[A-List] US imperialism: propaganda war

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Al Qaeda was trained in Iraqi terror camps
GWYNNE ROBERTS
The Herald, 13 February 2003

EVIDENCE is now emerging of a shadowy military alliance between Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden which involves training al Qaeda fighters to use
chemical and biological weapons in sabotage operations in Europe and the
United States.

US claims of a direct link between bin Laden and Saddam have fallen on deaf
ears in Europe. But an investigation I conducted for PBS, the American state
broadcaster, reveals such a connection really exists.

Iraq's ruling Ba'ath Party was indeed once hostile to Islamic
fundamentalism. But times have changed. The Iraqi media often refer to their
leader as the great Mujahed (holy warrior) Saddam Hussein. His speeches are
peppered with Koranic references; his regime has launched a "faith
campaign"; senior Ba'athists are learning the Koran by heart, and religious
instruction is being stepped up in schools.

In the late 1990s, senior Iraqi defectors reaching Lebanon, Turkey, northern
Iraq, and Europe even began to suggest that Saddam's embrace of Islam and
his hatred of America had caused a seismic shift in Middle Eastern politics,
resulting in an alliance of convenience.

The first hint that something unusual was happening was picked up in 1997 by
Jane's Intelligence Review. It reported that Saudi and Palestinian
dissidents were being trained in Iraq at secret camps run by a Iraqi
military intelligence group known as Unit 999.

Abu Khalil arrived in Ankara last year after escaping from Iraq. His first
post was as a Unit 999 trainer.

In 1994, Unit 999 was tasked with training non-Iraqis from all over the
Middle East and North Africa. "Many of them were very Islamic, very
religious and very radical," he said. "I knew the head of the camp and he
told me they came from countries like Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Palestine.

"They were trained in many different techniques - how to lay bombs and how
to use chemical weapons. They were taught to do operations outside Iraq,
never inside."

In 1994, Unit 999 also started training Saddam's Fedayeen, a brutal militia.
Abu Mohammed, who fled to Turkey three years ago, told me that in 1997 and
1998 Islamic extremists were being instructed to use poison gas and
biological weapons in behind-the-lines operations in the Middle East and the
West. Unit 999 ran a course for a number of extremist Middle Eastern groups,
including al Qaeda.

Mohammed said he was recruited into Saddam's Fedayeen in 1997. His first
encounter with bin Laden's fighters occurred that same year when he went to
Salman Pak.

"I went there with 70 other officers. I noticed people queueing for food.
The camp manager said to me, 'You'll have nothing to do with these people.
They are Osama bin Laden's group, and the PKK and the Mujahidin e' Kalq.'
So, I knew at the beginning who we were training with."

Mohammed said a year later he attended another training course at Salman Pak
and Unit 999 where he encountered al Qaeda fighters.

"There was also training in the use of biological and chemical weapons there
but they were not Iraqis doing it - only foreigners. In the training areas
there is a field especially for weapons of mass destruction. Here, experts
hold lectures and conduct biological experiments, theoretical experiments,
of course, on how to place explosives, or how to pollute specific areas."

Mohammed added: "They had maps of the USA, Britain, Turkey, Iran and Saudi
Arabia."

The training described by the defectors raises the dreadful spectre that
Iraq was passing on expertise learned from the East Germans during the cold
war. At Massow, a camp just south of Berlin, secret police instructors
taught Iraqis, Yemenis and Palestinians, among others, how to attack
civilian targets.

A former Stasi lieutenant colonel said: "The courses emphasised chemical
weapons which attack the nervous system such as yperit, the nerve gas,
Sarin, and binary chemicals. They were also taught how to deploy
bacteriological weapons - influenza, anthrax, pneumonia and yellow fever."

Fighters were taught to terrorise civilians by attacking railways stations,
airports and public gatherings. The contamination of water sources, roads
and large surface areas was also emphasised.

Gwynne Roberts is an Iraq specialist and documentary film maker

-----

Published on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 by Reuters
Bin Laden Labels Saddam an Infidel - Jazeera TV
by Samia Nakhoul

DUBAI - A taped message believed to be from fugitive militant Osama bin
Laden on Tuesday warned Arab nations against supporting a war against Iraq
as threatened by the United States -- but branded Saddam Hussein an infidel.

In a broadcast coinciding with a major Muslim festival that prompted tight
security in the United States and Britain to avert possible attacks, the man
blamed for September 11 urged Muslims to fight America and repel any war
against Iraq.

"We stress the importance of martyrdom (suicide) attacks against the enemy.
These attacks inflicted on America and Israel a disaster they have never
experienced before," said the statement, broadcast on the Qatar-based
al-Jazeera satellite television channel.

Any Arab ruler supporting America or providing logistical or verbal backing
for a war on Iraq would be "an apostate whose blood should be spilled," it
said.

The broadcast coincided with the start of the three-day Muslim Eid al-Adha
festival marking the end of the annual Haj -- the pilgrimage to Mecca.

U.S. officials said the tape was probably genuine, the strongest evidence so
far that bin Laden survived the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan to drive out the
Taliban government and the al Qaeda network of the Saudi-born militant.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the tape corroborated the
allegations that Secretary of State Colin Powell made to the U.N. Security
Council last week to justify U.S. threats to go to war against Iraq -- that
al Qaeda and the Iraqis were in contact and cooperating.

But the statement did not express support for Saddam. It said Muslims should
support the Iraqi people rather than the country's government.

Concern that the United States has not made a valid case for war against
Iraq has already divided the NATO Western alliance, with France, Germany and
Belgium refusing to back preparations to assist fellow-member Turkey in the
event of war.

A NATO official in Brussels said after two days of deadlock that efforts to
break the impasse in the alliance would continue through the night, with a
meeting of its North Atlantic Council set for 3:45 a.m. EST on Wednesday.

While urging Muslims to support the Iraqi people and repel any attack on
their country, the tape said Saddam's secular "socialist" government had
lost credibility.

"Socialists are infidels wherever they are," the statement said. But it
added: "It does not hurt that in current circumstances, the interests of
Muslims coincide with the interests of the socialists in the war against
crusaders."

See http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0211-11.htm