Fortune for 'jihad: Laden papers reveal suspicious Qaeda

Mar 05, 2016, 00:49

In another instance, bin Laden, writing under the pseudonym Abu Abdallah, anxious that the US might have followed his wife's visit to a dentist in Iran, and possibly implanted a tracking chip in a filling. The size of the chip was nearly equal to the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli, read the revealed documents.

The insight is one of several emerging from 113 newly declassified documents, part of a trove found by U.S. Navy SEALs during the 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the al Qaida leader was killed. They address a range of topics, including fractures between al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq, which eventually splintered off into what is now known as the Islamic State; and bin Laden's concerns about his organisation's public image.

He said a letter, apparently written by bin Laden, to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, Head of al Qaeda's Yemen branch, stressed: "We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes".

The latest publication aligns with the presidents call for increased transparency consistent with national security prerogativesand the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act, which required the ODNI to conduct a review of the documents for release, a media statement said.

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"Please trust me that I am working very hard to live with you", bin Laden wrote.

"I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah", he wrote.

"In regard to the money that is in Sudan, it is about 29 million dollars", bin Laden writes in the undated document. Bin Laden was the scion of a family that made a vast fortune in construction projects for the Saudi royal family, although he was later expelled from that country and fled to Sudan.

In another letter regarding negotiations to releasing an Afghan prisoner, bin Laden was also anxious about American surveillance and tracking devices. Even people presenting themselves as friends were not trusted.

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Bin Laden sought to portray the USA as mired in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. The syllabus includes a list of lectures to be delivered to new recruits that included topics ranging from the history of jihad in the Horn of Africa to "a brief word on raising children".

Despite the excesses, bin Laden eulogized Zarqawi as a "lion of Jihad" after his death. But bin Laden did not reject all things Western. This is the second batch of documents that has been made public.

There is a document outlining the structure of a "chief of staff committee", which it explains is "the group of officers and personnel qualified to work with a military commander". It has been a slow process.

A USA intelligence official pointed out Tuesday that bin Laden's discussion about moving locations somewhere else in Pakistan means if the US had waited much longer, it might have missed getting him at the compound - and that this new document is the first indication the USA had that he was thinking of leaving. In the documents released on Tuesday, bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda leaders discussed names of media outlets, including al Jazeera, CBS and British and Arabic journalists, that could be offered material. The first was released last May.

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