Rezko's Friend Ayham Alsammarae gives a Press Conference

Whow...no sooner do I comment to Bored Now about waiting for Rezko to talk about friend Ayham Alsammarae and Alsammarae (the guy who put up bond for Rezko) talks, and talks tough. Talisman Gate via Rezko Watch.

There’s so much vileness here that I really don’t know what to mop up first.

Ayham Alsammarae, Iraq’s slimy ex-Minister of Electricity under the Bremer and Allawi administrations, who had escaped from an Iraqi prison by hiring an American security company to break him out back in December 2006, has resurfaced in the Jordanian capital Amman where he gave a press conference today saying, among other things, that he hoped that the insurgency in Iraq “would continue [against U.S. occupation] and avenges the Iraqi people.”

Alsammarae, an Iraqi-American Chicagoan, added during remarks carried by Radio Sawa (Arabic link) that he had contributed the maximum allowable of $2,300 to Barack Obama’s campaign. But there’s another Obama link to Alsammarae: while serving as electricity minister Alsammarae had been involved in brokering deals in the Iraqi electricity sector for Antoin Rezko, Obama’s long-term friend and patron. Rezko is the Syrian-American hustler who was convicted of fraud in an Illinois court on the day that Obama secured the Democratic nomination.

Talisman Gate told me the fellow to the right of Blagojevich at that dinner in 2004 at the Four Seasons was Alsammarae. The other is a photo of Alsammarae at this Press Conference.

xp Bill Baar's West Side

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Jill Morgenthaler and Daniel Frawley’s Companion Security in Iraq

Morgenthaler's site tells us,

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe Congress must do a better job overseeing how US money is spent. The war in Iraq is costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars. Big money non-compete defense contracts are being consummated behind closed doors for the benefit of wealthy friends of the Bush Administration with little regard to need or budget considerations. At a time of fiscal uncertainty, I will go to Congress committed to ensuring that all taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

Morgenthaler might want to start by explaining how deeply she was involved in Alsammarae and Frawley's plans for Iraq Reconstruction funds.

Alsammarae, who lives in the Chicago area and was a college classmate of Rezko, is a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen. He left his post as Iraq's electricity minister in May 2005, about a month after Companion got the contract. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.

Companion's contract called for it to fly 150 Iraqis to the United States for police-type training. Among the subjects: how to shoot AK-47 rifles.

As Frawley sought to revive the contract in spring 2006, Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, directed the state's homeland security adviser, Jill Morgenthaler, to find "a military site for the training of Iraqi police forces,'' Morgenthaler wrote in an April 26, 2006, e-mail. She wrote the letter in June 2006 offering the Savanna site.

Alsammarae knows, Frawely knows, Iraqi Politicians know... it's about time Morgenthaler told the people of Illinois what she knows about all of this.

And then, does she know anything about how Blackwater got their site in Illinois?

xp Bill Baar's West Side

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Rezko or Alsammare in that picture with Blagojevich and Auchi?

ABC linked to Middle East Online for a series of photos of Nadhmi Auchi with Blagojevich and Emil Jones.

ABC claims the man to Blagojevich's right is Rezko,

A Middle East Web site shows a photograph of what it described as Auchi visiting Illinois government officials in April 2004, with Rezko visible on the right of the photo.

He doesn't look like Rezko to me and instead looks like Aiham Alsammarae shown here in photo I downloaded from the NYT: Escaped Minister Says He Fled Iraqi Jail ‘the Chicago Way’

Alsammarae would have been Iraq's Minister of Electricitiy at the time of this photo in April 2004 so I'm not sure he would have been in country for this event. But it sure doesn't look like Tony Rezko in the photo as ABC is saying here.


Rich originally linked the ABC photo here.

Another Auchi Blagojevich photo op from GMH's website.

Update: Middle East Online and GMH have trashed their links to the Auchi Blagojevich Emil Jones bash so here's the pic of Auchi and Jones from the site yesterday,

Update: Nibras Kazimi also believes it's Alsammare in the top photo,

Regarding that top picture, I immediately recognized the third man as Alsamarrae.

