References:
Zarqawi Letter, February 2004, Coalition Provisional
Authority English translation of terrorist Musab al Zarqawi letter obtained by
United States Government in Iraq, can be found at:
http://www.state.gov
/p/nea/rls/31694.htm
Mugshot:
Abu Musab Zarqawi
Analysis by the Emergency Response & Research Institute
(With other sources as noted)
Jordanian Authorities Say They Thwarted Major Terror
Attack;
Allegations Arise of a "Poly-Agent" Chemical Incident
AMMAN JORDAN: According to still largely unconfirmed reports, Jordanian officials are saying that they believe they have thwarted a major terror attack involving tons of explosives and toxic chemicals. Several suspects have reportedly been killed or captured.
According to a Cable News Network report, at least three people were arrested, including Azmi Jayyousi, the cell's suspected ringleader, whom Jordanian intelligence alleges was responsible for planning and recruiting. In a confession shown on state-run Jordanian television, Jayyousi said he took orders from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Ahmad Fadel al-Khalayleh), a suspected terrorist leader who has been linked to al Qaeda and whom U.S. officials have said is behind some attacks in Iraq.
The plot, to include a "poly-chemical bomb," allegedly was to be used against the intelligence services HQ, the prime minister's office, and the U.S. Embassy. The plot was to have used trucks packed with 20 tons of explosives and chemical agents and could have killed as many as 80,000 people, Jordanian security officials said Monday.
U.S. intelligence officials have not so far been able to validate the details or feasibility of the plot.
26 Apr 2004 - 11:00CDT
Zarqawi Reportedly Claims Oil Seaport Attack
BASRA, IRAQ: EmergencyNet News is receiving preliminary and largely unconfirmed reports that shadowy terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi is today claiming responsibility for an attack and subsequent explosions at "Mina al-Amiq and Mina al-Bakr (Basra terminal)," that took place this weekend. Three U.S. military personnel were reportedly killed in the incident. The veracity and authenticity of these reports is presently not known. U.S. military and intelligence officials have not made comment on the claim.
06 Apr 2004
Zarqawi Given Death
Sentence in Absentia
AMMAN, JORDAN: Earlier today, Jordan sentenced Musab
al-Zarqawi and seven others to death for the murder of U.S. diplomat Lawrence
Foley in 2002, in Amman. Zarqawi is not in custody and the announcement of the
death sentence may further motivate attempted retaliation by Zarqawi and his
cohorts. In the past 24 hours, Zarqawi has also pledged to carry out more
attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, according to an audio tape aired on an Islamist
Web site. In the tape, Zarqawi claimed responsibility for a wave of terror
attacks that have targeted U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq during the
past year. Zarqawi,
whose real name is Ahmad Fadheel al-Khalayleh (among others), is suspected
of collusion with the Al-Qaeda and other Jihadist organizations.
In related news, Jordanian security officials reportedly thwarted an al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in the capital Amman, and the State Department, anticipating possible problems, warned Americans to be extra vigilant for future dangers, in an advisory to the American community in Jordan. "The development is a reminder that al-Qaeda continues to prepare to strike U.S. interests abroad," the U.S. embassy in Amman said in what is known as a warden message to resident Americans. It was posted on the embassy's Web site. "The bulletin said Jordan "has taken steps against a terrorist cell, which had targeted several government of Jordan facilities'' and the embassy.
27 Mar 2004
Al-Zarqawi Possible Behind Madrid
Terrorist Attacks?
MADRID, SPAIN: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian
linked to Al-Qaeda and suspected of heading a terrorist network in Iraq, is now
believed to have been the brains behind the deadly Madrid railway attacks, a
French private investigator told the Associated Press on Friday.
Investigator Jean-Charles Brisard said Spanish officials told him some suspects
held in the March 11 attacks were in contact with al-Zarqawi as recently as a
month or two before the bombings, which killed 190 people and wounded more than
1,800.
The Spanish Interior Ministry declined to comment on his assertions. "The
investigation is at a critical stage," a ministry official said, speaking on
condition of anonymity. Western intelligence analysts told EmergencyNet News
that they had no comment concerning the allegations against the already "most
wanted" al-Zarqawi, without further confirmation.
04 Mar 2004
Unknown Extremist Group Claims al-Zarqawi
Was Killed
BAGHDAD, IRAQ: A Jordanian
extremist suspected of bloody homicide attacks in Iraq was killed some time ago
in U.S. bombing and a letter outlining plans for fomenting sectarian war is a
forgery, a statement allegedly from an several insurgent groups west of the
capital said.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq
"during the American bombing there," according to a statement circulated in
Fallujah this week and signed by a previously unheard-of group calling itself
the "Leadership of the Allahu Akbar Mujahedeen." There was no way to verify the
authenticity of the statement, one of many leaflets put out by a variety of
groups taking part in the anti-U.S. resistance.
