Baghdad, December 27: Iraqi security forces have managed to arrest a senior military commander with links to al-Qaeda in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province.
A Defense Ministry spokesman said on Saturday that a force from the 3rd Brigade, Quick Intervention Corps (QIC) arrested a leader of the al-Qaeda network in Iraq, Jassem Mohammed al-Jabouri, in the al-Saddiq neighborhood of northern Mosul.
He added Jabouri is wanted for his involvement in several crimes and bombings in Mosul and Kirkuk and that a judicial warrant to arrest him had been issued months ago. His interrogation is being conducted by senior police officers.
Al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq are said to have formed an alliance with Ba’ath party extremists loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein — a move American and Iraqi officials describe as a marriage of convenience. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is believed to supply the suicide bombers while the Ba’athist extremists provide logistics and planning.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq was headed by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until he was killed in a US air strike in June 2006. His successor, Masri, was Zarqawi’s close associate, and has a US bounty of $5 million on his head.
Iraqi and US officials blame al-Qaeda in Iraq for most of the big bombings in the country, including an attack on a revered Shia shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that sparked a wave of sectarian carnage that nearly tipped Iraq into an all-out civil war.
——Agencies