Baghdad, January 17: Iraqi authorities have captured a senior leader of a militant group linked to Al-Qaeda in Iraq who oversaw the 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and other attacks. Baghdad’s top military spokesman announced the capture of Ali Hussein Alwan Hamid Al-Azzawi in a televised news conference on Saturday.
The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim Al-Moussawi, said Al-Azzawi was apprehended June 26 in his house in eastern Baghdad. He said authorities kept the arrest secret for more than half a year to ensure the capture of other suspects linked to him.
In the video, the man said he served as a top administrator for the Islamic State of Iraq, a group that purports to speak for various insurgent factions linked to Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He also said he worked as a pilot for national airline Iraqi Airways. Officials at Iraqi Airways were unable to say whether Al-Azzawi had worked for the carrier.
“He had direct responsibility for many terrorist operations,” Al-Moussawi said. Authorities linked Al-Azzawi to a number of attacks throughout Iraq, including the Aug. 19, 2003, truck bombing on the UN headquarters in Baghdad that left 22 people dead. Among those killed in that blast was mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The Islamic State of Iraq has claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile attacks in recent months that have shaken confidence in Iraq’s security, including a double bombing Dec. 30 that killed 24 people and severely injured a provincial governor.
The announcement came on a day when Iraq’s former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi unveiled a broad secular alliance of candidates to contest the country’s general election on March 7.
“Today we have a feeling of victory and pride because other political coalitions gave up the way of the nation, which left us marginalized, excluded and persecuted,” Allawi said in a statement issued by his Al-Iraqiya Alliance.
Allawi was flanked by Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi who fired an opening verbal salvo at Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. “He (Maliki) has failed to create a state of citizens to replace a state of (religious) communities,” Hashemi told candidates and onlookers at the launch ceremony at Al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad.
Rafa Al-Essawi, the country’s Sunni deputy prime minister and a partner in Allawi’s coalition, said: “We are a national political entity, committed to serving all Iraqis and we call on them to join us.”
Prominent Sunni lawmaker Saleh Al-Mutlak, who has been banned from competing in the March poll for alleged links to Saddam Hussein’s regime, is also a member of Allawi’s alliance and was at the ceremony.
——-Agencies