|
V. Bin Laden In
Exile
On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and bin Laden’s easy lifestyle
received a jolt. Suddenly there was a new threat to be dealt with
and a new mission for him to embrace. On the day of the invasion bin
Laden flew from his home in Jeddah by private jet to the capital of
Riyadh. He went directly to the offices of King Fahd and was met by
Prince Sultan. He offered the prince a handwritten ten-page
memorandum in which he offered to raise an army of 10,000
battle-hardened mujahedin veterans to complement the Saudi Arabian
army, to liberate Kuwait and drive out Saddam Hussein’s army.
Biographer Adam Robinson describes the situation,
"Family members recall that for
several days after making the offer Osama remained glued to his
mobile telephone, expecting a reply from King Fahd. He called
the monarch’s office repeatedly, contacted several of King
Fahd’s aides to repeat the offer, sent several faxes and
dispatched members of his office staff to the king’s office with
copies of his letters. Meanwhile he worked day and night in his
office marshalling his forces, mobilising them in preparation
for action, confident that they would be the key to success in
the war that lay ahead. But then, on August 7, came the snub
that has consumed and angered him until this day."
(1)
On that day it was announced that King Fahd had agreed to allow a coalition of American-led forces to
occupy Saudi Arabian territory to protect his regime and to prepare
to liberate Kuwait. The Bush Administration had panicked King Fahd
with reports of satellite photos showing Hussein’s forces massing on
the border preparing for a Saudi invasion. The reports were entirely
bogus, the satellite photos did not exist and the threat was a
complete fabrication.
Iraq had no intention of invading Saudi
Arabia, as they attempted to make clear through diplomatic channels
and the international media. Nevertheless King Fahd was intimidated
into believing that his regime was in danger and he allowed the
occupation and troop buildup for Desert Storm.
(2)
Osama bin Laden, along with the Islamic leadership within Saudi
Arabia and around the world, considered this foreign occupation of
holy Muslim lands to be an abomination.
Bodansky describes the
problem faced by King Fahd,
"In early August 1990 King Fahd
asked the ulema -the country’s senior religious leaders- to
endorse the deployment of U.S. forces. ’All the senior ulema
were categorically against the idea,’ a Saudi official said in a
study by exiled Saudi scholar Nawaf Obaid. ’It was only after
long discussions with the King that Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz
Bin Baz reluctantly gave his endorsement to the idea on
condition that solid proof be presented as to the [Iraqi]
threat.’ ...Word of this conflict between the Saudi Court and
the ulema spread like wildfire throughout the Islamist circles
of Saudi Arabia." (3)
Bin Laden had this to say about
King Fahd in a 1998 interview,
"Any government that sells its
peoples’ interests and betrays its people and takes action that
remove it from the Muslim nation will not succeed. We predict
that the Riyadh leader and those with him that stood with the
Jews and Christians with American identities or other, will
disintegrate. They have left the Muslim nation. We predict that
like the Iran royal family, the Shah, they will disperse and
disappear. After Allah gave them property on the most sacred
land and gave them wealth that is unheard of before from oil,
still they sinned and did not value Allah’s gift. We predict
destruction and dispersal..." (4)
Operation Desert Storm ended on February
28, 1991, but as the foreign occupation continued, so did bin Laden’s outspoken criticism of the Saudi regime. He gave speeches at
meetings and at mosques and as a result he began to be closely
monitored by the Saudi secret police. Bin Laden began to receive
threats and Robinson writes of relatives that recall that on one
occasion he was even cornered and beaten up by a group of "youths"
(allegedly Saudi secret service agents) for criticizing the
government.(5) Bin
Laden began to realize that he was not welcome in his home country
and that he would be better able to pursue his goals outside of
Saudi Arabia. In April of 1991 he was able to leave under the
pretext of signing a business deal in Pakistan. He had no intention
of returning.
Bin Laden spent about eight months in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but
even there he did not feel completely free. The Pakistan government
was not especially friendly to Islamists at this time and bin Laden
often heard rumors that Saudi Intelligence was working with the ISI
to arrest him and bring him back to Saudi Arabia. His close
relationship with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was a problem as well, because
Hekmatyar had angered the Saudis through his strong support for
Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm.
Throughout the Middle East the Islamists
were feeling a backlash. Afghanistan was in the midst of a civil
war, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were cracking down, Iran was Shi’ite
and unwelcome towards Sunnis, and Egypt was cracking down as well.
As a result many of the most fanatical Islamists fled to London,
where they were always accepted, or to the newly established Islamic
Republic of Sudan, to which bin Laden was invited.
Sudan had become an official bastion of Islamic Fundamentalism
starting on June 30, 1989, when General Omar Hassan al-Bashir took
over in a military coup. In August, just a few months later, Sudan’s
role was confirmed at a London meeting of the International Muslim
Brotherhood. The Sudanese delegate was a man by the name of Hassan
al-Turabi, who would emerge as the real power behind the throne in
Sudan, and a mentor to Osama bin Laden.
Hassan al-Turabi was born in 1932, educated in English-language
schools in Sudan and indoctrinated into Islam by his father. He
graduated the British-run Gordon College in Khartoum in 1955 with a
law degree, and sometime during this time he joined the Muslim
Brotherhood. After Gordon College he received a scholarship to
attend the University of London, where he received his masters
degree in law. Turabi then attended the Sorbonne University in
France receiving his doctorate in 1964. Back in Sudan he emerged as
the intellectual leader and spokesman of the Islamist movement and
the leader of the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. He
became known as the Black Pope of Africa.
(6)
At the Muslim Brotherhood meeting in London in 1989 it was decided
that Sudan would be a new base for the Islamist movement, and a
Muslim Brotherhood leadership council of nineteen members was
subsequently established in Khartoum under Turabi. This council
helped to organize the Islamist movement in the chaotic aftermath of
the Afghan-Soviet war and in April 1991 a conference called the
"Islamic Arab People’s Conference" was held in Khartoum. This was a
congress of Islamist and terrorist groups from around the world and
it helped to establish the Popular International Organization. The
PIO then established another council in Khartoum of fifty members,
one each from the fifty countries around the world that were engaged
in an Islamic struggle. (7)
The International Muslim Brotherhood does more than just create
councils and more councils. The IMB also controls the "International
Legion of Islam" or "Islamic Legion." It emerged during the 1980s
and was based primarily in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and also in
Tehran, (earlier we covered the role the Muslim Brotherhood played
in evicting the Shah and setting up the hardline Shi’ite regime of
the Ayatollah Khomeini). During the 1990s the Islamic Legion would
work most effectively out of Khartoum. The Islamic Legion is simply
an unofficial loose-knit military organization that helps to
coordinate the global jihad. Yossef Bodansky, the director of the
Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and
author of the bin Laden biography sited often in this study, refers
to the Islamic Legion as the Armed Islamic Movement or AIM.
The Islamist movement suffered a huge blow on July 5, 1991 when the
Bank of Credit and Commerce International was finally shut down by
the Bank of England. As related in
Part One, this bank was an
important conduit of drug profits and money laundering that also
served as a broker for illegal arms deals. It had been an important
component of the global Islamist movement’s financial network and
now it had been dissolved. Before the movement could rise to its
potential its leaders knew that a new financial network had to be
set up. This may be one of the reasons for inviting bin Laden to
Sudan, because bin Laden was married to the sister of Khalid bin
Mahfouz. In the book "Forbidden
Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin
Laden," the French authors describe Mahfouz,
"Khalid bin Mahfouz was a key figure
in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI,
affair. Between 1986 and 1990, he was a top executive there,
holding the position of operational director. His family held a
20 percent share in the bank at the time. He was charged in the
United States in 1992 with tax fraud in the bank’s collapse. In
1995, held jointly liable in the BCCI’s collapse, he agreed to a
$245 million settlement to pay the bank’s creditors, allowing
them to indemnify a portion of the bank’s clients. The specific
charges against the bank were embezzlement and violation of
American, Luxembourg and British banking laws.
After dominating the financial news throughout the 1990s the
BCCI is now at the center of the financial network put in place
by Osama bin Laden’s main supporters."
