May 23 (Bloomberg) -- An aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, today appeared on state-run Jordanian television and confessed to involvement in the killings of Iraqis and other Arabs. Ziad al-Karbouli, also known as Abu Houthiyfah, admitted to working for Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi and said he took part in looting and theft in Iraq.
Al-Karbouli described how last year he kidnapped and killed a Jordanian driver in Iraq, and how he seized two Moroccans who worked at their country's embassy there, as well as how he killed Iraqis.
Al-Zarqawi's group has carried out some of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq since the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003, including beheadings of non-Iraqi hostages. The U.S. has a $25 million bounty on al-Zarqawi, whose organization also acknowledged responsibility for suicide bombings last November at three hotels in Jordan's capital, Amman, that killed at least 57 people.
Jordanian security forces in March foiled a suicide bomb attack in the country and arrested three suspected al-Qaeda terrorists, two of them Iraqi nationals and the third a Libyan citizen. Jordan's King Abdullah II ordered security forces to undertake a war on terrorism in the aftermath of the Amman hotel bombings. Jordanian courts have sentenced al-Zarqawi to death in his absence for an attempted bomb attack on the border with Iraq and for the murder of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman in 2002.
State television, citing an unidentified security official, described al-Karbouli as a customs employee on the Iraqi border, adding that he was arrested in a joint operation by the intelligence forces and army special forces after he was drawn out of Iraq, Agence France-Presse reported. Al-Karbouli also confessed to killing four Iraqi national guards, television cited the security official as saying, AFP reported. |
