Nov 26, 2002 News

November 26, 2002 News http://www.aljazeerah.info

Jordan Times, 11/26/02

LANDSTUHL (R) — A US soldier who was shot by a Kuwaiti policeman on a highway last week said on Monday that the man had accused him of speeding before opening fire on him and his colleague, wounding both.

US Army Reserve Master Sergeant Larry Thomas, wearing a hospital gown, recounted his ordeal at a news conference at the US military medical centre in Landstuhl in central Germany.

“The police officer pulled up on the left hand side of me. When he got even with the car we exchanged eye contact. He slowed down, got behind us, put his lights on,” he said.

“We pulled over to the side of the road. He got out of his car and came up to our car and asked if we had a driver's licence. I asked him: `What's the problem officer?' He said: `You are speeding.' I said: `No sir, we are not speeding.'”

“I handed him the driver's licence. He went back to his vehicle. I looked through the vehicle mirror. It looked like he was talking on the phone. He got back to the car and he spoke English. So he said: do you have other papers?”

Thomas said he told the officer he believed he and his fellow soldier, Sergeant Charles Ellis, were driving at about 100 km/h against a speed limit of 120 km/h.

“The officer said: `One twenty?' And he looked like he was going to leave the car to go back to his, but he made a step away and I was looking at him and he unsnapped his pistol.

“I was thinking just he may be holding the gun or something. But he unsnapped his pistol, shot me right here in the chest. And at that time my arm went numb and I knew I had been hit.”

“Then he released another shot and shot Sergeant Ellis. So I took my right arm, left arm and threw it in gear because I did not want him to finish shooting us.”

“I called my sergeant major and let him know we had been shot. He asked about the location we were at and how far we were out. The phone went dead on me and I called him back and he asked me to calm down,” he said.

Previous shootings

Last month, two Kuwaitis attacked US Marines training on a Kuwaiti island, killing one and wounding another.

Since then, there have been several reports of shots fired at US soldiers training in the desert, although some Kuwaiti officials blame bird hunters.

The incidents coincide with mounting tension over a possible US-led war in neighbouring Iraq — likely to feature US troops based in Kuwait — if Iraq does not satisfy Washington's demand that it prove itself free of weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq insists it has no chemical, biological or nuclear arms.

Major Matthew Welch, a doctor in the Landstuhl centre, said the other soldier was still in intensive care for observation.

“He has remained stable and alert the entire time. We were concerned because of the injuries in the facial region,” he said.

The two soldiers were shot last Thursday while travelling in a civilian vehicle between the Camp Doha military base on the northern outskirts of Kuwait City and Arifjan, 55km to the south of the capital.

Kuwait's interior ministry said on Saturday the policeman suspected of the shooting, Khalid Al Shimmari, had been extradited for questioning from Saudi Arabia, where he fled to after the shooting.

Israelis force Palestinian to strip naked — witnesses

Jordan Times, 11/26/02

RAMALLAH (R) — Three Israeli occupation soldiers forced a Palestinian man to strip naked at gunpoint and walk like a dog in a West Bank city under curfew, Palestinian witnesses said on Monday.

A Reuters photographer snapped Yasser Sharaf, 25, standing naked in a cold, muddy street in Nablus on Sunday as two men were handing him clothes to put on and two Israeli armoured vehicles were pulling away from the scene.

Sharaf declined to comment on Monday about the incident.

Israeli military sources denied that Sharaf was forced to strip, saying checks with soldiers involved determined that he had been ordered only to raise his shirt to show whether he was carrying explosives. "When he saw members of the media in the area, he decided to undress completely," a military source told Reuters.

Witnesses including two Palestinian firemen said occupation soldiers stopped Sharaf after spotting him walking in a street in violation of curfew and, "pointing their rifles at him, ordered him to start stripping."

"Yasser told them he had nothing to hide but they continued shouting and readied their rifles to shoot," fireman Samir Al Lifdawi told Reuters by telephone from Nablus.

"They forced Yasser to take off all his clothes including his underwear...They ordered him to walk like a dog and then he burst into tears," Lifdawi said.

He said he watched the incident unfold from a fire station a few metres away. A colleague, Sultan Al Minawi, provided the same account.

"He kept crying and was in a very stressful situation... `Many residents, including women, watched him and he was very embarrassed',” Minawi said.

Humiliation

Palestinian civilians have often complained of being humiliated and abused by Israeli troops who have reoccupied Palestinian-administered West Bank cities to combat an uprising for freedom spearheaded by resistance activists.

