The U.S. is "running out of demons. I'm down to
  Fidel Castro & Kim Il Sung"   Colin Powell,
  former JCoS chair & millennial Sec•State
per Robt. Borosage   Inventing the Threat: Clinton defense pgm
  Frankenstein redux
[ U.S.S. Cole attack, like Libya & the Gulf War, is a
rogue monster of our own creation; yet more are our shibboleths.   Until we insist on financing peace ¹ ² ³
"the murderers are among us"   Bertold Brecht
in place of more war , cruel & implacable retribution will haunt us.
Just as we looked the opposite direction when Saddam Hussein used U.S. Agriculture Dept loans to buy biochemical weapons & strategic munitions, so is Osama bin Laden a manifestation of blowback from Ronald Reagan era machismo foreign policy & vestigal cold war colonialism. ]
Experts are almost unanimous in saying that bin Laden is a creature of a US foreign policy which recklessly fed & nurtured him & his Islamic [ Wahhabi ] warriors with million of dollars worth of money & arms to fight the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Under a little known document called the National Security Directive 166 of 1985, Pres. Reagan ordered stepped up U.S. covert aid to militant groups fighting the Soviets. The order resulted in the CIA providing, lavishly and, as it turned out, recklessly, arms & training via money funnelled largely through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Even at that time, Bin Laden & his holy warriors had made it clear that the US was as much anathema to them as the communists. "bin Laden learnt a lot of tricks from the CIA, which is glad to help him fight the Russians. We all helped him. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and U.S. were united in the view that the Russians must be defeated. He was the point man," an unnamed Saudi intelligence official was quoted as saying in the U.S. media. Washington conceived a plan to make Moscow pay the maximum price for its occupation of Afghanistan while turning Islamic radicalism against the communists and, as a spin-off, against the Iranian Shia.
8.15.98   Chidanand Rajghatta "U.S. Frankenstein monster behind Kenya blasts?" Indian Express
The idea was to encourage a specifically Sunni radicalism aiming at full application of the sharia but avoiding any hint of Islamic "revolution". This suited Saudi Arabia perfectly, since it was anxious to strengthen its Islamic credentials in opposition to Iran. As for the Pakistani intelligence services, they had and still have the wider aim of playing the Sunni Islamist card to gain control of Afghanistan and achieve a breakthrough in Central Asia.
10.98   Barry Smerin "Fundamentalists without a common cause" Le Monde diplomatique
The CIA is now trying to destroy the same camps it helped set up, British writer Robert Fisk who covered the region and who met bin Laden at his camp, said in an interview on National Public Radio.
8.22.98   Chidanand Rajghatta India Express ¹
According to fundamentalist commander Bakhat Zamin in Khost, it takes very little to rebuild the camps that were struck in the U.S. attack. He said to rebuild "All one needs are mud and stones and there are plenty of them out here."
12.20.98   London Times
Osama bin Laden & his al-Qaeda organization is credited with U.S. embassies' bombings in Africa; funding Philippines terrorist training camps and Chechniyan, Tajikistan & Bosnian Muslim fundamentalist forces' training; assassination plots against President Clinton, the Pope, Egyptian President Mubarak & Jordanian king Hussein; the World Trade Center bombing; arming Somalian war lords' opposition to U.S. military peacekeeping; bomb attacks on U.S. servicemen in Yemen in 1992, at a Saudi National Guard Base in 1995, & at Dhahran's Khobar Towers in 1996; financing Egyptian terrorists' 1999 slaughter of 58 tourists; suicide bombs in Israel; and, most recently, the murder of U.S.S. Cole crew.
8.21.98   Martin Sieff, Washington Times
State Dept terrorism experts describe bin Laden as a skilled businessman and fund raiser. A 1996 report said his Sudanese empire included a $50 million stake in an Islamic bank, an investment company and an import- export firm; land holdings that gave him a near monopoly in Sudanese agriculture, notably gum, Arabic corn, sunflower and sesame products, and a construction company that built roads and airports in the Sudan & Afghanistan. Soon after bin Laden's CNN interview, the Clinton administration cut off Sudanese exports to the U.S., hoping to squeeze bin Laden's business interests. His ties to funds from his family's construction firm, largest in Saudi Arabia, were cut in 1994 when his citizenship was revoked.
8.20.98   Daryn Kagan CNN Morning News
He started organizing Afghan Muslim guerillas against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. The Klashnikov that he carries with him is the one which he took from a Russian soldier on a battlefield. The Klashnikov to him is now a sacred symbol.
8.99   M. Hassan Kakar, "Afghanistan Fdtn's White Paper or Dark Paper ?" Online Ctr for Afghan Studies
Still based in Afghanistan under protection by a Taliban faction after having been stripped of Saudi citizenship in 1994, expelled from the Sudan in 1996, and renounced even by some Afghans who "blame Pakistan & the U.S. for helping radical Islamic groups to flourish during the resistance to Soviet occupation and then washing their hands of the consequences"
8.21.98   Pamela Constable, Wash.Post
bin Laden founded al-Qaeda to provide funds and soldiers to the Afghan resistance in 1988 eight years after joining the mujahedeen at age 22. Four years later, he allied with Iran's Shiite Muslim terrorist organization Hezbollah in expressly targeting the U.S. and its allies foremost. Another four years later, he made his anti-U.S. goals public in a Declaration of Jihad or War in August 1996.
PBS Frontline
It was at his very beginning in 1980 that bin Laden, one of many Arab Muslims who traveled to Afghanistan to fight Soviet invasion, used Saudi funding and U.S. military arms & training from the Pakistan border.
10.25.96   Reuters
"We knew him as one of the Saudi benefactors who took care of widows & orphans" of the U.S. backed Afghan rebels who fought off Soviet invaders in the 1980s, said a retired U.S. official who helped fight that long battle. bin Laden spent millions supporting Afghan guerillas, financing thousands of volunteer foreign soldiers who came to Afghanistan from throughout the Islamic world, and creating a network of guest houses & charities to support them & their families. "He had a common cause with the U.S.," said Zalmay Khalilzad ², former State Dept & Pentagon official of Afghan descent who monitored the war. "But with the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989, his struggle became the struggle against the U.S., the dominant power in the world and in the Middle East."
bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia in 1989 and began to support militant Islamic groups opposing moderate Islamic govts. His rage against the U.S. took root during the 1991 Gulf War, with the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. "He regarded that as an occupation of the Islamic holy places by the U.S.," Khalilzad said, and bin Laden swore vengence against what he called "the crusaders" of Christianity trespassing on Mecca & Medina. "What this man thinks about every day is: How do I get the U.S. out of my home in Saudi Arabia, and how do I get those corrupt pharaohs out of power?" said Kenneth Katzman, former CIA analyst & Congressional Research Service resident expert on MidEastern terrorism.
8.21.98   Tim Weiner NYTimes
In the mid-1980s, bin Laden co-founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) or Services Office to help funnel fighters & money to the Afghan resistance in Peshawar. The MAK ultimately established recruitment centers around the world, including in the U.S., that enlisted, sheltered and transported thousands of individuals from over 50 countries to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. It also organized & funded paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan & Pakistan. bin Laden imported heavy equipt to cut roads and tunnels and to build hospitals & storage depots in Afghanistan.
8.20.98   U.S. Information Agency factsheet
"After a brief relative disengagement, the US, much to its disbelief & dismay, discovered in 1993 that many of its past Afghan policies had started to boomerang against the US interests. Many of the mujahideen, incl Americans' own favourites & proteges like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, had turned Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terrorists. … Past policies that had begun to backfire on American interests."
8.99   P.Stobdan, Fellow, IDSA "The Afghan Conflict & Regional Security" Strategic Analysis IDSA monthly journal, v.XXIII n.5 p719-747
Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto and the CIA had each their own reason for creating & backing the Taliban. A company with which Asif Zardari, her husband, was connected, had the exclusive contract for the import of cotton from Turkmenistan for Pakistan's textile industry and the Taliban protected the cotton convoys from attacks by other mujahideen groups. The CIA was interested in using the Taliban for its operations against Iran and for facilitating the construction of oil & gas pipelines by U.S. oil company UNOCAL from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
When Sudan asked bin Laden to quit its territory in May,1996, Maj.Gen. Babar persuaded Benazir to agree to a request from Burhanuddin Rabbani, then in power in Kabul, to let bin Laden travel to Jalalabad via Pakistani territory on condition that he would not act against U.S. & Saudi Arabia from Afghan territory. Maj.Gen. Babar, through the IB & the ISI and with the support of the Taliban which had reasons to be grateful to him, ensured this.
First, the failure of the agencies to effectively control the Taliban & bin Laden, both of whom became Frankensteins. No govt of any Islamic State would accept him lest they fall foul of the U.S. The only way out, in Pakistani calculation, is help him flee to a country where Muslim insurgent elements control some territory.
12.18.98   R. Raman, dir. Inst. for Topical Studies
There's a strong body of Bin Laden supporters in Pakistan army & intelligence services and also, obviously, among increasingly powerful clergy. However, many moderate politicians realise Pakistan cannot jeopardise its U.S. relationship, and the continuing drip-feed of IMF & World Bank loans, by overtly obstructing efforts to capture him.
10.4.99   Jason Burke & H.Baweja India Today ³
"If there is a message that I may send through you, then it is a message I address to the mothers of the American troops who came here … To these mothers I say if they are concerned for their sons, then let them object to the American govt's policy and the American president. Do not let themselves be cheated by his standing before the bodies of killed soldiers describing freedom fighters in Saudi Arabia as terrorists. It is he who is a terrorist who pushed their sons into this. … "
3.97   bin Laden interview, Peter Arnett, CNN
"One should go to the refugee camps throughout Pakistan and find out how many boy children have been named Osama since last August (1998), that's scary," said former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the agency's covert campaign to arm the Afghan mujadeen fighting Soviet troops in the 1980's. Missiles (fired at Afghanistan & Sudan) inflicted little lasting damage but helped to make bin Laden "a revered figure" in the Islamic world a senior counterterrorism official said. "People feel they have no voice," said former American Amb. in Pakistan & former State Dept counterterrorism coordinator Robt B. Oakley. "They look at a people with great wealth while they live in deep poverty. They resent the personal corruption of the Saudis" and the power of the U.S. American counterterrorism officials ruefully agree that bin Laden's oratory also rings true in Saudi Arabia. "His attacks on the Saudi royal family's repression & corruption are factually similar to State Dept human rights reports and CIA economic analyses". But they differ sharply in blaming the U.S. for shoring up the House of Saud by stationing troops in the Arabian Peninsula. "And if we make it into a war, we lose," said former Amb. Oakley. "We'll swell their numbers enormously." That further increases the political threat that bin Laden presents, American officials concede.
7.29.99   Vernon Loeb "U.S. harassment campaign may backfire" Wash.Post
"The goal has never been to get bin Laden" ¹   4.6.02   AP
Gen. Richard Myers, chair U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
Osama bin Laden, CIA creation & its "blowback"
"Terrorist" connected to CIA, drugs. … ¹
9.98   Michael C. Ruppert, From The Wilderness Publ.
On 8.20.98 the U.S. launched a series of cruise missile attacks against alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, both of which were said to be under the control of a rabid Islamic fundamentalist leader & arch terrorist named Osama bin-Laden. I did some checking on bin-Laden and what I found out leads me to suspect that the CIA & the U.S. govt would rather have this evil terrorist hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan than answering questions which might embarrass them.

