Al Qaeda #2

[DBAHO]

ONE of the world's most wanted terrorist suspects could have visited Australia in the 1990s on a forged passport, the Federal Government said today.

 

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock urged anyone with information about the reported visit by Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, now at the centre of a manhunt in Pakistan, to come forward.

 

Pakistani journalist and bin Laden biographer Hamid Mir said al-Zawahiri claimed to have come to Australia in the 1990s on a mission to establish a global terrorist network.

 

Mr Mir described al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor, as the brains behind al-Qaeda and also revealed he boasted of buying blackmarket nuclear bombs.

 

"In those days, in early 1996, he was on a mission to organise his network all over the world," Mr Mir said.

 

"He told me he stopped for a while in Darwin. He was ... looking for help and collecting funds."

 

Mr Ruddock said the government had no record of the reported visit, but admitted it was possible al-Zawahiri had entered Australia undetected by authorities.

 

"Under his own name or any known alias he hasn't travelled to Australia," Mr Ruddock told reporters in Sydney.

 

"But if a person is able to obtain forged documentation in another identity, it is quite possible that somebody could have travelled and that we wouldn't know."

 

Mr Ruddock said the government was keen for further information about the reported visit, as Mr Mir had been unable to provide details of aliases or travel dates.

 

"But if there are other people who have information, I would encourage them to come forward and provide it to us," Mr Ruddock said.

 

"It is important if people like this have been in Australia to know what they have been doing, who they've been seeing, to know something of the circumstances of their linkages."

 

Mr Ruddock would not comment on whether spy agency ASIO would approach people linked to terror groups over the matter.

 

Sydney brothers Bilal and Maher Khazal have both been sentenced in absentia to 10 years in jail after being found guilty in Beirut's military court of helping to finance a terrorist campaign in Lebanon.

 

In an interview with ABC TV's Andrew Denton, Mr Mir said al-Zawahiri made the claim about nuclear weapons after an interview with bin Laden in December 2001.

 

Mr Mir said he told al-Zawahiri it was difficult to believe al-Qaeda had nuclear weapons when they did not have the equipment to maintain or fire them.

 

"Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri laughed and he said 'Mr Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the blackmarket in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available'," Mr Mir said.

 

"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs."

 

The FBI lists al-Zawahiri among its Most Wanted Terrorists with a bounty of $US25 million ($33.32 million) on his head.

 

He is thought to be among a group of militants encircled by Pakistani forces near the Afghan border, who have been holding out under a barrage of shells and mortar bombs since Tuesday.

[Rex Kickass]

except now they think its some dude from Chechnya and not Al-Zwahiri.