Abu Anas al-Libi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)

[Magda Hassan]

A different Al Libi but lots of good information on LIFG

[QUOTE]

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http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/05...oss-would- be-major-blow-for-al-qaeda/

Al-Libi death a major blow for al Qaeda

By Paul Cruickshank

[June 5, 2012]

Abu Yahya al-Libi is universally admired in jihadist circles and among the younger generation of al Qaeda leaders. Charismatic, intelligent, a religious scholar - and with the extra qualification of having escaped from U.S. custody in Afghanistan his loss is "a cataclysmic blow" to al Qaeda, according to analysts who follow the group.

Al-Libi was the target of a U.S. drone strike this week, a U.S. official tells CNN's Barbara Starr. A U.S. official told CNN's Pam Benson that al-Libi is dead.

In recent years, al-Libi emerged as one of the terrorist network's most important clerics and propagandists, appearing in countless videos. By most accounts, he was effectively al Qaeda's deputy leader. And his Libyan nationality is important to an organization that after the elevation of Ayman al-Zawahiri as leader was vulnerable to criticism it was dominated by Egyptians.

Noman Benotman, a former senior member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who spent significant time with al-Libi in the 1990s, told CNN that his death is a "very serious blow" to al Qaeda because no one else within the group rivals his legitimacy as a religious scholar nor has the credibility in the Arab world to provide Islamic justifications for al Qaeda's global campaign of terrorism.

"Awlaki wasn't even close," said Benotman, referring to Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen last year.

Al-Libi (real name: Hasan Muhamad Qayed) was born in Marzaq in the southwest Sabha province deep inside Libya's interior. As a young man he studied chemistry for one year at Sabha University but, like many young Libyans, was swept up in an Islamic awakening hostile to the Gadhafi regime that arose in Libya in the late 1980s.

As an outlet for their frustration, and a chance to participate in Holy War, al-Libi and his brother, Abd al-Wahab al-Qayed (also subsequently known as Idris), were among the many young Libyans who traveled to Afghanistan to fight jihad against the Soviet-backed government. In 1990 his brother was one of the founding members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which fought a failed campaign to overthrow the rule of Moammar Gadhafi in the mid 1990s.

Benotman, who is now a senior analyst at the Quilliam Foundation in London, first spent time with al-Libi around 1990-1991 in Afghanistan. He recalls that al-Libi was always much more interested in religious learning than fighting.

"He was a very smart guy and hungry to learn about Sharia law," Benotman told CNN.

After a few years in Afghanistan, al-Libi traveled to Mauretania, where he undertook religious studies for two years under well-known scholars, according to Benotman. "He was the best student they had," Benotman said.

Benotman noticed the change in al-Libi when he returned to Afghanistan: "He was a real and serious Sharia student." In the mid-1990s al-Libi moved to Sudan with other LIFG fighters after conditions for Arab fighters became difficult in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Separately, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda also relocated there. Benotman said that al-Libi took no operational role in the coordination of a insurgent campaign the group began against the Gadhafi in Libya around this time.

"He didn't have fighting skills or knowledge of military leadership," Benotman told CNN.

After the Taliban took over much of Afghanistan in 1996, al-Libi settled in Kabul, according to Benotman. Al-Libi's religious views leaned toward the extreme, said Benotman, but he did not subscribe to the ultra-hardline "takfiri" interpretation of Islam that argued for the permissibility of killing those regarded by some Sunnis as "heretical" Muslims - like the Shia.

In late 2001, al-Libi's world was turned upside down when the United States routed the Taliban in Afghanistan. Like many Arab fighters he fled across the border to Pakistan, where he holed up in an apartment block with other militants in Karachi, according to Benotman.

But a Pakistani raid in 2002 led to his arrest and he was quickly handed over to American authorities, who held him in a prison in Kandahar, according to Benotman. He was subsequently transferred to an American detention facility at Bagram air base near Kabul.

It was al-Libi's escape from the prison in July 2005 that shot him to jihadist stardom. His nighttime escape was featured in a subsequent jihadist propaganda video narrated by a fellow escapee, who claimed that as American soldiers patrolled it was al-Libi who cut a wire mesh fence, allowing them to escape and eventually connect with the Taliban fighters in Kabul.

Al-Libi himself appeared in the video in which he alleged the Americans were responsible for severe human rights violations, claiming that when a new prisoner arrived, he would be abused and humilated until "he almost loses his mind."

After some time in hiding in Afghanistan, al-Libi traveled to the tribal areas of Pakistan, which were increasingly becoming a new safe haven for Arab fighters and al Qaeda operatives. His views on jihad were increasingly in line with the terrorist group. In December 2006 he appeared in a video urging jihadists to learn how to make nuclear weapons.

Al-Libi became one of al Qaeda's chief ideologues and propagandists, appearing in numerous recruitment videos in which he cast himself as a sheikh with the legitimacy to issue fatwas.

His eloquent Arabic addresses, several of which were made to groups of fighters sitting crossed-legged outdoors in the tribal areas of Pakistan, were filmed and disseminated online, and won him a significant audience among a radical fringe of young Muslims in the Arab world.

Part of al-Libi's appeal to young Muslims radicalized by the Iraq war was his uncompromising ideology. But there were limits to his radicalism. According to Benotman he was concerned about the negative fallout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's barbaric campaign in Iraq.

In 2008 al-Zawahiri cited a tract written by the Libyan to justify al Qaeda's campaign of terrorism. The tract was titled "Human Shields in Modern Jihad." According to Jarret Brachman, an American academic who has long studied al Qaeda, al-Libi argued that al Qaeda could take on the West only if it engaged "in a fierce war using weapons of mass destruction" and that this would entail Muslim casualties.

As drone strikes began to take their toll on al Qaeda in 2008, killing a number of senior leaders, al-Libi appeared to play a more hands-on military role in the organization despite his lack of combat experience.

