Israel Matzav

New lawsuit alleges Iran and Hezbullah trained al-Qaeda; much of the evidence comes from Israel

A new lawsuit filed in Federal Court in Manhattan by a group of relatives of 9/11 victims, led by the widow of the pilot of United Flight 175 (pictured above), alleges that Iran and Hezbullah trained the al-Qaeda terrorists and were behind the 9/11 attacks. Much of the evidence comes from Israel. And the article was written by Israeli intelligence reporter Ronen Bergman, who testified before the 9/11 commission about this.

In July of 2004, members of the National Commission established to look into the September 11 attacks were facing immense pressure. The target date for submitting the report the whole of America was waiting for had passed, and commission members were given a 60-day extension that was also about to expire. However, eight days before the final submission date, some commission members received word of new information; a real intelligence time bomb.

Commission members didn’t know what to do. On one hand, a whole new lead emerged; yet on the other hand, nobody could process this huge amount of information within days. At the end of the day, the commission chose a solution that turned out to be the worst of all: It crammed some of the information into three pages (pp. 240-242 in the report) written hectically, ignored most of the information, and in fact left the big question open.

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Early in the 9/11 commission’s work, it turned out that the issue of traveling and visas was a major component in the affair. According to the documents submitted to the court, an immense operation was managed prior to September 11 in order to facilitate the many trips required by the operation.

The reason is clear: Only a well-oiled arrangement of flights and secret border crossings could have enabled the terrorists to enter and exit the US and go to Afghanistan. Anyone who ever tried to get a US visa knows this is no simple matter. A passport stamp of a state on America’s list of terror-sponsors immediately turns one into a suspect.

So how did the 19 terrorists manage to enter the US after all? How could it be that US immigration officials in Germany and Saudi Arabia suspected nothing? The answer to these questions remained unknown, until the treasure trove was discovered at the NSA basement. As it turned out, many of the terrorists headed from Afghanistan to Iran, with Iranian officials ordering border control officers not to stamp these passports. The other terrorists passed through Beirut in their many trips, where Hezbollah officials similarly cared for them.

Mellon’s team hopes that this is where the “smoking gun” can be found, proving a direct link between Iran and 9/11. If Iran did not know about the attacks and was not involved in them, why did it keep its stamps off the terrorists’ passports?

Yet that’s not all. The intelligence information submitted to the court includes yet another “smoking gun”: In some of the flights, the terrorists were accompanied by figures whose names were identical to the aliases used by former Hezbollah “army chief” Imad Mugniyah and some of his close aides. This would be hard to dismiss as an “odd coincidence.”

Read the whole thing.

Labels: 9/11, al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, Hezbullah, Imad Mughniyah, Iran, Osama Bin Laden

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:34 PM