Baghdad, Iraq – Iraq released a most-wanted list of 41 names Sunday, including Sad dam Hussein’s wife and eldest daughter, as well as the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and one of the ousted president’s closest allies.
The government also announced a bounty for several figures on the list.
“We are releasing this list so that our people can know their enemies,” national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said.
He added that countries hosting those on the list and Interpol had been informed.
The largest reward was $10 million for Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top official in the Hussein regime who has eluded capture since the U.S.-led invasion more than three years ago. Al-Douri is believed to have played a major role in launching the insurgency.
Hussein’s wife, Sajida Khairallah Tulfah, who is believed to be in Qatar, and his eldest daughter, Raghad, who has been living in Jordan, also were named, but no reward was offered for information on them.
“We have contacted all the neighboring countries, and they know what we want. Some of these countries are cooperating with us,” al-Rubaie said. “We will chase them inside and outside Iraq. We will chase them one after the other.”
The government also offered a $50,000 reward for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who replaced al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after his death in a June 7 U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.
Al-Zarqawi has been buried in a “secret location” in Baghdad, al-Rubaie said Sunday. He would not say when the Jordanian-born militant was buried or give any specifics on the location of the grave.
Al-Zarqawi’s older brother demanded that his body be transferred to Jordan, and accused the U.S. of lying.
“Bush took his body to the United States,” Sayel al-Khalayleh, 50, said in a phone interview from his home in Zarqa, Jordan.
Jordan’s government had refused to let al-Zarqawi’s body back for burial because of a triple suicide bombing his organization carried out in the capital, Amman, last year.
