Bin Laden name puts spotlight on tiny Comoros
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden may be thousands of miles away in central Asia, but the world's most wanted man cast a long shadow over a coup attempt on Wednesday on a distant Indian Ocean island.
Diplomats said unidentified gunmen trying to take over Moheli island on the coup-prone Comoros archipelago distributed leaflets in English linking Comoran military strongman Colonel Azaly Assoumani with bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
The reference to the Saudi-born tycoon and his reputation as an alleged terrorist mastermind added a new twist to a staple of politics in the Comoros -- the attempted military takeover.
The move sparked rumors that the gunmen could be U.S. soldiers hunting for an al Qaeda cell on Moheli, ensuring a rare moment of world attention for the trigger-happy political elite of the Muslim country of 700,000.
Diplomats played down any link to Washington's war on terrorism and said the incident was probably linked to the islands' rough-and-tumble local politics -- an opinion echoed by government officials who rapidly sent troops to Moheli to try to quell the revolt.
``It is not very clear what these people stand for,'' said Francisco Madeira, special envoy to the Comoros of the Organization of African Unity.
``They passed themselves off as American soldiers looking for Islamic fundamentalists on Comoros, and one or two of them spoke English, but eventually it was established they spoke perfect French.''
But the gunmen's reference to the top suspect in the September 11 attacks may have been an astute move to mask their true intentions, as the name of at least one Comoros islander has cropped up repeatedly in Washington's research into bin Laden's followers.
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 22 most wanted men for his alleged role in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya.
Said to be an explosives expert, Mohammed has been indicted and accused of being the linchpin of the Kenya bombing. Simultaneous attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people and wounded over 4,000.
FBI Wanted posters circulating for the last three years describe Fazul as ``very good with computers'' and say he wears baseball caps and dresses casually. Fazul is believed to have trained with bin Laden in Afghanistan and speak five languages.
Four followers of bin Laden, put on trial in a U.S. court, were sentenced to life imprisonment in October for the attacks.
Also noteworthy on Wednesday was the presence of whites among the gunmen. This was a sign, diplomats said, that the plotters may have revived an ailing tradition among the political barons of the former French colony of hiring European or white South African mercenaries to topple rivals.
There have been more than 20 attempted coups on the Comoros since independence from France in 1975, but the last involving white people was five years ago.
The country's few brief months of post-independence stability ended abruptly when French mercenary ``Colonel'' Bob Denard, leading a group of white mercenaries known as Les Affreux (The Terrible Ones), overthrew the first president, Ahmed Abdallah.
The coup set the tone for the next 2-1/2 decades of political volatility in the islands, which lie just off the east coat of Africa.
There have been a number of coup attempts this year alone in the run-up to a referendum planned for next Sunday to approve a new constitution aimed at ending the long-running secessionist crisis on the islands.
More than a dozen mysterious hooded men who invaded the smallest island in the Comoros archipelago appear to have been mercenaries.
Comorian troops have killed five of the insurgents.
A senior Comorian defence official said the men appeared intent on destabilising the tiny Indian Ocean islands ahead of a crucial referendum this weekend.
Earlier reports suggested the armed men, who claimed to be FBI agents and cut telephone links to the outside world, could have been hunting al-Qaida operatives, or even Osama bin Laden himself.
A Comorian - Fazul Abdullah Mohammed - has been indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 Nairobi embassy bombing which killed 12 Americans.
He is a fugitive, and was named as one of 22 most wanted terrorists by President George Bush. Comorian troops killed five of the insurgents on Moheli island, said Mahamout Soilih, secretary-general for defence.
"Five bodies have been brought to Moroni. They are mercenaries, and one could be a Romanian," he said, adding that one government soldier was wounded.
Speaking in Moroni, the capital of the Comoros Islands, Soilih said it is not clear who was behind the pre-dawn incursion by between 15 and 30 hooded men.
"Whoever it was, they were intent on destabilising the Comoros just when we are trying to find a peaceful solution to our problems," he said.
The three island archipelago off the coast of Mozambique is holding a constitutional referendum on Sunday that, if approved, would allow greater autonomy to the three islands and end military rule in Moroni.
Story filed: 14:03 Wednesday 19th December 2001
Comoran army repels gunmen posing as US special forces on Moheli
Dec 19 2001 22:15 IST
MORONI, Dec 19 (AFP) - The Comoran government said Wednesday it had quelled a group of armed foreigners posing as US special forces on the island of Moheli, after a clash that left at least five dead.
"The situation on the island is returning to normal," Communications Minister Ali Toihir said on national radio.
The Comoro islands, in the Indian Ocean between the northern tip of Madagascar and the east African coast, have been plagued by a score of coups and attempted coups since independence from France in 1975.
As part of a reconciliation process, Comorans will on Sunday vote on a radically new constitution providing for a less centralised state and granting more autonomy to the country's three isles: Grande Comore, Moheli and Anjouan.
Toihir indicated the invaders no longer posed a threat to security.
"After an exchange of gunfire, some of the attackers were killed, while others ran away," he said.
The "attackers", according to witnesses, were a group of about 100 men, some white, some black, several masked, who arrived at dawn on the island at three points and seized the police and gendarme posts.
They explained their mission in leaflets, written in French, and topped with a US Department of Defence letterhead complete with bald eagle motif.
"Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, committed by Osama bin Laden's terrorist group, special forces of the United States army have landed in your country.
Comoran President "Colonel Azali Assoumani is guilty of colloborating with Osama bin Laden's group. Cooperate with the American soldiers and you will be thanked," the text added.
"Soldiers and officers of the Comoran army, do not die for Azali. You will be well treated and we will pay you. Fighting against us is useless, a foregone conclusion," read the statement, which few on Moheli took seriously.
Not least because the armed visitors had, either by accident or design, failed to secure the island's airport, thereby allowing a requisitioned commercial jet full of troops from Moroni to land.
Azali himself took personal charge of this operation, officials said.
Bodies of three of the group were flown to Moroni, as were two injured men: a white man from the group and Comoran government soldier.
The US embassy in Nairobi and the Pentagon both said they had no reports of US military intervention in the islands, where there is no American diplomatic presence.
"The US embassy in Nairobi has checked all sources and has no information about any American activity the Comoros," a US spokesman in Kenya told AFP.
He said US officials were treating the events in Moheli "cautiously, given the past history of mercenary intervention in Comoran affairs."
Also Wednesday, a colonel in the Comoran army, Hassan Harouna, was arrested, family sources said, saying the arrest was linked to events on Moheli.
In September 1997, Harouna led a botched military mission to the third Comoran island, Anjouan, a month after it unilaterally announced its independence from Moroni.
On Wednesday, France condemned what it called "an action of destabilisation against Moheli," and warned it would jeopardize the reconciliation process steered by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).
A group of African foreign ministers, headed by South Africa's Zkosazana Dlamini Zuma, agreed to stick to their plans to fly Wednesday to the Comoros in support of the reconciliation process, despite the unrest on Moheli.
"These developments have only served to strengthen the resolve of the countries of the region and the OAU to continue with their efforts to help the people of the Comoros to bring about democracy, peace and stability," Zuma said in South Africa.
OAU Secretary General Amara Essy is also currently visiting the Comoros.