Was al Qaida Related Media Chief Connected with First World Trade Center Bombing?

May 27, 2004

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The apparently Canadian based operator of a recently defunct Yahoo group known as Global Islamic Media (GIM) may have ties to Islamic militant Ramzi Ahmed Yousef.

GIM is believed to be a means of communication for al Qaida members

Yousef was sentenced in 1998 to 240 years in prison for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and to a life term for plotting to blow up U.S. airliners in Southeast Asia and kill as many as 4,000 Americans (www.metimes.com/2K2/issue2002-24/reg/september_11_suspect.htm).

Prior to starting the Global Islamic Media group on Yahoo, Abu Banan operated a site called www.guraba.com.

A spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Phil Gibson, said he was unable to confirm whether Banan was a subject of interest to the Canadian government. "Investigations are matters of operational interest and we don't ever talk about them," Gibson said.

However, an e- mail from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the agency "can't comment on ongoing investigations."

A spokesman for the FBI's Washington office declined to say if Banan is wanted or a person of interest in the United States.

The Istanbul office contact for Guraba was listed as an Abdullah Yolcu (http://web.archive.org/web/20030604184344/http://guraba.com/aaboutus.htm). It is unclear whether Banan was using an alias or Yolcu was a colleague.

A May 13 1999 article in the Turkish Daily News (http://216.239.37(DOT)104/search ?q=cache:LSDLEsp3STIJ: www(DOT)turkishdailynews(DOT)com/past_scanne r/05_13_99/scanner.htm+%22Abdullah+Yolcu%22&hl=en&start=8&ie=UTF-8) hinted at some sort of connection between Yolcu and Yusuf.

The article read, "According to a report prepared by U.S. terrorism experts, radical Islamist militant Remzi Yusuf, who bombed New York's World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, called more than two places in Istanbul more than 10 times prior to the bombing. The mysterious calls were placed from the house Yusuf had been staying at in New York and from a phone in New Jersey. One of these two places is a house in Istanbul's Uskudar district where a man from Kirkuk named Abdullah Yolcu has been staying. The other number belongs to a business place in Istanbul's Aksaray district, an office which Yolcu had later, along with his two Saudi partners, handed over to a textile company named Gureba Tekstil. Yolcu told journalists he did not know who did the World Trade Center bombing and that he did not know the person named Remzi Yusuf. One of these conversations, placed from New Jersey on Jan. 5, 1993, lasted 27 minutes while all the rest were one-minute conversations."

Yousef's real name may be Abdul-Basit Baluchi (www.metimes.com/2K2/issue2002-24/reg/september_11_suspect.htm). Commenting on Yolcu's claim that he did not know Yousef, a source close to the first World Trade Center bombing speaking on condition of anonymity said, "Just because someone claims not to know him by the name Ramzi Yousef hardly means that someone does not know the person who is actually Abdul Basit."

That same individual added, "I believe (Yousef lieutenant) Mohammed Salameh (http://specials.ft.com/attackonterrorism/FT3FJ5RJMUC.html) was living with Yousef throughout the latter's stay in the U.S.; they were both using the phone in each location, and I believe -- although this is just educated speculation -- that Salameh used the phone more often (Salameh was much more out front than Yousef was in dealing with the chemical companies and the storage facility, etc")

The source wondered if there was any way of knowing if "the Istanbul location was an al-Qaeda hostel for the mujahideen as they made their way through Afghanistan ... possibly ... many people were staying there and that, even though the phone may have been registered in one name, the people on this end were actually talking to someone else when they called."

While it is difficult to find out much about Banan, he has been making use of the Internet for some time. This appears to be one of his earlier communications. http://web.archive.org/web/20010815184810/www.angelfire.com/al/guraba/guraba.html

From that page, there was also a link to a Global Islamic site from Montreal; (http://web(DOT)archive(DOT)org/web/20010828000553/www.angelfire(DOT)com/al/guraba/montreal.html) with a Montreal address and phone number. (7600 Earle Rd. # 1103, Cote St. Luc , Montreal , QC H4w 1N9 Tel: (514) 369-6107). The telephone number is no longer in service.

A floating button outlined in red on that site invited browsers to "click here," and took them to a page apparently hosted at one time on the servers of Montreal's McGill University. (http://web(DOT)archive(DOT)org/web/20010923221643/ssmu.mcgill.ca/iss/Chechnya(DOT).html). There readers found an appeal for Muslims in Chechnya.

A McGill University spokesman was not immediately certain of the school's current policy on student run sites, but acknowledged that there had obviously been a lot of changes since 9/11.

