Iraq attempted to smuggle anthrax to U.S., Britain

TEL AVIV — Iraq has attempted to smuggle large quantities of anthrax into Britain and the United States, an Israeli analyst says.

Dany Shoham, a research associate at Tel Aviv University's Begin-Sadat Center of Strategic Studies, said the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein attempted to bring biological weapons agents into Britain and the United States in 1998. The attempt was reported by Israeli intelligence.

At the time, Shoham said, Iraqi women agents arriving in the United States were hiding vials filled with biological agents under their dresses.

Iraq was also attempting to smuggle biological and chemical agents into Britain hidden in duty-free goods.

Shoham, a reserve intelligence officer with close ties to Western intelligence agencies, said the Iraqi effort was foiled by British authorities. He suggested that Iraq succeeded in bringing the anthrax virus into the United States.

Iraq has been developing the same type of powder anthrax now being mailed to prominent Americans, Shoham said. He said another developer of powder anthrax has been the Al Qaida group headed by Saudi billionaire fugitive Osama Bin Laden.

"Bin Laden and several Arab countries — most specifically Iraq — have been working for years to develop this capacity," Shoham, who has published articles in leading professional journals, said. "Of course, we do not yet know for sure that Bin Laden and or Iraq is behind the recent anthrax attacks. But it is most probably so."

Shoham said Bin Laden and his agents obtained expertise and material for chemical and biological weapons from Iraq, which constructed a weapons of mass destruction facility in Sudan in the early 1990s. When Bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996, Shoham said, Bin Laden continued to purchase components for biological and chemical weapons from the Sudanese military.

On Thursday, the German Der Bild daily reported that Bin Laden aide Mohammed Ata, one of the leaders of the Islamic suicide attacks in New York and Washington, smuggled anthrax into the United States. The daily based its report on Israeli intelligence sources.

CIA officials concluded in 1999 that Iraq was most likely working with Bin Laden and other terrorist groups to develop weapons of mass destruction, Shoham said. Such weapons expertise might have also reached Palestinian groups.

Israeli security sources said two Palestinians were arrested on Oct. 10 upon their return to the West Bank from Pakistan. One Palestinian was identified as Amin Shawani, said to have studied pharmacology in Pakistan and an agent of Bin Laden. The other was identified as Mahmoud Azzam, described as a cousin of a Bin Laden aide.

In 1999, Shoham said, Israeli security forces arrested a squad from the Palestinian Hamas group. The squad was recruiting Palestinian biology and chemistry students as part of a project to develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction against Israel.

Israeli officials acknowledge that Bin Laden and his Palestinian allies launched several attempts to stage a WMD attack in Israel. Health Minister Nissim Dahan said the prospect of such an attack is becoming increasingly likely.

"Our only scenario given by the appropriate authorities is that of anthrax," Dahan said. The other [WMD] scenarios are less likely. Luckily, we have a solution and with proper preparations, we could reduce the damage that our enemies seek to wrought upon us."

SATURDAY OCTOBER 27 2001

Hijacker 'given anthrax flask by Iraqi agent'

BY DANIEL MCGRORY

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date.

Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic.

Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam helped to orchestrate the simultaneous hijackings and the anthrax attacks, but President Bush and Tony Blair have yet to be convinced. To get proof of the Baghdad connection, senior officials in the Bush Administration even sent a former CIA Director to Britain on a covert mission.

Intelligence officers in Washington have deliberately leaked the testimony of an Iraqi defector hiding in Turkey who said that Saddam set up a terrorist training school on the outskirts of Istanbul to practice hijacking a Boeing passenger aircraft. The CIA says that it is assessing the claims.

Meanwhile, a special FBI team sent to Europe to uncover al-Qaeda cells say that they are studying a report from Prague that anthrax spores were given to Atta during his last meeting in Prague in April with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the Iraqi consul. “If it can be shown that Atta was given a flask of anthrax,” a Western intelligence official said, “then the link will have been made with Osama bin Laden and with Iraq.”

What is known is that Atta made at least four visits to the Czech Republic to see Mr al-Ani. Czech intelligence officers who saw them embrace at Ruzyne Airport admit that they had no idea who the man greeting Saddam’s envoy was. When they were followed to the headquarters of Radio Free Europe the suspicion was that they may have been plotting to bomb it.