The statement did not say when al-Zarqawi was supposedly killed, but U.S.
jets bombed strongholds of the extremist Ansar al-Islam in the north last April
as Saddam Hussein's regime was collapsing. It said al-Zarqawi was unable to
escape the bombing because of his artificial leg.
"This is yet another obvious attempt at deception," ERRI senior CT analyst Clark
Staten said about the letter. "Mr. al-Zarqawi and his friends must be 'feeling
the heat' of pursuing U.S. forces," Staten continued. This latest letter is
obviously an attempt to divert attention from the search for al-Zarqawi," he
added "Without trying to be macabre, we'll believe that Mr. al-Zarqawi is
deceased, when we see his cold, dead body...and not until then," Staten
concluded.
03 Mar 2004
Who is Abu Musab Zarqawi?
The most-wanted terrorist in Iraq. The Jordan-born Palestinian has
directed many attacks in Iraq, according to U.S. officials, and a recent
message from Zarqawi confirmed that charge. Most terrorism experts say
that while he collaborates with al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam, Zarqawi is
an independent operator recruiting forces to wage jihad in Iraq.
A January 23 raid in Baghdad uncovered a compact disc containing a
17-page memo attributed to Zarqawi, asking Qaeda leaders for assistance
in the fight against occupying forces in Iraq and calling for sectarian
war against the Shiite majority, according to The New York Times.
Zarqawi, on whom U.S. authorities doubled the bounty to $10 million
February 11, is allegedly behind several major car bombings in Iraq
since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
These include the August 2003 bombings of the U.N. Baghdad offices and a
Najaf mosque and the November 2003 bombing of the Italian police
headquarters in Nasiriya. The death toll from these three attacks
totaled more than 138. Zarqawi is also blamed for planning the October
2002 assassination of U.S. Agency for International Development
administrator Laurence Foley in Jordan and for plots against European
capitals uncovered in 2002.
When Zarqawi was 20, he went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets,
according to The Wall Street Journal. He was jailed after returning to
Jordan in a round-up of Afghanistan veterans whom authorities feared
would spark unrest.
Following his release in 1999, he returned to Afghanistan to meet with Qaeda leaders and began recruiting his own followers, the Journal reported. He was reportedly wounded in Afghanistan during the 2001 U.S.-led war and fled to Baghdad, where his injured leg was amputated. He then worked out of Iran and northern Iraq, where he allied with Ansar al-Islam, officials say.
In his February 5, 2003, address to the U.N.
Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Zarqawi was
operating "a deadly terrorist network" out of Iraq. Now "he sees Iraq as
the next battlefield" of the jihad against Western interests that aims
to establish Islamic states, says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at
the RAND Corporation. Zarqawi is recruiting "anybody and everybody who
is willing to commit violence against Americans in Iraq, [whether]
secular or religious Iraqis or foreigners," Hoffman says.
Zarqawi is not a member of a particular terror group, most experts say,
but rather cooperates with several terror organizations. He represents a
new kind of terrorism, they say, carried out by small, mostly autonomous
groups that share a common belief in jihad but have individual goals and
may seek financial or logistical help from bigger organizations like al
Qaeda.
Hoffman says Zarqawi's relationship with al Qaeda is "like a businessman
with a good idea coming to a venture capitalist." U.S. intelligence
reports have also tied Zarqawi to al Tawhid ("Unity of God"), a shadowy
group of global reach whose goals align with al Qaeda's and that
reportedly has plotted attacks in Jordan and Germany.
Source:
http://cfrterrorism.org/home/
Aliases
AL-ZARQAWI, Abu Mus'Ab (a.k.a. 'ABD AL-KARIM; a.k.a. ABU AL-MU'TAZ; a.k.a. AL-HABIB; a.k.a. AL-KHALAYLAH, Ahmad Fadil Nazzal; a.k.a. AL-MUHAJIR; a.k.a. GHARIB; a.k.a. KHALAILAH, Ahmed Fadeel; a.k.a. KHALAYLEH, Fedel Nazzel; a.k.a. "MOUHANAD;" a.k.a. "MOUHANNAD;" a.k.a. "MUHANNAD;" a.k.a. "RASHID"); DOB 20 Oct 1966; POB Zarqa, Jordan; Passport No. Z264968 (Jordan); citizen Jordan; National No. 9661031030 (Jordan) (individual) [SDGT]
AL-ZAWAHIRI, Aiman Muhammad Rabi (a.k.a.ABD AL-KARIM
(a.k.a. ABU AL-MU'TAZ; a.k.a.
