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U.S.
forces rolled into Baghdad to no resistance after Republican Guard
chief made a deal with the U.S. according to the report
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PARIS,
May 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Special Republican Guard
chief, and one of Saddam Hussein’s cousins, Maher Sufian al-Tikriti,
betrayed the deposed Iraqi leader by ordering his elite forces not to
defend Baghdad after making a deal with the United States, a leading
newspaper reported on Sunday, May 25.
General
Tikriti, responsible for defending the Iraqi capital, left Baghdad
aboard a U.S. military transport plane, bound for a U.S. base outside
Iraq, Le Journal du Dimanche reported Sunday, citing an
Iraqi source close to Saddam's former regime.
His
departure, along with that of a 20-strong entourage, came on April 8,
the day before U.S. forces swept into Baghdad, and after U.S. Marines
announced that the general had been killed, added the press report.
Before
he left Baghdad, following the capture of the capital's international
airport on April 4, Sufian ordered his troops to lay down their weapons,
another Iraqi general, Mahdi Abdullah al-Dulaimi, was quoted as saying.
Sufian
does not appear on the U.S. military's list of most wanted Iraqis, which
names Barzan al-Ghafur Sulayman Majid as commander of the Special
Republican Guard, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
An
Arab diplomat told Le Journal du Dimanche that the plot
was hatched more than a year before by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), noting: "Many suitcases filled with dollars were
floating around."
The
report helps explain one of the enduring mysteries of the U.S.-led
invasion against Iraq: why the U.S. forces rolled into Baghdad to no
resistance from Iraqi forces, in many cases “melting away and changing
into civilian clothes,” rather than forcing the invading troops to
engage in bitter, street-to-street fighting.
"Being
cautious, those who accepted the deal only agreed to defect once the
American soldiers were in sight. The signal was to be the taking of the
airport in Baghdad," the diplomat added.
The
press report came one day after U.S. commander in Iraq Tommy Franks said
that senior Iraqi officers in command of troops defending key Iraqi
cities against the U.S.-led invasion were bribed
not to fight American forces.
“These
Iraqi officers had acknowledged their loyalties were no longer with the
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but with their American paymasters,”
Franks said.
“We
knew that some units would fight out of a sense of duty and patriotism,
and they did. But it didn't change the outcome because we knew how many
of these [Iraqi generals] were going to call in sick," he added.
In
the run-up to the invasion against Iraq, the Pentagon revealed its
ambitious attempts to encourage Iraqi soldiers and officers to lay down
their weapons rather than stand and fight, the Independent reported.
Aziz’s
Family In Amman
Meanwhile,
a relative to Saddam’s deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz, who
surrendered last month to U.S. forces, said the latter’s family is
living in Amman under police protection.
"The
wife of Aziz, Umm Ziad, his two sons, the wife and three children of one
of them, arrived in Jordan several days ago," the relative told AFP
on condition of anonymity.
The
only member of the family to stay in Baghdad was Aziz's married
daughter.
The
elder son Ziad's wife is expecting their fourth child, the relative
added, while his younger brother is studying medicine.
The
relative added the family had not heard from Aziz since he surrendered
to U.S. forces in Baghdad on April 24.
The
Daily Telegraph said late in April that Saddam Hussein
security chiefs placed members of Aziz's family under
arrest shortly before the start of the war to make sure that the former Iraqi
deputy prime minister did not defect to the West.
The
paper added that Aziz might have sold Saddam out by helping the U.S.
target the place of a secret meeting chaired by the former Iraqi leader
one day before the invasion opened its salvoes on March 20.
