Rense.com
Europol Anti-Terrorism
Chief Has Doubts On bin
Laden Conspiracy
| THE European Union's chief anti-terrorism
officer cast doubt yesterday on claims that Osama bin Laden was solely
responsible for Tuesday's attacks. Jurgen Storbeck, the director of Europol, cautioned against jumping to conclusions before the mass of evidence had been properly sifted. In an interview with The Telegraph, he said: "Bin Laden is not the automatic leader of every terrorist act carried out in the name of Islam. "It's possible that he was informed about the operation; it's even possible that he influenced it; but he's probably not the man who steered every action or controlled the detailed plan. "As for the idea that, sitting in Afghanistan, he could have controlled the last phase of the operation is something we should not accept without a lot of doubt." He added: "If one wants to avoid error, one must ensure that the investigation has a wide scope." Mr Storbeck, a German lawyer, said that Britain was providing valuable leads on the attacks, but the German police, immigration, and customs services were playing the key role. This suggests that the German authorities are highly sceptical about bin Laden's role and may have uncovered evidence pointing in a different direction. He refused to speculate on which groups might be responsible, saying: "There are a lot of people with the same philosophy who may have been to bin Laden's training camps, but are not necessarily under his orders." He said Europol was giving serious consideration to claims that there was some form of state-sponsorship involved, but said there was no hard evidence to date. Europol tracks Islamic fundamentalists, drawing on sensitive information provided by all EU states as well as tip-offs from allies such as Japan, Canada and Switzerland. http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/15/whunt215.xml$ |
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