Women behind Saddam’s germ warfare go free
TWO women scientists who were among Saddam Hussein’s leading chemical and biological warfare experts have been freed by the U.S. One of them, Rihab Taha, 49, was nicknamed Dr Germ and educated in Britain.
She is said to have made weapons from anthrax, botulinium toxin and alfotoxin.
The other, Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, 51, became known as Mrs Anthrax and is said to have ordered the torture of scientists who refused to co- operate with her.
They are among 27 prisoners, including eight close aides to Saddam, to be freed in recent days by the U.S. authorities in Iraq.
Their release was announced as the murder of an American hostage increased fears for the British man being held by kidnappers in Iraq, Norman Kember. A videotape, released to a web site by the extremist group Islamic Army of Iraq, showed Ronald Allen Schulz being shot in the back of the head.
Last night there was speculation that the release of the 27 prisoners is part of a pre- election deal to appease Iraq’s large Sunni Arab minority.
All the detainees were seen as posing no threat to security. They were neither charged with crimes nor material witnesses, and had no intelligence value.
Lawyers said Tariq Aziz, the urbane international face of Saddam’s regime, was among others being considered for release.
Dr Taha was awarded her doctorate from the University of East Anglia in 1984 after studying for five years in Norwich.
Weapons similar to those she helped develop were used on Saddam’s enemies within Iraq. UN weapons inspectors, who gave her the name Dr Germ, described her as ‘ difficult and dour’. She is married to Amir Rashid Muhammad al- Ubaydi, a former general who headed Iraq’s missile development programme in the 1980s.
Mrs Anthrax, who was also known as Chemical Sally, was educated in America.
She was a member of Saddam’s war cabinet and was said to be the most powerful woman in Iraq until the Allied invasion.
She was the only woman included in the U.S. military’s list of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam’s regime, and was the Five of Hearts in a deck of cards issued to help identify fugitives. A mother of four, she attended science conferences in Scotland, Leeds and Birmingham during the 1980s.
She has a master’s degree from Texas Women’s University and a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Missouri.
Lawyers acting for her have said she is gravely ill with cancer.
British hostage Ken Bigley was murdered after U.S. and Iraqi officials refused to bow to his kidnappers’ demands to release all Iraqi women prisoners – including the two scientists – last year. A U. S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the detainees ‘were released in full consultation with the Iraqi government’.
They have been flown to Jordan, reportedly because of fears for their safety in Iraq, where many former regime figures have been assassinated.
U. S. spokesman Colonel Barry Johnson said: ‘ Many of those released were held as suspects in possible war crimes and as material witnesses. They no longer were deemed to have information in this regard.’
U.S. State Department sources confirmed yesterday that Mr Schulz had been shot.
His hands were tied behind his back and he had been blindfolded. His killers claimed he was a security consultant for the Iraqi housing ministry, although neighbours and family in Alaska said he was an electrician.
Hopes that 74- year- old Briton and peace campaigner Mr Kember would be released before Christmas were raised on Sunday when German Susanne Osthoff, 43, an aid worker, was freed.
Anas Altikriti, an envoy for the Muslim Association of Britain, who travelled to Iraq in the hope of securing Mr Kember’s release, said last night that it was unlikely that the execution of Mr Schulz would affect the Briton’s situation.
He said very few people in Iraq had doubted there would be anything other than a ‘tragic end’ to Mr Schulz’s story.
Mr Altikriti said the case of Mrs Osthoff bore more similarities to that of Mr Kember and that news of his fate was likely to emerge in a matter of ‘ days rather than weeks’.
Mr Kember, from North London, was seized in Baghdad in November with fellow peace campaigners James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both Canadians and an American, Tom Fox, 54.
The first results of Thursday’s parliamentary election were issued yesterday, with the Shi’ite religious bloc the United Iraqi Alliance winning about 58 per cent of the vote while the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance party took about 20 per cent.