Tag: Hizballah

4 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda lieutenants are indicted in the Southern District of New York.

The unsealed indictment, resulting from the African embassy bombings, included bin Laden; al Qaeda operational chief Mohammed Atef; Wadih El Hage, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (also known as Harun Fazul); Mohamed Sadiq Odeh; and Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali. Both bin Laden and Atef are added to the Department of State Rewards Program.

The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hizballah. The original sealed indictment, according to the 9/11 Commission (p. 128) had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” Interestingly, this language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq was dropped from the final indictment filed in November 1998.

Upon the indictment, a threat advisory was sent by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) headquarters to all immigration inspectors at ports of entry. It warned of possible infiltration into the United States by radical Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to bin Laden. It calls for “hard” inspections of certain visitors from Middle Eastern countries. It seems to have no effect whatsoever.

CIA director George Tenet would later write: “I can’t imagine this fazed him in the least since he was living comfortably in his Afghan sanctuary.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 109)

23 October 1983

Posted on by William Arkin
U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut Airport after a terrorist attack

 

The age of mega terrorism begins in Lebanon. Using massive truck bombs, Hizballah simultaneously attacks the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks at the Beirut Airport and a housing complex for French paratroopers in West Beirut. The blasts kill 241 Marines and 58 French paratroopers.

At approximate 6:22 AM, a large truck laden with explosives equivalent to 12,000 pounds of TNT crashed through barbed wire and concertina fencing of the U.S. compound at Beirut International Airport and detonated at the front entrance to the Marine Battalion Landing Team Headquarters. The truck penetrated the obstacles, passed between guard positions six and seven without being engaged, entered an open gate, passed around one sewer pipe obstacle and between two others, flattened the sergeant-of-the guard booth, and entered the interior of the lobby by passing through the main entrance, and then exploded. The force of the explosion destroyed the building.

FBI forensic laboratory investigators later described the blast as the largest conventional blast ever seen by their community. Just in April, another attack had destroyed the U.S. embassy.

The bombings successfully caused the removal of the multinational force, in particular the U.S. contingent, from Lebanon. The government of Iran and Syria were ultimately implicated in the attack. That’s almost 40 years ago. Some things never change.

George H.W. Bush at the Beirut Airport after a terrorist attack