A former Iraqi airline pilot who has been in custody for seven months was accused Saturday by Iraqi authorities of orchestrating the 2003 bombing of the UN Baghdad headquarters in which 22 people were killed. Then-UN envoy to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian, was among those who died when a truck bomb exploded at the Canal Hotel, which served as the UN operations centre before and just after the 2003 US invasion. The suspect, identified as Ali Hussein Al-Azzawi or Abu Imad, has been charged with supervising several other attacks also, including an attack on an Iraqi army troop carrier in 2006 and bombings in eastern Baghdad in 2007 and 2008, Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Al-Moussawi said. “He is the direct perpetrator of many terrorist attacks and on top of them, supervised the planning of the bomb attack on the UN headquarters in August 2003 ... and he is responsible for linking Qaeda terrorist networks in Europe and Iraq,” Moussawi said at a news conference.
