Nearly 400 Al-Qaeda Members And Other Terror Suspects In Iran: Newspaper

TurkishPress ^ | July 15 2004 | NA

[Dog]

DUBAI, July 15 (AFP) - Hundreds of alleged members of Al-Qaeda, including 18 of its top leaders, and other terror groups are living in Iran, some under tight security, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported Thursday.

"More than 384 members of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations are present in Iran, including 18 senior leaders of Osama bin Laden`s network," the London-based daily said, citing a senior source in the Iranian presidency.

The Saudi-owned newspaper said the terrorist leaders were living under tight protection, some of them in villas in the Namak Abrud region, near the town of Chalous on the Caspian coast, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Tehran.

Others are living in Lavizan, in the north-west of the capital, and which also houses a large military complex, it added.

The report could not be verified in Tehran.

According to the source, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad convinced Tehran, during his visit to Iran early this month, of the "seriousness" of using Al-Qaeda elements in Iran as a card in its policy with the United States.

As a consequence, Tehran handed over wanted Saudi militant Khaled bin Odeh bin Mohammed al-Harbi to the Saudi authorities, the source added.

Riyadh has said the disabled militant, suspected of being an Al-Qaeda figure close to bin Laden, surrendered on Tuesday under an amnesty after contacting the Saudi embassy in Iran.

In 2003, Iran confirmed it was holding senior Al-Qaeda members but refused to identify them. Tehran has said the detainees may stand trial in Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said last month his country had given Saudi Arabia some useful information concerning members of Osama bin Laden`s network that it was detaining.

[freedom44]

The general Iranian populace is Muslim and they love us, but i do agree about the Government and Al Queda connection.

[Boot Hill]

MAP TIME!

8   “The Saudi-owned newspaper said the terrorist leaders were living under tight protection, some of them in villas in the Namak Abrud region, near the town of Chalous on the Caspian coast, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Tehran. Others are living in Lavizan, in the north-west of the capital, and which also houses a large military complex, it added.”

Namak Abrud:   Populated place, located within the red circle in the first map below.

Chalous:   Native name: Chalus, a populated place found on the map about 20 km east of Namak Abrud.

Lavizan:   A suburb of Tehran, located 13 km NNE of the center of Tehran. While Lavizan is not shown on the map below, it is located approximately at the top of the letter "T" in Tehran.

multimap.com

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The above map came from MultiMap.com. Click the logo on the left to visit the best site on the internet for accurate and detailed maps of the entire world.

 
To orient yourself regionally, find Tehran on the map below and in the map above.

--Boot Hill

[Dog]

Not a bit surprising that the AQ foot soldiers are dying in the trenches and their leaders are leading the good life in a Caspian Sea resort villa.

[jeffers]

Access to both Tehran and the Caspian.

Surprise, surprise.

A case of choice says the US has no comment.

[jeffers]

"Work accidents..."

Well put.

[jeffers]

"...one suspects that Bush just wanted his own launching pad for Iran from his base in Iraq..."

You can't drive on Tehran with 23 unopposed divisions on your left flank.

Then too, Iraq had value in the following equation:

2 towers = 2 flags

The only real question left is whether Syria will cave after Tehran falls, or will they force us to implement regime change there as well. My money says they cave, and that Nayaf and his followers in SA hasten to follow them.

[bitt]

I am more interested in the shake and bake stage, LONG before ground troops go in.

[The Scourge of Yazid]

Good call!

Anyone who has read anything about international Islamic (especially Sunni-centered) terrorism over the past decade, from Bergen, to Bodansky to Emerson to Pipes, would have already realized the enormous role played by Iran (in association with The Sudan) as a facilitator for Bin Laden and Zawahiri's diabolical plans.

Stretching back to Islamic Jihad's devastating attacks on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, these cretins have been attempting to destabilize unfavorable governments and bolster those that they consider to be hospitable to their overall aims.

The Iranian dictatorship falls under that rubric pretty nicely, don't you think?

[nuconvert]

If you remember, Lavizan came up in the news a couple of weeks ago. There were aerial photos (satellite photos?). It was one of the locations reported to have been bull-dozed over....one of the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't nuclear facilities.

[nuconvert]

Thanks for the ping.

[The Scourge of Yazid]

No problem.

[Boot Hill]

8	“If you remember, Lavizan came up in the news a couple of weeks ago. There were aerial photos (satellite photos?). It was one of the locations reported to have been bull-dozed over....one of the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't nuclear facilities.”

Good memory, nuconvert. Here it is.

-----begin article-----
Iran satellite images raise nuclear questions

12:25 21 June 04
Rob Edwards
NewScientist.com news service

The top image was taken 11 August 2003, the lower image
on 22 March 2004 (Image: DigitalGlobe/ISIS)

Nuclear inspectors are expected to visit a site in the Iranian capital, Tehran, following evidence from satellite photographs that it was scraped clean earlier in 2004.

The Lavizan Shiyan Technical Research Centre, in a north-eastern suburb of the city, has been under mounting suspicion of harbouring secret military activities since it was named by an Iranian opposition group in 2003.

