Adib Shaaban, the right hand of Saddam Hussein’s powerful son Uday, has defected. DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports exclusively that this key member of Saddam Hussein’s administration, who was charged with his son’s most sensitive missions, traveled to Jeddah at the beginning of this week, saying he needed to put through some gold transactions ahead of the war. From Jeddah, he flew to Beirut and
disappeared.
US intelligence sources report that Shaaban never really went to Beirut. He made his way under cover to Damascus Monday and was picked up by an unmarked plane for an unknown destination. As Uday’s closest aide, he also managed a chain of official publications, including the authoritative Babel, and was in on the Saddam regime’s deepest secrets.
Uday commands the secret army known as Saddam’s Fedayeen, the backbone of Baghdad’s defenses and custodian of the weapons of mass destruction that were not smuggled out to Lebanon. Uday is also the chief of the ruling Baath Party’s covert service. Shaaban must therefore be a veritable treasury of Saddam Hussein’s secrets. In American hands, Uday’s chef de bureau would be even more valuable than the proverbial smoking gun.
| Okay. I'm confused. I don't know if it's a defection, a false alarm, or Mahmoud the Weasel trying to avoid getting smoked. From the Independent: |
Mr Shaaban, who has intimate knowledge of the Iraqi regime's sanctions-busting operations, had been sent to Lebanon by Uday to buy jewellery, according to Iraqi exiles in Damascus and London. They say that members of Saddam's family have been converting dollars into valuables as the threat of war comes closer.
Mr Shaaban and his colleagues had arrived in Beirut after attending a football competition in Saudi Arabia in their guise as a sports delegation. He is understood to have been travelling with several million dollars in cash to buy diamonds and jewellery.
"Uday cannot put the family's black money in the bank and he does not want huge hoards of cash, so he converts it into portable valuables," said Mashaan Jebouri, the Syria-based leader of the Homeland party, an Iraqi opposition group.
Mr Shaaban has been involved at the highest level in the lucrative business dealings that Saddam has entrusted to Uday. He knows first-hand how the regime flouts United Nations sanctions to fund Saddam's illegal weapons programmes and amass fortunes for the country's ruling elite.
"He knows all the secrets about the smuggling operations, the illegal oil sales, the front companies, all the black money business," said Abbas al-Janabi, a former senior Baghdad official now based in London.
According to the reports from exile groups, Mr Shaaban had been waiting with colleagues in a Beirut hotel car park for a vehicle to drive them back to Baghdad on Monday. He reportedly told them he had left his mobile phone charger in his room, went back into the building and vanished through another exit.
The account of his disappearance was given by Mr Jebouri, who said that the details were secretly provided to him by another member of Mr Shaaban's group. Other Iraqi exile factions gave similar versions of events.
Mr Shaaban is understood to have feared punishment after mishandling a recent business deal for Uday, who is notoriously cruel. Afeel Tavra, another senior official on the Olympics committee, recently had his hands and legs broken after falling foul of him.
Nothing was heard of Mr Shaaban for several days before he emerged in Damascus last night, blaming the Iraqi opposition for "making up information about my disappearance and defection to a Western embassy in Beirut" and describing himself as "one of Saddam's soldiers".
There was no explanation, however, of his whereabouts in the meantime. Iraqi intelligence agents attached to the embassies in Beirut and Damascus had been ordered to search for him. |