Posted on 10/05/2005 8:50:01 PM PDT by Straight Vermonter
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The main spokesman for Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, Abdul Latif Hakimi, was arrested in Pakistan on Tuesday, the Pakistani government said. "He was arrested a few hours ago. Intelligence agencies worked on a tip-off. More details will come later," Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told Reuters.
Hakimi has been the main spokesman for the Taliban, who were ousted by US-led forces in 2001. He was frequently in touch with reporters, speaking by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, although Afghan and US officials have long suspected he was in Pakistan.
In June, the former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, publicly questioned Pakistan's inability to find him and other Taliban figures.
Hakimi often made outlandish claims on behalf of Taliban fighters, saying they had inflicted huge casualties on US and Afghan government troops. But his information was also, at times, very accurate.
Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Hakimi was arrested in Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan. "We're interrogating him and we expect to get some important information from him," he said. Asked if Hakimi would be handed over to the United States, as have other Taliban and al Qaeda militants arrested in Pakistan, Ahmed said: "First we will interrogate him and then we will see."
An official in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office welcomed the news. "We are grateful for his arrest. Hakimi was someone who claimed the deaths of innocent people," Khaliq Ahmad said. "We hope that his arrest leads to more arrests." He could not say whether Afghanistan would request that he be handed over to Afghan custody. A US military spokesman in the Afghan capital, Kabul, said he had no immediate comment.
In Washington, a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the arrest on behalf of the Bush administration, called the arrest "a significant, symbolic capture."
"But it's not clear what impact this would have on Taliban operations," the official said. There was no word on whether the United States would seek custody of Hakimi.
Hakimi last called Reuters on Monday at around 4 pm (1100 GMT) to deny an Afghan government report that 31 Taliban insurgents had been killed in figiting with government troops. "They're lying," Hakimi said. "We were the attackers and we killed 11 Afghan soldiers. Only three Taliban were injured."
The Afghan Defence Ministry said eight government troops had been wounded.
"Problems not solved by peace"
Hakimi frequently vowed unending jihad, or holy war, against US and government forces and angrily rejected suggestions of reconciliation. Late last year, responding to a US call for the Taliban to lay down their arms, he said peace would not resolve Afghanistan's problems. "They are the criminals for destroying our homeland," he said of the United States. "Our problems will not be solved through peace. None of the mujahideen (holy warriors) will compromise with them and the mujahideen are standing against the enemies.
"The door of reconciliation and peace is not open to us," he said. "This is just a deception."
Hakimi's telephone was switched off on Tuesday.
His arrest comes less than a month after a previous Taliban spokesman, former ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, was freed from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba under an Afghan government reconciliation programme. Zaeef became Taliban spokesman after the September 11 attacks and held regular news conferences at which he tried to convince the world the Taliban's guest, Osama bin Laden, was not responsible.
Zaeef was arrested in Pakistan in early 2002 and handed over to US authorities. Hakimi had welcomed his release and expressed hoped that more prisoners would be set free.
Police pursued a tip Wednesday from a caller claiming that one of the latest Bali suicide bombers studied on an Indonesian island known for having hard-line Islamic schools.
The tipster called police in Solo, a city on the main island of Java. He identified one of the bombers by name and said he had studied in the area, home to an radical Islamic boarding school attended by several militants convicted in previous terror attacks, said Abdul Madjid, Solo‘s police chief commissioner. He gave no further information.
The al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiya was emerging as the key suspect in Saturday‘s attacks, which came three years after Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, blamed on the regional Islamic extremist group.
Meanwhile, the recent bombings have triggered new calls for Washington to give Indonesian investigators access to detained Southeast Asian terror mastermind Hambali — a Muslim cleric once dubbed Osama bin Laden ‘s point man in Southeast Asia.
"I think the time has now come for the United States to give full access to the Indonesian police so they can interrogate Hambali," said Theo Sambuaga, chairman of Parliament‘s political and security commission.
Hambali, a 41-year-old Indonesian citizen, is also accused of being Jemaah Islamiya‘s operations chief. Thai forces and the CIA captured him two years ago in the ancient Thai temple city of Ayutthaya. He was handed over to U.S. authorities and flown to an undisclosed location for interrogation.
Up to 40 Islamist militants are believed to have been killed in clashes with Pakistani security forces near the Afghan border, about half of them foreigners, a Pakistani military spokesman says.
Pakistan launched a drive early last year to purge its lawless tribal lands on the Afghan border of Islamist fighters and hundreds of militants and Pakistani soldiers have been killed since then.
