Afghan War Curbs al-Qaida Arms Program

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - An al-Qaida program to develop chemical and biological weapons was in the early "conceptual stages" when it was cut short by the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. and Malaysian security officials told the Associated Press.

The information on the state of Osama bin Laden's weapons plan came from interrogations of terrorist suspects captured in Southeast Asia and from clues gathered in the Afghan battlefield, the authorities said.

The project was being developed in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Officials believe the program was being run by Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian army captain and U.S.-trained biochemist, under the direction of Riduan Isamuddin, or Hambali, an Indonesian accused of heading al-Qaida's operations in Southeast Asia.

Both men are suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group.

Yazid was arrested in December 2001 as he returned to Malaysia from Afghanistan. Hambali was arrested last August in Thailand and is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location.

While clues that al-Qaida was trying to develop chemical and biological weapons were found in Afghanistan after the U.S. military victory in 2001, Hambali's arrest opened a new vein of intelligence.

Interrogators have been trying to match up details of the project gleaned separately from Yazid and Hambali, Malaysian officials told AP.

As the investigation continues, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is considering whether to renew an order keeping Yazid in prison. The order expires Friday.

Yazid graduated from the University of California, Sacramento, in 1987. But after returning to Malaysia, he began attending religious classes run by Hambali, a charismatic preacher, and became one of scores of Malaysians and Indonesians recruited to his radical form of Islam in the mid-1990s.

Yazid, now 40, spent time in an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and became a key Jemaah Islamiyah member in Malaysia. He is accused of allowing top al-Qaida operatives — including two eventual Sept. 11 hijackers — to use an apartment he owned for meetings in Malaysia in January 2000, and gave Sept. 11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui a letter of employment that helped him enter the United States.

In October 2000, Yazid allegedly bought four tons of ammonium nitrate to be used to make bombs. At the time, Jemaah Islamiyah was plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy and other Western targets in neighboring Singapore, officials say.

By mid-2001, Yazid was in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that was the base of al-Qaida's Taliban hosts, and working on a program "to equip al-Qaida with the capability to launch a chemical attack," a Malaysian official said.

Yazid — who police say is trained in counterinterrogation techniques and is "cooperative only in areas that he chooses to" — has been evasive about chemical or biological weapons he was working on, an official said.

The Pentagon said in early 2002 that U.S. forces had found traces of anthrax at a suspected al-Qaida biological weapons site in Kandahar, along with some equipment needed to convert the bacteria into a weapon. Other samples found at the site tested positive for the poison ricin.

Yazid has told Malaysian authorities the program was in its "conceptual stages" when it was abandoned when the U.S.-led attack on the Taliban started in October 2001, an official said.

Hambali has given U.S. interrogators some information on the weapons program but not much detail, and Yazid is believed to know more specifics, the official said.

In the past, Malaysia has refused to consider extraditing Yazid to the United States. But FBI agents were allowed to question Yazid in November 2002, nearly a year before Hambali's arrest.

Granting foreign officials access to Yazid is a sensitive issue for Malaysia, which is holding at least 70 Islamic militant suspects under a law allowing indefinite detention without trial.

While Malaysia has been cooperating with U.S. counterterrorism authorities, at home the government plays down the role Malaysians may have played in international terrorism. Islam is a political issue in Malaysia, where a moderate form of the religion is practiced by about two-thirds of the population.

So far, U.S. officials have made only informal approaches about questioning Yazid again, a Malaysian official said. He said the Americans believe Yazid has more information about al-Qaida, particularly about the group's attempts to obtain chemical weapons.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said he was not aware of any request for U.S. officials to question Yazid again.

"But if there is, we are willing to consider it," Syed Hamid told AP. "We are always ready to cooperate with any quarter in helping to combat international terrorism."

The order that has kept Yazid detained expires Friday. Under the security law, Abdullah can renew the order for two more years without any judicial review or public explanation.

Detention orders for more than a dozen other Jemaah Islamiyah suspects are due to expire by late February.

U.S. Embassy officials in Malaysia have said Washington is watching what happens to the jailed Jemaah Islamiyah suspects.

Here's an old article I thougth interesting...

Computer in Kabul holds chilling memos: PC used by al-Qaida leaders reveals 4 years of terrorism

As for this article...reading the tea leaves...maybe too closely...after Libyan revelations of Malaysia's complicity with world wide illegal nuke tech trade, Malaysia deserves a closer look...they don't want anyone talking to Yazid too much...back in November 2002 the FBI had a different anthrax "person of interest"... This article indicates a new interest in Yazid...Malaysia has sophisticated industries, including pharmaceuticals...which could have made the Senate anthrax with the silica and glass...and Malaysia is acting suspicious....

Conclusion: Since Hatfill has/had a Malysian girlfriend, he did it.

Things might have been simpler, in a long ago, much simpler time. I agree with your thoughts and wish to provide additional support. Therefore this reply is to EVERYONE to help in addressing this question to the 'other side'.

The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan reminds me of the bad bartender.

When you have a bar where the bartender/owner allow patrons to keep drinking, no matter how drunk they get, you end up with dead wives/dead children, killed in a head-on collision with a drunk.

So, the cops sit outside the bar before close, and pull over patrons driving off that seem to be having problems getting in their car, or manuevering out of the lot.

Finding a patron too drunk to drive, they arrest and charge the person.

As a result, some people didn't die that night.

Now, the person arrested is mad and feels the whole thing is unfair.
The bartender/owner feels cheated out of money.

Sometimes the bartender/owner can lose their license if they continue to allow dangerous drunks to drive home.

I don't think I have ever known or read of a situation where the DRUNK PERSON, or the BARTENDER or OWNER tells the police THANK YOU FOR SAVING SOME LIVES. THANK YOU FOR KEEPING US SAFE.

This is the same with Iraq, the Al Queda, and Afghanistan.

We already had the head-on collision (WTC). Now the police are sitting in the parking lot, waiting for the drunks to come out so they can prevent those not able to drive from killing your child or mine.

And most people in this country, instead of THANKING those that protect us (the President, the Armed Forces), we complain that the bar patron wasn't DRUNK ENOUGH.
We are complaining because the cops didn't find an empty bottle in the car after it crashed.

Saddam is the bar owner.

The terrorists are the patron.

We couldn't wait until they crashed into another car anymore.

It doesn't matter whether they were drinking BUSCH LIGHT or Tequila, does it? If your children are dead, DO YOU REALLY CARE WHAT THE HELL THE BAR PATRON WAS DRINKING?

If the Al Queda attack the US with box cutters, is that OK because it's not a WMD?

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