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| Iraq | ||
| Kurd officials recover 200 corpses at Ansar’s hideout | ||
| 2003-04-04 | ||
| Edited for length: Two former Toronto residents are not among the 200 members of Ansar al-Islam killed during a U.S.-led battle to wipe out the radical Islamist group. But more bodies continue to be found in the crevices and isolated footpaths of Ansar's overrun mountaintop bases, so it may be some time before the fate of the former Toronto residents is clear, Westa Hassan said. "It's very difficult terrain," said Hassan, the chief Ansar investigator for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) militia. "We find more bodies every day."
The size of this battle grows every day. With Hassan was Osman Ali, an 18-year-old Ansar prisoner who used to be in the Ansar unit of suicide bombers Jaber commanded. "We washed the faces of the corpses and, one by one, Osman looked at them. Jaber was not one of them," Hassan said in an interview yesterday. A process of elimination determined Sobrhatolla was also not among the dead. Hassan said Osman and other Ansar prisoners identified the other dead Ansar fighters, 95 per cent of whom were Arabs from across the Middle East. Suprise meter didn't budge Hassan believes the Arabs died in the battle — while Ansar fighters of Kurdish origin fled to Iran — because they were not familiar with the mountain passages that lead across the border. None of the Ansar fighters killed in the battle were leaders of the group, Hassan said, adding they likely fled to Iran. Big shots are always the first to run. Jaber, whom PUK officials say also goes by the name of Hassan Farahat, is described by Ali as being in his late 40s. He commanded two fighting units, including one made up of 80 guerrillas, most of them Arabs from across the Middle East, and a six-man cell of suicide bombers. Sobrhatolla, whose wife Ibtisam is under a form of house arrest in PUK-controlled Sulaymaniya, was Ansar's 29-year-old computer expert. Ibtisam is a Canadian citizen who wants to return to Canada, but the Canadian government has so far done little to help her. "Who? Never heard of her?" Farahat and Sobrhatolla met at a Scarborough mosque founded by Farahat. Hassan is convinced Farahat and Abdul Jaber are one and the same person. As evidence, he notes their sons have the same names, and both are members of Iraq's Turkoman minority. Muhammad Saeed Hussein, a PUK prisoner in Sulaymaniya, also believes Farahat and Jaber are the same person. Hussein, 30, was arrested last December while trying to reach Ansar bases. He's from the Iraqi-controlled town of Telafa, west of Mosul, the same town Farahat is originally from. | ||
| Posted by:Steve |