Czy to Bin Laden?

[Gość: maurycy]

Bin Laden connection probed

American officials have begun piecing together a case linking Osama bin Laden
to the worst terrorist attack in US history. They have intercepted
communications between his supporters and are examining harrowing mobile phone
calls made by victims aboard the hijacked airliners before they crashed. US
intelligence intercepted communications between bin Laden supporters discussing
the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, according to Utah Senator
Orrin Hatch.
("The Times"

[Gość: maurycy]

Przepraszam, że nie tłumacze na Polski, nie mam w tej chwili czasu, ale ci co
znaja angielski niech skorzystają z tych wiadomości. Z Poważaniem,

Maurycy

Bin Laden heads list of suspects

BY RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR "The Times"

SEVERAL extremist Middle Eastern groups and governments have the motivation to
launch devastating attacks against the United States, but only one man has the
experience and audacity to cause so much bloodshed.
Even before the full horror of yesterday’s attacks became clear, American
officials were publicly blaming Osama bin Laden, the FBI’s most-wanted
terrorist, who was responsible for a decade of bloody attacks on American
targets.

Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator, said that he had information from the FBI
that bin Laden was the prime suspect.

“I do have some information,” he said. “They have come to the conclusion that
this looks like it it may be the signature of Osama bin Laden, that he may be
the one behind this.”

The Taleban, Afghanistan’s religious leaders, who have played host to bin Laden
and his supporters, last night denied that he had the ability to carry out such
an attack.

“Osama is only a person: he does not have the facilities to carry out such
activities,” Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taleban envoy to Pakistan, said.

Investigators will want to look at other possible suspects, including the Shia
Muslim groups loyal to Iran that launched devastating attacks against American
targets in the 1980s, the regime of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the
numerous Palestinian groups that are locked in conflict with Israel.

There is even the remote possibility that the attack was a homegrown operation,
either by Muslims living in America — who were responsible for the previous
bombing of the World Trade Centre — or right-wing American extremists, who
until yesterday held the record for the most deadly terrorist attack in
America, with 168 deaths in the Oklahoma City bombing.

When the World Trade Centre was bombed in 1993, the attack was launched by a
group of Arab expatriates led by Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani. The group had links
with Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, a New Jersey-based cleric wanted on terrorism
charges in Egypt.

If a state such as Iran, Iraq, or Libya is found to have any role in
yesterday’s events, it would be tantamount to an act of war and America would
almost certainly respond with devastating force.

That likelihood reinforces suspicions about bin Laden. He is the only name on
the list of suspects who has a history of hitting American targets with suicide
bombers and using a terrorist network that spans the globe. For the past decade
the millionaire businessman-turned-terrorist has been America’s most bloody foe
and the champion of extremist Muslims from the Middle East to Afghanistan,
where he remains in hiding near the city of Kandahar as a guest of the
fundamentalist religious authorities.

Abdel-Bari Atwan, Editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, who
has met bin Laden, said yesterday that the Saudi was almost certainly behind
the attacks.

“It is most likely the work of Islamic fundamentalists. Osama bin Laden warned
three weeks ago that he would attack American interests in an unprecedented
attack, a very big one,” Mr Atwan said.

“We received information that he planned very, very big attacks against
American interests. We received several warnings like this. We did not take it
so seriously, preferring to see what would happen before reporting it.”

Earlier this year bin Laden made similar threats in a long recruitment video,
when he urged his supporters to “penetrate America and Israel and hit them
where it hurts most”.

Bin Laden, 44, who formed his al-Qaeda group when he fought the Soviet Army in
Afghanistan in the 1980s, emerged as a serious threat against the West a decade
ago when his men were responsible for a car bomb attack on an American military
barracks in Saudi Arabia, which killed scores of US airmen.

He launched his most deadly attack in 1998, when suicide car bombers blew up
the American Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, killing 301 people and
injuring 5,000. Most of the victims were local civilians.

Last October bin Laden was blamed for a suicide attack that killed 17 American
sailors and wounded 39 on the USS Cole as she docked in Aden.

American investigators could not prove bin Laden’s responsibility for that
attack, but he praised the bombers and hinted that it had been his operation.

What makes him particularly dangerous is his global reach and resources.
Although forced to leave his native Saudi Arabia, he is related to one of the
country’s richest families and is believed to have inherited Ł200 million.

From his training in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviet Union he has
experience in combat and the loyalty of fellow Mujahidin — religious warriors —
who were drawn to the conflict from as far away as Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan
and Saudi Arabia.

He runs several training camps in Afghanistan and is thought to have thousands
of men under arms and loyal followers in every big city around the world where
there is a large Muslim population — including in the United States.

President Clinton ordered cruise-missile attacks against his bases in 1998
after the bombings of the American Embassies in East Africa, but it had little
impact on his organisation.

Even if America wants to retaliate against him he will impossible to arrest or
kill unless US forces are prepared to go in on the ground, which is likely to
result in heavy casualties, given the experience of the Soviet Union in the
rugged Afghan terrain.

Yesterday’s attacks are likely to increase support for bin Laden among militant
Muslims, who are drawn to a man capable of defying the world’s only superpower.