Report: Security Forces Arrest Senior Baathist in Western Iraq

Iraqi security forces arrested a senior member of the former Baath Party in Western Iraq on Tuesday.
The security forces have arrested Ahmed Abbas, a senior member of the Baath Party, in Anbar’s provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km West of Baghdad today, al-Masleh news website reported.

Abbas was arrested in Khalediya district of Eastern Ramadi, al-Masleh quoted an informed provincial police source as saying.

Earlier this year, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned that certain groups are making collective attempts to bring back the former Baath Party to power.

“This wave of sectarianism associated with a wave of terrorism has returned to Iraq, but we will not open a new page for it again and we will not allow cancelling the political process and the return of the criminal Baathists,” Maliki said, addressing an audience in Southern Iraq in February.

“Some political groups are attempting to exercise a foreign agenda for the sake of their own interests,” the Iraqi premier said, and voiced his opposition to any international interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.

Media reports disclosed earlier this year that the al-Qaeda terrorist group and the remnants of the former Baath regime are trying to make Baghdad insecure through conducting numerous terrorist attacks in the Iraqi capital.

Plots are underway to destabilize Baghdad and spread the protests to the Iraqi capital, Iraq’s satellite television network al-Anwar-II reported.

The Baathist groups and remnants of the former Iraqi regime as well as Wahhabi elements are carrying out terrorist attacks and targeting Iraqi citizens and security forces, the TV reported.

The terrorists target the Iraqi citizens and security forces by guns which are equipped with silencer in Baghdad’s al-Seyedia district where both Sunni and Shiite Muslims reside.

Last month, an Iraqi lawmaker said the Al-Qaeda terrorist group and the remnants of the former Baath regime are trying to undermine the Iraqi government.

“The Baathists and the al-Qaeda-affiliated individuals are trying to annul the counterterrorism laws in a bid to weaken the Iraqi government,” member of the Iraqi Parliament Karim Alivi told FNA in Baghdad in January.

This plot aims to show that the Iraqi government cannot protect its citizens, he said, adding that if the Iraqi government had not implemented the counterterrorism act, the country would have entered a war which would be much difficult to end.

The Baathists and the al-Qaeda are trying to stir tension in the country and implement their terrorist plots by annulling the counterterrorism act, he reiterated.

“There are some plots underway now which are put into practice with the help of internal means,” the Iraqi MP cautioned.

In December, Iraq’s security forces foiled a foreign-led plot to topple Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s government.

Iraq’s Arabic-language daily, al-Dastour, reported on December 30 that Baghdad has witnessed increased operations and presence of security forces in the last two days and all the military personnel have been called to stay on the alert for an unspecified period of time.

The security measures were intensified after a high-ranking Iraqi security official warned of an imminent coup d’ ‘tat against Maliki’s government orchestrated by the spying agency of a regional Arab state.

“One of the regional states had worked out a coup d’état through talks with former Iraqi army officials and commanders but another regional country discovered the plot and informed Maliki through a secret message,” he said, but refrained from naming any one of the two aforementioned countries.

The Iraqi security official said the conspirators wanted to occupy Baghdad first and then take the city’s control through their secret agents.