BAGHDAD, Aug 9: Iraq’s interior ministry has brought in the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to head the probe into the deadly Jordanian embassy bomb blast in Baghdad, a spokesman for the US-led forces said on Saturday.
“The Iraqi ministry of the interior has requested the assistance from the FBI,” the spokesman said.
The FBI was brought in amid US suspicions that Thursday’s attack, which killed at least 14 people and wounded more than 50, bears the hallmarks of an operation by an Al Qaeda-style group.
The FBI has been actively probing Al Qaeda and bomb blasts linked to the group in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, confirmed on Saturday that FBI agents had arrived in Baghdad.
The decision was a flip-flop by the occupation force, which said on Friday the Iraqi police would head the investigation and not the US-led administration.
At the time, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) stressed the 32,000-strong police force would be closely watched by western advisers, including their chief, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik.
But Mr Kerik apparently had a change of heart on Friday night, according to a spokesman.
Explaining his decision, Bernard Kerik told The New York Times: “I think the Iraqi investigative ability is not capable of handling an investigation of this type. We need specialized assistance in the area of forensics, blast issues and explosives.”
The stakes apparently were too high, as one top US Defence Department official said the military was focusing its attention on Ansar al Islam, a militant group accused of links to Al Qaeda.
“The one organization that we have confidence, that we know is in Iraq and in the Baghdad area is Ansar al Islam,” said Lt Gen Norton Schwartz, operations director of the military’s joint staff.
In March-April, US-led forces conducted a devastating air and ground assault to wipe out an Ansar al Islam-controlled enclave in the Kurdish-dominate northern Iraq, but last week Mr Bremer warned the organization was trying to regroup.
However, Mr Bremer on Saturday refused to pin the blame on Ansar.
“I frankly have not reached a conclusion yet,” he told reporters about the mastermind behind the deadliest attack in Baghdad since American troops seized the Iraqi capital four months ago.
Neither did he rule out loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein.
“It’s possible that some of the groups responsible for attacks on coalition forces, the Fedayeen Saddam, elements of the former intelligence services, some Baathists who are not accepted in the new Iraq, it’s possible some of them could have conducted this kind of attack,” he said.
Despite the cautionary note from Mr Bremer, a Jordanian official pointed to a fugitive Jordanian national, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was at the centre of pre-invasion US efforts to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, as chief suspect.
“The style of the attack and the explosives used point towards Ansar al Islam and in particular to Zarqawi, who is still on the run in Iraq,” the senior Jordanian official said.
Zarqawi, whose real name is Fadel Nazzal al Khalayleh, fled to Iraq last year and is suspected of working with Ansar.
Although some point the finger at radical groups, others suspect Iraqis who had a score to settle with Jordan for a host of reasons. An Iraqi newspaper reported on Saturday that a group calling itself the Humanitarian Aid Forces for Iraq had handed out pamphlets at the beginning of the week calling for anti-Jordan demonstrations by the embassy.—AFP