Arab states trained Al-Qaeda men to fight in Somalia

[musika man]

Arab states trained Al-Qaeda men to fight in Somalia

MIDDLE EASTERN countries secretly armed and supported suspected Al-Qaeda recruits in the failed state of Somalia in a direct challenge to western interests in east Africa, according to a United Nations report.

Hundreds of Islamist fighters were flown, with Eritrean assistance, from Somalia to Syria and Libya for military training. Others were taken to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah, the report to the UN security council has revealed.

UN investigators also detailed military aid given to the Islamists by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Arab states friendly to the West. Iran also supplied 125 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, 80 of which arrived by sea in dhows and the rest by air.

A clandestine operation to smuggle the fighters out of Somalia began in July last year.

In an interview, Evgueny Zakharov, the owner of Aerolift, an airline with a fleet of ageing Antonov and Ilyushin transport aircraft, based in Johannesburg but registered in the British Virgin Islands, said: “We transported lots of men in uniform — Arabian men with masks.

“They were disciplined men and although none of them had rank badges there were obviously people in charge. They got on the aircraft as if they had done it many times before.”

Zakharov said his involvement began after he was approached by a General Tambi of the Eritrean People’s Defence Forces. Eritrea, a neighbour of Somalia in the volatile Horn of Africa, was a major supporter of the Islamists.

Tambi offered to buy Zakharov’s Ilyushin 76 transport aircraft carrying the Kazakhstan registration number UN 76496 for $1.5m (£770,000), even though the normal price for an aircraft of that vintage and condition is just $1m.

Zakharov went ahead despite the unusual contract conditions that stipulated secrecy. He insisted the contract should specify that the new owners were not to use the aircraft to make arms flights.

However, he said last week that the Ilyushin made three sanctions-busting arms flights to Somalia from the Eritrean port of Massawa, bringing out the masked men on the return legs. “I do not know who they were but you can draw your own conclusions,” he said.

Zakharov’s revelations came as western security services continued their investigation into foreigners suspected of fighting on behalf of Islamic forces in Somalia and of joining Al-Qaeda last year. Among them are British, American and French Muslims.

Significant numbers of foreigners went to Somalia, western intelligence officials have found, after the radical Islamic Courts Union (ICU) movement seized power from a weak UNbacked government, established links with Al-Qaeda and allowed Somalia to be used as an Al-Qaeda terrorist training ground like Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

In December, invading Ethiopian troops took the capital Mogadishu from the ICU and restored the internationally recognised government, routing the Islamists and scattering the foreigners and Al-Qaeda fighters.

But violence continues to plague the weak and fractured country and there are fears of an Islamist resurgence unless African Union peacekeepers are rapidly deployed.

Last week four British Muslims who had been in Somalia under the radical militia and then crossed the border into Kenya were briefly held under the Terrorism Act on their return to Britain.

An American who was also arrested in Kenya and then deported was charged in Texas with teaming up with Al-Qaeda. He told FBI officers who interrogated him that he had spent time with an Al-Qaeda bomb maker in Somalia being trained in assembly techniques.

The UN report also described Iranian attempts to obtain Somali uranium. Somalia is reported to have 6,600 tons of recoverable uranium but the mines have never been exploited because of poor security.

In addition, Libya provided $1m to finance future training missions and pay salaries. Surface-to-air missiles supplied by Iran are of the type Al-Qaeda used to try to bring down an Israeli charter flight over Kenya in 2002. The missiles are still at large.

Zakharov believes that one of the reasons the Eritreans wanted to use the Ilyushin in the clandestine operations was because the freighter’s registration began with the letters UN and therefore might have been mistaken for a United Nations aircraft.

When Zakharov discovered the Eritreans’ real use of the plane was for arms shipments and for flying the masked men from Somalia, he cancelled the contract. Zakharov said he first grew suspicious when he found that the seven-man crew were each being paid £2,500 bonuses for every flight.

Contacted last week, Tambi denied all knowledge of the deal. However, The Sunday Times has a copy of the contract signed in Moscow and Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, between Aerolift and Eriko Enterprise of Asmara on July 21.

The first sanctions-busting arms flight landed at Mogadishu on July 26 and was followed by three arms shipments — a total of some 140 tons — over the next three days.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 400655.ece

[musika man]

American Is Charged in U.S. for Activities in Somalia

Associated Press
Wednesday, February 14, 2007;

HOUSTON, Feb. 13 -- A former Houston man has been charged in Texas with teaming with al-Qaeda in the East African country of Somalia to fight the internationally recognized government there and establish an Islamic state.