AL-HABIB; a.k.a. AL-KHALAYLAH, Ahmad Fadil Nazzal; a.k.a. AL-MUHAJIR;
a.k.a. AL-ZARQAWI, Abu Mus'Ab; a.k.a. GHARIB; a.k.a. KHALAILAH, Ahmed
Fadeel; a.k.a. KHALAYLEH, Fedel Nazzel; a.k.a. "MOUHANAD;" a.k.a. "MOUHANNAD;"
a.k.a. "MUHANNAD;" a.k.a. "RASHID"); DOB 20 Oct 1966; POB Zarqa, Jordan;
Passport No.
Z264968 (Jordan); citizen Jordan; National No. 9661031030 (Jordan)
(individual) [SDGT]
AL-KHALAYLAH, Ahmad Fadil Nazzal (a.k.a. 'ABD AL-KARIM; a.k.a. ABU AL-MU'TAZ;
a.k.a.
AL-HABIB; a.k.a. AL-MUHAJIR; a.k.a. AL-ZARQAWI, Abu Mus'Ab; a.k.a.
GHARIB; a.k.a.
KHALAILAH, Ahmed Fadeel; a.k.a. KHALAYLEH, Fedel Nazzel; a.k.a. "MOUHANAD;"
a.k.a.
"MOUHANNAD;" a.k.a. "MUHANNAD;" a.k.a. "RASHID"); DOB 20 Oct 1966; POB
Zarqa,
Jordan; Passport No. Z264968 (Jordan); citizen Jordan; National No.
9661031030 (Jordan)
(individual) [SDGT]
"MOUHANAD" (a.k.a. 'ABD AL-KARIM; a.k.a. ABU AL-MU'TAZ; a.k.a. AL-HABIB;
a.k.a.
AL-KHALAYLAH, Ahmad Fadil Nazzal; a.k.a. AL-MUHAJIR; a.k.a. AL-ZARQAWI,
Abu Mus'Ab; a.k.a. GHARIB; a.k.a. KHALAILAH, Ahmed Fadeel; a.k.a.
KHALAYLEH, Fedel Nazzel; a.k.a.
"MOUHANNAD;" a.k.a. "MUHANNAD;" a.k.a. "RASHID"); DOB 20 Oct 1966; POB
Zarqa,
Jordan; Passport No. Z264968 (Jordan); citizen Jordan; National No.
9661031030 (Jordan)
(individual) [SDGT]
Source: OFFICE OF FOREIGN ASSETS CONTROL SPECIALLY DESIGNATED NATIONALS
AND BLOCKED PERSONS February 9, 2004
ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT
Report for Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Vol. 10, No. 041
CD Containing Islamist Battle Plans Captured
BAGHDAD, IRAQ: U.S. military officials claim they have captured a
CD-ROM written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a jihadist who is supposedly
close to Usama bin Laden. The U.S. Army made the seizure last week and
has documents relating to the Ansar al-Islam group, a group also linked
to Al-Qaeda, on it.
The letter contained information about how jihadists were hoping to
instigate a civil war in Iraq where Sunnis and Shiites fight each other.
It also contained information detailing the difficulties Islamists were
finding to recruit new members in the region.
February 10, 2004
Long In U.S. Sights, A Young Terrorist Builds Grim Résumé On Journey to
Iraq,
Zarqawi Forged Ties With al Qaeda, Attracted Own Followers; An
Amputation in Baghdad
By David S. Cloud, Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal
On the second day of the war in Iraq, more than 40 U.S. cruise missiles
rained down near the northern town of Khurmal, destroying what Gen.
Tommy Franks called a "massive terrorist facility."
The U.S. was hoping to kill terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi. Among
the dead was one of Mr. Zarqawi's top lieutenants, known by the alias
Abu Taisir. But Mr. Zarqawi, who had lost a leg in a previous U.S.
attack in Afghanistan, had slipped out of the camp before the missiles
hit, U.S. intelligence officials now believe.
Operating for years in relative obscurity, Mr. Zarqawi has been pursued
by the U.S. since 1999 -- so far with frustrating results. The
37-year-old Jordanian has avoided capture or death several times on the
way to becoming one of the world's most wanted terrorists. Now,
intelligence officials believe, he is leading the effort to recruit
Arabs to Iraq to fight the U.S.
occupation.