(8)
In 1999 the French Parliament
commissioned an intense and thorough investigation of global
money-laundering. After publishing reports on Liechtenstein, Monaco
and Switzerland it produced, on October 10, 2001, the conclusions of
its investigations into the banking system of Great Britain:
"The City of London, Gibraltar and
the Crown Dependencies: Offshore Centers and Havens for Dirty
Money."
Attached to the 400-page report was a
70-page addendum entitled "The Economic Environment of Osama bin
Laden" that focused specifically on the London-based financial
network associated with Osama bin Laden. The report concludes that
up to forty British banks, companies and individuals were associated
with bin Laden’s network, including organizations in London, Oxford,
Cheltenham, Cambridge and Leeds.
In introducing the report French
Member of Parliament Arnaud Montebourg said,
"Tony Blair, and his government,
preaches around the world against terrorism. He would be well
advised to preach to his own bankers and oblige them to go after
dirty money... Even the Swiss co-operate more than the English."
(9)
French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard
(who I believe worked on the report) offers this conclusion in his
book
Forbidden Truth,
"The financial network surrounding
Osama bin Laden and his investments is similar in structure to
the fraudulent network put in place in the 1980s by the BCCI.
They even share some of the same personalities (former BCCI
executives and directors, oil and arms dealers, Saudi investors)
and, sometimes, the same companies (NCB, Attock oil, BAII).
The study points out the fact that BCCI financing networks have
survived, even though Osama bin Laden receives parallel support
from political or terrorist movements from the Islamist sphere
of influence.
The convergence of financial interests and terrorist activities,
especially Great Britain and Sudan, does not seem to have been
an obstacle to each group’s desired objectives.
A terrorist network backed by a vast financing system is the
trademark of Osama bin Laden’s operations."
(10)
And now I am going to introduce a thesis
that we will return to often throughout the rest of this study. It
is simply this, that Osama bin Laden is not the head of this covert,
shadowy financial network that has surfaced occasionally as a source
of funding for bin Laden’s terrorist activities. Osama bin Laden is
not, nor has he ever been, the leader of the international Islamist
movement which is directed by the International Muslim Brotherhood.
Osama bin Laden has been used effectively as a figurehead for the
Brotherhood’s militant branch to take responsibility for its
atrocities, but he is not the mastermind of the entire operation, or
even of the operations which he is asked to direct or take
responsibility for.
By the same token the Muslim Brotherhood is being used as a tool by
the British-based Globalists whose main objective is to overthrow
the established world order and create a new one-world system of
global governance. But we will get to this secondary and more
sensational thesis later.
The International Muslim Brotherhood had used the BCCI to finance
its activities up until its closure in July of 1991. When this
happened, which was after all of the important high-level Islamist
meetings had already taken place in Sudan, Osama bin Laden was
brought in to help organize the rebuilding of the network in
December of 1991. Bin Laden had established a reputation as an
excellent organizer during his years with the MAK in Peshawar and so
he was the perfect man for the job, and his close relationship with
his brother-in-law Khalid bin Mahfouz was an added benefit. Mahfouz
knew the British banking establishment like the back of his hand and
he knew exactly which British banks and bankers could be trusted to
help rebuild the covert quasi-legal network.
Adam Robinson writes
about the resurrection of this network, which owed a great debt to
the organizer bin Laden,
"Within months, Osama unveiled
before an astonished al-Turabi what he called ’the Brotherhood
Group’ [author - yes, the ’Brotherhood Group’]. This was a
network of 134 Arab businessmen whose combined commercial empire
extended around the globe and back many times. They maintained
bank accounts in virtually every country and, collectively,
routinely shifted billions of dollars around as part of their
legitimate businesses. It was a perfect front. The Brotherhood
Group came to be utilized by terror groups all around the world.
Osama was the toast of his industry."
(11)
Bin Laden also helped to invigorate
Sudan’s own failing banking industry when he invested $50 million to
capitalize the El Shamal Islamic Bank of Khartoum. This was bin
Laden’s bank, owned in partnership with Sudan’s National Islamic
Front, which is simply the Sudanese branch of the International
Muslim Brotherhood.
After helping to reestablish the Muslim Brotherhood’s financial
network bin Laden was kept busy in Sudan on projects related to his
profession as a contractor. A company was set up jointly controlled
by bin Laden, the Sudanese military and Sudan’s National Islamic
Front called Al-Hijra for Construction and Development Ltd. Major
projects were tackled including the development of Port Sudan on the
Red Sea, an airport at Port Sudan and a four lane highway over the
650 miles from the Port to Khartoum. Al-Hijra also undertook a
project to widen the Blue Nile and to build the Rosaires Dam. Work
was also done to improve the rail lines, several smaller airports
were built, and roads were paved throughout the country.
(12)
While bin Laden was being kept busy building Sudan’s infrastructure,
the International Muslim Brotherhood (IMB) was preparing to confront
the United States Military in Somalia. While the intent to insert
American forces into Somalia for "humanitarian purposes" was not
publicized until late 1992, the IMB seemed to anticipate American
intervention almost from the time that the Somalian government fell
in January of 1992. It’s almost as if the U.S. Military’s mission to
Somalia was pre-arranged to confront the Islamists, and to fail.
As was noted earlier, Sudan announced its intention to become a
militant base for the IMB at the London meeting of 1989. After that,
organizations such as the one run by Abu Nidal, HAMAS, and
Iran/Lebanon’s Hezbollah set up offices in Khartoum. Soon after
training camps were opened and bin Laden was invited in. Also in
late 1991 Iran and Sudan began to form a strategic friendship. This
cooperation between militant Shi’ite and Sunni Fundamentalism
immediately caught the attention of the regimes in Egypt and Saudi
Arabia and it was understood that Sudan was emerging as a threat.
Hassan al-Turabi also made the diplomatic rounds in the West.
According to bin Laden biographer Roland Jacquard, Turabi visited
London in 1992 and was a guest at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs. This is the headquarters of the British Globalists and the parent organization of America’s
Council on
Foreign Relations. After this visit he also took a trip to the
United States, where he was given an official reception in
Washington.(13) Back
in Sudan Turabi established links with Somalian warlord Muhammad Farah Aidid.
Bodansky explains,
"The Somalian terrorists were
provided with equipment and weapons for the militias they would
train and lead. Some of these militias operated within the ranks
of the main Somalian parties, while others were completely
independent, answering only to Khartoum... Tehran, which
controlled and sponsored these Somalian terrorists via Sudan,
planned on using them against the U.S. forces the same way the
HizbAllah had been used by Syria and Iran against the U.S.
peacekeepers in Beirut in the early 1980s."
(14)
In late 1992 the IMB also called upon
Sheikh Tariq al-Fadli to return to Yemen from his comfortable exile
in London to organize a terrorist cell to strike the American forces
that would soon be passing through on their way to Somalia. Bin
Laden had known al-Fadli from the Afghan campaign, and bin Laden was
instrumental in linking the sheikh up with the thousands of Yemeni
"Afghans" that had returned home. Al-Fadli was inserted into Yemen
in "mid-November" according to Bodansky, while the intention to
commit American forces to Somalia was not revealed by the Clinton
Administration until November 28. (15)
American forces landed on the beaches of Somalia on December 9,
1992, as captured ridiculously by the floodlights of the waiting
horde of international media. From the beginning the world, the
majority of American citizens, and especially American servicemen
and women, wondered what in the hell the US Military was doing
trying to impose order upon the chaotic and unappreciative Islamic
country of Somalia.
Initially the operation appeared to be a success, and the
humanitarian aid was allowed to pass through, but the Islamists were
simply biding their time waiting to strike. The first attack took
place in Yemen, on December 29, 1992. Al-Fadli’s newly-organized
Yemeni Islamic Jihad detonated bombs in the Aden Hotel and Golden
Moor Hotel, killing three and wounding five. One of the bombs barely
missed hitting a contingent of 100 American marines on their way to
Somalia. Another team armed with RPGs failed as well, caught near
the fences of an airport where U.S. Air Force transport planes were
parked nearby. Al-Fadli and a few of his followers surrendered on
January 8, 1993. The rest of the Yemeni "Afghans" were airlifted to
Somalia by Osama bin Laden in a covert operation in the middle of
1993. Bin Laden later boasted in an interview that this operation
cost him $3 million of his own money.
