China paid Osama bin Laden several million dollars for access to unexploded American cruise missiles left over from the US attack on his bases three years ago, an alleged senior al-Qaeda agent in Europe claims.
The alleged agent's account is contained in the transcript of a secretly taped conversation between supporters of bin Laden. The revelation emerged as US President George W. Bush announced that he had won Beijing's support for the war on terrorism on Friday. After his first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
The Chinese government has denied it obtained US missiles after the 1998 raid, which was carried out in reprisal for the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Beijing is said to have made a deal with al-Qaeda to acquire the missiles despite the fact that it was facing a growing threat from Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang region. In 1999, China accused bin Laden's organization of training members of the independence movement in guerrilla warfare.
The US fired 75 missiles into Afghanistan during the attack on bin Laden's camps on Aug. 20, 1998. A report four months later in the Pakistani newspaper Ausaf, cited Taliban sources as saying that 40 were found unexploded.
The story of what happened next was taken up by Lased ben Heni in a conversation with associates this year. Ben Heni, a 32-year-old Libyan arrested in Munich last week, is accused by Italian prosecutors of being the liaison officer between two terrorist cells owing allegiance to al-Qaeda in Frankfurt and Milan.
On March 9, in a rundown flat in the Milan suburb of Gallarate, he met the leader of the Italian cell, Sami ben Khemais Essid and told him of his experiences in Afghanistan visiting bin Laden's camps. Unknown to the two men, the flat had been bugged by officers of the Italian anti-terrorist police.
"Perhaps the Americans are convinced by the bombardment of the sheikh's [bin Laden's] training centers," Ben Heni is quoted as saying. "For them, it was a victory. But, in fact, it was a defeat because the majority of the missiles didn't even explode.
"With these weapons, he [bin Laden] has boosted his financial resources. ... In particular, businessmen have come from China. He works a great deal with China. He's got good relations with them.
"Thanks to the money that comes from these studies from outside, he created the army of muhajidin headed by Omar Zayan in Chechnya."
The transcript is the first supporting evidence from inside al-Qaeda of sporadic reports in the months following the 1998 attack that China had acquired two unexploded Tomahawk missiles. In March 1999, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman described the reports as "groundless."
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS