BIN LADEN'S CHILD SLAVES

Kids Traded For AK-47S To Work Marijuana Farms In Sudan

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."