* Where is Yazid Sufaat?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 20, 2012
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Posted by Lew Weinstein on January 20, 2012
This entry was posted on January 20, 2012 at 7:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Tagged: Yazid Sufaat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
DXer said
After Malaysis released, Yazid Sufaat.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Ivins first counselor, a key accuser, thought she had a microchip implanted in her butt with her actions controlled by an alien (see her 2009 book claiming this). When this was pointed out to the psychiatrists who, relying on her claims, said that Dr. Ivins was likely responsible for the mailings, they did not correct their report and withdraw reliance on her claims.
http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/the-psychiatrists-are-selling-a-report-relying-on-a-counselor-who-says-she-was-granted-special-powers-by-an-alien-controlling-her-by-a-device-implanted-in-her-butt-but-the-usg-has-taken-steps-to-ke/
http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/doj-has-successfully-avoided-deposition-of-amerithrax-consultant-who-extensively-and-uncritically-relied-on-the-ivins-accuser-granted-her-psychic-abilities-by-an-alien-from-another-planet/
Instead, the CIA would have implanted microchip in Sufaat’s butt so as to track him when he fled back to Al Qaeda’s ranks.
Is history repeating itself?
“Al Qaeda’s Anthrax Scientist
Malaysia releases a dangerous terrorist from jail.
8:00 AM, DEC 12, 2008 • BY THOMAS JOSCELYN
The government of Malaysia made a curious announcement this week: Yazid Sufaat, a known al Qaeda operative, and four other alleged terrorists have been released from jail. It is not clear why Malaysian authorities thought it was time to set them free. Malaysia’s home minister, Syed Hamid Albar, simply declared, “They are no longer a threat but they will be watched closely.”
We can only hope.
Sufaat’s newfound freedom is troubling. According to the 9-11 Commission, four top al Qaeda operatives stayed at Sufaat’s apartment in Malaysia in January of 2000. The al Qaeda terrorists were in Malaysia for an important planning meeting, during which they discussed the upcoming attack on the USS Cole and details of the 9/11 operation. Shortly after the meeting, al Qaeda terrorists Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, both of whom stayed at Sufaat’s apartment, left for California. Twenty months later, al Mihdhar and al Hazmi were part of the team responsible for hijacking American Airlines Flight 77 and crashing it into the Pentagon.
Al Mihdhar and al Hazmi were not the only 9/11 plotters to receive Sufaat’s hospitality. In the fall of 2000, Sufaat played host to convicted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui during his visit to Malaysia. Moussaoui was scheduled to take part in the September 11 attacks, or a similar follow-on plot, but was detained by the FBI in August of 2001.
Thus, Sufaat assisted al Qaeda members during a crucial juncture in their operational planning for the 9/11 attacks. And that is not all Sufaat accomplished during his terrorist career. According to the 9/11 Commission, Sufaat is guilty of more.
At some point, a top al Qaeda operative named Hambali, who is currently a high-value detainee being held at Guantánamo, introduced Sufaat to al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al Zawahiri. Zawahiri wanted to jumpstart al Qaeda’s program for developing anthrax and asked Hambali for assistance in finding a suitable scientist. Sufaat fit the bill. In 1987, he graduated from California State University at Sacramento with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and a minor in chemistry. In 2001, Sufaat put his degree to work for al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission found that he spent “several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he helped set up near the Kandahar airport,” which was then a stronghold for Osama bin Laden.
It was for good reasons, then, that Malaysian authorities detained Sufaat in December 2001. And there are good reasons to worry now that he has been freed. We must now rely upon the Malaysian government to make sure the freed Sufaat does not find his way back into al Qaeda’s ranks.”
Oops.
DXer said
Hambali, Anthrax Lab Tech Yazid Sufaat And The Anthrax Bomb Maker
George Tenet in his May 2007 In the Center of the Storm says Sufaat was “the self-described ‘CEO’ of al-Qai’da’s anthrax program.” Tenet reports that “Sufaat had impeccable extremist credentials” and “[i]n 2000 he had been introduced to Ayman al-Zawahiri personally, by Hambali, as the man who was capable of leading al-Qai’da’s biological weapons program.”
The 9/11 Commission Report explained:
“Hambali played the critical role of coordinator, as he distributed al Qaeda funds earmarked for joint operations. In one especially notable example, Atef turned to Hambali when al Qaeda needed a scientist to take over its biological weapons program. Hambali obliged by introducing a U.S.-educated JI member, Yazid Sufaat, to Ayman al Zawahiri in Kandahar. In 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he set up near the Kandahar airport.”
