Category Archives: Middle East

Failed Immigration Policy/Systems led to 9/11

Posted on by

While reading the long and factual summary below on the 9/11 hijackers, ask yourself the following questions:

Note the date of this summary, 2010

  • Have immigration policies changed today?
  • Are there new systems in place?
  • Do members of Congress still standing with the 9/11 Commission Report?

The Complete Immigration Story of 9/11 Hijacker Satam al Suqami

By Janice Kephart September 2010

This Memorandum is in memory of Danny Lewin, whose incredible life was ended by hijacker Satam al Suqami on American Airlines Flight 11 prior to its tragic crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

I dedicate this Memorandum to my former colleague on the September 11 Commission, Walt Hempel, who gave me confidence that our investigation was as accurate and as thorough as possible. The collating of the digital images you find here was due primarily to his work.

The past year and a half has provided a litany of examples, some tragic, that America is not safe from terrorist conspiracies and acts. Our processing and informational analysis has improved greatly since September 11 at our air and land ports of entry, but our southwest border is suffering from a near national security crisis due to Mexican narco-insurgency. Meanwhile, aviation security remains subject to incomplete vetting procedures and issues of international cooperation. What is becoming increasingly clear is that despite some real gains in border and aviation security, we are not safe. Thus, the value of continuing to learn from the terrorist travel story of September 11 remains relevant today as we continue to rummage through panoplies of choices about immigration and border security. If any immigration issue should rise above the fray and remain a standalone, it should be border security. This Memorandum is an attempt to help inform that debate more fully, by providing never-before seen digital images that back up previously published material in the September 11 border team’s monograph, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel.

Background. In January 2009, the National Archives made available some of the 9/11 Commission work product that revealed to the public for the first time much of the evidence that resulted in the 9/11 Commission Report published (as required by law) in July 2004. Among those archives was some of the most precious work the border team had uncovered after numerous and arduous document requests to the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation: hard copies or digital images of travel documents of the hijackers.

In 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, my team and I were able to include images of about one-quarter of the physical evidence we had accumulated that aided fact development and recommendations for both the 9/11 Final Report and 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, which was written to provide substantive support for the 9/11 Final Report recommendations. But the remainder of those images has remained buried these past years.

As the ensuing five years have passed since the publication of the 9/11 Commission materials, one hijacker in particular stands out for a number of reasons – not only for the tragic story of his likely murder of Daniel Lewin on American Airlines Flight 11 before the crash – but also because he was the only hijacker (of two total) well aware that he was an illegal overstay on September 11. We know this because this hijacker had attempted to enter the Bahamas in May 2001 in order to re-enter the United States and obtain a six-month length of stay like his “muscle” co-conspirators (i.e., those who were not the pilots). He was also the only such hijacker that had only received a business traveler one-month length of stay upon entry. He failed, and thus was the only hijacker not to use his travel documents to obtain a state-issued driver’s license or ID, causing him again to be one of the few hijackers who we know used his passport for check-in on the morning of September 11, rather than a U.S.-issued ID card. In addition, because we did not – and still do not—have an Exit system in place that logs visitors out of the country, authorities were initially confused as to whether or not he was even in the United States on September 11. Both these issues – illegal overstays and failure to implement an Exit system – remain outstanding issues in the United States, affecting the national discussion of immigration and border security. The goal this story is to better inform that discussion.

Below is a consolidation of the 9/11 and Terrorist Travel facts, verbatim, about Satam al Suqami as developed by myself as immigration counsel and my colleague, Tom Eldridge, who conducted the visa analysis. Supporting our work are the digital images of Suqami’s passport culled from reams of materials, mostly done by Walt Hempel. One small miracle in our investigation was learning that Suqami’s passport survived the attack; having its images to review helped solidify findings.

I have not changed our words, but added in the heretofore unseen images alongside source information of Suqami’s travel documents, providing more depth to 9/11 Commission final work products and reiterating the basic message that our borders matter to national security. Detecting a terrorist through his travel documents and records, coordinated with intelligence – and today with biometrics and programs that assure we know who is entering and exiting our country – is equally important to economic and national security. This story of Suqami reiterates that point.

On September 11, Daniel Lewin was on board American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. However, Lewin was likely murdered prior to the crash by 9/11 hijacker Satam al Suqami. Two months before his death, Lewin was named as one the 100 most important people in the national information industry. He was survived by his wife and two sons.

Daniel Lewin, 31, a mathematician and entrepreneur, co-founded and ran Akamai Technologies, nearly becoming a billionaire in the dot-com stock boom. At the time of his death, he was a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was said to have become a paper-billionaire when Akamai stock first became available. Lewin was born in Denver and raised in Jerusalem, where he served in Sayeret Matkal, a counter-terrorism unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. He had previously worked for IBM’s research lab in Haifa, Israel.

The FAA memo’s summary of the Flight 11 shooting incident, real or not, is the most detailed and specific – not to mention shocking – of the four hijacking summaries. It says Lewin, sitting in seat 9B, was “shot by passenger Satam al-Suqami,” sitting behind him in seat 10B. (Both names match those on the manifest released by the airline.) However, we do not know if he was shot or stabbed; the on-flight phone call between flight attendant Betty Ann Ong and the FAA states that Ong relayed that Lewin, sitting in seat 9B, was killed by the passenger in seat 10B at approximately 8:20. That passenger in 10B was later identified as Satam M. A. Al Suqami.

— Walt Hempel, professional staff member, 9/11 Commission

The 9/11 hijackers and conspirators on American Airlines Flight 11 – North Tower of the World Trade Center were: Mohamed Atta Hijacker (Pilot), Abdul Aziz al Omari, Waleed al Shehri, Wail al Shehri, and Satam al Suqami.

Introduction: Factual Overview of the September 11 Border Story

Entering the United States as tourists was important to the hijackers, since immigration regulations automatically guaranteed tourists six months of stay. Thus the 14 muscle hijackers who entered the United States in the spring and early summer of 2001 were able to remain in the country legally through September 11. The six-month tourist stays also assured the hijackers of sufficient time to make such preparations for their operation as obtaining the identification some of them used to board the planes on September 11.

