Baghdad — Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Chalabi, a former governing council member, on counterfeiting charges and another for Salem Chalabi, the head of Iraq's special tribunal, on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Sunday.
The warrant was a new sign of the fall of Ahmad Chalabi from the centres of power. Mr. Chalabi, a long-time exile opposition leader, had been a favourite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans in the weeks before the U.S. occupation ended in June.
His nephew, Salem Chalabi, heads the tribunal that is due to try Saddam on war crimes charges.
"They should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial," said Judge Zuhair al-Maliky.
Both men, who were out of the country Sunday, denied the charges and said they were politically motivated.
Salem Chalabi called the accusations "ridiculous," while Ahmad Chalabi said the charges were "outrageous," and "manufactured lies."
The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmad Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars, which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year, he said.
Ahmad Chalabi appeared to have been mixing the counterfeit money with other old money and changing it into new dinars in the street, Judge al-Maliky said.
Police, backed by U.S. troops, found the counterfeit money along with old dinars during a May raid on Ahmad Chalabi's house in Baghdad, Judge al-Maliky said.
Salem Chalabi, Ahmad Chalabi's nephew and the head of the tribunal trying Saddam for war crimes, was named as a suspect in the June murder of Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry, Judge al-Maliky said.
Both said the charges were part of a political conspiracy against them and their family, and promised to return to Iraq to face them.
"I'm now mobilized on all fronts to rebuff all these charges," Ahmad Chalabi told CNN from Tehran, Iran, where he was attending an economic conference. "Nobody's above the law and I submit to the law in Iraq ... despite my serious and grave reservations about this court,"
"I don't think ... that I had anything to do with the charges so I'm not actually worried about it," Salem Chalabi told CNN from London. "It's a ridiculous charge, that I threatened somebody ... there's no proof there."
If convicted, Salem Chalabi, 41, could face the death penalty, which was restored by Iraqi officials on Sunday, Judge al-Maliky said. Any sentence for Ahmad Chalabi would be determined by the trial judges, he said.
Ahmad Chalabi's star has steadily declined in Washington; he was once considered the most likely choice for Iraqi president after Saddam's ouster, but he was never popular in Iraq and ended up without a job in the new interim government.
But Ahmad Chalabi said that his fallout with Washington has only boosted his status among Iraqis.
"I've risen higher in the esteem of my people and I'm now much better positioned politically in the country, because I'm in sympathy with my people, this is what it is all about," Ahmad Chalabi said.
Ahmad Chalabi has also lately been accused of informing Iran that the United States had broken its secret intelligence codes, a charge he branded as "stupid." And he is wanted in Jordan for a 1991 conviction in absentia for fraud in a banking scandal. He was sentenced to 22 years in jail, but has denied all allegations against him.
Born in Baghdad, Salem Chalabi studied at Yale, Columbia and Northwestern University in the United States and holds degrees in law and international affairs. He served as a legal adviser to the interim Iraqi Governing Council and was a member of the 10-member committee framing the basic transitional law for the new interim government.