Participants at a key meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 included Hambali, Yazid Sufaat, two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar, Cole planner Attash aka Khallad, and others. Tawfiq Bin Attash was a long time Bin Laden operative. The Yemeni first went to Afghanistan in 1989. He came to lead Bin Laden’s bodyguards and was an intermediary between Bin Laden and those who carried out the bombing of the Cole in October 2000. Attash also had been a key planner in the 1998 embassy bombings, serving as the link between the Nairobi cell and Bin Laden and Atef. Khalid Almhidhar, one of the 9/11 hijackers, was from Saudi Arabia but was a Yemeni national. Almhidhar was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment against Zacarias Moussaoui. Al-Hindi, who along with Jafar the Pilot would later case the NYC landmarks, had gone to Kuala Lumpur with Attash. While not at the meeting with the hijackers, they met Hambali shortly after.
Zacarias Moussaoui was alleged, at least initially, to have received his money from Yazid Sufaat, under the cover of a company managed by his wife named Infocus Tech. A legitimate company, the company has eight employees and virtually no connection to the US. The company was an importer of US computer software and hardware. After authorities found a letter signed by Yazid Sufaat purporting to authorize Zacarias Moussaoui as its marketing representative, authorities went looking for Sufaat. But by then, he had left for Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to his wife, he went to Pakistan in June 2001 because he wanted to do his doctorate in pathology at the University of Karachi. Dursina had attended Sacramento State with Sufaat. It was her mother who encouraged Yazid’s religious studies. According to his wife, Sejarhtul Dursina, “He had planned to set up a medical support unit in Afghanistan, near Kandahar.” Kandahar is where Al Qaeda established its anthrax lab and where extremely virulent (but unweaponized) anthrax, according to author Suskind, was found at a home identified by Hambali after his capture.
Sufaat graduated from California State University, Sacramento in 1987. He received a bachelors degree in biological sciences, concentrating on clinical laboratory technology, with a minor in chemistry. Sacramento State biological sciences professor Robert Metcalf taught Sufaat a food microbiology class in the spring of 1986. The first lesson in class was to teach students how German physician Robert Koch proved that anthrax was caused by a specific bacterium. “All of my students know how to isolate anthrax in soil samples,” Metcalf told the Chicago Tribune. “Anthrax was the first organism we talked about.” Sufaat joined the Malaysian army, where he was a lab technician assigned to a medical brigade. After five years, he left the service with the rank of captain and worked for a civilian laboratory. In August 1993, he set up his own company, Green Laboratory Medicine. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Sufaat started work on the al Qaeda biological weapons program after he participated in JI’s December 2000 church bombings. In December 2001, Sufaat was arrested upon returning from Afghanistan to Malaysia where (his wife says) he had been serving in a Taliban medical brigade.
Malaysian officials sought to minimize Sufaat’s role. Sufaat merely was a foot soldier who provided housing and false identification letters and helped obtain explosives. “I would put it this way: If Hambali [Al Qaeda's point man in Southeast Asia] was the travel agent, Sufaat was the guy at the airport holding up the sign.”
Sufaat admits to having purchased 4 tons of ammonium nitrate to build a truck bomb for the Singapore cell. The Malaysian officials report that they believe that Sufaat had no knowledge of what the hijackers who stayed at his condominium or Zacarias were planning. That is consistent with the principles of cell security ordinarily followed — also evasion in interrogation. At a minimum, however, the established facts relevant to the Amerithrax investigation show that in the Summer and Fall of 2001 an Al Qaeda supporter who had assisted in the 9-11 operation — and who was a lab technician working with anthrax — was in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Was he the fellow perceived as Filipino who the journalist met in Afghanistan in the Fall of 2001 bragging about his ability to manipulate anthrax? According to Sufaat’s attorney, Sufaat gave two FBI agents no fresh evidence during a 30-minute interrogation finally conducted in November 2002 (where they mainly wanted to know how he knew Zacarias). The U.S. has asked for his extradition in connection with hosting of the two 9/11 hijackers, but Malaysia refused. President Bush reports that US officials did not fully appreciate Sufaat’s role in Al Qaeda’s anthrax program until after KSM’s capture in March 2003.
As described in US News, a former reporter from the Kabul Times actually may have met a Filipino carrying papers from Zawahiri and bragging about his ability to manipulate anthrax. The man may have been Hambali’s lieutenant, Muklis Yunos, who had been Hambali’s right-hand man and was in charge of special operations for the Philippine Moro Islamic Liberation Front (“MILF”). British reporter Philip Smucker explained that the Afghan reporter working with him spoke fluent Arabic and made regular undercover trips into Afghanistan from Pakistan. He had visited three functioning al Qaeda camps at grave risk to his life. Smucker explains that his colleague had landed in a Kabul hotel with a Filipino scientist who had a signed letter from al Qaeda’s number two, Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, authorizing him to help the network develop biological weapons. The man at the hotel had described his own efforts to develop an “anthrax bomb.” Filipino Muklis Yunos was an explosives expert who had participated with Yazid Sufaat in the December 2000 church bombings. Upon his arrest in May 2003, Philippine intelligence said he had received anthrax training in Afghanistan.
