July 24, 2003	Thursday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 23, 1424

BAGHDAD: Crime is bad in Baghdad. So bad in fact that a rich Baghdad businessman staged a funeral to change dollars to dinars and avoid being robbed in the capital.

Mohammed al-Timimi bought a mini-bus, and hired people to pose as weeping mourners, so he could smuggle his dollars stashed in a coffin inside a money exchange and convert them to dinars, reported Al-Taakhi newspaper, owned by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

As the funeral procession entered the city’s Al-Kifah neighbourhood, home to many money-changers and violent thieves, he hired female mourners who wept and beat their chest to create a distraction.

The coffin was then discretely slipped into an exchange bureau, where the coffin was filled with dinars, replacing the visage of Benjamin Franklin on 100 dollar bills for the familiar face of fallen dictator Saddam Hussein.

The paper did not specify the amount Timimi traded, perhaps mindful of its readers with criminal records. —AFP