Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in one of eight photos from Rewards for Justice, all undated.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Arabic: أبومصعب الزرقاوي) (possibly born on October 20, 1966) is a Sunni-Jordanian insurgent, guerrilla leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and Islamic militant. He has allegedly confessed, in various audiotapes, to committing numerous acts of violence in Iraq, including killing of civilians and hostage-taking. Among the many acts of violence he is known to have committed, Zarqawi is notorious for beheading hostages in Iraq. Due to his current role in the Iraqi insurgency and his prior activities in Jordan, both American and Jordanian authorities are pursuing his capture. As an Islamist militant, Zarqawi is violently opposed to the presence of U.S., Israeli and Western military forces in the Islamic world. In Iraq he has in September 2005 reportedly declared "all-out war" on Shia Muslims [1] and prior to that already sent numerous Al Qaeda in Iraq suicide bombers to target areas with large concentrations of Shia civilians.

Zarqawi is believed to be a one-time rival, but now high-ranking member of the Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda militant network, and since October 2004 refers to his own organization (Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad - Unification and Holy War Group, an insurgent network operating in Iraq) as "Al-Qaida in Iraq". On October 21, 2004, Zarqawi officially announced his allegiance to Al Qaida; on December 27, 2004, Al-Jazeera broadcast an audiotape of bin Laden calling Zarqawi "the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq" and asked "all our organization brethren to listen to him and obey him in his good deeds."[2]

Zarqawi is the most wanted man in Iraq, [3] having participated in or masterminded a number of violent actions against United States and Iraqi targets. The U.S. government is offering a USD25 million reward for information leading to his capture, the same amount offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden before March 2004. On 15 October 2004, the U.S. State Department added Zarqawi and the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad group to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and ordered a freeze on any assets that the group might have in the United States. There are reports that he was arrested by the Iranian government, and, together with several other high-level al-Qaida suspects, he was offered to the U.S. government in a deal that was never consummated.[4]

One alias, Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh (Arabic: أحمد فاضل النزال الخلايله), is believed to be his real name. Zarqawi literally translates as "man from Zarqa"; he is from the town of Zarqa, 30 minutes northeast of Amman. [5] [6] [7]

1 Background
2 Reported missing leg/death
- 2.1 Missing leg
- 2.2 Death
3 External links

[edit]

Background

In personal accounts Zarqawi is usually described as somber. The son of Palestinian refugees, Zarqawi grew up in the Jordanian town of Zarqa. At the age of 17 he dropped out of school. According to vague Jordanian intelligence reports, Zarqawi was jailed briefly in the 1980s. Subsequently, he was active as a militant in Afghanistan, Jordan, Iraq and elsewhere.

A photo of al-Zarqawi from CNN

In 1989, Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to join the insurgency against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the Soviets were already leaving by the time he arrived. Instead, he became a reporter for an Islamist newsletter. There are reports that in the mid-1990s, Zarqawi travelled to Europe and started the al-Tawhid militant organization, a group dedicated to killing Jews and installing an Islamic regime in Jordan.

Zarqawi was arrested in Jordan in 1992, and spent seven years in a Jordanian prison for conspiring to overthrow the monarchy and establish an Islamic caliphate. In prison, Zarqawi reportedly became a feared leader among inmates. Yet, upon his release in 1999, Zarqawi was reportedly involved in an attempt to blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan, whose customers are frequently Israeli and American tourists. He fled Jordan and travelled to Peshawar, Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border. In Afghanistan, Zarqawi established a militant training camp near Herat which competed with al-Qaida for recruits. According to the Bush administration, the training camp specialized in poisons and explosives.

Sometime in 2001, Zarqawi was arrested again in Jordan but was soon released. Later, he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death for plotting the attack on the Radisson SAS Hotel.[8]

After the September 11 attacks, Zarqawi again travelled to Afghanistan and was reportedly wounded in a U.S. bombardment. He moved to Iran to organize al-Tawhid, his former militant organization. Zarqawi then settled in the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq, where he joined the Islamist Ansar al-Islam group that fought against Kurdish-nationalist forces in the region. He reportedly became a leader in the group, although his leadership role has not been established.

In Colin Powell's famed February 2003 speech to the United Nations urging war against Iraq, Zarqawi (despite the fact that he was not in an area under Iraqi government control) was cited as an example of Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism. Many parts of the speech have since been discredited, and Powell mistakenly referred to Zarqawi as a Palestinian, but Powell and the Bush administration continue to stand by the statements. (According to MSNBC, the Pentagon had pushed to "take out" Zarqawi's operation at least three times prior to the invasion of Iraq, but had been vetoed by the White House because Zarqawi's removal would undercut the case that war on Iraq was part of The War on Terrorism.)

[edit]

Assassination of Laurence Foley

Laurence Foley was a senior U.S. diplomat working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jordan. On October 28, 2002, he was assassinated outside his home in Amman. Under harsh interrogation by Jordanian authorities, three suspects confessed that they had been armed and paid by Zarqawi to perform the assassination. U.S. officials believe that the planning and execution of the Foley assassination was led by members of Afghan Jihad, the International Mujaheddin Movement, and al-Qaida. One of the leaders, Salim Sa'd Salim Bin-Suwayd, was paid over USD$50 thousand for his work in planning assassinations in Jordan against U.S., Israeli, and Jordanian government officials. Suwayd was arrested in Jordan for the murder of Foley. [9] Zarqawi was again sentenced in absentia in Jordan; this time, as before, his sentence was death.

