18.07.2005
Russian Secret Services' Links With Al-Qaeda
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Michel Elbaz, AIA general coordinator
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The right hand of bin Laden, the Number Two in "Al-Qaeda" was trained at the secret base of the Russian secret services on Caucasus, the former Lieutenant Colonel of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Litvinenko told the Polish Rzeczpospolita newspaper. Until the end of 1998, Litvinenko had served in several top-secret units that specialized in struggle against the terrorist and the mafia organizations.
Litvinenko claims that Ayman al-Zawahiri, who headed at that time the terrorist organization "Al-Jihad al-jadid" (it was formed from the Egyptian emigrants - activists of "Al-Jihad" and "Al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah"), in 1998 secretly stayed on the territory of Russia.
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Alexander Litvinenko |
Up to the beginning of 1998, the process of merging of the two most radical Islamic organizations – "Al-Jihad al-jadid" and "Al-Qaeda" was completed. Al-Zawahiri became the second person in the hierarchy of the Osama bin Laden's "Al-Qaeda". In February 1998, being together in Afghanistan, they have created the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. However, at that time the Western secret services yet did not pay any special attention to al-Zawahiri's activity (several years prior to that, he freely visited the USA, and several countries of the Western Europe). The hunt for him, as well as for his fellows in arms began only after the explosions in the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in August, 1998.
Only then the CIA analysts with the help of the Egyptian and Israeli colleagues managed to restore retrospectively a part al-Zawahiri's "activity schedule" for seven months prior to the attacks in East Africa. As it was discovered, since January till the end of July, 1998, he personally supervised the preparation for the terrorist attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.
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| Communiqué of the Islamic Front for Liberation of Sacred Places concerning the attack against the American embassy in Nairobi. August, 11, 1998. |
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For this purpose al-Zawahiri had left the territory of Afghanistan several times, in particular traveling to Sudan (in the middle of May, 1998). In parallel, he paid a lot of attention to strengthening "Al-Qaeda's" ties with secret services of Khartoum and Tehran.
Strange links
Although our American and Israeli sources do not know about al-Zawahiri staying in Russia, they have supplied us with some other interesting details. According to this information, in the first half of 1998, leaders of "Al-Qaeda" tried in every possible way to increase the level of coordination with terrorist groups worldwide. For this purpose the leaders of many such groups and cells of "Al-Qaeda" were invited to Afghanistan. Getting close to the large-scale attack on the USA, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have organized a "congress" of the adherents from all over the world. It took place on June, 24, at the capital of the talibs - Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. Among the visitors were the representatives of the Balkan countries, the Middle East and Africa, and even of the radical Islamic groups from the republics of the former USSR. The Uzbeks and the Chechens were especially outstanding. Besides them, the Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz, the Dargins, the Lakks, and the Tatars had also secretly arrived to Kandahar. All of them came here separately, using sideways. A week prior to the beginning of the conference, a group of well-armed al-Zawahiri's assistants had left by jeeps in the direction of Herat. Following the instructions of their patron, in the town of Koh-i-Doshakh they met three unknown men that arrived from Russia via Iran. The latter called themselves by Muslim names, despite the fact that the two of them had a clearly Slavic appearance. After their arrival in Kandahar, the 'guests' split up. One of the "Russians" was directly escorted to al-Zawahiri, and he did not participate in the conference.
Later on, this 'Russian guest', for almost six years disappeared out of the secret services' sight. He reappeared only in 2004. On February, 13, in the capital of Qatar the car of the ex-president of the Chechen Republic Zelimhan Yandarbiev was blown up.
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Yandarbiev's car after the explosion |
Couple of days after his death, the authorities of the United Arab Emirates detained two Russian citizens. They turned to be the officers of the secret services. For the last three months they had been working in the embassy of Russia in Doha. After Yandarbiev's assassination these two Russians together with several other of their fellow citizens have hastily left Qatar. Having found out all this, investigators have carefully studied video and photo materials made by the counterspies during the last months on a course of supervision over the Russian diplomatic mission. The results were surprising not only for the Qatar's secret services, but also for their Western colleagues. It appeared that at the end of November, 2003, the embassy was visited by the above-mentioned "Russian", who met al-Zawahiri in the summer of 1998 in Kandahar. Although he had changed his appearance, the special computer software precisely established that he was the one, who had met bin Laden's right hand…
To be continued
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