“In 1996, the UN established the Oil for Food (OFF) program, under which limited oil sales were permitted.” The program started in December 1996. “The revenues, deposited in UN-controlled accounts, were supposed to be used to import food and medicines. But the program had been corrupted and there were reports that some countries, including France […]
Category: quotes
12/6/1996
On December 6, 1996, “Secretary of State Warren Christopher…sent the first formal demarche to the Taliban, demanding bin Laden’s expulsion. ‘Harboring bin Laden and allowing him and his supporters to transit Afghan territory at will and to conduct uncontrolled activities greatly hurt[s] prospects for Afghanistan rejoining the world community,’ the letter said. The response took […]
12/5/1996
“Throughout the 1990s the US sanctions program resulted in thousands of Iraqi citizens dying every month from malnutrition and lack of medicine. [On 60 Minutes on December 5, 1996] When asked about the deaths of half a million Iraqi children due to sanctions, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously remarked that it was ‘worth it.’ […]
12/1/1996
“…on December 1, 1996, [Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-] Zawahiri crossed into Russia in a minivan with two of his closest assistants–Mahmoud Hisham al-Hennawi and Ahmed Salama Mabruk. …Traveling without visas, they were detained at a roadblock and taken to the Federal Security Service, which charged them with entering the country illegally. Zawahiri carried […]
11/27/1996
” ‘America continues to claim that it is upholding the banner of freedom and humanity,’ bin Laden would tell an interviewer in November [27] 1996, ‘while these deeds that they did [the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the imposition of sanctions on Iraq], you would not find that the most […]
11/23/1996
Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan met with Osama bin Laden for a few days, starting on November 23, 1996. ” ‘When I met bin Laden…he explained his long-term strategy to me. He knew he would never be able to defeat his enemy, the giant military superpower America, on its own soil using conventional weapons. …patience would […]
11/16/1996
“On November 16 [1996], four days after [World Trade Center bomber Ramzi] Yousef’s conviction, six assassins surrounded fifty-eight tourists at the Luxor site [in Egypt] and began shooting and stabbing them. The group responsible was the al Qaeda-related al Gamma’a Islamiyah (IG), which the Sheikh [Omar Abdel Rahman] had led for more than a decade.” […]
11/15/1996
“In November 1996, Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of the newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, traveled to meet bin Laden at his base in a cave in the Afghan mountains. …Atwan recalled the visit: ‘…I found him to be sincere, simple, not trying to impress. He never portrayed himself as an Islamic leader. He told me that […]
11/15/1996
In November 1996, FBI agent assigned to the CIA Counterterrorist Center, Daniel “Coleman traveled to an American military base in Germany with two United States attorneys, Kenneth Karas and Patrick Fitzgerald. There in a safe house was a jittery Sudanese informer named Jamal al-Fadl, who claimed to have worked for bin Laden in Khartoum. …[al-Fadl […]
11/15/1996
In November 1996, filmmaker “Gwynne Roberts conducts [an] interview of bin Laden for the British documentary program Dispatches. Bin Laden threatens to wage an Islamic holy war against the United States and its allies if Washington does not remove its troops from the Gulf region.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] […]