21 August 2005

Iran 'supplies infra-red bombs' that kill British troops in Iraq

BRITISH soldiers in Iraq are being killed by sophisticated new bombs supplied by Iran and triggered by infra-red beams to defeat electronic jamming equipment, according to military intelligence sources.

The "passive infra-red" devices, the use of which is revealed publicly for the first time by The Sunday Telegraph, are detonated when the beam is broken, just as when a infra-red burglar alarm is set off by an intruder. They have been used by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon since 1995.

Hezbollah developed the dual radio controlled and passive infra-red combination system that is now being used against the British in Iraq. The radio signal is used to "arm" the bomb when a target vehicle approaches and then switched off leaving the infra-red to fire the bomb as the target passes.

Coalition officials see the disturbing new development as a key part of an aggressive new campaign by Tehran to drive coalition forces out of Iraq so that an Islamic theocracy can be established.

American and British intelligence officials believe that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is training, supplying and funding part of Iraq's insurgent network and that its activities have stepped up considerably since the spring.

British officials said Iran had also been providing "shaped charges", which use a directional explosive force to fire metal projectile into the target to penetrate heavy armour, to Shia insurgents in southern Iraq.

Delivery of bombs is relatively easy because of the long, porous border between the two countries, criminal supply routes and tribal connections.

Iraq's insurgency is proving to be more effective month by month and links between Shia and Sunni groups, usually through trading by criminal arms dealers, means that expertise spreads quickly across the country.

"These guys have picked up in two years what it took the IRA a quarter-century to learn," said an Army bomb disposal officer.

Four British soldiers are believed to have been killed by devices made by a senior bombmaker from the lawless town of Majar-al-Kabir. The bombmaker, in his early 40s, was identified as one of the agitators behind the mob killing of six British military policemen there in June 2003.

He has known connections to Iran and one intelligence report stated that he had been seen in Maysan province, the capital of which is al-Amara, with agents from Tehran. Orders have been issued to arrest him on sight and two of his lieutenants were detained in June.

After the arrests, however, three soldiers from the Staffordshire Regiment were killed when their Land Rover was blown up in the town of al-Amara last month as they were lured into a trap that led them into the bomb's kill zone.

2ndLt Richard Shearer, Pte Leon Spicer and Pte Phillip Hewett were killed instantly by the roadside bomb as they investigated gunfire in the Risaala district of the town.

Guardsman Anthony Wakefield of the Coldstream Guards died from wounds inflicted by a similar infra-red device in al-Amara in May. He was the "top cover" gunner riding with head and shoulders exposed in an armoured Land Rover. The bomb was set at a precise height and directed towards the road so it would hit a soldier in this position.

"This was something completely new," said one military intelligence officer. "Before, they used to keep bashing away with the same crude devices again and again. 'But the Iranian influence has shown itself in a sudden increase in the sophistication of their bombs and a new ability to innovate.'

Mohammad Mohaddessin, an Iranian opposition leader in exile in Paris, said that the election in June of the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guard, as Iranian president has given fresh impetus to Iranian "meddling" in Iraq.

"The regime in Tehran is very concerned about a democracy being created right next to Iran. They also believe that the more chaos there is in Iraq the less attention will be paid by America and Britain to Iran's nuclear ambitions."

Iranian ambitions had already been boosted by the election in January of a Shia-dominated government led by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who had spent most of his exile in Iran, rather than the secular Iyad Allawi, the preferred American candidate.

Previously, bombs in Iraq were initiated by an electronic remote control signal such as a mobile phone, car locking device, garage door opener or even a child's toy.

These could be blocked by electronic countermeasures (ECM) jamming equipment first developed by the Army in Northern Ireland, though different devices used different parts of the electronic spectrum, making jamming a constant game of cat and mouse.

But by using infra-red beams, which can be modified from burglar alarm systems, this ECM equipment is rendered useless. Once the bomb is "armed", it will be set off by the next thing that passes through it.

This has led military commanders to brief soldiers to be much more cautious and to avoid rushing into a set-up bomb attack - known as a "come on" - by reacting too quickly. Patrol routes are varied so that no predicable pattern is set.

The use of shaped charges was perfected by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in Lebanon in the 1990s. Tactics and technology first used by Hezbollah are increasingly prevalent in Iraq. Shaped charges are likely to be powerful enough to penetrate the armour of a Warrior vehicle.

