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DAMASCUS, Syria — A former top deputy to Saddam Hussein has urged followers in a letter to turn down proposals for reconciliation talks with the United States or the Iraqi government, according to former Baath party members outside Iraq familiar with the letter. It is unclear if the message from Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam's former vice president and now a fugitive with a $10 million bounty on his head, is being followed. But it appears aimed at blunting a flurry of diplomacy to stabilize Iraq, including efforts by several Arab governments to persuade Iraqi Sunni insurgents to lay down arms and...

Mohannad is a spy for Daesh. He eavesdrops on chatter in the street markets of Mosul and reports back to his handlers when someone breaks the militant group’s rules. One man he informed on this year – a street trader defying a ban on selling cigarettes – was fined and tortured by Daesh (ISIS) fighters, according to a friend of Mohannad’s family. If the trader did not stop, his torturers told the man, they would kill him. Mohannad is paid $20 for every offender he helps to catch.He is 14.The teenager is one cog in the intelligence network Daesh has...

Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, on Saturday said that the Iraqi security forces captured a leading figure in Saddam Hussein’s Baath party in an operation based on intelligence reports. Al-Abadi said this in his address to a ceremony in Baghdad for the 146th anniversary of the Iraqi press. “The security forces managed to arrest the terrorist Abdul Karim al-Sadoun by the efforts of the Iraqi intelligence,” Abadi said. Abadi did not give further details about how or where the arrest took place, saying he preferred an official statement to declare the details later as interrogation was still underway. Al-Sadoun was...

SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe. Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis... All of the men, however, were former Iraqi officers who had served under Saddam Hussein... His account, and those of others who have lived with or fought against the Islamic State over the past two years, underscore the pervasive role played by members of...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A former aide to late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a leader of Iraq's insurgency, Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, may have been killed by Iraqi forces and Shi'ite militias involved in an operation against insurgent forces. Raed al-Jubouri, the governor of Salahuddin province, told al-Arabiya television that al-Douri had been killed, and the station broadcast a photo of a dead man who looked like al-Douri. "This is a major victory for those involved in the operation," al-Jubouri said. "He is considered a mastermind for this terrorist group," he said, referring to Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda...

SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe. Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis who moved in and out of the battlefield in Syria. When Abu Hamza disagreed with fellow commanders at an Islamic State meeting last year, he said, he was placed under arrest on the orders of a masked Iraqi man who had sat silently through...

BAGHDAD, July 15 (VOI) - Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, Iraq's former military commander and Saddam Hussein's vice president, criticized al-Qaeda network in Iraq and Mahdi Army militias loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in his first audio call, vowing to fight U.S. troops in Iraq. Al Douri, who has not been seen since the last days of Saddam's rule, became the leader of the Baath Party after Saddam's execution in December 2006. It was unclear why al Douri chose this time to release an audio tape — his first ever at a time that Iraq is witnessing an all time...

Baghdad, 23 May (AKI) - The number two of the al-Qaeda network, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited Iraq under a false name in September 1999 to take part in the ninth Popular Islamic Congress, former Iraqi premier Iyad Allawi has revealed to pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. In an interview, Allawi made public information discovered by the Iraqi secret service in the archives of the Saddam Hussein regime, which sheds light on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Islamic terrorist network. He also said that both al-Zawahiri and Jordanian militant al-Zarqawi probably entered Iraq in the same period. "Al-Zawahiri was summoned by Izza...

Baghdad, As-Sabah , July 21, Page 1 The official sources at the ministry of interior and the national security advisor department have refrained commenting on the news of seizing three missiles of nuclear heads in the course of arresting Khudir al- Dori the former leader at the dissolved Baath party.Notably, Iraqi political sources on anonymity affirmed that the detaining of al- Dori by the Iraqi security departments resulted in the seize of three nuclear heads missiles .The sources indicated that Khudir al- Dori occupied top party and security posts during ex-regime. Al-Dori death announced after the collapse of the regime...

Many of the quasi-conclusions are based largely on claims of innocence from Saddam Hussein, “a top official in Saddam’s government, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Kattab al-Tikriti,” Tariq Aziz and Faruq Hijazi. These are 4/7 of the primary players in any involvement or potential involvement between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. The other 3 primary players are Mohammed al-Douri (He is Saddam’s VP/muscle man/Thug-In-Charge who remains at large. He is also suspected of being the primary source for most of a large portion of the insurgency and most reports place him as directing operations from inside Syria). The last 2 primary players...

