Date:23/04/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/23/stories/2003042305810100.htm

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Marchers throng Najaf, Karbala; Saddam aide held

Iraqi shia pilgrims at the Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD APRIL 22. One of the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein's most-feared lieutenants landed in U.S. hands today, Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, who was captured on Monday by the Iraqi opposition and turned over to American authorities for trial on war crimes charges, is the highest-ranking figure on the U.S. military's most-wanted list to be caught so far.

Hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims converged on two of Iraq's holy cities in an annual pilgrimage that had been banned for years under Mr. Hussein's rule.

In Baghdad, U.S. soldiers trying to stop looting discovered more than $600 million in $100 bills behind a false wall, the Central Command spokesman, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, said. Al-Zubaydi, who was captured on Monday, was known as Saddam's "Shia Thug" for his role in Iraq's bloody suppression of the Shia Muslim uprising of 1991. Tens of thousands of people died in the revolt. Iraqi opposition groups have also accused Mr. al-Zubaydi of the 1999 assassination of a top Shia cleric.

A former Prime Minister, Mr. al-Zubaydi was No. 18 — the queen of spades — in the U.S. military's 55-card deck of cards of most-wanted regime figures.

Meanwhile, Shia Muslims, streamed toward Najaf — the burial shrine of Imam Ali, son-in-law of Prophet Mohammad — and Karbala, where Hussein, Mohammad's grandson, was martyred in the 7th century. Up to two million Shia Muslims are expected to take part in the annual pilgrimage, which culminates on Thursday.

Jay Garner, Iraq's civilian administrator, visited the Kurdish north on his second day of a tour around the country. Gen. Garner landed in Sulaymaniyah, where he was met by a delegation from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the groups jockeying for power in post-war Iraq.

AP, Reuters