Terrorists Raised Funds in U.S.
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - Osama bin Laden's chief deputy visited the United States at least twice in the last decade to raise money for terrorism, according to federal court records.
Ayman al-Zawahiri made the trips in the early 1990s to help raise funds for the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ali Mohamed said on Oct. 20, 2000, as he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges stemming from the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
"I helped him to do this," Mohamed told Judge Leonard B. Sand.
The sworn statement was highlighted in a San Francisco Chronicle story Thursday detailing how two members of a Silicon Valley terrorist cell had admitted bringing al-Zawahiri to the United States to raise money for terrorism.
The newspaper said he traveled with a stolen passport supplied by the two men and used a fake name. It said he visited mosques in Santa Clara, Stockton and Sacramento during a nationwide fund-raising mission.
The Chronicle said he may have raised as much as $500,000 in the United States, mostly donations from U.S. Muslims who were told the money would support refugees of the Afghanistan war with the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Al-Zawahiri, 50, was included in a list of most wanted terrorists posted by the FBI this week in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. A doctor by training, al-Zawahiri is the alleged former head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged in 1998 with bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Jihad had been linked to terrorist activities dating to the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
A U.S. citizen and former Army sergeant, Mohamed once taught soldiers in the American special forces about Muslim culture.
He said during his plea that he became involved in the early 1980s with Egyptian Islamic Jihad and was introduced to bin Laden's organization in the early 1990s.
He said he conducted military training and taught basic explosives and intelligence to al-Qaida recruits in Afghanistan in 1992.
"I taught my trainees how to create cell structures that could be used for operations," he said.
Mohamed's testimony provided one of the most direct links between bin Laden and the August 1998 bombings that killed 231 people _ 12 Americans and 219 Africans _ at the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Mohamed said bin Laden in late 1993 asked him to conduct surveillance of American, British, French and Israeli targets in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
He said his surveillance files and photographs were reviewed by bin Laden, who "looked at the picture of the American Embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber."
Mohamed also gave a glimpse of the connections between organizations blamed for terrorism worldwide, saying he was aware of contacts between al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad on one side, and between Iran and Hezbollah on the other.
He said he arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between Hezbollah's chief and bin Laden. Hezbollah provided explosives training for al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad, Mohamed said, while Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons and used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks.
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