Posted on 11/08/2001 3:36:33 PM PST by blam
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 09 2001
Saddam's terror training camp teaches hijacking
BY RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
IRAQ has been running a secret terrorist training camp where commandos, including foreigners, are instructed on how to hijack civilian aircraft, according to an Iraqi defector who worked at the base.
Sabah Khodada, a former special forces officer who sought political asylum in the US earlier this year, said he trained Iraqis to take over a civilian airliner using a real Boeing 707 at the base in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. He said that Arab fighters, probably from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, were trained at an adjacent base.
“When I heard the news about the attacks on September 11, I immediately thought of the training camp,” he told The Times from his new home in Texas. “We were told every day that America was the enemy and we should attack them.”
His account, along with similar testimony from other recent Iraqi defectors, is likely to increase suspicions in America that President Saddam Hussein may have had a hand in the September 11 attacks and to support calls for Iraq to become America’s next target, after Afghanistan.
The interview with Mr Khodada was organised by the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam movement, which is keen to draw attention to Baghdad’s terrorist links. British officials have tried to play down suggestions of an Iraqi connection to the attacks on the US, but defectors’ testimony has intensified suspicions in Washington.
The former captain, 47, said that he served at the base between 1994 and 1995 as an instructor for Iraqi special forces teams working for the Mukhabarat intelligence service, which is under the direct command of Saddam. The men were given traditional training in scuba-diving, parachuting and sabotage. But they were also taught how to hijack aircraft and other “terrorist” skills like kidnapping and assassination.
“They were trained how to check out security at an airport and how to smuggle weapons on to an aircraft,” he said. “They were trained how to take control of an aircraft by terrorising the passengers and crew and how to gain access to the cockpit.”
He said that foreign fighters were also trained at Salman Pak, but that he was never told what missions, if any, they subsequently carried out. “We were not allowed to speak with them, but we could see them training every day,” he said. “They looked like Arabs and on some occasions I would greet them in Arabic and they replied.”
Mr Khodada added that political indoctrination was a key element in the training programme. “It was drummed into us every day that America was responsible for killing Iraqi children,” he said.
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