A Senegalese Muslim cleric deported from Italy as a danger to state security was quoted Sunday as telling a pan-Arab newspaper that he had met three times with Osama bin Laden. The cleric, Abdel Qadir Mamour, told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat in an interview by telephone from Dakar, Senegal, that he had the meetings with bin Laden in Sudan during 1993-1996. Mamour said bin Laden had provided money to finance his trading in diamonds between Africa and Belgium, but did not say how much money was involved or if bin Laden was involved in the business.
Mamour angered Italian authorities by saying in an earlier interview that Italian soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq would be attacked, as well as Italian diplomats, because Italy was aiding the U.S.-led military presence. His statement followed the Nov. 12 car bomb at the Italian barracks in Nasiriyah, Iraq, that killed 19 Italians. He was deported to Senegal in mid-November. In his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Mamour said Italian authorities deported him because they found at his home some CD-ROMs contained the wills of four suicide attackers in a bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May. Mamour was quoted as saying he got the tapes from a fundamentalist Muslim in London so they could be distributed in Europe. He did not name the man who sent the tapes.
| "Not mine. Somebody gave 'em to me..." |
Mamour said he also met in Sudan with bin Laden’s top aides including Mohammed Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, who was pulverized killed in a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan in November 2001. Mamour said his Italian wife and five children saved him from being sent to the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. He said the Senegalese authorities kept him under house arrest and interrogated him for four days. Asharq Al-Awsat said that when Mamour was asked by the interviewer to name his religious leader, he answered without hesitation: "Osama bin Laden." |