Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Abu Abbas Arrested Near Baghdad

Aired April 15, 2003 - 23:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: For a war that's seemingly over, a lot of pieces in play tonight. We begin the hour with the capture of Abu Abbas. He has been a most wanted man since 1985, out of reach for a good portion of that time living in Iraq. When Iraq fell into American hands, so did Abbas.
CNN's Nic Robertson is following that and more, and joins us again from Baghdad -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Aaron.

Well, according to Palestinian sources that we've been in touch with from Baghdad, they say that Abu Abbas left Baghdad, left his house on Sunday, drove to the Syrian border, was turned back by Syrian border guards, and then headed back towards Baghdad. About 50 miles west of Baghdad, he was arrested by U.S. Special Forces.

Now, Abbas had been living in Iraq since the early 1990s, had gone back to Gaza in 1996 and spent about four years there. Then when the Palestinian intifada started, he returned again to Iraq and has been living in Baghdad for about the last three years. And he was very aware that if the U.S. forces -- if coalition forces invaded Iraq, then he was very liable for capture, and certainly aware that he was wanted on charges of murder in the United States -- Aaron.

BROWN: One more question on him, and then I want to move on to the meeting outside Nasiriya.

Was there no safe haven for him anywhere else in the Arab world? Given the run-up and the inevitability of the war, was there no place else he could have gone?

ROBERTSON: That's not clear. He would have been unlikely to have found a welcome home in Iran. He would have not been particularly welcome if he tried to go to the northern Kurdish area of Iraq. Turkey would seem to have been off-limits given Turkey's ties. Syria, that's a very debatable question of perhaps why he chose not to go to Syria any earlier. He may have felt that he was, for certain reasons, unwelcome there. Jordan out of the question, Kuwait obviously. Saudi Arabia as well.

BROWN: Yes.

ROBERTSON: So perhaps he had run out of options, and Baghdad was the only place for him -- Aaron. BROWN: All right, we got a glimpse today of both the process and the complexity of the problem outside Nasiriya today, this meeting of the Americans -- with the Americans and the protests as well.

ROBERTSON: It was, and certainly the reaction in An Nasiriya from the Shiite community is symptomatic of the broader feelings with the Shia community.

We were in Najaf yesterday. Najaf is the holiest Shia city in the whole of Iraq, in the whole of the world, and that is where the heart of the Shia community is. And we talked with three different Shia leaders there, and while there is an intense power struggle going on between the different factions within the Shia community, they are united in one thing, and that is that they want to present a united front at this time. The reason, they say, they are 60 percent of the community in Iraq. They believe that their political voice should be commensurate with that.

And they believe -- and this is what we heard from a number of different Shia leaders -- that the United States is trying to divide the Shia community in order to conquer them. And they feel that there should be -- or at least the Shia community, the religious part of the community, the extremely religious part of the community we talked to, believe that there should be a religious leader, a cleric ruling Iraq. That is their view, and that's why we've seen these protests against the meeting in An Nasiriya.

Also, it's been very interesting here in Baghdad to listen to the people here. Many people here were not even aware that this meeting was going on in Nasiriya, this meeting to form a new government, or at least begin to talk about who might be represented in that new government.

And what we heard from people in An Nasiriya, what we've heard from people in Baghdad, is that if there is going to be a new government in Iraq -- and certainly everyone here hopes there will be soon, because they know that is the best way to get back to some sense of normality and get their lives back going again -- is that it should be Iraqi people and not ex-Iraqis as they see it, people who have been in exile for a number of years, not those people coming back. They don't believe that they have suffered in the same way that the people here have, and therefore, they don't have the moral authority and the right to be in positions of power here -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic, thank you -- Nic Robertson in Baghdad.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.






Aired April 15, 2003 - 23:01   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: For a war that's seemingly over, a lot of pieces in play tonight. We begin the hour with the capture of Abu Abbas. He has been a most wanted man since 1985, out of reach for a good portion of that time living in Iraq. When Iraq fell into American hands, so did Abbas.
CNN's Nic Robertson is following that and more, and joins us again from Baghdad -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Aaron.

Well, according to Palestinian sources that we've been in touch with from Baghdad, they say that Abu Abbas left Baghdad, left his house on Sunday, drove to the Syrian border, was turned back by Syrian border guards, and then headed back towards Baghdad. About 50 miles west of Baghdad, he was arrested by U.S. Special Forces.

Now, Abbas had been living in Iraq since the early 1990s, had gone back to Gaza in 1996 and spent about four years there. Then when the Palestinian intifada started, he returned again to Iraq and has been living in Baghdad for about the last three years. And he was very aware that if the U.S. forces -- if coalition forces invaded Iraq, then he was very liable for capture, and certainly aware that he was wanted on charges of murder in the United States -- Aaron.

BROWN: One more question on him, and then I want to move on to the meeting outside Nasiriya.

Was there no safe haven for him anywhere else in the Arab world? Given the run-up and the inevitability of the war, was there no place else he could have gone?

ROBERTSON: That's not clear. He would have been unlikely to have found a welcome home in Iran. He would have not been particularly welcome if he tried to go to the northern Kurdish area of Iraq. Turkey would seem to have been off-limits given Turkey's ties. Syria, that's a very debatable question of perhaps why he chose not to go to Syria any earlier. He may have felt that he was, for certain reasons, unwelcome there. Jordan out of the question, Kuwait obviously. Saudi Arabia as well.

BROWN: Yes.

ROBERTSON: So perhaps he had run out of options, and Baghdad was the only place for him -- Aaron. BROWN: All right, we got a glimpse today of both the process and the complexity of the problem outside Nasiriya today, this meeting of the Americans -- with the Americans and the protests as well.

ROBERTSON: It was, and certainly the reaction in An Nasiriya from the Shiite community is symptomatic of the broader feelings with the Shia community.

We were in Najaf yesterday. Najaf is the holiest Shia city in the whole of Iraq, in the whole of the world, and that is where the heart of the Shia community is. And we talked with three different Shia leaders there, and while there is an intense power struggle going on between the different factions within the Shia community, they are united in one thing, and that is that they want to present a united front at this time. The reason, they say, they are 60 percent of the community in Iraq. They believe that their political voice should be commensurate with that.

And they believe -- and this is what we heard from a number of different Shia leaders -- that the United States is trying to divide the Shia community in order to conquer them. And they feel that there should be -- or at least the Shia community, the religious part of the community, the extremely religious part of the community we talked to, believe that there should be a religious leader, a cleric ruling Iraq. That is their view, and that's why we've seen these protests against the meeting in An Nasiriya.

Also, it's been very interesting here in Baghdad to listen to the people here. Many people here were not even aware that this meeting was going on in Nasiriya, this meeting to form a new government, or at least begin to talk about who might be represented in that new government.

And what we heard from people in An Nasiriya, what we've heard from people in Baghdad, is that if there is going to be a new government in Iraq -- and certainly everyone here hopes there will be soon, because they know that is the best way to get back to some sense of normality and get their lives back going again -- is that it should be Iraqi people and not ex-Iraqis as they see it, people who have been in exile for a number of years, not those people coming back. They don't believe that they have suffered in the same way that the people here have, and therefore, they don't have the moral authority and the right to be in positions of power here -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic, thank you -- Nic Robertson in Baghdad.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.