IRAQ: The Plot That Failed

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Chief of the Secret Police Nazem Kazzar said he was inaugurating a new "research center" near Baghdad, and he wondered if two of Iraq's major officials would like to attend. Indeed they would, replied Defense Minister General Hammad Shehab, 51, and Interior Minister General Saadoun Ghaidan, 43, both members of the inner, 15-member Revolutionary Command Council. When Ghaidan arrived at the secret center he was told to dismiss his chauffeur. The minister did so. At that, Kazzar turned on him and had him taken to a dungeon at gunpoint. There he was forced to strip to his underwear and join Shehab, who was already a prisoner.

From that point on the plot went out of control. Both ministers and Kazzar were expected at the airport, where other officials were waiting for President Ahmed Hassan Bakr to return from a swing through Eastern Europe. When the ministers failed to appear, the officials, alerted about Kazzar's knavery, sent out alarms. With troops searching for him, Kazzar and 15 accomplices took the two ministers as hostages and headed for the Iranian border in a convoy of cars. The group was tracked down by helicopters three miles from Iran and captured−but not before Kazzar had killed Shehab and wounded Ghaidan with a bullet in the arm. That obviously was not Kazzar's prime mission, but just what he hoped to achieve remains a mystery.

Though Kazzar's motives were obscure, justice was swift and cruel. Ever since the militant Baath Party assumed power in Baghdad five years ago, the Iraqi penchant for frequent political bloodletting has burgeoned. In all, more than 100 political opponents have been killed. At week's end Kazzar, 35, once one of the regime's leading henchmen, and 21 other co-plotters were summarily executed.