Anti-al Qaeda Sunni leader arrested, charged with 'treason'

Wire services reported on May 2 that Nadhim al-Jubouri, a highly respected Sunni leader in the town of Dhuliuya in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad, had been arrested and charged with terrorism. A US military spokesperson confirmed that "coalition advisors" were involved in the arrest. The deputy governor of Salahuddin Province said that the charges brought against al-Jubouri were in connection with killings he is alleged to have committed in 2006-2007. At the time he was a prominent fighter with the so-called Awakening Councils, the largely Sunni militias organized and bankrolled by the US that are credited with damping out the civil strife incited by al-Qaeda in those provinces with large Sunni populations. However other Iraqi officials say that al-Jubouri is suspected of links to killings of "prominent figures" prior to his involvement with the Awakening Councils, at a time when he was fighting with the insurgency against the US occupation. He is also alleged to have been involved with the downing of a US helicopter and an attack against an Iraqi police station during that earlier period. Al-Jubouri was the apparent target of a suicide attack just last month, when a teenage boy detonated himself in the Sunni mosque where al-Jubouri is imam. Five people were killed and more than a dozen injured in the bombing, but al-Jubouri escaped injury. Also in October of 2007, a bomb went off in the pulpit while al Jubouri was preaching, seriously wounding him. Again the perpetrators were apparently teenagers, with two 15-16 year old boys having been arrested. Al-Jubouri himself blamed both attacks on al-Qaeda in an extensive interview with Iraqi media last month. Other Awakening Council leaders are protesting his arrest, adding further tension to the already strained relations between the Sunni militias and the Shi'ite government. Since the US handed over control of the Councils to the government of Nouri al-Maliki, monthly payments to Council members have all but evaporated, and dozens of members have been assassinated, arrested, or "disappeared".