n Iraqi man accused of working secretly as an agent for Iraqi intelligence in New York City was actually trying to help the United States learn about Iraq's intelligence activities, his lawyer said yesterday.Posted on 04/16/2003 12:00:33 AM PDT by sarcasm
n Iraqi man accused of working secretly as an agent for Iraqi intelligence in New York City was actually trying to help the United States learn about Iraq's intelligence activities, his lawyer said yesterday.
The defendant, Raed Rokan al-Anbuge, whose father is a former diplomat at the United Nations, met regularly with the F.B.I. over the past two years and provided information about Iraqi intelligence officers in Iraq's mission, said the lawyer, Thomas H. Nooter.
Mr. Nooter said his client now planned to seek asylum in the United States. "If he was an agent of anybody, he was an agent of us," Mr. Nooter said.
Mr. Nooter made his comments after Mr. Anbuge, 28, appeared before a magistrate judge in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where he was ordered held without bond.
A criminal complaint unsealed on Monday accused him of having secret contacts with Iraqi intelligence officers in New York beginning in January 2001 and of working on behalf of officers who wanted to track down Iraqis living in the United States, including dissidents and former government officials.
Mr. Anbuge, who was charged with failing to register with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign government, did not enter a plea.
His lawyer said after the hearing that Mr. Anbuge strongly denied the accusations. He said Mr. Anbuge (whose family name has also been spelled Anbuke) was not involved in intelligence gathering on behalf of the Iraqi mission, and did not help locate Iraqis in the United States.
Mr. Nooter said his client was required to report regularly to the Iraqi mission on East 79th Street to show Iraqi officials that "he hadn't defected, to prevent jeopardizing his parents in Baghdad."
Mr. Nooter said his client's father, Rokan, who was a diplomat in New York in the late 1990's, was called back to Iraq in 2000, but left behind several grown children, including Raed. The son had recently worked at a dry-cleaning business in Greenwich Village.
Mr. Nooter said that after most of the son's visits to the Iraqi mission, Mr. Anbuge was debriefed by F.B.I. agents. "They would question what he saw and who was there, and he would answer to the best of his ability," the lawyer said. The United States attorney's office had no comment.
The lawyer's assertions about his client's loyalties added new intrigue to the unfolding case. Indeed, Mr. Nooter suggested, sometime after F.B.I. agents first approached his client in the summer of 2001, they made it clear that they wanted to reach his father.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Mr. Nooter said, the father worked in the disarmament office of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad, and served as a liaison between Iraq and United Nations weapons inspectors.
"I think the suggestion was that if the father could find his way to some neutral place, they'd be interested in meeting him," Mr. Nooter said. The criminal complaint also accuses the father of working covertly for Iraqi intelligence.
The son was first taken into custody on immigration violations on March 25, the complaint says. Mr. Nooter said that after a hearing before an immigration judge on Monday, his client was released on a $20,000 bond over government objections. The government obtained a stay of the order, he said, pending an appeal of the bond ruling. Within hours, Mr. Nooter said, the criminal charge was also filed.
A spokesman for the Iraqi mission had no comment on Mr. Anbuge's case, or the accusations against Iraqi officials who worked at the mission, but he said he was sure that the father had no connection to Iraqi intelligence.
Mr. Nooter said Mr. Anbuge's two brothers and a sister were also arrested with him on immigration violations. The four had lived together in an apartment on Senator Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, he said.
The residential street was quiet yesterday. One neighbor said four people had moved into the apartment a year and a half ago. They kept to themselves, and had a small dog that they would take out for walks, the neighbor said. Several weeks ago, he said, F.B.I. agents were seen arriving at the address. He said he had not seen the apartment occupants since then.
Despite being on the northernmost fringe of the neighborhood, Senator Street is still a decent part of Bay Ridge, comprised largely of single family homes. I have a feeling this guy lived in the building near 5th Avenue and Leif Ericson Park.
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