Posted on 03/02/2003 9:30:59 PM PST by Wallaby
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THE capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed not only casts new light on the September 11 attacks on the US, it offers southeast Asian police potentially their best insight yet into al-Qa'ida's regional operations, especially by Jemaah Islamiah.
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Khalid emerged again in the region in January 2000 at an apartment in Kuala Lumpur, where he was videotaped by Malaysian intelligence officials meeting 10 men. Two attendees later turned up on the passenger list of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. |
But compared with his regional al-Qa'ida cohorts, Hambali and Mohammed Mansour Jabarrah, he has remained a background player more often mentioned for his role in the attacks on New York and Washington.
However, his name and reputation are just as well known in Singapore where, if not for a few false moves by his operatives, Khalid would have executed a terrorist spectacular six years earlier -- sending 11 hijacked jetliners into the Pacific.
Khalid was also the key controller of a foiled plan by JI to bomb Western embassies, including the Australian high commission, in Singapore in late 2001.
He dispatched key lieutenant Jabarrah with funds to the region on September 10, 2001, to develop the suicide-bomber plan.
Other operatives already arrested have named Khalid as the key mastermind, and Singapore's Internal Security
Department claims to be holding strong evidence the plan was his.
Khalid's links to southeast Asia are believed to date back to 1994, when he was sent to The Philippines as a sleeper terrorist.
He is believed to be the uncle of the 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef, and also to be connected with the organisation of that bombing.
But it was in Manila that he first began to create an image for himself as a playboy businessman who frequented girlie bars and enjoyed golf, diving and helicopter rides.
With other Manila-based operatives, Khalid built the plan to hijack 11 jets and explode them over the Pacific.
Authorities believe the group chose Asia as a base because of lax security and because a successful strike there would further the causes of terrorist groups such as JI, the Moro Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf, who all seek the expansion of a radical Islamic state throughout the region.
However, the plot was uncovered in 1995 when the Manila apartment Khalid and his cohorts were using as a base exploded. He fled The Philippines, leaving precious evidence in computers behind him and a unit littered with bomb-making components.
An associate who was later arrested, Abdul Hakim Murad, told Philippines authorities he and Khalid had discussed an idea to crash planes into the CIA building in the US. That information led to accusations that the FBI had access to information that should have prevented September 11.
Khalid emerged again in the region in January 2000 at an apartment in Kuala Lumpur, where he was videotaped by Malaysian intelligence officials meeting 10 men.
That meeting is now believed to have been the planning meeting for the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
But two other attendees, Khalid al-Mindhar and Nawaq al-Hazmi, who at the time prompted no warning bells, later turned up on the passenger list of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Australian and Indonesian authorities hope Khalid's debriefings will offer more insights into al-Qa'ida's involvement in the Bali atrocity and JI's activities elsewhere in the region.
As head of al-Qa'ida's military division he was likely to have been the point man for the terrorist group's main man in southeast Asia -- Hambali, who is believed to have fled to Pakistan.
I wonder what he knows about OKC? I won't hold my breath that we'll ever find out.
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JANE CORBIN DAILY MAIL (London) March 3, 2003
The 37-year-old Kuwaiti-born fanatic was on the FBI's most-wanted list and had a GBP 16million U.S. government bounty on his head, the same amount President Bush has offered for Bin Laden. The Americans believe he has been in touch with the Al Qaeda leader recently and knows where he is. Intelligence suggests Khalid may have been planning an attack on Britain. Khalid was being held at a secret location last night, although it was not entirely clear under who's jurisdiction. Pakistan said he was being jointly interrogated by Pakistani and U.S. agents, denying earlier reports he had been 'handed over' to the Americans. But Jay Rockefeller, vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, claimed he was under 'American protection'. He told CNN news: 'This is huge. It's as big as Bin Laden. This guy is the brains and we took him down. He will be grilled by us. I'm sure we will be very tough with him.' Mr Bush described the arrest as 'fantastic'. Below, an author and expert on Al Qaeda examines Khalid's background and the implications of his arrest. A master of aliases and disguises, Khalid Sheik Mohammed has remained hidden in the shadows pulling the strings for Osama Bin Laden for more than a decade. The urbane Kuwaiti-born graduate of a U.S. engineering college, fluent in several languages, has adopted myriad identities, travelling all over the world to direct Al Qaeda's biggest terror spectaculars. He is believed to be the architect of the simultaneous hijackings that turned four passenger planes into deadly missiles on September 11. Time and again he escaped the net thrown round him until his luck ran out on Saturday. Today there is relief and a degree of jubilation among many western security agencies at the capture of 'the biggest fish so far'. Khalid has special significance for British intelligence. For, as the rising tide of 'chatter' in signals and human intelligence rose to a crescendo in recent months, there were indications that he was directly in charge of Al Qaeda's plans to target the UK. A chemical attack, a hit on Heathrow airport or the bombing of a skyscraper like London's Canary Wharf were all scenarios feared by the security forces. His cunning and his success with past operations made him an enemy to be reckoned with. Indeed, he was so clever at hiding his tracks that it was not until several months after September 11 that the identity of the real mastermind began to emerge when Bin Laden's head of recruitment, Abu Zubaydah, was captured and began talking.
