Rakad Salem

Rakad Mahmoud Salameh Salem , also Abu Mahmoud (* 1944 in Kabri near Acre) is an Iraqi - Palestinian politician.

Salem is a teacher, married to Umm Mahmoud, and has been a member of the Iraqi Baath Party since 1960 . For many years he was General Secretary of the Arab Liberation Front (ALF, part of the PLO ) and also of the Iraqi Baath Party, in which the ALF represented the majority of the 40,000 Palestinians in Iraq. He was also editor-in-chief of the movement's monthly magazine, Sawt al-Jamahir ( Arabic : Voice of the Masses ), which has probably not appeared since 2003. During the Lebanese Civil War , Salem was the commander of the military part of the ALF in Lebanon . He is an Iraqi citizen and has lived in Bir Zeit ( West Bank ) since 1996 .

On November 12, 2001, he was arrested and charged with "planning and financing terrorism". The Aman brought the documents of the public prosecutor's office from the headquarters of the ALF and the Iraqi Baath Party in Ramallah ( Ramoun Building ) during an Israeli military action on June 25, 2002 . The " Operation Defensive Shield " of April 2002 revealed further material.

Salem then brokered money from Iraqi authorities in Saddam Hussein's government to families of Palestinian suicide bombers through the Cairo-Amman Bank (as an intermediary for the Western Union in Jordan and the Palestinian Territories ) from October 2000 to 2002 . There was also an account at the headquarters of the Palestine Investment Bank (PLC) in Al-Bireh near Ramallah.

The documents do not completely prove the transfer. A bank declaration from Salem for the Cairo-Amman Bank was found, which enclosed a handwritten note, addressed to Baghdad, about the use of the deposits from "Account Number 1". According to the Israeli investigation, this was the Salem / party account at the PLC office in Al-Bireh. The money was transferred to Ramallah in a timely manner to the attack and passed on via the PLC in the form of checks to relatives / representatives of the attackers. Salem himself testified that the money was transferred from the formerly state-owned Iraqi Al Rafidain Bank to its branch in Amman , then to the local PLC branch and on to Rakad Salem's PCL account in Al-Bireh.

The court is convinced that the documents show the transfer of at least US $ 9.5 million, but not what sources it came from or whether it came from the UN's oil for food program , as initially assumed .

Salem was incarcerated in Beersheba prison in the Negev desert until at least 2010 .

Web links

• Trial documents (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2002, English)