Free Republic

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group. The...

In the Pentagon/FMSO document ISGZ-2004-009247 there is a clear report about the relation between Iraq and Bin Laden that dated back to 1995. This document contains a 9 page report from the Iraqi Intelligence Apparatus and it is titled “The Saudi Opposition and Achieving the Relation and Contact With Them”. In the report they talk about there meeting with Osama Bin Laden and that Bin Laden in 1995 and how to establish relations wiht him. In the meeting Bin Laden asked the Iraqis for joint operations with them against the Foreign forces (US military) in the land of Hijaz (Saudia...