Osama America's latest punching bag

By Kathy Gannon

The Times of India

JALALABAD: The passenger, indistinguishable from his fellows in beard, turban and baggy pants, was whisked through security at Jalalabad airport on the strength of a flimsy rectangle of cardboard.

The pass identified the holder simply as ``Mr Mauritania'' and made clear he was not to be questioned or detained. ``It was a very important card. It was like cardboard and had a Taliban stamp on it,'' recalled the airport manager, Abdullah.

It was good Mauritania had the pass. He was carrying eight pistols, six satellite phones and three suitcases stuffed with riyals, the Saudi currency, said Abdullah, who like many Afghans uses just one name. Mauritania is believed by international authorities to be a key lieutenant of Osama bin Laden.

But at the shabby, single-runway airport here, Mauritania is simply the most prominent traveler among the many hundreds wearing paths to the Afghan camps where Bin Laden's Al Qaida group trains terrorists. Investigators believe Al Qaida-trained terrorists are behind two recent foiled bomb plots --in the US and Jordan --as well as the 1998 attacks on two US embassies in Africa that killed 224 people and the 1996 bomb that killed 19 American airmen in Saudi Arabia.

Authorities emphasize that no evidence links Bin Laden directly to the plots. Yet an investigation that encircles the globe keeps pointing to Afghanistan and the wealthy Saudi renegade. On Tuesday, Jordanian officials told reporters the two thwarted bomb plots were connected and that interrogation of 14 suspects in Jordan helped US authorities apprehend alleged conspirators in Washington state, New York and Canada.

Ahmed Ressam, 32, was stopped December 14 trying to enter Port Angeles, Washington, by ferry from British Columbia in a car packed with bomb-making materials. Ressam and three other young Algerians are now in American and Canadian jails for allegedly plotting to blow up unidentified US targets around New Year's Day.

The suspects have many compatriots among the new arrivals flocking to Afghan training camps. In three months, Abdullah said, 15 Algerians have flown into Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, in eastern Afghanistan, where Afghan sources say Al Qaida --Arabic for ``the base'' --runs at least three camps.

The Algerians came in groups of two and three, Abdullah said, and all carried satchels of US dollars. They, too, flashed Taliban identity passes -- ``but just pieces of paper...not special like Mr Mauritania,'' the airport manager said. At the camps, Bin Laden's trainees learn to use explosives, heavy weapons, light arms and chemical weapons, a Taliban commander said.

``Everywhere there is training,'' he said, scrubbing his teeth with a frayed piece of wood as he spoke. ``The Arabs are coming and going. There is a big house in Jalalabad where they get their documents. I saw it myself.''

A young Afghan who trained this winter at a camp in mountainous Kunar province, in northeastern Afghanistan, said he saw men from Chechnya, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Cuba and North Korea. The North Korean, he said, had brought chemical weapons, which were stored in caves and in the dozens of sunbaked mud-and- stone houses.

``Myself I saw 10 satellite dishes,'' said the Afghan, who also did not want his name used. ``There were doctors, engineers, chemical engineers... Everyone was speaking different languages,'' among them French, English, Persian, Arabic and Pashto, the main language of the Taliban.

The apparent links between the Afghanistan camps and the alleged bomb plots are many. For three weeks before his arrest, Ressam shared a motel room in Vancouver, British Columbia, with Abdelmajid Dahoumane, another 32-year-old Algerian who is now a fugitive. Ressam and Dahoumane trained at Bin Laden camps before traveling to Canada, said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief working as a security consultant in McLean, Virginia.

Dahoumane ``is very close to Osama,'' said Janullah, an Afghan journalist with Wahadat, a newspaper in northwestern Pakistan. Others entangled in the alleged Ressam plot include: Abdel Ghani Meskini, 31, an Algerian whose Brooklyn, New York, phone number was found in Ressam's pocket, arrested December 30.

Janullah says Meskini was known as Bola Imam while training in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Mokhtar Haouari, 31, Meskini's childhood friend, arrested January 10 in Montreal. At his bail hearing, Canadian investigators said Haouari sent Meskini to Seattle to help Ressam, then, after Ressam's arrest, ordered Meskini back to New York to destroy evidence of his trip and change phone numbers.

Mohambedou Ould Slahi, native of Mauritania and brother- in-law of Mauritania. Worked with Haouari in Montreal before leaving in January when investigators closed in. Detained and questioned in Senegal, then Mauritania, at request of US investigators, based on his activities in Canada and frequent telephone calls to Mr Mauritania; released February 19.

Abdel Hakim Tizegha, 29, Algerian arrested Christmas Eve at Blaine, Washington, for immigration violations; linked to Meskini through telephone records. US intelligence and law enforcement agents sharply disagree whether the highly suggestive evidence of links between Bin Laden and the plotters arrested in the US bomb plot amounts to proof.(AP)