Iraqi Insurgent Gives Chilling Confession

Iraqi Insurgent Gives Chilling Confession
An alleged agent of the group al-Qaeda in Iraq told a chilling story of hijacking, kidnapping and murder in the name of holy war Tuesday.
In a videotaped confession broadcast on Jordanian state television, Khalaf al-Kerbouly related his deeds without a trace of emotion. Though Jordan’s government billed him as a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative arrested in the murder of a Jordanian citizen, Kerbouly’s account made him sound more like a simple foot soldier for Iraq’s most prominent insurgent organization.
His confession gave a rare glimpse into the mentality of the combatants.
Kerbouly said he was an Iraqi customs agent along the western border with Jordan and was in a position to know who was entering and leaving Iraq, and to kill them if it suited al-Qaeda’s purposes. Among his targets was a Jordanian truck driver.

“His name was Khalid al-Dasouqi,” Kerbouly recalled in a flat tone. “He said, ‘What will you do?’ I said, ‘I will kill you.’ He started to beg me, ‘Please, do not kill me,’ and so I said, ‘I must kill you.’ He kept on begging me, and I pulled my personal pistol and said to him, ‘Say your prayers.’ He said them as he was begging.

“Immediately I shot him twice in the head. I left him in that spot and he was handcuffed and blindfolded. I made sure that he was dead, put his passport and papers over him and went away.”

Dasouqi’s wife, interviewed separately in the broadcast as one of her daughters wept, suggested that Kerbouly be executed in front of a mosque.
Kerbouly also said he had hijacked trucks, killed four Iraqi soldiers and kidnapped two employees of the Moroccan Embassy in Baghdad, who were killed after he handed them over to his superiors.
Al-Arabiya television, quoting the Jordanian government, said Kerbouly was captured in Iraq by Jordanian intelligence agents, carried across the border and eventually arrested at Queen Alia International Airport near Amman, the capital.