- LONDON - A 30-year-old
photograph
of Osama bin Laden, wearing purple flared trousers, a skinny-rib jumper
and leaning against a pink Cadillac, that enduring symbol of America, is
being hawked around by a Swedish picture agency at 1,000 pounds a
copy.
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- Meanwhile, Western security agencies are reported to
believe that one of the hijackers who flew into the World Trade Centre
(WTC) was part of the team that seized Indian Airlines flight IC 814 from
Kathmandu, and took it to Kandahar in 1999.
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- According to The Times, London, the Indian Airlines
hijacking
and the WTC attacks are thought to bear the fingerprints of senior
Hizbollah
leader Imad Mughniyeh, who is now believed to be somewhere in Iran.
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- The paper said Mughniyeh's whereabouts are likely to
be raised with the Iranian government by British foreign secretary Jack
Straw during his ongoing visit to Teheran.
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- Mughniyeh, who has proven expertise in hijackings, is
especially prone to using pocket knives and scissors in hijacks, rather
than guns.
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- The paper recalled that the Indian Airlines hijack was
accomplished by a similarly-armed gang, who stabbed 25-year-old Rupin
Katiyal,
while other passengers were ordered to watch him bleed to death. It said
that intelligence officers discerned the same pattern in the American
hijackings,
with a stewardess and a business-class passenger being stabbed on the
flight
that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The other passengers were told to keep
watching.
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- Investigators say Mughniyeh is linked to Bin Laden's
Al-Qaeda network, through the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Dr
Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is known to be close to Bin Laden.
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- But even as intelligence agencies investigate the extent
of Bin Laden's links with terrorist outfits around the world, the West
is digesting quite a different image of the young boy through a family
photograph, taken in the Swedish town of Falun in the summer of
1971.
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- The photograph, which appeared in several British
tabloids
on Monday, accompanies media revelations that not only was the young Bin
Laden fairly Westernised before he embraced Islamist radicalism, he also
had a close family link with American President George W. Bush.
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- According to The Daily Mail newspaper, Salem, the eldest
of Bin Laden's 55 brothers and sisters, invested heavily in Bush's first
business venture, Arbusto Energy.
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- The paper said that Salem, who died in a plane crash
in 1983, became Bush's business partner through James Bath, a close friend
of the future American president.
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- Salem, says the paper, appointed Bath as his
representative
in Houston, Texas. It was Bath who invested 50,000 dollars in Bush's
company
and also bought Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of Osama's elder
brother.
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- The paper said a White House spokesman was unavailable
for comment on the subject on Sunday night.
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- The Swedish owner of the hotel Osama Bin Laden stayed
at all those years ago, is quoted to say "they (Osama and Salem) were
such nice boys, beautiful boys, so elegantly dressed. Everybody loved
them".
She added that the innocent young Osama often played with her two
sons.
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