Biggest Terrorist Data Base Ever Seized
The military commanders of the Defensive Shield Operation Israel launched on March 29 were assigned two objectives. They were to be accomplished as part of the action to uproot the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure in West Bank towns.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources name these objectives as being:
1. To destroy Palestinian Authority government institutions on the West Bank;
2. To seize every single data base, file and computer network reposing in those institutions. Israeli troops consequently removed from Yasser Arafat’s eight headquarters across the West Bank the complete archives of the Palestinian terror machine.
Data banks and files were also removed and brought to Israel from the offices of:
— Colonel Tawfik Tirawi’s general security service in Ramallah and Nablus.
— Moussa Arafat’s Palestinian military intelligence service in Ramallah and Nablus.
— Hamas and Islamic Jihad offices – mainly in Ramallah as well as in Nablus and Jenin.
— Palestinian Authority departments and offices, banks, economic institutions and universities.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources report the Israeli military operation came away with the largest haul of data on a terrorist infrastructure ever to fall in the hands of any intelligence service.
It includes the complete records of Arafat’s undercover ties, his secret finances and the clandestine activities of Palestinian Authority intelligence and security chiefs, who doubled as terror masters. Computerized data banks and dossiers, discovered in the offices of Palestinian Authority’s various intelligence services, exposed their links with intelligence agencies in Arab countries and Arab and Islamic terror groups.
Sources with access to this treasure trove tell DEBKA-Net-Weekly that it will take years to sort through the entire body of material. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has briefed Israel intelligence scanners to focus first on six main themes:
1. Arafat’s direct operational links with Iraq, al-Qaeda, Hizballah and Libya.
2. Ties between his close aides and those parties.
3. Reciprocal relations between Palestinian Authority intelligence services and terrorist organizations around the world.
4. Links between Palestinian officials and anti-US, anti-Western intelligence bodies.
5. Organizational and intelligence collaboration between Palestinian institutions and anti-globalization movements.
6. Link between Palestinian leaders and anti-Semitic groups.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources, a preliminary dip into the material has already laid bare undercover activities by Iraqi military intelligence in various Middle Eastern countries, including Palestinian-controlled territory. Other materials attested to the formation of new terrorist cells in at least three West Bank cities – Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm – for attacks against US targets in the Middle East and Western Europe.
Talking to foreign ambassadors in Tel Aviv on Thursday, April 25, Israeli defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that among the many passports found in Arafat’s compound in Ramallah was one belonging to his chief financial officer, Fuad Shubaki. US and Israeli intelligence believe Shubaki organized the Karine-A Iranian arms smuggling ship that Israeli commandos stopped from reaching the Palestinian Authority last January. Ben-Eliezer told the foreign envoys that Shubaki’s passport was full of Iraqi and Libyan stamps.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources can report that before he went to see Arafat in his besieged compound in Ramallah earlier this month, US secretary of state Colin Powell was shown this finding. This and other records are evidence that Shoubaki is not just a technocrat; he was in charge of the Palestinian Authority’s most secret contacts with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Also found were documents revealing Palestinian Authority officials’ links with al Qaeda in Europe. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources, some of the 17 men arrested this week in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain as suspected members of al Qaeda cells, were picked up on the basis of the Palestinian data Israel seized and passed on to the United States. The Israelis also unearthed records in Palestinian Authority offices and banks in Ramallah pertaining to Mohammed Zouaydi, a Syrian arrested in Spain on Wednesday April 24. He is described as a senior al Qaeda treasurer, who distributed funds to cells and organizations supporting the Islamic network in the United States.
