New Files Cast Doubt on Case Against 6 Iraqis

For more than a year, six Iraqis who say they are opponents of Saddam Hussein have been held prisoner in Southern California based on unconfirmed allegations and the decisions of FBI agents who conducted incomplete investigations, newly declassified documents show.

U.S. officials suspect that the six may be Iraqi spies largely because of uncorroborated reports and tips assembled by FBI agents from sources within the splintered Iraqi opposition gathered at a makeshift refugee camp in Guam, according to the records.

The documents show much was left to the surmise of an FBI that relied heavily on “sources” within the squabbling Iraqi camp and whose investigating agents subsequently gave what defense attorneys call racially insensitive testimony about Middle Easterners.

The government turned over the documents only after three powerful conservative senators--Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah)--wrote to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno seeking a briefing on the controversial case.

Federal investigators suspect that the six are double agents who are pretending to be foes of the Iraqi regime while clandestinely working for Saddam Hussein. All six deny being secret agents and say they face certain execution if returned.

The Justice Department has admitted that officials erroneously classified the evidence against the six as “secret” and improperly withheld the material from the Iraqis and their lawyers, who now include former CIA Director R. James Woolsey.

John Russell, a Justice Department spokesman, said the documents were turned over after a review of several classified cases ordered by Reno--not because of congressional pressure. He declined additional comment on the case.

Among other things, the documents show agents’ attitudes toward Middle Easterners.

“It’s been my experience working with these people that they, they lie an awful lot,” testified agent Mark A. Merfalen, a 19-year FBI veteran who said he based his opinion on his many years of working on Middle East terrorism cases. “If they can get away with it, to them it doesn’t make any difference,” Merfalen testified during secret deportation proceedings against the Iraqis, according to transcripts.

Agent John Cosenza, who received FBI, CIA and State Department training in Arab culture, added in his testimony: “There is no guilt in the Arab world. It’s only shame.”

The more than 500 pages of once-secret documents--copies of which were provided to The Times by the defense team--reveal multitudes of suspicions but no firm proof linking any of the six to foreign intelligence. Some evidence remains classified, but the government says most has now been turned over.

In the newly available material, the FBI never disputes that the Iraqis worked with anti-Hussein forces. Each was affiliated with a CIA-backed opposition organization, either the Iraqi National Congress or the Iraqi National Accord.

The six men, who range in age from 29 to 37, all say they risked their lives to fight Hussein. Five are former Iraqi military officers; the other was a physician at a government missile plant.

“I’ve spent 22 years of my life reading and in school--I’ve had no time to learn anything about spying,” Ali Yasin Mohammed-Karim, the former government doctor, said in a telephone interview from the Immigration and Naturalization Service lockup on Terminal Island. “I’m not Indiana Jones.”

During what was dubbed Operation Pacific Haven, rotating teams of FBI agents interviewed the six Iraqis and scores of other evacuees airlifted to Guam in late 1996 after an Iraqi government offensive. CIA personnel provided the FBI with background information.

*

The FBI ground rules in the case precluded launching a formal investigation--a step that would have mandated more rigorous checking of the validity of the myriad, often-conflicting allegations. Without corroboration, the records show, the FBI agents often fell back on hunches and reports that hardly rose about the level of rumor.

Another agent, Thomas Graney, raised doubts that one imprisoned Iraqi, Safadin Hassan Al-Batat, was the target of a much-publicized assassination attempt. An Iraqi commando turned anti-government rebel, Al-Batat said he almost died in 1994 when an Iraqi agent slipped rat poison into his soft drink. But Graney testified that one walk-in source on Guam suggested that Al-Batat may have been using the poison as a “recreational drug.”

“I don’t know if this is medically possible,” Graney testified. “I was never able to check.”

Nonetheless, the agent’s speculation that the assassination attempt was a “ruse” figured in the FBI’s decision to put an alert on Al-Batat, who says he was wounded in an ill-fated 1991 uprising, or intifada, against Hussein. The FBI suspects Al-Batat of possible intelligence links to Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey--nations with greatly differing foreign policy objectives.

