Your wish is my command. Here is your visual:
Mussolini, his wife and some of his fellow facists seen hanging around at the end of the war.
Posted on 02/14/2003 10:08:17 PM PST by Wallaby
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EX-SWANSEA STUDENT'S STORY COULD PROVIDE LINK BETWEEN AL-QAEDA AND IRAQ
JENNY REES Western Mail; NEWS; Pg. 9 February 1, 2003, Saturday THE story of how an ex-Swansea student's identity was stolen could help provide evidence of a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, it was claimed last night. After years of painstaking re-search, former Bill Clinton defence adviser Laurie Mylroie claims Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the New York World Trade Centre in 1993, was an Iraqi agent. Mylroie, who advised Bill Clinton on Iraq during his 1992 presidential campaign, is convinced that Yousef stole the identity papers of Abdul Basit, who studied computer-aided engineering at Swansea Institute of Higher Education in the 1980s. Yousef was sentenced to 240 years for terrorism plots and the 1993 attack which severely damaged the World Trade Centre's underground car park and killed six people.
Mylroie, whose book The War Against America details her belief that Iraq and Al-Qaeda are inextricably linked, is pleased that President Bush is now connecting Iraq with the September 11 attacks. She said, "Al-Qaeda acts as a front for Iraqi intelligence. Al-Qaeda provides the ideology, the foot soldiers and the cover, and Iraqi intelligence provides the direction, training and expertise."
"Al-Qaeda acts as a front for Iraqi intelligence. Al-Qaeda provides the ideology, the foot soldiers and the cover, and Iraqi intelligence provides the direction, training and expertise."
To confirm her suspicions that Yousef had stolen Abdul Basit's identity, she travelled to Swansea to speak to institute lecturers who had taught him. She said, "The crucial factor in deciding that Basit and Yousef were two separate people was their height. "His teachers put Basit at about 5ft 8ins tall while Yousef was a six footer. "The two lecturers with whom I met had a very clear memory of Abdul Basit. "They described him as quiet and not quite the person who would run up $ 18,000 in unpaid telephone bills as Yousef had.
"He was also not the sort of per-son to play a leading role in organising others in two major bombing plots (the first World Trade Centre attack and a plan to blow up 12 US airliners). "Abdul Basit's teachers also said they observed no strong political or religious views in the student. "He went to the Swansea Mosque on Fridays but was not considered an extremist."
Mylroie says her research has shown that Basit was one of a number of Kuwaiti students murdered when Iraq invaded their country in 1990. Their passports and belongings were stolen and later used to provide Iraqi agents with false identities, she claims. It is thought Yousef was even given text books Abdul Basit had loaned and not returned from Swansea Library to complete his cover. When finally arrested in Pakistan after fleeing the US, the library books were discovered in his hotel room along with maps and guns. Mylroie says the capture of Abdul Basit's identity and the subsequent attack on the World Trade Centre was a precursor to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Mylroie says at Salman Pak, a short distance from Bagdhad, US intelligence planes have taken photographs of a parked Boeing 707. She says Iraqi defectors and captured Al-Qaeda agents have said this plane has been used by terrorists for "familiarisation" with western airliners in preparation for attacks and hijacks.
Mylroie is not the only American defence expert to have concerns about the links between Ramzi Yousef and Iraq. Last year, Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish US deputy defence sec-retary, sent James Woolsey, a former CIA director, to Swansea to search for information about Abdul Basit and Ramzi Yousef.
