Author: Larry Neumeister, Associated
Press Writer
Publication: The Associated Press
Date: October 11, 2001
New York, Oct 11, 2001 (AP) -Osama
bin Laden's chief deputy visited the United States at least twice in the
past decade to raise money for terrorism, according to federal court records.
Ayman al-Zawahiri made the trips
in the early 1990s to help raise funds for the Egyptian Islamic Jihad,
Ali Mohamed said on Oct. 20, 2000, as he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges
stemming from the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.
"I helped him to do this," Mohamed
told Judge Leonard B. Sand.
The sworn statement was highlighted
in a San Francisco Chronicle story Thursday detailing how two members of
a California terrorist cell had admitted bringing al- Zawahiri to the United
States to raise money for terrorism.
The newspaper said he traveled with
a stolen passport supplied by the two men and used a fake name. It said
he visited mosques in Santa Clara, Stockton and Sacramento, all in California,
during a nationwide fund-raising mission.
The Chronicle said he may have raised
as much as dlrs 500,000 in the United States, mostly donations from U.S.
Muslims who were told the money would support refugees of the Afghanistan
war with the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Al-Zawahiri, 50, was included in
a list of most wanted terrorists posted by the FBI this week in connection
with the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. A doctor by training,
al-Zawahiri is the alleged former head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which
merged in 1998 with bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Jihad had been linked
to terrorist activities dating to the assassination of Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat in 1981.
A U.S. citizen and former Army sergeant,
Mohamed once taught soldiers in the American special forces about Muslim
culture.
He said during his plea that he
became involved in the early 1980s with Egyptian Islamic Jihad and was
introduced to bin Laden's organization in the early 1990s.
He said he conducted military training
and taught basic explosives and intelligence to al-Qaida recruits in Afghanistan
in 1992.
"I taught my trainees how to create
cell structures that could be used for operations," he said.
Mohamed's testimony provided one
of the most direct links between bin Laden and the August 1998 bombings
that killed 231 people - 12 Americans and 219 Africans - at the embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania.
Mohamed said bin Laden in late 1993
asked him to conduct surveillance of American, British, French and Israeli
targets in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
He said his surveillance files and
photographs were reviewed by bin Laden, who "looked at the picture of the
American Embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber."
Mohamed also gave a glimpse of the
connections between organizations blamed for terrorism worldwide, saying
he was aware of contacts between al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad on one side,
and between Iran and Hezbollah on the other.
He said he arranged security for
a meeting in the Sudan between Hezbollah's chief and bin Laden. Hezbollah
provided explosives training for al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad, Mohamed said,
while Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons and used Hezbollah to supply
explosives that were disguised to look like rocks.
