Speaking of links to Turkestan...

A reader responded to our report regarding a certain elevation in the visibility of Turkestani and/or Uighur elements of the global jihad by pointing to this FBIS report from August of 2005. Granted that the Chinese connection in this instance was in Hong Kong, not Xinjiang (i.e. Eastern Turkestan - the two are some thousands of kilometers apart), nevertheless the story is interesting enough to put into circulation...

Spanish police find London link between Madrid bomber and Libyans in China Tuesday, August 2, 2005 T09:49:37Z:

A police brief has detailed the "hitherto unknown" links between the "spiritual leader" of the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombers and alleged Libyan terrorists residing in China, according to a report in a Spanish daily. The following is the text of the report by Dolores Martinez and Nieves Colli, "Police reveal Tunisian's links with Libyan terrorists living in China", published by the Spanish daily newspaper ABC web site on 1 August; all names and subheadings as published:

Madrid: A report by the Central Foreign Intelligence Unit (UCIE) from the police's General Intelligence Headquarters reveals the connections via London of Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, "The Tunisian", the spiritual leader of the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings cell, with members of the Libyan Islamic Combatant Group (GICL) living in China. This new, hitherto unknown, branch of Islamist terrorism has been uncovered by police in an investigation which was brought to the attention of (National High Court) judge Juan del Olmo barely a month ago. It is, therefore, one of the latest advances regarding the movements of the man who was the instigator of the massacre in Madrid. The confirmation of the presence of Islamist elements linked to Usamah Bin-Ladin in China makes it clear once again that the extension of his network reaches practically the whole planet.

The thread which led General Intelligence Headquarters investigators to the Asian country was the Jordanian Abdallah Mohd Othman, with whom "The Tunisian" was thinking of setting up a furniture business. The police discovered that Serhane called London from a telephone registered in Othman's name and had a conversation with an individual with a (United) Arab Emirates accent or from some Persian Gulf country. In the chat, they agreed that the man speaking from the British capital would send "The Tunisian" a fax to Othman's company in Madrid. The document never arrived.

The police also intercepted telephone calls by Serhane to Hong Kong, where the furniture company which he intended to contact was based. Some of these calls were made from the Arconsa estate agents, where "The Tunisian" worked, and others from a phone booth parlour near the company's head offices. Investigators managed to obtain the Chinese telephone numbers which the 11 March instigator called, to be precise 0086/13710236554 and 0086/13556171218.

Following painstaking work during which the police have had the collaboration of "friendly services" - and this is what is on record in the report issued to the court -, the person speaking to Serhane in Hong Kong was an individual known, among other aliases, by that of Mohamed Ali, head of the furniture business who, incidentally, speaks with an Arab Emirates accent.

Mohamed Ali

The Chinese telephone numbers correspond to two mobiles from the same country used by Mohamed Ali, whose name is Abu Abdullah Sadeq and who also uses the aliases Abd al-Hakim al-Khuwailidi Bill-Hajj and Mohamed Bin Ali Mohsen. This individual's importance lies in the fact that he leads the Libyan Islamic Combatant Group and, precisely because of his membership of this terrorist movement, he has been under house arrest in Libya since April 2004 after having been extradited by the Chinese government.

Always via the collaboration of "friendly services", the UCIE learned that calls were made to Spanish numbers from the two mobiles which Mohamed Ali used in China. With one of them, as many as four calls were made on 3 January 2004 (two months before the 11 March bombings) to the mobile 629130072, which was used by Othman, the Jordanian with whom "The Tunisian" wanted to set up a furniture business, though in fact there is no evidence that a commercial activity was the true purpose. Othman also received calls from the second Chinese mobile on his landline phone in Madrid. In the statement given to the police on 8 July 2004, Othman said that "The Tunisian" "made a call to London from his telephone using a prepaid card from the Supercall company". Othman himself took the phone to tell the person on the other end of the line the number of his company's fax to which they should send him a document which, however, never arrived.

The police stress in their report the "coincidence" that these calls to London by "The Tunisian" came at exactly the same time that Ziyad al-Hashim, alias Mullah Shakir al-Ghaznawi and Imad al-Libi, a member of the Libyan Islamic Combatant Group's media committee, was living in the city. In addition, in January 2004 this individual took a direct plane from China to the United Kingdom, a country in which from that moment he took up residence. But that was not the only coincidence. In fact, the UCIE has learned that when "The Tunisian" and his partner Othman called the two Chinese mobiles, Mohamed Ali (the GICL leader) and Ziyad al-Hashim were together in that country.

The report also states that "The Tunisian", Mohamed Ali and Ziyad al-Hashim are members of Mustapha Maimouni's family, a man who is being held Morocco for his links to the attacks in Casablanca in May 2003. Serhane and Ziyad were married to two of Maimouni's sisters while a cousin of his is Mohamed Ali's wife. Nevertheless, the police attach only secondary significance to these family ties and stress the importance of their belonging to the network which Al-Qa'idah has deployed in North Africa (the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) and the Libyan Islamic Combatant Group, which in 2002 in a meeting of high-ranking leaders in Istanbul agreed that their strategy would be subordinated to what (Usamah) Bin Ladin decided).

Malek al-Andaluzi

The connection between these three individuals takes on even more importance from the moment in which Maimouni "pairs" them, acting on the instructions of Abdulaziz Morafik, alias Malek al-Andaluzi, a "high-ranking" GICL member who also ordered them to create two terrorist cells, one in Kenitra (Morocco) and another in Madrid. "This last one", says the police report, "was the core which formed the base of the 11 March perpetrators".

(Description of Source: Madrid ABC (Internet Version-WWW) in Spanish -- center-right national daily)

Posted on 20 November 2006 @ 16:25