The latest surge in violence began last week in the North Waziristan region and Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said seven members of government forces had been killed since then.
"On the other side, we cannot say how many, but from information from local people and intercepts, we think 30 to 40," he said, referring to intercepted radio messages.
Almost half the casualties were believed to be foreigners, he said, adding most foreign militants in the area were believed to be from Central Asian countries and Afghanistan.
Many al Qaeda militants and their Taliban allies were believed to have slipped into Pakistan after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban government in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, and his top aides are believed to hiding somewhere along the rugged frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistani security officials have said they have no evidence of any "high-value target" in the area of the latest fighting.
Egyptian police have spent the weeks following the July 23 bombings of Sharm al-Sheikh searching for bomb suspects and others involved in attacks. On September 28, they appear to have made progress, given the announcement that police forces shot and killed Moussa Mohamed Salem Badran in a remote mountainous area in the Sinai peninsula about 60 km (35 miles) south of El-Arish, said to be the hometown of several suspects (www.alwafd.org). Badran is believed to have played a significant role in the Sharm al-Sheikh bombings which left 67 people dead. Two more suspects, Khalid Musaid Salem and Tilib Murdi Soliman were announced dead with a third, Yunis Mohammed al-Alian, taken into custody. The confrontation occurred as the result of an ambush organized by Egyptian security, following a tip that the men were on their way to meet Badran (www.asharqalawsat.com).
The armed confrontations come in the wake of a massive security drive, following a series of embarrassing incidents that undermined the Egyptian authorities' claims to have cleaned up the group responsible for the Sinai attacks (security authorities believe the group responsible for the Sharm al-Sheikh bombings were also involved in the Red Sea resort bombing of Taba in October 2004). A day after Minister of Interior Habib el-Adli announced the security success, a roadside explosive package, claimed by the "Mujahideen of Egypt," (one of the groups laying claim to the bomb at Sharm al-Sheikh and explosions in Cairo) injured two Canadian peacekeepers in northern Sinai. Following this Egyptian security cracked down harder on August 22 with thousands of police deployed to the south of El-Arish. A press ban has prevented news details emerging, but one indication of the severity of the clash is the reported death of two senior Egyptian army officers.
The violent activity in Sinai has presented a puzzle to security analysts. The claim by the Mujahideen of Egypt has yet to be authenticated and the more familiar name of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which also claimed the Taba attacks, is also problematic. Their claim for the August 19 Aqaba bombings posted on the Risalat al-Umma forum (www.alommh.net/forums) was contradicted by two separate, subsequent claims. The first of these was made by al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq; the second from the son of the eponymous Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, who in an interview with the Saudi daily al-Riyadh, claimed that the group had nothing to do with his father, other than using a pious name "to dress their sordid acts with a positive image" (www.alriyadh.com). (Abdullah Azzam was a Palestinian Islamist considered to be the original organizer of foreign Muslim volunteers fighting the Soviet invasion. He was killed in Afghanistan in 1989.)
A member of an illegal armed group has been detained in a police operation in the Chechen village of Samashki in the Achkhoi-Martan district.
"Two grenades were seized from the detainee, aged 21. He is suspected of keeping weapons and ammunition intended for guerilla groups, and gathering intelligence about the location and movement of federal forces," the Russian Interior Ministry's temporary press center in the North Caucasus told Interfax.
Another guerilla was detained in the village of Znamenskoye in Chechnya's Nadterechny district.
A Spanish court on Wednesday sentenced Spanish Muslim Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed to six years in jail for belonging to al-Qaeda. Ahmed, originally from the Spanish Ceuta enclave in Morocco, travelled to Afghanistan to attend an al-Qaeda military training camp in 2001 "in full knowledge of the terrorist profile of the group" in order to wage Jihad, the court said. The prosecution had requested a nine-year sentence for Ahmed.
According to renowned anti-terror prosecutor Balthasar Garzon, Ahmed was linked to al-Qaeda's Spanish cell, led by Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat - also known as Abu Dahdah. Last week, Barakat was sentenced to 27 years in jail in the same trial - which began on 22 September and is Europe's biggest trial of suspected Islamist militants.
Captured in Afghanistan after al-Qaeda's 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, Ahmed was taken to the United States' detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In February 2004, the US handed Ahmed over to Spain, where he was jailed preventatively until July 2004. The time he has already spent in custody in Spain will be deducted from his sentence.
