Fears Persist of Terrorism Links at Scuba School

Few answers appear in the probe of students in Netherlands suspected of ties to Al Qaeda

AMSTERDAM — The guys around the scuba school laughingly called them the "Al Qaeda Diving Team."

Late last year, Dutch counter-terrorism agents investigating a possible Al Qaeda recruitment cell grew interested in the school because a man suspected of recruiting terrorists had become a certified diver and studied to be an instructor there. Iraqi-born Kasim Ali was one of between 50 and 150 Muslim men who had taken classes in recent years with the same Tunisian instructor at the school in the city of Eindhoven, about 70 miles southeast of Amsterdam.

The student roster in Eindhoven heightened fears among investigators. In the past, captured Al Qaeda operatives have talked about plans to use scuba divers in attacks. As a result, the FBI did a canvass of dive shops and schools in the United States last year. Investigators worry that Al Qaeda-trained divers could plant explosives on the hulls of ships, act as seagoing suicide bombers or sneak aboard vessels and commandeer them for attacks.

"We've always been concerned about a maritime threat, and this adds credence to it," said a U.S. official familiar with the Eindhoven case. "We are in the process of tracking everything down."

Dutch and U.S. investigators learned that several of the students in the Eindhoven classes were suspected Islamic extremists.

Terrorists supposedly followed divingcourse in the Netherlands
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/896294/posts

"Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan recently convicted in Germany of helping a terrorist cell in Hamburg plan the Sept. 11 attacks, attended an Islamic seminar in 1999 at Eindhoven's Al Fourkhan mosque along with other associates of the Hamburg plotters. The mosque shares a complex with a Saudi-connected Muslim cultural organization known as Al Waqf al Islami that promotes fundamentalism, according to authorities."

Al-Qaeda taking lessons in Eindhoven, the Netherlands
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/896302/posts

Al Waqf al Islami is paid with Saudi money and publishes schoolbooks:

Islamic educational books encourage hate against non-believers

From NOVA TV, by Peter ter Horst en Siem Eikelenboom

In the Netherlands there is a systematic distribution of fundamentalistic and hate-encouraging texts from extremistic muslims.

Nova (Dutch newsprogram) has done an investigation of the politic islam in the Netherlands and discovered that in many of the texts there is a call for hate against Christians, Jews, woman and homosexuals.

"I have been given oders to fight the people, to wage war with them, until they confess that allah is the only and true god and mohammed is his prophet", is one of the texts in a book that is currently in use by some schools for childeren aging 4 to 12 years in the Netherlands. The educational books are from the foundation Al Waqf from Eindhoven (Dutch city), that holds connections with Saudi-Arabia.

Criminal code expert A. Ellian from the university of Amsterdam says that the educational books from the foundation Al Waqf from Eindhoven call out for hate. In one of the studybooks from Al Waqf the teachers are instructed to motivate their "students to behave like conquerors".

Foundation Al Waqf aslo has a youthorganization where on the internet a cyber-imam answers a lot of questions from young muslims. Questions on this site are about the way islam teaches about homosexuality: "... the argument (about the punishment of homosexuality) that is amongst the "learned" is only about the way of how the punishment has to be; some say that the person needs to be beheaded with a sword, others say that he has to be tossed from a high point and then to be stoned".

The Amsterdam mosque and the foundation El Tawheed have spead a flyer where there is a warning about Christian celebrations/holidays: "How can you join the festivities from the enemy just as if it where you're own?". Also on the website of the foundation is stated about how muslims must deal with neighbors that are non-believers; "Advised is it not to live amongst them" and "We must never make friendship with them".

Minister Van Boxtel of Immigration reacts in NOVA about these statements. He announces a BVD (Dutch NSA) rapport about the influence of fundamentalistic muslimorganizations on education. This rapport is due somewhere in 2002. Also Van Boxtel askes, after the NOVA broadcast about this information, his collegue Hermans from Education for better control on these issues.

at the school in the city of Eindhoven, about 70 miles southeast of Amsterdam.

I'm guessing that one would need to wear more than a pair of Speedos to Scuba in the North Sea....

I've done some cold water diving in Northern California - Monterey - 45deg water in a wetsuit is cold enough to shrink your (eye)balls - but I'll bet the North Atlantic is just a whole 'nother kinda "chilly".

A far cry from the balmy Red Sea for these guys, so it makes sense they weren't there to practice fish ID.

Ali was one of between 50 and 150 Muslim men who had taken classes in recent years with the same Tunisian instructor ...

I see nothing unusual here.

Just a group of desert-dwelling, camel-humping, womenless, crap-eating muslims studying something of no use to them in their homeland.

Meanwhile, wonder what's going on over at one of the Dutch flying schools?

Probably another gaggle of ragheaded idiots who don't want to learn how to take off and land an airplane. Makes sense.

Let's move along. Nothing of interest to us here.

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