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1) Why was Brixton address on back of terror manual? - Guardian 2) New terror link to Brixton - Guardian 3) Three Britons among al-Qa'eda fighters held - Daily Telegraph 1) Why was Brixton address on back of terror manual? ===================================== A booklet found at an al-Qaida training camp raided by US marines may show links to a September 11 suspect Audrey Gillan Saturday January 5, 2002 The Guardian The booklet was found lying in a gun nest, beside a pile of spent cartridges from an AK-47 rifle and a 45mm machine gun. In the middle of an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in an isolated desert valley 60 miles from Kandahar, the address on the back was somewhat incongruous: 114 Chute House Road, Stockwell Park Estate, London, SW9. The crudely printed pamphlet included handwritten instructions on how to use Kalashnikovs, M-16s, Uzis and other light automatic weapons. Written neatly in broken English, it described places to shoot a person so that the wound would be fatal. The address on the back of the booklet was for a flat in a council block in the middle of one of London's multi-ethnic housing estates, just 400 yards from Brixton police station. The current tenant, who has lived there for 18 months, said she was shocked to learn her address had connections with al-Qaida. Neighbours reported that the former tenants were a woman and her two daughters, of African descent, and had lived there for a number of years. Shortly after Zacarias Moussaoui, the man charged in the US with involvement in the September 11 plot, was arrested, there were reports that he had lived with his north African girlfriend in a flat in the Brixton area. No address was given but police are known to have raided an apartment at Lambert Road, a mile from Chute House, as part of their investigation. The emergence of the address will raise further fears that al-Qaida cells have been operating in London. It is a few streets away from the mosque in Brixton where Richard Reid, the Briton who is suspected of trying to blow up an airliner with a bomb hidden in his shoes, is believed to have met Moussaoui. The two men were in regular telephone contact when they lived in Britain. Moussaoui was being monitored by British intelligence while living as a student in the capital, but agents were unable at the time to identify Reid from their phone calls, which were intercepted last year. Moussaoui, who American authorities believe was the 20th hijacker, lived in south London for nine years and is alleged to have gone on to become an al-Qaida operative. Moussaoui is believed to have met and influenced Reid. Both went on to train in an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan, though it remains unclear whether they were there at the same time or indeed if the newly raided Afghan camp was in fact their training base. The camp at Garmawak where the south London address was found - known to locals as Rut Para camp - was raided by US marines earlier this week. They say it was home to hundreds of trainee terrorists at any one time and that between 150 and 200 cars used to drive to and from the camp every day. The camp lies amidst a desolate rocky valley and beside a typically dramatic mountain backdrop. A deep ravine containing a half-dozen caves runs through the area, with many of the caves linked by tunnels. The camp's commando-style obstacle course is the size of a football field. The camp was found to contain books written by Osama bin Laden, as well as manuals of bomb-making and demolition. Examination papers found among the rubble of the flattened camp showed that student terrorists learned the best way to shoot down an aircraft, at what height, the angle at which the weapon should be fired and how many people would be required to carry it. Questions included: "If a plane is travelling at a height of 900 metres and a speed of 500 metres a second, which part of the aircraft should you target with your weapon?" Three trainee terrorists all chose the correct spot of the four circled options on a sketch of a plane. The Arabic-language tests of three students, Abu Hassan Qatari, Musaub al Freeb and Osama, focused on the use of the old Russian-made Dashka anti-aircraft weapon. Out of a maximum score of 30, Al Freeb scored 24.5, Osama 22 and Qatari 19.5. Qatari was poor on dates and left some answers blank. Al Freeb gave detailed responses. Some of the questions were handwritten in red. Some were fill-in-the-blanks. Others required dates. A few were specific to a weapon's weight and range. Each correct answer was marked with a red check mark, each wrong answer with an 'x.' The questions were basic. Students had to know the inner workings of the weapon, how to take it apart and put it back together. They had to know the ammunition it used, how many rounds it could fire per minute and per second. The students drew careful designs of weapons, or of a human being, carefully marking off target areas between the eyes and the heart. Paper was strewn around the training camp site, though much of it was burned. In one cave were several paperback books by Bin Laden entitled A Call to Jihad, which rails against the US and British military presence in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and the Middle East. In one notebook there was a Pashtu-language poem dedicated to the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, along with scribblings from one friend to another. On one page the student practised his signature over and over. There were doodles and chiding notes between friends. A postcard of fighters trudging up a rocky hillside at sunset says in Arabic: "Today Afghanistan, tomorrow Pakistan." A cutout pencil drawing of a Kalashnikov rifle is pasted on to the front. "Made in Pakistan," is printed on the back. The marines said there were indications that the camp had been inhabited as recently as two weeks ago. During their raid, however, they failed to notice the British address, which could prove to be a valuable piece of intelligence. The south London connection Zacarias Moussaoui, 33 American investigators are convinced Moussaoui was set to be the 20th hijacker on September 11, but he was arrested on immigration charges four weeks earlier in Minnesota after flying school staff became suspicious when he asked to go to jumbo jet simulators without completing his basic training first. A French national of Morrocan extraction, Moussaoui is thought to have moved to London in 1992. He took a masters degree in international commerce at South Bank University, and attended Brixton mosque in Gresham Road, south London, near the address found on the pamphlet in Afghanistan yesterday. He is also known to have lived in a flat in Brixton. Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of Brixton mosque, said Moussaoui was openly extreme in his religious beliefs. In the summer of 1998 he left the mosque, apparently frustrated at the moderate Islamic teaching practised there. He appeared in a US court on Wednesday charged with six counts of conspiracy, including conspiracy to murder and acts of terrorism. Richard Reid, 28 Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, is thought to have met Moussaoui at Brixton mosque between 1995 and 1998. A mugger and petty thief from Bromley, south London, Reid served several spells in prison during the mid-1990s including one in Feltham young offenders' institute in 1995. During this time he converted to Islam, and on his release was directed to Brixton mosque, which has a reputation for informally helping Muslim offenders on release. Speaking last week after Reid had narrowly failed to blow up a passenger jet using explosives hidden in his shoes, Abdul Haqq Baker described him as an "affable, amiable" fellow when he first attended the mosque. However, he gradually became interested in extreme interpretations of Islam. Mr Baker became convinced Reid was mixing with extremists who targeted the mosque because of its largely young, convert congregation. Reid began arguing that jihad justified violence. In the summer of 1998 he stopped attending the mosque and is believed to have travelled to Pakistan and possibly Afghanistan before launching his botched terrorist attack. 2) New terror link to Brixton ==================== Audrey Gillan Saturday January 5, 2002 The Guardian New links with Osama bin Laden and south London emerged last night after a council flat address in Brixton was found on the back-page of a weapons instruction manual left at an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. The crudely printed booklet included handwritten instructions on how to use various light automatic weapons. Written neatly but in broken English it describes where to shoot on the human body to produce a fatal wound. The address is a few streets from the Brixton mosque linked to the alleged shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, who US authorities believe was part of the team behind the attacks on September 11. Both men are being held in the US. The south London address was found along with exam papers that trainee terrorists sat, testing their knowledge on how to shoot down planes, as well as books by Bin Laden. Yesterday, the flat's occupant said she was "shocked" to be told that her address had been found in an al-Qaida camp and that she had nothing to do with terrorism. She said she had lived there for 18 months. Shortly after Moussaoui was arrested there were reports that he had lived with his north African girlfriend in a Brixton flat. No address was given but police are known to have raided an address nearby. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 3) Three Britons among al-Qa'eda fighters held ================================ DAILY TELEGRAPH By Sean O'Neill (Filed: 05/01/2002) THREE young British Muslims are among hundreds of Taliban and al-Qa'eda prisoners being held in a jail in northern Afghanistan, the Foreign Office said last night. The men, all from the West Midlands, approached Red Cross representatives who were visiting the prison in the northern town of Shibergan, near Mazar-i-Sharif. They said they were British citizens and the information was passed to the Foreign Office on New Year's Eve. On the same day, American troops moved a batch of prisoners, believed to be al-Qa'eda fighters, from Shibergan to a makeshift jail in the southern city of Kandahar. It was not known if the three Britons were among them. "The three told the Red Cross people they were British but we have not been able to confirm that because we do not have details such as passport numbers," said a Foreign Office spokesman. The spokesman was unable to say whether the men, whose names have not been released, had been fighting with Taliban or al-Qa'eda forces for a long period or whether they travelled to Afghanistan only recently. It is believed that up to 40 Britons may have been fighting with the Taliban or al-Qa'eda terrorists but the three men in Shibergan and James McLintock, a Scottish convert to Islam, are the only confirmed detainees. McLintock, 37, a father of five children, who is originally from Dundee, was being held in custody at a military camp in Pakistan after being arrested while trying to cross from Afghanistan close to the Tora Bora cave complex. The Foreign Office took the unusual step yesterday of denying reports that it had been refused consular access to McLintock because he had been under interrogation by the officials of America's Central Intelligence Agency. A spokesman said: "We have asked for access to McLintock but that is being delayed by the Pakistani authorities who are holding him in detention. "It is without foundation to say that the CIA are blocking our access." 2002 ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
