Word: qaeda
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...Waziristan region made a surprising discovery: documents that appear to be linked to suspects in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Among the finds: a German passport in the name of Said Bahaji, a militant associated with hijackers, and a Spanish passport for the wife of an alleged al-Qaeda member. Though the documents have not been authenticated, U.S. officials say they're proof that al-Qaeda members took refuge in the area. Visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she found it "hard to believe" that Pakistani forces couldn't capture al-Qaeda leaders "if they really wanted...
Another passport the army claimed it recovered, and seen by reporters on the visit, belonged to Raquel Burgos Garcia, also 34, a Spaniard who had converted to Islam and later joined al-Qaeda as a low-level operative. The Spanish passport, number P099823, did not bear any Pakistani stamps. Her passport was also issued just weeks before the 9/11 attacks...
...genuine, the passports would confirm what the U.S. has been saying all along: that Pakistan's wild borderlands have served as a sanctuary for global jihadis who may be plotting fresh attacks on the West. Bahaji served as a "senior al-Qaeda propagandist," says a senior U.S. counterterrorism official. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, it was widely reported that members of the Hamburg cell had their first known meeting at Bahaji's 1999 wedding in a Hamburg mosque...
...emergence of the passports came the same day that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vented frustration at Pakistan's failure to capture al-Qaeda members who are suspected to be sheltering in these very tribal areas. "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," Clinton told Pakistani journalists at a meeting in Lahore. No Pakistani officials reacted to her remarks...
Foreign fighters aligned with al-Qaeda make up a large component of the fighters that the army is taking on in South Waziristan. The military's chief spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said that some 1,500 Central Asian fighters, mainly Uzbeks, were among the 5,000 to 8,000 fighters that the offensive was targeting...