-Caveat Lector-

http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=asia/hea
dlines/010914/world/afp/Bin_Laden_s_tentacles_spread_into_Israel__report.ht
ml


Bin Laden's tentacles spread into Israel: report

JERUSALEM, Sept 14 (AFP) - Israel Friday threw a cloak of secrecy over its
investigations into the Osama bin Laden trail, as the suspected mastermind
of the horrific attacks in the United States was reported to have ties with
Palestinians.

The Israeli daily Haaretz cited the arrest of 27-year-old Nabil Ukral in
the Gaza Strip last year, saying he was supposedly the first representative
of Bin Laden's organisation in the territory.

The chief of military intelligence, Major General Amos Malka, recently said
"bin Laden has already tried and will surely try to reach Israel again."

But Israeli security services refused Friday to discuss bin Laden, and
would not confirm that intelligence operations have been stepped up since
Tuesday's strikes in the United States.

"There have been reports to that effect, but we are not commenting on those
reports," David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office
which houses the Shin Beth security agency told AFP.

Haaretz said the arrest of Ukal at the Rafah crossing on June 1 last year
attracted little attention other than that shots were fired between Israeli
security guards and Palestinians trying to block the arrest.

But over time, it emerged that Ukal served "as a key figure" in the
organisation operated by the Saudi-born, Afghan-based, bin Laden, the
report said without quoting sources.

In October 1997, Ukal left the Gaza Strip for religious studies in Pakistan
where he joined an organization affiliated with bin Laden and underwent
paramilitary training in Afghanistan, Haaretz said.

He allegedly returned to the territory with orders to set up a paramilitary
infrastructure, including the participation of Israeli Arabs, and remained
in contact with bin Laden activists in Jordan and Britain via e-mail.

He also met in the Gaza Strip with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual
leader of the radical Islamist group Hamas, informing him of the training
that he had undergone in Afghanistan, the report said.

When charges were brought against Ukal, he was indicted for planning to
carry out a large-scale attack in the center of the country, sending
suicide bombers and attacking Israel soldiers.

While the trial is still continuing, there is no known information on any
other arrests linked with bin Laden.

But Haaretz said 10 members of the bin Laden cell in the territories were
arrested by Shin Beth and the Palestinian Authority during the weeks before
the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising against Israel, which
began last September.

Although bin Laden is scarcely known in the Gaza Strip for struggling to
end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, he was hailed after
the US strikes.

"Bin Laden struck against America and the infidels," said Saleh, 32, during
demonstrations in the town of Khan Yunis.

"Bin Laden is a hero, he is defending Jerusalem and Palestine," said
Mohammad,a freshman student in social sciences.

Yoram Shweitzer, a researcher on terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center
in Herzliya, believes Israel remains a bin Laden target.

"He will do this by trying to infiltrate here or by trying to recruit
people from the territories. He will try different creative ways."

Action against bin Laden 'will start holy war' (Filed: 15/09/2001) Muslims
will have a duty to fight if America attacks the Taliban, Alex Tillius is
told in Peshawar AS Maulawi Gul Rahman prepared for lunchtime prayers
yesterday, he donned his ragged scholar's robe, stroked his tangled beard
and pondered the question of what the affects of American military
retaliation against Osama bin Laden would be.

The maulawi, a senior priest, who considers himself a moderate by the
region's standards, said: "Muslims around the world, from north, south,
east and west, would wage war against the United States.

It would be holy war, our duty." They were not empty words.

Anyone in any doubt that reprisals against the Saudi exile and his Taliban
hosts would do anything other than bolster anti-Western Islamic militancy
need spend no more than a few minutes in the sinuous bazaars and dusty
religious schools of Peshawar.

To many here, bin Laden is an icon. He is seen as a pious man defending
Islam against combined Israeli and American aggression. As a just and holy
warrior he could not have killed so many innocent people in New York and
Washington. The attack is blamed on a conspiracy to defame Islam or vague
notions of natural justice for previous American offences. The name Osama
has become a popular choice for parents wishing to bestow Islamic virtues
upon the newly-born, as was Saddam in the wake of the Gulf War.

A man selling posters bearing bin Laden's image on a pavement said he had
sold all his stock since Tuesday. "It's my number one seller," he said.

The capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province is the gateway to
the formidable Khyber Pass leading to Afghanistan. The majority of
Peshawar's population is drawn from the same Pashtun tribe that dominates
southern Afghanistan and makes up the Taliban leadership.

A few miles outside Peshawar there are thriving markets in guns and
contraband household goods. Foreigners must negotiate the Khyber Pass in
the company of a Pakistani soldier and not stray from the main road into
the lawless hills that were the graveyard of thousands of Britons during
three Afghan colonial adventures. The government of Pakistan, like the
Moghul emperors before them, knows better than to interfere with the
ferociously-proud Pashtuns.

The tradition of melmastia, or hospitality, allied to Islamic comradeship,
lies behind their passionate approval of the Taliban's refusal to consider
handing over bin Laden. "To sacrifice him would bring us shame, would go
against all our principles," said Gul Yusuf, 25, a student at Maulawi
Rahman's White Mosque.

"Osama is our guest and in our history we have never given up a guest."

Temur Shah, one of the million or so Afghan refugees who have settled in
Pakistan since the 1979 Soviet invasion and ensuing conflicts, said that if
the Americans produced evidence of bin Laden's guilt, then he should be
tried by a Pashtun jirga, or elders' council, which adjudicate everything
from petty theft to murder cases.

"But they have no evidence, and if they attack it will be an act of
terrorism, and once again Afghans will suffer," he said to the fervent
approval of a crowd outside the mud and brick Kamwal mosque at an Afghan
refugee camp.

They are keen to remind a Western journalist that American cruise missiles
aimed at bin Laden's hideouts across the border in August 1998, in revenge
for the bombings of two US embassies in Africa, missed their target and
killed innocent citizens.

"We think what happened in New York is wrong, but if the Americans attack
we will defeat them like we defeated the Russians," said Mohammed Al Jamal
who was only 14 when the Soviet invasion ended in 1989, unable to break
down the Islamic guerrillas.

That resistance was backed by a Cold War America keen to thwart Soviet
expansion. It is widely held that among their military trainees in camps in
Pakistan was a young Osama bin Laden.

"He is a man of America, they pampered him and now he is against them but
he is their creation, their problem," said Maulawi Israr, the camp's
religious leader.

"America supported us against Russia and now they have abandoned us.
Afghanistan has always been a game to the big countries, including you
British. Everybody is drawn by the beauty of our country, and then they
bomb it."


================================================================
             Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT

   FROM THE DESK OF:

           *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

  The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
================================================================

<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
 <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
 <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Om

Reply via email to