Posted on 02/18/2003 4:47:00 PM PST by knak
Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources.
The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country.
Uncovering such a deadly cargo on board would give George Bush and Tony Blair the much sought-after "smoking gun" needed to justify an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, in the face of massive public opposition to war.
The ships were chartered by a shipping agent based in Egypt and are flying under the flags of three different countries. The continued radio silence since they left port, in addition to the captains' failure to provide information on their cargoes or their destinations, is a clear breach of international maritime laws.
The vessels are thought to have spent much of their time in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean, berthing at sea when they need to collect supplies of fuel and food. They have berthed in a handful of Arab countries, including Yemen.
American and British military forces are believed to be reluctant to stop and search the vessels for fear that any intervention might result in them being scuttled. If they were carrying chemical and biological weapons, or fissile nuclear material, and they were to be sunk at sea, the environmental damage could be catastrophic.
Washington and London might also want to orchestrate any raids so that they can present the ships as "evidence" that President Saddam is engaged in "material breach" of UN resolutions. This could provide the trigger for military strikes. While security sources in London last night were unable to provide information on any surveillance operation, the movement of the three ships is the source of growing concern among maritime and intelligence experts.
A shipping industry source told The Independent: "If Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction, then a very large part of its capability could be afloat on the high seas right now. These ships have maintained radio silence for long periods and, for a considerable time, they have been steaming around in ever-decreasing circles."
The ships are thought to have set sail from a country other than Iraq to avoid running the gauntlet of Western naval vessels patrolling the Gulf. Defence experts believe that, if they are carrying weapons of mass destruction, these could have been smuggled out through Syria or Jordan.
Despite hundreds of searches by UN inspectors, no evidence has yet been found of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. A succession of "dossiers" presented by Downing Street has been criticised for providing inaccurate information, with the most recent one subject to ridicule because a student's 11-year-old doctoral thesis was being passed off as current intelligence. There was a further setback for Washington and London when the accuracy of satellite photographs shown to the United Nations by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, purporting to show Iraqi officials moving incriminating evidence from a suspected site, was questioned by Hans Blix.
Mr Blix said: "The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of an imminent inspection."
Attempts to link the Iraqi regime to al-Qa'ida and other Islamist groups have also been met with scepticism. The UN says, though, that Iraq has failed to account for 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents from the war against Iran; to reveal the whereabouts of 6,500 missing chemical rockets; to produce evidence it has destroyed 8,500 litres of anthrax; and to account for 380 rocket engines smuggled into Iraq with chemicals used for missile propellants and control systems.
Intelligence reports, and some Iraqi defectors, have maintained that incriminating material and documents relating to weapons of mass destruction have been buried in remote parts of the country and have also been hidden in a variety of locations including homes of officials and scientists, as well as mosques. There have also been claims that chemical and biological products have been smuggled into Syria.
No one heard them callin'---no one came at all---'cause they were too busy watchin those old raindrops fall...
You think because you haven't heard it before now, no one in the intel community has? Or that Bush and company are stumbling around blind? I've got two words for you to think about.
Strategery.
Yes, I remember seeing this little gem, too. That's quite a list. I think it deserves a post of its own.
And that goes for the A-Q fleet, also. I would not be surprised if the entire known fleet becomes habitats for marine life once hostilities commence.
Of course, the State Department might prefer that each simply suffers some unknown catastrophe until the fleet is finally eliminated. I feel certain that could be arranged, also.
Satellite telephones are one way the ships could communicate. Depending on how far apart they travel, they may have some short range directional antennae, or they may be operating on a schedule of some kind, putting into port at regular intervals and communicating via messengers. There is very little that they would need to communicate that couldn't be passed in everyday, but coded, conversation.
As far as them scuttling the ships, they may already be wired to explode with the push of a button. Without knowing how the crew would intend on scuttling it, any commando raid could very easily find themselves landing on a sinking ship.
- "Direct Links Detailed: Three Prisoners in N. Iraq Outline Links Between Al Qaeda and Iraq," Reporter's Notebook, By Don Dahler, ABC News, January 11, 2003
(snip)
Shihab Ali is in prison for the murder of an Iraqi dissident who had been living in Iran. He was captured at a Kurdish checkpoint and found in his possession were some photographic negatives which, when developed, were a full-color record of the grisly deed. When confronted in court with the photos, he confessed all. He's still confessing. "Killing is something I did. I killed. This was for the Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda."
Shihab Ali told me he has done numerous operations for al Qaeda and Iraq over the years, including numerous assassinations and smuggling drugs and guns. Two years ago, he says he was hired by an Iraqi intelligence officer, Othman Salman Daoud, to smuggle 30 refrigerator "motors" — which I took to mean "compressors" — from Iraq to Iran, where they were handed over to men he describes as Afghan members of al Qaeda. He was paid $10,000 each for the items, which usually contain the refrigerant gas Freon, but, in this case, contained something more mysterious. Shihab Ali was warned it was dangerous to himself, and to any children he might hope to have.
We have no way of knowing what was in those compressors, or what their ultimate destination was. "Only God knows what was in them," he says. Which is not entirely true; he says the compressors were ordered by the man Shihab Ali met five days later in Afghanistan — bin Laden.
There were nine other operations he was expected to work on, he said, at the time he was caught, but he was reluctant to give away the details. Finally, I convinced him to tell me about one that was supposed to have happened last year. He says he and a partner were given $16 million to go to the Gulf and buy some large ships, equip them with 500 kilos of high-explosive, and set sail under Iranian flags. The crews would slip away in motorboats after being replaced with men willing to commit suicide, who would then enter Kuwaiti waters, according to Shihab Ali, and ram the ships into American tankers or military vessels.
"The only reason this didn't happen is because you were captured?" I asked him as my mind filled with the mental image of the extent of death and damage such an attack might have caused.
"Yes, if I hadn't been arrested, I would have done it."
It can't beat the brutal, Superman like, movie plot, where our own jet airliners smashed into our Pentagon, and tallest building, collapsing them, killing thousands.
This stuff is all to real. Movies can't compete.
Viruses need to live in certain cells (labs use stuff like monkey kidney cells) to stay alive for extended periods. These cells wouldn't survive extended periods in an enviroment of just plain salt water and cold.
Spores like Anthrax may make it but the dilution alone would render it relatively impotent.
Approximately 15 cargo freighters around the world are believed by the U.S. to be controlled by Al Qaeda or used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or commodities, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. American spy agencies have occasionally lost track of the vessels, which are continually given new fictitious names, repainted or re-registered using invented corporate owners, all while sailing the oceans, the paper said.
Starting with the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000 by Al Qaeda men in an inflatable dinghy, a strike that killed 17 sailors, U.S. officials told the paper they have discerned a steady increase in nautical attacks, some of which were aborted by the planners or uncovered by authorities at the last moment. The latest attack came in October, when the hull of the French oil tanker Limburg was blasted by a speedboat off Yemen, causing a widespread oil spill.,p> In October, a 50-foot wooden freighter, undetected by the Coast Guard, ran aground near downtown Miami and its 220 undocumented Haitian passengers scrambled ashore. Some U.S officials expressed concern at the time that Al Qaeda fighters could infiltrate the country via the same route. Dozens of Navy and allied ships are scouring the Arabian Sea in search of Al Qaeda ships and fighters, in one of the largest naval seahunts since World War II, officials told the paper.
In that part of the world, U.S. naval officers suspect they are as likely to find terrorists aboard a 300-foot freighter as they are aboard a dhow, the small sailing vessel common along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, the paper reported. U.S. officials believe traders sailing small craft have been bribed for months to help Al Qaeda fighters escape from Pakistan to Yemen and other countries, the paper said.
U.S. efforts to track Al Qaeda's activities at sea was helped by last month's capture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, an alleged mastermind of Al Qaeda's nautical strategy who officials say is now cooperating with U.S. interrogators. U.S. officials say they are on alert for signs that Al Qaeda would use exotic craft to launch underwater attacks -- small submarines and "human torpedoes," underwater motor-propelled sleds that divers use, the paper reported. Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger terrorist movement has been developing such equipment for years, Tanner Campbell, vice president of the private Maritime Intelligence Group, which consults for shipping interests, told the paper.
Captured Al Qaeda operative Omar al-Faruq has told interrogators that he planned scuba attacks on U.S. warships in Indonesia, Campbell said. Apparently as a result of his confessions, U.S. officials recently visited hundreds of scuba shops nationwide asking about suspicious visitors, the Post reported.
