Date : 29/09/2005
KUN0001 4 GEN 0255 KUWAIT /KUNA-BIX9
POL-BIN LADEN-ASYLUM
The day when Osama bin Laden applied for asylum in Britain
LONDON, Sept 29 (KUNA) -- He claims to hate everything the West stands for,
but it has emerged that Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Britain even as he
was planning the September 11 attacks on the US, it was revealed here Thursday.
The al-Qaeda leader wanted to abandon his base in Sudan at the end of 1995
and asked some of his followers in London to sound out whether he would be
able to move to Britain, The Times newspaper said.
Michael Howard, who was Britains Home Secretary at the time, recalled how
his aides told him of the asylum request from the Saudi-born militant of whom
the world knew little of ten years ago.
A number of his brothers and other relatives, all members of the wealthy
bin Laden construction empire, owned properties in London by the mid-1990s.
The teenage bin Laden had reportedly toured Europe with his family and
became a fan of the "Arsenal" football team, though there is no record of his
ever having been to a match at their stadium of Highbury, in north London.
The astonishing approach to the British authorities happened only months
after bin Laden had secretly organised a terror summit in Manila in January
1995 to begin planning how hijackers would turn passenger planes into flying
bombs.
By this time bin Laden had also transferred some of his considerable
personal fortune to London for his followers to establish terror cells here
and across Europe, the paper added.
His name rarely appeared in the British media even though by late
1995 his network had already bombed a number of US army bases abroad and
plotted assassination attempts against Pope John Paul II and the US President
Bill Clinton.
Howard told The Times "In truth, I knew little about him, but we picked up
information that bin Laden was very interested in coming to Britain."
"It was apparently a serious request."
"He already had people operating here, and who knows how history could have
been rewritten if he had turned up here?"
Bin Laden never got a chance to make a formal application as British Home
Office officials investigated him and Howard issued an immediate banning order
under Britains immigration laws.
It was not until June 1998, two months before attacks on US embassies in
Africa, that bin Laden was placed on the FBIs most wanted list.
Howard added "If he had come here to plot the attacks on the twin towers
and the US had subsequently asked for his extradition, then by then, under the
Labour Governments laws, he could not have been sent because they refuse to
extradite to a country which has the death penalty."
Bin Laden had, according to Home Office officials, used a Saudi businessman
Khaled al-Fawwaz, to sound out his chances of coming to Britain.
Fawwaz, 41, had arrived in 1994 and was described by security chiefs as his
"de facto ambassador" in Britain.
Intelligence experts said that at the time of the asylum request, bin Laden
was not enjoying his exile in Sudan, where he had moved after fleeing
Afghanistan.
The Sudanese authorities were making noises about expelling him, The Times
concluded. (end)
he.mab