British Troops in Iraq Kill Senior Qaeda Figure
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Sept. 25 — A senior Al Qaeda operative who engineered a brazen escape from a high security American prison in Afghanistan last year was killed in a predawn raid by British soldiers in a quiet, wealthy neighborhood in southern Iraq on Monday, officials said.
Two companies of about 250 soldiers wearing night goggles and carrying night-vision rifles stormed a house in the neighborhood of al-Tuninnah in Basra, intending to capture the operative. The spokesman for the British military in Iraq, Maj. Charles Burbridge, I identified the operative as Omar al-Faruq. But they were fired upon as they entered and shot back, killing Mr. Faruq.
Major Burbridge said Mr. Faruq was “a terrorist of considerable significance” who had been hiding in Basra, but he declined to say whether this was the same man who escaped from the American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, last July. Mr. Faruq’s identity was confirmed by an American official in Washington and by an official in Basra, who was not authorized to speak on the subject.
At the time of his arrest, in Jakarta, Indonesia, in June, 2002, Mr. Faruq was described at as one of the most important Al Qaeda figures ever captured by the United States. He was later transferred to the detention facility at Bagram, 40 miles north of Kabul, where he was interrogated by the American military.
As evidence of his seniority, he was transferred out of military custody, apparently taken by Central Intelligence Agency officers, who hold the most senior terrorist suspects. He was back in the military system by the time of his escape, and was on a list of prisoners marked for transfer to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr. Faruq, whose mother, an Iraqi national, lives in Iraq, had entered the country about two weeks ago from Kuwait, according to an Iraqi official and to a neighbor who lived next door to the house that was raided by British soldiers overnight.
Mr. Faruq, a Sunni Arab, had been staying with a brother in the town of Zubayr, the one large Sunni enclave in a hostile Shiite area, said a neighbor, who gave only his first name as Ali. |
