Iraqi health minister arrested; ICRC visits Iraqi war prisoners including former regime officials

The former Iraqi health minister Omed Mubarak Medhat was arrested by the coalition forces following a decision issued by the US administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer in which he banned leading figures of the former regime to occupy senior posts in the new Iraqi administrations, while the retired American gen. Jay Garner permitted Medhat to practice his mission until his arrest on May 2nd.

Meantime, the spokeswoman for the ICRC in Baghdad Nada Doumani said that the coalition forces permitted ICRC representatives to visit 1,000 Iraqi prisoners in the Baghdad area including officials in the Baath Party which had ruled Iraq.

For his part, son of the former Iraqi health minister Omed Medhat said on Saturday that the American forces in Iraqi had seized his father since the beginning of May. Nardrin Mubarak said from Paris that the American forces summoned his father who had the post of the health minister since the Gulf war in 1991 in order to interrogate him as from May 2nd and that he is still held in custody since then.

Nardrin said that his father ( 64 year old), of a Kurdish origin, is held in a position near the airport and that members of the ICRC had visited him.

Garner had permitted Mubarak to continue his work after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime on April 9th, but Bremer when he succeeded Garner banned the participation of any member of the former regime of Baath Party senior members from occupying any governmental post.

The former Iraqi health minister is not on the list of the 55 Iraqi figures wanted by the USA.