"He's the most active and frenetic terrorist commander out there today,"
says Matthew Levitt, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation terrorism
analyst. U.S. officials believe, for instance, that he was involved in
the massive bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Iraq in
August, an attack that effectively drove much of the U.N. operation out
of the country.
The story of the high-school dropout from the small town of Zarqa, in
Jordan, says much about the hurdles the U.S. faces in its war against
terrorism. The two-year campaign to kill or capture terrorist leaders
has been hampered by a constantly moving and multifarious enemy.
Although the U.S. has bagged many top al Qaeda leaders and kept Osama
bin Laden on the run, new extremists keep popping up to take their
place.
Mr. Zarqawi, whose real name is Ahmad Fadil Nazzal Al-Khalayleh,
epitomizes the elusiveness of these foes. He has ascended to the top
terrorist tier because of what intelligence officials describe as a rare
talent for building overlapping networks of friends, relatives and
conspirators of various nationalities. He has repeatedly picked up and
moved across borders
-- from Jordan to Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. And he has attracted a
following that is as devoted as he is to jihad and the defeat of the
U.S.
In an audio message recently posted on militant
Web sites and attributed by intelligence officials to Mr. Zarqawi, he
laments the death of Mr. Taisir in northern Iraq and concludes, "O God,
destroy the rule of Bush, just as you did with Caesar." He also declared
he was "puzzled" why followers elsewhere had "failed to mobilize" to
fight American forces. As reported Monday in the New York Times, U.S.
officials say that they recently found a document in Iraq, believed to
be written by Mr. Zarqawi, in which he appeals to al Qaeda leaders to
send more help to fight the American occupation.
In the last two years, Mr. Zarqawi's involvement has been detected in
terrorist plots in France, Germany, Jordan and Israel, according to
intelligence officials. He also is believed to have been behind an
unsuccessful plot to launch an attack in London using the poison ricin
and to have orchestrated the October assassination of U.S. diplomat
Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan. It is strongly suspected that Mr.
Zarqawi was behind four recent bombings of British and Jewish sites in
Istanbul, Turkish officials say. When the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad
was struck by a truck bomb in August killing 17 people, suspicion
immediately focused on Mr.
Zarqawi because of his hostility to the Jordanian regime.
Mr. Zarqawi's journey was reconstructed through six months of interviews
with intelligence and security officials in the U.S., Middle East and
Europe, and from court documents and government reports. It began as it
did for thousands of young Arab militants: He traveled to Afghanistan in
the late 1980s to fight the Soviets when he was about 20 years old. When
he returned in 1991 to Zarqa -- from which he took his alias -- he was
more religious, said his mother, Um Sayef al-Khalayleh, in an interview
in September in Jordan. He spent hours memorizing the Quran in the
family home, a two-story concrete structure furnished with foam
mattresses.
After returning from Afghanistan, Mr. Zarqawi married and settled in his
home town. But he couldn't find work in Jordan. His father had died in
the 1980s, leaving a small monthly pension to support his family. A
video-rental store Mr. Zarqawi opened failed. His mother says he shunned
suggestions that he finish high school and attend college, saying it was
pointless.
Jordanian authorities, worried about veterans of Afghanistan fomenting
unrest, harassed him, says his mother. In 1992 he was jailed. Released
in 1999 under a general amnesty, he was soon in trouble again. He had
fallen under the influence of a Jordanian cleric who called for the
overthrow of Jordan's monarchy and the creation of an Islamic state,
according to an Israeli intelligence official. Security officials in
Jordan accused him and others of planning to gun down and throw acid on
U.S. and Israeli tourists during celebrations at Jordanian holy sites.
Mr. Zarqawi fled to Peshawar, Pakistan, and went into business selling
honey, says his mother. His wife and children joined him and then
returned to Zarqa. Later Mr. Zarqawi married his second wife, a
Jordanian he met in Pakistan.
The U.S. claims that while in Pakistan in 1999, Mr. Zarqawi contacted al
Qaeda members and asked for help training Jordanians. He crossed into
Afghanistan and met senior al Qaeda leaders in Kandahar. Intelligence
officials suspect he wanted to develop his own group dedicated to
overthrowing the Jordanian monarchy. Though his father had once worked
for Zarqa's local government, Mr. Zarqawi considered the Jordanian
regime insufficiently Islamic, the officials say.