Check the comments in his post Obama’s Saddam Connection?


xp Bill Baar's West Side

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Al Chaib: Tax-delinquent Rezko pal

I love this headline: Tax-delinquent Rezko pal runs toll restaurants

He's another IIT guy. MBA520 must have plenty of case studies with alums like Chaib, Rezko, and Alsammarae.

Leadership techniques for influencing other organizational members, creative problem-solving and decision-making, ethics and values-based managing are covered.

From the Sun Times,

The selling of food on state property is not the only perk Chaib's family has secured under Blagojevich. The governor, in 2003, gave Chaib's wife a part-time job in the Department of Employment Security Review Board, an agency charged with collecting more than half of her husband's tax debt.

Aides to Blagojevich told the Sun-Times that Lori Chaib never tried to influence officials about her husband's back unemployment taxes. Al Chaib also owes sales taxes.

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Aiham Alsammarae: battling Iranians or fleeing Fitz?

Today's Trib says,

Eight months after Aiham Alsammarae escaped from a Baghdad jail and returned to his home in suburban Chicago, an Iraqi judge has thrown the book at him, sentencing the former electricity minister in absentia to 21 years in prison in a corruption case.

Yet Alsammarae, an Oak Brook resident who had gone back to his native Iraq to serve in the government after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, isn't exactly hiding at home. He says he recently returned to the maelstrom of Iraqi politics, traveling to Jordan to join other Iraqi officials in forming an opposition front as he continues to insist on his innocence.

Reached on a Jordanian cell phone, the Iraqi-American dual citizen, 55, said he is in Amman meeting with Iraqi political leaders in an effort to counter what he says is Iranian influence in the Shiite-majority government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has been prosecuting him.

While the ST told us a few days ago,

Rezko, 52, is fighting federal charges that he solicited kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Blagojevich. Sources in December told the Sun-Times the feds are investigating Rezko's dealings in Iraq, where Rezko once had a contract from Alsammarae's agency to build a power plant.

Alsammarae, who lives in the Chicago area and was a college classmate of Rezko, is a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen. He left his post as Iraq's electricity minister in May 2005, about a month after Companion got the contract. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.

Companion's contract called for it to fly 150 Iraqis to the United States for police-type training. Among the subjects: how to shoot AK-47 rifles.

As Frawley sought to revive the contract in spring 2006, Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, directed the state's homeland security adviser, Jill Morgenthaler, to find "a military site for the training of Iraqi police forces,'' Morgenthaler wrote in an April 26, 2006, e-mail. She wrote the letter in June 2006 offering the Savanna site.

Makes you wonder if Alsammarae isn't running from Fitz's questions instead?

Is it too cynical to think Illinois isn't offering training sites for Secuirty Contractors because others feel some day, they may need a spring from the joint, doing it the Chicago Way?

Update: from the NYT story in Dec on the escape,

Mr. Alsammarae shed little direct light on the two leading theories of how he escaped: either with the help of a mysterious Western private security firm that appeared at the station on Sunday, or with the complicity of the Iraqi police.

“I don’t like to harm these people who helped me,” he said.

Despite the charges against him, Mr. Alsammarae said he did not believe that the American authorities would arrest him in Chicago. “I hope they are smarter than that,” he said.

xp Prairie State Blue

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Sun Times: on Rezko's deal in Iraq

Bravo to the Sun Times for continuing to connect the dots with Rezko, Alsammarae and Illinois's efforts to export Illinois's politics of graft to Iraq.

That Blagojevich's staff could be talking to a company like Companion this summer given the history with Alsammarae, Rezko and Runman is unfathonamble. What can they be thinking.

Two years ago, Iraq's Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to a start-up security company owned by now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop with a checkered financial past.

Within a month, an Iraqi leadership change left the deal in limbo.

Now the company, Companion Security, is working to revive its contract to train Iraqi power-plant guards in the United States.

