by nomo » Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:33 pm
The New York Times<br>November 14, 2005<br><br>Man Briefly Held by U.S. in Iraq May Have Attacked Jordan<br>By EDWARD WONG<br><br><<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/international/middleeast/14cnd-jordan.html>">www.nytimes.com/2005/11/1...rdan.html></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 14 - The American military command said today that <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>American troops had detained a man last year with the same name as one of the Iraqi bombers involved in the terror attacks in Jordan last week</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, but had released him because he was judged not to be a threat.<br><br>Safah Muhammad Ali was detained by the Americans in November 2004 as Marine-led forces were laying siege to the guerrilla stronghold of Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement. Mr. Ali was held for about two weeks at a division-level detention area.<br><br>"A review of the circumstances of his capture by the unit determined there was no compelling evidence that he was a threat to the security of Iraq and he was therefore released," the military said. "We cannot confirm that the person we detained is the same person allegedly involved in the bombings in Jordan."<br><br>American troops often detain large numbers of Iraqis in operations and raids, releasing many days later after determining that they do not pose a threat or have no useful information about the insurgency.<br><br>The Falluja offensive was the most intense urban combat the Marine Corps had taken part in since the Vietnam War, and many young Iraqi men seized during the fighting were herded into detention centers. Support for the insurgency was fairly widespread in Falluja, a Sunni-dominated city of 300,000 that is strongly religious.<br><br>The military's statement came a day after Jordanian officials announced the arrest of an Iraqi woman who had failed to blow herself up in the bombings, and it raises further questions about whether the war in Iraq has transformed this country into a training ground for militants intent on exporting terrorism elsewhere.<br><br>Suicide bombings were virtually nonexistent under the repressive, secular government of Saddam Hussein. Now, driven by hatred of the American presence and zealots such as the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, angry Iraqis and foreign Arabs are rallying beneath the banner of suicide-style jihad.<br><br>The Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, led by Mr. Zarqawi and calling itself Al Qaeda in Mespotamia, has taken responsibility for the hotel bombings.<br><br>Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari strongly condemned the participation of Iraqis in the Jordan attacks, which killed at least 57 in three hotels. But he urged Jordanians not to feel embittered, saying today that "there is a conspiracy against the Jordanian people to embitter our Jordanian sons and daughters against their Iraqi sons and brothers."<br><br>Mr. Jaafari pointed out that three senior Iraqi oil officials had died in the hotel bombings. He denounced the failed bomber, Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, 35, as "a woman who does not understand a thing except the culture of hatred and spite."<br><br>Jordanian officials say Ms. Rishawi was one of four bombers, all Iraqis, who strapped explosives on last Wednesday and went to three hotels in Amman, the Radisson, Hyatt and Days Inn. Ms. Rishawi's husband, Ali Hussein al-Shumari, 35, accompanied her to a ballroom in the Radisson, where a Jordanian wedding party was taking place, while the other two bombers, both men, went alone to their destinations. The three men - one of whom was a 23-year-old with the same name as Mr. Ali, the American detainee - detonated their explosives almost simultaneously.<br><br>Ms. Rishawi was arrested shortly afterward and said in a videotaped confession broadcast Sunday that she had tried to detonate her explosives but failed. She said she then left the hotel as throngs of people fled.<br><br>The Jordanian authorities arrested her after spotting her on a videotape from a hotel surveillance camera. In the televised confession, Ms. Rishawi spoke of the operation while wearing a translucent explosive belt with red wires and packed with ball bearings.<br><br>Ms. Rishawi comes from Falluja, and she belongs to the same tribe as Sadoun al-Dulaimi, the Iraqi defense minister. Jordanian officials said one of her brothers, Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, was a senior aide to Mr. Zarqawi.<br><br>Residents of Falluja said today that the brother's full name was Thamir Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, and that he was killed in fighting in April 2004, when the Marines tried assaulting the city after four American security contractors were shot dead in an ambush and mutilated. Mr. Rishawi was the leader of an insurgent cell, but was not as high-ranking in the Zarqawi organization as the Jordanians had stated, the residents said. The most senior Zarqawi aide in Falluja at the time of the second American siege was a man named Omar Hadid, who was killed in the fighting.<br><br>The residents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by insurgents, also said two other brothers of Ms. Rishawi and two relatives were also killed in confrontations with American forces in Anbar Province, the western Sunni-dominated swath of desert that includes Falluja.<br><br>That city became a safe haven for insurgents between April and November 2004, when the Marines agreed to turn over security of the area to an Iraqi militia called the Falluja Brigade. The force eventually dissolved, with some of the soldiers joining the insurgency and fighting against the Americans using armament that the Marines had supplied themselves. The Marines decided to seize control of Falluja again in November 2004, but not before thousands of insurgents fled, leaving behind only those guerillas intent on achieving martyrdom by carrying out a rear-guard action.<br><br>The city is now virtually a police state, with random checkpoints and frequent street patrols by marines and Iraqi soldiers, largely Shiite Arabs.<br><br>The Central Intelligence Agency recently issued reports warning that a new generation of jihadists was being trained in the Iraq war, and that these fighters could soon take their cause to other countries, as the mujahedeen in Afghanistan did after the Soviet withdrawal there in 1989.<br><br>The theory of a widening jihad, with Iraq at the center, is bolstered by intelligence reports stating that Mr. Zarqawi, long opposed to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, had been funneling personnel and materiel to Jordan even before Wednesday's attacks. Intelligence officials say Mr. Zarqawi is intent on toppling Western-backed Arab governments and establishing an Islamic state in the Levant, similar to the Sunni caliphate at the height of the Muslim empire.<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting for this article from Falluja.<br></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
