Saddam ‘ordered $1bn cash withdrawal’
Saddam Hussein ordered his son Qusay to collect nearly $1 billion from Baghdad’s Central Bank just hours before the coalition bombing raid started the Iraq conflict, the New York Times has reported.
According to the paper, Qusay removed around $900m in US dollars and $100m in euros from the vaults of the Central Bank at about 0400 local time on March 18th and took it away in three lorries.
This is believed to have been a quarter of the Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves and it is not known if the money belonged to Saddam Hussein.
Finance Minister, Hikmat Ibrahim al-Azzawi who is now in US custody, reportedly oversaw the two-hour withdrawal.
The Times quoted a US special forces officer, Colonel Ted Seel, who stated that intelligence information suggested that a convoy of lorries crossed from Iraq into Syria shortly after the withdrawal.
The suggestion that the money might have crossed the border into Syria could turn the spotlight on Damascus again, after the Bush Administration accused the Syrians of shielding Iraqi officials and aiding terrorists recently.
It is not known where the cash is now. However, it could also have formed part of a £650 million haul discovered by US troops recently.
Meanwhile, US forces in southern Iraq have released a further 150 prisoners of war, as the conflict draws to a close.
The PoW camp in the port of Umm Qasr has been freeing prisoners daily, according to the BBC, and only around 2,000 of the original 7,000 captured remain there.
PoWs are fingerprinted and have DNA samples taken before being handed a supply of food and water, $5 and boarding buses heading for key southern cities.
However, the hunt continues for Iraq’s ‘most wanted’ officials of the former regime. The latest high-profile arrest is that of Dr Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, or ‘Chemical Sally’, who is believed to have been instrumental in the development of Iraq’s banned weapons programme.
It is hoped that she will provide them with further evidence of the chemical and biological weapons development for which the war was fought, after the capture of 18 key officials has failed to provide any conclusive proof.
While the coalition has failed to turn up evidence of the alleged weapons of mass destruction, the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is begging them to allow inspectors to investigate whether radioactive material has been removed from Iraqi nuclear facilities.
British ambassadors have now returned to Baghdad for the first time in 12 years and are currently operating from transport containers in the grounds of the old embassy, while it is repaired.
