Al-Qaeda:  More WMD Documents Discovered

U.S. investigators discovered “significant” documents at Tarnak Farms near Kandahar, Afghanistan, while searching former al-Qaeda sites for evidence that the organization was building weapons of mass destruction, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday (Agence France-Presse I, Dec. 16).

U.S. officials will test items from the Tarnak Farms camp for traces of chemical, biological and radioactive material, Rumsfeld said.  Investigators had visited about 30 sites to test for such materials (see GSN, Dec. 14), U.S. General Tommy Franks said yesterday. He said that the list of sites to be inspected has grown to 50 sites partly based on information gleaned from Taliban and suspected al-Qaeda detainees.

“It is frightening,” Franks said, “Some of the information that we have gained would allude to perhaps—I don’t want to call them science projects—but would make reference to things like poisons, the building of explosives, some of these cookbooks that we have talked about before that talk about terrorist approaches to problems and how buildings can be destroyed, and so forth.”

Some pieces of evidence “suggest that [al-Qaeda was] trying, at least, to acquire these weapons of mass destruction, and that’s no surprise,” said U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (Kenneth Bazinet, New York Daily News, Dec. 17).

There is no confirmation yet that al-Qaeda had the means to create weapons of mass destruction, Franks said, adding he could not confirm reports that al-Qaeda had planned to detonate a bomb in London (Agence France-Presse II, Dec. 16).

In a former al-Qaeda house near Kandahar, a Portuguese journalist discovered a hand-written plan to detonate a car bomb weighing more than 1,000 pounds in the Moorgate area of London, the London Independent reported yesterday.  It was unclear whether al-Qaeda planned to execute the attack or whether the notes were only for training purposes, and there was no evidence of when the organization would have implemented the plan, the Independent said (Justin Huggler, London Independent, Dec. 16).

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Pakistan:  Two Nuclear Scientists Released

Two Pakistani former nuclear scientists under investigation for their ties to al-Qaeda were released Saturday in time for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, although reports conflicted on the details of their release.

Muhammad Asim Mehmood, son of Sultan Bashiru-din Mehmood, one of the detained scientists, said yesterday that Mehmood and Chaudry Abdul Majid, another scientist, had been released and declared innocent, the New York Times reported today.  According to previous reports, Pakistani authorities had already released the scientists once after their original detention and then detained them again for further questioning last month (see GSN, Nov. 26).

Pakistani authorities were unavailable for comment, according to the Times, and Muhammad Asim Mehmood said he did not know if U.S. authorities had been involved in the release and could not comment on any U.S. involvement in the scientists’ interrogation.  The scientists must report any of their movements outside Islamabad and are not allowed to speak to the media, the son said.

Mehmood said his father had met with Osama bin Laden in August (see GSN, Dec. 12) but only to ask bin Laden for funding for a university in Kabul.

“It’s true that he met with Osama,” he said, “but my father wanted to discuss setting up a polytechnic university.  He thought Osama might be the financier for it.”  U.S. authorities have said no evidence existed (see GSN, Dec. 10) to indicate the scientists provided useful nuclear weapons information to bin Laden (Douglas Frantz, New York Times, Dec. 17).

The Washington Post reported the release slightly differently.  Pakistani officials said the two scientists were released to spend Eid al-Fitr with their families, according to the Post.  “They have promised to return back to us soon after the Eid holidays,” said a Pakistani official.  They were not allowed to leave Islamabad, the Post reported.

The scientists said last month they had answered bin Laden’s technical questions about constructing weapons of mass destruction, Pakistani officials said, adding that the scientists’ information did not help advance any al-Qaeda weapons programs.  “The probe against these scientists is by no means over, but we are satisfied that their contact with bin Laden didn’t result in any improvement in al-Qaeda’s firepower,” said a Pakistani intelligence official (Kamran Khan, Washington Post, Dec. 16).

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