BAGHDAD - Iraq's former trade minister wanted on a corruption charge was arrested Saturday at the Baghdad airport after attempting to leave the country, a senior lawmaker said.
The plane carrying Abdul-Falah al-Sudani was ordered back to Baghdad during its flight to Dubai so that an arrest warrant charging him with corruption could be served, said Sabah al-Saedi, the chairman of the parliamentary integrity committee.
The arrest comes in the midst of a government crackdown on corruption. So far hundreds of arrest warrants have been issued since the beginning of the year against officials -- including 51 in high-level positions.
Al-Sudani is charged with mismanaging the ministry by importing expired foods, engaging in illegal contracts and employing relatives, said Judge Rahim al-Ogaili, the head of the Commission on Public Integrity.
Al-Sudani, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party, resigned shortly after appearing before parliament earlier this month to answer allegations of corruption.
The minister's brothers are accused of having skimmed millions of dollars in kickbacks on food imports. One of them is in custody after attempting to flee the country while the other is still at large.
The charges against al-Sudani center around the sale of food in Samawah, on the Euphrates River about 370 kilometres southeast of Baghdad.
The former minister was detained at the airport before being arrested, and will now be sent to Samawah in the next day or so to answer the charges before an investigating judge, said al-Saedi.
The case became a national spectacle after a video surfaced on YouTube purportedly showing al-Sudani's two brothers drinking and partying with scantily clad women.
The news of the arrest also comes after al-Maliki said earlier this week that he would not defend any official in his party accused of corruption.
He also said he would refer all allegations of corruption to the judiciary for investigation. The statements came during an online question-and-answer session on Iraq's official government media Web site.
Dozens of Iraqi political leaders have been accused of high-level corruption and links to violent groups, with some fleeing the country to neighboring Jordan and Syria, while others have managed to keep the suspicions from turning into formal charges.
In February, Sunni lawmaker Mohammed al-Dayni was charged with being an insurgent ringleader and ordering a wave of attacks that included a 2007 suicide blast in the parliament cafeteria and mortar strikes on Baghdad's Green Zone.
Al-Dayni tried to flee the country on a flight to Jordan, only to have the plane turned back.
He slipped through Iraqi custody, though, after arriving in Baghdad and disappeared. He is believed to be in Syria where he recently appeared on a cooking show.
Also Saturday, al-Maliki met with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a prominent Iraqi Shiite leader, who is undergoing treatment for lung cancer at a Tehran hospital, according to a report by Iran's official IRNA news agency.
It said the two men discussed the latest political and security developments in Iraq but didn't provide further details.
Al-Hakim's office said he was in good condition, undergoing a checkup.
A political rivalry emerged earlier this year between the two men after al-Maliki's political party outperformed al-Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council in January's provincial elections.
