Free Republic

The independent Iraqi weekly Al-Yawm Al-Aakher reveals details on the training of Al-Qa'ida members operating under the orders of Saddam's Presidential Palace two months before the September 11 attacks. The following are excerpts from the article: [1] Training At Nahrawan and Salman Pak "An Iraqi officer (L) [only identified by initial] tells us that one day a Land Cruiser belonging to the Personal Security Force (Al-Amn Al-Khass, responsible for the protection of Saddam Hussein) arrived and a senior officer from the Presidential Palace stepped out of it. He was one of those officers who used to stand behind Saddam, which...

Officer: Saddam trained al-Qaida pre-9-11Iraqi paper says Fedayeen supervised hijack drills in summer 2001 Saddam Hussein ordered the training of al-Qaida members two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to an independent Iraqi weekly. The Fedayeen, under the command of Saddam's late son Uday, directly supervised 100 al-Qaida fighters who were split into two groups, reported Al-Yawm Al-Aakher, citing an Iraqi officer identified by the initial L. One group went to Al-Nahrawan and the second to Salman Pak, near Baghdad, where they were trained to hijack airplanes, the officer said in an article translated by the Washington,...