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One of Iraq’s ‘most wanted’ men arrested: security spokesperson
[Rudaw] One of the "most wanted" men in Iraq who was allegedly behind a deadly 2016 bombing in Baghdad’s Karrada district and other incidents was arrested, officials said on Monday.

"Five years after the terrorist bombing of Karrada, our brave forces succeeded in capturing the terrorist Ghazwan Alzawbaee in a complex intelligence operation outside the country," Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraqi prime minister and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, said in a tweet.

"He is the primary culprit behind the Karrada atrocity and many others," he added.

Karrada, a commercial hub on the east bank of the Tigris River, had been the target of regular attacks since the US-led invasion in 2003. The district saw its deadliest explosion in July 2016, which killed over 250 people and maimed about 200 others. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) group.

Spokesperson for the commander-in-chief, Yehia Rasool, said he is "one of the most wanted persons by the Iraqi judiciary, as this terrorist carried out many criminal operations against the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces."
The suicide car bombing in the central Karradah district was the deadliest attack by a single bomber in the Iraqi capital after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Two Iraqi intelligence officials said the man identified as Ghazwan al-Zobai, an Iraqi, was detained during a complex operation that was carried out with the cooperation of a neighboring country they did not name. He had been tracked by authorities for months.

They told The Associated Press that al-Zobai was detained in an unidentified foreign country and transported to Iraq two days ago. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak of the operation on the record.

The 29-year-old al-Zobai was an al-Qaida militant when he was imprisoned by the Americans in Iraq at Cropper prison until 2008, and then escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in 2013. He joined the Islamic State group after that.

The officials said al-Zobai plotted many attacks in Iraq, the most infamous of which was the 2016 bombing in Karrada in 2016. He operated under the Alias Abu Obaida.
...a popular nom de guerre...

Posted by: trailing wife 2021-10-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=615543