Terrorist Attack _______________ Information Only

Top 485. Dec 15, 2001 6:59 PM

» Steven_Russell - Re: London/Germany - 20th hijacker

In response to message posted by BPyles:

Heib declined to comment on a report Saturday in the news magazine Der Spiegel saying the fingerprints of Ramsi Binalshibh, one of three fugitives sought by Germany suspected of helping plot the attacks, were found on documents relating to the transfer of money to a suspect in the United States. The money was sent to Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national who was indicted Tuesday for conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks.

---------------------------------------------

Ramzi Binalshibh

(a.k.a. Ramzi Omar), a key fugitive who may have been the phantom "20th hijacker". He was prevented from entering the United States when his visa requests were denied repeatedly prior to September 11. The indicted Zacarias Moussaoui may have been intended to take his place on one of the planes. Binalshibh traveled to Spain in the summer of 2001, at the same time hijacker Mohamed Atta was there. And on Sept. 5, the FBI believes, he flew to the United Arab Emirates, the financial hub of the September 11 operation. He disappeared on the 10th and hasn't been seen since.

Moussaoui had been arrested Aug. 17, for visa violations, and was already in jail during the Sept. 11 attack, and so was thus prevented from replacing Binalshibh. He would have likely been a 5th terrorist on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania, in the passenger air revolt.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 486. Dec 16, 2001 3:22 PM

» Steven_Russell - Top al Qaeda body count, December 15, 2001

This is an update of an approximation of the body-count summary of the top enemy operatives and leaders, which is being tracked daily by US War Planners. Their information on the number and status of individuals of top interest is drawn from various sources of Intelligence and news media reports.

==============================================================

Other Top al Qaeda Fugitives

This list consists of other important al Qaeda members or close associates, who are not on the FBI Top Most Wanted List, and who are "foreign", "Arab", "Pakistani", or otherwise associated more closely to al Qaeda than to the Afghan Taliban.

===============================================================

1 Fahmi Nasr ------------------------------- KIA at Khost, November 12-19, 2001
(a.k.a. Mohammed Salah), Egyptian, senior leader and operations officer of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda lieutenant. Killed in the US warplane bombing at Khost. He may have died on November 19, 2001, during a US bombing raid east of Gardez, southeast from Kabul, halfway to Khost, which is on the northern Pakistan border below Jalalabad. In the bombing of targets to the east of the town of Gardez, seven people were killed and three others injured. The victims were a family of refugees sheltering near buildings belonging to a United Nations mine clearance agency which were destroyed overnight. It was the second bombing in 24 hours. The area was devastated. Pieces of wood and metal and great chunks of corrugated iron were blown over a huge area. In the market place hundreds of men and boys asked why the Americans were still bombing their town, a week after it fell to anti-Taleban forces. They said there are no Arabs here, no Pakistanis, no Osama Bin Laden and no Taleban. Tribal elders have been holding councils every day since the fall of the Taleban. But there were strong Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the region of Khost in the prior week. The area was one of the regions that reportedly gave way to local uprisings against the Taliban, on Tuesday, November 13, when Kabul was abandoned by the Taliban.

2 Tariq Anwar al-Sayyid Ahmad ----------------------------- KIA at Khost, November 12-19, 2001
Egyptian, senior leader and chief of the special action committe of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and a longtime bin Laden associate. Killed in the US warplane bombing of a building at Khost.

3 Abu Zubaydah --------------------------------- at Tora Bora, mid December 2001
A top al Qaeda deputy, he is suspected of being one of the key planners of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, along with Mr. Zawahiri and Mr. Atef. Abu Zubaydah, believed to be from the Gaza Strip, was suspected by the United States of being the coordinator of the unsuccessful millennium plots that included a plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Both Mr. Zawahiri and Mr. Zubaydah are believed to be in the Tora Bora region, as of mid-December 2001.

4 Abu Jaffar ---------------------------------wounded at Tora Bora, December 11, 2001
Born in 1960, a 41-year-old Saudi financier and a senior al-Qa'eda member, who studied in Cairo's al-Ahzar University. On December 11, 2001, his foot was blown off by a cluster bomb at Tora Bora. Jaffar, his Egyptian wife, a daughter and a 13-year-old Yemeni orphan boy, had left their cave in the Tora Bora complex after the attack and walked for four hours to reach an Afghan village still sympathetic to bin Laden, at the base of Tora Bora. On December 12, Jaffar was speaking to an Arabic-speaking reporter working for The Daily Telegraphs who was brought blindfolded into the village. He gave the reporter the first detailed account of bin Laden's recent movements in early December. On the morning of December 13, Jaffar and his family intended to leave for Pakistan. For much of the interview, Jaffar was unaware that he was speaking to a reporter. After a while, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of British banknotes, to show that he had enough money for his travels. He said: "Osama is my good friend. My own son was working with his son, Salah Uddin, in Ghazni. The village is used as the starting point for an "underground railway" which helps transport important Arabs and their families from the embattled al-Qa'eda base in the White Mountains. Jaffar's wife cried throughout the two-hour interview. She said: "I've seen my sweet brothers and sisters killed by fire from the sky. Alas, I've begged them to leave and they have refused. They want to die there for the sake of Allah." Egyptian and Afghan sources close to al-Qa'eda say that 120 fighters in Tora Bora had been killed by US air raids, as of December 13.

5 Ahmed Abdel Rahman --------------------- prisoner in Afghanistan by NA, November 2001
Born in 1973, age 28, the son of Omar Abdel Rahman, now jailed for life in a U.S. prison for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1993. When Kabul fell, the Northern Alliance nabbed Young Ahmed. He and his brother Mohammed, 29, still on the run, were sent to Afghanistan in 1988 as teen recruits in the Islamic holy war. Some U.S. officials think Ahmed could spill a trove of useful information, since he spent years at bin Laden's side. But so far, Ahmed has refused to cooperate with his captors, and U.S. officials say they have not yet had access to question him, as of November 2001.

6 Mohammed Rahman
born in 1972, age 29, son of imprisoned Omar Abdel Rahman, still on the run, sent to Afghanistan in 1988 as teen recruit in the Islamic holy war.

7 Salah Uddin --------------------------------- at Tora Bora, since December 5, 2001
Son of Osama bin Laden. Born in 1982, he is married to a daughter of the late Muhammad Atef, who was on the FBI list of initial 22 most wanted terrorists. Around December 5, 2001, 19-year-old Salah Uddin was reportedly sent to Tora Bora by bin Laden, as his replacement, and at the time reportedly was the only bin Laden family member at Tora Bora, according to one of bin Laden's senior and most trusted aides, Abu Jaffar, who spoke to a reporter on December 12. Jaffar was speaking in an Afghan village still sympathetic to bin Laden, a day after his foot was blown off by a cluster bomb at Tora Bora. "After Osama left 10 days ago, he contacted us inside Tora Bora to tell us that he was sending his own son to be with us there. His son travelled through Paktia province with 30 Arabs and 50 Afghan fighters. "Yesterday, Salah Uddin told me to leave and he gave me money because I will likely need another operation on my leg."

8 Ali Mahmud --------------------------------- KIA at Tora Bora, December 3, 2001
bin Laden's financial manager

9 Fazle Raziq ------------------------------------------arrested in Peshawar, Pakistan, November 19, 2001, caught while on a sabotage mission to Kuwait. A top bin Laden aide
An ethnic Pashtun resident of Swabi district of the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, and a top Osama bin Laden aide. He was caught close on the heels of the death of bin Laden's deputy Mohammad Atef in US air strikes. Arrested by Pakistani authorities in Peshawar on Monday, November 19, 2001, he was "being quizzed by a joint interrogation team, which comprises both civil and military officials." Raziq was "travelling on a sabotage mission, which entailed action against American military targets in Kuwait". Analysts say that "without doubt, Raziq is a prize catch. This may very well be the beginning of the end for Bin Laden". In the present circumstances, "arrest of a top aide (Raziq) may be a serious blow to Bin Laden, who has already lost his deputy Atef to the relentless US air strikes."

10 Zacarias Moussaoui ----------------------- prisoner in US, indicted December 11, 2001
aliases "Shaqil" and "Abu Khalid al Sahrawi"
Born in 1968, a 33-year-old French citizen. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., filed a 30-page six-count indictment, exactly three months after the hijacked airline attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The indictment accuses Moussaoui of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, to commit aircraft piracy, to destroy aircraft, to use weapons of mass destruction, to murder U.S. employees and to destroy property. If convicted, he could face the death penalty on four of the counts. Almost a year before the hijackings took place, Moussaoui contacted Airman Flight School, in Norman, Okla. Soon after, he bought flight deck pilot training videos for the Boeing 747 Model 200 and Boeing 757 Model 200 from a pilot store in Ohio, the indictment said. He then traveled to Pakistan, declaring at least $35,000 in cash when he returned to the United States in February 2001. Moussaoui allegedly inquired about crop-dusting equipment in Oklahoma in June, and then traveled to Minnesota about a month before Sept. 11. He paid $6,300 in cash to the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Minnesota to take simulator training courses on the 747 Model 400. Detained before the Sept. 11 attacks, after instructors at the Minnesota flight school became suspicious. FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service investigators held him initially on visa violation charges. When authorities detained him on Aug. 17, they reported finding a variety of incriminating evidence in his possession, including two knives, binoculars, flight manuals for the 747, flight simulator computer program, fighting gloves, shin guards, papers referring to a global positioning device, and a hand-held aviation radio. They also found notes and phone numbers linked to Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, who had Atta stay with him in Hamburg, Germany. Bin al-Shibh was prevented from entering the United States when his visa requests were denied repeatedly, and Moussaoui may have been intended to take his place on one of the planes. Three of the Sept. 11 hijacking teams had five members, but one had only four. Moussaoui was placed under arrest as a material witness in September. He was indicted December 11, 2001. A report Saturday December 15 in the news magazine Der Spiegel said the fingerprints of Ramsi Binalshibh, one of three fugitives sought by Germany suspected of helping plot the attacks, were found on documents relating to the transfer of money to a suspect in the United States. The money was sent to Zacarias Moussaoui.

11 Tawfiq bin Atash
(a.k.a. Khallad) He once commanded bin Laden's bodyguards. He is a key fugitive who both served as operational chief of the the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and appears to have had a hand in the September 11 attacks. Investigators are particularly interested in a meeting that took place in Malaysia on Jan. 5, 2000. Also present were Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two of the September 11 hijackers. When Almihdhar and Alhazmi left Malaysia, they flew directly to Los Angeles, where they quickly enrolled in a San Diego flight school. That leads investigators to believe that at least some of the planning for September 11 took place at the Malaysia meeting.

12 Fahad al-Quso
Key fugitive who appear to have had a hand in both the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen and the September 11 attacks. He helped plan the Cole attack in a meeting that took place in Malaysia on Jan. 5, 2000.

13 Ramzi Binalshibh --------------------------- fingerprints found on documents of money transfer to "20th" hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, December 15, 2001
(a.k.a. Ramzi Omar), a key fugitive who may have been the phantom "20th hijacker". He was prevented from entering the United States when his visa requests were denied repeatedly prior to September 11. The indicted Zacarias Moussaoui may have been intended to take his place on one of the planes. Binalshibh traveled to Spain in the summer of 2001, at the same time hijacker Mohamed Atta was there. And on Sept. 5, the FBI believes, he flew to the United Arab Emirates, the financial hub of the September 11 operation. He disappeared on the 10th and hasn't been seen since. A report Saturday, December 15, 2001 in the news magazine Der Spiegel said the fingerprints of Ramsi Binalshibh, one of three fugitives sought by Germany suspected of helping plot the attacks, were found on documents relating to the transfer of money to a suspect in the United States. The money was sent to Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national who was indicted Tuesday December 11 for conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui was arrested Aug. 17, for visa violations, and was already in jail during the Sept. 11 attack, and so was thus prevented from replacing Binalshibh. He would have likely been a 5th terrorist on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania, in the passenger air revolt.

14 Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood --------------------- disappeared from Kabul, November 2001, Pakistani nuclear scientist whose Kabul house was used for studying anthrax and helium
One of Pakistan's leading nuclear scientists. Mahmood had founded and became president of a Pakistani aid group, The Foundation for Construction, after retiring from his job at Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1998. His Kabul house was a shabby, two-story villa located in a quiet residential area of Kabul favored by a number of international charities. The house is next to the British charity Save the Children and a few doors from the offices of the United Nations refugee agency. Neighbors say the house had been occupied by three Pakistani men and their wives and children, and they said they had no reason to believe the occupants were engaged in anything other than charitable work. Those living in the house left abruptly after Sept. 11, leaving behind one man. In October 2001, Pakistani authorities detained Mahmood along with another retired nuclear scientist. Mahmood was questioned about his links with the Taliban amid concerns that he may have shared Pakistan's nuclear secrets with Osama bin Laden. He denied ever meeting bin Laden and insisted that his frequent contacts with the Taliban were due to his involvement in the delivery of humanitarian aid. No evidence of wrongdoing was found. The one man left residing at Mahmood's Kabul house was later joined by a number of Pakistani fighters, local guards said. They all left on the night the Taliban fled Kabul, November 12, 2001. Northern Alliance fighters visited the house soon after that and ordered local residents not to go inside, said the guards, who added that three foreigners wearing masks and gloves visited the house a few days later and removed boxes of materials. The men spoke English and had a document from local commanders giving them permission to remove the material, said a guard who sits outside a house across the street. In November 2001 after the discoveries at the house, Mahmood and his associate, Abdul Majeed, were detained for questioning again, although Pakistan still insists it has found no evidence that he was involved in wrongdoing. "There is no linkage established at all with any anthrax-related capability," said a Pakistani government spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi. Pakistan also has denied Pakistani newspaper reports that Mahmood had been involved in the development of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. Nothing was found at the house to suggest any link to nuclear weapons or efforts to acquire nuclear expertise, nor was there anything directly linking the house to bin Laden, apart from a newsletter published by Al Qaeda. But items found at the house since the Taliban fled Kabul on November 12, 2001 suggest that Mahmood's Islamabad-based "charity" Foundation for Construction may have been interested in something other than helping Afghans rebuild their country. The house contained sheaves of disturbing documents. These include the results of a massive Internet search on anthrax vaccines, and a report titled "Bacteria: What You Need to Know." Investigators also found a report titled "Iraqi Anthrax Troops," and a New York Times article on Plum Island, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's animal-disease center near the north fork of Long Island. The Plum Island center does research to help guard the United States "against catastrophic economic losses caused by foreign animal disease agents accidentally or deliberately introduced into the U.S.," its Web site explains. Also at the house in Kabul, piles of documents containing detailed information about the use of anthrax in biological warfare, boxes containing gas masks and diagrams suggestive of a plan to use a helium-filled balloon to disperse anthrax across a wide area were found in the house by journalists. But someone either living at the house or visiting it had taken a close interest in anthrax and in studying ways to deliver biological weapons. In one upstairs room, there were dozens of copies of documents about anthrax, including details about the U.S. military's vaccination program downloaded from a Defense Department Web site and other Defense Department documents relating to anthrax. One, titled "The bacteria: what you need to know" contains the statement that anthrax spores "can easily be spread in the air by missiles, rockets, artillery, aerial bombs and sprays." There were 10 copies each of most of the documents, suggesting that a seminar or perhaps a brainstorming session had taken place. On the floor, there was what appeared to be a disassembled rocket alongside a canister labeled "helium," as well as two bags of powder, which journalists have refrained from inspecting. An elaborate diagram on a white board depicts what appears to be a balloon rising at various trajectories, alongside a fighter jet apparently shooting at the balloon. Beside the jet are the words, "You are dead, bang," which appear to have been added later because they are written in a different color. There are also pictures of ground missiles linked by lines to the balloon. Mathematical calculations indicate the height at which the balloon would fly, the distance from which it would be shot down and the area over which its contents would be dispersed. Next to one of the balloons is the word "polystyrene"; next to another is the word "cyanide." There is no mention of anthrax on the diagram, but the impression is of a plan to deliver biological agents by packing them into the gondola of a balloon that would be shot down by a jet or a missile. Loose sheets of paper containing scribbles of missiles and balloons similar to those on the board were found among the documents, suggesting that those at a possible seminar had been taking notes or elaborating on the calculations. The photocopied documents are faded, suggesting they have been there awhile. Western diplomats in Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that they have no reason to believe the evidence was planted but that they had not studied it. "We know there were a lot of houses like this, and many that have been found by journalists in very similar circumstances," one diplomat said. Investigators know Al Qaeda had been trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, he said. "It's a question of whether they have the availability, and there's no evidence yet that they do have the availability or the capability. The evidence is inconclusive." As of December 2, most of the documents found have been removed by journalists, and at least some have been turned over to Western diplomats.

