This is from “aliraqnews”:
Fled this morning to Amman, Iraqi Major-General Tariq Aboudi first military adviser of the Defense Ministry, supervisor of the military courts and the head of the The Debaathification Committee.
Arrest warrant issued against Major-General Tariq Aboudi two days ago for stealing $600 Million for Iraq-Poland arm deal, Aboudi at that time was the head of the Committee to purchase the weapons, police force came to his house, hours after he left the country to Amman
Background on Iraq-Poland weapon deal:
IRAQ: Fraud in Weapons Deals Drained $1 billion
Security developments in Iraq, Sept 5
Following are security and other developments in Iraq reported on Tuesday, as of 1700 GMT:
BAGHDAD — The body of Sheikh Jamal Khalifah, the imam of al-Rifai mosque in western Baghdad, was found on Tuesday, the Muslim Scholars Association said. He had been kidnapped on Friday. The group blamed the killing on militias tied to the government.
NEAR SUWAYRA — The bodies of five blindfolded men with multiple gunshot wounds and signs of torture were pulled from the Tigris River near Suwayra, a town south of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
BAGHDAD — Police said they found the bodies of seven people in Baghdad with gunshot wounds to the head, five of them in the mainly Sunni area of Adhamiya, where insurgents are active.
BAGHDAD — Gunmen killed three Shi’ite pilgrims in the southern Baghdad district of Doura while they were walking to a religious ceremony in Kerbala, police said.
BAQUBA — Insurgents killed three policemen when they fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their vehicle in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.
NEAR LATIFIYA — Gunmen killed one Shi’ite pilgrim and wounded three others near Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, as they were going to Kerbala to attend a religious ceremony, an Interior Ministry source said.
SAMARRA — Three people were killed and others wounded when two roadside bombs struck a fuel tanker in a residential area in Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad, witnesses and hospital officials said.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
BAGHDAD — All British troops may be gone from Iraq by the end of 2007 as Iraq’s army and police gradually assume security responsibility, Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani said.
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliament, in its first session since the summer recess, extended the the state of emergency for another month. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s emergency powers are renewed monthly and have been in place for the last two years.
Iraqi parliament extends state of emergency for a month
September 5, 2006
The Iraqi parliament voted Tuesday to extend a state of emergency for a month, and Britain’s foreign secretary emphasized the importance of transferring control of security from the U.S.-led coalition to the Iraqi government.
The state of emergency has been in place for almost two years and covers every region except the autonomous Kurdish region in the north. It grants security forces greater powers such as implementing curfews and making arrests without warrants.
It has been renewed every month since it was first imposed in November 2005, hours before U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a major offensive to drive insurgents out of the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, on her first trip to Iraq since taking her post in May, met with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh and discussed the transfer of security control from the U.S.-led coalition to Iraqi authorities.
British forces handed over control of the southern Muthanna province to their Iraqi counterparts in July, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said another southern province, Dhi Qar, would follow in September.
Handing over control from the coalition to Iraqi authorities is a key part of any eventual drawdown of U.S.-led international troops.
In the past week, a disagreement emerged over the handover of Iraq’s armed forces command and a highly anticipated ceremony on Saturday marking the transfer was called off at the last minute.
On Monday, Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for the prime minister, said in an interview with the BBC that the ceremony would be held on Thursday.
Beckett, whose visit came after two British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Iraq on Monday, was to meet with al-Maliki later in the day.
After meeting with the British foreign secretary, Saleh left on a four-day trip to Iran to develop ties and prepare a forthcoming visit to Tehran by al-Maliki, the deputy prime minister’s office said. It did not release any details on when al-Maliki would visit Iran.
Iraq’s new Shiite leaders have close ties to Tehran, and U.S. officials have encouraged Iraq to have good relations with all of its neighbors, including Iran, despite accusing the Islamic Republic of not doing enough to stop militants from infiltrating Iraq across the nearly 1,000-mile-long porous border.
Since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003, Iraq has tried to build closer ties with Iran and heal scars left by the 1980–88 war that killed more than 1 million people on both sides.
In Baghdad, Sunni Arab lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq held a conference with the heads of Iraqi tribes and called upon the leader of the Kurds in the north to reconsider their decision to replace the Iraqi flag with the Kurdish one.
The decision by Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region, last week has angered many in Baghdad. The Kurdish region gradually has been gaining more autonomy since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, a worrying development to many Iraqi leaders, especially Sunni Arabs.
U.S., Iraq near handover
By Ibon Villelabeitia
September 5, 2006
The United States and Iraq hope to sign an agreement by next week to hand operational command of Iraq’s new army to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq said on Monday, after wrangles on wording had held up the accord.
A day after the government hailed the arrest of al Qaeda in Iraq’s purported deputy head as a coup against insurgents, the bodies of 33 men, some with their hands bound and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad.