Bryant Neal Vinas, a young American from Long Island who was recruited into al Qaeda, testified in a recent court case that during the late summer of 2008 he participated in an expedition to attack a U.S. base near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with a group of fighters under the command of al-Libi, whom he described as the "emir" of an al Qaeda outfit based in Lwara, Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

Benotman said that al-Libi's military role should not be exaggerated. "He's not a frontline fighter or someone very capable of military strategy," he told CNN.

Brachman and other counterterrorism analysts came to see al-Libi as a natural successor to bin Laden because of his charisma and religious credentials. In an interview with CNN in 2009, Benotman was sceptical al-Libi would be effective in the top job: "He lacks the management skills of a bin Laden; the ability to see the big picture and think strategically. Hardcore Salafists don't think practically because they believe God will help them through."

By the second half of 2010, as more senior al Qaeda operatives were killed or captured, al-Libi was thrust into a managerial role. But within the al Qaeda hierarchy he was still junior to another Libyan within the group.

Letters recovered from bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad suggest al-Libi developed a working relationship with Atiyah abd al-Rahman, who in mid-2010 took over al Qaeda's day-to-day operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan and became bin Laden's main interlocutor within the terrorist organization until al-Rahman's death in a drone strike in August 2011.

Al-Rahman was known as a strategic thinker but also a pragmatist. In December 2010 he and al-Libi wrote a joint letter to Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, to scold him for the group's indiscriminate killing of Muslim civilians and use of kidnapping, which they said was hurting the jihadist cause in Pakistan. A copy of the letter was subsequently found in Abbottabad.

After the death of al-Rahman, counterterrorism officials believe, al-Libi stepped into his shoes in managing the day-to-day operations of the terrorist network and its relations with affiliates.

Benotman says that like al-Rahman, al-Libi had significant influence with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda's North African affiliate, and Al-Shabaab, the network's Somali affiliate. "They respect him, love him, and listen to him," Benotman told CNN. His loss might therefore damage al-Zawahiri's ability to coax the affiliates into following his strategic guidance.

After the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, al-Libi took a lead role in al Qaeda's propaganda efforts to try to turn events to their advantage.
Benotman said that it is here and in his justification of al Qaeda's global campaign of attacks that his loss would be most keenly felt. The Libyan cleric was able to describe the stakes arising from the Arab uprising in religious terms more effectively than any other al Qaeda leader, according to Benotman.

Addressing Libyan followers in a wide-ranging video address in December 2011, al-Libi said, "At this crossroads you have found yourselves, you either choose a secular regime that pleases the greedy crocodiles of the West and for them to use it as a means to fulfill their goals, or you take a strong position and establish the religion of Allah."

With his death, it is possible there may be a backlash by pro al Qaeda forces in Libya. According to several sources, al Qaeda has developed a presence in eastern Libya, where it has recruited and trained several hundred fighters. Last month a previously unknown jihadist outfit calling itself the Imprisoned Omar Abdel Rahman Brigades claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the Red Cross in Benghazi.

Al-Libi, in a video released late last year, claimed his own death would not hurt al Qaeda's cause:

"I say to America: Don't have hopes that you are about to defeat al Qaeda. Let al Qaeda be defeated and all their leaders and individuals be killed, and then what? The battle with America today is not with an organization or a group or a sect, but it is a battle with the Ummah of Islam," meaning the global Islamic community.

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COMMENTS:

"Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen last year"? The Anwar al-Awlaki story is on this thread: Uncharted ground in al-Awlaki's killing. After reading the biographical data on him and reading about his exploits, I have concluded that he was part of a network of US intelligence assets. Anwar al-Awlaki "was first enthralled with jihad as a teenager but the cause he embraced, the defeat of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, was then America's cause too." He may have become a loose cannon, and more of a "liability" than an "asset."

"Abu Yahya al-Libi...was the target of a U.S. drone strike this week, a U.S. official tells CNN's Barbara Starr"? Well, some of these Al Qaeda leaders, who are called a "number 2" or a "number 3," have been reported to have been bumped off a number of times. All we really can know for sure from reports of those CIA drone attacks is that there was a drone attack and that the CIA wants to put out the story that a particular individual is dead. Sometimes relatives may "confirm" that this individual is dead. But since jihad tends to be a family affair, I usually don't take what relatives say as proof, unless the same story comes from other independent reliable sources.

"[Abu Yahya] al-Libi and his brother, Abd al-Wahab al-Qayed (also subsequently known as Idris), were among the many young Libyans who traveled to Afghanistan to fight jihad against the Soviet-backed government"? I can see why the CIA and others in the US intelligence establishment might want to silence Abu Yahya al-Libi for good. I am sure that he has some fascinating stories to tell about Abdelhakim Belhaj and other high Libyan officials from the LIFG! How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli:

"Muammar Gaddafi's fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last week by Belhaj's men - who were at the forefront of a militia of Berbers from the mountains southwest of Tripoli. The militia is the so-called Tripoli Brigade, trained in secret for two months by US Special Forces. This turned out to be the rebels' most effective militia in six months of tribal/civil war....

Abdelhakim Belhaj, aka Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, is a Libyan jihadi. Born in May 1966, he honed his skills with the mujahideen in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.
He's the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and its de facto emir - with Khaled Chrif and Sami Saadi as his deputies. After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis.

After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - all this before al-Qaeda in Iraq pledged its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and turbo-charged its gruesome practices....

The LIFG had been on the US Central Intelligence Agency's radars since 9/11. In 2003, Belhaj was finally arrested in Malaysia - and then transferred, extraordinary rendition-style, to a secret Bangkok prison, and duly tortured.

In 2004, the Americans decided to send him as a gift to Libyan intelligence - until he was freed by the Gaddafi regime in March 2010, along with other 211 "terrorists", in a public relations coup advertised with great fanfare.

The orchestrator was no less than Saif Islam al-Gaddafi - the modernizing/London School of Economics face of the regime. LIFG's leaders - Belhaj and his deputies Chrif and Saadi - issued a 417-page confession dubbed "corrective studies" in which they declared the jihad against Gaddafi over (and illegal), before they were finally set free....

Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir....

Fast forward to last February [2011] when, a free man, Belhaj decided to go back into jihad mode and align his forces with the engineered uprising in Cyrenaica.

Every intelligence agency in the US, Europe and the Arab world knows where he's coming from. He's already made sure in Libya that himself and his militia will only settle for sharia law...."

It could get interesting, if Sami al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhadj continue with their lawsuit "against Jack Straw, the British former foreign secretary, and the British government" for the "rendition" of these two LIFG leaders to Qaddafi's prison. The MI6 and MI5 are pressuring the UK Parliament to allow "certain court evidence to be heard from behind closed doors," such as MI6 collaboration with CIA "renditions." Evidently Saadi and Belhaj were able to bury the hatchet with the MI6 to collaborate in the overthrow of Qaddafi and in setting up a new government. It's possible that Saadi and Belhaj were promised more than the MI6, CIA, or NATO was willing to give them. Plenty of questions remain about contacts among the LIFG and Western intelligence agencies during these operations against Qaddafi, and I wonder how much Abu Yahya al-Libi may have been involved in this?

"After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996," when Abu Yahya was running that LIFG training camp, the Taliban regime had US support. In 1994, "the Americans had - secretly and through the Pakistanis - supported the Taleban's assumption of power." Afghanistan's current President Hamed Karzai "worked as a consultant for the huge US oil group Unocal, which had supported the Taleban movement and sought to construct a pipeline to transport oil and gas from the Islamic republics of Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan." In 1997, Taliban officials visited Unocal headquarters in Texas and also "visited the State Department."

As a "founder" of the LIFG, Abdelhakim Belhadj would have worked closely with Abu Yahya, when "many young Libyans" went to "Afghanistan to fight jihad against the Soviet-backed government." During the CIA's Jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan, the CIA saw Abdullah Azzam as their "prime asset because of his close connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi intelligence, and the Muslim World League." It's well-documented that the CIA continued these operations against that "Soviet-backed" Afghan regime, after Soviet troops pulled out in 1989. After Azzam was assassinated in 1989, the CIA used "one of Azzam's closest spiritual kin, Sheikh Abdel Rahman," to do the jobs, which Azzam was doing, such as building up the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. Alkifah in Brooklyn served as a base for "the string of jihad offices that had been set up across America with the help of Saudi and American intelligence." CIA and US Special Forces officers, who were "who were orchestrating the war" in Peshawar, called Rahman their "valuable asset." They used him to help unite the mujahideen factions, who were bankrolled by the CIA. Rahman was the "spiritual mentor" of "Egypt's militant Islamic Group, or Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya."

This Alkifah network with Rahman's gang didn't dry up after the Soviet Union bit the dust. In 1992, the Bosnian war started when Warren Zimmerman, U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade, "persuade[d] Izetbegovic to renege on the agreement" with Serb and Croatian leaders "promising him all political, diplomatic and military aid if he agreed to do so." Then Izetbegovic "stationed his green-berreted snipers on the roofs of central Sarajevo, reneged on the agreement, appealed for support in the Moslem world." That Alkifah system was conveniently available to provide this "support." Bosnia Begins Deportations:

"A police source close to the anti-terror investigations told ISA Consulting that most of the Algerian fighters came to Bosnia in mid-1992 through the Algeria based Armed Islamic Group (GIA), via Croatian capital Zagreb - though the Bosnian Security Ministry has no evidence that Mimun himself was member of the group. The source also said that some Algerian nationals arrived in Bosnia through the Egyptian militant group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya.
The source said GIA had sent some high-ranking officials to Zagreb, where they set up a charity front called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) or Al-Kifah - a center used for the logistical operations of infiltrating Bosnia.
Western media quoted several unnamed intelligence officials as saying that MAK was founded in the mid-1980s by Osama bin Laden to raise funds for recruiting foreign fighters for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Al-Kifah also had branches in Pakistan and New York, and offices in 32 US cities. The New York branch was shut down right after the 1993 WTC bombing after an investigation proved that all of the bombers were connected to that office...."

The Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn was not actually "shut down." After the 1993 WTC attack was traced back to Alkifah in Brooklyn, operations were transferred to the Alkifah branch in Boston, which was renamed Care International. According to Care International financial documents, from August 1993 to June 1995, the Care office in Boston "wired close to $167,000 in the name of Care or al-Kifah to the Human Service Office (another name for MAK) in Bosnia." And also "Care publications and websites regularly provided updates" on the the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group! This shows how LIFG leaders were involved with these US intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and how LIFG was used against Qaddafi: Dossier: Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG):

"Although the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) did not officially announce its formation until 1995, the roots of the movement are closely linked to the 'first group of Libyans who fought and declared their jihad against [Libyan President Muammar] Qadhafi's regime during the 1980s.'.....

In addition to receiving military training from Al-Qaida instructors, LIFG recruits were also indoctrinated in Afghanistan by influential jihadist clerics such as Al-Qaida cofounder Dr. Abdullah Azzam, whose jihadist writings were later posted on the LIFG's Internet website.20 Indicating the extent of that indoctrination, the LIFG website also contained audio and video recordings of Bin Laden himself, imprisoned Egyptian jihad leader Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman, the El-Mudzahid Brigade in Bosnia-Herzegovina....

Like other regional Islamist movements, the LIFG also found kinship with arguably the most dominant force among Afghan-trained extremists in North Africa: the Egyptian terrorist organization Al-Gama`at al-Islamiyya. By the mid-1990s, supporters of Al-Gama`at in Europe and North America began distributing news updates regarding LIFG operations targeting the "apostate" Libyan regime....The LIFG has been a particularly vocal ally of Al-Gama`at al-Islamiyya's imprisoned spiritual leader, the blind Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman....."

