|
15/08/2008
The Associated Press
Iraqi Shiite explosive and assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran's elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militia
fighters and other sources in Iraq.
A senior U.S. military intelligence officer in Baghdad also said the fighters planned to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as U.S. and Iraqi forces.
The intelligence officer described he information Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the intelligence information. The officer on Wednesday protded Iraq's national security adviser with several lists of the assassination teams' expected targets. The country's intelligence service is now preparing operations to determine where and when the specially trained fighters will enter Iraq and will provide an assessment to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the intelligence officer said. Iran, Hezbollah's mentor, denies giving any support to Shiite extremists in Iraq. The U.S. official apparently disclosed the information in an attempt to create political pressure on Iran to suspend the training and prevent the militia fighters from returning to Iraq. The U.S. military also wants the Iraqi government to take steps to protect the targets. Wanted posters picturing men believed to be heading the special groups are being posted around Baghdad, the military officer said. The fighters are expected to return to Iraq between now and October, but the officer said there's no intelligence suggesting they are actually in Iraq yet. Many of the fighters fled to Iran this spring after Iraqi government forces cracked down first on militia sanctuaries in Basra and Sadr Ce running training camps in southern Iraq until April, when they were pushed into Iran by the Iraqi crackdown. The trainees in the Iranian camps include three Iraqis already wanted by the Iraqi government for terrorist attacks: Haji Mahdi, Haji Thamir, and Baqir al Sa'idi, the officer said. He identified two Iraqi Shiite militia groups in Iran by name: The League of the Righteous, or Asaib al Haq, and the Kataib al Hezbollah. The special group criminals are offshoots of cle2hc Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi mqlitia. They spun off their own groups after al-Sadr declared a cease-fire with the Iraqi government in August 2007 and are not thought to be under his control now
|
Click Here to view