X-Ray suspect planned embassy attacks, claims US
A terror suspect imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay is a former Iraqi soldier and al-Qaida member who plotted to attack the American and other foreign embassies in Pakistan with chemical weapons in August 1998, US officials claim.
There is no public record of such an attempt being made, although staff at the US embassy in Islamabad was reduced that month amid heightened security concerns following truck bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
On August 20, the US responded with cruise missile attacks on al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and a target in Sudan.
The Iraqi, whose identity is being concealed by the Pentagon on privacy grounds, is further described as a ”trusted agent” of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and a member of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. He was arrested in Pakistan in July 2002.
There is no indication the Iraqi’s alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s government, other than the brief mention of him travelling to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence.
These accusations are contained in a two-page “summary of evidence” presented to the Iraqi for his appearance before a Combatant Status Review Board at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba late last year.
The evidence was meant to convince the three-member review board – which has heard all 558 detainee cases at Guantanamo Bay – that the government properly classified him as an “enemy combatant”.
Among the few details made public about the Iraqi is that he is 39 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay since October 2002, three months after he was reported captured in Pakistan.
The assertion that the Iraqi was involved in a plot against embassies in Pakistan is not further substantiated in the document. It states only that he travelled to Pakistan in August 1998 with a member of Iraqi intelligence ”for the purpose of” striking at embassies with chemical mortars.
