Free Republic

WASHINGTON: The famous African explorer Dr David Livingstone might have been impressed, even if the agenda was suspect. Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear proliferator-hero Abdul Qadeer Khan traversed the breadth of Africa in his hey day as a nuclear salesman , going to as romantic a getaway as Casablanca in Morocco and as remote an outpost as Timbuktu in Mali.   US officials might dearly like to get hold of Khan’s travel agent, or simply his itinerary, since he seems to have pretty much charted his own course during his profligate proliferating days. According to accounts now surfacing in the Pakistani media,...

A London accountant has described how Pakistan's disgraced nuclear hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan visited the West African state of Mali on three occasions between 1998 and 2000. Abdul Ma'bood Siddiqui accompanied A.Q. Khan on three mystery trips  between 1998 and 2000. Their final destination was Timbuktu, a remote outpost in the desert that has always been a magnet for explorers and adventurers from around the world. The mystery behind the visits has deepened following recent revelations that Khan is also the owner of a small hotel in the town that he has named after Hendrina, his Dutch-born wife and...

The London accountant who accompanied Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to Timbuktu on three occasions in 1998, 1999 and 2000 says the 'father' of the Pakistani bomb witnessed the digging of a well, toured an ancient Islamic library and enjoyed the views of the desert. A remote outpost in the middle of the West African desert, Timbuktu usually attracts explorers associated in the popular mind with the adventures of the comic character Tin Tin. And Pakistani dissidents told rediff.com the reason for Khan's visit to Timbuktu, part of landlocked West African state of Mali, was to prospect for uranium. They say...

N THE AFTERMATH of September 11, more than several former national security and intelligence officials fashioned new careers as critics of the Bush administration's war on terror. Among the more prominent of these former officials is Daniel Benjamin, who worked for the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999. Benjamin's criticism flows from his belief that prior to the war in Iraq, as he wrote in Time magazine earlier this year, "there was no pre-existing relationship between Baghdad and al-Qaeda." Still worse, the invasion of Iraq has made us "less safe" and "above all, the invasion and occupation of Iraq--have...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Arrest of Kenyan Exposes Massive Global Arms Trade The East African Africa News February 25, 2002 Monday Kenya L AST WEEKEND'S arrest of Kenyan-born Sanjivan Ruprah, who is alleged to be a part of a major arms smuggling operation to Africa, has brought into the open the extent of the multi-million dollar illegal business. The whereabouts of Bout remain unknown. Some media reports say he is in Moscow, while others say he is in the Congo or the United Arab Emirates. An international ...

LACKAWANNA, N.Y. -- Members of the Yemeni community in this western New York city struggled Saturday to reconcile their identity as a hardworking and vital part of their town with allegations of a terrorist cell in their midst. Yemenis started coming to the Buffalo suburb in 1922, finding work in the steel mills that churned on the Lake Erie shore. They remain a growing part of this city of 20,000. But the community of about 1,000 Yemenis living in Lackawanna has been shaken by the arrests of five men -- all U.S. born -- who federal authorities say aided the...

The September11 terror attacks in the US were staged to overcome disunity in al-Qa'ida, confidential computer records reveal. Alan Cullison reports on what happened after his laptop was wrecked while he was covering the combat in Afghanistan IN the autumn of 2001, I was one of scores of journalists who ventured into northern Afghanistan to write about the US-assisted war against the Taliban. After losing use of my computer in an accident, I scrawled stories by candlelight with a ballpoint pen and read dispatches to my editors at The Wall Street Journal over a satellite phone. When the Taliban's defences...