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Thanks to CallMeJoe for this memory jogger post.
Note: the following post is a quote:
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1614188/posts?page=316#316

Zawahiri and Mughniyeh:

The insurgency in Iraq began in August 2003. It is worth remembering that reports were ciruclating at that exact time that Mughniyeh and Zawahiri were seen leaving Iran. I think the rumors at the time were that they were headed for Turkey, then Iraq.

This is where it all started. September 11th to Iraq to now. We have come full circle. The next phase of their jihad is here.

These two conspired to perpetrate the most heinous act of mass murder in U.S. history. They have not stopped conspiring. And we await yet another message from one of them.

The torrent of missives in recent months from Zawahiri and UBL and the white-hot rhetoric of Ahmadinejad, Mughniyeh's longtime associate through the IRGC Qods Force, that directly threatens the US with attack, indicates that they are not finished. These are not men who believe they are beaten in any sense. Their jihadi "empire" is about to "strike back" - - along with those who backed them (Iran-Iraq-North Korea)

Zawahiri is the true head of al Qaeda. Mughniyeh is the operational commander of Hezbollah. And Ahmadinejad runs the largest terror state in history with connections to both.

Their mutual history is long. And they have worked their entire lives to get to this one moment - - a final battle.

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/august/08_14_1.html

IRAN: LEADING INSURGENTS LEAVE COUNTRY

LONDON [MENL] -- Iran has again asserted that leading Islamic insurgents have fled the country amid fear of being extradited to their countries of origin.

The escape by the insurgents come as Iranian and Western sources report a power struggle between President Mohammed Khatami and the ruling Islamic clergy over the fate of Al Qaida and other anti-U.S. insurgents in Iran. The sources said Khatami has launched an effort to capture Al Qaida members wanted by Saudi Arabia while the ruling clergy has sought to protect them.

Al Qaida's Ayman Zawahiri and Hizbullah's Imad Mughniyeh were said to have left Iran over the last two weeks, the Iranian sources said. The sources said they did not know where the insurgents were headed.

Zawahiri has been a leader of Egypt's Jihad and the number two member of Al Qaida. Mughniyeh was described as the foreign operations director of Hizbullah and the leading operative for Iran.

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr010919_1_n.shtml

19 September 2001

Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view

(snipped)

Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.

Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world’s foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden.

The two men have not been seen for some time. Mughniyeh is probably the world’s most wanted outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognisable. Zawahiri is thought to be based in Egypt. He could be Bin Laden’s chief representative outside Afghanistan.

The Iraqis, who for several years paid smaller groups to do their dirty work, were quick to discover the advantages of Al-Qaeda. The Israeli sources claim that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri.

According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured last October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan. The Iraqis are also reported to have established strong ties with Imad Mughniyeh.

"We’ve only got scraps of information, not the full picture," admits one intelligence source, "but it was good enough for us to send a warning six weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was expected. One of our indications suggested that Imad Mughniyeh met with some of his dormant agents on secret trips to Germany. We believe that the operational brains behind the New-York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, who were probably financed and got some logistical support from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (SSO)."

Mughniyeh was the only one believed to have tried it before. On April 12th 1997, he was reported to be only two hours away from achieving the highest goal of any terrorist organisation (until last week): blowing up an Israeli El-Al airliner above Tel Aviv. A man carrying a forged British passport with the name Andrew Jonathan Neumann was in a Jerusalem hotel preparing a bomb he was supposed to take on board an El-Al flight leaving Israel, when it accidentally went off. Andrew Jonathan Neumann was very badly injured but strong enough to reveal later to the Israelis that he was not British but Lebanese, and that his operation was supposed to be a special "gift" to Israel from Imad Mughniyeh. . .

Our Israeli sources claim to see Mughniyeh’s signature on the wreckage in New York and Washington. How to counter this kind of terrorism? "To fight these bastards you don’t need a military attack," said an experienced Israeli commando officer. "You only need to adopt Israel’s assassination policy."

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP47303

February 21, 2003 No.473

Top Iranian Defector On Iran's Collaboration with Iraq, North Korea, Al-Qa'ida, and Hizbullah

On Iranian Support of Hizbullah's Actions Against the U.S.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: "You mean you went [to Lebanon]?"

Zakiri: "I have visited most of the countries in the region, but I meant that the [Revolutionary] Guards established bases in Lebanon, and used them for recruiting and training the revolutionaries and gradually bringing them into [carrying out] their schemes against the Americans, such as blowing up the Marines headquarters in Beirut [1983] and attacking the American Embassy. Imad Mughnia and some of the [Revolutionary] Guards commanders had a major part in these actions. Imad Mughnia and some of the [Revolutionary] Guards officers commanded the operation of hijacking the American TWA airplane and the killing of one of its passengers. Mughnia remained liaison officer with Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri and with commanders of other fundamentalist organization."

Al-Qa'ida Request for "Help to Carry Out a Most Important Mission in the Land of the 'Great Satan'" – Turned Down

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: "Did you know about the plans to attack the World Trade Center in New York?"

