Al-Qaida Leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Bosnian Links Emerging

Al-Qaida Leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Bosnian Links Emerging

Exclusive. Analysis. With input from GIS Station Sarajevo. Very reliable sources within the Islamist community in Bosnia-Herzegovina told GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs on November 22, 2004, that evidence was beginning to emerge of very significant links between senior al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the ostensible “master mind” of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States — and Islamist groups in Bosnia. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was detained by US officials in March 2003, and remains in US custody.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, September 17, 2003: Bosnian Official Links With Terrorism, Including 9/11, Become Increasingly Apparent as Clinton, Clark Attempt to Justify Support of Bosnian Militants.

The sources, who have been extremely reliable in the past, produced definitive evidence that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was integrally linked into the Bosnia al-Qaida terrorist logistical hub. Despite the long chain of evidence which has already emerged over the past three years, the European Union’s appointed ruler of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Paddy Ashdown, has consistently claimed that there was no evidence of terrorist basing or involvement in Bosnia, and has supported the Islamist groups which were, in fact, involved with terrorist support activities.

The GIS sources had documentary evidence that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the son of Salem, was born October 22, 1966, in Kuwait. He was in Bosnia as first member of El-Mudzahid unit and then, since 1996, became a member of Egyptian Islamist radical operations. He also obtained Bosnian citizenship and a Bosnian passport under the Government of the late Alija Izetbegovic. By a decision of Sarajevo Police No. 09/2-204-108 dated April 30, 1994, Khaled obtain his Bosnian citizenship certificate and immediately after that his Bosnian passport. This absolutely tied Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into the Bosnian terrorist network; Osama bin Laden and the two al-Zawahiri brothers also obtained their Bosnian credentials in similar ways.

Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily of September 17, 2003, noted:

A series of documents, just acquired by GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, highlight the links between radical Islamists in key positions in the Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H) and known and suspected Islamists with terrorist links. Significantly, one of the key Bosnian Islamist officials, Huso (he later called himself Hussein) Zivalj, was B-H Ambassador to the United Nations during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York. He arrived just before the attacks and left the post shortly thereafter.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that the movement of Zivalj to the New York post just before (and his departure just after) the September 11, 2001, attacks was not coincidental.

Significantly, the clarity of the links between the Bosnian Islamists and anti-US terrorism is now becoming apparent at a time when former US President William Clinton and his former military appointee and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Gen. Wesley Clark (now a Democratic Party presidential aspirant for the US 2004 elections), have begun moves to justify their military support for Bosnian and Kosovo Islamists in moves which will almost certainly lead to a new wave of ethnic division in B-H and in neighboring Serbia. [See Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, September 8, 2003: US Official Implicated With Bosnian High Representative Ashdown in Attempting to Force Fabricated Report on Srebrenica.]

Zivalj had earlier — between 1992 and 1995 — been B-H Ambassador to Vienna, Austria. At that time, he approved a significant number of visas and passports to radical Islamists of non-Bosnian origin. He then went on to be Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the most senior Muslim position in the Ministry. He maintained a constant shuttle during his time as Deputy Minister from Sarajevo to Vienna, the United States and a number of Arab countries.

Significantly, Huso Zivalj was a key component of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, attacks apparently organized in large part by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If both were involved, at a senior level, in the September 11, 2001, attacks, it is reasonable to accept that there was liaison either between the two, or between entities the two used. A significant number of the known September 11 attackers also had direct links into Bosnia.

It is also significant that, despite the fact that the US Government has had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in custody for more than a year, there has been no mention of Bosnia‘s rôle in the September 11, 2001, attacks, despite the growing volume of evidence linking Bosnia to the attacks. There has been some suggestion that the linkage was an embarrassment to the US Government — and particularly to the US Dept. of State — which had been a significant source of support for the Bosnian Islamists during and after the Bosnian civil war.

