Iraqi security forces have raided a headquarters of Kataib Hezbollah and turned three captured leaders to the US military, officials in Baghdad said. The militia was at the heart of US-Iranian conflict earlier this year.
Special forces from the Counter Terrorism Service carried out the raid in the early hours of Friday local time, at a base south of Baghdad. One of the three militia leaders detained in the operation was an Iranian national, Reuters reporting citing an Iraqi government official. A number of rockets were also seized, the Iraqi security forces said.
According to @AP 13 members of the group have been arrested. Kadhimi has been under pressure to reign in Iranian proxies who have continued to attack US targets. It’s inconceivable that he would have launched tonight’s operation without the firm backing of the US.
— Ranj Alaaldin (@RanjAlaaldin) June 25, 2020
The raid appears to have been ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who took office last month over the vocal objections of Kataib Hezbollah and other Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias.
Kataib Hezbollah has been at the center of tensions between Washington and Tehran over the US presence in Iraq. The US has accused the Shia militia of repeated rocket attacks against the bases housing US personnel, going so far as to bomb Kataib positions on multiple occasions in reprisal.
One such attack, in December 2019, prompted the militants to besiege the US Embassy in Baghdad. In response, US President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike against the PMF leadership on January 2 – killing Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in the process.
Iran responded by launching missiles against several US bases in Iraq, inflicting massive material damage but not killing any US or Iraqi troops. It later emerged that Washington and Baghdad received a warning ahead of the attacks.
Since then, US-Iranian tensions have simmered by never again escalated to the point of open warfare. Friday’s raid could ratchet them up again, however.
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“Terrorism” is apparently a politicized designation undeserving of earning John Bolton, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, and Rudolph Giuliani indictments apropos pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 2339A-B, the top counter-terrorism criminal statutes in the U.S. code.
People have gone to GITMO for years with full US government oppression of their civil rights for unknowingly giving cab rides to designated “Al Qaeda members”, which many with evidence and justification are warranted in claiming was a proxy and byproduct of the corrupted US foreign policy in the first place, under these same statutes.
The aforementioned individuals escaped accountability under the law for providing material support to a terrorist designation far before they publicly announced it, at least going back to 2009, and will remain accountable under the law as there is no statute of limitations on terrorism in perpetuity.
So, if any so-called “counterterrorism” agendas of the corrupted US foreign policy and allies have any validity at all and haven’t just been a series of war crimes for economic pursuits tantamount to a Muslim Holocaust now of over 30 million, then the top counterterrrorism criminal laws should also apply to the terrorists who have infiltrated and held top-ranks, performing criminal acts within and around public office, and have already been caught within several unethical controversies and conspiracies while under oath of office.