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Associate: al-Qaida ** RF1**
Al-Ridi, a naturalized American born in Egypt in 1958, testified for the prosecution in the Southern District Court of New York on February 14, 2001. Al-Ridi, a flight instructor, was a veteran of the Afghanistan conflict where he first met bin Laden and el Hage in 1983. **RF2** During the 1980s, Al-Ridi shipped night vision goggles and rifles to the mujahadeen. In 1993, Al-Ridi purchased a used jet for bin Laden with el Hage as the go-between. The jet was to be used to transport Stinger antiaircraft missiles to Khartoum, but the missiles were never shipped. Al-Ridi did shuttle al-Qaida members to Nairobi using the plane, at the same time that al-Qaida established the Nairobi cell. In 1994, he crashed the plane and fled, ending his association with al-Qaida. Al-Ridi testified that he grew disillusioned with bin Laden and al-Qaida, stating that he was opposed to a "rich man with no military experience trying to be a decision maker." **RF3**
REFERENCES:
**RF1** United States v. Usama bin Laden et al., S (7) 98 Cr. 1023 (LBS), p. 34.
**RF2** Sworn testimony of Essam Al-Ridi at the Southern District Court of New York, February 14, 2001.
**RF3** Deborah Feyerick and Phil Hirschkorn, "Witness Says He Bought Plane, Made Shipments for bin Laden," CNN, February 14, 2001.
SOURCE:
Excerpted from
Usama Bin Laden's al-Qaida: Profile of a Terrorist Network,
by
Yonah Alexander and Michael S. Swetnam. NY: Transnational
Publishers, 2001.
The night after the attacks on New York and Washington, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts told CNN that the CIA believed it had thwarted an attack by Mr bin Laden's acolytes as recently as August. He gave no further details.
Aside from the general threat, however, there seems to have been some misreading of the evidence at hand. Over the weekend, for example, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert Mueller, said he had been taken entirely by surprise by the revelation that a number of last Tuesday's hijackers had received pilot training in the United States. "If we had understood that to be the case, we would have, perhaps one could have, averted this," he said on Saturday.
And yet, during the trial earlier this year of four defendants
charged with involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings, it emerged
that two suspected contacts of Mr bin Laden's, Essam
al
Ridi and Ihab Ali Nawawi, had received pilot training in
Texas
and Oklahoma. Mr al-Ridi, a naturalised US citizen of Egyptian
origin who testified that he had bought a military aircraft at Mr
bin Laden's request and flown it to Sudan, had been in contact with
federal authorities since 1998. That would suggest, contrary to Mr
Mueller's statement, that the FBI had solid information about the
pilot-training scheme for three years.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/bush_did_not_heed_several_warnings_of_attacks.htm
A He say he need $1,500,000. And he say this is for the
uranium.
But he need commission for himself, and he need commission for
Salah Abdel al Mobruk.
Testimony of Pilot and former bin Laden Associate Essam Al-Ridi Describing efforts by Al Qaeda to purchase an airplane in order to fly Stinger missiles from Peshawar to Khartoum
Al-Ridi testimony
p. 562 - 564
Q. Can you tell us what Wadih El Hage told you when he first contacted you?
A. The interests of Usama Bin Laden in aquiring an airplane for Khartoum.
Q. And did you, did he tell you where Usama Bin Laden was living at the time?
A. Yes.
Q. Where was he living?
A. In Khartoum, Sudan.
Q. And what did he tell you about the airplane that he wished you to purchase for Usama Bin Laden?
A. The price range within 350,000 US, and that is a range of about a little bit over two thousand miles.
Q. And did you have any further discussions with him about the financial arrangements for purchasing this airplane?
A. Yes.
Q. What was that discussion?
A. Once I located an airplane with that price and that range, I've called Wadih and specifically told him, it's 350,000 and I'll be offered 9 percent from the dealer, the owner of the airplane. [Discussions about price etc.] ...