Ahmed is the first Guantanamo inmate sentenced in a Western country, according to Spanish news reports.
Garzon has called for a more cooperative approach between countries, "within the limits of the rule of law," to fight the scourge of international terrorism, noting several instances of European countries refusing to allow the extradition of suspects.
Syrian authorities have arrested seven members of the outlawed radical Islamic group, Hizb ut Tahrir (Party of Liberation). Lebanon-based leaders of the group said their fellow militants were picked up by security forces in Damascus and the northwestern city of Aleppo. Those arrested include university professors, engineers, pharmacists and law students, the party said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Hizb ut Tahrir was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 with the goal of re-establishing an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East. Over the years, its ideology has moved closer to al-Qaeda's, with a mixture of anti-US and anti-Israeli sentiments.
In the wake of the crackdown against Islamic radicals following the July bomb blasts in London one of the group's most prominent European representatives, Sheik Omar Bakri, who had been living in Britain since 1996, has sought shelter in Lebanon since August. British authorities and those in many Middle East countries have banned Hizb ut Tahrir, and in Syria membership of the group can be punished by the death penalty.
A wave of recent expulsion orders has hit Europe-based Hizb ut Tahrir militants, as authorities in Britain, France, Denmark and Russia have started investigating the organisation for its terrorist links and anti-Semitic propaganda.
Danish authorities ordered several militants out of the country while Hizb ut Tahrir's spokesman in Denmark, Fadi Abdel Latif, has been arrested and charged with instigating hatred against Jews. Unconfirmed reports have also said that over 50 of the party's militants have been deported from Russia after police discovered firearms and explosives in their homes. France has also expelled an unspecified number of the group's militants.
(HuT used to bill themselves as the peaceful voice of radical Islam. Recently this has been demonstrated to be a sham but the damage has been done. HuT has members all over the world, from Russia to Britain to Australia.)
A British citizen has been arrested by Iraq's border security force near the Saudi border, along with nine Iraqis. A British military spokesman in the southern city of Basra confirmed the arrest of the British man to CNN on Tuesday and an Iraqi police official in the central city of Najaf revealed that he was one of "ten suspected terrorists" arrested on Monday evening who were believed to have crossed over the border from Saudi Arabia.
The man was named as Colin Peter by a border guard spokesman in Najaf, who said he was arrested near Mathloum, near the Saudi border, and is being held by the border guard, pending a response from the British embassy. The British Foreign Office is currently investigating the incident.
Peter is reported to have claimed to be a contractor, but had no proof in his passport to support the claim. The group was travelling in three vehicles and carried Kalashnikov assault rifles, a video camera, a satellite telephone and a GPS satellite positioning device.
The nine Iraqis are all said to be from Basra.
After the arrests of four suspected terrorists in swoops by armed police in northern France last week, French police arrest four more suspects on Monday in a town 100 kilometres south of the capital, Paris, two of whom are French converts to Islam aged 25-30. Also on Monday, British anti-terror police detained five foreign nationals who are now facing deportations for "reasons of national security".
The arrest of four terror suspects in the French town of Montargis on Monday are part of an investigation into Islamic militants suspected of plotting to blow up Orly airport in Paris, the headquarters of the DST domestic intelligence agency, and the Paris metro system, according to interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. "It's a continuation of the same inquiry, it's the same network," Sarkozy was quoted as telling RTL radio.
The latest French anti-terror operations resulted from searches of the homes of the four men who were charged with terrorism offences last week, a source close to the investigation was quoted as telling LCI television.
Monday's raids in central Britain and in Wales were the latest in a series since the 7 July bomb attacks on the London transport system that killed 52 people and injured 700. Seven Algerian men were arrested in raids in London and Manchester on 15 September. At at least three of the seven detained were believed to have been acquitted in April of involvement in a plot to poison Londoners with ricin.
A further 10 people, including the alleged leader of al-Qaeda in Europe, were detained following police raids in August. After the London bombings, the British government outlined plans to deport hardline Islamists it believes are inciting or glorifying militant attacks.
To avoid breaching the European on Convention on human rights, which prevents detainees being sent back to countries where they risk torture or the death penalty, Britain has since signed agreements with some countries including Jordan, that guarantee people deported to these countries will not face mistreatment or execution.
Although France, unlike Britain, has no troops in Iraq and is not one of US president George W. Bush's "war on terror", it says it remains a target for Islamic militants. It supports international military operations in Afghanistan, and cooperates over intelligence with Washington, as well as supporting North African states fighting Islamic extremism.