Snippet: NETTAVISEN.no: "Krekar-saken NETT-TREFF: Krekar varsler hellig krig Av: Ole Berthelsen / Liv Ekeberg 11. feb 11:36, ny 12. feb 14:32 – Hellig krig, jihad, vil komme dersom amerikanerne fortsetter den politikk som landet fører i dag, hevdet mulla Krekar under Nettavisens nett-treff. Nettavisens lesere gikk mann av huse for å stille spørsmål til mulla Krekar onsdag. Under nett-treffet ble Krekar spurt om han tror på hellig krig. – Hellig krig, jihad, vil komme dersom amerikanerne (les: George Bush) fortsetter den politikk som landet fører i dag, svarte Krekar. Mulla Krekar svarte Nettavisens lesere onsdag. Foto: Liv Ekeberg/Nettavisen – Bush en full sjåfør Han kom også med harde utfall mot president George W. Bush. – George Bush er en full sjåfør som kjører en toetasjers buss over en falleferdig bro, mener han. Bin Laden Anders fra Oslo ville vite hva Krekar mener om Osama bin Laden og opptaket med al-Qaida-lederen. – Jeg tror opptaket er ekte, og at han prøver å motivere irakere for å si at de ikke skal være redde for USA, svarte Krekar. Ansar al-Islam Han benekter at han leder den kurdiske gruppen Ansar al-Islam. – Jeg har sagt til norske og utenlandske medier at jeg ikke lenger er leder for Ansar al-Islam. Det gjentar jeg også her nå, hevdet Krekar. – Men jeg er bekymret fordi den er en kurdisk-islamsk gruppe som er truet av en mulig krig, la han til. Forlater Norge med glede På spørsmål om hva han vil gjøre dersom han blir utvist fra Norge, svarte mullaen at han vil gjøre det "med glede". – Hvis norsk lov sier at jeg må forlate landet, så vil jeg gjøre det med glede og takknemlighet overfor det norske folk for hva jeg har fått gjennom 11 år i deres land. De fleste har vært høflige mot meg og min familie og har behandlet meg rettferdig." (NOTE: Click on the snippet/link to read the exact text of the interview. I have an English Language computer so this foreign language snippet may not be in its correct format on this page only.)
***INSIGHT On The News online: "AL-QAEDA OPERATIVES STILL ACTIVE IN IRAQ" by Kenneth R. Timmerman (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "An Islamic group with ties to al-Qaeda continues to operate in northern Iraq where it receives aid from Saddam Hussein's intelligence services, Iraqi opposition officials in Washington and London told Insight in recent interviews. The group, called Ansar al-Islam, is led by an Iraqi Kurd named Nejmeddin Faraj Ahmad (also known as Mullah Krekar) who trained with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s.") (020403)
THE NEW YORKER - FACT: A Reporter At Large: "THE UNKNOWN" by Jeffrey Goldberg (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad.") (February 3, 2003)
***AFTENPOSTEN.no: "USA WANTS NORWAY TO WATCH KREKAR" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Mullah Krekar has been, and likely remains, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, a fringe Islamic group in Iranian Kurdistan accused of having connections to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. The New York Times reported the connection last week after interviews with Ansa al-Islam members, and after finding documents in Afghanistan mentioning direct links to al-Qaeda.") (January 17, 2003)
stepping back in time...ALBAWABA.com: "EXPERTS: AL ZAWAHIRI TAPE IN AL JAZEERA TRIGGERED RECENT WAVE OF ATTACKS" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "A tape played on the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television last week from Ayman al Zawahiri and later authenticated by the Americans seemed to have triggered the recent wave of attacks. According to the British Daily Telegraph, that has suggested to Western experts that al-Qaeda has now devolved the timing and possibly the targeting of terrorist attacks to its cells in the field.") (101402)
stepping back in time...HOUSTON CHRONICLE.com (NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE): "BIN LADEN DEPUTY, AN EGYPTIAN SURGEON, HAS LONG BACKED EXTREMIST CAUSES" (September 24, 2001) (ARTICLE NOTE: The "Bin Laden deputy, Egyptian surgeon" is identified as Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, age 50. ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The man, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, 50, was the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the terrorist group blamed for the 1981 assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat. He joined in an alliance with bin Laden's group in 1998. After the American cruise missile attacks on al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan that year, it was Zawahiri who telephoned a Pakistani reporter on bin Laden's behalf and warned: "The war has started. The Americans should wait for the answer."") (September 24, 2001)
WorldNetDaily.com: "NEW EVIDENCE LINKS SADDAM, BIN LADEN" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Unit 999 of Iraqi intelligence has helped train both Arafat's shock troops and bin Laden's Islamists for suicide operations utilizing weapons of mass destruction. According to Bodansky's book, some of these terrorists have already "succeeded in infiltrating several Arab countries. They are provided with instructions, secret codes and advanced weapons." According to Israeli sources, the Iraqis permitted the terrorist trainees to test chemical weapons in southern Kurdistan.") (120902)
