Bin Laden considered seeking asylum in Britain

[sabra]

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=252243&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/

Bin Laden considered seeking asylum in Britain

He might be the self-professed enemy of the West, but a decade ago terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden considered seeking asylum in Britain, the country's interior minister of the time has said.

Michael Howard told The Times on Thursday that the request from the al-Qaeda chief appeared to be serious.

According to the newspaper, in 1995 Bin Laden wanted to abandon his then-base in Sudan and asked some of his followers in London to sound out whether he would be able to move to Britain.

...

A number of Bin Laden's brothers and other members of the wealthy family construction empire owned properties in London at that time, the paper added.

[leveymg]

1. Who was he afraid would persecute him: his CIA control officer?

Cofer Black was the CIA Chief of Station in Sudan at that time. Mr. Black claims that he and bin Laden had some sort of conflict there that involved an armed standoff. Mr. Black went on to head the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) that allowed the hijackers of Flt 77 into the United States without notifying the FBI.

The FBI Inspector General's report, published a couple months ago, states that the Bureau's liason officer at CTC was ordered by CIA commanders at CTC to withhold a cable notifying the FBI National Security unit in New York about the entry into the US on 1/15/2000 of Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who went on to hijack AA Flt. 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

Black was singled out along with his boss, George Tenet, for severe criticism in the CIA Inspector General's 9/11 report for their handling of al-Qaeda cells inside the US. That report remains classified and was recently released to a handful of Congressmen.