A former official responsible for security at the Shrines of the Askari Imams in Samarra has been arrested for affiliation with the group that bombed the holy site in February of last year, which led to the eruption of sectarian violence in the country.Director of Mosul's National Command Center, Major General Abdulkareem Khalaf, told KUNA that security forces arrested the official, Aws Tareq Fareed, in Mosul Wednesday evening, adding that the arrest was based on "intelligence information" that the man in question was back from Syria, where he had been in hiding.
The arrest warrant for Fareed was issued last year, and he is now being interrogated in Baghdad, he said. The bombing of the two shrines early last year led to a wave of sectarian violence that ripped through the country and took great effort to control. The shrines were again targeted in June of this year.