Fourteen of 15 operatives and all of the pilots acquired one or multiple forms of U.S. state-issued identification. Only Satam al Suqami did not, possibly because he was the only hijacker who knew he was out of immigration status: His length of stay end date of May 20, 2000, was clearly inserted in his passport.

November 21, 2000. State Department records show that Satam al Suqami, a Saudi, applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There is strong evidence that the passport Suqami submitted with this application had fraudulent travel stamps now associated with al Qaeda. These stamps remain classified, and are not contained here.

Suqami’s Saudi Arabian passport with numerous travel stamps, some of which were determined to be fraudulent. They include multiple travel to Instanbul, Malaysia, Oman, and Egypt. There are no travel stamps from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iran, all three locations likely destinations.

Although Suqami had false travel stamps in his passport as of 9/11, we do not know if these stamps were placed in his passport before or after submission of his visa application, although the dates on some of the false stamps pre-date the date he applied for his visa.

Suqami left blank the line on which he was asked to supply the name and street address of his present employer.

Suqami’s visa application. The stamp with the “No” crossed states: “Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?”

The consular officer who issued the visa said he interviewed Suqami because he described his present occupation as “dealer,” the word Saudis often put on their applications when they meant “businessman.” The officer testified that he asked Suqami a number of questions, including, he believes, who was paying for the trip. Although the officer stated that notes were always taken during interviews, none were written on Suqami’s application, raising the possibility that the officer’s memory of having conducted an interview was false. In any case, Suqami evidently raised no suspicions and his application was approved.

April 23, 2001. According to INS records, Waleed al Shehri and Satam al Suqami, both Saudis, entered together at Orlando from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Suqami was the only Saudi muscle hijacker admitted on business, and only for one month. Both were admitted by the same primary immigration inspector.

Above is Suqami’s U.S. visa issued on November 21, 2000. The Final Report states that Satam al Suqami and Mojed Moqed flew from Iran to Bahrain in late November 2000, in all likelihood as soon as the plotters were assured that Suqami had obtained his U.S. visa, critical to al Qaeda for entry into the United States. Also note on page 18 a U.S. entry on April 23, 2001, and re-entry on May 16, 2001, after the failed attempt to enter the Bahamas.

Biographic pages of Suqami’s passport

FBI reports revealed that Suqami’s passport was recovered by NYPD Detective Yuk H. Chin from a male passerby in a business suit, about 30 years old. The passerby left before being identified, while debris was falling from WTC 2. The tower collapsed shortly thereafter. The detective then gave the passport to the FBI on 9/11. Later analysis showed that it contained what are now believed to be fraudulent travel stamps associated with al Qaeda. In addition, the forensic document analysis of Satam al Suqami’s passport indicates that on page 8, “An Arabic stamp impression located near the top of page 8 has been partially covered with correction fluid,” as stated in an INS letter from John Ross, INS Supervisory Forensic Document Examiner, to Lorie Gottesman, FBI Document Examiner, on November 2, 2001.

Correction fluid on top right stamp, indicating fraudulent travel stamps

Upon reviewing color copies of the document, the inspector who admitted Suqami told the Commission he did not note any such fraud. Indeed, he could not have been expected to identify the fraud at the time of Suqami’s admission – it was not discovered by the intelligence community until after the attacks.

May 16, 2001. Waleed al Shehri and Suqami again traveled together, this time out of the country to the Bahamas, where they reserved three nights at the Bahamas Princess Resort. INS records show that they turned in their arrival record, which was now acting as an exit record, boarded the plane, and arrived in Freeport. Ramzi Binalshibh, a key facilitator and organizer for the 9/11 conspiracy who was denied a U.S. visa, stated during interrogations that the trip was intended to extend Suqami’s legal length of stay in the United States.

Bahamian immigration refused the two entry, however, because neither had a Bahamian visa. They therefore had to return to their starting point, in this case Fort Lauderdale. Because they never entered the Bahamas, under U.S. immigration law they had never left the United States. After being refused entry by the Bahamian INS at Freeport, they were sent through U.S. “pre-clearance” before boarding the plane back to Miami. By making possible immigration inspections of U.S.-bound travelers prior to their arrival, pre-clearance helped ease the burden of admission at busy U.S. airports. These stations also prevented travelers deemed inadmissible from boarding U.S.-bound planes. Pre-clearance stations existed prior to September 11 in Canada, Ireland, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. In this pre-clearance process, immigration waived them through but customs stopped Shehri. The inspection lasted one minute; Shehri was not personally searched, nor was his luggage x-rayed. Customs records showed they boarded a plane and returned to Miami.

The attempted three-day jaunt by Shehri and Suqami to the Bahamas would cause difficulty for the INS in assisting the FBI’s investigation into 9/11 since the INS records indicated the two had left the United States and not returned. This is because when the two left Miami for the Bahamas, they handed in their I-94 departure records as required. When they were turned around in the Bahamas for a lack of visas, under U.S. immigration law they never left the United States. However, they were not given new arrival records when they physically returned to the United States. Therefore, when the attacks occurred, investigators thought that Suqmai and Shehri had departed the United States, which is what the INS records indicated.

May 20, 2001. Suqami joined the millions of overstays in the United States after failing to file for an extension of stay with the INS after he returned from the Bahamas. Had he been allowed into the Bahamas, upon his return to the United States he would have likely been granted an additional length of stay in the country as a tourist. As it was, he remained in illegal status until September 11.

September 11. As the hijackers boarded four flights, American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 93 and 175, at least six used U.S. identification documents acquired in the previous months, three of which were fraudulently obtained in northern Virginia. Airline check-in personnel remembered that Suqami, the only hijacker who did not have a state-issued identification, used his Saudi passport as check-in identification for American Airlines Flight 11.

An Entry-Exit System. The INS also was unable to enforce the rules regarding the terms of admission of visitors to the United States because there was no national tracking system designed to match a person’s entry with that person’s exit. Inspectors were similarly unaware of whether a visitor had overstayed a previous visit.

