Bin Laden has been linked to a web of terror for years

The Providence Journal

BOSTON -- Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hides away, a shadowy figure who is said to dispatch terror from places such as the Hindu Kush mountains in Pakistan.

But he has tentacles.

Bin Laden's network reportedly has at least 3,000 operatives and a goal: to wage a war against the United States, which he calls the "Great Satan."

He has as an almost god-like status among his followers, who attend guerrilla-training camps in Afghanistan and then morph into outwardly appearing regular Joes who settle in Israel or even in American suburbs as they lay the groundwork to carry out their orders.

The hijackers, who are suspected to be part of bin Laden's sinister web, gave as addresses houses and bland apartment buildings from San Diego to Newton, Mass.

Others linked to bin Laden have worked as Boston cab drivers; one lived off welfare checks and petty theft in a rundown flat in Montreal.

Behind the simple facade , there is a grandiose plot.

"He's a zealot who believes that the best way to get into heaven is to kill all the people in the Western civilized world," said Michael S. Swetman, president of the Potomac Institue for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va., and author of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda: A Profile of a Terrorist Network .

Five years ago, according to a federal indictment in New York, bin Laden read aloud his Declaration of Jihad, or Holy War, and made an audiotape recording for worldwide distribution. The New York indictment accuses bin Laden of financing and planning bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.

The declaration said it was time to pool efforts to kill Americans. Bin Laden encouraged others to join the Jihad againt the "American enemy."

Just a few weeks ago, bin Laden told Abdel Bari-Atwans, editor of a London Arab newspaper, al Quds-al-Arabi, that a large-scale attack against the U.S. was coming soon, Bari-Atwans told the Guardian newspaper in London this week.

Bari-Atwans told the Guardian that given what bin Laden told him, bin Laden's followers were "almost certainly" behind the attacks.

Bin Laden, who is around 45, is the son of Muhammed bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi of Yemeni origin and founder of the Bin Laden Group, a construction firm heavily involved in work for the Saudi government.

Bin Laden is the 17th of his father's 52 children. It is a sprawling family whose ties reach to Boston.

The Bin Laden Group, which is based in Jedah, Saudi Arabia, donated $1 million to Harvard University's Graduate School of Design in 1993. The endowment funds graduate-student research and the study of the restoration of Islamic architecture, Joe Wrinn, university spokesman, said Friday.

In 1994, the Bin Laden Group made a second gift, to Harvard Law School. That donation funds the study of Islamic law by visiting professors.

Abdullah bin Laden, a cousin of Osama bin Laden, graduated from Harvard Law School, in 1992, Wrinn said.

"The vast majority of his family have actively disassociated themselves with [Osama bin Laden]," Wrinn said. "There is no connection whatsoever between [the donations], and the terrorist actions of Osama bin Laden."

Wrinn said the Bin Laden Group made a contribution to another local university, but that could not be confirmed yesterday.

One of bin Laden's relatives, Mohammed M. bin Laden, owns six condominiums in a pricey complex on the wharf in Charlestown.

"I've heard that [bin Laden] is an outcast, and also that the brother in Boston is an outcast. There isn't much contact between them," Swetman, of the Potomac Institute said. "When you have 51 brothers and sisters, it's not saying a lot if you're not close to all of them."

Edith Flynn, a terrorism expert from Northeastern University, said of bin Laden's family: "They'd like to disown him."

Bin Laden, tall and gaunt, is said to be married to four women and to have up to 18 children. He went to college in Saudi Arabia and is said to be very intelligent.

He was considered somewhat of a rich, party boy in college, but his studies of business management and undergraduate degree in civil engineering would probably help him with the logistics of planning terrorist attacks, said David Leheny, a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and a former fellow at the U.S. Department of State Counter Terrorism.

"His participation would have been very helpful . . . they probably received ideas about what they're supposed to do. It's not a secret that the World Trade Center was targeted by Islamic fundamentalists [in 1993]. There were people clearly resolved to finish the job," Leheny said. "They would have been trained sufficiently by [bin Laden] . . . My guess is that if he studied just a little bit he would know what an aircraft fully loaded with fuel would do to a skyscraper made of steel."

In the 1970s, bin Laden recruited Muslim terrorists for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia expelled him from the country for terrorist activities in 1989. He moved to Sudan, but that country kicked him out in 1996 at the urging of the United States, which believed bin Laden was linked to the attempted assasination of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

That same year, bin Laden publicly issued his declaration of war against the United States. He then moved to Afghanistan, where he is said to run some five training camps for young Muslim extremists. The United States has demanded the Afghanistan ruling faction known as Taliban turn over bin Laden to justice.

Bin Laden supports Jihad fighters from Afghanistan to Chechnya to the United States. The indictment against him for the embassy bombings said that as early as 1991, bin Laden made efforts to recruit U.S. citizens to his enterprise, al-Qaeda, also known as "the base."

