Posted on 09/12/2001 9:30:46 AM PDT by HAL9000
PARIS, Sept 12 (AFP) -The prime suspect in the terrorist attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, Osama bin Laden, has close links with the former head of Saudi intelligence, experts said Wednesday.
Alexandre Del Valle, author of a book on Islam in the United States, told French radio that the multi-millionaire militant was in contact with Turki al-Faycal, the spy chief sacked last month by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.
Guillaume Dasquier, editor of the specialist magazine "La lettre du renseignement" (Intelligence Newsletter), said that Turki had been sacked after failing to deliver Bin laden for extradition to the United States.
"A few days ago something important happened in Saudi Arabia," Dasquier said, in an interview with the daily Le Parisien.
"That is that Prince Turki al-Faycal -- the shadowy figure at the heart of Saudi power for more than 25 years and the basis of all the ambiguous links between the Saudi secret services, the CIA, and Bin Laden -- was sacked amid much recrimination when it was realised that, despite his promises, he would never manage to achieve Bin Laden's extradition," he added.
"It was realised that the negotiations between Turki and Bin Laden were not working and that the United States and Saudi Arabia were being taken for a ride," Dasquier said.
German, British, French and Israeli intelligence services have linked Bin Laden, who has been blamed for previous attacks on US interests, to the kamikaze attacks by hijacked airliners on US targets Tuesday.
The radical leader has been stripped of his Saudi citizenship and is believed to be living in Afghanistan sheltered by the Taliban Islamic militia.
A Pakistani newspaper reported Wednesday that Bin Laden had denied involvement in the US attacks but had welcomed the strikes. He had previously declared a holy war against the United States.
Bin Laden, leader of the militant Islamist group al-Qaeda, has been indicted by US authorities for alleged involvement in the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998 which killed 224 people.
Thousands were presumed dead after hijacked planes crashed into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth hijacked aircraft went down in western Pennsylvania.
Dasquier supported the view expressed by many terrorism experts that the attacks, which took place almost simultanously and involved four separate hijackings, were too complicated for one group to pull off alone.
"In recent months we have see a spectacular regrouping of Islamist groups," he said.
The expert said the largest armed fundamentalist group in Egypt -- Jamaa Islamiya -- had struck an alliance with Bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the smaller Egyptian group Al-Jihad.
"This Islamic international, which is based in Khost (Afghanistan) is a novelty, because up until now these terrorist groups worked apart," he said.
Al-Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the murder of 58 tourists in Luxor in 1997, had already in 1998 joined the Front for the Liberation of the Holy Sites of Islam, another Bin Laden front organisation based in Pakistan.
beneath American innocents and blood-soaked debris.
I see this line beginning to appear and I feel that it's the beginning of a class warfare movement in the media.
Let's be sure to point this out...
Secondly, if you spend about an hour on the official Saudi website, you will discover that the Saudi's hold no grudge against bin Laden.
Get it through your heads, dumb Americans, the Saudis are quite proud of him.
Third, when the Saudis say someone was fired, don't believe them.
Prince Turki's wife is from a "bad" Egyptian family (let me tell you Saudis don't like Egyptians to begin with). Prince Turki's father-in-law was arrested in Egypt years ago for WITCHCRAFT. He used to run a little shop that sold supplies for what we in the US call a "botanica."
Prince Turki is a fun-loving guy who takes Islam at face value, not your in-your-face I-have-to-pray-5-times-a-day kind of guy.
The Saudis who ARE friendly with bin Ladin are Prince Naif and Prince Saud (twins). If you go on the official Saudi website, you will see this.
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