"Al Qaeda has developed a presence in eastern Libya, where it has recruited and trained several hundred fighters"? Al Qaeda has certainly "developed a presence" in the Libya government, who took over after NATO's war with Qaddafi.

"Last month a previously unknown jihadist outfit calling itself the Imprisoned Omar Abdel Rahman Brigades claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the Red Cross in Benghazi"? Isn't that interesting! Arab Spring was made in the USA, via the NED and the Freedom House, the usual tools of imperialism: The Protest Movement in Egypt: "Dictators" do not Dictate, They Obey Orders. The overthrow of Mubarak led to the increasing power of the Muslim Brotherhood. Radical Muslim Brotherhood offshots like Rahman's Al-Gama`at al-Islamiyya or Jama'a Islamiya have also grown in influence, with their history of operational ties to the LIFG in neighboring Libya. The new Egyptian government demanded that Rahman be released from an American prison and returned to Egypt. This came out on June 23, 2011: Omar Abdel Rahman's family to establish political party:

"Members of the family of Omar Abdel Rahman, the jailed spiritual leader of the Jama'a Islamiya, have announced that they plan to establish a new party called the Reform and Justice Party and that Abdel Rahman will be an honorary chairman....

Amar went on to say that Abdel Rahman was one of the biggest supporters of public works, but that he was forced to approve the decisions made by the Jama'a's Shura Council, which banned political and party work at that time.

Amar added that the Jama'a had begun taking the necessary steps to establish a satellite television station, to be called "A Word of Truth". The name is the same as the title of Abdel Rahman's book, which he wrote during his trial. Amar said the channel would express moderate Islamic views and would be mainly concerned with Abdel Rahman's case and the demand that he be released.

According to Amar, the channel's main theme will be defending victims of injustice, and that it would be an Arabic channel with some English-language programs."

I haven't found any new information on this satellite station or this Reform and Justice Party with Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman himself as "honorary chairman." The leading Muslim Brotherhood candidate for President of Egypt Mohamed Mursi "has pledged to work for the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman." Rahman's family and followers have continued their demonstrations outside the US embassy in Cairo. There are more reasons than one for holding these demonstrations at this location. In 1989, US officials met with Rahman's followers at this US embassy in Cairo, when the CIA was trying to build up an international network of US intelligence assets from al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad: U.S. Secretly Met With Followers of Blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman Before Controversial Visa Application

"Benotman says that like al-Rahman, al-Libi had significant influence with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda's North African affiliate, and Al-Shabaab, the network's Somali affiliate"? If "the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM)" have merged, and if Belhaj is the defacto "emir" of both, then Abu Yahya al-Libi has probably maintained a working relationship with Belhaj. What we do know is damning enough, but we still don't know the whole story on how the CIA and MI6 revived their contacts and relations with LIFG to overthrow Qaddafi.

Abu Yahya al-Libi's "brother was one of the founding members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which fought a failed campaign to overthrow the rule of Moammar Gadhafi in the mid 1990s"? This raises some disturbing questions of who was really behind the creation of the LIFG, using jihadis from previous Western intelligence operations, for the purpose of overthrowing and assassinating Qaddafi. MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden':

"British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.
The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya's fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden's trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as 'pure fantasy'.

The allegations have emerged in the book Forbidden Truth , published in America by two French intelligence experts who reveal that the first Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden was issued by Libya in March 1998.

According to journalist Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac, British and US intelligence agencies buried the fact that the arrest warrant had come from Libya and played down the threat. Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The arrest warrant was issued in connection with the murder in March 1994 of two German anti-terrorism agents, Silvan and Vera Becker, who were in charge of missions in Africa. According to the book, the resistance of Western intelligence agencies to the Libyan concerns can be explained by MI6's involvement with the al-Qaeda coup plot.

The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government's most wanted list with a reward of $25 million for his capture. He is wanted for his involvement in the African embassy bombings. Al-Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al-Qaeda leader returned to Afghanistan in 1996.

Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000 when he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad. The raid discovered a 180-page al-Qaeda 'manual for jihad' containing instructions for terrorist attacks.

The Observer has been restrained from printing details of the allegations during the course of the trial of David Shayler, who was last week sentenced to six months in prison for disclosing documents obtained during his time as an MI5 officer. He was not allowed to argue that he made the revelations in the public interest.

During his closing speech last week, Shayler repeated claims that he was gagged from talking about 'a crime so heinous' that he had no choice but to go to the press with his story. The 'crime' was the alleged MI6 involvement in the plot to assassinate Gadaffi, hatched in late 1995.

Shayler claims he was first briefed about the plot during formal meetings with colleagues from the foreign intelligence service MI6 when he was working on MI5's Libya desk in the mid-Nineties.

The Observer can today reveal that the MI6 officers involved in the alleged plot were Richard Bartlett, who has previously only been known under the codename PT16 and had overall responsibility for the operation; and David Watson, codename PT16B. As Shayler's opposite number in MI6, Watson was responsible for running a Libyan agent, 'Tunworth', who was was providing information from within the cell. According to Shayler, MI6 passed £100,000 to the al-Qaeda plotters.

The assassination attempt on Gadaffi was planned for early 1996 in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte. It is thought that an operation by the Islamic Fighting Group in the city was foiled in March 1996 and in the gun battle that followed several militants were killed. In 1998, the Libyans released TV footage of a 1996 grenade attack on Gadaffi that they claimed had been carried out by a British agent.

Shayler, who conducted his own defence in the trial, intended to call Bartlett and Watson as witnesses, but was prevented from doing so by the narrow focus of the court case....

Shayler claims Watson later boasted that there had been MI6 involvement in the Libyan operation. Shayler was also planning to call a witness to the conversation in which the MI6 man claimed British intelligence had been involved in the coup attempt.

According to Shayler, the woman, an Arabic translator at MI5, was also shocked by Watson's admission that money had been paid to the plotters...."

Dasquié and Brisard also revealed in the Forbidden Truth that between February and August 2001, the Bush administration revived those Unocal pipeline negotiations with the Taliban regime. A US diplomat told the Taliban: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." It's not rocket science to see that when Khalid Bin Mahfouz filed a "libel" suit in England and got the Forbidden Truth banned, the chief beneficiaries were the CIA, MI6, and other US and British intelligence agencies.

"Noman Benotman, a former senior member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)...is now a senior analyst at the Quilliam Foundation in London"? This Quilliam Foundation presents itself as a think tank, which "stands for religious freedom, equality, human rights and democracy." Quilliam claims to be "independent" from any political group. However, their website admits that "Quilliam's founders, Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, are, respectively, members of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties and our advisory board includes members of all three main parties." In other words, this represents the UK political establishment. Noman Benotman, Senior Analyst in Strategic Communications at Quilliam says this about Syria, which amounts to a rationale for Western military intervention:

"The international community must intervene immediately in the escalating civil war in Syria. We have a duty to protect innocent civilians from mindless state-sponsored violence. The Responsibility to Protect doctrine provides an adequate framework for such an intervention and action is needed now. Past experience in Bosnia proves that a lack of will by international actors will lead to further mass killings."

Oh, yes, just as in Bosnia, the Western powers in the NATO "framework" are using their Muslim Brotherhood assets to fight anyone who stands in their way of dominating the planet. As a former LIFG member, Benotman should know plenty about how the MI6 operates in these cases and why so many former LIFG operatives have found a home in England.

"In the mid-1990s al-Libi moved to Sudan with other LIFG fighters after conditions for Arab fighters became difficult in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region"? This happened during the time frame of the Bosnian war. During the CIA's anti-Soviet mujahideen operations, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman "met frequently during those years, in London and Khartoum, with Hassan al-Turabi," a Muslim Brotherhood leader in Sudan. Turabi provided Osama Bin Laden with his "home away from home" in Sudan, and Turabi also had close ties to Iran. In Sudan, Turabi "broker[ed] a series of meetings between Osama bin Laden and senior leaders of Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence." Thus "Al-Turabi's pan-Islamist efforts bore immediate fruit in the Bosnia war, the first major post-Cold War European conflict. The vehicle was the Third World ReliefAgency (TWRA), a charity based in Vienna, Austria." If Abu Yahya al-Libi "moved to Sudan with other LIFG fighters" in the mid-1990's, then Abu Yahya & his LIFG became part of this "pan-Islamic" network in Bosnia. TWRA served as a front for jihad recruitment, money laundering, and arms smuggling to Bosnia. Turabi's "pan-Islamic efforts" certainly paid off in this US intelligence operation, when Bin Laden, Rahman, Iran, and Hezbollah all pitched in to fight the Bosnian Serbs. Bush CIA Nominee Turned Blind Eye As Arms Flowed To Al Qaeda In 1994, 1995:

"After being dropped in Tuzla, the arms were shipped by land or air into Bosnia, destined for the Bosnian Muslim army, which included both official and irregular mujahideen regiments with extensive links to al Qaeda....
Several European U.N. observers believed the operation was either conducted or condoned by the U.S. military intelligence apparatus, then commanded by Hayden. 'They were American arms deliveries,' said a British general with access to that country's Tuzla intelligence. 'No doubt about that.'....

New York City native Clement Hampton-El fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1988. During his time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hampton-El met several members of the nascent al Qaeda organization....
In August 1992, Hampton-El agreed to help recruit operatives to fight in Bosnia and to train other mujahideen for the effort. Over the course of 1993, members of Hampton-El's training group were arrested and indicted for complicity in the February bombing of the World Trade Center and a subsequent plot to bomb the U.N. and other New York City landmarks.[16]
Hampton-El received more than $40,000 in cash from Third World Relief Agency,[17] a Vienna-based charity with deep ties to Osama bin Laden, which was also directly implicated in the covert arms shipments to Bosnia. He smuggled the money back to New York over the course of three trips, where it was used by the New York terrorist cell led by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.

TWRA was founded by al-Fatih Ali Hassanein, a Sudanese diplomat directly tied to bin Laden and Rahman. In addition to the $40,000 payment couriered by Hampton-El, TWRA distributed videotapes of Rahman's sermons widely across Europe. [18] Rahman made several phone calls to the TWRA offices during the period before his arrest. TWRA had been funded directly by Osama bin Laden as well as other wealthy Saudi patrons of jihad, to the tune of $300 million....

TWRA's team of supporters and board of directors boasted several Bosnia dignitaries including Haris Silajdzic, the Bosnian official who received assurances that the U.S. would encourgage violations of the arms embargo during Holbrooke and Hayden's November 1994 trip to Zagreb.
In 1992, Silajdzic had traveled to Vienna to issue a bank guarantee for Hassanein.[21] That same year, TWRA helped smuggle arms into Bosnia not just from Iran, but from Khartoum, Sudan, where Osama bin Laden was in the process of relocating al Qaeda. The arms were eventually shipped to the Bosnians via Tuzla....

[Footnote 12] Many of the leading mujahideen commanders in Bosnia were associated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad and answered personally to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a member of al Qaeda's ruling council. Egyptian commanders in Bosnia included Moataz Billah, a renowned jihadist with ties to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and Abu Thabit, a former officer in the Egyptian Army. Zawahiri coordinated efforts with the Iranian Hezbollah terrorist group and with the core al Qaeda organization...."

Later on, the Bosnia pattern was repeated in Kosovo. When the CIA was training the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA or UCK] in Albania, Iran's Revolutionay Guard Corp was also training KLA units. "One of the leaders of an elite KLA unit was Muhammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and a military commander of Osama bin Laden." El-fatih Hassanein also arrived on the scene in those Albanian KLA camps with this TWRA. According to ICTY documents:

[p.43] "According to intelligence information, Hassanein also visited Macedonia being actively engaged with aiding the efforts of Albanian terrorists active in Kosovo. IT has also been discovered that later he traveled through Macedonia traveling inside a NATO vehicle with French markings while carrying a false passport. Hassanein was one of the key organizers of the Albanian terrorist organization named [UCK] (or KLA) whose training camps were located in: Bajram Curri, Tropoja and Kukes."


