Tag: Osama bin Laden

CIA Seizes Bin Laden Son-In-Law In Turkey

Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was seized by CIA agents and taken to the United States, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) confirmed to the Associated Press today.

Abu Ghaith, the former spokesman of the Al-Qaeda network, was seized last month at a luxury hotel in Ankara after a tip-off from CIA and was held there by the police despite a US request for his extradition.

Turkish authorities deported Abu Ghaith to Jordan on March 1 to be sent back to Kuwait but he was seized by CIA agents in Jordan and taken to the United States, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.

King called it a “very significant victory” in the war on terror.

“Definitely, one by one, we are getting the top echelons of al-Qaeda,” King said. “I give the (Obama) administration credit for this: it’s steady and it’s unrelenting and it’s very successful.”

Abu Ghaith’s deportation coincided with a visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to Ankara as part of a regional tour, it added.

The Turkish foreign ministry declined to comment on the report while the US embassy in Ankara told AFP: “We’re aware of the reports.”

Ankara considers Abu Ghaith a “stateless” person as he was stripped of his Kuwaiti nationality after appearing in videos defending the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and threatening further violence.

The United States wanted him extradited over his alleged connection to the attacks.

He appeared in a propaganda video in the aftermath of 9/11, standing beside bin Laden, who was killed in May 2011 in Pakistan in a covert U.S. operation.

Abu Ghaith was detained in Turkey after he allegedly entered the country illegally from Iran.

He was freed by an Ankara court because he did not commit any crime on Turkish soil and local media claimed Turkey had hesitated to extradite him to the United States fearing it could become a target of Al-Qaeda.

via CIA Seizes Bin Laden Son-In-Law In Turkey [Report] – Business Insider.

March 8, 2013
Former CIA Agent Claims Americans Did Not Kill bin Laden

Osama bin Laden died a natural death nearly 5 years before it was announced that he was eliminated by the American commandos. This sensational statement was made by a Turkish politician, and a former U.S. intelligence agent. In an interview with Russia’s Channel One, he said that the Americans simply found and opened the tomb of the leader of al-Qaeda.

The journalists of Channel One first met this man in 2008. At the time he was featured in the documentary “Plan Caucasus,” talking about the attempts of the western intelligence services in the early 1990’s to separate the Northern Caucasus and, in particular, Chechnya from Russia. Chechen by nationality, Berkan Yashar is now a Turkish politician, but in those years he was one of the ideologists of Johar Dudayev. He asked for a meeting, promising to tell the truth about the death of Osama bin Laden whom he met in the early 90-ies in Chechnya.

“In September of 1992 I was in Chechnya, that’s when I first met the man whose name was Bin Laden. This meeting took place in a two-story house in the city of Grozny; on the top floor was a family of Gamsakhurdia, the Georgian president, who then was kicked out of his country. We met on the bottom floor; Osama lived in the same building, “said Berkan Yashar. Berkan said he did not know why bin Laden visited while in Grozny, and said only one thing about his meetings: “Just wanted to talk.”

However, according to Channel One, in those years the former employee of Radio Liberty Berkan Yashar already had an operational name Abubakar, given to him by the CIA. According to Berkan, after that trip Chechen nationals appeared in Osama bin Laden’s circle. Berkan Yashar emphasized that they did not participate “directly in the terror bombings.” “They protected bin Laden, it was his choice because he trusted them entirely, and knew that they would never betray,” said Yashar. According to Yashar he was not the only one who knew about it, but the Russian security services and the CIA were aware of this as well.

Answering the question whether he believed that the Americans killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Berkan Yashar answered: “Even if the entire world believed I could not possibly believe it.” “I personally know the Chechens who protected him, they are Sami, Mahmood, and Ayub, and they were with him until the very end. I remember that day very well, there were three sixes in it: 26 June 2006. These people, as well as two others from London and two Americans, all seven of them, saw him dead. He was very ill, he was skin and bones, very thin, and they washed him and buried him,” said Berkan Yashar.