Perhaps he was who the journalist encountered.
Yazid Sufaat was released without notice in December 2008. According to local news reports, he then headed for Pakistan. That’s pretty lax probation, eh?
DXer said
The Mid-February 2003 Capture of Al Qaeda WMD Committee Member Mohammed Abdel-Rahman And Related Capture Of KSM
Authorities closed in on KSM in Spring 2003. When arrested, US citizen and NYC resident Uzair Paracha said he had met in February 2003 a chemistry professor who was supposed to help Al Qaeda with biological and chemical weapons. It was a big break, therefore, when the son of the imprisoned blind sheik, Abdel Rahman, was captured in Quetta, Pakistan in mid-February 2003. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman from Afghanistan spoke alongside Ali Al-Timimi at IANA conferences in 1993 and 1996. The blind sheik’s son Mohammed Abdel-Rahman had recently had been in contact with Khalid Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s #3. Two weeks after Mohammed’s capture, authorities raided microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse in Alexandria, VA, and searched the residence of a couple of PhD level drying experts in Idaho and Upstate NY, along with various others associated with IANA. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman then provided information that led authorities to the home of the bacteriologist who had harbored KSM. Anthrax spray drying documents were found, both on a computer and in hard copy.
In June 2003, a UN report explained that Al-Qaeda has a “WMD Committee,” which according to the report, “is known to have approached a number of Muslim scientists to assist the terrorist network with the creation and procurement of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.” Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a member of the 3-member WMD committee, knew Ali Al-Timimi. Ali Al-Timimi conducted a summer camp at a park in Frederick, Maryland over the years. The kids liked the outdoors and ponds. Ironically, the FBI searched the park’s ponds more than once claiming that Dr. Hatfill had once suggested that someone could weaponize anthrax and discard the equipment in a pond.
DXer said
March 2003 Arrest Of Bacteriologist Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan
On March 1, 2003, authorities announced that Khalid Mohammed had been captured 400 miles from Quetta, in Islamabad. A walk-in to the CIA, the Egyptian said he was upset that Al Qaeda had attacked the United States. An unnamed Egyptian reportedly received $25 million for providing the information about Khalid Mohammed. Authorities said he had been in the car that drove KSM to a safe house that night. Agents quickly raced him back through the streets as he made out landmarks, leading them to KSM, who was being harbored in the home of bacteriologist Abdul Qadoos Khan.
Khalid Mohammed had hands-on responsibility for planning 9-11. Reports of the arrest described his role in various operations over the years, including the thwarted “Operation Bojinka” in the Philippines in 1995. At that time, Philippine authorities searching a seized laptop computer found a letter signed by “Khalid Shaikh Bojinka” that threatened to attack American targets “in response to the financial, political and military assistance given to the Jewish state in the occupied land of Palestine by the American government.” The letter, apparently written by Mohammed and his associates, threatened to not only attack aircraft, the principal plot underway, but threatened to launch a chemical attack if an imprisoned co-conspirator was not released from custody. Khalid Mohammed reportedly played a substantial role in trying to build Al Qaeda’s expertise in biological and chemical weapons. It turned out that he knew quite a bit about the process for weaponizing anthrax.
The Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan ran a respected cardiology institute called Hearts International
Dr. Khan and his wife, according to early accounts, had been at a wedding in Lahore. The family reports that at 3 a.m on Saturday, a squad of around 20 officers burst into the home.
The day after the raid of the Khan’s home, authorities also detained another of the microbiologist’s sons for questioning, a major in the Pakistan Army, who author Scroggins was thought to be connected to the jihadists, though he was not arrested. Pointing at a large cage of blue and green budgies on the patio, Mrs. Khan, Ahmad’s mother, said: “These are his life. Ahmed is a very simple person. He had no job, he hardly went out, just to the mosque to pray. He never traveled and his main thing was pets. He loved pets. “Ahmed can’t be a terrorist,” a neighbor who was a Colonel in the Army said. “He’s a goof, simple in the head.” The son reportedly receives a stipend from the UN’s Farm and Agriculture Organization for having a low IQ due to lead poisoning.
Ahmed Qadoos’ mother was an activist for the ladies’ wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s biggest religious party. Ramzi Binalshibh, the 9/11 plotter arrested in Karachi, and Abu Zubaydah, were both found in houses belonging to JI members.