Soon he began creating his own network of followers. In late 2000,
officials say, he established a training camp near Herat, in western
Afghanistan, far from al Qaeda's Kandahar base. Soon other Jordanians
began to arrive, according to U.S. intelligence reports, many from his
large, poor tribe, the Bani Hassan. Mr. Zarqawi controlled a route for
bringing men into Afghanistan, according to interrogation reports
arising from the 2002 arrest in Germany of a Zarqawi follower named
Shadi Abdellah. Recruits made their way to the eastern Iranian city of
Mashhad and then were smuggled to Herat, about 300 miles away.
In need of funds, Mr. Zarqawi drew closer to al
Qaeda's leadership, a move that meant broadening his focus beyond
Jordan. In mid-2001 he visited Kandahar and was given $35,000 by al
Qaeda along with a promise of more if he organized attacks against
Israel, according to a 2003 U.S. Treasury report, which cited summaries
of interrogations of al Qaeda leaders. Later in 2001, a senior Israeli
intelligence official says, Mr. Zarqawi sent followers on missions to
mount attacks in Israel, though they were arrested in Turkey before they
arrived.
Mr. Zarqawi next formed an alliance with a group of exiled religious
Iraqi Kurds, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern intelligence
officials. The Iraqis, many of them veterans of Afghanistan, had founded
Ansar al Islam, a fundamentalist group that hoped to establish an
Islamic enclave in Iraq's mountainous north, where a haven for Kurds had
been set up in 1991. Ansar succeeded in carving out a small sanctuary
near Khurmal, a few miles from the Iraq-Iran border. Intelligence
officials say that Ansar's leaders invited other veterans of Afghanistan
-- possibly including Mr. Zarqawi -- to join them in Iraq.
The timing proved fortuitous for Mr. Zarqawi because he soon needed a
new home. The U.S. had invaded Afghanistan a few months earlier. On Dec.
12, 2001, in a telephone conversation monitored by German authorities,
Mr. Abdellah in Germany told a Zarqawi lieutenant that "Habib" -- an
alias used by Mr. Zarqawi -- had been badly wounded in the leg and
stomach in a U.S.attack. The Herat group was preparing to flee to Iran
and had arranged for $40,000 to be transferred from Tehran to Germany
for the purchase of fake passports, according to reports of Mr.
Abdellah's interrogation.
Nearly 30 passports were smuggled into Tehran for Zarqawi and his
followers, who arrived from Afghanistan in late December, according to
the interrogation reports. Mr. Zarqawi's group then split up. Some
headed to Chechnya, and others remained in Iran. Their plan was to
regroup in northern Iraq, according to Lorenzo Vidino, an analyst with
the Investigative Project, a terrorism research organization in
Washington.
Mr. Zarqawi didn't get far because of his injured leg. For several
months he operated from Iran, according to U.S. officials and European
intelligence documents. He planned several attacks, with frustrating
results. Mr. Zarqawi, using the codename "Muhannad," made dozens of
calls from Iran to Mr. Abdellah and other followers, who were allegedly
planning attacks against Jewish targets in Germany. Mr. Zarqawi grew
worried that the plot might be uncovered.
"Listen, the longer it takes, the harder it will be for you. So try to
hurry things up," Mr. Zarqawi said, according to a translated excerpt of
a cellphone conversation cited in a German police report. Mr. Zarqawi's
warnings were justified; German police arrested Mr. Abdellah and his
cohorts in late April 2002.
Whether the Iranian government condoned Mr. Zarqawi's presence in their
country is unknown. But a counterterrorism official at the FBI says he
believes that Mr. Zarqawi established covert ties to Iranian officials
that enabled him to stay. Mr. Abdellah told German police that Mr.
Zarqawi had the tacit support of Iranian officials, according to German
police reports.
At the time, Iran was being warned by U.S. officials not to give
sanctuary to al Qaeda members. Diplomatic and intelligence officials
suspect Mr.
Zarqawi was one of dozens of al Qaeda suspects rounded up or quietly
expelled. Iran disclosed recently that it had expelled Mr. Zarqawi's
nephew, Umar Jamil al-Khalayleh, around this time because they suspected
that he had ties to al Qaeda.
After the crackdown, Mr. Zarqawi moved to Iraq, looking for a safe
haven. In May, he turned up in Baghdad seeking medical treatment, U.S.
officials later learned. He had his leg amputated and was fitted with an
artificial limb.
While he was recuperating in Baghdad, new recruits -- some Zarqawi
followers -- were converging on northern Iraq. The CIA traced half a
dozen satellite phones used in northern Iraq by suspected Islamic
militants. Among them, according to information provided to Italian
officials by the CIA, was a number belonging to Abu Taisir, 33, who is
believed to be a Jordanian relative of Mr. Zarqawi's.
