The Terrorist Round-Up for December 2, 2005

[Straight Vermonter]

Syrian Border Situation Gradually Improving
Fewer Suicide Bombers Get Through

Click the pic for the story

Iraqi Army soldiers wave their guns in celebration moments after a ceremony to restore Iraqi border security in the restive city of Kusaiybah, Iraq, 30 November. (AFP/POOL/File/David Furst)

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U.S. downplays attack on Iraq base

 Rebels attacked a U.S.-Iraqi base in the restive western city of Ramadi on Thursday, hours after U.S. President George W Bush outlined his strategy for winning the war in Iraq but refused to set a timeline for withdrawal.

The attack also came as Washington demanded the immediate release of American hostage Thomas Fox, abducted with three other Westerners over the weekend, reiterating that it does not negotiate with kidnappers.

Residents of Ramadi said that rebels fired mortars and rockets at the base and then roamed briefly through the streets, posting al-Qaida leaflets.

Al-Qaida issued an unverifiable Internet statement saying its fighters "were able to control a big part of the city of Ramadi after launching a new blessed conquest."

U.S. military officials in Baghdad dismissed such reports as "spurious," maintaining that there was little more than a single rocket attack on a checkpoint at 9:30 a.m. local time.

"So the idea that there is this massive uprising in insurgents in Ramadi to have retaken control of the town is incorrect," said coalition forces spokesman Major General Rick Lynch.

According to Lynch, Ramadi is becoming more secure due to a set of joint U.S.-Iraqi operations against the insurgents, the latest called Operation Tigers, "designed to ensure that the people of Ramadi can participate in the democratic process," he told reporters.

The main Sunni political coalition, however, said that it would be easier for people to vote in these towns if the U.S. forces pulled out during the election.

"We call on the American forces to leave Iraqi cities, especially the unstable ones, to allow for their residents to exercise their electoral rights in a normal fashion," the Iraqi Concord Front (ICF) said.

(More..)

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Airstrikes, a Meeting with Sheikhs, a Cache on the River and a Trip to Camp al-Qaim
By Bill Roggio

Thursday morning started off with strikes at undisclosed locations near the Syrian border by “the task force”, presumably Task Force 626, the group assigned to hunt Zarqawi and the leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Bombs and gunfire rained from the sky in the early hours during darkness. No information is available about the targets or the results of the attack.

(more..)

(I have my fingers crossed again)

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Qaeda suspect's arrest 'confirmed' by website
 
An Islamist website "confirmed" on Wednesday the arrest in Pakistan of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a man with joint Syrian and Spanish nationality wanted as a suspected Al-Qaeda militant.

On November 3, Pakistani officials said their forces killed an Arab Al-Qaeda suspect and seized another in a shootout. But a top-level intelligence official played down reports that Setmariam, who has reported links to the Madrid and London bombings, had been nabbed.

The Internet statement Wednesday said "Sheikh Abu Musab al-Suri was arrested three months ago ... and not recently, as the media have reported, as if it were news."

The statement was signed by a previously unknown figure, Abdul al-Tawab al-Shami, and its authenticity could not be verified.
 
(More..)

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3 al-Qaida suspects arrested in Pak
  

Jalozai Refugee Camp

Three foreigners with suspected links to al-Qaida were arrested in an Afghan refugee camp in northwestern Pakistan, intelligence officials said.  The men were arrested yesterday from a mud-walled compound in Jalozai, a sprawling refugee settlement about 25 kilometers east of Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier province, one intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature of his job.

The second intelligence official, who also could not be named for the same reason, said a large number of police and intelligence agents arrested the suspects from a bus they were traveling in following an intelligence tip off.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who has officially announced arrests of al-Qaida suspects in Pakistan in the past, could not immediately confirm the reported arrests near Peshawar.

The intelligence officials did not give nationalities or identities of the three men but said that they did not appear to be senior terrorist figures.
 

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Jordan charges four militants over U.S. death plot

Four Islamists will stand trial soon in Jordan accused of planning to kill Americans who train Iraqi police recruits in the kingdom, the prosecutors office said on Thursday. The four Jordanian suspects named as Muaz Breizat, Ibrahim Jahawshe, Faisal Rweidan and Obadah Hiyari were charged with "conspiracy to undertake terror acts" and the illegal possession of automatic weapons, the state security prosecutor said.

The conspiracy charge alone carries a death sentence.

