Saddam Ordered Training of Al-Qa'ida Members

The independent Iraqi weekly Al-Yawm Al-Aakher reveals details on the training of Al-Qa'ida members operating under the orders of Saddam's Presidential Palace two months before the September 11 attacks. The following are excerpts from the article: [1]

"An Iraqi officer (L) [only identified by initial] tells us that one day a Land Cruiser belonging to the Personal Security Force (Al-Amn Al-Khass, responsible for the protection of Saddam Hussein) arrived and a senior officer from the Presidential Palace stepped out of it. He was one of those officers who used to stand behind Saddam, which means that he was one of [his] personal bodyguards. After a two-hour meeting with a select group of officers at the Special Forces School, we were informed that we would have dear guests, and that we should train them very well in a high level of secrecy - not to allow anyone to approach them or to talk to them in any way, shape, or form.

"A few days later, about 100 trainees arrived. They were a mixture of Arabs, Arabs from the Peninsula [Saudi Arabia], Muslim Afghans, and other Muslims from various parts of the world. They were divided into two groups, the first one went to Al-Nahrawan and the second to Salman Pak, and this was the group that was trained to hijack airplanes. The training was under the direct supervision of major general (M. DH. L) [only identified by initials] who now serves as a police commander in one of the provinces. Upon the completion of the training most of them left Iraq, while the others stayed in the country through the last battle in Baghdad against the coalition forces."

"I remember that the leader of the group was a Saudi cleric called [Muhammad], who was a fervent and audacious individual and did not require much training. He was highly skilled, and could fire accurately at a target while riding a motorcycle. Additionally, he used to deliver fiery sermons calling for Jihad and for fighting the Americans anywhere in the world. Surprisingly, this man's picture, alongside the commander of the Special Forces School, was televised several times before the beginning of the war and the fall of the former regime."

"...The Fedayeen command [Fedayeen Saddam under Uday's command] supervised the 100 Al-Qa'ida fighters directly, to the extent that senior Fedayeen officers visited them constantly and inspected them almost daily, especially during the final days when they transferred them, late at night in two red trucks that belonged to the Ministry of Transportation, to an undisclosed destination. I witnessed that with my own eyes because on that day I was the duty officer."

"A few days before the beginning of the last war, we were surprised to see the same people whom we had trained return to the Special Forces School and with them 100 additional individuals. The high command asked us to re-train them and to divide them into several groups to be deployed in various areas in Iraq.

"Truth be told, most of these individuals competed to go to war and to the front lines. [2] Therefore, under pressure they participated immediately in extremely fierce battles that astonished the Iraqis and the Americans."

"On April 5, 2003 orders were issued to send these individuals to the battle front immediately. About 100 of them were sent to the 11th company division in Nasiriya. And for the sake of history I will say that this division's endurance was due to some formidable fighters, the commanding officer and members of Al-Qa'ida who fought with intensity and brutality that are seldom matched, while they were praising Allah: Allahu Akbar… Allahu Akbar… What I mean by that are the violent battles that took place along the rapid highway for seventeen consecutive days and forced the Americans to withdraw and re-enter from the industrial area of Nasiriya … As for the groups which went to Al-Kifl, they participated in extremely brutal battles. Not many of them retreated and they sacrificed their lives to Apache [helicopter] fire, amid the admiration of the Iraqis and the Americans themselves. The proof is that some of them blew themselves up in the midst of American forces."

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[2] According to the article, a number of the individuals also fought in Afghanistan: "Most of [the people] I talked to confirmed to me that they had come from Afghanistan and the Pakistani mountains, and that they were the ones who fought the Americans in Mazar Al-Sharif and Kabul. This was a true experience that they translated into the reality of the fierce battles in Iraq."

Here are some more juicy pre - 9/11 tidbits....straight outta Texas???

2/6/1999 The UK Guardian The Western nightmare: Saddam and Bin Laden versus the world
At the head of the group was a man by the name of Farouk Hijazi, President Saddam Hussein's new ambassador to Turkey and one of Iraq's most senior intelligence officers. He had been sent on one of the most important assignments of his career - to recruit Osama bin Laden.

Thus the world's most notorious pariah state, armed with its half-built hoard of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, tried to embrace the planet's most prolific terrorist. It was the stuff of the West's millennial nightmares, but United States intelligence officials are positive that the meeting took place, although they admit that they have no idea what happened.

1/11/1999 Newsweek
Here's what is known so far: Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas--assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer. U.S. intelligence has had reports of contacts between low-level agents. Saddam and bin Laden have interests--and enemies--in common. Both men want U.S. military forces out of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has been calling for all-out war on Americans, using as his main pretext Washington's role in bombing and boycotting Iraq. Now bin Laden is engaged in something of a public-relations offensive, having granted recent interviews, one for NEWSWEEK (following story). He says "any American who pays taxes to his government" is a legitimate target.

Saddam's terrorism capability is still small-time, according to senior U.S. officials. "He's nowhere close to the level of the Iranians or Hizbullah," says one. But terrorism may be Iraq's growth industry. An Arab intelligence officer who knows Saddam personally and stays in touch with his clandestine services predicts that "very soon you will be witnessing large-scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis." The attacks, he says, would be aimed at American and British targets in the Islamic world. Washington is somewhat skeptical, but this source says plans have already been put into action under three "false flags": one Palestinian, one Iranian and one "the al-Qaeda apparatus," the loose collection of terrorists who receive bin Laden's patronage. "All these organizations have representatives in Baghdad," says the Arab intelligence officer.

8/6/1999 National Press Club transcript with terrorism expert Yosef Bodansky
The other state that is rising up -- and I've elaborated a lot in the book about that -- is Iraq. Bin Laden has been dealing with Iraq intelligence since the early 1990s, where they cooperated in Sudan and in Somalia. This has been a love-hate relationship because of the Iraqi secular policies and Saddam Hussein's disdain for Islamism and even persecution of Iraqi Islamists, including veterans of Afghanistan.

1999 Excerpt from terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky’s book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America.
Bin Laden moved to solidify the cooperation with Saddam Hussein. In mid-July (1998)*, Ayman al-Zawahiri traveled to Iraq clandestinely. He met senior Iraqi officials, including Taha Yassin Ramadan, to discuss practical modalities for the establishment of bin Laden’s base in Iraq, the expansion of training for his mujahideen, and a joint strategy for an anti-U.S. jihad throughout the Arab world and North Africa. Baghdad could not have been more helpful, conditioning its support on bin Laden’s promise not to incite the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood into establishing and Islamic state in Iraq; in other words not to conspire against Saddam Hussein’s reign.

2/17/1999 Radio Free Europe
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein offered bin Laden asylum last month.
Middle East analyst Neil Partrick of the Royal United Services Institute in London told RFE/RL that the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey has met with bin Laden.

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