Baghdad, April 21: Iraq’s government will hope announcing the death of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the political leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, will finally bury the myth of a man whose killing or capture was previously bungled.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Monday told the nation that Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the Qaeda front in the country, was killed in a joint Iraqi-US operation in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad.
The Sunday morning raid that purportedly ended Baghdadi’s life also killed Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian militant who seized the reins of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2006, upon the death of his better-known Jordanian predecessor Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US airstrike.
Monday’s announcement, a public relations coup for Maliki, was swiftly followed by an unusually detailed US statement confirming the deaths — the first time American forces have overtly acknowledged the existence of Baghdadi — quoting General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in the country.
“The death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to Al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” Odierno said.
“Baghdadi”, however, has been killed off or captured at least three times before and scepticism about his involvement in Iraq’s insurgency, including much doubt from the US military, continues to cloud his persona.
He was captured for the first time in early 2006 and held in US custody, according to Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari, but he managed to obscure his exact role and was released after seven months.
Among all the claims surrounding Baghdadi, this one seems solid as Maliki unfurled a picture of him in an orange US-prison jumpsuit, holding a board on which was written his real name — Hamid Dawood Mohammed Khalil al-Zawi.
The US military used that same name in its Monday statement about the joint operation that killed Baghdadi and Masri.
Askari also said that Baghdadi was a police brigadier general during the reign of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
On March 9, 2007, Iraqi forces announced that Baghdadi had been captured.
One day later though, Brigadier General Qassim Atta — now a major general and still a Baghdad military spokesman — cited “conflicting information,” and refused to confirm that the detained militant was in fact Baghdadi.
Nine months later, on December 4, Baghdadi warned in an Internet message of more attacks in the country, claiming a new brigade had been formed to fight every “apostate and traitor.” At this point, the US military described him as a “fictional” character and said ISI was merely an Internet-based organisation.
Osama bin Laden entered the fray on December 30, when he called on “all the Muslims of Iraq to join Abu Omar al-Baghdadi,” in the insurgency.
The story went cold until April 23 last year, when Iraqi police announced that they had arrested Baghdadi in the capital.
“The criminal terrorist Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is in the hands of justice,” Maliki’s office said in a statement five days later, a claim that was denied by Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in an Internet statement on May 11.
Atta told state television late on Tuesday that last year’s apparent capture was an elaborate ploy to confuse Baghdadi’s followers.
“It was a camouflage operation,” Atta said. “We arrested a man close to the al-Nida mosque in Baghdad who claimed to be Baghdadi, but we were convinced it was not him.”
According to Atta, AQI had asked several of its members to assume Baghdadi’s identity — of whom the detained man, Ahmed Khamis al-Mujamahi, was one — to provide cover so that the real insurgent leader could continue his activities.
“Our intelligence services asked me to go on television and to assert strongly that he was Bagdhadi, so that Al-Qaeda would think they had conned us, but our intelligence service continued to hunt the real one until Sunday.”
Tuesday’s broadcast said that the real Baghdadi was born in 1947 and he left the country in 1985 only to return in 1991.
His name first came to prominence during the two battles for the Sunni-rebel bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, in 2004, it said.
—Agencies