El País (Translation T&P):
The clue that links definitely March 11th terror attacks with Al-Qaeda appeared 4 yearsa go, although it is here and now, in this article, when it will be published for the first time. It happened in a remote place located on North-West Pakistan, near Afghanistan’s frontier. During the night of Nov 30th to Dec 1st, 2005, a missile fell in a building located in a little village near Miran Shah, North Waziristan’s capital. This is one of the seven agencies belonging to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where the main AQ leaders and an important number of its members established between the last months of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, after losing Afghan sanctuary where they have been at their leisure till the US military intervention just weeks after Sept. 11th.
The missile I am referring to, was launched from one of those unmanned drones that US CIA uses since some time ago to kill AQ leaders whose presence is detected in the area. North Waziristan is, on the other hand, the place where 2004 and 2005, AQ had to place their operatives and the terrorist training camps, after fleeing from the invasion that the Pakistani Army made in South Waziristan between spring and autumn 2004. In their North Waziristan’s base, AQ has been profiting from the protection given by talibanised sectors of the native Pashtun tribes, in this case of Utmanzai Wazir and Dawr.
As a consequence of the mentioned attack, 5 individuals were killed. One of them was Hamza Rabia, then AQ external operations’ chief and the last responsible of the planning of terrorist attacks in North America and Europe. In the beginning of 2002, Osama Bin Laden had decided to divide in two AQ’s operative structure. The other chief, the one related to internal operations, was dedicated to Afghanistan and Pakistan in full. Its chief was Mustapha al Uzayti, widely known as Abu Faraj al Libi. The external operations’ leadership was given then to Sept 11th’s mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But he was arrested in Rawalpindi on March 2003. From that moment on, Abu Faraj Al Libi also implicated himself on external operations, whose leadership was given to the Egiptian Hamza Rabia. They worked closely from that moment on.
But what has this to do with March 11th bombings? Well, one of those other 4 individuals who were killed with Hamza Rabia in the referred selective targeting of AQ operatives, was identified thanks to foreign intelligence services as Amer Azizi. His identification was confirmed by some facts dicovered later in Pakistan and the United Kingdom to which I will not refer on the present article. Amer Azizi, a Moroccan national, had been a very outstanding member of the AQ cell stablished in Spain in the mid 90s, whose leader was Imad Eddine Barakat Yarkas, aka Abu Dahdah, who recruited him and sent him to a training camp in Afghanistan. He was judged in absence on terrorism charges related to that cell, because he fled successfully from Spain after the police operation that closed it definitely on Nov. 2001. This happened when it was discovered that Abu Dahdah’s cell was directly linked to another European cell, this time based in Hamburg, directly linked with Sept. 11th bombings.
Amer Azizi was mentioned in, at least, 141 of the 241 books related to the policial and judicial investigation carried on by National Court after March 11th bombings. His name also appears in 8 of the 30 separate processes related to March 11th bombings, that completed its investigation. Considering them in full, these references underline, on the one hand, that there were very closed links between individuals who carried on leading roles in the preparation and later development of the local terrorist plot which prepared and placed the bombs that exploded in the 4 Atocha trains. And on the other hand, they reveal the relations Amer Azizi had with North-African organizations, which are now inside global terrorism nets, which he used to reach relevant positions in the closed circle of AQ’s leadership.
It was precisely Amer Azizi, when he returned from Afghanistan on the summer of 2001, who recruited Mustapha Maymouni, also a Moroccan national, who in 2002 created the red core which perpetrated March 11th bombings. Another Moroccan nationals, Driss Chebli, and Serhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, The Tunisian, already Mustapha’s brother-in-law, ended by being named leaders of that net when Maymouni was arrested temporarily on Morocco on Feb. 2003. When Driss Chebli was also arrested 4 months later, accused of being part of Abu Dahdah’s cell, The Tunisian became the local leader of the March 11th terrorists. Well, The Tunisian was also recruited by Amer Azizi. As the indictment 20/2004 uncovers, a protected witness maintained that they communicated back in 2002 and 2003 by e-mail. That same investigation shows the links of Amer Azizi with other well-known material authors of Madrid’s bombings, as Jamal Zougam or the fugitive Said Berraj.
