Iraqi police have arrested Saddam Hussein's nephew after Syrian authorities forced him to return to Iraq several days earlier.
Yasir Sabhawi Ibrahim, son of Saddam's half-brother Sabhawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, is alleged to be the top financier of the country's uprising. He was arrested in a Baghdad flat last night by Iraqi police.
"He is the most dangerous man in the insurgency," said one official who works as a co-ordinator between Iraqi authorities and the US military intelligence in the war-ravaged country.
Officials said Syrian authorities "pushed" Ibrahim into Iraq but did not hand him over to authorities.
But the Syrians were aware of his whereabouts in Baghdad and informed US authorities, who then passed the information to Iraq security forces, who raided Ibrahim's flat.
On July 21st, the US Treasury froze US property or other assets of Ibrahim and five other sons of al-Tikriti, who was himself captured in Syria earlier this year and handed over to Iraq in an apparent gesture of goodwill.
Syria has been under intense pressure from the United States and Iraq to do more to prevent militants and weapons crossing from its territories into neighbouring Iraq . Damascus denies actively supporting rebels battling US-led coalition forces in Iraq and says it is impossible to seal its porous desert frontier with Iraq .
Iraqi officials believe Ibrahim was operating Baath Party funds in Syria, Jordan and Yemen and had been running a vast network of militants inside Iraq .
They also claim he was co-ordinating between Baathist rebels and the terror network of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.