| IRAQI secret police trained al-Qaeda operatives in poison gas use, according to The New Yorker magazine. The magazine also claims a radical Muslim group linked to al-Qaeda is operating in northern Iraq. Citing senior US administration officials, reporter Jeffrey Goldberg reports that Iraqi Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to ask Iraq for assistance in poison gas use. "Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organisation called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct al-Qaeda terrorists," he says. The article does not say when the training was carried out. Goldberg also claims that the CIA is taking seriously reports that another Iraqi, known as Abu Wa'el, "is the liaison of (Iraqi leader) Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq". Goldberg says he was told that the area was to be used as an alternative to Afghanistan as a base of operations. Quoting US and Kurdish officials, he says the enclave is used by an al-Qaeda subgroup known as Jund al-Shams, run by Mussa'ab al-Zarquawi, "believed by European intelligence agencies to be al-Qaeda's main specialist in chemical and biological terrorism". |