A charge sheet said the men had originally targeted Western tourist groups but shifted their plan to kill American instructors heading to an U.S. funded police centre on the outskirts of Amman that trains Iraqi police recruits. The sheet detailed how the suspects had been tracking down the American instructors' movements from work to their homes and were planning to kill them in a drive-by shooting operation.

The men were among scores of Jordanians who sought to infiltrate to Iraq via Syria to join Arab militants battling the U.S. military presence but failed to make it across the border.

Jordanian authorities uncovered the plot last August after arresting one of the suspects and finding cameras used for surveillance during the planning of the attacks. They also uncovered several AK-47 automatic weapons in the homes of some of the detainees.  Jordanian investigators say the U.S. invasion of Iraq acted as a powerful magnet for recruitment of young Jordanians by anti-Western militants, some of whom have left to join the insurgency.

They say they have detained several hundred Jordanian Islamists since the start of the year for plotting attacks at home, far more than in previous years. Their aim was to destabilise Jordan because of the monarchy's pro-Western stance. Security officials also fear many Jordanians will return battlehardened from Iraq and may carry out attacks on home soil.

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Israel arrests Al Jazeera reporter in West Bank

Israeli forces have arrested a reporter for the Web site of the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera television station in the West Bank town of Hebron.

Awad Rajoub, 29, was arrested at his home there on Wednesday evening, Walid al-Amari, Al Jazeera bureaux chief for the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, said on Thursday.

Israel has not explained the arrest, he told Reuters. "We are checking to find out why they arrested him."

An army spokeswoman said only that Awad was being held "for security reasons".

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Militants linked to woman suicide bomber held in raids (France and Belgium)
By David Rennie

Police in Belgium and France yesterday arrested 15 suspected militants believed to be linked to a Belgian woman who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq last month.  The 38-year-old convert to Islam blew herself up on Nov 9 on the outskirts of Baghdad in what security sources believe was the first suicide attack involving a European woman.

More than 200 heavily-armed officers raided addresses in Brussels and three other Belgian cities in the early hours of the morning. They arrested 14 people in an attempt to shut down the suspected network which smuggled the unnamed woman into Iraq.

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said that two Tunisians and three Moroccans were among those arrested, while police also seized documents. The fifteenth suspect, a Tunisian, was arrested near Paris. The man, who was not previously known to police, was taken into custody because he knew the husband of the suicide bomber. The husband, a Moroccan, is also believed to have died in Iraq, reportedly after being shot by American soldiers.

All those arrested were said by officials to be closely connected to the woman, a former drug addict and divorcee from the run-down French-speaking city of Charleroi.

The network had been under surveillance for four months after Belgium received intelligence about a suspected terror cell, but the country's small and overstretched security services failed to detect the woman leaving the country, officials admitted. Glenn Audernaert, a senior police official, said: "It was through this organisation that the lady went to Iraq with her husband, but we only knew about her presence … once she was already there."

She is thought to have been taken to Iraq overland via Turkey by her husband, a Muslim extremist.  Her suicide mission targeted an American military convoy but she only succeeded in killing herself. US forces found a recent Belgian passport with her remains, triggering a European-wide intelligence operation.

Claude Moniquet, an intelligence analyst and director general of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre, said: "The family are completely devastated, but sadly this is the classic profile: someone with bad family ties, and a history of trouble with the law.

"It allowed terrorist recruiters to work on her."

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PAKISTAN: SILENT CRACKDOWN ON HARDLINE ISLAMIST GROUPS
by Syed Saleem Shahzad

Struggling with an enormous task after the 8 October earthquake, the Pakistani government has been more than happy to allow banned Islamic groups, even those considered terrorist organisations by Washington, to take over much of the aid effort in remote areas. Without the help of groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba - now renamed as Jamaatut Dawa - the relief operation would simply collapse. However a quiet crackdown is underway, with the arrests of leading figures associated with Lashkar-e-Toiba (LT), a Salafite group in the al-Qaeda galaxy which is supportive of the former Taliban regime

Arif Qasmani is a veteran jihadi, having fought against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and been associated with the armed struggle in Indian-held Kashmir. He was picked up by Pakistani security forces last October but released a few days later. Now Qasmani is once again missing. According to his family, he was in Karachi and departed for Lahore two days ago but since he left home his whereabouts are unknown.

