2012年5月6日 星期日

ABC News: U.S.: 2 NY Cooperators Give Firsthand Look at Al-Qaida

ABC News: U.S.
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2 NY Cooperators Give Firsthand Look at Al-Qaida
May 6th 2012, 21:29

By the time a wayward kid from Long Island named Bryant Neal Vinas joined al-Qaida in 2008, the sight of trainees swinging from monkey bars was a thing of the past.

The Afghani terror camps had been replaced by safe houses tucked away in the border region of Pakistan â€" houses made of mud.

"There's no carpet. There's no wood floors," Vinas told a Brooklyn jury on April 23. "Just mud."

Vinas' description of the crude Waziristan hideout came during the trial of Adis Medujanin, a New York City man convicted last week in a foiled plot to attack the subway system in 2009. Prosecutors had accused Medunjanin of receiving terror training and instructions from al-Qaida in Pakistan during a trip with two former high school classmates who pleaded guilty.

At Medunjanin's trial, jurors heard Vinas and another high-value government cooperator born in Great Britain, Saajid Badat, testify as expert witnesses. They provided an unprecedented, firsthand look at al-Qaida in the heady days following the Sept. 11 attacks and in more recent years as it struggled to survive.

The pair's insights suggested that the terror group never lost its desire to strike again on U.S. soil but its means and goals became more modest. It also became more reliant on late-bloomer jihadists who sometimes proved half-hearted or inept.

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AP

FILE - In this April 18, 2012 courtroom file... View Full Caption
FILE - In this April 18, 2012 courtroom file sketch, terror trial suspect Adis Medunjanin, accused in a foiled plot to attack New York City subways, sits in federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York. As they testified at the trial of Medunjanin, two high-value government cooperators have offered an unprecedented firsthand account of how al-Qaida operated in the decade following the Sept. 11 attacks. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams, File) Close

The testimony also gave the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn and British authorities a chance to show off two trophies in the civilian prosecution of terrorists â€" sworn enemies of America who, after their arrests, were persuaded to switch sides and tell everything they know.

Badat, 33, described growing disillusioned with al-Qaida. After hearing that admitted Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed would face American justice, he said he "felt ... almost a moral obligation to give evidence specifically against KSM."

The once-bearded Badat appeared on a videotape looking like a clean-cut banker. His testimony had been recorded at a secret location outside London after being freed early from a 13-year prison term as a reward for his cooperation.

Born in Gloucester, England, to immigrants from the tiny African nation of Malawi, Badat was the product of a stable childhood. He attended respected schools while playing soccer and rugby. Prodded by his father to become an imam, he memorized the Quran by age 12.

His aspirations turned violent when he learned more about the oppression of Muslims in Bosnia. While in London in 1997, he became convinced he needed to take up arms in the name of Islam.

"It was almost the glamour factor of it drawing me in," he said of heading off to Afghanistan at age 19 for "violent jihad."

By 2001, he was firmly in al-Qaida's grasp at the height of its post-Sept. 11 infamy. He recalled Osama bin Laden telling him in a meeting of just the two of them that hiding explosives in shoes in suicide attacks could get huge results.

"So he said the American economy is like a chain," Badat said. "If you break one link of the chain, the whole economy will be brought down."

The highest ranks of al-Qaida, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, picked him and Richard Reid for a shoe bomb plot in September 2001. Reid was caught aboard a plane in December with explosives; Badat backed out.

His reluctance was based on "my fear of performing the mission and also the fear of ... the implication for my family," he said.

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