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Iraqi suspect: It cost $10,000 to pass checkpoints
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-24 14:50

Al-Moussawi aired only Ibrahim's confession but said more than 10 people comprising the whole network involved in the attacks have been arrested. He did not mention the Foreign Ministry but said other confessions would be shown in coming days.

Public confidence has been badly shaken, dealing a major blow to a government eager to demonstrate that it can take over responsibility for the country's security from American combat troops, who pulled back from urban areas on June 30 with plans for a full withdrawal by the end of 2011.

Surveillance video widely broadcast on Iraqi television stations shows a truck carrying three large red water tanks in which the explosives were hidden approach the gate in front of the Foreign Ministry, which is next to the Green Zone. A refrigerated truck was used in the Finance Ministry attack.

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The confession was a boost to claims by al-Maliki and other Shiite politicians that an alliance of al-Qaida and Saddam loyalists known as Baathists was to blame. The US military said the attacks bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq.

The link to Syria and the Baathists is politically explosive. The question of what to do with Saddam-era officials in the civil service, army and police has been at the heart of the Sunni-Shiite divide since the overthrow of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime in 2003 and has been a major hurdle to national reconciliation efforts.

Last week's bombings occurred a day after al-Maliki met with Syrian President Bashar Assad and called on Damascus to hand over people suspected of Sunni insurgent links and to stop fighters from crossing the border into northern Iraq.

In all, at least 101 people were killed and hundreds others wounded in the series of midmorning blasts, which coincided with the sixth anniversary of the deadly bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad.

Ibrahim said he had joined the Baath Party in 1973 and traveled to Syria in July 2006 as sectarian violence raged in Baghdad. He returned to Iraq the next year.

"I returned to Iraq in August 2007 in order to revive the Baath organization, which was suffering badly in Muqdadiyah," he said in the televised confession.

Muqdadiyah, an area 60 miles (90 kilometers) north of the capital that holds a volatile mix of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen, has seen some of the worst bloodshed in recent years.

The Iraqi government has frequently trotted out suspects of bombings and other attacks for the media, often airing confessions on television.

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