Iraqi police arrest a man on connection with An-Najaf bombing

An-NAJAF, Iraq, August 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – While the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime were "high on the list" of suspects in the assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, Iraqi police announced Saturday, August 30, that four Arabs have confessed to the crime.

The suspects have confessed to the car bombing which killed the SCIRI leader and 82 others, a police source said, adding three other suspects are still at large.

"They confessed to the attack," the source told Agence France-Presse (AFP), although he would not say if they revealed in whose name they carried out the blast.

"We captured four suspects Friday, none of them Iraqi, all of them Arab. They told us there were three others with them," the source said.

One police source told the Associated Press the men had connections to al-Qaeda and said they wanted to "keep Iraq in a state of chaos".

The SCIRI London representative said the arrests led him to believe there was an alliance between al-Qaeda and veterans of Saddam regime.

"I suspect there was a collaboration here between al-Qaeda and Saddam's people, as well as in the blasts at the U.N. headquarters and Jordan embassy (in Baghdad)," charged Hamed al-Bayati.

Discussing the three devastating attacks in a short span of three weeks, he said: "They are using new tactics - cars bombings, suicide bombings that have the fingerprints of al-Qaeda.

"But al-Qaeda cannot act alone in Iraq. They must have help from inside. That would be Saddam's loyalists."

Friday's car bombing came close on the heels of the truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on August 19 and the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in the first week of August.

Baathists

"We repeatedly offered our help in restoring security and stability, but up till now our offers were rejected," Mohsen Hakim

The SCIRI said Saturday that remnants of Saddam Hussein's deposed regime were "high on the list" of suspects in the powerful car bombing.

"Considering that seven grand ayatollahs have been killed in Iraq in the past 20 years, that 600 scholars met the same fate after being arrested, that Ayatollah Hakim was himself the target of eight attacks, there is no doubt that the Baathist forces and supporters of Saddam Hussein are high on the list of suspects for this terrorist crime," said SCIRI official Mohsen Hakim.

Mohsen Hakim, an aide to Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the slain ayatollah's brother and a member of Iraq's interim Governing Council, also did not exclude the possibility that "mercenaries" or "terrorist organizations" had taken part in the An-Najaf attack.

He said it was "very unlikely" that another Shiite group would have had a hand in the carnage, but added that no possibilities should be ruled out and cautioned it was necessary to "wait for the end of the investigation."

Echoing other Shiite leaders, Mohsen Hakim charged that ultimate responsibility for the deaths rested with the U.S.-led occupation forces, even though they had stayed out of central An-Najaf under a mutual agreement with religious leaders who warned their presence risked inflaming tensions.

"The full responsibility to ensure security in Iraq, under international conventions, rests with the occupiers," he told reporters.

"We repeatedly offered our help in restoring security and stability, but up till now our offers were rejected," he added.

Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of several Iraqi towns Saturday protesting the assassination of al-Hakim.

Heaping blame on Baathists and the U.S.-led occupation authority, they chanted: "No, no to America, death for America. Death for Baathis."

BBC correspondent Valerie Jones said: "They are blaming Saddam Hussein supporters for the attack but also they are starting to rather vehemently blame the Americans for not providing them security."

It is turning into chants that America should not be here in Iraq, added the correspondent.

In his last sermon, Hakim denounced loyalists of Saddam who he said were "now targeting the Marjiya (the top Shiite religious leaders)".