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May 23rd
Home News Non-state Actors A Guantanamo detainee spoke of "a nuclear bomb” as revenge
A Guantanamo detainee spoke of "a nuclear bomb” as revenge
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El País, 4 May 2011. Non-state Actors

"What will be the revenge that the acolytes of Al Qaeda prepare for the death of emir at the hands of an American elite commando?" The answer came from Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian jihadist arrested in Pakistan in 2004 and startled the CIA and the FBI agents who questioned him. "If Osama Bin Laden was captured or killed the [nuclear] bomb would be detonated in America."

The confidence is reflected in the secret report prepared, in September 2008, by the Department of Defense of the United States on Abu Faraj al Libi , 41, one of the most valuable prisoners of Guantánamo, a Libyan who is linked by other inmates with nuclear, chemical and bacteriological warfare experiments conducted by Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

The report of the bearded Abu al Libi, alumni of Shuhada al Wajib in Libya, fascinated since young age by the jihad and close associate of Osama Bin Laden and his squire Ayman al Zawahiri, reflects the confidence of the Egyptian Sharif, who also said the Libyan "would be one of those authorized to give the order" of the alleged nuclear attack, as recorded by his statement in the Guantánamo files, which El Pais has had access to.

Al Qaeda has a nuclear bomb, but has trouble moving it. If it could move it to its target "it would find agents to detonate it", although the Egyptian confessed that at that time it did not count on a terrorist command in the U.S.. "The agents would be European or Arab or Asian descent. The bomb is in Europe. Sharif al-Masri said that the detainee [Abu al-Libi] knows the bomb and its exact location," said the Libyan assessment report of 15 pages and one of the largest made by the military at Guantanamo.

Abu al Libi achieved his dream of entering Al Qaeda and was named chief operating officer of the organization following the arrest in 2002 of Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 11-S, also a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay and the man who allegedly provided the clue of the messenger who lived at the Pakistani shelter where Bin Laden had been located and killed. As pointed out in his record, he provided safe houses to Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri between 2001 and 2003. Some unconfirmed sources suggest that he could also had provided details on the whereabouts of the emir.

The Libyan prisoner was trainer at Al Farouq terrorist camp in Afghanistan and had up to 50 suicide bombers at his disposal ready for operations, as revealed by another prisoner who dealt with him and said his companion shared this information with him. This man, who allegedly knows where the nuclear bomb in the hands of Al Qaeda hides, is qualified by the admiral who signs his report , DM Thomas, as a prisoner of high value, risk and intelligence. The list of exploiting areas that the U.S. military expects of him is endless, including his knowledge "about a possible attack with nuclear weapons."

Following the attacks of 11-S in 2001, Bin Laden instructed his chief of operations and several members of his council the planning of the "new jihad", a metaphor whose real meaning is to obtain the so-called "dirty bomb", a homemade nuclear device that could end the lives of thousands of people, as well as to develop chemical and biological weapons which have been already tested in several training camps in Afghanistan. The interrogations of Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantánamo reveal some disturbing details and agree that the dirty bomb is already within reach of the jihadists.

The report of the prisoner Saifulah Abdullah Paracha, a 64-year old Pakistani, seriously ill, says that after his arrest in Bangkok in 2003 his electronic phonebook was seize with 1,265 names and addresses, in addition to numerous websites and references to chemical , biological and nervous agents. Two other prisoners told interrogators that this businessman educated in the United States and who lived in New York, Chicago, Washington and San Francisco wanted to "establish a nuclear program in Afghanistan" and was "looking for chemical and biological weapons to organize terrorist attacks in the U.S. and UK.". Saifulah met with Bin Laden and is one of the few prisoners who smiles at the camera for the photography that illustrates his secret file on Guantánamo.

"I poisoned rabbits and saw a video in which a dog died of cyanide in a room," confessed the prisoner of Tajikistan Hamza bin Umar, 31, as recorded by his prison file. A mass attack with poison is another of the obsessions and musings of members of Al Qaeda.

 

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