Shortly after the Russians invaded Afghanistan, young & wealthy Saudi Arabian named bin-Laden rushed to Afghani mountains to fight a Muslim holy war against Godless Communism. Having inherited more than thirty million dollars from his father's construction business he was in a position to lend immediate help to the struggling Afghani freedom fighters. He formed quick alliances among the half dozen or so major factions of the Mujahedeen led by Afghani Sheik Hekmatyar.
US records indicate that we spent nearly $3 billion dollars over the next 8 years to train & equip the Afghan rebels. We even supplied them with Stinger missiles, which caused great concern in later years as we began to fear they would be turned against us. U.S. Congress appropriated ransom money to buy them back in the early 90s. Few were recovered. In addition the CIA, under Bill Casey, sponsored an explosion in the heroin trade to finance the war. This was nothing new.

In 1979, when Soviet invasion occurred, virtually none of the heroin entering U.S. came from the so-called Golden Crescent in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the time it was coming from Mexico & SE Asia. By 1982 the region was producing exportable opium base equivalent to 20-30 tons of heroin a year. Of that, at least 4.5 tons reached the U.S. By 1988 those numbers had increased to 70 to 80 tons of heroin of which 15 to 20 tons reached the U.S. According to Alfred McCoy, in his outstanding book The Politics of Heroin (Lawrence Hill Books, 1972, 1991), Hekmatyar controlled no less than 6 heroin refineries in the Khyber District of Pakistan alone. At his side was Osama bin-Laden.

Around the time that Osama bin-Laden moved to Afghanistan in 1980 he was also curiously able to found a series of investment companies under the umbrella SICO which he headquartered in Geneva. Sources formerly in the intelligence community have confirmed to me that, as bin Laden established branches in the Cayman islands & the Bahamas, he employed law firms & consultants connected to Langley, VA & the CIA. Throughout the Afghan war bin-Laden grew in reputation as a fearless leader and devout Muslim. His wealth also increased rapidly. By the end of the war and the Soviet withdrawal he was known throughout Africa & the MidEast as a radical fundamentalist leader who had turned his sights against the U.S. But this was not without creating enemies both in Afghanistan and his home country of Saudi Arabia, which drew ever more securely into the U.S. sphere, especially during & after the Gulf War.

In the early 1990s bin-Laden took up sanctuary in the Sudan and was afforded a kind of safe haven. He threw himself into massive construction projects including road building. The Sudanese govt has admitted that it had an agreement with the U.S. to monitor bin-Laden and to curtail his terrorist activities. In exchange for this Sudan received unspecified rewards. It is, therefore, mystifying as to why, with bin-Laden under scrutiny in the reasonably accessible and penetrable Sudan, the U.S. govt forced the Sudanese govt to expel him in 1995. This drove him back into the arms of the increasingly hostile Taliban militia in Afghanistan. There, he re-established relations with Afghani drug lords in the towns of Jhost and Jalalabad.
When the U.S. cruise missiles struck the El-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, a host of conflicting stories appeared as to who owned the plant and when it was built. The British turned up a man named Tom Carnaffin who claimed to have helped build the plant and manage it from 1992 through 1996. Other records & sources indicated, however, that the plant was not built until 1996. Carnaffin claimed that he was intimately familiar with the plant and that it could not have produced nerve agents as the U.S. claimed. Later the U.S. backed down and said that it didn't have proof that bin Laden owned the plant. In the meantime about 4 other people were named who reportedly did. Some of them didn't know each other.

What really got my attention was the fact that French Internet publication Indigo reported bin Laden was London guest of British Intelligence as recently as 1996 and his treasurer last year defected to the Saudis as different factions shifted alliances for new MidEast campaigns. …

As my good friend, producer Marc Levin, points out, the CIA has a term for it when one of their operations goes awry and turns ugly, "It's called 'Blowback'." Levin produced an outstanding 1997 6 hour documentary on CIA for PBS entitled, "CIA, America's Secret Warriors". … Special thanks to Ralph McGehee's CIA BASE Program, Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin and various unnamed sources who prefer it.]

Argentina bomb trial a lesson in terror fight
Prime suspect still loose after 7 years
9.21.01   Kevin G. Hall Knight Ridder News Service

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil   … Imad Mughniyah, a leader of the militant Islamic group Hezbollah in Lebanon, is thought to be living in Iran. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials believe Mughniyah directed the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in Beirut, in which Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem was murdered; the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people; and the kidnapping of American hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. An Iranian intelligence official who defected to Germany told prosecutors in the Argentine case that Mughniyah helped plan the Buenos Aires bombing.

He's believed to have had help from the Iranian Embassy in Argentina, an accusation the Iranian govt denies. Argentina also alleged that Moshen Rabbani, a cultural attache at the embassy, had a role. "People should see that these attacks (in Argentina and in the United States last week) are different sons from the same father. It was like a preamble to what happened in New York," said Marta Nercellas, an attorney for the survivors and victims' families. Argentine Jews, who number more than 300,000, make up the largest Jewish community in South America. On the morning of 7.18.94, a white Renault van exploded in front of a 4 story building that housed the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association and the Delegation of Argentine-Israeli Associations. The building caught fire and collapsed, killing 85 people and injuring 300. A 3.17.92 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires also killed 23 people.

Jane's Foreign Report this week said Mughniyah allegedly kidnapped the head of the CIA station in Beirut, William Buckley, and may have killed "Buckley with his own hands in March 1984." Jane's said that in 1985, a reported combined operation of the CIA and Israel's Mossad exploded a car bomb in Lebanon at the the house of Hezbollah Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, killing dozens, including one of Mughniyah's brothers. Israel's Feb. 1992 helicopter gunship slaying of Hezbollah Sheik Abbas Musawi and his family in Lebanon then was the trigger for Hezbollah's attack a month later on Israel's Argentine Embassy. Jane's said that in December 1994, a car bomb in Beirut killed another Mughniyah brother, Fuad, and 3 others.

The Argentina trial also is expected to shed light on the nearly lawless border area where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet in the southern cone of South America. The FBI in late 1999 placed an anti-terrorism investigator at the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay's capital, Asuncion, to keep tabs on the area. Investigators in the Jewish center bombing think much of the logistics and planning may have been done from that tri-border area, where customs and immigration control often operate on bribes. Paraguay's internal security minister, Julio Fanego, said last week that his country was stepping up document checks in Ciudad del Este, a border city. Several people were held for fingerprinting to seek ties to the U.S. attacks.
The relationship between the tri-border underworld and Middle East terrorism became clear in February 2000, when authorities in Paraguay detained Ali Khalil Mehri, a recently naturalized citizen who was born in Lebanon. Mehri, a music counterfeiter, was held at the United States' request but managed to buy his way out of jail even as Argentina sought to question him and his brother Mustafa about the Jewish center bombing. Mehri flew within Brazil and then from Sao Paulo to Paris despite detention orders.

Paraguayan investigators and U.S. sources described Mehri as a fund-raiser from Hezbollah and accused him of copying thousands of CDs, which were used for recruiting. The CDs found in his apartment had interviews with suicide bombers, images of suicide bombings and a call from a cleric to attack the U.S. & Israel.

    The Accidental Operative Mondo Washington
Richard Helms's Afghani niece leads corps of Taliban reps
6.6.01   Camelia Fard & James Ridgeway Village Voice

… little regard for Osama bin Laden, whom she sneeringly refers to as a "tractor driver." She says he was inherited by the Taliban and is widely viewed as a "hang nail." …

    Taliban slammed over bin Laden appt
    8.30.01   UPI
Moscow … This month, Russian media quoted Pakistan's Nation daily as saying that the Taliban had named bin Laden commander of their troops. …
"Unless retaliation is designed to prevent escalation, the results are catastrophic. Israeli retaliation was most effective when the policy was to hunt down and kill known terrorist leaders.
One mistake in a deadly war, the killing in Norway of Moroccan Ahmed Bouchki, and the timid response and subsequent soul searching that followed, cost the Israelis and others dearly. It led to the Knesset stopping the practice of seeking out and executing terrorists wherever they might be found.

Terrorism can be likened to a well prepared ambush. The choices we are presented with are

  • to keep walking into that ambush and continue to take heavy casualties;
  • no to venture out, avoid the ambush, and, in effect, capitulate to terror;
  • or to take the war to the terrorist, and, in so doing, contain the fight, and prevent the ambush.
It seems that the only sensible choice must be prevention.

There is a conflict between the religious teachings that have had a major influence on the way society moralizes. The Bible and Koran invoke "an eye for an eye", a policy I describe as retaliation.
The Hebrew Talmud says "If someone comes to kill you, rise and kill him first".   [ no cit. ]
  That is prevention. In less theological terms, teachings of military history have, for centuries, advocated attack as the best means of defense.

It is (cliché) that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When it comes to stopping terrorism, prevention is a multipurpose response;

  • it saves the lives of future victims
  • it saves the huge cost of armadas & airstrikes for rescue or retaliation, and
  • it avoids the cul-de-sac of escalation into which govts invariably find themselves driven.
As to moving against terrorism, Western democracies' responses are too little and/or, most often, too late. Intelligence information available from a variety of sources on terrorists is now superb, Law enforcement, however, is often unwilling or unable to use knowledge gained.

Take the case of Zuhair Akkasha, who was well known not only in counterterrorist circles, but to the London police as a Palestinian fanatic capable of murderous action. Akkasha appeared in a London courtroom 12.15.75, charged with assaulting a policeman.
This was no subtle plotter or devious Carlos, moving along a well prepared underground network of safe houses and sympathizers, going to elaborate lengths to avoid being noticed. Akkasha was noticed but the British police failed to spot his real potential.

For his assault against a police officer, Akkasha was sentenced to 6 months in jail and deportation. He served his time and was expelled; within a year, he was back. An observant policeman spotted him in Wimpy bar.
He was followed and seen going into a building in a row of inexpensive accommodations. The observation was dutifully relayed to Scotland Yard, but significance of the sighting went unheeded.
2 months later, Akkasha waited in the lobby of the Royal Lancaster Hotel. When he spotted his target in the back seat of a car in front of the hotel, Akkasha opened the back door and shot to death former Yemeni prime minister Cadi Abdullah al-Hajari, his wife Fatima and embassy diplomat Abdullah al-Hammami

Although the triple murder was committed in public on a street in central London, Akkasha got away. 6 months later, he surfaced again as one of those responsible for the highjacking of a Lufthansa plane and forcing it to land at Mogadishu, identified as the highjacker who shot pilot Jurgen Schumann.
When a (German SAS equivalent) GSG9 team successfully assaulted the highjacked aircraft, Akkasha was one of the terrorists killed.

