November 20, 2008

Iraq Raid Kills Suspect In Slaying of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Matt Maupin

This will be good news to the family of Matt Maupin as well as the three other Marines families. It won't bring them back, but at least there was justice done.

An Iraqi slain last week in a raid has been positively identified as a notorious militant suspected in the 2004 kidnapping of a U.S. soldier and the June killings of three U.S. Marines, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The U.S. military says Hajji Hammadi, a top-ranking al Qaeda in Iraq militant, was killed in a November 11 operation in Baghdad.

The military said Hammadi's terrorist activities included the abduction and slaying of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Matt Maupin. The soldier's remains were found in Iraq earlier this year, nearly four years after he was captured when his fuel convoy was attacked near Baghdad on April 9, 2004.

The military maintains Hammadi was the "mastermind" of a June 26, 2008, attack on coalition forces and Iraqi government officials at a sheikhs' meeting in the Anbar province town of Karma.

An attacker dressed in a police uniform detonated a suicide vest and killed "three U.S. Marines, two interpreters and more than 20 Iraqis, including the mayor of Karma and several other sheikhs. Hammadi escorted the suicide bomber to the location and videotaped the attack."

"The removal of Hajji Hammadi from the AQI network is yet another significant blow to the terrorist organization," said Brig. Gen. David Perkins, spokesman for Multi-National Forces-Iraq. "His death and the detention of his associates is bringing the people of Iraq one step closer to a safer, more peaceful Iraq."

The military said Hammadi had been affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq since it began and became al Qaeda in Iraq emir of Karma and Abu Ghraib areas west of Baghdad in 2004.

He is thought to have had connections with the slain al Qaeda in Iraq founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the group's current leaders.

Enjoy your virgin goats you bas**rd terrorist.