THE GULF: A US warship seized two tonnes of hashish from a small Arab vessel near the mouth of the Gulf this week in what was believed to be an al-Qaeda smuggling operation, the US Navy said yesterday.
"An initial investigation uncovered clear ties between the smuggling operation and al-Qaeda," the Navy said in a statement. The guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur stopped the 40ft boat near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.
"No shots were fired during the interception mission," a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, Cdr James Graybeal, said in Dubai.
He declined to say where exactly the ship was intercepted or where it came from or its destination. "The same route has been used before by al-Qaeda," he said.
Iran and the Gulf are major transit routes for drugs from Afghanistan, a leading producer of hashish and opium, to markets in Europe and the oil-rich Gulf Arab states.
The statement said: "The dhow's 12 crew members were taken into custody and transferred to USS Decatur, and Decatur sailors are in control of the dhow.
"The smuggling routes are known to be used by al-Qaeda and four of the 12 crew members are believed to have links to the organisation."
The Navy said a boarding team from the Decatur seized 54 70lb bags of hashish with a street value of $8 million to $10 million.
The warship was conducting expanded maritime interception operations in and near the Gulf designed to deny use of the seas by "terrorists and smugglers", the Navy said.
Meanwhile, the Arabic television station, al-Jazeera, yesterday broadcast an audio tape purportedly of al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri.
He said the United States was defeated in Afghanistan and his group was chasing Americans everywhere, including the United States.
"America has been defeated \ our fighters despite all its military might, its weaponry . . .
"With God's help we are still chasing Americans and their allies everywhere, including their homeland," said the speaker who sounded like al-Zawahri, believed to be Osama bin Laden's deputy.
Al-Zawahri said he was speaking two years after the battle between al-Qaeda fighters and the US and its Afghan allies in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan. "Two years after Tora Bora, the American bloodshed started to increase in Iraq and the Americans have become unable to defend themselves," he said.
The United States leads a 12,000-strong force in Afghanistan after the US-led invasion in 2001 ousted the hardline Taliban which gave shelter to al-Qaeda, which is blamed for the September 11th attacks on the United States. Taliban and al-Qaeda militants are still active in the south-east of the country.
The Egyptian-born Zawahri joined up with Osama bin Laden in 1998 and was indicted in New York two years ago in connection with the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
- (Reuters)