Now two commercial satellite images, the first on 11 August 2003 and the second on 22 March 2004, show that the site's buildings have been razed, its features obliterated and its ground cleared.

"The images show that Iran has taken dramatic steps that make it difficult to discover what was happening there," says Corey Hinderstein from the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington DC. It was the institute which found and released the photographs.

Independent nuclear experts regard the satellite photographs of Lavizan Shiyan as important new evidence. "Iran is clearly trying to hide something - and there is suggestive, though not conclusive, evidence that the something is nuclear," says Matt Bunn, a nuclear policy adviser to former US President Bill Clinton, now at Harvard University. "Iran clearly owes the world an explanation."

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a defence policy group based in Alexandria, Virginia, agrees: "The images suggest that there are important elements of Iran's nuclear program that have not been disclosed by Iran, and may not be reflected in the IAEA's current understanding of Iran's nuclear efforts."

Radiation monitor

The National Council for Resistance of Iran claimed in May 2003 that Lavizan Shiyan was a research facility for biological weapons. But since then investigations by the US government, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other countries have uncovered evidence that the site had imported a radiation monitor and bought spare parts for it.

This does not prove that nuclear weapons were being developed on the site, Hinderstein points out. But the monitor was "out of place" at a location which Iran had not declared as having any nuclear activities.

The IAEA told New Scientist that it had only just seen the satellite images. "We have asked for clarification from Iran and will visit if we deem it important," said an agency spokeswoman. "At the moment, we do not know whether it is nuclear related."

Hossein Mousavian, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA in Vienna, told reporters that inspectors would be able to visit the site. "There is nothing there," he said. If it has been thoroughly cleaned up, inspectors may have difficulty detecting residual radioactivity or chemicals.

Iran has consistently denied that is developing nuclear weapons, but insisted on its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to expand its civil nuclear power programme. One of the technologies it has been developing has been uranium enrichment, which can be used to make fuel for power stations or bombs.

At a meeting in Vienna last week, the IAEA's 35 governors approved a resolution deploring Iran's lack of "full, timely and proactive" co-operation in disclosing its nuclear activities. In response Hasan Rowhani, head of the country's Supreme National Security Council, warned that it might restart uranium enrichment, suspended in October 2003 at the request of the UK, France and Germany.

-----end article----

Very interesting photos. They really tried to clean that place up. But it's one thing to clean it up visually and entirely another thing to clean it up so that sensitive instruments can't detect what was once there. They might have some more on this topic over at GlobalSecurity.com.

--Boot Hill

[nuconvert]

There are several other locations they did the same thing.

And the regime's response when called on it?

Huh? What nuclear facilities? You're mistaken. You must have pictures of somewhere else. (to paraphrase)

[Grampa Dave]

Syria and N Korea has had a few "Work Accidents" the past couple of years. Without Osha, Work Accidents can be a real bitch to an Axis of Terror country.

[hershey]

It's really too bad these killers don't blow up a few dozen Iranian businesses, cars, buses, shopping malls, police stations. They deserve every horror that comes their way, and sooner or later, it will happen. Arab govts. who connive at wholesale murder richly deserve a taste of what they export...mullahs and clerics deliberately keep their own citizenry illiterate, brainwashed and poverty stricken. Eventually it will occur to the dumbest terrorist that revolution begins at home. Bush was right on the money when he called them the 'Axis of evil'.

[Boot Hill]

INTEL ALERT !

Is it just a coincidence that Iran is providing the terrorists sanctuary in Chalus and Lavizan (see thread story), or are the terrorists there to work on nuclear weapons??? Keep reading...

The article from New Scientist News Service, posted in number 52 above, identifies Lavizan as the site of an Iranian nuclear facility. While the article describes the facility at Shiyan Technical Research Center as having recently been moved, given the proximity of Iran's other nuclear facilities in Tehran, it can't have moved very far.

Now comes this revelation.

“Chalus has been reported as the locale of an underground nuclear weapons development facility located inside a mountain south of this coastal town. The facility has been variously reported as being staffed by experts from Russia, China and North Korea.” -- GlobalSecurity.org

Compare the above map to the Tehran/Chalus area map in Post #42

Googling "nuclear" + "chalus" produced 160 hits
Googling "nuclear" + "Lavizan" produced 1560 hits

The location of the AQ terrorists at Chalus and Lavizan gets more intriguing the more one looks at it. I don't view the locating of AQ terrorists in both of those nuclear cities as a coincidence. If Iran is helping AQ with nuclear terrorism, it's almost as if they are begging to get themsleves nuked.

--Boot Hill

[Boot Hill]

Both of you might like to check out the Russia/North Korea/China/AQ aspect of post #56.

--Boot Hill

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Its having trouble taking the index, did we change the system again?

Wierd... it's OK now.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks.

It is probably no accident that al Qaeda thugs are in that area.

[Grampa Dave]

It sounds like GW's nut crackers are being removed from Iraq and being positioned around Iran and probably Syria.

I'm sure that Mr Blair's and the Aussie SAS teams are well in country sizing up allies, and who to take out.

The Whoopi Goldberg will be flying shortly after election day in Iran.

In the mean time a lot of industrial accidents will be happening in Iran and Syria.