One-degree of separation: Alsammarae-Rezko (Updated)

RezkoWatch posted the lengthy article Rezko and Alsammarae: Corruption in Iraq on February 4, 2008. Indicted political fixer Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Aiham Alsammarae, who served as Iraqi Minister of Energy following the 2003 U.S. invasion, were classmates at the Illinois Institute of Technology and one-time business partners for a proposed power plant and a planned security company in Iraq. The upcoming fraud trial for Rezko, political patron to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), is scheduled for March 3, 2008.

Recruited by State Department
"Aiham Alsammarae, Iraq's minister of electricity, has also left a life on hold in Illinois. Before he departed for Iraq in 2003, he was a manager at KCI Engineering who knew both Illinois senators personally, according to his boss at the firm in Downers Grove, near Chicago.

"...Alsammarae was also recruited by the US government to help plan for postwar Iraq. In the fall of 2002, he was one of dozens of exiles involved in a $5 million State Department project called the 'Future of Iraq.' Alsammarae helped draft a document he thought would become an Iraqi bill of rights," Farah Stockman and Thanassis Cambanis of the Boston Globe reported June 10, 2004.

Electrical Problems

Jamie Glanz wrote January 26, 2005, in the New York Times about the poor condition of Iraq's power grid and what that meant for Alsammarae's prospects as a candidate who was "running as a prominent member of the Independent Democrats ticket."

The caretakers of Iraq's decrepit and constantly sabotaged infrastructure are learning that there are few jobs more thankless than campaigning for a seat in the new government while struggling to keep the water, electricity and oil flowing for the citizens who will be voting on Sunday. [snip]

The slide in his fortunes began after electricity on the national grid began plummeting from a peak of about 5,300 megawatts, or a million watts, in September. By November the number had fallen below the politically sensitive benchmark of 4,500 megawatts, the level before American-led forces invaded Iraq, and bottomed out in mid-January at about 3,500 megawatts.

Alsammarae was "accused in the Arabic news media and café rumor-mill of corruption and incompetence and of intentionally keeping the amount of electricity low." There were "demonstrations outside his ministry" and he got "into a nasty public spat with the oil minister, Thamir al-Ghadban, who [was] under fire himself for gasoline shortages and who [was] running on the Iraqi List, the slate headed by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi."

Alsammarae said that, try as he might, he had not been able to stay above his rock-bottom goal of 4,000 megawatts as insurgents hit transmission lines and the fuel lines feeding the generating plants. "I was getting hit left and right," Alsammarae said.

But even as he defended himself, Alsammarae got into the dispute with Ghadban, the oil minister. Ghadban told the newspaper Al Ufuq that he was astonished to hear that Alsammarae was blaming problems with the fuel pipelines controlled by his ministry for electricity shortages. Fuel trucks are immediately called in to make up for shortages at power plants when pipelines are blown up, Ghadban said, according to a translation by the BBC Monitoring service.

Glanz concluded: "Long neglected under Saddam Hussein, when the system became decrepit and unreliable even without the threat of sabotage, this kind of regular maintenance has been encouraged by American engineers despite the short-term political price that officials like Alsammarae are bound to pay."

More about Alsammarae's escape from Iraq

On December 19, 2006, the Los Angeles Times wrote that, according to "several Iraqi officials," Alsammarae, "jailed on corruption charges, was sprung from a Green Zone prison this weekend by U.S. security contractors he had hired."

Ayham Sameraei, a Chicago-area businessman, returned to Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and assumed the position of electricity minister during the interim government of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi....

Neither the security contractors nor their company was named by Iraqi officials ...

There have been no suggestions that American officials had a role in Sameraei's escape Sunday afternoon. But the B-movie scenario of a rich businessman hiring armed muscle to bust himself out of jail from inside the fortress-like, U.S.-protected enclave could further contribute to Iraq's image of instability and lawlessness. The flamboyant former government minister's arrest and prosecution were held up by Iraqi and U.S. officials as a rare example of good government prevailing in the new Iraq.

His high-profile escape, splashed across Iraqi television channels Monday night, also could further damage the reputation of the U.S., which is already believed by many Iraqis to have wasted and stolen billions of dollars in Iraqi revenue.

Iraqi officials were enraged by his escape and the suggestion that any Americans had a hand in it.

UPDATE: Alsammarae fled to Amman

Bill Baar wrote December 27, 2006, citing the Chicago Tribune, that "Aiham Alsammarae shows up in Jordan on a US Plane,":

His whereabouts had been unknown until today, when Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit told reporters that Alsammarae "arrived in Amman as an American and on an American plane," an apparent reference to a U.S. military plane, the Associated Press reported.

"Jordan did not receive any demand from the Iraqi authorities" for al-Samaraie's extradition, al-Bakhit said.

But Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, flatly denied the United States was involved in transporting Alsammarae anywhere or played any role in his escape.

"Wherever Mr. Alsammarae went, he did not get there with the assistance of the U.S. government," Fintor said this morning. "There's absolutely no truth whatsoever to these reports."

Baar commented: "Can [U.S. Attorney Patrick] Fitzgerald fly someone over to Amman to interview him before someone packs off to Baghdad again?"

Also see related article: James Glanz, Escaped Minister Says He Fled Iraqi Jail ‘the Chicago Way’, Democrats Rule Blog, December 20, 2006.