Another key member of the Saddam regime is now in Iraqi custody, and the news may be a brutal left-right combination to the midsection of the terrorists still in Iraq.
A half-brother of Saddam Hussein, who was one of his most reviled enforcers, has been arrested in Syria on suspicion of bankrolling anti-coalition insurgents, Iraqi officials said yesterday.
Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, a strongman who once served as a head of Saddam’s feared security services, was held after nearly two years on the run. Syrian authorities captured him and handed him over to Iraq in an apparent goodwill gesture.
He was number 36 on the deck of 55 most-wanted Iraqis issued by United States troops after Saddam’s fall in April 2003. He also featured in the US list of the top 30 people sought for supporting the insurgency.
[…]
The announcement was greeted with delight by many Iraqis, who, despite chafing under US occupation, recall Hasan as epitomising all the worst aspects of Saddam’s nepotistic rule.
Even in the former dictator’s Tikriti peasant clan, he was considered something of a black sheep – a short, overweight semi-literate whose sole qualification was his aggressive devotion to his leader.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was the dungeon master of Baghdad’s main public security HQ, where he is said to have presided over the torture and murder of many prisoners.
Why do I say this is a two-punch combination? Well, the first is obviously the blow felt by the loss of a key financier and a figure representing the old regime. The second is a little more subtle. With the handoff coming from Syria, it seems that Iraq’s neighbor may finally be feeling the pressure resulting from its support of the terrorists and holdouts opposing the new Iraqi government. That so much international focus is currently on Syria because of its involvement in Lebanon must also play a role.
Loss of Syrian support would be a huge hit to the terrorists, tolling the death knell for any insurgency not solely based on religious radicals and separating the insurgents from another chunk of the Iraqi populace.