15 Essid Sami Ben Khemais ---------------------------- arrested in Italy, before December 14, 2001, the suspected head of bin Laden's European logistical operation

16 Yasser al-Siri ------------------------------------- arrested in London, November 26, 2001, in al Qaeda conspiracy to kill Massoud
Born in 1963, he was arrested in London and charged in connection with Mr. Massoud's killing. Mr. Siri runs the Islamic Observation Center in London, and the assassins got close to Mr. Massoud with the help of a letter on the center's stationery saying they were journalists with an Arab news agency. Mr. Siri says the men altered the text of what he gave them. His lawyer, Gareth Peirce, did not return phone calls. Investigators piecing together the suicide-bomb assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan rebel leader, say they believe the plot was carried out by members of a European-based cell of Al Qaeda, mainly North Africans. One assassin was a Moroccan. The other of the two assassins was the cell's presumed leader, Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, 39. a Tunisian who came to Europe as a student. Mr. Sattar had left for Belgium in 1987 after obtaining a journalism degree, planning to pursue studies at the Free University of Brussels and the Catholic University in Leuven. Mr. Sattar enrolled at the Free University in 1990 but left after a year without taking exams. The Tunisian lived in Belgium from the late 1980's until he departed on his suicide mission. Though both men said they were Moroccans, Mr. Sattar did not betray a Moroccan accent when speaking Arabic. Mr. Sattar went underground in 1999, after the Belgian authorities sought to expel him because his residence permit had expired. He next surfaced in Britain in June 2000, when he was detained at Heathrow Airport for using a fake Belgian passport. The killers used Belgian passports stolen in 1999 from the Belgian Consulate in Strasbourg, France, and the embassy in The Hague. Mr. Sattar used a passport issued to Karim Touzani, 34, while that used by his accomplice had been issued to Kacem Bakkali, 26. Traveling to Britain, they boarded a flight from Heathrow Airport to Pakistan, which they entered using forged multiple-entry visas. Mr. Massoud was killed on Sept. 9, 2001 by the two suicide bombers posing as journalists and photographers. The killers detonated bombs on their bodies and in a camera at the start of what was to have been an interview in northern Afghanistan. From early on, American intelligence officials have said the killing was a preemptive strike for the overall terror scheme that unfolded in America two days later.

17 Adel Tebourski ------------------------------------ detained in France November 26, 2001, ties to Belgian al Qaeda cell in killing of Massoud
Born in 1963, a native of Tunisia, he confessed to purchasing the airline ticket used by the Tunisian Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, one of the two September 9 assassins of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan rebel leader. Tebourski described to investigators the activities of the Belgian al Qaeda group in providing forged travel documents and recruiting young Arabs to travel to Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. But he denied knowledge of the assassination plot.

18 Boualem B. ----------------------------------------- arrested in Belgium, November 26, 2001 accused of altering stolen passports used in Afghan Massoud murder on Sep. 9

19 An Algerian man --------------------------------- arrested in Belgium, November 26, 2001 accused of altering stolen passports used in Afghan Massoud murder on Sep. 9

20 Moroccan ------------------------------------- arrested in Belgium, week prior to December 7, 2001, accused of altering stolen passports used in Afghan Massoud murder on Sep. 9
An unidentified Moroccan forger. He was arrested in Belgium, in the week prior to December 7, 2001, suspected of having supplied the forged documents used by Mr. Massoud's killers. The forgers had been found in possession of passports with serial numbers corresponding to those stolen in Strasbourg and The Hague in 1999. The arrests were the latest in roundups in France and Belgium of Arab men suspected of ties to the forgers' group.

21 Tunisian ------------------------------------- arrested in Belgium, week prior to December 7, 2001, accused of altering stolen passports used in Afghan Massoud murder on Sep. 9
An unidentified Tunisian forger. He was arrested in Belgium, in the week prior to December 7, 2001, suspected of having supplied the forged documents used by Mr. Massoud's killers. The forgers had been found in possession of passports with serial numbers corresponding to those stolen in Strasbourg and The Hague in 1999. The arrests were the latest in roundups in France and Belgium of Arab men suspected of ties to the forgers' group.

22 Mounir El Motassadeq --------------------------- arrested in Germany, before December 14, 2001, accused of controlling an account used to bankroll several of the 9/11 hijackers.
Motassadeq is the only person in custody in Germany on charges related to the attacks.

23 Sheik Sulayman ------------------------ host of bin Laden dinner in WTC attack video, November 9, 2001, believed to be at Kandahar
He is a Saudi, paralyzed from the waist down. Seen on the video as the host to bin Laden, in the Kandahar home where the infamous videotaped dinner was held on November 9, 2001, in which bin Laden laughed about his planning of the 9-11 WTC attacks. The Sheik in the video frequently flatters bin Laden about the success of the attack, while they eat and converse. He also offers bin Laden news and praise from religious figures in Saudi Arabia. The tape was found by non-Americans, at a private home in Jalalabad, in late November. It was then given to the CIA, which translated it. It was first broadcast to the public on December 13, 2001.

24 Sheik Rhamdi ------------------------ present at bin Laden dinner in WTC attack video, November 9, 2001, believed to be at Kandahar
He is the "other" person in the video, taped in the Kandahar home where the infamous videotaped dinner was held on November 9, 2001, in which bin Laden laughed about his planning of the 9-11 WTC attacks. The tape was found by non-Americans, at a private home in Jalalabad, in late November. It was then given to the CIA, which translated it. It was first broadcast to the public on December 13, 2001.

25 Unknown Yemeni intelligence officer
Captured FBI Top 22 Most Wanted terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, aka Abu Ahmed, has provided information about the alleged involvement of a Yemeni intelligence officer in the October 2000 terrorist boat-attack on the destroyer USS Cole at a Yemeni port, in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed. Also involved in that al Qaeda conspiracy were fugitive Tawfiq bin Atash (a.k.a. Khallad), who served as operational chief of the the bombing, and fugitive Fahad al-Quso, who helped plan the Cole attack in a meeting that took place in Malaysia on Jan. 5, 2000.

26 Dr. Ahmad Abu-al-Khair ------------------------------- with bin Laden in Afghanistan, on September 9, 2001, mentioned by bin Laden on the Osama video, 11/9/01
bin Laden: "It was 5:30 pm our time. I was sitting with Dr. Ahmad Abu-al-Khair. Immediately we heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center."

27 Sulayman Abu Guaith ---------------------------- with bin Laden in Afghanistan, on September 9, 2001, mentioned himself on the Osama video, 11/9/01, at Kandahar
Guaith: "I was sitting with the Shayk [meaning Osama bin Laden] in a room, then I left to go to another room where there was a TV set. The TV broadcasted the big event."

28 Abu Salahaddin --------------------------------- at Tora Bora, December 15, 2001, main al Qaeda negotiator
aka Mairajudin. On December 15, 2001, this exchange occurred between battlefield opponents, over short-range radios at Tora Bora: "Where is the big guy?" Commander Mazrat Ali asked a Qaeda representative at one point during the radio conversation, referring to Mr. bin Laden. "This is not the right time to disclose that," said the main Qaeda negotiator, Mairajuddin, who is also known as Abu Salahaddin.

29-33 Five other al Qaeda members ------------------------ arrested in Saudi Arabia after September 11, 2001.
They were arrested while attempting to leave Saudi Arabia, after September 11, 2001. One of them was picked up in Bahrain the week of September 11, along with Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, aka Abu Ahmed, one of the FBI's Top 22 Most Wanted terrorists.

34-41 Eight suspected al Qaeda members ---------------------- arrested in Spain, week of November 18-22, 2001.
were arrested in Spain in the week of November 18-22, 2001. On November 22, the CIA provided the name of one of the eight suspected al Qaeda members arrested in Spain earlier in the week.

42-53 Twelve Jordanian al Qaeda members ------------------------ arrested in Jordan, as of November 22, 2001.
The Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) has been involved in more than a dozen arrests, as of November 22, 2001.

================================================================
Not yet known to be active in al Qaeda terrrorism:

Abdullah Omar Abdul Rahman ----------------------------------- free in Cairo, December 2001
Two of his brothers are terrorist criminals, trainees in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, ever since they were teenagers. They are sons of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian cleric jailed for life since 1995 for a foiled plot to bomb New York landmarks. Abdullah said in Cairo on December 14, 2001, about the bin Laden tape, that the United States "has the technology it takes to forge a videotape of this kind."

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 487. Dec 17, 2001 12:35 AM

» Steven_Russell - Top Taliban body count, December 15, 2001

as of December 15, 2001
_______________________
FBI Top Wanted terrorists: .. 22 on list - 1 KIA, 1 prisoner, 2 wounded/in peril, 18 at large
_______________________
Other Top al Qaeda: ........... 53 on list - 3 KIA, 36 prisoners, 3 wounded/in peril, 14 at large
_______________________
Top Taliban/rogues ............. 47 on list - 12 KIA, 2 prisoners, 15 defector/surrender, 18 at large
_______________________

==========================================================================

Taliban Top Leadership and Rogues

This list consists of other important dangerous or wanted individuals in Afghanistan, who are either current or ex-members of the Taliban leadership, or who held important Tribal leadership or governmental positions while under the Taliban rule. Many of the lesser "defectors" and "surrenders" simply switched sides over to the winners, while others were bribed, or lost battles, or just gave up and went home. The remaining "at large" individuals are ones who should be held, interrogated, prosecuted and imprisoned - but, they are all missing, in hiding, or have refused to fully surrender or cease hostilities. Also on the list are some rogue tribal commanders, who are responsible for ongoing atrocities and violence, and who continue to operate independent of the influence of US allies or of any national Afghan government.

==========================================================================

1 Mullah Mohammed Omar --------------- fled Kandahar to Baghran, December 12, 2001
Supreme spiritual and top commanding leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A half-educated, one-eyed warrior megalomaniac with almost no knowledge of the wider world. His home town is in Tarin Kowt, in central Uruzgan province, north of Kandahar. But during the war in 2001, he was based at a large compound in Kandahar. In October, US Special Forces briefly invaded the compound. When opposition forces and media finally entered and controlled the compound after December 7, they found that Omar had been living very luxuriously there, relative to sparse conditions that existed in the outside surrounding city.

2 Hafiz Majid ------------------ resisting at Sperwan, December 12, 2001
Taliban former righthand man of Mullah Mohammad Omar, was resisting surrender at Sperwan, 22 miles from Kandahar. Majid also still controls al Qaeda forces barricaded at Kandahar's Chinese Hospital on December 15, 2001.

3 Mullah Abdul Razaq ------------------------------------ at large around Kandahar, December 14, 2001
Taliban interior minister; Taliban Defence Minister as of December 14 2001
On December 14, 2001, he claimed the Taliban would soon occupy the whole Afghanistan within one month. "We will soon carry out our operations and the whole world will see it," Mullah Abdul Razaq told the BBC Pashto service. He said that armed Taliban are around Kandahar and they are waiting for the Americans. He claimed that Mullah Omar had informed him about the escape of Osama Bin Laden from Afghanistan before December 1.