Amer Azizi’s links with North-African entities belonging to AQ’s net were consolidated during his time in Afghanistan, because the training camp in which he spent time there, named Martyr Abu Yahyia, was one the Lybian Fighting Islamic Group’s (LFIG) main facilities. There, both members of LFIG and of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (MFCG) were indoctrinated and trained, after both organizations decided in the late 90s to coordinate their activities. It was there also that Amer Azizi met Abdulatif Mourafik, aka Malek the Andalousian, a member of LIFG. As a result of his stay there and of the contacts he maintained, Amer Azizi became integrated into the LFIG, but with strong ties with MIFG or even being an operative of both groups.
It is now then that the meeting held on Feb 2002 in Istambul by delegates from LFIG, MICG and from a Tunisian similar organization, some of whose leading operatives have had a relationship with Abu Dahdah’s cell, acquires an special meaning. They agreed then to perpetrate Jihadi acts in their countries of origin or in those they were living then. About that meeting and the strategic decision adopted in it, there is an intelligence note inside indictment 20/2004. The facts are the Casablanca attacks happened on May 2003, and those of Madrid on March 2004, and that both plots were deeply connected. Moreover, the already mentioned Malek the Andalousian was the one who entrusted Mustapha el Maynouni, the one who began March 11th bombings’ net, to build a cell to plot a terrorist attack in Morocco afterwards.
Even if what happened in Atocha trains continues to be presented as an example of what an independent cell, only integrated by auto-radicalised Muslim immigrants, can do, evidence suggests a different interpretation of its authors, leadership and strategy. In the March 11th bombings’ execution, there were some criminals who were just common offenders and it’s very reasonable to consider that some members from LIFG took part. But that’s not all. The close relationship between those who had important roles in March 11th plots and Amer Azizi, who in 2004 had an key post in the external operations’ AQ leadership, as I have mentioned in this article, obliges us not to look to a Madrid’s quarter, not even to the Maghreb, when we ask ourselves where the March 11th plot was approved, but to North Waziristan.
Thanks to Barcepundit for the tip.
So in the end it was not Iraqi war what was linked to March 11th bombings, but Afghan NATO operation which began only some weeks after Sept 11 attacks, while Iraqi military intervention began in 2003. Zapatero took back the troops shortly after he won the March 14th elections because he didn’t want Spain to be an AQ’s target. But if we read carefully this article, we see tht the same groups that plotted March 11th bombings, had reunited in the now Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and had kidnapped 3 Spanish and a French national, who were volunteers in Mali. At the same time, they have mentioned Islamist prisoners in Spain in the same press release where they announced the kidnappings. In fact, Spain has been a recruitment and funding area traditionally since the 90s, after France, and the wider movement this terrorist group belongs to, the Salafists, has an important net to provide both recruits and money in really big quantities, although officials can only guess it, because hawala is employed to send it (around 1 million euros on recent years, according to experts).
The interesting thing is that the kidnapping has taken place around the same time as Obama announced the US troops’s surge for Afghanistan. Just today Spanish Defense Minister Chacón has announced that Spain will send 511 more soldiers to Afghanistan. There are people who are beginning to write on Internet forums that Zapatero is just as depending on Obama as Aznar was from Bush (of course, the opposition this time is backing the Government, although I can’t say if it’s because they are convinced of doing what’s right or because of something else). Before March 1th there was Casablanca plot.
I only hope that the volunteers’ kidnapping is not another step towards a new terrorist plot on Spanish soil, under the pretext that we are in Afghanistan. Not because I am worried about Zapatero’s ass, but because of the devastation, pain and horror that this kind of attacks bring.
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