SPACE WIRE
Iraqi diplomat's son charged in New York
NEW YORK (AFP) Apr 15, 2003
An Iraqi diplomat's son was charged Monday with illegally acting as a foreign agent while living in the United States as well as spying on Iraqi dissidents for his government's secret intelligence service.

Raed Rokan Al-Anbuke, 28, son of Rokan Al-Anbuke, former deputy permanent representative to the Iraq's United Nations Mission in New York, is slated to be brought before a federal magistrate Tuesday on the charge.

He faces up to ten years in prison if convicted of acting "unlawfully, willfully and knowingly" as an agent of Iraq without notifying US officials. Law enforcement officials said he is employed by a dry cleaning business and lives in Brooklyn.

According to a federal complaint filed in US District Court in Manhattan late Monday, Al-Anbuke aided Iraqi spies in the United States, including one who was sent to the United States to kill a former Iraqi government official.

He was charged with working with Iraqi intelligence officials, who asked him to obtain information about eight Iraqi dissidents living in the United States -- including their location, employment and family status.

He admitted to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he provided information about four of them to Iraqi intelligence officials.

Al-Anbuke was also accused of buying a tiny camera the size of a cigarette lighter, which he provided to the Iraqi spies, and of meeting with Iraqi spies in Atlantic City, New Jersey in January 2001.

The FBI also accused him of facilitating a meeting between a suspected spy and an Iraqi dissident living in the United States.

The US government charges that Iraqi intelligence officers have participated in terrorist operations, including a filed plot to assassinate former US president George Bush and attempted bombings during the 1991 Gulf War.

Al-Anbuke's lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

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