Posted on 02/07/2002 9:49:08 PM PST by csvset
Singapore bomb-plot suspect helped run terror firm
Evidence reveals the link between Hambali and terrorists planning to bomb US jetliners out of the skies
KUALA LUMPUR - The man said to be behind a plot to blow up the United States Embassy in Singapore was also the business partner of an Afghan terrorist.
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| Evidence against Indonesian cleric Hambali is mounting. |
He helped the terrorist to finance a 1995 plot to blow up 12 US jetliners over the Pacific Ocean, according to documents and officials in Malaysia and the Philippines.
Indonesian cleric Riduan Isamuddin, 37 - better known as Hambali - has also been linked to two Sept 11 hijackers.
He has emerged in recent weeks as the South-east Asia operations director for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
But his involvement in plots against US targets dates back to at least 1994.
Revelations about Hambali's early business ties to terrorists trained in Osama's camps and his involvement in the recent Asian plots make his role in the global terror network appear more central than previously thought.
The new information links him to a 1994 plot that foreshadowed last year's Sept 11 attacks.
In June of that year, Hambali was one of the founders of the Konsojaya trading company in Kuala Lumpur.
That December, his partner in the firm, Wali Khan Amin Shah, helped to bomb a Philippine Airlines jumbo jet.
A Japanese man was killed and the jet forced to land in Okinawa.
US prosecutors said the bombing was a test for a much more ambitious plot to plant explosives in rapid succession on United, Northwest and Delta airlines jets bound for America's West Coast from cities throughout Asia.
A freak accident and fire in January 1995 in the Manila apartment that served as the group's bomb factory foiled the plan.
Prosecutors say the mid-air explosions could have killed as many as 4,000 Americans in a 48-hour period.
One of the plotters later told investigators in the Philippines that the ultimate plan had been to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into government buildings in Washington - a plan that foreshadowed the Sept 11 plot.
Involved with Khan - Hambali's business partner - in the plot to bomb the 12 planes was Ramzi Yousef, who was also found guilty in the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center, and Pakistani Abdul Hakim Murad.
All three were convicted by a federal jury in New York in 1996 in the plot to bomb the 12 planes.
Trial testimony showed that Khan had used Malaysia as a logistics base and transit point before the planned attack.
He was arrested in Manila after the apartment fire but escaped and fled to Malaysia.
He was captured by Malaysian police 11 months later and handed over to America's Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Malaysian officials and a former Philippine investigator now say the Konsojaya company was central to the bombing plot and was code-named Bojinka.
'Konsojaya was the nerve centre not only for business but also for operational supervision of the plot to bomb the airplanes,' said Rodolfo Mendoza, the former head of Philippine counter-terrorism.
Indonesian cleric Hambali
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