History
Discussions in a Peshawar guest house, named bait al Ansar, are reported to have played a pivotal role in the formation of the al Qaida network. Saad Al-Faqih, reported to be an expert on al Qaeda's history, has stated that al Qaeda's origin was tied to a computer system situated in the "bait al-Ansar guesthouse"
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TM: You said something interesting in an interview with Frontline back in 1999—and you just repeated it here—namely that al-Qaeda originated from a documentation system in the Bait al-Ansar guesthouse back in the 1980s.
SF: The term yes, but the organisation's history is much more interesting than that!
At the 2005 bail hearing for Hassan Almrei in Canada, an unidentified Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent named only as J.P. stated that Bayt al-Ansar had been "associated with al-Qaeda... since 1984", although even the most liberal estimates suggest that the group didn't even exist until 1988-1990.
Read more about this topic: Al Ansar Guest Houses
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