Part II of II Tehran’s master terrorist, Imad Mughniyah and the forgotten road to 9/11

 
  

Sudan & Iran Form the Popular Arab Islamic Conference (PAIC), A Regional Umbrella for International Radical Islamic Militants, Headquartered In Khartoum Sudan

Hassan Al Turabi became the secretary general of PAIC. Under his guidance, the Sudan government created an open-door policy for radical Islamic militants, including Hassan Al Turabi Islamist associate Osama bin Laden, who made his base in Sudan in 1990-1996”.  Biography of Hassan Al Turabi, Human Rights News www.Hrw.Org/Press/2002/03/Turabi-Bio.Htm

The Popular Arab Islamic Conference Created : The 1993 PAIC conference in Khartoum was a who's who of Islamist terror. Branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, top Iranian Political and military officials, along with delegates from Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine ,just to name a few . Even the late Saddam Hussein’s top International terrorist Abu Nidal was there. 

“During the early 1990s extensive discussions took place between Osama Bin Laden, Turabi and representatives of Iran in Khartoum. Once Turabi defined the theological compromise between Sunni Wahhabism and Shia Khomeinism on the role of Islam as the supreme force in the modern world and applied the compromise to the Islamist  Revolutionary process, the road was open for a close and genuine alliance between Iran and Bin Laden. Turabi and Sheikh Muhammad Said Nou’mani, an adviser to the Iranian minister of culture, ‘preacher of Khomeinism in the Horn of Africa’, jointly went to Osama Bin Laden in Khartoum and they concluded that such an alliance was possible. During the discussions an agreement was reached between the Sunni movement of Osama Bin Laden and the Shiite hard-liners in Tehran to co-operate. Both had a common priority to fight the Great-Satan (US) and the Little-Satan (Israel) first, before settling any intra-Islamic quarrels and attacking each other,”.

Islamism, Jihadism and Terrorism in Sudan American Enterprise Institute on Aug. 6, 2004 aei.org/files/2004/08/06/20040809_SANDEEremarks.pdf

Sudan became a land bridge, for different State sponsors of terrorism The Sudan is in a strategic position to export its Islamic revolution because of its borders with both Egypt and Libya and with six African countries, including Ethiopia, which has a large and impoverished Muslim population.

In 1991 Bin Laden moved his base of operations from Afghanistan to Sudan (see Summer 1991), and asked US-al-Qaeda double agent Ali Mohamed to assist in the move. In 1998, American authorities captured former Green Beret adviser Ali A. Mohamed for his role in the twin terror attacks against U.S. embassies in Africa. Having been a relatively close associate of Bin Laden himself, Mohamed proved to be a treasure trove of information for American investigators. One of his statements, however, proved particularly troubling. In testimony delivered during his court case, Mohamed admitted that in 1994, he had arranged security for a momentous meeting in Sudan. There, Osama Bin Laden met Imad Mughniyah. He also stated that Hezbollah provided training for Al-Qaeda operatives in exchange for weapons and explosives. Indeed, this testimony corresponded with statements made by other Al-Qaeda officials, who told American investigators that the two had met several times in the mid-1990s, where they had discussed a greater degree of cooperation.

Ali Mohamed had an almost unbelievable career: Major in the Egyptian Army Special Forces, then Sergeant in the U.S. Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg, long-time al-Qaeda operative and trainer of terrorists who bombed the New York World Trade Center in 1993, chief of security for Osama bin Laden, CIA agent, FBI informant, and applicant for a Department of Defense security clearance. This fascinating tale of intrigue and deception has important lessons about: By 1989, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s militant wing of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad was cooperating closely with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Mohamed’s U.S. passport and residence gave him a safe base from which to travel around the world on behalf of bin Laden. He continued his terrorist activities, shuttling between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and at least a dozen other countries. Much of the information about this period comes from Mohammed’s own testimony after his arrest in 1999.

The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, was it connected to Tehran’s terrorist

training camps in Sudan? `

 There are still multiple unanswered questions concerning the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. The terrorist band was a complex mixture of Middle East terrorist associations.

Ramzi Yousef directed the terrorist cell which organized and conducted the execution of the WTC 1993 bombing. He said he did it to avenge the sufferings of Arab Palestinian people who had endured at the hands of US-aided Israel.  Ramzi Yousef admitted to FBI agents that he fully intended his bomb would topple the North Tower into the South Tower with the goal of killing up to 250,000 Americans. The terrorists laced 1,200 pounds of explosive urea nitrate with sodium cyanide in the hopes of poisoning up to 50,000 additional office workers. Providentially, the enormous heat generated by the main explosive burned the cyanide before it could vaporize and poison thousands of additional innocent office workers. Far too many are unaware of the enormous power of the 1993 terrorist bomb because the towers did not fall as the huge explosion occurred below the ground level. The bomb pulverized 15,000 square feet of concrete and steel creating a massive crater that extended six stories deep leaving a pile of burning rubble over thirty feet deep. At the time, it was one of the worst terrorist attacks ever to occur on U.S. soil. But it would soon be overshadowed by the events of September 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda operatives crashed hijacked airplanes into the towers and brought them down.