"He was subsequently transferred to an American detention facility at Bagram air base near Kabul. It was al-Libi's escape from the prison in July 2005 that shot him to jihadist stardom"? And "a fellow escapee, who claimed that as American soldiers patrolled it was al-Libi who cut a wire mesh fence, allowing them to escape"? With all the satellite surveillance and tight security they have at this CIA prison at the Bagram air base, it's hard to believe that a prisoner could escape without some help from the guards or other prison authorities. Did the CIA find another job for Abu Yahya al-Libi to do? That's what I suspected when I looked at the picture of Aby Yahya with that As Sahab logo above the article, which I posted at the beginning of this thread. The logo also appears with him here: "To Our People in Libya" Abu Yahya al-Libi Delivers Message:



In March 2011, during NATO's war against Qaddafi in Libya, Abu Yahya appears in this video:

"For the first time since the bloody revolt in Muammar al-Gaddafi´s Libya began, al-Qaida has released a video statement urging Libyans to fight for Shariah and freedom from the regime, act in the footsteps of Libyan historical figure Umar Mukhtar (whom al-Libi calls 'Shaykh of the Martyrs').

Abu Yahya al-Libi, al-Qaida´s Libyan battlefield-cleric, a former 'Libyan Islamic Fighting Group' member, who hails from the conflict region Benghazi, is featured in the newest As-Sahab Media production 'To Our People in Libya.'

'The only solution for our country is Jihad for Islam,' al-Libi says about the Libyan uprising. He praises the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia who toppled the 'Pharao Hosni Mubarak' and the 'Tyrant Ben Ali.' 'These revolutions have shown us that the Western governments only care about their own interests. They only speak out when they see them endangered. By now: the wind of revolution is blowing, and they evacuate their own citizens.'"

I would not expect Abu Yahya al-Libi to give these "Western governments" credit for bombing Qaddafi's regime into submission. Neither Al Qaeda nor their Western sponsors want to publicly acknowledge how they covertly work together hand-in-glove. Going back to the Dossier: Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG):

[p.18-19] "Abu Yahya al-Liby has nonetheless also become a strikingly influential figure in the international jihadist movement ever since his stunning escape in July 2005 from a high security U.S. prison at Bagram air base (near Kabul). Less than six months later, Abu Yahya began to appear in video recordings produced by Al-Qaida's official 'As-Sahab Media Foundation'so often, in fact, that his face has become virtually synonymous with As-Sahab. Over the last two years, Abu Yahya has been the principle featured spokesman for Al-Qaida in at least fourteen separate audio and video recordings released by As-Sahab appearing more often than either Usama Bin Laden or Ayman al- Zawahiri. Abu Yahya has even used his position at As-Sahab in order to publicly address issues of more particular significance to Libyan Islamistssuch as the controversial criminal case against Bulgarian doctors who were accused of deliberately spreading AIDS among Libyan children."

This As-Sahab Media company has all of the marks of a CIA or US military psy-op. These As-Sahab video and audio recordings seem to reinforce whatever story the Bush or Obama administration wants to put out at the moment. As-Sahab started out "in 2001 with the involvement of Adam Yahiye Gadahn." Adam Gadahn, aka Adam Pearlman, aka Azzam the American is also the star of many of these As-Sahab videos, as the "Voice of the Caliphate." Gee, how about that! "the 'Voice of the Caliphate' segment appears modeled on the 'Voice of America' format used by the U.S. military." Voice of America has a long history in US psy-ops. For instance, before Yugoslavia's elections in 2000:

"Director of CIA George Tennet visited the broader region of South Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania) to step up and co-ordinate pressure in the run-up to elections in Yugoslavia.
A ring of radio and TV centres was established around the FR of Yugoslavia to transmit anti-Yugoslav propaganda, the well-known system of NATO propaganda such as Radio Free Europe, Deutshe Welle, Voice of America and others."

So how did this Adam Gadahn get involved with jihadis? According to this report, So I Married a Terrorist, Saraah Olson, the ex-wife of Hisham Diab, saw Diab and Khalil Deek recruit Adam Gadahn in 1994, which was during the Bosnian war. Diab abd Deek were part of a group of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman's followers in Orange County, California. Diab and Deek hosted the CIA's "valuable asset" when he visited their mosque and homes. "At least 30 people gathered in Deek's apartment" for a gathering with Rahman as the guest of honor. Diab and Deek went to Bosnia in 1994. Olson said she "learned" that they had "set up a terrorist training camp in Bosnia."

Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were fugitives from justice in the United States since November 1998. These As-Sahab films would mysteriously pop up on obscure websites or into that Al-Jazeera TV station in Qatar, just about 15 miles from that US Central Command (CENTCOM) base in Doha. Yet nobody from US intelligence seemed interested in finding the source of these films and audio tapes. An AP reporter did track down the "distribution" system for these media productions. Cameraman Sheds Light on al - Qaida Videos:


[June 25, 2006] "PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- The bitter winter winds were howling through the Afghan mountains when, cameraman Qari Mohammed Yusuf says, a courier brought a summons from al-Qaida's No. 2: 'The emir wants to send a message.'
The emir, meaning prince or commander, was Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. He wanted to send a message to the world that he had safely survived a U.S. attempt to kill him......
The video aired on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic TV network, on Jan. 30, less than three weeks after the U.S. airstrike on a building just across the border in eastern Pakistan that targeted al-Zawahri but instead killed 13 villagers. Pakistan said four al-Qaida militants were also killed in the attack, but their identities were never proven.....

Yusuf said As-Sahab puts together its videos in a minivan that was turned into a mobile studio by al-Qaida technicians and blends easily into Pakistani traffic. The courier network often draws on ties that hark back decades to the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Pakistan-based Islamic insurgency it provoked.....