Abu Taisir, whose real name is Abdul Hadi Daghlas, had gone from Tehran
to the Khurmal camp, according to Jordanian court documents. Soon after,
Mr. Zarqawi was tracked to northern Iraq, according to Jordanian
authorities. His mother says she received a phone call from her son
around this time. Apologizing that he could no longer send money home,
Mr. Zarqawi told her, "Life is too hard."
In late December 2002, the CIA unraveled a plot by Mr. Zarqawi's group
to carry out poison attacks in several European capitals. The
breakthrough came when a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Zubaydah, who had
been arrested in April in Pakistan, disclosed the details under
interrogation. A Zarqawi operative named Abu Atiya, operating out of a
remote area of the Caucasus, had dispatched nine North African men to
Europe to prepare the attacks in 2001.
Mr. Atiya, a veteran of Mr. Zarqawi's Herat camp, was later captured in
the Azerbaijani capital of Baku and turned over to the CIA for
interrogation, according to U.S. and foreign intelligence officials.
U.S. intelligence officials suspect that Abu Atiya is a Zarqawi family
member and that his father had helped run Mr. Zarqawi's Herat camp.
The CIA sent reports about the Zubaydah interrogation to European
governments. In a raid near Paris in December 2002, the French police
recovered a chemical suit as well as cyanide. Three of those arrested
had been named by Mr. Zubaydah, according to U.S. officials. A few weeks
later in London, traces of the poison ricin were found in an apartment
of several other North African men arrested by British police, officials
said. Investigators believe that they had been dispatched by Mr. Atiya,
the Zarqawi operative, to attack the London subway.
By the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, intelligence officials believe, Mr.
Zarqawi already had fled Khurmal, across the border to Kurdish areas of
Iran. When Jordan sent its top security officials to Tehran last summer
to ask about Mr. Zarqawi, Iranian officials said that he had been in
their custody but had been released because he had a Syrian passport,
according to a senior Jordanian security official.
During the summer, Mr. Zarqawi was reported to have been spotted back
again in Iraq, intelligence officials say. U.S. special forces in Iraq
mounted several unsuccessful raids hoping to capture him.
Little was heard from Mr. Zarqawi until last month, when the audio
statement attributed to him was noticed by CIA analysts. The CIA is
unsure whether the voice on the recording is Mr. Zarqawi's but suspects
that the statement was written by him or someone close to him, officials
say. The decision to post the words on militant Web sites signals the
growing appeal Mr. Zarqwai holds among Arab radicals, they say.
In a 60-minute diatribe mixing references to the Quran, Arab history and
the life of Muhammad, the speaker bemoans the death of his comrades and
prods young Arabs, whom he accuses of failing in large numbers to come
to Iraq and Afghanistan, to attack the U.S.
"We swear our actions will inflict harm on the enemies," he says. "We
will pursue jihad against them by all available means."
--David Crawford in Berlin contributed to this article.
Source: Wall Street Journal
ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT
Report for Monday, February 9, 2004
Vol. 10, No. 040
IRAQ:
Al-Qaeda Assistance Sought for Iraqi "Sectarian War"
BAGHDAD, IRAQ: U.S. officials said they have obtained a proposal by Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is linked to Al-Qaeda, for assistance
from the terrorist network for the "sectarian war" in Iraq. Zarqawi is
believed to be operating in Iraq and his 17-page proposal details the
problems associated with recruiting insurgents inside the country and
neccessary measures to recruit abroad for this conflict.
American officials believe that this document and sectarian war will
rally the Sunni Arabs to the religious extremists. The officials in
Baghdad who took possession of the document said they were confident the
account was credible and said they had independently corroborated
Mr. Zarqawi's authorship. If it is authentic, it offers an inside
account of the insurgency and its frustrations, and bears out a number
of American assumptions about the strength and nature of religious
extremists, but it also charts out a battle to come.
February 6, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
The Zarqawi Node in the Terror Matrix
Linking the terrorists
By Matthew Levitt
In mapping out Iraq's links to international terrorism before the United
Nations Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell highlighted
the case of senior al Qaeda commander Fedel Nazzel Khalayleh, better
known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In fact, Zarqawi exemplifies not only the Iraq role in the web of
international terror but serves as a case in point of the terror matrix
itself. Zarqawi's activities on behalf of al Qaeda span the globe, from
Afghanistan to Great Britain, with equally diverse links to other
terrorist groups, from Ansar al-Islam in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon
to al-Tawhid in Germany and Beyyiat el-Imam in Turkey. At least 116
terrorist operatives from Zarqawi's global network have already been
arrested, including members in France, Italy, Spain, Britain, Germany,
Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
WHO IS ZARQAWI?
