Federal authorities have charged an Iraqi-born Canadian citizen with conspiring to spy for the former regime of Saddam Hussein while allegedly working at the Iraqi embassy in Washington, in the second such case to emerge in a week.

The US Justice Department filed a criminal complaint in Maryland against Muyad Mahmud Darwish, a Canadian citizen born in Iraq, alleging he was paid by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) for providing assistance and information.

Last week, Saubhe Jassim al-Dellemy, an Iraqi national living in Maryland, pleaded guilty to the same charges.

Both Darwish, 47, and Dellemy, 67, face a maximum five-year prison sentence for conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. They are not accused of seeking or obtaining classified information.

Neither one was ever recognised by the US government as an Iraqi government diplomatic or consular officer.

The agency said in a statement that the charges were backed by confidential IIS documents seized by the US military after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

In one incident described by an IIS document, Darwish, who lived in Maryland, reported that Iraqi volunteers were being trained by the US military in Virginia.

Darwish was detained in Buffalo, New York on 24 December after trying to enter the United States from Canada, where he resides. He was scheduled to appear in a Buffalo court on Tuesday for a detention hearing.

Dellemy is scheduled for sentencing on 5 March.

"Since coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003, the Justice Department has charged at least a dozen people who served in the United States as illegal agents for the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein or its feared intelligence service," also known as the "mukhabarat", said Patrick Rowan, Assistant US Attorney General for National Security.

"The number of these cases underscores the reach of Saddam's intelligence service in America and the extent to which the former Iraqi regime was concerned with defectors and expatriate groups here."

The affidavit said that Darwish "performed tasks" at the Iraqi Embassy and at the Iraqi Interests Section (ISEC), which was formed in 1991 after Washington severed ties with Baghdad for more than a decade following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Between 2000 and mid-2004, Darwish is said to have worked full-time at the ISEC as an accounting assistant and as a driver, for a salary of 1500 dollars a month. He also obtained a work visa to work as a cook in a Maryland restaurant during that time.

But his application for permanent US residence sought between 2001 and 2006 was denied after he provided conflicting information. Darwish also failed to reveal his Ba'ath Party and Iraqi government affiliation or his employment by the embassy and the ISEC.

AFP