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South Kingstown
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3/4/99 Update
Osama Bin Laden
An organization headed by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden "appears to be the most dangerous terrorist threat to US diplomatic facilities and personnel overseas," Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security David Carpenter told a House subcommittee on 2/24/99. Bin Laden's organization, believed to be operating in more than 25 countries, has generated more than 650 threats against US embassies in the past six months, about a third of which are deemed credible. Bin Laden's group is considered especially dangerous, Carpenter said, "because it has a potentially global reach, it appears well-financed, it has the protection of one and possibly two states, it has a dedicated cadre, it engages in suicide attacks, it has an avowedly anti-American ideology, and it appears to have plugged into or provides support of over a half-dozen indigenous terrorist groups around the world." Bin Laden has been indicted for the August 7 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. He remains at large.
Threatened attacks linked to bin Laden were thwarted at US embassies in Albanian and Uganda within three weeks of the August 7 bombings. There was evidence of preliminary planning for possible future attacks against US embassies in Azerbaijan, Ivory Coast and Tajikistan. However, the evidence for those threats is not as strong as what was detected for the Albanian and Ugandan threats, according to a US counterterrorism official who wishes to remain unidentified. The official said an Egyptian connected to a Middle Eastern group called Gama'a Islamyia (the Islamic Group) was arrested this month in Uruguay, giving rise to concerns about an attack in that country. The man was identified as El Said Hassan Mohamed Mokhlis. Gama'a Islamyia is one of the groups that reportedly signed on to bin Laden's call in February of last year for the deaths of Americans around the globe.
A senior US official said last week that bin Laden may have fled Afghanistan after his hosts in the country's Taliban-led government turned on him by cutting off his telephone service and limiting his access with outsiders. Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, a Taliban diplomat assigned to the United Nations, told US State Department officials on February 17 that bin Laden had fled the area in Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban Islamic militia a few days earlier. But some US intelligence officials said at the time that they were skeptical of the report. According to a Pakistani journalist, bin Laden met with Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Mullah Abdul Jalil within the past few days in the eastern Afghan town of Jalalabad.
Sudan
The Sudanese air force bombed a hospital in southern Sudan, the Norwegian People's Aid agency (NPA) said on 2/25/99. NPA spokesman Dan Eiffe said 24 bombs had been dropped on the town of Yei in a one-hour raid on Wednesday evening, and that two had hit the NPA-run hospital, damaging the operating theater, maternity ward and other buildings. No injuries were reported at the hospital but there were no details from the rest of the town. Eiffe said it was the fifth time this year that the hospital at Yei, in rebel-held territory, had been bombed by government forces. Last week one person died and five were injured in a bombing raid. ``I think the international community who support relief aid into southern Sudan should do something to prevent this,'' Eiffe told Reuters. ``If this happened in Europe there would have been action along time ago.'' He called for the introduction of a no-fly zone. There was no immediate comment from the Sudanese government. NPA supports the political cause of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which has been fighting for 15 years against the Khartoum government for self-determination and religious freedom in the largely Christian south.
A pro-government Sudanese militia repelled an attack by southern rebels in oil-rich Unity state, killing 47 of them and taking 58 prisoner, a member of Sudan's parliament said in remarks published on Tuesday. The private Al-Usbua newspaper quoted legislator Tout Galouk as saying Major General Paulino Matip's forces had inflicted heavy losses on rebels in Mayom province in Unity state. Galouk did not say when the main rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had launched the attack, but said Matip's forces were in complete control of the area. Riek Machar, chairman of the coordinating council that rules the south for Khartoum, was quoted on 3/2/99 as saying his party was holding talks with SPLA representatives.
A Saudi businessman whose drug factory was destroyed by American missiles last year sued the US government Friday, contending he was unfairly branded a terrorist. Salah Idris contends the United States mistakenly targeted his plant, but he sued in federal court on 2/26/99 over what the government did next. Immediately after the attack, the Treasury Department froze $24 million in Idris' overseas accounts, on grounds he and his money were linked to terrorism. Idris may soon file a second suit over destruction of the plant. Idris' lawyers met with Justice Department lawyers Friday to discuss that possibility, department spokeswoman Chris Watney said. Watney would not discuss the first suit. Idris, a Sudanese native now living in Saudi Arabia, argues that the United States has no claim on the $24 million. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control did not lay out Idris' alleged terrorist links beforehand as required by law, or formally declare him a terrorist, the suit says. ``We hope to promptly have the court lift the block on Mr. Idris' bank accounts,'' said one of his Washington lawyers, Mark MacDougall. Idris maintains he has no links to terrorists. His lawyers said he is being made a scapegoat for an American blunder. By asserting that Idris has terrorist ties, US officials can justify bombing what Idris maintains was an innocent private business, the attorneys said. ``In any human endeavor, even one as worthy as the fight against international terrorism, there is the possibility of error,'' said another of Idris' lawyers, Steven Ross. ``This is not a question as to whether the United States should vigorously fight terrorism. This is a question of what happens when a mistake is made.''
At the time of the missile attack, US officials said the pharmaceutical plant was a cover for chemical weapons production. They also said it had links to Osama bin Laden, who allegedly bankrolled the bombings of the American embassies. US officials later admitted they did not know Idris had bought the plant four months before it was bombed. But the officials also said bin Laden has ties to both the current and former plant operators, and took the unusual step of disclosing that a CIA test of soil from the plant showed the presence of a deadly nerve gas.
Afghanistan
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia announced plans on 3/2/99 to purge its security agencies in the capital Kabul. A commission has been set up to carry out the purge in the ``security, military and intelligence services'' in Kabul and its environs, the Taliban-controlled Voice of Shariat radio said. The broadcast, monitored in Islamabad, said the commission would clear the security forces of people lacking good behavior and discipline. It quoted the commission as asking the security departments to remove the undesirable staff before they are found out. The radio gave no reason for the purge.
Leather jackets are now the latest item prohibited by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban religious army. Taliban soldiers used knives to slash the leather jackets young men were wearing in Kabul today, saying the jackets were prohibited under Islam, witnesses said. The attacks took place in the Kabul's northern Khair Khana neighborhood and in its central Ferozgha district. No one could be reached for comment on the edict from the Taliban's religious affairs ministry or its ministry of vice and virtue. Since taking power in Kabul in 1996, the Taliban have banned music, video cassette recorders, televisions, cameras and books published outside of Afghanistan. They also have banned brown paper bags, fearing they may be made of recycled copies of the Koran, the Muslim bible. Women have been forbidden from working outside the home, girls from going to school. A store owner in Kabul, who gave his name only as Akbar, said the price of leather jackets has fallen in the last two days from $36 to $27. ``We are very worried because more than 300 people make their money from selling leather products,'' said Akbar. However, it wasn't immediately clear whether all leather products were considered contrary to Islam or whether it was only leather jackets, which are prized commodities in Afghanistan's harsh winters. Afghanistan, which has been ravaged by two decades of war, also exports some of its leather products to Russia, and it was not clear how the edict affected those exports.
Iraq
Almost daily for the past two months, American and British warplanes have hammered Iraq with missiles and bombs in a low-grade war of attrition that the Clinton administration insists is nothing more than dutiful enforcement of no-fly zones protecting minority Iraqis in the north and south. It is an avenue toward the administration's goal of replacing President Saddam Hussein as Iraq's leader. The bombings, US officials hope, can encourage internal unrest by portraying Saddam as hapless and cornered, unable to defend his own territory and a danger to his own people. President Clinton says the Iraqi leader can end hostilities by cooperating with the United Nations. Clinton recently referred to the attacks on Iraq as ``these little encounters,'' which include one incident in which an errant Air Force missile killed at least 11 Iraqi civilians. He said he feared Saddam was aiming for a ``symbolic victory'' by downing a US plane. On 2/28/99, US Air Force F-15 fighters attacked Iraqi military installations with bombs and missiles after planes patrolling the northern no-fly zone came under anti-aircraft fire, a US military official said. The targets included an Iraqi air defense headquarters, a radio relay site and a surface-to-air missile site. Until last December the Iraqis rarely challenged the no-fly zones in a sustained way. That changed in the aftermath of Operation Desert Fox, a Dec. 16-19 US-British bombing campaign meant to punish Saddam for not cooperating with UN weapons inspections. The campaign targeted air defenses, military communications, units of Saddam's best troops, airfields, an oil refinery, a missile-repair complex and weapons research and development facilities. has ordered his air defense forces in the northern and southern zones to shoot at US and British air patrols. He moved more surface-to-air missile systems into the zones and began targeting allied planes, sometimes merely illuminating the planes with radar, other times firing missiles. None has come close to hitting an allied aircraft.
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