BAGHDAD, 10 August 2003 — The Iraqi Interior Ministry has requested that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation take charge of the probe into the deadly Jordanian Embassy bomb blast in Baghdad, a coalition spokesman said yesterday.
“The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior has requested the assistance from the FBI,” the spokesman told AFP on condition of anonymity. The FBI is being brought in amid US suspicions that the attack, which killed at least 14 people and wounded more than 50, bears the hallmarks of an operation by an Al-Qaeda-style terror group.
The decision was a flip-flop by the coalition which said on Friday the Iraqi police would head the investigation and not the US-led administration. At the time, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) stressed the 32,000-strong police force would be closely watched by coalition advisers, including their chief, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik. But Kerik apparently had a change of heart Friday night, according to a coalition spokesman.
Explaining his decision, Kerik told The New York Times: “I think the Iraqi investigative ability is not capable of handling an investigation of this type. We need specialized assistance in the area of forensics, blast issues and explosives.”
The stakes apparently were too high, as one top Defense Department official said the military was focusing its attention on Ansar Al-Islam, a militant group with links to Al-Qaeda.
“The one organization that we have confidence, that we know is in Iraq and in the Baghdad area is Ansar Al-Islam,” said Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, operations director of the joint staff. In March-April, US-led forces conducted a devastating air and ground assault to wipe out an Ansar Al-Islam-controlled enclave in northeastern Kurdistan, but last week, the US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, warned the organization was trying to regroup.
A Jordanian official on Saturday raised the possibility that the attack was carried out by fugitive Jordanian national Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was at the center of pre-war US efforts to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.
Zarqawi, whose real name is Fadel Nazzal Al-Khalayleh, fled to Iraq in 2002 and is suspected of working with Ansar. “The style of the attack and the explosives used point toward Ansar Al-Islam and in particular to Zarqawi, who is still on the run in Iraq,” the senior Jordanian official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Although some point the finger at radical Islamist groups, others suspect Iraqis who had a score to settle with Jordan for a host of reasons, including the kingdom’s decision to grant asylum to Saddam’s two daughters one week ago.
An Iraqi newspaper reported yesterday that a group calling itself the Humanitarian Aid Forces for Iraq had handed out pamphlets at the beginning of the week calling for anti-Jordan demonstrations by the embassy. The group said it was angry at Amman for the treatment of the thousands of destitute Iraqis living in poverty in Jordan.
UK favors UN move: Britain is in favour of a new United Nations resolution endorsing the reconstruction of Iraq, Valerie Amos, British secretary of state for international development, indicated in an interview published yesterday.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Amos suggested that the US was drawing up proposals for a new resolution, saying: “The Americans are doing exactly the same thing.” Amos believes that the US, stung by the spiralling cost — in terms of both money and lives — of policing Iraq, is beginning to see the benefits of the UN, according to the Telegraph.
“We’re currently looking at the possibilities for another resolution and what that might mean, which issues it would cover,” he said A new resolution would make it possible for other countries including India, Pakistan and Turkey to contribute to a UN-backed multinational peacekeeping force, Amos suggested, according to the Telegraph.
