Bush Announces List of 22 "Most Wanted Terrorists"US President George W. Bush Wednesday unveiled a new list of 22 "most wanted terrorists" including Saudi militant Osama bin Laden and his two top deputies."Those are among the most dangerous," Bush said as he announced the list during a visit to the FBI headquarters. "They will be stopped and will be punished." "Our war is not against religion, our war is against evil," Bush said. Bush was accompanied by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Listed just below bin Laden's name among those indicted for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were two Egyptians, Ayman al-Zawahri and Mohamed Atef, who have been identified as bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants. Al-Zawahri, a doctor by training, is the former head of the Egyptian al-Jihad group that merged in 1998 with bin Laden's al- Qaida network. Atef, a former police official, has been identified by U.S. authorities as a key military strategist and training director for bin Laden. Others who made the most-wanted list were several people identified last week by British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a speech laying out evidence against bin Laden's network. They include: -- Ahmed Khfaklan Ghailani and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, whom Blair said were two al-Qaida operatives that bought a truck used in the U.S. embassy bombings in August 1998. -- Mustafa Mohamed Fadhil, another al-Qaida operative whom Blair said was implicated in the embassy bombings. -- Saif al Adel, whom Blair identified as a senior member of al- Qaida believed to have provided training to tribes in Somalia, where U.S. troops were attacked and killed in 1993. -- Ibrahim al-Yacoub and Abdel Karim al-Nasser, named as suspects in the federal grand jury indictment issued in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen. Others named on the list include suspects in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a foiled 1995 plot to bomb airliners in the Far East. |
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