'Killing civilians is wrong'

2005-07-05 15:23

Amman - The former mentor of Iraq's most wanted man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi bitterly criticised the deadly attacks against civilians and other Muslims in Iraq claimed by his one-time protege.

Abu Mohamad al-Maqdissi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, said: "I warned in the past against actions which kill dozens of innocents from among the Iraqi people."

Maqdissi, whose real name was Issam al-Barqawi, was released from Jordanian custody last week, six months after he was acquitted of plotting attacks against the United States embassy and other targets due to a lack of evidence.

An Islamist ideologue that headed a Salafist Sunni Muslim conservative movement, the Palestinian-born Maqdissi initially met Zarqawi in Pakistan in 1991.

'Zarqawi becomes a champion'

The pair were arrested in Jordan in 1994 for membership in an outlawed Islamic group, al-Tawhid, jailed and released as part of a general amnesty in 1999.

But, during their detention, the Jordanian-born Zarqawi became a champion of Maqdissi's teachings about the jihad - a word that both meant the struggle to improve oneself in the eyes of God and holy war.

Maqdissi said violence that fails "to differentiate between women and children, civilians, soldiers and American forces" and which targets "Shiite mosques, churches and holy places in general" was wrong.

He said: "In our opinion, such action in Iraq or in any other Muslim country, distorts the image of the blessed jihad. Jihadists should not aim their wars and their explosives at Muslims."

'Killing of workers, journalists'

Maqdissi said: "Operations such as the abductions and killings of relief workers and neutral journalists ... have defaced the image of the jihad and are portraying its followers as killers who don't care about bloodshed."

Maqdessi insisted he had "no direct relations to the groups fighting in Iraq".

He also complained that Zarqawi used Maqdessi's website on the internet - Tawhid wal Jihad - to release claims of attacks until last year when he changed it to "al-Qaeda group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers".

Zarqawi, a fugitive who had a $25m US bounty on his head, faced a death sentence handed down in absentia by a Jordanian court.

His organisation had claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq.

- AFP