Jihadi Du Jour: British Troops Kill Bin Laden Lieutenant

By Peter Graff in Baghdad
September 26, 2006 04:00am

BRITISH troops in Iraq said they killed one of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top global lieutenants, who escaped from a US prison in Afghanistan last year.

Omar Faruq was shot dead while resisting arrest during a raid by about 200 British troops in Iraq's second biggest city, Basra, British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge said.

US leaders have described Faruq as the top al-Qaeda operative in South-East Asia. He was caught in Indonesia in 2002 and held at a high-security detention centre at Bagram airbase, north of the Afghani capital Kabul, until his escape last year.

“The individual had been tracked across Iraq and was in hiding in Basra,” Major Burbridge said, calling him a “very, very significant man”.

Faruq, once believed to be the main link between bin Laden's followers and the Jemaah Islamiah militant group blamed for bombings in Indonesia, was one of four men who escaped from Bagram in July last year.

Washington did not reveal that he had got away until November, when defence lawyers demanded he be produced as a witness at the trial of a US army sergeant accused of abusing prisoners in Bagram. US officials were then obliged to reveal that he could not testify because he had escaped.

The escape caused embarrassment for Washington, changes to security at Bagram and a massive manhunt in Afghanistan which failed to track down the four prisoners.

Major Burbridge said Faruq was hiding in Basra and not necessarily believed to be operating there. The mainly Shiite southern Iraqi city does not have a large presence of the Sunni militant group al-Qaeda, whose Iraq branch has claimed responsibility for attacks on Shiites.

Omar al-Faruq, senior operative in Southeast Asia and confidant of Osama bin Laden, was to be a witness in a trial of an American Soldier for abuses in Bagram. Does that strike anyone else as absurd? An American Soldier is on trial for abusing prisoners who are in this prison are in this prison because they are top lieutenants in bin Laden's Army. And this guy was going to be considered a witness in the American Soldier's trial.

No wonder four of the prisoners there were able to escape. One wonders if the guards there are loath to do anything to prevent them from escaping. Touching one of them could end up in a court martial.

Another interesting point is that Omar al-Faruq was tracked across Iraq and was hiding out in Iraq. Would that imply that Iraq does, indeed, have something to do with the Global War on Terror?

The following is a summary of his capture, treatment and the information he gave up under interrogation.

June 2002

Omar al-Faruq, a top al-Qaeda senior operative in Southeast Asia, is captured by Indonesian agents after receiving a tip from the CIA. He is flown to the CIA interrogation center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where is subjected to months of intense interrogations . “It is likely, experts say, that ... Mr. Faruq [was] left naked most of the time, his hands and feet bound. [He] may also have been hooked up to sensors, then asked questions to which interrogators knew the answers, so they could gauge his truthfulness,” the New York Times will later report. One Western intelligence official will tell the newspaper that Mr. Faruq’s interrogation was “not quite torture, but about as close as you can get.” For three months he is provided with very little food, subjected to sleep and light deprivation, prolonged isolation and temperatures ranging from 100 degrees to 10 degrees. After being softened up, Faruq provides information about “plans to drive explosives-laden trucks into American diplomatic centers [and] detailed information about people involved in those operations and other plots, writing out lengthy descriptions.” [New York Times, 3/9/2003]

Hooah for the Brits for ridding the world of this guy. A job well done.

crossposted at Blue Star Chronicles

Labels: al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiah, Omar al-Farouq, Osama Bin Laden