01.11.17 Yemen: 1997 al Qa’idah meeting location

14 July 2023 UPDATE

As detailed in my report below it is my assertion that Al Qa’idah town in Ibb governorate Yemen is the origin of the name of the terrorist group known as Al Qaeda. That assertion is based on one very specific piece of evidence - I visited a secluded collection of buildings one-mile from Al Qa’idah town on 26 September 1997, when I was taken to an unscheduled meeting by Mohamad A Salem, the general manager of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group. That detour happened thirty-minutes after I had been photographed with a man introduced to me as  ‘the Engineer’ inside the Hayel Saeed Anam (HSA) Group HQ in Taiz city, seventeen-miles south of Al Qa’idah town. I have no doubt that ‘the Engineer’ was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an assertion supported by these photos.


Supporting evidence to my claim about Al Qa’idah being the origin of the name Al Qaeda is very strong, including the fact that one third of the Arab Afghan Mujahideen volunteers of the 1980s came from Yemen, Yemeni General Ali Mohsen helped recruit those volunteers and even visited them and Osama bin Laden (OBL) in Afghanistan during the Jihad against the Soviets. It is widely reported OBL gave General Mohsen $20-million to help resettle 
Arab Afghan Mujahideen veterans in Yemen after the anti-Soviet Jihad. General Mohsen is the brother-in-law of Tariq Nasr al-Fadhli, a prominent tribal leader in Yemen who fought besides Osama bin Laden in the 1980s Jihad in Afghanistan. Al-Fadhli comes from a powerful Yemeni business family that found its fortune under British Colonial rule (as did the HSA Group). Al-Fadhli is also said to have met with OBL during his exile from Saudi in the 1990s and to have founded the precursor organisation to AQAP, the Abyan-Aden Islamic army.

Osama bin Laden’s personal mentor was also a Yemeni, Sheikh Abdul-Majeed al-Zindani. He was born in 1941, in Ibb governorate where al Qa’idah town is located. And Osama bin Laden’s ties to Yemen remained so strong that in the year 2000 he married his last wife, a Yemeni woman from a prominent family in Ibb Governorate, the same Governorate that contains al Qa’idah town. It was that Yemeni wife who was with bin Laden in his last moments during the US mission to assassinate him in Abbottabad in 2011. 

It wasn’t until 1 November 2017 that I found my 1997 meeting location in Yemen on google maps and discovered the name of the town - Al Qa’idah - one mile away. I immediately passed that information to British security services and proceed to search for any public references to Al Qa’idah town via Google and found three references. They were published by Reprieve NGO in June 2015, Newsweek magazine in September 2015 and by reporter Justin Ames in January 2016 - all published after my April 2015 communications with British counter terrorism police about my experiences in 1997 Yemen. Although I had no knowledge of Al Qa’idah town in April 2015, I had given British counter terrorism police enough details for them to know I had visited it. At that time of searching for references to Al Qa’idah town I couldn’t find any reference earlier than the Reprieve NGO June 2015 report on Guantanamo detainee Amed Hassan. In December 2019 Repieve deleted that report in response to an email I sent detailing my visit to Al Qa’idah in 1997. They republished it but ommitting the reference to Al Qa’idah town. When I pointed out that omission in the re-publication on twitter Reprieve deleted that new report too. But then (post December 2019) when I Google searched Al Qa’idah I started to find new references at the top of the search results that I had not been unable to find previously, all predating my 2015 contact with British counter terrorism police. Those references are as follows:

· In a report on Guantanamo detainee Emad Hassan dated 21 November 2013, Reprieve NGO employee Johanna Hortolani asserted Al Qa’idah town and the designated terrorist organisation Al Qaeda had no connection: https://medium.com/@reprieveuk/eleven-years-lost-in-translation-52eefc9110ab

· In a report on Guantanamo detainee Emad Hassan dated 19 February 2014, musician Andy Worthingon mentioned Al Qa’idah town, referencing a Reprieve NGO report but with a dud link to the source information. Worthington’s report: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2014/02/19/the-guantanamo-experiment-a-harrowing-letter-by-yemeni-prisoner-emad-hassan/ 

