FOR years, Ahmad al-Hamwi has led an inconspicuous life like thousands of refugees from the Middle East who settled in Sydney's southwest.
But in fact Syrian-born Hamwi is anything but an ordinary asylum-seeker. An investigation by The Weekend Australian has revealed that he has alleged links to terrorist organisations spanning a good part of the globe.
Hamwi is allegedly connected to the international web of Osama bin Laden, and his terrorist arm, al-Qa'ida.
Hamwi has been accused of being a senior al-Qa'ida bagman linked to the 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef.
Living for a decade in the southwestern Sydney suburb of Riverwood, he has admitted he was a confidant of some of bin Laden's closest lieutenants, and he is a relative by marriage to the world's most wanted man.
Since Hamwi, also known by the alias Abu Omar, was given asylum in June 1996, it has been revealed he was a key figure in a Manila-based charity funding Yousef's terrorist cell, which was conspiring to blow up US airliners and assassinate Pope John Paul II.
Hamwi was, by his own admission to the Refugee Review Tribunal, a key figure in the Islamic charity known as the International Research and Information Centre.
According to Philippines National Police intelligence reports obtained by The Weekend Australian, Hamwi and his two colleagues at IRIC were funding Yousef's plans, codenamed Operation Bojinka, which were a harbinger for September 11.
Research by world-renowned terror expert Zachary Abuza also alleges that Hamwi was an "important money man for the cell".
"He (Hamwi) was the hand-picked executive director of the IRIC, which had little in the way of charitable works and I refuse to believe he did not know what was going on," Abuza told The Weekend Australian yesterday.
"At the time, (in the mid-1990s) the IRIC was involved in funding the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front), al-Qa'ida and Abu Sayyaf, the group involved in military training with Jemaah Islamiah operatives."
According to Abuza, Hamwi helped bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, with introductions to set up al-Qa'ida's network in Southeast Asia, and then ran IRIC for him as a front for terrorist financing.
The pair lived together for years and married Filipina sisters, Nora and Alice.
For Khalifa, this was one of two wives - his other wife is Osama bin Laden's older sister.
But when the refugee tribunal granted Hamwi asylum in June 1996, they had scant details about his past, and he denied he knew Yousef or anything about the men involved in the Operation Bojinka plot.
Although Hamwi revealed to the tribunal he had shared the apartment with Khalifah, who has been named by the US State Department's co-ordinator for counter terrorism, Philip C.Wilcox, in a letter to a US court as a "terrorist financier", the tribunal was aware only that Khalifa was a suspected terrorist.
The tribunal asked ASIO whether Hamwi was "directly or indirectly responsible for any acts of terrorism", and despite Hamwi being interviewed several times by the intelligence agency, "neither ASIO nor DFAT could or would provide any evidence to the tribunal in this regard".
Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, told The Weekend Australian that Canberra had "in the past had a policy where people who were very much involved in terrorism could enter Australia".
But Gunaratna said this had now changed in the wake of the Bali bombings.
Abuza said that at the time sought a protection visa in Australia there was not much information-sharing between countries.
"I would be surprised if the Australians had any idea (about his background)," he said.
The Weekend Australian put detailed questions to Hamwi but he repeatedly refused to respond.
A spokeswoman for federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said that should an applicant for a visa be assessed as a risk to national security, the Immigration Department had no option but to reject it.
But it appears that the authorities may not have been told about claims, known by the Philippine National Police counter-terrorist unit, that Hamwi had been involved in radical activities in Turkey and was one of four foreign students banned by the Turkish government for their suspected involvement in a 1986 bombing.
He explained the Turkish visa in his passport by saying he told Syrian authorities that was where he was going to study to enable him to get a passport, but that he went to Pakistan instead.
He later turned up in The Philippines running the Islamic charity IRIC, a "three-man operation" with a tiny office in Manila, Abuza said.
One of the other men involved with the IRIC was Wali Khan Amin Shah, a close associate of Osama bin Laden who became a key planner in the Bojinka plot.
Wali Khan was arrested in February 1995. He was later convicted along with Yousef. He has since co-operated with US authorities.
Hamwi, when questioned by Philippine police, admitted he had known Wali Khan since 1993.
While Hamwi denied any involvement with terrorism to the refugee tribunal in 1995, The Weekend Australian has learned from US Court documents that when his former flatmate Khalifa was arrested in the US, he had letters on him on IRIC letterhead discussing funding the establishment of military training camps.
In Khalifa's defence, Hamwi, as director of the IRIC, wrote letters to the US Immigration Court considering Khalifa's deportation, denying any allegations that the IRIC was clandestinely funding militant training.
Khalifa now lives in Saudi Arabia and regularly protests his innocence.
Hamwi's role in the Manila al-Qa'ida cell was discovered after Yousef's Operation Bojinka was literally blown apart by an accidental explosion in Manila in January 1995.
It resulted in the subsequent arrest of cell member Abdul Hakim Ali Hasmid Murad, alias Abdul Murad, who later proved crucial to US investigators unravelling the September 11 plot.
Philippine senior counter-terrorist Police Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza Jr, who led the manila investigation, found plans to bomb 11 US planes over the Pacific and to kill Pope John Paul II. Tragically, the plot had already had a dry run, when they bombed a Philippines Airlines flight to Tokyo, killing the Japanese passenger sitting over the bomb.
Mendoza's investigation fingered Hamwi for providing funding to Yousef for his terrorist activities through an intermediary, Carol Santiago (who revealed his name during interrogation), and her boyfriend, Wali Khan, who was Hamwi's offsider at IRIC.
Hamwi was questioned but never arrested for his role in the plot. Philippine officials later told Abuza that after the plot was discovered they realised they were ill-prepared to round up all the suspects, who soon fled the country.
Hamwi fled to Australia just months after the discovery of the plot.
Former ASIS spy Warren Reed said allowing Hamwi into the country was a "potentially dangerous situation". |
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