Re: “First Bank the West and Islamic Terror”

By

Zainab Musa Kperogi

zeekperogi@yahoo.com

Last week’s piece titled above provoked a swift rebuttal from my sister, Aisha, the articulate editor of Aminiya the Hausa weekly in the Trust stable, and from the First Bank. I thought readers will find them interesting and thought-provoking. Both are reproduced below.

Sir,

Not you too, Ya Kudu

Except for those inevitable few weeks in summer, when you graciously ‘check out’ with your family for a European break, you have successfully managed to make my day every Wednesday, since the birth of Daily Trust five years ago. I may not always agree with you but I always finish your back page pieces feeling thoroughly fulfilled and definitely more educated on whatever your subject was.

It was the same last Wednesday when I began to read your piece titled First Bank, the West and Islamic Terror.’ I read on, mentally applauding you along the way, till I reached the point where you said ‘ September 11^th 2001, the Bali bombings, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings are all despicable acts by Muslims. However they pale in significance compared to the acts of Western terrorism against the rest of the world..’ I  then had to stop abruptly and say to myself  ‘Not you too Ya Kudu’. I took the liberty, after over a decade of close association between our two families, to call you by the name only family and close associates have been addressing you, because of the extent of my distress.

So how was it proved that Muslims had committed 9/11, the Bali bombing, the Madrid bombing, the Beslan school siege, and London 7/7 among other abhorrent terrorist acts?   If I remember correctly, just before George W Bush launched his dubious and murderous War on Terror in October 2001, you had written, quoting Time or Economist  that the so-called compelling evidences against Usama Bin Laden and the Taliban, which proved their culpability in the events of September 11^th and therefore justified an attack on Afghanistan were ‘too circumstantial and could not stand their on own in a court of law’. Then, there was no question of a claim of responsibility by Bin Laden because it was too fresh in people’s minds that he had said he had no hand in it. The so-called confession came later, in December 2001, when after America’s assault on the Tora Bora mountains, a video tape was reported found at the cave allegedly vacated by Bin Laden during the bombardment. The tape has long since been proved to be a fake. According to Gerard Holmgren, writer and member of the 9/11 Truth Movement, ‘It is a common myth that Bin Laden has claimed responsibility for the attacks but this simply isn’t true….the myth of his confession is based entirely upon a video tape produced by the Pentagon which claims to show him laughing about how many people he has killed. This tape is a fake. In some of the clips, the person is not Bin Laden. The Pentagon translation was immediately attacked by independent translators as misleading and incomplete.’ If you would take the trouble to read Mr Holmgren’s two fantastic and well-researched essays, namely ‘The looniest of all 9/11 Conspiracy theories’ ( a satire) and  Manufactured Terrorism: The Truth About September 11^th’ you would see how this Australian writer took every aspect of the official suicide-hijack theory of September 11^th and tore them to shreds.

But long before his effort, a book and numerous other treatises had been written with the aim of disproving the official version of events on 9/11 and proving that it was actually an inside job. In other words it was a case of America attacking America because the motivation was right.

The first to set the ball rolling in this direction was American activist Carol Valentine. In a piece she posted on her website as early as October 5^th 2001, which she titled ‘There were no suicide hijackers on September 11^th’  she expounded a 15-page theory disproving all that the US government had claimed happened on that day. Less than a year later the first book on that incident was written by French journalist Thierry Meyssan. Titled  9/11: the Big Lie, Mr Meyssan presented meticulously researched facts and figures proving that September 11^th was indeed a big lie, a hoax.staged by American authorities ‘with the intent to make war on the whole world and make a handsome profit from it’.

Since then other writers and researchers have since taken over the bait. Today it is a growing movement within America and in Europe and Australia, with the network known simply as the 9/11 Truth Movement. Every member of this network is dedicated to proving that 9/11 was indeed a lie, but more importantly to making sure the rest of the world knows it. Unfortunately mainstream media frowns upon their efforts and dismisses them as conspiracy theorists, so their painstaking investigations are usually confined to the internet which makes them less accessible to the rest of the world where the hard copy is still the in-thing. But a look at the calibre of writers and the stuff they made research on can convince you that indeed these people must be taken seriously.

For instance former US Air Force Colonel George Nelson made research into the possibility that planes could be vaporised to nothingness, as happened to the planes of 9/11, since no plane parts were found at the World Trade Centre, where the towers had collapsed. He concluded that no such vaporisation was possible, no matter the extent of the destruction because of items called replaceable time change parts. Some of them are so small they are smaller than a silver coin. When a plane crashes they don’t get destroyed, they show up in the wreckage and the plane is identified that way. According to Colonel Nelson every crash that has ever happened is identified in this way, except the planes of 9/11.

Professor A K Dewdney concentrated his research on phone calls received by so-called victims’ families from the hijacked planes. He proved conclusively that cell-phones don’t work at that altitude. Gerrard Holmgren, earlier quoted, found out that two of the planes allegedly hi-jacked had never existed in American aviation records. John Kaminski, a Florida-based writer and the leading light among American members of the movement found out that no such thing as an al-Qaida network of Muslim terrorists exists, that the much touted word is actually a data-base in the CIA. Kaminski has written a lot of articles on the subject as well as a book titled ‘The Day America Died: Why You Should Not Believe The Official Story Of September 11^th’.

Expectedly, it isn’t only the September 11^th terror myth that has received attention from members of the movement. Having seen how 9/11 had turned out to be a big hoax, they now expend the same energy and resources into researching every single terrorism outcry. Here the late Joe Vialls, an Australian writer and investigative journalist easily takes the day. He had made painstaking research into so-called instances of Islamic terrorism from Bali in Indonesia to Beslan in Russia before his death in July last year.

On the Bali bombing of October 12^th 2002, which was blamed on a couple of Indonesian mechanics known as Amrozi and Ali Imran, his painstaking research led to an article he called ‘Zionist nuclear attack in Bali officially buried by western media.’ Mr Vialls claim that a micro-nuke was used to bomb largely Australian tourists holidaying at the Kuta beach in Bali was corroborated by Indonesian parliamentary Speaker Amin Rais, who said the extent of the destruction in Bali couldn’t be achieved by any surface bomb. In any case, how did the perpetrators manage to survive, given that they were made to confess they had the bomb tied to their bodies?

In the same facts-backed and convincingly way, he had looked into the Madrid bombings and written ‘Myahudi monsters maul Madrid’ absolving those Moroccans and all Muslims of any blame in the Madrid carnage. On the Beslan school siege of September 2004 he had written ‘Black psy-op at Russian school controlled by Wall Street’ again absolving all Muslims of blame in that inhuman outrage. All of these articles can be found at late Vialls’ website www.joevialls.altermedia.info or on joevialls.co.uk .

On the London terrorism of July 7^th 2006, it was left to his soul-mate on the 9/11

Truth Movement, John Kaminski to tell us that four Muslims were invited to a terrorist drill in which they were given live bombs without their knowledge. When they were detonated they killed their unsuspecting victims as well as tens of others. Today those four Muslims have gone down in history not as victims but as perpetrators of terror.

I took the trouble to go through these examples of the other versions of what international media prefers to call Islamic terrorism, to provide a feel of the extent of the negative propaganda being perpetrated against Islam and Muslims. With all due respect, we should all come together to popularise these so-called conspiracy theories. The official versions never provide the strong evidences that these other versions provide. We must liberate all Muslims from the burden of guilt placed on us by the events of 9/11 and other subsequent terror hoaxes. The first step is by refusing to repeat all official versions of so-called Islamic terrorism.

Aisha Umar Yusuf, Editor, Aminiya.

*************

Sir,

We wish to set the records straight regarding the article titled “FirstBank, the West and ‘Islamic terror’ ” by one Mohammed Haruna, published on the back page of Daily Trust, Wednesday, November 22, 2006, in which the writer complained about the policy of Western Union Money Transfer, of which First Bank of Nigeria Plc is an agent.

On September 23, 2006, one Dr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed transferred the sum of N15,000 to one Mohammed Bashir Abubakar from FirstBank Kano branch to Zaria branch through the Western Union Domestic Money Transfer service.  The Money Transfer was effected successfully on the same day and the intended recipient was paid. 

Subsequently, another transfer of N15,000 that was sent on October 6, 2006 by one Salihu Ali to one Bashir Mohammed, presumably the same person as the aforementioned recipient, was flagged by the Western Union system to require additional documentation – photocopy of receiver’s identity card and birth certificate or sworn affidavit of age. 

Salihu Ali (apparently a representative of Dr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed) gave Dr. Mohammed a feedback, which prompted him to contact the Bank on the flagged transfer and was informed by the Bank to advise the receiver to provide the required documents that would facilitate the release of the money.

The need for the additional documentation stemmed from the requirement by the Office of Foreign Assets and Control (OFAC) of the US Department of Treasury that all financial institutions in the United States, and American entities worldwide, including Western Union International, should report transactions which bear names that are similar to those that have been programmed in the system.  OFAC has the authority to impose controls on transactions and also freeze foreign assets under U.S. jurisdiction.  All money transfers from the networks of all agent Banks in Nigeria are routed through the Western Union host system in the US with an interface with OFAC programming.

As shown above, the additional documentation had nothing to do with the religion of the receiver, Bashir Mohammed who had earlier collected N15,000 from FirstBank less than two weeks prior, using the same Western Union Money Transfer vehicle.  The same bank which paid a transfer sent from Dr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed to Mohammed Bashir Abubakar could not have withheld the subsequent transfer for any religious reason.  The flagged Money Transfer would have been released immediately if the documents required to establish the identity of the recipient was provided.

The requirement of additional documentation is global, system-driven and purely operational and would have been demanded from Bashir Mohammed from any other bank in so far as the transaction was through Western Union. It is a requirement of Western Union International, which is binding on all Western Union’s over 245,000 worldwide agent locations spread in over 200 countries and territories, including Nigeria.

Out of the 25 existing banks in Nigeria, 14 banks, including First Bank, are Western Union agents. It is pertinent to emphasize that any Money Transfer that is sent through each of these Western Union agent banks is subject to the same regulations.  The requirement is neither peculiar to First Bank nor restricted to it. 

First Bank, in its over 110 years of operations in Nigeria, has never recorded a case of discrimination, persecution or bias against any religion, belief, creed, or faith.  We subscribe fully to the doctrine of freedom of expression, worship and association. This is clearly and deliberately reflected in the ethnic and religious diversity of the Bank’s Board, Management and Staff. The national spread of the Bank’s shareholders, customer-base, employees and branch locations are eloquent testimonials to FirstBank’s sensitivity to the diverse interests and religious groups in this country.

H. O. Bakare, Head, Corporate Planning & Group Coordination, First Bank Plc.