msnbc.com
Israel trumpets ‘terror invoice’
Military alleges documents prove Arafat linked to attacks
MSNBC AND NBC NEWS
RAMALLAH, West Bank, April 2 — The Israeli military said Tuesday that its assault on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters had yielded an intelligence bonanza, including documents it said directly linked Arafat to militant Palestinian suicide bombings.
THE DOCUMENTS, most notably a financial report addressed to Brig. Gen. Fuad Shoubaki, the Palestinian Authority’s chief financial officer for military operations, were discovered among piles of official papers, computer hard disks and counterfeit U.S. and Israeli bills at Arafat’s headquarters, NBC News’ Martin Fletcher reported from Ramallah.
A senior Palestinian official told The Associated Press that he had not seen the document and suggested that the Israelis had fabricated it.
The financial report, which the Israeli Defense Forces included in a statement it posted on its Web site late Tuesday, is signed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militia linked to the Fatah movement led by Arafat. Dated Sept. 16, it outlines seven categories of expenses through Sept. 6 and asks Shoubaki for money to build additional bombs, as many as nine a week.
“I call it a terror invoice, of how much terrorism costs,” Col. Miri Eisin, an Israeli intelligence officer, said at a news conference in Jerusalem.
The Al-Aqsa Brigades, which formed several months after violence erupted in September 2000, have been involved in shootings and other attacks on Israelis. Last month, the United States included the group on its list of terror organizations.
The militia has claimed responsibility for many of the recent suicide bombings, which killed more than 120 Israelis last month alone.
ISRAEL: DIRECT LINK TO ARAFAT
Senior U.S. officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity that they could not confirm the authenticity of the document, which was posted in Arabic and in an English translation by the Israeli military.
The officials said the Israelis’ characterization of Shoubaki as “Arafat’s chief procurement and finance officer” was not completely accurate. “Arafat has many money men,” one of them said.
But Israeli officials told NBC News that they considered the document confirmation that Arafat was behind the recent wave of bombings.
April 2 — Israel said it found the documents in the office of Yasser Arafat’s financial chief. NBC’s Martin Fletcher reports from Ramallah.
“The Al-Aqsa Brigade was under the full control, the full control of Yasser Arafat,” Ra’anan Gissin, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told Fletcher. “This document proves it.”
Eisin told reporters in Jerusalem that the document “connects directly those responsible for terrorist activity and their requesting the money [with] an official person within the Palestinian Authority, and not just any person, but Shoubaki.”
Fletcher reported that Shoubaki, who is also known as Abu Hazm, has been close to Arafat for 30 years. Israel said he planned and financed a shipment of Iranian arms aboard the freighter Karine A, which Israeli commandos seized on the Red Sea in January. The ship carried hundreds of rifles, rockets and land mines in violation of Arafat’s agreements with Israel.
At Israel’s insistence, Arafat arrested Shoubaki and officially fired him after the seizure of the Karine A. But the arrest and a subsequent trial were widely considered to be public relations gestures, and Shoubaki was presumed to have continued his close relationship at Arafat’s side.
Fletcher reported that Shoubaki was currently trapped with Arafat inside the Ramallah headquarters, which Israeli forces surrounded and stormed late last week.
FORBIDDEN WEAPONS FOUND
The Israeli military said that when it searched Shoubaki’s offices in the compound, it found “a large amount of weapons, including RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] launchers, which the [Palestinian Authority] is forbidden to possess according to its agreements with Israel.”
The Israeli forces “also found counterfeit money as well as documents belonging to Fuad Shoubaki,” the military said. “These prove that Shoubaki continued to operate ‘business as usual’ in the Moukata compound, even after his involvement in the ‘Karine A’ affair was discovered.”
The alleged Al-Aqsa document was among those documents. It is a seven-point financial report listing the projected cost of various attack-related activities.
The largest expense listed is for electrical components and chemical supplies to produce charges and bombs. Each explosive costs at least $150, the document said.
“We require on a weekly basis 5-9 explosives charges for squads in various areas,” it said, according to the Israeli military translation.
It also asks for $17,000 to buy ammunition for automatic rifles, adding, “We need bullets on a daily basis.”
FUTURE PLOTS ALLEGED
The military’s report on the document alleged that the money “does not go merely to finance propaganda concerning terrorists involved in attacks, but also to control the planing of future attacks.”
The report said a second letter discovered in Shoubaki’s office “details an ambitious plan of this terrorist organization to create a factory for the manufacturing of heavy weapons ... such as rockets and mortars.”
“The required investment in the weapon factory is $100,000, and the ongoing expenses are measured at $15,000 per month,” the report said. “It is no wonder that these requests are being received by Shoubaki, the procurement and finance officer who seems to have a hand in everything.” |
