Mother denies son's link to Saddam

Sitting on floor cushions in her simple concrete home on Friday, the mother of the Jordanian man accused of being the crucial link between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussain passionately denied the charges.

Um Sayel described the youngest of her three sons, Abu Masa'b Al Zarqawi, as a deeply religious, affectionate and friendly man. She said he had never been involved in politics or expressed particular interest in the United States, but that he had travelled to Afghanistan to fight Soviet troops more than a decade ago, and more recently had been in Pakistan.

Zarqawi's name, previously familiar only to those who follow investigations of Al Qaida, emerged on Wednesday when U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell identified him as the head of a "deadly terrorist network" now based in Iraq, and as an associate of Osama bin Laden.

Powell said in a presentation to the UN Security Council that Al Zarqawi specialised in poisons and explosives. Powell charged that Al Zarqawi had found his way to Iraq, and with Baghdad's knowledge established a terrorist training centre with a focus on poisons and explosives in the wild northeastern part of the country.

Um Sayel refuted such charges, depicting her son as a devout man who was persecuted by Jordanian authorities after he returned home from fighting the Soviets.

"All these accusations are false and lies," she said. "The source of all of it is the Jordanian mukhabarat (secret police), because how would America know about him? He's not so well known.

"If they want to attack Iraq, attack it, but why accuse a young man of all those things unjustly?" she said. Taking exception to the idea that he could have become an expert in explosives and poisons, she said he had not been good in science.

"He doesn't even have a diploma; he is not so well educated," she said. "All that is said are lies."
Although Powell said Al Zarqawi is a Palestinian Jordanian, his mother said firmly that he is member of the Bani Hassan tribe, which has long-standing roots in central Jordan.

Al Zarqawi was born in 1966 as Ahmed Kalaylah (Abu Musab Al Zarqawi is a name derived from the name of one of his sons and his hometown). Before he even finished high school, he became passionate about studying the Holy Quran.

"He liked to study the Quran, only the Quran," she said. "We tried to convince him to continue his studies (for his high school diploma) but he refused. Even for free, he said he wouldn't continue and go on to university."

After school, Al Zarqawi went to work for the municipality. His father was a mukhtar, or neighbourhood mayor, to whom people came to resolve problems. He died nine years ago.
At 24, Al Zarqawi married and started a family. "He loved to play with his children too much, he was very affectionate," said his mother.

But at about the same time, he also headed to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. When he returned home, authorities fearful that he had been radicalised in Afghanistan, imprisoned him, his mother said. He was jailed for 7 1/2 years, finally released in March 1999 in a general amnesty for prisoners serving time for nonviolent crimes.

However, his brushes with the law were far from over. He tried to find work, but his mother claimed the intelligence services "harassed him" and encouraged him to leave the country.

By the end of the summer he gave up looking and moved to to Hyatabad, a suburb of teeming Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghan border. His sister was living there with her husband, who was teaching Arabic language and Islamic law.

Um Sayel went with her son and stayed a month to visit her daughter before returning to Jordan. Al Zarqawi's wife also followed him to Pakistan with their four children but later returned to Jordan.

"I don't know what he did in Pakistan, some simple trade, buying and selling honey," Um Sayel said.

Later in 1999, Al Zarqawi was one of a group of people indicted in Jordan in the foiled "millennium plot" to bomb the SAS Radisson hotel. He was tried in absentia and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Now intelligence officials here are quoted in the local media as saying they believe that by that time he was in contact with bin Laden and was fast becoming one of Al Qaida's top 20 operatives.

In December, Jordanian officials identified Al Zarqawi as the mastermind of the October slaying of Laurence Foley, a 60-year-old administrator of the U.S. Aid programme in Jordan.

Two men were arrested, a Jordanian and a Libyan. They are said to have confessed to links to Al Qaida and Al Zarqawi. Powell made similar assertions in his presentation to the Security Council.

"Powell is wrong; he is a liar," Um Sayel said.