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The fugitive Khalid was known only to the Americans for his involvement in a past terror plan in the Philippines, which was not at that stage directly attributed to Al Qaeda. Operation Bojinka, a plan in 1995 to blow up U.S. airliners over the Pacific, was foiled, but the two main protagonists, Khalid and his nephew Ramsi Yousef, escaped when the chemical cocktail they were mixing set fire to their flat in Manila. For six years, Khalid was free to refine his ambition to use planes as terror weapons. I first came across his tracks in the United Arab Emirates, a few weeks after September 11, while researching the story for the BBC's Panorama. I was shown a Saudi passport featuring a deliberately fuzzy photograph and told it belonged to a mysterious Al Qaeda operative who used many false names. He would jet in to Dubai from neighbouring Qatar and use the glittering westernised city as the financial hub for the terror plot. I visited international banks and an anonymous back street Western Union money transfer office which he used to send thousands of dollars to Mohamed Atta, the leader of the hijackers, based in Florida. The money paid for flying lessons. Atta dutifully sent back the remaining balance just seven days before he flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Atta addressed the parcel to 'Almohtaram' (the respected one). Investigators now believe Al Qaeda's money man was none other than Khalid, who escaped from Dubai just before September 11. America's subsequent war against Afghanistan forced Al Qaeda's high command to split and its leaders fled. While Bin Laden and his deputy, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zowahiri, remained near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Khalid was left responsible for maintaining the terror network. His name was linked to fresh attacks: the bombing of a synagogue which killed 18 German tourists in Tunisia last April and the terror that engulfed the Sari nightclub in Bali in October. By now, Khalid was second only to Bin Laden on America's 'most wanted list' and had a GBP 16million bounty on his head. But yet again last September he eluded capture, this time in Karachi. He had been holed up with another fugitive, Ramsi bin al Shibh, a key member of Atta's Hamburg cell. The two were using computers and mobiles to stay in touch with their secret and far-flung terror networks. Khalid was tipped off, probably by sympathisers within Pakistan's security apparatus, just before government paramilitaries burst into the apartment. Western intelligence sources believe that Khalid then made his way to Iran and disappeared from view. But he was becoming too hot to handle and the Iranian authorities made it clear he was no longer welcome. He had no choice but to return to Pakistan, this time choosing the garrison town of Rawalpindi, close by the capital Islamabad and within easy reach of lawless north western tribal areas where Al Qaeda is still operating with impunity. His arrest is vital, because if anyone can shed light on Bin Laden's whereabouts, it is him. But will he talk and can his U.S. interrogators rely on what he says? Many people will urge that every means should be used to find out what he knows, even truth drugs. Moreover, just because he has been arrested does not mean that the danger of terrorist attacks has been diminished. There are persistent rumours of a major strike by Al Qaeda planned to coincide with any military action against Iraq. Bin Laden himself, in a new audio tape a few weeks ago, made it clear that he intends to capitalise on Moslem anger against America and Britain to win new recruits and establish himself as the only man standing strong against a new western imperialism. The players in a new Al Qaeda terror spectacular, one likely to have been planned by Khalid, could already be in place waiting to strike. The new captive holds the key to when and where - and who the victims might be.
Jane Corbin is author of The Base: In Search Of Al Qaeda, The Terror Network That Shook The World. |
By who?
