 |
|
 |
| [-] |
| [−] |
| [−] |
| [−] |
| [−] |
Prev | List | Random | Next |
Here's a different sort of story from USA Today:
His head and hands were wrapped in bandages and his uncovered face looked like bubbled tar.The young Saudi man told investigators this month that he wants revenge against the Iraqi terrorist network that sent him on the deadly mission that he survived.
Ahmed Abdullah al-Shaya, 18, told Iraqi investigators during an interrogation early this month that he was recruited to drive a car rigged with explosives to Baghdad and blow it up.
He said the objective was ?to kill the Americans, policemen, national guards and the American collaborators.?
But Shaya said he was injured even before he went on the mission when insurgents detonated a truck bomb he was supposed to leave at a target site.
<...>
Shaya's video statement describes the journey of a young man ready to die in his zeal to drive Americans from Arab lands.
Shaya says he left Saudi Arabia for Syria in late October, right after the start of the holy month of Ramadan. A smuggler he knew as Abu Mohammed took him over the border into Iraq and into the hands of other Islamic extremists who call themselves mujahedin, or holy warriors.
In Iraq, he traveled first to Qaim, then Rawa, and finally to the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, where he spent 1? months with like-minded Muslims from Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and Macedonia. Most, however, were Iraqis, he says, gesturing with his gauze-wrapped arms.
<...>
Shaya moved to Baghdad in December to prepare for his final mission, which he expected to be as the suicide pilot of a bomb-laden car.
But on Dec. 24, he was given a preliminary job of driving a butane-gas delivery truck that was rigged with bombs. It wasn't supposed to be a suicide mission.
?They asked me to take the truck near a concrete block barrier before turning to the right and leaving it there,? he says. ?There, somebody will pick up the truck from you,? they told him.
?But they blew me up in the truck,? he says.
Man, those wacky insurgents! We pause now for this editorial comment: "Aieeeeeeeeeee...!!!!" Now back to our story.
Authorities at first didn't know who he was. But then a local Baghdad newspaper carried a report from Saudi Arabia about his family mourning his martyrdom.
Hopefully they weren't too horrified to learn he had lived. We can only pray his father didn't slap his mother upon learning their son had survived.
Shaya told the interrogators that he regretted his mission now.?I want the Iraqi people to live in peace,? he says, and he can no longer support Osama bin Laden because ?he is killing Muslims.?
As for the Zarqawi network that sent him on the mission that left him permanently disfigured and in prison, he says, ?I want revenge for what they have done to me.?
Oh, by the way, Ahmed's truck bomb killed nine people, including a family of seven in their house nearby.
