THE fanatical guerrillas protecting Osama bin Laden were secretly trained in remote hills in Scotland. The training camps were organised by SAS hero Ken Connor, who had to resign so the British Army would not be implicated. The killers travelled under cover to the Highlands to learn "hit and run" warfare before leading their feared Mujahedin troops.

Yesterday, Connor, 53, told the Sunday Mail: "The Mujahedin fighters were already excellent soldiers committed to their cause. "The main thing they lacked was tactical knowledge and battle planning, so we worked constantly on that. "Some helicopter training was also arranged for them and they were taught how to attack airfields. "But the main achievement was to turn them from a disorganised mob into a fighting unit."

The officers went on to command senior positions in the Taliban regime, helping shelter bin Laden, the prime suspect for last week's terrorist atrocities in the US. The Scots training camps can be revealed today as George Bush contemplates the cost in US lives of waging war on the infamous fighters. Warlords were trained by crack British troops in some of Scotland's most rugged and remote mountain ranges. And Connor operated another camp in north England during the top-secret training programme. The secret initiative came as Britain and the US secretly supported Afghan guerrillas in their war with the Soviet Union. Much of bin Laden's pounds 300m wealth came from CIA cash aimed at winning the war and installing a "sympathetic" government in Afghanistan.

The makeshift army inflicted humiliating defeats on the heavily-armed Soviet forces, leading eventually to the break-up of the Soviet Union. But it is now feared the skills honed on Scots mountains could cost the lives of western troops ordered to seek out and destroy bin Laden's terrorist force. The Sunday Mail can today reveal the locations of the camps where the Mujahedin learned from some of Britain's best soldiers. One was in mountains surrounding the Criffel in Dumfries, the other in the remote Applecross peninsula in the West Highlands. The Scots missions took place in 1983 - four years after the Soviet invasion. The Afghans trained with incredible determination, stopping only to pray five times a day, eat and sleep.

Connor added: "It was all work and very little rest - the Mujahedin were at war. "At night, they crowded round a television and they would watch absolutely anything. "In one of the camps they watched Westerns such as the John Wayne film, The Searchers. "They loved films like that although they would always be rooting for the Indians. Unlike the Mujahedin, though, the Indians never won." The training camps paid off for the Mujahedin. They returned to Afghanistan and turned the conflict into a savage and successful war against the Soviets.

The year after training in Scotland, the Mujahedin - using sophisticated weaponry secretly bankrolled by the CIA - killed 2343 Soviet troops. Locally-led bands of the religious warriors waged jihad - or holy war - against the invaders. The balance of power in Afghanistan decisively turned towards the Mujahedin to the delight of then US President, Ronald Reagan. Today, President Bush is weighing up the cost of taking on the SAS-trained killers. The benefits of battlefield training were clearly learned by bin Laden, who now uses such camps extensively. And Connor says they will be dangerous adversaries But he warned: "Not every Muslim is a bad Muslim.

"At first the Mujahedin backed Ahmed Shah Masood, who is opposed to the Taliban." But Masood was assassinated on Friday, and Connor says the consequences are impossible to predict. "If Afghanistan unites, these soldiers will be a fearsome enemy. "It's a landlocked country and the terrain is such that a couple of dozen soldiers could fight off thousands . "And this is the scary bit. I don't think there's any way of getting bin Laden out. "Unless the Taliban lock him up and present him to the US, he's not coming."