(16)
On June 5, 1993, back in Mogadishu General Aidid’s forces ambushed
and killed a Pakistani detachment of UN forces, killing twenty-three
blue-helmeted soldiers. Aidid left Somalia and turned up later in
June in Khartoum to appear at a top-level Islamist meeting. Turabi,
bin Laden, a number of Iranian agents, and the head of Egyptian
Islamic Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also attended. The meeting was
focused on evicting the United States and the UN from Somalia.
Bodansky writes that the operation was headed by Turabi, with
Zawahiri, along with several other Arab "Afghans" serving under him
as the military commanders. Bin Laden, like always, was responsible
for the logistical support. In the fall of 1993 Zawahiri entered
Somalia where he coordinated operations with Aidid’s senior
commanders. (17)
The resistance to Operation Restore Hope peaked on October 3, 1993,
with the events that have been memorably re-enacted in the Hollywood
movie "Blackhawk Down." On this day Aidid’s forces managed to shoot
down two Blackhawk helicopters, wound seventy-eight American
soldiers, kill eighteen and capture another. Up to a thousand Somali
fighters and civilians were killed in the carnage. After this
incident it became apparent to the Clinton Administration that the
Somali operation needed to come to an end. By March of 1994 almost
all of the American forces had pulled out, leaving the Islamists in
control.
Bin Laden considered this another great victory for Islam. First the
Soviets had been beaten and expelled from Afghanistan, and now the
United States had been beaten and expelled from Somalia. Two
superpowers had been defeated by the strength of Islam. Robinson
relates the following interview of bin Laden,
"The so-called superpowers vanished
into thin air. We think that the United States is very much
weaker than Russia. Based on the reports we received from our
brothers who participated in jihad in Somalia, we learned that
they saw the weakness, frailty, and cowardice of US troops. Only
80 US troops were killed. Nonetheless, they fled in the heart of
darkness, frustrated, after they had caused great commotion
about the new world order..." (18)
Section Notes and Sources
Back to Contents
VI.
World Trade Center 1993
Under Hassan al-Turabi Sudan had achieved a great victory for the
Muslim Brotherhood by evicting the United States from Somalia. But
even prior to the Somalia engagement the Muslim Brotherhood was
involved in a major strike at the heart of the United States. On
February 26, 1993 the World Trade Center bombing occurred in which
six people were killed and up to a thousand more were wounded, with
the cost of damages over $250 million. The intention of the bomber,
Ramzi Youssef, was to topple one tower onto the other, and at the
same time disperse a cloud of cyanide gas over New York City.
Fortunately the explosion in the underground parking structure was
not enough to topple the tower, but it was enough to burn up the
cyanide gas making it ineffective.
The mainstream media focused on the blind sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman,
who was arrested, tried and convicted for being involved in the
conspiracy. He was the leader of the Jamaat al-Islamiyya (the
Islamic Group), who had been imprisoned in Egypt for his moral
support of the murderers of Anwar Sadat. When he was released in
1985 he made his way to Pakistan where he linked up with Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar and Abdullah Azzam. He became a very famous cleric within
Islamist circles, well known for his fearless militant preaching,
and for his hatred of President Mubarak of Egypt. Throughout the
late ’80s he constantly traveled preaching in Islamic centers
throughout Saudi Arabia and even in Britain, Germany and the United
States, with the blessing of the CIA. He also met several times with
Hassan al-Turabi in Khartoum and London.
(1)
In May of 1990 he acquired a visa from the American consulate in
Khartoum, from a CIA agent posing as an official, despite the fact
that his name was on a State Department list of terrorist suspects.
Rahman settled in New Jersey where he began to preach the same
militant message that he had always preached. In November of 1990
the State Department revoked Sheikh Rahman’s visa and advised the
INS to be on the lookout for him. Five months later the INS, instead
of deporting him, issued Rahman a green card.
(2)
Sheikh Rahman’s move to the United States was sponsored by the
Muslim Brotherhood through at least two individuals. One was Mahmud
Abouhalima, a member of the Brotherhood who had worked with the CIA
in Afghanistan and networked with radical Muslims and Black Panthers
in the United States. The other was Mustafa Shalabi who was the
director of Abdullah Azzam’s Al Kifah Center in Brooklyn.
(3)
After Rahman set up his mosque in New Jersey he and his associates
began to pressure Shalabi to turn over control of the Al Kifah
Center and its $2 million in assets to Sheikh Rahman. Shalabi backed
down in the face of this threat and made plans to leave Brooklyn for
Peshawar, Pakistan in March of 1991. The man chosen to succeed
Shalabi as director of the Center was a Lebanese-American named
Wadih el-Hage, a man closely-affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood
(most likely a member) who lived at the time in Arlington, Texas.
The transition was complicated however,
by the murder of Shalabi on February 26, and although el-Hage was in
Brooklyn at the time he did not take over the Al Kifah Center after
Shalabi’s sudden death. Instead he returned to his home in Arlington
where he continued his work brokering auto deals to the Middle East.
About two years later he was called to Sudan where he worked for
Osama bin Laden traveling and selling the agricultural merchandise
from bin Laden’s businesses. Eventually he became bin Laden’s
personal secretary. Today he is in a U.S. jail for his involvement
with Al Qaeda and connection to the African embassy bombings of
1998, even though he returned to the United States in 1997.
(4)
In Brooklyn the Al Kifah Center came under the complete control of
Sheikh Rahman’s network. In September of 1992 the network brought
Ramzi Yousef into the United States. Yousef is now generally
recognized as the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,
and his case presents an interesting challenge. He entered the
United States as Ramzi Yousef on an Iraqi passport. He had no visa,
but was given political asylum. Some months later he visited the
Pakistani consulate and, after presenting the required
documentation, was given a passport under the name Abdul Basit Karim.
The U.S. Government’s investigation of Ramzi Yousef concluded that
Abdul Basit Karim was indeed his true identity.
Abdul Basit Karim was born in Kuwait in 1968 to a Pakistani father
and Palestinian mother. His father was an employee of Kuwait
Airlines. In 1984 Karim moved to Britain and began his college
education. He took English language courses at the Oxford College of
Further Education and attended the West Glamorgen Institute in
Swansea, where he graduated with a degree in electronic engineering
in 1989. According to Ramzi Yousef’s own confession, taken after he
was finally arrested and brought to the U.S. in 1995, he was
recruited into the Islamist movement in 1987 while living in Swansea
after he was approached by local members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the summer of 1988 he traveled to Pakistan where he attended one
of the many Brotherhood-sponsored mujahedin training camps.
After graduating with his degree in 1989
he was injured in a bomb blast in Karachi while he was trying to
perfect his skills as a bomb-maker. During Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait
he was in Kuwait collaborating with the Iraqis, as charged by the
Kuwaiti Interior Minister, and then prior to Desert Storm he fled to
the Philippines where he offered his expertise in bomb-making to the
fledgling Islamist groups that were beginning to make their presence
known. Abdul Basit Karim, a.k.a. Ramzi Yousef, was a
Muslim
Brotherhood operative and expert bomb maker, and the network brought
him to the United States in late 1992 for the sole purpose of
destroying the World Trade Center. (5)
A different theory on Ramzi Yousef’s true identity that has
unfortunately achieved wide-spread coverage must also be addressed.
In the aftermath of the 1993 attack there was a serious effort on
the part of many conservatives to implicate Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as
the state-sponsor of the 1993 bombing. This theory was spearheaded
by well-respected analyst Laurie Mylroie, and subsequently supported
by former head of the CIA James Woolsey, who was grasping for
anything to mask the CIA’s own involvement in the bombing that
occurred while he was director. The Iraq theory claims that Abdul Basit Karim was a mild-mannered academic who was murdered by Iraqi
Intelligence during their occupation of Kuwait in 1990, and that
Karim’s identity was stolen and given to "Iraqi super-agent"
Ramzi
Yousef.
