Iraq's Foreign Ministry dismissed as "lies" Thursday a reported Israeli claim that Baghdad was involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States.
"These are lies and slanders aimed at misleading world public opinion, especially in the United States," an Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman told AFP.
Jane's Security, a website specializing in defense and security matters, quoted on Thursday Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, as saying they suspect that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.
They claimed that two Lebanese and Egyptian masterminds directed the attacks, with Iraqi support.
Aman officers named the two as the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbollah, and the Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden.
Unconfirmed reports in Beirut quoted by the Foreign Report say Mughniyeh has undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognizable. Zawahiri is thought to be based in Egypt. He could be bin Laden's chief representative outside Afghanistan, it said.
“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)." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
