U.S. forces detained the deputy head of a committee that purged Iraq's government of members of Saddam Hussein's party, an ally said, but the U.S. Army said he was a wanted militia leader behind a deadly Baghdad bombing.
American forces detained Ali al-Lami, general manager of a committee established in 2003 and 2004 by then U.S. governor Paul Bremer to remove members of Saddam's Baath party from the government, on Wednesday, the committee's head conveyed on Thursday.
According to Reuters, a U.S. military statement said its troops seized a man at the airport suspected of planning a bomb attack in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City in June that killed 10 people, including two American troops and two American civilian contractors.
"He was captured at the airport. He had just returned from Lebanon with his family," Ahmed al-Chelabi, director of the deBaathification Committee, said in a statement. "We strongly condemn this operation against one of the highest officials of the ... committee, who had done good work."
The U.S. military said the man they picked up at the airport, was a senior "special groups criminal." "Coalition forces captured a man suspected of working within the highest echelons of the special groups criminals," spokesman for the U.S. military, Major John Hall, said.
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