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Sunni Website Claims to Have Located Fugitive

IraqSide:Developments

According to the Sunni pro-Baathist website Iraqi Rabita the Shia death squad leader, Abu Dire, known as the Shia Zarqawi, is hiding in Egypt with 18 other Iraqis. Rumors about Abu Dire’s existence first surfaced in Baghdad in the summer of 2006. He was said to operate in Sadr City and his nickname meant “the armor bearer.” In the Shia uprisings of 2004 he was said to have held off the Americans in southern Sadr City. He earned his name either by destroying American armored vehicles or by killing an American soldier and stealing his body armor, which (some say) he wears at all times. Another story claims that he took his name out of irony: a Sunni prison guard under Saddam called Abu Dire was notorious for his brutality. Hailed by Shias as a hero, he is known by Sunnis as the “Shia Zarqawi” and the “Rusafa Butcher,” a reference to the primarily Shia eastern half of Baghdad.

All information about this man is based on rumor, but he is said to be in his 30s and called either Salim or Ismail. It is said that he lives in Sadr City but was born in the southern Shia town of Amara. Some say that he is a member of the Mahdi Army and commands hundreds of fighters, but others say that he is a renegade militiaman, out of Muqtada’s control. Some say he was a bodyguard in the former regime but later fled to Iran. Or that he was a guard and torturer in one of Saddam’s prisons. One Web site claims that he controlled the ministry of the interior’s Falcon Brigade, which kidnapped Sunnis from Baghdad’s Zafraniya district. Some say that every time there is an attack on Shias he counts the dead and kills an equal number of Sunnis. Others say he kills a greater number of Sunnis. He is said to kill dozens of Sunnis every day in a remote part of Sadr City by a dam, and he is said to have threatened to fill the craters left from car bombs in Sadr City with the bodies of Sunnis.

But there is little solid information about the nebulous militiaman. According to Nibras Kazimi of the blog Talisman Gate :

“Abu Dera’s real name is Isma’il Hafidh al-Hilfi, but I have heard some others give his tribal affiliation as al-Lami or al-‘Izerjawi, and he was born and raised in the southern town of ‘Amara. He is the illiterate son of a fishmonger. He served as a Master Sergeant (Artillery) in the Iraqi Army and saw front-line action during the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88), but was discharged after receiving a debilitating wound. Some claim he was wounded in his left foot, and he presently walks with a slight limp. Abu Dera rose to prominence in Sadr City as a projectiles expert during the second round of clashes between American forces and the Mahdi Army in November 2004. He also seemed to be well funded. After the Samara Shrine bombing last February, Abu Dera’s stature as the “protector” of Sadr City reached its zenith. One myth had him atop the dome of the Abu Hanifa Mosque (the most important shrine for Iraq’s Sunnis) within hours of the Samara bombing. He was allegedly rigging the dome with explosives when a call came in from Muqtada al-Sadr himself asking him to stop. Abu Dera’s gang was responsible for much of the sectarian reprisal killings in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of ‘Adhamiya. The most interesting piece of information I have heard about Abu Dera is that he had gone into hiding in Iran in July and stayed there for six weeks. Recently, there have been many reports of Abu Dera sightings in Sadr City (at funerals, rallies...etc.) and in Basra, prior to the most recent arrest attempt against him. He is now, according to a source, in Iran. I believe Abu Dera is an asset of the Iranians Revolutionary Guard, although I can’t prove it. All I know is that is that in the summer of 2004, the Iranians were very much interested in penetrating the Mahdi Army and placing commanders such as Abu Dera at its helm.”

Kazimi also maintains that Dire is actually Abu Dire's son's name, and is not an invented nickname. Some Sunni sources believe Abu Dire is obeying a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Kadhim al Hairi in Iran, who was Muqtada’s supporter once. One Sunni Web site claims that he took an oath to slaughter a camel and feed the poor people of Sadr City after killing the Sunni politician Adnan al Duleimi. A popular radical-Sunni line is, “Our dead are in paradise and your dead are in Hell.” It is said that Abu Dire tells Sunnis, “Our dead are in paradise and your dead are in Sada,” a reference to a remote area near Sadr City where Sunni corpses often turn up. Muqtada and the Mahdi Army have denied that Abu Dire even exists, claiming that he was invented by Sunnis as a way of falsely accusing Shias of crimes. In July, Americans targeted the Sadr City funeral of someone they believed was one of Abu Dire’s relatives, but the operation failed to lead to an arrest. One video surfaced recently showing a man believed to be Abu Dire’s son killing one of the lawyers for Saddam Hussein.

Although Sunnis had believed that the Americans killed Abu Dire, Iraqi Rabita claims that Abu Dire fled to Iran to Syria where he spent one week in Allepo and visited the Shrine of “Seyida Zeinab” in Damascus and met contacts there. He and his comanions are said to have acquired forged passports. The website posted a photo of a man fixing his car engine, claiming he was Abu Dire. “Iraqis in Egypt,” the website, asked, “please inform the Egyptian authorities to stop them.” The website also named a new Shia death squad leader called Sheikh Azhar, or Azhar Mohammed Salim, and provided some details about him. He is said to be from the Sunni Ubeidi tribe (although the website incorrectly claims he is from the Janabi tribe), which means he may have converted to Shiism, he is 36 years old and lives in sector 76. It is believed that Azhar receives his commands from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and has moved to Basra.