HEADLINE: Is Bin Laden planning strikes against Israel?
BYLINE: David Eshel
BODY:
ACCORDING TO Israel's army intelligence chief, Major General Amos Malka, an attempt by the Osama bin Laden-led terrorist group, Al-Qaeda, to attack Israeli targets was foiled by the Israel Defence Force earlier this year.
In June, US intelligence sources said that Al-Qaeda was interested in expanding its operational sphere into Israel, the West Bank and Gaza by trying to set up their own network, separate from the already-operating Hamas and Hizbullah terrorist cells. The Israeli daily Haaretz also reported that last June Israeli agents arrested a
Gaza resident at the Sinai-Rafa crossing. Associated Press named the man as Nabil Okal, a member of Hamas, but at the time, Hamas denied any connection with Bin Laden.
Saudi Middle East Broadcasting Corporation reporter Bakr Atyani has revealed that one of Bin Laden's aides had claimed that strikes would soon be carried out against Israeli interests, not specifying whether in Israel itself or abroad.
Dr Gil Feiler, a senior researcher at Bar-Ilan University's BESA Centre for Strategic Studies, played down the significance of an immediate threat to Israeli interests, stressing that: "Israel is not at the top of his operational priorities."
Feiler said: "We know that in the past we did not hear much about Bin Laden vis-a-vis Israel. Most of his activity has been against American targets." He argued that Israel's real enemies remain Hamas and Hizbullah.
Feiler's assessment runs contrary to Yoram Scheitzer of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre for Anti-Terrorist Studies who told a recent seminar that: "Bin Laden is a professional. He takes a long time to plan and prepare his activities. It is not inconceivable that Bin Laden is planning terrorist attacks against Israel."
Copyright 2001 Jane's Information Group Limited,
All Rights Reserved
Jane's Intelligence Review
August 1, 2001
SECTION: SPECIAL REPORT; Vol. 13; No. 8
LENGTH: 2320 words
HEADLINE: Convictions mark first step in breaking up Al-Qaeda network
BYLINE: Phil Hirschkorn
HIGHLIGHT:
As the defendants in the US embassy bombing trials are handed life sentences, Phil Hirschkorn, who was in court throughout, reviews the intelligence that law
enforcement agencies gathered in their efforts to break Al-Qaeda.
BODY:
The conviction of four men - Wadih el Hage, Mohammad Rashed Daoud Al Owhali, Mohammad Sadeek Odeh and Khalfan Khamis Mohammad - for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people, including 12 US citizens, marked the first time the USA has prosecuted terrorists for crimes committed off US soil. All are
lower to mid-level players in the Islamic militant group, Al-Qaeda (The Base).
More important players yet to be captured include Osama Bin Laden's top adviser, his military commander, the ground co-ordinators of the bombings and Bin Laden himself, who still lives in Afghanistan with the approval of the ruling Taliban regime. Bin Laden is on the FBI's '10 most wanted' list and the US government is offering a US$5 million reward for his capture or conviction.
Inside Al-Qaeda
The prosecutors won their case by convincing jurors who knew almost nothing about Islam, the bombings, Bin Laden, or the defendants. They presented a decade-long plot dating back to the twilight of the Afghan resistance to Soviet military occupation. Like thousands of Arabs who joined the Mujahideen, Bin Laden ventured to Afghanistan to purge the Muslim nation of communist rule. They were considered
'freedom fighters' and supported by covert US aid, Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) trainers, and shipments of arms including Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Bin Laden donated resources from his family construction business to build roads and defensive tunnels.
After the Soviet withdrawal, the Mujahideen stayed in touch through the 'mekhtab al khidemat,' (services office) in Peshawar, Pakistan and a branch in New York and contemplated the next jihad. This was the genesis of Al-Qaeda.
PAGE 7
Jane's Intelligence Review, August 1, 2001
"When the Russians decided to leave Afghanistan, Bin Laden decided to make his own group," Jamal al Fadl, one of two Al-Qaeda defectors in the US government's witness protection programme, testified. He was the third rank and file member to swear a bayat (loyalty oath).
The US government has relied heavily on Al-Fadl's information ever since he split with Bin Laden after embezzling money from him. He showed up at a US embassy in 1996 with a warning.
"I have information about people, they want to do something against your government," Al Fadl had said, according to his testimony. "Maybe they will try to do something inside the United States and they may try to fight the United States Army outside, and also they may try to make a bomb against some embassy."
Al Fadl offered an insider's account of Al-Qaeda's hierarchical structure with Bin Laden at the top surrounded by his 'majlis al Shura' (consultative council). Committees below handled religious policy, military training, and businesses that financed the operation. There was a even a media committee led by one 'Abu Musab Reuter'.
The businesses based in Khartoum, Sudan, where Bin Laden
headquartered for five years starting in 1991, spanned road and bridge construction, trucking, currency exchange, a leather tannery, and exporting farm products like sesame seeds and peanuts. One of al Fadl's jobs was managing the payroll - something he later trained the defendant El Hage to do. The top salary was US$1,200 a month, high by Sudanese or Kenyan standards.
Prosecutors claimed these companies were fronts providing income for the terrorist enterprise but did not produce any financial records to prove it. Al Fadl mentioned bank accounts in London, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Malaysia, but no bank records were introduced to corroborate his testimony. If the US government has evidence of Bin Laden's money flow in Afghanistan, the trial did not reveal it.
Instead, the image of Bin Laden as a billionaire's son freely spending his fortune to finance terrorism was undermined.
The other Al-Qaeda insider witness, L'Houssaine Kherchtou, suggested Bin Laden may have been bankrupt. Kherchtou, who trained in Kenya to become an Al-Qaeda pilot, said the network was short on cash, cutting salaries and travel in 1994. It would not pay $500 to renew Kherchtou's pilot's license or settle a maternity bill for his wife.
The four convicted men lived modestly. Odeh resided in a mud-walled hut without plumbing or telephone in Witu, a fishing village near Mombasa, Kenya. El Hage, who lived in Nairobi with his wife and six children, hustled in the gem trade, ostrich imports and other business schemes.
The only significant, documented transactions in the trial were cash purchases of the bomb trucks by conspirators not on trial who paid $10,000 for a used Toyota Dyna in Kenya and $6,000 for a used Nissan Atlas refrigeration truck in Tanzania.
Cell structure
Ties between Bin Laden and the four defendants were proved. Odeh, Al Owhali and Khalfan Khamis Mohammad studied guns, explosives and Islamic ideology in his military training camps. All four were found guilty of joining Bin Laden's conspiracy to kill US citizens, although the only bona fide member of Al-Qaeda was Odeh.
His post-arrest statement to the FBI suggested that cells are split into planning and execution phases, with members of one group not necessarily knowing the other. For example, there was no evidence that Odeh, thought to be a technical adviser to the Kenya bombing, ever met Al Owhali, who helped assemble the bomb and rode in the bomb truck. Odeh told former CIA analyst Jerrold Post that Al-Qaeda
recruits non-members to assist in low-level logistical tasks. This appears to be how Khalfan Khamis Mohammad became ensnared in the Tanzania bomb plot.
A surveillance guide found in a computer inside the California home of Ali Mohammad, a Bin Laden associate who once provided military and surveillance training to recruits, said: "Every member has a legal job, as a cover... Safety is the main concern...
Communications between the different groups are conducted through the dead mail drop only." Trial evidence showed El Hage and Odeh shared a post office box in Nairobi.
Ali Mohammad and another Al-Qaeda fugitive, Anas al Liby, first conducted surveillance of the US embassy in Kenya in late 1993, converting Kherchtou's apartment living room into a dark room. Kherchtou said he and other members learned surveillance techniques, map reading, writing blueprints, measuring wall thickness, installing hidden cameras, and developing film.
Mohammad did not testify in the trial, but would be instrumental in convicting Bin Laden for ordering the bombings.
Orders via satellite phone
Bin Laden appears to have given his orders via satellite phone. A US associate purchased a laptop-sized phone from a New York telecommunications firm which sold the account 2,200 minutes of time. Prosecutors disclosed a complete record of outgoing and incoming calls between late 1996 and late 1998. The most frequent voice on the other end was Khaled al Fawwaz, a fellow Saudi dissident, in UK custody since late 1998.
In London, Al Fawwaz served as a kind of press secretary, disseminating Bin Laden statements including his February 1998 fatwa targeting all US citizens, which al Fawwaz arranged to have published in the Arabic newspaper Al Quds. Prosecutors say he established the Nairobi cell
and managed it until El Hage's arrival.
Over 50 calls went to Kenyan numbers, including four to the Nairobi home phone of defendant El Hage, who had denied communicating with Bin Laden after 1994. Bin Laden's military commander and partner in hiding, Mohammad Atef, initiated two of the calls that were wiretapped.
Dozens of calls were placed on Bin Laden's satellite phone to numbers in Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Azerbaijan.
More trials to come
The Bin Laden-related US trials are far from over. There are public indictments against 26 associates.
Al Fadl, Kherchtou, and Ali Mohammad pleaded guilty and are co-operating with the government. In addition to the four men convicted in May, six others are in US or UK custody awaiting trial.
The highest-ranking defendant in custody is Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a Sudanese-born Al-Qaeda founder considered a religious scholar who oversaw management of Bin Laden companies based in Sudan. Before Salim is tried on terror conspiracy charges, he faces a September trial in US federal court for the attempted murder of a jailguard he
allegedly stabbed in November 2000.
Three alleged London cell operatives - Al Fawwaz and the Egyptians Ibrahim Eidarous and Adel Abdel Bary - have been in UK custody for nearly three years on terrorist conspiracy charges and are fighting extradition to the USA. Eidarous and Abdel Bary face the death penalty.