In 1996, expressing frustration at the apparent number of overstays in the United States and the inability of INS to enforce the law, Congress took action. It passed a law requiring the attorney general to develop an automated entry-exit program to collect records on every arriving and departing visitor. Congress provided about $40 million over four years to fund the development of such a system. By contrast, Congress provided nearly $1 billion to increase the Border Patrol’s presence in the southwest in order to stem the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico. Countering terrorist entry was not a rationale for the system.

Leaders of border communities along the Canadian and Mexican borders, where more than a million people move back and forth daily, denounced the system. They argued that it would inhibit border trade. Some members of Congress, along with senior INS managers, agreed and decided to automate only the entry process. Prior to September 11, even these efforts were unsuccessful. Thus, while the hijackers were preparing for the planes operation in the United States, immigration authorities had no way to determine whether any of them had overstayed their visas or traveled in and out of the country. The lack of an entry-exit system was especially significant for Satam al Suqami and Nawaf al Hazmi, as both were illegal overstays.

(In June 2010, CIS held a symposium of high-level officials and policy thinkers on the issue of implementing an Exit control. A report can be found at http://cis.org/exit-panel.)

The Immigration and Naturalization Service Overview

A review of the entries and immigration benefits sought by the hijackers paints a picture of conspirators who put the ability to exploit U.S. border security while not raising suspicion about their terrorist activities high on their operational priorities. Evidence indicates that Mohamed Atta, the September 11 ringleader, was acutely aware of his immigration status, tried to remain in the United States legally, and aggressively pursued enhanced immigration status for himself and others.

Despite their careful efforts to understand and operate within the legal requirements, however, the hijackers were not always “clean and legal.” For example, they used fraudulent documents and alias names as necessary. And when the hijackers could, they skirted the requirements of immigration law. Ziad Jarrah, for example, failed to apply to change his immigration status from tourist to student, and Satam al Suqami failed to leave the country when his length of stay expired. They thus were vulnerable to exclusion at ports of entry and susceptible to immigration law enforcement action. In this section, we explore how the hijackers succeeded in making it through U.S. airports of entry in 33 of 34 attempts, drawing on interviews of the immigration and customs inspectors who had contact with the hijackers, immigration law, port of entry policy, training, and resources available to inspectors in primary and secondary inspections.

The four pilots, who went in to and out of the United States 17 times, were admitted on business four times. Only one muscle hijacker, Suqami, was given a one-month stay as a business traveler when he entered at Orlando on April 23, 2001, with Waleed al Shehri. Both hijackers had filled out their Customs declarations stating that they intended a 20-day stay. The immigration arrival record did not require information about the length of stay, however; and since immigration inspectors checked the Customs declarations only for completeness and not for substance, the 20-day stay request was ignored – to their advantage, in fact.

Indeed, the 30-year INS veteran inspector who admitted both hijackers told the Commission that the Customs declaration had no bearing on the length of stay he gave Suqami, which was based solely on Suqami’s answer regarding the purpose of his visit. That Suqami was limited to a business instead of a tourist stay meant that he and Nawaf al Hazmi (who overstayed his tourist visa despite filing for an extension of his stay in July 2000) were the only operatives who had overstayed their authorized lengths of stay as of September 11. The four pilots, who went into and out of the United States 17 times, were admitted on business four times. Only one muscle hijacker, Suqami, was given a one-month stay as a business traveler when he entered at Orlando on April 23, 2001, with Waleed al Shehri.

Immigration Violations Committed by the Hijackers in the United States

Once a non-U.S. citizen is admitted to the United States, he or she remains subject to U.S. immigration laws and may be deported if any are violated. The hijackers violated many laws while gaining entry to, or remaining in, the United States. Here are the violations pertaining to Suqami:

  • Every hijacker submitted a visa application falsely stating that he was not seeking to enter the United States to engage in terrorism. This was a felony, punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1546 by 25 years in prison and under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 by 5 years in prison, and was a violation of immigration law rendering each one inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
  • The hijackers, when they presented themselves at U.S. ports of entry, were terrorists trained in Afghan camps who had prepared for and planned terrorist activity to further the aims of a terrorist organization – al Qaeda – making every hijacker inadmissible to enter the United States under 8 U.S.C.§ 1182(a)(3)(b).
  • At least two (Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari) and possibly as many as seven of the hijackers (Suqami, Omari, Mohand al Shehri, Hamza and Saeed al Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, and Ahmad al Haznawi) presented to State Department consular officers passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner, a felony punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1543 by 25 years in prison and a violation of immigration law rendering them inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
  • At least two hijackers (Suqami and Omari) and as many as 11 of the hijackers (Suqami; Omari; Waleed, Wail, and Mohand al Shehri; Hani Hanjour; Majed Moqed; Nawaf al Hazmi; Haznawi; and Hamza and Ahmed al Ghamdi) presented to INS inspectors at ports of entry passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner, a felony punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1543 by 25 years in prison and a violation of immigration law rendering them inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
  • Nawaf al Hazmi and Suqami overstayed the terms of their admission, a violation of immigration laws rendering them both deportable under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B).

Walt Hempel
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
Commission hearing January 26, 2004
Senate Office Building

bin Ladin al Suri in Afghan Hideout

Posted on by

The full photo catalog is here.

New York (CNN)  The house is primitive, constructed of baked mud and stone. The landscape is sparse and mountainous, with snow cover in the winter. The terrain is rugged and challenging for the long walks the owner liked to take with his sons.

32 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-57

Photographs quietly introduced as evidence in the latest major terrorism trial in Manhattan federal court offer a rare look inside Osama bin Laden’s lair — years before al Qaeda flew hijacked planes into buildings or bombed U.S. embassies in Africa and even before the FBI placed bin Laden on its Most Wanted List.

Still, bin Laden was preparing, hiding out in a remote, mountainous area of Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.

