Hussein Kamel

Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid ( _ar. حسين كامل حسن المجيد) (died February 23, 1996) was the son-in-law and second cousin of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. He defected to Jordan and assisted United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams assigned to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Kamel rose through the army ranks to become Iraq's minister of military industries, heading the Military Industrialisation Commission and supervising Iraq's weapons development programs from 1987.

He married one of Saddam Hussein's daughters, Raghad Hussein, and lived in Iraq until 1995. On August 7 of that year, Kamel and his wife defected from Iraq, along with Kamel's brother, Col. Saddam Kamel al-Majid, and the brother's wife, another of Saddam Hussein's daughters. In a September 21, 1995 interview with CNN, Hussein Kamel explained:

This is what made me leave the country, the fact that Saddam Hussein surrounds himself with inefficient ministers and advisers who are not chosen for their competence but according to the whims of the Iraqi president. And as a result of this the whole of Iraq is suffering. [http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9509/iraq_defector/kamel_transcript/index.html]

Jordan granted asylum to the Kamels, and there they began to cooperate with UNSCOM and its director Rolf Ekéus, the United States' CIA and the British MI6. Kamel provided the inspection teams with a wealth of information.

Kamel confirmed what inspectors had been able to ascertain shortly before his defection, that Iraq had operated a biological warfare program prior to the Gulf War, providing locations for large amounts of undeclared technical documentation. The defection appears to have had a psychological impact in Baghdad due to uncertainty over what Kamel would reveal: soon afterwards, inspectors were invited to revisit weapons sites and new documents were turned over for examination.

In a January 25, 1999 report to the U.N. Security Council, UNSCOM declared that the history of the Iraqi weapons inspections "must be divided into two parts, separated by the events following the departure from Iraq, in August 1995, of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel."

Kamel maintained that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction and related programs after the end of the first Gulf War.

I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed. [http://middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html]

Britain's Foreign Office has stated that they disbelieved this claim, while a March 3, 2003 "Newsweek" report said that Kamel's revelations were "hushed up" because inspectors "hoped to bluff Saddam [Hussein] into revealing still more." [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0226-01.htm] Kamel's version of events appear to have been borne out in the wake of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

In February 1996, after intermediaries for Saddam Hussein had assured them that all would be forgiven, Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel were convinced to return to Iraq with their wives. Reportedly, immediately upon their return, they were ordered to divorce their wives and were denounced as traitors. Three days after their arrival, on February 23, they refused to surrender to Saddam's security forces and were killed in a 13-hour firefight at a safe house.Fact|date=February 2007

In the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush administration figures--including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell--repeatedly cited Kamel's testimony as evidence that Iraq had produced unconventional weapons, without mentioning that, according to Kamel, all such weapons had been destroyed. [http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1845]

External links

* [http://www.cbc.ca/news/photogalleries/saddam_timeline/pages/04.html Photo of Hussein Kamel] , "CBC news".
* [http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=hussein_kamel Profile: Hussein Kamel] , "Center for Cooperative Research".
* [http://middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html Interview with Hussein Kamel] , August 22, 1995; a transcript of Kamel's debriefing by U.N. weapons inspectors.
* [http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9509/iraq_defector/kamel_transcript/index.html CNN interview with Hussein Kamel] , September 21, 1995.
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/experts/defectors.html A Defector's Revelations] , "Frontline", April 1999.
* John Barry. [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0226-01.htm "The Defector’s Secrets"] , "Newsweek", March 3, 2003.
* [http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1845 "Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed"] , FAIR Media Advisory, February 27, 2003.

* Russ Baker. [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030407/baker "The Big Lie"] , "The Nation", March 20, 2003.
* [http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/timeline "Downing Street Memo - Timeline"] . 1992 -2005. Read: date 8-22-1995
* [http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html "Downing Street Memo"] July 22, 2002 - Secret Minute memo. USA and UK Prime minister meeting. "...intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy"
* [http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/docs/unscom950822.pdf "General Hussein Kamel testimony to UNSCOM ] " August 22, 1995. See date 8-22-1995. Also CIA who shares all their intelligency information with MI6 got this report. Including Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush and USA and UK administrations that were told this issue.