Former Minnesota National Guard Member Has Links To Insurgent Leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

The U.S. government wants an Iraqi court to prosecute an American citizen who is being held in Iraq on suspicion that he is a senior operative of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The man's lawyers said he is innocent and likely to be tortured if handed over. The case is the first known instance in which the government has decided to allow an American to be tried in the new Iraqi legal system. At least four other U.S. citizens suspected of aiding the insurgency had been held in Iraq, the Pentagon has said. Shawqi Omar, 44, who once served in the Minnesota National Guard, has been held since late 2004 in U.S.-run military prisons as an enemy combatant. He has not been charged with a crime or been given access to a lawyer, said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer representing Omar's family in the United States.Shawqi OmarThe government said Omar, who also holds Jordanian citizenship, was harboring an Iraqi insurgent and four Jordanian fighters at the time of his arrest and also had bomb-making materials. He is described in court papers as a relative of Zarqawi who was plotting to kidnap foreigners from Baghdad hotels. Separately, Omar, Zarqawi and 11 others have been indicted by a Jordanian court on charges they plotted a chemical attack against Jordan's intelligence agency. Omar's family said he is a businessman who was seeking reconstruction contracts in Iraq. The family is asking a U.S. judge to step in and force the government to charge Omar with a crime and put him on trial in the United States, or release him. They also are seeking to prevent Omar's transfer to Iraqi custody, which they said would subject the Sunni Muslim to torture by Shiite-dominated authorities. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina last week issued an order in Washington temporarily blocking Omar's transfer to Iraqi custody. The order is set to expire Monday, but the family is asking the judge to extend it until he decides whether to order Omar to be returned to the United States. The Justice Department weighed in Tuesday, arguing that Urbina has no business intervening on Omar's behalf and denying that Omar is even in U.S. custody. Instead, the department said in court papers, Omar was captured by the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq and remains in its custody. The multinational force is independent of the U.S. government, the department said. n any event, Omar would not be handed over to the Iraqis unless he is convicted in an Iraqi court, the government said. Hafetz, a lawyer at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said the government is resorting to a legal gimmick to keep Omar's case out of American courts. Prosecutors are arguing, "despite all appearances to the contrary, Mr. Omar is not really in U.S. custody," the Omar family's lawyers said Wednesday in a legal filing. In July, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said five unnamed Americans, including one who also had Jordanian citizenship, were in U.S. military custody in Iraq. Whitman said then that the government had not decided whether their cases would be turned over to the Justice Department or to the new Iraqi legal system, which has handled the prosecution of other foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight the U.S.-led occupation and Iraqi government. It is unclear what happened to the other Americans. Los Angeles filmmaker Cyrus Kar was released later in July without being charged after nearly two months in custody. An Iraqi expatriate who is a legal U.S. resident, Numan Adnan Al Kaby, was freed in September, but it is not known whether he was one of the five described by Whitman. Last March, Matthew Waxman, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said a panel of three U.S. officers had determined the Jordanian-American was an enemy combatant and was not entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention. The description provided by Waxman and other officials matches Omar's biography as contained in the government's court papers. In its filing Tuesday, the Justice Department said the officers were part of the multinational force. Omar became a U.S. citizen in 1986, two years after he served in the National Guard. Omar spent about 11 months in the Guard before being discharged in November 1984 without completing his training, said Shannon Purvis, a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard. Omar received an "uncharacterized discharge," meaning he was discharged for such things as health problems or poor performance, Purvis said.