Sarkozy has unveiled plans for tough new anti-terror laws that would increase video surveillance at airports, metro and railway stations, as well as shops and banks. He also wants to make Internet cafes and mobile phone operators retain data for one year.
Security officials in the southern Zabul province Wednesday claimed arresting a local Taliban commander named Mullah Sattar and killing two fighters.
Zabul police Chief Abdul Saboor Allahyar told Pajhwok Afghan News the fighting in Shamalzai area broke out after a group of Taliban insurgents attacked government forces. The security personnel seized two AK-47 rifles, a rocket launcher and two satellite telephone sets.
The encounter came a day after local security forces killed two Taliban militants and arrested another in Shinkai and Nawbahar districts.
Iraqi Security Forces and Task Force Baghdad Soldiers continued numerous offensive operations against terrorists in east Baghdad Oct. 2.
Around 4 a.m., a dismounted Coalition Forces patrol in Sadr City discovered a parked vehicle with a heavy machine gun mount in a garage.
The patrol conducted a hasty search of the house and found numerous illegal weapons and material to make improvised explosive devices, including 50 blasting caps and an igniter, two hand grenades, sights for rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine gun rounds, a bullet-proof vest, large amounts of ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles, and both Syrian and U.S. currency.
Two individuals were detained and are being held pending processing into the Iraqi judicial system.
“This was a significant find for us,” said Staff Sgt. Benjamin Phinney, a leader with the unit that made the arrests. “It really boosts morale when we make a positive impact on security in east Baghdad.
“Aggressive dismounted patrolling is the key – it really pays off,” Phinney added. “If we had been conducting a mounted patrol, we might not have seen the truck. The more we patrol, the more information we gather and the more effective we become.”
Phinney said working closely with the local Iraqi population is vital to his unit’s success in combat and security operations.
“One of the keys to finding the terrorists is to get on the ground and listen to what the people tell us,” he said. “We then develop the situation and conduct refined searches based on that information.”
In other combat operations around east Baghdad, an Iraqi Police patrol discovered a suspicious vehicle parked along a road around 6:30 a.m. The IPs, believing the sedan might be a car bomb, did not approach the car but were able to observe from a safe distance that there was a dead body inside.
The IPs were concerned that a terrorist had placed the body in the car as bait, which is sometimes used as a terrorist ploy to bring potential targets closer to a vehicle before detonation in order to maximize casualties.
In this case, the IPs believed, the bait was being used to kill good Samaritans or first responders who would approach the body in the car.
The police secured the area to prevent potential injury to pedestrians and commuters. An explosive ordnance disposal team was called to the scene. As the vehicle was being examined by remote methods, explosives inside the car detonated.
There were no casualties.
“It sickens me that the terrorists are willing to murder someone and use them as bait. We will probably never know who the victim in the car was but I can only imagine that he had a family and loved ones, and he was killed for absolutely no reason,” said Col. Joseph DiSalvo, 2nd Brigade Combat Team commander. “I applaud the vigilance of the Iraqi Police who found this car bomb before it could be detonated. The Iraqi Security Forces, in joint cooperation with Coalition Forces, continue to disrupt terrorist operations in east Baghdad daily.”
Later, around 9 a.m., Coalition Forces working with Iraqi Police responded to a report of rockets being fired in the vicinity of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior building.
The IPs and Iraqi Army forces descended upon the suspected origin of the rocket fire. Within an hour, the Iraqi forces discovered a suspicious ice cream truck parked near a soccer stadium. The search of the vehicle revealed it was a rocket-launching truck disguised as an ice cream vendor.
Further investigation revealed the vehicle had recently launched four rockets; one which hit a local civilian’s vehicle causing the death of one Iraqi citizen and wounding another. The other three rockets caused no casualties and little damage.
“These improvised weapons systems are of dubious military value. It is almost impossible to know where the rockets will land. When the terrorists try to employ these weapons, you can expect the collateral damage will be great,” said Sgt. 1st Class Robert Bennett, a fire support expert in 2nd BCT.
U.S. Forces, responding to an Iraqi citizens’ tip, foiled a potential terrorist car bomb attack near an elementary school in west Baghdad Oct. 3.
At 2 p.m. an Iraqi citizen reported a possible car bomb 20 yards from an elementary school. The man said the car had been parked there with its hood up since 11:30 a.m. when the driver exited the vehicle and was picked up by another car, which then drove away.
