Peter Finn is at it again! The WP foreign affairs reporter seems to have inside contacts among our overseas intelligence people that allows him to report a better picture of what we are doing than anyone else we are reading.
washingtonpost.com
Arrests Reveal Al Qaeda Plans
Three Saudis Seized by Morocco Outline Post-Afghanistan Strategy
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 16, 2002; Page A01
RABAT, Morocco, June 15 -- Besieged by U.S. and allied forces in December in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden commanded his fighters to disperse across the globe to attack "American and Jewish interests," according to accounts officials here say they have obtained from three al Qaeda operatives who were captured in Morocco.
The three men, citizens of Saudi Arabia, have told interrogators that they escaped Afghanistan and came to Morocco on a mission to use bomb-laden speedboats for suicide attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar, senior Moroccan officials said. The men were captured in May in a joint Moroccan-CIA operation.
The interrogations of the three men, who appeared briefly in court in Morocco on Friday but have not made public statements, have created what officials describe as a fuller understanding of al Qaeda's strategy since its expulsion from Afghanistan, and provided clues about the organization's persistent, though impaired, vitality.
Officials here said bin Laden's instructions were behind a string of recent attacks, including Friday's bombing at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. They said that information from prisoners and other evidence shows that al Qaeda leaders continue to direct missions from afar.
In one example, officials said that just before the April 11 bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia, which killed 14 German tourists and five Tunisians, a call was placed from Tunisia to a telephone believed to be used by a senior bin Laden aide, Khalid Mohammed. U.S. officials have identified Mohammed as a planner of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Moroccans said that, based on their findings and communication with other intelligence agencies, there is every indication that bin Laden is still alive.
The accounts provided by the three Saudi captives were related during interviews with senior Moroccan officials who have direct knowledge of the results of the interrogations.
These officials said the Saudis told of being among thousands of foreigners who went to Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks to train at al Qaeda camps. Two of the men said they spent years in Afghanistan and fought against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.
One of the Saudis told interrogators that he knew bin Laden well and had eaten with him dozens of times over the years. He said that until Sept. 11, bin Laden increasingly adopted the mantle of a prophet, preferring to speak through senior aides rather than interact directly with his followers.
In late August, speaking to followers through an aide, bin Laden "was beginning to talk of a dream he had," a Moroccan official said. "He said he saw America in ashes. It was like announcing a prophecy."
The Saudi told interrogators that on Aug. 31, bin Laden, again speaking through a senior aide, had placed al Qaeda on "general alert."
The United States began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7 and by the end of November, most of the country was in the hands of U.S. forces and their allies. The Saudis were among the al Qaeda members who assembled in the mountainous Tora Bora region after U.S.-backed forces captured Kabul, the capital.
U.S. officials have said they believe that bin Laden was in Tora Bora, and the Saudis confirmed this, saying they had seen him there.
The Saudis told Moroccan authorities that with the U.S. stepping up military pressure, bin Laden ordered his headquarters moved south, to the area near the town of Gardez.
The al Qaeda leader dropped from sight when the first U.S. bombs fell in Tora Bora in late November.
The Saudis didn't see him again.
They were among many al Qaeda loyalists who sneaked out of Tora Bora and struggled across mountainous terrain along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the Gardez region.
There, a senior bin Laden lieutenant assembled the members for final instructions.
The Moroccans identified the man as Mullah Bilal, a Saudi, who is probably Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, identified by the FBI in December as a senior al Qaeda leader.
He is also suspected of playing a major role in the October 2000 attack in Yemen on the USS Cole, using tactics similar to those the Saudis say they planned in the Strait of Gibraltar.
Bilal told the men he was carrying direct instructions from bin Laden.
They were ordered to flee Afghanistan to whatever areas of the world they had previously operated from, including Asia, the Persian Gulf, Africa, Turkey and Europe. Bin Laden's decree directed them to launch terrorist attacks once they had become established in familiar areas.
"Members who were very knowledgeable about one region had to go back to that region to prepare and perpetrate terrorist attacks," said a senior Moroccan official.
Bilal specifically noted that operations against European targets could be launched from North Africa, and operations in the Persian Gulf from Yemen.
Although some in Gardez received very general orders, others, such as the Saudis, two of whom were married to Moroccan women, were given specific targets.
They were to go to Morocco and attack the ships.
The Saudi prisoners described a final ceremony in which the men pledged allegiance to bin Laden and swore themselves to martyrdom through suicide operations, according to Moroccan officials.
