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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| GID's thwarted 150 Zarqawi attacks on Jordan since April 2004 |
| 2005-11-13 |
| The leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, dispatched three men, and possibly a woman as well, from Iraq to carry out the suicide bombing attacks here on Wednesday night, Jordanian security officials said Saturday. Jordanian security, they said, has foiled some 150 attempted attacks by Mr. Zarqawi's group since April 2004 - and another 10 this year alone. The officials spoke on the condition that they not be identified because their work is covert. They described Mr. Zarqawi as increasingly frustrated at not being able to export his brand of terrorism - indiscriminate and aimed at civilians - out of Iraq. While the investigation into the bombings, which hit three major hotels and left 57 people dead, is still in its early stages, the security officials said they had begun to sketch the architecture of the attacks and had concluded that they represented a significant shift in tactics from Mr. Zarqawi's many previous efforts here. This time, they said, Mr. Zarqawi appears to have purchased and assembled all of his materials - including the suicide belts - outside of Jordan, and relied on non-Jordanians to carry out the strikes. The agents said the other attempts were aimed at embassies and government offices, which are generally well-protected. Wednesday's attack involved so-called soft targets. "Anybody can go to a hotel with a pistol and kill people," one security official said. "You don't have to be Zarqawi to do that." Three days after the attacks on three downtown hotels, officials have begun to release details of the investigation. Investigators said they had 14 suspects in custody and had located at least one safe house that was used by a cell that carried out the attack. They said the bombers came from Iraq, crossing into Jordan with the tools of terrorism on Nov. 7. King Abdullah said in interviews with CNN and the state-run news agency that there were four suicide bombers, including a woman, and that they were all members of Mr. Zarqawi's group. The officials said they had identified the three men and would name them at a news conference on Sunday. "I think that to walk into the lobby of a hotel to see a wedding procession and to take your wife or your spouse with you into that wedding and to blow yourself up, these people are insane," King Abdullah said in an interview on CNN. The hardware of the attack has so far been easiest to determine. The security officials said the bombers wore suicide belts packed with RDX, a military explosive. The detonators, they said, were, in a novel move, taken from grenades. The hand grenades and explosives were made in Yugoslavia, the officials said. Hand-grenade detonators would be safer to carry over long distances, they said, because a pin must be pulled to set them off. The possible role of a woman has stymied the investigators. In the many years of investigating Al Qaeda-related activities, they said, never before had they found a woman involved in such work in Jordan. Security officials said they believed that the bomber who walked into the Radisson SAS Hotel and blew himself up in the middle of a wedding party was accompanied by his wife, perhaps to make him appear less suspicious. That would seem to confirm a claim attributed to Mr. Zarqawi saying that one attack was the work of a husband and wife. The investigators said they did not know whether the woman also blew herself up, or whether she survived. A large portion of the investigation, until this point, has involved forensic examination of body parts. The investigators said they had a piece of brain matter that a DNA test had shown to be from a woman, but it had not yet been matched to any of the known victims. Investigators said that they had already disinterred one female victim to check the DNA, but that it was not a match. Jordan and Mr. Zarqawi have been waging war against each other for more than a decade. Mr. Zarqawi was sentenced to life in prison in Jordan in the early 1990's, after returning from Afghanistan, where he had been immersed - from the sidelines - in the world of the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet Union. He was released from prison in 1999 during a general amnesty, and ever since he has been trying to launch attacks in Jordan, the officials said. "This is personal," said one. "It is a war, a long war." With his role in the insurgency in Iraq drawing support from many Arabs, Mr. Zarqawi has transformed himself from what Jordanian officials described as a thug and street criminal into a terrorist with money and resources at his disposal. The security officials said Mr. Zarqawi had two wives and that one of them, Intisar, was living with him in Iraq. They also said they had information saying that Mr. Zarqawi now wore an explosive belt at all times, and that he had worked to change his appearance, removing a tattoo from his arm and putting on weight. One security official, who said he had questioned Mr. Zarqawi on several occasions, described him as vengeful, and recalled that he would insult his interrogators as apostates, or infidels. "He is a very mean person who holds a grudge," the official said. "He will never forget a bad word said about him He is very vindictive and always looks for revenge." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |