Iraqi government offers US$1 million reward for leading militant

The Iraqi government has offered a US$1 million (euro 780,000) reward for the capture of a former official in Saddam Hussein's deposed regime who is accused of financing and recruiting foreign insurgents to launch attacks in Iraq.

The official, Abdul Baqi Abdul Karim al-Sadoun, headed several Baathist organizations during Saddam's rule, the government said in a statement Wednesday.

He already is wanted for crimes against humanity, accused of supervising the killing 500 people during an uprising by Shiites in the south in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War, during which U.S. forces ended Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the statement said.

During the current Iraq war, Al-Sadoun is accused of recruiting and financing foreign terrorists in eastern and central Iraq, and is believed to be responsible for attacks against Iraqi civilians and police in the Iraqi cities of Nasiriya and Basra in the south, and Diyala in the northeast, the government said. It accuses him of using money stolen before the fall of Saddam's regime to fund those attacks.

The Iraqi government and the U.S. military blame remnants of the former regime, as well as foreign militants, for much of the insurgent violence now plaguing the country.

AP