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Saddam's Philippines Terror Connection
Weekly Standard ^ | 3-19-2006 | Stephen F. Hayes

Posted on 03/19/2006 5:59:41 AM PST by AliVeritas

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.

The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.

(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 200106; 20010606; abusayyaf; alqaedaphilippines; iraqiintelligence; philippines; prewardocs; saddamfiles; stephenhayes; wot
And other revelations from the Iraqi regime files.
1 posted on 03/19/2006 5:59:46 AM PST by AliVeritas
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To: AliVeritas

bttt


2 posted on 03/19/2006 6:00:34 AM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: sono; rodguy911

ping


3 posted on 03/19/2006 6:01:20 AM PST by AliVeritas (“Pacifism is objectively pro-Islamo-Fascist.”)
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To: AliVeritas

Bump!


4 posted on 03/19/2006 6:22:21 AM PST by F-117A
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To: AliVeritas

I'm sure CBS News will get right on it.


5 posted on 03/19/2006 6:25:10 AM PST by rightwingintelligentsia (You know a liberal has lost the argument when he calls you a Nazi.)
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To: AliVeritas
Saddam's Philippines Terror Connection

Release of Classified PreWar Docs ping. If you want to be added or removed to the ping list, please Freepmail me.

Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents

Documents from the Harmony Database

6 posted on 03/19/2006 6:42:53 AM PST by eyespysomething
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To: eyespysomething
Army of Translators!
7 posted on 03/19/2006 7:07:51 AM PST by sono ("If Congressional brains were cargo, there'd be nothing to unload." - Rush Limbaugh)
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To: AliVeritas
Thank you for your extremely valuable efforts.

I have a copy of 140 Days of Terror: In the Clutches of the Abu Sayyaf by Roberto Aventajado who negotiated the release of some of the hostages seized by the Abu Sayyaf in 2002. Libya provided a large chunk of the $25 million in ransom money even though none of the hostages were Libyan.

After reading the story, it was impossible for me not to suspect that the kidnapping and ransom scenario was planned as a way to transfer money to the Abu Sayyaf. Here is a link to a story from a Phillippine news website that provides some details concerning the ransom payment

http://www.inq7.net/nat/2003/dec/11/nat_4-1.htm

8 posted on 03/19/2006 11:28:49 AM PST by Ben Hecks
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To: AliVeritas
NICHOLS/PHILIPPINES
9 posted on 03/19/2006 11:31:18 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Ben Hecks
After reading the story, it was impossible for me not to suspect that the
kidnapping and ransom scenario was planned as a way to transfer money to
the Abu Sayyaf.


That's why I always hold my breath when some Westerner is kidnapped
in Iraq.
The idea that the abducted party isn't even a willing part of a
cash transfer to (and sometimes between) terrorists can't be easily
discounted in some cases. IIRC, the case of the Italian journalist
smelled of this sort of strategy.
10 posted on 03/19/2006 11:44:59 AM PST by VOA
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To: VOA
The idea that the abducted party isn't even a willing part

I meant: "The idea that the abducted party is even a willing part..."
11 posted on 03/19/2006 11:46:28 AM PST by VOA
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To: VOA
I believe this case was the second Abu Sayyaf kidnapping that involved ransom money from Libya which pegs my alert meter. The behavior of one of the hostages, a German woman, struck me as particularly bizarre and I have wondered if she wasn't privy to the scam. Here is the link I failed to post above:

http://www.inq7.net/nat/2003/dec/11/nat_4-1.htm
12 posted on 03/19/2006 12:19:55 PM PST by Ben Hecks
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Any idea about the current status of the trial?


13 posted on 03/19/2006 1:34:42 PM PST by fso301
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

SeeBS can't verify these documents because they weren't produced on Windows software.


14 posted on 03/19/2006 1:40:16 PM PST by johnny7 (“Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all.”)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Exactly what popped into my head!

The MSM will never flesh this out, it would implicate their hero, BJ Clintoon, and justify fuller, W's action to attack Iraq.

