At least one of the al-Qaida plotters arrested in Jordan earlier this month as part of a weapons of mass destruction plot that Jordanian officials say could have killed 80,000 people revealed on Monday that he was trained in Iraq before the U.S. invaded in March 2003.
In a confession broadcast on Jordanian television, the unnamed WMD conspirator revealed: "In Iraq, I started training in explosives and poisons. I gave my complete obedience to [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi," the al-Qaida WMD specialist whose base of operations was in Iraq.
Excerpts from the WMD conspirator's confession broadcast by ABC's "Nightline" late Monday show that the WMD plot was planned and trained for in Iraq more than a year before the U.S. invasion, with the terror suspect admitting, "After the fall of Afghanistan, I met Zarqawi again in Iraq."
U.S. forces vanquished the Taliban government in Kabul in December 2001 - 15 months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"Some of the details appear to be fairly significant in terms of the planning," reported "Nightline's" Chris Bury: "$170,000, a lot of meetings, getting instructions from people in Iraq, people inside Syria."
"This doesn't appear to be a mom-and-pop operation," he added.
Al-Zarqawi, who also ran a camp for Jordanian recruits in Afghanistan, has been linked to a series of terrorist plots, including the attack in Madrid last month, the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad last summer, and the 2002 killing of an American diplomat in Jordan.
On Monday al-Zarqawi took credit for the attacks on Iraq's oil terminals in Basra over the weekend, "Nightline" said. The attack, though interrupted before it could do maximum damage, killed three U.S. soldiers.
The Jordan chem-bomb plot was to be executed in three stages, according to a video re-enactment released by Jordanian officials.
The first stage was to involve a car carrying several al-Qaida operatives, who would approach the gates of the Jordanian security service in Amman and gun down the facility's armed guards.
The car would be quickly followed by a specially equipped track laden with conventional explosives that would break through the security service gate and crash into the main building.
In the third stage, the plot called for three tanker trucks to follow the breakthrough vehicle, loaded with a combined total of 20 tons of chemical weapons laced with conventional explosives. One truck was to crash into the security headquarters, another the U.S. Embassy nearby. A third was to hit a building within a few hundred yards of the other two targets, the Jordanian video showed.
The ensuing cloud of poison gas could have killed 80,000 people, Jordanian officials said, an estimate that was revised upward from an anticipated death toll of 20,000 last week.
In film footage broadcast by "Nightline," Jordanian television showed hundreds of plastic containers that had been removed from the trucks that Jordanian officials said were filled with chemical weapons.
Jordan's King Abdullah said last week that the five trucks originated from Syria and were intercepted just 75 miles from the Syrian border. Syria has long been suspected as a repository of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/27/164917.shtml
In a confession broadcast on Jordanian television, the unnamed WMD conspirator revealed: "In Iraq, I started training in explosives and poisons. I gave my complete obedience to [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi," the al-Qaida WMD specialist whose base of operations was in Iraq.
Excerpts from the WMD conspirator's confession broadcast by ABC's "Nightline" late Monday show that the WMD plot was planned and trained for in Iraq more than a year before the U.S. invasion, with the terror suspect admitting, "After the fall of Afghanistan, I met Zarqawi again in Iraq."
U.S. forces vanquished the Taliban government in Kabul in December 2001 - 15 months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"Some of the details appear to be fairly significant in terms of the planning," reported "Nightline's" Chris Bury: "$170,000, a lot of meetings, getting instructions from people in Iraq, people inside Syria."
"This doesn't appear to be a mom-and-pop operation," he added.
Al-Zarqawi, who also ran a camp for Jordanian recruits in Afghanistan, has been linked to a series of terrorist plots, including the attack in Madrid last month, the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad last summer, and the 2002 killing of an American diplomat in Jordan.
On Monday al-Zarqawi took credit for the attacks on Iraq's oil terminals in Basra over the weekend, "Nightline" said. The attack, though interrupted before it could do maximum damage, killed three U.S. soldiers.
The Jordan chem-bomb plot was to be executed in three stages, according to a video re-enactment released by Jordanian officials.
The first stage was to involve a car carrying several al-Qaida operatives, who would approach the gates of the Jordanian security service in Amman and gun down the facility's armed guards.
The car would be quickly followed by a specially equipped track laden with conventional explosives that would break through the security service gate and crash into the main building.
In the third stage, the plot called for three tanker trucks to follow the breakthrough vehicle, loaded with a combined total of 20 tons of chemical weapons laced with conventional explosives. One truck was to crash into the security headquarters, another the U.S. Embassy nearby. A third was to hit a building within a few hundred yards of the other two targets, the Jordanian video showed.
The ensuing cloud of poison gas could have killed 80,000 people, Jordanian officials said, an estimate that was revised upward from an anticipated death toll of 20,000 last week.
In film footage broadcast by "Nightline," Jordanian television showed hundreds of plastic containers that had been removed from the trucks that Jordanian officials said were filled with chemical weapons.
Jordan's King Abdullah said last week that the five trucks originated from Syria and were intercepted just 75 miles from the Syrian border. Syria has long been suspected as a repository of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/27/164917.shtml
