This article claims that the four men arrested in Germany are suspected members of what they call Ansar al-Islam. This would be strange since that terrorist organization seems to have been destroyed during the initial invasion. It has since been supplanted by The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah, which is not directly led by Abu Mussab Zarqawi, but soes cooperate with his Al Qaeda linked terrorist organization. The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah has been responsible for the beheading murders of dozens of foreign civilians. That group operates in the areas bordering the Kurdish homeland of Northern Iraq and is responsible for murdering up to 90 Iraqis in Mosul over the past three weeks. Just today there are reports that al-Sunnah was involved in a plot to assassinate the governor of Iraq's Dohuk province. Since Ansar al-Sunnah may be composed of remnants of Ansar al-Islam and operates in the same general vicinity, it is easy to get the two groups mixed up.

Three Iraqi men were arrested Friday just hours before Allawi met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. The suspects are believed to belong to the Ansar-al-Islam terror group, which has attacked U.S. and allied forces in Iraq since last year's U.S.-led invasion.

U.S. authorities have linked the group to al-Qaida. German authorities have said Ansar al-Islam has about 100 supporters in the country.

Prosecutors did not release the three suspects' names. One of them, the suspected head of an Ansar-al-Islam cell in the southern German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, has been under investigation by Stuttgart authorities since October 2003, Der Spiegel reported.

Posted by: Rusty at 06:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 281 words, total size 2 kb.