| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks & Islam |
| US deploys informants against al-Qaeda |
| 2004-11-28 |
| They wore stocking masks over their faces, sunglasses, black baseball caps, gloves and baggy clothes. They could have been mistaken for the kind of terrorists who appear with increasing regularity on videotapes, issuing fearsome threats. In fact, the two men and one woman were the recipients of $1 million in reward money for a tip-off that led to the whereabouts and ultimate killing of a senior member of an al Qaeda-linked group of terrorists in the Philippines. And U.S. officials hope it will lead to more tips on the whereabouts of Islamic extremists hiding in the country's southern jungles. "People will now know that we are serious and we will be paying large amounts of money if they cooperate," said Joseph Mussomeli, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Manila. The payout, part of the U.S. State Department's Reward for Justice program, took place last month in a tightly secured ceremony on southern Basilan island, 545 miles south of Manila. The tip had led Filipino troops to Hamsiraji Sali, a senior member of the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas. Sali, one of five rebel leaders wanted by Washington for the deaths of two American hostages, died in a shootout with soldiers in April. Under the same program, which began in 1984, a $25 million reward is being offered for information leading to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden and Jordanian-born guerrilla leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the latter believed to be the mastermind of a wave of car bombings and kidnappings in Iraq. The aim is to "sow seeds of doubt and fear among terrorists -- that they would always be looking over their shoulders for who was going to sell them out for a million dollars," said Michael Scharf, who helped start the program as a legal adviser for the State Department's Counter-Terrorism Bureau. To date, 35,000 tips have been received and $57 million has been paid out to 43 people, according to the State Department. The lion's share of $30 million was for information that helped U.S. forces in Iraq find Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, who were both killed in a gunbattle last year. Other high-profile terrorists snagged through the program include Aimal Khan Kasi, who killed two people and wounded three outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., in 1993; and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, one of the organizers of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Both were captured in Pakistan and extradited to the United States. Kasi was executed by lethal injection in 2002; Yousef is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |