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November 2, 2005
Afghanistan: Islamist Escapes From US Jail
A report from the San Fransisco Examiner announces that a suspected leader of al-Qaeda, Omar al-Farouq, has escaped from a US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.
Al-Farouq, who was born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents, was thought to be one of Osama din Laden's main deputies in Southeast Asia until he was captured by Indonesian authorities, who handed him over to the United States.
It was revealed by a US official that Al-Farouq managed to escape with three others in July of this year. At the time the escape happened, his name was reported under a pseudonym. It was only yesterday confirmed by the US that he was among those who had escaped.
The escapees made a video of themselves after the event, which was aired on the Dubai TV channel, Al-Arabiya on October 18.
Boston.com report the anger of the Indonesian authorities that Al-Farouq had become a fugitive, some of whom felt that Washington had failed to tell them of the breakout.
Al-Farouq had joined al-Qaeda in the early 1990s and underwent training in Afghanistan. He had unsuccessfully applied to a Philippines flight school, in order to commit a 9/11 atrocity, said Ken Conboy, a security official in Indonesia. He had later plotted car and truck bombings, but was caught.
In the Al-Arabiya broadcast, one of the four fugitives, a Libyan, claimed that he had picked the locks of cell doors to escape. The escape had been planned for a Sunday, because on that day the prison was not so well-staffed. The Bagram prison houses 500 inmates.
Kabir Ahmed, the government leader in the area, said American investigators had found where the men escaped from the base and fled through a field of wild grapevines.
"The soldiers found the escapees' footprints still in the mud," he said. "It was an amazing breakout. How they did it exactly I still don't know."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 2, 2005 5:55 PM
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