IP: "apocalypse now?"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 17:01:35 -0500
> From: "Tim O'Connor" <oconnort () nyu edu>
> To: dave () farber net
>
>
> Dave: The full text of this is at:
>
>         http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,7-2001365343,00.html
>
>
> The article, "Apocalypse Now?"
> by Giles Whittell, begins:
>
> Dozens of Russia's nuclear weapons are
> missing. There is clear evidence that
> Osama bin Laden's agents have been
> scouring the world to buy or steal such
> devices in order to attack the West.
> Our correspondent investigates how near
> they may be to succeeding.
>
> When Ahmed Salama Mabruk was arrested
> three years ago in Baku, in Azerbaijan,
> no one in the West could confirm what he
> claimed to know. Some still doubt him,
> but no one now dares to say that he was
> lying.
>
> Mabruk was personal assistant to Ayman
> Zawahiri, the bespectacled lieutenant to
> Osama bin Laden who is now thought
> to have masterminded the September
> attacks on New York and Washington.
>
> When Azerbaijani security forces
> confiscated Mabruk's laptop they
> were able to download from it a
> mine of information about the
> structure of the al-Qaeda network.
> He was extradited to Egypt and is
> now serving a 25-year sentence for
> planning terrorist activities there,
> but during his trial he had a chance
> to exchange a few words in his Cairo
> courtroom with Mohammed Salah, a
> reporter with the London-based
> Al-Hayat newspaper.
>
> "I asked him if al-Qaeda had obtained
> nuclear weapons and he told me that
> both al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad had
> done so with the help of several
> different countries," says Salah.
> "He said that bin Laden had told his
> men not to use them except when
> ordered to." Salah was sceptical at
> first. "But now," he says, "I believe
> everything."
>
> <snip>
>
> --tim o'connor


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