An organization known as Qoqaz has posted on its website a description of Jihad training. It explains that Jihad, or Holy War, means to "struggle against oppression."

"Jihad is therefore an act to liberate people from the oppression of tyrants," states the posting, which suggests reading U.S. military field manuals, and "Soviet weapon operating manuals" for AK-47s.

Bin Laden is an extremist who says he wages war on religious grounds, although Islam is a peace-loving religion that forbids "ignorant wars." Bin Laden, however, practices an extreme, fundamentalist brand of what he calls Islam.

Flynn, of Northeastern, said the Islamic extremist movement tries to attract followers by portraying the United States as a godless, valueless society. When that happens, she said, "convincing someone that this is a corrupt country that needs to be fought, isn't that hard to do."

U.S. authorities believe bin Laden's al Qaeda organization has a bankroll of more than $300 million and a structure which includes a consultation council that discusses and approves major terrorist undertakings. Bin Laden's name has been linked to the bombing of the embassies, the suicide bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole, and several plots aimed at Americans and Israelis oveseas.

To his followers, bin Laden is seen as a charismatic, though quiet and reserved, man, said Swetman, of the Potomac Institute. Swetman is also an adviser to the U.S. Senate Special Select Committee on Intelligence.

"He is almost worshipped," he said. "Very much like an ayatollah."

He recruits young people, indoctrinates them and brainwashes them to the point where they are willing to give their life to attack the United States and Israel, Swetman said.

His organization has recently taken to calling itself the International Islamic Front for Jihad against America and Israel. His hatred of the United States centers on two main points: he believes America is an "infidel," a morally corrupt country that threatens his extremist Islamic beliefs; he believes the United States' presense in the Middle East is a threat to fundamentalist Islamic society.

Last year FBI investigators tracked two former Boston cab drivers to Afghanistan, and to bin Laden's hierarchy. Bassam A. Kanj, a onetime Northeastern University soccer player, lived in Boston for about 15 years. He was killed in Lebanon last year in an attack against the Lebanese army. Raed M. Hijazi, a Palestinian, was charged in Jordan with plotting a millennium hotel bombing.

"We had concrete evidence of a cell in Boston when we found out about the cab drivers," said Flynn, of Northeastern University. "It's rare to get really concrete evidence."

Flynn said there are cells in Boston, "no question about it."

"There are cells dotting the countryside, some in Canada . . . then in Vermont or New Hampshire . . . quite a few in New York," she said. "I have been told by the FBI that for every terrorist movement on our globe, there is at least one or more cells in New York City. For instance, the cult that bombed that Toyko subway had a cell in New York City."

Flynn said cells are generally groups of between four and seven individuals, who receive momey, transportation, and support from an umbrella organization. The financial support is deliberately slim so followers don't stand out.

"Eight years ago with the first assault on the World Trade Center, one of the terrorists was so scarce of money that he went back to the rental agency of the car he blew up and wanted money back," Flynn said.

Some hijackers in Tuesday's attack are said to have come to New England by way of Nova Scotia. Bin Laden's operatives have already tried that same path. A foiled terrorist act in 1999 also began in Canada and headed for the United States.

Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian, was arrested in December, 1999, as he tried to cross the Canadian border with more than 50 pounds of bomb-making materials. He was convicted in Los Angeles in April. Prosecutors said Ressam's Montreal apartment was a terrorist cell financed by bin Laden.

When Ressam was caught, possibly intending, prosecutors said, to blow up Seattle's Space Needle, investigators found the business card of Abu Doha, a 37-year-old suspected bin Laden associate now on trial in London, Brian Whittaker, a Middle East reporter for the Guardian newspaper in London said Friday.

Doha is suspected of providing phony passports and other support in the so-called millennium plot.

Bin Laden, Whittaker said, is "shadowy" and "impossible to find."

"I think it's always so difficult to trace it back to bin Laden," he said. "The most you seem to find is that people have been to Afghanistan at some time. I think in general, if you look at previous trials, it's more sort of guilt by association. They are found with bin Laden's terrorist training manual or that sort of thing."

Swetman said he doesn't think bin Laden's network operates full-time in the United States. What's clear, however, is that when the operatives want to commit acts of terrorism in the United States or Israel, they move to the countries ahead of time to prepare, he said.

Two of the highjacking suspects, Mohammed Atta, 33, and Marwan al Shehhi, 23, both of the United Arab Emirates, moved to Florida in early 2000, renting homes and carrying on quiet lives and enrolling in pilot classes, USA Today reported.

"If you can brainwash a young man to die for your cause and you have the money to send him to learn to fly an airplane," Swetman said, "you can do almost anything."