Proof that Saddam bankrolls terrorism: documents seized by Israel in raids against Palestinian Authority offices in the West Bank in recent months detail massive terror funding from the Iraqi dictator

Insight on the News, Nov 26, 2002 by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Even as President George W. Bush and CIA Director George Tenet lay out the evidence of Iraq's operational ties to al-Qaeda terrorists, new documents seized by Israel from Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah and other terrorist operational centers in the West Bank show in extraordinary detail how Iraq has been funding terror and mayhem against Israeli civilians during the last two years.

Among Saddam's victims have been U.S. and European citizens who were visiting Israel. And yet for some reason, as with the evidence showing Iraq's alliance with al-Qaeda, few Western reporters have been willing to pay attention. A notable exception was a report aired Sept. 29 by CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl. Citing captured documents provided by the Israelis, she revealed that Saddam's closest deputy, Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan, personally had signed checks made out to Palestinian terrorist leaders who had organized suicide-bombing attacks.

Since dropping that bombshell, the Israelis have analyzed and offered to reporters hundreds of pages of documents that detail Iraqi money transfers and operational orders to what they now call an Iraqi "terror industry" in the West Bank and Gaza. The evidence is so overwhelming it appears almost mundane.

Captured documents include ledgers of "martyrs" who have carried out suicide operations against Israel, showing how much and when each was paid and the number of the check. It includes internal memoranda, computer disks, hard drives, videotapes and bank statements. In many cases the Israelis managed to seize checkbooks showing the stubs of these payments; in others, they have the actual wire transfers from Iraq.

"We knew all of this many years ago," chief analyst Reuven Ehrlich told INSIGHT as he displayed hundreds of pages of letters, reports, bank statements and lists that showed payments to suicide bombers and their families by Iraq in recompense for murder. "But, until now, the proof has all been classified top secret or above. Now we can finally release the evidence to the public."

So far neither the United Nations nor the European Union has paid attention, despite their support for the extensive networks in Israel and the territories that erupt into strident activity whenever claims are made of an Israeli "massacre." It's not the first time they have ignored hard evidence of Iraqi misdeeds in their eagerness to rehabilitate the Iraqi dictator. Iraq used the Arab Liberation Front and the Ba'ath Party in Palestinian-controlled areas as "payment contractors," Ehrlich says--part of a policy to encourage suicide-bombing attacks. Another organization, the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF), headed by Mohammad Zaydan (aka Abu Abbas), was used by Iraq "as an operational tool for carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel." The PLF hijacked the Italian Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1986, tossing wheelchair-bound U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer overboard simply because he was a Jew.

In a rare intelligence scoop, the Israelis managed to capture active members of the PLF who confessed to having traveled to Iraq for military training. "Here you have a case where you have the documents, and then the individuals actually described in the documents," Ehrlich tells INSIGHT at the Defense Ministry's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Herzliyya. While in Iraq, he adds, they received operational instructions "to carry out terrorist acts against Israeli military and civilian targets." One PLF instructor in Iraq had been arrested in Italy during the Achille Lauro affair but later was released.

INSIGHT reviewed some 350 pages of Iraq-related documents in both English and Arabic, in addition to hundreds of pages more on financial aid from Saudi Arabia and direct military assistance from Syria and Iran. The evidence of their involvement in Palestinian terrorist operations is massive, direct and overwhelming.

Once Operation Defensive Shield was launched in retaliation for the Passover massacre that killed 29 Israelis on March 27, the Iraqis made a conscious decision to step up payments to the families of suicide bombers "in order to encourage suicide attacks," the documents show. In a signed, handwritten letter, Iraqi Vice President Ramadan explains in detail how clandestine Ba'ath Party cells in the territories should be organized and designates the Arab Liberation Front as the main "payment contractor" of the Iraqi regime, an Israeli analysis of the documents states. Ramadan reiterates Iraq's eagerness to use Palestinian suicide-bomb attacks to help achieve "the complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea," a familiar code-phrase meaning the destruction of the state of Israel and its replacement by a Palestinian Arab state.

The Iraqis maintained a hierarchy of mayhem when handing out financial rewards to the families of dead terrorists. Until the Passover bombing in March, the families of suicide bombers were paid $15,000, whereas "ordinary" martyrs got $10,000. Realizing that more money meant more attacks, the Iraqis later upped the price for a "quality" suicide operation to $25,000, the equivalent of several years' wages for an average worker there. The documents show the Iraqis also distinguished between suicide bombers who successfully carried out their missions and those who blew themselves up without killing Jews. In the warped economy of terror, failure has a price greater than death.