Daniel Joseph Maldonado, 28, also known as Daniel Aljughaifi, was ordered held without bail Tuesday on federal charges of undergoing military training with a terrorist organization and conspiring to use a destructive device.

Arrested in Kenya last month, Maldonado was returned to the United States on Monday night and appeared Tuesday before Magistrate Judge Calvin Botley, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston said.

Intelligence officials have said that significant numbers of foreign fighters went to Somalia last year to support the radical Islamic Courts movement, which was confronting a weak, U.N.-backed government. Ethiopian troops took the capital, Mogadishu, from the Islamic movement in December and scattered the group's fighters. Many appear to have crossed into Kenya.

Maldonado is the first American to be prosecuted on suspicion of joining terrorists in Somalia, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein said in a statement. Four British citizens captured in Kenya after fleeing Somalia were returned to Britain on Tuesday, the Bloomberg news agency reported.

According to the criminal complaint, Maldonado traveled from Houston to Cairo in November 2005. In November last year, the complaint says, he landed at Mogadishu airport and joined with the Islamic Courts movement and elements of al-Qaeda.
The complaint says that in interviews with FBI agents in Kenya, Maldonado recounted being issued an AK-47 assault rifle, military fatigues and combat boots and attending military training camps where members of al-Qaeda were present.

He described spending time with a bomb maker and learning assembly techniques, according to the complaint. He also said he wanted to take part in combat, but did not do so because he contracted malaria.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... v=hcmodule

[Advocatar]

Yet another lie about eritrea...................man fuk UN.

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

Who knows what the real truth is on this issue? I think there were some foreign fighters, but I think the numbers were in the hundreds, not the thousands. And I think Eritrea's role was minimal.

[Lil_Cutie..]

Eritrea?..How many more times Musika--Leave them out of your games and with Ethopia.

Eritreans know that these are all LIES some serious mafia stlye and with the link of Ethopia probley more to come.. & The British foreign office have also had enough..


"Ethiopia's claims that it has arrested British citizens in operations against Islamic fighters in Somalia looked increasingly dubious last night after the Foreign Office said that requests for proof had drawn a blank
...
A final Foreign Office put-up-or-shut-up request on Friday had come to nothing by yesterday afternoon. It is understood that British officials, deeply anxious at the prospect of a Somali terror cell with links to Britain, also made their own inquiries via the High Commission in neighbouring Kenya and MI6, but have yet found nothing to support the claims.
The Ethiopian government's failure to provide evidence will heighten suspicions that Mr Zenawi may have talked up the possibility of foreign jihadists to help justify the invasion."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... opia14.xml

[eyes-only]

The UN has become a joke. Now I know why the Americans and others criticise it.

Even the Israelis know the report on Somalia was a load of qashin. Harry Potter is more realistic than the stories curved up by the UN report.

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

The UN hasn't "become a joke", it has always been a joke. BUT, in lieu of something better, it does provide some useful services to the poor and it does provide a venue for nations to engage in dialog, so in that sense, it is useful.

[eyes-only]

Mac, they don't provide anything to the poor. The money goes to fill pockets of consultants, project managers, warlords...... The whole organisation is corrupt and I was hoping they would at least report the truth instead of cooking up lies worse than the plagiarised dossier on Iraq.

[Garaad_LQ]

Miskinka Man
leave others along and worry about that Tigrean Coc* up your A$$

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

Eyes
That's not true. It's corrupt, but it still does provide a lot of food aide to the poor. No getting around that. Doesn't do it that well, but it does do it.

[musika man]

[quote="Garaad_LQ"]Miskinka Man
leave others along and worry about that Tigrean Coc* up your A$$[/quote]

^^^^

your tribe are the tigre-darod, and if there were no savage nomadic darods and hawiyes, somalia will be like heaven and not hell's address on earth. why do you support ayr terrorists, are they your other half? a savage mongrel.

Lil_Cutie.. stick with your theme of i love qaldaanland and chasing men in cyber. qaldaans want the chaos and the civil war in the south to continue till they are recognized as a state. keep encouraging the terrorists ayr, and non-somalis like the black american dude to fight in somalia and kill somalis. what has he got to do with somalia?

eyes-only, if it was not the u.n, somalis would have disapeared, they are the oxygen of refugees. even bill gates is helping immunize somali children from polio. somali attitude is destruct and the u.n will feed you.

[abwaan1]

According to UN Eritrea, is the poorest place on earth. 85% the people who live in that desert wasteland are surviving on a forging handout. Even the government official live off UN's food that they steal from NGOs. It filed for bankruptcy years ago. It’s the only place that if you compare with Somalia, Somalia becomes haven and shining star. It supposes to be Free State, and fairly peaceful, yet it has the highest refuge fleeing to neighbor’s country. (Including Ethiopia) the dictator who runs the place is a seriously ill mental patient. It’s shame and disgrace to all Somali’s even such place can have involvement in Somali affairs.

[FreedomOfSpeech-]

[quote="abwaan1"]According to UN Eritrea, is the poorest place on earth. 85% the people who live in that desert wasteland are surviving on a forging handout. Even the government official live off UN's food that they steal from NGOs. It filed for bankruptcy years ago. It’s the only place that if you compare with Somalia, Somalia becomes haven and shining star. It supposes to be Free State, and fairly peaceful, yet it has the highest refuge fleeing to neighbor’s country. (Including Ethiopia) the dictator who runs the place is a seriously ill mental patient. It’s shame and disgrace to all Somali’s even such place can have involvement in Somali affairs.[/quote]



Ok...why dose it sound like you are an Ethiopian?? Everything you stated about Eritrea is wrong buddy.


http://www.fundforpeace.org/programs/fs ... ex2006.php

FAILED STATES INDEX 2006

# 1 Sudan

# 7 Somalia

# 16 Yemen

# 26 Ethiopia

# 54 Eritrea



The numbers don't lie, only your tigrian ass dose.

As for Eritrea/ns, i really feel bad for them man. With the exception of Somalia, no other nation has been f'ucked over by super power nations than Eritrea.


For starters, when Ethiopia ILLEGALLY annexed Eritrea in 1962, the UN did not even saction Ethiopia, instead, they supported it and legitimized it, which triggered a 30 year war, in which Eritreans had to face, American trained/funded Ethiopian military and had to endure the might of the mighty Soviets and over 25,000 cuban troops, all joined arm in arm to fight little ol' Eritrea.


Then after Eritreans liberated their nation and put Meles in power, the midget goes and invades an internationally ruled Eritrean city of Badme and starts one of the largest ground wars in which half the Ethiopian military was killed (155,000) in under two years. But after the World says the city the WAR STARTED over was an Eritrean city, the UN then goes and says "Eritreans started the war, when they sent a convoy of Eritrean soldiers to their own Eritrean city of Badme" - Since when can a nation be blamed for a war when sending their troops to their OWN city???


Then After the peace deal was signed by Eritrean leaders and Ethiopians in Algiers, which clearly stated the agreement as "FINAL AND BINDING" and any nation not to follow through on their end of the bargin will be SANCTIONED, Ethiopia yet again disobeys their deal and the UN yet again dose not SANCTION their illegal acts. BTW, if the UN did sanction Ethiopia, Ethiopia can seriously collapse, because much of their economy and food relys on forign aid. But instead of peace and stablity in the horn, the UN/US support Ethiopia blindly because of what happened inn 9/11 and they know that Ethiopia is one of the handful of African nations that will send their troops to their early graves for American hand out wheat. As you can see, that's why they're in Somalia, not because 3,000 rag tag milita men where a threat to Ethiopia's 300,000 man army, but because the Us is ANTI-ISLAM.



Then after all that (and others i haven't mentioned), the UN comes and states that "2,000 HIGHLY trained Eritrean soldiers are in somalia to aid the ICU in fighting" - but after 2 and half months, NOT A SINGLE ERITREAN SOLDIER WAS FOUND IN SOMALIA. But instead of the UN saying, "we f'uked up on that bogus report", they ignore it and pretend like they never stated it and continue to make bogus claims how Eritrea, which is one of the poorest nations on Earth, is some how magically doing Super Power moves by suplying, and sending expensive weapons to the ICU....



Seriously, I don't know what the UN has against Somalia and Eritrea, but no other nations on Earth have been through more crap then them two.

[eyes-only]

Mac & musika man

The UN doesn't do much for the suffering Somalis, the most needy. It is true they provide food aid to the chronically malnutritioned but that is because those countries in the west over produce on their agricultural subsidies and use the excess supplies to collapse the farming on countries like ours. They use the UN as a disposal bin to discard unwanted and expired/expiring food stuff.

I'm not denying there are people from those countries that work to provide humanitarian assistance but the reality is the people making a difference are not the UN and they are not governments……they are NGOs and individuals. The only thing the UN is good for is bribing, corrupting, threatening and waging wars………

[Salah Al-Din]

Assalaamu Alaikum,

Eyes I'm surprised some people still believe the U.N. or any other body help the poor. Unless the poor help themselves, they will continue to be marginalized and exploited.

Wassalaam Wabilaahi Towfiiq