Curveball could face jail for warmongering, says German
MP
Agent whose lies about Saddam's weapons
capability led to Iraq war has broken German law, says Green MP
Helen Pidd and Martin Chulov
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 16 February 2011 18.31
GMT
Curveball,
aka Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, would
be found guilty under a German law that bans war-mongering, says a
German MP. Photograph: David Levene
A German politician has warned that the CIA informant Curveball could go to
jail after telling the Guardian that he lied about Saddam Hussein's bioweapons
capability in order to "liberate" Iraq.
Rafid
Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who was given the name Curveball by his US and
German handlers, told the German secret service that Iraq had a secret
biological weapons programme.
The 43-year-old defector's evidence
was then passed to the CIA and became the primary source used by the US
to justify invading Iraq.
Politicians in Iraq called for
Curveball's permanent exile following his admission and poured scorn on
his claim to want to return to his motherland and build a political
party. "He is a liar, he will not serve his country," said one Iraqi MP.
In his adopted home of Germany,
MPs are demanding to know why the German secret service paid Curveball
£2,500 a month for at least five years after they knew he had lied.
Hans-Christian
Ströbele, a Green MP, said Janabi had arguably violated a German law
which makes warmongering illegal. He added that Gerhard Schröder, German
chancellor around the time of the second Iraq war, should also reveal
what he knew about the quality of evidence Curveball gave to Germany's
secret service, the BND.
Under German constitutional law, it is a
criminal offence to do anything "with the intent to disturb the peaceful
relations between nations, especially anything that leads to an
aggressive war", said Ströbele. The maximum penalty is life
imprisonment, he said, adding that he did not expect it would ever come
to that.
The MP said he would table a question to the Bundestag
demanding to know whether the German secret service knew that Curveball
was lying before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Schröder famously
refused to join the "coalition of the willing" who took part in the
second Iraq war.
Curveball told the Guardian he was pleased to
have finally told the truth but that he was scared of the consequences.
He said he had given the Guardian's phone number to his wife and brother
in Sweden "just in case something happens to me".
In the US,
questions are being asked of the CIA's handling of Curveball and
specifically why the then head of the intelligence agency, George Tenet,
did not pass on German warnings about Curveball's reliability.
Lawrence
Wilkerson, chief of staff to the US secretary of state Colin Powell in
the build-up to the invasion, said Curveball's lies raised questions
about how the CIA had briefed Powell ahead of his crucial speech to the
UN security council, where he presented the case for war.
Tyler Drumheller, head of the CIA's Europe
division in the run-up to the 2003 invasion, said he welcomed
Curveball's confession because he had always warned Tenet that Curveball
may have been a fabricator. But the harshest criticism came from Iraq.
Jamal
al-Battikh, the country's minister for tribes' affairs, said:
"Honestly, this man led Iraq to a catastrophe and a disaster. Iraqis
paid a heavy price for his lies – the invasion of 2003 destroyed Iraqi
basic infrastructure and after eight years we cannot fix electricity.
Plus thousands of Iraqis have died. This man is not welcome back. In
fact, Iraqis should complain against him and sue him for his lies."
Others poured scorn on Curveball's plan to return to Iraq and enter
politics.Intefadh
Qanber, spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), led by Ahmed
Chalabi, said: "He is a liar, he will not serve his country. He
fabricated the story about WMD and that story gave the USA a suitable
pretext to lead the 2003 invasion, which hurt Iraq. For most Iraqis, it
was obvious that Saddam was a dictator, but they wanted to see him
ousted on the basis of his crimes against human rights, not a fabricated
story about weapons of mass destruction."
In the US, a pressure
group representing veterans of the Iraq war demanded the justice
department open an investigation into the INC's relationship to
Curveball.Chalabi, who was very close to the former US
vice-president Dick Cheney in the decade leading up to the 2003
invasion, has often been accused of being the man behind Curveball. It
has long been known that Chalabi provided the CIA with three other
sources who lied about Saddam's WMD capability. But when asked by the
Guardian, Janabi and Chalabi denied knowing each other.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/16/curveball-jail-war-mongering-germany
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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