Tests Say Detainee Isn't al-Douri

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Medical tests have shown that a man being held in Iraqi custody is not former president Saddam Hussein's deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said Monday.

"The required tests to identify him showed he is not Izzat al-Douri," Kadhim told The Associated Press. Kadhim said the man being held is related to al-Douri.

Iraqi officials on Sunday said they had nabbed al-Douri during a shootout nort.S. military commanders had also been unable to confirm his arrest.

American officials believe that al-Douri — Saddam's former right-hand man — is playing an organizing role in the 16-month insurgency that has plagued U.S. forces here.

There have been incorrect reports of al-Douri's arrest in the past as U.S. and Iraqi forces hunt for the man who was once one of Saddam's most senior deputies. Sunday's report centered on a raid near al-Douri's hometown of Adwar, north of Baghdad.

Iraq's top information official had told The Associated Press that al-Douri was seized while receiving medical treatment at a clinic near Adwar and that DNA tests were underway to confirm his identity. Al-Douri reportedly suffers from leukemia, and needs blood transfusions.

"We are sure he is Izzat Ibrahim," information official Ibrahim Janabi said. "He was arrested in a clinic in Makhoul near Tikrit and Adwar and 60 percent of the DNA test has finished."

A Defense Ministry spokesman, Saleh Sarhan, also told the U.S.-funded Alhurra television station that al-Douri had been captured.

Later, however, the Iraqi defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, said in an interview with Lebanon's Al Hayat-LBC television that reports that al-Douri was captured were not true.

"They are baseless," he said. "There are search operations by the national guards troops and multinational troops going on during which some terrorist positions were shelled. There were rumors that Izzat al-Douri or someone who resembles him were in that position but we don't have any information on Izzat specifically."

U.S. Maj. Neal O'Brien of the Tikrit-based 1st Infantry Division said he could not confirm the report and U.S.-led forces issued a statement saying he was not in U.S. custody. A senior U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Americans had no information to indicate that al-Douri had been arrested.

Meanwhile, a Turkish driver taken hostage in Iraq was released by his captors on Monday, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said. The release came a day after the driver's company announced it would withdraw from Iraq in line with his captors' demands.

Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi national guardsmen clashed with insurgents in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said Monday. Hospital officials said three civilians were killed and nine others wounded in the fighting late Sunday.

Also Monday, Iraqi police in the northern city of Kirkuk seized a BMW car packed with explosives that authorities believed was going to be used by a suicide bomber, said police Col. Sarhad Qadir. He said 38 people were detained during the operation in the city's Al-Khadra neighborhood.

The seizure came two days after a suicide car bombing outside a Kirkuk police academy left 20 dead and 50 others injured in an attack aimed at disrupting efforts to build a strong Iraqi security force.

In other violence, a mortar barrage Sunday evening hit a U.S. base on the western edge of Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding 16 others, one critically, Maj. Richard Spiegel of the Army's 13th Corps Support Command said.

The soldiers killed and wounded all belonged to the 13th Corps Support, which oversees distribution of fuel, food and water to U.S. forces. As of Friday, 976 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department.

Al-Douri was once the vice chairman of the Baath Party's Revolutionary Command Council and U.S. military officials believe he played an organizing role in the 16-month-old insurgency.

He is No. 6 on the U.S. military's list of 55 most-wanted figures from Saddam's regime — the king of clubs in the deck of cards — and U.S. forces have offered a $10 million bounty for his arrest. Forty-four of the people on the list already have been killed or captured.

Saddam was arrested on Dec. 13, hiding in a tiny underground bunker near Adwar.

Dawoud, the minister of state, said the trial of Saddam and other indicted officials from his regime would start "within a few weeks ... before the end of this year and before (Iraqi) elections," which are planned for January.

Saddam so far has had seven preliminary charges filed against him, including gassing thousands of Kurds in 1988, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the suppression of 1991 revolts by Kurds and Shiites, the murders of religious and political leaders and the mass displacement of Kurds in the 1980s.

Eleven others have also been charged, including former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz; Ali Hasan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali;" and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.