Companion found support last summer from Gov. Blagojevich, whose staff offered to let the company lease a military facility in western Illinois. Since then, Companion has been lobbying officials from Washington to Baghdad about its Iraqi deal, according to documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Blagojevich's offer to assist Companion came as a federal investigation into Rezko's state-government dealings was heating up. A former top fund-raiser for the governor and other politicians, Rezko was indicted on corruption charges in October -- four months after Blagojevich's homeland security chief wrote a letter inviting Companion to train the guards at the Savanna Army Depot.

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Alsammarae's back home

And no response to my email to Obama's office if he supports Iraq's efforts to get him back.

From KansasCity.com: Former Iraqi electricity minister returns to Illinois home, (Originally in the Chicago Tribune)

After spending four months in an Iraqi prison and pulling off an audacious jailbreak, Aiham Alsammarae flew quietly back into Chicago and was behind the desk of his Downers Grove, Ill., engineering firm Tuesday.

In an hourlong interview, the former Iraqi electricity minister who is still wanted on corruption charges in his native Iraq gave new details of his escape. The dramatic jailbreak included a high-speed run to the Baghdad International Airport, a private jet that flew him out of the country and back-channel talks with Iraqi political leaders on how to extricate himself.

The Iraqi judge overseeing the case expressed surprise that Alsammarrae had turned up in Chicago, and vowed to take "all legal measures" to return him to Iraq.

and a little more...

Alsammarae, who has long been friends with indicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, also sought to distance himself from allegations that he oversaw Rezko's bid to build a power plant in northern Iraq.

Alsammarae said he learned through news reports that federal authorities are interested in speaking to him about his relationship with Rezko, but he said that authorities have made no attempts to contact him. The two have been "good friends" since they met while studying for advanced degrees at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the late 1970s, Alsammarae said.

The power plant was never built and Rezko's $150 million contract is no longer in effect. Alsammarae declined to give further details about the project, but said that he would be willing to speak with federal authorities about it. He added that the project was under the Kurdish Regional Government authority and outside his purview.

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Alsammarae appears in Dubai, and mid level officals not making any waves

Rezko friend Ahim Alsammarae appeared in Dubai yesterday per this from CBS.

Also, two paragraphs from a redacted CPA memo Jason Vest used for this story on Iraqi Reconstruction. Here are two paragraphs from the memo with probable references to Alsammarae. He's one with a photo with Bush as described below.

I've always believed (and still do) we fight in Iraq to bring Democracy. I didn't realize we were bringing Democracy with a Chicago face though.

Read the whole memo.

Iraqis politicians, ordinary Iraqis, and U.S. contractors have the sense that Bremer’s goal is to leave Iraq with his reputation intact. He therefore hesitates to take tough but necessary decisions, instead hoping to foist them onto his successor or international organizations. Success should not be seen as the state of Iraqi on June 30, but rather the state of Iraq on July 31, September 30, or November 30. It is essential we transfer sovereignty to an Iraq built upon the strongest possible template. We need to use our prerogative as occupying power to signal that corruption will not be tolerated. We have the authority to remove ministers. To take action against men like [REDACTED] would win us applause on the street, even if their GC sponsors would go through the motions of complaint. The alleged kickbacks that [REDACTED] is accepting should be especially serious for us, since he was one of two ministers who met the President and has his picture taken with him. If such information gets buried on the desks of middle-level officials who do not want to make waves [Baar's emphasis], then short-term gain will be replaced by long-term ill.

We so share culpability in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis. After all, we appointed the Governing Council members. Their corruption is our corruption. When [REDACTED] work to exclude followers of other trends of Shi’a political thought from minister and deputy minister positions, Iraqis blame Bremer, especially because the Governance Group had assured Iraqis that their exclusion from the Governing Council did not mean an exclusion from the process. As it turned out, we lied. People from Kut, for example, see that they have no representation on the Governing Council, and many predict civil war since they doubt that the Governing Council will really allow elections.

Make no waves... Milt Rakove would know. I hope Fitzgerald gets Alsammarae talking.

update: from the end of the CBS story. Only from Chicago....

The flamboyant former minister peppered his remarks on Monday with colorful statements, saying he has ``lovers everywhere in the world'' and that his defense would be easier if Iraq adopted libel laws similar to those in the United States.

