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Samir Vincent's ongoing court case exemplifies the underreported story of Saddam Hussein's agents who were operating inside the United States in the years prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Vincent's trial involves the Oil for Food scandal and implicates the Iraqi agent in attempting to buy off pro-Iraq (pre-invasion) sentiments within the U.S. government and the United Nations on behalf of Baghdad. The FBI's press release details Vincent's admission of guilt as an unregistred Iraqi agent and is available here. ShaabanAnother recently concluded trial is that of Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban (pictured right). Shaaban, who had met with...

Trucker Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban is what trucker/terrorist-wannabe, Mohammed Yousef Mullawala dreamed he could be. Mullawala is facing deportation on various charges, including suspicious activities surrounding his brief attendance at the Nationwide Tractor Trailer School in Rhode Island. Unlike Mullawala, Shaaban was the real deal – a terrorist spy hiding behind the steering wheel of a big truck. The story of Shaaban is as captivating as it is unsettling. The Palestinian-born Russian-educated Shaaban settled in Greenfield, Indiana, with his family and worked as a truck driver for CLM Freight Lines in nearby Indianapolis. According to reports, his commercial driver’s...

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for what prosecutors said was a plot to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. "I am not a bad man," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban told U.S. District Court Judge John D. Tinder during his sentencing hearing. "I help this country a lot. ... I came to live in peace." Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Jackson said Shaaban was putting up a front in maintaining his innocence. "This defendant is a man without a conscience. Mr. Shaaban has no allegiance to this...

Before war on Iraq, much chatter went around about the domino effect in the Arab region. The claim was that once “freedom” finds its way to Iraq, Arab regimes will automatically crumble down one after the other under the sheer pressure of public demand for similar freedom and democracy, or with an American military push in that direction. Three years of occupation and bloodshed later, the American-exported democracy in Iraq was not much more than ethnic and sectarian division and hostility to neighboring Arab states. The democratic leader turned out to be no one other than the American Ambassador, and...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A Greenfield man has been indicted on accusations he tried to sell the names of U.S. intelligence agents to Iraq before the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Authorities: Man Was In Iraq In '02 Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban, a 52-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested Thursday after an investigation of more than a year by the FBI and other agencies, U.S. Attorney Susan W. Brooks said. Shaaban, also known as Shaaban Shaaban Hafed and Joe H. Brown, is suspected of going to Iraq in 2002 and making a deal to sell the names. He isn't accused...

Senior Iraq Defector May Not Have Made It All may not be well for Adib Shaaban, senior aide to Saddam’s powerful son Uday and Iraq’s highest-ranking would-be defector. His attempt to flee to the United States, first revealed exclusively in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 97 (February 14), may not have come off. First a recap: Shaaban -- charged with Uday’s most sensitive missions -- traveled to Jeddah in early February, saying he needed to put through some gold transactions ahead of the war. From Jeddah, he flew to Beirut and disappeared. But he never really went to the Lebanese capital. Instead, he made...