Al-Qaeda-Saddam alliance?

2003-08-30 21:00

Najaf, Iraq - Two Saudis espousing the al-Qaeda terror group's militant brand of Islam, and a pair of Saddam Hussein's henchmen, have been detained for the gruesome car bombing in Najaf in a sign Saddam's men and Muslim fundamentalists may have made common cause.

Police arrested the four moments after the car bomb ripped through the Mausoleum of Ali, one of the holiest shrines in Shi'ite Islam, on Friday, killing 83 people, among them prominent Shi'ite cleric and political leader Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim.

"Two are Iraqis from Basra, who belonged to the former regime, while the other two are Arab Wahhabis," Najaf Governor Haidar Mehdi Matar said on Saturday.

A spokesperson for Hakim's party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), later said the two Arabs were Saudis and called all four al-Qaeda agents.

Wahhabism, a rigorous version of Islam forged in Saudi Arabia, is a byword for those subscribing to the puritanical vision of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

Whether or not the two foreigners identify themselves as belonging to al-Qaeda, in waging war on Iraq they would be sharing bin Laden's conviction of taking up arms in the name of Wahhabism to create a new Islamic empire, in harmony with the teachings of the Muslim prophet Mohammad.

Collaboration

SCIRI's London representative said the arrests lent credibility to suspicions of an alliance between al-Qaeda and veterans of Saddam's regime.

"I suspect there was a collaboration here between al-Qaeda and Saddam's people, as well as in the blasts at the UN headquarters and Jordan embassy (in Baghdad)," said Hamed al-Bayati.

Referring to the three devastating attacks in a short span of three weeks, Bayati said: "They are using new tactics - car bombings, suicide bombings that have the fingerprints of al-Qaeda.

"But al-Qaeda cannot act alone in Iraq. They must have help from inside. That would be Saddam's loyalists."

The attack came close on the heels of the truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19 and the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in the first week of August.

Young, rebel cleric

Before the arrests, some speculated young rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose followers are suspected in the murder of a pro-Western Shi'ite cleric in April, might have plotted the killing of one of his rivals for the Shi'ite throne.

But Bayati dismissed the notion Sadr could have been involved.

"They would not dare attack the holy shrine of Imam Ali," Bayati said, warning it would cost them too much in popular support.

"They don't have the capabilities," he added.

The spectre of an alliance between al-Qaeda and the deposed Ba'ath party had also been raised after the deadly blast at the UN headquarters in Baghdad which killed 22 people.

Iraq's US civil administrator, Paul Bremer, has warned repeatedly that hundreds of the party's followers have returned to plot terror attacks around the country.

US officials have also sounded the alarm over militants slipping into the country from Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April, more than 50 Islamists have been arrested in the Kurdish province of Sulaimaniya on suspicion of coming to Iraq to fight US soldiers, Kurdish officials told AFP on August 17.

- AFP