Egypt's deepening links to al Qaeda

29 Oct, 2001 12:34 AM4 mins to read

LONDON - The international investigation into Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network is discovering ever more connections to Egypt, where a growing population of well-educated but unemployed and disaffected young men has proved a fertile recruiting ground for terrorism.

The latest link, tying al Qaeda to the anthrax attacks terrorising the United States, is Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar, a follower of bin Laden who was jailed for life in Egypt last year for trying to overthrow the Government and replace it with a radical Islamist regime.

In prison he has become an informer on al Qaeda, telling the Egyptian authorities that the network openly bought anthrax spores and other biological agents from laboratories in eastern Europe and Asia.

According to the New York Post, which obtained translations of his evidence to the Egyptian authorities, al-Najjar said the anthrax was supplied by a facility in Southeast Asia to the Islamic Moro Front. The Philippines-based group is connected with al Qaeda as well as Abu Sayyaf, the Muslim separatist guerrilla movement in the Philippines, which itself has close ties to bin Laden.

In London, police are continuing to question Yasser al-Siri, sentenced to death in absentia by Egypt for his part in a failed bomb plot against a senior politician which killed a young girl.

He is accused of supplying credentials to the two Arabs posing as journalists who killed the Afghan Opposition leader, Ahmed Shah Masood, in a suicide bombing on September 9, two days before the attacks on New York and Washington. The assassination is believed to have been ordered by bin Laden, but the Egyptian dissident, who came to Britain eight years ago, denied acting illegally.

Al-Siri's Islamic Observation Centre runs a website which was the first to report that a senior Egyptian associate of bin Laden, Abu Baseer Al-Masri, had been killed in Afghanistan.

It alleged that he died in the American bombing, but the Taleban regime later said it was the result of an accident while he was handling a grenade.

When the FBI released its "most wanted" list of terrorists in connection with the September 11 attacks, at least a third were of Egyptian descent, including bin Laden's closest associate, Ayman Rabi al-Zawahiri.

Another link between Egypt and Afghanistan was revealed when the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported that the translator with an eye-patch who always appears next to the Taleban Ambassador to Pakistan is a former Egyptian Army corporal. It said Abdel Aziz Moussa al-Jamal was detained for three years after President Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981 and on his release headed for Afghanistan, where he lost an eye in fighting against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

United States federal authorities were yesterday contending with the death of a Pakistani man who had been in custody on immigration violations. Guards found Muhammed But, 55, of New York, dead at the Hudson County, New Jersey Jail. An autopsy determined the man died of natural causes from a heart problem.

He was arrested September 19 as part of the investigation into the terrorist attacks, a government source said.

The US House of Representatives passed and sent to the Senate for final congressional approval a broad bipartisan bill to expand the power of law enforcement to combat terrorists.

The Senate was expected to pass the measure as early as today, and then send it to President George W. Bush, who has pushed for such legislation since shortly after the terrorist attacks.

Abroad, Pakistani security officials said three Western nationals of Arab origin, including one linked to hijacker Mohamed Atta, came to Pakistan shortly before the September 11 terrorist attacks and may have slipped into Afghanistan.

The three were identified by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as Said Bahaji, a German-Moroccan sought by Germany on an international arrest warrant; Abdullah Hussainy, a Belgian of Algerian origin; and Ammar Moula, a French citizen.

Nato-led peacekeepers said yesterday that they believed they had disrupted a terrorist organisation in Bosnia and were investigating whether it had links to bin Laden.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Nato officials believed they had foiled a terrorist attack planned for last week on two US military installations in Bosnia.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Story archives: