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The Targeted Killings of the Al Harzi Brothers in Iraq and Syria

On June 23, the Pentagon announced Tunisian Ali al Harzi, who was a suspect in the 2012 Benghazi embassy attack, was killed in an airstrike in Mosul, Iraq on June 15. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced his brother, Tariq al Harzi, (pictured above) was killed in an airstrike in Syria on June 16. I wrote a long post on the background of the al Harzi brothers here, commenting that Tariq seemed to be the more significant of the pair.

But there's more to Tariq that I find interesting and hasn't been reported in Government reward listings or OFAC notices: Tariq was a champion boxer in Tunesia who lost a leg in a 2004 U.S. bombing attack in Fallujah in Iraq. Human rights groups said he was tortured for three months by Iraqi intelligence at Abu Ghraib. (He later told his father the Americans had treated him well.) U.S. detention records list him as #009 654. [More...]

Here's what he reportedly looked like then:

Here's the Google-translated version of the October, 2008 article:

Tunisian human rights sources reported the presence of 13 Tunisians detained one of the detention camps in Baghdad. He said the same source in a newsletter obtained by «Arabs», a copy of the US occupation authorities in Iraq arrested the 13 Tunisians: «after combing campaigns carried out against anyone who does not hold Iraqi citizenship». Stressing that the Tunisians were arrested multiple parts of the Iraq, including the young and Tariq Aharza boxing champion in Tunisia and is now under the supervision of the Americans guarding the Group No. 5 in the detention camp