Posted on 04/26/2004 1:53:03 PM PDT by TexKat
AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) - Jordanian state television aired Monday what it said were confessions by captured militants tied to al Qaeda who said they had planned deadly chemical attacks that could have killed thousands of people.
Authorities had already reported the plot earlier this month, but the confessions shown on a prime-time broadcast provided further details of the planned attacks.
The arrested militants, who included Syrians, said they were ordered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused by Washington of being a top al Qaeda supporter, to attack targets that included the heavily fortified U.S. embassy and intelligence headquarters.
The head of the group, Azmi Jayousi, said that he first met Zarqawi during his training in an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and met him again in Iraq without giving any dates.
"I pledged allegiance to Zarqawi and after the fall of Afghanistan I met him again in Iraq," said Jayousi, who had clearly identifiable bruises on his face and palm.
"Zarqawi commissioned me to go to Jordan to wage military action," Jayousi said in the 20-minute broadcast where he calmly recounted how he carefully planned with his accomplices the chemical attacks using trucks.
A narrator, without any detailed explanation, said at least 80,000 people would have been killed in the attack by toxic fumes spreading over a radius of more than three miles. The high figure cited was symptomatic of the high tension prevailing in the kingdom, with wide media coverage of raids and street checks.
Jayousi said he set up a chemical factory near the northern city of Irbid, close to the Syrian border, and received $170,000 in financing and logistic aid along with fake passports and forged banknotes from Suleiman Darwish, an alleged Zarqawi aide living in Syria.
The broadcast showed graphic pictures of the location of the alleged chemical plants and the trucks that were to be used in the attacks. It did not say what type of chemical explosives were being prepared.
Another captured militant shown on television was a Syrian national, Annas Sheikh Amin, 18, who said he went to Afghanistan where he was trained at a Qaeda camp before heading to Jordan.
Jordanian Hussein Sharif said he was driven by a fervent belief that the attacks would promote the cause of Muslims.
"I agreed to this operation because I thought it would serve Islam," a bearded Sharif said.
Security sources said al Qaeda had sought to punish Jordan for supporting Washington's efforts to pacify post-war Iraq, and was incensed over covert aid Jordan had given to the U.S. military campaign there.
Jordanian officials said ten days ago they had found explosive-carrying cars believed to have been loaded by an underground group linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Jayousi said he planned the attack with trucks laden with 20 tons of explosives. King Abdullah said after the arrest of the group earlier this month that it had had saved "thousands of lives"
Jordanian intelligence officials have often boasted in recent years that their efforts have foiled plots by al Qaeda-linked militants to launch deadly attacks on Western targets and government installations.
Jordanian authorities said Azmi Jayyousi was the suspected ringleader in an alleged al Qaeda plot.
"I took explosives courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to obey him without any questioning," Jayyousi said.
That's an improvement.
LoudRepublicangirl the only chemical that I have heard mentioned thus far is sulphuric acid.
Azmi al-Jayousi, identified as the head of a Jordanian terror cell, appears in this image from video, from a 20-minute taped program aired on Jordanian television Monday, Apri 26, 2004. Al-Jayousi described meeting Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq (news - web sites) to plan chemical and poison gas attacks against the US Embassy and other targets in Jordan for Al-Qaida. (AP Photo/ArabicNat via APTN)
This image grab from Jordan's official TV shows Jordanian al-Qaeda leader Ahmad Fadel al-Khalayleh, nicknamed Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who was masterminding terror attacks to hit Jordan, according to a taped testimony by members of a terrorist cell aired by the official television station.(AFP/JORDANIAN TV)
Tuesday April 27, 2004 3:01 AM
By JAMAL HALABY
Associated Press Writer
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Al-Qaida plotted bomb and poison gas attacks against the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan, suspects confessed in a videotape that aired Monday on Jordanian state television. A commentator said the plotters hoped to kill 80,000 people.