South of the capital, the U.S.-trained Iraqi army said it killed 14 suspected insurgents who had been plotting to attack Shi’ite pilgrims, a popular tactic by Sunni militants whom U.S. and Iraqi officials accuse of spreading sectarian civil war.
A player for one of Iraq’s biggest soccer clubs was kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad just days before he was due to sign a transfer to a Syrian club, an Iraqi official said.
Transferring security from U.S. forces to the Iraqi army it is training is key to Washington’s plans to withdraw its 140,000 troops. A handover ceremony set for Saturday was delayed over disagreements between Baghdad and Washington over the wording of a document outlining their armies’ new relationship.
Denying there had ever been serious disagreement, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters: “Both sides have agreed on the main issues. I think the document is ready to be signed, probably by the end of this week or early next week.”
He said all remaining disagreements were “technicalities”.
The agreement, which the U.S. military says is a key step toward Iraq taking responsibility for its security, lays out a gradual transfer of command from U.S. forces to Iraqi units.
Under the timetable, every two weeks command of Iraqi units meeting certain criteria would be transferred until, by April 1, Iraqi troops in even the Sunni insurgent strongholds of Ramadi and Falluja would no longer be under U.S. command, Dabbagh said.
In parallel with this, control of security is being handed over province by province to Iraqi leaders, a process Dabbagh said would largely be complete this year, requiring U.S. forces then to receive approval for any movements across the country.
Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said Iraqi government lawyers had recommended that some articles of the document, drafted by U.S.-led forces, be rewritten.
“It is a very important document because it deals with the whole handover of sovereignty,” Askari told reporters.
U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson called the disagreements “legalistic”.
Although mindful of his dependency on U.S. military power, Maliki is keen to be seen winning independence from Washington. A government source told Reuters the Shi’ite prime minister was pushing for guarantees that his forces would have freedom to make decisions independently.
MASS GRAVES
As Iraqi and U.S. officials worked on the final draft of a document that spells out their military relationship in the future, Iraq’s past reverberated again with the discovery of two mass graves in the north containing 80 people believed to be Kurdish victims of Saddam Hussein’s anti-Kurdish campaign.
Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed in the 1988 Anfal onslaught for which Saddam and six others are now on trial.
A row between ethnic Kurds and the central government that had provoked threats of Kurdish secession in the north appeared to have been defused on Monday after Maliki, a Shi’ite Arab, said Iraq may get a new flag when parliament meets on Tuesday.
Rejecting Iraq’s national flag as a symbol of Saddam’s oppression, the Kurdish regional leader last week banned it from flying in public building, sparking a stern rebuke by Maliki. Dabbagh said designing a new flag and anthem was now a priority.
Along with the Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian divide that a recent Pentagon report said could spark a civil war, friction between Kurds and Arabs is seen as a major threat to Iraq’s unity.
An Iraqi al Qaeda-led group questioned the alleged rank of Juma Faris al-Suaidi, whom Iraq’s national security adviser called the deputy of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who took over the group after U.S. forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June.
In an Internet statement, the Mujahideen Shura Council said: “We bring good tidings to our brethren that all our leaders are well, praise God, leading the ranks.”
Ahmadinejad calls for university purge
September 5, 2006
Iran’s hard-line president urged students Tuesday to push for a purge of liberal and secular university teachers, another sign of his determination to strengthen Islamic fundamentalism in the country.
With his call echoing the rhetoric of the nation’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad appears determined to remake Iran by reviving the fundamentalist goals pursued under the republic’s late founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Ahmadinejad’s call was not a surprise — since taking office a year ago, he also has moved to replace pragmatic veterans in the government and diplomatic corps with former military commanders and inexperienced religious hard-liners.
Iran still has strong moderate factions but Ahmadinejad’s administration also has launched crackdowns on independent journalists, Web sites and bloggers.
Speaking to a group of students Tuesday, Ahmadinejad called on them to pressure his administration to keep driving out moderate instructors, a process that began earlier this year.
Dozens of liberal university professors and teachers were sent into retirement this year after Ahmadinejad’s administration named the first cleric to head Tehran University, sparking strong protests from students.
The country’s oldest institution of higher education remains home to dozens more professors and instructors who outspokenly oppose policies that restrict freedom of expression.
“Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a meeting with students.
The president complained that reforms in the country’s universities were difficult to accomplish and that the educational system had been affected by secularism for the last 150 years. But, he added: “Such a change has begun.”
It was not clear whether Ahmadinejad intended to take immediate specific measures, or was just urging the students to rally.
Ahmadinejad, in his role as head of the country’s Council of Cultural Revolution, would have the authority to make such changes himself. But his comments seemed designed to encourage hard-line students to begin a pressure campaign on their own, thus putting a squeeze on universities.
“This is the beginning of a so-called cultural revolution. Ahmadinejad and his allies plan to sweep their opponents from the universities,” said Saeed Al-e Agha, a Tehran University professor. “They want to rule the brains of youth there.”