This theory is almost entirely based on
the fact that the Kuwaiti documents of Karim had been obviously
tampered with prior to 1993 when they were brought forward during
the investigation of the WTC bombing. Mylroie and company concluded
that the Iraqis must have been responsible for this and that the
tampering had been done to allow Yousef to take over Karim’s
identity. The fingerprints between Karim and Yousef matched, and so
the tampering was alleged by Mylroie to have also included switching
fingerprints. This theory was quickly supported by a number of
conservatives in the United States, and also by several prominent
journalists in Great Britain. (6)
Mylroie does not consider the possibility that the documents may
have been tampered with to cover up Karim’s collaboration with the
Iraqi invaders and his involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood which
supported Iraq during the invasion. Mylroie’s elaborate theory was
also understandably supported by several members of the faculty of
Karim’s Swansea university. Ken Reid, the deputy principle, claimed
that Karim’s height and weight were different than Yousef’s. He also
stated that Yousef’s deformed eye and smaller ears and mouth did not
match Karim’s.(7)
Brad White, a former Senate investigator
and CBS newsman also took up Mylroie’s cause and interviewed
teachers who had known Karim.
"Two people had a good memory of
Abdul Basit but, shown photos of Yousef, were unable to make a
positive identification. They both felt that while there was
some similarity in looks, it was not the same person. ’Our
feeling is that Ramzi Yousef is probably not Basit’, White was
told."(8)
However, these alleged differences can
be partly explained by Yousef’s bomb-making accident in Karachi in
1989 that resulted in facial injuries and a lengthy hospitalization.
Another angle was attempted by a British journalist who described
Yousef’s command of the English language as "appalling" and
theorized that he could not be the same Karim who had lived in
Britain for four years and attended language courses at Oxford.(9)
This theory falls flat when faced with Yousef’s performance during
his trial:
"He insisted on representing himself
at the first trial; he cut a sharp figure in a tailored,
double-breasted suit, frequently turned on the charm and
generally represented himself surprisingly well, even getting
hostile witnesses to contradict themselves."(10)
Could his English have been that
"appalling" for him to represent himself so well at his American
trial?
Simon Reeve in his book
The New Jackals confronts the
allegations that Yousef was not Karim. He mentions Neil Herman, the
head of the FBI investigation into the 1993 bombing, and he also
quotes from several of Basit’s friends from his days at Swansea,
"...Neil Herman and the FBI are
convinced Yousef and Karim are one and the same, and several
former students remember and identify ’Ramzi,’ their
’temperamental’ and ’volatile’ former mate. ’One minute he was
your friend, and the next . . .’ said one Welsh student. Another
former student from South Wales remembers a mutual friend of his
and Yousef’s -a Briton from an Asian family- mentioning a
political conversation the two men had. ’He’s a real nutter,’
the man was told. Another student cut out and kept newspaper
articles from Yousef’s trial. When Yousef was still on the run
he remembers comparing the newspaper pictures with those in his
albums. ’That’s my friend Jane, she’s a teacher,’ he would say
to friends looking at the albums, ’that’s my friend Phil, he’s
an engineer, and then [turning to the articles] that’s my friend
Ramzi, the international terrorist and most wanted man in the
world.’ " (10b)
In any case, it is understandable that
the faculty of Karim’s university would like to distance their
institution from Yousef the terrorist mastermind, and it is
understandable that conservatives like Mylroie were so willing to
look for a "higher power" responsible for the WTC bombing. A higher
power did exist, but it was not Iraq, and most conservatives are so
completely anglophile in their outlook that they find it impossible
to look critically at Britain, which is where the Muslim Brotherhood
is based.
The question of Yousef’s true identity was finally settled in the
few weeks after September 11, 2001. Former CIA chief
James Woolsey
was dispatched to London to gather whatever proof he could that Iraq
was at least partially responsible for the attacks. His trip was
independently sponsored by Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish deputy
defense secretary, creating a rift within the Bush Administration
and angering the state department and the CIA.(11)
Woolsey focused on the allegations that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta
had met with Iraqi Intelligence in Prague, and he also looked into
Yousef’s alleged Iraqi connection:
"Another bit of intrigue that
Woolsey has been exploring while in Britain involves a convicted
Kuwaiti terrorist known as Ramzi Youssef, whose real name is
Abdul Basit. Woolsey claims that Youssef is an Iraqi agent who
kidnapped Basit and stole his identity. Woolsey’s sleuthing has
made him something of a laughingstock among British police and
intelligence, who are "bemused" by his activities, according to
one British official. But Woolsey’s own lack of credibility
hasn’t stopped the mainstream media from quoting him extensively
to whip up anti-Iraq hysteria."
(12)
Woolsey met with British Intelligence
who, to Woolsey’s dismay, agreed with the long-standing conclusion
of the American investigators in Yousef’s trial and confirmed that
Ramzi Yousef really was Abdul Basit Karim, and not an Iraqi
impostor. The matter has since been dropped, although Laurie Mylroie
continues to believe that the British are going out of their way to
cover for Saddam, (12a) even while Tony Blair scrambles for reasons
to support Bush’s plans to invade Iraq.
Abdul Basit Karim, a.k.a. Ramzi Yousef, fled the United States
immediately after the February 26, 1993 bombing to Karachi,
Pakistan. In 1994 he appeared back in the Philippines where he
joined up with the Muslim Brotherhood cell that had been established
to support the new Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in Mindanao. Karim met
up with Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden,
who had helped to finance the initial creation of the Abu Sayyaf
group that is named after militant Islamist Dr. Abdurrab Rasul
Sayyaf.(13)
Dr. Sayyaf received his doctorate from
Cairo’s Al Azhar University and became one of the most important
theologians in Afghanistan. He founded the University of Sawal
al-Jihad in Peshawar around 1990 and is today an outspoken militant
critic of the new Karzai government in Afghanistan and an enemy of
the United States. Abu Sayyaf is seen by many as an Al Qaeda front
group, but in reality it is a Muslim Brotherhood group that was
planned long before Osama bin Laden emerged as the "international
terrorist mastermind."
In the Philippines Abdul Basit Karim, a.k.a. Yousef, also interacted
closely with his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is now understood
to be the operational mastermind of the attacks of September 11, and
suspected as the mastermind of WTC 1993. Like Karim, Mohammed was
born in Kuwait, but moved to Pakistan.(14)
Kuwaiti records show that Karim’s entire family moved from Kuwait to
Pakistan on August 26, 1990 during the Iraqi occupation.(15)
Indian Intelligence believes that the entire family is originally
from the Balochistan province of Pakistan and that Karim was only
raised in Kuwait.(16)
In any case, Karim and his uncle Khalid, who once attended a North
Carolina college,(17)
are the terrorists who originally conceived of the operation that
was finally pulled off on September 11.
Philippine Police uncovered the plot,
known as Operation Bojinka, after raiding Karim’s apartment due to
an alarm raised from a bomb-making accident. A computer was
recovered which contained plans to place bombs on eleven U.S.
jetliners timed to go off simultaneously. One of the captured
members of the cell, Abdul Hakim Murad, later admitted under
interrogation that phase two of the plan was to hijack jetliners and
fly them into targets such as the CIA headquarters, the White House,
the Pentagon and possibly some skyscrapers. Murad was sure of this
because he had attended several American flight schools, in Texas,
New York and North Carolina, and he was to be one of the suicide
pilots. (18)
Uncovering the plot and disrupting the terrorist cell was a triumph
for Philippine Intelligence, and the CIA awarded Senior Inspector
Aida D. Fariscal a certificate of merit "In recognition of your
personal outstanding efforts and co-operation." (19a)
The CIA then promptly forgot all about Operation Bojinka.
Karim, a.k.a. Ramzi Yousef, was able to barely escape from the
Philippines and avoid arrest, but he did leave behind several
technical reference books that he had stolen from the Swansea
library (further confirming his identity as Karim)
(19b). He made his way back to Pakistan where he
easily went underground in the extensive Islamist network. He would
have continued to have been a key figure in the global terror
network, but he was betrayed by one of his closest associates.
