A leading al-Qaeda fugitive who escaped U.S. custody in Afghanistan more than a year ago has been killed by British troops in Iraq. Omar Faruq was shot dead while resisting arrest in a dawn raid in the southern Iraqi town of Basra. One British solider was wounded in the attack, which featured about 200 British troops.
British military spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said Faruq was a "very, very significant man", although he was believed to be hiding inside Iraq and not necessarily operating there. Faruq was a Kuwaiti citizen who was captured in Indonesia in June 2002, was described by Washington as the most senior al-Qaeda figure in southeast Asia, a key link between Osama bin Laden's followers and Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiah terrorists. Jemaah Islamiya was responsible for the 2002 bombings in Bali, which killed 202 people, mostly tourists from Australia.
Faruq was one of four men who escaped from the high-security U.S. detainee centre at Bagram air base north of the Afghan capital Kabul in June last year. It was no revealed that he had escaped until six months later, when defense lawyers demanded he be produced as a witness at the trial of an army sergeant accused of abusing prisoners in Bagram.
Comments