Saif Eddine Wahhed Said Bitar
Saif Eddine was born on November 23, 1956, in Nabilus, Jordan. While legally resident in Cyprus (in 1996), he was de facto established in Peshawar, Pakistan. In 2000, Italian authorities mandated his arrest for numerous crimes committed in connection to the support of a foreign terrorist organisation. In fact, while not having been in Italy, part of his crimes took place in the country.
During the investigations, it emerged that Said was an important figure in the management of a paramilitary (and jihadist) training camp between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Intercepted phone calls revealed he sought funding for the camps, managed the flow of new recruits and procured false documents for them.
Saif oversaw the arrival of the Italian national Bovero Franco to the camp. Moreover, in more phone calls he was recorded instructing Karray Kamel Ben Ali to only seek motivated individuals to send to the camps, and to tell them they would have had to stay there for 4 or 6 months. In these same conversations, connections to notorious extremists were often exposed, such as in the case of the Algerian Aouni Bachir, part of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and its leader in Germany, who would later meet Saif in Afghanistan.
In a fax sent to Italy requesting money to fund the camps, the name of Said was together with that of Abu Gharib, another known extremist linked to the Mosque of Viale Jenner in Milan, who had taken part in the war in the Balkans.
In recorded conversations with Dah Dah (alias of Essaadi Moussa) and Abdullah (alias of Abdaoui Youssef) in the early months of 1998, Saif frequently discussed the ongoing process of forging new false documents. In April 1998 he had sent Abdullah 4 blank visa modules for entry in Pakistan, hidden in a book cover. He also discussed the then-recent price spike and instructed the others on how to proceed in gathering the documents. In a conversation with Abdullah, he also expressed his intention of opening another “school”.
The testimony of Bovero Franco (alias, Abdel Kader) after his arrest, confirmed that these “schools” were in all effects military training camps. In the one he attended in Afghanistan, he had the opportunity to train with different weapons.
Bovero also stated that before departing, Saleh Nedal (alias Hitem) handed him a package of unknown contents to be delivered to Saif Eddine once in Pakistan. Additionally, before he returned from Pakistan, Saif Eddine handed him another such package, which was later retrieved by an unknown individual in Italy.
Saif Eddine therefore proved to be an important figure in the overall management of an extremist training camp in Afghanistan, as the content of his calls and communications made clear the illegal nature of his network’s activities, which mostly took place in Italy in last part of the 1990’s. For these reasons, in 2000, the Court of Bologna requested his arrest.
