US working with Iraq over disappearing minister

BAGHDAD, Dec 19 (Reuters) The United States said today it was cooperating with Iraq to find out how a former Iraqi minister with dual US citizenship was sprung from his Baghdad jail cell, reportedly by armed, plain-clothes Americans.

''We are co-ordinating with the Iraqi government, which is currently investigating the case. There are conflicting reports surrounding his disappearance and we can't comment further,'' US embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said.

Ayham al-Samarraie, an electricity minister in the former government of Prime Minister Iyad al-Allawi, has not been seen since Sunday, when he walked out of the police station where he was being held, in the company of a group of armed men.

He had been detained at a police station on the outskirts of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified compound that houses the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies, to await trial in up to 12 corruption cases, a judge said on Monday.

The head of the police station and a second officer have been arrested, said Ali al-Shaboot, spokesman for Iraq's independent Public Integrity Commission, which is investigating nine cases of misuse of public money against Samarraie.

''The warrants of arrest were issued by the investigating judge,'' Shaboot told Reuters.

The commission says Samarraie was taken from the station by plain-clothes Americans and that the minister had previously employed a private American security firm to protect him.

A judge close to a trial in which Samarraie was convicted of corruption in October and sentenced to two years in jail offered a different version of events.

He said Samarraie's conviction in that case had been overturned on appeal and the Americans who arrived at the police station told police they had no right to continue holding him. But the judge said Samarrai should have remained in custody as he had other cases pending against him.

In October, armed Americans took Samarraie from court shortly after his conviction. He had expressed fears for his life and decried the ''political'' verdict.

He was handed over to Iraqi police to begin serving his sentence after the government objected to the interference.

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 thousands of members of his minority Sunni Arab sect.

REUTERS PDM KN711