Terrorists tend to escalate their outrages. If you let a terrorist get away, he'll come back to haunt you. If his next attack is against an ally, that ally won't be grateful.
Deporting a known terrorist does not mean a country is successfully exporting his terror making capacity. It is setting him free and washing its hands of the problem.

… With the United Nations unsuitable as a place to discuss and agree on the defeat of terrorism, counterterrorism created other forums such as, at a political level, a long-standing co-operation of Western intelligence services known as the Kilowatt Group created in 1977 upon an Israeli suggestion following Black September attack at 1972 Munich Olympic Games (successor org ENFOPOL), and the Club of Berne, and, operationally, the Intl Assn of Bomb Technicians & Investigators (AIBTI)"

"Retaliation" Çh. 11, et al   The War Against the Terrorists: How to Win It Gayle Rivers
    counterpoint op-ed C.L. Staten exec. dir. Emergency Response & Research Institute
Now bin Laden's dark eyes stare out of posters displayed proudly in thousands of Pakistani & Afghan shops & tea kiosks.
10.4.99 J.Burke & Harinder Baweja India Today
Since 9.11.01 attacks, Americans longing to help have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to aid agencies. Groups such as the Red Cross are using the donations to help thousands affected. But another little-known organization is funneling contributions in a very different direction. The Rewards for Justice Fund, a non-profit charity, was started to let the public contribute directly to the govt's fight against terrorism. A new marketing strategy, and some help from Internet professionals, is raising the profile of the Rewards for Justice Fund and raising a lot more money in the wake of 9.11.01. The money goes to pay for rewards offered by the State Dept and claimed by people who have helped bring criminal suspects to justice. The charity was the brainchild of 2 businessmen, Scott Case & Joe Rutledge, who approached the State Dept with the idea of creating an easy way for people to support an effort to apprehend terrorist suspects.

"We view ourselves no differently than people who went down to Ground Zero with water & sandwiches to help out the workers down there," Case told NPR's Ina Jaffe. "We were doing what we knew how to do, bring together a marketing program, to bring a solution about." Case says that about 100 million Internet advertisement "banners" have been distributed. A Web surfer clicking on one gets directed to the Rewards for Justice Fund, which describes how donations are used and gives directions for contributing funds electronically. The fund received part of the proceeds from an all-star benefit concert at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. that featured Michael Jackson, Bette Midler and the Backstreet Boys. And the state of Florida may soon issue United We Stand license plates, with the proceeds going to the fund.
Special Agent Walt Deering of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service says that the charity fund serves a purpose that goes beyond simply funneling money into the program. "It lets the American public have the opportunity to... become part of the cause, and bring intl terrorists to justice," Deering says. "And when you're... trying to get people to provide information, money talks." The reward program has paid out $8 million in rewards in recent years, involving 22 different incidents. Deering says most of the program's success stories are classified. One that isn't: capture & conviction of Ramzi Youssef, who helped plan 1993 World Trade Ctr bombing.

interview   personal views, Anssi Kristian Kullberg, Finnish Dir. of Immigration Western & Central Asia Desk legal & country intelligence service researcher.

… during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. British intelligence and part of the Pakistani intelligence community clashed with the US already during the Cold War period, because they wanted to support Ahmad Shah Massoud, the "Lion of Panjshir". It was Massoud & his mujaheddin who finally, after getting Stingers from the British, managed to make the war too expensive for the Soviets, forcing them to retreat in 1989. Meanwhile, the CIA was incompetent enough to be dependent on the Pakistani intelligence services that, especially in Zia ul-Haq's period, favored Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a pompous figure who claimed to have extensive contacts throughout the Islamic world. He indeed had some contacts, incl with Osama bin Laden, but he was considered to be a KGB provocateur by Massoud & many others, and was never of any help in the Afghan independence struggle.
Instead of fighting the Soviet occupants, Hekmatyar preferred to fight other Afghans, and to conspire with suspicious Arab circles imported by his contact bin Laden to Peshawar. The Stingers that the CIA had provided to Hekmatyar, were not used to liberate Afghanistan. Instead, Hekmatyar sold them to Iran, and they were later used against the Americans in a well-known incident.
When the Soviet troops moved out, Hekmatyar pursued a bloody rebellion against the legal Afghan govt, devastating the country along with another rebel general, Dostum. (Though they were not aligned.) In 1993, Hekmatyar supported the KGB general & spymaster Haidar Aliyev's coup in Azerbaijan and, in 1994, Hekmatyar was involved in supporting pro-Russian Lezghin terrorists in the Caucasus.

As far as I know, Osama bin Laden was never a CIA agent. However, there are relatively plausible claims that he was close to Saudi intelligence, esp. to the recently fired intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faizal, until they broke up. Osama first appeared in the Afghan War theater either in 1979, or, at the latest in 1984. But at the beginning he was first & foremost a businessman. He served the interests of those who wished to construct roads accessible for tanks to cross through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. This might also explain his characteristic opportunism, quite atypical for a self-proclaimed warrior of faith. International jihadists surely want to portray him as a religious fighter or Muslim hero, but this is not the true picture, but, mostly, a myth created by the Western media. This is where Arab, Pakistani and Indonesian teenagers learn that Osama is a fighter in a universal struggle of Islam against its oppressors. But bin Laden never fought the Soviets to liberate Afghanistan. For most of this period, he was not even in Afghanistan.

He was managing an office in Peshawar, and the only credible claim about him being in a battle has been made by the former CIA official Milton Bearden concerning a minor skirmish that took place in spring 1987.
Bin Laden's first significant contact in Peshawar was the Palestinian Professor Abdullah Azzam, whom bin Laden has later described as his mentor. Azzam was an Arab idealist, who wanted to concentrate on the liberation of Afghanistan, and who wanted to support Massoud, whom he correctly regarded as being the right person to uphold. Bin Laden disagreed. He wanted to support the disloyal Islamist fanatic Hekmatyar. As a result, Azzam & his son were blown up in a car bomb in 1989, and consequently, bin Laden took over his organization and transformed it into Al-Qaida (the Base). Already before these events, he started to transform the agency by flooding it with his Arab contacts from the Middle East. These Arabs were not interested in liberating Afghanistan as much as in hiding from the law enforcement agencies of their own countries, most of all Egypt's.

When Russia attacked Tajikistan, bin Laden & his folks were by no means interested in liberating Tajikistan from a new communist yoke. Instead, bin Laden left Afghanistan and dispersed his terrorist network, directing it to act against the West. It is bizarre that a man claiming to be an Islamic fundamentalist supported the invasion by the Arab socialist (and thereby atheist) Iraq against Kuwait & Saudi Arabia, both with conservative Islamic regimes. Al-Qaida's supported all causes & activities against the West: the US, Turkey, Israel, and any pro- Western Muslim regime like Pakistan. Robbers on the island of Jolo in the Philippines qualified for Al-Qaida's support although they hardly knew anything about the Qur'an. They were immediately portrayed as "Islamic fighters". Even the strictly atheist anti-Turkish terrorist organization PKK has been welcomed. At the same time they definitely have not supported Muslims advocating Turkish-modeled moderate independence, like the Chechens, the original Tajik opposition or the Azeri govt under President Abulfaz Elchibey.

… Q: The "Arab" fighters in Afghanistan, are they a state with a state, or the long arm for covert operations (e.g., the assassination of Massoud) for the Taliban? Who is the dog and who is the tail?
A: The dog & tail can get very entangled here. Everybody is exploiting everybody, and finally all organizations & states are tools which consist of individuals and used by them.
The Arabs form the hard core of Al-Qaida. They are the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi etc. professional revolutionaries & terrorists who have gathered around the figurehead of Osama bin Laden. Many of these share the same old background in Marxist-inspired revolutionary movements in the Middle East. Ideology & facade have changed when green replaced red, but their methods as well as foreign contacts have mainly remained the same. This is why they are much more interested in attacking the West & pro-Western Muslim regimes than in supporting any true national liberation movements. Even if they try to infiltrate & influence conflict outcomes in the Balkans, the Caucasus, East Turkistan and Kashmir, they are set against the nationalist & secular, and usually pro-Western, policies of the legitimate leadership of these secessionist movements. So the people whom Al-Qaida may support and try to infiltrate are usually exiled or otherwise opposition forces acting in fact against the idea of independence. This has been the case in Chechnya, Dagestan, Bosnia, Kashmir and so on.

And this has been the case in Afghanistan as well. Osama bin Laden & his Arabs never contributed to the actual Afghan national liberation struggle. Instead they acted against it by infiltrating Afghan circles and turning them against each other. Their jihad is not intended to defend the Muslims against infidel oppressors, but to cause chaos and destruction, in which they apparently hope to overthrow Muslim regimes and replace them with the utopia of Salafi rule. It is not hard to see how this set of mind was inherited from the communist utopian terrorist movements that preceded the present Islamist ones. They had the same structures, the same cadres, the same leaders, the same sponsors and the same methods.
The Arabs in Afghanistan have feathered their nests, though. Osama bin Laden & his closest associates have all married daughters of Afghan elders from different factions and tribes and their sons & daughters have, in turn, married the off-spring of eminent Afghan leaders. This is how they secured their foothold in Afghan social networks, something neither the West nor Pakistan succeeded to do. When issues are reduced to family relationships, it is not to be expected that the Afghans would hand over the Arabs to the West or to Pakistan. Al-Qaida is not only fortifying itself physically, but also socially. At the same time their cells and countless collaborating agencies, some of whom are clearly non-Islamist, and some of which are govt agencies of certain hostile states, are hoping to escalate this "war against terrorism" and to exploit it for their own purposes. …
" … Afghanistan, source of 80% of the world's opium and target of a recent eradication campaign by the fundamentalist Taliban. … most of the country's real money comes from taxing non-dope trade. Nor will it bother the drug traffickers, who swarm the region and are shifting production north & west into such places as Turkmenistan. … "

1) http://www.india-today.com/itoday/19991004/cover.html

2) Zalmay Khalilzad said that "the US should actively assist the Taliban because even though it is fundamentalist, it does not practise the anti-US style fundamentalism of Iran". Within less than a month of the Taliban's take-over of Kabul, the US made a U-turn in its position, when it abandoned the plan to send an envoy to Kabul. The US policy shift came amidst mounting international criticism against the Taliban's appalling policies. The savagery and arbitrary medieval rule, while imposing a strict Islamic social code, banning women from working and shutting down girls schools, turned off the international community, drawing condemnation even from the orthodox Iranian clergy. Washington's denouncement of the Taliban action also came in the backdrop of the presidential election in the US, as supporting a regime that had no respect for human rights would have negatively affected Clinton's position. Robin Raphel said that the "US had little influence in Afghanistan, and supports none of the warring factions, and has no plan for bringing the conflict to an end." Another senior official of the US Administration denied that the US had assisted the Taliban in capturing Kabul. The official asserted that "as far as US policy is concerned, we have always maintained that peace and security in Afghanistan can only be achieved through the establishment of a broad coalition govt." Washington got rattled not only with the Inter-Services Intelligence's ill conceived plan but also horrified and ashamed at the Taliban's defiance. The US Taliban policy evoked mounting criticism for being too dependent on Pakistani inputs and analyses.
Aug. 1999 P.Stobdan, Fellow, IDSA
"The Afghan Conflict & Regional Security"
Strategic Analysis   monthly journal, v.XXIII no.5 p719-747