A Palestinian-Jordanian and veteran of the Afghan war against the
Soviets, Zarqawi first appeared as a terror suspect when Jordan indicted
him in absentia for his role in the al Qaeda millennial bombing plot
targeting the Radison SAS hotel in Amman as well as other American,
Israeli, and Christian religious sites in Jordan. In 2000 he returned to
Afghanistan, where he oversaw a terrorist training camp and specialized
in chemical and biological weapons. European officials maintain Zarqawi
is the al Qaeda coordinator for attacks there, where chemical attacks
were recently thwarted in Britain, France, and Italy. In fact, Secretary
Powell informed that Abuwatia (ph), a detainee who graduated from
Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, admitted to dispatching at
least nine North African extremists to travel to Europe to conduct
poison and explosive attacks.
Zarqawi heads Jund al-Shams, an Islamic extremist group and al Qaeda
affiliate which operated primarily in Syria and Jordan, but is now
believed to have moved to the Ansar al-Islam enclave in the Kurdish
region of northern Iraq where he helped establish a new poison and
explosive training camp. Powell noted that Zarqawi's lieutenants operate
the Ansar al-Islam camp in coordination with a senior Iraqi agent "in
the most senior levels of the radical organization."
TERROR TO GO
Zarqawi's own movements are themselves telling. After being wounded in
the leg in Afghanistan, Zarqawi escaped to Iran. While there, he
dispatched two Palestinians and a Jordanian who entered Turkey illegally
from Iran on their way to conduct bombing attacks in Israel. The three,
members of Beyyiat el-Imam (a group linked to al Qaeda) who fought for
the Taliban and received terrorist training in Afghanistan, were
intercepted and arrested by Turkish police on February 15, 2002.
From Iran Zarqawi traveled to Iraq in May 2002, where his wounded leg
was amputated and the limb fitted with a prosthetic device. He spent two
months recovering in Baghdad, at which time "nearly two dozen extremists
converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there." Powell
informed that "these Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now
coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and
throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely
in the capital for more than eight months."
While Iraq maintained it was unaware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or
other terrorists, Powell informed the Security Council that the United
States passed information to Iraqi authorities on Zarqawi's location in
the Iraqi capitol via a third party.
From Baghdad Zarqawi traveled to Syria, and from there to Lebanon where
he met with leaders from Hezbollah and other extremists at a terror
training camp in South Lebanon. In fact, Zarqawi has been definitively
linked both to Hezballah as well as a terrorist cell apprehended in
Germany that had been operating under the name Tawhid. German
prosecutors announced that the group, tied to the recently arrested Abu
Qatada in Britain but controlled by Zarqawi, was planning to attack U.S.
or Israeli interests in Germany. Eight men were arrested, and raids
yielded hundreds of forged passports from Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Denmark,
and other countries.
While in Syria Zarqawi planned and facilitated the October assassination
of Lawrence Foley, a U.S. official with the Agency for International
Development. In December a Libyan and a Jordanian were arrested for the
attack. Jordan's prime minister announced that the pair received funding
and instructions from Zarqawi, and intended to conduct attacks against
"foreign embassies, Jordanian officials, some diplomatic personnel,
especially Americans and Israelis." Powell revealed that after the
murder, one of the assassin's associates "left Jordan to go to Iraq to
obtain weapons and explosives for further operations."
Zarqawi is now believed to have returned to the Ansar al-Islam camp in
northern Iraq run by his Jund al-Shams lieutenants. Terrorists trained
at the camp have plotted chemical attacks with various toxins in
Britain, France, Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, and Chechnya.
THE TERROR MATRIX
The Zarqawi network highlights the matrix of relationships that define
today's international terrorist threat. Indeed, international terrorism
is a web linking many disparate groups. Senior U.S. and European
officials have noted that although Hezbollah and al Qaeda do not appear
to share operational support, they have engaged in logistical
cooperation on an ad hoc and tactical basis, as well as cooperative
training.
Support networks play a particularly crucial role in the matrix of
relationships among terrorists. For example, over the past year,
evidence has shown that the al-Taqwa banking network - which was shut
down shortly after the September 11 attacks in light of its ties to al
Qaeda - was a preferred conduit for transferring funds to Hamas and a
host of North African terrorist groups, in addition to being established
with seed money from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Moreover, state sponsors of terrorism continue to play a central role,
as evidenced by the hospitality showed Zarqawi by Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
For example, Syria has provided a great deal of assistance against al
Qaeda, but is nevertheless believed to be supplying rockets directly to
Hezbollah.
