US troops protect ex-minister after jail sentence

BAGHDAD, Oct 11 (Reuters) U.S. troops took a former Iraqi minister who holds U.S. citizenship from a Baghdad court today after he was sentenced to two years in jail for misusing public money, Iraqi officials said.

The troops whisked Ayham al-Samarraie, a Sunni Arab who served in the first post-war interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, from the courtroom in the central criminal court building after he expressed fears for his life, the officials said.

Samarraie, a former electricity minister who had been in Iraqi custody since his arrest on charges of financial and managerial corruption in August, told Reuters earlier he was under U.S.

protection and that he was the victim of a political conspiracy by the Shi'ite-led government.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government had demanded Samarraie's return and that the Americans had agreed to this.

The case could be politically embarrassing for Washington, which has repeatedly stressed the independence of the Iraqi judiciary and the sovereignty of the government.

Samarraie was under U.S. protection in the Green Zone, the heavily fortified compound in central Baghdad that houses the U.S.

embassy and Iraqi government, Dabbagh said.

He declined to say, however, whether the former minister was at the U.S. mission, as Samarraie said earlier in the day.

''An American force took him from the court. They thought for his own safety he should be put under their protection until he could be moved to a safe prison to serve his sentence,'' he said.

The U.S. embassy declined official comment on the case.

''In the absence of a Privacy Act waiver, U.S. federal law prohibits us from providing information on U.S. citizens,'' U.S.

embassy spokesman Lou Fintor told Reuters.

''POLITICAL MOTIVE'' Lawmaker Sabah al-Saedi, from the powerful Shi'ite Alliance, protested against what he called ''American interference in Iraqi judicial law'' and said the government must take steps to prevent Samarraie being taken out of the country.

Samarraie described the guilty verdict in his trial as political and said he feared for his life. ''If I get out, they will kill me in two minutes,'' he said.

Samarraie, who spent years in exile in the United States, said he was being victimised because of his opposition to Iranian influence in Iraq and Shi'ite militias, who are accused of killing hundreds of members of his minority sect.

But a spokesman for the Iraqi Commission for Public Integrity, a government body that investigates corruption in Iraq's ministries, denied any political motive in the case.

''This is not true. The court listened to witnesses and has evidence. He faces six cases of managerial and financial corruption and this was just one of them. He is due back in court in a few days for another case,'' Ali al-Shaboot said.

Details of the cases are sketchy. Samarraie would only say he had been accused of wasting public money by buying an electricity generator worth 200,000 dollars for a neighbourhood in Amara, capital of the southern Maysan province.

Corruption is rampant at every level of the government and has cost the state billions of dollars and Maliki has made tackling it a priority.

On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament voted to remove the immunity from prosecution of Sunni lawmaker Mishaan al-Jubouri, who is accused by anti-corruption investigators of pocketing millions of dollars while in charge of protecting northern oil pipelines.

Jubouri also said the charges were fabricated by the government in revenge for his opposition to Iranian influence.

Reuters SHB DB2117