Chicago Tribune Sept 23, 2001

Peering into bin Laden's network Recruits taught how to sow fear

By Michael J. Berens

He was also taught to attack American targets at times when Muslims are most likely to be at prayer services so as to reduce Muslim casualties, and to seek out female victims because they garner more media attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ His mission was simple: Drive a small truck laden with explosives as close as possible to the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, then push an electronic trigger that would level the building.

Two years of harsh training in Afghanistan camps sharpened his skills as a killer and molded his thoughts into a single-minded fervor to hate Americans. Over and over, he said, leaders drilled in the mantra: It is your right and duty to kill.

Push the plunger and enter paradise, he was told.

The only glitch was that Mohamed Rashed Al-`Owhali inexplicably survived what was supposed to be a suicidal blast in August 1998. Once in custody, he would reveal to the FBI the inner workings of the clandestine brotherhood guided by Osama bin Laden, now the focal point of the world's largest manhunt.

Al-`Owhali's confession provides a chilling portrait of how a financially privileged and educated man became a terrorist, of mountaintop rituals and the bayat--a sacred oath among the killer squads--and of hidden identities and rigorous conditioning where only the most loyal soldiers are granted an audience with bin Laden.

The confession and more than 8,000 pages of court transcripts reveal not only how a seemingly ordinary man was molded into a robotic killer, but also how terrorists are trained to infiltrate dozens of nations, including the U.S.

Although Al-`Owhali now claims his confession was coerced--a charge rejected by the court--his statement is considered one of the most detailed accounts of the bin Laden network of terrorists. Law-enforcement agencies are revisiting cases like this one to help explain how 19 men came to hurl themselves at American targets on Sept. 11.

Al-`Owhali, 24, is in a federal prison cell at an undisclosed location. He was convicted this year with three other bin Laden operatives for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania that killed 224 people and injured thousands. Bin Laden was indicted in the case but remains at large.

During an extraordinary four-day interview with FBI agents following his capture days after the blast, Al-`Owhali provided insight into how and why a man chooses to be a martyr, and how he stoked a hatred for people who had done him no direct harm.

He recounted making a video that was to be shipped to a secret library deep in Afghanistan, where it would be shelved alongside other "martyr tapes."

"I am the liberator of the Holy Lands," he said.

Although the FBI did not recover the video, the agency confirmed its existence through interviews with other bin Laden associates now in custody. And key parts of his confession are corroborated by two FBI informants who were part of the bin Laden network, according to court records.

Despite his initial cooperation with federal agents, Al-`Owhali has remained absolute in his beliefs, an FBI interrogator, agent Stephen Gaudin, told a jury earlier this year.

He quoted Al-`Owhali as saying, "America is my enemy."

Choosing bin Laden

Al-`Owhali, the son of millionaire Saudi parents, appeared to have a privileged life. Born in Liverpool, England, while his father finished a master's degree, he could have chosen most any direction, backed by family wealth and influence.

But in 1994, the 17-year-old, who was studying religion at Mohamed Bin Saud in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, drifted toward bin Laden, who was a hero to many of Al-`Owhali's less affluent friends.

Al-`Owhali told FBI agents he was saturated with anti-American sentiments found in books, magazines and videos. The materials portrayed America as a nation seeking to control Saudi Arabia and Muslims everywhere. America was evil disguised as good. America was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Muslim children.

Spurred by companions who talked of joining a jihad, a battle against their enemies, Al-`Owhali began to look for a way into bin Laden's organization.

Bin Laden, too, was born into a wealthy family. Trained as a civil engineer, he amassed millions from his family's construction business but harbored a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in Muslim lands. After he helped rally Afghan freedom fighters to victory against the Soviet Union, bin Laden's stature grew enormously. By the 1990s, citing America's interference in his native Saudi Arabia, bin Laden declared war on the U.S., his one-time ally against the Soviets.

In a display of the organizational reach and sophistication of bin Laden's network, the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi drew on members living secret lives in a dozen countries, from a New York resident who frequently met with bin Laden to a German businessman who helped with logistical support to an unidentified counterfeiter who traveled among nations distributing fake passports, according to court documents.

Like countless other young men, Al-`Owhali was drawn to the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, the primary portal to bin Laden's Afghanistan-based training camps, in the hopes of learning the skills to defeat Islam's enemies.

A recruiter he met at a coffee shop agreed to escort Al-`Owhali to the Khaldan Camp, a basic training area for raw recruits. Young men arrived from many countries--Egypt, Syria, Algeria, among others--lured by the promise of salvation for their service.

On the first day, a leader told the recruits their real names would never be used again. Al-`Owhali, a Saudi, became Mohammed Akbar of Qatar.

There was a real Mohammed Akbar in Qatar, he would learn. It was his first lesson on deceit, Al-`Owhali explained to the FBI. There were many others.

Training and strategy

During missions, he was instructed, beards should always be shaved to look less menacing. Wear ordinary clothes. Don't turn away from security cameras. Smoke cigarettes and wear cologne to more easily blend in.

He was also taught to attack American targets at times when Muslims are most likely to be at prayer services so as to reduce Muslim casualties, and to seek out female victims because they garner more media attention.

A daily regimen of strategy sessions and light weapons training was supplemented with mandatory religious study. Recruits repeatedly were told that their objective was to eliminate opponents of Islam.

He also learned how to hijack planes--quickness and fear are the best allies--and how to topple office towers with explosives. He was taught how to survey a building for its weakest points and how to target a structure's main load-bearing supports.

The camp leader nominated Al-`Owhali and a small group of other camp standouts for an audience with bin Laden in 1996. Three days before the advent of Ramadan, a holy time of worship and fasting, he stood before the leader.

Al-`Owhali told the FBI that bin Laden urged the death of all Americans, anywhere and by any means.

He was then introduced to bin Laden's top military guard. In a mountaintop ritual, many of the men took the bayat, an initiation into bin Laden's personal military.

Al-`Owhali never took that oath. He told agents he was more interested in operating in an underground cell than in bin Laden's private army.

In Arabic, he explained to FBI agents that under bin Laden's influence he had become convinced that his homeland was under siege by America. He desperately wanted a mission that would result in the deaths of Americans, he told agents.

But before he would get his wish, Al-`Owhali was dispatched to assist the Taliban government near Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Al-`Owhali claimed he and only five other men deployed in the hills repelled an anti-Taliban attack ten times stronger.

The FBI could not verify the account, but Al-`Owhali said it elevated him in standing to where he was awarded the privilege of carrying a rifle over his shoulder even when bin Laden was in camp.

No clear definition

For years, scholars have written that terrorists typically share a background of poverty and desperation.

But stories like Al-`Owhali's and the backgrounds of some of the 19 suspected hijackers have left terrorism experts scrambling to explain why so many educated young men were willing to kill themselves.

Beyond Al-`Owhali's conviction that America was strangling the Islamic world was a sense of loyalty to his comrades. That bond fortified his willingness to sacrifice his life while committing acts of terror.

Al-`Owhali told investigators he agreed to kill others as much out of devotion to the other members of his terrorist cell as out of a duty to bin Laden.

As Al-`Owhali and a friend he knew only as Azzam rode in a covered truck packed with explosives, winding their way through crowded Nairobi streets, they listened to a cassette of Arabic chants to steel themselves.

The bomb was to be detonated at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 7, 1998. The two had learned of their final destination only days before, but they had known for weeks that a martyr mission was planned, Al-`Owhali told the FBI.

A mixture of TNT, aluminum nitrate and aluminum powder was put into dozens of wooden boxes, which were wired together to batteries hidden in the back of the truck.

Publicity sought

They had chosen the embassy in Nairobi because the U.S. ambassador stationed there was a woman and they thought her death would result in more publicity, the FBI was told.

All associates connected to the bombing--more than a dozen who helped secure money, passports and vehicles--were ordered to leave the country the day before.

Al-`Owhali jumped from the passenger side of the truck as it approached the embassy gate, FBI investigative reports show. His job was to shoot embassy guards, but he accidentally left his gun in the truck so he tossed a stun grenade that had been attached to his belt.

Past the guards, Azzam moved the truck closer to the embassy and detonated the explosives.

Azzam died, but Al-`Owhali staggered to a hospital for treatment of head and hand injuries. He then checked into a hotel and was arrested several days later.

FBI agent Gaudin later testified, "Al-`Owhali explained to me that he was fully prepared to die, but once the mission was complete, after that it would be suicide and suicide is forbidden by Islam."

Despite the intensity of the blast, Ambassador Prudence Bushnell survived and testified against Al-`Owhali.

More cells

FBI officials said they are currently reviewing the case for clues into bin Laden's network that may have been overlooked or dismissed at the time.

During his four-day interrogation in 1998 by the FBI, Al-`Owhali promised that there were more cells, more men not only in the U.S., but in dozens of countries.

A final incident in the interrogation room showed Al-`Owhali still clinging to the loyalties that had been sown in Afghanistan.

Gaudin handed Al-`Owhali a picture of a suspect and asked him to identify the person. It was Azzam.

Al-`Owhali clutched Azzam's picture to his chest and cried, Gaudin and Nairobi police authorities wrote in their reports. Al-`Owhali lapsed into a poetic chant.

He spoke in his native Arabic in an almost childish, singsong voice, startled agents recalled. He spoke of joining Azzam in paradise.

I will live forever, he sang.

-- Lars (lar@indy.net), September 24, 2001

Answers

Coming soon to your neighborhood.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 24, 2001.

Two years of harsh training in Afghanistan camps sharpened his skills as a killer and molded his thoughts into a single-minded fervor to hate Americans. Over and over, he said, leaders drilled in the mantra: It is your right and duty to kill.

Push the plunger and enter paradise, he was told.

Chilling, Lars. How is one supposed to get a good night's sleep from this point on?

-- Semper (Ready?@Lets.Roll), September 24, 2001.

Let's not go back to sleep.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 24, 2001.

Amen Lars, we must NOT go back to sleep. The first step is to recognize who and what we are up against in this so-called ‘New War’. These are people who have no desire for diplomacy or seek negotiations. They want all American’s and everything we stand for to be destroyed….killed, burned, and eradicated. There must be no attempt to reason with these people…we must kill them before they kill us…end of story.

We would all hope for a more civilized solution but that is not to be. Is there ONE person that you know who would be willing to give their life to blow up a mosque? Well then, there you are. We are entering into an era that has taken place so many times in our planets history and like before…..the STRONG will survive!

-- So (cr@t.es), September 24, 2001.

More from the Establishment press. The LA Times discovers Al Qeada.

Would they have printed such inflammatory, non-progressive material a moth ago?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 24, 2001.

Yes...it's an excellent article.

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), September 24, 2001.