| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks |
| New Friends, New Ties |
| 2003-05-22 |
| May 22— It started as a low, largely unnoticed rumble of accusations in some Washington circles, but when suicide bombers fatally struck Western targets in Saudi Arabia last week, the official grumblings began to pick up volume and pitch. More than a year ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained that Iran — a member of Washington's "axis of evil" and an officially condemned "supporter of terrorists" — was not doing enough to crack down on al Qaeda operatives fleeing from neighboring Afghanistan. "It certainly would be helpful if they were more cooperative, and they have not been, particularly," Rumsfeld told reporters in Washington on April 2, 2002, in a second straight day of accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran. But in the months that followed, international attention shifted from Tehran's alleged links to al Qaeda to the hunt for evidence of Saddam Hussein's touted ties with the terrorist network as the Bush administration sought to bolster its case for a war against Iraq. Days after President Bush declared that the military phase of the battle to topple Saddam's regime was "one victory in a war on terror" however, terrorists struck again. This time, it was a spate of suicide attacks in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, which claimed 34 lives, including eight Americans and nine attackers. A reconfigured al Qaeda, revamped under the pressure of the U.S. war on terror, was quickly identified as the mastermind and perpetrator of the crime. And slowly, the accusations of the Iranian government's links with al Qaeda began to mount as the terror alert in the United States was raised to orange or "high" following an FBI warning about imminent attacks. "There's no question, but that there have been and are today, senior al Qaeda leaders in Iran, and they are busy," Rumsfeld told reporters on Wednesday. But if the accusations were strong on frequency, they were noticeably weak on details, with senior U.S. officials declining to go on record with concrete proof of the Iranian government's supposed support for the shadowy terrorist network. Former Colonel Becomes 'Military Chief' But although U.S. officials have declined to go on record with concrete evidence of the Iranian government's complicity in al Qaeda's recent operations, terror experts and intelligence sources have attempted to fill in the gaps in the latest accusations. And at the heart of the claims, it slowly became clear, was a handsome young former colonel in the Egyptian Army, Saif Al-Adel, who experts claim has risen from the ranks of one of Osama bin Laden's personal guards to al Qaeda's new military chief and the third-most powerful man in the terrorist network's ranks. He is on the U.S. list of 22 most-wanted terrorists. "Saif Al-Adel is the newly appointed military chief of al Qaeda who took over as military chief when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured [in Pakistan earlier this year]," said Rohan Gunaratna, a former investigator at the U.N. Terrorism Prevention Branch, and author of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. "He is operating near the Afghan-Iran border and he is responsible for the attacks in Saudi Arabia," he said. U.S. intelligence officials and some terror experts say Saif Al-Adel has been living in the eastern border regions of Iran under the protection of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran, an elite military force under the direct control of the Islamic republic's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And it was from the Iran-Afghan border region, according to intelligence sources, that Al-Adel oversaw the attacks in Riyadh. Along with Al-Adel, terror experts say several senior al Qaeda figures — including bin Laden's son, Saad bin Laden — are currently stationed on the Iranian side of the border. In a report in the Arabic daily Asharq al Awsat today however, the respected London-based quoted an unnamed source close to the Revolutionary Guards as saying al Adel and Saad bin Laden, along with 17 of their men, had left Iran last week for the Baluch areas where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet. But according to Vince Cannistraro, an ABCNEWS consultant and a former CIA counterterrorism chief, the report appeared to be "Iranian disinformation to deflect diplomatic pressure, where they can say, yes they were here, but they have been kicked out." Snip In a report published earlier this month, the Philadelphia Inquirer, quoting unnamed U.S. officials, said a subordinate of Al-Adel, Abu Bakr — whose real name is Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi — may have been turned over to the Saudi government by the Iranians after he escaped the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. In a massive embarrassment for the Saudi authorities, however, U.S. officials told the paper that al Ghamdi may have been released in Saudi Arabia. If accurate, it was a slipup that has come to haunt the Saudi authorities in recent days. According to U.S. intelligence officials, it was al Ghamdi, a Saudi native, who received Al-Adel's directive to go ahead with the Riyadh attack. Somehow I think that this was a little more than an embarrassment ... Sorry if this is a little long, Fred, but I mainly posted it to offer an alternative interpretation to the MEMRI story as well as disclosing yet another likely example of Saudi collusion with al-Qaeda. Assuming this was the rule, it may explain why there haven't been tons of prosecutions of al-Qaeda operatives sent home from Iran - they were all turned over to elements of the local security services so as to ensure that they received the revolving door jail treatment. What do you figure that this Abu Bakr character is one and the same as the guy who spoke with the Saudi press under the nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj? |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |