Great news! Another Zarqawi top aide was arrested today. I am beginning to think, though, that this terrorist, Zarqawi, has more of an entourage than J Lo.
Top Zarqawi aide, Abu Talha, said he would never be taken alive. Today he put up little resistance at his capture.
A top aide to Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, the US military revealed. Mohammed Khalaf Shakar, also known as Abu Talha, is “Zarqawi’s most trusted operations agent in all of Iraq,” a military statement said Thursday. “This is a major defeat for the Al-Qaeda’s terrorist organisation in Iraq. Zarqawi’s leader in Mosul is out of business,” said US Air Force Brigadier General Donald Alston.
In a statement made by al-Zarqawi in early May, in which the militant leader told supporters that it is “acceptable” to kill Iraqi civilians in the course of the insurgency.
That tactic may have encouraged ordinary people to tell authorities where insurgents may be hiding. General Alston says tips from ordinary people to private telephone hotlines have increased three-fold since April.
“The Iraqi people are increasingly exposing the insurgency,” he said. “In some places, there are cells that are concerned that they cannot blend in to that neighborhood anymore, and that the people are stepping up [to oppose them].”
And Barcepundit says that 11 terrorists of the Zarqawi Clan were arrested in Spain, yesterday:
Spanish police arrested 11 people linked to the Islamic terror network run by Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, and another five suspects in the Madrid train bombings of last year, police said Wednesday.
Some 500 Spanish police took part in raids that led to the arrests, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Al-Zarqawi is accused of being al-Qaida’s main operative in Iraq and responsible for the bloodiest terror attacks there.
The ministry said the group of 11 people belonged to a terrorist network that was established in Spain and linked to Ansar al-Islam, which it called the group run by Zarqawi.
It is interesting that Zarqawi has terrorist followers “working” in Kenya now, as well.
