BAGHDAD, March 14 -- Police arrested one of Saddam Hussein's former bodyguards and a relative of the ousted leader in a raid north of Baghdad last month, the Iraqi government announced Monday.
Marwan Taher Abdulrasheed, the ex-bodyguard, and Abdullah Maher Abdulrasheed, the brother-in-law of Hussein's son Qusay, were arrested Feb. 8 in a joint Iraqi-U.S. raid on one of Hussein's former houses outside the city of Tikrit, about 85 miles north of the capital, according to Iraqi Maj. Jamal Hussein of the military's Joint Coordination Center.
Marwan Taher Abdulrasheed had been involved in a "number of attacks against the security forces," a government statement said, and "it is strongly believed" that Abdullah Maher Abdulrasheed financed terrorist operations with money he received from Qusay Hussein, who was killed along with his brother Uday in a shootout with U.S. troops in July 2003.
Political factions continued negotiations Monday toward forming a new government following the elections in January. The parliament is scheduled to convene for the first time on Wednesday. The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of predominantly Shiite parties that won 140 seats, is trying to lure a Kurdish coalition with 75 seats into an alliance that could control the 275-seat National Assembly.
"They're down to the details of structuring the government and ensuring that the roles and prerogatives of the two sides are protected, and they're trying to lock in those guarantees by drafting very careful language," a U.S. official monitoring the talks told reporters Monday.
Meanwhile, a cameraman for the Kurdish satellite television channel KurdSat, Husam Hilal Sarsam, 28, was shot and killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as he tried to run away from people who had kidnapped him the day before, co-workers and witnesses said. He was the sixth journalist to be killed in Mosul since U.S. forces invaded Iraq two years ago.
Ahmad Abdul Kareem, 25, said he saw Sarsam burst out of a Mazda that was stuck in heavy traffic and try to flee to safety. Sarsam was then chased by another occupant of the car. When Sarsam escaped that man, Kareem said, a second man from the car pulled out a handgun and shot Sarsam four times, killing him.
Akram Sulayman, the Mosul bureau chief for KurdSat, said Sarsam was kidnapped Sunday and apparently tortured. He said that Sarsam's upper torso had been badly slashed by a sharp instrument and that his back had burn marks.
"He received many threats, like the others here at the office," Sulayman said, noting that the station's former bureau chief had also been killed. "We will continue, no matter what the price we pay."
Also in Mosul, two Iraqi civilians were killed Sunday in a battle between insurgents and American forces, the U.S. military said in a statement Monday.
In Baghdad, insurgents apparently targeted a senior official from Iraq's Health Ministry, detonating a roadside bomb as his car passed. The official escaped injury but four of his bodyguards were wounded, two of them critically.
"It is obvious that they want to hurt everyone that works for the benefit of the people," said the official, Saad Amili.
Meanwhile, thousands of angry demonstrators converged on the Jordanian Embassy to protest comments reportedly made by the father of a man said to have carried out a suicide bombing two weeks ago in Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Jordanian Web sites reported last week that the bomber was a Jordanian university student named Raed Banna. His father, Manour Banna, held a funeral ceremony during which he called his son a "martyr" and accepted congratulations for his death, according to the sites. The bombing killed at least 115 people in one of the deadliest attacks of the insurgency.
The reports could not be independently confirmed.
Brwary reported from Mosul. Special correspondents Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit, Saad Sarhan in Najaf, and Bassam Sebti and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.
