Rezko pal says legal woes over
IRAQI | Denies role in corruption
At his desk in Downers Grove, Aiham Alsammarae looks like any businessman.
Over the last two years, though, the engineering consultant, 51, has been on an odyssey that led from Iraq to a U.S. courtroom. He served as Iraq's electric power minister in 2003 but was later jailed on corruption charges, escaped and went on Interpol's fugitive list.
(AP)
He resurfaced this year, posting $2.7 million to bail friend Tony Rezko out of jail pending the trial that ended in Rezko's conviction.
These days he has a simple message: ''I've had absolutely nothing to do with any corruption,'' said Alsammarae, producing Iraqi papers that say a court has stopped "the legal procedures against him forever.'' Interpol is no longer looking for him.
Alsammarae was born in Baghdad and came to the U.S. to study engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. There, he met Rezko.
While he was electricity minister, Iraq awarded a $50 million contract to a company partly owned by Rezko. Before Rezko's trial, his attorneys said federal prosecutors told the judge that Rezko had paid $1.5 million to ''Dr. Alsammarae'' to land the contract. Rezko's lawyers said the allegation was false. Prosecutors declined to comment.
Alsammarae, in a recent interview, said that contract was one of four awarded by a committee in Kurdistan.
He knows his bailing out of Rezko raised eyebrows.
''I cannot let my friend down," he said. ''Do you know that Tony Rezko was calling me every week in Baghdad when I was in jail to ask about my well-being there?'' he added. AP