Federal authorities have charged an Iraqi-born Canadian citizen with conspiring to spy for the former regime of Saddam Hussein while allegedly working at the Iraqi embassy in Washington, in the second such case to emerge in a week.The U.S. Justice Department filed a criminal complaint in Maryland against Muyad Mahmud Darwish, a Canadian citizen born in Iraq, alleging he was paid by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) for providing assistance and information.
Last week, Saubhe Jassim al-Dellemy, an Iraqi national living in Maryland, pleaded guilty to the same charges.
Both Darwish, 47, and Dellemy, 67, face a maximum five-year prison sentence for conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. They are not accused of seeking or obtaining classified information. Neither one was ever recognized by the U.S. government as an Iraqi government diplomatic or consular officer.
The agency said in a statement that the charges were backed by confidential IIS documents seized by the U.S. military after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
In one incident described by an IIS document, Darwish, who lived in Maryland, reported that Iraqi volunteers were being trained by the US military in Virginia.
Darwish was detained in Buffalo, New York on Dec. 24 after trying to enter the United States from Canada, where he resides. He was scheduled to appear in a Buffalo court on Tuesday for a detention hearing. Dellemy is scheduled for sentencing on March 5.