THE CIA HAD MET BEN LADEN IN JULY IN DUBAI
By Alexandra Richard*
Paris- 31 Oct. (IPS) Osama Ben Laden, the prime suspect behind the 11 September terrorist operations against the United States had been hospitalised in the Persian Gulf city of Dubai where he was visited by an unidentified CIA "station" officer, according to the French centrist daily "Le Figaro".
"The number one enemy public would have been treated in the American Hospital of Dubaï in the beginning of summer for serious renal insufficiencies. During his stay of 15 days, the Saudi multimillionaire would have received the visit of a local representative of the CIA. This agent would even have been informed on possible attempts.
Dubaï is one of the seven emirates of the federation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) situated to the northeast of Abu Dhabi. This city of 350 000 inhabitants was the discreet theatre of a secret meeting between Mr. Osama Ben Laden and the CIA’s station officer in July. A man, professional partner of the administrative direction of the American Hospital of Dubaï, asserts that the number one public enemy stayed in this hospital from 4 to 14 July.
[The German news agency DPA quoted Wednesday Mr. Bernard Koval, the Hospital’s General Manager as having vehemently denied the report, saying Ben Laden had "never been" in this establishment].
From the Quetta airport in Pakistan, Osama Ben Laden has been transferred since its arrival in Dubaï Airport. Accompanied by his personal and faithful physician lieutenant, who could be the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahari - on this point the testimonies are not formal -, four bodyguards, as well as of an Algerian male nurse, Ben Laden has been admitted to the American hospital, a building of glass and marble situated between Al-Garhoud Bridge and Al-Maktoum Bridge.
Every floor includes two "VIP" suites and about fifteen rooms. The Saudi multimillionaire has been admitted in the very well known urology department of doctor Terry Callaway, specialist of the kidney stones and the masculine infertility. Joined by telephone several times, doctor Callaway didn't wish to answer our questions.
Already in March 2000, the weekly Asia Week published in Hongkong wrote that Ben Laden had a serious physical problem that his days were in danger because of a "renal infection that propagates itself to the liver and require specialised cares".
According to authorised sources, Ben Laden would have made himself deliver in his Afghan den of Kandahar a set of mobile material of dialysis during the first semester 2000 and between 1996 and 1998, he had travelled several times to Dubaï for his business.
On 27 September, fifteen days after the attack on the World Trade Center, on American demand, the central Bank of the UAE announced to have ordered the freezing of the accounts and the investments of 26 people or organisations suspected to maintain contacts with Mr. Ben Laden’s organisation, notably by the Dubaï Islamic Bank.
During his hospitalisation, Osama Ben Laden received the visit of several members of his family, of Saudi personalities and émiraties. During this same stay, the local representative of the CIA, known by a lot of people in Dubaï, has been seen using the main elevator of the hospital to go Ben Laden’s room.
Days later, the CIA man boasted before some friends about to have paid a visit to the Saudi multimillionaire. According to authorised sources, the agent has been recalled by his main station on July 15, one day after of Ben Laden’s departure for Quetta.
At the end July, the Emirate’s customs arrested at the airport of Dubaï the franco-Algerian Moslem activist, Djamel Beghal. Beginning August, the French and American authorities were alerted. Interrogated by the local authorities in Abu Dhabi, Beghal said that he had been recalled Afghanistan end of 2000 by Abou Zoubeida - a military person responsible of Ben Laden’s organization, Al Qa’ida and was instructed to blow up the US embassy in Paris.
According to different Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence, some very precise information have been communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aiming American interests in the world, including on the American territory.
A report of the DST dated of September 7 sums up the totality of these data, specifying that the order to act had to come from Afghanistan.
In August, an emergency meeting bringing together the DGSE and high-ranking officials from American services was held at the American embassy in Paris,. Extremely worried, the American side present their French counterparts very precise information concerning Algerian activists, without explaining however on the general sense of their action. To the question "what you fear in the coming days? ", the Americans oppose a silence difficult to understand.
Contacts between the CIA and Ben Laden go back up to 1979 when, representing the familial society in Istanbul, he starts to enrol volunteers from the Arab-Moslem world for the Afghan resistance against the Red army. Investigating into the attempts of August 1998 against the American embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and of Darussalam (Tanzania), FBI investigators discovered that the traces let by the impacts come from a military explosive belonging to the American army delivered three years earlier to Arab Afghans, the famous international brigades of volunteers, fighting in the side of Osama Ben Laden during Afghan war against the soviet army.
Continuing its investigations, the FBI discovers "montages" that the CIA had developed for years with its "islamist friends." The meeting of Dubaï would be therefore only the logical continuation of a "certain American politics". ENDS BEN LADEN CIA MEETING 311001
Published by "Le Figaro" on October 31, 2001
Highlights Are from IPS