A remarkable set of photos — the first showing bin Laden in the hideout where he would seek refuge after 9/11 — came to light only last month in the terrorism conspiracy trial of bin Laden lieutenant Khaled al-Fawwaz, a communications conduit for al Qaeda in London in the mid-1990s. Al-Fawwaz would arrange bin Laden’s first television interview for CNN’s Peter Arnett and Peter Bergen in 1997 and a sit-down for ABC News’ John Miller a year later. But before then, al-Fawwaz called on a Palestinian print journalist, whose 1996 journey to Afghanistan yielded these photos.

37 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-62

Visiting bin Laden
Bin Laden had declared war on the United States and wanted more people to know it, especially in the Arab world. He reached out to Abdel Barri Atwan, the founder and then-editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an independent Arabic weekly published in London that had been critical of certain Arab regimes and the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Atwan had broken the story about bin Laden’s first fatwa, or religious decree, stating his grievances against the United States, such as the presence of U.S troops in Saudi Arabia. He published the entire screed in August 1996. The next month, al-Fawwaz went to Atwan’s office to offer him the first print interview with the emerging jihadist leader in Afghanistan.

“I was told that Osama bin Laden was fond of my writing, he liked my style, and he wanted to meet me personally,” Atwan recalled in an interview for Bergen’s 2006 book, “The Osama bin Laden I Know.” “I was hesitant, because it was very dangerous.”

25 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-50-b

Danger aside, in November 1996, Atwan was airborne to Afghanistan. The date-stamped photographs from his trip — which Scotland Yard detectives discovered two years later in a search of al-Fawwaz’s London home — show a healthy, relaxed, sometimes smiling bin Laden, not yet 40, conversing, hiking, videotaping pronouncements, surrounded by children.

06 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-17

The photos also show rare images of another man who has become an influential ideologue in the global jihadist movement — Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, better known as Abu Musab al-Suri, a Syrian now in his mid-50s who has not been seen in public or heard from in a decade. Still, al-Suri is arguably the most influential strategic thinker in Islamist militant circles today.

“A generation of jihadis were influenced by his teachings,” said Paul Cruickshank, a CNN terrorism analyst who has written about al-Suri. “He wanted a global jihadist intifada, where people rose up and fought as individuals.

“His teachings have deeply influenced jihadis in Syria — how to build up an organization, how to win support for it,” he said.

39 OBL photos 43

The mountain hideout
Bin Laden, from Saudi Arabia, first went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to participate in the armed resistance to Soviet invaders, one of thousands of Arab fighters defending a Muslim nation. As the anti-Soviet jihad wound down, bin Laden began organizing al Qaeda, meaning “the base,” around the border city of Peshawar, Pakistan. By 1992, Pakistan forced him and his fighters to leave.

Bin Laden relocated to Khartoum, Sudan, welcomed by a new Islamist regime. But after four years headquartered there, in 1996, under pressure from the United States, Sudan made bin Laden go. By then, the ideologically in sync Taliban had taken control of Afghanistan, and bin Laden decided to move there.

In May 1996, bin Laden settled in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. His mountain fortress in Tora Bora was a long drive up a dirt road he had built. Atwan was driven there in a red Toyota pickup in a twisting seven-hour drive through the mountains. As a photo of him shows, Atwan donned Afghan-style baggy trousers and a turban to get past security checkpoints and fit in.

Atwan met bin Laden in his cave. It was small, 13 by 20 feet in Atwan’s estimation, and as the new photos show, it was lined with shelves of books about the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed. Bin Laden liked to use the bookshelves as a backdrop for his videotaped edicts and interviews. The cave not only offered bin Laden a hiding place but also street credibility in the Muslim world, as the prophet is believed to have received the revelations of the Koran while camped in his own mountain cave.

After hours of conversation and an inedible dinner featuring salty cheese and sandy bread, Atwan ended up bunking in the cave on a mattress that rested on boxes of grenades.

“He wanted media exposure,” Atwan recalled in the interview for Bergen’s 2006 book. “He wants to say, ‘Now I am an international figure; I’m not just a Saudi. I am aggrieved at Americans who are occupying Saudi Arabia who are desecrating the Holy Land.’ ”

As seen in the photographs, bin Laden always carried a Russian-made Kalashnikov rifle. His comrades addressed him as “Abu Abdullah,” for father of Abdullah, his eldest son. Two younger sons, Saad and Ali, then in their early teens, sometimes were at the compound. As one photo shows, Atwan and bin Laden took a two-hour walk around Tora Bora.

“He loved that nature there. He loved the mountain. They were trying to have their own community, grow their foods,” Atwan recalled. “It’s like an oasis in Afghanistan.”

Bin Laden’s three wives and more than a dozen children did not share bin Laden’s joy in living the life of medieval peasants in the Tora Bora mountains, where the only light at night was from the moon and gas lanterns, and the only heat in a place where tremendous blizzards were common was a wood-burning metal stove. Hunger was a frequent companion to the bin Laden children who lived on a subsistence diet of rice, bread, eggs and that salty cheese.

In December 2001, with U.S. troops retaliating for 9/11 closing in, bin Laden fled Tora Bora, eventually making his way to Pakistan, where U.S. Navy SEALs ended a decade-long manhunt by killing him in his Abbottabad hideout, an hour north of Islamabad.

Atwan stepped down from the helm of Al-Quds in 2013 and recapped his journey in a deposition for the al-Fawwaz trial. Al-Fawwaz was convicted in Manhattan federal court on February 26 and faces a possible life sentence.

Even in Tora Bora, Atwan felt bin Laden was vulnerable to intelligence agencies. “I thought this man would not last,” Atwan said Tuesday. “He wasn’t really well-protected. He was visible and moving freely.”

14 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-28

In 1996, bin Laden knew but certainly did not disclose the lethal plots he had set in motion — the embassy bombings, the planes plot that would become 9/11. Atwan said, “He was very optimistic, and it never occurred to me that this would be the most be dangerous man in the world.”

The jihadist intellectual
With his pale skin, short red hair and beard, and green wool hat, Abu Musab al-Suri could pass for Irish. But he is Syrian, originally from the ancient city of Aleppo, fought in the anti-Soviet Afghan war, and lived in London in the 1990s.

