Sky Bomber Mastermind Indirectly Linked To Saddam Hussein?

Thanks to Rocket's Brain Trust for this.

Ray Robinson is the guy translating captured Iraqi documents, often publishing his translations on FoxNews. He's doing good work. If I have to make a criticism -- and, frankly, I do -- I think a lot of his stuff is ignored because he fails to lay out what he intends to show, or suggest, in a bullet-point opening paragraph. I find my eyes glazing over in his articles, wondering which pieces (of they many he mentions) I'm supposed to be putting together.

From a blogger's POV, he's a tough one to link, because there is rarely a summary paragraph to quote.

Sorry, Ray. Just saying. Write more reader-friendly, and your important work will be more widely read. Conclusions first, then supporting evidence. Not all mixed together. This stuff is winding and confusing, so give us a road-map upfront.

At any rate, he seems to have found an indirect, but not too indirect, connection between the British Bombers and Saddam Hussein, but that's just crazy talk, because we know for a fact Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism (apart from inviting Al Qaeda to Iraq for sanctuary when it was forced to depart the Sudan, and apart from putting up Abu Nidal in Baghdad, and etc.).

To be honest, I have trouble following this, as I have trouble with a lot of Robinson's work. Maybe I'm dumb or impatient. Maybe it seems confusing because it is confusing, or the links Robinson attempts to show are very attenuated. Either way, these are what I think are the key bits:

Robinson's full post, with backing evidence, can be found here.

Quoting first from The Blotter:

There were several arrests also made in Pakistan today in connection with the case, but the suspected ringleader remains at large. Pakistani officials say this 29-year old al Qaeda commander, Matiur Rehman, was known to be planning a terror spectacular to mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/ll attacks. The London plot may well have been it.

Then Robinson:

I did a little research on this because it intersects with the IIS agents notebook Sammi translated for our Fox News column, The Saddam Dossier.

The South Asia Terrorism Portal mentions Matiur Rehman in connection with Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI):

was established in 1992, reportedly with assistance from Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front. On April 30, 1992, several of the HuJI leaders addressed a press conference at the Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka and demanded that Bangladesh be converted into an Islamic State.

The HuJI’s Pakistani link was further established with the recovery of a diary from Hannan’s brother Matiur Rehman, who was also arrested in connection with the assassination plot. Entries in the diary revealed that he was in touch with Pakistan’s diplomatic mission in Bangladesh.

Later:

So let's put the pieces together. The MMA is a political party of which the Maulana Fazlur Rahman is a high official. He brings to the MMA the political/militant group JUI. The JUI has two factions, which are strongly connected. The JUI commands the HUM and the HUJI which carries out terrorist attacks. In other words, it is the military wing of the militant organization, or in effect, the army.

If you read the IIS agent notebook, you know Saddam was playing footsies with the Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a known al Qaeda terrorist. In other words, he was supporting the JUI which provided support to HUJI and would have lead to support for this most recent terrorist attempt if Saddam was still in power. So this is a premier example of why the Saddam regime was part of the war on terror. If they still had Saddam's support, and there is probably a case to be made that the explosive making expertise originally came from Iraq (apparently it was RDX which is mentioned in Iraqi commando training memos) it might have been a little easier for them to pull it off.

posted by Ace at 04:37 PM

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