Osama's friend Saddam...

Proof of Iraq/Bin Laden links
From AFP
04nov01

A FORMER Iraqi special forces officer has given new proof of links between Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden and Iraq, according to a report.

The newspaper said that it was told by a leading member of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Nabeel Musawi, of the testimony of the 36-year-old former officer, identified only as A.S.

The INC is one of the main opposition groups to Saddam Hussein's government.

The newspaper said that the former officer told of a training camp called Salman Pak in Iraq where members of bin Laden's terror network had trained as pilots and on how to seize control of aircraft.

Musawi said that the former officer told him: "There were also women pilots who were trained and I believe that the next time, if there is a next time, it could be a woman who takes over an airplane."

The source also told of a meeting on the Pakistani border in December 1998 between an Iraqi diplomat working in Turkey and Osama bin Laden.

He further claimed that Iraq had sent a tonne of anthrax bacteria to bin Laden.

The former officer was said to have been in a poor physical state after being tortured and poisoned while in prison.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,3183236%5E15574,00.html

 

HOOP-T:

How does Iraq break the embargo by exporting billions of dollars of black market oil every year? Practically everyone except the US and Britian busts the embargo, that has been well documented.

Shipping a ton of anthrax somewhere isn't that hard. All you need is a lax border in Iraq (easy, since they're shipping it and we aren't really watching) and a lax border in Afghanistan/Pakistan (also easy, since ISI can relax the border controls whenever they want).

JuanValdez:

A grain of salt never hurts. But the INC has given us accurate info in the past; for example, they helped the weapons inspectors quite a bit when they were there. I wouldn't just brush it off so easy if I were you.

 

Here are a couple of INC-free articles:

Saddam reaching out to Laden?

NEW YORK, Jan 4 (PTI) — Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is making efforts to reach international terrorist Osama bin Laden, accused of bombing two US embassies last summer, to rebuild his overseas intelligence and to establish terrorist networks, Newsweek said quoting and unidentified American source.

But some analysts and officials believe that Saddam Hussein is unlikely to associate himself with Bin Laden or other terrorists as he considers himself to be a world leader.

The idea of an alliance between Iraq and Bin Laden is “alarming” for the West which fears the consequences if Baghdad gives portable biological weapons to the Saudi dissident, The Newsweek said.

At present, Mr Hussein’s “terrorism” capability is “still small time”, senior US officials were quoted as saying. “He is nowhere close to the level of Iranians or Hizbullah.”

But an “Arab intelligence source” told the magazine that “very soon, you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by Iraqis.”

The attacks, he said, would be aimed at American and British targets in the Islamic world. Plans had already been put into action under three “false flags ”, — Palestinian, Iranian and the Al-Qaeda apparatus, a collection of terrorists who are said to receive Bin Laden’s patronage.

“All these organisations have representatives in Baghdad, the sources said”.

The magazine, however, does not identify the source or his nationality but said he personally knows Mr Hussein and stays in touch with his clandestine services.

Mr Saddam Hussein’s long-term strategy, it said, quoting “several sources” is to “bully or cajole” Islamic countries into breaking the embargo against Iraq without waiting the UN to lift it formally.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden alleged his family members were denied permission to visit Afghanistan.

The Saudi dissident millionaire, wanted by the USA for terrorist acts, said his eldest son and other relatives had been prevented from going to Afghanistan and from sending him his share of proceeds from his family business.

The American news magazine ‘Newsweek,’ which reported Bin Laden’s statement, did not say whom he blamed but apparently he was referring to the Saudi Government.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/99jan05/world.htm#1

another:

Iraq tempts bin Laden to attack West
IAN BRUCE
The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, has been offered sanctuary in Iraq if his worldwide terrorist network succeeds in carrying out a campaign of high-profile attacks on the West over the next few weeks.

Intelligence sources say the Saudi dissident believed responsible for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and a US military barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1998, is running out of options for a safe haven.

He is now thought to have overcome his initial rejection of Saddam Hussein, whom he regarded as an exploiter of the Islamic cause rather than a true believer, and is considering the offer of a bolt-hole from which he can continue to mastermind terrorism on a global scale.

