Former Iraqi oil minister in custody: US

April 29, 2003 14:02 IST

US forces said on Tuesday they were holding former Iraqi oil minister Amir Mohammed Rashid.

"Amir Rashid Mohammed al-Ubaydi surrendered Monday and is currently in coalition custody," the US Central Command in Qatar said in a statement, using Rashid's rarely used full name and an alternative transliteration. It gave no other details.

He was number 47 on a US list of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's administration and the six of spades in a deck of cards issued to US troops hunting Iraqi leaders.

Rashid is the 14th on the list whose arrest has been announced.

He was last seen by journalists at Baghdad's Doura refinery on March 25, surrounded by burning pits of oil as bombs fell on nearby Baghdad.

Before becoming oil minister in 1995, he was in charge of Iraq's military industrialisation.

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