Via Blogs of War this Pakistan Daily Times article. Murdering suspected collaboraters, as we have oft noted, seems to be the national past time in a few promulent countries with large populations of a certain religion of peace....

Suspected Islamic militants opened fire on a man in a crowded bazaar in this tribal town on Monday, killing him before fleeing, an intelligence official said.

No one claimed responsibility for the shooting in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. The official, on condition of anonymity, said that authorities found some evidence suggesting the man may have been killed on suspicion that he was spying for the United States on militants in the area.

The 35-year-old local tribesman, identified as Fazal Rahman, was shot twice in the head by fire from an AK-47 rifle. No one was arrested and a probe into the shooting has been started, he said

UPDATE: The small minority of extremists are at it again in Pakistan. This time they're pissed because a few women decided to run in public.

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File under 'reaping what they have sown'. Reuters:

Saudi troops have killed eight gunmen and wounded another in a protracted siege in the northern town of Al-Ras, where fierce gunbattles raged for a second day with suspected militants, security sources said Monday.
A local hospital official said 51 security personnel had been treated by midday (0900 GMT) Monday in one of the longest and bloodiest battles in Saudi Arabia's two-year confrontation with al Qaeda supporters. Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Mansour al-Turki said he could not verify casualty figures but confirmed the operation in Al-Ras, 180 miles northwest of Riyadh, was continuing more than 24 hours after it broke out.

Turki said the suspected militants, holed up in a complex in the town's Jawazat neighborhood, had hurled hand grenades at security forces.

The battle erupted early Sunday when security forces tried to raid a house where the suspects were staying. Witnesses said the house was secured by Monday morning but gunfire had erupted from a nearby building.

"They were asked to surrender, but those people are known not to listen," local governor Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdul-Aziz told state television Sunday, describing the gunmen as "terrorists."

Saudi Arabia has been battling supporters of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, who have targeted Westerners and security forces in the world's biggest oil exporter in a wave of violence since May 2003....

The town of Al-Ras is in the conservative Qassim province, the heartland of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi doctrine which some critics say has fueled intolerance and anti-Western violence.

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Hajim al-Hassani, a Sunni Muslim with deep ties to America and the Coalition, was elected speaker of Iraqi National Assembly over the weekend.

The 50 year old al-Hassani, earned a Ph. D. from the University of Connecticut in Agricultural and Resource Economics in 1990. He also lived in my hometown of Los Angeles for 12 years. After returning to Iraq following the U.S. led liberation he became the Minister of Industry and Minerals.

It is also interesting to note that al-Hassani was against the war, initially, and that he was part of a Sunni Islamist party. When that party called for a boycott of the election, however, he broke with party ranks.

San Francisco Chronicle:

The Iraqi National Assembly appointed a speaker and two deputy speakers on Sunday, taking the first step, though a largely symbolic one, in installing a new government.

In last-minute deal making on Saturday and Sunday morning, the leaders of the top political parties settled on Hajim al-Hassani, a prominent Sunni Arab and the minister of industry in the interim government, as speaker. They selected Hussain Shahristani, a nuclear physicist and leading Shiite Arab, and Aref Taifour, a Kurd, as the two deputies...

During the formal U.S. occupation and the start of the interim government, al-Hassani was a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a religious Sunni group. But last November, when that party called for withdrawal from the interim government over the government's support for the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, al- Hassani decided to leave the party and continue in his ministerial role.

To Western reporters, al-Hassani puts forth a secular appearance and underscores his time in the United States. But his former ties to the Iraqi Islamic Party indicate that he could support conservative Islamic policies for the new government.

In recent weeks, the main Shiite and Kurdish blocs, which together have more than two-thirds of the assembly seats, have said they want to ensure that prominent Sunni Arabs get significant roles in the new government. Al- Hassani's appointment was a nod in that direction. The Sunnis, who held the bulk of political power in Saddam Hussein's government, make up a fifth of the population and lead the insurgency.

