Baghdad, August 23: Facing widespread criticism over security lapses, the Iraqi military on Sunday broadcast the confession of a Sunni man identified as the mastermind of one of two suicide truck bombings targeting government buildings in Baghdad.
The announcement comes as Iraqi lawmakers and other top officials have traded blame and called for investigations into how the bombers drove trucks past checkpoints and positioned them close to government institutions.
Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the chief military spokesman for Baghdad, said the man was a senior member of Saddam Hussein’s ousted Baath Party who had confessed before his lawyer and the chief prosecutor.
The 57-year-old man, wearing a gray and white striped shirt, identified himself as Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim and said he was a former police officer from the Diyala province city of Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad.
He said he had fled to Syria in July 2006 but returned to Iraq the next year to revive the Baath Party in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles (90 kilometers) north of the capital.
Ibrahim said the bombers who drove the trucks paid thousands of dollars in bribes to get through checkpoints on the heavily guarded road to Baghdad, then drove to the Finance Ministry building and detonated their explosives.
Al-Moussawi only aired Ibrahim’s confession but said the whole network involved in Wednesday’s twin suicide truck bombings against the Foreign and Finance ministries has been arrested. He said other confessions would be shown in coming days.
Wednesday’s bombings against the heavily guarded symbols of state authority have shaken confidence in a government eager to demonstrate that it can take over responsibility for the country’s security from American combat troops, who pulled back from urban areas on June 30 with plans for a full withdrawal by the end of 2011.
At least 101 people were killed and hundreds others wounded in a series of mid-morning blasts, which coincided with the sixth anniversary of the deadly bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Shiite politicians have blamed an alliance of al-Qaida and Saddam loyalists known as Baathists for the bombings. The U.S. military said the attacks bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq.
The suspect said he had joined the Baath Party in 1973 and worked with fellow members in Syria.
“I returned to Iraq in August 2007 in order to revive the Baath organization, which was suffering badly in Muqdadiyah,” he said in the televised confession.
The Iraqi government has frequently trotted out suspects of bombings and other attacks for the media, often airing confessions on television.
–Agencies