So sad.

Sincerely


15 posted on 03/19/2006 1:41:15 PM PST by ScubieNuc
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To: AliVeritas
"But,...but...Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism. Every left-wing professor will tell you that, and they are really, really smart people.
16 posted on 03/19/2006 2:13:59 PM PST by cookcounty (Army Vet, Army Dad.)
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To: AliVeritas
Ummm...we knew this years ago...

Saddam Hussein showed no reluctance to support terrorism per se during his career. The fact that he gave money to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists and had a close working relationship with the PLO was well known, and something he admitted. The Iraqi regime maintained a terrorist training camp at Salman Pak near Baghdad where foreign terrorists were instructed in methods of taking over commercial aircraft using weapons no more sophisticated than knives (interesting thought that). Saddam also harbored Abu Nidal and other members of his international terror organization (ANO) in Baghdad. Abu Nidal died under suspicious circumstances in Baghdad in August 2002, an apparent multiple gunshot suicide. Abd-al-Rahman Isa, ANO's second in command based in Amman, Jordan, was kidnapped September 11, 2002, and has not been heard from since. Coalition forces did recently apprehend ANO member Khala Khadr al-Salahat, the man who reputedly made the bomb for the Libyans that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He was hiding out in Baghdad. Another bomb maker, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was also a Baghdad resident. He was one of the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who had fled there after being detained briefly by the FBI. Recent document finds in Tikrit show that Iraq supplied Yasin with both money and sanctuary. The 1993 WTC attack was masterminded by Yasin's associate Ramzi Yousef, who received financial support from al Qaeda through Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key 9/11 planner.

There is also the case of Abu Zubayr, an officer in Saddam's secret police who was also the ringleader of an al Qaeda cell in Morocco. He attended the September 5, 2001 meeting in Spain with other al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, the 9/11 financial chief. Abu Zubayr was apprehended in May, 2002, while putting together a plot to mount suicide attacks on U.S. ships passing through the straits of Gibraltar. He has allegedly since stated that Iraq trained and supplied chemical weapons to al Qaeda. In the fall of 2001 al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan took refuge in northern Iraq until they were driven out by Coalition forces, and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda terrorist active in Europe and North Africa, fled from Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has reportedly been sent back to Iraq to coordinate al Qaeda activities there.

Iraq made direct payments to the Philippine-based al Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf group. Hamsiraji Sali, an Abu Sayyaf leader on the U.S. most-wanted terrorist list, stated that his gang received about one million pesos (around $20,000) each year from Iraq, for chemicals to make bombs. The link was substantiated immediately after a bombing in Zamboanga City in October 2002 (in which three people were killed including an American Green Beret), when Abu Sayyaf leaders called up the deputy secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, Husham Hussain. Six days later, the cell phone used to call Hussain was employed as the timer on a bomb set to go off near the Philippine military's Southern Command headquarters. Fortunately, the bomb failed to detonate, and the phone yielded various contact numbers, including Hussain's and Sali's. This evidence, coupled with other intelligence the Philippine government would not release, led to Hussain's expulsion in February 2003. In March, ten Iraqi nationals, some with direct links to al Qaeda, were rounded up in the Philippines and deported as undesirable aliens. In addition, two more consulate officials were expelled for spying.

National Review Article - 09/13/03

17 posted on 03/20/2006 6:25:05 AM PST by ravingnutter
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To: cookcounty
"But,...but...Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism. Every left-wing professor will tell you that, and they are really, really smart people.

Here is a good link to send them to:

Saddam Hussein's Philanthropy of Terror

18 posted on 03/20/2006 6:29:18 AM PST by ravingnutter
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To: AliVeritas
03/01/03 - 'Iraqis aiding us,' admits Abu Sayyaf

02/26/03 - Iraq to 'outsource' counterattacks

02/25/03 -The Philippine Terror Front

19 posted on 03/20/2006 6:52:28 AM PST by ravingnutter
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