Alleged spy seen in video calling Saddam 'our inspired leader'

The Times (N.W. Indiana) ^ | 1-7-2004 | MIKE ROBINSON

[Prince Charles]

Alleged spy seen in video calling Saddam 'our inspired leader'

ILLINOIS -- Prosecutors say he spied on dissidents, reported to U.N. mission honeycombed with secret agents.

By MIKE ROBINSON Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO (AP) -- Jurors watched a video Tuesday in which a man accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents for Saddam Hussein's intelligence service described the dictator as "our inspired leader" and spoke scornfully of "American colonial imperialism."

"A light has illuminated our path and our procession toward the struggle and the liberation," Khaled Dumeisi said in describing Hussein at an April 2001 birthday party for the dictator at the Iraqi mission to the United Nations in New York.

Dumeisi, 61, an Arabic-language community newspaper publisher from suburban Oak Lawn, is charged with serving as an unregistered agent of the former Iraqi government, conspiring to do so, lying to a federal grand jury and lying to an immigration officer.

Prosecutors say he spied on dissidents opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad and reported what he learned to the U.N. mission, which they say was honeycombed with secret agents.

Dumeisi's attorney, William Theis, told jurors as the trial got under way Monday that his client was just a journalist who liked to write stories for his tiny paper in Chicago's south suburbs about what was going on in Iraq and that he contacted the U.N. mission to get information.

Theis has objected to showing jurors the video, and U.S. District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon told jurors that Dumeisi's right to express unpopular views was protected by the Constitution. But she gave prosecutors permission to show the tape as an example of Dumeisi's state of mind.

Prosecutors say Dumeisi, who was born in what then was Palestine, supported Hussein as the only Middle Eastern leader who was really supportive of the Palestinian cause.

On the video he is seen telling the birthday party that Hussein is "our great leader" and "our inspired leader." He attacks "American colonial imperialism" and "the Arab apostasy," referring to moderate leaders in the Mideast.

Prosecutors called to the stand a former Iraqi intelligence officer, Hazim El Dilemi, who met Dumeisi in July 2000 at the U.N. mission where a Dilemi cousin was security chief.

Dilemi told how he became a guard at the Iraqi Embassy in Rome and was made an intelligence officer as a reward for fighting off an attack by Iranian terrorists.

He said he defected to the United States in 1986 after members of his tribe fell out of favor in Baghdad and that he made his way to New York, where he found work as a limo driver. He said he also has gotten cash from the FBI and in return has occasionally furnished agents with information.

He said his cousin at the mission, Kassim Mohammed, introduced Dumeisi as "a nice man and he has a newspaper in Chicago." The paper had a circulation of several thousand and was described by Theis as a "shopper." It contained numerous articles critical of U.S. policy in the Mideast.

Dilemi said Dumeisi urged him to circulate the paper at grocery stores in New York in hope of getting advertisements. He said he circulated it once but refused to do it a second time.

He said his cousin Mohammed also agreed to give Dumeisi financial help. But on cross-examination, Theis got him to admit he never saw any money had changed hands.

Theis tried in vain to get Dilemi to admit he worked for Iraqi intelligence long after he claimed to have defected. He had better luck in bringing out that FBI agents had gotten Dilemi out of an unspecified run-in with a Times Square electronics store.

"Were you charged with credit-card forgery?" Theis asked.

"I don't know about the credit card but they helped me with this situation," Dilemi said.

[SpinyNorman]

Just give him, and a copy of the video, to a group of revenge hungry Iraqis.

Case closed.

[piasa]

SaddamHussein, baathists