- In the late 1970's, Carlos the Jackal a "terrorist for hire" met with and was openly supported by Saddam Hussein. click
- Abu Abbas was the mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murderer of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Manhattan retiree who Abbas's men rolled, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean. On April 14, 2003, Abbas was captured by U.S. Special Forces during a raid near Baghdad. Abbas had lived in Baghdad since 1994, where he was living under protection of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. click
- Before the rise of Osama bin Laden, Abu Nidal was widely regarded as the world's most ruthless terrorist. Abu Nidal entered Iraq in 1999 after being expelled from Libya by Muammar Gadaffi. As the AP's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities." There he lived until August, 2002 when he died of between one and four gunshot wounds. It is believed by many that Abu Nidal was killed on the orders of Saddam Hussein although the Iraqi government claimed Abu Nidal committed suicide. click
- Khala Khadr al-Salahat, accused of designing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (259 killed on board, 11 dead on the ground), also lived in Iraq. He surrendered to U.S. Marines in Baghdad on April 18, 2003. click
- During the 1992 presidential campaign, Al Gore criticized the first Bush administration for a "blatant disregard" of Iraq's ties to terrorism. On September 29, 1992 Al Gore said, "The Reagan/Bush Administration was also prepared to overlook the fact that the terrorist who masterminded the attack on the Achille Lauro and the savage murder of American Leon Klinghoffer fled with Iraqi assistance. Nor did it matter that the team of terrorists who set out to blow up the Rome airport came from Baghdad with suitcase bombs." Gore went on to say, "There might have been a moment's pause for reflection when Iraqi aircraft intentionally attacked the USS Stark in May 1987, killing 37 sailors -- but the Administration smoothed it over very fast." click
- Former President George H.W. Bush visited Kuwait between April 14 and April 16, 1993, to commemorate the allied victory in the Persian Gulf War. In late-April 1993, the United States learned that terrorists had attempted to assassinate Bush during his visit to Kuwait and evidence indicated that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS ) was behind the assassination attempt. The Kuwaiti authorities arrested 17 persons suspected in the plot to kill Bush using explosives hidden in a Toyota Landcruiser. On June 26, 1993, the United States launched a cruise missile attack against a building housing the IIS in Baghdad in retaliation for the assassination attempt on former President Bush. click
- Saddam Hussein paid $25,000 bonuses to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. "President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al-Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz declared on March 11, 2002. Mahmoud Besharat, who dispensed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said: "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue." click
- Russian President Vladimir Putin said on June 18, 2004, "I can confirm that after the events of September 11, 2001, and up to the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received ... information that official organs of Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations." click
- The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicated that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. click
- After the fall of Saddam's government, coalition forces found and destroyed a terrorist training camp located near Baghdad called Salman Pak. The terrorist training camp featured an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] where Iraqi defectors had earlier reported that foreign terrorists were being trained in hijacking aircraft. click click click
- USA Today reported on September 18, 2003 - "U.S. authorities in Iraq say they have new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime gave money and housing to Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993..." Military, intelligence and law enforcement officials reported finding a large cache of Arabic-language documents in Tikrit, Saddam's political stronghold. A U.S. intelligence official said some analysts have concluded that the documents show Saddam's government provided monthly payments and a home for Yasin. click
Connections between Iraq and Al-Qaeda
- On November 5, 1998 a Federal grand jury in Manhattan returned a 238-count indictment charging the Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two United States Embassies in Africa and with conspiring to commit other acts of terrorism against Americans abroad. The indictment also charged that Al-Qaeda had reached an arrangement with President Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq whereby the group said that it would not work against Iraq, and the two parties agreed to cooperate in the development of weapons. click click
- United Press International. January 3, 1999, Sunday, BC cycle. - UPI Focus: Bin Laden 'instigated' embassy bombings. - "... The Taliban government in Afghanistan says the Saudi does not have the money to finance projects in the country. Newsweek also reported that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been making new overtures to bin Laden in an attempt to rebuild his intelligence network and to create his own terror network...." click
- Newsweek magazine. January 11, 1999 issue, ran the headline "Saddam + Bin Laden?" The subheadline declared, "America's two enemies are courting." click click
