a bullet or two in the heads of people personally. He's also rumored to have been a CIA and British thug operative back in the day.
Allawi shot prisoners in cold blood: witnesses
By Paul McGeough in Baghdad
July 17, 2004
<snip>
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.
They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".
The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.
But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694568757.html-MORE-
A man for all intrigues
Iyad Allawi, the new choice to lead Iraq, isn't Ahmed Chalabi -- but that's about the only thing to commend this wily member of the old-boy, CIA-sponsored exile club.
By Andrew Cockburn
Pages 1 2
May 29, 2004 | There could be no more perfect evidence of the desperation among U.S. officials dealing with Iraq than the choice of veteran Baathist and CIA hireling Iyad Allawi as prime minister of the "sovereign" government due to take office after June 30. As one embittered Iraqi told me from Baghdad on Friday: "The appointment must have been orchestrated by Ahmed Chalabi in order to discredit the entire process." He was not entirely joking, given the fact that Chalabi joined the rest of the Governing Council in voting for Allawi despite their long and vicious rivalry.
Though he is Shiite, Allawi was once upon a time an active Baathist, a member of Saddam Hussein's political party, and is thought to enjoy much support among the officer corps of the old Iraqi army, and by extension among many former Baathists and influential Sunni. Indeed, there are reports that the reason Ahmed Chalabi, the neoconservative favorite, urged his friends in the White House to dissolve the army last year -- a decision now acknowledged to be the most disastrous of the occupation -- was Chalabi's fear of the support enjoyed by his rival (and cousin -- everyone in Baghdad is related) within the military.
Allawi cut his political teeth as a strong-arm Baathist student organizer before being dispatched by the party to London to run the Iraqi Student Union in Europe. Apart from the Iraqis he dutifully monitored, other Arab students with whom he came in contact were of considerable interest in Saddam's Baghdad, since they tended to be drawn from elite circles in the Middle East. They were also of more direct value to Allawi personally, garnering him a fruitful array of connections in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, which he then used with great effect in various business enterprises in the region. By the late 1970s he had become wealthy.
However, Allawi never lost his taste for the intrigue of intelligence operations and the company of intelligence officers. Soft-spoken, eloquent and persuasive, always ready to hint at a powerful connection or make a promise, he proved adept at telling them what they wanted to hear in language they could understand. In 1978, this mutual affection almost proved fatal. By that time, Allawi had reportedly entered into a relationship with the British security services, who were naturally keen to have a willing and well-informed source in the large and faction-ridden Arab student community in London. Word of this relationship reached the suspicious ears of Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, who dispatched a team armed with knives and axes to Allawi's comfortable home in Kingston-upon-Thames to deal with the problem in summary fashion. Bursting into his bedroom, the assassins hacked at him as he lay beside his sleeping wife and were prevented from finishing the job only by the fortuitous appearance of his father-in-law, who happened to be staying in the house. The would-be killers ran off and the badly injured Allawi lived to make more money and pursue his connections with British intelligence.
At the time of the 1991 war, Allawi scented the interest of Saudi intelligence and joined forces with his fellow ex-Baathist, Salih Omar, in producing the Voice of Free Iraq. The pair soon fell out, however, reportedly because of a dispute over a $40,000 check from their Saudi paymasters. Omar gradually faded from sight, while Allawi retained control of the group they had founded, the Iraqi National Accord (Al Wifaq), into which he steadily recruited former Baathist Sunnis, and was soon back in London, awaiting fresh clients. He found them among his old connections at British intelligence, MI6, and, a few years later, the CIA, which was simultaneously funding Ahmed Chalabi's exile organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC).
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/05/29/allawi/index.html__________________________________________________________________________
Who knows? Maybe he's thug enough to hold the country together.
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