Posted on 04/25/2003 7:08:32 PM PDT by blam
Aziz phoned friend to fix surrender
By Alex Spillius in Baghdad
(Filed: 26/04/2003)
The demeanour of 20 members of a prominent Baghdad family locked firmly behind the iron gates of a suburban mansion yesterday afternoon was positively funereal. But there had not been a death in the family, there had been a surrender.
Late on Thursday evening their leading light, the former foreign minister Tariq Aziz, had given himself up to American forces.
The man who had once been the smooth-talking public face of Iraq to millions in the West had suffered two recent heart attacks. Now he decided to end his seclusion in his sister-in-law's house in the wealthy neighbourhood of Zaiyouna, where he moved shortly after the war began.
He apparently made several satellite phone calls to a friend in America asking him to approach the US military and demanding medical treatment in return for his submission. A neighbour, Mohammed Hillal, described a quick, almost silent operation in which no shots were fired. He said several American military armoured vehicles arrived in the street of sumptuous ochre homes with gardens filled with date palms around 11.30pm. He saw troops in night-vision goggles. "Then they brought a GMC Jeep with black windows and a white BMW and some people got into them," Mr Hillal said.
As the family mourned Aziz's departure to an uncertain future and possible prosecution, US Central Command in Qatar hailed the highest profile capture of a member of Saddam Hussein's regime so far and hoped that it would lead them to Saddam.
A leading member of the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group which has led the Americans to five people on the list of the 55 most-wanted regime members, said: "His surrender gives confidence to the Iraqi people that the regime is not coming back. But from the point of view of the power structure here he was by now largely irrelevant. He turned himself in because the game was up. I doubt he knows much that isn't known, and I doubt he knows much about weapons of mass destruction."
The ease with which Aziz was able to conceal himself without detection in a relative's house suggests other leading Ba'athists may have done the same, including Saddam and his sons. There are only around 30,000 American troops in a city of six million Iraqis. The patrols mainly stick to the main roads. The Americans are not going to stumble upon fugitive members of the regime.
Perhaps the best hope from Aziz's capitulation is that it will encourage others from the list to follow suit.
On the streets of the capital his arrest was welcomed with enthusiasm not jubilation. "This is another proof that Saddam is finished. If Aziz surrenders to the Americans, who is still with Saddam?" said Mohammad Hareth, selling cigarettes on a street corner.
That's what the article said.
"The man who had once been the smooth-talking public face of Iraq to millions in the West had suffered two recent heart attacks."
Jim McDermott?
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