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Iraq plotted Radio Free Europe attack - Czech officer
uk.news.yahoo.com
PRAGUE - Iraqi agents plotted an attack on the Prague headquarters of U.S.-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to stop its Arabic-language broadcasts to Iraq, according to a top Czech intelligence officer.
Jiri Ruzek, director of the Czech Secret Service, said Iraq had ordered its intelligence agents to seek ways of halting the broadcasts, which were launched several years ago.
"We have found out that it was decided to halt (the RFE) broadcasts to Iraq...and we have managed to obtain certain scenarios which were drawn up for this case," Ruzek said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation's Czech-language service on Wednesday.
"One of the scenarios was also to carry out a terrorist attack," Ruzek added without giving further details.
It was the first time a top Czech official had publicly confirmed long-standing rumours that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, financed by the U.S. Congress, might be the target of an attack.
Czech police and the army have tightened security in and around the radio station's offices, located at the top of Wenceslas square in the historic centre of Prague.
Ruzek said Iraqi intelligence activity in the Czech capital was the reason for the expulsion of five Iraqi diplomats in the past week, leaving only one official at the Iraqi embassy.
"Our task was to minimise the risk that could come from the operations of Iraqi intelligence services... The risk I would say is high, given the ongoing military campaign in Iraq and decisions that are being taken or have been taken at the top leadership level of the Iraqi state," he said.
The United States has long said there are links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, an allegation based partly on a meeting that may have taken place in Prague a few months before the September 11 hijacked aircraft attacks in the United States.
Czech officials have said that Mohammed Atta, believed to have been the leader of the September 11 hijackers, visited Prague and met a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani.
The CIA was unable to confirm the meeting took place.
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The Case Officer
edwardjayepstein.com
Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani was a case officer in the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, in the Czech republic between March 1999 and April 2001. Like other intelligence officers in Saddam Hussein's service, he also had diplomatic cover — and diplomatic immunity — as Iraqi counsel and 2nd Secretary and Counsel of the Iraq Embassy in Prague. His service came to an abrupt end on April 22, when he was expelled from the Czech Republic for his intelligence activities.
Al-Ani's intelligence mission had been beset with problems even before he arrived in Prague. His predecessor in the Mukhabarat, Jabir Salim, who had the same diplomatic over, had defected to the British Secret Service, MI-6, in December 1998. The defection greatly complication his job of managing agents. First, it had to be assumed that in his debriefings by MI-6 Salim would compromise not only the Mukhabarat's agents but all its sources and methods in Prague. Second, it had to be assumed that he would disclose ongoing covert actions, including the planned car bombing of Radio Free Europe for which Salim had been paid over $100,000 in Mukhabarat funds. Third, it had to be assumed that the Czech counterintelligence service, BIS, would subject him to a full-court press, including surveillance of email, phones and other communications, especially it had already resulted in the firing of the former BIS director, Karel Vulterin, for the BIS laxness in not keeping closer tabs on Iraq's plans for blowing up Radio Free Europe. Since the BIS had the capability of surveilling everyone who entered the Iraqi Embassy compound in Prague, Al-Ani had to proceed extremely cautiously with his agent-management tasks and, with important agents, use evasive tactics to avoid their being photographed by the BIS cameras at the embassy.
The BIS, however, also had means of detecting and surveilling intelligence trysts that occurred in other so-called remote locations. Appointed meetings, after all, have to be arranged in advance by some form of communications. And communications, especially long-distance ones, are often vulnerable to interception by sophisticated means. In early April, 2001, the BIS detected such a meeting at a remote location between al-Ani and Mohamed Atta, according to briefings provided by the BIS chief, Jiri Ruzek, to Stanislav Gross, the Minister of Interior of the Czech Republic, and other Czech officials with a need to know. This meeting, according to one such briefed official, took place in or near the Prague airport.
In checking their files, the BIS found that Atta had made two previous trips to the Czech Republic in the Spring of the previous year. On Friday May 25th, 2000, Atta had tried to enter on a transit visa that was deemed improper, and was denied entry. He went back to Germany by bus, got a Czech transit visa, and returned to Prague on Friday, June 2nd, 2000, and, less than a day later, proceeded to the US. On his visa application, Atta identified himself as a student in Hamburg. Atta had gone to considerable efforts to get to the Prague Airport en route to the US, so presumably he had business in Prague of commensurate importance.
The BIS, although unable to determine who Atta met in Prague in June 2000, knew that his business in Prague in April 2001 was with an Iraqi official of the Mukhabarat. It could further assume:
1) Atta would not have flown 3000 miles to Prague for a brief meeting unless the subject was too important for other means of communication.
2) Al-Ani would not have arranged a remote location if it was not necessary to prevent surveillance cameras at the Iraq embassy from linking Atta to Iraq by photographing him. (Or possibly, if al-Ani was using a "false flag," Ani-Ani needed to hide his Iraqi position
3) Although the content of meeting was not intercepted, Atta had returned to the US, as he had done on his previous trip to Prague, and so possibly the business between al-Ani and Atta concerned America, Atta's place of residency.
One "hypothesis" that the Czech government considered, according to Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman, was that the al-Ani-Atta tryst might concern America's most visible facility in Prague— the headquarters for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Since the Czechs— as well as MI6 and the CIA— had learned from the debriefings of al-Ani's immediate predecessor in Prague that the Mukhabarat had been trying to arrange a terrorist car-bombing of this facility, al-Ani might be involved in continuing the uncompleted mission. If so, any attempt of his to recruit an Arab terrorist could have ominous consequences for the Czech government, which now had entered the NATO alliance.
The Czech government therefore took precautionary actions. On April 20th, Hynek Kmonicek, the deputy foreign minister of the Czech Republic, ordered al-Ani expelled from the Czech Republic for activities incompatible with his diplomatic status. Kmonicek, referring to the meeting with Atta, explained "It's not a common thing for an Iraqi diplomat to meet a student from a neighboring country." It was the only time an Iraqi intelligence officer had been expelled from the Czech Republic. |