Q. Was there any discussion of the reason why the range for the plane had to be two thousand miles?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you tell us what was said
?
A. They have some goods of their own they want to ship from Peshawar to Khartoum.
Q. And first of all, who is "they"?
A. Again, I'm referring to Wadih and Usama.
Q. And did he tell you what the goods were that he wanted to ship from Peshawar to Khartoum?
A. Yes.
Q. What were they?
A. Stinger missiles.
Q. And when he told you they wanted to ship Stinger missiles from Peshawar to Khartoum, what did you say?
A. I said it's possible as long as we have arrangements from the departing country to the arriving country.
Q. And what do you mean by that?
A. I meant the legality, because it's clearly air policy.
Q. Did you discuss this with Wadih?
A. Yes.
Q. Tell us what you told him about the legality of shipping the Stingers from Peshawar to Khartoum?
A. That we have to have a legal permit to depart Peshawar with that equipment on board, and the legal permit to land in Khartoum, which is not a problem because they could ally people in Peshawar and also in Khartoum. However, the problem with allies, once we have to divert or land for any fuel or any emergency in the countries in between, then it will be definitely exposed and then it will be absolutely a chaos.
Q. And what, if anything, did he say in response?
A. Nothing in particular. I was just explaining to them
technicalities.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/bombings/trial.html
Here's CNN's Deborah Feyerick.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Afghan war against the Soviets was in full swing when Essam al-Ridi, a U.S.- trained pilot, heeded the call to join his Muslim brothers. There he met Osama bin Laden.
(on camera): What was your impression of him?
ESSAM AL-RIDI, GOVERNMENT WITNESS: A decent youngster, well educated, that does have a lot of emotions and feelings towards helping the mujahadeen.
FEYERICK (voice-over): But al-Ridi says he viewed bin Laden as a rich man with no military experience, buying his way into a role in the Afghan war against the Soviets.
AL-RIDI: People started demanding on us, you know, I'm going to give you this much money, and you have to do this with it. And of course top of the list was Osama bin Laden.
FEYERICK: In the late '80s, with the war nearing an end, al-Ridi went home to Texas, and though he still disagreed with bin Laden, he didn't cut off ties. In 1992 he got a call from an old friend, Wadi al-Haj (ph), bin Laden's personal secretary. He wanted al-Ridi the pilot to help buy a twin-engine business jet. Al-Ridi agreed.
AL-RIDI: It was very natural of Wadi to ask me for assistance (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Osama have an interest for an airplane, this is strictly business, he wants to use it over Africa. Could you help us in buying one? So as a business deal, it was absolutely a legitimate business deal...
FEYERICK (on camera): What did he tell you this plane was going to be used for?
AL-RIDI: Osama had some left-over Stingers, left-over Stingers.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Stingers, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles supplied by the United States to Afghan fighters. Bin Laden wanted them moved to his new headquarters in Sudan. Prosecutors called the timing important. It was the early '90s, and bin Laden had turned his sights on American troops in neighboring Somalia.
(on camera): Were you concerned at that point that Osama bin Laden wanted to ship his spare Stingers, as you call them, to a place where there was no jihad going on?
AL-RIDI: I -- it didn't really -- mind you, at that time, there was nothing against Osama at all. So all I thought was, the Stinger missiles being what it is, is very valuable commodity.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Al-Ridi says he had a tough conversation with bin Laden, criticizing his role in the Afghan war, accusing him of getting young Arabs killed.
(on camera): And what did you tell him? AL-RIDI: I don't approve with what you're doing. I don't think that you are (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I think you should only have donated money, and that's it. But to have your own war, that's pure killing. This is not jihad. Those are like murders.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Al-Ridi turned down bin Laden's pilot job. At $1,200 a month, the salary was too low. A year later on a test flight, al-Ridi wrecked the neglected plane on landing after the brakes failed. He fled, afraid of being tied to bin Laden.
(on camera): The Osama bin Laden that you see now, is this just a crazy man?