3) http://dawn.com/2000/01/02/op.htm#1

Islamabad, Pakistan   Warning that Muslims worldwide are under siege by a corrupted West, Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden urged a gathering of hardline Muslims to prepare the next generation for holy war. Bin Laden's statement was issued to coincide with 3 day convention that ends Wednesday. About 200,000 Muslim men at the gathering celebrated the Deoband Dar-ul-Uloom Islamic teachings, which inspired the Taliban religious militia, who govern most of Afghanistan. The 143-year-old school in Deoband, India, is also the ideological inspiration of most hardline Islamic groups in Pakistan, including the conference organizers, Jamiat-e-Ulema or Organization of Islamic Clerics. Bin Laden's statement, which was sent to Pakistani news organizations earlier this week, was not read out at the convention.
The statement urged wealthy Muslims to support the Taliban and use their money to rebuild their war-shattered nation. It also urged the new generation to train for holy war, or jehad. "Issue a call to the young generation to get ready for the holy war and to prepare for that in Afghanistan," he said. "I appeal to you to teach Muslims that there is no honor except in jehad in the way of God." Successive speakers at the conference were sharply critical of the U.S. and the UN. They loudly denounced the sanctions imposed against the Taliban in January, an attempt to press them to hand over bin Laden for trial. The Taliban say it would betray Islamic tenets to hand over bin Laden to a non-Muslim country for trial. They also say the U.S. has not provided proof of bin Laden's involvement in terrorism.

In a taped address played Wednesday at the convention, the Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar called the UN a tool of Washington, which he said wants to see the destruction of Muslims worldwide. The latest expression of intl outrage against the Taliban came in Feb. when Omar issued an edict ordering the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, including 2 mammoth ancient mountain carvings hewn from a Bamiyan cliff face. He called them idolatrous and offensive to Islam, which outlaws images. In his statement, Bin Laden praised Omar's edict, calling it a "great Islamic decision." Afghanistan has been battered by civil war, a drought, famine and the U.N. sanctions aimed at forcing Bin Laden's handover. On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- CA, said he had met with Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil to offer a peace plan that would end more than two decades of fighting. Rohrabacher declined to elaborate on the proposal, which he said is his own initiative and does not represent the position of the U.S. govt. He spoke to The AP from the Qatari capital of Doha, where he met Muttawakil.
Rohrabacher, member of the HIRCommittee and former special asst for Afghanistan in the Reagan administration, said Muttawakil's response was "thoughtful and inquisitive." Rohrabacher said Muttawakil would present the plan to the Taliban leadership, and that he was prepared to travel to the Afghan capital Kabul if they showed interest.

bin Laden's divisive Euro truce
4.15.04   AP

Cairo, Egypt   A man identifying himself as Osama bin Laden offered a "truce" to European countries that do not attack Muslims, saying it would begin when their soldiers leave Islamic nations, according to a recording broadcast Thursday on Arab satellite networks. Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain quickly spurned what appeared to be an attempt to drive a wedge between Europe & America.
The tape, which ran in full at more than 7 minutes, also vowed revenge against America for the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and denounced U.S. as using the Iraq war for corporate profiteering. "I announce a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries," the taped message said as the stations showed an old, still picture of al-Qaida leader.

The message said "the door to a truce is open for 3 months," but the time frame could be extended. "The truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries," the speaker said without elaborating. A CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency conducted a technical analysis of the recording and concluded it is probably authentic. The official said the tape was likely recorded in the past several weeks because of its reference to Israel's killing of Yassin last month.
The tape made clear overtures to Europeans, calling them "our neighbors north of the Mediterranean," and tried to drive a wedge between Europe & U.S.
Several audio & videotapes of al-Qaida's #2 Ayman al-Zawahri, have been released in recent months, but Thursday's tape was the first purportedly from bin Laden since Sept. 2003. Then, a videotape showed bin Laden climbing down a craggy mountainside with al-Zawahri.

al-Arabiya editor Ayman Gaballah said only that the pan-Arab TV network received the tape from "our sources." He would not say if the tape was received at its UAE HQ or in a bureau elsewhere, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. "From the voice, it seems it is bin Laden, but we are not experts to confirm it," Gaballah said.
Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera also aired the tape in full. Its chief editor wasn't available for comment. Senate Foreign Relations Committee sr Democrat Jos. Biden said on NBC's "Today" show that bin Laden was "trying to separate us from the Europeans, and Europeans from the U.S. It's an example of how opportunistic he is."
Sen. Richard Shelby R-AL expressed skepticism about the offer made on the tape. "You cannot negotiate with terrorists, esp. someone like Osama bin Laden," Shelby told "Today".

In London, the Foreign Office ruled out any deal with al-Qaida. "Their attacks are against the very idea of co- existence," the Foreign Office said. "The right response is to continue to confront terrorism, not give in to its demands."
A British opposition spokesman said the purported truce offered was a sign that the al-Qaida network is rattled. "It is obviously an attempt by al-Qaida or the associates of al-Qaida, to try and drive a wedge between the coalition," said opposition Conservative Party foreign affairs spokesman Michael Ancram. "They are frightened about the effectiveness of the coalition," Ancram said in an interview with BBC radio.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome that "it's unthinkable that we may open a negotiation with bin Laden; everybody understands this." Germany is a leading contributor to the intl peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. It opposed the Iraq war but is now helping train Iraqi police.
German govt spokesman said: "There can be no negotiations with terrorists & serious criminals like Osama bin Laden."

The voice on the tape defended al-Qaida's methods. "They say that we kill for the sake of killing, but reality shows that they lie," the speaker said. Russians, he said, were only killed after attacking Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechnya, Europeans after invading Iraq & Afghanistan and the Americans in NYC after supporting the Jews in Palestine & their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula."
"Stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling your blood," the message added. "This is a difficult but easy equation." This truce, the message said, was to deny "the warmongers" further opportunities and because polls have shown that "most of the European peoples want reconciliation" with the Islamic world.

Germany rejected that notion. "The intl community must pursue the fight against intl terrorism together," a govt spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. "Germany will continue to make its contribution."
In a reference to terror attacks on U.S. & Spain, the voice on the tape said that "what happened 9.11.01 & 3.11.04
  [ Spain train bombings 3.11.04 by N.African group prev. most interested in independence from colonial rule in Ceuta & Mellila. ]
    was your goods delivered back to you. Security is a need for all humans and we could not let you have a monopoly on it for yourselves. People who are aware would not let their politicians jeopardize their security."
At the start of the recording, the voice called this a "message to our neighbors north of the Mediterranean, incl a reconciliation initiative in response to the recent positive developments that have appeared."

It did not give any specifics, but 3.11.04 attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people and increasing violence in Iraq have prompted debate in Europe & Asia about keeping troops there. Spain's outgoing PM Jose Maria Aznar's govt, which strongly backed U.S. led war in Iraq despite popular & political opposition, was ousted in general elections 3 days after the attacks in Spain.
Incoming Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq by 6.30.04 unless UN takes control. However, his incoming govt rejected the offer of a truce with al-Qaida. Spain's incoming foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, speaking at his nation's parliament, said: "What we want is peace, democracy and freedom. We don't have to listen to or answer" the tape.

Madrid, Spain   A Spanish judge indicted Osama bin Laden and 34 others Wednesday on charges of terrorism, including 9.11.01 attacks in U.S. In a nearly 700-page document, investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon issued international arrest orders for bin Laden and 7 others suspected in 9.11.01. 2 other Spaniards also were indicted in connection with those attacks. Spain served "as a place or base for resting, preparation, indoctrinating, support and financing" of al-Qaida, Garzon said in the ruling.
The indictment charged bin Laden and the 9 others with membership in a terrorist organization and "as many crimes of terrorist murder ... as there were dead and injured" in 9.11.01. Garzon said terrorism is one of the crimes included in Spain's universal justice legislation, under which some offenses, such as crimes against humanity, can be tried here even if they were committed elsewhere. Garzon has used this law to try to prosecute abuses under military rule in Chile and Argentina.

The list of indicted suspects includes Tayssir Alouni, Al-Jazeera journalist arrested 9.8.03 in Spain, and Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who was accused of leading an al-Qaida cell in Spain and was arrested in Madrid Nov. 2001. 6 others believed to be in Spain also were indicted, but not all will be jailed, according to the order, which was obtained by AP. Garzon ratified jailing orders for 11 already in prison in Spain. Garzon also accused the suspects of belonging to a terrorist group and other crimes, including weapons possession, tax fraud, forgery and other crimes.
Other names on the indictment list include Ramzi Binalshibh, another core leader of the Hamburg, Germany, cell that helped prepare 9.11.01. He was arrested in Pakistan Sept. 2002. Along with Germany, Spain is known to have been an important staging ground for 9.11.01. Accused ringleader & suicide pilot Mohamed Atta visited Spain July 2001 and is believed to have held a key planning meeting with other participants in the northeastern Spanish region of Tarragona.

Garzon said the warrants & indictments are not so much aimed at putting bin Laden on trial in Spain as preventing him & other suspects from escaping justice altogether if & when they are caught. "When this happens, that will be the time establish priority of jurisdiction," Garzon wrote. He also said at least one Spaniard died in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
In U.S., bin Laden is charged in an indictment returned by a grand jury in New York with multiple charges resulting from 8.7.98 bombings of U.S embassies in Nairobi, Kenya & Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed more than 200 people. The indictment charges bin Laden with murder of U.S. nationals, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and attack on a federal facility resulting in death.
The only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks in U.S. is Zacarias Moussaoui, French citizen who admits allegiance to al-Qaida but denies being part of the hijacking plot. His trial is on hold while the courts determine whether he should have access to captured al-Qaida operatives he says will support his innocence.

