Al-Qaida's Leader in Iraq Arrested

PUkmedia         10:21    2008/05/09

IRAQI and US forces have detained a man suspected of being the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Iraqi security officials said.
The US military in Baghdad said it was checking the reports that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had been caught in the northern city of Mosul.
If confirmed, the arrest would be another blow for Sunni Islamist al-Qaida in Iraq, which has reeled under a wave of US military operations in the past year.
Iraq's Defence Ministry spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askari told Reuters the head of the local province's security operations had told him that Masri had been detained.
"Now the American forces have taken him to identify him," Major-General Askari said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said an associate of Masri who had been detained in an earlier operation took security forces late on Wednesday to where the al-Qaida leader was hiding in Mosul.
After being detained, Masri had confessed to being the al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Major-General Khalaf said, adding his identity still had to be confirmed.
US officials blame al-Qaida in Iraq for most big bombings in the country, including an attack on a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that sparked a wave of sectarian carnage that nearly tipped Iraq into all-out civil war.
But a build-up of US troops last year allowed the military to focus a series of offensives against the group. The emergence of Sunni Arab tribal security units also helped to provide intelligence on al-Qaida activities.
The result was al-Qaida has largely been pushed out of Baghdad and its former stronghold in western Anbar province to areas in northern Iraq, such as Mosul.
American generals say Mosul is al-Qaida in Iraq's last remaining urban stronghold in the country.
But US commanders warn that the group, while significantly weakened, can still carry out large-scale attacks.
Al-Qaida 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 $US5 million on his head.
In October 2006, the al-Qaida-led Mujahideen Shura Council said it had set up the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of Sunni militant affiliates and tribal leaders.
In April 2007 it named a 10-man "cabinet", including Masri as its war minister.
Iraq's Interior Ministry said last May that Masri had been killed, but soon afterwards al-Qaida released an audio tape purportedly from him.
In an hour-long audio tape issued last month, Masri called for renewed attacks on US troops.
He urged militants from the Sunni Islamist group to "celebrate" the recent announcement that the number of US troops killed in Iraq had passed 4000.
"We must celebrate this event in our special way, and make the defeated Bush join us in this celebration," he said.
He called on al-Qaida fighters to provide "a head of an American as a present to the trickster Bush" in a month-long campaign that he called the "Attack of Righteousness".
Al-Qaida in Iraq shares a name and ideology if not organizational ties with Osama bin Laden's network, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
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From: News.com