Saddam Hussein ordered the training of al-Qaida
members two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to
an independent Iraqi weekly.
The Fedayeen, under the command of Saddam's late son Uday, directly
supervised 100 al-Qaida fighters who were split into two groups, reported
Al-Yawm Al-Aakher, citing an Iraqi officer identified by the initial L.
One group went to Al-Nahrawan and the second to Salman Pak, near Baghdad,
where they were trained to hijack airplanes, the officer said in an article
translated by the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media
Research Institute.
According to the testimony
of Iraqi military defector Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, Iraqi intelligence
had a Boeing 707 fuselage at Salman Pak used to train groups how to hijack
planes without weapons. His claims were consistent with commercial satellite
photos showing the fuselage. Saddam's regime insisted to U.N. inspectors
Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces.
The Iraqi weekly, quoting the anonymous officer, said senior Fedayeen
officers visited the al-Qaida fighters almost daily, "especially during the
final days when they transferred them, late at night in two red trucks that
belonged to the Ministry of Transportation, to an undisclosed destination."
"I witnessed that with my own eyes because on that day I was the duty
officer," he said.
The officer recalled one day a Land Cruiser belonging to Saddam's personal
security force, Al-Amn Al-Khass, arrived, and a senior officer, one of
Saddam's personal bodyguards, stepped out.
After a two-hour meeting with a select group of officers at the Special
Forces school, the officer said "we were informed that we would have dear
guests, and that we should train them very well in a high level of secrecy –
not to allow anyone to approach them or to talk to them in any way, shape or
form."
About 100 trainees arrived a few days later, he said, a mixture of Arabs,
Arabs from the Saudi peninsula, Muslim Afghans and other Muslims from various
parts of the world.
The training, he said, was under direct supervision of a major general he
identified only by his initials, M. DH. L, who he said now serves as a police
commander in one of the provinces.
Most left Iraq after completion of their training, but others stayed
through the last battle in Baghdad against coalition forces earlier this year.
The officer said he remembers the leader of the group was a Saudi cleric
named Muhammad "who was a fervent and audacious individual and did not require
much training."
"He was highly skilled, and could fire accurately at a target while riding
a motorcycle," the Iraqi officer said. "Additionally, he used to deliver fiery
sermons calling for jihad and for fighting the Americans anywhere in the
world."
Surprisingly, he continued, "this man's picture, alongside the commander of
the Special Forces school, was televised several times before the beginning of
the war and the fall of the former regime."
At the beginning of the Iraq war this year, the officer said, "we were
surprised to see the same people whom we had trained return to the Special
Forces school and with them 100 additional individuals. The high command asked
us to retrain them and to divide them into several groups to be deployed in
various areas in Iraq."
"Truth be told," he said, "most of these individuals competed to go to war
and to the front lines. Therefore, under pressure they participated
immediately in extremely fierce battles that astonished the Iraqis and the
Americans."
On April 5, about 100 of the foreign trainees were sent to the 11th company
division on the front lines in Nasiriya.
"And for the sake of history," he said, "I will say that this division's
endurance was due to some formidable fighters, the commanding officer and
members of al-Qaida who fought with intensity and brutality that are seldom
matched, while they were praising Allah: Allahu Akbar [Allah is great] …
Allahu Akbar. …"
These battled, which took place for 17 days, forced coalition troops to
withdraw and re-enter from the industrial areas of Nasiriya, he noted.
Others went to al-Kifl, he said, and participated in "extremely brutal
battles."
"Not many of them retreated and they sacrificed their lives to Apache
[helicopter] fire, amid the admiration of the Iraqis and the Americans
themselves," he said. "The proof is that some of them blew themselves up in
the midst of American forces."
