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| Iraq | |
| Qaida mutiny in Baghdad jail kills 18 | |
| 2011-05-09 | |
BAGHDAD: The accused mastermind of last year's bloody Baghdad church siege grabbed a policeman's gun mid-interrogation on Sunday and led a jail mutiny that left eight police, including a general, and 10 inmates dead.
Among the eight policemen killed in Sunday's incident was Brigadier General Moayed al-Saleh, the head of counter-terrorism for Baghdad's central Karrada district; a lieutenant colonel and two first lieutenants, a senior counter-terrorism official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "This cell, which was dismantled in November, was accused of a large number of terrorist operations -- not just the one against the church," the official said. "Several investigations were ongoing against them, and that's why they were still being held by this unit." An interior ministry official, who did not want to be named, said that Huthaifa al-Batawi, who stands accused of planning the October 31 siege on a Baghdad church in which 46 hostages and seven security force members died, was among those killed. He said, without elaborating, that six other people were wounded in the uprising at the interior ministry detention facility in Baghdad. According to the counter-terrorism official, Batawi, who was the Baghdad chief of al-Qaida's front group in Baghdad when he was arrested on November 27, was being interrogated because officials were seeking intelligence of possible attacks in the wake of bin Laden's death. Batawi managed to grab the weapon off the first lieutenant who was questioning him and shot him dead, before taking hostages and releasing a group of fellow inmates. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |