Story of Iranian Intelligence Infiltration in Saddam's Command Room

TEHRAN (Defapress) - "The Iran-Iraq War from the Perspective of Saddam's Commanders" is the second volume in a series of books prepared with the support of the US National Intelligence Council to shed light on some issues related to Iraq during Saddam's time through interviews with officials of the former Iraqi regime..

In this regard, General Ra'ad Majid Rashid Hamdani, commander of the Iraqi Presidential Guard, explains the deception that the Iraqi intelligence service received from an Iranian intelligence element: "In late 1985, Iraq and Iran exchanged a number of their prisoners of war. In its propaganda, Iraq wanted to show that (Imam) Khomeini was using children in the war. For this reason, Saddam met with 20 teenage Iranian prisoners of war in front of the media cameras. At that time, one of the captured Iranian soldiers was brought to Saddam to translate. However, it was only after the prisoner exchange that Iraqi intelligence learned that the translator in question was an Iranian intelligence officer and had introduced himself as an Iranian army officer by deceiving our counterintelligence.

Wafiq Samurai, the then head of Iraqi military intelligence, allowed a captured Iranian intelligence officer to return to his country with some sick prisoners, because he intended to use him as an intelligence element [for Iraq]. Samurai even introduced one of the important Iraqi intelligence agents in Iran to this prisoner. In this way, the released Iranian prisoner, who was actually an Iranian intelligence agent, returned to his country and, after we gave him the information he had asked for, he betrayed our intelligence agent to the Iranians, who promptly executed him.

To make up for this grave mistake, Saddam transferred Samurai from the Iranian branch of the Iraqi intelligence service to the intelligence of the 7th Division in Faw. Colonel Ayyub was appointed to replace Samurai and Mahmoud Shaheen, who was the head of ground force intelligence, but when his information about the Faw proved wrong, Saddam dismissed him and reinstated Wafiq Samurai in his previous position.