Iraqi defector admits he lied about WMD

[News_Editor]

Iraqi defector admits he lied about WMD

2011-02-16 03:46:55 GMT+7 (ICT)

KARLSRUHE, GERMANY (BNO NEWS) -- The Iraqui defector codenamed Curveball who claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction admitted for the first time that he lied about his story and said he is proud of having helped the US build a case for invading Saddam's Iraq, The Guardian reported.

"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi told the Guardian that he made up stories about mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories to bring down Saddam Hussein's regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

"I had a problem with the Saddam regime," he told the British newspaper. "I wanted to get rid of him and now I had this chance."

Al-Janabi, who has been granted asylum in Germany, said he told a German official about mobile bioweapons trucks throughout 2000. The German intelligence, which he described as gullible, identified him as an Iraqi chemical engineer willing to provide inside information about Saddam's Iraq.

Al-Janabi claimed he was first exposed as a liar as early as mid-2000, when the BND, the German secret service, met with his former boss at the Military Industries Commission in Iraq, Dr Bassil Latif, who denied Janabi's claims.

"He says, 'There are no trucks,' and I say, 'OK, when [Latif says] there no trucks then [there are none],'" Janabi said when German officials confronted him with Latif's version.

The meetings continued throughout 2002 and it became apparent to Janabi that a case for war was being constructed.

The information was used on February 5, 2003, by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in a speech to the United Nations in which he made the case for going to war. After the speech, Janabi accused the secret service of breaking an agreement that they would not share any information with another country. He said he was told not to speak and placed in confinement for around 90 days.

Janabi said he doesn't regret that his information originated the chaos of the past eight years in which more than 100,000 civilians have died.

"I tell you something when I hear anybody – not just in Iraq but in any war – [is] killed, I am very sad. But give me another solution. Can you give me another solution?," he said.

"Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq. There were no other possibilities," he added.

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