Free Republic

US sets Saddam's scientists free Huda Ammash was educated in the US Eight former aides to Saddam Hussein - including two women accused of making biological weapons - have been released from US custody in Iraq. The freed detainees no longer pose a security threat, a US spokesman said. They include Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, nicknamed by the US "Mrs Anthrax" and Rihab Taha, also known as "Dr Germ". Reports have been circulating of a pre-election deal to free former regime figures in order to appease Iraq's Sunni Arabs, correspondents say. A US military spokesman in Baghdad said eight detainees...

The US has dismissed reports from Iraq's justice ministry that one of two female scientists held in a US-run prison was to be released. A US source told the BBC that both prisoners were in the physical and legal custody of the Americans and would not be freed imminently. Militants have reportedly killed two American hostages and are threatening to kill a third, Briton Kenneth Bigley. They had demanded the release of all Iraqi women held in US-run prisons. The US says it is only holding two women prisoners - Rihab Rashid Taha and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash - that...

<p>Some of Iraq's top weapons scientists already have fled their country and are in Syria, from where they may seek political safety in France, administration sources said yesterday.</p> <p>The officials said among those believed to have made it to Syria are Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash and Rihab Taha, both top scientists in Iraq's biological-weapons program. The administration sources said there are intelligence reports that one, or both, made it to Damascus.</p>

In a chilling signal to the Allies, the woman who runs Iraq's chemical warfare programme has been shown on TV at Saddam Hussein's war cabinet. Scientist Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as Mrs Anthrax to Western intelligence, was sitting next to Saddam Hussein's son Qusay. The pictures, broadcast by Iraqi television, send a clear message to the West and increase fears that the Iraqi dictator is on the brink of using his weapons of mass destruction. The woman is the key figure behind Iraq's illegal weapons programme and helped rebuild his biological capibility after the Gulf war in 1991. But...