A South African Muslim recruited by
Karim offered information on Karim’s whereabouts in return for the
$2 million reward offered by the American government for his arrest.
Karim was apprehended in his apartment by U.S. and Pakistani
security officials on February 7, 1995. The informant collected the
$2 million reward and now lives in the United States under a new
identity with his family, sheltered by the Witness Protection
Program.(20) Karim was subsequently deported to the United States
and tried and convicted for the WTC bombing. "Ramzi Yousef" now
serves a life sentence of 240 years.
Karim’s uncle escaped out of the Philippines as well. However, in
1996 while he was in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Qatar a deal was
struck between the Qatar government and the FBI to detain Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and turn him over to the United States. The FBI
dispatched a team to Qatar who waited for their prize in a hotel,
but at the last minute the deal fell through. Apparently a "higher
power" had intervened at the last moment and Mohammed was spirited
away. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed escaped to Prague, of all places, where
he set up a new headquarters under the name Mustaf Nasir. Who could
have possibly intervened to disrupt an important deal that was at
the final stage between two sovereign governments?
The person who intervened in the deal
was reportedly the government minister in charge of religious
affairs.(21) The
other factor that must be considered is that Qatar is the home of
one of the most prominent and outspoken Muslim Brotherhood
theologians,
Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Dean of
Islamic Studies at the University of Qatar, who also works out of
London as head of the Islamic Council of Europe.(22)
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s stay in Qatar had to have been hosted by
the Muslim Brotherhood, and only the Muslim Brotherhood possessed
the influence and power necessary to disrupt the deal to deport
Mohammed to American authorities.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the key to uncovering the entire
conspiracy surrounding September 11, yet investigative journalists
around the world are unable to uncover hardly anything about the
man’s life. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped
and brutally murdered for pursuing his investigation of Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed into Pakistan, and
the dramatically edited high-tech video of his
execution by beheading was disseminated worldwide via the
internet as a warning.
When the US Congress began its inquiry
into the events of September 11 they found that CIA chief
George
Tenet prevented the declassification of all information regarding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mohammed’s name was not even allowed to
be mentioned in the inquiry’s report. Tenet knows that a critical
examination of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will reveal Mohammed’s close
ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and subsequently the Muslim
Brotherhood’s ties to the elite intelligence organizations of the
West. Mohammed was a CIA asset, as was "Ramzi Yousef."
They were a part of the Muslim
Brotherhood organization but they were Muslims in name only. The
Philippine investigation revealed that Mohammed and his nephew "Yousef"
both enjoyed drinking, partying, visiting strip bars and pursuing
the local women.(23)
It was the same thing with many of the hijackers of 9-11 as they
passed the time in Florida up to their operation. This stands in
stark contrast to Osama bin Laden, who would put his fingers to his
ears when music played while out in public in Sudan.(24)
Osama bin Laden was loosely connected to
the events of September 11, but only because the international
Islamist movement is so small, and he played little if any part in
planning and executing the operation. The truth may only be found
through Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and too many powerful interests are
determined to hide that truth.
Section Notes and
Sources
Back to Contents
VII. Bin
Laden’s Money Problems
By the end of 1993, after serving al-Turabi and the Muslim
Brotherhood dutifully for two years, bin Laden began to feel a cash
crunch. He was not allowed to withdraw funds at will from the
’Brotherhood Group’ financial network that he had helped set up
after the fall of the BCCI because it was not his network. He was
dependent on his masters do disperse these funds to him and at this
time the Brotherhood did not see any cause for which bin Laden
needed funding.
The primary reason for bin Laden going broke was that the Saudi
government had blocked all of his assets and bank accounts. This
fact is related by a number of sources, including Robinson, and the
unnamed author (I have reasons to believe he is
Dr. Saad al-Fagih) of a
biography of bin Laden posted at
PBS.
To remedy this situation Osama bin Laden did what many other Saudi
dissidents have done over the past several decades: he moved to
London and established an organization to publicize his group and to
accept donations from the millions of affluent Muslims living in
Britain. This was done by the aforementioned Dr. Saad al-Fagih, who
fled Saudi Arabia and set up his
Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia,
and also by Dr. Muhammed al-Massari who fled Saudi Arabia and
set up the
Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights
(CDLR).
The fact that bin Laden lived in London for a short period of time
received a great deal of publicity in 1999 with the publication of
Yossef Bodansky’s book,
Bin Laden - the Man Who Declared War on
America. Bodansky’s claim was challenged by several
London journalists, and most notably by CNN’s resident terrorist
"expert" Peter Bergen, the author of
Holy War, Inc., who ridiculed the
possibility. However, bin Laden’s time in London has since been
confirmed by Saudi-based journalist Adam Robinson in his book
Bin Laden - Behind the Mask of the Terrorist.
His biography, published late in 2001, draws from interviews with
Osama’s immediate family and gives a detailed account of bin Laden’s
three months in England at the beginning of 1994.
Upon arriving Bin Laden bought a house "on, or near, Harrow Road in
the Wembley area of London. He paid cash, and used an intermediary
as the named owner."(1)
Bin Laden’s most important task was setting up his organization, the
Advice and Reformation Committee, to disperse his press releases and
to receive donations. After bin Laden left a fellow Saudi dissident,
Khaled al-Fawwaz ran the ARC from London, keeping in touch with bin
Laden via satellite phone, and distributing his statements to the
many Arab-language newspapers based in London.
As mentioned in Part One, bin Laden also
established relations with two London residents that were crucial to
crafting his image as an international spokesman for, and mastermind
of, the militant Islamist movement over the years. The first was Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of the Arabic newspaper
Al-Quds Al-Arabi,
and the other was radical cleric, and Muslim Brother,
Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, who
called himself "the voice of Osama bin Laden" and directed the
extremist Islamic Liberation Party and the al-Muhajiroun
organization out of his London mosque.
Robinson also relates that bin Laden found the time to do some
sightseeing. He writes,
"Osama was given to sending
postcards. This paper trail shows that he toured the Tower of
London and the Imperial War Museum. He also left the south of
England on at least one occasion and was one of the million
people every year who visit Edinburgh Castle in the Scottish
capital." (2)
Robinson also describes bin Laden’s
reaction upon attending two important Arsenal football games,
including a March 15 match that saw Arsenal defeat Torino and
advance into the semifinals of a European tournament. Bin Laden
commented on the excitement and passion of the fans, and later told
his friends and family that it was like nothing he had ever seen.
When he returned to Sudan he brought back with him Arsenal Club
memorabilia, including a jersey for his fifteen-year-old son
Abdullah.(3)
Bin Laden’s London excursion was cut short by interference from
Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was not a terrorist "mastermind," but he was
a high-level militant operative of the Muslim Brotherhood, and he
was the most highly-connected Saudi to ever publicly turn against
his government. According to Robinson further pressure was placed on
the Saudi regime by Yemen, and also in early 1994 by President Mubarak of Egypt.(4)
Both governments were receiving intelligence that Sudan was aiding
terrorists trying to destabilize their regimes. Robinson describes
Saudi Arabia’s response to the bin Laden problem,
"In April 1994, his Saudi
citizenship was revoked for ’irresponsible behaviour,’ and he
was informed that he was no longer welcome in his land of birth
because he had ’committed acts that adversely affected the
brotherly relations of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other
countries.’ " (5)
In England the Saudi government demanded
that Britain turn him over to be extradited. Instead he was allowed
to quietly leave the UK and return to Sudan. Bin Laden’s first move
after coming home was to issue a statement denouncing the Saudi
decision revoking his citizenship. His response was that he was not
dependent upon his Saudi Arabian nationality to define himself as a
Muslim. Several weeks later his ARC sprang to life in London,
describing itself in press releases as "a political group that aimed
to be an effective opposition inside and outside of the one-party
system in Saudi Arabia." (6)
Robinson p. 173
For the next several years in Sudan bin Laden continued to be wary
of his finances. His own enterprises commanded a very high overhead
and so he needed a continual cash flow. In a 1996 interview with
Abdel Bari Atwan’s Al-Quds Al-Arabi he claimed that he had lost over
"$150 million on farming and construction projects" during his time
in Sudan.(7) He never
ran out of money but he began to be more careful of his spending.
