BAGHDAD, Iraq - British forces
shot and killed a leading al-Qaida terrorist Monday more than a year after he
embarrassed the U.S. military by making an unprecedented escape from a maximum
security military prison in Afghanistan, officials said.
Omar al-Farouq was gunned down after he opened fire on British forces during
a raid on his home in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, British forces
spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said.
A British soldier of the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) patrols the streets of
Kabul, August 2006. Security forces in Afghanistan have announced they
have killed more than 60 Taliban in new clashes, as a British minister
played down suggestions the nation's troops deployed here are
over-stretched.[AFP] |
Burbridge said he could not comment on whether it was the same man who
allegedly led al-Qaida's Southeast Asia operations, citing British policy not
allowing him to link an individual to a specific organization.
But a Basra police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity for security
reasons, said it was the same man. The officer said al-Farouq entered Iraq three
months ago, was known to be an expert in bomb making and went by the name
Mahmoud Ahmed while in Basra.
Al-Farouq and three other al-Qaida suspects escaped from Bagram, in central
Afghanistan, in July 2005, but the Pentagon waited until November to confirm his
escape. The delay upset Indonesia, which had arrested al-Farouq in 2002 and
turned him over to the United States.
In Indonesia last November, al-Farouq's wife said the U.S. government should
have put her husband on trial.
"My husband was kidnapped by America but they never officially told us ...
for more than three years," Mira Agustina said then. "I don't believe that my
husband was a terrorist. He is only an ordinary man who cried when he watched
movies about violence."
"I was shocked when news broke that my husband was a terrorist wanting to
kill many people," she said, adding that she told her two daughters that their
father had gone off to America "to work."
But a top security consultant in Indonesia, Ken Conboy, told The Associated
Press last year that al-Farouq joined al-Qaida in the early 1990s and trained in
Afghanistan for three years before unsuccessfully trying to enroll at a flight
school in the Philippines so he could commandeer an airplane on a suicide
mission.
He later plotted to stage car and truck bombings at U.S. embassies across
Southeast Asia on or near the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks,
but the plan was thwarted and he was captured, Conboy said.
It was not known why al-Farouq fled to Iraq, but officials have said he was
born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents. In the interview last year, Conboy played down
concerns that al-Farouq would go to Southeast Asia.
"He's Iraqi after all. If he's not hiding out (in Afghanistan or Pakistan),
he's probably headed to Iraq to join the fight there," Conboy said then.
Al-Farouq and the three other escapees boasted about their breakout from
Bagram on a video broadcast in October 2005 on Al-Arabiya television. They
claimed to have plotted their escape on a Sunday when many Americans on the base
were off duty. One of the four, Muhammad Hassan, said to be Libyan, said he
picked the lock of their cell.
In the video, apparently filmed in Afghanistan, the men show fellow militants
a map of the base and the location of their cell. Another shot in the video
showed Hassan leading a prayer.
Some 250 British troops from the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment took part
in the raid on al-Farouq's home Monday.
"We had information that a terrorist of considerable significance was hiding
in Basra. As a result of that information we conducted an operation in an
attempt to arrest him," Burbridge told the AP by telephone from southern Iraq.
"During the attempted arrest Omar Farouq was killed, which is regrettable
because we wanted to arrest him," Burbridge said.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraqi politicians praised a deal Monday among the
largest Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish groups that delays a possible division of
Iraq until the constitution is amended.
But Iraq's second-largest Sunni group rejected the deal and promised to fight
any effort to divide the country now or in the future.
Saleh al-Mutlaq's National Dialogue Front also accused Iraq's biggest Sunni
Arab coalition of ignoring "the will of the people" by signing on to the deal
and suggested it had betrayed the community for political gain.
Legislators formed a 27-member committee Monday to begin talking about
amending the constitution. It will take about a year to review any changes and
get them approved - first by parliament and then by referendum.
The separate Shiite-sponsored federalism bill will be read to the legislature
Tuesday and debated for two days. It could be voted into law as early as Oct. 5.
Although the deal allows Shiites to gain quick approval for their
legislation, it makes them wait 18 months before it can become law. In the
meantime, Sunni Arabs have a year to try to hammer out a deal to amend the
constitution in an effort to dilute the federalism law.
Sunni Arabs fear that if the constitution is not amended, the legislation
will splinter the country and deny them a share of Iraq's oil, which is found in
the predominantly Kurdish north and the heavily Shiite south.
The deal was seen by many as a victory for Sunnis. But in many respects it
was a pyrrhic victory - any constitutional amendment must be approved in a
referendum, which may not be supported by many Shiites or Kurds. Shiites make up
60 percent of Iraq's population of about 26 million. Kurds are about 20 percent
and Sunni Arabs 15-20 percent.
