September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front

they were on a terrorism task force and said they had proof of criminal activity, Wright said he was
told not to pursue the matter.... even after the bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no
arrests. 'Two months after the embassies are hit in Africa, they wanted to shut down the criminal
investigation,' said Wright. 'They wanted to kill it.' ... The move outraged Chicago federal prosecutor
Mark Flessner, who was assigned to the case despite efforts Wright and Vincent say were made by
superiors to block the probe....'There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and
within the FBI that simply were not going to let it [the building of a criminal case] happen. And it
didn't happen,' Flessner said. He said he still couldn't figure out why Washington stopped the case... On
Sept. 11, 2001, the two agents watched the terror attacks in horror, worried that men they could have
stopped years earlier may have been involved.'"[Called Off the Trail? ABCNews, 19 Dec 2002]
“ The Observer has obtained a copy of a personal memo sent from Sudan to Louis Freeh, former
director of the FBI, after the murderous 1998 attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
It announces the arrest of two named bin Laden operatives held the day after the bombings after they
crossed the Sudanese border from Kenya. They had cited the manager of a Khartoum leather factory
owned by bin Laden as a reference for their visas, and were held after they tried to rent a flat
overlooking the US embassy in Khartoum, where they were thought to be planning an attack. US
sources have confirmed that the FBI wished to arrange their immediate extradition. However, Clinton's
Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, forbade it.... Sudan held the suspects for a further three weeks,
hoping the US would both perform their extradition and take up the offer to examine their bin Laden
database."[Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files, Observer, 30 September 2001]
“The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government's most wanted
list with a reward of $25 million for his capture. He is wanted for his involvement in the African
embassy bombings. Al-Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al-Qaeda leader returned to
Afghanistan in 1996. Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-
Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000....."[MI6 'halted
bid to arrest bin Laden', Observer, 10 November 2002]
Another example of this unwillingness to detain key Al Qaeda mercenaries is the case of
Abu Haf (aks Abu Hafs, Abu Hafsi). Abu Haf was a significant Al Qaeda operative in the
original US strategy to deploy Al Qaeda against the Russians.
Al-Qaida emerged from another organisation, Maktab al-Khidamat, the services bureau
that Abdallah Azzam set up in the early 1980s to support Afghan resistance. Azzam was
assassinated in 1989; he was succeeded by Bin Laden, one of his leading disciples, who
transformed the organisation into al-Qaida.
“During a recent interview in Amman, Azzam’s son Hudayfa, who has spent almost 20 years among
Arab militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me: “Most Yemeni fighters, simple minded warriors
whose only ambition was martyrdom, left Afghanistan after the fall of the Communist government.
The Egyptians stayed because they had other ambitions as yet unfulfilled. When Osama bin Laden
joined them, after he left Sudan in 1996, they focused on shifting his basic thinking from opposition to
American hegemony in the Middle East towards a Takfirist perspective.“When I met Osama bin Laden
in 1997 in Islamabad, he was flanked by three members of the Egyptian camp: the Somali Abu Obaida,
and the Egyptians Abu Haf and Saiful Adil..” [Global jihad splits into wars between Muslims: Al-
Qaida: the unwanted guests, Syed Saleem Shahzad, Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2007]
In 1994, he joined the US operation to disrupt Russian control of oil in Chechnya.
At the end of 1994, this Jordanian, together with a group of his associated, moved to Chechnya, joining
military activity against the Russian troops. [World Secret Services and the Caucasian Emissary of Al-
Qaeda, Michel Elbaz , 30.11.2006]
THE SEPTEMBER 11 COMMISSION REPORT Page 82