Feds Unveil "Most Wanted" Suspected Terrorist List
By REBECCA CARR / Cox Washington Bureau
10-11-01
WASHINGTON --President Bush opened "a new line of attack" on terrorism Wednesday, unveiling a "most wanted list" of 22 suspected terrorists.
The top of the White House's chart came as no surprise: Osama bin Laden, named by the president as the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Terrorists try to operate in the shadows, they try to hide," Bush said. "But we're going to shine the light of justice on them. Terrorism has a face and today we expose it for the world to see."
MOST WANTED TERROR SUSPECTS
The White House released the names Wednesday of 22 suspected terrorists involved in five separate incidents against American targets dating back to 1985.
* Hijacking of TWA Flight 847 on June 14, 1985. Details: The plane, enroute from Athens to Rome, was hijacked and a U.S. Navy diver was tortured and murdered. Indicted Suspects:
Imad Fayez Mugniyah, head of the security apparatus for the Lebanese Hezbollah, believed to be in Lebanon.
Hasan Izz-Al-Din, member of the Hezbollah, believed to be in Lebanon.
Ali Atwa, member of the Hezbollah, believed to be in Lebanon.
* World Trade Center bombing on February 26, 1993.
Details: A bomb exploded the World Trade Center's underground parking garage, killing six people and injuring hundreds.
Indicted Suspect:
Abudl Rahman Yasin, believed to have connections to Iran and Iraq
* Plot to bomb 12 American jumbo jets flying Asian-Pacific routes in January 1995.
Details: U.S. intelligence officers learned about the plot, which originated in Manila to bomb 12 commercial jets. In December, 1994, The conspirators staged a test on a Philippines airliner using a fraction of the explosives that they planned to use, resulting in the death of a Japanese national.
Indicted Suspect:
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
* Khobar Towers Bombing on June 25, 1996
Details: A tanker truck blew up outside a U.S. military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The explosion killed 19 U.S. Airforce personnel and wounded 280 others.
Indicted Suspects:
Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mughassil
Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Hoori
Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub
Abedelkarim Hussein Mohamed Al-Nasser
* Bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998
Details: Large motor vehicles carrying bombs blew up outside the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. More than 200 people were killed including 11 U.S. nationals in Kenya. There were heavy casualties among the residents of both cities.
Indicted Suspects:
Osama bin Laden
Muhammed Atef
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed
Mustafa Mohamed Fadhil
Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah
Anas Al-Liby
Saif Al-Adel
Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali
Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah
About half of the list of suspects have ties to bin Laden's al-Qaida network of terror, including the two closest confidants of the wealthy Saudi exile.
For example, the list includes Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, a physician and founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, best known for assassinating Anwar Sadat in 1981. Terrorism experts say that he is the driving force behind bin Laden's organization.
And the list includes Muhammad Atef, a trusted lieutenant in al-Qaida and another member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad believed to be living in Afghanistan. His daughter married bin Laden's son earlier this year.
Al-Zawahiri and Atef were indicted by a federal grand jury in New York for allegedly orchestrating the deadly bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
The list of names will be circulated throughout the world and displayed on the TV show, "America's Most Wanted" on a date yet to be determined.
The State Department's Rewards for Justice program will pay up to $5 million for tips that lead to the capture and prosecution of any of the men on the list. Congress recently added another $20 million to that fund, which has paid out $8.5 million in 22 different terrorist incidents or aborted plots.
"To defeat terrorists, we must identify them, we must find them and we must seize them wherever they are in the world doing their evil deeds," said Secretary of State Colin Powell, who appeared with the president, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Some of the 22 suspected terrorists are connected to the 19 suicidal hijackers who steered four commercial planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania.
Mohammed Atta, the suspected pilot of the plane that first tore into the World Trade Center, was a member of the same Egyptian terrorist group as Atef and al-Zawahiri.
"They have blood on their hands from September 11 and from other acts against America," Powell said.
The terrorist list is modeled after the FBI's Most Wanted List. The FBI has captured 94 percent of the 467 dangerous criminals it has placed on the list since it was created 50 years ago, Mueller said.
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, convicted of being the lead planner of the plot to blow up the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, was apprehended overseas through the FBI's fugitive list.
"With this new program we are spotlighting those who attack freedom itself: terrorists who hide in the shadows and whisper their plots in the dark corners of the world," Mueller said.
So far, the Justice Department has arrested or detained 655 people for questioning in the investigation. Of that number, 165 are being held for immigration violations. Investigators are still seeking 202 others it would like to interview.
Authorities have arrested or detained dozens more in some 23 countries. And 111 countries are changing their banking regulations to stop the flow of money to terrorist groups throughout the world.
Terrorism experts generally agree that the list of wanted terrorists released Wednesday is a good place to start. Not only are key members of bin Laden's organization on the list, they point out, but the list also includes members of other terror networks worth hunting down.
For example, three of the suspects wanted in connection to the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 on June 14,1985 are believed to be members of the terrorist group Lebanese Hezbollah.
Imad Fayez Mugniyah, Hasan Izz-Al-Din and Ali Atwa were all indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly torturing and murdering a U.S. Navy diver and dumping his body on the tarmac of the Beirut International Airport.
And Abdul Rahman Yasin, another suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is believed to have connections to Iran and Iraq. Yousef and Yasin came to the United States with the intention of pulling off the attack. Money flowed from Iran and Germany into the accounts of two of the bombers.
"It is a big mistake to focus solely on bin Laden and not Iraq," said Laurie Mylroie, author of "A Study of Revenge," a book about Saddam Hussein.
Part of the trouble in hunting down terrorists is that their organizations are diffuse, with ties to other organizations throughout the world, said Ian O. Lesser, an expert in counterterrorism at RAND, a nonprofit public policy institution based in California
The trend among terrorist groups is to use "amateurs" enlisted for specific acts of terror, Lesser said. These are people who may not have a long-standing history with a particular group or its top layer of leaders, he said.
As for a connection between bin Laden and another country like Iraq, Lesser said it would not be unexpected.
"It would not be surprising if there was a link to Iraq down the line," Lesser said. And Iraq is not the only country under suspicion for helping bin Laden. There are questions about the involvement of Libya, Syria and Iran, he said.
"But the list is a reasonable list of culprits to start with," Lesser said. "Undoubtedly, the net is going to have to be cast much broader than that."
The list shows that al-Qaida is more of a super-agency of terror with as many as 30 different affiliates, said Michael S. Swetnam, founder of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Virginia and an author of a book about bin Laden.
"This is a good start, but there are many more groups to look at," Swetnam said.