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Al Qaida assassins got $18,000 to kill U.S. diplomat

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, December 16, 2002

AMMAN Ñ Jordan has captured two suspects in the assassination of a U.S. diplomat.

Jordanian officials identified the suspects as nationals from Jordan and Libya. They said both are members of Al Qaida and were trained in Afghanistan, Middle East Newsline reported.

The members were said to have received $18,000 for the Oct. 28 assassination of Laurence Foley, the 60-year-old head of U.S. Agency for International Development in Jordan. Foley was the first U.S. diplomat killed in the Hashemite kingdom.

Information Minister Mohammed Adwan said Libyan national Salem Saad Bin Suweid and Jordanian Yasser Fatih Ibrahim confessed to membership in Al Qaida. He said Bin Suweid entered Jordan on a forged Tunisian passport.

A government statement said the two suspects confessed to being linked to Al Qaida's Ahmed Kalaylah, accused of having supplied the weapons and money to attack embassies and foreign diplomats in Jordan. Kalaylah, believed to be in Syria, was said to have been appointed a leading Al Qaida operative in attacks on Europe.

Last week, CIA director George Tenet said the United States has brought 70 Islamic insurgents to justice. He said about half of the suspects, including the senior Al Qaida operatives, were captured in recent months. They included the operations chief of Al Qaida in the Persian Gulf region.

"Jordan and Egypt have been courageous leaders in the war on terrorism," Tenet said in a speech to the Washington-based Nixon Center on Dec. 11. "A number of Gulf states like the UAE are denying terrorists financial safe haven, making it harder for Al Qaida to funnel funding for operations, and others in the Gulf are beginning to tackle the problem of charities fronting for, and funding, terrorists. The Saudis are providing increasingly important support to our counterterrorism efforts Ñ from making arrests to sharing debriefing results."

On Dec. 14, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration has prepared a hit list of at least 24 people deemed as terrorists. The newspaper said President George Bush relayed authority to the CIA to track and kill those on the list without additional approval.

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