THE United States tasted sweet revenge when Navy Seals swooped on Osama bin Laden’s secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011, killing the world’s most wanted terrorist and the supreme commander of al-Qaeda.
As the special operations force swept through the compound, combing every room, they gathered documents and other vital evidence regarding al-Qaeda’s grand plan for its future global war of terror.
According to a document compiled by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), these documents indicated al-Qaeda’s long-term plans for future targets.
From some of the documents seized, a picture emerged that illustrated South Africa as a safe haven where international terrorism could be fomented.
Among the treasure trove of intelligence documents seized during the raid were documents indicating that Bin Laden thought of South Africa as an “open territory” from where al-Qaeda operatives could target Americans, the ICSR report stated.
Although it was never confirmed if al-Qaeda or groups allied to Bin Laden were behind it, the total security lockdown of the US Embassy in Pretoria and all its consulates as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in South Africa in September 2009 was widely reported in the media as a “credible threat”. This was during the run-up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
In the months after Bin Laden’s demise, the Combating Terrorism Crime Centre of the US Military Academy released details of Bin Laden’s operational plans.
John Solomon, the global head of terrorism research for World-Check, released a report based on the CTCC details that said the fact that Bin Laden thought of South Africa as an “open territory” and one from which his operatives could work relatively freely to strike at US targets should come as no surprise to those who have been following developments in the country.
He pointed out the problem areas in South Africa that make the country a safe haven for international terrorists. This sounds all too familiar for millions of South Africans. Porous borders, corruption in Home Affairs that allows the fraudulent issuing of South African identity documents and passports to terror suspects, “as well as a highly politicised intelligence services focused more on sectarian political battles within the ruling party, all contribute to South Africa being seen as this ‘open territory’”, Solomon pointed out.
He added that as early as 1997, al-Qaeda had established a presence in South Africa.
In October 1999, Khalfan Khamis Mohammed, part of the al-Qaeda cell that attacked the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam in 1998, was arrested in Cape Town.
Not only was al-Qaeda using South Africa as a safe house, but South Africa was also central in the organisation’s fundraising efforts.
The case of Yassin al-Qadi, a US-designated terrorist financier who invested US$3-million (R30-million) for a 12% interest in Global Diamond Resources that mined diamonds in South Africa, is but one example, according to Solomon.
The issue of South Africa as an operational base and conduit for international terrorists to their target country also emerged in the case of a Tunisian al-Qaeda suspect, Ihsan Garnaoui, in 2004.
Garnaoui was an explosives expert who trained in Afghanistan and was “promoted” to being an al-Qaeda trainer.
He held several South African passports in different names (including Abram Shoman and Mallick Shoman) and travelled via South Africa to Europe, where he was accused of planning to bomb American and Jewish targets.
According to Dutch counter-terrorism expert Ronald Sandee, most of Garnaoui’s preparation for these planned attacks took place in South Africa, where he purchased sophisticated military-grade binoculars with an integrated digital camera, diagrams and instructions for the assembly of detonators.
Garnaoui was setting up networks in Berlin while still in South Africa.
A well-known expert on Islam and senior professor in political studies at the University of the Free State, Hussein Solomon, said the South African government’s preoccupation with a Boeremag-like coup from “white racists” has left the country wide open for real terrorist attacks from groups such as Islamic radicals.
“When I interact with our counter-intelligence people, they are more concerned about the Boeremag than al-Qaeda ... But they are acting from an ideological perspective which is fundamentally out of sync with reality,” Hussein Solomon said.
“More worrisome is the existence of terrorist training camps on isolated farms – with the knowledge of certain people in the government,” he stated in a research paper, Terrorism in South Africa: More Questions than Answers, published in February 2013.
“Clearly these government officials believe that South Africa will not be targeted by these elements. Unfortunately, the available evidence does not support such wishful thinking. There is nothing preventing South Africa’s own citizens from becoming ‘collateral’ in the pursuit of other targets,” he said.
He warned that this belief that South Africa will not be targeted could also account for the fact that, despite monitoring these camps for a number of years, no action has been taken.
“Like any cancer left alone, these camps started to spread, and by May 2010 there were reports that operational training camps were established in several provinces and that these had links with other camps outside the country.”
He added that South African journalists had knowledge of these camps as early as June 2010.
“If journalists knew about it, why would the South African government have been clueless about it, and if policy-makers do have such information, why do they not shut it down? Is it once again the belief that South Africa is immune from such attacks?”
He warned that the political correctness had to stop, and greater clarity in policy and greater effort in implementation were needed.
“The terrorists we are confronting share none of our ambivalence on their destructive goals. We cannot hope to defeat them and protect our citizens if we continue to play ostrich.”
