Iraq/BinLaden connection
Did everyone here see this article?
abcnews.go.com.
I believe that these prisoners are telling the truth.
Why isn't this info getting out?
Many are saying give us some proof, the above article
is a must read for everyone.
Here it is:
The three men are in the custody of the Iraqi Kurdish government, which is opposed to Saddam Hussein's regime. All three assured me they were speaking of their own free will. They said they were not under threat of torture and they were aware they did not have to talk to me.
But prison interviews are always suspect because there's no way to know if they're exaggerating or simply lying in order to curry favor from their captors, and the information is difficult to confirm. All three men appeared to be calm and sincere, and their responses were very detailed, often including names and specific dates. Talking to me, they said, was a step towards righting the wrongs of their past.
'Trying to Assassinate American Journalists'
The first man sat before me with an Afghan scarf pulled up to just below his eyes. He asked not to be identified because he still has family in the area and feared for their safety. He said before his capture, he was a fighter for the radical militant Islamic group, Ansar al-Islam, that had been waging a small-scale insurgency against the Iraqi Kurdish government.
This former fighter for Ansar al-Islam, requested his identity not be disclosed. (ABCNEWS.com)
The United States and the Kurdish government believe Ansar al-Islam is directly linked to al Qaeda, and is part of a larger relationship between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization.
According to this prisoner, there are about 500 to 600 men in the group, whose goals and methods were similar to the Taliban and al Qaeda. They want to institute a fundamentalist Islamic society and eventually control the entire region. According to him, al Qaeda is in fact, closely linked to Ansar al-Islam.
"Al Qaeda is a main finance source for al Ansar," he said, "because al Qaeda now doesn't have a particular base and is scattered. They only can provide financing to al Ansar. Definitely they have the same principles and goals which the Taliban and al Qaeda have. Because [Ansar al-Islam] is in the early stage and they are small in size, they are not able to act against America as effectively as al Qaeda and Taliban did. But nevertheless, they don't hesitate to act against America. They do it, for example, they are trying to assassinate American journalists or kidnap them. Particularly those who come to Kurdistan."
That explained the heavily-armed military escort the Kurdish government insisted we take with us on our visit to the front lines where Ansar al-Islam is active.
He went on to say that there were 80 al Qaeda fighters among Ansar al-Islam in the mountains of Northern Iraq at the time of his capture earlier this year.
Still, al Qaeda's influence with Ansar al-Islam is a far cry from the Bush administration's claims that bin Laden's organization is closely related to the Iraqi regime. But the next man I met said he had specific information about that.
Prisoner: Al Qaeda Members Met With Saddam
Abu Iman al-Maliki was convicted of spying on the Kurds as an Iraqi intelligence officer. He says he worked as such for 20 years. Al-Maliki chain-smoked Marlboros as we talked, sitting on a metal chair in a T-shirt advertising a martial arts school that strained against his bulk. He is, simply put, a huge man. Abu Iman al-Maliki was an Iraqi intelligence officer for 20 years. (ABCNEWS.com)
"The U.S. believes Iraq has had contact with al Qaeda," I said, "Do you know that to be a fact?"
"Yes. In '92, elements of al Qaeda came to Baghdad and met with Saddam Hussein and among them was Dr. Al-Zawahiri."
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, you may recall, has been identified as a top lieutenant of bin Laden's, and is widely thought to be a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"There is a relationship between the governments of al Qaeda and the Iraqi government," he continued. "It began after the events of Kuwait approximately. That is when the relationship developed and many delegations came to Baghdad. There are elements of al Qaeda training on suicide operations, assassinations, explosions, and the making of chemical substances, and they are supervised by a number of officers, experts from the Iraqi intelligence, the Explosives Division, the Assassinations Division, different specialties."
Al-Maliki's specialty is somewhat more disturbing. He says he was part of a group of officers ordered by Saddam to hide chemical weapons throughout the Iraqi countryside. When I asked him if the U.N. weapons inspectors might find anything if they return, he smiled and said, "No. They will find nothing."
'I Killed' for Iraqi Intelligence and Al Qaeda
As midnight approached, I was introduced to Muhammad Mansour Shihab Ali, a man who, if you believe his confession, is a cold-hearted killer with a deep hatred for the United States. Muhammad Mansour Shihab Ali is behind bars for murdering an Iraqi dissident. (ABCNEWS.com)
His explanation of wanting to talk to an American journalist is the most perplexing of all: he had absolutely nothing to gain by doing so that I could tell. I asked him numerous times about his motives for giving us so much detailed information and his mumbled response, as gleaned by the translator, was that he thought I could do something to help his children whom he'd left behind with bin Laden's people in Afghanistan. It became obvious that he thought I was an American intelligence agent, and no amount of denial on my part could convince him otherwise.
Shihab Ali is in prison for the murder of an Iraqi dissident who had been living in Iran. He was captured at a Kurdish checkpoint and found in his possession were some photographic negatives which, when developed, were a full-color record of the grisly deed. When confronted in court with the photos, he confessed all. He's still confessing.
"Killing is something I did. I killed. This was for the Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda."
Shihab Ali told me he has done numerous operations for al Qaeda and Iraq over the years, including numerous assassinations and smuggling drugs and guns. Two years ago, he says he was hired by an Iraqi intelligence officer, Othman Salman Daoud, to smuggle 30 refrigerator "motors" — which I took to mean "compressors" — from Iraq to Iran, where they were handed over to men he describes as Afghan members of al Qaeda. He was paid $10,000 each for the items, which usually contain the refrigerant gas Freon, but, in this case, contained something more mysterious. Shihab Ali was warned it was dangerous to himself, and to any children he might hope to have.
We have no way of knowing what was in those compressors, or what their ultimate destination was. "Only God knows what was in them," he says. Which is not entirely true; he says the compressors were ordered by the man Shihab Ali met five days later in Afghanistan — bin Laden.
There were nine other operations he was expected to work on, he said, at the time he was caught, but he was reluctant to give away the details. Finally, I convinced him to tell me about one that was supposed to have happened last year. He says he and a partner were given $16 million to go to the Gulf and buy some large ships, equip them with 500 kilos of high-explosive, and set sail under Iranian flags. The crews would slip away in motorboats after being replaced with men willing to commit suicide, who would then enter Kuwaiti waters, according to Shihab Ali, and ram the ships into American tankers or military vessels.
"The only reason this didn't happen is because you were captured?" I asked him as my mind filled with the mental image of the extent of death and damage such an attack might have caused.
"Yes, if I hadn't been arrested, I would have done it."
I left there hoping that his arrest had so compromised the operation, if indeed one had been planned at all, that it was scrapped.
I have no way of knowing how truthful these men were. Shihab Ali has been interviewed by print reporters in the past, one of whom described him as "deranged" because of his boasts of having killed so many people. After seeing the photographs of his last victim, I think that's an understandable assessment, although deranged in a Jeffrey Dahmer sort of way, not as a raving lunatic. As he sat there, quietly and methodically describing his experiences, I couldn't help but think he was capable of everything he was saying.
If I was sitting in the same room listening to the same man last Sept. 10, I'm not sure I would have believed a word he said. |