``We have to start suing those guys so they shut up,'' he said of Iraqi court officials who have declared him a fugitive from justice.

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Cindy Sheehan shouts down Emanuel: "de-escalate, investigate, troops home now,"

This is why I've said Democrats will implode come 2008.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., cut the press conference short when protests drowned out his voice through a dozen microphones set up to record his comments. Emanuel said Democrats would go back to the caucus room and return later.

Start the investigation with how Bremer could have appointed Ahim Alsammarae Minister for Electricity. A guy active in the movement to remove sanctions on Saddam pre-War. We need Alsammarae back in Chicago talking to Fitzgerald.

Update: PJ Media has the video.

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Marin's Man of the Year 2007: Tony Rezko

She got that right. Today's Sun Times,

A 51-year-old Syrian-born wunderkind from Wilmette, Rezko was always the quiet, low-key guy who preferred the shadows to center stage. An immaculate, moneyed Dr. Phil lookalike, Rezko's special gift was spotting stars before anyone knew they would be stars. And doing them favors, seemingly for free. And so for years, whether it was campaigning for the late Mayor Harold Washington in 1983, or raising big bucks for former Cook County Board President John Stroger in the '90s, or helping raise money for Sen. Barack Obama, whose rock star possibilities Rezko recognized years earlier, Rezko was ready with hefty infusions of his own cash and millions of dollars of other people's money. And it wasn't just Democrats whom he supported. Republicans from President Bush to former Gov. Jim Edgar got a little lift from Tony.

And he links to world problems and wars too,

Rezko, let's remember, was "traveling" internationally when his indictments were handed down. He has interesting friends the world over. The emir of Qatar is a pal. The former Iraq electricity minister, Aiham Alsammarae, who resides in west suburban Oak Brook when he's not on the lam from a Baghdad lockup, is a Rezko business colleague who's been indicted in connection with $2 billion in missing money meant to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. The feds are investigating what role Rezko may have had in that deal.

And much closer to home, the feds continue to pursue Rezko's past real estate dealings with Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich, a business relationship that began in 1997.

Meanwhile, Rezko's city developments, "minority partners" and contracts with Cook County are also under the federal microscope.

Some really talented people can play three-level chess in their head. Rezko can do even better than that. He could master at least four levels of government -- city, county, state and international -- all at once.

The only good thing here is 2007 will be a bonanza year for Illinois bloggers. You'll be getting lots of google hits for Rezko Obama combinations. A lot of e-emails from people asking questions.

Rezko's a real Chicago story. A guy from Syria comes to Chicago and all he's got going for him is the ability to play three-level-chess. Then he trys to take over the world.

Update: And the last thing that interests me about Obama is did he smoke pot. MSM ought to ask instead what he talked about with Rezko a couple of times a year over dinner since 1990. Somehow I think Obama would rather talk about pot then Rezko. Don't give him a pass.

xp Bill Baar's West Side

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Obama and Rezko: Resko and Alsammarae and Stop the Killing, Start the Healing

The Obama-Rezko intern story made USA Today today.

As for the immensly intriguing Ahim Alsammarae story, I sent an email to Obama's office this AM asking for comment on the State Department's position expressed here,

U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington, who could face the difficulty of balancing respect for Iraq's judicial system and sovereignty against concerns over a U.S. citizen's safety, have declined to say how they would respond if Alsammarae were to turn up in the United States.

But on Tuesday, a State Department spokeswoman went as far as to say that the U.S. government "supports the Iraqi government's effort to resolve the matter." She did not go into details about whether the U.S. would cooperate if Iraq calls for Alsammarae's extradition.

Dania Alsammarae, the daughter of the former electricity minister, said she has spoken with her father daily since his escape but he never has told her or other family members where he is or what he has been doing since fleeing Iraq.

"My dad wouldn't tell us any details but has been calling regularly to let us know that he continues to be safe," said the daughter, who lives in Dublin. "If the prime minister of Jordan is saying he is there, then I believe it to be true."

Dania Alsammarae has contacted both Durbin and Obama's offices for help securing her Father's release.