AL-RIDI: No, Osama is not crazy. Osama is seduced initially, and finally became a tyrant, or somebody who totally believed in his own lies.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Al-Ridi, born in Egypt, became a U.S. citizen in 1994. He went on to hold a number of jobs with at least four different airlines. His salary, he says, was well over $100,000. The letters of recommendation, glowing.
After the U.S. embassies in East Africa were attacked, al-Ridi took the stand for the prosecution, testifying about bin Laden and his operation and helping convict his former friend, Wadi al-Haj. Prosecutors say they did offer witness protection. Al-Ridi turned it down.
All he wanted, he says, was to be protected from authorities when he went to visit his family in Egypt. Instead, he was thrown in jail there. It took the U.S. government 24 hours to bail him out.
Al-Ridi says he was never part of al Qaeda. But after 9/11, he says he was forced to resign his job training pilots at Cutter Airlines. He's been out of work since January and has burned through his savings.
The prosecutor al-Ridi helped says his situation would have been even worse had he not cooperated.
PATRICK FITZGERALD, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY: I do not think that we broke the promises we made to him. What I cannot do is write a letter that says he is simply a witness, he was not charged with a crime, and he's credible, and vouch for his worthiness to be behind the wheels of an airplane with commercial passengers behind there and not disclose the fact that this man flew a plane from America to Sudan for bin Laden...
AL-RIDI: I'm still proud of what I did, because it's right, but I'm not proud of my government doing what it's doing to me.
FEYERICK (on camera): What is it specifically that you want the government to do for you?
AL-RIDI: To sum it all, to give me my life back.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: That was Deborah Feyerick reporting.
A bit more on Essam al-Ridi's complaint. Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald tells CNN the FBI has requested funds to compensate Essam al-Ridi for his lost wages. The problem alluded to in the piece, Mr. Fitzgerald says, stem from al-Ridi's association with bin Laden years before the trial or his testimony ever happened.
When NEWSNIGHT continues, we will have the latest on the midair collision of two jets over southern Germany.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: And before we go tonight, we want to bring you the latest on our top story, the midair collision over southern Germany, two large planes, one an airliner, the other a cargo jet.
CNN's Stephanie Halasz has been working the story for us and joins us again from Berlin.
Stephanie, what's the latest?
HALASZ: Anderson, we've heard from the Russian emergency ministry tonight that has said that 69 people were on board of that Bashkirian Airline flight. Sixty-nine people, 57 of those were passengers, 12 were crew. Police are also saying that the flight recorder of that plane has been recovered. In case you don't know about Bashkirian Airline, it's supposed to be the 12th largest airline in Russia.
Let's just recap what we know has happened tonight at about 11:35 p.m. local time. Two planes collided over southwestern Germany, over Lake Constance. One of the planes, as we know, was the Bashkirian Airlines charter. It was a charter going from Moscow to Barcelona, and it made a routine stop in Munich. The other plane seems to have been a cargo plane going from Bahrain to Brussels in Belgium. It seems to have made a routine stop in Italy.
Now, what we know is that two people were on plane -- on board of the -- on the cargo plane, 11 bodies have been recovered on the ground so far, police say.
Back to you.
COOPER: All right, Stephanie, thanks very much for joining us with that update.
And that is about it for NEWSNIGHT tonight. Thanks for watching. I'm Anderson Cooper. I will see you again tomorrow.
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transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0207/01/asb.00.html
Funding Terror
Investigating the role of Saudi banks.
Al-Shamal appears to have
been a bin
Laden bank of choice. Al-Qaeda
members had accounts in al-Shamal,
according to testimony during U.S. trials surrounding the 1998
attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. One al-Qaeda
collaborator, Essam
al-Ridi, recounted how bin Laden transferred $230,000 from
al-Shamal to a bank in Arizona to buy a plane to fly Stinger
missiles from Pakistan to Sudan. www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/277/
Testimony also
demonstrated how a
U.S. bank was used by bin Laden to send money from the Shamal bank
to a bin Laden associate in Texas using a correspondent account.