4 Obaidullah Akhund -------------------------------------Taliban defense minister, his home in Kabul turned up multiple al Qaeda terror documents
Taliban Defense Minister. On early Saturday, November 10, 2001 Taliban Defense Minister Obaidullah Akhund told Reuters from Kabul that the Taliban militia had lost the strategic northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif to the opposition Northern Alliance, heralding in an incredibly rapid advance by opposition forces that coming weekend. ``Yes, Mazar has gone,'' he said in a brief interview. ``The city and its airport are with the opposition. Our forces are in Tangi Tashgurghan,'' he said, referring to a town some 60 km (40 miles) to the east of Mazar-i-Sharif. On November 16, 2001 Apparent Qaeda presence found in a Taliban defense ministry building in Kabul suggest that Osama bin Laden's organization was closely linked to the radical Islamic government. It was not clear who might have visited the houses, in the Karte Parwan area of Kabul, the former diplomatic district, since the capture of the city by the Northern Alliance or where exactly all the documents came from. The former defense ministry building is guarded by alliance soldiers, but the private house is not. Some of the documents along with 19 highly advanced French- made Milan antitank missiles discovered on Thursday November 15 were in a house that belonged to the ministry of defense of the Taliban government. Other documents were found in a private residence two miles away in the same upscale district of Kabul. A flight-simulator computer program, a list of flight schools in the United States and documents describing chemical, biological and nuclear warfare and referring to the Qaeda organization were found in the two Kabul houses littered with paper. Throughout both houses were scattered green and yellow forms in Arabic labeled "Al Qaeda Ammunition Warehouse." The forms list weapons, including rifles and grenades, and state to whom they were issued. The apparent Qaeda presence in a Taliban defense ministry building suggested that Osama bin Laden's organization and the radical Islamic government were closely linked. In one house, a page torn out of Flying magazine was found, listing flight schools in Florida, including Walkawitz Aviation in Titusville and Phoenix East Aviation in Daytona Beach. [Greg Nardi, the manager of Walkawitz Aviation, said that several Arab students had approached the school in the last year and that the F.B.I. had visited the school on more than five occasions since the Sept. 11 attacks, taking away the records of a number of these Arabs.] The contents of the houses including hundreds of pieces of paper scattered on the floors appeared to provide evidence of the activities of Al Qaeda in Kabul and the extent of its network, the nature of its planning and its training methods. The houses were adorned with maps, including one listing the location of power plants in Europe, Africa and Asia. Another map showed Saudi Arabia with American military bases marked with the words in Arabic, "Occupied by the Crusader." There were also ashes and other evidence in both houses that documents had been burned. The papers include addresses of individuals living in Canada and Italy, letters listing the names of young recruits hoping to join Mr. bin Laden's Qaeda network, and lists of people who lived in the houses. It is not known whether false names were used on the documents. One of the visiting cards was from U-Enterprises Ltd., a Vancouver- based company that was founded in April 1998. One of its directors is Essam Hafez Marzouk, who was arrested in Egypt two years ago and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for links to the militant Islamic group Al Jihad. The contents of the two houses suggest an organization that used the Internet to research rudimentary bomb-making and chemical weapons development and to track news coverage of Mr. bin Laden. An empty manila envelope was labeled "Khost," a reference to the network's training camp in southern Afghanistan that the United States has repeatedly bombed. Other papers appeared to be copies of a letter Mr. bin Laden sent to Mullah Muhammad Omar, leader of the Taliban, asking not to be turned over to the Americans and a reply from Mullah Omar granting his request. Both men cited religious teachings to justify their position. Notebooks from young recruits describe daily lessons in military tactics, bomb-making and basic chemistry. About 20 people worked in each of the houses, neighbors said. Documents in English described "explosives and demolition techniques" and how to blow up power lines. Others, in Arabic, showed how to put a bomb in a suitcase and pass lie detector tests. One student wrote across a piece of paper with notes in Arabic on it, "Kevlar is available in Lahore," a reference to the substance used to make bullet-proof vests. Other notebooks had ledgers listing how much money the house had spent on supplies or descriptions of where Al Qaeda forces were deployed "north of Kabul." The neighbors described the men who occupied the houses as Arabs who kept to themselves and followed regular routines. The documents suggest a broad network, including Somalis, Algerians, Bosnians, Uzbeks, Sudanese and natives of the Dagastan region of Russia. The one individual clearly identified in the documents in the houses is a Canadian citizen. A July 1996 letter from the Canadian immigration service to an Amro Abouelmaati in Toronto informs him that his Canadian citizenship certificate is enclosed. Near the letter was a patient card from Toronto General Hospital in Mr. Abouelmaati's name. It was not clear whether Mr. Abouelmaati was a member of the group or whether his identity was stolen, a tactic Al Qaeda members have used in the past. Several business cards from Canada were also found that listed companies in Toronto and Vancouver, including U-Enterprises Ltd. The private house held several aviation-related documents. Amid the paper was a form that comes with a "Microsoft Flight Simulator 98" computer program. The program, a game that simulates the experience of flying a commercial jet, is often used by pilots. The form listed the identification number the owner needed to install the program. In an adjacent room, a tattered page from an undated Flying magazine listed the flight training schools in the United States. One resident of the house apparently had dreams of designing a new high-technology fighter jet. Pakistan, he hoped, could produce the plane for itself and the Taliban regime. Several dozen scraps of paper filled with a man's drawings and doodlings about the jet, called the Aladdin Ghoul, were scattered across the floor in one room. Draft letters to Pakistani officials extolling the plane's virtues filled small sheets. A document in Arabic entitled, "Before and After Precautions For Using Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Warfare," was found on the floor of the private house. The page contained the preface to the book by Abul Khabad, a man who identified himself as being from Greece and a "protector of mujahedeen." In the preface, Mr. Khabad dedicated his book, with love, to Mr. bin Laden. There were at least 10 letters from associates of Al Qaeda recommending young men for bin Laden camps. An Oct. 7, 1996, letter in Arabic, the language used in most of the documents, is on the stationery of the "mujahedeen of Uzbekistan." Addressed to "Abul Atta" at the "Aghanistan base," it begins: "At first, I hope that you are all right, and I hope that Allah protects you. Second, I thank you for approving of my brothers." The note lists the candidates, including one from Uzbekistan and four from Dagastan. It is signed by the "deputy administrator of mujahedeen in Uzbekistan," with no name. The letter's stamps show that it passed through Peshawar, Pakistan, before being delivered to Al Qaeda. The private house, a spacious, two- story structure with large windows, had been stripped of all its furniture. It appeared to have functioned as a base and training center. The other house was more formal, with the Taliban seal painted on its exterior wall facing the street and a ministry of defense seal greeting visitors as they entered the courtyard. Hand-painted seals, murals and slogans lined the walls. Near the door, a seal showed two crossed Kalishnikov rifles below a Koran and the words, "Jihad is our way." A world map showed all Islamic countries, except for Turkey, an American ally, painted in dark green. A map of Saudi Arabia showed it surrounded by small American, French and British flags, representing foreign bases and ships. Above the painted map were the words, "Occupation of the Holy Lands of Islam by the Crusaders." Upstairs, a room labeled "special office," had been mostly emptied, but numerous papers remained in desk drawers. Most of them were notebooks from students. One gave a detailed description of various ways to make nitroglycerin, dynamite and fertilizer bombs. A note next to one of the explosive formulas said "the type used in Oklahoma." The only clear indication of one resident's identity was a notebook written in Serbo-Croatian and a Bosnian passport and other papers. But the passport was in one name, and a government health card was in another. The photo had also been removed from the passport. Two ammunition rooms in the basement had been emptied. Only a dusty copy of an August 1998 article about Mr. bin Laden in a Turkish newspaper remained. Behind a dingy courtyard was a second building with five more apartments for students. That basement was filled with ammunition. Eleven of the French Milan rockets sat in crates. A heavy mortar leaned against the wall. Helmets were spread across the floor. The advanced French antitank rockets, still in wooden cases, appeared new. It was not clear how Al Qaeda had obtained them and why they were not used in the Taliban's recent losing effort against the Northern Alliance, the forces that now control Kabul. On the floor above the weapons, all but one of the five bedrooms was empty. Clothes, an electrical heater and a tea pot lined the one room that had signs of life. Along with piles of adults' clothes, there was a pair of children's shoes. Outside, neighbors explained that the men attending the school did not live alone. As they learned their craft, they lived with their families.

5 Mohammed Khaksar ------------------------------- defected at Kabul, November 12, 2001
Taliban's deputy interior minister, a bearish man with searching eyes, a long beard streaked with white and a weather-worn face making him look older than his 41 years, born in 1960. Once a close friend of the Taliban's supreme leader, Mohammad Omar, Khaksar played an important role in the Taliban from the beginning. An ethnic Pashtun like most members of the Taliban, he was one of the early key figures in the movement, which emerged in 1994 and swept to power in Kabul in 1996. He served first as intelligence chief of the movement and later as deputy interior minister, supervising security in the capital, where brutal tactics were often used to enforce restrictions on women and modern life. While Omar remained in his home base in Kandahar, much of the rest of the government operated out of Kabul, and Khaksar had a place at the table through many of its most controversial decisions. Over the years, however, he became disenchanted, particularly by the arrival of bin Laden and his foreign fighters. He complained off the record to reporters as early as 1999 and kept up a regular secret dialogue with the top military commander on the other side, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated in September, allegedly by bin Laden operatives. Khaksar abandoned the Taliban when they fled Kabul November 12, becoming the highest-ranking defector from the Taliban inner circle. Khaksar has provided enough intelligence to the Northern Alliance to win him continued freedom despite his prominent position in the Taliban. While the alliance has vowed imprisonment or death for other senior Taliban leaders, Khaksar remains in his own home, able to travel at will, still guarded by some of the same soldiers who surrounded him while he was a Taliban official. He denied any complicity in "actions against humanity." Spared from retribution by his onetime enemies, Khaksar probably has more to worry about from his former friends. He would be an obvious target for any Taliban operatives or sympathizers still hiding out in the city, but he brushes off concern, placing his trust in his well-armed guards and even declining an offer to relocate him to a safer location in Golbahar, about 50 miles to the north.

6 Qari Ahmadullah ------------------ resisting at Kandahar, or at Ghazni, before December 12, 2001
Taliban intelligence and security chief. He is either in Northern Alliance custody or negotiating to surrender to rebel forces in Kandahar, as of December 12, 2001. Taliban sources claim he has gone home to Ghazni. He would be a potential gold mine if captured.

7 Juma Namangani ------------------------------- KIA at Kunduz, abt. November 18 2001
Lately in Afghanistan, he was a recent senior Taliban commander, one of bin Laden's senior advisers, and responsible for the Taliban's northern front in Afghanistan, as the top commander of an al-Qaeda ally, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. He was defending Mazar-i-Sharif, before it fell to the Northern Alliance, and was killed at Kunduz. Born in 1964 as Jumaboy Khojiyev, an agriculture student from Namangan, a conservative town deep in the Ferghana Valley, he fought for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan from 1987 to 1989. But on his return, he encountered the extremist Islamic beliefs slipping across Ferghana's jigsaw borders, sliced up among Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Armed with cash and Korans, Muslim missionaries from Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi sect revived the old Silk Road, and inspired students such as Jumaboy Khojiyev, who soon took the name Namangani from his hometown. Uzbek President Islam Karimov was humbled by Mr. Namangani at an election rally in 1991, and was nearly assassinated by him two years ago. But once confirmed in power in 1992, Mr. Karimov forced Mr. Namangani to flee Uzbekistan, whereupon he joined the tribal and religious war in neighboring Tajikistan. Later, Mr. Namangani crossed into Afghanistan and built contacts in Iran and Pakistan as he crafted the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an opposition group guaranteed to scare Mr. Karimov, a former Communist Party boss. He then became a bin Laden lieutenant who fought to establish Taliban-style rule in Uzbekistan. Uzbek police believe Mr. Namangani's IMU was behind the February 1999 car bombings in Tashkent that killed at least 16 persons near several government locations. Over the past three years, IMU fighters, estimated from a few hundred to several thousand in number, have made repeated incursions from Afghanistan. In November 2001 he was involved in the unsuccessful defense of Mazar-e-Sharif, having been promoted to senior Taliban commander in recent months. On November 10, 2001 US aircraft had been bombing Taliban positions around Taloqan for the past week. Along the way was the city of Kunduz, under the control of the Taliban's terrorist ally, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which aimed to topple the Central Asian regimes. Namangani was killed likely sometime in the week following that attack. Mr. Namangani never gave an interview, and now it seems he never will, but the shadowy figure, dead at 37, became infamous across Central Asia.

8 Gulgarai ------------------------------------------------ KIA at Mazar-i-Sharif, November 7, 2001, treacherous Taliban commander. Had defected to the Taliban in 1997
Gulgarai was one of the local Pashtun commanders who defected to the Taleban in 1997, allowing them briefly to capture Mazar-i-Sharif. He had a bad reputation for human rights abuses and would probably have fought to the last, if necessary, because defection to the Alliance was not an option. Reports of Gulgarai's death came after the Alliance said on Tuesday November 6 that it had won control of three other districts, south of Sholgera, as a week of see-saw battles continued. On November 7, 2001, the US bombing during the Northern Alliance capture of Sholgera (or Shol Gar) district killed the treacherous key Taliban commander, Gulgarai, near the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Northern Alliance commanders were jubilant about what they say is the death of the commander, Gulgarai, and about 48 Pakistani militants. Earlier, Northern Alliance forces said they were advancing towards Mazar-e-Sharif after heavy US bombing helped weaken Taleban defences. They said their troops had entered the district of Sholgera, about 60 km (36 miles) south-west of the city.

9 Mullah Abbas Akhund
Health Minister. On November 13, 2001, Kabul houses used by Taliban leaders in the once posh neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan were abandoned. The large steel doors of home of former Health Minister Mullah Abbas Akhund were wide open, after the Taliban fled the city the night before.

10 Amir Khan Mutaqqi
Taliban information and culture minister

11 Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Usmani
He was appointed the deputy of Mullah Omar at Kandahar, November 20, 2001. Mullah Akhtar Usmani, the Taliban military commander of five southern provinces, had been named as the successor to Mullah Omar if he died.

12 Abdul Kabir
Taliban eastern regional leader

13 Mullah Qari Abdullah -------------------------------- head of the anthrax factory in Kabul before April, 2001, when he disappeared. Believed to be in Europe or the US
He headed a deadly Taliban anthrax factory, Institute of Veterinary Vaccine Production, which was found in Kabul November 18, 2001. The two-storey lab was first built in Charikar, in the northern province of Parwar, in 1993/4 with equipment from India. The lab factory was officially set up for the production of vaccines for cattle using highly dangerous wild anthrax bacteria. Its discovery fuels fears that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror group is behind the US anthrax alert. Taliban political chiefs were quick to realise the potential of the lab after they came to power in 1996. The following year they moved it from Charikar, where the Alliance had a stronghold, to Kabul. Our source said: "The Taliban were very keen to take control of the laboratory. "They moved the staff and all equipment down to the capital without warning. They wanted the laboratory there very badly." Dr Abdul Quader Raoufi, 58, current vaccines chief at the Afghan factory, told us: "We'd rather have been running the labs on our own. "But the mullahs were in charge of everything and we couldn't stop them learning about our activities. Mullah Abdullah, previously famed for his ability to recite from the Koran, was brought in to head the operations. Dr Raoufi said: "He and his Taliban superiors were interested in the technical detail of what happened here, although they had no background in science. Ten different kinds of vaccine were made at the unit. They were divided into four sections - pox vaccines, Newcastle, anaerobic and aerobic. The production of vaccines at the Kabul factory was so successful that some samples were sent to Geneva where the Red Cross congratulated the Taliban on their work. A number of experiments were carried out. Three sheep were infected to study the results. Their carcasses were buried 30ft in desert land on the Shomali Plains away from possible contamination of water supplies. Our source, who refused to be identified, said: "We developed the technology of how to keep anthrax bacteria and how to develop it for use in vaccines. "At the time, we created three million doses. It was essential work to keep our country's cattle healthy." A source who worked at the factory added: "There's no doubt the Taliban were planning chemical or biological warfare against the West. "I believe anthrax might have been first on their list." The anti-West mullah and about half of his staff had vanished in April 2001. They are now believed to be in the US and Europe. Dr Raoufi revealed that the vaccine institute, set up with help from the Red Cross and one of Afghanistan's most modern buildings, once had 45 staff. But more than half left, many saying they meant to work abroad. Dr Raoufi said: "I don't know what happened to these people. "I'm told most went to work in America and Europe. They knew their skills were in demand elsewhere in the world." Referring to the disappearance of Mullah Abdullah, he added: "I've no idea what happened to him. He wasn't well liked. We didn't have a lot to do with him." The factory was bombed by US B-52s in early November. During US air strikes, 13 B-52 bombs landed all around the premises at Badram Bagh, outside Kabul, although none scored a direct hit. It is not clear if the fighters deliberately targeted the lab. All the equipment needed to make vaccines was hidden away the day before the bombardment began. The plant had an incubator to develop the bacteria, hundreds of test tubes ready for samples and the word "anthrax" scribbled on a container. Glass was scattered throughout the building and doors blown off their hinges. At the end of one corridor on the second floor we were led into a small office where our eyes were immediately drawn to the word "Anthrax", scribbled on a test-tube. Hundreds of glass vessels were kept in a large cabinet in readiness for the latest batch of vaccines. Elsewhere, there was a walk-in incubator to develop bacteria, a cold-room where vaccines were stored, a viral vaccine store and an expensive French-made viral vaccine harvesting machine. On one door were the words "to be safe than sorry", the word "better" having fallen off.

