21 - 27 December 2000
Issue No.513
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 21 - 27 December 2000 Issue No.513 |
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A Bin Laden connection?
By Nasser ArrabyeeYemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said investigators were close to identifying those behind the bomb attack on the USS Cole in Aden two months ago which killed 17 US servicemen and injured 39 others. "We are looking for the man who gave instructions to the two people who executed the [suicide] operation. His name is Mohamed Omar Al-Harazi, born in Saudi Arabia of Yemeni origin," Saleh told the Washington Post.
Saleh said Al-Harazi had funded the operation and paid for the houses used by the bombers in Aden as a hideout before carrying out the 12 October attack which badly damaged the US warship. A blast from a small explosives-laden boat which drew right next to the Cole as it took on fuel in the harbour while en route to duty in the Gulf blew a gaping hole in its hull.
He said some suspects who have been rounded up were Saudis of Yemeni origin. "We can say with 80 per cent certainty that the perpetrators were born in Mecca but are of Yemeni origin and were trained in Afghanistan," Saleh said.
As in most violent incidents in Yemen in recent years, officials were quick to point the finger to "outside elements," a reference to Saudi Arabia. Saleh added that his government was still searching for one or two more people who might help unravel the mystery blast once and for all. "Is it Osama Bin Laden, Israeli intelligence or someone else?" asked Saleh.
Asked directly to confirm whether Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden was behind the attack, Saleh said, "everything is possible." Despite strong suspicions that Bin Laden was responsible, Sana'a and Washington have refrained from accusing the militant leader who has been residing in Afghanistan since 1996.
Yemen's Interior Minister Hussein Arab said recently that investigators had uncovered links between suspected participants in the Cole attack and Bin Laden. "We think the Cole terrorists have strong links with Afghanistan and we can say, yes, there are links with Bin Laden," Arab said.
Bin Laden is a Saudi of Yemeni origin. Like many Yemeni families who immigrated to Saudi Arabia in the 1940s and 1950s after the oil boom, the Bin Ladens amassed a fortune and turned into tycoons in the construction business. Bin Laden was among thousands of Arab youths who went to Afghanistan in the early 1980s to try to oust Soviet forces. Backed at that time by the United States, Bin Laden also used his massive wealth to train young Arab fighters on guerrilla war techniques. After the war ended in Afghanistan, the fighters turned their guns against their governments in several countries, including Yemen.
In early 1998, Bin Laden announced the formation of The International Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, declaring the United States as the main enemy of all Muslims due to what he said was its blind support of Israel and what he described as its "occupation" of the Gulf region since the 1991 Gulf War.
A few months later, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in simultaneous suicide attacks, killing more than 250 people, mostly Kenyans. Washington declared Bin Laden its most wanted man and led a worldwide campaign to arrest his close associates. US missiles were also fired at a number of his suspected camps in Afghanistan shortly after the attacks in Africa. But he escaped the attack and remains surrounded by a small number of heavily armed loyalists, allegedly hiding in caves and mountain areas in fear of a second US attack. The ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan had repeatedly rejected US demands to extradite Bin Laden, despite warnings by Washington that it would seek to impose more sanctions against already impoverished, war-torn Afghanistan.
The attack against the USS Cole and an attempt to blow up the British embassy in Sana'a a day later were both said to be in reaction to the ongoing clashes between Palestinians and Israeli occupation troops over the past three months. Bin Laden has denied direct involvement in any of these attacks but admits that his "fatwas" (religious rulings) and "incitement for Jihad" against the Americans might have encouraged the actual perpetrators.
Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul-Karim Al-Iryani said last month that investigators had concluded that Bin Laden was "at least indirectly involved in the Cole bombing."
Even without Bin Laden, Yemeni officials believe they can make a case against the men they have already rounded up. They say the trial of six suspects is expected to start next month, but the exact date has not been fixed. Interior Minister Arab said three of the six detainees were directly involved in the attack. The rest, including two civil servants, were accused of providing the attackers with fake documents, he added.
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