Infra-red beams have been used by the IRA in ambush mines and in 1989 by the Red Army Faction to kill Alfred Herrhausen, chairman of the Deutsche Bank, with a device that also employed a type of shaped charge.

"There has always been cross fertilisation of terrorist technology across the terror diaspora," said a former Army bomb disposal officer. "The point about infra-red is that it is virtually impossible to jam whereas radio control and cell phone systems are detectable and jammable."

British intelligence reports indicate that complete devices, carefully machined in military workshops, are being delivered to Shia extremists in Iraq. It is thought that after once recent failed attack the complete device was recovered by insurgents and transported back to Iran for analysis.

Iranian backing for Shia insurgents could inflame sectarian tensions in Iraq and hasten what has become the nightmare scenario for coalition officials - a civil war breaking out between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority that was favoured by Saddam Hussein.

There has been growing Iranian influence in the southern areas of Iraq where British forces are based. This has to some disagreement between British officials and Americans, some of whom who accuse the British of failing to exclude those with links to Tehran from local government positions.

One officer admitted that provincial governments in southern Iraq and the police force in Basra, the headquarters of the British Army, have been "infiltrated from top to bottom".

A British diplomat who held a senior post in post-invasion Iraq said: "The big issue is that if the Americans feel threatened by something they take it on while the British tend to go around it.

"The Americans said these people should have been rooted out. But the question is how does one confront an influence, particularly with clannish connections and open borders between Iraq and Iran?"

7th August 2005

UK terrorists got cash from Saudi Arabia before 7/7

BY TOBY HARNDEN in Riyadh

TWO senior al-Qa'eda operatives of North African descent based in Saudi Arabia made money transfers and used coded text messages to communicate with unknown people in Britain in the months before July's terror attacks in London, according to Saudi Arabian officials.

He also revealed that Hussein Osman, the July 21st attempted London bombing suspect being held in Rome, telephoned his parents in Saudi Arabia from a train as he apparently fled from Britain, according to a Saudi government security adviser.

The officials said that the North African operatives, now dead, might be connected to the July attacks and established that al-Qaeda is active in Britain. "It's beyond doubt they're active in your country," a Saudi security adviser told The Sunday Telegraph in Riyadh.

Coded mobile phone text messages were sent from associates of Younis Mohammed Ibrahim al-Hayari, al-Qaeda's leader in Saudi Arabia when he was shot dead in Riyadh three weeks ago, and Abdel Karim al-Mejati, who died in a gun battle in the central Al-Qassim region of the desert kingdom in April.

The deaths of al-Hayari and al-Mejati had severely disrupted al-Qaeda's base in Saudi Arabia, Saudi officials have said. This was confirmed by a Western diplomat in Riyad who said: "They are conducting a model counter-terrorism campaign. They have really disrupted the al-Qaeda network here. These extremists are on the run."

There are also understood to have been money transfers made from Saudi Arabia to Britain during the same period of the first half of this year through shops and businesses in the two countries. Both al-Qaeda men were of Moroccan origin.

Al-Hayari was believed to have been the senior al-Qaeda member in Saudi Arabia. Large quantities of chemicals and other bomb making materials were found at his hideout. Al-Mejati is said to have been the mastermind between the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid while

The British authorities are understood to be seeking to question Lahoussine el-Haski, who was one of a group of seven men of Moroccan descent arrested in July last year and accused of planning attacks in Belgium. He had formerly been based in Saudi Arabia.

The information was relayed to the British authorities by Saudi Arabia weeks and months before the July 7th attacks. "The details of the [text message] intercepts were immediately given to the British," said the adviser, who was accompanied by a second Saudi official. "We're talking within about 12 hours."

He stressed there was no "ascertained link" between the North Africans based in Saudi Arabia and the so-called North African cell accused of attempting to carry out at least four bombings in London on July 21st.

Just who received the messages and money, however, is at the heart of the British investigation into whether the two alleged cells had linked with foreign-based terrorists and whether they were connected to each other.

"We are trying to establish whether the money was directly linked to the individuals who carried out either the first or the second sets of bombings in London," the adviser said.

