Question:
Is
there any evidence to show that Saddam Hussein's intelligence
service has had liaisons with, or supplied logistical
help, to known terrorists involved in bombing attacks
on American targets prior to the 9-11 plot?
Answer:
Yes. There are at least three cases prior to the 9-11
conspiracy.
1) Radio
Free Europe. In 1998, Iraq plotted to blow up Radio
Free Europe in Prague, a prime US target in the Czech
Republic. Jabir Salim, the consul and second secretary
at the Iraq embassy in Prague, was the Iraq intelligence
officer Saddam Hussein had entrusted with the mission
and $150,000 to recruit terrorists who would not be
traceable back to Iraq.
This plot was aborted in December 1998 when Salim
defected in Prague,revealing details of the plot to
the CIA, British MI-6 and Czech intelligence,.
Czech counterintelligence also developed evidence that
Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the official who
Saddam dispatched to Prague replace Salim, had
continued the efforts to attack this American target.
2) President George Bush. On April 14, 1993,
Iraq plotted to assassinate former President George Bush
while he was visiting Kuwait. The assassins were Ra'ad
al-Asadi and Wali al-Ghazali, two Iraqi nationals, who
had been supplied with a sophisticated car bomb. They
were captured in Kuwait City and, when interrogated by
the FBI, they admitted that they had been recruited by
the Iraqi intelligence Service in Basra, Iraq, who provided
them with the explosive device four days before Bush arrived
in Kuwait.
The
CIA concluded with "confidence" that the Iraqi government,
at the highest levels, had authorized the recruitment
of the assassins.
3) Saddam gave sanctuary to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the only
indicted conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center
to get away. After helping to mix the explosives,
Yasin fled to Baghdad. He remains at large presumably
in Iraq.
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