One of the alleged conspirators, Azmi al-Jayousi, said he was acting on the orders of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian wanted by the United States for allegedly organizing terrorists to fight U.S. troops in Iraq on behalf of al-Qaida. U.S. officials have offered a $10 million reward for his capture.
Al-Jayousi, identified as the head of a Jordanian terror cell, said he met al-Zarqawi in neighboring Iraq to plan the attacks.
The 20-minute taped program contained what were described as confessions by the suspects, who were arrested a month ago. Officials said four terror suspects believed linked to the conspiracy died in a shootout with police in Amman last week.
A commentator on the tape, who wasn't further identified, said the plotters targeted Jordan's secret service, its prime minister's office and the U.S. Embassy.
``At least 80,000 people would have been killed,'' the commentator said. Al-Zarqawi ``is the terrorist'' who plotted this operation.''
Another Jordanian suspect, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, was shown saying al-Jayousi asked him to buy vehicles and modify them so that they could crash through gates and walls.
The bearded Hussein, looking anxious, said al-Jayousi told him the aim was ``carrying out the first suicide attack to be launched by al-Qaida using chemicals ... striking at Jordan, its Hashemite (royal family) and launching war on the Crusaders and nonbelievers.''
A Web site known for publicizing messages from Muslim extremists on Monday carried a purported claim of responsibility from al-Zarqawi for suicide boat attacks against Gulf oil terminals Saturday that killed three Americans and disabled Iraq's biggest terminal for more than 24 hours.
``I have pledged loyalty to Abu-Musab to fully be obedient and listen to him without discussion,'' al-Jayousi said in the Jordanian television segment. He said he first met al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan, where al-Jayousi said he studied explosives, ``before Afghanistan fell.'' He said he later met al-Zarqawi in Iraq, but was not specific about when.
The videotape also showed still photographs of al-Jayousi and nine other suspects. The commentator said four had been killed in clashes with security forces. Three of the slain men were identified as Syrians. But Syria has denied Jordanian claims that militants involved in the plot entered Jordan from Syria.
Al-Jayousi said he received about $170,000 from al-Zarqawi to finance the plot and used part of it to buy 20 tons of chemicals. He did not identify the chemicals, but said they ``were enough for all the operations in the Jordanian arena.''
Images of what the commentator said were vans filled with blue jugs of chemical explosives were included in the broadcast.
Hussein, the car mechanic, said he met al-Jayousi in 1999 but did not clearly say when the terror plans were laid out.
Al-Jayousi said he and Hussein bought five vehicles, including a truck which was to be filled with explosives and used to attack the intelligence department. At least two vehicles had forged license plates and car registrations.
Citing unidentified technical experts, the commentator said al-Jayousi had made enough explosives to cause ``two explosions - conventional and chemical - which were to have directly affected an area within a 2-kilometer (one mile) radius.''
Al-Jayousi said he began making the explosives in a secret lab. Another detained terror suspect, Ahmad Samir, said that he worked in one of the labs for two months. ``I never had the chance to leave it at all ... for the protection of the operation.''
No trial date has been set in the case.
Airing suspects' confessions before their trial is unusual in Jordan. In 1998, six men accused of affiliation with a militant group confessed on television to planting a bomb that exploded outside an Amman hotel. Five years later, a court found them innocent.
The unusual move may be an attempt to answer critics who claim the government has exaggerated the terror danger to justify tightening security. Officials in Jordan, a moderate Arab nation with close ties to the United States and a peace treaty with Israel, say the kingdom has been repeatedly targeted by al-Qaida and other militant groups.
'Attack could have killed 80,000'
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
The members of the terrorist network planned on attacking the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department, the Prime Ministry and the US embassy
By Mahmoud Al Abed
AMMAN — Suspects arrested earlier this month in connection with a major terrorist plot confessed to planning to carry out the first ever Al Qaeda chemical attack in Jordan.
