Excerpted from the ENN Daily Intelligence Report-02/21/97-Vol. 3, No.052

Saudi Dissident and Fundamentalist Supporter Threatens U.S. ...
By Amy Grant, ENN Correspondent

CHICAGO (ENN) - According to reports from the British television documentary show, "Dispatches", and the Reuter's News Service, Osama bin Laden, Saudi dissident exile and alleged Islamic Fundamentalist terror financier, has again threatened United States forces in Saudi Arabia. In a television interview from Afghanistan, Bin Laden said that 1996 attacks on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Dhahran and a November, 1995 military assistance unit in Riyadh were carried out as "a warning to Washington." Bin Laden went on to threaten additional attacks on U.S. personnel, unless all American and allied military forces are immediately withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.

ERRI analysts say that Bin Laden issued a similar warning near the end of 1996, threatening that attacks would take place unless U.S. forces were withdrawn by the end of the Islamic Holy month of Ramadan. Obviously that has not occurred, and some experts see this interview as Bin Laden making his threat public prior to carrying it out.

"If Bin Laden publicly says there will be attacks, I would suggest that U.S. forces should take that threat seriously," according to Clark Staten, Executive Director of the Chicago-based Emergency Response & Research Institute. Staten, who has been studying, analyzing, and reporting on terrorism issues for more than 12 years, said that Bin Laden is well-known in counter-terrorism circles as "a very dangerous religious zealot," who is probably one of the most important independent sponsors of terrorism in the Mid-East and parts of Asia.

"It is also possible that this latest threat by Bin Laden is in response to and with intent to confuse any possible U.S. links being drawn to Iran or Syria for their alleged participation in the Dhahran Barracks bombing." Staten continued. "By essentially accepting responsibility for these acts, Bin Laden may feel that he can obfuscate and/or forestall American retaliatory efforts, which may be forthcoming in the near future," Staten added.

According to Staten, terrorist financiers like Bin Laden may be part of an emerging trend in "stateless warfare", where the insurgent objectives and policies of identifiable nation-states such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and others are being carried out by specially put together teams of "deniable" political and religious fanatics. These terrorists, after carrying out a terrorist act, can easily melt back into the civilian population of any sympathetic nation and make it next to impossible for the United States or her allies to trace and "legally" take action against the nation that actually condoned or sponsored the atrocity.

The resulting circumstances of this trend may explain the difficulty we have seen encountered by the FBI investigation of the Dhahran bombing and in several other recent terrorist acts, according to Staten. It may also explain the reason why no one group has claimed responsibility for several recent terrorist events. "There is no recognizable cell/group before the attack, and there is no recognizable cell or group after the attack...they only exist as an very compartmentalized organization during the planning and conduct of the operation," Staten continued. "This makes detection, prevention or apprehension very difficult, at best...and limits the public ability of the victim nation to engage in legitimate retaliation for what could be considered 'acts of war'," Staten concluded.

(C) Copyright, EmergencyNet NEWS Service, 1997. All Rights Reserved. Redistribution without permission is prohibited by law.

The ENN DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT is a subscription publication of the EmergencyNet NEWS Service, which is a part of the Chicago-based Emergency Response and Research Institute. This publication specializes in Security/Terrorism/Intelligence/Military and National Security issues.

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