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Al Qaeda was trained in Iraqi terror camps

GWYNNE ROBERTS

EVIDENCE is now emerging of a shadowy military alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden which involves training al Qaeda fighters to use chemical and biological weapons in sabotage operations in Europe and the United States.

US claims of a direct link between bin Laden and Saddam have fallen on deaf ears in Europe. But an investigation I conducted for PBS, the American state broadcaster, reveals such a connection really exists.

Iraq's ruling Ba'ath Party was indeed once hostile to Islamic fundamentalism. But times have changed. The Iraqi media often refer to their leader as the great Mujahed (holy warrior) Saddam Hussein. His speeches are peppered with Koranic

references; his regime has launched a "faith campaign"; senior Ba'athists are learning the Koran by heart, and religious instruction is being stepped up in schools.

In the late 1990s, senior Iraqi defectors reaching Lebanon, Turkey, northern Iraq, and Europe even began to suggest that Saddam's embrace of Islam and his hatred of America had caused a seismic shift in Middle Eastern politics, resulting in an alliance of convenience.

The first hint that something unusual was happening was picked up in 1997 by Jane's Intelligence Review. It reported that Saudi and Palestinian dissidents were being trained in Iraq at secret camps run by a Iraqi military intelligence group known as Unit 999.

Abu Khalil arrived in Ankara last year after escaping from Iraq. His first post was as a Unit 999 trainer.

In 1994, Unit 999 was tasked with training non-Iraqis from all over the Middle East and North Africa. "Many of them were very Islamic, very religious and very radical," he said. "I knew the head of the camp and he told me they came from countries like Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Palestine.

"They were trained in many different techniques - how to lay bombs and how to use chemical weapons. They were taught to do operations outside Iraq, never inside."

In 1994, Unit 999 also started training Saddam's Fedayeen, a brutal militia. Abu Mohammed, who fled to Turkey three years ago, told me that in 1997 and 1998 Islamic extremists were being instructed to use poison gas and biological weapons in behind-the-lines operations in the Middle East and the West. Unit 999 ran a course for a number of extremist Middle Eastern groups, including al Qaeda.

Mohammed said he was recruited into Saddam's Fedayeen in 1997. His first encounter with bin Laden's fighters occurred that same year when he went to Salman Pak.

"I went there with 70 other officers. I noticed people queueing for food. The camp manager said to me, 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden's group, and the PKK and the Mujahidin e' Kalq.' So, I knew at the beginning who we were training with."

Mohammed said a year later he attended another training course at Salman Pak and Unit 999 where he encountered al Qaeda fighters.

"There was also training in the use of biological and chemical weapons there but they were not Iraqis doing it - only foreigners. In the training areas there is a field especially for weapons of mass destruction. Here, experts hold lectures and conduct biological experiments, theoretical experiments, of course, on how to place explosives, or how to pollute specific areas."

Mohammed added: "They had maps of the USA, Britain, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia."

The training described by the defectors raises the dreadful spectre that Iraq was passing on expertise learned from the East Germans during the cold war. At Massow, a camp just south of Berlin, secret police instructors taught Iraqis, Yemenis and Palestinians, among others, how to attack civilian targets.

A former Stasi lieutenant colonel said: "The courses emphasised chemical weapons which attack the nervous system such as yperit, the nerve gas, Sarin, and binary chemicals. They were also taught how to deploy bacteriological weapons - influenza, anthrax, pneumonia and yellow fever."

Fighters were taught to terrorise civilians by attacking railways stations, airports and public gatherings. The contamination of water sources, roads and large surface areas was also emphasised.

Gwynne Roberts is an Iraq specialist and documentary film maker

-Feb 13th