Damascus should be told in no uncertain terms to direct its
counterterrorism cooperation against all terrorists. Tehran continues to
support Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups as well, and has
given senior al Qaeda officials sanctuary in villages along its eastern
border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan,
Powell announced, served as Saddam's liaison to al Qaeda from 1999
through 2001.
To ignore these links is to forfeit hope of any real progress toward
constricting the operating environment in which terrorist plan, fund and
execute terrorist attacks. To be effective, the war on terror must have
a strategic focus on the entirety of the terror matrix. Tactically, this
must translate into taking action against both operational and
logistical networks, as well as targeting the full range of groups
making up terror web - from Jund al-Shams, Beyyiat el-Imam and al-Tawhid
to al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas - and the states that continue to
support them.
About the Author - Matthew A. Levitt is senior fellow in terrorism
studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT
Report for Saturday, January 24, 2004
Vol. 10, No. 024
U.S. Forces Facing Al-Qaeda Cell in Iraq?
By Jeremy Zakis, ERRI Analyst
WASHINGTON: Have U.S. forces in Iraq uncovered an Al-Qaeda cell? That
was the question facing military officials on Friday after two men were
arrested in Fallujah, according to Fox News. The Emergency Response and
Research Institute (ERRI) has previously theorized that the
anti-coalition insurgency was being propelled by local militant factions
with outside support from Al-Qaeda who have performed a similar support
role in other world insurgencies such as the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) fight in the Philippines and the Jammu and Kashmir
conflict.
The arrested men in Iraq were identified as Husam al-Yemeni and Hasan
Ghul, arrested Thursday by U.S. forces as part of ongoing operations in
Iraq. Both were believed to be connected with the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar
al-Islam organization based in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Ghul is a Pakistani and was believed to have been an Al-Qaeda member
since the early 1990s. Little else was known about al-Yemeni, but ERRI
analysts said his name indicated he was a native to Yemen.
According to officials, Ghul was promoting Al-Qaeda in Iraq and acted as
a facilitator who moved money and people around the country. In
terrorism terminology, Ghul was known as "the Gatekeeper". Another
of Ghul's operational capabilities was to work as the right-hand man for
Abu Zarqawi, who was working directly with Usama bin Laden before the
war in Iraq.
ERRI analysts said that although the Al-Qaeda links in Iraq were not a
surprise, they were a sign that the world-wide terrorist organization is
far from eliminated. Iraq is likely to be the operational end of the
network's structure, but the terrorist group's senior leadership
remained in a remote unknown location.
Ansar al-Islam was established in December 2001 following a merger
between Jund al-Islam, led by Abu Abdallah al-Shafi'i and the Islamic
Movement splinter group led by Mullah Krekar. Through this merger the
group maintained links with both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
While waging war with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the terror
organization is a strong defender of Islamic tradition, Ansar al-Islam
has attacked beauty salons, burned schools for girls and murdered women
in the streets for refusing to wear the burqa. The U.S. Government
believes it is based in a Taliban-style enclave near the Iranian border.
10/2002: Distributed to a number of law enforcement, intelligence,
and military agencies
BACKGROUND: "Recent raids have underlined the presence of several
Islamic extremist cells and support networks in Germany. A surprise was
the revelation of a cell of a previously unknown Palestinian extremist
group named al-Tawhid. The group seems to be a sub-group within the al-Qaida
network. Al-Tawhid's leader is known as Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and is a
Jordanian close to extremist preacher Abu Qatada. Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi
used to command an al-Qaida training camp near Herat (Afghanistan) that
instructed mostly Palestinian and Jordanian extremists. Jordanian
authorities sentenced Al-Zarqawi to death in absentia for his role in
the plot to attack tourists in Jordan on the eve of the millennium
(1999-2000).
Al-Zarqawi escaped from Afghanistan to Iran, from where he contacted the
German al-Tawhid cell leader in April 2002."
What else do we have on this guy Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi??...our
assessment would suggest that he is reportedly behind several of the
recent threats in Europe concerning WMD's -- suggest that we start
looking into his history, intent, and capabilities...Abu Qatada, known
ally of al-Zarqawi, is a British cleric who has been making several
threats of late...also may have been involved in recent plots/threats in
Jordan...
C. L. Staten, Sr. Analyst Sends