Author: John Follain and Nicholas
Rufford
Publication: The Times of India
- Internet Edition
Date: October 15, 2001
Secretly recorded tapes have revealed
plans by followers of Osama bin Laden for a chemical weapon attack in Europe
using a poisonous invisible gas that security sources say was cyanide.
A gang of terrorists active in Britain,
Germany and Italy plotted to use tins of tomatoes to? transport "a liquid
that suffocates people". The plan was foiled after a? Libyan at the centre
of the plot was arrested in Munich on Wednesday.
The evidence is the first that Bin
Laden's Al-Qaida organisation was? preparing to use weapons of mass destruction.
The tapes were made by Italian anti-terrorist police, who bugged an apartment
outside Milan that the gang thought was a safe house. The suspects discussed
getting 10 litres of the poison, enough to kill thousands if released indoors.
One theory is that the group planned
to spread the poison in an American government building in London or Rome.
A witness who trained in one of bin Laden's camps said he was instructed
how to put cyanide in a building's ventilation system.
The tins of tomatoes could have
been used to transport cyanide crystals before they were dissolved into
a liquid, which could then be dispersed through the ventilation ducts.
If large quantities were available, the vapour produced could kill many
occupants of a building within 10 minutes.
The transcripts are part of evidence
compiled by Stefano Dambruoso, an Italian prosecutor, against five suspected
members of the Salafist Group for Faith and Combat, a militant offshoot
of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), backed by Bin Laden. The five are in
custody in Milan. At least two had links to Britain.
Last Friday the US Treasury named
the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan, to which cell members were linked,
as "the most important base of al-Qaida in Europe". It said the institute
was used by bin Laden's organisation "as a station from which weapons,
men and money travel the whole world".
The clandestine recordings were
made in March and April, when gang members were becoming impatient to receive
instructions from bin Laden and to be told the target. They also reveal
claims that female followers of bin Laden were being trained as potential
suicide attackers.
The most chilling conversations
took place between Ben Heni Mohamed Lased, a 32-year-old Libyan arrested
in Munich last week, and Essid Sami Ben Khemais, 31, a Tunisian, believed
to be the leader of the Italian cell, who was arrested in Milan in April.
Khemais is believed to have met Mohammed Atta, one of the 19 hijackers
behind the American attacks.
Khemais and Lased spent a week in
an apartment near Milan to plan terrorist atrocities, unaware it was bugged.
Lased is heard trying to teach Khemais to conceal a bomb in a personal
cassette player, to which Khemais responds by asking about chemical weapons:
"I'd like to learn how to use the medicine, I'd like to see what effect
it has when someone breathes it in. The Libyan has the formula; he's a
chemistry professor."
Another activist said: "What's going
on -you are putting down your guns and taking up industrial products?"
Lased replied: "There's a liquid which is extremely efficient because it
suffocates people. Do you want to try it?" The other man said: "Yes, why
not. A few barrels."
In another conversation, Khemais
urges Lased to get in touch with "the sheikh", believed to be bin Laden,
about recruiting attackers. "Talk to the sheikh. I need two people who
I have already got in mind, the Libyan and the Kurd from London. What I
need is not an army but two people who have got a brain, training and nothing
to lose or to gain. They spread the gas and say goodbye. I only need a
barrel of 10 litres and a few documents. God is with us."
On the evening of March 9, Lased
confided: "Believe me, the sheikh is planning something. He has an objective
and he wants to realise it, just like he has achieved all his desires.
It's not a little thing." Predicting the success of bin Laden's terror
campaign, Lased said: "God loves us because Europe is now in our hands.
Now we are emigrant fighters, that's the task we've got to carry out with
honour. We have to be like snakes. We have to fight and then hide."
Lased also explains how to reach
bin Laden's training camps by obtaining a visa from Iran's London embassy,
ostensibly for visiting Mecca. "In Iran there is an organisation which
helps mujahideen brothers to cross the border. There's total collaboration
with the Iranians," he said.
Khemais talked about trips to Afghanistan
during which he saw bin Laden's weapons, including captured US cruise missiles
launched against the camps in 1998 but which failed to explode. "The Americans
are probably convinced that bombing the sheikh's training camps was a victory,
but the truth is it was a defeat. Most of the weapons didn't even explode
and they have enriched the? sheikh's arsenal," he claimed.
(The Sunday Times)
