Ping to the Swedish Ping List.
Posted on 12/13/2005 5:43:12 AM PST by School of Rational Thought
A 39-year-old Swede accused of terrorism by the United States has been arrested in Prague, Swedish tabloid Expressen reported on Tuesday.
The man, who was not identified, is wanted by the US CIA spy agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which accuse him of being terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden's "man in Sweden", Expressen wrote.
The US has tried to obtain his extradition for several years, accusing him of setting up Al Qaeda training camps in the US state of Oregon in 1999, but Sweden has refused to hand him over, the paper said.
The man was on a Czech Airlines flight from Stockholm to Beirut on Sunday, but never got there after stopping over in Prague, the paper said.
The Swedish foreign ministry confirmed that a Swedish man was missing but would not confirm the newspaper's report.
"The man's brother has asked us to look into the matter. He did not arrive in Beirut and the brother suspects that he got stuck in Prague," foreign ministry spokeswoman Miriam Mannbro told AFP.
However, the first secretary at the Swedish embassy in Prague, Leena Jaanson, told Expressen that the 39-year-old was arrested when he landed in the Czech capital.
The paper said that the Swede was also accused of having links to the group that carried out the July 7th bombings in London.
Expressen met the 39-year-old earlier this year when he denied having anything to do with the London bombings.
But he stressed that he "loved Bin Laden".
"You don't have to be a terrorist to love Bin Laden," he told the paper.
According to Expressen, the man was accused in Sweden of plotting terrorist attacks several years ago but was freed for lack of evidence. He was later sentenced to a year behind bars on a weapons offence.
Ummm . . . Sweden is a neutral country.
Ping to the Swedish Ping List.
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I doubt this suspect is in any real way a Swede, other than the purely legal sense.
Excerpt from the above The Local link.
A real scumbag...needs to be removed from circulation....maybe Tony did this one/
I still haven't found his name yet, but it sounds like this (if true) is a major catch. Heavy FBI interest in him, potentially with direct involvement in the London massacre.
It's my understanding that Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish are all quite similar. Please forgive me if this is incorrect.
Do you think "neutrality" is a logical national position in the war on terror?
Its my guess that although the Swedes knew this was a "bad guy", they didn't want the bad press of extraditing him to the US so they tipped off the Czechs as to his travel plans. The Czechs took it from there, being a little more stalwart about this kind of stuff.
Fellow FReeper franksolich maintains a Norwegian ping list. Perhaps he knows of someone on that list who can read Norska.
It's my understanding that Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish are all quite similar.
Not Finnish. Finnish is from a completely different linguistic family. The other three, yes, they are quite similar.
Okay, thanks for the ping and the education. :-)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=3321
On Nov. 26, authorities allege, Abu Hamza dispatched two "emissaries" to evaluate the Oregon property as a potential training camp. According to the indictment, the pair flew to New York, then made their way to Seattle and Bly, where they met potential training candidates, established security through the use of guard patrols and passwords, conducted firearms training "and viewed a video recording on the subject of improvised poisons."
Sources familiar with the case identified the pair as aides to Abu Hamza. One was Oussama Kassir, a bulky Swede of Lebanese ancestry with a long criminal background who supposedly claimed to be Bin Laden's "hit man." The other was Haroon Aswat, a soft-spoken, slim Indian who seemed to spend most of his time reading the Koran. Both have been with Abu Hamza at Finsbury Park, according to one former mosque worshiper in London.
Knighthawk....Can you translate Finnish for Coop.
Never mind. Found it elsewhere. Thanks
I'd say the Czech Republic authorities just made some American and British intel and law enforcement folks very happy!
"Captain Hook" of Finsbury Park. I had not seen anything on him in quite a while. I vaguely recall that he was fighting extradition to the U.S.
Also reminds me of Krakar. Another in again out again terrorist in the land of midnight sun.
Both of them have been off my radar for quite a while.
I wonder whether this Kassir might have been immediately transfered to a more "local" facility if someone had not leaked info on outsourced detention facilities.
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