6 March 2005.

Thanks to C, who writes:

It seems the Iranians are not far from the truth in their statement:

http://www.ana.ir/en/viewnewsdetails.aspx?newsid=4316

For his part, the Algerian president said that his country is prepared to expand cooperation with Iran in all fields, including the campaigns against terrorism and illicit drugs. Terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda have given some powers a pretext to implement their plots against Islam in the name of the campaign against terrorism, Bouteflika observed. “However, Al-Qaeda was in fact created by them and is an extremely suspicious phenomenon,” he added.

From BBC:

The reality was that bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri had become the focus of a loose association of disillusioned Islamist militants who were attracted by the new strategy. But there was no organisation. These were militants who mostly planned their own operations and looked to bin Laden for funding and assistance. He was not their commander. There is also no evidence that bin Laden used the term “Al Qaeda” to refer to the name of a group until after September the 11th, when he realized that this was the term the Americans have given it.

Jamal al-Fadl...  In return for his evidence, the Americans gave him witness protection in America and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many lawyers at the trial believed that al-Fadl exaggerated and lied to give the Americans the picture of a terrorist organisation that they needed to prosecute bin Laden.

SAM SCHMIDT, DEFENCE LAWYER EMBASSY BOMBINGS TRIAL:

And there were selective portions of al-Fadl’s testimony that I believe was false, to help support the picture that he helped the Americans join together. I think he lied in a number of specific testimony about a unified image of what this organisation was. It made Al Qaeda the new Mafia or the new Communists. It made them identifiable as a group and therefore made it easier to prosecute any person associated with Al Qaeda for any acts or statements made by bin Laden—who talked a lot.

... But in the wake of panic created by the attacks, the politicians reached for the model which had been created by the trial earlier that year: the hijackers were just the tip of a vast, international terrorist network which was called, “Al Qaeda.”

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Daily transcripts of the Embassy Bombings trial:

http://cryptome.org/usa-v-ubl-dt.htm

GEORGE W BUSH , PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES [ ON SPEAKER’S PODIUM ] :

Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods, and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror.