Save me! These cans! He hates these cans!
Posted on 01/24/2003 11:12:29 PM PST by HAL9000
(Baghdad, Iraq-AP) -- An unidentified man shouting "Save Me!'' has entered the compound of U-N weapons inspectors in Baghdad.
Journalists outside the compound say a man in his 20s climbed into an inspectors' vehicle as it was about to leave from the site.
He was shouting in Arabic.
The man was taken into the compound, a hotel where more than 100 inspectors and other U-N staffers have their offices.
There's been no comment from the U-N and no explanation of the incident.
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The cars drive around him but he manages to stop one by standing in fromt of it.
The UN team immediately try to hand him over to Iraqui soldiers but he refuses to leave the vehical and appears shaken.
After 10 minutes, a UN security team takes him into the compound and he is later handed over to Iraqui authorities.
Very reassuring to any potential informant.
O wonder how he would have been treated had the press not been present.
Men Seek to Breach U.N. Baghdad Compound2 Men, 1 Carrying Knives, Arrested in Baghdad After Trying to Enter U.N. Inspectors' Compound
BAGHDAD, Iraq Jan. 25 —
Two men one carrying three knives, the other a notebook and shouting "Save me!" tried to enter the U.N. inspectors' Baghdad compound in separate incidents Saturday, but were apprehended and turned over to Iraqi authorities.
The apparently unrelated incidents came amid U.N.-Iraqi tensions over a crucial inspectors report to be submitted to the U.N. Security Council on Monday.
In the first incident, about 7:50 a.m., a man identified in a preliminary report as an Iraqi government employee tried to enter the U.N. compound through a gated roadway entrance, but was apprehended by U.N. and Iraqi security, Baghdad U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said. Reporters saw the man wrestled to the ground by about a half-dozen guards.
"He was carrying three knives," Ueki said. "He was handed over to the Iraqi police. He is being interrogated by police."
In the second incident, occurring outside the same main entrance about 45 minutes later, a man appearing to be in his 20s ran in front of inspectors' vehicles as they left the site to begin their daily field missions to sites, witnesses said.
As he waved his arms frantically, the first two vehicles swerved around him, but the third stopped, witnesses said. "Save me!" he shouted in Arabic and English, after which he was allowed to enter the vehicle. He was carrying a copybook, witnesses said.
Appearing agitated and frightened, the young man, with a closely trimmed beard and mustache, sat inside the white U.N.-marked utility vehicle for 10 minutes. At first, an inspection team leader sought help from nearby Iraqi soldiers, but the man refused to leave the vehicle as the uniformed men pulled on his sleeve and collar.
"I am unjustly treated!" he shouted.
U.N. security arrived and, with Iraqi police, carried the man by his feet and arms into the fenced compound, the witnesses said. Ueki said the man was turned over to Iraqi authorities at a government office adjacent to the compound, but the spokesman had no further comment on the man's identity or purpose.
More than 100 inspectors and staff of other U.N. agencies have their offices at the site, the three-story former Canal Hotel, about four miles from the city center.
Such U.N. compounds traditionally provide diplomatic protection to persons seeking asylum.
The incident came two days before chief inspectors are to submit reports to the U.N. Security Council on whether Iraq is cooperating with their work, begun in late November.
The inspectors have been particularly eager to find Iraqi scientists, engineers or other specialists who may have information about any continuing programs to develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, prohibited to Iraq under U.N. resolutions.
It could not be determined whether the unidentified man with the notebook was somehow linked to the arms investigation.
After U.N. officials requested private interviews with three Iraqi scientists on Friday, one Iraqi appeared at the inspectors' residential hotel in Baghdad on Saturday morning and was led inside by an inspection team leader for an apparent interview. It was not immediately known if the interviewed was conducted in the presence of Iraqi officials.
More than an hour later, the man left the hotel without comment.
The Iraqis have generally cooperated with the inspectors' field missions, but chief inspector Hans Blix has complained about difficulties in other areas, specifically, for example, Iraq's reluctance to allow overflights by reconnaissance aircraft.
On Saturday morning, the Baghdad newspaper Al-Iraq criticized the U.N. effort.
"After much evidence of Iraq's innocence has become clearer ... the heads of the (inspectors) were put under extensive U.S.-British pressure, which led to an obvious deviation ... in their professional work and the nature of the work assigned to both orgniztions," it said.
I'm sure more will come forward now. Time to act.
Given the version of the story in #43, your theory makes a lot of sense.
They turned the guy over to Iraqi authorities??????God help that man if they did, he is in for a hard death.
I also agree with this. It's too much of a coincidence that two incidents would happen within a small time unless they were coordinated. The Baathists are too paranoid to realize that they can safely let these inspectors see anything, since the only result will be praise from Blix for Iraqi cooperation combined with minimization of what is found. Of course, the alternative, that the man with the notebook was a legitimate defector turned over to the torturers, is too horrible to contemplate.
International, and even domestic, support, for US/UK invasion of Iraq is already past its peak. It will be very dissapointing if President Bush, Tuesday night, gives Blix more time to be snowed and John Derbyshire more time to be right about our fecklessness.
We do, though, have a smoking gun here. The fact that the inspectors turned over an unarmed defector to the Baathists proves that they do not want to determine the truth, but rather to cover-up for Saddam's defenders.
This is the possibility that's had me sitting here shaking my head.
The first thing I thought of was that this guy may be one of our human intelligence guys on the ground, wanting to get extracted before the shooting starts. It would be great if he had all sorts of intel to provide to us before Bush makes his case...
Is that any way to treat the Ginsu II salseman?
Save me! These cans! He hates these cans!
That appears to be what happened. From the above article:
"I am unjustly treated!" he shouted.
U.N. security arrived and, with Iraqi police, carried the man by his feet and arms into the fenced compound, the witnesses said. Ueki said the man was turned over to Iraqi authorities at a government office adjacent to the compound, but the spokesman had no further comment on the man's identity or purpose."
I hope they determined that he was just a decoy to delay the convoy and that is why they turned him over.
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