The attempts to minimize the role played by al Qaeda in Iraq in the larger Sunni insurgency took a significant step over the past week. Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times, claimed that the media had become complicit in the government's attempts to paint the entire Sunni insurgency with an al Qaeda brush. Also this week, Malcolm Nance published an article at the Small Wars Journal claiming al Qaeda is being given too much credit for the violence in Iraq. In the article, titled "Al Qaeda in Iraq--Heroes, Boogeymen or Puppets?," Nance claims al Qaeda is...

LONDON (AFP) - Saddam Hussein's former right-hand man Ezzat Ibrahim al-Duri called for an escalation of the deadly insurgency in Iraq Ibrahim, who has been on the run since the US-led invasion of March 2003, urged "resistance movements and the Baath party to intensify the national campaign against the occupation", according to the letter published in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Qods Al-Arabi. US commanders suspect that Ibrahim, 63, has been the paymaster of many attacks on their troops during the insurgency that erupted after Saddam's downfall in April 2003. Ibrahim also warned against the "sectarian division of Iraq to the...

Izzat Ibrahim Addouri has resurfaced despite a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. By Nicola Nasser Addouri Outlines Anti-U.S. Strategy For the first time since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003, the deputy of Saddam Hussein, the late President of Iraq, Izzat Ibrahim Addouri has resurfaced, despite a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, in a lengthy interview with Abdel-Azim Manaf, the editor-in-chief of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Mawqif Al-Arabi, not a mainstream, on May 26 to lay out the strategy and tactics of the Iraqi resistance led by the former ruling party, Al-Baath. Addouri's resurface and...

Bomb Scare At Tucson Grocery Store Jenny Rose KGUN9 News An explosive situation tied up the intersection of Prince and Campbell for hours after someone found a bomb at a grocery story. Jenny Rose has the latest. http://www.kgun9.com/NewsArticle/tabid/111...38/Default.aspx

'Saddam's deputy' in anti-US call The US blames Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri for attacks on its troops A message purported to be from the fugitive deputy of executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has called on insurgents to make a final push against US forces. The message attributed to Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri urged Iraqi fighters to "make this year... decisive for victory". The message also called on US President George W Bush to "come clean about the scale of US losses". Ibrahim is the most senior member of Saddam Hussein's regime still at large. The message, aired by Dubai-based satellite broadcaster...

Ezzat Ebrahim Al Douri served as vice president during Saddam Hussain's regime.Baghdad: The US military in Baghdad on Thursday denied that Ezzat Ebrahim Al Douri, Saddam Hussain's former vice president, had been arrested in Salaheddin.Iraqi army officers also denied the report, although Iraq's national security adviser Muwaffaq Al Rubaie said the army had arrested a group of terrorists and will conduct DNA tests."We can say at this stage that he is not under arrest for the coalition forces and we do not have any reports about the arrest by Iraqi security forces," the US military said in a statement.Al Douri...

Saddam Hussein's ally Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri 'captured' in Iraq By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 12:57am BST 24/04/2008 American forces have captured Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party heir, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the most wanted former regime official still at large, it has been reported. A Middle Eastern television channel said Douri, a key force in the country's devastating insurgency, had been seized in a mountain raid in Saddam's home province of Salahaddin. Most wanted: Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri Douri was King of Clubs in the deck of cards of most wanted Iraqis issued to American soldiers after the war. But...

Saddam VP's hideout found 07/12/2007 16:07 - (SA) Baghdad - Security forces stormed a hideout belonging to Izzet al-Douri, the former Iraqi vice president under Saddam Hussein, in a village near Tikrit, 170km north of Baghdad, an Iraqi official said on Friday. They broke into the hideout based on confirmed intelligence that al-Douri was using it to hold meetings with his aides, said the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The forces did not find al-Douri, but seized documents with information on the al-Qaeda terrorist network and other militias, their activities and the techniques used to conduct their...

The Long War Journal: Al Douri forms nationalist Sunni coalition; 1920s Revolution Brigades denounces al Qaeda Written by Bill Roggio on October 4, 2007 11:34 AM to The Long War Journal Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/10/al_douri_forms_natio.php The Sunni insurgency continues to fracture as US and Iraqi forces are on the offensive in central and northern Iraq. Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, the most wanted Baathist and leader in the Sunni insurgency, has formed a new insurgent front which is willing to negotiate, while a faction of the 1920s Revolution Brigades openly denounced al Qaeda. A grouping of 22 Sunni insurgent groups have...

Earlier today, the Italian news service AKI reported that the presumed leader of the largest insurgency in Iraq will start cooperating with the Iraqi government. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of the highest-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's government, reportedly pledged to work with Iraqi and American forces to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq: The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party's former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat. "AlDouri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to...