The bacteriologist’s father’s role came to be all the more important when the documents relating to the weaponization of anthrax were found on Khalid Mohammed’s laptop computer (which allegedly had been seized at the microbiologist’s home). On March 28, 2003, the father, at a hospital receiving treatment for his heart condition, was granted “pre-arrest bail,” which was confirmed the next day in court upon his arrest. Dr. Abdul Qadoos Khan, a bacteriologist with access to production materials and facilities, previously worked in Sudan for the UN’s World Health Organization. According to his family, he retired in 1985 after heart bypass surgery. “His career speaks about his honesty, and he has never been involved in any clandestine activities,” his counsel successfully argued in seeking pre-arrest bail. Al Qaeda was based in Sudan from 1992-1996. The 78-year-old microbiologist was reported in Pakistani press to be a leader of the Jamaat-i Islami, a fundamentalist group in Pakistan.
Documents in UTN’s “House of Anthrax” in Kabul indicated a connection to Jamaat-I-Islam. Jamaat is part of the United Action Council, the coalition of fundamentalist religious groups that controls the provincial government of the Northwest Frontier Province and about one-fifth of the seats in the Federal parliament.
There has been no mention of the arrest of Abdul Qadoos Khan (that I have noticed) or the disposition of his legal matter since he was granted pre-arrest bail.
DXer said
Capture of Hawsawi and Laptop With Anthrax Spray Drying Docs Capture of Hawsawi and Laptop With Anthrax Spray Drying Docs
On March 23, 2003, the Washington Post reported on documents allegedly discovered at the Abdul Qadoos Khan residence — on a seized laptop — relating to biochemical weapons. The documents indicated that Al Qaeda leaders may already have manufactured some of them. The documents at the Qadoos home reveal that Al Qaeda had a feasible production plan for anthrax. Confronted with scanned handwritten notes on the computer, Mohammed reportedly began to talk about Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program. KSM, however, denies that it was his computer. He says it was the computer of his assistant, Mustafa Hawsawi, who was captured at the home the same day. In 2001, before departing for the UAE, Al-Hawsawi had worked in the Al Qaeda media center Al Sahab (Clouds) in Kandahar. The letter containing the first anthrax went to the American Media in Florida had blue and pink clouds on it.
Hawsawi worked under KSM who in turn worked for Zawahiri. Al-Hawsawi was a facilitator for the 9/11 attacks and its paymaster, working from the United Arab Emirates. Al-Hawsawi sent thousands of dollars to Bin Al-Shibh the summer of 2001. After 9/11, he returned to Afghanistan where he met separately with Bin Laden, Zawahiri and spokesman Abu Ghaith. KSM worked closely with al-Hawsawi. The fact that the anthrax spray drying documents were on that computer, however, and that Al-Hawsawi had worked for Al Sahab in Kandahar in 2000, serves to suggest that the undated documents predated 9/11, particularly given that extremely virulent anthrax was later found in Kandahar. Al-Hawawi in turn worked providing logistical support for the hijackers with Aafia Siddiqui’s husband-to-be, KSM’s nephew Al-Baluchi, in the UAE in the summer of 2001. Al-Balucchi, who married Aafia Siddiqui in a courtyard ceremony in 2003, discussed Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab with Aafia Siddiqui and discussed whether the head of the lab was up to the job.
Hawsawi worked as a financial manager for Bin Laden when he was in Sudan. Egyptian Islamic Jihad shura leader Mahjoub was Bin Laden’s farm manager in Sudan. Mahjoub was the subject of the anthrax threat in January 2001 in Canada, upon announcement of his bail hearing. The day after Mahjoub’s bail was denied on October 5, 2001, the potent stuff was sent to US Senators Daschle and Leahy. The CIA and FBI should have long ago considered who else knew Mahjoub from Sudan. Amerithrax represents the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the United States.
The Washington Post explained that “What the documents and debriefings show, the first official said, is that “KSM was involved in anthrax production, and [knew] quite a bit about it.” Barton Gellman in the Post explained that Al Qaeda had recruited competent scientists, including a Pakistani microbiologist who the officials declined to name. “The documents describe specific timelines for producing biochemical weapons and include a bar graph depicting the parallel processes that must take place between Days 1 and 31 of manufacture. Included are inventories of equipment and indications of readiness to grow seed stocks of pathogen in nutrient baths and then dry the resulting liquid slurry into a form suitable for aerosol dispersal.” The documents are undated and unsigned and cryptic about essential details.
In addition to establishing him as paymaster for the hijackers, Al-Hawsawi’s computer disks reportedly also included lists of contributors worldwide, to include bank account numbers and names of organizations that have helped finance terror attacks. In press accounts, one unnamed government official confirmed that the information has yielded the identities of about a dozen suspected terrorists in the US. In his substituted testimony in the Moussaoui case, Al-Hawsawi says he became part of Al Qaeda’s media committee in Afghanistan in about July 2000. Hawsawi lived at the media office. For about 4-5 months in 2000, Hawsawi worked as a secretary on al Qaeda’s media committee. Hawsawi’s role “was to copy compact discs and reprint articles for the brothers at the guesthouse in Qandahar. After 2000, Hawsawi worked at the direction of Sheikh Mohammed, transferring funds, and procuring goods.” KSM joined the committee in February 2001.
