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U.N. inspectors make first home searches
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.N. weapons inspectors Thursday made their first searches of private homes in the hunt for evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The two homes located in the Al-Ghazaliyah district in Baghdad were not listed as declared sites by Iraq, suggesting that inspectors may have been working on an intelligence tip. Inspectors questioned Dr. Shakir Al-Jabouri, a nuclear scientist and owner of the home, and Dr. Faleh Hassan Al-Basri, director-general of the Al-Razi company, belonging to Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission (MIC). Al-Basri, a physicist, went off with U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission inspectors carrying a bulging box of documents and paperwork after an earlier heated discussion between Al-Basri and Dimitri Perricos, a UNMOVIC official, over documents. Hours later, an UNMOVIC spokesman said the scientist "wasn't detained. I assume he's back home." But no details were provided on where he was taken. Al-Basri apparently wanted to have documents that the inspectors sought to be photocopied. The scientists, who are neighbors, were not at their homes when the inspection team arrived, but did show up later and were questioned by three inspectors for several hours. Inspectors spent almost six hours in those homes, located in a residential area populated by scientists, university professors and other professionals. CNN's Rym Brahimi, who went to the scene, said the scientists were not pleased to see the inspectors on their doorsteps or with the subsequent home searches, which they regarded as invasions of personal privacy. Bedrooms were searched and the son of one of the scientists was not allowed to leave the home and couldn't take a school exam. Weapons inspectors also deployed to a number of other locations across Iraq: • Chemical weapons experts visited the Al Tahdi company in Baghdad and also went to an Iraqi military facility west of Baghdad. • Another chemical team boarded a helicopter and flew over a Mujahedeen Khalq base, located 60 kms northeast of Baghdad near the Iranian border. The Mujahedeen Khalq are Iranian dissidents that have been based in Iraq since the 1980s. • Missile teams went to a Baghdad site called the Seventh of April and also visited the Al Nidaa company -- also part of the MIC -- in the Baghdad suburb of Zafkraniyah. Inspectors were last at Al Nidaa December 12. It's a facility that was once used to produce Al Hussein missiles. The site was bombed by coalition aircraft in 1993 and again 1998.
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