19 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-39

Al-Suri was close to bin Laden, which explains his comfortable presence in the 1996 photos of Tora Bora, seated next to al Qaeda’s leader in his cave or hiking with him, carrying his own cameras. (Al-Suri also accompanied Bergen and Arnett on their visit to bin Laden in 1997.)

The United States has since accused al-Suri of training recruits at al Qaeda’s pre-9/11 al-Ghuraba and Derunta camps in Afghanistan, where operatives such as Ahmed Ressam, who planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999, learned how to kill with poisons and chemicals.

Eventually, al-Suri publicly criticized bin Laden for making al Qaeda so hierarchical, for courting publicity and being so controlling, even calling him a “Pharoah” for his imperial leadership style.

But al-Suri was no less militant. He set up his own training camp in Afghanistan and advocated a “leaderless jihad” featuring, as he put it, “spontaneous operations performed by individuals and cells all over the whole world without connection between them.”

22 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-47-b

Al-Suri summarized his philosophy in his 1,600-page treatise, “The Call for Global Islamic Resistance,” which he published on the Internet in 2004. He coined the Arabic slogan nizam, la tanzim, meaning “a system, not an organization,” to describe his belief that there should be no organizational bonds between “resistance fighters.”

Al-Suri advocated terrorist cells of no more than 10 men and envisioned more “lone-wolf” attacks, such as the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre carried out in 2009 by rogue U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was inspired by the radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, himself an al-Suri disciple.

Strategically, al-Suri argued, a less centralized jihadist network would make operatives who were arrested less likely to expose fellow militants to intelligence or law enforcement agencies, because the fighters would not know who else was part of the movement. Al-Suri was forward thinking about al Qaeda evolving into an international ideology more than a centrally controlled organization.

After 9/11, al-Suri appeared on the U.S. Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

In 2005, al-Suri was tracked down in Quetta, Pakistan, and sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned. There were unconfirmed reports that he was released in 2012, followed by al Qaeda statements by leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and spokesman Adam Gadahn in 2014 saying, “May Allah release him.”

A decade after his arrest, al-Suri’s whereabouts are a mystery.

Balance of Power and Peace Determined Tuesday

Posted on by

Israel’s next 22 months

By Caroline Glick

The next 22 months until President Barack Obama leaves office promise to be the most challenging period in the history of US-Israel relations.


Now unfettered by electoral concerns, over the past week Obama exposed his ill-intentions toward Israel in two different ways.
First, the Justice Department leaked its intention to indict Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez on corruption charges. Menendez is the ranking Democratic member, and the former chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the most outspoken Democratic critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.
As former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote this week at PJMedia, “It is perfectly reasonable to believe that Menendez may be guilty of corruption offenses and that his political opposition on Iran is factoring into the administration’s decision to charge him. Put it another way, if Menendez were running interference for Obama on the Iran deal, rather than trying to scupper it, I believe he would not be charged.”
The Menendez prosecution tells us that Obama wishes to leave office after having vastly diminished support for Israel among Democrats. And he will not hesitate to use strong-arm tactics against his fellow Democrats to achieve his goal.


