U.S. reveals face of alleged new terror chief
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The U.S. military on Thursday revealed for the first time a photo of the man said to be the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.
The military said the picture showed Egyptian-born Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a senior al Qaeda in Iraq operative believed to have taken over the terror network after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week.
The Defense Intelligence Agency declassified the photograph on Wednesday at the U.S. military’s request, said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell at a news conference in Baghdad, adding that he had no idea how the DIA got the photo. (Watch why al-Masri is considered the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq — 2:08)
Al-Masri “has been a terrorist since about 1982, beginning with his involvement in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was led by Zawahiri,” said Caldwell. Ayman al Zawahiri is al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s top deputy.
Caldwell described al-Masri as “an explosives expert, specializing in the construction of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.” He also said al-Masri spent time training with terrorists in Afghanistan starting in 1999.
After U.S. forces ousted Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in late 2001, al-Masri began to work with al-Zarqawi in Falluja “and then later became, we think, basically the emir of southern Iraq” for the group, Caldwell said.
Al-Masri’s “intimate knowledge” of the terrorist network will help al Qaeda in Iraq “regain some momentum if, in fact, he is the one that assumes the leadership role,” Caldwell said.
The military believes al-Masri is also known as Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, who was named last week as al-Zarqawi’s replacement on a Web site used by al Qaeda in Iraq, Caldwell said.
“We’ll continue to do further analysis,” Caldwell added, noting that a power struggle may still be under way inside al Qaeda in Iraq.
cnn.com
He looks like a Photo-Shopped Johnny Depp.
Beginning of the end for Zarqawi group, says Iraq
Iraqi and US officials claimed yesterday that they were close to breaking the back of al-Qaida in Iraq, after hundreds of raids in recent days yielded a trove of information about the group’s movements, bases and tactics, as well as more than 700 captives. Documents and computer equipment retrieved from the rubble where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died last Wednesday indicated that the group was struggling to get new recruits and losing both members and weaponry to regular US raids.
Mowafaq al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, said a memory stick, laptop and other documents had been found in the rubble of the house near Baquba after the US airstrike on Zarqawi, yielding “a huge treasure of information” about the terror network. One document suggested that the group’s best tactic to ease the pressure would be to foment war between the US and Iran.
“We believe this is the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq,” Mr Rubaie told a news conference in Baghdad. “We feel we know their locations, the names of their leaders, their whereabouts, their movements, through the documents we found during the last few days.”
More than 450 subsequent raids on suspected militant hideouts across Iraq have resulted in 104 insurgents being killed and 759 “anti-Iraqi elements” being captured, according to Major General William Caldwell, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq. He added that the raids, a third of which were carried out by Iraqi forces working on their own, had turned up 28 significant arms caches.
A senior US military official in Iraq said US forces were now in possession of some of the best intelligence about the workings of the insurgency since the invasion in 2003. The finds included mobile phones, computer files, flash disks, letters, and policy documents.
“We are still studying the documents and items found since the killing of Zarqawia” said Barham Salih, Iraq’s deputy prime minister. “They reveal much about the scope of al-Qaida in Iraq and its network of relations.”
One document released publicly purported to shed light on the”broad policy guidelines” of al-Qaida in Iraq. It suggested it had sought to drive a wedge between the US and its Shia allies and draw America into a war with Iran.