Watban is depicted as the five of spades in the deck of playing cards handed showing the most-wanted list of 52 people of the Iraqi leadership

WASHINGTON, April 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As U.S. forces stepped up a frantic search for Iraqis who can support their allegations of the country’s weapons of mass destruction, a top Iraqi nuclear scientist has surrendered in Iraq following the capture of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s half brother Watban Ibrahim Hasan, a U.S. official said late Sunday April 13.

Jaffar al-Jaffar turned himself in over the past few days, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jaffar "certainly would know about their nuclear program as possible locations of nuclear related facilities, and also would know a lot of people associated with Iraq's nuclear program, as well as likely other aspects of the WMD program," said the official.

"Hopefully he will be more forthcoming and candid than he has been to date," said the official.

His surrender follows that of Lieutenant General Amir Saadi, Saddam's chief scientific adviser, who turned himself Saturday, April 12, in with the help of Germany's ZDF television network.

Saadi, for his part, told ZDF in an interview that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction.

"Hopefully what he says in private will be different than what he has been saying public now that his circumstances have changed," said the U.S. official.

Charges that Iraq was developing banned chemical and biological weapons and trying to revive a nuclear capability in defiance of U.N. resolutions served as the primary U.S. justification for invading Iraq.

Contrary to U.S. expectations, though, Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons in the 23-day war, and so far U.S. forces have not uncovered either caches of banned weapons or hard evidence of a secret weapons program.

Saddam’s Half Brother Captured

Meanwhile, Saddam’s half brother and former interior minister had been captured trying to flee the country through Syria, the unnamed U.S. official confirmed late Sunday.

The official said Watban Ibrahim Hasan was captured near Rabia, a town northwest of Mosul that is near the border with Syria.

A former interior minister, he was on the list of 52 top Iraqi officials wanted by coalition forces.

The news was first reported by Kurdish TV, which is run by the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani.

Watban's full brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, was killed Friday morning in U.S. bombing of his farm, in the region of Ramadi west of Baghdad, a family friend told AFP.

Barzan is named on the U.S. list as "Barzan Ibrahim Hasan," and he and Watban are each identified as "presidential advisor and Saddam half-brother."