| Who is Osama
bin Laden ?
Osama bin Laden is a 48 year-old
"businessman" and son of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, and the
coordinator of an international terrorist network believed to be responsible
for numerous deadly attacks against American and Western targets.
Osama formed the terrorist Al-Qaeda
("the base") organization in 1988, and it is believed to have operatives
in as many as twenty countries. In 1998 bin Laden announced the establishment
of "The International Islamic Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders,"
an umbrella organization linking Islamic extremists in scores of countries
around the world, including Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The group issued
a religious edict upon its establishment: "The ruling to kill the Americans
and their allies, civilians, and the military, is an individual duty for
every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it,
in order to liberate al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque from their grip and
in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated,
and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of
Almighty God, and 'fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,'
and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail
justice and faith in God."
His militancy is traced back to the
1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Osama's avowed goal from that time is
to remove Western "infidels" from Muslim countries - the Russians from
Afghanistan, the American military from Saudi Arabia and other points in
the Gulf - the downfall of many governments of Muslim states, and for the
destruction of the United States and its allies.
Bin Laden is the son of the Yemeni-born
owner of a leading Saudi construction company. Born into great wealth, he
is believed to have inherited as much as $300 million when his father died
in the 1960's. From 1979, bin Laden began raising money for the Mujahadin
forces fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and gradually became more and
more affiliated with Egyptian Islamic extremist groups, such as Egyptian
Islamic Jihad. From the mid-1980's bin Laden began to establish training
camps in Afghanistan, initially for the war in Afghanistan, but later to
fight against other targets worldwide. He has attracted thousands of recruits
from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan and Sudan.
Reportedly, bin Osama's anti-Americanism
intensified during the Gulf War, when U.S. troops were stationed in Saudi
Arabia. According to The New York Times: "The presence of American soldiers
in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the home of the
two holiest Muslim shrines, enraged Osama and other Arab militants." He and
his associates also blamed the U.S. support for Israel as anti-Islam.
In 1994 Saudi Arabia stripped bin
Laden's citizenship, citing his opposition to the Saudi King and leadership
and expelled him from the country. He then went to Khartoum, Sudan
(where he owns numerous businesses), but under U.S. pressure was expelled
in 1996 and relocated to Afghanistan. Osama is on the FBI's list of 10
most-wanted criminals, and the State Department offered a $5 million reward
for his arrest following the August 1998 embassy bombings. The United Nations
imposed economic sanctions on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 1999 for
harboring Osama, and many nations, including the U.S. have frozen assets
owned by Osaman and his senior associates.
Osama has been thought to finance,
inspire or directly organize various terrorist attacks. In one way or another
his name has been linked to the killings of Western tourists by militant
Islamic groups in Egypt, bombings in France by Islamic extremist Algerians,
the maintenance of a safe-house in Pakistan for Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the convicted
mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and sheltering Sheikh
Omar Abd Al-Rahman (the Blind Sheikh), who was also convicted in the World
Trade Center bombing. He has also been linked to the 1992 bombings of a hotel
in Yemen, which killed two Australians, but was supposedly targeted against
American soldiers stationed there; the 1995 detonation of a car bomb in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia; the 1995 truck bomb in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia that killed 19
U.S. servicemen; and the 1995 assassination attempt on Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak. Bin Laden has been directly connected to the August 7, 1998
bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania,
killing 224 people, and the October 2000 attack of the U.S. destroyer ship
Cole in Yemen.
Osama has made no secret of his
anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Israel sentiments. In fact, he has been
outspoken on these topics, issuing theological rulings calling for Muslims
to attack Americans and threatening terrorism against related targets. Pointing
to the defeat of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, Osama has consistently
declared that the United States is vulnerable to defeat by a jihad by Islamic
forces.
Born with a Silver
Spoon
Osama was born in Saudi Arabia around
1957 to a father of Yemeni origins and a Syrian mother. His father, Mohammed
bin Laden, founded a construction company and with royal patronage became
a billionaire. The company's connections won it such important commissions
as rebuilding mosques in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Mohammed bin Laden took numerous
wives and fathered about 50 children. Osama was the 17th son, the only born
to a later wife. In a society where status within a family is highly important,
bin Laden would therefore have been of relatively low rank.
Osama studied management and economics
at King Abdul Aziz University in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, coming under the influence
of religious teachers who introduced him to the wider world of Islamic politics.
 |
Where is Osama today ?
