Ash-Sharq al-Awsat quoted an unnamed source from the Iranian presidential office as saying that the surrender of a top al-Qaida leader, Khaled al-Harbi, to the Saudi embassy in Iran on Tuesday came after pressure from President Mohammad Khatami on the conservative Revolutionary Guards to hand over terrorists sought by the Saudis. The source said the intelligence of the Revolutionary Guards had initially resisted pressure to hand over al-Qaida elements to the Iranian Security Ministry, saying the Guards were being supported by the Iranian conservative and religious leaders. He added the Republican Guards responded after Saudi Arabia and Iran recently signed a judicial cooperation memorandum calling for handing over wanted suspects to each other. The source said that al-Harbi was informed two weeks ago that a decision was made to hand him over to the Saudi authorities. Al-Harbi, he added, was told to either surrender voluntarily to the Saudi embassy in Tehran or be forcefully taken to Saudi Arabia, of which he chose the first option.
| So, what is al-Harbi wanted by the Saudis for? As far as I have read, he's been out of the country for years as a spiritual supporter of al-Qaeda. Fox News had somebody on yesterday saying the US didn't have any charges against him, he was just a cheerleader, of sorts. Any ideas? |
The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi reported Wednesday that an Iraqi court convicted a prominent member of the Iraqi National Congress and top aide to the INC leader, Ahmed Chalabi, for abusing power in the disappearance of 36 billion Iraqi dinars during the process of changing the old dinar to the new currency. The independent Palestinian-owned daily said the court sentenced Sabah Nouri Ibrahim Salem to 4œ years in prison, saying he worked as the office director of the finance minister in the postwar Iraqi government. Meanwhile, the paper also quoted former Iraqi Governing Council member Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum as accusing former U.S. administrator to Iraq, Paul Bremer, of "stealing more than $250 billion of Iraqi funds represented by deposits and large reserves." Bahr al-Uloum said Bremer left Iraq after "he turned it into a poor-budget state" and accused him of practicing "backwardness and dictatorship on the Governing Council members that very much resembled the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein." The former official insisted that if Bremer "could have prevented us from drinking water, he would have done so."
The London-based Arabic daily, ash-Sharq al-Awsat, quoted the INC's Ahmad Chalabi as also accusing Bremer of having violated the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq and other agreements reached with Iraqi leaders at the time the Governing Council was formed last year. Chalabi told the Saudi-owned paper that Bremer was involved in violations regarding the Iraqi Development Fund, but did not elaborate. He said his differences with the U.S. administration began to escalate when the Americans insisted on nominating Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy to Iraq, to help in the formation of the new Iraqi government. He said he fiercely opposed such a role for Brahimi, claiming the U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq, Robert Blackwell, had told him to either support Brahimi or face a confrontation with the United States. |