Baghdad - Iraqi police have confirmed that a man they detained last week is the mysterious "emir" of an umbrella group including al-Qaeda in Iraq, an Iraqi security spokesman said Tuesday. Baghdad security spokesman Qassim Atta told the al-Arabiya satellite news channel that investigations had confirmed that the man Iraqi police arrested in Baghdad last Thursday was Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq.

In March and May 2007, respectively, Iraqi police said that al-Baghdadi had been arrested and killed.

After those reports turned out to be false, US Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner in July 2007 told reporters that the US military believed al-Baghdadi was a myth created "to put an Iraqi face on the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Tuesday's "confirmation" followed news that Iraqi police had arrested three suspected members of al-Qaeda in Iraq in al-Ramadi, 100 kilometres west of Baghdad.

Police in al-Ramadi, the capital of the heavily Sunni al-Anbar province, told the German Press Agency (dpa)