Visitors to that same McGill student site (http://web(DOT)archive(DOT)org/web/20010305214721/ssmu.mcgill.ca/iss/Chechnya1(DOT)html) were invited to donate to among others, the Al Haramain Foundation, some branches of which have been designated by the American government as being supporters of terrorism (www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js1183.htm)

Another charity on the old McGill site for giving was listed as the Global Relief Foundation, which was also accused by federal officials of providing financial assistance to terrorists (www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/01/28/inv.charilty.lawsuit/) The organization's former president and co-founder, Rabih Sami Haddad, lost his immigration appeal and was removed from the United States (www.ice.gov/text/news/newsrel/articles/removal071503.htm)

Visitors to the site whose "heart did not move much" were invited to look at http://web(DOT)archive(DOT)org/web/20011003200735/www(DOT)amina(DOT)com/war/mines/, where they saw pictures of landmine victims in the war between Russia and Chechnya.

Banan has left many other electronic footprints across the Internet. Abubanan: Global Islamic Media Group (http://web.archive.org/web/20011227153924/groups.yahoo.com/group/abubanan/) which was started by him on June 29 2001, had 663 members on Dec. 27 the same year. By Feb. 12 2002 the group's membership had increased to 1,042 (http://web(DOT)archive(DOT)org/web/20020212034232/groups.yahoo.com/group/abubanan)

There was also an invitation on www.guraba.com in late 2002 (http://web(DOT)archive(DOT)org/web/20021211110048/www.guraba.com/AbuBanan(DOT).htm) inviting those interested to join the Yahoo group.

The www.guraba.com Abu Banan page billed Global Islamic Media as a source that "brings to you the real and true news from trustiest sources."

The Yahoo hosted Abu Banan Global Islamic Media quickly grew in numbers, and later changed its name to Global Islamic Media. The group listed 6,500 members until it was presumably closed by Yahoo in late April.

The group achieved recent notoriety in part because in Dec. 2003, Islamic militants discussed the possibility of a terrorist attack designed to affect the Spanish general election.

In a March 2004 Agence France Press (AFP) story, the news agency reported that Britain's Channel 4 News revealed that a Dec. 10 posting on GIM, which had previously carried statements purporting to be from Al-Qaeda affiliates, suggested that attacks could help bring about a Socialist election victory and the withdrawal of Spain's troops from Iraq.

According to Channel 4 News, the GIM posting was issued under the name of the Centre for Services to the Mujahideen and read, "The approaching general elections in Spain in March next year must be exploited to the extreme. We think that the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most, before it will be forced to withdraw (from Iraq) because of the public pressure on it. If its forces remain after these blows, the victory of the Socialist party will be almost guaranteed, and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its campaign manifesto."

After the bombings, which killed 200 people and injured 1,500, Spain's conservative party was defeated. Spain's new Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who criticized President George W. Bush for the Iraq campaign, has withdrawn Spanish troops.

In late April the group changed its name to Global Islamic Media Centre and again opened up on Yahoo. Soon after a story aired on CNN about GIM, that group also ceased operating.

Yahoo has repeatedly refused to answer media inquiries about its hosting of radical Islamic sites, but did send this written statement some weeks ago to a reporter. It was from Mary Osako, Yahoo's Director of Communication. She said that those wishing to use Yahoo Groups "agree to not use the Service to upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable. When notified of content that may be in violation of our Terms of Service, we are committed to reviewing each report and taking appropriate action, generally within 24 hours."

Banan has a variety of e- mail addresses that include abubanan@hotmail.com, abobanan@hotmail.com and guraba@hotmail.com. Requests for information to those addresses about his on- line activities were not answered but an e- mail to Banan at bnmnet@yahoo.com, an address given for him as administrative and technical site administrator of guraba.com, was answered with a terse, "I am not Abu Banan. It's wrong e mail!"

In addition to the possible alias mentioned above, Banan could be using a variety of other names that include Abu Banan Ayad, Abu Banan Ayad Abdul Hamid, Ayad Kerkukly, Ayad Hamid Kirkukly, and Ayad Yolcu AbuBanan Kirkukly

While www.guraba.com is not currently operational, the name is still reserved and the administrative contact is listed as an Abdullah Banan, with a false address in the United Kingdom. Billing and registrant information for the site is listed as an Abdulaziz Almahyoubi, with an address of "Riyadh, UK 11322 SA."

(The archival research for this article was provided by TPCK).

Jeremy Reynalds

He was honored with the prestigious Jefferson Award in 1994. Reynalds emigrated from England to the United States in 1978 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1999. He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico and is a candidate for the Ph.D. in intercultural education at Biola University, located in La Mirada, California, just outside Los Angeles.

He is also the author of two books and a contributor to a third, which deals with the media's images of the homeless. He may be reached by e-mail at reynalds@joyjunction.org.