14 Haji Mullah Mohammad Ahmadi --------------------- plundered Kabul bank, November 12, 2001
aka Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi. Taliban governor of Kabul. Before fleeing with other Taliban members from Kabul, he showed up at Bank Millie Afghan, Afghanistan's national bank, with a posse of gunmen on the night of November 12, got out the key to the underground strongroom and made off with $5.3 million and 22 million Pakistani rupees ($360,000). "He came with the key, opened the lock, took the money and locked it again," said Mahmoud Sharif, deputy head of the bank's strongroom section. On Tuesday, November 13, US war planes, which stopped bombing the Taliban's front lines shortly before the Opposition offensive began around midday (0730 GMT), redirected their efforts to Taliban targets in the capital itself. A reporter in Kabul said that three bombs struck the city shortly after dusk, one of which hit the house of the Taliban's governor for Kabul, Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi.

15 Jalaluddin Haqqani
prominent Taliban commander

16 Haji Bashar -------------------- has not surrendered weapons in Kandahar, as of December 12, 2001
A Pashtun commander seen as close to the Taliban in Kandahar. On November 17, 2001 Taliban spokesman Maulvi Najibullah told Reuters the Taliban movement had not handed over control of Kandahar to commanders Mullah Naqeebullah and Haji Bashar and "will not do so in future as well". As of December 12, Bashar had still held onto his weapons and vehicles in Kandahar, after the Taliban surrender to Mullah Naqibullah on December 7, 2001.

17 Mullah Abdul Salam Rockti --------------------- surrendered Zabul Province, December 9, 2001
A Pashtun Taliban commander, surrendered Zabul Province December 9, 2001

18 Mullah Sayed Mohammad Haqani --------------------- surrendered Zabul Province,
December 9, 2001, security official in charge at the border town of Spin Boldak
aka Mohammed Saeed Haqqani. A Pashtun Taliban commander, and security official in charge at the border town of Spin Boldak. On November 21, 2001, he said the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were the work of Jews trying to blacken the name of Islam. "The US has not provided any information about his (Bin Laden's) involvement in the attacks. He has not the telecommunications means to conduct such activities. Being our guest we are duty bound to protect him" and not hand him over to the US authorities. He then went on to place a bounty on the US President's head: "The Americans have offered $25 m for Osama. We will give $50 m for (US President George W.) Bush even though we are a poor country." On Tuesday, November 20, 2001, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had boosted the reward for Bin Laden from $5 mto 25 m, with the bounty advertised in radio broadcasts to Afghanistan, and leaflets distributed on the ground. All good Muslims would reject the opportunity to cash in on the bounty for Bin Laden's capture, Haqqani said. "Being good Muslims we have a strong faith, that's why it is not tempting to us." Asked for proof of Jewish involvement in the September 11 strikes, Haqqani said 4,000 Jews had not gone to work at the World Trade Centre on the day. "And why did the television cameras know where the second plane was going to hit? "They are trying to eliminate Afghanistan. They are trying to blacken our name." On December 9, 2001, Haqani surrendered his control of Zabul Province, the last Taliban holdout. Haqani is not in custody, and has not been charged yet for his threat against the American President.

19 Mullah Naqibullah -------------------- defected from Taliban before Kandahar fell
An ethnic Pashtun member of the Jamiat-e-Islami party of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, Naqibullah is a former governor and military chief of Kandahar under the Taliban. On November 17, Maulvi Najibullah told Reuters the movement had not handed over control of Kandahar to commanders Mullah Naqeebullah and Haji Bashar and "will not do so in future as well". But then under a deal struck by the new government's prime minister, Hamid Karzai, Kandahar's Taliban defenders were to have surrendered to Mullah Naqibullah on December 7, 2001. Pashtun commander Gul Agha Sherzai then pushed into the city from the south to besiege and take control of Kandahar from Naqibullah. During the battle for Kandahar, the Red Cross brought 19 wounded Saudi Arabs loyal to Osama bin Laden to Ward Four in the the city's main hospital, Mirwais Chinese Hospital, in the western section of Kandahar controlled by Naqibullah. By Saturday, December 15, nine were left, clutching grenades to their chests, vowing to blow up anyone who tries to capture them. Five of the original 19 had disappeared several days earlier, and another five escaped Friday night, December 14. Outside, two Afghan tribal commanders stood guard, AK-47s draped casually over their shoulders, barring entry to all but one male nurse trusted to change the Arabs' dressings. "We plan to hand them over to their own country," said Rahman, a commander under Mullah Naqibullah who accepted the Taliban surrender in Kandahar on December 7. "They are from Saudi Arabia. They are soldiers of Osama bin Laden." These are the remnants of a community of Arab radicals who lived in Kandahar under Taliban rule, many of them training in a key al Qaeda camp called Lewa Saradi -- or Wolf's Frontier -- near the city airport, residents say." said a male nurse. But the new city governor, Gul Agha, has not yet proposed a solution. Part of the problem appears to be that the hospital lies in an area of the city controlled by Mullah Naqibullah and off limits to rivals loyal to Gul Agha. U.S. troops, occasionally spotted roaming the streets of Kandahar in open-back pick-ups and army jeeps, had not yet visited the Chinese Hospital.

20 Mullah Maulvi Najibullah ------------------------------------------------------ a senior Taliban official in the southeast Afghan border town of Spinboldak, Foreign Ministry spokesman as of November 17, 2001
Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman. On Wednesday November 14, 2001, Egyptian top-3 Al Qaeda leader and member of the FBI Top 22 Wanted Terrorists List, Mohammed Atef was killed along with seven colleagues in US bombing near Kabul. It was a separate airstrike than the one that killed several Taliban leaders on Tuesday, at a house inside Kabul. On November 17, 2001, Mullah Najibullah, a Taliban official in the southeast Afghan border town of Spinboldak, confirmed Atef's death but would not identify the location of the airstrike or the other Al Qaeda members who died with him. It was the first time a senior Taliban official has confirmed Friday's claim November 16 by U.S. officials that Atef was killed. Those US officials said Atef was struck in a bombing raid outside Kabul. But Maulvi Najibullah then later denied on that Saturday that U.S. bombing had killed Atef. ``He has not been killed, he is safe and sound,'' the Taliban foreign ministry spokesman based at the small southern Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, told Reuters by telephone. Najibullah called reports of Atef's death propaganda, and asked: ``Where is the evidence that he has been killed?'' On November 17, Maulvi Najibullah also told Reuters the movement had not handed over control of Kandahar to commanders Mullah Naqeebullah and Haji Bashar and "will not do so in future as well".

21 Haji Ghulam Mohammed Maidani -------------------------- surrendered at Maidan Shahr, November 24, 2001, had
commander of the Taleban forces at Maidan Shahr. He is widely despised and has a brutal reputation. The alliance had paid the Taleban commander some $200,000 to defect - but he took the money and stayed in the hills. It appears that the Taleban commander feared reprisals for acts of brutality when he was in control of the village. Ghulam Mohammed finally surrendered his holdout in the hills above Maidan Shahr on November 24, 2001. There is no indication if he will be prosecuted for any atrocities of his Taliban rule in the village of Maidan Shahr.

22 Arbab Mohammed Hashim ----------------------------- KILLED in helicopter crash at Takhar Province, December 9, 2001, had defected at Kunduz November 2001
Well-known ethnic Pashtun leader thought to have defected from the Taleban during the militia's defeat in Kunduz province in November, 2001.

23 General Mirza Ghulam Muhammad Nasri - --------------------------- KILLED in helicopter crash at Takhar Province, December 9, 2001, had defected at Kunduz airport November 16, 2001
aka General Mirai Nasery. Well-known prominent ethnic Pashtun Taliban commander thought to have defected from the Taleban during the militia's defeat in Kunduz province in November. On November 16 2001 at the village of Musazai near the Kunduz airport, just after the Northern Alliance announced the defection of Mirza Muhammad Nasri, along with 1,000 of his Afghan Taliban troops, foreign al Qaeda soldiers gunned down 125 Afghan Taliban soldiers who had been stopped on their way to the front lines, trying to defect. A fight had begun and the foreign Taliban opened fire on the troops of Mr. Nasri's son-in-law, Noor Aga, who was the commander of those killed at Musazai.

24 Noor Aga --------------------------- KILLED while defecting, by al Qaeda at Musazai, near Kunduz airport November 16, 2001
Mirza Nasri's son-in-law, Noor Aga, was the commander of those dozens of Afghan Taliban soldiers killed at the village of Musazai near the Kunduz airport, by foreign Taliban soldiers on November 16, 2001. The foreign Taliban soldiers gunned down 125 Afghan Taliban soldiers who had been stopped on their way to the front lines. The foreign Taliban soldiers seem to have decided that the local Taliban were trying to defect. When they tried to stop them, a fight began and the foreign Taliban opened fire. The reported killings at Musazai occurred just after the Northern Alliance announced the defection of Mirza Muhammad Nasri, a prominent Taliban commander.

25 Nizamuddin ------------------------- KILLED while defecting, by al Qaeda at Alchin, north of Kunduz November 16, 2001
Pashtun Taliban commander at Kunduz. In the first of the reported killings before dawn Friday morning, November 16, 2001, in the village of Alchin, a front-line hamlet about three miles north of Kunduz, foreign Taliban soldiers gunned down 70 local Taliban who were preparing to defect. According to the accounts, the slain troops belonged to a commander named Nizamuddin, a Pashtun from Kandahar. An overwhelming majority of the Taliban troops are Pashtuns, so a defection by commander of that ethnic group with his men could provoke particular anger among hard-line Taliban leaders. The foreign Taliban fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a truck carrying fleeing Afghan Taliban as it neared the front line. Then, the foreign Taliban sprayed the remaining group with machine-gun fire.

26 Mullah Hamidullah Khan ------------------------------------ defected at Kunduz November 24, 2001
Senior Taliban commander at Kunduz

27 Mullah Faizal ---------------------------- surrendered at Kunduz November 25, 2001
Taliban commander at Kunduz

28 Mullah Amidullah ------------------------------ surrendered at Kunduz November 25, 2001
Top Taliban leader from Ishkamesh in Konduz province

29 Omar brothers ------------------------------------ offered to surrender November 18, 2001, at Kunduz, top Taliban commander and his brother Hajii
Hajii Omar, brother of a top Taliban commander in Kunduz, on Sunday November 18, 2001 offered to surrender their northern stronghold city of Kunduz to the opposition alliance. The offer was made during negotiations by radio with the Taliban in Kunduz, the last city in the north held by the Taliban. Under the offer, the Taliban would surrender if the opposition alliance guaranteed the safety of non-Afghans fighting with the Taliban and if the surrender were witnessed by United Nations representatives.
There are an estimated 3,000 non-Afghans fighting with the Taliban in Kunduz, including Arabs believed to be affiliated with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network as well as Pakistanis.
Alliance commanders had been delaying an attack on Kunduz for days as negotiations proceeded, saying they wanted to avoid civilian causalities. The reported surrender offer came on the heaviest day to date of bombing in the region by US warplanes.

30 Mullah Bismillah --------------------------- defected from Taliban at Kandahar November 9, 2001
in charge of a Taliban ammunition depot in Kandahar. Bismillah fled Kandahar for the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta in early November because of heavy U.S. bombing, and because he said he did not believe in sacrificing his life for Saudi-born Islamic radical Osama bin Laden.

31 Younis Khalis --------------------------------------------- head of a Hizb-e-Islami faction, abandoned the Taliban at Jalalabad on November 14, to take control of Torkham checkpoint on the Pakistan border. On November 17, 2001, Khalis lost out in the campaign for control of Jalalabad. Taliban positions in and around Jalalabad had come under heavy aerial bombardment overnight November 13-14 by US warplanes. On November 14, 2001, a day after Kabul fell, Younis Khalis declared himself independent of both the Taliban and the northern alliance, then he abandoned the Taliban at Jalalabad to take control of Torkham checkpoint on the Pakistan border. But the "liberation" of Nangarhar province in the east and its strategic capital Jalalabad was affected by forces loyal to Younis Khalis, head of a breakaway faction of the Hizb-e-Islami mujahedin outfit. In a sign of the possible frictions ahead, a spokesman for Khalis told AIP his forces would brook no interference from outside. "Neither the Northern Alliance nor anybody else should try to enter into Nangarhar," the spokesman said. But on November 17, 2001, Khalis lost out in the local campaign for control of Jalalabad to Haji Abdul Qadir, the brother of the recently-murdered Pashtun leader Abdul Haq, when local militia commanders in the eastern Afghan city agreed to return the region's former governor to office, as the new governor of Nangarhar province. Jalalabad is Pashtun territory, entrance to the Khyber Pass, on the northern Pakistan border, east of Kabul. This city seems to have stabilized under the control of Qadir. Mr Qadir, who fled the region in 1996 after it was captured by the Taleban, originally welcomed Osama Bin Laden when he arrived from Sudan in the mid-1990s. Qadir is the brother of the prominent anti-Taleban guerrilla leader, Abdul Haq, who in October 2001 was captured and killed by the Taleban after he returned to Afghanistan to try to persuade members of his Pashtun ethnic group to abandon the Taleban. The militia commanders who up until November 16 were controlling Jalalabad took two days to reach an agreement on how to share power. A Shura, or council, with representatives from several different factions and militias met throughout Friday, November 16. There had been fears that the talks would break down and that with hundreds of heavily armed gunmen on the streets of the city this would spark more violence. Hard-line Pashtun warlord Younis Khalis had also been a contender for power in the province. As of November 18, 2001, there was reportedly still fighting going on with 1,000-1,500 Arab Al Qaeda forces in the hills near Jalalabad. On November 19, 2001 in Jalalabad, the new anti-Taliban governor of Nangarhar province, Abdul Qadir, offered to help US and British commandos search for bin Laden and al-Qaida fighters in the rugged mountains of his province. He said there were hundreds of Arab fighters holed up in the Tora-Bora camp in Nangarhar and he would be happy to help coalition forces root them out. Dozens of US Special Forces later arrived via many helicopter landings into Jalalabad, and set out from there on their way by trucks up to the Tora Bora cave region to root out al Qaeda at their last major holdout through the month of December 2001.

32 Mullah Qahir ------------------------------------------ captured at Mazar-i-Sharif, November 6, 2001, local commander
Forces opposed to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban gained ground in the north in a slow-moving campaign to try to recapture the strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif on November 6, 2001. They had also captured several Taliban fighters including local commanders Mullah Qahir and Mullah Rowhani. "Our fighters have seized Zari Bazar, Baluch and Wayemar areas near Keshendeh in Balkh in overnight fighting," Ustad Muhakik, one of the three veteran commanders waging the battle to take Mazar-i-Sharif, told Reuters. Keshendeh lies some 40 km (25 miles) south of Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of Balkh province that borders the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan and had been at the heart of fighting for several weeks in which the opposition launched several offensives, only to be beaten back by the Taliban. Five people from both sides were killed in the fighting for Zari Bazar, a town that had changed hands numerous times since May. Mohakik said the offensive in Balkh was a joint attack by his Shiite Muslim forces and those loyal to ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum and had forced the Taliban to retreat.

33 Mullah Rowhani ------------------------------------------ captured at Mazar-i-Sharif, November 6, 2001, local commander
Forces opposed to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban gained ground in the north in a slow-moving campaign to try to recapture the strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif on November 6, 2001. They had also captured several Taliban fighters including local commanders Mullah Qahir and Mullah Rowhani.

