 Gunmen kidnap three Turks in northern Iraq Kirkuk, Iraq (AFP) Feb 15, 2011 - Gunmen stormed a house in Iraq's ethnically divided northern oil hub Kirkuk on Tuesday and kidnapped three Turks who were inside, police said. The five attackers entered the house in the south of the city in which eight Turkish workers and engineers were living and snatched three of them, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said the kidnappers were armed with four pistols and a Kalashnikov rifle, and carried out the raid at around 8:30 pm (1730 GMT). B The officer identified the kidnapped men as Ali Hekmet Rajab Qolanimiz, 31, Mutlab Katak, 21, and Baktiar Hassan College, 39, all of whom are from Istanbul. He added that none of the eight had valid Iraqi visas in their passports, and said that police were interviewing the other five Turkish men who were in the house at the time of the raid. The Turkish embassy in Baghdad could not immediately be contacted by AFP. Spanish police arrest 'Saddam's lawyer' Madrid (AFP) Feb 15, 2011 - Spanish police have arrested an Italian lawyer known as the 'devil's advocate' who was on the team that defended hanged Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the interior ministry and news reports said Tuesday. The lawyer was held in Palma, capital of the Spanish Mediterranean island of Majorca, on a European arrest warrant issued by Britain, "on charges of embezzlement, fraud, money-laundering and theft," the ministry said in a statement. It identified him only by his initials, G.D.S. But Spanish media named him as Giovanni di Stefano, who helped defend Saddam and some of his cohorts as well as serial killer Charles Manson and British train robber Ronnie Biggs, and has earned the nickname "the devil's advocate" in the press. He is also a former director of Dundee Football Club of Scotland. Di Stefano, 55, was arrested on Monday night at a luxury villa in Palma, the daily El Mundo said on its website. Following his arrest, he was taken to hospital for treatment for a health condition that was not revealed, the paper said, quoting police sources. The interior ministry said the crimes of which he is accused took place between between 2004 and 2009 when he "received large sums of money after presenting himself as legal counsel without being accredited to practice as such". It said he is accused of 18 crimes for which he could receive a maximum 75 years in prison. Saddam was hanged in December 2006 for ordering the killings of 148 Shiite Muslim villagers in the mid-1980s. |
"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi told the British newspaper.
"They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy," he added.
Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials, told the BND, Germany's secret service, that Iraq had mobile bioweapons trucks and had built clandestine factories.
The faulty information formed the cornerstone of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell's key address to the United Nations on February 5, 2003.
"I had a problem with the Saddam regime," Janabi told the paper during a meeting in Germany. "I wanted to get rid of him and now I had this chance."
"I tell you something when I hear anybody, not just in Iraq but in any war, (is) killed, I am very sad. But give me another solution. Can you give me another solution?
"Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq. There were no other possibilities," he continued.
German authorities approached Janabi in 2000 after identifying him as a Baghdad-trained chemical engineer with possible inside intelligence of former leader Hussein's regime.
earlier related report
Zain to challenge Iraq SIM card fine
Baghdad (AFP) Feb 15, 2011 -
Kuwait-based telecoms operator Zain said Tuesday it would challenge what it called an "unjust" $262,000 fine imposed by the Iraqi government over the distribution of SIM cards.
On its website, the Iraqi communications and media commission said it had slapped the fine on Zain -- the biggest telecoms provider in Iraq with a 55 percent market share -- for placing five million SIM cards on the market "without obtaining prior legal approval".
The fine must be paid within three months of January 11, the date it was imposed, but Amin al-Zubaidi, the head of Zain's regulatory department in Iraq, said it would be challenged.
"We were very surprised with these unfair and unjust penalties," he told AFP. "Our legal department is preparing a formal response challenging the grounds of such penalties."
In May 2009, Zain and its two rivals Asiacell and Korek were fined a total of $20 million after they were cited for faulty service. Of that amount, more than $18.5 million was levied against Zain.
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