TIKRIT, Iraq — An Iraqi man suspected of leading a terrorist cell loosely tied to al-Qaida and considered a “high-valued target” for his alleged role in crimes ranging from beheadings to bombings, has surrendered to coalition forces, the U.S. Army announced Friday.
Nabil Badriyah Al Nasiri turned himself in after a number of his bodyguards and associates were arrested during a series of recent raids in Bayji, according to Army officials with the 42nd Infantry Division.
Specific details of his arrest were not released, other than that he surrendered Monday to Iraqi army forces in Tikrit, which is south of Bayji.
Badriyah apparently headed up Al-Muqaferin, a sub-network of QJBR, which, translated into English, stands for “Organization of Jihad’s Base in the Country of the Two Rivers,” a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Authorities have been looking for Badriyah for months because of his suspected role in conducting and videotaping beheadings, said Lt. Col. Alden Saddlemire, a division intelligence officer. The identities of his victims were not revealed.
In addition to those acts, Badriyah and his group are suspected of conducting recent bombings using vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, Saddlemire said. One of them was the Feb. 24 attack on the Tikrit police station that killed eight Iraqi officers.
“We’ve been hunting for him since we got here,” said Lt. Col. Philip Logan, commander of the 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor Regiment, a Pennsylvania National Guard unit and the lead unit of Task Force Dragoon.
Logan was quoted in the news release as saying: “It started to turn for us when we conducted a series of raids in Bayji and picked up some of his bodyguards.”
The release gave much credit to the Iraqi army’s Company C, 201st Battalion, which regularly works with Logan’s troops.
“Everywhere we go, we will capture terrorists,” Capt. Hussein Ali Suleman, the company commander said in the release. “When I took command, I told my soldiers if I don’t catch Badriyah, I am a loser. I will win.”