The distribution network appears to have no chain of command. Distribution falls to a variety of hands, including members of Pakistan's best-organized religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which once had close links with Afghanistan's outlawed Hezb-e-Islami party and its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Also involved are loyalists of a second Hezb-e-Islami faction, led by Yunus Khalis, who welcomed bin Laden to Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996.

'They pass the discs from one person to another person,' said a Jamaat-e-Islami member who gave his name only as Abdullah and said he had a personal library of hundreds of As-Sahab, Taliban and other militant CDs, some of which he shared with the AP. 'I have gotten mine from friends of mine from jihad days,' he said, referring to the Soviet invasion.

The AP's meeting with Yusuf came after a month of seeking contact with al-Qaida's production company through Hezb-e-Islami members, particularly in Afghanistan's northeastern Kunar province, where the U.S. military targets al-Qaida, Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami insurgents.....
Yusuf said all four of his brothers died waging a jihad, giving him impeccable credentials for al-Qaida membership. He said two of them were attached to al-Zawahri and one was a key Taliban liaison with militants from neighboring Tajikistan and Uzbekistan."

Both the Yunus Khalis and Hekmatyar factions were bankrolled and armed by the CIA, through Pakistan's ISI and other institutions, during the "Soviet invasion." Lost at Tora Bora:

"Yunis Khalis...had accepted Washington's largess, and over the years, as the war against the Soviet occupiers progressed, Khalis, among the seven resistance leaders, would receive the third-largest share of the more than $3 billion of weapons and funds that the C.I.A. invested in the jihad. As the godfather of Jalalabad, the capital of the province of Nangarhar, Khalis controlled a vast territory, including Tora Bora....
It was also during the war years that bin Laden first met Khalis; the two men became very close friends. Indeed, when bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in May 1996 from his base in the Sudan (after the United States insisted that the Sudanese government expel him), it was Khalis, along with two of his key commanders - Hajji Abdul Qadir and Engineer Mahmoud - who first invited him. And it was also Khalis who, later that year, would introduce bin Laden to the one-eyed leader of the Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar, who had fought with Khalis - and would later become his protégé - during the jihad...."

Yeah, the US pressured Sudan to kick Bin Laden out of their country, just in time for him to return to Afghanistan to give the Taliban the shot in the arm, which they needed. Osama Bin Laden "gave the group's leader Mullah Omar three million dollars at a crucial point and the war turned decisively. In 1996 the Taliban took Jalalabad and ten days later Kabul the capital. Bin Laden sealed his hold on the Taliban when Omar married one of his daughters." As I said earlier, in 1994, US intelligence agencies "had - secretly and through the Pakistanis - supported the Taleban's assumption of power."

When THE CIA AND HEROIN FINANCED THE MUJAHEDEEN, who fought the Soviet army and Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, these mujahideen leaders received CIA and matching Saudi funds laundered through the BCCI branches in Pakistan and through Pakistan's ISI. That's how Hekmatyar "received more than $1 billion in covert U.S. aid" and how Hekmatyar became one of "the world's biggest heroin dealers." Hekmatyar also maintained operational ties with Rahman's group of CIA assets in Brooklyn. In August 1993, the Los Angeles Times reported in U.S. Aid to Afghan Rebels Proves a Deadly Boomerang, that members of Rahman's Brooklyn group, including Clement Rodney Hampton-El, were among Hekmatyar's trainees. Rahman and Hampton-El became part of the TWRA operation in Bosnia. It's logical that Jamaat-e-Islami would be involved in that As-Sahab distribution network with Hekmaytar and his Hezb-e-Islami faction. They did have "close links" in the CIA's Afghan operations in the 1980's. In March 2003, US and Pakistani forces captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the home of a local Jamaat-e-Islami official in Rawalpindi. Pak radicals accuse govt of Khalid sellout

"Pakistan's largest Islamic party today called suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 'a hero of Islam' and accused the government of a shameful sellout to America by arresting him at the weekend....
Pakistani officials say Mohammed was arrested on Saturday in the old city of Rawalpindi at the house of a female Jamaat-e-Islami official, whose son was one of two other al Qaida suspects detained with him.....
The Jamaat-e-Islami played a key role in fighting the forces of the former Soviet Union and its allied Communist regime in Afghanistan during 1980s. It sent fighters to assist the faction of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has now been declared a terrorist by the US. During the anti-Soviet war, Hekmatyar was a major recipient of weapons and money from the US that was backing Islamists at the time...."

KSM and his relatives were also part of these US intelligence operations against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and later against the Serbs in Bosnia. See: Evidence shows 9/11 mastermind lived in Bosnian capital in 1995. Jamaat-e-Isalmi has a defacto branch in New York called the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). It is most interesting that the Alkifah Refugee Center branch in Boston put out this flyer promoting a "Bosnia Fund," with "reports" from the ICNA parroting the same disinformation, which we heard from US and NATO sources:



Jamaat-e-Isalmi may have been "outraged" about the US capture of their "hero" KSM in 2003, but evidently they maintained their working relationship with US intelligence operations through this ICNA. Just after the GW Bush administration consummated Kosovo's "independence," the ICNA issued this press release on Feb. 19, 2008: Kosovo Gains Independence:


"JAMAICA, New York (February 19, 2008) Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) a leading grassroots organization of American Muslims congratulates Kosovo on its newly acquired independence. ICNA also commends the United States government for acknowledging the sovereignty of the state of Kosovo, which was previously a province of Serbia. It's only a matter of time that other countries will also come forward to accept Kosovo as an independent state.

Kosovar Muslims have suffered through ethnic cleansing and have survived genocide. The international community must stay committed to helping to maintain peace and order in the Balkans.

The Muslims of Kosovo should educate themselves on the rights of minorities living under Muslims and should ensure that ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo are given their due rights and are allowed to practice their religion(s) freely....."