By thinking "outside the box" ASEC
has concluded that Osama is hiding out in Sudan. We expect that he
went there well in advance of 9-11 in order to avoid the U.S. response to
that event. Our reasoning is based on "connecting the dots" regarding what
he was doing, in Sudan, prior to his expulsion in 1996 and with whom he had,
and still has, dealings.
Osama's Ongoing Connections to
Khartoum
Osama's ongoing commercial and financial
connections to the Sudan caught our attention as the US developed a broad
campaign against international terrorism. There have been numerous recent
investigative and synthesizing reports, reflecting research into court records,
interviews with regional and terrorism experts, and a canvassing of publicly
available documents. Of particular note are Osama's construction companies
in Sudan, their role in developing the key road from Khartoum to Port Sudan,
and the related commercial enterprises that continue to fund the al-Qaeda
terrorists.
One of Osama's businesses was the
Hijra Construction Company in Sudan, which built roads and bridges and bought
explosives to clear the way, according to testimony at the U.S. Embassy bombing
trials. Bin Laden's Taba Investments fund, also of Sudan, was used to change
Sudanese currency into dollars and British pounds.
It is essential to recognize that
bin Laden's financial presence in Sudan continues in many forms, primarily
agriculture (including gum arabic), banking, and construction. Osama and
al-Qaida also ran the Blessed Fruits farming business, growing peanuts, fruit,
sesame, white corn, sunflowers and wheat, according to [court] testimony.”
But Osama’s most important legacy is certainly the vast reconstruction
of the road from Khartoum to Port Sudan. This formerly narrow, winding, and
lengthy road was shortened by a third (from 1200 to 800 kilometers), leveled,
expanded, and made into the natural construction route and platform for the
oil pipeline that would soon be built by Talisman Energy, China National
Petroleum Corp., and Petronas of Malaysia.
Osama's Connections to
China
In the building of the Khartoum-Port
Sudan road, the foreign labor was primarily Chinese, the pipeline construction
project was funded by all three companies of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating
Company. All are thus the beneficiaries of bin Laden's construction efforts---and
all have, in turn, indirectly funded his terrorist operations via the oil
revenues flowing to Khartoum.
Certainly Sudan's reputation as a
terrorist-sponsoring nation was well known to all these companies. It is
thus especially striking that the Government of Canada would have allowed
Talisman Energy to engage in a commercial project in Sudan, given the conditions
that obtained when Talisman entered the country in 1998. Not only was the
country wracked by massively destructive, ongoing civil war, but Talisman’s
entrance came just one year after the US imposed comprehensive sanctions
on Sudan, primarily for its role in sponsoring international terrorism. Their
entrance also came very shortly after the terrorist bombings of the two US
embassies in August 1998. The recently concluded trial for these acts of
terrorism has clearly indicated the responsibility of bin Laden and his terrorist
network al-Qaeda. Talisman Energy and the Government of Canada must certainly
have had considerable knowledge of bin Laden’s, and thus Sudan’s,
role in the embassy bombings when Talisman officially entered Sudan in October
1998.
How
did Osama get to the Sudan?
ASEC concludes that Osama got to
Sudan via the sea; first by fishing boat from Pasni, Pakistan, along the
Makran coastal range; then by Chinese submarine after a GPS rendezvous in
the Arabian Sea 50 miles off the coast of Pakistan. The Chinese diesel
class sub traveled submerged past the coasts of Oman and Yemen; and, dropped
Osama (and his body guards) off near the island of Perim,Yemen, at the mouth
of the Red Sea. From there Osama took another boat ride to Port Sudan where
he traveled, by the same road he helped build, to the Nile river just north
of Khartoum. There, we believe Osama resides in a waterside villa on the
North Nile. While the road to Port Sudan is guarded by Chinese military,
we believe that Osama is being protected by Chinese secret service agents
who are also assigned to the China National Petroleum project in Sudan.
Why the Chinese would take such risks
moving a suspected terrorist and world criminal is not too difficult
a jump in our estimation process;
China currenty buys 60% of the
entire production of arab controlled Sudanese oil.
ASEC believes that
Osama may have brokered a China-Sudan oil deal prior to Osama's involvement
in the building of the Khartoum-Port Sudan highway--oil, likely at prices
too good for China to pass up.
  
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