The former commander of Lashkar-e-Toiba in the Sindh province, Dawood Qasmi, resigned from the hardline group soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks and has since been associated with a medical research institute.  Intelligence agents have raided his house in Karachi and threatened his wife that if Qasmi did not surrender within 24 hours the whole family would be rounded up, Dr Qasmi’s wife Hania told Adnkronos International (AKI).

High level intelligence sources has confirmed that dozens of other suspected militants - mainly from Lashkar-e-Toiba- have been secretly rounded up across the country. 

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, along with four other Islamic groups, in January 2002 amid pressure that followed the 11 September attacks in the US.  Until then LT, with its reputation for being purely Kashmir-focused, was able to operate openly inside Pakistan, raising funds and recruiting members. LT has close ties with Arab-Afghans, who came from their native countries to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets or in the late 1990s, either for Al-Qaeda training or to boost the Taliban government.

After the Taliban retreated from Kabul and Kandahar in 2001, and many Arab-Afghan families moved to Pakistan, LT members gave them refuge and arranged their safe exit from Afghanistan.

High level sources said that so far the operation against LT is highly secret and selective but massive lists have been drawn up all across the country and a major arrest sweep is expected. They said that the operation, currently very low-key, would expand to the whole country including North and South Waziristan.

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Five militants die in Pakistan blast

Five militants, three of them Uzbeks, were killed in Pakistan’s tribal belt on the Afghan border on Thursday when a blast destroyed the house they were staying in, a government official said.

The blast happened when explosives the men were storing went off, the official said, but residents of the troubled North Waziristan region, on the Afghan border, said a helicopter fired rockets into the house.

“The explosives materials were dumped at the house to make improvised explosive devices,” said Syed Zaheer-ul-Islam, top administrator in North Waziristan where the Pakistani army is hunting al-Qaida militants and their Pakistani supporters.

(More..)

(The Uzbeks and Chechens that are in Pakistan are the worst of the dead enders.  They can not return to their home countries, they can not go back to Afghanistan and the Pakistanis want them gone.  They are generally with their families and will fight to the death when confronted.)

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Thailand accept surrender of 46 more insurgents in south
 
Forty-six insurgents in Thailand's southern province of Narathiwat surrendered to the Army and will go to the army's new reeducation centers for training to be rehabilitated for peaceful civilian life, Thai News Agency reported Thursday.

Local military and police commanders joined in a welcoming ceremony held at Narathiwat provincial hall Thursday morning for those who gave up arms from seven districts.

Those who reported to the authorities will be sent to the army's new reeducation centers to be trained as good citizens who are ready to help develop and restore peace in the three violence-plagued southern province of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala .

In addition, they will attend an oath-taking ceremony to submit to the Thai state and not to be further involved in any form of insurgency. Later they will be sent back to their hometowns and families.

According to the interrogation report, all 46 were involved in various forms of insurgency. The authorities will use the information gained from the inquiry for further search for other insurgents, those who planned and directed the unrest, as well as those who give financial support and supply arms to them.

More than 1,100 people have been killed since unrest broke out in January 2004 in three southern border provinces of Narathiwat, yala and Pattani.
 
(Thailand has been terrified of offending their Islamic minority. Meanwhile non-moslems in the south are being forced to adopt Islamic practices at the barrel of a gun. They are an execellent example of how not to fight an insurgency.)

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One more Bali bombings suspect held

Police have arrested a man for alleged involvement in the Oct 1 Bali bombings, bringing the number of suspects detained in the attack to four, a police spokesman said on Thursday.  The near-simultaneous strikes on three crowded restaurants have been blamed on the al-Qaida-linked terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.

Twenty people were killed and more than 100 injured, mostly Indonesians. Lt Col Antonius Reniban said a suspect identified as Dwi Widyarto, 33, was arrested last week in Central Java province for helping carry out the attack.

"Police found evidence and witnesses linking him to the bombings,'' Reniban said. "He knew about the plot and helped implement it." He will be tried under Indonesia's anti-terror law, which carries a maximum penalty of death, he said.

Three other suspects were arrested last month: Mohamad Cholili, also known as Yahya, 28; Anif Zulhanudin, also known as Pendek, 24; and Abdul Azis, 30. Police have identified the alleged masterminds as Jemaah Islamiyah's bomb-making expert Azahari bin Husin, who was killed on Nov. 9 in a police raid, and Noordin Moh Top, who is still at large. They have also identified the three suicide bombers.

