Another senior Baath Party official on the US most wanted list has been caught in Iraq, Central Command said today.
Mr Samir Abd al-Aziz al-Najim was handed over by Iraqi Kurds near the northern city of Mosul overnight, Brig Gen Vincent Brooks said.
He was the Baath Party Regional Command Chairman for East Baghdad and was the four of clubs in the 55-card deck that US officials gave American forces to help them identify wanted Iraqi officials.
He was Minster of Oil until earlier this year and was Saddam Hussein's chief of staff for several years after the 1991 Gulf War.
Today was the second day in a row that US officials announced the capture of a significant Iraqi official.
Yesterday, US forces grabbed Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and a former head of Iraqi intelligence.
Al-Najim is a Sunni Arab from Baghdad and a veteran Baath party member who took part, along with Saddam, in an assassination attempt against Prime Minister Abdel Karim Qassem in 1959.
Al-Najim had served as Iraq's ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, Spain and Moscow and was a top insider among the top coterie around Saddam.
"We think we have someone here - all those people on that list of 55 have information on the inner workings of the regime - that relates to weapons of mass destruction, that relates to terrorism," Brooks said at Central Command in Qatar.
US forces raided a house on Wednesday looking for al-Najim, but found no one in the building after breaking down the door.
AFP