A US counter-terrorist source said yesterday: "Our State Department issued a worldwide warning on December 11. We have solid information that many of the groups operating under bin Laden's patronage are planning 'spectaculars' to coincide with the period leading up to and through the millennium celebrations.

"They want to inflict maximum loss of life in return for publicity. Now we are also facing the prospect of an unholy alliance between bin Laden and Saddam. The implications are terrifying.

"We might be looking at the most wanted man on the FBI's target list gaining access to chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons courtesy of Iraq's clandestine research programmes."

The US intelligence community has been squeezing bin Laden's finances steadily for several years. His personal fortune of anything up to £500m has been whittled down to single figures, although funds continue to flow into the coffers of his Al Qaeda - Arabic for "The Base" - organisation from wealthy individuals in the Middle East.

These include members of the Saudi royal family opposed to American involvement in the region and rich businessmen in the Gulf States hoping to buy themselves immunity if bin Laden's Islamic revolution ever manages to overthrow their governments.

But the bulk of his income comes from acting as middleman and fixer for the Afghan opium producers. According to the United Nations, Afghanistan supplies 75% of the world's opium and its heroin derivatives in a narcotics' trade worth an estimated £4bn to £6bn a year.

The Taleban religious fanatics who control 85% of Afghanistan need the cash to fund their never-ending civil wars. They gave bin Laden refuge because he had connections with the Chechen and Russian mafias and their access to money-laundering in the West.

According to Middle Eastern intelligence sources, bin Laden rakes off anything up to £500m a year from his pivotal role in the drugs' trade. It is more than enough to underwrite the cost of mujahideen training camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan and the provision of weapons for bin Laden's personal war against the US and its allies.

Up to 20 Islamic extremist groups operate under the loose control of Al Qaeda.

They include Algeria's GSPC, responsible for the casual murder of civilians in the country's Kabylie region, and a network for recruiting Muslim volunteers to fight in the Balkans and Chechnya.

Al Qaeda's tentacles spread across Europe and the Middle East, including the United Kingdom. Up to 2000 young Muslims a year were enlisted in Britain between 1995 and 1998 to fight militant Islam's cause.

They received basic survival and unarmed combat training in Britain, and were then flown to various camps in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to be instructed in the use of firearms and explosives. A few were involved in combat in the latter stages of the Bosnian conflict.

The spread of bin Laden's influence has spawned some strange alliances.

Israel's Mossad agency is currently helping the Russians identify known fundamentalist militants in Chechnya. British, Italian and US agents reportedly co-operated with Slobodan Milosevic's regime to root out veterans of the 1979-89 Afghan-Russia war while they were themselves on opposite sides in Bosnia.

The Americans have also resorted to hi-tech destabilisation. Various agencies inserted "sniffer" software programmes into the banking systems of Europe and the Middle East from the mid-1990s onwards. These were targeted on known or suspected accounts for bin Laden's front men in Holland, Britain, Switzerland, Italy, the US and the Caribbean.

When large amounts of cash were moved around, the programmes flagged up the transactions. Computer experts then transferred or deleted the cash electronically to starve Al Qaeda of funding.

Bin Laden has almost outstayed his welcome in Afghanistan. Despite the Taleban's public declaration of protection for a "guest", the regime is suffering from international sanctions as long as it harbours him.

The Americans have a continually updated plan for a special forces' team to snatch him from his mountain lair in the Hindu Kush.

But they look back to a Soviet raid in the same area in April, 1986, when three battalions of elite Spetznaz commandos went in after a local Afghan commander. Few came back.

Bin Laden is understood to have selected Yemen, his father's birthplace, as a first alternative. But the Yemenis could not protect him from the wrath of the West or Saudi Arabia. Chechnya was his second choice, but the province is being ground under Russia's military jackboot.

That leaves Iraq, and the potential for an alliance which would be everyone else's nightmare. - Dec 28

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/28-12-1999-23-33-25.html

These are a couple of years old, but that just makes me wonder what they've been able to pull together in those couple of years...