About 40 Islamic extremist suspects have been arrested in Spain since the attacks, although many were released for lack of evidence. Garzon has been leading the investigation in Spain into alleged members of al-Qaida and other militant Islamic groups. Garzon had Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested in London but failed in 1999 to take him to court. Britain ultimately freed the aging ex-despot on grounds he was unfit to stand trial.
Last month, he had requested that Buenos Aires extradite 40 men indicted in Spain for abuses during Argentina's "dirty war." He also had focused on Spain's Basque separatist conflict, working to break up commando units of the armed group ETA.

bin Laden followers to be sentenced
10.16.01   AP

Extraordinarily tight security is being put into place in the New York courthouse where 4 followers of Osama bin Laden who were convicted in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa are to be sentenced this week. They were found guilty in May in a trial that laid out in detail what the govt knew about bin Laden and his al- Qaida terrorist network. Their sentencing will take place at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, blocks from the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center. U.S. marshals with shotguns guard the courthouse. Barricades block the adjacent street, and steel posts protect the building. The 4 were arrested in the 8.7.98 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and led to an international manhunt for top leaders of al-Qaida. The 6 month trial attracted few spectators beyond govt employees and the families of the victims. But the 9.11.01 terrorist attacks on U.S. targets, which have been blamed on bin Laden, have spurred new interest in the trial and the evidence the govt collected.
The defendants were the first convicted by a U.S. jury after bin Laden issued an edict in February 1998 to kill all Americans wherever they were found. They were convicted of conspiracy charges that alleged that their actions were carried out in furtherance of bin Laden's order, or fatwa. Bin Laden, who was indicted in the embassy case, is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. Federal prosecutor Kenneth Karas told the jury that the govt had "established the guilt of these defendants … in a conspiracy to murder the U.S. people merely because they were Americans."

Death penalty rejected
2 of the defendants, Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 28, could have gotten the death penalty, but jurors fearful of making the men martyrs decided not to impose it. Al-'Owhali and Mohamed face a mandatory life sentence. Al-'Owhali rode the bomb vehicle up to the embassy in Nairobi, slinging stun grenades at guards before fleeing. Mohamed helped to build the bomb that struck the embassy in Dar es Salaam. The 2 other men, Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, and Wadih El-Hage, 41, were convicted after the evidence showed that they had played significant roles in al-Qaida. Prosecutors alleged that El-Hage, the only U.S. citizen among the group, led "a secret double life," traveling the globe to raise money and smuggle weapons, incl Stinger missiles, for al-Qaida's terror plots. They said Odeh was an explosives expert who was a "technical adviser" to the terror group.
Security had already been increased around the 2 federal courthouses in downtown Manhattan in the past year. The measures included installation of 2 of the world's largest hydraulically operated street barricades and a row of steel posts in front of the courthouse. Since the trade center attack, visitors are required to submit bags & briefcases for inspection outside the courthouse. Environmental workers have regularly checked the air inside court for contamination.

NBC: Top al-Qaida militant arrested   Libyan accused of masterminding 1998 African embassy attacks
3.17.02   Daniel Strieff Reuters

A senior al-Qaida militant listed by U.S. as one of the world's 22 most dangerous men has been captured in Africa, sr U.S. official told NBC News on Sunday. Anas Al-Liby was captured at least 3 weeks ago and is imprisoned in Egypt. He is believed to be a sr member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network and is accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya & Tanzania that killed 224 people. The FBI has offered a $25 million reward for the arrest of Al-Liby, Libyan national who lived in Britain, and placed him on its list of 22 most-wanted terrorists. Al-Liby is believed to be the first of the list, issued after 9.11.01 attacks, to have been captured alive. He is thought to have extensive computer skills, and U.S. officials will try to use him to explain al-Qaida's use of the Internet and encrypted computer files to communicate with terrorists around the world, the U.S. official told NBC News on condition of anonymity. London's Sunday Times newspaper reported that al-Liby is being held in a high-security prison in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and that U.S. & Sudan were in negotiations about a possible handover to U.S. custody. There was no immediate explanation for the contradictory reports.

The Times said that days 9.11.01 between 30 & 40 al-Qaida members were secretly rounded up in Sudan and flown to Egypt. A further 10 were arrested last month, including Al-Liby. The suspect lived in Manchester, northern England, before fleeing Britain 2 years ago as an arrest warrant was issued for him by U.S., the paper said. British police tracked him down to his home May 2000, but he had left by the time they raided it, the Sunday Times said. Among possessions found at his flat was a manual entitled "Military Studies in the Jihad against Tyrants," the paper said. Scotland Yard spokesman in London declined to comment on the story. The most sr al-Qaida member known to be held by U.S. authorities is another Libyan, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured on the Afghan-Pakistani in Dec. while fleeing U.S.-led attack on the Tora Bora mountains. One other man on the most-wanted list, top al-Qaida member Mohammed Atef, was reported killed in a U.S. bombing raid on his home in Afghanistan.

More suspects arrested in bombing of USS Cole
4.1.01   WashPost pA22

Sanaa, Yemen   Police today arrested several new suspects in the bombing of the warship USS Cole, in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed last year, a Yemeni official said. The security official said an unspecified number of suspects believed to be Islamic militants were held in the southern port city of Aden, site of the apparent suicide bombing that crippled the destroyer on Oct. 12. "They will be interrogated to see if they were involved in the attack on Cole", the official said.Yemen had earlier arrested six suspects in the attack, some of whom are reportedly Muslim militants. But officials have said the main suspect has apparently fled to Afghanistan. The security official said a team of Yemeni investigators left for the U.S. today to continue their probe. One of the suspects, Ali Mohammed Omar Kurdi, was arrested and his house was searched by security forces on Friday, a relative told the Associated Press. Authorities gave no explanation for the arrest of Kurdi or for the search.
U.S. officials have said Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, who is based in Afghanistan, might have been involved in the attack. Bin Laden, who is also accused by Washington of masterminding the 1998 bombings of 2 U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 people, has denied involvement in the Cole bombing. But Arab news media have reported that he publicly praised the Cole attack in a poem in February. The Taliban Islamic militia that controls most of Afghanistan has refused to surrender bin Laden to the U.S. despite U.N. sanctions. The Taliban says Washington has not provided proof of his guilt and that it is against Afghan tradition to hand over a guest to his enemies.

The tunnel rats of terror   al-Qaeda captives in Yemen spent 2 months digging to freedom. Did they get inside help?
2.20.06   M.Hirsh, M.Hosenball, R.Nordland, M.Isikoff Newsweek

… Earlier this month, … a group of 23 suspected terrorists dug their way to freedom from a basement compound beneath the Political Security Office (PSO), Yemen's main intelligence service, in the capital of Sana. Leading them out was Jamal al-Badawi, mastermind of Oct. 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. Another escapee was an American Muslim, Jaber Elbaneh, who was once part of an alleged cell in Buffalo, NY. None has been seen since.
Not all the details of the escape are yet clear. But it is highly unlikely it could have succeeded without help from members of the Yemeni govt, which has been an ally in the war on terror. Last Friday a U.S. Embassy cable sent from Sana, described to NEWSWEEK by a U.S. official who did not want to be identified discussing classified material, noted "the lack of obvious security measures on the streets" and concluded, "One thing is certain: PSO insiders must have been involved."

As described by Yemeni and U.S. officials, the prisoners, left to themselves in a locked basement, spent 2 months digging the 143-foot tunnel. For tools, they used a broomstick with a sharpened spoon lashed to the end as a spade, along with 3 pots tied together as a U-shaped scoop. The plotters also had a soccer ball that they kicked around indoors, apparently to make enough noise to drown out the digging.
At about 4:30 a.m. 2.3.06, the prisoners crawled through the tunnel, broke through the floor of a nearby mosque, somehow emerging in the women's bathroom, the least frequented part of the mosque, and disappeared into the darkness. The escape occurred on a Friday, the Muslim holy day when prison authorities do not conduct head counts as rigorously. While it is unclear what kind of outside help the escapees might have had, officials found it particularly suspicious that they knew exactly where to dig.

The Bush administration has been generally happy with assistance from Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland. A draft of the State Dept's forthcoming country survey of global terrorism, obtained by NEWSWEEK, notes that Yemen has acted against Islamist extremists involved in attacks on U.S. and Western targets. Once virtually a welcoming committee for Islamist agitators, Yemeni govt changed its attitude after the Cole attack, especially after 13 Yemeni soldiers were killed in a Dec. 2001 shootout with Qaeda fugitives. President Ali Abdullah Saleh began to work more closely with U.S. investigators.

But privately, U.S. officials say the plotters must have had serious, possibly high-level, help at the Political Security Office. U.S. investigators say the PSO's rival agency, the National Security Board, is now leading the probe, detaining and questioning everyone who worked at the PSO. Saleh's security chief and the head of the PSO, Ali Mutahar al-Qamish, is said to be under suspicion, according to two U.S. officials.
U.S. and Dutch navies, meanwhile, have mounted an expensive search operation off the Arabian and Red seas. "We're blocking their southern escape route," says Dutch Lt. Cmdr. Willem Cosiy.

Al-Badawi escaped once before, in 2003, when several prisoners were being transferred to another Yemeni prison. After he was recaptured, some Yemeni officials tried unsuccessfully to claim a multimillion-dollar U.S. award, suggesting a scam.
At the time, al-Badawi apparently was friendly with Col. Hussein al-Anzi, then a top PSO official. Yemeni officials say al-Anzi was fired and no longer has any ties to the PSO.
The State Dept cable also cited Yemeni sources who suggested alternative escape theories, including "that elements of the govt liberated the prisoners to engage them in covert operations." American authorities are now offering rewards of up to $5 million for al-Badawi and Elbaneh, and wondering who in Yemen they can really trust.


U.S. gives key allies evidence on Bin Laden
10.30.01   Norman Kempster (Wash.DC) & John Daniszewski (Islamabad); P.Richter & R.Wright (Wash.DC), M.Reynolds (Moscow) L.A.Times

The Bush administration on Tuesday presented evidence to its key allies that it said links Osama bin Laden to the 9.11.01 attacks, and dispatched Def.Sec Rumsfeld to the MidEast to consult with allies in the anti-terrorism campaign. … The administration presented a detailed information package to allies in NATO and to Pakistan govt. State Dept spokesman Richard Boucher said the information was also given to other countries but he declined to name them. " … We have said all along we'll be sharing that information with foreign govts as we can." He said the information is classified and will not be made public for the time being. … U.S. and European officials said the evidence includes transcripts of intercepted communications, along with information concerning Bin Laden's participation in earlier terrorist attacks. These officials said the intelligence was supplied both by the British govt & U.S. agencies. … bases in Uzbekistan could be key to bombing or commando attacks on Afghanistan. … Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov … has agreed to open his country's airspace for U.S. military overflights but has left the status of Uzbekistan's valuable air bases unclear. … State Dept counter-terrorism chief Frank Taylor discussed the evidence with NATO representatives in Brussels. … One European diplomat said of the information: "It includes people talking about having done the job. It includes discussions of personal links between Bin Laden and people who organized the attacks and their associates. "There's other evidence of financial and business transactions, setting up businesses to set up procurement of weapons … "

bin Ladens own stake in Mass. biomedical firm
9.25.01   Jonathan Wells & Jack Meyers MSNBC

One of Osama bin Laden's brothers and a separate Saudi banking family suspected of funneling millions of dollars to bin Laden's terrorist organization own 28% of the stock in a Massachusetts biomedical firm engaged in advanced DNA research. SEC records show that Yahia M. A. bin Laden, one of the bin Laden siblings in charge of the family's MidEast based construction conglomerate, owns 16 % of Cambridge-based Hybridon, Inc., an 11 year old co. developing new medicine to combat cancer and bolster the human immune system. A second co. stockholder is Abdela bin Mahfouz, member of wealthy family which controls Saudi Arabia's largest bank, National Commercial Bank. That bank was accused by the Saudi govt in 1999 of trying to transfer at least $3 million to front organizations for Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. As of last May, Abdela bin Mahfouz owned nearly 12 % of the stock in Hybridon. Earlier SEC filings show that another member of the family, Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz, held stock in Hybridon. Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz is a director of the National Commercial Bank as well as a board member of Blessed Relief, a Sudan-based charity, which U.S. officials say served as a front for Osama bin Laden.