34 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ---------------------------- rogue warlord at Serobi, ruler of Logar Province, as of November 20, 2001
The area of the dam at Serobi that provides the capital Kabul's electricity is believed to be under the control of groups linked to this exiled Pathan warlord and former comrade-in-arms of the alliance. On November 14, 2001 Logar province fell to local commanders loyal to the notorious exiled warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a bitter rival of Younis Khalis, who then later lost his own bid to rule neighboring Nangarhar Province to the east.

35 Shah Zadah ---------------------------------- rogue commander at Serobi, as of November 20, 2001
commander in charge of the dam at Serobi that provides the capital's electricity, he had possibly pulled the plug on the city November 20, 2001. Serobi is 15 miles west of the place on the main road between Kabul and Jalalabad where four journalists were pulled out of their cars and shot dead on November 20. Another version of events of the power outage had the search party of 300 Northern Alliance troops, sent out to find the missing four journalists, clashing with bandits in the hills and damaging the power lines in the process. Reporters who took the same road from Kabul on November 21 to investigate the source of the blackout were robbed at gunpoint by men claiming to be under the command of Shah Zadah.

36 Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef -------------------------- rendered irrelevant after fall of Taliban at Kandahar, as of December 7, 2001
Taliban's sole ambassador, and Pakistan envoy. On November 20, 2001 Pakistan ordered Zaeef to close consulates in Peshawar and in Quetta. The Taliban embassy will be allowed to operate until an interim Afghan government is established. He was summarily dismissed by Pakistan without any official fanfare, after the fall of Kandahar, on December 7, 2001.

37 Abdur Rassool Sayyaf ------------------------------- turned against al Qaeda, leader of the Ittehad-e-Islami faction of the Northern Alliance, which had the largest Arab force during the 1980's war agains the Soviets, former al Qaeda sympathizer
Sayyaf leads the northern alliance Ittehad-e-Islami faction. During the 1980s war against the Soviet occupation, Sayyaf's party had the largest number of Arabs in its ranks. Sayyaf, who has stayed loyal to former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, was considered close to Arab militants fighting in Afghanistan. The rebel leader Sayyaf sided with Iraq against the U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War. Like bin Laden, he also has publicly opposed the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Documents shown to The Associated Press showed that Sayyaf had requested that Rabbani provide Afghan citizenship to 604 Arabs in 1993. At the time, Sayyaf's lieutenant, Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai, was Rabbani's interior minister. But Sayyaff fought a fierce battle against the al Qaeda forces, for the hills of Paghman, barely 12 miles outside Kabul, on November 15, 2001. Sayyaf's support for the assault on Arab militants is an unusual change of heart. The November 15 battle was the first major ground assault on the Arabs and Pakistanis who fled with the retreating Taliban rulers from Kabul at dawn Tuesday, November 13, 2001. Several hundred al-Qaida members were headquartered in Paghman, many living in Sayyaf's abandoned home. Twenty of the Arabs had booby trapped their bodies. With detonation devices in their hands, they dared their attackers to engage in hand-to-hand combat. As the northern alliance troops attacked, the Arabs detonated the booby traps, killing themselves and their assailants. After the battle, at his home in Paghman, Sayyaf refused to answer questions about the battle with the al-Qaida warriors or his long association with militant Arabs. On Friday, November 16, Inayat Ullah, a former secretary for Sayyafs lieutenant Ahmedzai, found several Afghan passports belonging to Arabs of al-Qaida as well as Yemeni passports in a safe house belonging to bin Laden's terrorist network.

38 Mowlawi Islam --------------------------------- surrendered, November 11, 2001 governor of Bamian province
Bamian province governor. On November 11, 2001, anti-Taliban forces captured the central Afghan town of Bamian after the provincial governor surrendered to the opposition. "Bamian governor Mowlawi Islam and 300 of his troops surrendered and joined the (opposition) forces," an Iranian radio correspondent reported from Afghanistan. The correspondent said opposition forces also captured the towns of Kahmard and Sayghan in Bamian province without facing any resistance from Taliban forces.

39 Abdul Rahman Jan --------------------- ceased fighting, tribal Pashtun commander, close to the Taliban in Helmand province, took power in rivalry battle December 9
Pashtun Noorzai tribal commander, took control of the Helmand provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, December 9, 2001, in a post-Taliban rivalry battle with Pashtun Barakzai tribal commander Hafeezullah Jan, that left 7 dead.

40 Hafeezullah Jan --------------------- ceased fighting, tribal Pashtun commander, close to the Taliban in Helmand province, took power December 7 2001, but lost it in battle December 9
Pashtun Barakzai tribal commander who took control of Helmand Province immediately after the Taliban abandoned it on December 7. On late Saturday November 17 and Sunday morning November 18, 42 people were killed in bombing raids close to the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar, Pakistan's AIP said. "Most of the victims were tribal nomads," who died during an intense aerial bombardment of Maywand district, 70 kilometers west of Kandahar city. The Taliban then fled the Helmand province capital, Lashkar Gah, when Kandahar fell on December 7, and Hafeezullah Jan then stepped into power. But Hafeezullah Jan then eventually withdrew in defeat from the Helmand provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, December 9, 2001, in a post-Taliban rivalry battle with Pashtun Noorzai tribal commander Abdul Rahman Jan, that left 7 dead.

41 Mohammed Zaman Ghun Shareef -------------------------------------- an Afghan Pashtun exile leader, in Pakistan November 15, 2001, vying for control of Jalalabad from Younis Khalis and Abdul Qadir
On November 15, 2001 Pakistan forces (ISI) were actively supporting a rival faction, the Eastern Shura, led by Zaman Ghun Shareef, to take back control of Jalalabad, 70 miles from their northwest border, after their Taliban forces fled the city only days earlier. At dusk on Thursday, November 15, Pak border forces allowed this armed group to cross the Torkham border, on its way to Jalalabad. The convoy of several hundred Afghan guerrilla veterans crossed the border from Pakistan into eastern Afghanistan, vowing to negotiate or fight their way to power in the city of Jalalabad. Their potential opponents were not Taliban forces, but another guerrilla group led by Younis Khalis, that had taken control of the city. "It is our country, so we have a right to return, whether the situation is secure or not," said Mohammed Zaman Ghun Shareef, an Afghan exile leader, as hundreds of veteran fighters in traditional Afghan dress milled impatiently that morning at his compound in Peshawar, a city near the Afghan border. "We are going in peace, for peace," Zaman said, "but if we must fight, we will fight." Jalalabad was said to have been taken over by one faction of the Northern Alliance forces under the leadership of Yunis Khalis and his popular local commander, Abdul Qadir. "The people of Jalalabad are much worried about what will happen now," said Gul Agha, a businessman from Jalalabad who reached Peshawar on Thursday. "Many people like Qadir, but Zaman says he has more followers. They don't care about the welfare of the people, they just want to take power in the province." Zaman's caravan, accompanied by a group of journalists, crossed the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan at dusk on November 15, heading toward Jalalabad 70 miles to the west. By some accounts, the convoy was assisted by Pakistani intelligence agencies, who appear to be sponsoring Zaman in a bid to gain influence over the crucial border region. Most of the convoy was allowed to cross the border, which is officially closed to traffic from Pakistan. Police stopped several vehicles carrying some foreign journalists and refused to let them follow. Informed sources said that the Afghan city of Jalalabad was in the hands of Afghan forces and a unity council drawing on all local chiefs. Warlordism was then avoided after two days of intense talks when Qadir was selected by the council to be the new governor of the province on November 17, 2001.

42 - 47 Six Unknown ------------------------- KIA, total of 12 in all reported by War Planners as of December 12, 2001

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 488. Dec 21, 2001 10:07 PM

» Steven_Russell - Abdul Rahman Said Yasin - the 1993 Iraqi smoking gun

This guy, an American from Bloomington Indiana, on the FBI Wanted list, is the key Iraqi smoking gun in the link between the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Iraq's state sponsorship of that horrendous terrorist act. 6 were killed.

---------------------------------------------

as of December 20, 2001
_______________________
FBI Top Wanted terrorists: .. 22 on list - 1 KIA, 1 prisoner, 0 wounded/in peril, 20 at large

==================================================================

FBI 22 Top Most Wanted Terrorists
released to the public by President Bush on Oct. 10.

pictures and original summaries found at:
http://www.mostwanted.org/Terrorists.html
http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/terrorists/f...

If you have information about any of the suspects, call the FBI (toll free): 1-866-483-5137.

==================================================================

15 Abdul Rahman Said Yasin ----------------------------- fugitive in Baghdad as of 1996, indicted for 1993 WTC bombing, led FBI to apartment where 1993 WTC bomb was made; employee of Iraqi government
An American, Born April 10, 1960 in Bloomington, Indiana, 5'10", 180 pounds. Yasin possibly has a chemical burn scar on his right thigh. Yasin is an epileptic. An Iraqi government employee who was living in Baghdad as of 1996. AEI Press scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship.

In early 1992, Palestinian fundamentalist Mohammed Salameh was recruited into a New York pipe bomb plot of imprisoned El Sayid Nosair. Planted among the plotters was an Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant, but also an active plotter and agitator. On June 10 1992, Palestinian plotter Mohammed Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his PLO terrorist uncle in Baghdad, number two man in the "Western Sector", a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence. Thus begins the Iraqi connection. Key preparatory steps to the World Trade Center bombing were taken within days of Salameh's first call-including steps taken in Baghdad.

On June 21, 1992 the now-fugitive American-born Iraqi government employee living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin (subsequently an indicted fugitive in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport. Born in America, Abdul Rahman Yasin received his passport, which he soon used to travel to the United States. Just at this crucial point, unfortunately, the FBI lost track of the Nosair-Salameh conspiracy. It had severed relations with its informant, Emad Salem, in early July 1992.

But Abdul Rahman Yasin's older Iraqi brother, Musab Yasin, lived in the same Jersey City building as Mohammad Salameh, the Palestinian who had first called his uncle in Iraq just days before Abdul Rahman sought his own passport to America. After September 1, 1992, the1993 WTC bombing mastermind, Abdul Basit Karim, travelling under the name of Ramzi Yousef, came to stay at the apartment of Musab Yasin in Jersey City. So too did Abdul Rahman Yasin, Musab's younger brother, who arrived in America from Iraq in September 1992, soon after Ramzi Yousef. Many young Arab men used the two Yasin and Salameh apartments, praying and eating together; relations were so close that the apartments were connected by an intercom.

On the morning of February 26, 1993 shortly after noon, the WTC bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. Salameh was arrested on March 4, 1993. Salameh had used Musab Yasin's phone number when renting the van, and Abdul Rahman Yasin was picked up the same day in a sweep of sites associated with Salameh. Abdul Rahman was taken to New Jersey FBI headquarters in Newark. He is reported to have been extremely cool, as a trained intelligence agent would be. He was helpful to investigators who themselves faced tremendous pressure to produce answers. He told them, for instance, the location of the apartment that was used to make the bomb, a key bit of information. They thanked him for his cooperation and let him walk out. This, although he had arrived just six months before from Iraq, and might well attempt to return there. And indeed, the very next day, Abdul Rahman Yasin boarded Royal Jordanian flight 262 to Amman, Jordan, the same plane Salameh had failed to catch a week earlier. From Amman, Abdul Rahman Yasin went on to Baghdad. An ABC news stringer saw him there in 1994, outside his father's house, and learned from neighbors that he worked for the Iraqi government.

Meanwhile, as U.S. authorities searched for Abdul Rahman Yasin in March 1993, after his "helpful" session with the FBI and before they knew for certain that he had fled, an FBI agent who had worked with Emad Salem in June 1992 speculated to Salem: "Do you ever think that Iraqi intelligence might have known of these people who were willing to do something crazy, and that Iraqi intelligence found them out and encouraged them to do this as a retaliation for the bombing of Iraq. . . . So the people who are left holding the bag here in America are Egyptian. . . or Palestinian. . . . But the other people we are looking for, Abdul Rahman, he is gone. . I hate to think what's going to happen if this guy turns out to be. . an Iraqi intelligence operative...and these people were used." That, indeed, is the most straightforward explanation of the World Trade Center bombing: that it was an Iraqi intelligence operation, led by Ramzi Yousef, with the local Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists serving first as aides and then as diversionary dupes.
(www.fbi.gov)
AKA: Abdul Rahman Said Yasin, Aboud Yasin, Abdul Rahman S. Taha, Abdul Rahman S. Taher DETAILS: Abdul Rahman Yasin is wanted for his alleged participation in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, New York City, on February 26, 1993, which resulted in six deaths, the wounding of numerous individuals, and the significant destruction of property and commerce. REWARD: $5 million.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iraq/956-tn...

Top 489. Dec 21, 2001 10:35 PM

» Steven_Russell - 1993 WTC Iraq connection, terrorist body count, Dec 20, 2001

This is an update of an approximation of the body-count summary of the top enemy operatives and leaders, who are being tracked daily by US War Planners in Florida. Their information on the number and status of individuals of top interest is drawn from various sources of Intelligence and news media reports.

as of December 20, 2001
_______________________
FBI Top Wanted terrorists: .. 22 on list - 1 KIA, 1 prisoner, 0 wounded/in peril, 20 at large
_______________________
Other Top al Qaeda: ........... 54 on list - 3 KIA, 37 prisoners, 1 wounded/in peril, 13 at large
_______________________
Taliban & Afghan rogues ..... 62 on list - 12 KIA, 2 prisoners, 22 defector/surrender, 26 at large
_______________________
1993 WTC agents & Iraq ... 12 on list - 9 prisoners, 3 at large
_______________________

===============================================================

1993 WTC agents, and Iraqi connection

===============================================================

This list contains key conspirators associated most closely with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who do not also appear on any other lists. A major focus here is the presentation of extensive evidence of Iraqi state sponsorship in the bombing.

Information has been derived mostly from:

The National Interest, Winter, 1995/96

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMB:
Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters
by Laurie Mylroie
Laurie Mylroie, formerly of Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College. is currently with the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia. She was co-author of the bestseller, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (Random House 1990), and has just completed a sequel, 'Study of Revenge': Saddam's Terror Against America, January 1993-??

-------------------------------------------------------------

Late in 2000, AEI Press published the finalized "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America", a careful book about the 1993 WTC bombing, by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie, and reviewed by R James Woolsey, former Director of US Central Intelligence Agency.

================================================================

1 El Sayid Nosair------------------------- in US prison at Attica, convicted with Ramzi Yousef November 12, 1997 of conspiracy in February 26, 1993 WTC bombing; 1992 pipe bomb plot initiator from Attica; convicted in 1991 of lesser charges in the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane
Egyptian fundamentalist. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following the conclusion of a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The story of Iraqi state sponsorship in the plot begins in November 1990 when an Egyptian fundamentalist, El Sayid Nosair, shot and killed Meir Kahane, an extreme right-wing Israeli-American, in Manhattan. A year later, in November 1991, Nosair's trial became a cause celebre among local fundamentalists, who turned out in force to support their "martyr."

