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To: maceng2 who wrote (32474)	4/26/2003 6:31:48 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Spy who plotted to kill Bush snr is seized By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 26/04/2003) telegraph.co.uk An Iraqi spy chief accused of masterminding a plot to assassinate former President George Bush in 1993 has been captured by American forces near the Syrian border, it was announced yesterday. Farouk Hijazi has been on the run since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. It was not clear whether he left Syria of his own accord or was expelled after heavy US pressure on Damascus not to harbour Iraqi leaders. The arrest followed the surrender of Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, which was negotiated by his son and involved a family friend in America and many satellite telephone calls. Aziz, 67, the only Christian in Saddam's inner circle, had vowed to "fight to the last bullet". In the end he spent several days negotiating a "dignified" surrender after suffering two recent heart attacks. Members of his family told CNN television that he had been hiding in a relative's home near Baghdad. They said he gave himself up after US officials said he would be questioned but might not have to go to prison. The former spy master Hijazi, latterly ambassador to Tunisia, was not listed among the 55 top Iraqi leaders given to American forces on the "deck of death" playing cards. However, he is seen as a potential mine of intelligence, especially about Iraq's alleged links to al-Qa'eda. In 1998 he is said to have met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He was the head of external operations in the Mukhabarat intelligence service when Iraq was reported to have tried to kill former President Bush with a car bomb in Kuwait. Rather than encourage accusations that the toppling of Saddam was motivated by a personal grudge, President George W Bush has avoided all but a handful of references to the attempted assassination, which would have involved his mother Barbara and his wife Laura, who were travelling with his father. In his first major interview since the war started, he said that Saddam could be dead. The CIA had been in close contact with "a guy on the ground" in Baghdad before the war about the dictator's movements and that prompted America to hit one of his compounds with missiles and bombs 48 hours early than planned. Afterwards the source reported that Saddam had been there. "He felt like we got Saddam," Mr Bush told NBC television. "And we are trying, of course, to verify." He suggested that Saddam's death would account the many tactical mistakes by his forces. Mr Bush made clear that he was not in a mood to forgive President Jacques Chirac for France's opposition to the war. "I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch any time soon," he said. Hijazi's capture raises the prospect of a criminal trial in America or Kuwait. James Woolsey, a former CIA director close to senior Pentagon officials, said he was "the biggest catch so far. We know he was involved with al-Qa'eda." American officials refuse to say where senior Iraqi detainees are being held. In a January interview, Aziz expressed a horror of being sent to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. "I would prefer to die," he said. Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, said that lawyers would have to "figure out" whether Aziz was a civilian or a military official who could be considered a prisoner of war. "Every time I was ever with him, he always wore a camouflage uniform and a pistol on his hip," he said. "Does that make him military? I don't know."