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Suspect for shrine blast is tunisian { June 28 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/world/middleeast/28cnd-iraq.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/world/middleeast/28cnd-iraq.html
June 28, 2006
Shrine Blast Suspect Is Held, Iraqi Official Says
By EDWARD WONG and JOHN O'NEIL
BAGHDAD, June 28 — The Samarra shrine bombing, which set off waves of sectarian killing that are still plaguing the country, was the brainchild of an Iraqi member of Al Qaeda, and not a foreign terrorist, a senior Iraqi official said today.
Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, the country's national security adviser, identified Haitham al-Badri as the planner of the February attack. He said that Mr. Badri, a member of a Sunni tribe from Salahadin province, which includes Samarra, was currently a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, but earlier had belonged to a different Iraqi insurgent group, Ansar al-Sunna.
Mr. Rubaie said that the recent capture of a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali, a Tunisian also known as Abu Qudama, had led to the identification of Mr. Badri.
Abu Qudama was wounded and captured several days ago after a group of 16 insurgents tried to storm a checkpoint in al-Dhuluiya, 25 miles north of Baghdad, Mr. Rubaie said. All the other attackers were killed, and afterwards, Abu Qudama confessed to killing many Iraqis, and provided details of the Samarra bombing.
Mr. Badri remains at large.
That confession yielded several new details about the shrine bombing, Mr. Rubaie. He said it was the work of a team of two Iraqis, four Saudis and Abu Qudama,under the direction of Mr. Badri.
The group took advantage of a handoff in security at the shrine, when the Iraqi army turned it over to a local facility protection service. "The terrorists entered the shrine the night before the bombing, and they jailed the guards in one of the rooms and had the whole time — several hours — to install the equipment of crime," Mr. Rubaie said.
The group also was responsible for the killing of three Iraqi journalists working for al Arabiya network — a television reporter and two technicians — who were reporting on the Samarra bombing outside the shrine, he said.
The bombing of the Golden Dome shrine, regarded by Shiites as one of their holiest sites, was followed by the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis in reprisal killings, as the country teetered on the verge of a full-blown civil war. Killings on the basis of ethnicity or religion have become routine in Baghdad and other mixed areas of Iraq, and a report issued Tuesday by the International Organization on Migration, a London-based advocacy group, estimated that more than 100,000 Iraqis had fled their homes since the bombing of the shrine, primarily out of fear of assassination.
Mr. Rubaie said that Abu Qudama also said that Mr. Badri and his team were responsible for "hundreds" of killings in Ramadi, Mosul and Samarra and had carried out a series of car bombinga against Iraqi security forces.
The American military said today that it had captured a suspected member of Al Qaeda near Baquba, but that a civilian was killed during the raid.
"While securing the initial target, coalition forces noticed an individual acting suspiciously at a nearby house," the military said in a statement. "They assessed him as an imminent threat, engaged and killed him. He was later determined to be a non-combatant."
The military also announced the death of a soldier who was wounded on Monday in combat in al-Anbar province, a center of the Sunni insurgency in western Iraq.
Reuters reported that an Iraqi police officer was killed by a bomb south of Baghdad Tuesday night, and that 3 people were killed and 12 injured when a car bomb detonated near a crowd of laborers looking for work in Baquba this morning.
Edward Wong reported from Baghdad for this article and John O'Neil reported from New York.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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