Al-Qaeda reward doubled
2004-02-11 22:10
Baghdad - The US army on Wednesday doubled to $10m
the reward on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspected al-Qaeda operative linked to a wave of terror attacks aimed at derailing power transfer in Iraq.
The reward hike came after two suicide bombings targeting recruitment centres for Iraq's fledgling army and police force killed more than 100 people in a 24-hour span on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Just hours later, the US-led coalition released to the media a memo seized last month and attributed to Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose real name is Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, branding the document a "blueprint for terror in Iraq."
Coalition spokesperson Dan Senor told reporters the 17-page document "clearly calls for unleashing civil war" betweeen Iraq's majority Shi'ite community and the unseated Sunni political and military elite.
Senor described Zarqawi as a new "wild card" in the US deck of cards of most-wanted Iraqis, in which captured ex-president Saddam Hussein was the ace of spades.
He said the memo outlines a plan for continued attacks on Iraqis linked to the coalition, drawing parallels between the strategy and this week's two deadly suicide bombs.
An English translation of the document shows the author plotting civil war ahead of a handover of power to an Iraqi authority from the US-led coalition, set for June 30.
The document says al-Qaeda would "lose the pretext to wage terror" after that date, Senor said.
"Elements of al-Qaeda feel threatened by the prospect of sovereignty transfer", the spokesperson said, adding that their plans "will fail if we hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30."
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief for the US-led coalition, said that "as we come closer to handing over sovereignty, there will be a spike in violence; but we are prepared for it."
Zarqawi is accused by the US-led coalition of acting as an intermediary between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and Ansar al-Islam, a militant group based in northern Iraq.
In the memo, the author expresses fears that the anti-US movement was losing momentum in Iraq but warns there is still potential to maximise harm.
"There is no doubt that our field of movement is shrinking. With the spread of the army and police, our future is becoming frightening," it said.
However, it adds: "We feel that our entity is spreading within the security void existing in Iraq, something that will allow us to secure bases on the ground, these bases that will be the jump start of a serious revival, God willing."