Hybridon CEO Robert Anderson said Yahia bin Laden and the bin Mahfouz family have been "loyal stockholders." We don't have any issue with the background of the investors. We don't have any concern," Anderson said. "These families put money in early on … they deal at arms length. I imagine they have a number of investments in the U.S. We are a legitimate company which is developing medicine We have dedicated scientists doing cancer research, not anything harmful." Hybridon, incorporated in 1990, is one of a handful of companies in the U.S. developing "antisense" technology, which involves the design of synthetic DNA material to inhibit the body's production of disease-causing protein. The biggest U.S. company involved in the antisense field, Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is currently working under a $6.6 million research grant from the U.S. Defense Dept. to see if this new technology can be used to counteract the devastating effects of biological weapons.

Hybridon has an agreement under which it licenses intellectual property to Isis, but according to Anderson, Hybridon has no involvement in any research related to germ warfare. "Currently we don't," Anderson said. "I guess if Isis were successful in some way we would consider it." As far as Anderson knows, Hybridon researchers do not work with materials useful in the development of biological weapons. Anderson said he has never met Yahia bin Laden in person or spoken with him by telephone. However, he provided the Herald with a copy of a statement Hybridon received from the head of the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia a few days after the U.S. named Osama bin Laden as the chief 9.11.01 suspect. Signed by Abdullah A. A. bin Laden, the statement declared the bin Laden family's "strong denunciation & condemnation of this tragic incident which has resulted in the loss of lives of so many innocent men, children and women, which run counter to our gracious religion and which is repugnant to all religions and humanity. … We express our condolences to the families and relatives of the innocent victims." Restating a position first announced by the family in 1994, Abdullah bin Laden also asserted that "the bin Laden family has no relation at all with (Osama bin Laden's) acts and conducts." The message was delivered to Hybridon through the Saudi Arabian consulate in U.S..

Another Hybridon stockholder & member of the company's board of directors is Camille A. Chebeir, whose company, Saudi Economic Development Co., manages bin Mahfouz family money, which reportedly totals some $4 billion. Chebeir, former exec. vp of the bin Mahfouz's National Commercial Bank, was appointed to Hybridon's board in 1999. According to reports in USA Today and by Associated Press that same year, Saudi govt officials audited National Commercial Bank and its founder, Khalid bin Mahfouz, and found that several of the country's wealthiest businessmen had ordered the bank to transfer more than $3 million to New York & London, where it was placed in the accounts of Islamic charities, including Blessed Relief. Khalid bin Mahfouz was reportedly placed under house arrest after the discovery of the transactions. Anderson said he is unaware of any alleged financial dealings between the bin Mahfouz family and Osama bin Laden's organization. Of the bin Laden and bin Mahfouz stock ownership, Anderson said: "They have a vote for their number of shares at the annual meeting. Like any other common stockholder, they're allowed to vote their shares. Surely these people have significant investments in other companies. There must be many, many others because these people have vast amounts of money. Why single out a little company like ours?" Yahia bin Laden (also spelled Yehia) is one of 3 brothers who exert the most control over the Saudi-based Bin Laden Group, according to research by PBS' Frontline, and he is currently negotiating with Lebanese officials for a $50 million contract to help rebuild war-torn central town Beirut.

    Is Michigan a terror stronghold?
    10.20.01   Keith Naughton Newsweek
With one of the largest populations of Arabs outside the Middle East, Detroit & surrounding suburbs are fertile ground for terrorism fund-raising & recruiting. "The Detroit/Dearborn area is a major financial support center for many Mideast terrorist groups," according to a Michigan State Police report obtained by NEWSWEEK. "Southeast Michigan is known as a lucrative recruiting area & potential support base for international terrorist groups. It is also conceivable that 'sleeper cells' may be located in that area of the state." Michigan state police submitted the "3 Year Statewide Domestic Preparedness Strategy" report to the Justice Dept earlier this month, to help support a request for federal funds to fight terrorism in Michigan. A police spokesman says the report "was not intended for public distribution." Almost every major terrorist organization has operatives in Michigan, according to the report. Citing information received from the Detroit FBI office, the report says "most of the 28 international terrorist groups recently identified by the State Dept … are represented in Michigan. Examples include such well-known terrorist organizations as Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Brotherhood, Al-Gama'at, Al-Islamiyya, and Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, Al Qaeda." The Detroit FBI office declines to comment on the report, which it has not yet reviewed, says a spokeswoman.

Those groups, along with domestic "patriot groups" in Michigan, combine to create 374 "potential-threat elements" statewide, the report says. A State Police spokesman describes such elements as individuals or groups who could engage in acts of terror. To raise money for international terrorist groups overseas, Michigan operatives "commit criminal acts" the report says. It cites 2 arrests in Detroit last year which had direct links to international terrorist groups. "Nov. 2000, 2 individuals were arrested in Detroit by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for smuggling weapons & military equipt to Lebanon. Evidence existed that linked the individuals to the terrorist group Hizballah," according to the report. On Sept. 17, the FBI raided a house in a rundown neighborhood in southwest Detroit looking for a suspected Osama bin Laden associate. Instead, they found 3 men and a trove of forged documents, including visas, a passport and 28 passport-sized photos. They also found a day planner with Arabic notations about the "American air base in Turkey," the "American foreign minister" and the "Alia Airport" in Jordan. The day planner also contained drawings of an airport believed to be the U.S. military base in southern Turkey that patrols the no-fly zone in Iraq.

The man the feds were looking for in Detroit, Nabil al-Marabh, was arrested near Chicago a few days later and is now in federal custody in NY. According to published reports, Al-Marabh has been identified as a bin Laden associate by Raed Hijazi, who is on trial in Jordan for foiled plot to blow up tourist sites on Millennium eve. Al-Marabh, former Boston cab driver born in Kuwait, is suspected of knowing 2 9.11.01 hijackers.
In Detroit, 3 men are facing federal fraud charges in connection with the forged documents found in the Detroit raid. 2 of the men, Karim Koubriti, 23, and Amed Hannan, 33, both Moroccan, have been in federal custody since the raid. Both formerly worked for at Detroit Metropolitan Airport as dishwashers for an airline catering service, before quitting in June to take truck-driving lessons. Third suspect, Youssef Hmimssa, was arrested on Sept. 28 in Iowa. He pled not guilty to federal fraud charges in Detroit on Oct. 17. Authorities say Hmimssa's photo appeared on a forged passport found in the raid of the Detroit house. FBI sources say Hmimssa is believed to have traveled the world using several aliases.

Did 'Jihad' arms course visit U.S.?   U.K. authorities plan to question man running camp in rural Alabama   12.27.01   Mike Brunker MSNBC

British authorities plan to question a security expert who runs a Alabama firearms training camp about claims that radical Muslims from Britain were honing their marksmanship on American soil before going off to fight for Islamic causes around the globe. In response to a query from MSNBC.com, a British Crown Prosecution Service spokesman in London confirmed British bodyguard & firearms trainer Mark Yates who has operations in both UK & U.S., will be questioned about a suspected terrorist's offering of "live fire" weapons training in America for aspiring holy warriors. "(Yates) has not been questioned as yet … but there are plans to do so soon," said spokesman Doug Crighton. The claim that Yates was somehow involved in the "Ultimate Jihad Challenge" training offered by the Sakina Security Services company was made by company's founder Sulayman Bilal Zain-ul-abidin, in custody since 10.1.01 on terrorism charges, Crighton said. It was the first time British authorities have acknowledged the investigation had extended to U.S. Previously, a British prosecutor had said only that Zain-ul- abidin claimed to have a business "associate" in Alabama.

Yates, who is operations & training director at the Ground Zero firearms training camp outside Marion, AL, denied in a phone interview that he or Berkeley & Associates, the company that operates the camp, had any business dealings with Sakina. "I first heard of Sakina last month when the Sunday Telegraph ran an article that mentioned it," the 44 year old Yates said by phone from London offices of Trans Global Security Intl, one of several inter-linked security companies he operates or is associated with.
  [ Yates is hyperbolic self-promoter per this account. So were G.Gordon Liddy, E.Howard Hunt, Oliver North, Richard Secord & Wm Casey. ]
"No, we had no agreements, no arrangements." He added that he is cooperating with British investigators. FBI spokesman Steven Berry said investigators are aware of Yates & the Alabama camp, and indicated that after checking Zain-ul-abidin's claim of having an associate in the state, the bureau is skeptical of the claim. In fact, though the claims that Sakina Security was providing weapons training in the U.S. first surfaced in British media accounts 18 months ago, federal & state law enforcement agencies told MSNBC.com they never found any evidence such instruction actually took place. Attempts to reach the president of Berkeley & Associates, Jason Fish, were unsuccessful.

Zain-ul-abidin, 43, was arrested on Oct. 1 and charged under Britain's Prevention of Terrorism Act with one count of "providing instructional training in the making or use of firearms, explosives or chemical, biological or nuclear weapons" and a second count of "inviting" others to undergo such training. He remains in jail after being denied bail and is scheduled for arraignment on Jan. 4. Zain-ul-abidin's attorney Muddassal Arani said her client is innocent. She did not return calls from MSNBC.com seeking comment. The charges arise from Zain-ul-abidin's operation of Sakina Security Services, which provided bodyguard service and claimed to specialize in "high-risk jobs in the former Soviet Union and in the civil war arenas of the world." Sakina's website also offered courses in self-defense & hand-to-hand combat for Muslims, incl the "Ultimate Jihad Challenge." After mastering the "art of bone breaking" and learning to "improvise explosive devices," it said, British Muslims would be given the opportunity to squeeze off up to 3,000 rounds at a shooting range in U.S. before heading off to fight for Islamic causes around the world. "All serious firearms training must be done overseas" because of British gun laws, the website said.

At a bail hearing in London 10.5.01, prosecutor Patrick Stevens said Zain-ul-abidin had told investigators that Sakina was essentially a one-man operation in which he acted as chief instructor. But he also claimed to have "an associate" in Alabama, Stevens said. The prosecutor also said investigators had searched Zain-ul-abidin's apartment and seized documents believed to be related to suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden & his al-Qaida network, anti-Semitic material and what appeared to be disabled firearms, including a rifle and 2 handguns. While Yates is adamant that he was not involved in a business relationship with Zain-ul-abidin or Sakina Security, he told MSNBC.com that he could not discuss whether he knew the suspect because the matter is the subject of an ongoing investigation.
Sunday Telegraph reported that Zain-ul-abidin, who also used the name Frank Etim, attended a military training course taught by Yates several years ago at a secret camp near the village of Yetgoch in southern Wales. Young Muslims & others learned how to use Uzi machine guns at the camp, which was run by Trans Global Security Intl, the newspaper said, quoting 2 individuals who placed Etim at the scene. A third man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MSNBC.com that he met Etim at the camp and had recently been interviewed by police about the training. "My memory is that he came alone and didn't stick out as an exceptional or forceful character," said the man, who works in the security field in Britain. "He was very approachable and in fact quite a nice guy." He added that he saw no evidence that Yates & Etim had anything beyond the usual instructor-student relationship.