Essam
al Ridi, who worked for bin Laden, testified that he received
a
$250,000 wire transfer at his bank in Texas that was sent by the
Shamal bank, which he then used to purchase a plane for bin Laden
and which he later delivered himself to bin Laden. Transactions
like this one were the focus of our recent investigation into
correspondent banking and money laundering, and that is what I want
to focus on this morning -- how criminals, including terrorist
organizations, can use the correspondent accounts of foreign banks
to gain access to the U.S. financial system.
www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/testimony_010.htm
Arizona Was Home to bin Laden ''Sleeper Cell''
http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2001/arizonarepublic092801.html
Al-Qaeda's
first known connection to Arizona took root in 1985,
when a veteran of the Afgan resistance named Wadih El-Hage moved
here to wed an American Muslim named April Ray in an arranged
marriage. He worked a series of low-wage jobs, including a stint as
a janitor. Records show the couple lived in an apartment at 2002
Ft. Lowell Rd. in Tucson in 1989, where today residents have no
memories of them.
Federal authorities say El-Hage, nicknamed "The Manager" within al-Qaeda, may have helped facilitate the 1990 unsolved murder of Tucson imam Rashad Khalifa who preached a version of the Koran contrary to traditional Islamic doctrine.
El-Hage moved to Sudan -- then bin Laden's headquarters -- shortly afterward, but reestablished connections to Tucson in 1992 when he allegedly asked a Texas commercial pilot named Essam Al-Ridi to buy a jet for bin Laden.
Al-Ridi traveled to Tucson and found a T-39A Sabreliner, described by one observer as "an old crappy puddle-jumper," at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Al-Ridi paid the U.S. military a reported $250,000 for the airplane and flew it to Sudan, where he personally handed the keys to bin Laden at a dinner party. The jet was to be used to transport Stinger missiles to Pakistan. But the plane's brakes failed during a test flight and it crashed at the end of a runway in Khartoum in 1994.
El-Hage later returned to Arlington, Tex., and got a job managing a tire store. Federal prosecutors accused him of conspiring with bin Laden to blow up the U.S. embassy in Tanzania in 1998. Al-Ridi, a bin Laden defector, became a government witness and testified against El-Hage, who was convicted of conspiracy last year. He is now in federal prison.
Bin Laden's Sabreliner was, according to an ex-CIA source, retrofitted at an ex-CIA base in Marana, Arizona by Evergreen International, an airline company with close ties to the CIA. Evergreen currently operates the base as the "Evergreen Air Center."
Bin Laden's Sabreliner is now reportedly secretly stashed at a
Pakistani
military airbase, which means that Bin
Laden is in
Pakistan with the knowledge of President
Pervez Musharraf (and
likely his close "ally" George W. Bush). The
ex-CIA source also
revealed that, as the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook
revealed shortly before his untimely death, "Al Qaeda" is nothing
more than a CIA
list of arms dealers, mercenaries, drug dealers,
and terrorists used by the United States and the Saudis in the
Mujaheddin war against the USSR. One of the most notorious heroin
and cocaine dealers was Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker and
someone frequently used as a prized and reliable courier by U.S.,
British, and Saudi intelligence.
http://www.voy.com/75426/8/41533.html
Ed Boardman Aviation School in Fort Worth Essam
al-Ridi,
one
of Osama bin Laden's personal pilots and a government witness in
the U.S. embassies-bombing trial, testified that he had taken
classes and taught at the now-defunct Ed
Boardman Aviation School
at Fort Worth Meacham International Airport. worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27916
Al-Ridi
learned in Norman,Oklahoma,
too.
911review.org/Sept11Wiki/FlightSchools.shtml
Essam
al-Ridi, a government witness in the U.S.
embassies-bombing trial, testified that he had taken classes and
taught at the now-defunct Ed Boardman Aviation School at Fort Worth
Meacham International Airport.