The members of the terrorist network planned on attacking the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department, the Prime Ministry and the US embassy in Amman.
In taped testimonies broadcast on Jordan Television Monday, the suspects revealed that the mastermind of the operation was the Iraq-based top Al Qaeda leader, Ahmad Fadeel Khalaileh, better known as Abu Mussab Zarqawi.
The TV programme quoted experts as saying that if successful, the operation could have killed 80,000 persons and caused physical harm to 160,000 others.
The suspects in custody are the group's leader, Azmi Jaiousi, Ahmad Samir, Hussein Sharif Hussein, Anas Sheikh Amin, Mohammad Salamah Sha'ban and Hosni Sharif Hussein. Four others, Mwaffaq Odwan, Hassan Simsimiyya, Salah Marjehm and Ibrahim Abu Kheir linked to the same plot, were killed in shoot out with security forces when they refused to surrender.
Last week, authorities announced that they had killed four terrorist suspects, three of them reportedly Iraqis, in shoot-out in the Hashmi Shamali neighbourhood of Amman.
Jaiousi, who appeared in the televised programme, said that he met Zarqawi in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, where he was recruited to carry out the attack.
"Abu Mussab assigned me to go to Jordan, with Mwaffaq Odwan. Our mission was to instigate military work on the Jordanian arena. He [Zarqawi] arranged for my infiltration to Jordan," Jaiousi testified.
Jaiousi added that contacts with his leader were through prepaid mobile phone cards and through messengers who came from Syria.
The first attack was planned against the General Intelligence Department, using three large trucks laden with 20 tonnes of chemical explosives and two small cars.
Using $170,000 Zarqawi sent him from Iraq, Jaiousi said the group purchased the vehicles and structurally reinforced them, bought the chemicals and manufactured part of them in a deserted house in a village near Irbid, then later in a warehouse near Ramtha.
"I envisioned the result after executing the work. According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the Intelligence Department would have been totally destroyed, and nothing of it would have remained, nor anything surrounding it. Destruction would have even reached far away areas," Jaiousi said.
The suspects said they were driven by religious beliefs to carry out the terror attacks.
Hussein Sharif, who helped in preparing the trucks, said: "I agreed to participate in this operation, because I thought it would serve Islam."
Security officials arrested members of the group in March and earlier this month and seized five explosives laden vehicles.
His Majesty King Abdullah described the plot as "a crime never before seen in the Kingdom.”
He told the San Francisco Chronicle, while visiting the US last week, that "it was a major, major operation."
"It would have decapitated the government," the King told the paper in April 17 interview.
Zarqawi was sentenced to death in absentia earlier this month, when the State Security Court found him guilty of masterminding the October 2002 murder of USAID employee Laurence Foley.
They certainly do look alike GEC.
Opinions??
Now this particular version of the story comes along, and just like all the others, it remains silent on the single most crucial fact of the entire story. And that is, what was the WMD chemical agent that the terrorists had in their possession and were planning on using with such devastating effect?
When terrorists are caught planning to set off a bomb, that is a "dog bites man" story. But when terrorists are supposedly caught with great amounts of what, by all press accounts, could only have been one of the deadly nerve toxins (sarin, tabun, soman, VX, etc.) and the only source of supply for those toxins would be from a government (like the former Iraqi regime), then you have an earth-shaking, stop the presses, 144 point type headlines, "man bites dog" story.
Yet, pregnant by its absence, these reports continue with still no one confirming what deadly WMD agent was found in the possession of these terrorists.
Mind you, I have no doubt that Iraq was in possession of WMD as of March, 2003. Nevertheless, these recent series of unconfirmed reports out of Jordon about "deadly chemical" weapons, have the distinct odor of bovine excrement about them.
I'm glad you posted this story, but until the authorities choose to disclose what chemical warfare agent was involved, I would recommend to all a very much greater degree of skepticism.
--Boot Hill
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