Captor said he was insurgency chief

Sunday, August 20, 2006 Iraqi investigators say Abu Nour was a senior officer in Saddam Hussein's air force. By DAN MURPHY CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Jill Carroll's captors weren't a run-of-the-mill kidnap-for-ransom criminal group. Nor were they just any band of insurgents. They were close allies of al-Qaida in Iraq. Her chief captor claimed that after he abducted Carroll, he was elevated to the leadership of the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq (MSC) — the umbrella council over about half a dozen major Sunni insurgent groups — including al-Qaida in Iraq. While both Iraqi and U.S. officials agree that her former captor is probably the official head of MSC, they disagree over how much power he wields. More intriguing, say some experts, is that her experience reveals a strong ideological affinity between Iraqi and foreign insurgents that contradicts news reports of a growing schism between them. About the group The MSC was a little-known group at the time of Carroll's Jan. 7 kidnapping. But on Jan. 15, the group was formally announced as a front for Iraqi and foreign mujahideen, or holy warriors, in an Internet statement. Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi — a pseudonym — was named its emir, or leader. Shortly after that statement, Carroll was approached by her lead captor who used the nom de guerre "Abu Nour" around her. Soft-spoken and stern, he never slept in the same place as his captive. He told her that he was a scholar of Islamic law and hailed from a wealthy Baghdad family. He wore Western business suits and a spicy cologne. He went to some lengths to prevent her from getting a good look at his face, sometimes covering it with a scarf and at other times simply sitting behind her. Usually reserved, on this day in late January he was excited and happy, almost puffed up with pride, says Carroll. But what he had to say, as he sat just outside a doorway, frightened her: In his halting but effective English, he brought up Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. "He's a very good man, and he's my friend.... If you met him, you would like him so much," Abu Nour said. "But he's not the head of the mujahideen anymore. ... We have something new." He told her that most of the major jihad groups in Iraq had gotten together to form the MSC, a name Carroll had never heard before. (Indeed, the name had been used publicly in Iraq only once before, in a May 2005 propaganda video claiming the kidnapping of Australian contractor Douglas Wood. He was rescued six weeks later.) Abu Nour told her the intent was not to sideline al-Qaida, but to put Iraqis in the titular lead of the fight against the U.S. presence and the Shiite-led government. "We decided we need to have an Iraqi face on this," he told Carroll. "The Americans are always saying that foreigners are leading the mujahideen, so people need to see an Iraqi face, and he [al-Zarqawi] agreed. So we decided to make Abdullah Rashid the head of this group." Revealing his identity Then Abu Nour dropped his bombshell. "I am Abdullah Rashid! When the editor of your newspaper finds out you spoke to Abdullah Rashid, he will be very happy." Senior Iraqi police investigators agree that Abu Nour or Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi is the head of the MSC, and that he was once a senior officer in Saddam Hussein's air force. The Iraqi investigators refused to reveal their identities for security reasons. A senior U.S. military intelligence officer in Iraq says that while Carroll's kidnappers were involved with the MSC, Abdullah Rashid was exaggerating his importance to Carroll, perhaps to confuse investigators. This U.S. officer also says, contradicting Iraqi investigators, that the group is operationally minor. The MSC "are a few guys and a dog and an Internet connection," he says. "Al-Qaida really drives the agenda." Either way, the evidence indicates that Carroll spent almost three months with some of al-Qaida's closest Iraqi allies. The MSC proclaimed its ties to, and admiration for, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, al-Zarqawi, before and after his killing by U.S. forces in early June. "May God accept you, Abu Musab, and join you with the martyrs and the righteous," reads a June 9 MSC statement signed by Abdullah Rashid. The group has emerged as the largest disseminator of propaganda for the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq. On some days, it posts dozens of Internet releases claiming attacks on U.S. forces, and frequently follows these with videos of exploding U.S. humvees. A new leader? After al-Zarqawi's death, foreign intelligence services and analysts speculated that Abdullah Rashid could emerge as the terror leader's successor. That hasn't happened, which has convinced U.S. intelligence officials in Iraq and outside analysts that the MSC is not the leader of the jihadis that it pretends to be, but is instead a largely subservient Iraqi ally of al-Qaida. "My understanding is that the MSC is like a front group," says Evan Kohlmann, an author and expert on al-Qaida propaganda who closely tracks the MSC's public statements. "I would say that if Abdullah Rashid were really the significant leader the MSC portrays him as, then he probably would have taken over al-Qaida from al-Zarqawi. Since he hasn't, that's an indication to me that he's more of a front man." Indeed, while Abdullah Rashid presented himself as the head of the MSC, it became clear to Carroll over time, both from his comments and those of more junior captors, that he was not in complete control of the situation. References were made to waiting for the Shura Council's decisions on what to do with her. The Arabic word shura implies consultation, but it seemed to Carroll that the final arbiter was al-Zarqawi. Late in her captivity, Carroll was told that al-Zarqawi had ordered the MSC not to accept a ransom for her, leaving her junior guards grumbling that that meant they'd be stuck watching her for a long time.