Brutal Al-Qaeda Ally May Be Next President of Afghanistan

From The Clarion Project.

Brutal Al-Qaeda Ally May Be Next President of Afghanistan


A close confidant of current Afghan Pres. Karzai, Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf was a mentor to the 9/11 mastermind.


Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, a former warlord who the 9/11 commission named as the mentor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 2001 attacks, may become the next president of Afghanistan.

With reported support from current Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Sayyaf, an Islamist with close ties to Saudi Arabia, announced his candidacy for the office this week. Sayyaf helped Osama bin Laden return to Afghanistan in 1996, ran military training camps through the 1980s and 90s both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

He later became a member of the Afghan parliament and a “confidant” of Karzai, who is prohibited by law from running for another term.

Ten men who trained in Sayyaf’s camps were involved in the 2002 bombings in the resort island of Bali, in which 202 people were killed.

In a particularly gruesome incident attributed to his men, Kathy Gannon, author of I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan and an AP reporter, tells in her book how Sayyaf's militia raped and scalped five ethnic Hazara women during the 1990s. An elderly man, who identified himself as a relative of the women, threw their hair dripping with blood at her feet before showing her the bodies of the women.

Ironically, Sayyaf is an enemy of the Taliban and sided with the U.S. during its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

He is described as the most conservative of the four candidates who have announced their candidacy for the April 5 election, especially on issues concerning women’s rights and individual freedom.