***News.TELEGRAPH.co.uk: "CHEMICAL WAR THREAT BY IRAQ'S 'TALIBAN'" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Mullah Mohammad Hasan is the new leader of Ansar Al-Islam, a radical Taliban-style mini-state in Northern Iraq where ricin and other chemical agents have been been tested as potential weapons. He has vowed to use his arsenal to fight America and its allies if a war is launched against Saddam Hussein. Ansar has also given shelter to Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi - the al-Qaeda quartermaster responsible for planning the terrorist group's attacks - in its camps, according to Kurdish officials in the area. The group has told recent visitors to its enclave that it holds stocks of the deadly chemical agents ricin, cyanide gas and aflatoxin.") (January 12, 2003)
stepping back in time...CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: "TALIBAN-STYLE GROUP GROWS IN IRAQ" (ARTICLE SNIPPETS: "HALABJA, NORTHERN IRAQ - A radical Islamist group - with possible links to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - is growing and threatening the stability of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq."..."Since, Ansar al-Islam has nearly doubled in size to 700, including Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians, and Afghans - a composition similar to the multinational Al Qaeda network. Villagers here claim it has ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the burqa. It has seized a Taliban-style enclave of 4,000 civilians and several villages near the Iran border.") (March 15, 2002)
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Anna Pukas and Nick Rufford Sunday Times June 11, 1995, Sunday
Special Branch detectives working with the FBI believe Yousef adopted the identidy of Abdul Basit Mahmoud Kareem, a Kuwaiti studying electronic engineering at the Swansea Institute of Higher Education. They have questioned staff there about the two men. Kareem, who attended the institute between 1987 and 1989, is thought to have been killed by Iraqi police during an incursion into Kuwait prior to the 1990 invasion. Yousef subsequently added Kareem's name to the aliases he used to evade capture. Yousef, 27, was finally arrested in Pakistan last February two years after the World Trade Center bombing killed six people and extradited to the United States, where he faces trial in the autumn. A pre-trial hearing is set for Wednesday. Dubbed ''the new Jackal'', he is also implicated in a plot to assassinate the Pope during his January visit to the Philippines and a scheme to blow up American airliners departing from Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila. The Swansea connection appears to have been confirmed by Yousef. In a statement to the FBI, he allegedly said he was born in Kuwait of Pakistani parents and went to Swansea to study electronic engineering, graduating in 1989. Although some former undergraduates and residents have claimed to remember seeing a man resembling him around the campus, university authorities found no trace of him in their records, either under the name Yousef or any permutation of four known aliases.
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The institute confirmed that a student registered as Abdul Basit Mahmoud Kareem completed a two-year HND in electronic engineering in 1989, which included a course in micro-electronics. However, none of the staff was able to identify him positively as either Kareem or Yousef from photographs produced by Special Branch officers. Hywel Rees, the vice-principal of the institute, said: ''The student we had could in many ways fit the profile of the person now in New York. But while he was with us he was a completely normal student, neither outstanding nor dull, who caused no concern at all.'' The real Kareem paid his own Pounds 4,000-a-year tuition fees and lived in a bedsit in the Uplands area of Swansea, a district with a large student population. The institute recalls he was registered as a Kuwaiti resident, although his birthplace was Iraq, and that he returned to Kuwait after his HND. It is thought that after his death Iraqi police kept his passport, which subsequently fell into Yousef's hands. When Yousef boarded a plane from New York to Pakistan hours after the World Trade Center explosion, he was travelling under the name Abdul Basit, two of Kareem's first names. Yousef is known to be a master of disguise, despite the fact that he has distinctive disfigurements: two deformed little fingers and one blind eye. Four photographs discovered in the Manila apartment show him looking completely different in each. |
Mr. Salem talks of the plan to substitute harmless powder for explosives during another conversation with agent Floyd. In that conversation, he recalls a previous discussion with Mr. Anticev.The FBI and the Mad Bombers"Do you deny," Mr. Salem says he told the other agent, "your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?" Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev did not deny it. "We was handling the case perfectly well until the supervisor came and messed it up, upside down."
Your wish is my command. Here is your visual:
Mussolini, his wife and some of his fellow facists seen hanging around at the end of the war.
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