BAGHDAD, Nov 8 (AFP) - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose bastion of Fallujah was under seige Monday, has topped a US wanted list since Saddam Hussein's capture but has proved elusive despite a huge reward and relentless military pressure.
Through his Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group, which recently changed its name to "The Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers", he has brought the horror of slow, grisly, video-taped beheadings to Iraq.
Among a host of such outrages, the group murdered British hostage Kenneth Bigley last month and two of his US colleagues in September.
Tawhid wal Jihad has almost never released a hostage and is responsible for many of the more than 20 killings recorded since April 2004, with two Bulgarian truck drivers, two Turks and a South Korean also among its victims.
Zarqawi, 38, was the reason behind the impending US assault.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ordered those in the Sunni Muslim rebel bastion of Fallujah to turn over the man with a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head; the same amount as Saddam was worth before his capture in December.
Zarqawi is accused of masterminding an Iraqi insurgency that the interim government and US forces have promised to crush in Fallujah in time for elections planned for January.
A father-of-four with two wives, he also faces a death sentence in Jordan, where he and seven others were condemned to die in April for the 2002 killing there of a US official.
Zarqawi has been described as a "street thug" by King Abdullah II of Jordan, but unlike Osama bin Laden, to whom he has allegedly sworn allegiance, he has never appeared in videos or on audio tapes.
The only real sign of him are old grainy identity-style photographs and while he is held responsible by the US-backed Iraqi government for numerous atrocities, a US general acknowledged this year that Zarqawi could be dead.
Born Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh in Jordan, he was a poor student who never graduated from high school.
He took the name Zarqawi in 1991 when he joined the radical Salafist Islamist group "Al-Tawjid Wal-Hejra Al-Muwahadin" (Unificators), which told new recruits to adopt the name of their hometowns.
After a period of delinquency, Zarqawi became awed by the teachings of the group's founder, Mohamad al-Makdessi, whom he met in Pakistan, where he worked as a journalist from 1988-1992 for mujahedeen newspapers.
A veteran of the Afghan war against Soviet occupation, a US-backed conflict in the 1980s that drew many Muslim idealists, his encounter with bin Laden took place in 2000 during visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In late 2001, he was wounded in combat and lost a leg after taking up arms against US-led forces fighting to unseat the Taliban, who were harboring Al-Qaeda and ruling Afghanistan under a conservative form of Islam.
Contrary to claims by US President George W. Bush, the fugitive has probably never mixed with followers of Saddam, a US officer has said.
At the moment, according to another another high-ranking US officer, Zarqawi commands a force of 500 to 1,000 men, swelled by some Iraqi fundamentalists.
A senior intelligence officer said in May that while Zarqawi does not drive the insurgency, his access to fighters and weapons are what make him dangerous.
11/08/2004 12:22 GMT - AFP