| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Hezbollah kept tabs on 9/11 hijackers |
| 2004-07-23 |
| Several months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it appears, the Iranian-sponsored terrorist organization Hezbollah was shadowing three of the hijackers as they flew from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon and onward to Iran. Could Iran have had an inkling of the pending disaster? Probably not, concludes the 9/11 commission in its final report yesterday. But it details a web of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the arrival and departure of three hijackers in November 2000 was of keen interest to Hezbollah and urges "further investigation by the U.S. Government." "Hezbollah officials in Beirut and Iran were expecting the arrival of a group during the same time period," says the commission document, citing three intelligence reports prepared shortly after the attacks. "The travel of this group was important enough to merit the attention of senior figures in Hezbollah." The intelligence reports apparently do not identify the group that so interested Hezbollah, but the commission concludes that it would be a "remarkable coincidence" if it was not the future hijackers. In addition, the commission noted, an associate of a "senior Hezbollah operative" was on the same Beirut-to-Tehran flight as the three al-Qaida hijackers. The hijackers were identified as Wail Alshehri and Waleed Alshehri, who were to become "muscle" hijackers on American Flight 11, one of the two jets to crash into the World Trade Center, and Ahmed Alnami, who flew on United Flight 93, which plowed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers tried to overwhelm the terrorists. About the same time the trio was apparently being tracked by Hezbollah, a "senior Hezbollah operative" was on the same Beirut-bound flight as Ahmed Alghamdi, who ended up on United Flight 175, the other jetliner to fly into the Twin Towers. While the commission noted that these bits of raw intelligence were of interest, it asserted that it "found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack." The commission also concluded that al-Qaida did not have operational ties with Iraq or that Iraq had any foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 hijackings. It did note intelligence reports from al-Qaida detainees claiming that Iranian officials facilitated the travel of al-Qaida members through Iran on their way to and from Afghanistan, and that Iranian border guards would not stamp visas on Saudi passports, so as to avoid possible scrutiny in Saudi Arabia. However, two senior al-Qaida operatives in custody, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, told their interrogators that Iran's relationship with the group was limited to transiting operatives through Iran and nothing more. They also denied that there was any relationship between the hijackers and al-Qaida. More recent events, however, suggest that some factions inside Iran, notably its intelligence service and the revolutionary guards, have allowed some al-Qaida operatives safe-haven in the country. Newsday reported in May 2003, for instance, that al-Qaida's former security chief, Saif al-Adel, had ordered through a cell phone inside Iran the car bomb attack on residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed 34, including eight Americans. A son of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, Sa'ad, who is married to an Iranian woman, lives in Iran. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 OK. I call bullshit. The Iranian "shadows" were probably not watching the terrorists, as much as they were watching to see if we or any one else were watching the terrorists. That is what facilitators and handlers do I think. Also, the claim that Iraq and al Qaida were not working together is total nonsense. Or at least let's put it this way, the situation with Saddam in Baghdad led to a flourishing atmosphere of 'qaida/'slim activity within the geography of Iraq. Even if you believe, like an idiot, that Saddam’s regime was not directly working with Qaida, he still had to be removed in order to fight Qaida in the North and the South (and the east and the west for that matter). But like I said, they were working together. My guess is the link was really Uday and Qusay, and that is why they each took a big bite of a death sandwich force fed to them by some well motivated U.S. delivery personnel. |
| Posted by: Victory Now Please 2004-07-23 9:59:04 AM |