· In a report on Guantanamo detainee Emad Hassan dated 11 March 2014, British news outlet The Morning Star also referenced Al Qa’idah town: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4513-guantanamo-inmate-launches-challenge-to-force-feeding, but interestingly a report published on the same subject on the same day by the Guardian newspaper made no mention of Al Qa’idah town: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/guantnamo-hunger-strike-water-cure-torture 

14 July 2023 UPDATE CONCLUSION

Given my primary evidence about Al Qa’idah town - I visited it on 26 September 1997 thirty minutes after meeting a man called the Engineer (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed known as 9/11’s Engineer) inside the HSA Group HQ, a company with documented terrorist funding links dating back to 1982 - my first reaction to belatedly finding these pre-2015 reports mentioning Al Qa’idah town was to think they’d been retrospectively edited. But I also accept they may be valid entries that I missed in the original searches for Al Qa’idah town I made post-November 2017. Do those earlier reports (if valid) invalidate my claims of having visited the collection of buildings one mile from Al Qa’idah town in 1997? No, they do not - I can describe the interior of one of those buildings, the room where my unscheduled meeting took place. I believe that given the wealth of evidence - Osama bin Laden's connections to Yemen, the HSA Groups documented (by the United Nations and the US Treasury) terrorism fund links, the fact that Al Qaeda’s US National Security Agency monitored ‘switchboard’ was in Yemen, etc, etc, etc - this subject requires professional investigation of both my claims and reporting by musician Andy Worthington and Reprieve NGO. And most importantly it must be clarified where, when, to whom and who by were the original reports about Emad Hassan’s reason for detention (he said he knew Al Qa’idah during his initial questioning), and the conclusion that Al Qa’idah town had no connection to Al Qaeda, therefore allowing his release without charge from Guantanamo.

This is not a matter of just validating my claims, this is a hugely significant matter relating to the entire history of Al Qaeda and its true origins. Confirming my claims about Al Qaeda and Al Qa’idah would be enough to collapse the entire Deep State that I believe clandestinely backed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s terror spree, including 9/11.

And as a final and perhaps the most pertinent point, if Al Qa’idah town and Al Qaeda the proscribed terror group having no connection was publicly known since at least November 2013, why after my 2017 reporting of my visit to Al Qa’idah town did a US Department of Defense army officer assigned to investigating 9/11 contact me in March 2018? Contact was via Facebook messenger initially (!!!!), then by email saying they were “very interested in your insight and knowledge” and finally proposing that a team of US 9/11 Military Commission investigators to interview me in Manchester England? I declined their invitation after they refused to discuss my witness status and because my intuition determined (correctly) they were a bunch of corrupt fucks (as detailed in my original report below) and all party to hiding the true origin of the name Al Qaeda, which is Al Qa’idah town in Ibb governorate Yemen, a fact I know because that’s where Al Qaeda tried to recruit me on 26 September 1997.




My original reporting on Al Qa’idah town, last updated 7 August 2020:

al Qa’idah town, Yemen 
(common spelling: al Qaeda)

(Last updated 07 Aug 2020, 19:10 hours GMT)


On 26 September 1997 I was taken by Mohamad A Salem (the general manager of the Hayel Saeed Anam Group HQ in Taiz) to a clandestine and unscheduled meeting at a secluded base in Yemen. Since April 2015 I have suspected that meeting was with members of the al Qaeda terrorist organisation, a suspicion I immediately reported to the British counter terrorism authorities. 

In November 2017 I found that meeting location on google maps; it is 1-mile from a town called al Qa’idah.


My Reporting History About said Meeting and the
Parallel Disinformation Published in the Main Stream Media:

February 2009 I telephoned British Counter Terrorism Command (CTC) and described events during my 1997 visit to Yemen. My focus and main suspicion at that time was my dinner meeting with Yousef on 25 September, the day before my visit to the secluded base. I guess that I also described my journey to the secluded base. CTC listened to my report without comment until I mentioned the name of the company I was visiting - YemPak. The moment I said “YemPak” the line clicked and a different person simply said “carry on” (describing events). There was no follow-up from SO15 to this call - I wasn’t contacted back and the next day I joined the British army.

April 2015  Having found previously thought lost photos of my 1997 visit to Yemen I realise that the man introduced to me as “the Engineer” was in fact Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I immediately reported this matter to the British Counter Terrorism Command (CTC. Over the course of several calls to the CTC I repeated the details of my experiences in Yemen that I'd given in 2009 and gave a detailed description of my journey to the clandestine meeting I attended in 1997. That description was of a half-hour drive north of Taiz and a short drive further cross country, after turning right off the main road. I very specifically stated I now suspected this meeting was with members of al Qaeda. CTC expressed no interest in my report and have never contacted me back.

15 June 2015 Human rights organisation Reprieve made the first public claim about al Qa’idah town that I've since found, stating that there is no connection between al Qa’idah town in Yemen and the terrorist organisation of the same name. Reprieve made this claim in a report on a Yemeni man recently released from the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Their report stated:

"A simple mistake led to Emad [Hassan]’s 13-year ordeal. Bounty hunters abducted him while he was studying in Pakistan, and sold him to US forces for $5,000. In the confusion of interrogation, he told his captors that he knew about ‘Al Qa’idah’, referring to a small village with that name near his hometown in Yemen. As a result, Emad was taken to Guantánamo Bay.”

Whilst this report was not signed it is very significant that supposed human rights attorney Alka Pradhan was employed by Reprieve from 2013 to September 2015. In October 2015 Ms Pradhan became an employee of the US Department of Defense, assigned as a defense attorney to the 9/11 military commission trials. I believe it was Ms Pradhan who introduced the lie about al Qa’idah town having no connection to the al Qaeda terrorist group.

The report with said claim was deleted by Reprieve in December 2019, just after I had advised them by email of my visit to the al Qaeda base besides al Qa’idah town. They have since republished the report on Emad Hassan but ommitting the spurious claim about al Qa’idah town. I suspect that Repieve was unwittingly used by the CIA in an attempt to discredit my claims of visiting an al Qaeda base in Yemen in 1997.

18 September 2015 Newsweek magazine report reported:

"The town [of al Qaidah] has no connection with the Al Qaeda terrorist organizations
Author: journalist Lauren Walker


22 January 2016
 Justin Ames, working for The Velvet Rocket website, visits al Qa’idah town in Yemen and reports catagorically that the town "has absolutely no connection with the Al Qaeda terrorist organisation"

09 May 2017 My first documented description of my 1997 meeting location - sent to the British Counter Terrorism Command (CTC), aka SO15. I describe the location as within ½-hours drive north of Taiz city, and a short drive from the main road

01 November 2017 I found my al Qaeda meeting location on google maps - as I zoomed out I saw the name of the town - al Qaidah. This is a meeting that I have long suspected may have been with al Qaeda, and had said so to SO15 in my 2009 telephone call.

02 November 2017 I emailed a detailed description of my 1997 meeting location besides al Qa’idah town to the British Counter Terrorism Command (CTC), aka SO15

19 December 2017 In a New York Times interview with 9/11 trial defense attorney Ms. Alka Pradan, reporter Jeffrey Stern again claimed that the town of al Qaidah had no connection to the terror group al Qaeda.

09 March 2018 US military investigators working for the defense attorneys (including Alka Pradhan) of the 9/11 military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay contact me expressing great interest in my published reports (about my experiences in Yemen and my subsequent research). They proposed sending a TEAM of Pentagon based 9/11 investigators to Manchester to interview me over a five day period. After initially cooperating fully with them I later declined their invitation due to a lack of trust and confidence in them and the Guantanamo trials.

My Evidence

The image below shows al Qa’idah’s proximity to Taiz city and the Hayel Saeed Anam Group HQ at PO Box 5302, where I was introduced to ‘the Engineer’ - the nome-de-guerre of the accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

taiz al qaidah


My approximate route to al Qaeda al Askariya from the main road is marked by the red dashed line in the image below. The second image with a green route arrow marks the entrance to the al Askariya base and the yellow star marks the building I visited briefly on 26 September 1997:

al qaeda meeting place copy



 

These images show that the collection of buildings I visited at al Qaeda al Askariya in 1997 was in fact just the entrance to an entire valley which was likely all occupied by the terrorist organisation:

al qaidah al qaeda town


al qaidah valley
Truly, for some of us nothing is written, unless we write it 
© Anthony C Heaford - The Quiet Mancunian