Iraqi official 'with al-Qa'ida links' in American custody

Farouk Hijazi is not included in the Pentagon's "deck of cards" of 55 most-wanted members of the toppled regime of Saddam Hussein. Until the outbreak of war, the former senior intelligence operative was serving as his government's ambassador to Tunisia.

But hopes were high in Washington last night that the diplomat may indeed become a source of important information on Saddam's rule. He is "the biggest catch so far I would say", the former CIA director James Woolsey told CNN. "We know this man was involved with al-Qa'ida."

Mr Hijazi, who was born to a Palestinian family, apparently fled from Tunisia to Syria after the fighting began. It was not clear last night what prompted him to leave Syria and enter Iraq, although America has been applying heavy pressure on Damascus to desist in offering shelter to members of the Saddam regime.

His capture, late on Thursday evening, came just hours after another main figure in the Iraqi government, the former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, surrendered to American forces. Both men were being interrogated yesterday by American military officials at an undisclosed location, presumably in Iraq.

In the early 1990s, Mr Hijazi was director of external operations, occupying the third most senior spot in the Iraqi Mukhabarat, the intelligence organisation. Washington believes that he may have information on a foiled car-bomb plot to assassinate the former US president George Bush Snr during a visit to Kuwait in 1993. Mr Hijazi will also be pressed for information on purported weapons of mass destruction.

More urgently, though, American interrogators will try to gain from Mr Hijazi confirmation that shortly after being named as ambassador to Turkey in 1998, he made a trip to the Afghan city of Kandahar to meet Osama bin Laden. Washington continues to contend that Saddam forged direct links with bin Laden and al-Qa'ida, which is blamed for the 11 September attacks. The Bush administration will be hoping Mr Hijazi will corroborate this and provide the first concrete proof that links existed. Before the war, Iraq denied meetings with Bin Laden ever took place.

Newsweek magazine reported that Mr Hijazi met Mohammed Atta – the suspected organiser of 11 September who died on one of the hijacked planes – in Prague in April 2001. But other sources have cast doubt on that report.

American officials are also anxious to find out what role Mr Hijazi may have played during his postings abroad in helping Iraq to procure illegally items for the build-up of its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. They suspect that this effort may have been partly spearheaded by Mr Hijazi from his embassy in Ankara and more recently in Tunis.

The US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, said yesterday that he did not know how senior officials from the regime would be handled or, if criminal charges were pressed against them, who would pursue the case.