In an interview with al-Sharqiya TV on Thursday, he announced: The truth is that we, like you and like all Iraqis, and perhaps like everybody else in the world, were surprised by this move, a decision that came from a government servant who acts as a director and seeks to remove and purge the leader of a political front.
Mutlak added: I spoke to the [Iraqi] president several hours ago, and he said that he is not aware of this issue. I also contacted the commissioner and he also expressed his lack of knowledge about the matter. Who do we have to contact to find out what is going on? Do we have to talk to al-Maliki or people outside our borders so that they can tell us what is going on?
In response to the question, ‘what do you mean by outside the borders? Do you mean Iran?’ Saleh Mutlak said: What I want to say is that this decision came on the day that [the Iranian regime’s foreign minister Manouchehr] Mottaki was here and sat down with the Iraqi government. I don’t know what kind of coincidence this is. Why was this issue not addressed before? Why all of a sudden? Why did not even one person from the de-Baathification committee talk to me about this? … Even the de-Baathification committee is saying that they are not apprised about the situation. This is a political decision that has been adopted today and not in the past. Perhaps this particular person had made requests about such a matter, nonetheless the decision was adopted on this day, the day that the Iranian foreign minister visited Iraq.