By David Dastych
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Baghdad-Warsaw: On July 10, an Iraqi Police SWaT team, cooperating with a unit of the Polish Military Intelligence (WSI), caught and arrested a leader of a Sunni terrorist group, linked to al Qaeda. His name is SaLaH KHaBBaS (38) and he is suspected to have organized several attempts against Polish and other Coalition troops in Iraq, and particularly for the killing of a famous Polish war correspondent, Mr. Waldemar Milewicz and his Polish-algerian pictures editor Mr. Mounir Bouamrane and wounding of a Polish cameraman, Mr. Jerzy Ernst.
The trap was organized on May 7, 2004 on a road from Baghdad to Kerbala, near Mahmoudiya. The gunmen drove up behind the Polish TV crew car and raked it with bullets. Mr. Ernst recalled:
"Milewicz and Mounir were sitting in the back seat of the car, I was in front with my camera. Suddenly we heard shots from very close behind and the window was shattered. Then there was silence and suddenly Mounir [Bouamrane] started to shout. We got out of the car and we saw Waldek [Milewicz] was sitting bent over, very pale, with blood running from his nose."
His colleagues tried to get Milewicz out from the car. But the gunmen returned shooting again, killing Bouamrane and wounding Ernst.
Waldemar Milewicz (47) was an excellent, courageous and honest reporter, who served as war correspondent in Bosnia, Chechnya, abkhazia, Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Cambodia and also in Iraq.
Mr. Milewicz had been working for the Polish public TV (TVP) since 1984, and he was an experienced war correspondent. I knew him, and I remember how he went from Kuwait to Iraq before the U.S. troops in 2003, sneaking through a breach in a neutral zone dirt wall. They got to a nearest town and started to report and take pictures. The Polish TV team took refuge in an Iraqi house, for the night. and then, before dawn, their hosts woke them up and told them to flee, because there were Saddam's men coming to kill them. In Chechnya, Milewicz exposed himself to danger all the time. In a short "in memoriam" TV documentary, aired after his death, there was presented an old interview with him. He told the interviewer then: "You can get killed in downtown Warsaw,too."
Waldek Milewicz received many awards: a John Hopkins University in Baltimore prize for his work in Chechnya in 1995, and also a Poland's Reporter of the Year title in 2001.
Salah Khabbas (38) , a former member of the Ba'ath Party, was caught near Baghdad on Monday evening, July 10, in result of a joint operation of the Polish Military Intelligence and an Iraqi SWaT team. On the way to Diwaniya (Polish troops HQ), a trap bomb exploded near the convoy, killing one Iraqi policeman and wounding two. Khabbas tried to buy himself out, offering a bribe of US $ 100,000 to his captors. Now he is being questioned in the Polish militarybase.
The terrorist cell, led by Salah Khabbas, "organized assaults and bomb attacks against convoys and individual vehicles on the road between Baghdad and al-Hillah, as well as the kindnappings and murders of Iraqi and foreign citizens" — said Poland's defense minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, at a press conference on Tuesday, July 11. Besides being the main suspect in connection with the deadly attack on Polish journalists on May 7, 2004, Khabbas could be also involved in the kidnapping of a Polish citizen, Ms. Teresa Borcz, in October 2004. She was later freed, and a group called abu Bakr Siddiq al-Salafiya later claimed responsibility for her kidnapping.
On Wednesday, July 12, a new detachment of the Polish troops flew to Iraq. Presently Poland has about 900 soldiers there, serving in the Coalition. Polish military presence in Iraq began in September 2003, when the Polish-commanded Division took over the responsibility for the South-Central Zone (in 5 out of 18 Iraqi provinces). Poland had 2500 soldiers then, and the whole Division numbered 9000 troops from 21 countries. Since the beginning of the mission, some 12,000 Polish soldiers had been serving in Iraq. Poles have earned a good reputation among the Iraqi people for their readiness to help the population. Now, after three years, Polish troops are mainly engaged in the training of the Iraqi army and Police.
The recent success of the Polish MI, is very likely due to a good cooperation with the Iraqi security forces.