The Telegraph reported in November that Yates acknowledged that he "had contact with (Etim) on a number of occasions over the past few years," but said he declined to elaborate on the nature of the relationship. The reports of the Welsh training camp have rekindled a debate in Britain over whether the country has in recent years become a hotbed for military recruitment by radical Islamic elements. Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, firebrand Islamic leader in London and a founder of the fundamentalist al-Muhajiroun organization, told the Telegraph last year that between 1,800 & 2,000 British Muslims were going abroad each year for military training. "We find young men in university classes or mosques, invite them for a meal and discuss … ongoing attacks being suffered by Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine or Kashmir," the the newspaper quoted Bakri Mohammed as saying. "We … make them understand their duty to support the jihad (holy war) struggle verbally, financially and, if they can, physically in order to liberate their homeland." Others in the Muslim community have challenged Bakri Mohammed's estimates, saying they are only designed to further the aims of al-Muhajiroun, which advocates uniting the world's 50-plus Muslim states under a single "khilafah," or Islamic state.

While reliable numbers are impossible to come by, anecdotal accounts of such recruitment, incl apparent involvement of Sakina Security, were reported at least as early as May 2000. BBC interviewed a British Muslim it identified as Abu Yahya who claimed to have attended a military training camp in the Kashmir after being recruited by Sakina Security. "I learned everything with respect to fighting, making bombs, using artillery, using a Kalashnikov (assault rifle), how to ambush," he told the network. The following month, the Hindu newspaper of India quoted a Sakina Security representative who identified himself as Sulayman Balal (Zain-ul-abidin's first & middle names) as saying that "a few people" had signed up for the first "Ultimate Jihad Challenge" in April. He described the 2 week course as taking place on a "1,000-acre, state-of-the-art shooting range in the U.S." The description closely matches published information about Ground Zero, the Alabama training camp that Yates runs. The Ground Zero Web site, which was quickly retooled after 9.11.01 to highlight a new "5-day anti-terrorist training" course, says the Alabama compound features "state-of -the-art, world-class ... training facilities." British security co. WK Security, which offers training in SWAT team tactics at Ground Zero under an arrangement Berkeley & Assoc., advertises the 5-day course as being held at a "1000+ acre training facility."

Al-Muhajiroun movement founder Bakri Mohammed told the Telegraph last year that the U.S. was becoming a favored destination for military training. "We use U.S.A. because whenever we go to Afghanistan, U.S.A. labels us terrorist," the Syrian-born Bakri Mohammed was quoted as saying, "OK, so let us go to America. You call us tourists." Since 9.11.01 and British authorities' heightened scrutiny , al-Muhajiroun is now distancing itself from Sakina. Al-Muhajiroun spokesman Mohamed Sharif told MSNBC.com Bakri Mohammed's comments about military training in U.S. referred only to "3 or 4 men" who signed up for a Sakina course and practiced their marksmanship at an unidentified shooting club in Missouri. "They discover when they went to America that it was too expensive, about $3,000 to $4,000," he said. Sharif, who described Sakina as a "youth club" that was not affiliated with al-Muhajiroun, added that that reports suggesting that al-Muhajiroun & Sakina were engaged in military recruitment amounted to "a storm in a teacup."

Al-Fuqra tied to Colorado crimes
Leader owned land in Buena Vista; followers convicted in bombing of Krishna temple
2.12.02   Charlie Brennan MSNBC

Radical Islamic leader linked to the kidnapping of Wall St Journal reporter Daniel Pearl tied to a wide range of illegal activity throughout Colorado. Through a broad-based investigation launched in 1989, CO authorities convicted 4 members of the al-Fuqra movement on a series of felonies including racketeering, forgery, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and the 1984 firebombing of a Hare Krishna temple in Denver. Those who helped lead those investigations said the Pakistani-based leader of al-Fuqra, Sheik Mubarik Ali Jilani, briefly owned 2 lots in downtown Buena Vista. Susan Fenger, then an investigator for the state Labor & Employment Dept, helped build the case against Colorado al-Fuqra members. She said Jilani had been in Colorado. "Sheikh Mubarik Jilani was the leader of al-Fuqra and still is," said Fenger, now working privately as a forensic documents examiner. "Sheikh Jilani visited Colorado, we know that," said Jefferson County prosecutor Doug Wamsley. Wamsley, then an asst atty general, led the prosecution against four al-Fuqra members in the early 1990s. "We have at least one witness who remembered Jilani from the Buena Vista area, where he had talked to a realtor and arranged to buy a piece of property," said Wamsley. "But then it was sold, right away. We didn't pay much attention to it, because he held it so briefly."

Pearl was seeking to interview Jilani when he vanished 1.23.02 in Karachi. Jilani has been questioned in the Pearl kidnapping, but has reportedly denied knowing anything about it. Fenger described al-Fuqra's CO presence now as minimal. The extremist group is believed to still have compounds in NY, CA, SC and VA. Jilani was questioned in connection with the Pearl kidnapping, Fenger said, after police intercepted a communication from Jilani to al- Fuqra members at their compound in Red Huse, VA. "What the content of that communication was, I didn't ask," said Fenger. "I knew the source wouldn't tell me, so I didn't ask." Jilani, Fenger said, attended a Dec. 1993 meeting in Sudan that included members of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. "I know Jilani was there," said Fenger, "and there was a huge group of Somalis," among whom there are many bin Laden supporters. While Jilani's reason for briefly investing in downtown Buena Vista more than 10 years ago may never be known, authorities know far more about other al-Fuqra CO activities.

For example, Jilani's followers also owned a 101-acre compound 12 miles east of Buena Vista near Trout Creek Pass. It was situated between 9 & 10 thousand ft, and lacked electricity or plumbing. Wamsley believed they wanted the property for "a high-altitude training camp." Police raided it in 1992 and discovered a hidden cave containing about 30 military weapons, including AK-47 rifles and about 6,000 rounds of ammunition. The Trout Creek Pass compound, located on an old mining claim, had been kept under surveillance by state & Chafee County authorities from June 1989 to March 1991, during which time police watched "various individuals conducting martial arts training, engaging in hand-to-hand combat & other paramilitary tactical maneuvers, and practicing the shooting of assorted firearms & weaponry," according to court documents. It was finally raided in Oct. 1992, resulting in the arrest of 4 members ultimately convicted in a series of crimes attributed to the group. Those still serving prison terms in Colorado in conection with their al-Fuqra activities are James D. Williams, 48, James Upshur, 57, and Edward Flinton. Fourth defendant Edward Ivan McGhee 46, has since been paroled.

"Jilani recruited these people in this country, and set up these groups around the country," said Wamsley. The first solid lead investigators developed on al-Fuqra in CO came in 1989. In probing a series of storage locker thefts in Colorado Springs, police executed a search warrant on a locker rented by the group. The locker held 30 lbs of explosives, 3 large pipe bombs, 10 handguns, silencers, military training manuals and bombing-making instructions. Additionally, investigators recovered documents, maps and surveillance photographs relating to potential targets in L.A., Tucson and Denver, plus a detailed description of the 8.1.84 Hare Krishna temple firebombing at 1400 Cherry St. in Denver. At that point, the fire was unsolved. One of the devices found in that Colorado Springs locker, Wamsley said, "was identical to the device that was used to burn the temple." Other crimes on which Colorado al-Fuqra members were convicted include defrauding the state of $355,000 in fraudulent worker compensation claims

Suspect: bin Laden living in border area
3.6.03   Kathy Gannon & Munir Ahmad AP

Islamabad, Pakistan   Osama bin Laden is alive, in good health and living in the border region between Pakistan & Afghanistan, suspected No. 3 al-Qaida leader told his interrogators after being captured last weekend, a Pakistani intelligence official said Thursday.
Suspected 9.11.01 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said he met with bin Laden in recent weeks using a complicated network of phone calls, runners and intermediaries to line up the visit, said the official, who participated in the interrogation.The meeting took place in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province or in the rugged mountain peaks that run along the border with Afghanistan, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mohammed said he didn't know bin Laden's exact whereabouts now, but that he was in the region, according to the official. Mohammed was captured last Saturday in a joint raid by Pakistani & CIA operatives on a house in Rawalpindi, a bustling city adjacent to the capital. The official said Mohammed was interrogated for several hours by both Pakistani agents & CIA agents before being handed over to U.S. authorities and taken out of the country to an undisclosed location.
"He said proudly, 'the sheikh (bin Laden) is a hero of Islam and I am his tiny servant. Life, family, money, everything can be sacrificed for the sheikh,"' said the intelligence official.

In what appeared to corroborate Mohammed's information, Associated Press received similar information on Monday from a former Taliban intelligence chief. In a telephone interview from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the former intelligence chief said bin Laden was seen in South Waziristan in Baluchistan province less than 2 months ago. bin Laden was meeting with Taliban members, he said. His report could not be independently verified, but both U.S Special Forces & Pakistani soldiers are in South Waziristan trying to flush out fugitive Taliban & al-Qaida.

Several sources say that bin Laden moves with only a small number of guards, changing his location nightly, never using satellite telephones. Instead he reportedly sends messages through intermediaries to a selected person who makes phone calls on his behalf, according to former Taliban interviewed by AP in Pakistan's remote tribal regions.
Another intelligence official earlier told AP that a raid was carried out on a house in Wana in South Waziristan earlier this year after a tip off was received that bin Laden's top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri, was there. The raid led to the arrest of some Afghan Taliban, but not al-Zawahri.

Officially, however, Pakistan's Interior Ministry spokesman, Iftikhar Ahmad, said "we cannot say that Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He (bin Laden) would have been arrested if he had been here." Western diplomats say it's intriguing that Mohammed was arrested in a Rawalpindi neighborhood, where army generals & top military officials live. The congested city of about 4 million people is the headquarters of the Pakistani Army and home of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Mohammed was arrested at the home of an activist of Pakistan's oldest religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which has close links with the Pakistan intelligence service, known as ISI. In the 1980s, Jamaat-e-Islami activists worked closely with Pakistan's intelligence to help Afghan insurgents during the U.S.-bankrolled anti-communist war in Afghanistan.

