Terrorist video shows training for golf killings

13 Jan, 2002 11:31 AM3 mins to read

By JOHN ARMSTRONG and AGENCIES

A video released yesterday showed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network training terrorists for a mass assassination of world leaders at a golf tournament.

The videotape, obtained by ABC TV in Australia, also showed terrorist soldiers rehearsing a hostage situation where they screamed their commands in English and shot one hostage dead.

Northern Alliance soldiers discovered the video at an al-Qaeda training camp near Kabul in southern Afghanistan.

A United States special forces veteran advising the Afghan military said bullet holes at head level on the wall of an abandoned school, used as the training camp, suggested live hostages were killed during the soldiers' apprenticeship.

"They sprayed the room a couple of times and this tells me that at some point they put live hostages in here," the US veteran, who declined to be named, told ABC television.

Perhaps the most frightening footage was the rehearsal for a mass murder of national leaders at a golf tournament.

The terrorists carried their weapons on to the course in golf bags and used a rocket-propelled grenade to take out officials.

The tapes, which were partly broadcast last night, are believed to be the first comprehensive record of al-Qaeda terrorist training.

Disclosure of the tapes comes as the New Zealand High Commission in Singapore is on security alert after the Singapore Government's exposure of an elaborate plot by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists to blow up Western embassies, including Australia's.

The suspected terrorists were arrested in Singapore last month under the state's Internal Security Act, which allows detention without trial for anyone deemed a national security threat.

Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry said on Friday that those detained were believed to have been planning attacks on the British High Commission, the Israeli Embassy and the Australian High Commission and on vehicles carrying US military staff.

The NZ High Commissioner, Nigel Moore, has been briefed by Singapore Government officials.

He told the Herald yesterday that he had been assured nothing had been uncovered in interviews with the detainees or in other material to suggest New Zealand assets or high commission staff were targets.

He said security at the NZ High Commission had been improved.

The arrests have shocked Singapore. Residents in one luxury apartment block were confronted with newspaper photographs of Ibrahim Maidin, aged 51, who had managed the property for almost 15 years.

Yesterday, they found out that he was allegedly the leader of the Singapore arm of Jemaah Islamiah, a secret group with links to other Southeast Asian nations.

NZ Foreign Minister Phil Goff said last night that he thought Australia had been targeted because it had a higher profile than NZ.

The 15 suspects were arrested in Singapore after authorities found bomb-making information along with photographs and video footage of the US Embassy and other buildings in the suspects' homes.

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