Mohammad al Nalfi, a Sudanese in jail in the USA, faces conspiracy charges for supporting Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s when it was based in Khartoum. Al Nalfi allegedly helped Bin Laden relocate there, established his umbrella company, Taba Investments, and led a jihad group that merged with Al-Qaeda.
Ihab Ali, a naturalised US citizen from Egypt, has been in a US jail for over two years, accused of lying to a grand jury about his Bin Laden connections and for refusing to complete his testimony.
Evidence in the embassy bombings trial showed Ali, last employed as an Orlando, Florida taxi driver, passed messages for Al-Qaeda and once trained to be Bin Laden's pilot.
The USA sought the death penalty against Al Owhali and Khalfan Khamis Mohammad, who were directly linked to the embassy bombings, but the jurors did not impose it, ostensibly because they did not want to make them martyrs, or viewed execution as less harsh than a life behind bars.
The death penalty hangs over most of the 13 fugitives, including Bin Laden, but prosecutors may find this a problem in bringing the accused to justice. South Africa's highest court ruled the country should not have handed over Mohammad to the USA without receiving assurances he would not face the death penalty. The UK wants such assurances before it hands over its three suspects, and Germany made
it a condition of Salim's extradition.
In addition to the pending embassy bombings case, Bin Laden is suspected of ordering the October 2000 suicide bombing of the navy destroyer USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in Yemen. "In Aden, the young men rose up from holy war and destroyed a destroyer for injustice that had sailed itself into its own doom," Bin Laden said in remarks videotaped at the January 2001 wedding of his son in Afghanistan.
The USA worries where Bin Laden might strike next. In the past six month, specific threats have been reported against US embassies in Italy, India and Yemen. CIA Director George Tenet recently told Congress that when it comes to terrorism, "Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat." l
THE CONVICTED
Wadih El Hage: A naturalised US citizen, the Lebanese-born El Hage, 40, served as Bin Laden's personal secretary in the Sudan years and conducted lawful business transactions for him following his move to Kenya. A cell leader until 1997, El Hage's house in Nairobi was used by the cell. He had been living in the USA for nearly a year before the bombings occurred.
Mohammad Rashed Daoud al Owhali: Saudi national and member of the Kenya cell. In the truck carrying the bomb, Al Owhali's job was to scare the embassy gate guard into opening the gate. Arrested in August 1998, Al Owhali was sentenced in New York to life imprisonment.
Mohammad Sadeek Odeh: Jordanian national, member of Al-Qaeda and part of the Kenya cell, Odeh was engaged in operations as early as 1993 in Somalia, where Bin Laden opposed the US military presence, but denied taking part in the embassy bombings. He was found guilty of conspiring to kill US citizens.
Khalfan Khamis Mohammad: Tanzanian national and member of the cell accused of carrying out the Dar es Salaam bombing. Mohammad, 27, admitted grinding TNT and loading the bomb onto a truck, but maintained he was acting on the orders of 'higher-ups' whose goals he did not know. An FBI agent who questioned him said that "based on his study of Islam, he felt he had an obligation and a duty to kill Americans". Arrested living incognito in Cape Town, South Africa in
June 1999, he narrowly escaped the death penalty.
THEIR ASSOCIATES
L'Houssaine Kherchtou: Former Al-Qaeda member turned US government witness. Not a member of the Kenya cell, but housed three Al-Qaeda members, including Ali Mohammad, while they conducted a surveillance mission against the US embassy in Nairobi in 1994-95. Testified about Al-Qaeda training techniques. Claimed to have seen Harun Fazul
the day after the Nairobi bombing.
Ali Mohammad: Egyptian national who went to the USA in 1985 and held the rank of sergeant in the US Army. Spent three years at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he trained US military personnel on Middle Eastern cultures. Pleaded guilty in October 2000 to conspiring to bomb US embassies in East Africa. Admitted helping photograph the Nairobi embassy as part of a surveillance operation, and was a trainer in several Al-Qaeda Afghan camps and in the USA.
Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah, aka Saleh: Kenya cell leader and allegedly the mastermind behind the embassy bombings. Still at large and wanted by the USA.
Harun Fazul, aka Fazul Abdullah Mohammad: Kenya cell co-ordinator. Still at large and wanted by the USA.
'Azzam': Alleged suicide bomber who died in the Nairobi attack. A picture from his Saudi passport bears the name 'Gihad Ali'.
Phil Hirschkorn covered the embassy bombings trial for CNN. He is based at the network's New York bureau.
(photo)
Mohammad Rashed Daoud Al Owhali, Khalfan Khamis Mohammad, Mohammad Sadeek Odeh and Wadih el Hage - appear in a federal court in New York before Judge Leonard Sand. The four were convicted on conspiracy and other charges in
connection with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 US citizens. (Source: PA News)
Con't..... |
