From my in-box today (hat tip):
MOSCOW 'TRAINED' AL QAEDA NO 2
By United Press International
Russia's secret service trained Al Qaeda's Number Two, a Polish newspaper has claimed. The Russian Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, gave military training to Ayman Al Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's deputy, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported. Rzeczpospolita said that before deciding to join Bin Laden, Zawahiri received terrorist training in 1998 at a FSB camp in Dagestan in the North Caucasus.
Thereafter, he shifted his base to Afghanistan to become BinLaden's deputy, the paper quoted a former FSB agent as saying. The agent also claimed that Zawahiri was not the only link between the FSB and Al Qaeda, Asian News International said.
Disturbing enough for you? Read the rest here. Russia has previously denied having trained Iraq's notorious Mukhabarat secret service organization, and many Bush supporters still blame Moscow for helping Iraq get rid of its WMD (which most experts now doubt they had...) before the March 2003 invasion. However if this latest development is true, it's yet another complicating mess in the GWOT (and another reason for George Bush to stop trying to read people's souls...) |