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3 Sayyaf leaders added to US terror list
By Al Jacinto

The United States Treasury added 3 senior leaders of the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group to its list of terrorists, a move welcomed Thursday by the Philippine military.  The local terrorists--Jainal Antel Sali Jr., Radulan Sahiron and Isnilon Hapilon--were included in the list Wednesday by the US Department of Treasury for their roles in brutal acts of terrorism, involving kidnapping of American and foreign citizens and bombing of civilian targets in the Philippines.

"The Abu Sayyaf group instills terror throughout Southeast Asia through kidnappings, bombings and brutal killings. This action financially isolates senior members of the Abu Sayyaf, who have planned and carried out vicious attacks on Americans, Filipinos and innocent citizens from around the world," said Patrick O'Brien, the Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crime.

Major General Alexander Yano, the Philippine Army's chief of staff, said the US move is a big boost in the fight against terrorism.  He said Manila will remain a strong ally of the United States in the global war on terror, and praised Washington for providing military training to Filipino soldiers under a security assistance program.  "The Filipino army will always be a strong partner in the fight against terrorism. And we welcome the decision of the US Department of Treasury to designate the trio as senior leaders of the Abu Sayyaf," Yano said.

US and Philippine troops are currently undertaking joint anti-terror trainings in the southern region of Mindanao, where the Abu Sayyaf is actively operating.

Washington ordered a freeze on assets the three Abu Sayyaf leaders may have under US jurisdiction. The Department of State's Rewards for Justice Campaign has offered to pay up to $90,000 for the capture of Abu Sayyaf members.  The reward is on top of the $200,000 the Department of Defense's US Pacific Command has offered for the arrest of known Abu Sayyaf leaders, including chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo offered as much as P100 million in rewards for the capture, dead or alive, of any senior leaders of the Abu Sayyaf and their lieutenants.

The US tagged Sali, alias Abu Soliman and now the Abu Sayyaf spokesman, as mastermind in the spate of bomb attacks in Zamboanga City since 2002 that killed many civilians, including an American soldier who was participating in a joint anti-terror war games.  Sali was also implicated in the 2001 Dos Palmas resort kidnappings of 17 Filipinos and three US citizens, two of whom were later killed and decapitated.  He was also said to have met with senior Jemaah Islamiya militants suspected of playing a role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people.

While Sahiron, based in Jolo island, has been linked to the series of terrorism and killings and kidnappings in the southern Philippines.  He was tagged as one of those who raided the Sipadan island resort in Malaysia in 2000 and kidnapped 21 mostly Asian and Western holiday goers, and also numerous attacks on foreign ships and kidnappings of many Indonesian and Malaysian sailors near Jolo.

Sahiron, like Sali, held several senior positions within the Abu Sayyaf group. He was one of 14 members of the group's Majlis Shura or consultative council and acted as an adviser to Janjalani and overall commander of the Abu Sayyaf in Jolo.

Hapilon, meanwhile, was involved in the 2000 kidnapping of US citizen Jeffrey Schilling on Jolo island. He is also Janjalani's top lieutenant and held several positions.

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Lashkar, Hizb militants arrested   (India)

Five militants of the Lashker-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen and their four overground workers were arrested by security forces in separate operations in Srinagar and Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, official sources said.

Acting on specific information, police arrested three LeT ultras from Soura locality of Srinagar. They said the militants were travelling in a private vehicle which was also seized.

The identity of the captured militants was being withheld as it might hamper the investigation, the sources said, adding they were being interrogated.

In another operation, said two Hizbul Mujahideen militants and their four overground workers were arrested.

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Police detain 22 after court attacks (More trouble in Bangladesh)

Police in Bangladesh said yesterday they had detained 22 suspected Islamist militants following suicide bomb attacks at court buildings which killed nine people.

Among those detained were the father and two brothers of Abul Bashar, a suspected suicide bomber who was wounded in Tuesday’s blast at a police checkpoint outside a court building in the southern port city of Chittagong.  Three people died in that blast. A police officer said Bashar, who lost both legs and his right hand in the attack, had travelled to Chittagong from northern Tangail district.

“I have no remorse. I did what I was supposed to do and I did it as per the will of Allah,” police quoted Bashar as saying.

A short time later a bomber entered the court complex in Gazipur, 30 km north of Dhaka, donning a black robe to disguise himself as a lawyer, and set off the bomb strapped to his body, police and a witness said. He died along with five other people.  A total of 65 people were wounded in the two blasts, which police and lawyers said were part of a campaign by Islamic militants to scare the judiciary before it puts rebels detained for other bombings on trial.

Police said Wednesday’s arrests were made in northeastern Sylhet and northwestern Jaipurhat districts. They did not provide any further details.

The State Minister for Home Affairs Lutufuzzaman Babar said earlier this month that there were reports that the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen had set up a 2,000-strong suicide squad.

Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, who was touring the coastal Patuakhali district when Tuesday’s bombs exploded, vowed tough action against those involved in the attacks.  “The bombers were enemies of Islam and enemies of the country. We will do everything and anything needed to stop them,” she told a rally.

Lawyers held protests and boycotted courts across the country yesterday, demanding action by the government. They called for a day-long general strike for Thursday, backed by opposition political parties.  “I am afraid this is not the end of the game. We can still be their target,” said a lawyer.  “The militants are deadly and operate with strong motivation and precision,” he said, adding that he could not give his name for fear of reprisal.

Police said the latest attacks showed that militants were becoming more sophisticated. “The bombs that exploded yesterday were the most powerful we have seen. We can’t immediately say what kind of explosives they used but they were highly destructive,” said a police officer.  “The terrorists have not only acquired advanced technology and training but also changed their operational tactics.”

Police said the attacks were the second time suicide bombers had struck this month, but with greater force. Two judges were killed in a bomb attack carried out by a suspected suicide bomber in the coastal town of Jhalakathi on Nov. 14.

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International Terrorist Reveals All
Bakhtiyar Akhmedkhanov

A Tashkent city court delivered a guilty verdict against members of the Akromiylar movement who took part in the Andizhan events (May, 12-13, 2005). The authorities allege that militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) were also involved. Shukhrat Masirokhunov, 34, a former chief of the IMU counterintelligence service who was extradited from Pakistan several months ago, is now awaiting trial in Tashkent. He faces 20 years in prison.

It is widely believed that people join the militants out of despair. Do you come from a poor family?

Well, my father was a CPSU regional committee functionary in the city of Andizhan. I never walked to or from school but went in a car. When I finished Grade 10, my father gave me a Model 6 Zhiguli sedan. I have a degree in history from the local university.

I worked at the Russian Communist Youth League (Komsomol) regional committee and then at the regional administration. I engaged in privatization programs and controlled an investment fund. Operations with securities brought as much money in a single day as an ordinary person might not even earn in 10 years.

So how did a Komsomol activist end up in the IMU?

Very easy. An ideological vacuum [that came with the breakup of the Soviet Union] was soon filled. First, they talked at the highest possible level about the need to restore Islamic values and then Muslims were made into enemies. I probably had more money than was good for me — drinking, playing around with girls, you know, leading an unhealthy lifestyle. Then I got sick: a stomach ulcer. One day a friend advised me to live like a good Muslim — stop drinking, start praying. I joined a Koran study group. We met and talked.

Someone said there was a madrasa in Chechnya that was open to all those willing to join. I went there in 1998. There was a training center called Kavkaz (Caucasus), near the village of Avtury, and I was accepted. At first, we studied religion and then took a course of combat training. There were about 50 Uzbeks there. The teachers were Arabs who spoke fluent Russian. It was there that I met Khattab. He was a real soldier and a cheerful guy who liked a good joke. Basayev was just a politician, but a very smart one. After a year of studies, I decided to leave: the local climate was humid and I caught pneumonia. Before leaving, I received instructions to send money to Chechnya to support the Uzbek jamaat. It was also planned to abduct a number of children from rich families in Tashkent, mainly Jewish. They were to be held in Kazakhstan, while ransom would be paid to people based in Chechnya. But after a series of bomb attacks in Tashkent in the winter of 1999, I had to run away. The abductions were carried out by the brothers Yuldashev and Murad Kaziev: We had trained in Chechnya together.

Eventually, I and several other men got to Afghanistan — via Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Iran, to the Char Asyab camp near Jalalabad.

Did you take part in the Andizhan events?

No, it was probably the work of the Islamic Jihad of Uzbekistan: they pulled out of the IMU. They are even more radical and intransigent. They are mostly young men.

But are events of this type not coordinated, for example, by al-Qaeda?

Al-Qaeda translates as “foundation,” “base”. So we also began with a base, but now everyone is on his own. Information and instructions are issued via the Internet. There was an al-Qaeda camp adjacent to ours in Chechnya, but the two kept entirely separate from each other. We had mainly Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz, while they had Arabs and Europeans, but some recruits occasionally moved from one camp to the other. There was no rigid structure.

