Informant Against Hussein Now One of Fellow Inmates

Izzedine Mohammed Hassan Majid was once a valued source of information on his former boss and first cousin, Saddam Hussein.

Ousted from the army after being linked to an abortive coup in 1992, Majid -- a nephew of the notorious Ali Hassan Majid, or Chemical Ali -- used his contacts in the Iraqi military and Sunni Arab tribes to supply intelligence to U.S., British and Jordanian spies, said his wife and a former Jordanian security official.

But instead of basking in triumph over Hussein’s overthrow, the 47-year-old has spent the last 21 months languishing in various U.S.-controlled prisons in Iraq.

American officials, citing Geneva Convention restrictions, won’t talk about his case.

But friends, family and the former security official fear Izzedine Mohammed Hassan Majid is the victim of a bureaucratic mess they say is all too common today in Iraq, where suspects may be detained on unsubstantiated charges and held indefinitely as their cases wend their way through layers of paperwork.

Majid was a major in Hussein’s Republican Guard until he, his brother Hussein Kamal Majid and others turned against the regime and became involved in the 1992 coup attempt.

His brother was executed after the incident, and Hussein purged the military of 1,500 officers, including Majid.

Majid, his family and two of Hussein’s daughters and their husbands went into exile in August 1995.

In Jordan, Majid began supplying information to Western intelligence, often through Jordanian handlers at the Amman headquarters of the country’s General Intelligence Directorate, said the former Jordanian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Izzedine dealt with Americans and other intelligence officials around the world,” the former official said. “I met him many times. He used to come in daily at some point.”

The Tikrit-born military officer became a rising star in the Iraqi opposition, along with U.S. favorites Ahmad Chalabi and Iyad Allawi.

But unlike Chalabi or Allawi, Majid vehemently opposed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, instead advocating a coup. Still, he returned to Iraq in the autumn of 2004 to help persuade fellow Sunnis to take part in the Jan. 30, 2005, parliamentary elections, his wife said. He was detained by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint near Fallouja in November 2004.

Majid was publicly accused by Allawi, then interim prime minister, of stealing millions of dollars and backing the insurgency. But he was never charged, leading family and friends to believe his arrest was aimed at keeping him out of politics.

Majid was no friend of the new regime, including Chalabi and Allawi, who had risen to high positions under the U.S.-led occupation. He had launched a newspaper called Madar and a political group, the National Salvation Party. Both were highly critical of the U.S. and its allies, including Chalabi and Allawi.

Majid accused the new government of pursuing a narrow, sectarian agenda and warned -- as did many Sunnis at the time -- that the insurgency would continue to spread if Iraq’s new political class didn’t change course.

Although he may have harbored some sympathy for the insurgents’ aims, those who know Majid say he probably disapproved of their methods.

“He was a democrat,” said the former security official. “He didn’t have the personality of a resistance supporter.”

Majid’s wife, Entesar Nazar Majid, 47, who cares for the couple’s four children, said she used to hear from him every two weeks from the U.S.-run Camp Cropper prison near Baghdad’s international airport.

But she lost contact about 50 days ago after he was hospitalized for a hernia operation, she said.

“The Americans were always his friends,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “They were his buddies.”

Camp Cropper also houses Hussein and other members of the former regime, as well as other high-profile prisoners.

“The worst part is that he’s stuck in there with all the people who killed his family,” said a recently released Palestinian American businessman who befriended Majid while at the prison, where the U.S. citizen was held without charge for nearly nine months.

The Palestinian American, who spoke on condition of anonymity and said he was considering a lawsuit against his jailers, said he was arrested in November 2005 as he was leaving the Baghdad airport after a business trip to the capital.

He said a number of others at Camp Cropper shared their plight, spending their days walking around the facility’s courtyard and hoping every day would be their last at the prison.

“We call it the black hole,” he said.

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Daragahi was recently on assignment in Amman.