Posted on 03/24/2004 12:08:50 AM PST by Destro
Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
U.S. helped Qatar link Russians to killing
By Vladimir Isachenkov
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — The United States assisted Qatar's special services in the investigation that led to two Russian secret agents being charged with killing a Chechen separatist leader, a top U.S. diplomat said in an interview published yesterday.
The United Nations considered Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev a terrorist. Helping find his killers could roil relations with a U.S. ally in the war on terror.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Steven Pifer, who was in Moscow for talks with Russian officials, told the daily Vremya Novostei newspaper that the United States provided "very insignificant technical assistance" to the Qataris.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman said the United States sent a small team of explosives experts to Doha, the Qatari capital, at Qatar's request.
"We send many such teams in response to requests from governments," the embassy official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The experts played no role in the arrest or investigation of any suspects."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment.
Three Russian intelligence agents were arrested in Doha in February after the killing of Yandarbiyev, the former separatist president of Chechnya. Yandarbiyev died Feb. 13 when a bomb went off in his car.
One of the agents, whom Moscow calls "embassy employees," has been released, but the two others remain in custody. The Russian Foreign Ministry has denied that the intelligence agents had anything to do with Yandarbiyev's killing and has demanded their release.
Moscow warned that a refusal to free the Russian agents would badly hurt relations with the Persian Gulf nation.
Yandarbiyev had lived in Qatar since 2000, and Moscow had sought his extradition on charges of terrorism and links to al-Qaida. President Vladimir Putin claimed last fall that U.S. representatives had met with Yandarbiyev.
Pifer denied that claim in the interview published yesterday, saying that U.S. officials had no contacts with Yandarbiyev last year.
The United Nations put Yandarbiyev last year on a list of people with alleged links to al-Qaida. The United States also put him on a list of international terrorists subject to financial sanctions.
They're closely intertwined. Basically, I see no reason to align myself with a nation-state that can't competently handle their wet work.
Bottom line: this was the sequence of events.
1. Bomb went KABOOM!
2. US forensics team arrived to help Qatari goobermint ID folks who planted bomb. (At the time, it was not known who planted the bomb. For all we knew at the time, it could have been a rival jihadi faction; IDing them could have given us someone else to test the Predator/Hellfire combo out on.)
(Note: There is a significant time lag between events [1] and [2].)
3. Forensics team ID'd folks who planted bomb. (Note: Again, there is a significant time lag between events [2] and [3], which indicates that there was an extremely long delay between events [1] and [3].)
4. Qataris arrest Russians, who were stupid enough to hang around Doha for a good long while after blowing somebody up.
5. Moral of this story: if you're going to violate another nation's sovereignty and kill someone, do not get caught doing so--or do not be around to be apprehended.
The late Timothy McVeigh would disagree with you.
You're either serious about this anti-terrorism thing, or you're not. An American government which was serious about this thing would not be assisting in the apprehension of two Russian agents for killing some chechen terrorist boss who was holed up in Qatar. I'd like to HOPE that this was the work of leftover Clintonistas in the state department or something, and not the direct will of George W. Bush.
Qatar has been our consistent ally in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia was more interested in propping up Saddam than in deposing him. I don't have any heartburn about who we helped in this one.
Apparently there are still people in the US state department who feel sorry for chechens. Far as I'm concerned, they're a bunch of barbarians. The good news is that 200 million Americans are now online, and it will be harder to fool and manipulate them in future times. I assume they'll shortly be demanding that some of these perverted policies get reversed. I'm starting to see this process on FR now; a couple of years back it was hard even convincing anybody on FR that there was a problem with American policy in the Balkans.
Aiding Qatari cops in catching two Russians who did them the favor of killing a chechen terror boss in their midsts is not "helping" them. Other than that, Russia by all right should be a major natural ally of ours and probably would be other than for Slick Clinton bombing an innocent orthodox nation into dust four years ago. Personally, I'd much rather have Russia as an ally in any sort of a fight than Qatar and would be willing to walk the extra mile to achieve that. If we'd depended on Qatar's help dealing with Hitler we'd all be speaking German, and I don't mean Nietzsche or Goethe's kind of German. More like:
'Jawohl, mein Herr' (yeees, massa...)
