Stewart Stogel, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Aug. 2, 2007

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It was a hot August day in Baghdad in 2003, and the United Nations had just recently returned to its headquarters at the old Canal Hotel following an evacuation prior to the U.S. invasion in March.

The "hotel" was swarming with newly arrived reconstruction personnel and a group of officials from U.N. headquarters in New York.

Suddenly, an explosion roared, smoke clouds filled the area, and a section of the three-story building imploded and collapsed.

An apparent suicide truck bomber had just brought down a big section of the United Nations compound.

The suicide bomber had launched the worst attack ever on a U.N. facility.

That action took 22 lives and wounded more than 150 others.

Among those killed was Kofi Annan's special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

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Nobody had claimed credit for the attack, though speculation was rampant.

Now it seems, the Iraqi government may have known otherwise.

On Monday, U.N. officials confirmed that Baghdad recently executed a man it says played a "central" role in the suicide attack.

Amwaz Abdul-Aziz Mahmoud Sa'id (aka Abu Umar Al-Kurdi) was executed by Iraqi authorities on July 3rd.

The U.N.'s current Iraq special representative, Ashraf Qazi explained:

"He (Al-Kurd) was sentenced to death by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq on 30 March 2006 following his conviction for a number of terror related offenses, including the bombing of United Nations headquarters at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad August 19 ... The death sentence imposed on Al-Kurdi was upheld by the Court of Cassation on August 30 2006 and subsequently ratified by the Presidency Council."

Why the U.N. low keyed the developments was unclear?

One reported target of the attack was the chief of the U.N.'s Iraq Oil for Food Program, Benon Sevan.

Sevan narrowly escaped being caught in the explosion as he had ventured to another section of the Canal Hotel for a cigar just seconds before the explosion.

Now living in retirement in his native Cyprus, Sevan told NewsMax: "The silence of the U.N. is amazing. I still cannot believe that the U.N. had remained silent. Are they any others (yet to be charged)?"

There has been no comment from either the U.S. or UK missions at the U.N. on the Iraqi execution.

© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.

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