Often, FBI agents complained about the Iraqis’ perceived lack of cooperation and candor.

“I didn’t like Al-Ammary’s whole demeanor when I was talking to him,” Merfalen said of Mohammad Jwer Al-Ammary, a former Iraqi Air Force pilot. The FBI found him evasive about his knowledge of the regime’s chemical weapons program, though Al-Ammary said he knew little. “He had this kind of smug look,” said Merfalen.

FBI agent Andrew Johnson testified that CIA analysts “found it kind of hard to believe” that Adil Hadi Awadh--a former physician in the Iraqi military--did not participate in the regime’s practice of cutting off the ears of deserters and opponents.

“There were a lot of Army deserters or ex-deserters walking around with their ears missing, and I believe that maybe noses,” Johnson testified.

In his testimony, Awadh acknowledged being posted at a military hospital in southern Iraq where the ear amputations were performed--though he says he never knew of nose removals. But Awadh insisted that the grisly operation was left to more experienced “specialists.”

“Those things are still deviling me in my memory,” Awadh, 29, said in an interview.

The FBI also found it suspect that Ali Jahjoh Saleh--a onetime Iraqi lieutenant assigned to guard Scud missiles during the Gulf War--insisted he had not witnessed a launching. Lacking evidence to contradict Saleh’s word, FBI agent Kathy Green cited the doubts of the U.S. military translators on Guam, whose role was a controversial one.

The Iraqis complained repeatedly that the military translators--none of whom were of Iraqi origin--were unfamiliar with contemporary spoken Arabic in Iraq.

In fact, the translation problem had proved pivotal in a previously disclosed case.

That case involved Hashim Qadir Hawlery, an Iraqi Kurdish journalist who was also held in Southern California as a security risk upon arrival from Guam. But Hawlery was freed in March after testimony revealed that a military translator had mistakenly called him a member of the “KLM,” supposedly a Kurdish opposition group. There is no such organization. A perplexed Hawlery had wondered if he was accused of affiliation with the Dutch airline, said his lawyer, Niels W. Frenzen of Public Counsel, an L.A.-based nonprofit group.

*

In the case of the six, the FBI also questioned the account of Mohammad Jassin Tuma, a former captain in Hussein’s Republican Guard.

“A person just does not resign his commission under the Republican Guard with Saddam Hussein,” testified FBI agent Warren G. Pellegrin. “That is usually grounds to be killed.”

But Tuma said he deserted in 1995 precisely to avoid being killed because he feared that his anti-Hussein leanings would be discovered. His uncle, an ex-general, had been executed for plotting against the regime, Tuma said, and his brother was serving a 15-year sentence for opposition activities.

Relying largely on the FBI testimony, federal immigration Judge J.J. Sitgraves, sitting in Los Angeles, ordered the six deported to Iraq as “security risks.”

The six Iraqis are appealing. Ironically, their wives have already been granted political asylum and have resettled in the United States with their children. Even Judge Sitgraves remarked during deportation proceedings that it seemed “rather inconsistent” that the wives of suspected spies would be granted asylum while their husbands were jailed.

The six Iraqis say their fate is sealed if returned to their embattled homeland.

“Saddam Hussein will turn me into a billion pieces if I am sent back,” said Mohammed-Karim, the lone Kurd among the six (the others are Arabs), who contends that he served as an interpreter for CIA agents in northern Iraq--and once even gave an agency man treatment for a migraine headache.

However, the FBI suspects Mohammed-Karim of foreign intelligence links, in part because of his wide travel in the Middle East and because he has a cousin who is purportedly an Iranian operative.

But Mohammed-Karim denies that his cousin is on Tehran’s payroll. And he maintains that his travel to neighboring nations--often facilitated with bribes to border guards--was meant to escape Iraqi forces or visit relatives. One place he never fled to, Mohammed-Karim said, was the Afghani capital of Kabul--a place where Judge Sitgraves wrote that he passed through en route to Syria.

“Our judge has a very wide imagination,” said Mohammed-Karim, who hopes to join his wife and two children, ages 8 and 5, now in Reseda. “I thought I would reach liberty when I came to America. But I have found the complete contrary.”