Planted among them was another Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant, even as he maintained ties to Egyptian intelligence. In December 1991, the jury returned a bizarre verdict, acquitting Nosair of murder and finding him guilty on lesser charges. An outraged judge gave Nosair a maximum sentence on those lesser charges, and sent him to Attica. The fundamentalists continued to support Nosair, arranging bus trips from their mosques to visit him in prison. Salem, the FBI plant, remained among them. In early June 1992, with the informant Salem acting as an agent provocateur, Nosair convinced his friends to execute a bomb plot. He wanted them to make twelve pipe bombs, to be used for assassinating his judge and a Brooklyn assemblyman, the others to be used against Jewish targets. A cousin was to organize the plot, and Salem was to build the bombs. Mohammed Salameh, a Palestinian fundamentalist with relatives in Iraq, was then also recruited into the early 1992 pipe bomb plot.

Beginning on June 10 1992, Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his Palestinian terrorist uncle, living in Baghdad. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. The Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in Manhattan, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

In late 1992, another Egyptian friend of El Sayid Nosair, Mahmud Abu Halima, a thirty-four year old cab driver in Manhattan, and some others from around the country, joined the growing plot, which by then was being controlled by a likely secret Iraqi agent, the mastermind Ramzi Yousef, with the probable intent of bringing down the World Trade Center in early 1993.

On November 12, 1997, El Sayid Nosair, still in Attica prison, was convicted along with Ramzi Yousef of conspiracy in the February 26, 1993 WTC bombing.

2 Emad Salem --------------------------------- in US prison for 1993 WTC bombing conspiracy; Agent provocateur and bomb builder in June 1992 pipe bomb plot; FBI informant against Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair, with ties to Egyptian intelligence.
An Egyptian, with ties to Egyptian intelligence, and FBI informant among Manhattan fundamentalists. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. In 1991, Egyptian fundamentalist El Sayid Nosair was convicted in the trial for the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in Manhattan, which became a cause celebre among local fundamentalists, who turned out in force to support their "martyr." Planted among them was another Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant, even as he maintained ties to Egyptian intelligence. The fundamentalists continued to support Nosair in Attica prison, arranging bus trips from their mosques to visit him in prison. Emad Salem, the FBI plant, remained among them. In early June 1992, with Salem acting as an agent provocateur, Nosair convinced his friends to execute a bomb plot to assassinate his prosecuting judge and others with twelve pipe bombs. A cousin was to organize the plot, and Emad Salem was to build the bombs. Mohammed Salameh, a Palestinian fundamentalist with relatives in Iraq, was then also recruited into the early 1992 pipe bomb plot.

Beginning on June 10 1992, Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his Palestinian terrorist uncle, living in Baghdad. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. On June 21, 1992 an American-born Iraqi government employee from Bloomington, Indiana, living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin, appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport, on which he travelled to the US several months later. Then unfortunately, the FBI lost track of the Nosair-Salameh pipe bomb conspiracy.

The FBI did not fully trust its informant, Emad Salem, and Salem's ties to Egyptian intelligence; so the Bureau severed relations with Salem in early July 1992 when he refused to follow its procedures relating to criminal investigations. But other evidence shows that the Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control of the plot from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in Manhattan, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Emad Salem taped most of his own phone conversations, including those with the FBI. As U.S. authorities later searched for the American Iraqi agent Abdul Rahman Yasin in March 1993, an FBI agent, John Anticev, who had worked with Emad Salem in June 1992 speculated to the FBI plant Salem: "Do you ever think that Iraqi intelligence might have known of these people who were willing to do something crazy, and that Iraqi intelligence found them out and encouraged them to do this as a retaliation for the bombing of Iraq. . . . So the people who are left holding the bag here in America are Egyptian. . . or Palestinian. . . . But the other people we are looking for, Abdul Rahman, he is gone. . I hate to think what's going to happen if this guy turns out to be. . an Iraqi intelligence operative...and these people were used."

3 Mohammed Salameh--------------------------- in US prison, rented the van used in the 1993 WTC bombing; lived with Ramzi Yousef in the apartment where the bomb was built; left an early trail of phone calls to Iraq; early accomplice in June 1992 Nosair pipe bomb plot
Born in 1966, a Palestinian fundamentalist with relatives in Iraq. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. In 1991, El Sayid Nosair was convicted in the trial for the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in Manhattan. Planted among his supporters was an Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant. In early June 1992, Salem acted as an agent provocateur, in a Nosair pipe bomb plot from Attica prison, to murder 12 people. Palestinian fundamentalist Mohammed Salameh was then recruited into the early 1992 New York pipe bomb plot.

Salameh comes from a long line of terrorists on his mother's side. His maternal grandfather fought in the 1936 Arab revolt against British rule in Palestine, and joined the PLO and was jailed by the Israelis. A maternal uncle became number two in the "Western Sector", a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence in Baghdad. Salameh's involvement begins when he was twenty-six years old, recruited into the June 1992 El Sayid Nosair plot.

Despite his terrorist pedigree, Mohammed Salameh himself is naive and manipulable. When one considers that he was arrested in the process of returning to collect the deposit on the van he had rented to carry the 1993 Trade Center bomb, it is not so surprising that on June 10 1992, soon after being recruited into Nosair's plot, Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his PLO terrorist uncle in Baghdad. We can only speculate about what Salameh told his uncle, but it seems very likely that he spoke about the bold new project Nosair was organizing, perhaps seeking his help and advice. Salameh's telephone bills suggest that the pipe bombing plot was one of the most exciting events in his life: In six weeks he ran up a bill of over four thousand dollars and lost his phone service.

Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. On June 21, 1992 an American-born Iraqi government employee from Bloomington, Indiana, living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin, appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport. Other evidence then shows that Yasin and the Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control of the plot from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in Manhattan, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

In late 1992, Iraqi employee Abdul Rahman Yasin travelled to the United States and stayed at the Jersey City apartment of the Iraqi Musab Yasin, his older brother. Musab Yasin lived in the same Jersey City building as the Palestinian, Mohammad Salameh, whose phone calls to Iraq had initiated the Iraqi connection in the plot. Other young Arab men also lived in the same building. Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing plot, had also recently moved into the Yasin apartment. Musab Yasin and Mohammed Salameh became friends and soon left to share an apartment elsewhere in Jersey City. On November 3, 1992 Ramzi Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb.

Another local fundamentalist recruited into the plot then was Nidal Ayyad, a fellow Palestinian, the same age as Mohammad Salameh. In January 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Mohammad Salameh moved into another Jersey City apartment where the bomb was actually built. Set well back from the street, the building provided seclusion. On February 23, Salameh went to a Ryder rental agency to rent the van to carry the bomb. On the morning of February 26, 1993 the conspirators gathered at a local Shell gas station where they topped up the tank--one last explosive touch--before driving to Manhattan. Shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. That evening Salameh drove another Palestinian named Eyyad Ismail Ismail, the van driver, and Ramzi Yousef to JFK airport; Yousef escaped to Pakistan, and Ismail to Jordan. But Salameh looks to have been deliberately left behind by Yousef, not provided with money he needed for a plane ticket.

Salameh had a ticket to Amsterdam on Royal Jordanian fight 262, which continues on to Amman, Jordan dated for March 5, 1993, but it was an infant ticket that had cost him only $65. While Salameh had been able to use this ticket to get himself a Dutch visa, he could not actually travel on it. Needing more money for an adult fare, he tried to get his van deposit back by telling the rental agency that the van had been stolen. With either desperate or inane persistence, he returned three times before he was finally arrested on March 4, 1993. Salameh had used Musab Yasin's phone number when renting the van, and Abdul Rahman Yasin was picked up the same day in a sweep of sites associated with Salameh. Abdul Rahman Yasin told the FBI the location of the apartment that was used to make the bomb, a key bit of information. They released Yasin and the very next day, he fled to Amman, Jordan on Flight 262, the same plane Salameh had hoped to catch. From Amman Yasin went on to Baghdad.

4 A maternal uncle of Mohammed Salameh ---------------------------- at large in Iraq as of 1996, key Iraqi connection to the 1993 WTC plot, received 46 phone calls in June 1992 from original pipe bomb plotter Salameh; living in Baghdad in 1992; #2 man in "Western Sector", a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence; served eighteen years in an Israeli prison before he was released and deported in 1986
The first Iraqi connection to the 1993 WTC plot. Palestinian PLO terrorist in Iraq, maternal uncle of 1993 WTC bombing conspirator Mohammed Salameh. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship.

In early 1992, Palestinian fundamentalist Mohammed Salameh was recruited into a New York pipe bomb plot of El Sayid Nosair. Planted among the plotters was an Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant, but also an active plotter and agitator. Salameh comes from a long line of terrorists on his mother's side, including this maternal uncle of Salameh, who was arrested in 1968 for terrorism and served eighteen years in an Israeli prison before he was released and deported in 1986, making his way to Baghdad where he became number two in the "Western Sector", a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence. On June 10 1992, Mohammed Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad. We can only speculate about what Salameh told his uncle, but it seems very likely that he spoke about the bold new project Nosair was organizing from Attica prison, perhaps seeking his help and advice. In six weeks Salameh ran up a bill of over four thousand dollars and lost his phone service.

In Iraq, the more significant the person, the greater the likelihood his activities are monitored--at least that is what Baghdadis assume. It is thus more than likely that Iraqi intelligence learned of Nosair's bombing plot and Salameh's participation in it through Salameh's phone calls to his uncle. In any event, key preparatory steps to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were taken within days of Salameh's first call-including steps taken in Baghdad. On June 21, 1992 an American-born Iraqi government employee from Bloomington, Indiana, living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin (subsequently an indicted fugitive in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and still one of the FBI's top Most Wanted Terrorists as of December 2001) appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport.

Just at this crucial point, unfortunately, the FBI lost track of the Nosair-Salameh conspiracy, because it had severed relations with its informant in Manhattan, Emad Salem, in early July 1992. But other evidence then shows that Yasin and the Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control of the plot from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in New York, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

5 Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim [Iraqi agent?] -------------------- in US prison, convicted November 12, 1997 of planning and execution of the 1993 WTC bombing, the mastermind behind the bombing, who went by the alias Ramzi Yousef; Basit may be a stolen Pakistani identity in Kuwait, and Yousef an Iraqi agent
aka Ramzi Yousef. Born in 1966, a Baluch Pakistani born and reared in Kuwait. At the time a 27-year-old, mastermind behind the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center and New York landmarks bombing conspiracy, to first piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Her conclusion was that Abdul Basit Karim was in fact a stolen Kuwaiti identy, assumed by an Iraqi agent, who masterminded the 1993 WTC bombing under the pseudonym Ramzi Yousef.

R. James Woolsey, now a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C., who also served as US Director of Central Intelligence from February 1993 to January 1995 under President Clinton, supports the theory, as more recently detailed in the following book: Late in 2000, AEI Press published "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America", a careful book about the bombing, by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie. The book's startling thesis is that the original theory of the attack, advanced by James Fox (the FBI's chief investigator into the 1993 bombing until his replacement in 1994) was correct: that Ramzi Yousef was not Abdul Basit but rather an Iraqi agent who had assumed the latter's identity when police files in Kuwait (where the real Abdul Basit lived in 1990) were doctored by Iraqi intelligence during the occupation of Kuwait. If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right, then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Center last time.

Following is the detailed chronological explanation of these events in the life of Ramzi Yousef, taken mostly from the original 1995 Mylroie article [credited at top], and also from the Woolsey review of the 2000 Mylroie book. According to the popular theory of the 1993 bombing embraced by federal prosecutors and the Clinton administration, Ramzi Yousef/Abdul Basit was just another Middle Eastern student who became radicalized in his early twenties. But the real truth behind that bomb plot is increasingly appearing to be much more ominous, as the investigation of the trail of evidence is meticulously followed. Yousef's nationality and ethnicity have become known: He is a Pakistani Baluch. The Baluch are a distinct ethnic group, speaking their own language, one of several Middle Eastern peoples without their own homeland. They live in eastern Iran and western Pakistan in inhospitable desert terrain over which neither Tehran nor Islamabad exercises much control. Baluchistan is a haven for smuggling, both of drugs and of arms. The Baluch are Sunni and are at sharp odds with Tehran's Shia clerical regime. Through Iraq's many years of conflict with Iran, first in the early 1970s and then during the Iran-Iraq war a decade later, Iraqi intelligence developed close ties with the Baluch on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border. Above all, it used them to carry out terrorism against Iran. Yousef's associates in Pakistan, too, were anti-Shia. This fact, taken together with his Baluch ethnicity, make it nearly impossible that Iran could be behind Yousef.

But why Abdul Basit Karim? Here we come to one of the most intriguing and vital aspects of the case. Because there really was an Abdul Basit Karim, a Pakistani born in Kuwait, who later attended Swansea Institute, a technical school in Wales. After graduating in 1989 with a two-year degree in computer-aided electronic engineering, he returned to a job in Kuwait's planning ministry. As Abdul Basit and his family were permanent residents of Kuwait, Kuwait's Interior Ministry maintained files on them. But the files for Abdul Basit and his parents in Kuwait's Interior Ministry have been tampered with. Key documents from the Kuwaiti files on Abdul Basit and his parents are missing. There should be copies of the front pages of the passports, including a picture, a notation of height, and so forth, but that material is gone. There is also information in the file that should not be there, especially a notation stating that Abdul Basit and his family left Kuwait for Iraq on August 26, 1990, transiting to Iran at Salamchah (a crossing point near Basra) on their way to Pakistani Baluchistan, where, according to the file, they now live.

Who put that notation into Abdul Basit's file and why? Consider the circumstances of the moment. The Kuwaiti government had ceased to exist, and Iraq was an occupation authority; bent on establishing control over a hostile population amid near-universal condemnation, as an American-led coalition threatened war. The situation was chaotic as hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing for their lives. While the citizens of Western countries were pawns in a high stakes game, held hostage by Iraq, little attention was paid to the multitude of Third World nationals bent on escape. It truly boggles the imagination to believe that under such circumstances an Iraqi bureaucrat was sitting calmly in Kuwait's Interior Ministry taking down the flight plans--including the itinerary and final destination--of otherwise non-descript Baluchis fleeing Kuwait. Rather, it looks as if Iraqi intelligence put that information into Abdul Basit's file to make it appear that he left Kuwait rather than died there, and that, like Ramzi Yousef, he too was Baluch. Moreover, Iraqi intelligence apparently switched fingerprint cards, removing the original with Abdul Basit's fingerprints and replacing it with one bearing those of Yousef. [the identity switch seems farfetched at first glance, until you read further on, about Yousef's later blatant attempts to establish his passport identity with New York officials under his "own" full name, as "Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim" - while living in Jersey City secretly as Ramzi Yousef!]

