Let’s also consider previous reporting on the subject of anthrax in Afghanistan. Amerithrax Agents checked the Kabul area in May 2004 but came up empty, sources told the Washington Post. In November of that year, on additional information, agents spent weeks searching an area in the Kandahar mountains, several hundred miles outside of Kabul, but again found nothing. In January 2007, a Taliban spokesman was captured. An Afghanistan governor says his residence contained anthrax powder packets. According to a report by the Aghan Islamic Press Agency, as monitored by the BBC. the powdered anthrax was intended for mailing to government officials. The former Taliban spokesman quietly told a camera that he was “on a mission” when he was arrested.
The fellow who reportedly had “anthrax powder packets” had been living in Peshawar. Muhammad Hanif’s real name is Abdulhaq Haji Gulroz. Is this young guy mentioned above Qari Mullah Din Muhammad Hanif, the former madrassa-trained Minister of Education who wouldn’t let the medical school use cadavers? (That was a good thing, given that it didn’t have electricity) Is he a “Dr.” If so, what kind? The former education minister had not received a secular education and oversaw the medical school. A veterinary student in September 2001 said they had nothing in the way of facilities or equipment. It was the Agriculture Minister who had taken a keen interest in supervising the Red Cross/FAO-funded anthrax vaccine laboratory. Yazid Sufaat did his anthrax work, he says, as part of a Taliban medical brigade. A building associated with the charity WAFA housed a lab, and WAFA was a militant supporter of the Taliban. So while we await lab tests and further clarification or confirmation, the earlier sketchy report from January 2007 about anthrax powder packets is certainly intriguing — as is today’s AP item about the Gitmo detainee.
I wonder if this fellow knew the Filipino-looking gentleman who was bragging about his skill in processing anthrax. As described in US News, a former reporter from the Kabul Times actually may have met a Filipino carrying papers from Zawahiri and bragging about his ability to manipulate anthrax. The man apparently was Hambali’s lieutenant, Muklis Yunos, who had been Hambali’s right-hand man and was in charge of special operations for the Philippine Moro Islamic Liberation Front (”MILF”). British reporter Philip Smucker, explained that the Afghan reporter working with him spoke fluent Arabic and made regular undercover trips into Afghanistan from Pakistan. He had visited three functioning al Qaeda camps, at grave risk to his life. Smucker explains that his colleague had landed in a Kabul hotel with a Filipino scientist who had a signed letter from al Qaeda’s number two, Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, authorizing him to help the network develop biological weapons. The man at the hotel had described his own efforts to develop an “anthrax bomb.” Filipino Muklis Yunos was an explosives expert who had participated with Yazid Sufaat in the December 2000 church bombings. Upon his arrest in May 2003, Philippine intelligence said he had received anthrax training in Afghanistan. Perhaps he was who the journalist encountered.