The ’Brotherhood Group’ may have been a financial network that never
lacked for funds, but bin Laden’s personal accounts were not
endless. This fact became clear through the testimony of several Al
Qaeda operatives who were arrested in the aftermath of the African
embassy bombings of 1998, and from the testimony of Al Qaeda
defectors.
One defector, Jamal al-Fadl, who at one time ran bin Laden’s
payroll, complained of his $500 a month salary and compared it with
the $1200 salary some of the Egyptian employees were making. Bin
Laden explained that they were paid more because they could command
higher salaries back in Egypt and he wanted to keep them in the
group. Al-Fadl later defected after stealing $110,000 from bin
Laden. (8)
Another defector, L’Houssaine Kerchtou, became upset with bin Laden
after he refused to pay for an emergency caesarian operation needed
for his pregnant wife. He testified that,
"Since the end of ’94 -
’95 we have a crisis in Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden himself, he was
talking to us and saying that there is no money and he lost all his
money, and he shouldn’t extend a lot of things and he reduced the
salary of people."
Kerchtou also testified that bin Laden refused to
pay to have his pilot’s license renewed. One would think that
licensed pilots would be considered a tremendous asset for the
infamous Al Qaeda terrorist organization.
(9)
In late 2001
Al-Quds Al-Arabi published a series of reports
on Bin Laden’s life in Sudan. The reports characterized
his stay as "negative," and described the terrible financial cost to
him,
"The Sudan era was important despite
its negative impact on Bin Ladin. The Sudanese viewed him as an
investor who came to support the Islamic project declared by Dr.
Hasan al-Turabi, the spiritual leader of the Sudanese Islamic
revolution... On one side, it was a bitter experience for Bin
Ladin that cost him huge amounts of money but on the other side,
it was a time when many of the subsequent ideas and acts were
fermented." (10)
Other problems arose within Al Qaeda
while bin Laden was based in Sudan. When Sheikh Rahman was taken
into American custody following the 1993 WTC bombing a number of bin
Laden’s Egyptian employees demanded that plans be made to strike
back at America, but bin Laden refused. Because of this a number of
them left Al Qaeda in disgust. Later on, due to Libyan pressure on
Sudan, bin Laden attempted to send his Libyan operatives home. He
explained the situation to them and offered plane tickets for
themselves and their families, but they were so disgusted to see bin
Laden cave in to the political pressure that they refused the offer
and walked out. (11)
The embassy bombings trial did a great deal to undermine the notion
that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization was a
tremendously wealthy, invincible, seamless, secretive terror machine
capable of striking anywhere in the world. Up until the middle of
2001 the New York Times was publishing articles such as the one on
May 31 by Benjamin Weiser entitled "Trial Poked Holes in Image of
bin Laden’s Terrorist Group," but these reports were not enough to
shatter the illusion, and September 11 brought it back with a
vengeance.
Bin Laden’s money woes and other internal problems may be one
explanation for the apparent betrayal of bin Laden by Hassan al-Turabi
and the Sudanese government. According to American businessman
Mansoor Ijaz, who met with Turabi in July of 1996, Sudan made
several offers to hand bin Laden over to the United States in return
for the lifting of economic sanctions.(12)
The first offer were was made in February of 1996, but it was
ignored by the Clinton Administration, even though a State
Department report,
Patterns of Global Terrorism was
calling bin Laden,
"one of the most significant
financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world
today."
The offer was repeated in May of 1996 as
bin Laden was preparing to move his organization to Afghanistan, but
likewise ignored. Even after bin Laden left Sudan the government
made offers to supply the Clinton Administration with information.
According to
a Newsday.com article Ijaz
relayed these offers, but the White House remained uninterested,
"On a subsequent visit to Sudan, he
said, he met with the Sudanese intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi.
’If you can persuade your government to come here, this is what
can be made available to them,’ said al-Mahdi, as reported by
Ijaz, gesturing at three stacks of files before him. ’We have
the entire network, not just bin Laden or Hezbollah. We
understand everything going on in the Islamic world.’ "
(13)
According to
a January 6, 2002 article in The Sunday Times
of London, in a post-9/11 dinner party in Manhattan,
Clinton admitted that letting Osama bin Laden go was probably "the
biggest mistake of my presidency."
But the question arises, was the offer genuine? Was Sudan willing to
betray "the entire network" of militant Islam? Ijaz had met with
National Security Council deputy Sandy Berger and Susan Rice, the
senior advisor on African affairs to relay the offers. Rice
subsequently explained that the offers were ignored because of
Sudan’s proven track record of duplicity,
"The Sudanese are one of the most
slippery, dishonest governments in the world. The only thing
that matters is what they do, not what they say they’re going to
do. They’re very good at saying one thing and doing another."
(14)
Perhaps Sudan was willing to turn over
bin Laden, but turning over bin Laden would have been but a small
blow to the Islamist Movement. The International Muslim Brotherhood
would have retained control over the financial network set up in
part by bin Laden and it would have continued its war against the
Middle East’s moderate regimes, and against the West, without hardly
missing a beat. Osama bin Laden was expendable.
Section Notes and
Sources
Back to Contents
VIII. The
Brotherhood Revolution Continues
After bin Laden returned from his visit to England in 1994 things
began to heat up in the Muslim world. After publicly revoking bin
Laden’s citizenship the Saudi regime faced increasing fundamentalist
unrest at home. The House of Saud was walking a fine line - it
supported jihad and the expansion of Islam around the world, and
capitalized on its role as guardians of the holy places, but at the
same time the family’s decadence, corruption and personal
immoralities were becoming more and more evident at home. It was
only a matter of time before this hypocrisy became a problem and the
jihad turned back on its maker.
One of the loudest dissident voices within Saudi Arabia was a
militant sheik named Salman bin Fahd al-Udah. He was well known to
bin Laden and to the thousands of Saudi "Afghans" who lived
restlessly in the kingdom after returning from the battlefield. The
Saudi regime began to view Sheikh Udah with greater and greater
worry, and in September of 1994 they arrested him. Only a few days
later an organization of anonymous origin called the Battalions of
Faith made the headlines when it issued an ultimatum to the Saudi
government that demanded the release of Sheikh Udah within five
days, or else face a campaign of terrorism against the Saudi and
American governments.
The Saudi government ignored the warnings and nothing came of the
threat, but Bodansky writes that it was notable because it was the
"first initiative taken by the Saudi Islamist system... the first
threat of violence against the House of al-Saud." This ultimatum was
the first "overt communiqué of an Islamist terrorist organization
inside Saudi Arabia." (1)
In April of 1995 the Saudi Islamists received a boost in the form of
a recorded message given by Sheikh Udah that had been smuggled out
and distributed to his supporters. Bodansky describes how important
this message was,
"The lecture, titled ’Death Workmanship,’ covered the whole logic of
the relationship between Islamist and Western civilization and
amounted to a declaration of an armed jihad against the House of al-Saud.
It provided justification for perpetual confrontation...
’Death Workmanship’ amounted to a
fatwa, that is, a religious decree, ordering the launch of jihad
against the Saudi royal family. Sheikh Udah decreed that any
rejection of jihad in favor of another form of resistance was
apostasy, a capital offence according to Muslim law, which left
the believer with no alternative but to fight..."
(2) Bodansky
pp.117-118
This message from Sheikh Udah fired up
the resistance to the Saudi regime at home and around the world.
According to Bodansky the London-based CDLR (mentioned above) is
"the largest and best-organized Saudi Islamic opposition group," and
with the issuance of Sheikh Udah’s message the organization changed
from being moderate and diplomatic to becoming a supporter of armed
resistance to the Saudi regime, a change reflected in their own
statements and press releases.
The Saudi Islamist network struck for real on November 13, 1995,
when a car bomb exploded in Riyadh destroying an American-leased
building and killing six people including five Americans. Robinson
writes that the bomb was made out of 200 lbs. of Semtex
military-grade explosives, and that it shattered windows in a
one-mile radius. Immediately a number of underground Islamists
groups claimed responsibility for the attack.