An Aihman Alsammarae was active in the anti-sanctions movement apparantly as a speaker from the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Here's a link to "Stop the Killing, Start the Healing", part of the August 5-7, 2000 Mobilization against Sanctions on Iraq, held in Washington DC,

"We are destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that." (Denis Halliday, former UN coordinator of the Oil-for-Food Program and Nobel Peace Prize nominee)

On 6 August 1990, the UN Security Council imposed a near total embargo on Iraq, the most comprehensive sanctions in modern history. Today those sanctions continue to kill innocent Iraqis while undermining the pillars of civil society. And since December 1998 the Iraqi people have faced regular bombing by American and British warplanes. Numerous sources estimate the death toll of sanctions and bombing to be over one million.

In response, a broad coalition of organizations and concerned individuals will converge on Washington, DC this August 6 to demand an end to this economic and military war carried out by the United States through the United Nations. Our message is clear and direct: "Lift the economic sanctions, stop the bombing!"

Aiham Alsammarae participated along with the actor Martin Sheen and British MP George Galloway.

I'll confirm next week with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee if this is the same Aiham Alsammarae wanted by both Iraq and for questioning by our Fitzgerald.

Update: "Jack" at the ADC's Dearborn Michigan Office confirmed the Chicago Alsammarae was an ADC board member.

The next question for Senator Obama to consider, should the Senate start investigating post-War Iraq, was why in the world Bremer appointed Alsammarae as Electricity Minister in the interim government given his pre-War position towards sanctions?

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Fighting Dock Walls and some Wednesday shorts

Bill Dock Walls challenges the Mayor's nominating petitions. From today's Trib. Nice to see a politician who doesn't roll over to the opposition.

Supporters of mayoral challenger William "Dock" Walls filed objections Tuesday to the nominating petitions of Mayor Richard Daley, the first time since Daley became mayor that his petitions have been called into question.

Daley's campaign said it is confident in the validity of its petitions. But Walls said his supporters found a number of problems with the mayor's petitions, including the names of people not registered to vote and evidence of forgery.

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Aiham Alsammarae shows up in Jordan on a US Plane. From today's Sun Times,

His whereabouts had been unknown until today, when Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit told reporters that Alsammarae "arrived in Amman as an American and on an American plane," an apparent reference to a U.S. military plane, the Associated Press reported.

"Jordan did not receive any demand from the Iraqi authorities" for al-Samaraie's extradition, al-Bakhit said.

But Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, flatly denied the United States was involved in transporting Alsammarae anywhere or played any role in his escape.

"Wherever Mr. Alsammarae went, he did not get there with the assistance of the U.S. government," Fintor said this morning. "There's absolutely no truth whatsoever to these reports."

Can Fitzgerald fly someone over to Amman to interview him before someone packs off to Baghdad again?

Alsammarae has a Chicago story to tell and I'm afraid it's going to get buried.

Also followed by RYP over at Iragslogger; the only National group following this story besides some righty bloggers who suspect Dick Cheney is springing Alsammarae in return for contributions to the Bush campaign.

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Kane County's Sheriff and any other shorts....

Seems Pat Perez made good on his plege to stop giving county cars as perks. From the Daily Herald,

Eight Kane County sheriff's office employees have 10 days to turn in the keys to their department-issued squad cars.

Kane County Sheriff Pat Perez said Thursday he ordered five corrections officers and three civilians to return the vehicles because they don't need them for their daily duties.
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It's nice to see guys secure enough to come out and admit this.
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Iragslogger posts a Aiham "The Chicago Way" Alsammarae sighting,

Former Iraqi Electricity Minister Aiham Al-Samarra'i was spotted at the American Embassy in Amman Thursday, according to Ali Al-Shabbout, official spokesman of the Public Integrity Commission in Iraq. Shabbout added that that the commission has contacted Interpol in order to issue an international arrest warrant for Samarra'i. Al-Samarra'i escaped his Baghdad Green Zone jail Sunday while awaiting trial on corruption charges.

