BAGHDAD — When twin blasts ravaged crowded pet markets earlier this month, Iraqi authorities offered a chilling account: Mentally disabled women carried the explosives, perhaps as unwitting bombers for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The U.S. military on Wednesday brought another stunning twist to the plot — that the acting director of a psychiatric hospital could have betrayed his ethics and turned over patient details to insurgents blamed for the attack, which killed nearly 100 people.
The questioning of the hospital administrator fits into a wider campaign to confront insurgents’ changing tactics as they seek to bypass stepped-up security measures. It was not immediately clear what direct contact occurred between the detained hospital administrator — who was not named — and the women who carried the explosives into the crowded markets.
