Saddam Hussein’s defence minister, General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, surrendered to the US military in Iraq yesterday after weeks of negotiations and with the apparent promise that he would not face prosecution.
Gen Ahmed gave himself up in Mosul to Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, whose troops control northern Iraq. He was flown to Baghdad where he is likely to be kept in the main American detention centre at Baghdad airport.
The surrender came after unusual negotiations in which letters were exchanged between Gen Ahmed’s family and the US military.
Dawood Bagistani, an Iraqi human rights official who claimed to have mediated between the two sides, said that US officials would remove the defence minister’s name from the list of the 55 most wanted Ba’athists and that he would not be jailed indefinitely and would not face prosecution.
”We trust the promise,” Mr Bagistani said. The former defence minister, he said, remained confident. ”His health is excellent and he is in high spirits.”
Early yesterday, Gen Ahmed, together with his six sons and three brothers and several tribal elders, arrived at the doorstep of a house used as a base by the American general in Mosul. ”We were warmly welcomed by Gen Petraeus,” said Abdullah, one of the defence minister’s brothers.
In a bizarre moment, the family had their photograph taken with the US general before the defence minister was led away. ”We hope that America, this great power, will keep its promise,” Abdullah said.
It was not clear why Gen Ahmed was afforded special treatment. Others on America’s most-wanted list have been captured in large military raids. Saddam’s two sons, Uday and Qusay, who were also hiding in Mosul, were killed in a barrage of gunfire apparently without the chance for such a cordial surrender.
A few weeks before the war in Iraq began, Gen Ahmed was rumoured to have been under house arrest. But once the war started he appeared regularly before the international press in Baghdad to extol the success of the Iraqi military in the face of the American invasion.
The general appeared to command significant authority in Saddam’s Iraq and his connections with the leadership were closer than most: his daughter was married to Saddam’s younger son and expected successor, Qusay.
Gen Ahmed was sent to the Kuwaiti border to sign Iraq’s humiliating ceasefire after the first Gulf war in 1991 and he was by Saddam’s side in one of his last public appearances before the end of the war.
Since the day Saddam’s regime was toppled in Baghdad, there were rumours that US officers were close to arranging Gen Ahmed’s surrender. In recent weeks efforts accelerated when Gen Petraeus sent the former defence minister a letter promising to treat him with the ”utmost dignity and respect” if he surrendered.
”I offer you a simple, yet honourable alternative to a life on the run from coalition forces in order to avoid capture, imprisonment and loss of honour and dignity befitting a general officer,” Gen Petraeus wrote. ”I pray that you make the morally right choice.”
Of the 55 most-wanted, 38 have been captured. Three have been killed and 14 are at large, including Saddam himself and Izzat Ibrahim, one of his vice presidents, who is also believed to be in Mosul. Others still at large include the heads of the Republican Guard, the feared general security organisation, and the Mukhabarat intelligence service.
What should have been a rare day of success for the US military was badly soured yesterday when it emerged that troops had fired at the car of one of the most senior diplomats in the US-led civilian authority. The Italian diplomat, Pietro Cordone, who is special adviser to the culture ministry, was unhurt but his Iraqi inter preter was killed in the incident late on Thursday.
The US military gave no explanation for the shooting. One report said the car was shot at as it tried to overtake a US military convoy on the road between Tikrit and Mosul, in northern Iraq.
There has been a series of incidents in which US troops have shot and killed Iraqi civilians and at least one journalist. Last week American soldiers killed 10 Iraqi policemen when they wrongly thought they were under attack. – Guardian Unlimited Â