ARAB-US RELATIONS - Apr 27 - US Military Detains 4 Suspected Bomb Smugglers.

The American military says that it had detained four men suspected of helping smuggle deadly homemade bombs from Iran to Iraq and transporting guerrillas from Iraq to Iran for training. The men were detained in the morning during an operation in Sadr City, a vast Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad whose residents are mostly loyal to the radical Shiite theologian Muqtada Al Sadr. The district is the base of a powerful militia, the Mahdi army, that rebelled twice against the Americans in 2004. The four men are suspected of helping shuttle into Iraq a deadly type of homemade bomb called an explosively formed penetrator, the military said. The men are also suspected of having ties to a kidnapping ring. American military officials have been saying for months that groups in Iran have supplied Shiite militias in Iraq with technology for the bombs, which are responsible for a growing percentage of American fatalities. American military officials also said recently that groups in Iran were supplying weapons to Sunni Arab insurgents. But American officials have not presented any evidence that ties the deadly homemade bombs or other weapons to Iranian government officials. Iranian diplomats have denied that Shiite-dominated Iran is playing any role in fueling the Iraq violence. The vast majority of foreign fighters captured in Iraq are from Sunni Arab nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt. The American announcement of the capture of the four suspects was made in a tersely worded news release. "Individuals coming into Iraq from other countries for the purpose of endangering Iraqi civilians and disrupting security won't be tolerated", Lt Col Christopher Garver, a military spokesman, said in a written statement. "We will continue to work diligently to rid Iraq of foreign terrorists trying to thwart the development of a stable and peaceful Iraq". The colonel later said in a telephone interview that the men were Iraqis and not foreigners. He said his written statement was intended to address foreign influence in general, and was not meant to imply that the four detainees were foreigners. The American military is holding five Iranians whom it detained in a raid in the Kurdish capital of Erbil in January. The Americans have accused them of being insurgents or aiding insurgents, but the Iranian government has contended that the men had been in Iraq on diplomatic jobs and demanded that they be released. The Iraqi FM Hoshyar Zebari, has said that the five Iranians were working in an office that was known to the Kurdish regional government and that had applied for diplomatic status. Tensions between the US and Iran have increased greatly in recent months. American officials have pressed the UN to impose harsh economic sanctions on Iran, arguing that Iran wants to use its nuclear program to develop weapons. Iran has said the program is for peaceful purposes. When Iranian and American officials met in March at a regional conference in Baghdad, Iranian diplomats demanded that the Americans free the five Iranian prisoners. Another regional conference on Iraq is scheduled on May 5 of May in Egypt, but Iran has not indicated whether it will attend. The military did not say whether the four men detained Apr 26 were linked to the Mahdi army or Sadr's organisation. The American military also said Apr 26 that three Marines were killed Apr 25 in western Iraq in combat operations. A detainee in Camp Bucca was killed Apr 25 in an assault by other detainees, the military said. Six detainees have been killed in the past year in such conflicts, the military said. More than 19,000 people are being by the Americans in their two main detention centers in Iraq. At least 10 people were killed or discovered dead across Iraq on Apr 25 and Apr 26, police and hospital officials said. A Spanish judge indicted three members of the American military in connection with the death of a Spanish journalist, who was killed when their tank opened fire on a Baghdad hotel in April 2003, Victoria Burnett reported from Madrid. The judge, Santiago Pedraz, charged Sergeant Thomas Gibson, Captain Philip Wolford and Lieutenant Colonel Philip de Camp with homicide in the death of Jose Manuel Couso, a cameraman with the Spanish TV network Telecinco. They were also charged with "crime against the international community", which under Spanish law includes "indiscriminate or excessive attacks" against the civilian population. Couso and Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian-born cameraman for Reuters, were fatally wounded when a US tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel on April 8, 2003. At the time, the hotel was lodging journalists from around the world. Pedraz has issued arrest warrants for the three men on more than one occasion, but the US government has said it will not hand them over. However, they would risk arrest if they traveled to a country that had an extradition treaty with Spain.