The
airport's manager says the school went out of business in the early
'90s.
But
the
airport's al-Qaida connection is disturbing, because Meacham has
become a magnet for Middle Eastern student pilots, some from
terrorist countries such as Syria.
Al-Ridi
– an Egyptian, like hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta
– testified
that in 1993 he bought a used Saber-40 aircraft for $210,000 for
bin Laden. He said bin Laden wanted it to transport Stinger
missiles, so he flew it from Fort Worth to bin Laden, who at the
time was based in Khartoum, Sudan.
911review.org/Wget/BinLadenconnectionFortWorthairport.html
In
another
curious disclosure, the FBI also says al Shamal
Islamic Bank --
Osama bin Laden's personal bank -- headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan
-- which the terrorist leader helped capitalize with $50 million in
private funds, "is being investigated by U.S. or overseas
authorities." According to U.S. News (10-8-2001), the Bureau won't
say which authority. President Bush, however, has failed to place
Osama bin Laden's al Shamal
Islamic Bank in his Executive Order --
freezing all of its correspondent transactions with other banks of
the world. [See http://www.banking.state.ny.us/il01102a.pdf ]
This is especially strange, since the Washington Post (9-29-2001)
reported that a an unnamed bin Laden associate testified (at the
U.S. trial on the 1998 African embassy bombings) that "$250,000 was
wired from al Shamal Islamic Bank directly into the bin Laden
cohort's Texas bank account -- where he used it to buy a plane
delivered to bin Laden... intended to transport Stinger
missiles...." Two months later, FT (11-29-2001) offered more
information, reporting that "The money was wired from the Wadi al
Aqiq account at al Shamal bank via Bank of New York to a Bank of
America account held in Dallas, Texas by Essam al Ridi. Al Ridi, an
Egyptian
flight instructor who met bin Laden in Pakistan in 1985,
flew the plane to Khartoum."
http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/ProfitsOfDeath3.htm
Context of '1993'
"You may know that the F-82 has not flown since sustaining a hard landing in 1987. When the opportunity became available in 2002 to trade it for a pristine flyable P-38, approval was granted and the trade consummated.
"Subsequent to the trade, the CAF and USAF have been in communication regarding the terms of the original donation document. It essentially is a 'contract' dispute. I want you to know that the CAF is working diligently and forthright with the USAF to bring this matter to an amicable conclusion. Assignment of the P-38 to a CAF unit has been placed on hold until this matter is resolved (Editor's note:The P-38 is currently in a CAF Southern California Wing hangar at Camarillo, California)."
This is a complex issue and includes changes in USAF Museum policy going back to the late 1990s. On 14 February 2001, Essam Al-Ridi testified for the prosecution in the US District Court in New York's Southern District that in 1993 he purchased a NAA T-39A Sabreliner - previously owned by the USAF Museum - for Osama bin Laden.
Al-Ridi, a pilot, testified that bin Laden planned to use the Sabreliner to transport Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Al-Ridi also testified that the Sabreliner transported members of bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. However, the aircraft had a short life - it ran off a runway and impacted a sand bank.
Ascher Ward, a well-known vintage aircraft broker, obtained the Sabreliner (along with several other examples) in a trade with the USAF Museum for a vintage aircraft. He then sold the T-39A to Al-Ridi at a time when, according to Ward, "we were friends of Osama's and we were giving him everything."
Ward also said that the Sabreliners were utilized for navigational trainers but some were also used for transporting USAF personnel. "Al-Ridi said he was going to use it for transporting executives - trying to get charters with it."
Metcalf said the T-39A was exchanged "totally within USAF rules" at the time but those rules changed in 1997. Metcalf went on to state that individuals obtaining trade aircraft must obtain an end user's certificate which will certify where the aircraft is going and who will use it. Also, there is a background check of the potential user by the Defense Logistics Agency.
