Two low blows for the Chalabis

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FH11Ak01.html

Former Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi and his nephew Salem Chalabi have vigorously protested their innocence after the Iraqi Central Criminal Court issued warrants for their arrest on Sunday, but the implications of the charges against them could go far beyond a simple issue of guilty or not.

Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), who is in Tehran on a business trip, is charged with counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars, while Salem Chalabi, the administrative head of a tribunal trying former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi War Crimes Tribunal, is charged with involvement in the murder of an Iraqi Finance Ministry official in June.

The warrants come a week before a national conference in which Ahmad Chalabi was expected to launch a campaign to revive his flagging political career, and at a time when he is trying to ally himself with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose forces have been engaged in bitter fighting with US-led troops for the past six days.

-snip-

Supporters of the Chalabis say that the indictments are unjustified and politically motivated by rivals in the interim Iraqi government. In Ahmad Chalabi's case the claim has some substance. On Monday the Iraqi Central Bank said it had not sought an indictment, and an INC official said the counterfeit currency on which the indictment was based only amounted to 3,000 dinars, or US$2.

Further, supporters of the Chalabis say that while the two cases are unrelated, the fact that the warrants were issued on the same day makes them believe that the charges are a political attempt to "neutralize" the Chalabis. At a news conference in Baghdad, a spokesman for Ahmad Chalabi said the charges were the initiative of "American advisers to the magistrate", whom he characterized as an "American puppet".

-snip-
-----------------------------