The army claims strict "controls" on Palestinian residents are necessary because activists hide among the population and wear civilian clothing when they carry out suicide bombings.

Scenes of Palestinians rolling up their shirts to prove they are not hiding bomb belts have become frequent since the Israeli army swept into West Bank cities in June to punish the Palestinian people for suicide attacks which have killed scores of Israeli civilians.

Sunday's incident in Nablus would be the first time a Palestinian was reported to have been ordered to strip naked in a security operation. Palestinian civilians have complained of being ordered to strip to their underwear at roadblocks.

No US pressure on Saudi Arabia to provide bases, says Saud
Arab News

CAIRO, 26 November 2002 — Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal said here yesterday that the United States was not pressuring the Kingdom to provide military facilities in case of war with Iraq.

“There is no American pressure on Saudi Arabia in this field,” Prince Saud told journalists when asked if the United States had asked Arab countries to cooperate in a possible war against Baghdad.

The prince made the remarks following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, to whom he gave a message from the Saudi leadership about the “current situation”.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Jordanian Information Minister Mohamed Adwan last week denied media reports that Arab countries, including theirs, had received US requests for cooperation in a possible war against Iraq.

Prince Saud said he hoped Iraqi cooperation with the inspectors “will lead to the application of UN resolutions and end the problem”.

In Iraq, UN experts who arrived in Baghdad yesterday said they will operate “like detectives” in inspecting suspected arms sites.

“We operate like detectives and when we have clues, we have to be flexible and change our plans,” said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“One of the most important points of our strategy is the ability to conduct unannounced inspections, we will never reveal where we are going,” she told reporters upon her arrival at the hotel housing the inspectors in Baghdad.

The 11 inspectors from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and six from the IAEA are due to start work tomorrow.

Fleming warned that “we are here just to test cooperation on the ground. We do not believe any words of any government ... we believe actions, we believe what we can see with our own eyes.

“We have had a lot of promises of cooperation, we believe that this is a good start, but we have suspicious minds, we are here to test cooperation among other things,” said Fleming, a US national.

Mohamed El-Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said UN arms inspections set to resume in Iraq will be “a substitute” rather than a prelude for war if Baghdad cooperates with them.

Saudi Arabia informs US of probe into 9/11 money link
By Mohammad Sadiq, Arab News Staff

RIYADH/WASHINGTON, 26 November 2002 — A Saudi official said yesterday that Riyadh had informed Washington of the results of a probe the Kingdom carried out into reports that Saudi royal charitable funds were funneled to two suspected hijackers who took part in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“A Saudi investigation has taken place into the suspicions raised over the channeling of funds by Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of Saudi ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar ibn Sultan,” a Saudi official told AFP.

“The results of the investigation have been communicated to the relevant US authorities, who were assured that there was no suspicion on the fact that the princess granted financial aid to charity,” the official said.

Interior Minister Prince Naif said in a comment carried by the Saudi Press Agency, “These are nothing but lies and baseless words.” He said it was normal for Saudis to offer financial support to fellow nationals living abroad. “If they are going to make an accusation of every assistance extended by one Saudi to another, then there is a problem and this should not be the case.”

Adel Al-Jubeir, adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, said yesterday his country was actively regulating charities funneling money abroad.

“We are going through an audit of all the charities,” Al-Jubeir told NBC television from Riyadh.

He told CNN that controls had been put in place to ensure that Saudi money transferred to any charities would leave an audit trail. “We have realized over the years that people have now taken advantage of our charity ... our innocence,” Al-Jubeir told CNN. Saudi officials have confirmed that Princess Haifa had written checks that were then signed over to people who happened to be friends and associates of two of the hijackers.

But Al-Jubeir denied that the princess had been aware that the money she had donated to a US-based Saudi woman, Magda Ibrahim Ahmed, had been passed on to Osama Basannan, Janet Basannan or Manal Al-Bayoumi, assumed to be Omar Al-Bayoumi’s wife.

Osama Basannan and Al-Bayoumi were friends of two of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 as part of multiple terror attacks in the United States.

US lawmakers are demanding the White House push the investigation.

“The president ought to be demanding a full public accounting from the FBI and the CIA about what they know about Saudi involvement,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a member of the Armed Services committee said Sunday on CBS.

Meanwhile, the US administration insisted yesterday that Saudi Arabia was a “good” partner in the war on terrorism.

