Author: Agencies/New York
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 7, 2002
The FBI is tracking hundreds of
mostly young Muslims in the US in the belief that al-Qaeda-trained terrorists
remain in the country, senior law enforcement officials say.
The surveillance campaign is being
carried out by every major FBI office in the country and involves 24-hour
monitoring of the suspects' telephone calls, e-mail messages and internet
use, as well as scrutiny of their credit-card charges, their travel and
their visits to neighbourhood gathering places, including mosques.
The monitoring campaign, which also
involved attempts at recruitment of the suspects' friends and family members
as government informants, has raised alarm from civil liberties groups
and some Arab-American and Muslim leaders. The men are suspected of ties
to al-Qaeda or other groups affiliated with Osama bin Laden's terrorist
network. Law enforcement officials were quoted as saying by the New York
Times that the surveillance programme has provided vital evidence to support
a string of arrests and indictments around the country since late summer
- in western New York, in Detroit, in Seattle and, on Friday, in Portland
in Oregon state - of American citizens and others accused of conspiring
in terrorist cells to assist al-Qaeda. Still, the paper says, the FBI has
acknowledged that it has no evidence of any imminent terrorist threat posed
by the so-called sleeper cells connected to al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, a telephone call intercepted
by the American spy satellites revealed that suspected terrorist mastermind
Osama bin Laden is alive and regularly meeting Mullah Omar, the fugitive
leader of the Taliban.
In the conversation, recorded less
than a month ago, Omar and a senior aide were discussing the American-
led hunt to track them down. The two men, using a mobile thuraya satellite
phone, spoke about tactics for several minutes. Omar then turned to a third
person who was within a few yards of him, voice analysis has revealed,
the Observer weekly reported from Jalalabad.
After exchanging a few words, Omar
said: "The Sheikh sends his salaams (greetings)". Senior Taliban figures
usually refer to bin Laden as "The Sheikh". The revelation comes amid growing
speculation that bin Laden is dead. He has looked gaunt and unwell in videos
released by al-Qaeda, and appeared unable to use his left arm. There has
been no public statement from bin Laden since early this year.
Bin Laden's current whereabouts
are not known, but it is thought he is moving between Pakistan and Afghanistan
via the remote border between the Afghan province of Paktia and the Pakistani
tribal agencies of Waziristan. Some analysts say this lack of communication
indicates that he might be dead, but others say he is biding his time.
"He does not want to be rushed into
saying something reactive. He wants to make statements on his own terms,"
said Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds newspaper in London. Other analysts
pointed out that Mullah Omar could have been bluffing in the knowledge
that he was being tapped by Americans. Three months ago a senior al-Qaeda
operative, apparently inadvertently, referred to bin Laden in the past
tense in an interview with an Arab journalist in Karachi.