Wonder who Alsammarae would call from there?
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See if they'll follow Rezko: Illinois Progressive Legal Action Center.
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A Blagojevich Press Release via Illinois Review,

Governor Rod R. Blagojevich today announced $9.6 million for a new pilot program that will help provide supportive housing and services for approximately 170 young adults leaving the state’s foster care system, and for children being raised by relatives or other caregivers.
[****]
The pilot’s developers - Interfaith Housing Development Corporation of Chicago and their service provider partners, Sankofa Safe Child Initiative and Coppin AME Church - will select approximately 75 young adults aged 18-21 years who are transitioning out of foster care and 44 kinship families where the children are being raised by relatives to benefit from the program.

I understand a Kinship Family as a family sharing bonds of blood or marriage. If marriage is expanded to exclude same sex couples, would Coppin AME Church be obligated to accept those kinds of kin to keep the grant?

The answer to that question would guide my vote on a same-sex marriage proposal. It's the most fundamental issue of Church and State I've seen in a long time.
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In Chicago (and burbs) its all about does a guy keep up his property. That's all that counts. NYT Home in Illinois May Lure Fugitive Former Iraqi Minister

It was an unremarkable scene on Wednesday outside a gated community here where the former Iraqi electricity minister, Aiham Alsammarae, now a fugitive from justice, keeps a palatial house.

Having escaped from a Baghdad jail over the weekend in what he boasted was the “Chicago way,” Mr. Alsammarae, whose whereabouts are unknown, could have been on the way back here.

Or perhaps he had already arrived, enjoying the serenity of the leafy surroundings of the Covington subdivision, about a half-hour west of Chicago.
[***]
“He kept his house just like any other guy,” said Mr. Brugh, who works for Oak and Dale Properties, a management company. “He’d have to or else we’d be all over it.”

And the guy who helped Alsammarae escape claims he was canned for it: Local man says he was fired for protecting Iraqi prisoner

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Alsammarae blog chatter

Lots of stuff on the blogs now about Alsammarae donating to Bush before and after Alsammarae's appointment as Iraqi Oil minister. Samples here, here, and here. These folks don't realize there's a combine in Illinois and our tradition is don't back no losers.

Independent Sentinel wrote,

...and is now a fugitive, on the run, from corruption charges.

Seems like a free-for-all out there, for corrupt bussines types, just like here.

The Bushites are creating a Capitalist nightmare in their own image, in Iraq.

More like Illinois's image.

I'm worried Alsammarae will be sent shackled back to Iraq before our Fitzgerald has a chance to talk with him about old friend Tony Rezko. From today's Sun Times,

Federal authorities in Chicago have expressed interest in Alsammarae's links to recently indicted businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a former top fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich who won an Iraqi power plant contract while Alsammarae was electricity minister. The contract no longer is in effect.

Authorities here want to learn more about the deal because Rezko and Alsammarae know each other, and each has been accused of corruption, a source familiar with the investigation told the Sun-Times. Alsammarae and Rezko attended the Illinois Institute of Technology together in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

I hope Fitzgerald gets the chance to talk with Alsammarae for a long time. I'm worried it won't happen because the capitalist nightmare will silence the canary.

Update: Iraqsloger has an nice backgrounder on Alsammarae: The Nine Lives of Aiman Alsammarae.

He [Alsammarae]admits that his attempts to introduce groups who attack Coalition troops as political entities was not entirely altruistic since he declared in this Voice of America interview that he intended to run in the December 2005 elections. Ultimately, his attempts to reconcile with insurgents was a failed venture that resulted in a February 2006 attack on Alsammarae's convoy that he escaped but injured two of his security contractors.

His troubles were just beginning. The predominately Shia government filed charges of corruption, when Alsammarae's returned to inquire about the nature of the charges were, he found himself surprised to be held in a Green Zone prison awaiting trial.

Got to admit, he sounds awfully Chicago; larger than life. I hope he makes it home to write a book... although I'm not sure how much of it I'd believe.

Update: A little more from Pioneer Press,

So now Dania and other family members are pleading with American government officials, including Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, to intervene and ensure Aiham's safety.

"We are hoping the State Department will step in and save his life," said Dania, who recently returned home to Oak Brook from a medical school in Ireland.