Zakiri: "No, but we had in our headquarters models of the [WTC] two towers, the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA building at Langley. Thus, Imad Mughnia came to Iran, met with a number of top officials in the security apparatus of the Leader [Khamenei] and gave them a letter from Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, which said: 'We need your help to carry out a most important mission in the land of the 'Great Satan.'' The issue was presented but his request was denied. Afterwards, it was decided by the head of our department and Natiq Nouri's deputy, head of the investigations section in the Leader's [Khamenei's] Office and his representative in the Higher Council for Security, to entrust Mughnia with keeping the relations with Al-Zawahiri and his comrades, provided he did not get involved in their activity."

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: "Where is Imad Mughnia today?"

Zakiri: "He is still in Iran and is continuing his activity. I think that he planned the escape of dozens of Al-Qa'ida men to Iran, some of them with their families. Before that, bin Laden's wife arrived, the young Yemenite woman with her son, and we handed them over to Yemen. Perhaps Sa'ad Osama bin Laden [too] entered Iran through Mughnia."

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA12703

March 11, 2003 No.127

Radical Islamist Profiles (3): Ayman Muhammad Rabi' Al-Zawahiri: The Making of an Arch Terrorist
By Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli*

The following report appeared in the winter 2002 edition of the journal "Terrorism and Political Violence."[1] It was authored by Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli, senior analyst of MEMRI's Middle East Economic Studies Program.

(snip)

Al-Zawahiri's biggest success was sending his and Al-Qaida's volunteers to Somalia to fight the American presence in that country and eventually causing the U.S. to withdraw. His volunteers fought under the command of a young Egyptian man, Ali Al-Rashidi, also known as Abu-Ubaida Al-Banshiri. From Somalia, Al-Banshiri was sent to Kenya to establish a base of operations for terrorist activities against the United States in East Africa. Al-Banshiri drowned in an alleged accident in Lake Victoria. After a period of uncertainty, Al-Banshiri was replaced by another Egyptian, Subhi Abu Sitta, also known as Abu Hafas Al-Masri who was responsible for organizing the bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam. In a final incarnation, Subhi Abu Sitta became Muhammad Atef, who was to become the field commander of Al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan. One of Abu Sitta's daughters married bin Laden's son, Muhammad, in January 2001. An American bomb killed Abu Sitta/Atef in Kabul in November 2001.

Toward the end of 1994 and early 1995 attempts were made by Al-Zawahiri, under the guidance of bin Laden, to coordinate the activities of the various Islamic terrorist movements to carry out sabotage activities against the United States in order to break its 'hegemony' in the Middle East. Meetings were held in Tehran, Khartoum and Cyprus (city unknown) with the participation of Imad Fadhia al-Mughniyah (of Hezbollah, wanted by the U.S. for murdering an American passenger on a commercial airliner and dumping his body on Beirut airport's tarmac), Fathi Al-Shiqaqi (of Palestinian Islamic Jihad), Musa Abu Marzuq (of Hamas), in addition to Sheikh Abd Al-Majid Al-Zindani from Yemen as well as representatives from the Nahdha Movement in Tunisia, and Al-Jama'a Al-Islamiyya of Pakistan. In the last meeting, held in Khartoum in April 1995, Al-Zawahiri laid down three fundamental directions for the next stage of the struggle: first, increase the effectiveness of the Islamic networks in London and New York, particularly in Brooklyn; second, increase the effectiveness of the Islamic militias in the Balkans; and third, provide greater support to the armed Islamic groups in Somalia and Ethiopia.

The conferees agreed to establish a high-level coordinating body of the armed Islamic movements comprising Al-Zawahiri, Imad Fadhia Al-Mughniyah and Ahmad Salem. In less than a month, this body met in Cyprus and agreed to increase the number of volunteers to Bosnia and to ask Al-Zawahiri to visit the U.S. to see first hand the modus operandi of the Islamic networks there. Al-Zawahiri visited the U.S. in 1996 and helped raise a considerable amount of money for "the widows and orphans" of Afghanistan.[27]

Upon reestablishing themselves in Afghanistan in 1996, the two leaders bin Laden and Zawahiri began articulating the position of Al-Qa'ida vis-à-vis the United States. They concluded that America was the Number One enemy of Muslims everywhere and that its support of some Arab regimes, mainly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, has been responsible for the failed efforts to topple those regimes. It was at the end of 1997 that bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri declared war on Americans everywhere, after an initial statement of war in 1996 against the American presence in the region only. Afterwards, the objectives were expanded. On 23 February 1998 bin Laden issued a declaration announcing the creation of "The World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and the Crusaders [Christians]." A Fatwa (edict) accompanied the declaration by bin Laden that "the killing of Americans –military and civilians—and the looting of their properties is a duty for Muslims everywhere." In addition to bin Laden, the declaration was signed by Al-Zawahiri as leader of Jama'at al-Jihad and by Rifa'i Taha, the man in charge of the Advisory Council of the Islamic Movement in Egypt. From this union between Al-Qa'ida and the Egyptian Jihad group "grew an apocalyptic vision that in many ways resonates more of Al-Zawahiri's than of bin Laden's"[28]

316 posted on 07/26/2006 10:40:11 PM PDT by callmejoe
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