Captured: The Torturer And Killer Who Hid Saddam's Cash

Barzan Al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and one of his most feared associates, was captured yesterday by American-led marines and special forces in what was probably the most important operation of its kind since the war began.

Barzan, who allegedly personally took part in the torturing to death of opponents, was seized in a raid in south Baghdad. He is believed to have helped Saddam Hussein to hide billions of dollars in other countries and has also been held responsible for the genocide of thousands of Kurds during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. He was among the 55 top members of the Iraqi regime being hunted by British and American forces in Iraq.

As chief of the Iraqi foreign Mukhbarat (intelligence agency) in the 1980s, Barzan will have intimate knowledge of the close military and intelligence links between the West and Baghdad during Iraq's bloody war with Iran.

Afterwards Barzan served as Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in Switzerland for a decade and was recalled to Baghdad in 1999 amid rumours that he intended to defect after a falling out with Saddam Hussein.

American Commanders hope that Barzan's interrogation will yield vital information on how to recover the bulk of the multi-billion dollar "slush fund" held overseas for the Iraqi dictator and his family. It was Barzan – whose full name is Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti – who was held responsible for the execution of the British journalist Farzad Barzoft, hanged in central Baghdad in March 1990 after being secretly tried on trumped up "espionage" charges.

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at US Central Command, disclosed the capture and said that Barzan was a close advisor to Saddam Hussein and had "extensive knowledge" of the workings of the former government.

The arrest came only a week after US war planes had used six "bunker buster" bombs to destroy a building to the west of Baghdad where they said they thought Barzan had been.

Last Sunday special forces – believed to be the British SAS – also captured another half brother of the dictator, the former interior minister Watban Ibrahim Hasan al Tikriti both men are on the US's list of 55 "most wanted" figures in the regime.

Barzan was captured alone in Baghdad, General Brooks said, and the hunt for him had been helped by information from Iraqi civilians. "We are currently asking a number of questions," he said. "Finding out what ever we can from this capture."

Because Barzan is said to have been closely involved in the weapons programme his questioning may prove important in determining whether US forces can establish the evidence which has so far eluded them of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Kenneth Pollack an Iraq expert who advised President Clinton, says that Barzan had said Iraq needed nuclear weapons because it wants "a strong hand in order to re-draw the map of the Middle East."

However, although two Arabic newspapers have cited claims by Baghdadis that Saddam Hussein was seen hours before US forces took effective control of the City, there is no word of his whereabouts.

Meanwhile a US army unit arrested a dozen men and youths inside a branch of the Al-Rashid Bank in Baghdad after thieves blew a hole in the vault and dropped children threw the opening to bring out cash, US sources said.

Guns were fired as hundreds of people converged on the bank demanding that the thieves gave them the money but US soldiers said they had recovered around $4m.

Barzan: a torturer and murderer who killed thousands

By Donald Macintyre in US Central Command
18 April 2003
Independent (UK)

Even by the savage standards of Saddam Hussein's regime, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, stood out for his ruthlessness. Of the many homicidal acts of which he stands accused, the genocidal killings of thousands of Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war are probably the most heinous.

But a chilling flavour of his methods emerges in testimony given to the human rights organisation Indict about killings that included the hanging of the Iranian-born Observer journalist Farzad Barzoft, sentenced to death in a closed court on charges of "espionage" in March 1990.

"When the coaches had left ... The soldiers ... began to beat [the women and children] and force them to return to their houses. As soldiers advanced towards us, I ran away with the other children and went home. By this time Barzan al-Tikriti had left.

"Around 300-350 were taken to the [X] military camp. They were all shot, some of them personally by Barzan al-Tikriti. A training camp was built over the mass grave in which the men were buried.Barzan al-Tikriti personally tortured them, pulling out their nails, administering electric shocks, stretching their limbs apart, throwing boiling water over them and using electric cables to beat them. Barzan al-Tikriti was also present when the British journalist Farzad Barzoft was executed."

"I was pulled to my feet and stood facing the door. Suddenly Barzan al-Tikriti stabbed me in the back with what could have been a screwdriver. When I was stabbed for the second time I lost consciousness."

The capture of Barzan in Baghdad will cheer human-rights campaigners deeply disappointed last year when Barzan left Switzerland in October for Iraq after the authorities declined to arrest and try him in response to a detailed war-crimes dossier compiled by Indict against him.

The dossier claimed that Barzan had pulled out fingernails, thrown boiling water over prisoners, beaten them with cables and administered electric shocks while he was director-general of the Iraqi Mukhabarat (intelligence agency) from 1979 to 1983. He is also alleged to have tortured reluctant scientists to force them to work on Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.

Indict told the Swiss federal prosecutor earlier this year that it could produce as many as 30 witnesses to support its accusations against Barzan – the chief accusation was that in 1983 he supervised the murder of between 3,500 and 8,000 Kurds suspected of helping the Iranians.

