Doubts about arrest of Saddam's No. 2 Defense minister says report on al-Douri 'baseless'
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:04 p.m. ET Sept. 5, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi authorities said Sunday that they captured Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the most wanted fugitive from Saddam Hussein's ousted dictatorship, but the Iraqi defense minister later said word of al-Douri's capture was "baseless."
The U.S. military said it could not confirm al-Douri's arrest and said he was not in American custody.
Past reports of al-Douri's arrest have proven false. But several top
Iraqi officials said his capture was all but confirmed in a raid on a clinic near Adwar, al-Douri's hometown, in the region of Tikrit, where Saddam and many of his top officials were from. Saddam was captured Dec. 13 hiding in a safe-house near Adwar.
"We are sure he is Izzat Ibrahim," information official Ibrahim Janabi told The Associated Press. "He was arrested in a clinic in Makhoul near Tikrit and Adwar (his hometown in northern Iraq) and 60 percent of the DNA test has finished."
A Defense Ministry spokesman, Saleh Sarhan, also told the U.S.-finded Alhurra television station that al-Douri had been captured.
Later, however, the defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, said in an interview with Lebanon's Al Hayat-LBC television that reports that Izzat Ibrahim was captured were "baseless."
"We don't have any information on this subject or on the reports that allegedly came out from the defense ministry," he said.
"They are baseless. There are search operations by the national guards troops and multinational troops going on during which some terrorist positions were shelled. There were rumors that Izzat al-Douri or someone who resembles him were in that position but we don't have any information on Izzat specifically," he said.
U.S. military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said al-Douri â€" who was Saddam's right-hand man before the regime fell â€" was not in U.S. custody and that they were waiting to hear more from the Iraqis.
U.S. Maj. Neal O'Brien of the Tikrit-based 1st Infantry Division said he could not confirm al-Douri was captured. A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Baghdad also said he had no information about an arrest.
There was no immediate way to reconcile the contradictory reports.
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