Yashar stressed that although the two American Muslims and two British Muslims the guards of bin Laden and saw him dead, they did not participate in the funerals. “Only three Chechens buried him, according to his will,” said Yashar. Bin Laden was buried, according to Yashar, in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border. “There was no assault,” said Yashar. “I know the American operations from the inside: they find the grave, dig out bin Laden and tell everyone about this. They need to show how technologically the security services worked, how each step was controlled, and then present it as a great victory to show that taxpayers are not paying taxes for nothing. ”

Berkan now blames himself for the fact that the Chechens from the protection of bin Laden, “the terrorist number one” are no longer alive after the U.S. intelligence services began to tap Berkan’s telephone conversations. He said he was the first one who announced the date of death of bin Laden. “I was the first one who announced the date of his death in November of 2008 at a conference in Washington, not naming any names, and it looks like it was when the Americans began to track my contacts,” he said.

The last security guard Berkan saw Sami, who, according to him, a few days before bin Laden was declared killed, was kidnapped by the U.S. intelligence agencies. According to Berkan, most likely, it was him who disclosed to them the exact place of burial in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border.
In any case, the last call from Sami was from Pakistan. Berkan explained why he informed the journalists of Channel One: he feared for his life. According to him, only wide publicity around the world can protect him from the CIA. However, just in case, the Turkish secret services, according to him, provided him with guards and weapons.

Pravda.Ru, 19.05.2011

March 18, 2012
Bin Laden honored in Turkey

ISTANBUL. – The demonstration dedicated to 18 Turkish Taliban members, who died at the U.S. operation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, took place in Istanbul’s Fatih mosque. The Reuters presented this event as “Taliban photos from Istanbul”, the Turkish Posta informs.

In one of the photographs presented by the media people carry a poster with Bin Laden’s photograph.

“Martyr, your way is also our way,” reads the poster.

The 18 Taliban members, who died on November 16 during the U.S. military operations, were Turks.

via Bin Laden honored in Turkey (PHOTOS) | Armenia News – NEWS.am.

December 5, 2011
Anders Behring Breivik And Osama Bin Laden Two Sides Of Same Coin – OpEd

Friday’s horrendous attacks in Norway raise the inevitable question: Is the man who has admitted them, Anders Behring Breivik, a one-off psychopath or is he the start of something frighteningly new in Europe?

That there are those in Europe who, like Breivik, are fanatically opposed to immigration, detest multiculturalism and have a particular hatred of Islam is known. These are the hallmarks of the far right across Europe (not to mention the US, Russia and elsewhere). But is the far right in such places now prepared to kill, as he has killed, in furtherance of these bigoted, twisted ideas?

That he acted alone in planning and carrying out his murderous rampage seems to be the case although he admits to contacts with similarly-minded fanatics in the UK and there is a possible link with the far right in Poland. But he also says are 80 sleepers in Europe, prepared to murder thousands of people in pursuit of eradicating Islam in Europe and to make it a monocultural continent — something it has never been. These claims cannot simply be dismissed as the ravings of a fanatic. They have to be thoroughly investigated.

In his 1,500-page online manifesto, uploaded just before Friday’s killings, he makes it clear that his aim is not only to “cleanse” Europe of Muslims but also to eliminate all who promoted or supported multiculturalism there and opened the door to Muslim immigrants — its politicians, journalists, lawyers and others. His potential targets included the UK’s Prince Charles, its former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and members of all its political parties, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso (popularly known as Durão Barroso in Portugal), former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and politicians in Belgium, France, the Netherlands. It was not only Europe’s political establishments he hoped to destroy. Targets also included oil refineries and nuclear power plants. His plan was to attack the very core of Western society which he sees as corrupted by liberalism and socialism. This is fanaticism on a scale of insanity not seen since the demise of the Adolf Hitler.