Following the unfolding connections to the 1993 WTC boming, an FBI task force soon uncovered a second terrorist plot to bomb a series of New York landmarks simultaneously, including the U.N. building, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, and the federal plaza in New York . On June 24, 1994, FBI agents stormed a warehouse in Queens and caught several members of a terrorist cell in the act of assembling bombs.

Yousef used an Iraqi passport to enter the United States. However, he immediately fled America after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing using his new false identity that of a Kuwaiti-born Pakistani national named Abdul Basit Karim. One of the 1993 WTC bombers Abdul Rahman Yasin immediately fled to Baghdad, Iraq, to escape being arrested. He was observed in Baghdad in the spring of 1994 according to a June 1994 report by ABC News. It is inconceivable that Abdul Rahman could enter and live in Iraq without the permission of Iraq's intelligence service. Saddam's regime reported it had imprisoned Yasin since arresting him in 1994. In 2002, he was interviewed on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" at an Iraqi prison. He thus far has not turned up in postwar Iraq. April 4, 2005 - The U.S. State Department announces that it is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who is still at large.

One aspect that has never explored is Saddam’s infamous terrorist at Tehran’s terrorist camps in Sudan at the time was, Abu Nidal. The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) is a secular international terrorist group that was founded in 1974 by the late Sabri al-Banna (a.k.a. Abu Nidal), who joined Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1967 and also spent some time representing Arafat's Fatah faction in Sudan and Iraq. During Abu Nidal era he and his ANO was sponsored and supported (with safe haven, training, logistical assistance, and financial aid) by Iraq, Syria, and Libya.  From 1974 until the early 1980's the organization was headquartered in Baghdad. Libya, seeking to rid itself of international sanctions, expelled the organization. ANO leader Abu Nidal who subsequently found refuge in Iraq. Abu Nidal, leader died from gunshot wounds in mysterious circumstances in a flat in Baghdad in 2002. All told, ANO has mounted terrorist operations in more than twenty countries—including a wide range of Western, Israeli, and Arab targets, killing about 300 people and wounding at least 600 more. At various times, the group also served as a mercenary terrorist force for radical Arab regimes. In the mid-1980s, it was widely regarded as the world’s most dangerous terrorist entity. In an article published in the NYT 26 Jan. 1992, “Sudan Is Seen as Safe Base for Mideast Terror Groups, reported Abu Nidal actives in Sudan

In 1995, investigative journalist Steven Emerson noted that federal investigators had identified links between the WTC bombers and at least five Islamic organizations: the Gama al-Islamiya, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Sudanese National Islamic Front, and al-Fuqrah.  Two of the men arrested in the 1993 bombing were Mohammed A. Salameh and Nidal A. Ayyad, Arab Palestinians connected to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

At this point to highlight these murky labyrinths, the late Yasser Arafat worked both for Saddam Hussein and Iran’s Khomeini, who were bitter enemies. This is also true as well as the Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 1990 UPI reported on July 15, in Khartoum Sudan Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, met in Sudan with military ruler Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir. Yasser and his PLO, Hamas and other Arab Palestinian groups openly and covertly conducted operations against America. For example in 1973 Yasser Arafat murdered two American diplomats in Sudan. State Department documents also make clear that Washington was aware, at the time, of Arafat’s involvement in the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel, his deputy chief of mission, George Moore, and Belgian charge d’affaires Guy Eid, during a terrorist hostage-taking in Khartoum in March 1973. “The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the head of Fatah,” said one of the documents released by the State Department’s Office of the Historian.

A large body of evidence indicates that the WTC conspirators were “transnational terrorists”, inspired and assisted by several Islamic militant groups operating in the United States and abroad, but not a formal part of any of them... Was the 1993 World Trade center bombing a complex operation whose dark origin was Sudan, erupting from the seeds of Tehran’s Sudanese terrorist camps, an evil harbinger for the September 11 ?

Ground Zero 9/11, the Islamic Republic of Iran

On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Often referred to as 9/11, the attacks resulted in extensive death and destruction, triggering major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defining the presidency of George W. Bush. Over 3,000 people were killed during the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., including more than 400 police officers and firefighters.

In 2011, United States District Judge George B. Daniels ruled in Havlish v. Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Usama bin Laden, et. al. that Iran was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. A key figure in the case was an Iranian defector named Abolghasem Mesbahi who had been established as highly credible. The ruling included 276 Findings of Facts and 35 Conclusions of Law. In  2012 A  New York federal judge approved a 6 billion-dollar 'default judgment' against Iran, and militant insurgent groups, Taliban and Al Qaeda, after finding them culpable in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. The US judge signed a default judgment pertaining to a lawsuit brought by relatives of 47 victims, who lost their lives during the attacks on the World Trade Center. Though the judgment is largely symbolic, it provides some hope to the relatives of Sept. 11 victims that someday they can recover damages from the incident.