This unfortunate event has a number of problems. First, in 1966 the F-82 was on outside display at Lackland AFB with no protection from the elements. In fact, there was another F-82 on display at the same location and it is still there. The CAF obtained the aircraft and made it flyable but because of mechanical difficulties it seldom flew. The 1987 "hard landing" at Harlingen was actually more of a crash - the two CAF pilots stalled the aircraft at about 50-ft and impact with the runway caused considerable damage, some of which was never repaired. Over the years, the aircraft was shuttled to different locations and its final CAF resting place was in San Diego, California, but that unit did not have the resources to restore the plane (which would probably cost well over $1,000,000) and when Mr. Fry became interested in the machine, exchanging the damaged F-82 and wrecked P-38 for a flying P-38 seemed a logical trade for the CAF. We will keep reporting on this situation as facts become available. Thanks to the Dayton Daily News for providing details.
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3901/is_200311/ai_n9325660Tantalizing, if terrifying, hints of al Qaeda's future plots emerged from testimony about the Sudan period from al Fadl, and another government witness Essam al Ridi, a naturalized American who worked as a flight school instructor in Texas. Al Fadl testified that in late 1993 he was involved in an attempt to buy uranium in Khartoum. Al Ridi, another veteran of the Afghanistan war who was not charged in the embassy bombings case, testified that he bought a used airplane for the Bin Laden Corporation from a junkyard in Tucson, Arizona. Al Ridi repaired the plane and flew it to Khartoum where he gave the keys to Osama bin Laden at a celebratory dinner. The next day, bin Laden offered al Ridi a job in the Sudan as a pilot for the agricultural and trading companies, which he turned down. Al Ridi returned to the United States, and his job at a flight school in Texas, but continued to do airplane-related work for bin Laden's Sudan businesses.
Al Ridi's testimony showed that al Qaeda had trained pilots at flight schools in the United States and abroad throughout the 1990s. Kherchtou, the second al Qaeda operative-turned-informant, also underwent flight training. He was told he was being groomed to be Osama bin Laden's personal pilot and to do crop dusting for the agriculture businesses.
www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/investigative/2002/abboud-bombing.aspAl-Qaeda has been able to move money around the world
through al-Shamal's correspondent network of banks that co-operate with
the
Sudanese bank in cross-border transactions. Al-Shamal's correspondents
have included France's Credit Lyonnais,
Germany's
Commerzbank, Standard Bank of South Africa and Saudi Hollandi bank
in Jeddah in which ABN Amro of the Netherlands has a 40 per cent
stake.
These external links were used in 1993 when al-Qaeda bought
an aircraft in the US to move Stinger ground-to-air missiles from
Peshawar in Pakistan to Khartoum.
The money was wired from the Wadi al-Aqiq account at al-Shamal
bank via Bank of New York to a Bank of America account held
in
Dallas,
Texas by Essam
al-Ridi. Al-Ridi, an Egyptian flight instructor who met bin
Laden in Pakistan in 1985, flew the plane to
Khartoum.
In view of the scale of bin Laden's investment in Sudan -
about Dollars 30m - and the relatively small amounts held at al-Shamal
and
other banks in Khartoum, it is clear that a large part of
al-Qaeda's financial arrangements did not involve banks at all.
Bin Laden buys a jet from the US military in
Arizona. The US military approves the transaction. The aircraft is
later used to transport missiles from Pakistan that kill American
Special Forces in Somalia. A man named Essam al Ridi will testify
in a US trial before 9/11 that he buys a Saber-40 aircraft for
$210,000, then flies it from Texas to Khartoum, Sudan. Bin Laden
wants the plane to transport Stinger missiles, and apparently it is
used in to transport some kind of missile from Pakistan that kill
US Special Forces in Somalia in 1993. Essam al Ridi had just taken
flying lessons himself (at the Ed Boardman Aviation School in Fort
Worth) in an apparently early attempt by bin Laden to get more
pilots. [Washington
Post,
5/19/02; Sunday Herald,
9/16/01]
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