"I think he's well accepted personally, and this acceptance will give him a broad base among the Sunnis, but this does not rule out that there will be opposition among some Sunnis," said Jawad al-Maliki, a deputy leader of the Dawa Islamic Party, a powerful Shiite group whose leader, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is the top candidate for prime minister.

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A new report in Stuff reviews what inmates at a Jordanian prison have to say about Abu Musab al Zarqawi. I think the proper jail lingo for a guy like Zarqawi who is reported to be a cryer is fish.

What I want to know is if Jordanian prisons are anything like Turkish prisons? Anyway, I've seen enough video of Zarqawi to know that he was somebody's bitch.

Long-time Jawa readers know that Zarqawi is public enemy number one. You'll have to excuse the editorializing below, but the man does like to cut off the heads of infidels.

"Abu Musab cried constantly. He was very emotional, almost like a child," said 35-year-old Yousef Rababaa as he recalled the young militant.

He dreamed of an Islamic utopia where people would relive the puritanical lifestyle of the faith's early founders.

"Abu Musab would be as preoccupied with writing letter after letter to his old mother as spending long hours reciting the Koran," said Rababaa.

It was piety of an extreme nature that moulded Zarqawi's militancy, according to Islamists and experts who follow many of the young adherents of the Salafi brand of Islamist jihadis.

Another cellmate, Khaled Abu Doma, 36, recalled the young Zarqawi's long days spent kneeling with another inmate on a mat in the prison courtyard ...

Another cellmate, Khaled Abu Doma, 36, recalled the young Zarqawi's long days spent kneeling with another inmate on a mat in the prison courtyard as he patiently helped him memorise verse after verse from the Koran.

Zarqawi would also wash other prisoner's clothes and scrub and clean prison lavatories, chores which other prisoners usually shunned, Abu Doma said.

"Those prison years were critical in shaping Zarqawi's leadership qualities among his circle of followers that prepared him for his future role in Afghanistan and later Iraq."

Anyway, just knowing that Zarqawi had to spend time in an Arab prison makes me smile a little. The day he dies, though, well I'm gonna party like it's 1999.

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An American was captured late last year fighting for Abu Musab Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq, the group responsible for dozens of beheading murders of civilians. Coalition forces are now holding him as an 'enemy combatant'.

I have a better word for him: traitor.

I can think of no better candidate for extraordinary rendition. After every last ounce of information is gently extracted for him then I say we send him to Saudi Arabia. I hear they have a most fitting form of execution.

N.Y. Post:

U.S. forces in Iraq are holding an associate of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who holds joint American-Jordanian citizenship, defense officials said yesterday.
The man was snared in a raid by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq late in 2004, according to a Pentagon spokesman, who said weapons and bomb-making materials were in his residence.

The man was described as a personal associate of Zarqawi and an emissary to insurgent groups in several cities in Iraq.

The officials said that the man holds joint U.S.-Jordanian citizenship, but declined to provide his hometown or otherwise identify him.

After his capture, a panel of three U.S. officers determined that he was an enemy combatant and therefore not entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention, the spokesman said.

He is still being held as a security threat but has been visited by representatives of the International Committee on the Red Cross.

He is the first American known to be captured fighting for the insurgency in Iraq.

Reuters:

He is being held at an internment facility in Iraq," said Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, spokesman for detainee affairs. "He's being held along with other detainees."

Rudisill said he had no details on the man's age or where he was from in the United States. He said he was born in Jordan and received U.S. citizenship later, but it was not known when. He has been interrogated by U.S. forces.

"We do know from interrogation that he has strong ties to the al-Zarqawi network," Rudisill said.

Legal action against the detainee will be taken in coordination with the Iraqi government, he added, leaving open the possibility that he could be handed over to the U.S. Justice Department.

Rudisill said the fact an American had been held in connection with the insurgency was only emerging now because no one had asked about it previously.

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