Al Qaeda still operates out of Iran: The United States has for years accused Iran of allowing a small Al-Qaeda network to operate inside Iran, conducting fund-raising and moving Al-Qaeda operatives through the Islamic Republic.  In July 2011, Treasury designated al Suri and other members of his network, saying that Iran had a “secret deal” with al Qaeda. In February 2012, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) was designated for, among other things, supporting al Qaeda. And in October 2012, an additional member of al Qaeda’s network in Iran was designated. The State Department has also exposed the relationship on multiple occasions. The State Department is offering multi-million dollar rewards for information that leads to the capture of two high-level members of al Qaeda based in the Islamic Republic. Under its Rewards for Justice program, the State Department is willing to pay up to $7 million for information leading to the capture of al Qaeda “senior facilitator and financier” Muhsin al-Fadhli, and another $5 million for the location of his deputy,Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi. In addition to being linked to past terrorist incidents, al-Fadhli allegedly knew about the 9/11 terror attacks before the planes struck the World Trade Center ,the two are also accused of moving fighters and funds through Turkey and into Syria. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/10/us-offers-bounty-for-iran-based-al-qaeda-facilitators/

In 2014 one of the newly designated individuals  part of al Qaeda’s Iran-based network, Treasury identifies Olimzhon Adkhamovich Sadikov (also known as Jafar al-Uzbeki and Jafar Muidinov) as an “Iran-based Islamic Jihad Union facilitator.” The Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and both groups are closely allied with al Qaeda. Sadikov “provides logistical support and funding to al Qaeda’s Iran-based network,” according to Treasury. He “serves as a key extremist smuggler based in Mashhad, Iran, near the country’s border with Afghanistan, and has provided visas and passports to numerous foreign fighters, including al Qaeda recruits, to facilitate their travel.” Sadikov has also “assisted extremists and operatives transiting Iran on their way into and out of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

At least two international terrorist plots have been directly connected to al Qaeda’s Iran-based network. Both al Qaeda’s planned 2010 Mumbai-style attacks in Europe and a foiled plot to derail a train running from New York City to Toronto in 2013 were directly tied to al Qaeda operatives in Iran. [See LWJ article, Report: Senior al Qaeda facilitator 'back on the street' in Iran.]

It was the Islamic Republic of Iran which was the epicenter for the cult of the Islamic Suicide bomber terrorism which has evolved into a global pandemic of mass destruction. From its terrorist training camps in Sudan, Arab Palestinian Groups the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad brought this sick twisted tactic into Israel in 1993. Later Yasser Arafat adopted this psychotic tactic causing forever a desolating dimension to the Israeli - Arab Palestinian Peace Process. “During Iran’s monarchy Era, Yasser Arafat’s   Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had close ties with the Iranian opposition and Ayatollah Khomeini. Many Iranian dissidents trained at PLO camps in Lebanon in the 1970s. The PLO also backed the 1979 Iranian revolution. Days after the revolution, PLO chief Yasser Arafat led a 58-member delegation to Tehran. Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan hosted the official welcome ceremony, where the keys to the former Israeli embassy were handed over to PLO. The road in front of the mission was renamed Palestine Street. Arafat traveled throughout Islamic Republic to set up PLO offices, which members of his delegation stayed to manage for more than one year.”

This catastrophic Cult of the Suicidal Bombing Terrorism still infects the Islamic Republic. Iran is the only country in the in the world that maintains a military force of suicide bombers. It is open to all adults male and female. It is important to note a male adult in Iran is fifteen years of age, more shocking for a female it is nine years of age. The college Student Basij Organizations and the Basij command as whole is tasked to recruit for this suicide Garrison, which it does in Iran and internationally. The Basij elements work through a civilian agency, The International Headquarters for Honoring Muslim Martyrs. In April 2005, the semi-official daily Iran announced convocation of a unit of female suicide bombers nicknamed the Olive Daughters. This suicide garrison is estimated between 30-60,000 members.

Imad Mughniyah assassinated in 2008 in Syria by a car bomb. As Mughniyah approached a parked SUV, a bomb planted in a spare tire on the back of the vehicle exploded, sending a burst of shrapnel across a tight radius, and killed instantly. His death is touted as a CIA – MOSSAD operation. However, there were many countries who wanted Imad dead. In addition, his terrorist activities were a constant threat to private and international security firms. Imad kept most of his terrorist organizational assets compartmentalized, and its core elements and resources known only to him. Imad was a viable asset to Tehran, but also one which was indispensable. His death set an inevitable domino effect wrecking decades of dark terrorist networks.  

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) is one of the most secretive agencies in the world and is ranked by experts as one of the largest and most active intelligence agencies in the Middle East, shrouded in so much mystery that apart from the occasional revelations by the Iranian Resistance, little has ever been made public about its operations and functions. Its secret budget and unchecked power have turned it into one of the key pillars of the Iranian theocracy. In February 2012 the US Treasury Department designated the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) "for its support to terrorist groups as well as its central role in perpetrating human rights abuses against the citizens of Iran and its role in supporting the Syrian regime as it continues to commit human rights abuses against the people of Syria.”

Treasury Designates Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security for Human Rights Abuses and Support for Terrorism 2/16/2012

http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1424.aspx

This country the Islamic Republic of Iran since its inception has been waging unrelenting international wars of militant terrorism. For some strange reason either by design or pure sheer incompetence, President Obama is handing Tehran the keys to nuclear weapons.