Terror of Bin Laden's 20 Backpack Nukes

December 15, 2002
by SHEKHAR BHATIA and TIM SHIPMAN
 
Osama bin Laden has bought nuclear firepower from renegade KGB agents, George Bush and Tony Blair have been warned. The world’s most wanted man paid £25 million for 20 nuclear "suitcases" each capable of killing several hundred thousand people.

The information raises the terrifying prospect of terrorists let loose in Britain with a nuclear “dirty bomb” in a rucksack – in a chilling real life version of the George Clooney thriller The Peacemaker. Security sources refer to the threat as “the ultimate nightmare”, saying a terror attack with nuclear materials is the best way of spreading public panic.

Details of al-Qaeda’s doomsday arsenal led to the Prime Minister’s unprecedented terror warnings last month and a Home Office memo detailing how bin Laden’s fanatics are prepared to explode a "a so-called dirty bomb or poison gas".

The suitcase bombs – originally built for Soviet special forces during the Cold War – have been adapted so they could be used by a suicide bomber to unleash a radiation cloud on a British or American city. The information has been passed to the Bush administration by Paul Williams, who has been a senior FBI adviser on terrorism matters for the last seven years.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon stated earlier this year that the Government had information that bin Laden had some "material" that could contribute to a nuclear weapon.

The latest chilling revelation comes as special forces operating in Northern Iraq step up their hunt for nerve gas sold to Islamic militants affiliated to al-Qaeda and allegedly part-funded by Saddam Hussein. The Sunday Express revealed last week that SBS commandos are hunting members of the Ansar al-Islam group.

In London, Defence chiefs have placed 6,000 reserve troops on notice to deploy in the event of all out war with Iraq.News of the suitcase bombs again shifts attention to bin Laden. Paul Williams has discovered that the terror chief employed five nuclear scientists from Turkmenistan, who had previously worked building the Iraqi nuclear reactor which was destroyed in an Israeli bombing raid in 1981.

Bin Laden ordered the five nuclear specialists to develop a nuclear reactor that could be used "to transfer a very small amount of material that could be placed in a package smaller than a backpack."

Within two years bin Laden is said to have hired hundreds more atomic scientists from the former Soviet Union. In 1993, Williams reveals, a man named Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl&Mac226; who later became a CIA source&Mac226; purchased for bin Laden a cylinder of weapons-grade uranium from a former Sudanese government minister who acted on behalf of unnamed South African businessmen. The minister met al-Fadl in Khartoum and £1 million changed hands. The uranium was tested at a facility in Hilat Koko in Cyprus and then taken onto Afghanistan. Two former KGB agents, named as Alexy and Boris, then helped supply bin Laden with "nuclear suitcases".

In his forthcoming book "Al Qaeda&Mac226; Brotherhood of Terror", Williams says the 20 atomic packages were handed over in August 1998 in Grozny, Chechnya. The terrorists paid £25 million in cash and handed over two batches of heroin refined by Al Qaeda laboratory technicians with a street value of £500 million.

He says former Soviet special forces troops and US trained Arab nuclear scientists were employed to overcome secret coded transmissions for activating the suitcase bombs, by developing a means of "hot-wiring" them so they could be attached to bodies of potential suicide bombers.

The portable nuclear weapons are known as Atomic Demolitions Munitions (ADMs) were smuggles around the world by Soviet diplomats and buried near key western targets. Others were buried along Russian borders for use as nuclear land mines in case of invasion and were disguised as boulders. Former Russian security chief Alexander Lebed has told the US House of Representatives that 40 nuclear suitcases disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yossef Bodansky,who headed the Congressional Task Force on Non-conventional Terrorism in Washington, told Williams:"There is no longer much doubt that bin Laden has finally succeeded in his quest for nuclear suicide bombs." CIA agents are making efforts to locate the nuclear stash,which is thought to be hidden in Afghanistan.

Each "suitcase" can yield one kiloton,which is the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT and experts say if the terrorists activated a single bomb, it could wipe out 100,000 people and leave hundreds of thousands dying from cancer in the fallout.

The US Federation of American Scientists say a dirty bomb attack would cost billions of pounds to clean up and to evacuate civilians.  Experts say an attack would target somewhere with a large concentration of people. The technique would spread mass panic death toll would depend on wind conditions, but contamination could last for months.

Nuclear expert John Large warned the Government’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological Committee in June that the London tube would be the best way to spread contamination from a dirty bomb through a large city. "The trains act as pistons, pushing contaminated air around the system and then through extractor fans all over the city. It is frightening,” he said.

The major concern would be the ability of the authorities to cope in the event of mass casualties. Britain has deployed high intensity geiger counters at ports and airports in an effort to detect terrorists smuggling radioactive materials into the country. But a National Audit Office report on the readiness of the NHS warned last month that one third of hospitals are not ready to deal with a dirty bomb.

The 10,000 page dossier of evidence handed over by Iraq to the United Nations detailing its weapons of mass destruction also refers to a "terminated radiation bomb project", a reference to Iraqi attempts to build a "dirty bomb".

The renewed terror fear comes as North Korea said it is ready to deliver "bitter defeat and death" to the US after unfreezing its nuclear programme. But the focus against terror has also switched to establishing who funded Al Qaeda.The finger is pointing firmly at Saudi Arabia.

A one trillion dollar lawsuit has been filed in Washington by lawyers against Saudi Arabia on behalf of relatives of those who perished on September 11 last year.  The claim will also represent families of British victims,who are being represented by lawyer Richard Fields of London law firm Judica.  US Lawyer Ron Motley in conjunction with Allan Gerson, who represented American victims of the 1988 Pan AM 103, bombing are representing the victims of Bin Laden's September 11 outrages.

Mr Gerson said the families were determined to make the Saudi terror financiers pay for the deaths of their loved ones and that the lawsuits were also being brought to ensure such devastation was never again wreaked on the world. He said:"We have more people including British and Irish relatives joining us all the time.

"For them it is not simple a case of getting help for the financial hardship they have suffered from the loss of what has often been the family bread winner, but about real justice. "Those responsible include money-men who transferred cash and thus helped send innocent people to their death.It is about makng them own up to what they have done in. "In fact, one of the families has told me that once they get their cheque they plan to sit there and burn it up."

http://www.solami.com/shipman.html