Approximately 15 cargo freighters around the world are believed by the U.S. to be controlled by Al Qaeda or used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or commodities, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. American spy agencies have occasionally lost track of the vessels, which are continually given new fictitious names, repainted or re-registered using invented corporate owners, all while sailing the oceans, the paper said.
Starting with the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000 by Al Qaeda men in an inflatable dinghy, a strike that killed 17 sailors, U.S. officials told the paper they have discerned a steady increase in nautical attacks, some of which were aborted by the planners or uncovered by authorities at the last moment. The latest attack came in October, when the hull of the French oil tanker Limburg was blasted by a speedboat off Yemen, causing a widespread oil spill.,p> In October, a 50-foot wooden freighter, undetected by the Coast Guard, ran aground near downtown Miami and its 220 undocumented Haitian passengers scrambled ashore. Some U.S officials expressed concern at the time that Al Qaeda fighters could infiltrate the country via the same route. Dozens of Navy and allied ships are scouring the Arabian Sea in search of Al Qaeda ships and fighters, in one of the largest naval seahunts since World War II, officials told the paper.
In that part of the world, U.S. naval officers suspect they are as likely to find terrorists aboard a 300-foot freighter as they are aboard a dhow, the small sailing vessel common along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, the paper reported. U.S. officials believe traders sailing small craft have been bribed for months to help Al Qaeda fighters escape from Pakistan to Yemen and other countries, the paper said.
U.S. efforts to track Al Qaeda's activities at sea was helped by last month's capture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, an alleged mastermind of Al Qaeda's nautical strategy who officials say is now cooperating with U.S. interrogators. U.S. officials say they are on alert for signs that Al Qaeda would use exotic craft to launch underwater attacks -- small submarines and "human torpedoes," underwater motor-propelled sleds that divers use, the paper reported. Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger terrorist movement has been developing such equipment for years, Tanner Campbell, vice president of the private Maritime Intelligence Group, which consults for shipping interests, told the paper.
Captured Al Qaeda operative Omar al-Faruq has told interrogators that he planned scuba attacks on U.S. warships in Indonesia, Campbell said. Apparently as a result of his confessions, U.S. officials recently visited hundreds of scuba shops nationwide asking about suspicious visitors, the Post reported.
Another new preoccupation for U.S. intelligence is the thousands of merchant ships worldwide that are registered in "flag of convenience" nations, some of which ask for almost no information from shipping firms that "flag" their vessels with them, the paper reported. Belize allows companies to register vessels online, for example, and countries such as Comoros, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines -- and even landlocked Bolivia -- barely keep track of their ships, U.S. officials told the Post. Navy officials told the paper Al Qaeda has used one shipping fleet flagged in the Pacific island of Tonga to transport operatives around the Mediterranean Sea. The firm -- which is called Nova and is incorporated in Delaware and Romania -- has for years engaged in smuggling illegal immigrants, U.S. and Greek officials said. Its ships also frequently change names and countries of registry, officials told the paper.
Last February, eight Pakistani men jumped ship off one of its freighters, the Twillinger, at the Italian port of Trieste after a trip from Cairo. U.S. officials told the paper they determined that the men -- who lied about being crewmen and carried false documents and large sums of money -- had been sent by Al Qaeda. With the help of Romanian intelligence, U.S. officials began an investigation of the firm and a search for its vessels, according to accounts by the Romanian newspaper Ziua that European officials confirmed.
In August, the captain of another of Nova's freighters, the recently renamed Sara, radioed to maritime authorities in Italy that 15 Pakistani men whom the ship's owner had forced him to take aboard in Casablanca, Morocco, were menacing his crew, the paper reported. Although the 15 claimed they were crewmen when questioned by U.S. and Italian naval officers, the captain said they knew nothing about seafaring.
U.S. officials say they found tens of thousands of dollars, false documents, maps of Italian cities and evidence tying them to Al Qaeda members in Europe, and concluded that they, too, were possibly on a terrorist mission. The 15 were charged in Italy with conspiracy to engage in terrorist acts, the Post said.
This is sorta their mark. Learning to fly planes without learning how to take off or land, saying they are sailors without having a clue how to work a ship.
This "I'm a clueless Middle Easterner, teach me" stuff has outlived it's usefullness. At least I hope.