Iraqi authorities set up new checkpoints and warned innkeepers to watch for suspicious people - all part of security measures to protect Shiites marking the holiest day of their calendar this week.
The measures were put in place Sunday ahead of the feast of Ashoura to prevent a repeat of suicide bombings by Al Qaeda in Iraq that killed at least 230 people during the past two years� ceremonies.
Iraqiya state television reported Sunday that Al Qaeda in Iraq�s fourth-ranking figure, Mohammed Rabei, also known as Abu Dhar, had been arrested by Iraqi police.
The terror organization, led by the Jordan-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been blamed for kidnappings and beheadings of foreign and Iraqi hostages and suicide attacks against police, soldiers and civilians.
Al-Zarqawi�s group has targeted Shiites because it considers them heretics and collaborators with American forces after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein.
Two Shiites were found Sunday bound and shot to death, apparently the latest victims of violence between rival Sunni and Shiite groups. Both were wearing black in apparent preparation for Ashoura, which marks the seventh century death in battle of the revered Shiite saint Imam Hussein, grandson of Islam�s Prophet Muhammad.
Hussein was killed in Karbala in 680 A.D. as part of a power struggle that produced the split between Shiites and Sunni Muslims. Ashoura falls on Thursday this year under the Islamic lunar calendar.
Sunni extremists have targeted the past two Ashoura festivals. Eight suicide bombers killed 55 Shiites last year. In 2004, at least 181 people died in bombings at Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala.
In Karbala, the center of the Ashoura commemorations, police warned innkeepers not to rent rooms to guests without proper identification. About 8,000 troops will be on duty in Karbala, officials said, and extra checkpoints have been set up on highways to protect Shiite pilgrims.
US and Iraqi forces have also stepped up efforts to track down al-Zarqawi. A senior Iraqi security officer, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said Iraq�s intelligence services had information that al-Zarqawi was spotted a few weeks ago near the border with Iran.
�Intelligence services are working on the assumption that he has been planning to move to Iran after being besieged in the areas where he was operating inside Iraq,� the official said.
Previous reports on al-Zarqawi�s whereabouts have proven false and he could simply be hiding among Sunni communities in Diyala, the volatile province bordering Iran.
Under Saddam, Shiites were suspected of ties to Iran, which fought an eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. They were restricted from performing Ashoura rituals such as beating themselves with their hands, chains and the flat edges of swords in shows of grief.
Shiites resumed the rites after Saddam�s ouster, with rituals often turning into frenzied, blood-soaked outpourings of religious devotion.
The Shiites, who comprise about 60 percent of Iraq�s 27 million people, now hold key positions in the government and security services. Most of the insurgents are Sunnis.
Also Sunday, a London newspaper reported that the British government has drawn up a secret plan to begin withdrawing 2,000 soldiers from Iraq this spring - a quarter of its total forces.
The Independent said 500 soldiers would be out by the end of May under the plan, which has been approved in principle by Washington as long as there are no upheavals in the political process or security in Iraq.
Britain�s defense secretary said there had been no change in British policy.
�We will stay in Iraq until the job is done and the conditions for handover to the Iraqi security forces have been met,� Secretary John Reid said in a statement.
There are about 8,000 British soldiers in Iraq, most of them in or near the southern city of Basra.
The US military, meanwhile, announced the release of about 50 Iraqi detainees. No women were among them. The freeing of women is a demand by kidnappers of Jill Carroll, the American journalist who was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad.
The head of a government watchdog agency said Sunday that authorities have issued arrest warrants for a Sunni Arab member of parliament and his son on embezzlement charges.
Meshaan al-Jiburi and his son Yazin were alleged to have pocketed millions of dollars earmarked for creation of a paramilitary force to protect oil pipelines against insurgent attacks, according to Judge Radhi al-Radhi, chairman of the High Commission of Integrity.
The whereabouts of al-Jiburi and his son are unknown. Al-Radhi said Iraqi authorities have asked Interpol for help in tracking them down. |
Iraq's former electricity minister, a member of the transitional government set up after the 2003 US-led invasion, was arrested today on corruption charges after he surrendered, an official said. Ayham al-Samarie, a dual Iraq-US citizen and Sunni Arab political figure, is one of the five ministers in the former government against whom arrest warrants were issued for massive corruption. The others — the ministers of labour, defence, transportation and housing — remain at large. Al-Samarie gave himself up at the Central Criminal Court, said Judge Radhi al-Radhi, chief of the Public Integrity Commission. He said al-Samarie was put under arrest and taken to a jail where he will remain until a trial starts. No date for the trial has been set.
Iraqi authorities issued arrest warrants for a Sunni Arab member of parliament and his son, accusing them of embezzling millions of dollars meant to protect vulnerable oil pipelines, the head of a government watchdog agency said Sunday.
IRAQ'S former defence minister is expected to be arrested in the coming days in connection with the disappearance of more than $1 billion from the country's defence budget, a senior corruption investigator said yesterday.