BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. civil administrator in Iraq said Monday al-Qaida members team with Saddam Hussein's followers and Kurdish Sunni extremists to attack coalition forces.
Speaking in an interview Monday with the Dubai-based al-Arabiya television, monitored in Beirut, Paul Bremer said remnants of Saddam's regime, al-Qaida operatives and the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam group led by Mullah Karikar were launching joint attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces in all parts of Iraq.
"Relations between them go back to many years. In fact, Ansar al-Islam were running a terrorist camp during the war and we killed hundreds of those terrorists forcing them to flee to Iran but they have returned and regrouped," Bremer said.
He said documents confiscated from an alleged envoy of leading al-Qaida operative Abu Misab al-Zirqawi, a Jordanian, carried information about the joint attacks.
The U.S. command said it arrested the envoy recently with a letter from al-Zirqawi, who is believed to be in Iraq, to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who is thought to be hiding near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Bremer said, Saddam who was captured by U.S. forces near his hometown of Tikrit last December, will be tried in Iraq by a special Iraqi tribunal.