Eyewitnesses claimed that under his direction thousands of men aged between 14 and 70 from one tribe were arrested, held in camps near Arbil, northern Iraq, and then taken away. The men were never seen again.

According to one statement in the dossier, 300-350 men were buried in a mass grave near Kirkuk after being shot, some by Barzan personally. Barzan was also said to have participated in the deportation and mass murder of the inhabitants of the village of Dujail after an attempt on Saddam Hussein's life.

The Indict dossier said that in April 1980 Professor Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, a leading Shia cleric was murdered with a nail that was pushed through his head. Barzan is said to have burnt off his beard and tortured him with electricity to obtain a pledge of loyalty to the regime.

In June last year, the Labour MP Ann Clwyd, a leading campaigner on Iraqi human rights, visited Switzerland and pressed Swiss prosecutors to take action on the Indict dossier. But despite a sympathetic hearing for Ms Clwyd, the federal prosecutor's office said last March there were not enough "substantial suspicions" to pursue the investigation and that the country's genocide law was not retrospective.

Barzan, 53, is one of the dictator's three half-brothers. Another half-brother, Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, a former minister of the interior, was captured last weekend by the SAS on his way towards the Syrian border.

He was also accused of widespread repression of religious and ethnic minorities.

Barzan moved to Switzerland after leaving Baghdad in 1983 following a family feud.

While in Switzerland, he is widely believed to have played a leading role in the dictator's clandestine acquisition of nuclear and military technology.

His rehabilitation appeared complete when he served in the Iraqi delegation that met former US Secretary of State James Baker in Geneva in January 1991 in a final and fruitless effort to head off the 1991 Gulf War.

But in Geneva, the dictator's half brother was widely shunned by the diplomatic community. He once beat up his chauffeur at a diplomatic reception when the man arrived late.

The dictator recalled him from Switzerland in 1998, but his return to Baghdad was delayed for months, sparking rumours he wanted to defect.

At the start of 2000 he was rehabilitated by President Saddam, but he was still believed to have had a long standing feud with the dictator's oldest son, Uday, who is married to Barzan's daughter Saja.

Watban also had uneasy relations with Uday who shot him in the leg at a party in 1995 after hearing that his uncle had been criticising him. In recent years the deposed Iraqi leader has relied increasingly on his younger son, Qusay.

Saddam Hussein's half-brothers were eclipsed after the death of their mother, Subha, in 1983, but became prominent again after the 1991 Gulf War. Both Barzan and Watban are likely to have information about any weapons of mass destruction developed by Saddam's regime. The third half brother, Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, reportedly took refuge in Syria.

Barzan was always the dictator's favourite among his half brothers. His first job was collecting the fares on a Baghdad minibus.

He was only 18 when he took part in the 1968 coup that brought Saddam Hussein's Baath party to power.

In 1974, while Saddam was Iraqi vice-president, he got Barzan appointed head of the Mukhabarat.

From Debka today:

Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti, one of Saddam’s three half brothers, was very much alive when American forces picked him up Thursday, April 17, despite the reports of his death in a coalition air raid of his home in Tikrit north of Baghdad last week. He had simply moved to another palatial residence, making no effort to join the hundreds of his fellow insiders in the Saddam regime, who fled to Damascus.

In addition to his Tikrit homes, the well-heeled Barzan maintained a villa at the Salman Pak bio-weapons, terrorist training camp south of Baghdad opposite that of the president. Both were found unoccupied and stripped of contents by American forces when they entered the facility two weeks ago. Saddam’s half-brother also owns a mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva, to which he traveled on March 5 two weeks before the US invasion.

Up until 1995, Barzan handled Saddam’s personal fortune, estimated at $5-6 billion and deriving mainly from smuggled oil sales, as well as his personal investments. He was also in charge of foreign intelligence. It was Barzan who devised Iraq’s sanction-busting tactics to circumvent the food-for-oil limits the UN placed on Iraq’s oil sales. But then, in the mid-1990s, Saddam removed control of his assets from his half-brother, having decided that no one in Iraq, including his nearest kin, would be privy to the most sensitive source of his power, his funding. The Iraqi ruler replaced him with a widely-distributed network of overseas foreign brokers, each with charge of a small part of his investments. He kept them all on a tight leash by threats.

The deposed ruler’s assets are now believed by DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources to be scattered around thousands of straw companies registered in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as criminal tycoons in Belarus and the Ukraine. Some investments may be located in Austria. There is no confirmation of reports that al Qaeda has accessed Saddam’s secret stash.

Much of the financial information Barzan can offer his American interrogators may therefore be out of date, like his knowledge of the whereabouts of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. His importance lies in his status as an insider of the overthrown Saddam regime, prominent on the card deck of 55 most wanted Iraqis and familiar with its inner workings.

So far, only five are dead or in custody. American forces have posted huge financial rewards – up to $200,000 a head - for information leading to further detentions.

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