IRAQ’S most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, goes to sleep every night wearing a suicide belt packed with explosives, according to a leading insurgent who met him two weeks ago.

“He never takes it off,” said Sheikh Abu Omar al-Ansari, leader of a Sunni resistance group called Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura (Army of the Victorious Sect).

“He told me: ‘I would rather blow myself up and die as a martyr — and kill a few Americans along the way — than be arrested and humiliated by them’.”

His account, passed to The Sunday Times by a reliable intermediary, is the first description of Zarqawi in Iraq since Washington slapped a $25m bounty on his head, the same as the reward for the killing or capture of Osama Bin Laden.

The sheikh’s two-day meeting with the Jordanian-born Zarqawi provided a rare insight into the terrorist accused of masterminding the videotaped beheadings of western hostages — including Ken Bigley, the Liverpool-born engineer, in 2004 — and countless suicide bombings and assassinations.

“He is known by America and the world as the prince of beheadings, the murdering sheikh of innocents, the blood spiller,” said Ansari.

By contrast, he said, Zarqawi seemed a “simple” man and put on a show of humility at a two-day meeting to secure the co-operation of the Army of the Victorious Sect and other groups with Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

According to the sheikh, Zarqawi sat cross-legged on a rug to eat with his guests and some of his 12 bodyguards, most of whom also wore suicide belts and carried American and Russian automatic rifles.

He helped his guests to wash before praying and devoted five hours a day to reading the Koran, listening to taped sermons at night and holding religious discussions with his entourage, Ansari said.

The sheikh also claimed one of the most widely circulated pieces of supposed western intelligence about Zarqawi — that he sought treatment in Iraq after losing a leg in a US missile strike on Al-Qaeda militants — is false.

Ansari confirmed that he has both his legs and “walks with confidence and balance”.

He appeared to have recovered from chest and shoulder injuries he suffered in a separate US airstrike last year.

Zarqawi was born to a Palestinian refugee family in Jordan, where he is said to have grown up a tattooed, semi-literate, Shi’ite-hating thug.

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