By the time the Gardez area came under serious assault by U.S. forces and their Afghan allies in March, many of the men had already left for Pakistan. Some may have attempted to reach North America, and some were to go only as far as Pakistan, Moroccan officials said.
The Moroccans said they are uncertain exactly how many men fled, but Western officials estimate there may have been several hundred.
Western and other intelligence agencies were aware of the exodus from Afghanistan and the potential for future attacks across the globe, Moroccan officials said. But they often lacked hard intelligence on exactly who was on the move.
The three Saudis said they arrived in Morocco in late January, having traveled through Lahore, Pakistan, and then either Qatar or Abu Dhabi. Their entry went undetected.
In February, in an effort to improve counter-terrorism, Moroccan intelligence agents flew to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where U.S. authorities were holding al Qaeda prisoners, some of them Moroccans, officials here said.
Working alongside the CIA, the Moroccan agents questioned a number of the Moroccan prisoners.
At the same time, Moroccan intelligence agents back home questioned al Qaeda suspects whom they had arrested in Morocco. Gradually, clues began to emerge.
One of the Moroccan prisoners in Cuba gave a general description of an al Qaeda recruiter who had operated in Morocco, officials said.
The prisoner also provided information about the man's Moroccan in-laws. But the Moroccan intelligence service had no idea if the man was a Moroccan national or whether he was in the country or likely to return from Afghanistan.
Armed with the information from Cuba, Moroccan officials tracked down the relatives of the man.
Using a sketch artist, officials said, they produced a drawing of the man's face.
The drawing was flown back to Cuba, where the cooperating Moroccan prisoner agreed that it was a good likeness, officials said.
The picture was then circulated to police departments and other agencies across Morocco.
In April, the intelligence service in Rabat, the capital, received information that a man resembling the picture was seen entering the Spanish enclave of Melilla in northern Morocco.
By now they had identified the suspect as Saudi national Zuher Hilal Mohamed al Tbaiti.
The man had a Moroccan wife and had visited the country numerous times before his recent return from Afghanistan, officials said.
Tbaiti was quickly spotted by undercover agents and placed under surveillance for a month, during which he traveled extensively around Morocco and repeatedly entered Melilla and another Spanish enclave, Ceuta, on the Moroccan coast opposite Gibraltar.
Telling people he was a businessman interested in starting an import-export business, Tbaiti had begun inquiring about the purchase of Zodiac speedboats.
In April, Tbaiti got a call from outside the country to return to Saudi Arabia, officials said. So at Casablanca airport, Moroccan intelligence officials swooped in and detained him.
He was arrested with another Saudi, Hilal Jaber Alassiri, and two Moroccan women, and between them they had $10,000 in cash.
The men led Moroccan police to the third Saudi man, Abdallah M'Sefer Ali al Ghamdi, who was arrested in another city in Morocco.
After some initial reluctance to cooperate, the three men admitted they were members of al Qaeda and detailed the flight from Tora Bora to Gardez to Morocco, Moroccan officials said.
Authorities said that Tbaiti was in the first phase of a three-step operation aimed at launching suicide attacks on NATO ships in the strait.
After they acquired boats, officials said, a logistics team, experienced in explosives and weapons, would have readied the boats for the operation.
In a third phase, suicide teams would arrive, study the intelligence, make some trial runs and then take the explosives-laden boats out to sea.
The operation bore all the al Qaeda hallmarks of slow, careful planning, the officials said.
Britain maintains a naval repair and supply base in Gibraltar, just 12 miles from Morocco, and the strait contains some of the busiest sea lanes in the world, through which U.S. Navy ships routinely pass.
While in Afghanistan, at least two of the Saudis arrested here, Tbaiti and Alassiri, had committed themselves to eventual suicide and probably would have participated in the final stage, officials said.
The officials said the three were also in an advanced stage of preparation for a separate attack in Morocco itself, but had recently aborted it.
The official declined to elaborate or identify the target.
"They were highly trained terrorists and had undergone a very advanced curriculum," said a senior Moroccan official.
"They are not foot soldiers. They are educated, ideologically formed, and they were technically proficient" in the mechanics of terror attacks.
Western officials here described Moroccan cooperation as "extraordinary."
"The Moroccans take very seriously their 225-year-old relationship with the United States," said a Western diplomat. "There is damn good cooperation. . . . They're serious."
The diplomat said Moroccan authorities were putting extensive resources into the search, even though the already poor country is suffering badly from lost tourist and investment dollars due to a generalized terrorist threat.
"The Moroccans have asked for nothing," said the diplomat. "Nothing. They made a decision to cooperate and they stuck to it." |
