If there is any truth to this the US government is perpetuating a major lie.
In consideration of the fact that the US has been shown to be lying
continuously, one has to question what the US is now saying regarding Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed.
Andrew
Moderator of People's Revolution
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/peoplesrevolution
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DJ30Df01.html
South Asia
A chilling inheritance of terror
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Ever since the frenzied shootout last month on September 11 in
Karachi there have been doubts over whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the
self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda's military committee, died in the police
raid on his apartment.
Certainly, another senior al-Qaeda figure, Ramzi Binalshibh, widely
attributed as being the coordinator of the September 11 attacks on the United
States a year earlier, was taken alive and handed over to the US. The latest
information is that he is on a US warship somewhere in the Gulf.
Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed
perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and
handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they
remain.
Sources close to Pakistani intelligence agents say that the wife, under
intense interrogation, has revealed information that is likely to lead to a
new crackdown in Pakistan, as well as in Southeast Asia.
After the Taliban and al-Qaeda were routed in Afghanistan at the end of 2001,
many fled to Pakistan to regroup and set up new cells. One of these, as
described in Asia Times Online, From the al-Qaeda puzzle, a picture emerges,
was in Karachi, with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as its head.
Despite being tracked by informers within Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has been described as
"probably the only man who knows all the [al-Qaeda] pieces of the puzzle",
always managed to remain one step ahead of any raiding parties in the slum
areas along the coastal belt of Karachi.
However, it was then learned that Shaikh Mohammed had established connections
with some local groups, including underworld figures, to entrench his cell.
Using highly sensitive equipment, in April a call was tracked to someone by
the name of Arif, living in the densely populated southwestern part of the
city. Arif spoke to a Tunisian, passing on a message from Shaikh Mohammed.
Subsequently, the Tunisian is believed to be the man who rammed a truck laden
with explosives into a Jewish synagogue in Djerba in Tunisia in which many
French and German citizens died.
After this suicide attack, the FBI were onto Shaikh Mohammed in a big way,
and, no doubt not entirely without coincidence, on September 11 they decided
on a showdown at the apartment of Shaikh Mohammed, his wife and child, in the
Defense Housing Authority near Korangi Road. A number of Arabs were also
living in the apartment at the time.
Initially, the joint ISI-FBI plan was to take Shaikh Mohammed alive so that
he could be grilled, especially as he was believed to have knowledge of other
al-Qaeda cells in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere. However,
as a plainclothed officer climbed the stairs toward the third-floor
apartment, a hand grenade was thrown, and he retreated. Reinforcements then
arrived, and for the next few hours a fierce gun battle blazed.
The FBI, still keen to take Shaikh Mohammed alive, teargassed the area, and a
number of people were captured. However, despite instructions to the
contrary, a few Pakistan Rangers entered the flat, where they found Shaikh
Mohammed and another man, allegedly with their hands up. The Rangers
nevertheless opened fire on the pair.
Later, the Pakistani press carried pictures of a message scrawled in blood on
the wall of the flat, proclaiming the Muslim refrain of Kalma, in Arabic:
"There is no God except Allah, Mohammed is his messenger"). An official who
was present in the flat at the time of the shooting has told Asia Times
Online that the message was written by Shaikh Mohammed with his own blood as
his life drained from him.
Subsequently, to their surprise, the raiders learned that Ramzi Binalshibh
had been netted in the swoop. And nothing further was said of Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed.
But now it emerges that an Arab woman and a child were taken to an ISI safe
house, where they identified the Shaikh Mohammed's body as their husband and
father. The body was kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days before being
buried, under the surveillance of the FBI, in a graveyard in the central
district of Karachi.
The widow subsequently underwent exhaustive interrogation in the custody of
FBI officials, during which she revealed details of people who visited her
husband, and of his other contacts and plans. News of the death of Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed was intentionally suppressed so that officials could play on
the power of his name to follow up leads and contacts.
>From this it emerges that, in particular, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was in close
contact with the Rabitatul Mujahideen, an alliance formed by Indonesia's
Jemaah Islamiyah to act as a central committee for leaders of the various
militant groups in Southeast Asia. He was also in touch with dissident groups
within the Lashkar-i-Taiba, a Pakistani-based militant group that has been
active in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in Indian-administered Kashmir, and another
Pakistani militia, the Ansarul Islam.
Intelligence officials now believe that through these links a new wave of
terror will be unleashed - and officials have already taken the precaution to
warn the intelligence agencies of friendly countries to check the lists of
all people who have undergone flight training in the past six months: They
have been led to believe that another World Trade Center/Pentagon attack is
being planned, although not on a target in the US.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
[EMAIL PROTECTED] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Oct 30, 2002
No material from Asia Times Online may be republished in any form without
written permission.
Copyright Asia Times Online, 6306 The Center, Queen’s Road, Central, Hong
Kong.
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