Qaeda Man Captured.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubai'e on Sept. 3 summoned reporters to a hastily arranged news conference to announce that al-Qaeda leader Hamed Jum'a Fares Jouri al-Sa'idi had been seized on June 19. Hitherto little heard of, and known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, Sa'idi was captured hiding in a building with a group of followers. Rubai'e said: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq is severely wounded". He said Sa'idi had supervised the insurgent who led the bombing of the Shi'ite Askariya Shrine in Samarra' on Feb. 22, an attack which set off a spasm of sectarian killings that continue to this day.

Rubai'e did not give Sa'idi's nationality. He said he had been tracked to the same area north of Baghdad near Ba'quba where US forces killed al-Qaeda's leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in June. Rubai'e said: "He was hiding in a building used by families. He wanted to use children and women as human shields". Rubaie called him the deputy of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a shadowy figure, probably Egyptian, who took over the Neo-Salafi group from Zarqawi.

Rubai'e said Sa'idi was formerly a member of Saddam's Ba'thist dictatorship who after the US invasion converted into Neo-Salafism, the most radical among militant movements in Sunni Islam. Iraqi officials say al-Qaeda has been severely weakened by the deaths or capture of terror leaders in Iraq in recent months, and Ruba'ie on Sept. 3 said the group now faced a serious "leadership crisis". After his arrest Sa'idi gave interrogators information which led to the arrest or killing of 11 high-level and 9 low-level Qaeda operatives.

The man who Iraqi officials accuse of having carried out the Samarra' attack is Haitham al-Badri, an Iraqi who is Qaeda's head of operations in Salahuddin Province, north of Baghdad. Reportedly Badri and a team of insurgents entered the Samarra' shrine on the night of Feb. 21 and placed explosives which were detonated the following morning. On Sept. 3, Ruba'ie said Sa'idi was Badri's boss.