Insurgent leader is not real, Hired as an Actor, U.S. military says

LATIMES -

BAGHDAD — In March, he was declared captured. In May, he was declared killed, and his purported corpse was displayed on state-run TV. But Wednesday, Omar al-Baghdadi, the supposed leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated group in Iraq, was declared nonexistent by U.S. military officials, who say he is a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-run terror group.

In reality, an Iraqi actor has been used to read statements attributed to al-Baghdadi, who since October has been identified as the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner.

Bergner said the information came from a man whom U.S. forces captured July 4 and who was described as the highest-ranking Iraqi within the Islamic State of Iraq. The detainee, identified as Khalid Abdul Fatah Daud Mahmoud Mashadani, has served as a propaganda chief in the organization, a Sunni Muslim insurgent group that claims allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.

According to Bergner, Mashadani helped create Islamic State of Iraq as a "virtual organization" that is essentially a pseudonym for al-Qaida in Iraq, another group that claims ties to al-Qaida. The front organization was aimed at making Iraqis believe that al-Qaida in Iraq is a nationalistic group, even though it is led by an Egyptian and has few Iraqis among its leaders, Bergner told a news conference.

"The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest effort by al-Qaida to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people," he said.

Islamic State of Iraq had been widely described as an umbrella organization made up of several insurgent groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq.

There was no way to confirm the military's claim, which comes at a time of heightened pressure on the White House to justify keeping U.S. troops in Iraq. Critics of the Bush administration say he has been trying to provide that justification by linking the broader-based al-Qaida to the conflict in Iraq, even though Bin Laden's organization had no substantial presence here until after the U.S. invasion of March 2003.

"The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people" in Iraq, President Bush said Tuesday.

The military announcement was the latest twist surrounding the figure known as al-Baghdadi. Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari rejected the U.S. claim and insisted al-Baghdadi is real. "Al-Baghdadi is wanted and pursued. We know many things about him, and we even have his picture," Askari said.

However, he said he could not release a photograph or additional information because it could jeopardize attempts to capture al-Baghdadi.

The man known as al-Baghdadi emerged as one of Iraq's to insurgent leaders after Islamic State of Iraq emerged last year following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

In March, the Iraqi government announced it had captured him, but then it acknowledged it had caught someone else. In May, confusion reigned when both Iraqi and U.S. officials announced the death of a high-ranking Islamic State of Iraq official. Iraq identified the man as al-Baghdadi and showed what it said was his dead body on television. The U.S. said it was someone else and had the DNA to prove it. Iraq countered by insisting they were the same man, and Iraqi officials dropped the matter.

Bergner said Mashadani had grown disenchanted with the Islamic State's foreign leadership, which has faced opposition from homegrown Sunni Muslim extremist groups who oppose the U.S. occupation but who fear non-Iraqis' attempts to take over the insurgency. One of those groups is Ansar Al Sunna, and Bergner said Mashadani was a leader in that group before assuming his latest role 2 1/2 years ago.

Navy Rear Adm. Greg Smith said U.S. officials had long suspected that Islamic State was a facade. "We sort of knew, but now we actually have the individual who was the co-founder," he said of Mashadani.

Askari said the Americans were being duped by Mashadani and that al-Baghdadi was the leader of a nationalistic faction of Islamic State of Iraq dominated by former Baathist Party members loyal to Saddam Hussein. It is different from the faction headed by foreigners but just as lethal, Askari said. "Two factions: the outsiders' Qaida and the insiders' Qaida," he said.

Neither Bergner nor Smith offered specifics of what they said were foreign al-Qaida leaders' involvement in Iraq's violence. But they said al-Qaida-affiliated groups, even more than Shiite Muslim militias, were the No. 1 threat to Iraq and hoped to fuel sectarian violence with major bombings.

They also had few details about the actor they said portrays al-Baghdadi in videos, saying only that he is an elderly man named Abu Abdullah Naima and is Iraqi.

The announcement was the latest in a series of statements from U.S. officials here pointing the finger at foreign influence in Iraq's violence. The shift in rhetoric has coincided with rising violence against U.S. troops, and Iran, for one, accuses the United States of changing its tone because it needs a scapegoat to blame for its failure to bring peace to Iraq.

Three U.S. troops were reported killed Wednesday, and at least 38 people were killed in violence across the country or found slain. They included 15 unidentified men whose bodies were discovered across Baghdad and who were suspected of being victims of sectarian death squads.