Posted on 11/30/2003 7:15:49 AM PST by knighthawk
A SEBEGALESE Muslim cleric deported from Italy as a danger to state security was quoted today as telling a pan-Arab newspaper that he had met three times with Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
The cleric, Abdel Qadir Mamour, told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat in an interview by telephone from Dakar, Senegal, that he had the meetings with bin Laden in Sudan from 1993 to 1996.
Mamour said bin Laden had provided money to finance his trading in diamonds between Africa and Belgium, but did not say how much money was involved or if bin Laden was involved in the business.
Bin Laden left his native Saudi Arabia for Sudan in 1993, criticising the presence of US troops on Saudi soil following the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. He was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and left Sudan in 1996 for Afghanistan.
Mamour angered Italian authorities by saying in an earlier interview that Italian soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq would be attacked, as well as Italian diplomats, because Italy was aiding the US-led military presence. His statement followed the November 12 car bomb at the Italian barracks in Nasiriyah, Iraq, that killed 19 Italians.
He was deported to Senegal in mid-November.
In his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Mamour said Italian authorities deported him because they found at his home some CD-ROMs contained the wills of four suicide attackers in a bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May.
Mamour was quoted as saying he got the tapes from a fundamentalist Muslim in London so they could be distributed in Europe, but did not name the man who sent the tapes.
Mamour said he also met in Sudan with bin Laden's top aides including Mohammed Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, who was killed in a US airstrike in Afghanistan in November 2001.
Mamour said his Italian wife and five children saved him from being sent to the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba. He said the Senegalese authorities kept him under house arrest and interrogated him for four days.
Asharq Al-Awsat said that when Mamour was asked by the interviewer to name his religious leader, he answered without hesitation: "Osama bin Laden."
The time period when Sudan offered clinton bin Laden on a silver platter. An offer clinton turned down.
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