- CNN (Associated Press). February 13, 1999. - "Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire accused by the United States of plotting bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, has left Afghanistan, Afghan sources said Saturday. Bin Laden's whereabouts were not known....." The article goes on to state that "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden....." click
- National Public Radio (NPR). February 18, 1999 at 10:00 AM Eastern Time. - "... There have also been reports in recent months that bin Laden might have been considering moving his operations to Iraq. Intelligence agencies in several nations are looking into that. According to Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counterterrorism operations, a senior Iraqi intelligence official, Farouk Hijazi(ph), sought out bin Laden in December and invited him to come to Iraq." ~ "Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There is a wide gap between bin Laden's fundamentalism and Saddam Hussein's secular dictatorship. But some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony...." click
- Los Angeles Times. February 23, 1999, Tuesday, Home Edition. - "Where is Osama bin Laden (Feb. 14)? That should be the U.S.'s main priority. If as rumored he and Saddam Hussein are joining forces, it could pose a threat making Hitler and Mussolini seem like a sideshow...." click
- The Kansas City Star. March 2, 1999, Tuesday. - "... He (bin Laden) has a private fortune ranging from $250 million to $500 million and is said to be cultivating a new alliance with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who has biological and chemical weapons bin Laden would not hesitate to use. An alliance between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could be deadly. Both men are united in their hatred for the United States and any country friendly to the United States...." click
- The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), December 28, 1999. - "The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, has been offered sanctuary in Iraq if his worldwide terrorist network succeeds in carrying out a campaign of high-profile attacks on the West..." click
- On April 8, 2001, an informant for Czech counter-intelligence observed an Iraqi intelligence official named al-Ani meeting with an Arab man in his 20s at a restaurant outside Prague. Following the 9/11 attacks, the Czech informant who observed the meeting saw Mohammed Atta’s picture in the papers and identified Mohammed Atta as the man who met with the Iraqi intelligence official. click click
- Able Danger, a highly-classified U.S. Army intelligence program under the command of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, supports information from the Czech Republic’s intelligence service that Atta meet with the Iraqi ambassador at the Prague airport on April 9, 2001. click click
- On July 21, 2001 [less than two months prior to 911] the Iraqi state-controlled newspaper "Al-Nasiriya" predicted that bin Laden would attack the U.S. "with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House." The same state-approved column also insisted that bin Laden "will strike America on the arm that is already hurting," and that the U.S. "will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs" - an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, "New York, New York." click click
- After the 9/11 attacks, Saddam became the only world leader to offer praise for bin Laden, even as other terrorist leaders, like Yassir Arafat, went out of their way to make a show of sympathy to the U.S. by donating blood to 9/11 victims on camera. click
- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell (prior to the U.S./Iraq war). He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan. click
- CIA director George Tenet wrote in a letter to Senator Bob Graham dated October 7, 2002. "We have solid reporting of senior level contact between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information exists that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. . . . We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities." click
- Babil, an official newspaper of Saddam Hussein's government, run by his oldest son Uday, published information that appeared to confirm U.S. allegations of the links between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. In its November 16, 2002 edition, Babil identified one Abd-al-Karim Muhammad Aswad as an "intelligence officer," describing him as the "official in charge of regime's contacts with Osama bin Laden's group and currently the regime's representative in Pakistan." click
- While sifting through the Iraqi Intelligence Service's [Mukhabarat] bombed ruins on April 26, 2003 the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department. Dated February 19, 1998 and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," it said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." click
- On May 7, 2003, a federal judge in New York awarded damages against the government of Iraq after ruling that the families of two victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings had shown that Iraq had provided material support to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Judge Harold Baer ruled that the two families were entitled to $104 million compensation from Iraq, bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban movement and their government of Afghanistan. "Plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al-Qaida." click
Bookmarked!
See post 314 for a little edumacation.
I'm printing this off. Thank you so much, faq.