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Barbara Mae Dacanay Gulf News March 28, 2002
Edwin Angeles, the Philippine government's double agent asked to penetrate the Abu Sayyaf, saw Nichols with Yousef in Cebu, Jones said in his book, adding that his data came from Angeles statement to the Philippine National Police (PNP). Nichols came to the Philippines after marrying his mail-order bride Marife Torres from Liloan, Cebu, central Philippines, in 1994. Yousef, a Kuwaiti, had escaped arrest in Manila during the visit of Pope John Paul the 11, in January 1995. But he was nabbed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Pakistan and was brought to the U.S. for a trial for the first bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York in 1993. His Liberation Party was believed responsible for the partial destruction of the WTC. |
Nichols was supposed to be one of the five men asked to destroy 11 747 U.S. planes, a failed plot code-named Bojinka (loud clap) which was decoded by the Philippine intelligence agents from the computer of Abdul Murad, a Pakistani, who was arrested in Manila's Malate district during the Pope's visit in 1995. The Bojinka plot included crashing a plane into CIA headquarters, the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre. Jones said the names of the five who were supposed to undertake the attacks were in codes, but they were decoded as that of Nichols. Jones became an expert on international terrorists after he handled the case of the Oklahoma bombing, critics admitted. Jones said the Bojinka plot in 1995 may have been a part of the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, dubbed as the worst act of domestic terrorism in US history. Philippine investigators have been linking the Bojinka plot to the destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11 last year. This was the reason why American investigators have been linking the Bojinka plot to Osama bin Laden. Jones quoted Vincent Cannistraro, counter-terrorism expert, and Dr. Laurie Mylroie, an expert on Iraq and terrorism, who reportedly agreed and were "convinced that the Iraqis spearheaded the U.S. bombing. Jones argued that a single fertiliSer-bomb could not have destroyed the Murrah building. He also disagreed with the government's version of McVeigh and Nichols as the only culprits in the deadly bombing of the Murrah building. "We may now be paying the price for the government's decision to halt its original search for the others unknown in its investigation of the Oklahoma bombing," said Jones. The "others unknown" could be behind the New York World Trade bombing which killed 3,000 on September 11, 2001, Jones argued. The so-called fertiliSer bombs were seen in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Al Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Jones said. Earlier, the American media described McVeigh and Nichols as Neo-Nazis who hate Jews, including other non-white residents in the US. Nichols was sentenced to life by a federal court, but prosecutors from Oklahoma are still seeking the death penalty, if they succeed to reopen the case. |
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Barbara Mae Dacanay Gulf News April 3, 2002
Angeles, Abu Sayyaf chieftain Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani and two unidentified members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), held a meeting with Ramsey Youssef, Abdul Murad, and two Americans, Terry Nichols and presumably Timothy McVeigh, in a warehouse near Dole (a Philippine plantation company) in South Cotabato, between General Santos City and Davao del Sur, southern Philippines in 1994, Abdul said in an exclusive interview with Manila Times before her death at the Basilan Community Hospital on March 30. Nichols and his American friend were later sent to a place (not identified) for more instructions on bomb-making to destroy a building in the U.S., Abdul claimed, but she added that she could not remember the name of the building. Youssey and Murad, both Pakistanis who grew up in Iraq, are now serving multiple prison terms for terrorist activities, including the bombing of the World Trade Centre which killed six people and injured 1,000 in New York on February 26, 1993. Nichols received a life sentence and McVeigh a death sentence for the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building which killed 168 people in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995. Basilan Provincial Information Officer, Christopher Puno, was present in the ward during the interview with Abdul, the Manila Times said. Abdul was a former local radio announcer before she became the fourth and last wife of Angeles. She met him in 1995 while he was in the Basilan Provincial Jail. They were married in 1997. She witnessed her husband's killing by still unidentified gunmen in Kaun-Purnah, Isabela, Basilan on January 14, 1999. Sources said she knew a lot of things in relation to the activities of her husband. Abdul once revealed to a TV journalist that her husband had established an armed group of Muslims, with aims similar to the Abu Sayyaf's, on Sacol Island where they had stayed for eight months from May to December, 1998. Sacol is known as a refuge for armed groups. When she became pregnant, her husband decided to leave Sacol Island for Isabela, Basilan, where he was gunned down. Angeles' real name was Ibrahim Yakub, one of the founders of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the early 1990s. In February, 1995, Angeles surrendered to the Philippine Marines based in Sulu, saying he no longer shared the ideals of Ustadz Abdurajack, Abu Sayyaf chieftain. Sources said this was the time when Angeles decided to become a deep-penetration agent of the government.
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He worked as a full time civilian agent of the Intelligence Command of the Philippine National Police.