We already experienced Obama’s efforts in this sphere in the lead-up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the joint houses of Congress on March 3 with his campaign to pressure Democratic lawmakers to boycott Netanyahu’s address.
Now, with his move against Menendez, Obama made clear that support for Israel – even in the form of opposition to the nuclear armament of Iran – will be personally and politically costly for Democrats.
The long-term implications of Obama’s moves to transform US support for Israel into a partisan issue cannot by wished away. It is possible that his successor as the head of the Democratic Party will hold a more sympathetic view of Israel. But it is also possible that the architecture of Democratic fund-raising and grassroots support that Obama has been building for the past six years will survive his presidency and that as a consequence, Democrats will have incentives to oppose Israel.
The reason Obama is so keen to transform Israel into a partisan issue was made clear by the second move he made last week.
Last Thursday, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice announced that the NSC’s Middle East Coordinator Phil Gordon was stepping down and being replaced by serial Israel-basher Robert Malley.
Malley, who served as an NSC junior staffer during the Clinton administration, rose to prominence in late 2000 when, following the failed Camp David peace summit in July 2000 and the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war, Malley co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times blaming Israel and then-prime minister Ehud Barak for the failure of the negotiations.
What was most remarkable at the time about Malley’s positions was that they completely contradicted Bill Clinton’s expressed views. Clinton placed the blame for the failure of the talks squarely on then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s shoulders.
Not only did Arafat reject Barak’s unprecedented offer of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty over all of Gaza, most of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, he refused to make a counter-offer. And then two months later, he opened the Palestinian terror war.
As Jonathan Tobin explained in Commentary this week, through his writings and public statements, Malley has legitimized Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Malley thinks it is perfectly reasonable that the Palestinians refuse to concede their demand for free immigration of millions of foreign Arabs to the Jewish state in the framework of their concocted “right of return,” even though the clear goal of that demand is to destroy Israel. As Tobin noted, Malley believes that Palestinian terrorism against Israel is “understandable if not necessarily commendable.”
During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, then-senator Obama listed Malley as a member of his foreign policy team. When pro-Israel groups criticized his appointment, Obama fired Malley.
But after his 2012 reelection, no longer fearing the ramifications of embracing an openly anti-Israel adviser, one who had documented contacts with Hamas terrorists and has expressed support for recognizing the terror group, Obama appointed Malley to serve as his senior adviser for Iraq-Iran-Syria and the Gulf states. Still facing the 2014 congressional elections, Obama pledged that Malley would have no involvement in issues related to Israel and the Palestinians. But then last week, he appointed him to direct the NSC’s policy in relation to the entire Middle East, including Israel.
The deeper significance of Malley’s appointment is that it demonstrates that Obama’s goal in his remaining time in office is to realign US Middle East policy away from Israel. With his Middle East policy led by a man who thinks the Palestinian goal of destroying Israel is legitimate, Obama can be expected to expand his practice of placing all the blame for the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians solely on Israel’s shoulders.
Malley’s appointment indicates that there is nothing Israel can do to stem the tsunami of American pressure it is about to suffer. Electing a left-wing government to replace Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will make no difference.
Just as Malley was willing to blame Barak – a leader who went to Camp David as the head of a minority coalition, whose positions on territorial withdrawals were rejected by a wide majority of Israelis – for the absence of peace, so we can assume that he, and his boss, will blame Israel for the absence of peace over the next 22 months, regardless of who stands at the head of the next government.
In this vein we can expect the administration to expand the anti-Israel positions it has already taken.
The US position paper regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiation that was leaked this past week to Yediot Aharonot made clear the direction Obama wishes to go. That document called for Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, with minor revisions.
In the coming 22 months we can expect the US to use more and more coercive measures to force Israel to capitulate to its position.
The day the administration-sponsored talks began in July 2013, the EU announced it was barring its member nations from having ties with Israeli entities that operate beyond the 1949 armistice lines unless those operations involve assisting the Palestinians in their anti-Israel activities. The notion that the EU initiated an economic war against Israel the day the talks began without coordinating the move with the Obama administration is, of course, absurd.
We can expect the US to make expanded use of European economic warfare against Israel in the coming years, and to continue to give a backwind to the anti-Semitic BDS movement by escalating its libelous rhetoric conflating Israel with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
US-Israel intelligence and defense ties will also be on the chopping block.
While Obama and his advisers consistently boast that defense and intelligence ties between Israel and the US have grown during his presidency, over the past several years, those ties have suffered blow after blow. During the war with Hamas last summer, acting on direct orders from the White House, the Pentagon instituted a partial – unofficial – embargo on weapons to Israel.
As for intelligence ties, over the past month, the administration announced repeatedly that it is ending its intelligence sharing with Israel on Iran.
The Hillary Clinton email scandal has revealed that during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton transferred top secret information regarding Israel’s operations against Iran to the New York Times. We also learned that the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is being fingered as the source of the leak regarding the Stuxnet computer virus that Israel and the US reportedly developed jointly to cripple Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.
In other words, since taking office, Obama has used the US’s intelligence ties with Israel to harm Israel’s national security on at least two occasions.
He has also used diplomacy to harm Israel. Last summer, Obama sought a diplomatic settlement of Hamas’s war with Israel that would have granted Hamas all of its war goals, including its demand for open borders and access to the international financial system.
Now of course, he is running roughshod over his bipartisan opposition, and the opposition of Israel and the Sunni Arab states, in the hopes of concluding a nuclear deal with Iran that will pave the way for the ayatollahs to develop nuclear weapons and expand their hegemonic control over the Middle East.
AMID ALL of this, and facing 22 months of ever more hostility as Obama pursues his goal of ending the US-Israel alliance, Israelis are called on to elect a new government.
This week the consortium of former security brass that has banded together to elect a leftist government led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni accused Netanyahu of destroying Israel’s relations with the US. The implication was that a government led by Herzog and Livni will restore Israel’s ties to America.
Yet as Obama has made clear both throughout his tenure in office, and, over the past week through Malley’s appointment and Menendez’s indictment, Obama holds sole responsibility for the deterioration of our ties with our primary ally. And as his actions have also made clear, Herzog and Livni at the helm will receive no respite in US pressure. Their willingness to make concessions to the Palestinians that Netanyahu refuses to make will merely cause Obama to move the goalposts further down the field. Given his goal of abandoning the US alliance with Israel, no concession that Israel will deliver will suffice.
And so we need to ask ourselves, which leader will do a better job of limiting the danger and waiting Obama out while maintaining sufficient overall US support for Israel to rebuild the alliance after Obama has left the White House.
The answer, it seems, is self-evident.
The Left’s campaign to blame Netanyahu for Obama’s hostility will make it all but impossible for a Herzog-Livni government to withstand US pressure that they say will disappear the moment Netanyahu leaves office.
In contrast, as the US position paper leaked to Yediot indicated, Netanyahu has demonstrated great skill in parrying US pressure. He agreed to hold negotiations based on a US position that he rejected and went along with the talks for nine months until the Palestinians ended them. In so doing, he achieved a nine-month respite in open US pressure while exposing Palestinian radicalism and opposition to peaceful coexistence.
On the Iranian front, Netanyahu’s courageous speech before Congress last week energized Obama’s opponents to take action and forced Obama onto the defensive for the first time while expanding popular support for Israel.
It is clear that things will only get more difficult in the months ahead. But given the stakes, the choice of Israeli voters next Tuesday is an easy one.

UN Facts on Syrian Crisis

Posted on by

Syria is entering the 5th year of a civil war. Repeat 5 years and still no proactive solution to remove Bashir al Assad much less to address epic refugees no longer in the country. The crisis in Syria is fully owned by Barack Obama walking away from his Red Line, deferring the solutions to Iran and Russia. So, when it comes to the United Nations and their intelligence on Syria which is correct, no member country seems to care.

Here is a factual symptom of the problem.

Turkey seizes cargo ship carrying hundreds of Syrian refugees

(Reuters) – Turkish coastguards found more than 300 refugees, mostly Syrians, when they seized a cargo ship they had opened fired on for failing obey an order to stop off Turkey’s western coast, the regional governor said on Friday.

Refugee trafficking in the seas around Turkey is a major problem. Turkey itself has kept its borders open to refugees since the start of Syria’s civil war four years ago, and around 2 million people have fled across the frontier.

Police arrested three crew and found the 337 immigrants after seizing the 59-meter-long vessel late on Thursday as it passed through the Dardanelles strait.

The passengers were taken to a nearby sports hall for questioning and health checks, the local governor’s office said.

Canakkale Governor Ahmet Cinar told reporters the coastguards were only able to stop the ship by opening fire on the engine room and locking the rudder.

Nobody was injured during the operation and the ship was docked at the Gelibolu port, Turkish media said.

***

What does the United Nations report on Syria? Of particular note, many countries have the same conditions including Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. This is proving failed policy by the U.S. State Department, the White House National Security Council as well as other allied nations.

GENEVA, March 12 (UNHCR) – As the Syrian conflict enters its fifth year, the UN refugee agency warned on Thursday that millions of refugees in neighbouring countries and those displaced within the country are caught in deteriorating conditions, facing an even bleaker future without more international support.