The first time that Hawsawi was asked to become involved in operational activities was about March 2001, when he took his second trip to the UAE. Although Sheikh Mohammed did not use the word “operation,” Sheikh Mohammed told Hawsawi that he would be purchasing items, receiving and possibly sending money, and possibly meeting individuals whom Hawsawi would contact or who would contact him.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed told Hawsawi that Hawsawi would be in contact with individuals called ‘Abd Al-Rahman (Muhammad Atta) and the “Doctor” (Nawaf al-Hazmi). Atta called Hawsawi four times while in the US. Hawsawi says he was never in contact with Hani or Nawaf while in the US. On September 9, Ramzi bin Shibh told him the date of the planned operation and urged that he return to Pakistan. He flew out on 9/11 and after a night in Karachi, flew on to Quetta. Hawsawi stated repeatedly that he never conducted any activity of any type with or on behalf of Moussaoui and had no knowledge of who made Moussaoui’s travel arrangements.
Documents, however, reportedly show that al-Hawsawi worked with the Dublin cell to finance Moussaoui’s international travel. Hamid Aich was an EIJ operative there who once had lived with Ressam, the so-called millennium bomber, in Canada. The indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui named al-Hawsawi as an unindicted co-conspirator. Moussaoui unsuccessfully tried to call KSM and Hawsawi as witnessses.
Microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi had spoken with Bin Laden’s sheik about helping with Moussaoui’s defense.
Hawsawi has said that it was Qahtani who was to have been “the 20th hijacker” rather than Moussaoui. Qahtani, Hawsawi said, had trained extensively to be one of the “muscle hijackers.” Atta went to pick Qahtani up at the Orlando airport but immigration officials turned Qahtani away. Al-Hawsawi said he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaeda guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, sometime in the first half of 2001, but was not introduced to him and had not conducted any operations with him. At Moussaoui’s trial, the government pointed to FAA intelligence reports from the late 1990s and 2000 that noted that a hijacked airliner could be flown into a building or national landmark in the U.S. Such an attack was viewed “as an option of last resort” given the motive of the attack was to free blind sheik Abdel Rahman. Flying a plane into a building would afford little time to negotiate.
Zacarias Moussaou was in Karachi with anthrax lab tech Yazid Sufaat on February 3, 2001 when they bought air tickets through a local travel agency for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They left on a flight for KL on February 8, 2001. Moussaoui began at the Norman, Oklahoma flight school on February 26, 2001. KSM says that Moussaoui’s inquiries about cropdusters may have related to Hambali and Sufaat’s work with anthrax.
Another reason not to overlook Hawsawi’s possible role in an anthrax operation is his contact with al-Marri. Al-Marri, who entered the country on September 10, 2001, was researching chemicals in connection with a “second wave.” Al-Marri was also drafting emails to KSM. Although al-Marri denies being in contact with Hawsawi, phone records show otherwise. E-mail evidence also confirms messages drafted by al-Marri to KSM. An article by Susan Schmidt in the Washington Post on al-Marri notes that al-Marri picked up $13,000 in cash from al-Hawsawi. Al-Marri made the mistake of opening the briefcase containing the money in bundles and peeling off a few hundred dollars to pay his bail after being stopped on a traffic charge a couple days after 9/11.
In applying to school, he would not provide a home address or sign the application. “He was a very pugnacious individual,” the administrator told the Post. He was calling students. A number of people reported him as acting suspicious in the heightened sensibilities after 9/11. One student from whom he sought help was the local mosque imam, graduate student Jaloud. Jaloud curiously reports that he did not remember him as the fellow he had taken to the airport 90 minutes away in the summer of 2000, or the fellow he had argued about shipping the computer, or the fellow who had then put him to the expense of shipping the computer to Washington. Jaloud reports when questioned in 2005, he told the Saudis that he did not remember the address in Washington where he sent the computer.
When people claim to not remember what they would remember, they sometimes are lying.
DXer said
2003 Capture Of Hambali And Sufaat’s Assistants And The Reported Seizure Of “Extremely Virulent” (But Unweaponized) Anthrax
Muklis Yunos was arrested on May 25, 2003. Agents reportedly became suspicious when an ambulance pulled over and delivered Yunos, who was wearing a plaster cast on a leg as part of a disguise. According to other reports, he was also wearing facial bandages. An Egyptian missionary accompanying him, Al Gabre Mahmud, was apparently on an international terrorist watchlist. Authorities became suspicious when the two went to the wrong gate (and did not go to the one typically used for medical transport). The pair then objected when officials wanted to remove some of the mummy-like bandages. AP reported that a police intelligence dossier describes him as “a fanatic of the extreme fundamentalist movement” who received training in an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, including lessons on the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. He is described as about five foot three and with the features of a Japanese-Korean. According to one report, Yunos initially was cooperating with authorities over a bucket of spicy Kentucky Fried Chicken, complaining about the arrogance and unhelpfulness of MILF leadership.
