IRAQ/FILE: Official says Iraqi former airline pilot orchestrated the 2003 bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters

Record ID: 355842

  • Title: IRAQ/FILE: Official says Iraqi former airline pilot orchestrated the 2003 bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters
  • Date: 17th January 2010
  • Summary: BAGHDAD, IRAQ (FILE - AUGUST 19, 2003) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SMOKE COMING FROM U.N. HEADQUARTERS BUILDING IN CANAL STREET, WITH VEHICLES IN THE FOREGROUND ON FIRE SECURITY IN FRONT OF PLUME OF BLACK SMOKE COMING FROM BURNING VEHICLES WIDE OF SMOKE FROM BUILDING U.N. FLAG WALKING WOUNDED WITH U.S. SOLDIERS WOUNDED MAN WITH BANDAGED BLOODY HEAD WALKING AWAY VARIOUS OF
  • Embargoed: 1st February 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVABU98MLHYJ31JQPOF6MKGVEVH5
  • Story Text: An Iraqi former airline pilot who has been in Iraq's custody for seven months orchestrated the 2003 bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters in which 22 people were killed in 2003, an Iraqi official said on Saturday (January 16).
    The suspect, identified as Ali Hussein al-Azzawi or Abo Imad, has been charged with supervising a series of attacks, including the U.N. bombing; an attack on an Iraqi army troop carrier in 2006 and bombings in eastern Baghdad in 2007 and 2008, Baghdad security spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi said.
    "(We have managed) to arrest the terrorist Ali Hussein al-Azzawi, known as Abo Imad, he is the head of rulers of Iraqi Islamic State, in his house in the New Baghdad area through intelligence information and cooperation of people. He is the direct perpetrator of many terrorist attacks and at the top, supervising the planning of the bomb attack on the U.N. headquarters in August 2003, which killed dozens of people, among them the representative of the U.N. in Iraq," Moussawi said at a news conference.
    Then-U.N. envoy to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian, was among those who died when a truck bomb exploded at the Canal Hotel, which served as the U.N. operations centre, in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone five months after the U.S. invasion.
    Azzawi was arrested in Baghdad on June 26, Moussawi said. He did not say where the suspect had been for the last seven months or why the charges were being announced now.
    Moussawi showed videotapes of what he described as the confessions of three men, two Iraqis and a Saudi, who said they had received orders from Azzawi.
    The Saudi, who identified himself as Mohammad Abdullah Hassan, said Azzawi acted as a financial manager for al Qaeda in addition to planning attacks.
    "He supervised the military operations, one of these operations was exploding a tanker next to Iraqi army detachment in Shahraban, as he was supervising the amount of explosives loaded to that tanker and then supervised the explosion," Hassan added, appearing in the video wearing a dark blue prison uniform.
    Moussawi said Azzawi also negotiated ransoms with the relatives of foreigners kidnapped in Iraq but did not give further details.
    Moussawi said Azzawi had been a pilot for Iraqi Airways, the state-owned airline.
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