Another new preoccupation for U.S. intelligence is the thousands of merchant ships worldwide that are registered in "flag of convenience" nations, some of which ask for almost no information from shipping firms that "flag" their vessels with them, the paper reported. Belize allows companies to register vessels online, for example, and countries such as Comoros, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines -- and even landlocked Bolivia -- barely keep track of their ships, U.S. officials told the Post. Navy officials told the paper Al Qaeda has used one shipping fleet flagged in the Pacific island of Tonga to transport operatives around the Mediterranean Sea. The firm -- which is called Nova and is incorporated in Delaware and Romania -- has for years engaged in smuggling illegal immigrants, U.S. and Greek officials said. Its ships also frequently change names and countries of registry, officials told the paper.
Last February, eight Pakistani men jumped ship off one of its freighters, the Twillinger, at the Italian port of Trieste after a trip from Cairo. U.S. officials told the paper they determined that the men -- who lied about being crewmen and carried false documents and large sums of money -- had been sent by Al Qaeda. With the help of Romanian intelligence, U.S. officials began an investigation of the firm and a search for its vessels, according to accounts by the Romanian newspaper Ziua that European officials confirmed.
In August, the captain of another of Nova's freighters, the recently renamed Sara, radioed to maritime authorities in Italy that 15 Pakistani men whom the ship's owner had forced him to take aboard in Casablanca, Morocco, were menacing his crew, the paper reported. Although the 15 claimed they were crewmen when questioned by U.S. and Italian naval officers, the captain said they knew nothing about seafaring.
U.S. officials say they found tens of thousands of dollars, false documents, maps of Italian cities and evidence tying them to Al Qaeda members in Europe, and concluded that they, too, were possibly on a terrorist mission. The 15 were charged in Italy with conspiracy to engage in terrorist acts, the Post said.
AUCKLAND - In a persisting diplomatic nightmare, the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga is being linked to the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden. The nation of just 109,000 people has acquired notoriety for get-rich-quick schemes, but this time it runs the risk of incurring the wrath of the United States.
The Washington Post on Tuesday quoted US intelligence officials as saying Osama's Al-Qaeda terrorist network was moving operatives around the Mediterranean on a shipping fleet flagged in Tonga. Quoting US and Greek officials, it said the shipping firm - which is called Nova and is incorporated in Delaware and Romania - has for years engaged in smuggling illegal immigrants. The Post said US intelligence officials had identified about 15 cargo freighters around the world that they believed were controlled by the Al-Qaeda or could be used by the terror network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or commodities over the high seas.
Tonga's role goes back to 2000 and the arrival in its capital, Nuku'alofa, of Mr Peli Papadopoulos, who said he represented Axion Services Ltd in Piraeus, Greece. He persuaded the authorities to allow him to run Tonga International Registry of Ships (TIRS) out of Athens. The deal was signed in a small ceremony. But the flag operation unsurprisingly turned sour.
In January last year, Israeli commandos seized Karine A, a Tonga-flagged ship, in the Red Sea and found it was carrying 50 tonnes of mainly Iranian weapons allegedly meant to be given to the Palestinians. Tongan Police Minister Clive Edwards said then that police were investigating the case.
Last February, eight Pakistani men jumped off the Tongan ship Twillinger at the Italian port of Trieste after a trip from Cairo. The Post said US officials had since determined that Al-Qaeda had sent the men.
In June last year, a Tongan government statement said TIRS was to be closed down. 'The TIRS had also not lived up to commercial expectations,' the chairman of a Cabinet committee, Mr Noble Fielakepa, said. 'International terrorism and an increase in people smuggling and asylum seekers were clearly key factors. Even our own region has felt the impact of these problems,' he said.He said the government did not want Tonga's image to be further hurt by events beyond its control.
In September, Italian officials intercepted another Tongan ship, Sara. They claimed it had landed 15 Pakistanis said to belong to Al-Qaeda.
In October, Croatian police seized the Tongan-registered ship Boka Star that they claimed was smuggling military explosives to Iraq.
Just prior to that, Mr Edwards told the Tongan Parliament that police were trying to close down the registry, adding that the kingdom had not only made no money on the deal, but had actually lost about US$300,000 (S$520,000) in the scheme. --AFP
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