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Osama bin Laden Reportedly Says He Has Armed Afghanistan
Wednesday, September 26, 2001
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan / Globe Staff

Tells biographer of major weapons

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Boston Globe
Osama bin Laden has told his chosen biographer that Afghanistan's Taliban regime has as much right to weapons of mass destruction as the United States and that he has “purchased a lot of dangerous weapons, maybe chemical weapons,” for the regime that shelters him.

Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist picked by the alleged terrorist mastermind to pen his biography, said he confronted bin Laden about Russian media reports that he was trying to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons that were allegedly stolen from Soviet arsenals after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“He didn't confirm or deny ..., [but] Osama bin Laden told me that if America has the right to have these weapons, then the Taliban have the right as well -- and to get them however they can,” said Mir, editor of Daily Ausaf, an Islamabad newspaper, in an interview with the Globe.

The terrifying insight was one of many into the mind of the man whom Mir got to know in person, in two meetings that lasted a total of six days, and through scores of hand-delivered messages over the last 41/2 years. Mir describes bin Laden as an Islamic zealot, a military genius, a poet, and an impassioned enemy of the United States ever since it based troops in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which bin Laden saw as a sacrilege against the Muslim holy land.
(More: The Boston Globe News Source)
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company

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