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Afar near the Sinjar road, during the bitterly cold night of 27/28
November 1944, wore German air-force uniforms and carried pay books
identifying them as members of 4 Company of the ex-Mufti’s so-called
German Arab Legion (officially 845th German-Arab Infantry Battalion
[Luftwaffe], successor to the DAL), which specialized in fighting partisans
in Greece and Yugoslavia, not surrendering until 10 May 1945. Their
names were Jassim Hussein Karradi (Iraqi/cover rank: major), his per-
sonal assistant Abdul Hassan Tahir Jifani (Palestinian/cover rank: lieuten-
ant), Ahmed Humaid Fellah (Iraqi/cover rank: 2nd lieutenant), and
Khalil Rasul (Iraqi/cover rank: sergeant).^76 Though given authoritative
cover ranks ranging from major to sergeant, and genuine uniforms and
insignia, these four men were not true legionnaires of the 845th at all and
had never set foot in the Balkans. In reality, they were exiles from the
Rashid Ali forces defeated by the British in Iraq in 1941 who had subse-
quently been forced to flee the region via Syria and Turkey. After intern-
ment by the Turks, they had been recruited by the Italians and in early
1943 had made their way variously to Italy, where they had joined the
ex-Mufti’s ragtag ‘army,’ already known popularly as the ‘Arab Legion’
(Compagnia Fucilieri ‘A,’ then under Italian command at Frascati, near
Rome).^77 There a group of Arabs—mostly Palestinians—had found
themselves cooped up as virtual prisoners, first by the Italian army and
then, after the fall of Mussolini, by the Wehrmacht. Morale had been low,
and the food and conditions in the camps appalling; so bad in fact that
many Arab soldiers had sought to escape, and some were even executed by
the Germans for attempting it. Towards the end of 1943, the four Arab
volunteers had finally been transferred by the Mufti to Berlin for training,
and subsequently to The Hague, and then in May 1944 back again to
Lehnitz, north of Berlin.^78 After undergoing six months of agent train-
ing—in small arms, sabotage, W/T, and M/T—they had found them-
selves members of a small Arab contingent retained by the ex-Mufti in the
Berlin vicinity and financed by the AB, apparently earmarked for future
guerrilla operations in Palestine. The four had then idled away a further six
months in Berlin at the ex-Mufti’s expense. Privately billeted in the capital
and wearing civilian clothes, their freedom to do as they wished had been
constrained only by their inability to speak German and the meagre pay
they had left after expenses. They had, however, been severely reprimanded
for making an attempt to socialize with German women. Every day they
would gather in the centre of Berlin in the hope that someone from the
AB in Oybin might appear with news about their fate.^79 It was not until