Iraqi scientists detained for far too long

1.45pm - From PATRICK COCKBURN in Baghdad


The US has detained for far too long Iraqi scientists arrested last year in the belief that they would provide information about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, according to an Iraqi government source.

Even when US investigators concluded that no such weapons existed the scientists were not freed because the US Administration feared that their release would be seen as a tacit admission that Iraq had no WMD. Earlier this year some 70 Iraqi scientists were under arrest.

This may explain why the US embassy in Iraq is determined to detain Dr Rihab Rashid Taha, who once worked on biological weapons, while the Iraqi Ministry of Justice says it sees no good reason for her continued detention.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose Tawhid and Jihad group is threatening to behead the British contractor Kenneth Bigley unless Iraqi female prisoners are released, probably had no idea that his demand would focus attention on the detention of two Iraqi women scientists.

Zarqawi was more likely trying to make propaganda points since it is widely rumoured among Iraqis that the US and Britain hold many female Iraqi prisoners.

When Dr Taha, a microbiologist with a doctorate from East Anglia University, handed herself in to US forces in Baghdad on 12 May last year American officials hoped that she would lead them to well-concealed biological weapons.

US central military command in Florida even issued a special press release crowing over her detention. In the lead-up to the war one of the key demands of the US and Britain was that Saddam Hussein allow free access to scientists whom the UN inspectors wanted to interview about WMD.

After the war American inspectors, first under David Kay and from this January under Charles Duelfer were able to order the detention of these same scientists and talk to them at length.

But despite vastly expensive and detailed investigations, no WMD were found.

The forthcoming 1,500-page study by the US government's Iraq Survey Group (ISG), details of which have been leaked to the press, concludes that Iraq had no large-scale programmes to build such weapons.

Dr Taha headed a small research team to develop Iraqi biological weapons at al-Muthana from 1985 to 1995 according to the US government. Her somewhat sinister appearance and the nick-name "Dr Germ" gave her international prominence.

She was also married to Lt Gen Amer Rashid, the Iraqi Oil Minister, who also surrendered to US forces.

The Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology has unsuccessfully sought the freedom of some of the scientists under arrest on the grounds that their expertise is needed to build up Iraq's scientific potential once more.

It is possible that Dr Taha and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, the biotech researcher nicknamed "Mrs Anthrax" by the media, were able to provide historical information about Iraq's WMD which were developed during the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s.

Much of this will already be known in detail in the US and Europe because they provided ingredients for the poison gas used first against Iran from 1983 and later against the Kurds in 1988-89.

The US and British governments have not formally admitted that their claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in quantity sufficient to threaten the rest of the Middle East is false.

The imprisoned scientists such as Dr Taha and Dr Ammash are therefore theoretically of potential use in continuing investigations though with the publication of the comprehensive ISG report these should now have ended.

While scientists who worked in Iraq under Saddam Hussein were regarded as suspect by the US after the war those who fled abroad and testified that the Iraqi leader had a fearsome arsenal of weapons were at first given jobs and high salaries. But not all have continued to flourish.

Dr Khidir Hamza, a dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist, was a star witness before Congressional Committees arguing for the immediate invasion of Iraq to avert the threat from Saddam Hussein.

In the run-up to the war Dr Hamza said: "Saddam has a whole range of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical."

He was rewarded after the war by being appointed to the well paid job as senior advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology. The appointment was not a success.

Dr Hamza was accused by his colleagues of often failing to turn up for work and preventing others from doing their job. He demanded a house in the heavily fortified Green Zone for himself and his family. He was at first turned down but last Christmas a bomb exploded near his car and he was given a house though the US administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority, was dubious of his claim to have been attacked.

On March 4 he was quietly sacked though it took the US authorities weeks to lever him out of his house.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq