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[[[[THE acting director of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital has been arrested on suspicion of supplying al-Qaeda in Iraq with the mentally impaired women who were used to blow up two markets in the city on February 1, killing about 100 people.Iraqi security forces and US soldiers arrested the man at al-Rashad hospital in east Baghdad on Sunday. They then spent three hours searching his office and removing records.Sources told The Times the two women bombers had been treated at the hospital in the past."They (the security forces) arrested the acting director, accusing him of working with al-Qaeda and recruiting mentally ill women and using them in suicide bombing operations,"]]]] a hospital official said.[[[[Ibrahim Muhammad Agel, director of the hospital, was killed in the Mansour district of Baghdad on December 11 by gunmen on motorbikes.Colleagues said that he was shot for refusing to co-operate with al-Qaeda.]]]][[[[Even before Sunday's arrest, US officials believed that al-Qaeda was scouring Iraq's hospitals for mentally impaired patients whom it could dupe into acting as suicide bombers.They said al-Qaeda had used the mentally impaired as unwitting bombers before."We have fairly good reason to believe this is not the first time they have recruited mentally handicapped individuals," ]]]]said a senior officer, although he thought there had been only half a dozen cases.Mentally impaired women were obviously attractive to al-Qaeda, he said. Being women, they could get close to targets with less chance of being stopped or searched; being mentally impaired, they were "less likely to make a judgment about what they are being asked to do".The February 1 attacks were the deadliest-and most chilling-to hit the Iraqi capital in months.One of the women was given a backpack full of explosives and ballbearings, the other a suicide vest laden with explosives. They were sent into the middle of the crowded al-Ghazl and New Baghdad markets.Their explosives were then detonated by remote control.[[[[[[The Times was shown photographs of the two young women's severed heads, which were recovered from the wreckage. One clearly had Down syndrome; the other had the round face, high forehead and pug nose often associated with Down syndrome, though less pronounced.]]]]]]An insight into the way al-Qaeda thinks came in a letter written by one of its leaders in Anbar province that the US military seized in November and released in part on Sunday.[[["It is possible to use doctors working in private hospitals and where the infidels/apostates are treated who have serious conditions to be injected with (air bubbles) that will kill them,"]]] it said.The US military says al-Qaeda is adopting these extreme tactics because the prevalence of checkpoints and concrete barriers is making car bombings harder.The number of car bombs has fallen from a peak of 112 last March to 27 last month but there were 16 pedestrian suicide bombs in January, the second-highest total in 13 months. Foreign jihadis, most male, used to carry out 90 per cent of suicide bombings in Iraq, but the influx has been halved to 50 or 60 a month.From Martin Fletcher in Baghdad-The Times
As in the days of Noah.....