Hambali was arrested in mid-August 2003 in Thailand. Hambali had fled Malaysia with his wife, Lee, not long after 9/11. His wife and her sister had studied at the school of Bashir, JI’s religious leader. He told his mother they were moving to Thailand. Hambali worked and his wife studied Arabic. Over the next two years, he also spent time in Cambodia and Myanmar.
Soft-spoken and polite, the neighbors said he kept to himself in the apartment building.
His wife, an ethnic Chinese Malaysian who converted to Islam, was also detained. After being shipped to Jordan, where he was harshly interrogated, Hambali eventually began providing information about Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program. He told interrogators that the terror network had what author Ron Suskind describes as an “extremely virulent” strain of anthrax before the September 11 attacks. In the autumn of 2003, Suskind claims, U.S. forces in Afghanistan found a sample of the virulent anthrax at a house in Kandahar. Pulitzer Prize winning author Ron Suskind writes: “One disclosure was particularly alarming: al Qaeda had, in fact produced high-grade anthrax.
Hambali, during interrogation, revealed its whereabouts in Afghanistan. The CIA soon descended on a house in Kandahar and discovered a small, extremely potent sample of the biological agent.”
Suskind wrote:
“Ever since the tense anthrax meeting with Cheney and Rice in December 2001, CIA and FBI had been focused on determining whether al Qaeda was involved in the anthrax letter attacks in 2001 and whether they could produce a lethal version that could be weaponized. The answer to the first was no; to the second, ‘probably not.’ Though the CIA had found remnants of a biological weapons facility — and blueprints for attempted production of anthrax — isolating a strain of virulent anthrax and reproducing it was viewed as beyond al Qaeda’s capabilities.”
Suskind continued:
“No more. The anthrax found in Kandahar was extremely virulent. What’s more, it was produced, according to the intelligence, in the months before 9/11. And it could be easily reproduced to create a quantity that could be readily weaponized.”
“Alarm bells rang in Washington. Al Qaeda, indeed, had the capabilities to produce a weapon of massive destructiveness, a weapon that would create widespread fear.
Based on the additional information being provided in 2003, authorities also captured two mid to low level technicians — an Egyptian and a Sudanese. President Bush has explained that these mid-to low level technicians were part of a Southeastern Asian based cell that was developing an anthrax attack on the United States.
In Fall of 2006, President Bush explained:
“KSM also provided vital information on al Qaeda’s efforts to obtain biological weapons. During questioning, KSM admitted that he had met three individuals involved in al Qaeda’s efforts to produce anthrax, a deadly biological agent — and he identified one of the individuals as Yazid. KSM apparently believed we already had this information, because Yazid had been captured and taken into foreign custody before KSM’s arrest. In fact we did not know about Yazid’s role in al Qaeda’s anthrax program.
Information from Yazid then helped lead to the capture of his two principal assistants in the anthrax program.”
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat left for Pakistan/Afghanistan and his whereabouts are unknown.
Let’s revisit what the FBI has known since 2002:
In January 2000, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi, two hijackers aboard the jet that hit the Pentagon, met with other al-Qaeda members in a condominium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The operatives included a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. That attack killed 17 sailors.
The meeting was hosted by Sufaat, a member of the militant Muslim group Jemaah Islamiah, which U.S. officials say is linked to Osama bin Laden. Soon after the meeting, Al-Midhar and Alhamzi entered the USA and enrolled at a flight school in San Diego.
In October 2000, Sufaat met with Moussaoui in the same condominium. Law enforcement officials allege that he gave Moussaoui papers identifying Moussaoui as a ‘marketing consultant’ for Infocus Tech, a Malaysian company. The papers were signed by ‘Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director.’ (Infocus Tech officials say Moussaoui never worked for the company.) Sufaat agreed to pay Moussaoui $2,500 a month and $35,000 up front, U.S. authorities say. Moussaoui arrived in the USA in February 2001 and deposited $32,000 in a bank in Norman, Okla. He attended flight schools in Norman and in Minnesota before he was arrested on immigration charges in August. FBI agents found the papers that mentioned Infocus Tech in Moussaoui’s apartment in Minneapolis.
Sufaat, 37, was arrested Dec. 9 as he returned to Kuala Lumpur from Afghanistan, where authorities say he fought against the U.S.-led coalition. He is one of 23 suspected al-Qaeda operatives who have been detained in Malaysia.
Sufaat bought the explosives through a company he owned called Green Laboratory Medicine, according to law enforcement sources.
