A photo taken from a Baghdad Operations
Command television screen shows a man identified as former police chief
named Wissam Ali Khadhim Ibrahim during a media conference in Baghdad August 23,
2009. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>
BAGHDAD, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi military spokesman
Sunday announced the arrest of the mastermind of Wednesday's deadly truck
bombings in central Baghdad, the state-run television of Iraqia reported.
Ali
Kadhim Ibrahim, a high-ranking member of Saddam Hussien's Ba'ath party,
confessed to planning and organizing Wednesday's attacks which claimed
casualties of nearly 1,300 people, said spokesman of the Baghdad Operation
Command Qassim Atta at a press conference aired by Iraqia.
In a videotape showed by Qassim Atta, Ibrahim, who
looked in good health, said he fled to neighboring Syria after the U.S.-led
invasion and came back to Iraq in February 2007.
A month ago, another Ba'ath party member Sattam
Farhan phoned him from Syria and ordered him to carry out an attack to
destabilize the security in Baghdad, Ibrahim said.
"The truck bomb was prepared by other party members
in Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad," Ibrahim said, adding that he
paid 10,000 U.S. dollars to people who helped bring the booby-trapped truck to
Baghdad.
The truck bomb passed several checkpoints on its
route and was finally close to the Finance Ministry near the highway where the
blast occurred, he said, without mentioning the other truck bomb outside the
Foreign Ministry.
According to Qassim Atta, confessions of others in the captured terrorist cell will be aired on the television later.
Iraq's chief military spokesman Brigadier General Qassim Atta shows a video of man identified as former police chief named Wissam Ali Khadhim Ibrahim confessing to organising one of the truck bomb blasts last week during a media conference in Baghdad August 23, 2009. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>
Iraqia channel also said security members of several
checkpoints on the route of the truck bombs have been arrested for
investigations.
On Wednesday, two truck bombs blew up near Iraq's
Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Foreign Affairs in central Baghdad, marking
the most fatal day in nearly 18 months.
Qassim Atta said the attacks killed 87 people and
wounded more than 1,200 others. While, Interior Ministry sources told Xinhua
earlier that the blasts killed 95 people and wounded 563 others.
Late on Friday, Qassim Atta said a terror group
responsible for Wednesday's deadly attacks against Iraqi ministries in Baghdad
was arrested. The terror group was linked to the former Ba'ath party.
