Mossad Suspected Of Systematically Killing 310 Iraqi Scientists
Arab Monitor | November 3 2004
A seminar in Cairo, attended by politicians, scientists and researchers with special interest in Iraq, a report disclosed to the participants claimed that since the begin of the US-led invasion some 310 Iraqi scientists have been killed, most likely by Israeli secret agents. In fact, already in the wake of the invasion some Arabic news agencies had reported about a list of up to 600 Iraqi scientists slated to be physically eliminated and about squads of Israeli agents infiltrated into Iraq from the closed military areas in Jordan bordering on Iraq and occupied by US forces.
At the Cairo seminar, which ended yesterday, experts referred to this organized campaign aimed at “liquidating Iraqi scientists”, particularly those who were engaged in the weapons programs under the former regime. “There is a joint American and Israeli plan to kill as many Iraqi scientists as possible”, said Abdel Rauf al-Raidi, an ambassador and assistant foreign minister, while Ahmad al-Iraqi, the Iraqi ambassador in Cairo, accused Israel of sending to Iraq immediately after the US invasion “a commando unit” charged with the killing of scientists, claiming that “Israel has played a prominent role in liquidating Iraqi scientists … The campaign is part of a Zionist plan to kill Arab and Muslim scientists working in applied research which Israel sees as threatening its interests”.
Moreover, an expert at the Al-Ahram Studies Center, Imad Ghad said the US had already secretely airlifted 70 Iraqi scientists out of the country to isolate them from the rest of the world. Ghad said that the Ahram Center estimated that nearly 17,000 Iraqi scientists working in various fields of knowledge have fled the country since the US-led invasion. In Baghdad, interim government officials refused to comment on the deliberations that took place in the Cairo conference, whereas the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology admitted that their own figures correspond with those mentioned at the seminar, particularly regarding the number of Iraqi scientists been killed so far