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U.S.
/ British Military Buildup
Forces
are being deployed throughout the Middle East and areas surrounding
Afghanistan in a much broader scale than has been acknowledged
by the Pentagon.
These
military forces are being prepared for the possibility of contingencies
to react to events in several countries if necessary and to
prevent Iraq from launching an attack on its neighbors due to
the shift in U.S. focus from Iraq to the terrorist threats in
Afghanistan.
There
are now four aircraft carrier battle groups in the Gulf, Arabian
Sea and Indian Ocean. They consist of three US carriers, USS
Enterprise, USS Vinson and USS Theodore Roosevelt, and one Royal
Navy carrier, HMS Illustrious.
There
are over 500 aircraft and a thus far classified number of troops
in the region.
Source:
- The Times
[link inactive]
Key
Link of Terrorists to Bin Laden
Excerpt
from an article describing part of the money trail which connects
the terrorist mass suiciders / mass murderers to bin Laden and
al-Qaida:
- US
investigators believe they have found the "smoking gun"
linking Osama bin Laden to the September 11 terrorist attacks,
with the discovery of financial evidence showing money transfers
between the hijackers and a Bin Laden aide in the United Arab
Emirates.
- The
man at the centre of the financial web is believed to be Sheikh
Saeed, also known as Mustafa Mohamed Ahmad, who worked as
a financial manager for Bin Laden when the Saudi exile was
based in Sudan, and is still a trusted paymaster in Bin Laden's
al-Qaida organisation.
- Money
transfers have been traced to Florida on September 8 and 9,
from an account under Ahmad's name in Dubai to Mohamed Atta,
the ringleader among the 19 hijackers who took part in the
attacks on New York and Washington.
- Atta
and other hijackers sent money back to an account under the
same name before their suicide mission. The money is presumed
to be unused "change" from the operational fund,
which investigators say stretched to about $500,000.
- The
return of unused funds by the hijackers is a trademark of
the al-Qaida organisation, which has been prepared to pay
large sums of money on big operations, but which is extraordinarily
stingy over the expenses of its suicide bombers.
- The
UAE central bank has ordered the freezing of all accounts
under Ahmad's name as well as accounts linked to 25 other
people and organisations named by the US Treasury last week
as suspected elements in al-Qaida.
Source:
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Shocking
Testimony of Former Taliban Torturer
Excerpts
from a testimony of a former member of the Afghanistan Taliban
secret police who also spent time as a bodyguard of the leader
of the Taliban, Mullah Omar:
-
- - begin excerpts - - -
In
an astonishing interview with Christina Lamb, the Afghan leader's
former bodyguard reveals the full brutality of the fundamentalist
regime sheltering Osama bin Laden
"YOU
must become so notorious for bad things that when you come into
an area people will tremble in their sandals. Anyone can do
beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways
of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten even crows
from their nests and if the person survives he will never again
have a night's sleep."
These
were the instructions of the commandant of the Afghan secret
police to his new recruits. For more than three years one of
those recruits, Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani, ruthlessly carried
out his orders. But sickened
by the atrocities that he was forced to commit, last week he
defected to Pakistan, joining a growing number of Taliban officials
who are escaping across the border.
In
an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, he reveals for the
first time the full horror of what has been happening in the
name of religion in Afghanistan.
...
"Like
many people, I did not become a Talib by choice," he explained.
"In early 1998 I was working as an accountant here in Quetta
when I heard that my grandfather - who
was 85 - had been arrested by the Taliban in Kandahar and was
being badly beaten. They would only release him if he provided
a member of his family as a conscript, so I had to go."
Mr
Hassani at first was impressed by the Taliban. "It had
been a crazy situation after the Russians left, the country
was divided by warring groups all fighting each other. In
Kandahar warlords were selling everything, kidnapping young
girls and boys, robbing people, and the Taliban seemed like
good people who brought law and order."
So
he became a Taliban "volunteer", assigned to the secret
police.
...
At
first, Mr Hassani's job was to patrol the streets at night looking
for thieves and signs of subversion. However, as the Taliban
leadership began issuing more and more extreme edicts, his duties
changed.
Instead
of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed
to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or, bizarrely,
keeping caged birds. Men
without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any woman
who dared venture outside her house. Even owning a kite became
a criminal offence.
The
state of terror spread by the Taliban was so pervasive that
it began to seem as if the whole country was spying on each
other. "As we drove around at night with our guns, local
people would come to us and say there's someone watching a video
in this house or some men playing cards in that house,"
he said.
"Basically
any form of pleasure was outlawed," Mr Hassani said, "and
if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them
with staves soaked in water - like a knife cutting through meat
- until the room
ran with their blood or their spines snapped. Then we would
leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with insects
until they died.
"We
always tried to do different things: we would put some of them
standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down with
their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others
and nail them to posts like crucifixions.
"Sometimes
we would throw bread to them to make them crawl. Then I would
write the report to our commanding officer so he could see how
innovative we had been."
...
After
Kandahar, he was put in charge of secret police cells in the
towns of Ghazni and then Herat, a beautiful Persian city in
western Afghanistan that had suffered greatly during the Soviet
occupation and had been one of the last places to fall to the
Taliban.
Herat
had always been a relatively liberal place where women would
dance at weddings and many girls went to school - but the Taliban
were determined to put an end to all that. Mr Hassani and his
men were told to
be particularly cruel to Heratis.
It
was his experience of that cruelty that made Mr Hassani determined
to let the world know what was happening in Afghanistan. "Maybe
the worst thing I saw," he said, "was a man beaten
so much, such a pulp of skin and blood, that it was impossible
to tell whether he had clothes on or not. Every time he
fell unconscious, we rubbed salt into his wounds to make him
scream."
"Nowhere
else in the world has such barbarity and cruelty as in Afghanistan.
At that time I swore an oath that I will devote myself to the
Afghan people and telling the world what is happening."
Before
he could escape, however, because he comes from the same tribe,
he spent time as a bodyguard for Mullah Omar, the reclusive
spiritual leader of the Taliban.
"He's
medium height, slightly fat, with an artificial green eye which
doesn't move, and he would sit on a bed issuing instructions
and giving people dollars from a tin trunk," said Mr Hassani.
"He doesn't say much, which is just as well as he's a very
stupid man. He knows only how to write his name `Omar' and sign
it.
...
He
became convinced that the Taliban were not really in control.
"We laughed when we heard the Americans asking Mullah Omar
to hand over Osama bin Laden," he said. "The Americans
are crazy. It is Osama bin Laden who can hand over Mullah Omar
- not the other way round."
...
He
was told that if he died while fighting under the white flag
of the Taliban, he and his family would go to paradise. The
soldiers were given blank marriage certificates signed by a
mullah and were encouraged to "take wives" during
battle, basically a licence to rape.
...
"I
think many in the Taliban would like to escape. The country
is starving and joining is the only way to get food and keep
your land. Otherwise there is a lot of hatred. I hate both what
it does and what it turned me into."
-
- - end of excerpts - - -
Source:
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