Suspected Saddam spy is held without bail
Caught crossing Peace Bridge here
Mouyad Mahmoud Darwish, an Iraqi-born Canadian charged by the United States with acting as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein, was traveling to Maryland to visit his ailing father when he was caught coming across the Peace Bridge on Christmas Eve.
Darwish, 47, a slight man wearing a wool turtleneck and blue jeans, was ordered held without bail Tuesday following a detention hearing by U. S. Magistrate Judge Hugh B. Scott. He will be turned over to federal authorities in Maryland.
Assistant U. S. Attorney Gregory L. Brown, acting for federal prosecutors in Maryland, told Scott that Darwish was a flight risk because Canada has no comparable crime — failing to register as a foreign agent — and therefore he could not be extradited if he were granted bail and went across the border.
His attorney, Kimberly A. Schechter, an assistant federal public defender, made a concerted effort to have Scott release Darwish on bail.
She said Darwish is a $300,000-a-year physicist in Markham, Ont., near Toronto, and came across the border using his own identification with his wife and three children.
“He struck me as a very sincere person,” Schechter said after the court session. “He seemed like he was trying to do everything right.”
She said Darwish’s father is being treated for cancer in Maryland. She said his parents, as well a brother, who is also a physicist, live in Maryland.
The crime carries a possible five-year prison sentence.
A criminal complaint filed in Baltimore said U. S. soldiers came across Darwish’s name following the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The seized documents said that he worked for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and that he provided information that Iraqi volunteers were being trained by the U. S. military in Virginia.
An FBI affidavit quoted a confidential source as saying that from 2000 through the spring of 2004, Darwish worked as an assistant to an accountant and as a driver for the Iraqi Interests Section, being paid $1,500 a month.
The source also said that Darwish told him that he later worked for the Iraqi Embassy through early 2004, according to the criminal complaint. He said Darwish worked as a cook in Laurel, Md., to legitimize his presence in the United States.
Prosecutors said Darwish tried to obtain papers to stay legally in the United States from October 2001 through 2006. At no time, they said, did Darwish reveal his affiliation with the Ba’ath Party or the government of Iraq.
When the FBI interviewed him May 20, 2003, Darwish said he went to work for the Iraqi Interests Section at the urging of the local Iraqi community, and he claimed no knowledge of any intelligence activities by the section.
After the United States denied his application for residency in August 2006, Darwish moved to Canada with his family and became a Canadian citizen. Darwish was barred from this country for 10 years, prosecutors said, but his attorney said even then he registered with immigration authorities as he was leaving the country.
If Darwish were guilty of a crime, Schechter asked Scott, why did the FBI allow him to go free in 2003?
Three days before Darwish’s arrest at the border, his alleged co-conspirator, Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy, pleaded guilty to the same charge in U. S. District Court in Baltimore.
mbeebe@buffnews.com ">email: mbeebe@buffnews.com
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments