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http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr010919_1_n.shtml

Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view

Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state
that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the
Pentagon in Washington. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were
two of the world's foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad
Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the
Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible
successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden. 

The two men have not been seen for some time. Mughniyeh is probably the
world's most wanted outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has
undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognisable. Zawahiri is thought to be
based in Egypt. He could be Bin Laden's chief representative outside
Afghanistan.

The Iraqis, who for several years paid smaller groups to do their dirty work,
were quick to discover the advantages of Al-Qaeda. The Israeli sources claim
that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling
between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri. According to
the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was
captured last October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan. The
Iraqis are also reported to have established strong ties with Imad Mughniyeh.

"We've only got scraps of information, not the full picture," admits one
intelligence source, "but it was good enough for us to send a warning six
weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was
expected. One of our indications suggested that Imad Mughniyeh met with some
of his dormant agents on secret trips to Germany. We believe that the
operational brains behind the New-York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri,
who were probably financed and got some logistical support from the Iraqi
Intelligence Service (SSO)."

Mughniyeh was the only one believed to have tried it before. On April 12th
1997, he was reported to be only two hours away from achieving the highest
goal of any terrorist organisation (until last week): blowing up an Israeli
El-Al airliner above Tel Aviv. A man carrying a forged British passport with
the name Andrew Jonathan Neumann was in a Jerusalem hotel preparing a bomb he
was supposed to take on board an El-Al flight leaving Israel, when it
accidentally went off. Andrew Jonathan Neumann was very badly injured but
strong enough to reveal later to the Israelis that he was not British but
Lebanese, and that his operation was supposed to be a special "gift" to
Israel from Imad Mughniyeh. 

'A psychopath'
"Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mughniyeh," says
an Israeli who knows Mughniyeh. "The guy is a genius, someone who refined the
art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the
conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable
psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The
killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong
motivation."

Experts on Iraq and Saddam Hussein also believe that Iraq was the state
behind the two terror masterminds. "In recent months, there was a change, and
Iraq decided to get into the terror business. On July 7th, they tried for the
first time to send a suicide bomber, trained in Baghdad, to blow up Tel Aviv
airport (Foreign Report No. 2651)."

Our sources believe that it will be very difficult to get to the bottom of
this unprecedented terror operation. However, they believe the chief of the
Iraqi SSO is Qusai Hussein, the dictator's son, and his organisation is the
most likely to have been involved.

Mughniyeh, 48, is a "sick man", says an intelligence officer who was in
charge of his file. He is considered by Western intelligence agencies as the
most dangerous active terrorist today. He is wanted by several governments
and the Americans have put a $2m reward on his head.

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