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Three Prisoners in N. Iraq Outline Links Between Al Qaeda and Iraq
Al Qaeda Members Met With Saddam
Abu Iman al-Maliki was convicted of spying on the Kurds as an Iraqi intelligence officer. He says he worked as such for 20 years. Al-Maliki chain-smoked Marlboros as we talked, sitting on a metal chair in a T-shirt advertising a martial arts school that strained against his bulk. He is, simply put, a huge man. Abu Iman al-Maliki was an Iraqi intelligence officer for 20 years. (ABCNEWS.com)
"The U.S. believes Iraq has had contact with al Qaeda," I said, "Do you know that to be a fact?"
"Yes. In '92, elements of al Qaeda came to Baghdad and met with Saddam Hussein and among them was Dr. Al-Zawahiri."
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, you may recall, has been identified as a top lieutenant of bin Laden's, and is widely thought to be a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"There is a relationship between the governments of al Qaeda and the Iraqi government," he continued. "It began after the events of Kuwait approximately. That is when the relationship developed and many delegations came to Baghdad. There are elements of al Qaeda training on suicide operations, assassinations, explosions, and the making of chemical substances, and they are supervised by a number of officers, experts from the Iraqi intelligence, the Explosives Division, the Assassinations Division, different specialties."
Al-Maliki's specialty is somewhat more disturbing. He says he was part of a group of officers ordered by Saddam to hide chemical weapons throughout the Iraqi countryside. When I asked him if the U.N. weapons inspectors might find anything if they return, he smiled and said, "No. They will find nothing."
'I Killed' for Iraqi Intelligence and Al Qaeda
As midnight approached, I was introduced to Muhammad Mansour Shihab Ali, a man who, if you believe his confession, is a cold-hearted killer with a deep hatred for the United States. Muhammad Mansour Shihab Ali is behind bars for murdering an Iraqi dissident. (ABCNEWS.com)
His explanation of wanting to talk to an American journalist is the most perplexing of all: he had absolutely nothing to gain by doing so that I could tell. I asked him numerous times about his motives for giving us so much detailed information and his mumbled response, as gleaned by the translator, was that he thought I could do something to help his children whom he'd left behind with bin Laden's people in Afghanistan. It became obvious that he thought I was an American intelligence agent, and no amount of denial on my part could convince him otherwise.
Shihab Ali is in prison for the murder of an Iraqi dissident who had been living in Iran. He was captured at a Kurdish checkpoint and found in his possession were some photographic negatives which, when developed, were a full-color record of the grisly deed. When confronted in court with the photos, he confessed all. He's still confessing.
"Killing is something I did. I killed. This was for the Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda."
Shihab Ali told me he has done numerous operations for al Qaeda and Iraq over the years, including numerous assassinations and smuggling drugs and guns. Two years ago, he says he was hired by an Iraqi intelligence officer, Othman Salman Daoud, to smuggle 30 refrigerator "motors" — which I took to mean "compressors" — from Iraq to Iran, where they were handed over to men he describes as Afghan members of al Qaeda. He was paid $10,000 each for the items, which usually contain the refrigerant gas Freon, but, in this case, contained something more mysterious. Shihab Ali was warned it was dangerous to himself, and to any children he might hope to have.
We have no way of knowing what was in those compressors, or what their ultimate destination was. "Only God knows what was in them," he says. Which is not entirely true; he says the compressors were ordered by the man Shihab Ali met five days later in Afghanistan — bin Laden.
There were nine other operations he was expected to work on, he said, at the time he was caught, but he was reluctant to give away the details. Finally, I convinced him to tell me about one that was supposed to have happened last year. He says he and a partner were given $16 million to go to the Gulf and buy some large ships, equip them with 500 kilos of high-explosive, and set sail under Iranian flags. The crews would slip away in motorboats after being replaced with men willing to commit suicide, who would then enter Kuwaiti waters, according to Shihab Ali, and ram the ships into American tankers or military vessels.
"The only reason this didn't happen is because you were captured?" I asked him as my mind filled with the mental image of the extent of death and damage such an attack might have caused.
"Yes, if I hadn't been arrested, I would have done it."
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