“Ahmadinejad wants to settle scores with the most important center of critics and opposition and close the door to any opponent before municipal elections in late November,” said Kouhyar Goodarzi, a human rights activist. “But his move may prompt a new round of student unrest.”
Liberal and secular professors teach at universities around the country, but they are a minority. Most are politically passive and do not identify with either the hard-liners or the liberal camp.
Public opinion is difficult to gauge because of a lack of independent opinion polls. But Ahmadinejad must tread carefully among various factions, and strong moderate voices remain.
Hard-liners increasingly control the top rungs of government but still encounter resistance from some members of the public. Moderates also remain in government. Even among conservatives, there are different goals and powerful political factions.
It remains unclear, for example, how tightly Ahmadinejad controls the government, or the exact nature of his relationship with the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Ahmadinejad surprised his conservative backers in April by deciding that women could attend soccer games, but Khamenei didn’t agree and the supreme leader’s view prevailed.
Shortly after the Iranian revolution, Tehran fired hundreds of liberal and leftist university teachers and expelled many students.
It had a brief period of reform in the 1990s under then-President Mohammad Khatami, but hard-line factions cracked down then, too, especially on university students, dissidents and journalists.
“It’s horrible. I did not expect at all that Ahmadinejad … would try to deprive others of their jobs because of political differences,” Reza, a university graduate who did not wish to be identified further for fear of retaliation, said of the president’s statement Tuesday.
In spite of Ahmadinejad’s bluster, the purge has not yet taken place, a human rights activist pointed out.
“At the moment, these words haven’t been followed with actions,” said Hadi Ghaemi, a researcher on Iran for the New York-based Human Rights Watch. But they could signal a coming crackdown, he added.
Ghaemi cautioned the international community not to be “fixated” on the Iranian nuclear issue. “We should not forget about human rights violations within the country,” he said.
The president, who won election based on promises of economic reform, has sharpened the government’s stance both on human rights issues and on Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.
Iran ignored a U.N. demand to suspend uranium enrichment by the end of August, insisting its nuclear program is peaceful and not intended to make a bomb. Ahmadinejad also has accused the United States of imperialism and called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Despite Western disgust with its confrontational positions, it seems unlikely that Iran will face tough U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program. Many European leaders have called for more negotiations, and Russia and China appear unwilling to endanger trade ties.
Bomb targets Lebanon police convoy
September 5, 2006
A remote-controlled bomb on Tuesday wounded a senior police intelligence officer who played a key role in the investigation into the slaying of a former Lebanese prime minister.
Security officials said four of the officer’s aides and bodyguards were killed in the sophisticated attack in south Lebanon.
Lt. Col. Samir Shehade, deputy chief of the intelligence department in Lebanon’s national police force, was taken to the Hammoud hospital in Sidon, and hospital officials said his condition was stable.
The four dead were Shehade’s aides and bodyguards, and another five were wounded in the attack, which occurred as Shehade’s two-vehicle police convoy drove by the village of Rmaile, near the southern port city of Sidon.
Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation that the blast was caused by a roadside bomb loaded with nails. He said it targeted the car normally driven by Shehade, who was traveling in the other vehicle at the time.
Fatfat did not say who might have been behind the attack but said it could have been aimed at Lebanese security forces, who are deploying to south Lebanon under a U.N.-brokered cease-fire deal that ended a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas August 14.
Lebanese army troops are supposed to deploy in the south with a beefed-up U.N. peacekeeping force as Israeli troops withdraw.
Shehade also was involved in the arrest last August of four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals in Lebanon. The four were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Security officials said Shehade was involved in the interrogation of several witnesses in the Hariri probe, including Syrian intelligence operative Husam Taher Husam.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said Shehade had received threats because of his work in the Hariri probe.
Hariri’s son, Saad Hariri, a prominent lawmaker in Lebanon, called the attack a terrorist act. “This is a message which we reject,” he told reporters in Beirut.
The roadside bomb was detonated by remote control as the convoy traveled on a highway between two bridges, said other security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Two of Shehade’s bodyguards, Chief Sgt. Wissam Harb and Chief Sgt. Chehab Aoun, were killed. Two others later died of their wounds at a hospital.
Shehade’s convoy was riddled with shrapnel and TV footage showed at least one bloodied man slumped on his seat in one of the cars. Police sealed off the area and began an investigation.
The Tuesday explosion came 10 days before U.N. chief investigator Serge Brammertz was to submit a report to the U.N. Security Council updating his findings on the Hariri investigation.
Previous reports have implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the killing, which rocked Lebanese politics and led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, ending a 29-year-military presence.
Syria denies any role in the Hariri slaying or the subsequent bombings.
Ladybird the knight Ridder source for your post has been pulled..only the blog “corp watch” is using it. There must be something bogus about it.
wotasuprise btw.