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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (42302)	3/30/2002 10:54:14 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Who is this Abu Zabaida? A massive hunt was on and FBI, US commandoes may have gotten him yesterday in Faislabad.... Looking for Abu Zubaida.. U.S sources say they have also launched a massive hunt for Palestinian terrorist Zainul al-Abideen Abu Zubaida, in whose guesthouse Ressam stayed after going to Pakistan and Afghanistan from Canada in early 1998 for terrorist training. Afghanistan is famous for its honey. Farmers build hives among its unyielding mountains and let the bees fly where they will. Apart from opium and terrorism, the sweet gold stuff is one of the country’s few exports. In the guise of a honey merchant, one of Osama bin Laden’s closest aides traveled to the Pakistani city of Peshawar throughout the 1990s. His mission was to screen would-be holy warriors before assigning them to the kind of terrorist cells that would blow up American embassies in Africa, a U.S. warship in Yemen and ultimately stage the horrendous attacks on New York and Washington.BUT INSANE AS these acts may seem, the honey merchant known as Abu Zubaida was not looking for madmen. Some recruits would best serve the cause by forging documents or moving money. Others might be good with guns or at making bombs. Only a few would be trained, eventually, to blow themselves to bits in suicide attacks on America and its allies. Abu Zubaida, a tall Gaza Palestinian who lost his sight in one eye fighting Russians in Afghanistan, rarely had to look far for volunteers. From Algeria and Germany, Yemen and France, the Emirates and Sweden, they found their way to him. Each time a spectacular attack sent shock waves through the West, new recruits arrived. True believers, they imagined themselves at the vanguard of their own. The newsweek.. Journey to Afghanistan Ressam told the FBI how he met Islamists in Montreal and Vancouver after landing in Canada in February 1994, carrying a fake passport he bought in France for 2,000 francs. In Montreal, Said Karim Atmani — who fought in Bosnia — encouraged his zeal for Islam. Atmani, deported to Bosnia by Canada in 1998, was a jihad teacher and a scholar of Islam sought out by others for advice on joining military conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo, he said. Ressam said he obtained a fake baptismal certificate under the name of Benni Antoine Norris, and used that to obtain a genuine Canadian passport. He then flew to Pakistan in 1998 and met bin Laden's top lieutenant, Zainul Al-Abideen Abu Zubaida, and stayed at his guesthouse in Peshawar, Pakistan, according to information made available to ABCNEWS. Ressam said Abu-Zubaida was the "emir" of the Durunta and Khalden training camps. At the Peshawar guesthouse, Ressam said, Abu-Zubaida told him to leave his personal belongings in a storage area. He was given Afghan clothing and had to remain there for three weeks — so he could grow a Taliban-style beard before attempting to enter Afghanistan. He described two ways to enter the isolated nation, then under the rule of the hard-line Taliban. One was to join crowds pushing through Pakistan border checkpoints. But he chose instead to walk up a mountain passage across the border, and was subsequently taken to the Khalden camp. Life in a Terror Training Camp The camp had eight barracks. Each morning, trainees would fall into formation for prayer before classes. Others at the camp included members of terrorist groups such as Algeria's Armed Islamic Group and the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, the Palestinian group Hamas, the Shiite Hezbollah, the Egyptian Jihad and the al Qaeda network. The cell structure of terror groups was devised to ensure people involved in an operation knew only enough detail to carry out their end of the operation. Ressam also provided the names of others present during training, offering valuable intelligence to U.S. authorities on numerous Islamic holy warriors around the world. In some cases, students at the camps used pseudonyms. His own name there was Nabil, he said. Upon completion of his training, Ressam was given $12,000 by the leader of the Algerian cell to set up his own cell in Canada. Ressam flew to Vancouver in February 1999, via Los Angeles. No one at either airport detected the glycol-filled shampoo bottle or hexamine pills he brought along to make bombs. Several members of his cell could not make it to Canada, so Ressam had to team up with fellow Algerian Abdel Majed Dahoumane to assemble the bomb at the 2400 Motel in Vancouver. Ressam told investigators he intended to make a single suitcase bomb that he would have placed at Los Angeles International in such a way that the explosion would have minimized the loss of life.