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| Iraq-Jordan |
| IEDs are the greatest threat to US troops in Iraq |
| 2005-04-12 |
| Before his arrest last month, Ahmed Hassan Reja was a bombmaker who played a key role in the fight against coalition and Iraqi government forces. Now he sits cross-legged on the floor, blindfolded and barefoot, in an Iraqi prison. Reja, 27, was captured after he deployed the insurgency's principal and most-destructive weapon: cheap, strategically placed bombs. His head bent, one hand bandaged from an abortive blast, Reja describes himself as part of a 12-man cell in the Islamic Army in Iraq, which is loosely affiliated with Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq. Largely uneducated, he says he is ignorant of Islamic Army leadership beyond his own cell and unclear on who would lead Iraq if insurgents prevail. The Interior Ministry says Reja is the face of the enemy. Reja says he was paid about $15 per assignment to set and explode the small but devastating bombs called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. He says he successfully detonated two IEDs against U.S. and Polish military convoys, and that he was captured March 23 while attempting to bomb a Baghdad pharmacist who the insurgents believed was a U.S. collaborator. Reja says he believed in the fight that landed him in an Iraqi prison, where he is being held without formal charges. The Interior Ministry made him available for an interview, although Iraq's Human Rights Ministry says blindfolding a prisoner during an interview was a violation of his human rights. "I consider myself a freedom fighter for the independence of my country," Reja says. Married with two young children and a mother to support, he says he worked as the caretaker at the Al-Sadeek Mosque in the farm village of Latifiyah south of Baghdad while training with the Islamic Army. The insurgency relies on young men such as Reja to deploy IEDs and VBIEDs — vehicle-borne IEDs, or car bombs — on the streets of Baghdad and on desert highways that U.S. forces patrol. "The greatest threat we face are the IEDs," says Marine Col. Bill Jurney at a forward operating base in Fallujah, where the U.S. military launched an incursion in November to root out Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters. At Camp Fallujah, the Marine headquarters just south of the river town, an elite team of U.S. explosive ordnance-disposal specialists is called on almost every day. Marine Staff Sgts. Jason Taylor, 34, of Jacksonville, N.C., and Matthew Small, 25, of Richlands, N.C., say that during a six-month period last year, their squads were called out on 317 missions to disarm enemy bombs. Back in Iraq for just a month, they already have been on 147 missions. Team leaders Taylor and Small say enemy bombmakers are becoming more adept. They now are able to detonate hidden explosives from up to 3 miles away, compared with just 100-300 yards a year ago. They say insurgents have progressed from using basic detonators such as wireless doorbells and car-alarm systems to cell phones and two-way radios. "They've learned how to adapt any power source that is a communications device to relay that to the explosives device," Taylor says. That makes people who place the bombs harder to find after an explosion. It also helps protect the detonator. In response, U.S. forces are developing innovative methods to counteract IEDs, Taylor says. • They are suppressing electronic signals insurgents can use to detonate explosives and employing air patrols to pre-emptively explode roadside bombs. • They have launched "black bag" ops — intelligence-driven operations — such as infiltrating the Iraqi bombmakers' supply chains to provide them with non-detonating blast caps and other material. • Coalition patrols are developing better intelligence on who is making the bombs. "We know who the bombmakers are. We have a good idea of the villages they live in. We target them," Taylor says. Last week in Tarmiya, after an Army patrol survived an IED that detonated in front of the patrol's vehicles, two Apache helicopter crews chased a vehicle they saw racing away from the bomb scene. According to an Army statement, soldiers detained three Iraqis who had a detonator and camcorder that showed the insurgents planting an IED. Just before the blast, the videotape carried the spoken words, "By the help of God, we will execute them," the statement said. Back in Baghdad, Reja blames his capture on a small slip-up. He says he had started to arm a bomb at the Iraqi pharmacy when he realized he had a dead battery that would be unable to process the detonation signal. After buying a new battery, Reja says, he forgot he'd attached a small explosive, the blast cap, to the detonator cord. Once the new battery was inserted, the cap exploded in his hands. The Interior Minister's interrogation chief, Brig. Rawad Al-Dulaimi, says men like Reja are criminals, not religious jihadis or sympathizers of fallen dictator Saddam Hussein. "I do not really say there is no religious or political (element), but it is very limited," Dulaimi says. He says the threat to Iraqi security today stems primarily from Saddam's decision just before the war began two years ago to release an estimated 50,000 criminals from prison. He also says efforts by the Iraqi police and army to contend with this hardened element have been professional. But activists have criticized the crackdown. In a 94-page report released in January, Human Rights Watch accused Iraq's government of "systematic use of arbitrary arrest, prolonged pre-trial detention ... without judicial review, torture and ill-treatment of detainees ... and abysmal conditions." The Interior Ministry also is under fire from the government's Human Rights Ministry, which is challenging its airing on national TV of videotaped confessions of captured insurgents. Reja is scheduled to appear on an upcoming program. Aad Sultan, a Human Rights Ministry spokesman, calls the televised confessions "illegal." Last week, he vowed to protest: "I will obtain a judges' approval to stop that (TV) show." Sultan described the blindfolding of Reja during his interview with USA TODAY as "a clear violation" of international human rights standards. "This ministry does not support such practices," he says. Reja describes his treatment during incarceration as "fairly good." Hunched over on the floor, he speaks in a monotone, though he flinches when a security officer slams a door or pounds a stapler on a desk. While Reja still opposes the presence of U.S. forces here, he expresses some regret for his actions. Speaking disjointedly, through a translator, he says, "I am regretting the things I have done. And I am advising my colleagues to surrender because this is hopeless work. ... My mistake was to be captured rather than surrender." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #5 Illegal! I love when these low life rotters (human rights activsits {sic}) declare something illegal. In this case putting this mass murder's confession on Iraqi TV |
| Posted by: sea cruise 2005-04-12 11:57:33 AM |
| #4 why worry about human rights for murderers? |
| Posted by: Thraing Hupoluper1864 2005-04-12 11:45:37 AM |
| #3 Now this is a hoot ... the Human Rights Ministry of Iraq is opposing "its own" government on the subject of security versus rights ... |
| Posted by: Phutle Javise6217 2005-04-12 11:40:31 AM |
| #2 Lessee....did the human rights groups have any comments before 2003? And my son, the Marine, seemed to be more troubled by mines in the "Wild West" near the Syrian border. But there's not much media coverage out that far. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-04-12 7:40:33 AM |
| #1 This reporter - along with the USAToday editors - is a classic jihadi symp and demonstrates the MSM runs a close second. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-04-12 5:52:19 AM |