Posted on 03/17/2002 11:58:28 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
As Vice President Dick Cheney tours the Middle East sounding out support for a potential U.S. incursion into Iraq, the Washington-based legal group Judicial Watch has filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeking $1.4 billion in punitive damages from the Republic of Iraq for what it alleges as that country’s involvement in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Murrah building on April 19, 1995.
Filed on behalf of a group of citizens who survived or who lost loved ones in the Oklahoma bombing, plaintiffs are seeking damages under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
The 1993 attack has long been officially styled as domestic in origin, the apparent exclusive work of Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh and a couple of associates.
In the suit, however, the plaintiffs asserted that the bombing plot was, "in whole or in part, orchestrated, assisted technically and/or financially, and directly aided by agents of the Republic of Iraq,” further asserting that the attack was an illegal continuation of the Persian Gulf War.
"Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq had developed a covert network in the United States to acquire materials for weapons of mass destruction,” alleged the plaintiffs. "After the Gulf War, Iraq converted that network into organized terrorist cells. Those covert Iraqi procurement and terrorist activities directly involved Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” the plaintiffs further alleged.
Along with detailing convicted and executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s numerous contacts with persons unknown in the Philippines at a time when Middle Eastern terrorists were plotting in that country (including Ramzi Youssef, convicted of the 1993 WTC bombing) the complaint details what it describes as "Iraq’s preparations for a continued war of terrorism against the United States since the Persian Gulf War in 1990,” including:
Saddam Hussein had called, on September 13, 1990, for a Holy War against those nations who supported the U.N. condemnation of Iraq.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz simultaneously warned that Baghdad was under no moral obligation to refrain from terrorism if threatened by the United States, British or French governments.
After the Gulf War cease-fire, a promise was made by Saddam Hussein on November 3, 1992 in Ramadi, Iraq that "the mother of battles . . . has continued, and will continue.”
The attempted terrorist plot by Iraqi agents to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush with a car bomb during his planned visit to Kuwait in April 1993, which was foiled by Kuwaiti intelligence.
The discovery by U.N weapons inspector Scott Ritter of a terrorist training school run by Iraqi intelligence in the Abu Garie area of Baghdad. In Ritter’s own words, claimed the plaintiffs, "Document after document outlined an international program of terror.”
Iraq had a chemical weapons testing facility at Samara and a biological agent testing facility at the Salman Pak in Iraq. Both facilities conducted lethal testing on human subjects.
Iraq also has an elite international terrorist training camp at the Salman Pak located southwest of Baghdad. "Iraq has had the ‘means,’ before and after the Gulf War, through individual agents like Ihsan Barbouti, Ramzi Youssef and Abdul Rahman Yasin, an indicted fugitive from the World Trade Center bombing currently hiding in Baghdad, to execute terrorist attacks against Americans in the United States and elsewhere,” maintained the plaintiffs in the suit.
Ramzi Youssef was convicted for his involvement in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. He also blew up a 747 in the Philippines in 1995, killing one man. He is presently serving 240 years in prison.
Dramatic Similarites
Furthermore, said the plaintiffs, the Iraqi-inspired terrorist attacks that have occurred have often utilized ammonium nitrate (fertilizer), nitromethane and cyanide, bomb ingredients that Iraq had been attempting to procure since before the Gulf War.
The plaintiffs alleged that the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in April 1995 had dramatic similarities to the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, maintaining that in each instance, the bomb was a massive "fertilizer bomb.”
"Both bombs were delivered to their targets in rented Ryder trucks, which had been rented in adjoining states. Both attacks were timed in order to inflict substantial casualties and to bring down the targeted buildings,” alleged the plaintiffs.
When the Murrah Building was bombed, said the plaintiffs, Abdul Hakim Murad, in a prison cell in New York City awaiting trial for his part in the plot to bomb five American 747 aircraft, admitted verbally on April 19, 1995 and in writing that Ramzi Youssef’s "liberation army” was responsible for the Murrah Building bombing.
Murad’s conspiratorial admission of foreign involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing was revealed by an FBI report that was referenced in Timothy McVeigh’s March 1997 petition for writ of mandamus, said the plaintiffs.
According to the plaintiffs, McVeigh and others attempted in October 1994 to blow up a metal milk jug with a small ammonium nitrate device.
"That attempt merely fizzled. Six months later -- and only three months after Nichols returned from the Philippines -- the same two individuals (supposedly) were able to devastate the Murrah Building with approximately 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and Nitromethane.
"Plaintiffs assert that this quantum leap in technical expertise occurred during Nichols’ last trip to the Philippines.”
OhhKay
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