Terrorist Osama bin Laden has used child slaves he’s bought from Ugandan rebels as forced labor on marijuana farms in Sudan, in order to help fund his global terrorist network al-Qaida.
Sudan, whose Islamic government has close links with bin Laden, is the longtime patron of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels of Uganda, who have abducted at least 8,000 children from the northern part of the country since 1994, according to a March 1999 London Telegraph story.
“We know that large numbers of children abducted by the LRA are being sold into slavery in Sudan,” Brigadier Gen. Katumba Wamala, commander of the Ugandan forces fighting the rebels, told the paper.
“Bin Laden is the main buyer of these children. He has very big marijuana farms in Sudan and he buys the children as slave laborers,” Wamala said, who added that evidence supporting his claims generally came from children who have escaped the slave traders.
“We have the testimony of abducted children and we also have intercepted radio conversations,” he told the Telegraph.
According to radio intercepts, bin Laden is said to pay one AK-47 rifle for each child.
“It is on the record that [Joseph Kony, the Lord’s Resistance Army leader] was complaining about the exchange rate. Once the Arabs gave him 98 guns for the 100 children he had given them. He complained very bitterly. It is a very lucrative business,” Wamala told the paper.
The pot farms worked by bin Laden’s slaves are located in the Nile Valley, north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Bin Laden has several large sunflower plantations located in the same area, the paper said, where slave labor may also be used.
Ugandan intelligence officials say bin Laden has invested millions of dollars in front organizations for his al-Qaida network.
“After being expelled from Saudi Arabia, bin Laden lived in Sudan from 1994 until 1996,” one unnamed source told the Telegraph. “He has a wide range of business interests there, covering farms, banks, factories and infrastructure. These are used to fund terrorism in Africa and elsewhere.”
“Sudan has offered itself as a training ground for terrorists. We know of 17 terrorist training camps and the target is to install Islamic fundamentalist governments in east and central Africa by 2002,” the source said. “That is why bin Laden is helping them to sponsor rebels and kidnap and enslave our children.”
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