Bodansky writes that the Armed Islamic Movement, the Muslim
Brotherhood’s loose-knit unofficial jihad organization, claimed
credit,
"by disseminating through
AIM-affiliated venues a communiqué in the name of a previously
unknown group calling itself The Militant Partisans of God
Organization. The AIM communiqué also stressed that the Riyadh
operation was ’the first of our jihad operations.’ "
(3)
The Muslim Brotherhood was taking
advantage of the Saudi political climate and had joined in the
movement to topple the House of Saud. This was only a secondary
operation, however. The primary goal for the Muslim Brotherhood in
1995 was to destroy its historical enemy, the secular government of
Egypt.
In March of 1995 Hassan al-Turabi convened a meeting in Khartoum
with three of the leading Egyptian Islamists: Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri,
the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, along with Mustafa Hamza and
Rifai Ahmed Taha, both of al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah (the Islamic
Group). Zawahiri was based in Geneva where his organization was
directed from a Muslim Brotherhood mosque(p.125). Mustafa Hamza was
based in London and Khartoum, while Rifai Ahmed Taha was based in
London and Peshawar, Pakistan. It was at this meeting that the plan
to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was agreed upon. The
attack would be made during Mubarak’s scheduled diplomatic visit to
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in late June.
(4) p. 123
Weeks later the plan was presented at a larger Islamist meeting in
Khartoum. It was thought that Mubarak’s assassination would create
the diversion for an Islamist coup in Egypt, followed quickly by the
fall of the House of Saud and the overthrow of the Persian Gulf
states. Mustafa Hamza was chosen to coordinate the uprising within
Egypt and Ayman al-Zawahiri was picked as the operational director
of the actual attack on Mubarak. (5)
In late May Turabi traveled to Paris for "medical treatment," from
where he made a quick secret visit to Geneva to meet again with
Zawahiri. Two weeks later Zawahiri made an "inspection visit" to
Khartoum, and he was also able to travel to Ethiopia using a forged
passport to go over the plan on the ground. He then returned to
Geneva where the final meeting of the top-level operational leaders
took place in safety on June 23. (6)
The plan was to use three teams to attack Mubarak’s convoy of
vehicles as it left the airport and traveled to the convention
center half a mile away. The first team would attack the convoy with
machine guns from a number of rooftop locations near the airport.
This was supposed to slow the convoy allowing the second team, armed
with RPGs, to come in and blast the president’s car and/or any other
official Egyptian vehicles in range. If Mubarak’s vehicle managed to
escape it would face the third team, which was simply a single
massively-armed car bomb driven by a suicide bomber. Zawahiri’s
intelligence contacts had related that Mubarak’s driver was
instructed to travel full speed ahead to their destination if
anything happened, and the car bomb was the last chance to take him
out.
The plan failed for a number of reasons. First, Mubarak’s entourage
was delayed in coordinating the convoy, and because Ethiopian police
had extra time to secure the route the RPG squad was told to
repackage their rockets for security reasons. Then without notice
Mubarak announced that whoever was ready should join his convoy to
journey to the convention center.
He was not willing to wait around
for the entire convoy to assemble, and for this reason the hit teams
had no advance notice and were caught with their RPGs packaged away.
The final decision that saved Mubarak’s life was the choice made
once the small arms fire erupted and the convoy jammed together and
stopped. The driver simply turned the car around and sped back to
the safety of the airport. The car bomber never even had the chance
to get near Mubarak’s limousine, which happened to be his special
Mercedes brought from Egypt that was bulletproof as well as
RPG-proof. (7)
Bodansky describes the ramifications of this failed plot,
"The attempt on President Hosni
Mubarak’s life in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on June 26, 1995, was a
milestone in the evolution of the Islamist struggle for control
over the Arab world and the Hub of Islam. Operations of such
magnitude, even if ultimately claimed by or attributed to
obscure terrorist organizations, are actually instruments of
state policy and are carried out on behalf of the highest
echelons of the terrorism-sponsoring states. The assassination
attempt, a strategic gambit sponsored by Sudan and Iran, had
regional and long-term effects. Although President Mubarak
survived and the Islamist popular uprising envisaged by the
conspirators failed to materialize in Egypt, the mere attempt
gave a major boost to the Islamist surge throughout the region."
(8) p. 121
On July 4 responsibility for the attack
was claimed by the Islamic Group (al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah), the
terrorist organization of the imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman.
It was claimed that the attack was made in honor of an Islamist
commander killed by Egyptian police in 1994.
Egypt was quick to blame Sudan for sponsoring the attack, and
Ethiopia and the United States, followed by the UN, blamed Sudan as
well. The evidence was overwhelming that Sudan had housed, trained
and financed the terrorists, and Sudan’s guilt was confirmed by
their refusal to turn over three of the terrorists accused of
conducting the operation. Because of this the UN imposed diplomatic
sanctions, and the United States evacuated its Khartoum embassy,
expelled a Sudanese diplomat and imposed diplomatic and economic
sanctions. Sudan’s time as an effective haven for the militant
Islamic movement was up. Turabi had to quickly change his policies
to avoid any serious actions against against Sudan and to preserve
his Islamist regime. One of his conciliatory gestures, however
empty, was to offer Osama bin Laden over to the United States. The
Clinton Administration didn’t buy it.
The next assault on the the government of Egypt occurred on November
19, 1995, just six days after the Riyadh bombing of American
servicemen. A small car rammed its way through the gate of the
Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan and seconds later a small
explosion occurred in an area where visitors were standing in line
for visas. The explosion, reportedly a suicide bomber who had jumped
out of the car, created a diversion and in the commotion a van
loaded with 900 lbs. of explosives rammed into the front of the
embassy. This huge explosion created a crater twenty feet wide and
ten feet deep. Nineteen people were killed and scores more were
wounded.
Soon afterward three main Egyptian terror groups claimed
responsibility. The Islamic Group of Sheikh Rahman, led by Mustafa Hamza and
Rifai Ahmed Taha, claimed that the bombing was done in
opposition to President Mubarak. The Islamic Group later withdrew
its claim of responsibility. The next claim was from Ayman al-Zawahiri’s
Islamic Jihad, which stated the names of the attackers, the
"martyrs" who perpetrated the attack. The last claim came from the
Zawahiri-affiliated International Justice Group, and the attack was
said to have been made by "the squad of the martyr Khalid Islambouli,"
referring to the executed assassin of President Anwar Sadat of
Egypt. (9)
Bodansky offers his conclusion as to who was responsible for this
attack on the Egyptian government,
"Like the assassination attempt on
President Mubarak, the Islamabad bombing operation was conducted
under the tight control of and financed by the higher Islamist
headquarters in Western Europe - Ayman al-Zawahiri in Geneva and
his new second-in-command, Yassir Tawfiq Sirri in London."
(10) p. 144
By the end of 1995 Sudan was feeling the full effects of its
sponsorship of the militant Islamist movement. The economy was in
terrible shape and sanctions were prohibiting any sort of
substantive economic investment or aid from the outside, and Egypt
and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of taking direct military action.
Because of these pressures General Bashir began to lessen his
support for Hassan Turabi’s Islamist experiment and leaned on him to
cool things down for a while. Sudan’s time as a Muslim Brotherhood
base was near its end.
This was foreseen by the MB and even as
the Mubarak assassination plot was being planned their assets were
being relocated to the camps of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.
A year later Osama bin Laden followed suit. He touched down in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on May 18, 1996.
