Re: Osama bin Laden's "best friend?"
I did not know (or confused) that Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim = Abu Hajer al Iraqi
He is the guy who infamously beat and blinded a prison guard.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/296fmttq.asp
FR posted this back in 1993:
"A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S. court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader. Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified cooperation with the Iraqi government."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115387/postsre:
I did not know (or confused) that Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim = Abu Hajer al Iraqi
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Your post is very confusing since it states it comes from a 1993 article, and talks about a jihadist who was a)in Iraq and Afghanistan in 1995, and b) is now [1993?] in an American jail.
What am I missing?