He said he was the masked man who identified Khadaffy Janjalani and Jovenal Bruno as Abu Sayyaf leaders at the Tagbak checkpoint in Sulu in 1995. He added that he was behind the arrest of suspected Arab terrorists in Metro Manila's suburban Caloocan and Paranaque in 1996, and that top government and police officials planted evidence on the suspected Arab terrorists. He gave advice on what type of fire-arms must be planted on the suspects. Angeles also revealed that he signed an affidavit in the law office of Senator Aquilino Pimentel at the Golden Loop Tower in suburban Pasig, in which he alleged that the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) was behind the creation of the Abu Sayyaf Group. Angeles made these revelations in the newsroom of ABS CBN, the country's largest TV network, but top officials, instead of giving him protection, decided to send him to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for a witness protection programme. This paved the way for the authorities to arrest him and send him to Basilan, southern Philippines, where he was charged with 54 counts of kidnapping. He was acquitted because he presented orders from his supervisors on the cases filed against him. After his acquittal, the cases against the suspected Arab terrorists were likewise dropped for lack of evidence. He also worked with the government to lure Abu Sayyaf chieftain, Abdurajak Janjalani, to surrender before then president Fidel Ramos. This did not materialise. He tried to help the southern command and negotiated for the release of Robert Beus, a German national and canning executive of Mar Fishing Corporation, one of the biggest tuna factories in the southern Philippines, who was kidnapped by a faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 1997. The ransom payment of $ 9,803 (P 500,000) never reached the kidnappers. The Janjalani family also blamed him for Abdurajak Abubakar's death by still unknown men, in December, 1998. Journalist de la Cruz, who has been writing a book on Angeles, said earlier: "Was Angeles an Abu Sayyaf turned government agent, or a government agent turned Abu Sayyaf?" Lawyer Stephen Jones who represented McVeigh, quoted Angeles extensively in his book, Others Unknown, to prove that his client was not acting alone when he bombed the Federal building in Oklahoma. |
Pop quiz. What famous middle eastern potentate set up a terrorist hit team based in South East Asia in the early nineties comprising intelligence agents with falsified identification?
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Officials of Ninoy Aquino International Airport refused to divulge details of Hussain's flight.
Lawmakers, however, saw Ople's move as succumbing to US President George W. Bush's pressure to expel the Iraqi diplomat. Ilocos Norte Rep. Imee Marcos, Akbayan Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo said Ople's decision to declare Hussain persona non grata reflects the clout Washington enjoys over Manila. They said Hussain's expulsion was an offshoot of Bush's telephone conversation with President Arroyo last Tuesday. But Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Lauro Baja Jr. said Bush did not compel President Arroyo to expel Hussain. It was the decision of the oversight committee and "it was reached even before President Bush called up President Arroyo," Baja said. |
He said Hussain, the second Iraqi diplomat to be removed from the Philippines in 12 years after former first secretary Muwafaq Jasim Al-Ani was kicked out for conspiring to bomb the Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center in Makati City in 1991, can no longer return as his country's emissary. He also downplayed Vice President and former foreign affairs chief Teofisto Guingona's call for a probe: "What is there to investigate? The report is already complete. (Doing so) would cast doubt on the capability and credibility of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency." Baja insisted that the crisis should be solved through proper diplomatic channels with the government of Saddam Hussein acting on the expelled diplomat. He did not expect relations between the two countries to sour. War imminent
Meanwhile, special envoy to the Middle East Roy Cimatu said the outbreak of war in the Gulf is imminent. With a US attack likely to happen in five to seven days, Cimatu said government is readying its evacuation plans for 1.4 million Filipinos in the Middle East. "We are now at a crossroads and we have to prepare for it," Cimatu told reporters in a news conference. He said preparations for Filipinos in the Gulf include the use of gas masks and defense drills. At the news conference, Cimatu presented video footage showing the deployment of American and British troops near the Iraqi border. Government officials are expected to monitor developments in Iraq and watch today the presentation of UN weapons inspector chief Hans Blix before the UN Security Council. Iraqi retaliation? In a related development, Marcos is worried that a retaliation might be forthcoming, not necessarily from Baghdad but from Saddam Hussein's unseen allies. "(Expulsion might create) serious diplomatic rift with Iraq, an old friend of the Philippines in the Arab world. It may be used to drag us into America's war not of our own making," Marcos said. With Lolit Rivera-Acosta, Rio Araja |
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Manila Standard February 21, 2001 ZAMBOANGA
Sabaya, who issues statements through local radio stations, said Tuesday the group tortured Schilling to retaliate for US and British strikes on long-range radar facilities Friday that they say Iraq used to target allied planes patrolling no-fly zones. Sabaya has frequently threatened to kill Schilling, an Oakland resident, unless his group receives $ 10 million in ransom. Sabaya has also said Schilling is very ill, losing weight and coughing blood. Army Col. Fredesvindo Covarrubias, the military spokesman, said the statement shows "Sabaya is out of his mind. Whatever happens to the kidnapped victim, the Abu Sayyaf will be answerable to the world. Blood will be on their hands." Some local military officials, however, doubt that Schilling is a hostage and say he may be a sympathizer of the Abu Sayyaf.
