'Iraq knew of al-Qaeda attacks'
2002-09-05 11:34
New York - A lawsuit filed on Wednesday alleges Iraq knew Osama bin Laden was targeting the Pentagon and New York City prior to September 11, and had sponsored terrorists to avenge its defeat in the Gulf War.
"Since Iraq could not defeat the US military, it resorted to
terror attacks on US citizens," according to the lawsuit filed in US District Court in Manhattan seeking more than US$1 trillion
in damages.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 1 400 victims of the September 11 attacks and their families, names bin Laden, al-Qaeda and Iraq as defendants.
Brought by Kreindler & Kreindler, a Manhattan law firm
specialising in aviation disaster litigation, the lawsuit tries to draw the kind of strong link between Iraq and terrorism that the US government has never alleged in public court actions.
The lawsuit relies in part on a newspaper article published in
Iraq on July 21, 2001, in the Iraqi city of Al Nasiriyah, 297 kilometres southwest of Baghdad.
The firm provided The Associated Press with a copy of the article written in Arabic, along with its own English translation.
The lawsuit said a columnist writing under the byline Naeem Abd
Muhalhal described bin Laden thinking "seriously, with the
seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert, about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House".
The firm alleged that Muhalhal writes a regular column for the
weekly newspaper in which the article appeared, and that one former associate claimed the writer had been connected with Iraqi
intelligence since the early 1980s.
It said Muhalhal was praised by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
in the same September 1, 2001, issue for his "documentation of
important events and heroic deeds that proud Iraqis have
accomplished".
The columnist allegedly wrote that bin Laden, described as a
revolutionary, was "insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting", a reference to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre, the law firm said.
Jim Kreindler, a lawyer for the firm, said the firm believes
Muhalhal had advance knowledge of al-Qaida's specific targets on
September 11, and that "Iraqi officials were aware of plans to attack American landmarks".
The lawsuit said there have been numerous meetings between Iraqi
intelligence agents and high-ranking al-Qaeda terrorists to plan
terror attacks.
It said one of those meetings occurred in 1992 when bin Laden's
chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose whereabouts are now unknown, met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Baghdad over several days.
An Iraqi serving with the Taliban who fled Afghanistan in the
fall of 2001 and was captured in Kurdistan has corroborated the
meeting, and confirmed that Iraqi contacts with al-Qaeda began in
1992, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit noted that Ramzi Yousef arrived in New York on September 1, 1992, with an Iraqi passport to begin planning the trade centre bombing on February 26, 1993. The blast killed six people and injured more than 1 000 others.
The lawsuit alleged that Yousef was an Iraqi intelligence agent
who traveled to the United States using travel documents forged in Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation of that country in 1991.
Yousef was eventually convicted in the trade centre bombing and
a plot to blow up a dozen airliners over the Far East in 1995. He
is serving a life prison term. - Sapa-AP
- SAPA