Terror leader al-Zarqawi dead, Iraqi officials say
From Debra Krajnak
CNN
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted insurgent in Iraq, is dead, according to an aide to Iraq’s prime minister.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was expected to make a public announcement of the death, the details of which are unclear.
Two Pentagon officials told CNN that the government is awaiting al-Maliki’s announcement in Baghdad before commenting on the report officially.
One official says the Pentagon is not sure of how the death was confirmed and that there might need to be “additional forensics” done before they can be fully confident the terrorist leader is dead.
Officials could provide no further details at this time.
Terror mastermind al-Zarqawi had eluded U.S. and Iraqi authorities for years, often taunting them with recorded messages and videotapes, including one in which he is believed to behead an American hostage.
He and his followers had taken responsibility for or been accused of perpetrating or aiding suicide bombings, car bombings, beheadings and other acts of brutality.
Soon after Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled, the 39-year-old al-Zarqawi quickly became the face of the insurgency.
Militant Islamic Web sites instantaneously posted his messages, bringing terrorism to cyberspace and reinforcing his support among Islamists.
In one videotaped posting, al-Zarqawi was suspected of being the masked man who beheads U.S. hostage Nicholas Berg, as he lets out piercing screams.
“For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage for some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib (prison), and they refused,” the voice said. “Coffins will be arriving to you one after the other, slaughtered just like this.”
In October 2004, al-Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, and renamed his group al Qaeda in Iraq.
With the insurgency spreading, the United States grew more determined to catch or kill the Jordanian-born militant, and increased his bounty to $25 million — equal to bin Laden’s.
“This guy, Zarqawi, has sworn his allegiance to bin Laden. He’s declared his intentions,” President Bush once said. “This is an enemy with no conscience and they cannot be appeased.”
Al-Zarqawi gained recognition in February 2003 when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the U.N. Security Council to make his case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Iraq, he said, was harboring al-Zarqawi’s terrorist network, a “collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants.”
Two years later, a man thought to be al-Zarqawi said his group had “declared a bitter war against democracy and all those who seek to enact it,” and declared all Iraqi candidates and voters enemies of Islam.
Al-Zarqawi fled to Iraq after the U.S.-led attack in Afghanistan and soon made a name for himself as one of the insurgent leaders. In one attack, his network was blamed for the 2003 suicide bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, and 21 other people.
There was an upsurge in car bombings in Iraq in late April 2005, after the transitional national assembly chose a new Cabinet. It was the worst spike of attacks since the U.S.-led push against militants in Falluja the previous fall.
Counterterrorism and intelligence officials believe Al-Zarqawi has forged links with terrorist groups in many other countries, including his native Jordan, where he admitted to the Nov. 11, 2005, triple hotel bombings in Amman that killed 60 people and injured scores, mostly Jordanians.
Jordanian courts have convicted and sentenced al-Zarqawi in absentia.
In December 2005, he was sentenced to death by hanging for a failed suicide bombing at the al-Karama border crossing between Jordan and Iraq. In March, he received 15 years in prison for a plot to attack the Jordanian Embassy in Iraq.
A court handed him a death sentence for the October 2002 assassination of Laurence Foley, with the U.S. Agency for International Development, and convicted him in a December 1999 “millennium” plot against Jordanian hotels.
Al-Zarqawi was born in Zarqa, Jordan, as Ahmed al-Khalayleh. He created his nom de guerre from the name of his hometown, one of the poorest communities in Jordan that is home to Palestinian refugees and Bedouins.
Al-Zarqawi’s father, a Palestinian, fought the Israelis in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that established the state of Israel. The son didn’t excel academically, and by his late teens had developed a reputation as a petty thug.
In 1989, he joined the mujahedeen, the loosely aligned, U.S.-backed opposition groups fighting to oust the Soviet army from Afghanistan.
There, al-Zarqawi met a spiritual mentor, Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a Kuwaiti-born jihadist leader intent on overthrowing secular Arab governments. The two reunited in 1992 in Jordan, where Al-Zarqawi was jailed for having explosives and plotting against the Jordanian kingdom.
When he was released in 1999, he was described as a committed radical.
While his wife and four children remained in Zarqa, he returned to western Afghanistan, where he oversaw a terrorist training camp in Herat, became an authority on chemical and biological weapons and met bin Laden. The camp was destroyed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and al-Zarqawi fled west, to Iraq.
Al-Zarqawi has proved to be slippery prey.
In November 2004, U.S.-led troops raided the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, only to find that many insurgent leaders, perhaps even al-Zarqawi, had bolted before the attacks.
In February 2005, U.S. troops received a tip that al-Zarqawi might be heading to a meeting in Ramadi, west of Falluja. Although his vehicle was under surveillance by a Predator spy plane, and checkpoints were set up, the vehicle eluded them, and the militant escaped.
In April 2005, U.S. troops raided a hospital in Ramadi in the hope of capturing al-Zarqawi — but struck out. “He was taken to a hospital. When we got the news, we rushed there, but he was out of there,” said Iraqi Lt. Gen. Nasser Abadi months later.
In December 2005, Hussain Kamal, Iraq’s deputy minister of interior, admitted that Iraqi security forces had al-Zarqawi in custody in 2004, but released him because they didn’t know who he was.
Although al-Zarqawi touted many successes in the insurgency he heads, a senior U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad contended in December 2005 that the militant was “struggling.”
“He’s struggling because we’ve taken away a lot of his leadership. He’s struggling because we’ve taken away a lot of his munitions. He’s struggling because we’ve denied him safe havens across Iraq. He’s struggling because we’ve taken away his freedom of movement,” said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch.
“But he’s still out there with the same stated objective.”
CNN’s Henry Schuster, Nic Robertson, Jamie McIntyre and Mike Boettcher contributed to this report.