"The messages and the money transfers were highly professional. They were using SIM cards for six hours and then throwing them away. The second group of London bombers were amateur time. Osman Hussein made calls throughout Europe. He was panicking."

He added that the Saudi information about link between North African al-Qaeda members in the kingdom and people in Britain could not have prevented the London attacks.

"They really were doing their best but they were overwhelmed - both Five [MI5, the domestic security agency] and Six [MI6, its overseas counterpart]. It wasn't America pre-9/11 when people were asleep."

Osman's parents, of Ethiopian extraction, are believed to have been living in Saudi Arabia's Jeddah area, beside the Red Sea, for several years. The telephone call was monitored by a British intelligence agency and agents listened as Osman spoke first to his mother and then to his father.

It is thought Osman made the call from Eurostar in France and his main purpose was to get the telephone number of his brother Remzi, who had been living in Rome for some time. The parents have been questioned by Saudi investigators but are not in custody.

"They seem to be normal, nice people and there is nothing suspect about them," said the security adviser. "However, the matter is part of an ongoing investigation."

Saudi officials have also established that Mohammed Sidique Khan, who blew himself up at Edgware Road on July 7th, transited through Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia en route to Pakistan in early 2004. It is not known if Hussein had visited his parents in Saudi Arabia.

7 August 2005

Saudi reformers pin their hopes on new king but know that any change will come slowly Abdullah is said to sympathise with the aims of men...

By Toby Harnden in Riyadh

ONLY the bandoliers and AK-47 rifles slung casually across the white dishdasha robes of the bodyguards flanking the Arab prince marked the ceremony out from one that could have been performed centuries ago.

In turn, identically dressed commoners in red and white keffiyeh headscarves bowed and kissed Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh, once on the right cheek and twice on the left as part of an oath of allegiance to his half-brother Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's new king, and the wider monarchy.

For all that the ceremony was steeped in tradition, Western and Saudi reformers hope that it also marked a turning-point in the country's history - the accession of the desert kingdom's first genuine moderniser.

The signs are there for close observers of the House of Saud: the absence, for example, of Prince Nayef, the feared, hard-line interior minister, from group portraits and televised gatherings suggests that he may have been excluded from the succession, a hint, possibly, that his influence may be waning.

"We expect King Abdullah and the word 'reform' to become synonymous," said Jamal Khashoggi, an adviser to Prince Turki, the Saudi ambassador to London. "He may not have long to rule and he has to create a legacy."

"That legacy will be to make Saudi Arabia stronger by reform, to integrate her more into the world."

Even so, the desert kingdom is still ruled by octogenarians and it could be 15 years before the succession moves to the next princely generation. As crown prince, Abdullah, thought to be 81, effectively led the country for the best part of a decade after King Fahd, 82, suffered a massive stroke.

Abdullah is the fifth son of King Saud - the country's founder to ascend to the throne and a sixth son, the 80-year-old Prince Sultan, is the new crown prince and anointed successor.

Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia's image is still that of an ossified gerontocracy, in thrall to fundamentalism. Yet Abdullah's succession marks a moment of hope for the country's reformers that citizens will soon be given rights that are taken for granted in the West.

Any progress is likely to be slow. "To say that this is an absolute monarchy is wrong," one Western diplomat pointed out. "The king is a leader of a coalition of princes and the only way to proceed is by consensus and consultation. Things move at the speed of the slowest camel in the convoy."

Yet there is a tiny reformist movement in Saudi Arabia, and it is more active away from the capital, Riyadh, where the mutawwa religious police, headquartered at the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue, are ever present.

Life is more relaxed in the port of Dammam, 200 miles to the north-east, where the sea breezes from the Persian Gulf offer respite from the searing heat.

Aramco - the Arabian American Oil Company - was established on Saudi Arabia's east coast as long ago as 1933. As a result, Dammam and the rest of the country's eastern province has come under greater Western influence and is more liberal. Across a 15-mile-long causeway is the island state of Bahrain, where alcohol and cinemas are permitted.

Dammam is home to Fawziah al-Domeini, a former teacher whose reformist husband is in prison. She is praying that, as king, Abdullah will have enough power in his own right to free her reformist husband from prison.

The charge sheet against Ali al-Domeini, in flowing hand-written Arabic script, lay in rolls across the white marble floor of her sitting room. It was 12 metres and 17centimetres long.

