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FBI tracking Muslims to trace al-Qaeda men

FBI tracking Muslims to trace al-Qaeda men

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.
 


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