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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (73878)	2/14/2003 1:12:11 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, If true defection might lead to an incursion in iraq to secure a sight. These sights may be deliberately unprotected and in obscure places. They are only known by a few people i would assume and i have heard stories in the past of them being under man made lakes etc.. Talk about draining a swamp. mike

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (73878)	2/17/2003 7:15:26 AM
From: Bill Ulrich	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Debka might have something with that second defector. Larger media picking it up now. Chicago Sun-Times: suntimes.com Saddam son's aide a defector? February 16, 2003 BY PHILIP SHERWELL LONDON--The right-hand man of Saddam Hussein's oldest son, Uday, is believed to have defected to the West after disappearing from a hotel in Beirut last week. Adeeb Shaaban, who has intimate knowledge of the regime's sanctions-busting operations, had been sent to Lebanon by Uday to buy jewelry. Iraqi exiles in Damascus and London say members of Saddam's family have been converting dollars into valuables as the threat of war comes closer. Shaaban, 52, is officially head of the Iraqi photographic association, but in practice he has run Uday's private office for the last five years from his power base at Iraq's sinister "Olympics headquarters." Its basement is a torture center. He is thought to have defected because he feared punishment after mishandling a recent business deal for Uday, who is notoriously cruel. Shaaban has been involved at the highest level in the lucrative business dealings that Saddam has entrusted to Uday. He knows firsthand how the regime flouts United Nations sanctions to fund Saddam's weapons programs 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-Jenabi, a former senior Baghdad official now based in London. Shaaban apparently had been waiting with colleagues in a Beirut hotel parking lot for a vehicle to drive them back to Baghdad. He told them he had left his mobile phone charger in his room, went back into the building and apparently escaped through another exit. The account of his disappearance was given by Mashaan Jebouri, the Syria-based leader of the Homeland Party, an Iraqi opposition group. He said the details were secretly provided to him by another member of Shaaban's group. Other Iraqi exile factions have given similar versions of the defection. Shaaban would be the highest-ranking Iraqi official to defect during the current crisis and could provide Western intelligence with crucial information about the regime's inner workings. Iraqi intelligence agents attached to the embassies in Beirut and Damascus have been ordered to search for him. His movements since disappearing from Beirut are not known. Jebouri said he believed Shabaan has been spirited out of the region by Western intelligence officials.