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Schilling, a Muslim convert, was taken by the bandits after he visited their camp in Jolo on Aug. 31. Schilling was accompanied by girlfriend Ivy Osani, Sabaya's cousin. Osani was allowed to go after the rebels seized Schilling.
Also, Covarrubias yesterday reported that the Abu Sayyaf kidnapped the daughter of a town mayor and four others in Sulu. But Sabaya denied over radio that his group kidnapped Norhaina Daud, daughter of Tapul town Mayor Danny Daud, saying the alleged victim met Abu Sayyaf leader Mujib Susukan around 11 a.m. in Barangay Poblacion, Tapul town, to avoid the son of the Sulu vice governor whose marriage proposal she rejected. Covarrubias said Susukan kidnapped the Tapul mayor's daughter, along with Merci Daud, a relative, and three other companions. He could not confirm if Daud was avoiding the Sulu vice governor's son. The bandits rose to international prominence last April when members crossed the sea border to Malaysia, abducted 21 Western vacationers and Asian workers from a dive resort and took them back to their camp on Jolo island. They later kidnapped other foreign and Filipino journalists covering the initial abductions. Most of the hostages were freed, reportedly in exchange for huge ransoms. The rebels are now holding two captives, Schilling and Filipino dive resort worker Roland Ullah. |
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BBC Monitoring International Reports Guzman and TJ Burgonio, carried by Philippine newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer web site on 2 March Zamboanga City
"We showed this by kidnapping more than 70 people in Tumahubong and Sinangkapan," Sali said in a phone interview. The bandit leader was referring to the mass abduction that took place on March 20, 2000 in Sumisip and Tuburan towns in which 78 schoolteachers and students, including the late Claretian missionary Fr Rhoel Gallardo, were taken hostage. Sali said the Abu Sayyaf received about 1m pesos each year from its allies and supporters in Iraq. "So we would have something to spend on chemicals for bomb-making and for the movement of our people in Mindanao," he said. Sali said the group's firearms were being provided by some contacts in the Middle East. He said the firearms were transported to Mindanao by way of Cambodia and Vietnam. "Then somebody receives them in Malaysia and sends them to the Philippines," Sali said.
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Sali, who was a key leader in the Abu Sayyaf hostage-taking in Sipadan, Malaysia and the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan, said corrupt soldiers and military officials also supplied the group with firearms. "But I won't identify them because they might not sell to us again," he said. During the interview, Sali said he had relocated to Central Mindanao, but not to hide. He said he was supervising the Abu Sayyaf's renewed attacks on the government. Sali has claimed that he and some 90 Abu Sayyaf terrorists were in Central Mindanao to carry out economic sabotage operations through bombings. "We won't stage kidnappings or beheadings in the meantime. We will sabotage the economy by destroying all electric posts, towers and lines," he said. But the military has dismissed his claims, saying it was the Moro Islamic Liberation Front MILF that staged the attacks. "It's just a diversionary tactic by the MILF to escape blame," Lt-Col Michael Manquiquis, the Armed Forces spokesperson. The military maintains that the MILF carried out the series of bombings that toppled power transmission towers in Maguindanao this week in retaliation against the capture of its camp in North Cotabato two weeks ago. Maj Julieto Ando, spokesperson of the Army's 6th Infantry Division based in Maguindanao, said the military has deployed a number of intelligence operatives to track down Sali's hideout in Central Mindanao even as he disputed claims that Sali's arrival in the region was behind the recent series of explosions. He said the bombing of the Cotabato City airport and the sabotaging of power lines of the National Power Corp. were meant to divert the military's attention from its offensive against the MILF in Pikit, North Cotabato. "What reports we received from our men in the field say all these attacks, including (the bombing of) the transmission towers of the National Power Corp., were really perpetrated by the MILF," Ando said. Manquiquis said the evidence pointed to the MILF as the culprit, pointing out that the mortar shells used in the attacks were part of the secessionist group's artillery. "We suspect that this was the work of the MILF-SOG (special operations group), the group trained in bombings," he said. Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer web site, in English 2 Mar 03 |
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