That he calls himself a modern-day Knight Templar, a successor to those commandoes of the medieval Crusades, proclaims him a fantasist. This is the stuff of a Dan Brown novel. But while he is not the first person to imagine himself a Templar, he is the first to cross the divide between fantasy and reality. His is a fantasy soaked in the blood of almost a hundred people, a fantasy made real by a frightening dedication to his hatreds.

Here is Europe’s Al-Qaeda. Anders Behring Breivik and Osama Bin Laden are two sides of the same coin: a fanatical belief that their cultures must be purified, that the political establishments which have overseen their degeneration must be destroyed and that anything “alien” rigorously excluded.

Just as there have been those in the Muslim world who followed Bin Laden, copied his methods or sympathized with his objectives, it is entirely possible that there will be those in the West who will regard Breivik as a hero to be emulated. The language he uses is chillingly reminiscent of Al-Qaeda. He refers to the supposed 80 sleepers across Europe as “martyrs”. Are there going to be other bomb attacks, other killings? We hope that Breivik is a one-off. But we dare not assume so.

Eurasian Review, 26 July 2011

July 26, 2011
Mass appeal for bin Laden at Irish church

By MARK HILLIARD in Dublin, Ireland, and BOB FREDERICKS in NY

The name alone got their Irish up.

A Catholic church in Ireland has provoked outrage among its parishioners after announcing plans for a Mass to pray for the “soul” of Osama bin Laden.

The Church of the Assumption in the affluent Dublin suburb of Howth distributed a leaflet to parishioners during its Sunday services that included details of the service.

Listed under “Mass Intentions” for Thursday in the church pamphlet distributed yesterday was a call to prayer for “Osama Bin Laden (Recently Deceased)” during that day’s 10 a.m. Mass.

Parishioners were immediately incensed, saying the idea of praying for the al Qaeda leader was an “insult,” particularly with the upcoming visit of President Obama to Ireland.

“I was disgusted. I have family in America who would be disgusted,” said one regular Mass-goer. “The Irish-Americans would be absolutely horrified, as if we are on the wrong side.”

The church attempted to play down the scandal yesterday, saying the request was probably taken down in a hurry and that the matter remained undecided.

However, the parish note was removed from the Web site and it remains unclear whether the service will go ahead as scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday.

www.nypost.com, May 9, 2011

May 9, 2011
Wasn’t Bin Laden the reason we went to war?

Patrick Cockburn: Wasn’t Bin Laden the reason we went to war?

The killing of the al-Qa’ida leader offers an opportunity to make long overdue progress on Afghanistan

Does the death of Osama bin Laden open the door for the US and UK to escape from the trap into which they have fallen in Afghanistan? At first sight, the presumed weakening of al-Qa’ida ought to strength the case for an American and British withdrawal. When President Obama ordered the dispatch of an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2009, he declared that the goal was “to deny safe-haven to al-Qa’ida and to deny the Taliban the ability to overthrow the Afghan government”.

This justification for stationing 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan and for Washington spending $113bn (£69bn) a year always looked thin. By the US army’s own estimate there are about 100 members of al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan compared with an estimated 25,000 Taliban. Even on the Pakistan side of the border, al-Qa’ida probably only has a few hundred fighters.

A problem for the US and Britain is how to dump this convenient but highly misleading explanation as to why it was essential for the safety of their own countries to fight a war in Afghanistan. This has required pretending that al-Qa’ida was in the country in significant force and that a vast US and UK military deployment was necessary to defend the streets of London or the little house on the prairie.

The death of Bin Laden reduces this highly exaggerated perception of al-Qa’ida as a threat. People, not unreasonably, ask what we are doing in Afghanistan, and why soldiers are still being killed. One spurious argument has been to conflate al-Qa’ida and the Afghan Taliban, and say they are much the same thing. But it is difficult to think of a single Afghan involved in bomb attacks against targets in the US and Britain before and after 9/11. Al-Qa’ida’s leadership was mainly Egyptian and Saudi as were all the 9/11 bombers.

