Even more important than the surrender of Aziz is the capture of this interesting gentleman:
Friday, April 25, 2003 · Last updated 6:50 a.m. PT
Captured Iraq Spy May Be Link to al-Qaida
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Little is known about Farouk Hijazi, the Iraqi spymaster who has been taken into custody by coalition forces - except that he could be the key figure who links Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.
It was Hijazi, as Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, who reportedly met with Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"It's a big catch. This man was involved in a number of contacts with al-Qaida," former CIA director James Woolsey told CNN.
Haidar Ahmed, spokesman for the opposition Iraqi National Congress in London, said Hijazi served as ambassador to Turkey from the late 1990s until soon after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He was then summoned to Baghdad following reports linking him to bin Laden, and was sent to Tunisia as ambassador in the last six months.
Ahmed claimed Hijazi was a key link between the regime and al-Qaida.
He also said Hijazi had an important role in organizing Iraqi sleeper cells in Europe that planned assassinations, smuggling operations and intelligence gathering.
Born to a Palestinian family, Hijazi "won the Iraqi ruling family's favor by the zeal with which he went about executing their opponents, both in Iraq and abroad," according to Britain's Guardian newspaper.
In the 1990s, he became head of external operations in Saddam's Mukhabarat security agency, run by Saddam's son Qusay.
Iraq first tried to place Hijazi as ambassador to Canada, but that country refused to accept him as an envoy, the Guardian reported.
In 1998, he became Iraq's ambassador to Turkey. In December of that year, he traveled to Afghanistan and reportedly met with bin Laden, officials in Washington said.
Details of the meeting in Kandahar, a region in southeastern Afghanistan where the al-Qaida had training camps, are not known. But American officials have pointed to it as an Iraqi link to al-Qaida.
Iraq denied a meeting occurred.
There have been other reports that Hijazi also met with bin Laden in 1996 or earlier.
Newsweek magazine reported Hijazi met with Mohammed Atta - the suspected organizer of the Sept. 11 terror attacks who died on one of the hijacked planes - in Prague in April 2001. But other sources have cast doubt on that report.
The congress' Ahmed said Hijazi was "one of the main channels between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden himself. As much as Iraqi intelligence was involved with al-Qaida, Hijazi was involved."
Ahmed said that after the fall of Saddam's regime, Hijazi went to Damascus and tried to enter Iraq, although it was unclear why.
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