The US intelligence establishment couldn't ask for more. This reenforced the entire mythology surrounding US-NATO intervention in the Kosovo war, that this was about "democracy" and "human rights," and saving the Albanians from "genocide." There was a war with atrocities on all sides in Kosovo, but no "genocide." Kosovo - the site of a genocide that never was.

"Part of al-Libi's appeal to young Muslims radicalized by the Iraq war was his uncompromising ideology. But...he was concerned about the negative fallout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's barbaric campaign in Iraq"? During the Bush years, we heard of spliced up internet videos starring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which were used to try to bolster US public support for continuing the US occupation of Iraq. It was a challenge to separate the myth and planted disinformation from the historical truth about Zarqawi. The real Zarqawi had a common history with the LIFG leaders: Abu Anas al-Shami Book on the Falluja Battle in Iraq (2004):

"Ahmed Nazal al-Khalaylah [aka, Musab al-Zarqawi] was born in 1966 on the outskirts of Amman, in the hamlet of Zarqa in a three-room home from the Khalaylah Clan of the Bani Hassan Tribe....
Zarqawi was recruited in 1988 by Abdul-Majid Majali, also known as Abu Qutayba al-Irduni (The Jordanian). Majali opened a Jordanian branch of Maktab al-Khidmat, the facilitation organization supporting the Islamist resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and became a representative of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam in Jordan. Azzam is the spiritual founder of al-Qaida and formed Maktab al-Khidmat as the earliest Arab-Afghan logistic and processing center in Peshawar to fight the Soviets. Majali was an experienced, well-credentialed militant who spent two years in Afghanistan (1986-1988) and returned to Jordan with a mandate from Azzam to raise funds and recruit.

Majali recounts that Zarqawi joined the Soviet-Afghan jihad after attending a fund-raising event in which the main speaker was Abdul-Rasul Sayyaf, one of the most prominent and militant Afghan warlords of the Soviet-Afghan War. Majali said he processed Zarqawi among the thousands of recruits destined for Pakistan. Zarqawi was not an exceptional figure when Majali first encountered him in 1988. Zarqawi was channeled into a pipeline of Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians who were grouped into battalions for training in Khost in 1989.
Zarqawi arrived too late in the conflict to participate in combat against the Soviets and returned to Jordan in 1994, linking up with Maqdisi and forming a cell called Jaysh Muhammad (Muhammad's Army) that was also referred to as Jamaa al-Tawheed al-Salafiyah (The Unified Salafi Group)...."

This warlord Abdul-Rasul Sayyaf was a "favored recipient of money from the Saudi and American governments," when he also became KSM's historic mentor. Zarqawi later became involved with Ansar al-Islam in "Iraqi Kurdistan." It's important to remember that before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in March 2003, Ansar al-Islam had their Taliban-like colony in "Iraqi Kurdistan" under the protection of US and British planes in the northern "no-fly zone" of Iraq. At this time, Ansar al-Islam's jihad was against Saddam's regime. Founder of Kurdish extremist group says he sought money from Osama bin Laden:

[April 23, 2004] "OSLO, Norway (AP) - The founder of a Kurdish extremist group accused by the United States of trying to destabilize Iraq says in his autobiography that he sought money from Osama bin Laden to fight Saddam Hussein.
In his new book, My Own Words, Ansar al-Islam founder Mullah Krekar says he met a Saudi prince in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1990 to ask for money to battle Saddam. The prince, who wasn't identified, declined to help.
Bin Laden was also at the meeting, Krekar said....
In his autobiography released Thursday, Krekar said the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, forerunner of Ansar al-Islam, later tried to get money from bin Laden through a mutual friend, Palestinian Abdullah Azzam.
Azzam and bin Laden had founded a group to recruit Arabs to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
'He went straight to bin Laden, but bin Laden would not help us,' wrote Krekar.
He said bin Laden responded with 'my money goes to the Afghans' jihad' - apparently a reference to the Taliban militia's fight against the Northern Alliance after the Soviets' departure from Afghanistan. Krekar did not say when the exchange took place....
In the book, Krekar said it was his opposition to Saddam's regime, especially after a 1988 chemical attack by Saddam's army that killed 5,000 people in the Kurdish city of Halabja, that drove him to seek funding from bin Laden.
Krekar said he fled to Norway as a refugee in 1991 after learning that Saddam had ordered his death....
During an extended visit after he fled to Norway, Krekar founded Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq in December 2001 to foment revolution against Saddam. Now the group is suspected of links to al-Qaida and in suicide bombings targeting U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq...."

Thus when Krekar met with Abdullah Azzam, Azzam was the CIA's "prime asset." Ansar al-Islam were the extremists among the extremists, who were incapable of working with other groups. It didn't take long for Ansar al-Islam to get into fights with other Kurdish groups in this "no-fly zone," who didn't conform to these "Taliban-like" laws. After the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, some of these Ansar al-Islam guerrillas and their recruits joined the insurgency against the US occupation.

During Saddam's regime, the CIA evidently had an international network of intelligence assets, who recruited for Ansar al-Islam. One example was Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar, who was a "veteran of military training camps in Bosnia and Afghanistan." He "allegedly was a member of the Egyptian radical movement Gama'a al-Islamiyya, which has been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization supported by Osama bin Laden." Gama'a al-Islamiyya was also an organization of the followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the CIA's "valuable asset." In the middle of the 1990's, in Albania, Abu Omar had served as a CIA informant through a ShIK Albanian intelligence unit, which "former ShIK officials said, was essentially an arm of the CIA." Abu Omar's messages were passed on to the CIA through ShIK. At some point, Abu Omar arrived at the Islamic Cultural Center and mosque in Milan, Italy, and became involved in operations with Ansar al-Islam. Alleged CIA target tied to Iraq group:

"[COLOR=firebrick]The radical Islamic preacher who Italian prosecutors say was abducted by CIA agents in February 2003 had been involved in preparing false passports and travel documents for radical Islamic fighters traveling to northern Iraq, accord...