The email he had Moussaoui using was greenlabusa@…
Prosecutor Rachel Lieber seized on the fact that a newsletter in Dr. Ivins’ home mentioned a case involving a Greendale baptist school as Dr. Ivins’ reason for using the return address.
Amerithrax represents the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the United States.
DXer said
After being released the week of December 10, 2008, Yazid promptly went to Pakistan/Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda’s anthrax scientist
By Thomas JoscelynDecember 12, 2008
This article was originally published at The Weekly Standard.
Yazid Sufaat.
The government of Malaysia made a curious announcement this week: Yazid Sufaat, a known al Qaeda operative, and four other alleged terrorists have been released from jail. It is not clear why Malaysian authorities thought it was time to set them free. Malaysia’s home minister, Syed Hamid Albar, simply declared, “They are no longer a threat but they will be watched closely.”
We can only hope.
Sufaat’s newfound freedom is troubling. According to the 9-11 Commission, four top al Qaeda operatives stayed at Sufaat’s apartment in Malaysia in January of 2000. The al Qaeda terrorists were in Malaysia for an important planning meeting, during which they discussed the upcoming attack on the USS Cole and details of the 9/11 operation. Shortly after the meeting, al Qaeda terrorists Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, both of whom stayed at Sufaat’s apartment, left for California. Twenty months later, al Mihdhar and al Hazmi were part of the team responsible for hijacking American Airlines Flight 77 and crashing it into the Pentagon.
Al Mihdhar and al Hazmi were not the only 9/11 plotters to receive Sufaat’s hospitality. In the fall of 2000, Sufaat played host to convicted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui during his visit to Malaysia. Moussaoui was scheduled to take part in the September 11 attacks, or a similar follow-on plot, but was detained by the FBI in August of 2001.
Thus, Sufaat assisted al Qaeda members during a crucial juncture in their operational planning for the 9/11 attacks.
And that is not all Sufaat accomplished during his terrorist career. According to the 9/11 Commission, Sufaat is guilty of more.
At some point, a top al Qaeda operative named Hambali, who is currently a high-value detainee being held at Guantanamo, introduced Sufaat to al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al Zawahiri. Zawahiri wanted to jumpstart al Qaeda’s program for developing anthrax and asked Hambali for assistance in finding a suitable scientist. Sufaat fit the bill. In 1987, he graduated from California State University at Sacramento with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and a minor in chemistry. In 2001, Sufaat put his degree to work for al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission found that he spent “several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he helped set up near the Kandahar airport,” which was then a stronghold for Osama bin Laden.
It was for good reasons, then, that Malaysian authorities detained Sufaat in December 2001. And there are good reasons to worry now that he has been freed. We must now rely upon the Malaysian government to make sure the freed Sufaat does not find his way back into al Qaeda’s ranks.
Sufaat’s story is not entirely unique, however. The U.S. government is relying on dozens of foreign governments to monitor both known and suspected terrorists who were once detained. For instance, the United States has transferred or released approximately 550 suspects from Guantanamo. While surely some of these men were innocents wrongly swept up in the fog of war, many of them were in fact part of the global terror network. In fact, some of them are well-acquainted with Sufaat’s attempts to develop anthrax for al Qaeda.
Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/al_qaedas_anthrax_sc.php#ixzz1k3HPwt5V
DXer said
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the former top intelligence official at the Energy Department, discusses Rauf and Sufaat in 2010.
What lab did Rauf visit on his quest for anthrax for Ayman Zawahiri? Did he visit the BL-3 lab at Porton Down? Was that the second lab he visited?
http://www.cnas.org/node/4262
Source: Congressional Quarterly
Journalist: Matt Korade
Original Post: Don’t count out Al-Qaeda, experts say
Type: Blog Post
March 24, 2010 — Reports that allied attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region have destroyed al Qaeda’s ability to conduct complex attacks might be premature, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official.
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the former top intelligence official at the Energy Department, told a group of congressional staff members on Friday that the terrorist group’s pursuit of bioweapons leads him to believe it could remain capable of complex attacks despite its recent setbacks. His remarks, delivered during a Center for a New American Security forum, came in response to comments CIA Director Leon Panetta made in The Washington Post Wednesday, which said relentless attacks against al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal region had left the organization without leadership.
Mowatt-Larssen said that, in 1999, while al Qaeda was planning the Sept. 11 attacks, its deputy chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was also using separate, redundant networks in an effort to acquire anthrax.
One of al Qaeda’s bioweapon networks was in Pakistan, headed by a nondescript, mid-level scientist named Rauf Ahmad — a man whom authorities found “by total accident,” said Mowatt-Larssen, who now serves as a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. However, he said the other network was far more ominous, run by U.S.-educated, Malaysian biochemist Yazid Sufaat, a member of a southeast Asian al Qaeda affiliate called Jemaah Islamiyah. Malaysian officials released Sufaat from prison in 2008.
