TNT Found in Home of Iraqi Leader

[sabra]

Source: NYSun

WASHINGTON — The Iraqi general in charge of the Baghdad security plan and the Interior Ministry is pressing Prime Minister al-Maliki to lift legal immunity for 15 Sunni members of parliament and begin prosecuting the lawmakers for conspiring with terrorists, in some cases Al Qaeda.

On April 18, Lieutenant General Aboud Qanbar presented the Iraqi premier with CD-ROM dossiers for the Sunni politicians, including almost all members of the National Dialogue Front, a bloc of three parties that have sought to negotiate cease-fires with those remaining portions of the Sunni Arab insurgency that have not been subsumed by Al Qaeda. The discs on Mr. Maliki's desk include photographs, testimony, and transcripts of conversations as part of the evidence against the premier's political opposition.

The lawmakers' recommendations for prosecution include some American allies such as Adnan al-Duleymi, whom American officials say is likely not linked to terrorism. But they also include parliamentarians that the American military leadership believes are senior terrorist operatives, such as Khalaf al-Ayan.

An American military official this week confirmed to The New York Sun that on April 3, American forces raided Mr. Ayan's house in Yarmouk and found stores of TNT that matched the kind used in the suicide belt that detonated on April 12 at the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria. That blast killed a member of parliament, Mohammed Awad, a Sunni Arab member of Mr. Ayan's Dialogue Front, yet the terrorist who killed him is believed to have been a member of Awad's security detail.

But the background on Mr. Ayan, who has threatened to return to "resistance" if the political process does not yield to the demands of his Sunni constituency, also implicates him in a string of attacks in Mosul on May 17 that detonated bridges and blew up a police station, according to one senior Iraqi Sunni official and an American intelligence officer who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the investigation. A raid last week on his parliamentary offices, in which American forces participated, yielded time-stamped before-and-after photos of the attacks, according to these sources.

Read more: http://www.nysun.com/article/55195

[hobbit709]

1. I'll believe this evidence

the same way I believe bush's evidence. Time-stamped means nothing on a camera. Takes all of 30 seconds max to change that.

[sabra]

2. "15 Sunni members of parliament"... I guess we know which side we are on

in this civil war?

[Kagemusha]

3. You know, he might actually be guilty of all this.

Just because your enemies are bad people doesn't make you a saint.

[sabra]

4. what I find more troubling is the list being only Sunnis...

<snip from article>

The suspect list of members of parliament is a particularly sensitive matter for Washington, which is seeking both to purge sectarian ministers and officials from the Iraqi government and promote reconciliation between the Shiites and the Sunnis.

A long-standing complaint for American military officers is that General Aboud has issued target lists to his officers in the Iraqi army that consist only of Sunni suspects and not Shiite death squads, as the Sun first reported on May 3. American commanders in Iraq have shared, for example, information on Shiite legislators, such as a former national security minister under Prime Minister Jafari, Abdul Karim al-Eaneze. But the list of legislators recommended for prosecution includes only Sunnis.

[Kagemusha]

5. Well of course it doesn't list death squad suspects, don't be silly.

And I'm sure that Shiite All Stars intelligence service that's competing with the CIA-funded one has much to say about which Sunnis have been naughty and which have been nice.

Less Sunnis in parliament, less people to vote against your bills.

[sabra]

7. Bush: "this is democracy in action"

:sarcasm:

[tabasco]

6. I imagine everybody has a few pounds after Tommy Franks left tons of that shit laying around.

There was enough stolen from Al Qaa Qaa to make thousands of IEDs.

[MasonJar]

8. The Shites condemning the Sunnis. It may be true, but who believes

the Shites or the Americans anymore? No one!