Wednesday in Baghdad: Iraqi police arrested Saddam Hussein's nephew Yasir Sabhawi Ibrahim, son of Saddam's half brother Sabhawi Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, several days after Syrian authorities forced him to return to Iraq. Senior Iraqi security officials said that he served as the top financier of the Iraqi insurgency. The officials also said Syrian authorities "pushed" Ibrahim into Iraq but did not hand him over to authorities. The Syrians were aware of his whereabouts in Baghdad and informed U.S. authorities, who then passed the information to Iraq security forces who carried out a "fast, easy" raid on the fugitive's apartment, a Defense Ministry official said.The Iraqi officials believe Ibrahim was operating Baath Party funds in Syria, Jordan and Yemen and had been running a vast network of insurgents inside Iraq. They also claim he was coordinating between Baathist insurgents and the terror network of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Ibrahim was believed to be second in command of the Iraqi-led insurgency behind Younis al-Ahmad, a former member of the Baath Party leadership believed to be still in Syria.
On July 21, the U.S. Treasury Department froze the U.S. assets of the suspect as well as the five other sons of al-Tikriti, who was himself captured in Syria earlier this year and handed over to Iraq in an apparent good will gesture. On Sept. 19, Iraq's Central Criminal Court sentenced another of al-Tikriti's sons, Ayman, to life in prison on charges he helped fund the insurgency and was a bomb-maker.
