In interviews conducted in a prison in Kurdish-controlled territory, captured members of Ansar al-Islam also alleged:
The intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over Ansar al-Islam.
Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.
A number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by Ansar al-Islam.
Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan