Associated Press

February 8, 2003, Saturday

HEADLINE: Islamic militants show press the camp Powell called poison site

BYLINE: By BORZOU DARAGAHI, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: SARGAT, Iraq

BODY:
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called the camp in northern Iraq a terrorist poison and explosives training center, a deadly link in a "sinister nexus" binding Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

But journalists who visited the site depicted in Powell's satellite photo found a half-built cinderblock compound filled with heavily armed Kurdish men, video equipment and children - but no obvious sign of chemical weapons manufacturing.

"You can search as you like," said Mohammad Hassan, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, which controls the camp and the surrounding village. "There are no chemical weapons here."

Ansar al-Islam, believed to have ties to al-Qaida, says the camp serves as its administrative office for Sargat village, living quarters and a propaganda video studio.

A half-dozen children and some teenagers watched with curiosity as Western journalists arrived in a convoy of white SUVs. A couple of dozen bearded men in black turbans, heavily armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades, watched closely.

During his appearance before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, Powell displayed a satellite photo of this camp, which was identified as "Terrorist Poison and Explosive Factory, Khurmal."

Powell said the camp was run by al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan who were under the protection of Ansar al-Islam here in the autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq in a region beyond Saddam Hussein's control.

But Powell maintained that a senior member of Ansar al-Islam was a Saddam agent, implying a tenuous link between Baghdad and the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Western journalists were brought to this camp, with its distinctive polygon-shaped fencing and nearby hills, by the Islamic Group of Kurdistan, a moderate Muslim organization which maintains good relations with Ansar al-Islam.

The compound, accessible by a long dirt road, is in a village of several hundred people at the base of the massive Zagros mountains separating Iraq from Iran.

Security appeared lax at the compound, whose jagged barbed-wire perimeter matched a satellite photograph Powell displayed in his Security Council presentation.

As evidence that the camp serves as a housing area, child-sized plastic slippers could be seen in the doorways. A refrigerator had been turned into a closet and filled with colorful women's clothes. The most sophisticated equipment seen at the site was the video gear and makeshift television studio Ansar says it uses to make its propaganda films.

Ansar officials speculated that Powell was misled in his accusations of a poison factory by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two parties governing the autonomous northern Kurdish section of Iraq. Ansar has been at war for two years with the PUK.

"Everything Powell said about us is untrue," said a man calling himself Ayoub Hawleri. Other Kurds referred to him as Ayoub Afghani, who manufactures explosives for suicide bombers.

"He was just repeating the PUK's lies," Ayoub said.

The Patriotic Union said Powell's allegations about the poison laboratory were correct and it was in the Sargat compound in an area accessible only to those who had come from Afghanistan and had "ties to al-Qaida." A PUK spokeswoman said Saturday that Ansar could have moved the facility before the journalists got there.

Though Ansar officials allowed the journalists access to the site, they did not permit reporters to talk to anyone except two designated Ansar officials.

Hawleri said he was shocked and surprised after watching Powell's speech, which said Ansar harbored Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, a suspected al-Qaida operative and alleged assassin of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Jordan last year.

"The first time I even heard of al-Zarqawi was on television," he said.

The name on the photo Powell showed to the world was Khurmal, a nearby town that is under the control of Islamic Group of Kurdistan.

Islamic Group denies there is such a camp at Khurmal and believes Powell's satellite photo evidence misidentified the site's location.

An official at the equivalent of the local social security office said the Sargat compound is in the district of Biyare, near the town of Biyare where Ansar has its headquarters.

Before taking journalists to Sargat, Islamic Group took them to Khurmal to show them the camp was not there.

Group official Fazel Qaradari said he welcomed the large contingent of Western media to "see for themselves" that there is no such factory in Khurmal.

The road to Sargat passes the ruins of numerous villages destroyed by Saddam Hussein in his late 1980s campaign against Iraq's Kurds. Though less well-known than nearby Halabja - a city about 19 miles away where 5,000 Kurds were killed by chemical weapons in 1988, the Sargat area also was subjected to chemical weapons bombardment.

In the village of Ahmad Awa, headquarters of the Islamic Group's leader, Ali Bapir, residents said they frequently visit Sargat, and although they have been denied access to the compound, they do not believe there are any chemical weapons or al-Qaida operatives in the village.

"We're certain that's wrong," said Azad Muhedil, head of the village council. "We have been victims of war and upheaval in the past. The people here are still recovering from chemical weapons."