Yesterday the German newspaper Bild suggested a more sinister motive for their meetings. The claim, according to Israeli security sources, is that Atta was handed a vacuum flask of anthrax by his Iraqi contact. From Prague, it is believed Atta flew to Newark. From New Jersey, letters laced with anthrax were sent to broadcasters and politicians in New York, Washington and Florida. Czech officials have been to Washington to reveal all they know, but they can’t question the Iraqi envoy because Mr al-Ani was deported from Prague in April for “activities incompatible with his status as a diplomat”.

Stanislav Gross, the Czech Interior Minister, confirmed yesterday a meeting in Prague between Atta and Mr al-Ani just weeks before the envoy was expelled.

US scientists believe the anthrax spores sent to Tom Daschle, the Senate Majority Leader, had been treated with a sophisticated chemical additive only three countries can manufacture: Russia, America and possibly Iraq.

Former UN weapons inspectors suggest that Saddam could have helped bin Laden to get nuclear material. Critics of the Pentagon’s view say that Iraq would not share its nuclear secrets, but might watch for others trying to buy on the black market.

Italian police say they are investigating how Saddam also used his Embassy in Rome to foster his partnership with al-Qaeda. One of Saddam’s intelligence agents, Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, was sent to be the new headmaster of a school for Iraqi diplomats in Italy. The bogus headmaster has not been seen in Rome since July, shortly after he also met Atta. The pair are also said to have been together in Hamburg and Prague.

There is no proof the men were in direct contact, but as one intelligence source in Madrid said: “They chose a strange time and place to take a holiday.” The Rome daily Il Messaggero, quoting Western intelligence sources, said of Mr al-Mamouri that “he spent more time pursuing contacts helpful to the Iraqi regime among fundamentalist Islamic groups than he had on his supposed teaching duties”.

Italian officials say that Mr al-Mamouri held the rank of general in the Iraqi secret service, and from 1982 to 1990 worked in the Special Operations Branch forging Baghdad’s links with Islamic fundamentalist groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Gulf and Sudan. He was transferred to his “teaching duties” in 1998, although all the Iraqi Embassy will say of his sudden departure is that “he had money problems”.

Although Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, and others in his department are sceptical of Saddam’s involvement, there are many influential figures in US intelligence who claim that Iraq’s links with bin Laden go back to the early Nineties.

Desperate for allies after the Gulf War, Saddam sent Faruq Hijazi, his secret service director, to Sudan in 1994, where bin Laden then had his headquarters. The meetings were brokered by Hassan al-Tourabi, the Sudanese Muslim leader, who was bin Laden’s protector. The Sudanese belatedly offered to show the CIA all they knew about bin Laden and his visits, to ingratiate themselves back into the international fold, but the Americans scorned the approach.

The Iraqi connection with bin Laden continued when the terrorist leader moved to Afghanistan. Mr Hijazi, who is now Saddam’s envoy in Turkey, reportedly met the al-Qaeda leader at his fortified home in Kandahar and in Kabul.

Mr Hijazi also disappeared from his embassy last month after the first reports of his meetings with al-Qaeda, and he is believed to have slipped back into Ankara earlier this week. The Foreign Ministry in Turkey says it has not been told that the Ambassador had returned, although the Iraqi Embassy says that he is “resting”. What puzzles Turkish officials is that there are no airport records of his return.

US Intelligence says Saddam cultivated the relationship with al-Qaeda at the start of 1998 by inviting the man regarded as bin Laden’s deputy — Ayman Zawahiri — to dine with Taha Yasin Ramadan, the Iraqi Vice-President. That was such a success that a delegation from al-Qaeda attended Saddam’s birthday celebrations that April, and it was during this trip that arrangements were made for bin Laden recruits to receive the sort of advanced weapons training they could not get in their camps in Afghanistan.

The hand-picked bin Laden agents found themselves under the supervision of Saddam’s violent son, Uday, who wanted to conscript some of bin Laden’s skilled fighters into his own militia. Bin Laden reciprocated by dispatching “400 Afghan Arabs” to Iraq to fight Kurds.

The most curious attempt to implicate Saddam was in South Wales last month when James Woolsey, the former CIA Director, is reported to have visited a Swansea college. The hope was that the testimony of college lecturers and recollections of former students could be used to convince sceptics in the US Administration and Downing Street that Saddam has helped to provide agents to carry out al-Qaeda attacks.

Mr Woolsey, who refuses to give details of his British itinerary, has always believed that the Iraqi leader masterminded the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Centre.

The trip to the Swansea Institute was to establish the true identity of one of bin Laden’s bombers, who claims to have studied computer-aided engineering in South Wales.

Additional reporting by Roger Boyes in Berlin; Richard Owen in Rome and Andrew Finkel in Istanbul

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