Iraq's Tie to Al-Qaeda Terrorists, Airline Hijackings

Aviation Week & Space Technology ^ | January 7, 2002 | Michael A. Dornheim

[Republican_Strategist]

Iraq's Tie to Al-Qaeda Terrorists, Airline Hijackings

From: Aviation Week & Space Technology
Headline: Satellite Photos Believed To Show Airliner for Training Hijackers
Byline: Michael A. Dornheim
Dateline: Los Angeles, January 7, 2002

Satellite images of a facility near Baghdad show an airliner that Iraqi defectors say is used to train terrorists in the art of hijacking.Space Imaging, which operates the Ikonos civilian surveillance satellite, was prompted to look for the aircraft in existing photos after a ''Frontline'' television show interviewed two Iraqi defectors who described the hijacker training and the aircraft used for the mock attacks.

One of them drew a map of the Salman Pak training area, and Space Imaging was able to find the facility and the aircraft in photographs taken on Apr. 25, 2000, of an area about 15 mi. southeast of Baghdad on the Tigris River. The zoomed-in photograph is a close match to the hand-drawn map, lending credence to the defector's story. He is Sabah Khodada, and said he worked at the secret Salman Pak complex for about six months as an administrator. The facility is run by the Iraqi secret service, and is used to teach assassination, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, buses and trains and other terrorist operations, Khodada said. ''This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the whole world.''

Foreigners were trained separately from Iraqis, both Khodada and the other defector said.The aircraft is sitting by itself far from an airport. ''In this camp, I saw [people] getting trained [in] situations where security will not allow you to get weapons into the plane - then what you need to do is to use...very advanced terrorizing methods,'' Khodada said on the television show.''They are even trained how to use utensils for food, like forks and knives provided in the plane....

They are trained how to plant horror within the passengers by doing such actions. Even pens and pencils can be used for that purpose. They can do it, and they can overcome any plane because they are very well physically trained, and they are very strong. They can overtake a plane in a very efficient manner. ''Training will include the way they would sit in the plane, how they enter the plane.... They will, for example, sit in twos, and they will assign who will sit to the right of the other guy, and who will sit to the other side. Two will sit in the front, two will sit in the back and two will sit, for example, in the middle. They are trained to jump all at one time, and make a declaration that 'We are going to take over the plane. And nobody [move], don't move, don't make any moves.'''

They will probably use a pencil or a pen, or even sunglasses or prescription glasses. Somebody will hold the crew members of the plane from their chins upward tightly, and you will pull it on his neck. He will think you are going to slaughter him and kill him. Including in this training is terrorizing by making very, very loud noises and screaming all over the plane. That will [create] the planned horror, and will terrorize the plane, including the crew.'

"The aircraft was also used to practice fighting a hijacking, Khodada said. He called it a Boeing 707, but the position of the wing on the fuselage better fits an aft-engined aircraft.The camp was visited by United Nations inspectors on a holiday in January 1995. The inspectors ''went all the way inside the camp,'' Khodada said. ''They saw the plane, they saw the train, and they didn't care anything about it, because [the commanders] told the United Nations, 'This is a camp to train police, antiriot police.'''

Khodada said he was sure the Sept. 11 attacks involved Iraqi training because Osama bin Laden was not capable of such a high-level operation. ''These kind of attacks must be, and have to be, organized by a capable state, such as Iraq,'' he said. ''Even the grouping; those groups were divided into 5-6 people in the group. How about the training on planes? Some of these groups were taken and trained to drive airplanes at the School of Aviation, north of Baghdad.... Everything coincides with what's happening.''

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