“It seems the thrust of what al Qaeda was doing wasn’t even in Pakistan, or in what you call the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan],” Mowatt-Larssen said.
He differed with the mainstream view in the U.S. intelligence community that al Qaeda is far less capable of conducting sophisticated attacks than it was nine years ago.
“Just because that may be true, that al Qaeda is less capable and on the run, doesn’t mean they can’t find sanctuary . . . and carefully plan a major attack” with weapons of mass destruction, he said.
The compartmentalized nature of al Qaeda’s bioweapons efforts make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about the group’s current status, Mowatt-Larssen said.
“The No. 1 question is what happened to the bioweapons program?” he said. “Did it die? Did we neutralize it? And I’d just have to speculate there.”
DXer said
NEWSWEEK –
A Germ Warfare Guru Goes Free
Dec 16, 2008 7:00 PM EST
Why did Malaysia release Al Qaeda’s bioweapons expert?
A U.S.-trained Al Qaeda microbiologist has been released from jail by the Malaysian government, prompting alarm among American counterterrorism officials.
“This individual is considered dangerous,” said one official, referring to the recent decision to free Yazid Sufaat, a notorious Qaeda operative who once oversaw the group’s germ-warfare efforts. The official declined to be identified talking about sensitive information.
Safaat had been in Malaysian custody since December 2001, when he was arrested because of his alleged involvement with Jemaah Islamiah, a radical South Asian terror group closely linked with Al Qaeda. But two weeks ago, Malaysia’s interior minister, Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar, announced that Sufaat and five other detained Islamic militants were being freed because “they are no longer a threat and will no longer pose a threat to public order.” Albar added that Sufaat “has been rehabilitated and can return to society.”
Malaysia privately informed the Bush administration that its legal authority to detain Sufaat had expired but promised Washington that he would be kept under close observation, the U.S. official indicated. But counterterror officials here expressed doubt that Sufaat has abandoned his radical Qaeda views or his desire to attack the United States with biological weapons. They also point out that Sufaat played an assisting role in planning the 9/11 attacks. He hosted two of the hijackers along with two other veteran Al Qaeda operatives at a terror “summit” in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000.
The timing of Sufaat’s release was especially awkward for U.S. officials. The Qaeda scientist was freed on Dec. 4—the day after a congressionally mandated commission on weapons of mass destruction released a public report warning of the risk of a biological weapons attack in the next five years.
“There’s a troubling irony that this happened the day after our report,” said Bob Graham, the former Florida senator and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who served as co-chairman of the bioweapons panel. (In aninterview with NEWSWEEK the day the report was released, Graham said he was particularly concerned about “the degree of risk associated with a biological weapon … The ubiquitous nature of pathogens and the increasing lethality of both natural and synthetic pathogens led our commission to conclude it’s more likely that an attack will come biologically rather than nuclear.”)
The son of a rubber tapper, Sufaat studied at Malaysia’s prestigious Royal Military College and won a scholarship to California State University in Sacramento, where he earned a degree in biological sciences in 1987. Upon returning to Malaysia, he founded a profitable laboratory analysis company. Sometime in the early 1990s—reportedly at the insistence of his wife—he became increasingly devout. He began spending time with militant Islamic teachers and soon became a devoted and committed follower of Jemaah Islamiah and its radical leader, Hambali (he’s known by just the one name).
According to the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission report, in January 2000, two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, visited Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, for what amounted to a planning meeting for the September 2001 attacks. At Hambali’s request, Sufaat made his apartment available for the meeting. One of the other participants was Walid bin-Attash, known as Khallad, a Qaeda operative who planned the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. He was later captured and charged as a 9/11 co-conspirator. Khallad told U.S. interrogators that, while staying at Sufaat’s apartment, he and Alhazmi talked “about the possibility of hijacking planes and crashing them or holding passengers as hostages.”
Later in 2000, Sufaat hosted a visit to Kuala Lumpur by another figure linked to the 9/11 hijackers: Zacharias Moussaoui, the wayward and eccentric would-be terrorist from France who the US government claimed was going to be a 9/11 hijacker. Captured 9/11 participants subsequently said Moussaoui was considered too erratic by Al-Qaeda’s leaders to participate in the plot.
The 9/11 Commission report also details Sufaat’s efforts to make weapons for Al Qaeda. The terror group’s leaders sought Hambali’s help in finding a scientist to “take over” Al Qaeda’s biological-weapons program. Hambali introduced Sufaat to Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In 2001, the report says, Sufaat spent “several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for Al Qaeda in a laboratory” he helped set up near the Kandahar airport in Afghanistan.
The Malaysians’s release of Sufaat points up the difficulties the outgoing Bush admin
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Mark Hosenball joined Newsweek as an investigative correspondent in November 1993, covering a range of issues for the National Affairs department.