US prosecutors reveal strands of Osama's web of terrorism

The Straights Times

In court papers, the government shows how the Saudi dissident uses covert methods to conduct his operations and to keep in touch with his network.

NEW YORK -- United States federal prosecutors, in a series of little-noticed papers filed in court, have painted the most detailed picture yet of how Osama bin Laden directed what they said was a worldwide terrorism conspiracy.

Osama is the exiled Saudi financier, implicated in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa.

The papers depict an organisation that used international companies and a relief organisation as cover for its operations, obtained blank passports from the government of Sudan, recruited a network of people living in the US and communicated by fax, satellite phone and coded letters, often using not-so-veiled language.

In one letter between group members, for instance, prosecutors said Osama was referred to repeatedly by the code name "Mr Sam" or "O'Sam", and the group's members in Kenya were called "the fish people".

When the FBI questioned one Osama associate in Texas in 1997, a letter went out warning that the man had been confronted by "an opposition company called Food and Beverage Industry, based in the US".

This, prosecutors said, was a reference to the FBI.

"He was given an extensive interview," the letter read. "Give my regards to Sam and tell him to take extra precautions, because business competition is very fierce."

The government has been investigating Osama's operations for nearly five years.

It has charged him and 16 others with conspiring to attack Americans, specifically in the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, which left more than 200 dead and thousands injured.

Osama, who is said to be living in Afghanistan, remains a nebulous figure.

Until now, the authorities have revealed only snippets from the reams of documents seized from his associates and it remains hazy how much control he has over them and other followers around the world.

The indictments of Osama have offered few details about his organisation or his role in acts of terrorism, with which he has been charged.

But federal prosecutors were forced to show their hand recently, when lawyers for one of the defendants, Wadih el-Hage, challenged the US government's assertion that he was dangerous or likely to flee the country.

El-Hage was arrested in 1998, a year after Kenyan police and US investigators raided his Nairobi home and seized his personal papers and computer.

The US authorities tied him to the terrorist conspiracy and he has been held without bail ever.

Responding to pleas from el-Hage's lawyers for bail, prosecutors disclosed evidence in the US District Court in Manhattan that they said showed he was one of Osama's most trusted and dangerous aides, privy to his secrets and a personal courier of his instructions.

They said he met Osama in Afghanistan in early 1997 and took orders to his operatives in Kenya to "militarise" for the first time.

This led to the 1998 embassy attacks.

The revelation is the closest the government has come to offering evidence of Osama's direct complicity in the bombings.

The documents also show that Osama used a Kenyan charity, Mercy International Relief Agency, as a front for terrorist operations. -- New York Times