Amir al-Saadi
German-trained chemist with an honorary general's rank who ran Iraq's state war industries from 1975, its chemical weapons and missile programs under Hussein Kamel, and was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the BNL case.
Amir Hamudi al-Saadi was a chemist trained in Germany who in 1975 took over Iraq's State Organization for Technical Industries, formerly the State Organization for War Industries. "It was run by a general, Dr. Amer Hamoudi al-Saadi, who had never spent a day in uniform. His rank was honorary, a way of showing the military that the Baath party was the sole dispenser of military merit."1
Chemical Weapons
An East German specialist in chemical warfare, Karl Heinz Lohs, recalled al-Saadi saying to him: "You Germans have great expertise in the killing of Jews with gas. This interests us in the same way. How can this knowledge be used to destroy Israel?" The phosphate mine at Akashat and the fertilizer complex at Al Qaim were built by Belgian contractors. "We'll build a railroad," al-Saadi said when they asked how the ore would reach the plant. The West German firm Thyssen Rheinstahl Technology built the "Diyala Chemical Laboratory" at Salman Pak, described as a university project, which made phosphorus pentachloride, "a starting chemical for organic phosphorus chemical agents." During the war with Iran he was given more resources and told "to accelerate the poison gas programs," to bury the plants where possible, and to scatter new ones across the country. With General Amer Rashid he worked for nearly a decade on missiles, among them the Condor II project with Argentina. "Long enough to hit Tehran," Rashid said of its range. "Or Tel Aviv," al-Saadi added.1
The Ministry and the Bank
In the late 1980s he served under Hussein Kamel in the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization. "Al Saadi was himself a dual operative," the head of the chemicals industry, proud of the petrochemical complex PC2, whose "other job was as the head of Saddam's ballistic missile and chemical weapons programs, reporting to Hussein Kamel and his father-in-law." The ministry's purchases in the West were financed by the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. When the branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, was indicted in February 1991, the government's list of co-conspirators who were not charged named Amir H. al-Saadi of the ministry.23
Sources
- Timmerman, Kenneth R. The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq. Houghton Mifflin, 1991, pp. 36, 49, 51, 105-106, 154. ↩
- Friedman, Alan. Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq. Bantam, 1993, p. 117. ↩
- "Government's Response to Defense Motions for List of Unindicted Co-Conspirators," United States v. Drogoul, No. 1:91-CR-078 (N.D. Ga. September 12, 1991), reproduced in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Serial No. 103-95. ↩
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