LOC21:42
18:42 GMT
BAGHDAD, Jan 18 (KUNA) -- The Iraqi Defense Ministry has on Monday unveiled
confessions of nine jailed militants of Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of
Two Rivers that the group slew Christians who refused to pay ransoms.
The group has targeted also Shabak people, a minority group of Kurdish
origin who live mainly in the villages of Ali Rash, Khazna, Yangidja and
Tallara in Sinjar district in the province of Nineveh in northern Iraq,
spokesman of the ministry Maj.-Gen. Staff Mohammad Al-Askari told reporters
here.
The Iraq security authorities managed to arrest the nine militants,
including a Syrian national identified as Azmi Darbi Mohammad, who belong to
the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization of Iraqi insurgent groups
established on October 15, 2006.
The detainees are involved in killings, abductions and ransom takings in
Nineveh province, the spokesman said.
He screened a videotape showing Mohammad Ramzi Shihab, the purported mufti
(religious mentor) of Nineveh, who confessed of slaying local Christians for
failure to pay ransoms.
Shihab is the mastermind of the bombing which claimed 40 lives in a
predominantly Shabak village on August 10, 2009, Maj.-Gen. Staff Al-Askari
said.
"I had been recruited and named mufti by a Pakistani Imam living in London
who financed part of our operations," Shihab said in the videotape.
"I issued fatwas (religious opinions) to kill a Christian teacher and a
ship-owner who refused to pay ransoms," he admitted.
He also confessed of issuing fatwas to kill three women for their
cooperation with the Iraqi security services.
"Azmi Darbi Mohammad, a resident of Homs, central Syria, was arrested which
disguising as a female," the military spokesman revealed.
He was recruited by female militants to work as a maid in the houses of
headmen in order to collect information and convey explosives, Al-Askari
pointed out.
Ali Ma'moun, a pharmacist from Iraq's northern city of Mosul, has admitted
to killing injured security personnel who were hospitalized after clashes with
insurgents.
He issued death threats to physicians and pharmacists in Nineveh who failed
to pay ransoms, Al-Askari added.
The prisoners include Ahmad Thannoun Ismail who killed Christians and Adel
Najm Shikara Al-Hamdani who was appointed by the Islamic State of Iraq as
ruler of the west bank of Tigris in Mosul.
Mosul, the provincial capital of Nineveh, some 395 km north of Baghdad, has
seen a apparent clout of Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers in
2006, 2007 and 2008 with thousands of local inhabitants being forced to leave
their home on ethnic grounds. (end)
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