PARIS (AP) – France’s former U.N. ambassador has been taken into custody as part of an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing in the Iraq oil-for-food program, judicial officials said Tuesday.
Jean-Bernard Merimee, 68, who also was ambassador to Italy from 1995-98 and to Australia in the 1980s, is suspected of having received kickbacks in the form of oil allocations from the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He was also a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 1999 to 2002.
The noose tightens. And reader Bryon Scott, who sent the link, observes:
The interesting thing to me is the Guardian is now stating “Saddam manipulated the program” as a forgone conclusion. No longer is the press treating this as if it “alledgedly” happened. One wonders how long it will take the MSM to make the connection between the lucrative income generated by this scam and the “international resistance” to the war in Iraq.
I’m guessing a while, but I’d love to be wrong.