Section Notes and Sources
For further information read the following important articles by the
CRG’s Chaim Kupferberg:
Back to Contents
Notes and
Sources
I. The Roots of Islamic Terrorism
Sources
Holy War, Wilhelm Dietl, 1983
Hostage To Khomeini, Robert Dreyfuss, 1980 (available here
online in .pdf format)
Notes
1. Biography of Hasan al-Banna
2. Freemasonry In Egypt, Insight Magazine, March 1, 1999
3. Biography of Jamal al-Afghani
4. Biography of Mohammed Abduh
5. Commentary from Shaykh Abdul Hadi of the Italian Muslim
Association
6. Excerpt from "The Return of the Khalifate" by Shaykh
Abdalqadir as-Sufi
7. Biography of Hasan al-Banna; Dietl, p. 26; Dreyfuss, p.
139-140
8. Commentary from Shaykh Abdul Hadi of the Italian Muslim
Association
8a. Dreyfuss, p. 143
9. Biography of Hasan al-Banna
10. Dietl, p. 56
11. Dietl, p. 32
12. Excerpt from "The Right To Judge," by Sayed Qutb
13. Excerpt from "The Right To Judge," by Sayed Qutb
14. Dietl, pp.37-39
15. Dietl, p. 38
16. Dietl, p. 42
17. Dietl, p. 43
18. Dreyfuss, pp. 106-108 (excerpt); What Really Happened In
Iran, Dr. John Coleman, 1984, p. 24 (1-800-942-0821)
19. Dreyfuss, pp. 106-108
20. Dietl, p. 45
II. Creating the ’Arc of
Crisis’
Sources
"What the Malthusians Say," from The American Almanac,
1994
Where On Earth Are We Going? Maurice Strong, 2000
Holy War, Wilhelm Dietl, 1983
Hostage To Khomeini, Robert Dreyfuss, 1980
Notes
1. Russell quotes from "Malthusians" above
2. "Nobel winner supported biological warfare as form of
population control," from The Interim, April ’02
3. "Malthusians"
4. Julian Huxley, "Essays of a Humanist," 1964
5. Strong, p. 119
6. "Malthusians"
7. "Malthusians"
8. "Malthusians"
9. Biography of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
10. Dietl, p. 72
11. Islam in the British Isles, a timeline
12. Dreyfuss, excerpt
12a. Dreyfuss, pp. 72-83
12b. Dreyfuss, pp. 92-95
13. 1979 in Pakistan history (see April 3)
14. Interview with Brzezinski
III. The Muslim Brotherhood
Branches Out
Sources
Holy War, Wilhelm Dietl, 1983
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America, Yossef
Bodansky, 1999
Hostage To Khomeini, Robert Dreyfuss, 1980
Notes
1. Dreyfuss, p. 133
2. Libya: history, internet article
3. Biography of Ayman al-Zawahri
4. Dreyfuss, pp. 174-175
5. Dreyfuss, p. 160
6. Dreyfuss, p. 164
7. Dietl, pp. 64-66
8. Dietl, p. 66
9. Dietl, p. 67
10. Dietl, p. 67
11. Dietl, p. 68, also see Zawahiri biography
12. Dietl, p. 68
13. Dietl, p. 61
14. Dietl, p. 87
15. Bodansky, p. 101, p. 125
16. Bodansky, p. 298, Balkans report
17. Bodansky, p. 13, p. 405
18. Hamas background, profile
19. Dreyfuss, pp. 164-165
IV. Osama bin Laden: The Early
Years
Sources
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America, Yossef
Bodansky, 1999
Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of the Terrorist, Adam Robinson,
2001
In the Name of Osama Bin Laden, Roland Jacquard, 2001
Holy War, Wilhelm Dietl, 1983
Islam in Central Asia: Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ahmed
Rashid, (online .pdf article)
Notes
1. Jacquard, pp.12-13
2. Dietl, pp. 211-227
3. Jacquard, pp.13-14
4. Jacquard, pp.13-14
5. Qutb- personal correspondence with the Italian Muslim
Association, Omar and Abdullah - article
6. The Guardian article by Greg Palast
7. The Guardian article by Malise Ruthven
8. Bodansky, p. 11
9. Bodansky, p. 11
10. Bodansky p. 12
11. Al-Fagih interview
12. Jacquard, p. 57
13. Al Kifah article
14. Rashid, pp. 213-214
15. Rashid, p. 214
16. Robinson, p. 112
17. Abdullah Azzam biography
18. Abdullah Azzam article
19. Radical Islam in the UK, report
V. Bin Laden In Exile
Sources
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America, Yossef
Bodansky, 1999
Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of the Terrorist, Adam Robinson,
2001
In the Name of Osama Bin Laden, Roland Jacquard, 2001
Forbidden Truth, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie,
2002
Notes
1. Robinson, p. 130
2. "Questions About the Supposed Iraqi Threat to Saudi
Arabia in 1990," article
3. Bodansky, p. 130
4. Robinson, p. 131
5. Robinson, p. 132
6. Bodansky, p. 32
7. Bodansky, p. 36
8. Brisard and Dasquie, p. 117
9. "UK is money launderers’ paradise," BBC News article
10. Brisard and Dasquie, pp. 184-185
11. Robinson, p. 139 also see Bodansky, p. 43
12. Bodansky, p. 46, Robinson, pp. 139-140
13. Jacquard, p. 32
14. Bodansky, p. 43
15. Bodansky, p. 71
16. Bodansky, p. 74
17. Bodansky, pp. 76-78
18. Robinson, p. 153
VI. WTC 1993
Sources
"Blowback," Mary Ann Weaver, 05-1996, The Atlantic
online
"Enemies and ’Assets’," William Norman Grigg, 03-1997, The
New American
The New Jackals, Simon Reeve, 1999
Breakdown: How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to
September 11, Bill Gertz, 2002
Notes
1. Weaver
2. Grigg
3. Grigg
4. "Osama bin Laden - the Past," Steve Emerson, IASCP.com
5. "The Past As Prologue," Russ Baker, 10-2001, salon.com
6. "Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters," Laurie Mylroie,
Winter 95/96, National Interest
7. "Terrorists’ trade in stolen identities," Daniel McGrory,
9-22-01, The Times UK
8. "Of Passports and Fingerprints," internet article
9. "Terrorists’ trade in stolen identities," Daniel McGrory,
9-22-01, The Times UK
10. "The Past As Prologue," Russ Baker, 10-2001, salon.com
10b. Reeve, p.251
11. "Hawks try to implicate Iraq by hunting for evidence in
UK,"10-2001, DAWN.com
12. "Hawks try to implicate Iraq by hunting for evidence in
UK,"10-2001, DAWN.com
12a. PBS Frontline, interview with Laurie Mylroie
13. "The Terror Lurking Within Asia," John Moy, 10-11-02,
SCMP.com
14. "Terrorist Plot Years in the Making, " Daniel Rubin and
Michael Dorgan, Knight Ridder Newspapers
15. "Of Passports and Fingerprints," internet article
16. "Antecedents of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef," 10-1996 , SAPRA
INDIA
17. "The Left’s Acrobatic Logic on Terror," David Harsanyi,
6-11-02, Capitalism Magazine.com
18. "Dropping the Ball," Reed Irvine, World Net Daily .com
19a. "Operation Bojinka’s Bombshell," Matthew Brzezinski (Zbigniew’s
nephew), 1-2-02, The Toronto Star
19b. Reeve, p. 89
20. "The Past As Prologue," Russ Baker, 10-2001, salon.com
21. Gertz, pp. 55-56
22. Qaradawi: London, Qatar
23. Non-Muslim lifestyle: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi
Yousef
24. Biography of bin Laden in Sudan
VII. Bin Laden’s Money Problems
Sources
Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of the Terrorist, Adam
Robinson, 2001
Notes
1. Robinson, p. 168
2. Robinson, p. 169
3. Robinson, p. 169
4. Robinson, p. 172
5. Robinson, p. 172
6. Robinson, p. 173
7. "Tracing Bin Laden’s Money," ICT
8. "Trial Poked Holes," New York Times, "Cross
Examination..."
9. "Trial Reveals a Conspiracy..." CNN.com,
10. "Bin Ladin’s Life in Sudan," Al Quds Al Arabi
11. "Trial Poked Holes," New York Times
12. "Missed Chance," Newsday.com
13. "Missed Chance," Newsday.com
14. "Missed Chance," Newsday.com
VIII. The Brotherhood
Revolution Continues
Source
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America, Yossef
Bodansky, 1999
Notes
1. p. 117
2. pp. 117-118
3. p. 141
4. pp. 123, 125
5. p. 124
6. p. 125
7. pp. 130-131
8. p. 121
9. p. 144
10. p. 144
Back to Contents
|