More Questions on Missing Imam (Italian Imam was linked to Iraq and Zarqawi)

Newsweek ^

[jmc1969]

The court records laying out the Italian case against Egyptian-born cleric Mostafa Hassan Nasr Osama, or Abu Omar, suggest possible motives for an otherwise puzzling CIA operation that has created new tensions between U.S. and European counterterrorism officials.

Abu Omar to Ansar Al-Islam, the Al Qaeda-linked group based in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Administration officials say Ansar was being protected by Saddam and run by lieutenants of the notorious terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

“There definitely seems to be a connection here to Iraq,” says Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer who specialized in Middle East terrorism. “We either wanted to find out information about Zarqawi’s connections to Saddam or to protect the troops. "I don’t think they knew what they were going to get.”

Still, some of the records in the Italian investigation—including wiretap transcripts of Abu Omar’s phone conversations—would seem to strengthen the administration’s arguments that Ansar Al-Islam was an increasingly dangerous organization that was becoming a new front line for anti-American jihadis around the world.

The document states that the conversation “clearly demonstrated the intention to organize a new subversive international terrorist structure … that obeyed the decisions of Al Tawhid [Zarqawi’s organization] for the commissioning of attacks.”

This transcripts and other records in the case show that Abu Omar was “directly in contact with the representatives of the Zarqawi group and Ansar Al-Islam,” says Jean-Charles Brisard, a Paris-based terror researcher who works closely with lawyers representing families of September 11 victims.

[F14 Pilot]

All Imams have some sort of connection with radical islamists

[Mister Baredog]

Lucy is hiding the ball from them, too bad.