Iraqi views himself as freedom fighter

Sunday, February 9, 2014

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - An Iraqi man convicted of trying to ship arms and cash to al-Qaida in Iraq doesn’t consider himself a terrorist for his time battling U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Instead, he compares himself with the Americans who fought for independence from British colonial rule in the 1770s.

In a letter to The Associated Press, Waad Ramandan Alwan, 33, lashes out at former President George W. Bush, who organized the coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein.

“There is a resistance in Iraq; they are not rebellions,” Alwan wrote from a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. “If what happened in Iraq had happened in America you would have done what I did in resisting the conquest.”

Alwan, who prosecutors described as an experienced terrorist, is serving a 40-year prison sentence. He and 26-year-old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi pleaded guilty in 2011 and 2012 to taking part in a plot to ship thousands of dollars in cash, machine guns, rifles, grenades and shoulder-fired missiles from Bowling Green, Ky., to al-Qaida in Iraq in 2010 and 2011. The pair was working with an FBI informant who squelched their plans, leading to their arrests.

The letter, written in Arabic and translated into English, marked the first time Alwan has communicated publicly since his arrest.

“You and all Americans are looking at me as a terrorist, I am not a terrorist,” Alwan wrote. “I am a conquest resister.”

Front Section, Pages 4 on 02/09/2014