U.S. troops were waiting at the Baghdad International Airport for
Ali Faisal Lami, an associate of Ahmed Chalabi, to climb down from his plane and when he
did, they grabbed him. The allegations are serious: leading Iranian-backed cells of Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army
and organizing a June bombing in Sadr city that killed four Americans
and six Iraqis.
A possible break in the investigation of one of the year's most notorious
acts of violence also marks another plunge in relations
between America and Chalabi, the one-time Iraqi exile and Pentagon
favorite who was a leading proponent of the invasion to topple Saddam
Hussein in 2003.
The arrest occurred Wednesday morning and was not announced by the
military until late last night – without identifying the target by name.
By Thursday morning word started to seep out and Iraqi officials,
asking not to be named because they are not authorized to speak
publicly, confirmed that it was Lami. According to one account from an
Iraqi security official, U.S. soldiers met Lami's plane and calmly
pulled him aside, confiscating his luggage including a laptop
computer. He was traveling from Beirut with his family.
Lami, a Shiite, holds a high rank in Iraq's controversial
DeBaathification Commission, which carried out widespread purges of
Sunnis from government jobs and has now been frozen by new
legislation. The committee is headed by Chalabi, who issued an adamant
defense Thursday, demanding that Lami be released with an apology from
his American captors. "This act by the Coalition Forces affirms again
the importance of finding a solution for the random arrests of Iraqis
by U.S. forces which are ignoring the rights of Iraqi citizens," Chalabi
said in the statement. He credited Lami with opposing Saddam's
repression and said he had helped negotiate an end to fighting between
Sadr forces and U.S. troops in Najaf in 2004.
Lami apparently joined Chalabi at the DeBaathification Commission
after working for a Shiite tribal leader on the Iraqi Governing
Council, established by the U.S. occupation in 2003. An Iraqi familiar
with the commission said Lami is a close aide who also does outreach
for Chalabi in Baghdad's Sadr City, a stronghold for the Sadr militia.
An Iraqi official told Newsweek that U.S. or Iraqi
troops had arrested one of Lami's bodyguards recently in Sadr City.
Chalabi has slipped in and out of favor with American leadership
since the invasion. Intelligence sources have accused him in the past
of being too cozy with Iranian contacts – though the allegations have
not been proven and would hinge on some fine distinctions in a
country where leaders frequently meet with their Iranian neighbors.
After helping Chalabi lead his own militia force into Baghdad in 2003,
U.S. officials ended up raiding his compound a year later, reportedly
because of links to Iran. Though his party failed to win a seat in
2005 parliamentary elections, Chalabi seemed to have rehabilitated
himself with the Americans and won influential economic and
trouble-shooting posts from the Iraqi leadership. But Newsweek
reported in May that Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki had stripped him of a post coordinating
infrastructure projects, again in part because of flirtations with
elements from Tehran. Chalabi's office denied he was fired and has
consistently denied that he has passed on secrets or made
inappropriate contacts with Iranians.
With reporting from Hassan al-Jarrah, Yassar Ghani and Ahmed Obaidi