LINKS BETWEEN 9/11 (MUHAMAED ATTA) AND THE AL-QAEDA NETWORK IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

Officials of the Muslim-Croat Federation in BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA never released any information to the US investigators or lawyers representing the families of 9/11 victims, because such information would cast a new light on the entire BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA conflict. They would have made it obvious that the war was a jihad, a religious war waged against Bosnia’s Christians by the Islamic extremists.
The Interpol office in Wiesbaden, Germany sent a request to the Bosnian authorities on 18 September 2001 to verify the identity of a certain Mr. Atta, who according to their information used to reside in the hamlet of Bakotiæ, 8 km outside Maglaj, in 1999. Attached to the request was the photo of Mohamed Atta, and a note to verify it through a certain Mehmed Hasaniæ, a resident of Bakotiæ. This means Mohamed Atta was traine in BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA; it is known that he left BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA for Hamburg, from where he proceeded to the United States and his ultimate mission – to destroy the Twin Towers.
4. FIVE KEY AL-QAEDA MEMBERS WHO DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY TOOK PART IN 9/11 AND ARE LINKED TO BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

• Sheikh Omar abd-al Rahman (convicted of the 1993 attack on the WTC) was connected with the so-called humanitarian organization TWRA, which was a cover for terrorists. Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic made personal guarantees for TWRA’s general director and personal friend Elfatih Hassanein, so he could open an account with Die Erste Osterreich Bank in Vienna, Austria in 1993.
• Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who recruited Mohamed Atta into Al-Qaeda, had a terrorist base in Bosnia. Zammar is also responsible for recruiting two of Atta’s lieutenants, Ramzi Binalsahib and Said Bahaji.
• Osama bin Laden received a Bosnian passport from the Embassy in Vienna, Austria. Many other Al-Qaeda members were issued BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA passports, which enabled them to continue their terrorist activities.
• Abu al-Ma’ali (Abdelkader Mokhtari), a senior Al-Qaeda operative, was stationed in Bosnia until recently. Just a few years ago, US officials used to call him “Osama Bin Laden, Jr.”
• Bensayah Belkacem was arrested in Bosnia in October 2001. Numbers saved in his cell phone connected him with at least one top-rank associate of Bin Laden. American investigators intercepted telephone calls and other evidence showed that Bensayah Belkacem, who was believed to be a native of Algeria or Yemen with Bosnian citizenship, had numerous conversations on cellular telephones last fall with leaders of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He has been identified as a European lieutenant in Al-Qaeda who was ordered to carry out attacks on American targets in the Balkans after Sept. 11.

The officials said FBI and military investigators were particularly eager to question Mr. Belkacem about the personal background and possible hiding places of Mr. Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian in his early 30´s who is believed to have coordinated the terrorist attacks ordered by bin Laden.

Al-Qaeda’s role in radical Islamic activities and events in Bosnia has been frequently mentioned in US media and official government reports since the 9/11 tragedy.

5. MORE ON SEPTEMBER 11 AND BOSNIA’S AL-QAEDA NETWORK
Another senior commander of Mujahedeen battalion in central Bosnia-Herzegovina was Abu Zubair al-Haili (a.k.a. Mohammed Haydar Zammar, "the Bear"), German citizen of Syrian descent. He was the chief handler of the Hamburg Al-Qaeda cell responsible for September 11 suicide hijackings. He received military training in Pakistan in 1991 plied his deadly skills in what militant Islamic fundamentalists refer to as the " Jihad - holy war" which raged in ethnically strife-torn Bosnia in the 1990s.

Zammar was travelling under the cover of "Tabligh", a missionary sect of Muslims, that he conveniently used for fundamentalist recruiting purposes.

German investigators have learned that one of the individuals whom Zammar tied into the Al-Qaida network was Mohammed Atta, the pilot of one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Zammar also brought two of Atta's lieutenants into the al-Qaida network, Ramzi Bin al-Shaibah and Said Bahaji. Indonesian citizen Agus Budiman, who spend more than nine months in a US prison as a terrorist suspect, met Bin al-Shaibah, a Muslim cleric from Hamburg.

Ramzi Bin al-Shaibah told Budiman that he wanted to take part in the Jihad, or holy war, in Bosnia. Bin al-Shaibah is the 20th hijacker who was supposed to be aboard the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar (American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon) were not like the other hijackers. The two Saudis militant backgrounds is more comprehensive than the others, despite their young ages. In the mid-1990s both apparently were in the Bosnia conflict, and then fought in Chechnya at various times between 1996 and 1998. This was confirmed by the Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet during the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings.

American investigators intercepted telephone calls and other evidence showed that Bensayah Belkacem, who was believed to be a native of Algeria or Yemen with Bosnian citizenship, had numerous conversations on cellular telephones last fall with leaders of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He has been identified as a European lieutenant in Al-Qaeda who was ordered to carry out attacks on American targets in the Balkans after Sept. 11.

The officials said FBI and military investigators were particularly eager to question Mr. Belkacem about the personal background and possible hiding places of Mr. Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian in his early 30´s who is believed to have coordinated the terrorist attacks ordered by bin Laden.

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