“With no political solution to the conflict in sight, most of the 3.9 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt see no prospect of returning home in the near future, and have scant opportunity to restart their lives in exile,” a UNHCR statement released in Geneva said.

It added that well over half of all Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in insecure dwellings – up from a third last year – posing a constant challenge to keep them safe and warm. A survey of 40,000 Syrian families in Jordan’s urban areas found that two-thirds were living below the absolute poverty line.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres reiterated that much, much more needed to be done to pull Syrians out of their nightmare of suffering. “After years in exile, refugees’ savings are long depleted and growing numbers are resorting to begging, survival sex and child labour. Middle-class families with children are barely surviving on the streets: one father said life as a refugee was like being stuck in quicksand – every time you move, you sink down further,” he said.

“This worst humanitarian crisis of our era should be galvanizing a global outcry of support, but instead help is dwindling. With humanitarian appeals systematically underfunded, there just isn’t enough aid to meet the colossal needs – nor enough development support to the hosting countries creaking under the strain of so many refugees,” Guterres added.

The High Commissioner pointed out that with the massive influx of Syrian refugees over the past four years, Turkey had now become the world’s biggest refugee hosting country and had spent more than US$6 billion on direct assistance to refugees.

But faced with growing security concerns and insufficient international support, several of Syria’s neighbours have taken measures in recent months to stem the flow of refugees, from new border management regulations to more onerous and complex requirements to extend their stay.

“More and more Syrians are losing hope. Thousands have tried to reach Europe by taking often deadly land or sea routes after paying their life savings to smugglers. Many have not made it. Those who do, face rising hostility as refugees are conflated with security concerns in a climate of rising panic,” the UNHCR statement said.

High Commissioner Guterres said that “refugees are made scapegoats for any number of problems from terrorism to economic hardship and perceived threats to their host communities’ way of life. But we need to remember that the primary threat is not from refugees, but to them.”

Inside Syria, the situation is deteriorating rapidly. More than 12 million people are in need of aid to stay alive. Almost 8 million have been forced from their homes, sharing crowded rooms with other families or camping in abandoned buildings. An estimated 4.8 million Syrians inside the country are in places that are hard to reach, including 212,000 trapped in besieged areas.

Millions of children are suffering from trauma and ill health. A quarter of Syria’s schools have been damaged, destroyed or taken over for shelter. More than half of Syria’s hospitals are destroyed.

More than 2.4 million children inside Syria are not in school. Among refugees, nearly half of all children are not receiving an education in exile. In Lebanon, there are more school-age refugees than the entire intake of the country’s public schools, and only 20 per cent of Syrian children are enrolled. Similar numbers can be seen among refugees living outside of camps in Turkey and Jordan.

“We have only a narrow opportunity to intervene now as this potentially lost generation confronts its future. Abandoning refugees to hopelessness only exposes them to even greater suffering, exploitation and dangerous abuse,” Guterres warned.

There are more Syrians under UNHCR’s care today than any other nationality on earth. Yet by the end of last year, only 54 per cent of the funding needed to assist refugees outside Syria had been raised. Inside Syria, humanitarian organizations received even less.

In December, the UN launched the largest aid appeal ever for $8.4 billion. Fully funded, this would cover basic needs for refugees, while also helping host communities to bolster their infrastructure and services. UNHCR is hoping significant pledges will be made at a funding conference in Kuwait on March 31.

“Further abandoning host countries to manage the situation on their own could result in serious regional destabilisation, increasing the likelihood of more security concerns elsewhere in the world,” Guterres stressed.

Islamic State Using Effective Vintage War Tactics

Posted on by

According to the BBC, the Islamic State has started using a terrifying tactic against soldiers in Iraq. This technique has rarely seen use since the European battlefields of World War I (1914-1918).

ISIS is packing crude roadside bombs with deadly chlorine gas.

Iraqi officials showed BBC News a video of security forces detonating one of these bombs, releasing into the air a recognizable and deadly orange cloud. ISIS has occasionally used chlorine gas before, but not with the frequency being seen now.

Iraqi security forces explained that these new attacks are meant to scare soldiers and civilians, rather than kill them. It is a new form of psychological warfare ISIS is using to try and turn the tide of the war in their favor.

The BBC interviewed Haider Taher, a member of an Iraqi bomb disposal squad, who unknowingly detonated one of these chlorine-filled roadside bombs:

Our throats were blocked, we couldn’t breath. My ears felt enormous pressure… we were lucky a military ambulance was there to treat us.

Chemical warfare has been used extensively in neighboring Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been notorious for their use of gas attacks on civilians and opposition alike, a tactic that has been condemned by the UN and the United States.

Although there’s been some use of chemical weapons by ISIS, there is little information on how much of these chemicals they possess.

The BBC has been shown footage of bright yellow gas rising up from a roadside bomb explosion that the Iraqis say is chlorine, as well as film of the Tikrit explosion.

Jennifer Cole, Senior Research Fellow at defence thinktank Royal United Services Institute, told MailOnline that although chlorine can be lethal, it does appear that it’s being used to spread fear by Isis.

She said: ‘Chlorine is easily available from a number of industrial sources and is very hazardous – causing breathing difficulties in particular and in extreme cases prolonged exposure can kill.

‘Used in roadside bombs such as this, in the open air, it disperses reasonably quickly and so appears to be intended to cause panic rather than serious harm.’

She added: ‘There is no doubt that public perception often sees chemical weapons such as this as more dangerous than conventional weapons such as explosives, even though it may not be the case that a chlorine bomb could cause more harm. In fact, the most damage is likely to be done by the explosion created to disperse it.’

Chlorine was used by the British in the First World War, but it proved to be unreliable. In one attack in 1915 the gas blew back into British trenches after canisters of the chemical were fired from heavy guns at the Germans.

Chlorine is not a prohibited chemical and has been used often in Syria.

