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Izzat Al Douri being sheltered by Syrian army

By Damien Mcelroy

DAMASCUS: The king of clubs from America’s card deck of most wanted Iraqis is being sheltered at a military base in the Syrian capital Damascus, according to a Gulf diplomat.

Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former vice-president of Iraq and one of Saddam Hussein’s closest henchmen, is said to be under the protection of Syria’s Republican Guard in the decrepit military base near the airport. He is among thousands of regime figures who are believed to have slipped into Syria before Damascus sealed the border. Izzat had been put in charge of defending northern Iraq but in the absence of a northern front, he decided to flee.

Diplomats in Damascus said that before President George W Bush threatened Syria with severe consequences if its border remained open, Iraqi officials were granted one-month visas on request. Izzat is effectively at the Syrians’ mercy should they wish to appease America and hand him over. “The Syrians allowed him to stay,” the diplomat told The Telegraph. “A substantial sum of money was paid to cross the border on an unmarked route used by shepherds.

“Although he is being treated well, now that he is here there’s nowhere for him to go. He cannot just slip away. Luckily for him, the Syrians have not yet responded to queries about turning him over.”

Rassem Raslan, a former Syrian ambassador to Paris, said that Izzat had been a regular visitor to Damascus in the past two years. “There were many opportunities for officials from Baghdad to come here and build relations,” he said.

“People who were involved in improving trade ties and putting the oil pipeline into operation have been able to use their connections to get in.” Many other Iraqis are making plans to move on from Syria. Last week, American intelligence officials accused France of providing passports to fleeing regime officials who want to come to western Europe. The French government denied the charges, but a Syrian employee of the French embassy in Damascus claimed that eight Iraqi officials from the oil and finance ministries had been given passports in the middle of April.

“The commercial section of the embassy received passports for eight Iraqi officials and members of their families,” he said. He claimed that Paris also ordered that a passport issued for Tahir Jalil al-Habbush, a former head of Iraq’s Mukhabarat intelligence service who is on America’s wanted list, should be cancelled soon after it had arrived. It remains unclear whether al-Habbush is in Syria.

Iraqis who cannot obtain genuine passports are buying counterfeit papers. Roni Ahmed, a self-styled people smuggler who used to help Iraqi asylum-seekers to make their way to Europe, claims to have made up dozens of Swedish passports, charging £2,800 for each, and arranged for Iraqis to travel to Stockholm.

“I didn’t ask any questions about who they were, what they had done or any of that,” Mr Ahmad said from his flat on the sixth floor of a breeze-block tower-block.

“They took the documents, booked the tickets and got out of here. You could tell some of them were very important though. I’m Iraqi and I know my family has had to rely on food rations for 10 years, but these guys were fat.”

Jewellers reported that trade had boomed as Iraqis turned their cash into easily portable gold necklaces before leaving the country. Adil Fowal, a jeweller in Sayeed Zainab, the Iraqi quarter of Damascus, showed off receipts for tens of thousands of pounds worth of business.

“On my best day I earned more than $50,000 from sales to Iraqi Sunnis,” he said. “The war was good for my business because the Iraqis were coming here worried about Syria’s foreign exchange restrictions. “A gold necklace can be worn through the airport but a large amount of cash could be taken away if it was discovered.

“Some of them were travelling overland through Russia and were worrying about getting robbed on the way.” —ST

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