Pakistan also maintains files on those of its citizens permanently resident abroad, at the embassy in the country in which they live. On August 9, 1990 Baghdad had ordered all embassies in Iraq's "nineteenth province" [Kuwait] to close. Most did, including the Pakistani embassy. The files on Abdul Basit and his family that should be in the Pakistani embassy in Kuwait are missing. The Pakistani government now has no record of the family. What does all this suggest? That Abdul Basit and his family were in Kuwait when Iraq invaded in August 1990; that they probably died then; and that Iraqi intelligence then tampered with their files to create an alternative identity for Ramzi Yousef. Clearly, only Iraq could reasonably have: 1) known of, or caused, the death of Abdul Basit and his family; 2) tampered with Kuwait's Interior Ministry files, above all switching the fingerprint cards; and 3) filched the files on Abdul Basit and his family from the Pakistani embassy in Kuwait. Is it likely to be mere coincidence, after all, that during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait key documents were removed from Abdul Basit's and his parents files, while the same files were filched in their entirety from the Pakistani embassy? Moreover, Abdul Basit had no criminal record in Britain, nor did he or his parents have any security record in Kuwait. And where are Abdul Basit's parents? They never returned to Kuwait after its liberation, nor have they appeared anywhere else. Did they too take up a life of crime after decades of abiding by the law?

The first concrete knowledge we have of Ramzi Yousef/Abdul Basit comes in early 1991, around the end of the Gulf war when he showed up in the Philippines seeking contact with a Muslim group there. Introduced as "the chemist", he proposed to collaborate in bombing conspiracies. Now, how did a young man who had led a seemingly normal life up until August 1990 suddenly become a world class terrorist six months after Iraq invaded his country of residence? Where did he get such sophisticated explosives training in just six months? (The real Abdul Basit's degree, remember, was in electronic engineering, not chemistry, which Swansea Institute does not even teach.)

In June 1992, it is more than likely that Iraqi intelligence learned of Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's plans to murder 12 people in Manhattan, from Palestinian Mohammed Salameh's 46 phone calls to his PLO terrorist uncle in Baghdad beginning on June 10 1992, and that Baghdad decided to help out in the process, thus transforming the Attica prison pipe bomb plot into the much more insidious 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On June 21, 1992 the now fugitive American-born Iraqi government employee living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport. Here probably lies the source of 1993 WTC bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef's exploits in America.

The man later identified as Abdul Basit Karim, travelling under the name of Ramzi Yousef, entered the United Stares on September 1, 1992, arriving at JFK airport. Yousef presented an Iraqi passport without a U.S. visa, was briefly detained (and fingerprinted) for illegal entry, and was granted asylum pending a hearing. Yousef went to stay at the apartment of Musab Yasin, an Iraqi living in Jersey City, the older brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, the American-born Iraqi government employee. Abdul Rahman Yasin himself then arrived in America from Iraq soon after Ramzi Yousef, in September 1992. Abdul Rahman Yasin then joined his brother and Ramzi Yousef in the same Jersey City apartment. Also living in the same building was Palestinian Mohammed Salameh, whose 46 phone calls to his PLO terrorist uncle in Baghdad had first initiated the Iraqi connection.

The Fox/Mylroie theory--that Ramzi Yousef, via Iraqi intelligence, stole Abdul Basit's identity--would explain a number of troubling differences between Abdul Basit in the summer of 1989 (when he left the United Kingdom after three years of study) and Yousef in September 1992 (when he arrived in New York). If the two are indeed the same man, then, over the course of three years, he would have: (a) grown four inches (from five foot eight inches to six feet) in his twenties; (b) put on between 35 and 40 pounds; (c) developed a deformed eye; (d) developed smaller ears and a smaller mouth; (e) gone from being an innovative computer programmer to being computer-challenged; (f) aged substantially more than three years in appearance; and (g) changed from being a quiet, smiling young man respectful to women to a rather different one (a sound file in Yousef's computer, for example, includes his voice saying "Fuck, fuck, fuck" and "Shut up, you bitch"). Also, Ramzi Yousef was known among the New York fundamentalists as "Rashid, the Iraqi". Of course, the best way to verify or falsify this stolen identity theory would be to check with people who knew Abdul Basit before August 1990. To this end, Brad White, a former Senate Judiciary Committee investigator and CBS newsman, contacted an overseas source he knew in the United Kingdom who had looked into the matter. Two people had a good memory of Abdul Basit but, shown photos of Yousef, were unable to make a positive identification. They both felt that while there was some similarity in looks, it was not the same person. "Our feeling is that Ramzi Yousef is probably not Basit", White was told.

In 1992, Iraqi Musab Yasin, who lived in the same Jersey City building as Palestinian Mohammad Salameh, had close contact with him and other young Arab men. Ramzi Yousef, living with the Yasin brothers, and Mohammed Salameh became friends and soon left to share an apartment elsewhere in Jersey City. Although the principal conspirators had been in place since September 1992, it was not until after the U.S. elections on November 3, 1992 that Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb. In mid-November the first of many calls to chemical companies appears on his phone bills. At the same time, Yousef also began calling surgical supply companies for the gloves, masks, and rubber tubing he needed to make the bomb.

The single most important piece of evidence pointing to Iraq is the passport on which Yousef later fled America. It was no ordinary passport. On November 9,1992, just after the final green light for the bombing had been given, Yousef reported to Jersey City police that he had lost his passport. He claimed to be Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim, a Pakistani born and reared in Kuwait. Then, between December 3 and December 27, 1993 Yousef made a number of calls to Baluchistan. Several of them were conference calls to a few key numbers, a geographical plotting of which suggests that they were related to Yousef's probable escape route--through Pakistani and Iranian Baluchistan--across the Arabian Sea to Oman, after which the "telephone trail" ends.

On December 31, 1992, Yousef went to the Pakistani consulate in New York with photocopies of Abdul Basit's current and previous passports. Consistent with his story to police in Jersey City, he claimed to have lost his passport and asked for a new one. The consulate suspected his non-original documentation enough to deny him a new passport. But it did provide him a six-month, temporary passport and told him to straighten things out when he returned "home." This turned out to be good enough for the purpose at hand. By now it should be clear that the World Trade Center bomber's real name is probably neither Ramzi Yousef nor Abdul Basit. After all, would someone intending to blow up New York's tallest tower go to such trouble to get a passport under his own name? Yousef was a man of many passports; he had three on his person when he was arrested later in Pakistan. Rather, it seems that Ramzi Yousef risked going to the Pakistani consulate with such flimsy documents because he wanted investigators to conclude that he was in fact Abdul Basit, and so would stop trying to determine his real identity. And that is pretty much what later happened.

In January 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Salameh moved into another Jersey City apartment where the bomb was actually built. Set well back from the street, the building provided seclusion. On February 21, 1993 a twenty-one year old Palestinian named Eyyad Ismail arrived from Dallas. Ismail is charged with having driven the bomb-laden van. On February 23, Salameh went to a Ryder rental agency to rent the van to carry the bomb. On the morning of February 26, 1993 the conspirators gathered at a local Shell gas station where they topped up the tank--one last explosive touch--before driving to Manhattan. Shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. That evening Salameh drove Ramzi Yousef and Ismail to JFK airport; Yousef escaped to Pakistan on falsified travel documents, and Ismail to Jordan. After Ramzi Yousef's later arrest, a National Security Council staffer confirmed that Yousef had indeed fled from the United States through Baluchistan. But Salameh looks to have been deliberately left behind by Ramzi Yousef, not provided with money he needed for a plane ticket. So Salameh tried to get his van deposit back by telling the rental agency that the van had been stolen, and was finally arrested on March 4, 1993.

The most straightforward explanation of the World Trade Center bombing is that it was an Iraqi intelligence operation, led by Ramzi Yousef, with the local fundamentalists serving first as aides and then as diversionary dupes. Fingerprints are decisive for investigators because no two people's match. But the very fact that fingerprints are so decisive makes them the perfect candidate for careful manipulation. Thus, after U.S. authorities learned that Yousef had fled as Abdul Basit, they sent his fingerprints (taken by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at JFK airport when he was briefly detained for illegal entry) to Kuwait, asking if they matched those of Abdul Basit. When the Kuwaitis said that they did, everyone assumed the question settled--forgetting that Kuwait's files were not secure during the Iraqi occupation.

Five weeks after the World Trade Center bombing, four Arabs were under arrest. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, had fled. At that point in early April 1993, the FBI proclaimed that it had captured most of those involved. The bombing, it claimed, was the work of a loose group of fundamentalists with no ties to any state. In short, the Justice Department determined that the bombing had no state sponsorship even before it decided definitively who had been involved. But there was no intelligence investigation of the World Trade Center bombing. The CIA is, after all, prohibited from operating in America. Such an investigation required, at a minimum, a meticulous examination of all records associated with the defendants to insure that they had had no contact with foreign intelligence agencies--or at least that none could be found. That process simply could not have been accomplished in five weeks. And it must be kept in mind that, at the time, the mastermind of the bomb, Ramzi Yousef, was still a fugitive about whom almost nothing was known.

In 1994, four fundamentalists stood trial for being actually responsible for putting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing into effect. The government contended that these were followers of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. The lead prosecutor in that 1994 trial would later also prosecute Ramzi Yousef. When AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie later put it to them that Iraq was probably behind the Trade Center bombing, the prosecutors replied, "You may be right, but we don't do state sponsorship. We prosecute individuals." Asked who does "do" state sponsorship, they answered, "Washington." "Who in Washington?" No one seemed to know.

But then, the fugitive Ramzi Yousef was involved in yet another stupendous bombing conspiracy. In January 1995, Yousef and his associates plotted to blow up eleven U.S. commercial aircraft in one spectacular day of terrorist rage. The bombs were to be made of a liquid explosive designed to pass through airport metal detectors. But while mixing his chemical brew in a Manila apartment, Yousef started a fire. He was forced to flee to Pakistan in January, leaving behind in the Phillipines a computer that contained the information that led to his arrest a month later in Islamabad, Pakistan. Among the items found in his possession was a letter threatening Filipino interests if a comrade held in custody were not released. It claimed the "ability to make and use chemicals and poisonous gas... for use against vital institutions and residential populations and the sources of drinking water." Yousef's apparent use of chemical agents in New York and his threat to use them in the Philippines deserve special attention.

Ramzi Yousef's plots were the most ambitious terrorist conspiracies ever attempted against the United States, at the time. Arrested in February 1995, and quickly extradited, Yousef was in U.S. custody awaiting trial in spring 1995. Since Yousef's arrest and extradition to the United States, the evidence for the explanation that he is an Iraqi agent has, if anything, grown stronger. First of all, he is clearly no fundamentalist. According to neighbors, he had a Filipina girlfriend and enjoyed Manila's raucous night life. The most recent inquiries, made since Yousef's arrest, have reduced the question to two possibilities: He is a free-lancer connected to a loose network of fundamentalists; or he worked for Iraq. Ramzi Yousef's arrest made it easy enough to resolve a key question and perhaps produce important evidence implicating Iraq in the World Trade Center bombing: Is "Ramzi Yousef" really Abdul Basit or not? Let those who remember Abdul Basit from before August 1990 meet Yousef in person and tell us. It sounds simple and logical, but strangely, the Justice Department showed no interest in arranging such a meeting. Moreover, it decided to try the bomber as Ramzi Yousef even though no one, including Yousef by late 1995, maintained that that is his real name. If the government believed that Yousef is really Abdul Basit, why didn't it try him as Abdul Basit? Why is the Justice Department uninterested even in definitively determining his identity, even though doing so might help get to the bottom of the matter. A Justice Department official, who maintained his confident view that Yousef is indeed Abdul Basit, was asked "Why don't you bring the people who knew Abdul Basit to the prison to meet Yousef, so they can say for sure if they are the same?" "But you", he replied, "are interested in an intelligence question."

The Justice Department had passed on very little information to other bureaucracies. The FBI's typical response to to the State Department to any question about Yousef is: "We can't tell you much because of the trial." Sources in the State Department, CIA, and Pentagon all said that those at the working level were not getting information from the FBI on Ramzi Yousef, and were all very unhappy about it. As a result, the State Department, which is responsible for determining whether a terrorist act had state sponsorship, lacks the most basic information-- even, for example, a point as simple as what passport Yousef was traveling on when he was arrested in Islamabad in January 1995. The details of the World Trade Center case are chilling. From the outset, the Justice Department refused to share key information with the national security agencies. The government had two sets of relevant information--foreign intelligence, gathered by the CIA from watching terrorist states such as Iran and Iraq, and evidence gathered by the FBI largely within the United Stares for use in the trial. The FBI flatly told the national security bureaucracies that there was "no evidence" of state sponsorship in the World Trade Center bombing. When the national security agencies asked to see the evidence themselves, the FBI replied, "No, this is a criminal matter. We're handling it." Thus, all that the national security agencies had available to decide the question of state sponsorship was foreign intelligence they themselves had collected. After the World Trade Center bombing, the FBI was the only bureaucracy with both the intelligence and the evidence. But the more fundamental problem is that the Justice Department in Washington seems not to have been interested in pursuing the question of state sponsorship. In September 1995, the State Department forwarded to Congress the report of an independent panel, established to examine whether mistakes in security training had contributed to the March 8, 1995 assassination of two U.S. consular officials in Karachi--apparent retaliation for Ramzi Yousef's extradition. The report expressed concern about the FBI's lack of cooperation with the national security agencies.

Ramzi Yousef was convicted November 12, 1997 of planning and execution of the 1993 WTC bombing. Now a new [Bush] administration, a new attorney general [Ashcroft], and a new FBI director should investigate the materials that Abdul Basit handled while in the United Kingdom in 1988 and 1989, which were taken into custody by Scotland Yard. If those materials have Yousef's fingerprints on them, then the Fox/Mylroie theory is likely wrong. But if they don't, then Ramzi Yousef was probably a creature of Iraqi intelligence.

6 Musab Yasin ------------------------------------- in US prison; Iraqi with Jersey City apartment where 1993 WTC bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef first arrived in US in 1992. Brother and 1992 roomate of Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Oct. 10, 2001 FBI Top Most Wanted Terrorist #15
An Iraqi living in Jersey City in 1992. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Beginning on June 10 1992, Mohammed Salameh, soon after being recruited into Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's pipe bomb plot made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad, over the next six weeks. On June 21, 1992 the now fugitive American-born Iraqi government employee living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin (subsequently an indicted fugitive in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport. 1993 WTC bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef entered the United States on September 1, 1992, arriving at JFK airport. Yousef went to stay at the apartment of Musab Yasin, an Iraqi living in Jersey City. So too did Abdul Rahman Yasin, Musab Yasin's younger brother, who arrived in America from Iraq in September 1992, soon after Yousef. (Musab had an unlisted telephone number under an Israeli-sounding alias, Josie Hadas.)

Musab Yasin lived in the same Jersey City building as Mohammad Salameh. Many young Arab men used the two Yasin and Salameh apartments, praying and eating together; relations were so close that the apartments were connected by an intercom.

On the morning of February 26, 1993 shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. Mohammad Salameh was arrested on March 4, 1993. Salameh had used Musab Yasin's phone number when renting the van.

7 Nidal Ayyad--------------------------------- in US prison, Palestinian fundamentalist convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Palestinian fundamentalist. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Beginning on June 10 1992, Palestinian Mohammed Salameh, soon after being recruited into Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's pipe bomb plot, made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad, over the next six weeks. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. On November 3, 1992 Ramzi Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb. In the meantime, two other local fundamentalists were recruited into the plot, Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abu Halima. Ayyad, a Palestinian, was the same age as Mohammad Salameh and Salameh's friend, Ramzi Yousef. Egyptian Abu Halima was older and generally savvier than the two Palestinians, Ayyad and Salameh. On the morning of February 26, 1993 shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War.