* Opposition says chlorine used in three areas this month

* Chlorine not declared by Syria to chemical weapons watchdog

* Canisters likely delivered by air-dropped barrel bombs

* Deadline for removal of chemical weapons is April 27

By Oliver Holmes

BEIRUT, April 22 (Reuters) – Chlorine gas attacks in Syria this month, if proven, expose a major loophole in an international deal which promised to remove chemical weapons from Syria and suggest chemical warfare could persist after the removal operation has finished.

President Bashar al-Assad agreed with the United States and Russia to dispose of his chemical weapons – an arsenal which Damascus had never previously formally acknowledged – after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of the capital last August.

Washington and its Western allies said it was Assad’s forces who unleashed the nerve agent, in the world’s worst chemical attack in a quarter-century. The government blamed the rebel side in Syria’s civil war, which is now in its fourth year.

Syria has vowed to hand over or destroy its entire arsenal by the end of this week, but still has roughly 20 percent of the chemicals it declared to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

In addition, chlorine gas that was never included on the list submitted to the OPCW is now allegedly being used on the battlefield, leading some countries to consider requesting an investigation, possibly through the United Nations.

Attacks this month in several areas of the country share characteristics that have led analysts to believe that there is a coordinated chlorine campaign, with growing evidence that it is the government side dropping the bombs.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that Washington had indications that chlorine was probably used by government forces in Syria.

“We are examining allegations that the government was responsible,” she said. “Obviously there needs to be an investigation of what’s happened here.”

YELLOW CANISTERS

In the rebel-held village of Kfar Zeita in the central province of Hama, 125 miles (200 km) north of Damascus, opposition activists uploaded video of people choking and being fed oxygen following what they said were bombs dropped from helicopters on April 11 and 12.

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the videos and activists regularly make similar claims, but further footage of canisters provided an indication of what had happened.

One of the canisters had only partially exploded and the marking CL2 was written along its side. CL2 is the symbol for chlorine gas. Also visible was “Norinco” – China’s biggest arms maker.

Repeated calls to China North Industries Group Corporation, or Norinco, went unanswered.

Canisters pictured in three separate areas were all painted yellow – complying with international standards on industrial gas colour codes indicating chlorine.

Since April 11, there have been repeated attacks on Kfar Zeita and also on the town of Al-Tamana’a in north west Idlib on Friday which shared the same characteristics.

Activists said helicopters dropped improvised barrel bombs with a chlorine canister enclosed, which led to casualties.

If inhaled, chlorine gas – a deadly agent widely used in World War One – turns to hydrochloric acid in the lungs, which can lead to internal burning and drowning through a reactionary release of water in the lungs.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, head of British-based chemical biological radiological and nuclear consultancy firm Secure Bio, said he is “reasonably satisfied that chlorine has been used”.

“The evidence is pretty compelling,” he said.

DOMESTIC CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

Amy Smithson, a leading American chemical weapons expert at the Monterey Institute, said that unless tests are run, it is not certain that chlorine was used or some similar agent.

“Once the Syrian government gets the remainder of the declared chemicals out, pressure should mount for Syria to revise its declaration again, to cough up the remainder of their offensive chemical programme,” she said, questioning whether Syria had weaponised its domestic chemical industry.

Chlorine, a so-called dual-use chemical which has industrial uses, is not on the list of chemical weapons submitted to the OPCW but was produced in Syria before the war. It should have been declared if the government has it, an OPCW spokesman said.

On Monday, opposition groups reported a further attack, this time 20 miles (30 km) northeast of Kfar Zeita in the town of Telminnes. Video footage was posted on YouTube by several opposition groups of men, women and children being treated in a field hospital.

Many appeared to have trouble breathing and medics held them down. One boy who looked less than 10 years old shook as a medic poured a liquid on his eyes and in his mouth.

A Reuters photograph of another young boy who had been transferred to a hospital closer to the Turkish border showed him lying dead on a stretcher with blood around his mouth. Medics said he had been exposed to chlorine gas at Telminnes.

Videos from the site of Monday’s bombing showed the same yellow canisters, this time twisted from an explosion.

Eliot Higgins, a British-based researcher who trawls daily through online videos of Syria’s civil war to verify weapons in them, said that these “chlorine bombs” have similar features to improvised barrel bombs the army has used in the war.

He said one bomb from Kafr Zeita shows metal rods, consistent with other large government barrel bomb designs, to hold the impact fuse plate in place.

Another video of an exploded barrel bomb shows a canister inside the barrel, which has fins on the back and what appear to be explosives around the top of the canister with a detonation cord.

“The interesting thing about these new videos is that there’s the same blue det cord you see in other DIY barrel bombs,” Higgins said.

Hundreds of videos confirm barrel bombs have been dropped from helicopters. Rebels have access to large rockets and missiles but there has never been a case reported of the opposition using air-dropped munitions nor commandeering a helicopter.

GREY AREA

A United Nations inquiry found in December that chemical weapons were likely used in five attacks in 2013, although it did not apportion blame. The nerve agent sarin was likely used in four of the five attacks, the inquiry found.

The OPCW mission to extract Assad’s chemicals has been mired by delays and inconsistencies. On Thursday, Reuters reported that Syria had submitted a “more specific” list of its chemical weapons to the OPCW after discrepancies were reported by inspectors on the ground, officials said.

Although it not public, officials have said the list includes more than 500 tonnes of highly toxic chemical weapons, such as sulphur mustard and precursors for the poisonous gas sarin, as well as more than 700 tonnes of bulk industrial chemicals.

The OPCW, which is overseeing the destruction with the United Nations, has taken an inventory of the chemicals and facilities Syria reported to the joint mission, but has not looked into whether the list may have been incomplete.

“Chlorine has a host of commercial uses. Actually, it’s not very toxic. Sarin is probably 2,000 to 3,000 times more toxic. You and I can buy chlorine in a shop,” chemical weapons specialist De Bretton-Gordon said.

This makes it a grey area, he said, as industrial-use chlorine in canisters – which is what these bombs appear to be – is not strictly a chemical weapon until it is used as one.

Nevertheless, he says, “the OPCW and others have been frankly naive.” (Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch in The Hague, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and Reuters TV; Editing by Giles Elgood)