A former cook at a Laurel shish kebab shop has pleaded guilty to lying about his ties to Saddam Hussein’s government on immigration forms, federal prosecutors in Maryland said.
Mouyad Mahmoud Darwish, 48, was born in a Iraq, but became a Canadian citizen in 1994, according to court documents. That was six years before he moved to the United States to work as an accountant and driver for the Iraqi Interests Section, a quasi-Iraqi embassy housed in the Algerian Embassy in the years before the United States toppled Hussein’s regime.
Darwish’s job at the section was arranged by 68-year-old Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy, the owner of Gourmet Shish Kebab in Laurel, prosecutors said. Al-Dellemy is an Iraqi national and a member of Hussein’s Ba’ath party. He came to the United States in the 1980s with the Ba’ath party picking up his tab.
In return, Al-Dellemy spied on Hussein opponents operating in the United States and passed the information to the Iraqi Intelligence Service. He admitted in December to the arrangement with the intelligence service upon pleading guilty to acting as an agent of a foreign government. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced in September.
In January 2000, Al-Dellemy obtained permission from the Department of Labor to hire Darwish as a cook at the shish kebab shop, court documents said. At the same time, Darwish began his work at the section. He applied for a work visa and then permanent resident status, but was denied in both cases.
However, Darwish did continue to receive permission from the Department of Labor to work at the restaurant under the pretense that it was his sole source of employment.
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the military discovered numerous documents pertaining to spying activities in America, prosecutors said. Those documents eventually led investigators to Al-Dellemy and then Darwish.
One of those documents showed that Darwish also reported information to Iraq’s spying agency, prosecutors said.
In August 2002, Darwish informed Iraq that the U.S. military was training Iraqi volunteers in Virginia. They were getting paid $2,000 per month.
Darwish and prosecutors have agreed he’ll receive a sentence of one year and three months, although a judge could send him to prison for up to five years when Darwish is sentenced in September.