But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer would not comment on issue of funding to the two 9/11 hijackers by Saudi personalities. “The president believes that the Saudis have been good partners in the war against terrorism and the president knows that the war on terrorism is a multi-front war and many nations are doing their best and Saudi Arabia is a good partner,” Fleischer told reporters. “On the specific issue of the wife of the Saudi ambassador, that’s a matter that is being investigated by the law enforcement agencies so I am not in a position to comment on anything specific on that,” he added.

Basannan ‘never knew Al-Bayoumi personally’
By Abdul Rahman Almotawa, Arab News Staff

JEDDAH, 26 November 2002 — Osama Basannan, a Saudi businessman recently released by the US authorities after being detained for 85 days in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, has told Arab News that he never knew Omar Al-Bayoumi, who allegedly paid for the accommodation of Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

“I never knew him personally. But I saw him at the mosque praying,” Basannan told Arab News in an exclusive interview.

The US authorities arrested Basannan and his Palestinian wife Majeda Duwaikat on Aug. 22 for allegedly having links to Omar Bayoumi.

However, Basannan acknowledged that his wife had received financial assistance from the office of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of Saudi Ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan.

“When I wrote a letter to Prince Bandar requesting assistance to meet expenses of my wife’s medical treatment, the prince approved the application. Princess Haifa’s office later called my wife by telephone and agreed to provide us assistance in the form of a monthly salary,” he explained. Asked whether his wife had endorsed these checks for use by others like Bayoumi, Basannan said: “She did not give them to anybody, be it Bayoumi or any other person. Our debts were more than what we received from Princess Haifa. You can imagine how much money an eight-member family requires to live in the US.”

Basannan said he met with Bayoumi at the Claremont mosque in San Diego, as did many other Muslims.

“If Americans blame every Muslim for the acts and violations of those who had prayed with him, nobody will be left out of the procedure,” he said.

A San Diego court, which held three sittings with Basannan and two with his wife, cleared the two of all allegations against them and allowed them to leave the US. The court ruled that there was no substantive evidence against either Basannan or his wife.

“They arrested me while I was on my way back to my house. More than 25 cops arrested me in a dramatic manner.”

Basnnnan’s wife was also arrested at their house and was taken to prison. She was separated from their six children, who were later sent to stay with two Arab families and an American family.

Basannan said the police did not beat him during questioning.

“But they put cuffs on my hands. There was a great deal of pain, which I still feel.”

He said that the arrest and interrogation had caused him a great deal of mental stress.

“I was also worried about the education of my children.”

Basannan confirmed that US authorities allowed him to use the phone only infrequently at the beginning of his detention and he suffered great financial losses as a result of this restriction. He went to the United States so his wife could get medical treatment before the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We were looking for a suitable doctor to carry out a complicated operation related to her thyroid gland,” he said. While in the US, he sold cars and his wife sat for an American fellowship certificate exam in nursing, which she failed and could not repeat because her visa subsequently expired.

He said that he had made efforts to renew the visa with the help of an American lawyer. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, an American official at the Immigration and Naturalization Service had told the lawyer that the Saudis did not need to renew their papers.

“I thought my wife’s medical treatment would not take so long. On the day they arrested me, I was actually coming from the Saudi Consulate, where I had gone to discuss the question of obtaining our resident permit.

Basannan said he also received financial assistance from his father in the Kingdom. The embassy helped him to meet the expenses of his wife and six children, aged from three to 11.

Asked what the FBI agents had questioned his wife about, Basannan said they asked her the reason they had both delayed their return to the Kingdom and requested information about who had lived in their residential complex.

He said his wife was jailed for 78 days in the same prison as him on the Mexican border.

Bin Laden's new letter

(Editorial Note: Al-Jazeerah has received this alleged Bin Laden's letter and the introduction to it by email. It is published without knowing its authenticity and without responsibility for its contents).

A new 4000-word letter purportedly from Osama bin Laden is being circulated among Islamists in Britain in which he has called for attacks on civilians in this country. He has told them that the "Islamic nation" is eager for "Martyrdom". Kashmir has also been mentioned in his letter as a place where Muslims are repressed.

Bin Laden, who is said to be hiding in the border regions between eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan, says in the letter, "Anyone who tries to destroy our villages and cities, then we are going to destroy their villages and cities.

"Anyone who steals our fortunes, then we must destroy their economy. Anyone who kills our civilians, then we are going to kill their civilians."

The letter also lists a number of grievances against the West and has put Palestine and the "creation and continutation of Israel" at the top of the list". The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally avenged."

He lists Kashmir, Somalia, Chechenya and Lebanon as places where Muslims are repressed before he moves on to Iraq where he says that 1.5 million children have died as a result of the UN sanctions.

The chilling message from bin Laden has alarmed the security and intelligence officers, who are already in a state of red alert. Details of the letter were apparently leaked as a warning of attacks in the UK from Al-Qaeda networks.

The letter was originally posted in Arabic on a Saudi Arabian website which had been previously used by Al-Qaeda to disseminate massages. But the intelligence has uncovered that in the last fortnight British Islamists have translated the letter, which is the "most comprehensive explanation of Bin Laden's ideology" to be issued for several years. It is now posted on English-language websites based in the UK.

The letter was sent to subscribers to an e-mail list run by Mohammad al-Massari, the Saudi dissisent who has been living here for years and heads Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights. He has been running a campaign here against the al-Saud regime for over a decade.

Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien told the Observer, "We face an enemy who will attack us in Britain as well as overseas - British workers in New York or tourists in Bali or residents of London or Birmingham."

The Minister has said that there was "threat of well-planned attacks" on national institutions, commercial and financial infrastructure and on many aspects of everyday life.

"The security forces also have information from their counterparts in Europe that Al-Qaeda is planning a major strike. The suspicion was re-inforced following the taped message of bin Laden which was broadcast by Al-Jazeera television network two weeks ago. Analysts have warned that any action against Saddam Hussian will provoke terror attacks in Britain.

The police is so much on nerves here that even an attempt to use a stolen credit card and cheque at a supermarket led to around a dozen officers in bullet-proof vests arriving at the store, simply because the offender was suspected to be from West Asia.

The government knows that bin Laden has a large following in this country. But, in trying to be politically correct and conscious of the allegation by certain Muslim leaders that the community is being discriminated against, it has been avoiding saying that danger stems from within. Many European countries have openly said that Britain is a safe haven for terrorist leaders.

A translation of the letter

From God's servant Osama bin Laden to the peoples of the countries allied with the unjust American government;
Peace on those who follow guidance;

The path of security begins with the ending of aggression. It is equitable to meet equal treatment. The events taking place since the New York and Washington conquests up to the present - like of the killing of Germans in Tunisia and the French in Karachi, the explosion in the giant French tanker in Yemen, the killing of the marines in Faylaka, the killing of the British and Australians in the Bali explosions, the recent Moscow operation, and some dispersed operations here and there - are all reactions and treatment in kind dealt by the zealous sons of Islam in defense of their religion and in response to the order of their God and prophet, peace be upon him.

The action of the pharaoh of the age, Bush, in killing our sons in Iraq and the actions of America's ally, Israel,. in bombing houses in Palestine on the heads of the old men, women, and children in them using American aircraft were all sufficient cause for the wise men and for your rulers to distance themselves from this criminal gang. Our people in Palestine are being killed and tortured for a century almost. Now, if we defend our people in Palestine, the whole world rises up to band together against the Muslims under the lying and deceitful banner or combating terrorism.

What business has your goverments to ally with the criminal gang in the Whit House against the Muslims? Don't your governments know that the White House gang are the biggest mass murderers of the age? Here is Rumsfield, the butcher of Vietnam, killing more than two million people not to mention the wounded and here are Cheney and Powell who caused more death and destruction in Bagdad than Holago and the Tatars did there. What business has your governments in allying with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I specially mention Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, and Australia?

We have warned Australia before over its actions in Afghanistan not to mention its hateful endeavour to separate East Timur. But it ignored the warning until it woke upon the sounds of the explosions in Bali. Then its government falsely and lyingly claimed that they were not targeted.

If you are dismayed by seeing the male dead of yours and your allies in Tunisia, Karachi, Faylaka, and Yemen remember our children dying every day in Palestine and Iraq, remember our people deliberately killed in the wedding parties in Afghanistan. If you are dismayed by looking at your dead in Moscow remember our dead in Chechnya.

Till when will murder, destruction, homelessness, orphans, and widows be our preserve alone leaving you with security, stability and happiness to be your own preserve? This is an unjust division. It is now time to get equal in the goods. Just as you kill, you will get killed and just as you shell you will get shelled. Await then what will dismay you.

Here is the Muslim nation starting by the grace of God to throw at you her sons who have sworn to God to continue fighting with word and sword to instil what is right and abolish what is wrong as long as their eyes blink and their veins beat with life.

Finally, I ask God to provide us with help from Him to enable us to uphold his religion and keep fighting for his cause until we meet Him pleased with us. He is well capable of that. The last thing we say in our prayer is Praise be to God the lord of creation.

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