Christina Angarola, spokesperson for Durbin, declined to discuss specifics, but said the senator is actively communicating with the State Department about Aiham's safety.

"We are in frequent contact with the Department of the State to check up on this," Angarola said.

Update: Biden's blog posts on the story too.

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Alsammarae: he did it the Chicago way

from the Trib,

In another phone interview, with The New York Times, Alsammarae was asked how he got away and he recalled a line about Al Capone in "The Untouchables," saying that he had escaped "the Chicago way."

Great... just great... He says he's on his way back to Oak Brook so now the Feds will have to contend with extraditing him back to Iraq.

"I think it would be the crime of the century if they were to send me back to Iraq or refuse me," he said. "People wouldn't allow it. I have contacted senators and congressman to help me. I am coming back to Chicago. It is my home."

Update: More from yesterday's NYT,

Despite the charges against him, Mr. Alsammarae said he did not believe that the American authorities would arrest him in Chicago. “I hope they are smarter than that,” he said.

I'd worry more that they're so smart they'd rather not have him talking to Fitzgerald about Rezko, and will want to send him back to Iraq instead. That could be the Chicago way too.

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Alsammarae's on the run...

Today's Sun Times: Iraqi with ties to Rezko escapes Baghdad jail.

Former Iraqi electricity minister Aiham Alsammarae, who has a home in west suburban Oak Brook, has escaped from a Baghdad police station, according to an e-mail he sent to the Chicago Sun-Times and others Tuesday.

"Hi, I am OK and out of their reach," Alsammarae wrote in the e-mail, which came in response to an e-mail the newspaper sent him several days ago.
[***]
"I said it before and I say it again: There is nothing [no case pending in the court that] required me to stay one day in the jail. . . . They make me wait for another 8 days . . . planning for more lies until they get the chance to kill me!!!" wrote Alsammarae, a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen who left his Downers Grove engineering firm in 2003 to join Iraq's transitional government.

"So, this is why I decide to hit the road and safe [sic] my life for the sake of my family and Iraq."

Alsammarae did not answer the Sun-Times' questions about an Iraqi power-plant contract that is of interest to U.S. authorities in Chicago.

I hope he doesn't get killed 'cause I sure want him back talking in Chicago.

Dick Durbin wants to talk about soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq. He should also be asking about Chicagoans fleecing Iraqi's in Iraq.

Update: as reported in the NYT and then VOA on Alsammarae from June of 2005. Makes you wonder who he would seek sanctuary with if not the US Army.

Update: Wonder how Durbin and Obama responded to the family's request for help.

The families have also reached out to the offices of Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, all in hopes of keeping him out of a prison run by the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

The Shiite-dominated ministry has a notorious reputation, and serious charges of extortion, torture and murder have been lodged against the security forces. Earlier this month, a police brigade was taken off the streets after some members were suspected of taking part in the kidnapping of more than 20 workers at a Baghdad meat-processing plant. Seven workers were later found executed.

As he sat in the police station Friday, Alsammarae said that his only hope now is for the U.S. government to intervene on his behalf. Even if U.S. officials wanted to get involved, any act on Alsammarae's behalf could be seen as heavy-handed interference in a sovereign country.

Update: Good background in the NYT from Dec 15th.

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Rezko, Alsammarae, and fleecing our Iraqi allies

I wondered about a Rezko connection to Alsammarae. Looks like Fitzgerald wondered too. Via the ST (isn't there another paper in Chicago? Why is the ST the first paper I link to now?)

Federal authorities are investigating an Iraqi power plant deal involving Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a former top fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich charged with defrauding Illinois taxpayers.

Investigators want to talk to Iraq's jailed former electricity minister, Aiham Alsammarae, about how Rezko landed the potentially lucrative contract, a source familiar with the probe told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Alsammarae, who holds dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship and has a house in Oak Brook, helped Rezko get the deal, another source said.

Rezko and others in the venture were to own the plant and sell electricity back to the Iraqis, but the Iraqi government still was to pay a substantial portion of construction costs, that source added.

xp Bill Baar's West Side

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