Sudanese among most prominent terror detainees was indoctrinated in extremism at home
By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt, Aug 24, 2004 (AP) — Growing up in a middle class religious family in Sudan, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi spent most of his time in a neighborhood mosque, paying so little attention to his regular studies that he wasn’t able to get into university after finishing high school.
He must have been good at math, though. As an adult, Osama bin Laden trusted al Qosi enough to make him al-Qaida’s accountant, paymaster and supply chief when the terrorist network was centered in Sudan and Afghanistan during the 1990s, according to U.S. military charges.
Eventually, al Qosi became bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver _ so trusted that he was with bin Laden and his inner circle “before, during and after” the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and helped them “evacuate” from Kandahar, Afghanistan, the military alleges.
Al Qosi, who is set to appear before a Guantanamo Bay military commission this week as a first step toward a trial, is among the more prominent detainees in Cuba.
Al Qosi has been charged with conspiracy as an al-Qaida member to commit war crimes, including attacking civilians and civilian targets, murder, destroying property and terrorism.
He’s accused of training in bomb-making and assassination at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan, but his introduction to Muslim extremism started at home in Sudan.
Al Qosi quickly attracted the attention of high-ranking al-Qaida figures he met after arriving in Afghanistan in 1989 the year coup leaders in Sudan declared they could bring prosperity, end civil war and solve all of the country’s other problems by instituting strict Islamic rule, say former militants and Middle East security officials.
Al Qosi arrived at the tail end of the Afghan fight against Soviet invaders, and well before Afghanistan’s Taliban began imposing a strict Islamic regime similar to what ideologues prescribed for Sudan. At the time, Sudanese women who didn’t cover up fully when on the streets were likely to be scolded by police, punishments such as chopping off the hands of thieves were instituted, and Islamic extremists from around the world found a haven.
In the early 1990s, al Qosi completed a 45-day military training course at al-Qaida’s al-Farouk camp near Khost, Afghanistan, learning combat skills, bomb-making and assassination, according to the U.S. military and the Middle East security officials. After the course, al Qosi carried messages between al-Qaida leaders and cells in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and elsewhere in Africa, one Middle East security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Al Qosi became close to Ayman al-Zawahri, leader of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad Group and bin Laden’s deputy and Abu Ubeidah al-Banshiri, the Egyptian who was al-Qaida’s military commander and later its main operative in East Africa before he reportedly drowned in a ferry accident on Lake Victoria in May 1996.
Though he had only a high school education, al Qosi was appointed chief accountant, managing donated funds and parceling them out for training camps and operations, another expert said.
From 1992 to 1995, when bin Laden moved his operations to Sudan, al Qosi returned home and became deputy financial chief for al-Qaida and worked for an investment company founded by bin Laden, according to the military charges and Middle East officials.
Egyptian Muslim activists who used Sudan as a base to launch attacks against their secular government at the time remember al Qosi as one of very few Sudanese close to bin Laden.
When bin Laden left Sudan under pressure from the Clinton administration in 1995, al Qosi allegedly traveled to fight with insurgents in Chechnya. Later he rejoined bin Laden in Afghanistan and became a bodyguard for the al-Qaida chief, said a former Egyptian activist who knew al Qosi then, speaking on condition of anonymity from exile in Europe.
Al Qosi’s brother, Abdullah, said the family lost track of him in 1996 about the same time the U.S. military alleged he rejoined bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains, the infamous area where the al-Qaida chief narrowly eluded capture by American forces five years later.
“He was only committed to his religion,” Abdullah told the Khartoum daily Al Sahafa in one of the stories that newspapers in Sudan have published retelling al Qosi’s saga.