Rasheed turned himself in, said U.S. Central Command

BAGHDAD, April 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - U.S. forces said Tuesday, April 29, they captured Saddam Hussein's veteran Oil Minister Amir Muhammed Rasheed, as his deputy Premier said he did not see the deposed Iraqi leader since the U.S. bombing attack on April 9.

Rasheed was number 47 on a U.S. list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam's administration and the six of spades in a deck of cards issued to U.S. forces in Iraq.

He ran Iraq's military industries until becoming oil minister in 1995, is the 14th on the list whose arrest has been announced.

U.S. Central Command in Qatar said in a statement that Rasheed, whose wife is biological weapons scientist Rihab Taha, had turned himself in Monday, April 28, with no details.

Taha, widely known as "Dr. Germ", is not on the 55-member list but U.S. forces are keen to interview her about her role in Saddam's alleged attempts to develop biological warfare systems, Reuters news agency reported.

She also is sought by the United States; there was no word on her whereabouts, according to an American press report.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said last month that Taha and Rashid would be among "the most interesting persons" for American investigators to interrogate because of their familiarity with a range of Saddam's weapons programs.

Rashid, the former oil minister, was a member of Saddam's Military Industrialization Organization. Others members included Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, Iraq's chief liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors, and Amir al-Saadi, Saddam's senior weapons adviser, both of whom are also in custody.

Adviser Says He Saw Saddam On April 6

In another related development, Saddam's Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz has told interrogators from the United States that he saw the deposed Iraqi leader alive in Baghdad on April 6, but did not see him again after a U.S. bombing attack on the Iraqi president the next day, according to senior administration officials.

With U.S. forces continuing to expand their hunt for proof of whether Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, are alive, Aziz's version "is interesting if true," one senior Bush administration official was quoted by Washington Post as saying.

But he added that CIA and Pentagon analysts are still going over a videotape that appears to show Saddam and Qusay, and was said to have been shot April 9.

That is two days after the second attack on Saddam, when 2,000-pound bombs were dropped on a Baghdad residential area where U.S. intelligence officials believed he, at least one of his sons and other Iraqi leaders were meeting.

A British press report claimed that Aziz might have helped the allies to target his ex-boss, hinting the Iraqi ‘spy’ provided the intelligence responsible for the cruise missile attack on the Iraqi dictator's bunker in southern Baghdad in the strike.

Aziz, an erudite, English-speaking former foreign minister and senior adviser to Hussein, turned himself in last week. During his first three days of questioning, he denied that Iraq had kept weapons of mass destruction, reported the Post.

On Sunday, Gen. Tommy Franks, head of Central Command, told reporters that Aziz had initially been "cooperative and talkative." But he added: "What we don't know is the veracity of it."

One veteran intelligence analyst warned that senior officials often do not tell the full truth in their first days of captivity, as they try to determine whether they face criminal prosecution. The first report that Aziz had mentioned seeing Saddam was published on Monday by USA Today.

Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi said Sunday in a TV interview that he believes Saddam and his two sons are alive and on the run hiding in separate places.