Note to Allawi: Forget Kerry, Watch Chalabi

With all the bickering about whether the Kerry camp is undermining Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi by calling him a “puppet,” the PM might not have noticed a real threat rising to his position and power:

A senior Iraqi judge said today that he had closed a case brought against Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile once backed by the Pentagon, who had been suspected of involvement in a counterfeiting operation.

The judge, Zuhair al-Maliky, said in a telephone interview that he took the action about a week-and-a-half ago because he had decided “the evidence was not enough to bring the case to trial.” If more evidence emerges, he said, the case will be reopened.

The decision also followed conversations between Mr. Chalabi’s lawyers and representatives of the Central Bank of Iraq, Judge Maliky said.

As soon as I read that, I recalled that I knew this guy was gonna keep making trouble. As reported in the Washington Times a while back:

Mr. Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons — several dozen tons of documents and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress (INC) from Saddam Hussein’s secret security apparatus.

Chalabi and Allawi are longtime rivals, according to the NYTimes. Could this be the first political victory in a pending Iraqi Civil War?

Now, having lost the support of politicians in Washington, Mr. Chalabi has recast himself as a champion of Shiite rights and is moving to align himself with Shiite religious leaders here.