Posted on 03/04/2003 5:44:03 PM PST by MadIvan
The arrested al-Qa'eda leader blamed for organising the September 11 attacks was betrayed by Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, the son of the man who ordered the first bombing of the World Trade Centre, it emerged yesterday.
Abdel-Rahman, 30, an Egyptian known to his followers as "the Lion of God", was arrested in Pakistan last month. His capture, a serious setback for al-Qa'eda, was kept secret in the hope that more would follow.
Pakistani officials said that, under duress, he had divulged information about the head of al-Qa'eda's military committee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with whom he had been hiding.
With intercepted mobile telephone calls and other clues, that allowed the authorities to pick up Mohammed's trail to Rawalpindi.
Last weekend about 25 Pakistani police burst into a house in a well-to-do neighbourhood of the city and arrested the man known in American intelligence circles as KSM and accused of organising the September 11 attacks.
The seizure was trumpeted as a great success in President George W Bush's war on terrorism. KSM is now being interrogated in the hope that he will reveal more al-Qa'eda plots and possibly the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
Abdel-Rahman's father, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, is known as the "blind sheikh". He is serving a life sentence in America for the 1993 trade centre attack and for a plot to blow up several New York landmarks, including the United Nations building.
Egyptian counter-terrorism experts described Abdel Rahman's arrest as a "major blow" to al-Qa'eda.
"Mohammed Abdel-Rahman had a huge role because of bin Laden's love and respect for his father," said Hala Mustafa, a counter-terrorism analyst with the Al Ahram centre for strategic studies in Cairo. "He was close to bin Laden and was engaged in planning key operations."
Abdel-Rahman ran terrorist training camps for bin Laden in Afghanistan and fought with the al-Qa'eda chief at the battle for the caves around Tora Bora in the mountains of northern Afghanistan in November 2001.
Like bin Laden, he slipped over the border into Pakistan as US marines and their Afghan allies prepared for their final assault on his hideaway.
Ahmad Abdel-Rahman, another son of the blind sheikh, was captured in late 2001 in Afghanistan by anti-Taliban forces and placed in American custody.
John Ashcroft, the attorney general, said that a worldwide FBI operation lasting more than a year had led to the arrest of the men in Frankfurt.
One of them, Sheikh Mohammed Al Hasan al-Moayyed, a prominent Yemeni cleric, is believed to be bin Laden's "spiritual adviser".
Yep, all their boasting about martyrdom, blah, blah, blah... They're REAL tough when it comes to slitting the throats of stewardesses but sure do give up quickly when the FBI/CIA knocks on their door. I heard a rumor the France is considering giving Bin-Al-Shibh, Khaled, and Abdel-Rahman honorary citizenships.
hehehehehe
I think bin Laden's spiritual advisor these days has horns and a pointy tail...
I think bin Laden's spiritual advisor these days has horns and a pointy tail...
I for one hope they refused all requests to re-attach his gonads.
I can think of a hundred reasons, but here's a good one: If word got out that Osama was dead, the dumbocrats would say the war on terror job was done, and we should stop this costly and meaningless war.
Within three years we'd all be speaking Farsi.
Here's another: It's probably true that many of his own followers don't know his fate. The more the CIA gins up and sends out fake messages, the more traffic they foster among his followers and the better chance we have of catching them. Also, we don't have to guess what the heirarchy is as long as some think he may return (would you as a lowly follower want to usurp him?)
Osama's very alive until he's better dead, then he will be much better dead. Which may be never.
Trust me on this.
By the way, I believe Iran would be a more formidable enemy than Iraq or any of the other middle eastern countries.
"Within three years we'd all be speaking Farsi".
I always thought it was a brand of condom!
When you want to know the real reason for the war on Iraq (after the obvious ones), take a look at a map
You'll see why we aren't getting much support in the Arab world. From Iraq we'd have a two-front vantage on pretty much any scumbag country in the region.
And that's a beautiful thing.
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