[edit]

Murder of Nicholas Berg

In May 2004, a videotape was released showing a group of five men beheading American Nick Berg, a civilian who had been abducted and taken hostage in Iraq weeks earlier. The speaker on the tape, wielding the knife that killed Nick Berg, identified himself as Zarqawi and claimed responsibility for planning the operation. He stated that the murder was in retaliation for US abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison (see Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal); CIA analysis of the voice concluded that it was indeed Zarqawi's [10]. The CIA analysis failed to quell doubts about the validity of the claim because, among other reasons, the man wears a mask in the video and did not resemble Zarqawi in other superficial ways. (see: Nick Berg conspiracy theories and this article in The Sydney Morning Herald.)

[edit]

Other incidents

Zarqawi is believed by the former Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to have written an intercepted letter to the al-Qaida leadership in February 2004 on the progress of the Iraqi jihad. Many observers do not believe that Zarqawi wrote the letter. (See Zarqawi Letter.)
U.S. officials believe that Zarqawi trained others in the use of poison (ricin?[11]) for possible attacks in Europe, ran a terrorist haven in northern Iraq, and organized the bombing of a Baghdad hotel
Jordan accuses Zarqawi of plotting to release a chemical cloud in Amman. Men were arrested in Amman who purportedly were planning to release the chemical attack. He was convicted in absentia on March 20, 2005, and sentenced to 15 years in prison in addition to his two death sentences for earlier crimes in Jordan.
According to suspects arrested in Turkey, Zarqawi sent them to Istanbul to organize an attack on a NATO summit there on June 28 or June 29.
On July 11, 2004, Zarqawi claimed responsibility for a July 8 mortar attack in Samarra, Iraq. Five American soldiers and one Iraqi soldier were killed.
U.S. officials blame Zarqawi for over 700 killings in Iraq during the occupation, mostly from bombings.
Zarqawi has also claimed responsibility for the Canal Hotel bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Iraq on August 19, 2003. This attack killed 22 people including the UN Secretary-general's special Iraqi envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

[edit]

Credibility questions

Some conspiracy theorists have purported that Zarqawi's notoriety is the product of U.S. war propaganda designed to promote the image of a demonic enemy figure to help justify continued U.S. military operations in Iraq[12], perhaps with the tacit support of terrorist elements who wish to use him as a propaganda tool or as a distraction.[13]. In one report, the conservative newspaper Daily Telegraph described as "myth" the claim that Zarqawi was the head of the "terrorist network" in Iraq. This report cited an unnamed U.S. military intelligence source to the effect that the Zarqawi myth was initially caused by faulty intelligence, but was later accepted because it suited U.S. government political goals.[14]

[edit]

Reported missing leg/death

[edit]

Missing leg

Claims of harm to Zarqawi have changed over time. Early in 2002, there were unverified reports from Afghan Northern Alliance members that Zarqawi had been killed by a missile attack in Afghanistan. Many news sources repeated the claim. Later, Kurdish groups claimed that Zarqawi had not died in the missile strike, but had been severely injured, and went to Baghdad in 2002 to have his leg amputated. On October 7, 2002, the day before Congress voted to give the President permission to go to war against Iraq, President Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio that repeated this claim as fact. This was Bush's primary example of ways Saddam Hussein had purportedly aided al-Qaida. Powell repeated this claim in his famous February 2003 speech to the UN, urging a resolution for war, and it soon became "common knowledge" that Zarqawi had a prosthetic leg.

In 2004 Newsweek reported that some "senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad" had come to believe that he still had his original legs.[15]. Knight Ridder later reported that the leg amputation was something "officials now acknowledge was incorrect," though it's possible this is merely a restatement of the Newsweek report.[16]

When the video of the beheading of Nick Berg was released in 2004, credence was given to the claim that Zarqawi was alive and active. The man identified as Zarqawi in the video did not appear to have a prosthetic leg.

[edit]

Death

There are rumors that Zarqawi is dead because no sightings of him have been confirmed since 2001. In one report, the conservative British newspaper Daily Telegraph described as myth the claim that Zarqawi was the head of the "terrorist network" in Iraq. According to a U.S. military intelligence source, the Zarqawi myth resulted from faulty intelligence obtained by the payment of substantial sums of money to unreliable and dishonest sources. The faulty intelligence was accepted, however, because it suited US government political goals, according to an unnamed intelligence officer.[17]

In March 2004, an insurgent group in Iraq issued a statement saying that Zarqawi had been killed in 2002. The statement said that he was unable to escape the missile attack because of his prosthetic leg. His followers claimed he was killed in a US bombing raid in the north of Iraq [18]. The claim that Zarqawi had been killed in northern Iraq "at the beginning of the war", and that subsequent use of his name was a useful myth, was repeated in September 2005 by Sheikh Jawad Al-Khalessi, a Shiite imam. [19]

On 24 May 2005 it was reported on an Islamic website that a deputy would take command of Al-Qaeda while Abu Musab al-Zarqawi recovered from injuries sustained in an attack. Later that week the Iraqi government confirmed that Zarqawi had been wounded by U.S. forces, although the battalion did not realize it at the time. The extent of his injuries is not known, although some radical Islamic websites called for prayers for his health. There are reports that a local hospital treated a man, suspected to be Zarqawi, with severe injuries. He was also said to have subsequently left Iraq for a neighbouring country, accompanied by two physicians. However, later that week the radical Islamic website retracted its report about his injuries and claimed that he was in fine health and was running the jihad operation.

In an September 16, 2005 article published by Le Monde, Sheikh Jawad Al-Kalesi claimed that al-Zarqawi was killed in the Kurdish northern region of Iraq at the beginning of the US-led war on the country as he was meeting with members of the Ansar al-Islam group affiliated to al-Qaida. Al-Kalesi also claimed "His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death." He also claimed that "Zarqawi has been used as a ploy by the United States, as an excuse to continue the occupation. saying that it was a pretext so they don't leave Iraq."

[edit]