A bank official and poet, Mr al-Domeini, 54, was seized in a car park last year by members of the General Bureau of Intelligence. Along with two other intellectuals, he was convicted of calling for a constitutional monarchy and sentenced to nine years in jail.

Two months before his arrest, Mr al-Domeini and other reformers had met the then Crown Prince Abdullah and been told by him: "Your project is my project."

Mrs al-Domeini believes his words were genuine, suggesting - though she does not say so - that his instincts were blocked by others such as Prince Nayef, who has held his post for 29 years.

"The wheel of reform has started turning," she said. "I hope the king will re-examine the case and decide that the verdict was unlawful."

Under Abdullah's de facto rule, a Centre for National Dialogue was set up and municipal elections held. "Of course, we see this as too little, too late," she said. "But terminology that was taboo before is now part of public debate."

In Riyadh, every Saudi woman wears the full black hijab with her face either completely hidden or with just a narrow slit for the eyes. Even in Dammam, life still stops during the five daily calls to prayer and all women cover at least their hair.

Mrs al-Domeini is one of the few Saudi Arabian women who have driven; they are allowed to take the wheel on the Aramco site and on the King Fahd University campus.

For her, though, the issue of women driving is "trivial". "We need a reform of the judicial and education systems, the right to vote and freedom of association," she said. "Changing the rules about driving would be like someone constructing the windows of their house before building walls."

Another reformer, Ibrahim al Mugaiteeb, sees the case of Mr al-Domeini and the other men jailed with him as an acid test.

"I think [King Abdullah] will release them," said Mr Mugaiteeb, a former writer and head of Human Rights First, who has been jailed five times and is currently banned from leaving the country.

"He is sincere in trying to unfetter his people. Whether he can transform these ideals into action with concrete steps for reform, however, is another question."

The underlying strength of King Abdullah's position is a subject of fevered discussion in the embassies inside Riyadh's fortified diplomatic compound.

When King Saud founded the state in 1932, he ensured a broad powerbase by marrying a daughter of every tribal chief he had conquered, fathering an estimated 44 sons by 22 wives.

He died in 1953, leaving a legacy of 5,000 Saudi princes descended from him, a ruling dynasty that controls every facet of the government. The study of who is in favour and who is being marginalised has become the new Kremlinology.

It appears that Prince Nayef, 72, who had expected to become second-in-line to the throne after Prince Sultan, may have been bypassed in favour of the more modern Prince Salman, 69, the Riyadh governor.

Liberals loathe Nayef, blaming him for the imprisonment of the three reformers. The West, too, has been deeply suspicious since Nayef insisted that the September 11 attacks - in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi - were the result of a Zionist conspiracy.

Prince Salman's possible elevation is a source of comfort. "Salman is open-minded," said Mr Mugaiteeb. "He's for change."

Progressive elements within the government agree with the reformists that change is vital for ensuring the future stability of the kingdom.

In stark contrast to its elderly rulers, Saudi Arabia's booming population has an average age of just 21.There is massive unemployment and an acute need for economic reform; the country has been further destablilised by terrorist attacks.

Any ambitions for reform must be tempered by realism. The centuries-old pact between the House of Saud and adherents of the strict Wahhabi Islam is still in place: in return for revenue and protection, the Wahhabis agreed to legitimise rule by the Sauds and were given control of social and educational policy.

"That deal remains at the heart of their rule," said the Western diplomat. "It goes back 200 years."

It is an agreement that neo-conservatives in the Bush administration believe culminated in the September 11 attacks. Since then, Saudi Arabia itself has suffered a wave of al-Qa'eda bombings as the contradiction between its simultaneous accommodations with the West and salafist Islam have been exposed.

It will take more than King Abdullah coming to the throne to persuade ordinary Saudis of change. Masad Khalid Sharif, a merchant, was among those who went to pay homage to the monarchy at the ceremony last week, making his way into the sandstone palace past hundreds of troops and vast concrete barriers erected to stop al-Qaeda suicide bombers.

The death of King Fahd, he said approvingly, would change very little. "King Abdullah, may God bless his authority, will proceed on the same path as King Fahd, God rest his soul," he said. "It is business as usual." The reformers can only hope otherwise.