Muslim states secretly funded Somali religious bigots

Sunday Times:

MIDDLE EASTERN countries secretly armed and supported suspected Al-Qaeda recruits in the failed state of Somalia in a direct challenge to western interests in east Africa, according to a United Nations report.

Hundreds of Islamist fighters were flown, with Eritrean assistance, from Somalia to Syria and Libya for military training. Others were taken to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah, the report to the UN security council has revealed.

UN investigators also detailed military aid given to the Islamists by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Arab states friendly to the West. Iran also supplied 125 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, 80 of which arrived by sea in dhows and the rest by air.

A clandestine operation to smuggle the fighters out of Somalia began in July last year.

In an interview, Evgueny Zakharov, the owner of Aerolift, an airline with a fleet of ageing Antonov and Ilyushin transport aircraft, based in Johannesburg but registered in the British Virgin Islands, said: “We transported lots of men in uniform — Arabian men with masks.

“They were disciplined men and although none of them had rank badges there were obviously people in charge. They got on the aircraft as if they had done it many times before.”

Zakharov said his involvement began after he was approached by a General Tambi of the Eritrean People’s Defence Forces. Eritrea, a neighbour of Somalia in the volatile Horn of Africa, was a major supporter of the Islamists.

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... he said last week that the Ilyushin made three sanctions-busting arms flights to Somalia from the Eritrean port of Massawa, bringing out the masked men on the return legs. “I do not know who they were but you can draw your own conclusions,” he said.

Zakharov’s revelations came as western security services continued their investigation into foreigners suspected of fighting on behalf of Islamic forces in Somalia and of joining Al-Qaeda last year. Among them are British, American and French Muslims.

Significant numbers of foreigners went to Somalia, western intelligence officials have found, after the radical Islamic Courts Union (ICU) movement seized power from a weak UNbacked government, established links with Al-Qaeda and allowed Somalia to be used as an Al-Qaeda terrorist training ground like Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

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Last week four British Muslims who had been in Somalia under the radical militia and then crossed the border into Kenya were briefly held under the Terrorism Act on their return to Britain.

An American who was also arrested in Kenya and then deported was charged in Texas with teaming up with Al-Qaeda. He told FBI officers who interrogated him that he had spent time with an Al-Qaeda bomb maker in Somalia being trained in assembly techniques.

The UN report also described Iranian attempts to obtain Somali uranium. Somalia is reported to have 6,600 tons of recoverable uranium but the mines have never been exploited because of poor security.

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There is more including the Libyan contribution. The windfall of information about all of the bad guys in the middle east is considerable. Iran is supposed to have an internal supply of uranium, but there have been other reports of attempts to buy it in Africa. I think we should send Joe Wilson to Mogadishu to check it out.

There was a substantial fraudulent attempt to suggest that the Islamist religious bigots of Somalia were not tied to the religious bigots who run al Qaeda, but this report reveals why people like the jihadi from Houston were there. It also reveals how al Qaeda followers lie without remorse.

The connections of the Syrians, Libyans and Hezballah indicate there is a working relationship between Sunni and Shia religious bigots. This story certainly goes against the theory of many on the left that the two groups of religious bigots can't work together.