Al-Qaeda in Iraq Leader Arrested

(Baghdad) Last Friday, the leader of Sunni Muslims in the Iraqi Parliament, Haith al-Obaidi, was gunned down along with his bodyguard by a teenage assailant who also killed himself. The "brutal crime" occurred at the Al-Shawaf mosque right after Obaidi led the Sunni worshippers on the Muslim day of prayer.

Today, Iraqi Police arrested the perpetrator of the assassination.

“We received information from one of our sources in Ghazaliyah that the group involved in the assassination were in one house,” Brigadier General Noaman Dakhil Jawad, the commander of the police’s rapid intervention forces in Baghdad, told AFP.

“We prepared our forces, we raided the house, and we arrested the criminal Ahmed Abed Oweiyed.”

Jawad said Oweiyed was the deputy commander of Al-Qaeda’s military wing in Iraq.

“Through intelligence efforts, we tracked down the criminal who masterminded the killing,” he said.

Prime Minister Maliki has warned that insurgent and militia attacks would likely increase since the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq's urban centers is only two weeks away. Notably, al-Qaeda in Iraq is blamed for a number of recent violent incidents in attempts to undermine the confidence of Iraqi security forces.

In any event, it's noteworthy that Muslims kill Muslims regardless of what any infidel groups are doing. However, through some distorted logic, the U.S. ultimately gets blamed.