BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi authorities have captured a man they allege is responsible for some of the bloodiest bombings in Baghdad, including an attack on the U.N. compound in 2003, the government announced Monday.
Hours before the announcement, yet another suicide blast intensified fears that violence would mar national elections Sunday. News of the capture of Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf came as Iraqi and U.S. leaders strain to reassure wary voters that Iraq’s first election since the fall of Saddam Hussein will not be sabotaged by the 22-month-old insurgency.
Authorities say that since his capture Jan. 15, al-Jaaf has confessed to helping plan or build 32 car and truck bombs that killed hundreds of people, including a major strike on Baghdad’s United Nations compound in August 2003. That blast killed senior U.N. official Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others and triggered an exodus of international organizations that have not returned.
Iraqi authorities said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Umar al-Kurdi, was responsible for 75 percent of the car bombings in the capital, but they did not say how they arrived at that estimate. It was not immediately clear whether he is suspected in other bombings not specified Monday.
Al-Jaaf is described in the government statement as the “most lethal lieutenant” to Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the U.S.’s most wanted man in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi, who is wanted on a $25 million bounty for a range of attacks including kidnapping and beheading foreigners, has honed his focus on derailing the election. He released a statement Sunday vowing “all-out war on this evil principle of democracy.”
It was not immediately clear what effect al-Jaaf’s arrest may have on the insurgency. Since his capture 10 days ago, at least six more bombings in the capital have claimed more than a dozen lives.
The latest explosion struck a checkpoint early Monday near the party headquarters of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Eight police officers and two civilians were wounded, and an Internet posting attributed to al-Zarqawi later claimed responsibility, The Associated Press reported.
The same checkpoint has been hit by bombings at least twice before, underlining the ease with which rebels launch their attacks, despite expanded police powers under a state of emergency, an intensive effort to improve Iraqi security forces and the presence of 150,000 American troops.
Allawi has emphasized his iron-fisted approach to battling crime and terrorism as the central plank in his own bid for the 275-member National Assembly that voters will select this weekend. In particular, his administration has targeted al-Zarqawi’s network, known as Tawhid and Jihad until October when he adopted the name al-Qaida in Iraq.
The offensive against al-Zarqawi has had mixed results. A U.S.-led assault on his stronghold, Fallujah, in November led to the killing or capture of hundreds of insurgents, though others dispersed and established new positions elsewhere in Iraq. In his statement Sunday, al-Zarqawi acknowledged that another top aide, Omar Hadid, was killed during the Fallujah offensive.
In addition to announcing the arrest of al-Jaaf, authorities said they captured a man they described as al-Zarqawi’s propaganda chief, Hasam Hamad Abdullah Muhsin al-Dulaymi, also known as Dr. Hassan.
Meanwhile, a new study by Human Rights Watch charges that Iraqi security forces systematically abuse and torture suspects in custody, despite a costly U.S.-led effort to refashion police and intelligence agencies.
The report, to be released Tuesday, examined Iraqi-run jails and detention centers, not the U.S.-managed facilities such as Abu Ghraib prison, where revelations of prisoner abuse drew international attention last year and led to convictions of U.S. soldiers. Researchers interviewed 90 detainees from July to October 2004, and 72 alleged they were tortured or poorly treated, particularly during interrogation.
The treatment of Iraqi prisoners has been a growing concern among human rights activists as more detentions and interrogations are conducted by Iraqi forces without American or British oversight. Detainees described beatings, use of electric shock and isolation – in some cases enough abuse to cause permanent damage, according to the report.
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Mistreatment of police suspects was standard procedure during the Saddam Hussein regime. In a system in which torture was a favorite tool of the state and international norms were mocked, the coercion of confessions was well within the bounds of police conduct. Many in Iraq’s law-enforcement ranks hold the same jobs today that they did under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Rights advocates fault the Iraqi government and its U.S. backers for failing to effect a cultural change in the law-enforcement community’s attitudes on human rights.
“This is systemic abuse, obviously indicative of more than a few bad apples,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division.
“(Change) must come from the highest levels of the Iraqi government,” she said.
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Law-enforcement specialists working to retrain Iraqi police say breaking patterns of abuse will take more than just the overthrow of the Baathist regime.
“There is a whole generation of Saddam’s children who do not understand international standards and realities,” said Paul McCormill, a Northern Ireland police superintendent working with British forces in Maysan province in southern Iraq. “It’s going to take a full generation at least to change that.”
Allawi, the interim prime minister, said in a recent Baghdad news conference that Iraqi forces were observing all international standards in their interrogations, including in terrorism cases.
Allawi promised that trials for those accused of terrorism would be “straightforward and legal.” He said Iraqi investigative judges were conducting the interrogations of many of the top suspects and that human rights observers had access to the detainees.
“This is all done in a very open and very transparent way by internationally qualified judges,” Allawi said.
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AP-NY-01-24-05 2057EST
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