8 Mahmud Abu Halima------------------------------- in US prison, Egyptian fundamentalist cab driver convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Born in 1958, Egyptian fundamentalist Manhattan cab driver. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Beginning on June 10 1992, Palestinian Mohammed Salameh, soon after being recruited into Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's pipe bomb plot, made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad, over the next six weeks. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot.

On November 3, 1992 Ramzi Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb. In the meantime, two other local fundamentalists were recruited into the plot, Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abu Halima. Abu Halima, a thirty-four year old Egyptian cab driver in Manhattan, was a friend of Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair. Abu Halima was older and generally savvier than the two Palestinians, Ayyad and Salameh. On the morning of February 26, 1993 shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. In March 1993, an FBI agent speculated that the local Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists had been used by an Iraqi intelligence operative. Mahmud Abu Halima had similar thoughts. As he told a prison companion who later turned state's evidence: "The planned act was not as big as what subsequently occurred. . . Yousef showed up on the scene. and escalated the initial plot. . . . Yousef used [them]. . .as pawns and then immediately after the blast left the country." That, indeed, is the most straightforward explanation of the World Trade Center bombing: that it was an Iraqi intelligence operation, led by Ramzi Yousef, with the local fundamentalists serving first as aides and then as diversionary dupes.

9 Eyyad Ismail --------------------------------- in US prison, convicted November 12, 1997 as the van driver in the WTC bombing on February 26, 1993, along with Ramzi Yousef
aka Eyad Ismoil, Born in 1971, Palestinian from Jordan charged with having driven the van.
In January 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Mohammad Salameh moved into another Jersey City apartment where the 1993 World Trade Center bomb was actually built. Set well back from the street, the building provided seclusion. On February 21, 1993 a twenty-one year old Palestinian named Eyyad Ismail arrived in Jersey City from Dallas. Ismail is charged with having driven the bomb-laden van, which Salameh rented from a Ryder rental agency to rent the van to carry the bomb. On the morning of February 26, 1993 the conspirators gathered at a local Shell gas station where they topped up the tank--one last explosive touch--before driving to Manhattan. Shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. That evening Salameh drove Yousef and Ismail to JFK airport; Yousef escaped to Pakistan, and Ismail flew home to Jordan. Salameh was arrested on March 4, 1993. lsmail was indicted in September 1994 and arrested in August 1995 at his family home in Jordan. He was identified by comparing Yousef's telephone records to the passenger manifests of planes leaving JFK the night of the bombing. Ismail was probably an unwitting participant and meant to be caught. After Yousef was arrested in February 1995, he mentioned the existence of another conspirator and expressed surprise that he had not yet been arrested. Eyyad Ismail was convicted November 12, 1997 of execution of the 1993 WTC bombing..

10 Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman ---------------------- in US prison for life, 1995, for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1993; one of his al Qaeda sons in custody in Afghanistan November 2001, another at large
An Egyptian cleric and spiritual leader of Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt and the United States. Blind cleric. Jailed for life in a U.S. prison for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1993. One of 14 convictions in the plots to blow up the World Trade Center, New York landmarks, and the United Nations. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was followed by another operation, in which Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman led a handful of local Muslims in a new bombing conspiracy, aimed at the United Nations and other New York landmarks. No one other than the prosecutors, the Clinton Justice Department, and the FBI had access to the materials surrounding that case until they were presented in court, because they were virtually all obtained by a federal grand jury and hence kept not only from the public but from the rest of the government under the extreme secrecy requirements of Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. For this conspiracy Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and nine others were found guilty in early October 1995. Yet none of those in the trial of Sheikh Omar et al., as it is formally called, was accused of actually participating in the World Trade Center bombing. They were only charged with conspiracy regarding it.

The government contended that other followers of Sheikh Omar--four fundamentalists who stood trial in 1994--were actually responsible for putting it into effect. From a legal perspective--as the judge in the 1995 Sheik Omar trial advised the defense team--whether state sponsorship played a role in the World Trade Center bombing was irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of Sheikh Omar et al. And indeed, the prosecution did not need to address the question of whether the World Trade Center bombing had state sponsorship in order to obtain the convictions sought against Sheikh Omar and the others. That state sponsorship can be irrelevant to a criminal prosecution was explained most clearly by the federal prosecutors in the New York bombing conspiracies, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Sheikh Omar et al., and the lead prosecutor in the 1994 Trade Center bombing trial, who would later also prosecute Ramzi Yousef. When AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie put it to them that Iraq was probably behind the Trade Center bombing, they replied, "You may be right, but we don't do state sponsorship. We prosecute individuals." Asked who does "do" state sponsorship, they answered, "Washington." "Who in Washington?" No one seemed to know. The prosecution also did not need to address the question of whether the World Trade Center bombing had state sponsorship in order to obtain the convictions sought against Sheikh Omar and the others.

11 Unknown assassin -------------------------------- at large, murdered 2 US consular officials in Karachi, March 8, 1995, retaliation for Ramzi Yousef extradition
In September 1995, the State Department forwarded to Congress the report of an independent panel, established to examine whether mistakes in security training had contributed to the March 8 1995 assassination of two U.S. consular officials in Karachi, Pakistan--apparent retaliation for Ramzi Yousef's extradition, for the masterminding of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The report expressed concern about the FBI's lack of cooperation with the national security agencies.

12 Islamic Revolutionary Council operative ------------------------------- at large as of 1997, shot to death 4 American businessmen in Karachi, November 12, 1997, retaliation for conviction that same day of Ramzi Yousef and Eyyad Ismail in 1993 WTC bombing
Four American businessmen were shot and killed in Karachi, Pakistan on November 12, 1997, the same day as conviction of Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil in the 1993 WTC bombing. A team of four FBI experts arrived in Karachi and were given access to the scene of the shooting, the car in which the men were shot and the hospital which received the bodies. NBC was reporting that the U.S. Consulate in Karachi received a call before the shooting, warning of an impending attack. There are also reports a group called the Islamic Revolutionary Council has claimed responsibility for the attack.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 490. Dec 23, 2001 11:05 AM

» Steven_Russell - Professor Don C. Wiley found

Professor Don C. Wiley ------------------------------------------- body found December 20, 2001, had vanished from Memphis, Tennsessee, November 15 2001
Born in 1944, award-winning biochemist and cellular biologist, 30-year Harvard scientist professor with Ebola expertise, member of the scientific advisory board at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. While authorities and colleagues remained baffled November 27, 2001 over the disappearance of a Harvard scientist, the FBI reportedly was taking a closer look at the case because of his expertise in deadly viruses and heightened concerns over bioterrorism in the wake of Sept. 11. Professor Don C. Wiley vanished the night of November 15, 2001 after dinner with friends in Memphis, Tenn. His rental car, full of gas and with a key in the ignition, was discovered early Nov. 16 on a bridge over the Mississippi River. His disappearance had attracted the FBI's attention because of recent incidents of bioterrorism in the United States. Wiley, 57, an award-winning biochemist and cellular biologist who had been teaching at Harvard for 30 years, was considered an expert on such deadly infections as the Ebola virus. "His line of work and field of expertise" are what prompted the FBI to contact Memphis police, acting assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Memphis office, William Woerner, told the Boston Globe. Memphis Police Lt. Walter Norris said investigators at this point see no links between the professor's research and his disappearance. "For that to change we'd have to find a body that showed evidence of foul play, or find out that he was missing for some other reasons" other than suicide, Norris told the Globe. Investigators had been concentrating on the Mississippi River on the presumption that Wiley either jumped in or fell from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge linking Memphis to Arkansas. Experts said the river, deep, wide and swift, doesn't easily give up its secrets. "It has the appearance of someone who drove down the bridge, got out of the car and took their life," Memphis police head Walter Crews said. "After interviewing members of the family and friends of his, there seems to be no indications in his personality that he would do something like that." Police, however, said no signs have been found that Wiley had been kidnapped or was the victim of a robbery. Wiley's wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir, said investigators should look deeper into his research for a possible motive for his disappearance, which she told the Globe "is still a complete mystery to me." He vanished the night of Nov. 15 after dinner with colleagues in a downtown Memphis hotel, the Peabody. Colleagues at Harvard were also mystified over the disappearance. "We are not speculating on anything," said spokeswoman Andrea Shen. "We are just waiting to hear."

On December 20, 2001 a body was discovered snagged on a tree near a hydroelectric plant at Vidalia, LA, across the Mississippi River from Natchez, MI, about 300 miles south of Memphis. A wallet containing Wiley's identification was found on the body, police said. Shelby County medical examiner O. C. Smith began an autopsy on the body on December 21. On December 22, the body was identified as that of the Harvard University biologist who had disappeared more than a month earlier. The body was identified through dental records, police Lt. Walter Norris said.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 491. Dec 23, 2001 11:20 AM

» Steven_Russell - Zacarias Moussaoui update

body count as of December 21, 2001
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FBI Top Wanted terrorists: .. 22 on list - 1 KIA, 1 prisoner, 0 wounded/in peril, 20 at large
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Other Top al Qaeda: ........... 54 on list - 3 KIA, 37 prisoners, 1 wounded/in peril, 13 at large
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Taliban & Afghan rogues ..... 64 on list - 14 KIA, 2 prisoners, 22 defector/surrender, 26 at large
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1993 WTC agents & Iraq ... 12 on list - 9 prisoners, 3 at large
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Other Top al Qaeda Fugitives

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10 Zacarias Moussaoui ----------------------- prisoner in US, indicted December 11, 2001, arrested August 17, 2001, intended to be "20th hijacker" replacement
aliases "Shaqil" and "Abu Khalid al Sahrawi". Born in 1968, a Morrocan and 33-year-old French citizen. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., filed a 30-page six-count indictment, exactly three months after the hijacked airline attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The indictment accuses Moussaoui of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, to commit aircraft piracy, to destroy aircraft, to use weapons of mass destruction, to murder U.S. employees and to destroy property. If convicted, he could face the death penalty on four of the counts. Almost a year before the hijackings took place, Moussaoui contacted Airman Flight School, in Norman, Okla. Soon after, he bought flight deck pilot training videos for the Boeing 747 Model 200 and Boeing 757 Model 200 from a pilot store in Ohio, the indictment said. He then traveled to Pakistan, declaring at least $35,000 in cash when he returned to the United States in February 2001. Moussaoui allegedly inquired about crop-dusting equipment in Oklahoma in June 2001, and then traveled to Minnesota about a month before Sept. 11. He paid $6,300 in cash to the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis, to take simulator training courses on the 747 Model 400. He was detained before the Sept. 11 attacks, after an instructor at the Minnesota flight school became suspicious. The instructor called the FBI several times to find someone in authority who seemed willing to act on the information. He told them, "Do you realize that a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb?" Officials said the instructor was a former military pilot who grew suspicious after encounters in which Moussaoui was belligerent and evasive about his background and because he was so adamant about learning to fly a 747 jumbo jet despite his clear incompetence as a pilot. Officials later said the Arizon branch of the school alerted the Federal Aviation Administration earlier in 2001 after finding that a student there spoke little English. The Saudi student, Hani Hanjour, has been described as being at the controls of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service investigators held Moussaoui initially on visa violation charges. When authorities detained Moussaoui on Aug. 17, 2001 they reported finding a variety of incriminating evidence in his possession, including two knives, binoculars, flight manuals for the 747, flight simulator computer program, fighting gloves, shin guards, papers referring to a global positioning device, and a hand-held aviation radio. They also found notes and phone numbers linked to Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, who had Atta stay with him in Hamburg, Germany. Bin al-Shibh had been prevented from entering the United States when his visa requests were denied repeatedly, and Moussaoui may have been intended to take his place on one of the planes. Three of the Sept. 11 hijacking teams had five members, but one had only four. Despite the urging of the flight school and federal agents in Minnesota and despite a warning from the French that Moussaoui was linked to Muslim extremists, FBI headquarters in Washington resisted opening a broader investigation until after September 11.

Moussaoui was placed under arrest as a material witness in September 2001. He was indicted December 11, 2001. A report Saturday December 15 in the news magazine Der Spiegel said the fingerprints of Ramsi Binalshibh, one of three fugitives sought by Germany suspected of helping plot the attacks, were found on documents relating to the transfer of money to a suspect in the United States. The money was sent to Zacarias Moussaoui.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 492. Dec 23, 2001 12:25 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: Zacarias Moussaoui update

In response to message posted by Steven_Russell:

Thanks Steven - from your post...

Moussaoui allegedly inquired about crop-dusting equipment in Oklahoma in June 2001, and then traveled to Minnesota about a month before Sept. 11. He paid $6,300 in cash to the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis, to take simulator training courses on the 747 Model 400. He was detained before the Sept. 11 attacks, after an instructor at the Minnesota flight school became suspicious. The instructor called the FBI several times to find someone in authority who seemed willing to act on the information. He told them, "Do you realize that a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb?" Officials said the instructor was a former military pilot who grew suspicious after encounters in which Moussaoui was belligerent and evasive about his background and because he was so adamant about learning to fly a 747 jumbo jet despite his clear incompetence as a pilot. Officials later said the Arizon branch of the school alerted the Federal Aviation Administration earlier in 2001 after finding that a student there spoke little English. The Saudi student, Hani Hanjour, has been described as being at the controls of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

I know - hind sight is always 20-20 - but would that our U.S. Intelligence hadn't been so blind prior to 9/11.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 493. Dec 23, 2001 1:42 PM

» Steven_Russell - Re: Zacarias Moussaoui - & Ramzi Yousef FBI failure

In response to message posted by JenL_2:

hind sight is always 20-20 - but would that our U.S. Intelligence hadn't been so blind prior to 9/11.....Jen

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Not US Intelligence, Jen -- rather, the FBI. CIA is prohibited from operating on US soil. And the FBI does not "do" state sponsorship, or anything like that. They only try to find bodies directly involved in US crimes.

Here is a fuller explanation of the process, from, the story of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing, and likely, it now appears, a deep cover Iraqi agent with a stolen identity from Kuwait.
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5 Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim [Iraqi agent?] -------------------- in US prison, convicted November 12, 1997 of planning and execution of the 1993 WTC bombing, the mastermind behind the bombing, who went by the alias Ramzi Yousef; Basit may be a stolen Pakistani identity in Kuwait, and Yousef an Iraqi agent

Ramzi Yousef's arrest made it easy enough to resolve a key question and perhaps produce important evidence implicating Iraq in the World Trade Center bombing: Is "Ramzi Yousef" really Abdul Basit or not? Let those who remember Abdul Basit from before August 1990 meet Yousef in person and tell us. It sounds simple and logical, but strangely, the Justice Department showed no interest in arranging such a meeting. Moreover, it decided to try the bomber as Ramzi Yousef even though no one, including Yousef by late 1995, maintained that that is his real name. If the government believed that Yousef is really Abdul Basit, why didn't it try him as Abdul Basit? Why is the Justice Department uninterested even in definitively determining his identity, even though doing so might help get to the bottom of the matter. A Justice Department official, who maintained his confident view that Yousef is indeed Abdul Basit, was asked "Why don't you bring the people who knew Abdul Basit to the prison to meet Yousef, so they can say for sure if they are the same?" "But you", he replied, "are interested in an intelligence question."

-- posted by Steven_Russell