For example, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. He is portrayed as a bin Laden representative, but this is not so; he is on his own. We got in touch with him not very long ago, offering to help, but he refused. I met with Zarqawi two years ago. He did not stand out in any special way. At that time, I was higher within our hierarchy.

Are you acquainted with bin Laden?

Would not say acquainted, but I have met him on several occasions. He addressed us in Afghanistan in 2000. He said that he was pleased to see representatives from 56 countries there and that we should unite. Some people proposed a series of attacks in a number of countries, for example, blow up a dam near Tashkent or explode a “dirty bomb”. But he said that “we will have time to do that yet.” He asked whether there were any physicists among us.

There was also talk to the effect that the raw materials for a “dirty bomb” had been bought in Russia and Ukraine, specifically from a scrap-yard for decommissioned nuclear submarines.

Are you saying that al-Qaeda has a “dirty bomb”?

Yes, I think it does. At least Takhir (Takhir Yuldashev, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who is now in Pakistan or Afghanistan. — Editor.) told me that bomb material had been acquired from Dr. Abdul Kadyr Khan in Pakistan, who, as is known, met with bin Laden in Kandahar. I also know that the Americans found two nuclear research laboratories in Kandahar, but for some reason the fact was suppressed.

In 2000, I took a 20-day training course in making chemical agents and explosives. A poison can be made literally from any material — cigarettes, honey, and even bread. We worked at a special laboratory near Jalalabad. Our instructor was Abu Habbob Misriy, a former chemistry teacher from Egypt. There were about 200 men taking that course, including 14 or 15 from the North Caucasus who returned to Russia a year later.

There was a similar laboratory in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, where chemical agents were synthesized by a hired scientist, apparently a Russian. That laboratory was then supposed to be moved from Georgia to Pakistan. There were plans to start using bacteriological and chemical weapons. The first targets for attack were to be in Italy and Moscow — why, I do not know.

Who funds all these camps?

I do not know about all of them, but we received money and weapons from the Taliban. There were no limitations: we got as much as we asked for. For their part, their funds purportedly came from donations, but there was too much money to have come from donations. Generally, money was not a problem. I spent seven years in Afghanistan and I regularly sent money home — often quite large amounts, up to $10,000. To do that, I had to travel to Iran since Western Union did not operate in Afghanistan. I often went there on business trips. We had no problem crossing the border: A vehicle from the other side would come and take us there.

(snip)

Do intelligence and security services from other countries also help you?

Do you know how special operations against militants are conducted in Pakistan? They will pin us down in some place and the situation seems to be hopeless, but then the Pakistani soldiers show us an escape route.

If Pakistan goes to war with us, the country will explode because the people sympathize with us. So they pretend to be helping the United States, while in fact they are helping us.

Where is bin Laden? In Pakistan. They cannot catch him? That’s because they do not really want to catch him.

But you were detained in Pakistan, right?

Yes, in Peshawar. I was certain that the Pakistanis would let me go. They promised not to extradite me to Uzbekistan. When I was in a local jail, U.S. intelligence officers talked to me on several occasions. I was blindfolded and taken somewhere. I did not see their faces, but they spoke Farsi with me.

(More..)

(There is much more of this at the link.  Much of what he says is transparent bull$#!t but it is revealing to see how they seek to mislead)

[Straight Vermonter]

Ping

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

[Recon Dad]

We can all thank one of our own FReepers for the headline on top of this post. I will only say that the border between Syria and Iraq is the way it is due to a plan proposed and implemented by this man and his team.

I was told that the reason the action is so heavy along the border today is due to their actions. Our enemies can't get their weapons across and they're using up what they have stored from the Saddham days. By Feb or Mar expect to see a lot less action there because we are kicking the sh*t out of them.

[leadpenny]

Bump.

[Coop]

Five militants, three of them Uzbeks, were killed in Pakistan’s tribal belt on the Afghan border on Thursday when a blast destroyed the house they were staying in, a government official said. The blast happened when explosives the men were storing went off, the official said, but residents of the troubled North Waziristan region, on the Afghan border, said a helicopter fired rockets into the house.

What a beautiful story!! :-) Thanks for pulling this all together.

[Just A Nobody]

Thanks for all the info SV. Good to see you back!

[JDoutrider]

Very imformative...Thank You!

[patriciaruth]

THANKS!