Arab & Pakistani sources told the AP that Mohammed may have been trying to raise money for terrorist attacks against U.S. interests. Fund-raising was not new to Mohammed, who ran an Islamic charity in northwestern Peshawar along with his brother during the 1980s war in Afghanistan. Through their charity they financed Islamic insurgents and taught students at religious schools in Peshawar & in nearby Pubbi, including the Jalozai Refugee camp, where many Arab militants lived.
Other militant Arab warriors lived in nearby Shamshatoo camp, which was run by renegade rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami group. Hekmatyar has been labeled a terrorist by U.S. A former loyalist of Hekmatyar's, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who identified himself as Abu Yusuf, said Mohammed traveled freely throughout Pakistan. His only fear was from U.S. intelligence agents, who have provided the tipoffs to Pakistani security officials that have led to previous raids & arrests.

One such tip led to a raid in southern Karachi 9.10.02 in which Mohammed's wife & 2 small children were arrested, Abu Yusuf said. The next day, Ramzi Binalshibh, would-be hijacker who could not get into U.S., was captured in the southern port city of Karachi. He was an aide to Mohammed and a key 9.11.01 moneyman.
Pakistani officials said that an arrest made in Quetta, capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, helped police trace Mohammed to Rawalpindi. However, other reports say that U.S. intelligence traced a telephone call that led police to Mohammed.
A second al-Qaida suspect, Saudi national Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, was arrested with Mohammed, along with Ahmed Abdul Qadus. Al-Hisawi was suspected of financing 9.11.01. He was also said to be the moneyman for al-Zawahri and may have been trying to contact the Egyptian fugitive at the time of his arrest

border diagram Afghan warnings that went unheeded at Tora Bora
U.S. decision not to send in its own ground troops might have enabled Bin Laden to escape, officials acknowledge
4.25.02   Megan K.Stack LA Times

Tora Bora, Afghanistan   Bombs rumbled in mountains that ribbon Pakistani border; anti-Taliban commander Haji Mohammed Zaman paced impatiently. On that hard, wintry December day, Zaman's troops were hunting for the world's most wanted man; they weren't having much luck. Day after day they captured, then lost, the same ground. His soldiers were shivering, hungry and losing their zeal. Zaman was frustrated.
"If America wants to capture Osama, why aren't they trying?" he complained. According to the commander's intelligence, Osama bin Laden was hunkered down in the mountains, waiting out the airstrikes in deep underground caverns. For weeks, Zaman had pressed the U.S. for more weapons, supplies and money to hunt the Al Qaeda chief, but Americans regarded the Afghan commander's information with suspicion.

Now, months later, interrogation of captured Al Qaeda fighters has reportedly led the Bush administration to conclude that Bin Laden was, indeed, hiding out in the mountain redoubt. He might have escaped by slipping over the border into wild tribal zones of Pakistan, just as anti-Taliban commanders warned.In hindsight, some U.S. officials have lamented the decision to fight the battle of Tora Bora with bombs & Afghan foot soldiers instead of sending in U.S. ground troops. But during the siege, a Western diplomat in the region characterized Zaman & other tribal warlords as "parasites" who were inflating reports of Al Qaeda's presence in hopes of milking money & supplies from the U.S.

If the U.S. was hesitant to trust the Afghan commanders, it wasn't for nothing. It was impossible to say what invisible laces of sympathy ran between the Afghans & their Al Qaeda foes. There was the bond of Islam. In candid moments, most of the anti-Taliban soldiers admitted that they'd rather see the terrorists flee than have to slaughter them. Then there were mercenary motivations: Some Afghans reportedly ferried desperate, wealthy terrorists to the Pakistani line for a pretty price. In a climate of mistrust & uncertainty and daunted by a forbidding terrain, U.S. military balked at sending troops. The Pentagon stands by that decision. Last week, Def.Sec. Rumsfeld said the U.S. couldn't be sure of Bin Laden's whereabouts.
In the swirl of second-guessing, some military officials say the Afghans fumbled, or even helped the terrorist chieftain evade capture. But as the battle unfolded, local warriors repeatedly warned of Al Qaeda members' probable, even imminent, escape.

A gap in strategies was obvious from the beginning: Instead of sending ground troops, U.S. warplanes flew overhead and dropped "daisy cutter" bombs & cruise missiles. The U.S. set a $25-million bounty on Bin Laden's head in hopes of appealing to local mercenaries. Afghans were skeptical. Bombs alone would never be enough to destroy the network of caves, they said. After all, they pointed out, Soviet forces spent years attacking Tora Bora, to little effect. Caves could be attacked & searched only on foot, they warned, and the sooner the better. As for the bounty, the men shrugged it off. Even if they bagged the famed fugitive, they didn't expect to see a single cent. "That money is for our commanders," said a soldier named Rohullah.

The Afghans pleaded for guns, food, coats and money. If they were properly outfitted, they said, they could storm Tora Bora and rout Bin Laden. But as the weeks passed, as biting winter brought the first snow clouds, and as U.S. hesitation to send ground troops to the region became apparent, local commanders spoke with impatience and, finally, bewilderment. "I don't think the U.S. wants to capture Osama," Zaman top aide Mohammed Alem said in late November. "We know where he is, we tell them and they do nothing. So they are not as serious as they say they are." When the Northern Alliance stormed into capital Kabul 11.13.01, provincial Taliban govts dissolved throughout eastern Afghanistan, and Zaman came riding over the Khyber Pass from Pakistan. Guarded by a young, ragged army, he returned to his family's stone house in Jalalabad and went to work plotting the ouster of "Arabs" who he insisted were hiding in the mountains.

Zaman told anybody who would listen that bin Laden had moved a few hours south to Tora Bora. He told the tale of a long convoy of Al Qaeda pickup trucks that rumbled out of the city and crept up into the hills. Accompanied by a tribal elder from the Pakistani region of Parachinar, Bin Laden had headed for Tora Bora, Zaman said. Villagers had watched him pass. "You know the infrastructure of Al Qaeda has broken down completely," Zaman said in November. "If the allies help us, we can get them out of Tora Bora." Newly appointed security chief for the eastern provinces Hazrat Ali was equally certain. "I know who is sending lunch & dinner from this city to Osama," he said one afternoon in November. He refused to elaborate.
Afghans said bin Laden was accompanied by one of his sons & by Egyptian doctor Ayman Zawahiri who looks after bin Laden's health and is also considered his most important advisor. They said the group included hundreds, even thousands, of hard-line followers from China, Chechnya, Kashmir and the MidEast.

First week of December, anti-Taliban moujahedeen clambered to a rocky plateau on the northern edge of Tora Bora. Far below, a dry riverbed lay like a spine on the drought-baked earth; abandoned terraces climbed the hillsides. The soldiers whistled, clapped and shouted; they were glad to start the fighting. But even in the first flush of battle, there was skepticism in the ranks. Commanders complained that their soldiers were being killed in misguided air attacks and that incessant bombing made it difficult to penetrate Al Qaeda hide-outs on foot.

A soldier named Yar Mohammed squinted into the hills, a rocket launcher slung over one shoulder. "These whole mountains are covered with caves, and across the mountain," he pointed, "is Pakistan. They could escape that way." Whether the roads to Pakistan had been sealed already by snow was an open question in the early days of the assault. At first, commanders claimed that Al Qaeda forces were cornered. But quietly, underlings contradicted them. "We see they're escaping, but it's difficult to go forward in the hills," Shorab Khan said. "Yeah, it's possible they can run away. We've blocked the roads as best we can."
It was an important point: south of Tora Bora lay the tribal areas of Pakistan, where lawlessness ruled and bin Laden enjoyed strong support. Commanders said the path through the mountains had already been trodden by fleeing Taliban leaders, including the chief of Nangarhar province, who'd reportedly taken shelter in Pakistan.

Eventually, it became clear that it was possible, even easy, to tramp through the snowdrifts into Pakistan. Around Dec. 7, the soldiers overheard Bin Laden on the radio. He was still in Tora Bora, but "they were getting ready to move," said Haji Zahir, another senior Afghan commander. The next morning, tribal scouts said they saw Bin Laden picking his way over the hills on horseback. The Saudi exile was flanked by four Al Qaeda guards, commander Haji Khalan Mir said.
The days slipped past. The Afghans said they caught sight of bin Laden, lost him, then found him again. In a shadow dance of rumors and overheard radio transmissions, bin Laden became an almost mystical figure: moving, moving, always moving. But this had always been the terrorist chief's way. One day, Zaman's scouts spotted blood in the snow on the route to the Pakistani border. The commander's conclusion was ominous: Al Qaeda fighters were escaping. The next day, Zaman & Ali, who seldom agreed on anything, spoke with renewed conviction of bin Laden's presence. Both refused to explain what made them so suddenly, unwaveringly certain. "I'm 100% sure Osama is here," Zaman said. "I send spies every day. They bring me the information." He paused, then gave a curt warning: "If America continues like this, it's a mistake."

At the height of combat, about 100 members of the U.S. & British special forces were stationed in Tora Bora. Otherwise, the U.S. kept an eye on the battle from the distant vantage of Tampa, FL. Afghan soldiers starved, shivered and wrapped their wounds in blankets because there were no medicines, bandages or doctors. They pressed toward the caves on the outskirts of the cave complex, only to be pushed back again. Foot soldiers seesawed over the same ground day after day, sniping & ducking along the rocky trails.
At night, when temperatures plunged and the hunger pangs were sharp, the soldiers, many barely beyond adolescence, climbed down from their posts and sought shelter in the mud houses of nearby farmers. One night, they raided a network TV truck and devoured the crew's food. "We were hungry," they said with a shrug the next day.

When morning broke, they battled their way back to the positions they'd abandoned the night before. "If we had coats or shoes, we could go ahead," said Sarbaz Khan, who headed an Afghan squadron. "It's so cold at night we can't hold our guns. Our blood freezes; it gets so we can't move easily." The Afghans had been holding walkie- talkie negotiations with Al Qaeda fighters since the attacks began. Then, 12.11.01, a core group of Al Qaeda fighters promised to turn themselves in at daybreak. But when the appointed hour arrived, eerie silence of the cease-fire was broken by a torrent of bombs from U.S. warplanes. Gunfire cracked against the rocks. "American bombing disturbed the negotiations," griped a commander named Ali Mohammed. "The Americans ruined everything." Other Afghans were wary: The negotiations were nothing but a trick, they said, a way to buy time. "Hundreds have already escaped," said Mir, the commander under security chief Ali. "And we are sure Osama bin Laden escaped through this road to the Pakistani tribal areas."

Report: al-Qaida headed to Lebanon ¹
Terrorist network looking for new home after Taliban defeat, U.K. paper says   2.1.02   R.Windrem (NY) D.Strieff (London) MSNBC, AP, Reuters

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network is trying to shift its base of operations to Lebanon following the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a British newspaper reported Friday. The report comes amid the airing of an interview in which the Saudi dissident describes himself & his followers as "terrorists" and says the U.S. is headed toward "unbearable hell."
Citing intelligence reports, The Times of London said one of bin Laden's top deputies arrived in Lebanon in mid- January and has held meetings with representatives of the Hezbollah militant group. Hezbollah, which last attacked a U.S. facility in 1983 when a suicide truck bomb exploded in an American military barracks in Beirut, killing 241 servicemen, is believed to be sponsored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. H