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Title: Bin Laden Was Made A Wanted Man By Gaddafi
Source:
news.sky.com
URL Source: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/
Published: May 02, 2011
Author: Mark Stone, Sky News reporter, in Tripol
Post Date: 2011-05-10 17:04:08 by GreyLmist
Keywords: Gaddafi, Bin Laden, Interpol
Views: 18
Bin Laden Was Made A Wanted Man By Gaddafi 8:46pm UK, Monday May 02, 2011 Osama bin Laden was a wanted man well before the 9/11 attacks, before the attack on the USS Cole and before the US Embassy bombings in east Africa. The first international warrant for his arrest was issued in April 1998 following a request not by the Americans or the Europeans, but by Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. On March 16, 1998, five months before the al Qaeda bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Libyan Ministry of Justice named Bin Laden as the main suspect in a double murder that had taken place in the Libyan town of Sirte four years earlier. The warrant was forwarded to Interpol in France, where it was formalised on April 15, 1998. In March 1994 a German man named Sinvan Becker and his wife Vera travelled to Libya. They were apparently on holiday. [1.5 min. embedded video] the operation to take out bin laden However, Herr Becker's job suggests that it was more than a sightseeing trip. Herr Becker was a spy. He is said to have been the top Arab expert in Germany's domestic intelligence agency - the German equivalent of MI5. Herr Becker and his wife were reportedly shot by four gunmen in or near Col Gaddafi's home town of Sirte. They initially survived the attack and were taken to a hospital near Sirte. They later died of their injuries. There are several theories about who murdered them. Col Gaddafi's government claimed it was members of the Libyan 'branch' of al Qaeda, known as "al Muqatila", who have been fighting for an Islamic state in Libya for years. We know that Bin Laden maintained close ties with al Muqatila. Some reports suggest that he lived near Benghazi, in eastern Libya, for a short time. There is no firm evidence for this. The Gaddafi government believed Bin Laden was involved and passed its evidence to Interpol who clearly agreed. To this day, Interpol arrest warrants exist for the murder suspects. The "wanted" page for Bin Laden also identifies Tripoli as the original issuer of the warrant. But there are other theories too. Herr Becker had been involved in the investigation into the 1998 Lockerbie bombing and the attack on a Berlin nightclub in 1986, in which two US troops were killed. Both were said to be Libyan government operations which supports the theory that the Beckers were actually murdered by Libyan secret service agents. Neither the Libyans nor the Germans have elaborated on the case. It is a strange twist of international affairs that Col Gaddafi, a man who now believes he is the subject of a western Nato plot to assassinate him, was the first to call for the world's most wanted terrorist to be arrested. And an interesting aside: As Germany's most experienced Arab expert, Herr Becker's job was to identify Islamist extremist threats. The 9/11 attacks were, in part, planned in Hamburg. Had he not been murdered, would he have been alerted to the plot?
Poster Comment: washingtonpost.com article: Gaddafi’s Libya reminds U.S. who issued the first bin Laden arrest warrant By Simon Denyer, Published: May 4 TRIPOLI, Libya — In an attempt to portray itself as an ally in the battle against al-Qaeda, Libya reminded the United States on Wednesday that Moammar Gaddafi’s government, not anyone in Washington, was the first to issue an arrest warrant against Osama bin Laden, back in 1998. The warrant, approved by Interpol, came after two German anti-terrorism agents were gunned down in the Libyan city of Sirte in 1994, an attack the government in Tripoli blamed on the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant organization linked to al-Qaeda. Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda carried out coordinated bombings on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people. “At the time, they didn’t listen to us, because no one listened to Libya then,” said one senior Libyan government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Gaddafi’s open endorsement of terrorist attacks against Western nations, as well as Libya’s involvement in the bombing of a Berlin nightclub in 1986 and the downing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, turned the country into a pariah state and led President Ronald Reagan to nickname its leader “the mad dog of the Middle East.” According to former British intelligence agent David Shayler, eight years after Lockerbie, Britain’s MI6 sponsored the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in a 1996 attempt to kill Gaddafi. It was as a result of this connection, two former French intelligence agents alleged, that the British secret service subsequently thwarted Libya’s attempt to turn the spotlight on Libyan Islamists and bin Laden. After years of U.N. sanctions, Gaddafi gradually repaired relations with the West. His government became an ally in George W. Bush’s fight against terrorism after Tripoli surrendered its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003 and diplomatic relations were restored. It is something Libya likes to frequently point out to foreign journalists in Tripoli, as officials portray the rebels they are fighting as led by al-Qaeda and argue that the United States is backing the wrong horse. Last weekend, less than 36 hours before U.S. commandos surrounded bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan, NATO sent rockets onto a house owned by the Gaddafi family in Tripoli, killing one of Gaddafi’s sons and three of his grandchildren, in what the Libyan government described as a deliberate attempt to assassinate its leader. That left the Gaddafi regime in the slightly tricky diplomatic situation this week of not knowing whether to congratulate the United States for taking out a mutual enemy or condemn President Obama for engaging in a political assassination. At a news conference early Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim first tried to dodge the question and then drew a distinction between the two events. “Bin Laden, he was not a head of state, and that’s why there is a difference. He was not a head of a political party or political organization. When we come to the definition of ‘political assassination,’ we should be a bit careful about whether bin Laden was a political figure or not,” he said. “The Libyan government, it is not its policy to target an individual leader to achieve political gain. But, again, Libya was the first victim of al-Qaeda .41;.41;. and Libya was very cooperative in combating al-Qaeda.” Earlier, the Foreign Ministry repeated its allegation about al-Qaeda’s increasing involvement on the side of the rebels in the Libyan conflict. “There is no doubt that defeating al-Qaeda as an organization and an ideology cannot be achieved under the policy conducted by the U.S., Britain and France in Libya and elsewhere in the world,” it said in a statement Tuesday. Although some Islamist radicals have joined the cause of Libya’s rebellion, the vast majority of rebel fighters appear to be ordinary Libyans fed up with four decades of repression under Gaddafi’s government. The Germans killed in 1994 were Silvan Becker, said to be one of Germany’s foremost experts on Islamist extremism and the Arab world, and his wife, Vera. Becker’s slaying is thought by some experts to have affected Germany’s ability to spot the Hamburg plotters who coordinated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Becker was also investigating the Berlin nightclub attack and the Lockerbie bombing. [My note: Link to foxnews report May 01, 2011 on the NATO bombing of Gaddafi's family, which was displaced hours later by the "Obama Gets Osama" news. Gaddafi's son, Saif/Seif al-Arab "had survived a 1986 U.S. airstrike on his father's Bab al-Aziziya residential compound" at the age of 3 or 4 but was injured then and hospitalized.]
Mark Stone, Sky News reporter, in Tripoli 
Osama bin Laden was on Gaddafi's radar well before the 9/11 attrocities 
Bin Laden was eventually tracked to this hideout in Pakistan
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