Link between Saddam and New York attack, US claims
Thursday June 06 2002
US security services are investigating possible new links between Iraq and the September 11 attacks. They have identified a new candidate as being the possible mastermind of the atrocity.
He was named as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation and a blood relative of Ramzi Yousef, the key figure behind the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993.
The officials said they believed he was at large somewhere in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mohammed had previously been implicated in the thwarted attempt by Yousef and others to blow up 12 airliners above the Pacific Ocean in 1995 and there were suspicions that he was involved in the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
However, it had not been known for sure that he was involved with al-Qa'ida, let alone at such a high level.
Some hawks in the Bush administration anxious to launch a military invasion of Iraq believe that Yousef is in fact an Iraqi agent and that the man ultimately responsible for many of the terror plots of the past decade is Saddam Hussein.
The new information, suggesting that Mohammed was deeply involved in both the operational and financial planning of the September 11 attacks, came largely from captured al-Qa'ida members including Abu Zubeida, one of Osama bin Laden's closest lieutenants. ( Independent News Service)
- Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