An explosives ordnance disposal team investigated and found a mortar round, four tank rounds, a propane tank and a radio controlled detonation device wired to the car’s antenna. The Soldiers safely detonated the bomb.
In other combat operations Oct. 3, Task Force Baghdad Soldiers captured four suspected roadside bombers and found four weapons caches in different areas of the city.
U.S. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment stopped a suspicious looking vehicle while manning a traffic control point at around 3 p.m. in south Baghdad.
When the unit searched the vehicle they found TNT and blue and white wires often used to detonate improvised explosive devices in the trunk. The four occupants of the vehicle were taken into custody for questioning.
Coalition Forces also found four weapons caches hidden in various areas of Baghdad. The caches contained 29 mortar rounds and a mortar tripod, nine rockets, a bag of TNT with wires running from it, one rocket propelled grenade launcher and four RPGs, four machine guns, four AK-47 rifles and nearly 3,000 rounds of ammunition. The Soldiers also found anti-Iraqi forces propaganda and paraphernalia at one of the cache sites.
Iraqi Security Forces and Task Force Baghdad officials continue to encourage all Iraqi citizens to report suspicious behavior by e-mailing baghdadtipshotline@yahoo.com or calling one of the TIPS hotlines at 07901737723 or 07901737727.
Six insurgents have been killed and eight arrested in an operation launched by the Army to flush out ultras from some areas of Bishenpur district of Manipur since yesterday, a senior army official said today.
The 'Operation Stringer' was launched to flush out ultras from Karang island and nearby Loktake lake in Bishenpur district, Maj Gen Govind Dwivedi, GOC 57 Mountain Division, told reporters at Karang, about 45 km south of Imphal.
Several arms, including sophisticated weapons, were also recovered from the slain militants and their hideouts, he said.
The bodies of the ultras and the arrested insurgents have been handed over to the local police, he said.
He claimed that no civilian was harassed during the operation which would continue in the Karang hill island area for some more days.
The Army would stay in Karang area till all insurgents are removed from the area, he said.
Some insurgents had reportedly escaped in small boats through Loktak, the biggest fresh water lake in north east India, he added.
Task Force Baghdad Soldiers and Iraqi Security Forces continue working hard to create a secure environment for the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum.
Operations in south Baghdad netted 11 suspected terrorists in the past 48 hours.
Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment conducted a cordon and search in east Al-Rashid, killing one terrorist and wounding another Oct. 5.
They also detained two other suspected terrorists.
In another operation, elements of 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment conducted a cordon and search of multiple locations in Al-Bayaa and detained nine suspected terrorists during the early-morning hours of Oct. 5. Three of the nine detainees are wanted members of an improvised explosive device cell.
A would be roadside bomb emplacement team became victims of their own device on the night of Oct. 3 in south Baghdad.
Terrorists driving a car were en route to place an IED when it detonated prematurely. Soldiers from 1st Bn., 184th Inf. Reg. investigated the explosion and discovered a small truck at the site of the explosion along with scattered additional explosive devices. The terrorists responsible had already fled the area.
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| Photo by Maj. James Street |
Coalition Forces helped dispose of a large number of collected munitions from the Civil Defense building in east Baghdad Oct. 4.
The munitions, which were collected by Iraqi Police on recent missions, included 35 mortar rounds, 36 rockets, 66 fuses, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades.
An explosive ordnance disposal team conducted a controlled detonation of the stockpile.
"These munitions were confiscated by Iraqi Police during successful, autonomous counter-terrorism missions," said Col. Joseph DiSalvo, commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division.
| Terrorist Scorecard | |||||
| The Iraqi "Deck of Cards" Scoreboard | |||||
| Centcom's New Iraq Scorecard | |||||
| Saudi Arabia's Most Wanted Scorecard | |||||
| Saudi Arabia's New Most Wanted Scorecard | |||||
| The Round-up Blog | |||||
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List courtesy of FReeper Indcons
thank you, well done as always
So Syria is arresting Al Qaeda pharmacists now...
c#4
HuT has always had their greatest success in Syria with the educated people.
Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Hakimi was arrested in Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan. "We're interrogating him and we expect to get some important information from him," he said. Asked if Hakimi would be handed over to the United States, as have other Taliban and al Qaeda militants arrested in Pakistan, Ahmed said: "First we will interrogate him and then we will see."
Someones life is about to get veeeery interesting.....and not in a good way.
I'm sure the PCLU will be right on the case.
PCLU Pakistan Civil Liberties Union
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