The problem for Washington and London is that they have got so many people killed in Afghanistan and spent so much money that it is difficult for them to withdraw without something that can be dressed up as a victory. Could the death of Bin Laden be the sort of success that would allow Obama to claim that America’s main objective has been achieved? For the moment, at least, it will be more difficult for the Republicans to claim that a disengagement is a betrayal of US national security. Could not this be the moment for the US, with Britain tagging along behind, to cut a deal and get out?

Unfortunately, it probably isn’t going to happen. It will not be Obama’s decision alone. In 2009, he was dubious about what a temporary surge in US troop numbers would achieve and keen not to be sucked into a quagmire in Afghanistan just as the US was getting out of one in Iraq. Endless discussions took place in the offices of the White House about whether or not to send reinforcements.

But the outcome of these repeated meetings was predictable given the balance of power between different institutions in Washington. Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA and the next US Secretary for Defence, said that the decision to send more troops should have been made in a week, because the political reality is that “no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he has asked for it. So just do it. Do what they [the generals] said.”

The US military is not going to eat its optimistic words of late last year when they were claiming that it was finally making headway against the Taliban. Insurgent mid-level commanders were being assassinated in night raids by US Special Forces, and survivors were fleeing to Pakistan. If the Taliban were increasing their strength in northern Afghanistan, they were losing their grip on their old strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar.

Such reports of progress appear to have been largely propaganda or wishful thinking. At the start of this year’s fighting season the Taliban have been able to launch as many attacks as last year and replace its casualties. In Kandahar last month, they were able to free 500 prisoners from the city jail by digging a tunnel 1,000 feet long over five months without anybody finding out about it. An organisation that can do this is scarcely on its last legs. The message of the last few months is that the “surge” in Afghanistan, of which so much was expected, has not worked.

The Americans and British are meant to be training Afghan military and police units to take the place of foreign forces. It is never quite explained how Taliban fighters, without any formal military training, are able to battle the best-equipped armies in the world, while Afghan government troops require months of training before they can carry out the simplest military task.

One escaped Taliban prisoner in Kandahar has said that their plan was helped by the fact in the evening the prison guards always fell into a drug-induced stupor.

Official bromides about building up the strength of the Afghan government ignore an ominous trend: the governing class is detested by the rest of the population as a gang of thieves and racketeers. I was struck in a recent visit to Kabul by the venom with which well-educated professional people and businessmen, who are not doing badly, condemn Hamid Karzai’s government. This does not mean that they support the Taliban, but it does show that Karzai’s support, aside from cronies busily engaged in robbing the state, is very small.

When negotiations do start they should be between the four main players: the US, the Afghan government, the Taliban, and Pakistan. For all the rude things being said about the Pakistan military after Bin Laden was discovered so close to their main military academy in Abbottabad, nothing is going to be decided without their say-so.

Only the Pakistani army can deliver the Taliban whose great strategic advantage in the war is that under pressure they can always withdraw across the border into Pakistan. It is the highly permeable border, as long as the distance from London to Moscow, which prevented the Soviet Union from defeating Afghan rebels in the 1980s. Pakistan is not going to try to close this border and could not do so even if it wanted to.

It would not be difficult for the Taliban to renounce al-Qa’ida and other jihadi groups. The killing of Bin Laden as the icon of evil should make this easier for the US to accept.

Obviously there is going to be no military solution to the Afghan conflict, and negotiations with the Taliban will have to begin sooner or later, so why not now?

www.independent.co.uk, 8 May 2011

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Sort by Subscribe by email Subscribe by RSS anna 21 minutes ago afghanistan has untold mineral wealth and the Unicla pipeline goes through it – that’s why they are thereGetit? the Taliban can’t get hold of that, right?

May 8, 2011