'Ich komme, mein Herr (I's a commin massa...)
'Bitte schlagen sie mich nicht mehr, mein Herr ('Puleeeze don whup me no mo, massa.....)
.....
The Qataris have their own reasons for helping us, but they are helping us, the Russians have chosen not to. Why should we not help those who have shown themselves to be our friends.
I have no idea what sort of political maneuvering brought Yandarbiyev to Doha, but better here(where he can be watched and we can learn from his activities) than in Chechnya. We might want to send a reassuring message to such a valuable ally that if another nation violates their sovreignty we will stand by them-as they have stood by us (I doubt if doing so was an easy decision for them) we might also want to send a message to the Ruskies that this is our sphere of influence and they can butt out. Sorry if this is more subtle than you would like in your foreign policy.
A couple brave Russians kill a terrorist leader who has links to our (supposed) enemy Al Qaeda, and the U.S. helps an Islamic nation find them.
The U.S. sides with Islamists and bombs thousands of innocent Christians to death in the Balkans.
There's a pattern here.
The Qataris are pro-western, I really have no idea why Yandarbiyev was allowed to live here, but as long as he was living here we could watch him and learn from his activities. That seems to me to be no small thing. Now the Ruskies have put a crimp in our intelligence gathering and I am supposed to believe that that is a good thing?
Rest of article here Chechen rebels phoned Gulf during siege
Sponsoring Terrorism: Syria and Hamas
The Assad regime even allowed the Hamas leaders who had been kicked out of Jordan to resume their political activities in Syria. Although the Hamas political bureau was not officially reestablished in Damascus (or anywhere else), Abu Marzouk and his aides have since worked out of the Syrian capital. Mashaal officially resides in Qatar, where he has not been allowed to undertake any form of political activity, but spends the majority of his time in Syria. The Hamas office in Damascus underwent extensive upgrades to accommodate the larger number of personnel.
Terrorism: Middle Eastern Groups and State Sponsors, 1999
Shaykh Ahmad Yassin
In the past, Yassin has advocated the establishment of an Islamic state in all of what was British-mandate Palestine. During February-June 1998, Yassin visited several Arab and Islamic countries, raising money and vowing that military operations against Israel would continue until all of what was Palestine is liberated. Interspersed with medical treatment in Egypt, Yassin was received at high levels in Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Iran, and Syria. He reportedly received $50 million to 300 million in financial pledges from Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Kuwait said it would allow Hamas to open an office there. In Syria, he was permitted to meet with leaders of other anti-peace process groups. Israel allowed Yassin to return to Gaza after his tour. He is in frail health.
World Trade Center Bombing Connections. There is no direct evidence that bin Ladin was involved in the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. However, bin Ladin appears to have had contacts with some of those involved in that and related plots. Ramzi Ahmad Yusuf, who was convicted in September 1996 of conspiracy to bomb U.S. airliners in Asia (a Phillipines Air flight that killed a Japanese traveler) and, in November 1997, for masterminding the Trade Center bombing, at one time resided at a guest house in Pakistan owned by bin Ladin. Bin Ladin publicly denies knowing Yusuf personally but bin Ladin calls Yusuf’s associate, WaliKhan Amin Shah, a "friend." Shah was arrested in the Phillipines in 1995 for an aborted plot, hatched in conjunction with Yusuf, to assassinate the Pope. 24 CNN reported August 25, 1998 that Yusuf and Khan also plotted, at bin Ladin’s behest, to assassinate President Clinton during his November 1994 trip to Manila. The New York Times reported on July 8, 1999 that, in the mid-1990s, bin Ladin visited an associate in Qatar, Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, who was also wanted by the United States for alleged involvement in ramzi Ahmad Yusuf’s airline bomb plots. The report adds that Qatari officials might have warned Mohammad in advance of an FBI attempt in early 1996 to arrest him in Qatar; 25 he remains at large.
And all of that is supposed to trump the fact that Qatar has provided real support for our efforts against terrorism in Afghanistan (where our war efforts would have been impossible without the use of Qatari facilities) and Iraq-where the war effort would have been immeasurably more difficult without their help (a war that the Russians did everything that they could to oppose).
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