Bin Laden is dead, but South Africa is still at risk. In May 2012 the Mail & Guardian’s Phillip de Wet published an article on the seized documents from Abbottabad and came to the conclusion that “even though the al-Qaeda boss is dead, South Africa could still be targeted for attacks”.
“The so-called Abbottabad documents paint a fascinating picture of internal al-Qaeda discourse and politics – and also show that South Africa could still be under threat from terrorist attacks,” he wrote.
“Newly released documents seized ... show the al-Qaeda leader might have been keen to see terrorist attacks on targets associated with the United States on South African soil.”
Bin Laden told his followers in one of the documents confiscated in his compound to be wary that only one group of mujahidin operates in a country. “Each mujahidin group must ascertain that it is the only al-Qaeda group operating in a country where it intends to target Americans,” he instructed his followers.
De Wet also wrote that South Africa was also apparently high on the list of open territories, and quoted from documents translated from Arabic by the Combating Terrorism Centre of the United States Military Academy.
“You may find it suitable to target Americans in South Africa, because it is located outside the Islamic Maghreb. Also, South Africa is not covered by the brothers who are located outside that region. The same can be said about other African countries,” the documents read.
The slain al-Qaeda leader was no stranger to South Africa. Soon after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the South African media carried several stories revealing Osama bin Laden’s history of connections with people and some Muslim organisations in the country.
As far back as September 13 2001 the Independent newspaper group carried a story from one of their Kwazulu-Natal-based publications under the heading “Bin Laden has Durban connection”.
“Considered the top suspect in Tuesday’s horrifying attacks in New York and Washington, wealthy Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden is no stranger to Durban, where his name is held in high esteem among some sectors of the Islamic community.”
In its report, IOL added “the al-Qaeda leader’s riches, some of which had been channelled to his Durban supporters, have also been used to propagate Islam and for the printing of the Koran in Zulu”.
The Mercury in Durban revealed in 2011 how the Bin Laden family spent millions of dollars buying up property in the city. What has happened to those millions since Bin Laden was killed?
De Wet Potgieterhas been an investigative journalist for 38 years. He is the author of ‘Contraband – South Africa and the Illegal Trade in Ivory and Rhino Horn’, and ’The Eleventh Hour’. ’Black Widow White Widow’ (Penguin) is available at all good book stores nationwide. See also page 21. A second extract runs on Tuesday
Bin Laden is dead but SA offers much as al-Qaeda lair
As the special operations force swept through the compound, combing every room, they gathered documents and other vital evidence regarding al-Qaeda’s grand plan for its future global war of terror.
According to a document compiled by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), these documents indicated al-Qaeda’s long-term plans for future targets.
From some of the documents seized, a picture emerged that illustrated South Africa as a safe haven where international terrorism could be fomented.
Among the treasure trove of intelligence documents seized during the raid were documents indicating that Bin Laden thought of South Africa as an “open territory” from where al-Qaeda operatives could target Americans, the ICSR report stated.
Although it was never confirmed if al-Qaeda or groups allied to Bin Laden were behind it, the total security lockdown of the US Embassy in Pretoria and all its consulates as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in South Africa in September 2009 was widely reported in the media as a “credible threat”. This was during the run-up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
In the months after Bin Laden’s demise, the Combating Terrorism Crime Centre of the US Military Academy released details of Bin Laden’s operational plans.
John Solomon, the global head of terrorism research for World-Check, released a report based on the CTCC details that said the fact that Bin Laden thought of South Africa as an “open territory” and one from which his operatives could work relatively freely to strike at US targets should come as no surprise to those who have been following developments in the country.
He pointed out the problem areas in South Africa that make the country a safe haven for international terrorists. This sounds all too familiar for millions of South Africans. Porous borders, corruption in Home Affairs that allows the fraudulent issuing of South African identity documents and passports to terror suspects, “as well as a highly politicised intelligence services focused more on sectarian political battles within the ruling party, all contribute to South Africa being seen as this ‘open territory’”, Solomon pointed out.
He added that as early as 1997, al-Qaeda had established a presence in South Africa.
In October 1999, Khalfan Khamis Mohammed, part of the al-Qaeda cell that attacked the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam in 1998, was arrested in Cape Town.
Not only was al-Qaeda using South Africa as a safe house, but South Africa was also central in the organisation’s fundraising efforts.
The case of Yassin al-Qadi, a US-designated terrorist financier who invested US$3-million (R30-million) for a 12% interest in Global Diamond Resources that mined diamonds in South Africa, is but one example, according to Solomon.
The issue of South Africa as an operational base and conduit for international terrorists to their target country also emerged in the case of a Tunisian al-Qaeda suspect, Ihsan Garnaoui, in 2004.
Garnaoui was an explosives expert who trained in Afghanistan and was “promoted” to being an al-Qaeda trainer.
He held several South African passports in different names (including Abram Shoman and Mallick Shoman) and travelled via South Africa to Europe, where he was accused of planning to bomb American and Jewish targets.
According to Dutch counter-terrorism expert Ronald Sandee, most of Garnaoui’s preparation for these planned attacks took place in South Africa, where he purchased sophisticated military-grade binoculars with an integrated digital camera, diagrams and instructions for the assembly of detonators.
Garnaoui was setting up networks in Berlin while still in South Africa.
A well-known expert on Islam and senior professor in political studies at the University of the Free State, Hussein Solomon, said the South African government’s preoccupation with a Boeremag-like coup from “white racists” has left the country wide open for real terrorist attacks from groups such as Islamic radicals.
“When I interact with our counter-intelligence people, they are more concerned about the Boeremag than al-Qaeda ... But they are acting from an ideological perspective which is fundamentally out of sync with reality,” Hussein Solomon said.
“More worrisome is the existence of terrorist training camps on isolated farms – with the knowledge of certain people in the government,” he stated in a research paper, Terrorism in South Africa: More Questions than Answers, published in February 2013.
“Clearly these government officials believe that South Africa will not be targeted by these elements. Unfortunately, the available evidence does not support such wishful thinking. There is nothing preventing South Africa’s own citizens from becoming ‘collateral’ in the pursuit of other targets,” he said.
He warned that this belief that South Africa will not be targeted could also account for the fact that, despite monitoring these camps for a number of years, no action has been taken.
“Like any cancer left alone, these camps started to spread, and by May 2010 there were reports that operational training camps were established in several provinces and that these had links with other camps outside the country.”
He added that South African journalists had knowledge of these camps as early as June 2010.
“If journalists knew about it, why would the South African government have been clueless about it, and if policy-makers do have such information, why do they not shut it down? Is it once again the belief that South Africa is immune from such attacks?”
He warned that the political correctness had to stop, and greater clarity in policy and greater effort in implementation were needed.
“The terrorists we are confronting share none of our ambivalence on their destructive goals. We cannot hope to defeat them and protect our citizens if we continue to play ostrich.”
Bin Laden is dead, but South Africa is still at risk. In May 2012 the Mail & Guardian’s Phillip de Wet published an article on the seized documents from Abbottabad and came to the conclusion that “even though the al-Qaeda boss is dead, South Africa could still be targeted for attacks”.
“The so-called Abbottabad documents paint a fascinating picture of internal al-Qaeda discourse and politics – and also show that South Africa could still be under threat from terrorist attacks,” he wrote.
“Newly released documents seized ... show the al-Qaeda leader might have been keen to see terrorist attacks on targets associated with the United States on South African soil.”
Bin Laden told his followers in one of the documents confiscated in his compound to be wary that only one group of mujahidin operates in a country. “Each mujahidin group must ascertain that it is the only al-Qaeda group operating in a country where it intends to target Americans,” he instructed his followers.
De Wet also wrote that South Africa was also apparently high on the list of open territories, and quoted from documents translated from Arabic by the Combating Terrorism Centre of the United States Military Academy.
“You may find it suitable to target Americans in South Africa, because it is located outside the Islamic Maghreb. Also, South Africa is not covered by the brothers who are located outside that region. The same can be said about other African countries,” the documents read.
The slain al-Qaeda leader was no stranger to South Africa. Soon after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the South African media carried several stories revealing Osama bin Laden’s history of connections with people and some Muslim organisations in the country.
As far back as September 13 2001 the Independent newspaper group carried a story from one of their Kwazulu-Natal-based publications under the heading “Bin Laden has Durban connection”.
“Considered the top suspect in Tuesday’s horrifying attacks in New York and Washington, wealthy Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden is no stranger to Durban, where his name is held in high esteem among some sectors of the Islamic community.”
In its report, IOL added “the al-Qaeda leader’s riches, some of which had been channelled to his Durban supporters, have also been used to propagate Islam and for the printing of the Koran in Zulu”.
The Mercury in Durban revealed in 2011 how the Bin Laden family spent millions of dollars buying up property in the city. What has happened to those millions since Bin Laden was killed?
De Wet Potgieterhas been an investigative journalist for 38 years. He is the author of ‘Contraband – South Africa and the Illegal Trade in Ivory and Rhino Horn’, and ’The Eleventh Hour’. ’Black Widow White Widow’ (Penguin) is available at all good book stores nationwide. See also page 21. A second extract runs on Tuesday
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