Al-Qaeda enters East Timor

Dili 1999

Al-Qaeda suspects 'entered East Timor'
From correspondents in Lisbon, Portugal
March 10, 2005
From: Agence France-Presse
News.com.au
Dili Atrocities
FOUR alleged al-Qaeda members may have entered East Timor in recent weeks from neighbouring Indonesia, national news agency Lusa reported today.
Citing diplomatic sources in the former Portuguese territory, Lusa said the four men - two South Africans, a Kuwaiti and a Turk - were first identified in a classified report by Indonesian authorities in January as being in primarily Muslim Indonesia.
They hoped to cross the border into mostly Roman Catholic East Timor, the agency said.
The report that four al-Qaeda members may have made it into East Timor comes two months after two unidentified Egyptian men were detained in Indonesia as they attempted to cross the border into East Timor.
At the time of their detention the two men, who had escaped a prison in Indonesia where they were being held on immigration charges, said their goal was to enter Australia via East Timor, the agency said.
The two men are being held by Indonesian intelligence services who have authorised Australian intelligence services to question the duo, a diplomatic source in Dili, the capital of East Timor, told Lusa.
The four suspected al-Qaeda members were identified as: Feroz Abu Bakar Ganchi and Zubair Ismail of South Africa; Mushin Fadhi, also known as Abu Samia, of Kuwait; and Abu Ubaydah al Turki, also known as Ubaida Ubeyde, of Turkey.
In September 2002 East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao publicly rejected reports that people connected to al-Qaeda, which has claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks against the US, were in East Timor, saying they were rumours intended to scare people.
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