Posted on 08/16/2005 12:04:57 PM PDT by Straight Vermonter
12-Year-Boy Killed by Car Bomb Blast in Chechnya Capital
Stay Angry
Pakistani Suspected of Terrorist Plot Arrested
By Greg Krikorian
LOS ANGELES -- A Pakistani national has been arrested by authorities in connection with a far-reaching investigation of a possible terrorist plot targeting any of nearly two dozen locations in southern California, including National Guard recruitment centers, law enforcement sources said Monday.
The suspect, identified as 21-year-old Hamad Riaz Samana of Los Angeles, was quietly taken into custody last week by counterterrorism officials as part of a probe that began with the arrest of two men in Torrance on suspicion of committing a string of gas station robberies. The investigation, sources said, has so far involved more than 100 FBI agents, Los Angeles police detectives as well as counterterrorism specialists with other federal and local agencies.
TERRORISM: INDONESIAN POLICE HUNT MILITANTS IN SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES
Jakarta, 16 August (AKI/Jakarta Post) -Indonesian police are working together with their Philippine counterparts to hunt down two Indonesian members of the al-Qaeda linked Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) militant group who are believed to be undergoing military training at Camp Hubaidiyah in the autonomous Muslim region of Mindanao, in the southern Philippines.
The two alleged Indonesian members of JI - blamed for the notorious 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali which killed 202 people, as well as other attacks - were identified as Ahmad and Abu Nida. The two had escaped from Indonesia to the Philippines, an Indonesian police spokesman said.
The information was obtained from Abdullah Sonata, a suspect currently being questioned by Indonesian police over his involvement in the 2003 blast outside the Australian embassy in which nine people died - also blamed on JI - said the police spokesman.
Based on the information from Sonata, Umar Patek - one of terrorists allegedly behind the deadly Bali blasts and currently residing in the Philippines - was recruiting more JI members, the police spokesman said.
The newly recruited members are currently undergoing military training at the radical Islamist Abu Sayyaf guerilla group's training camp in Mindanao, due to a lack of skilled human resources within the JI regional terror group. The US believes Abu Sayyaf is also linked to al-Qaeda.
At the request of Patek, Abdullah sent several JI members, including Faiz Saifuddin, Nasir and Dedy Rusdiana, to the Philippines last December. However, the three were immediately arrested by the Philippine authorities.
Hearing the news of the arrests, Abdullah later sent JI members Maulana Musa and Salman, but they were also arrested in Tawau, Malaysia, when trying to leave for the Philippines. "They're still being detained by the Malaysian authorities," the police spokesman said.
Last June, Abdullah sent Ahmad and Abu Nida and they managed to get to the Philippines. "Now, we are trying to trace their whereabouts. "We're working together with the Philippines police and we are exchanging information to prevent any unwanted incident, such as further bomb attacks," the police spokesman added. Abdullah himself was arrested in July along with another 14 terrorist suspects in various places in Indonesia, including Surakarta in Central Java, and Jakarta.
In a further development, the Philippines police announced on Monday that they have killed a senior terrorist suspect believed to be Patek. However, Indonesia's foreign affairs minister Hassan Wirajuda and national police chief General Sutanto could not confirm this.
Patek had been reported to have been killed by the Philippine authorities early in January 2005, but they failed to come up with proof of identity.
A separatist conflict in Minandao has claimed more than 120,000 lives over three decades. Sporadic violence has continued despite a ceasefire and peace talks.
Iraqi Policeman Engages Suicide Bomber in Mahawil
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15, 2005 – An Iraqi police officer identified a suicide bomber in Mahawil, Iraq, Aug. 14 and attempted to kill him before the bomb could be detonated, according to a multinational forces report.
Despite the policeman's best efforts, the Syrian suicide bomber was able to detonate his bomb, killing two civilians and injuring four others in the town, which is located about 16 kilometers north of Hillah.
The report indicated the officer's actions likely prevented many more deaths and injuries.
The same day in Hit, Iraqi army and coalition forces got help from local citizens during a combined cordon-and-knock operation. Iraqi soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Iraqi Intervention Force, and U.S. Marines from 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, detained three suspected insurgents during the search.
The troops confiscated 14 ammunition magazines, AK-47 assault rifles and an unspecified number of police uniforms from two of the suspects.
The patrol had received information from local citizens alleging the suspects' ties to the insurgency. All three suspected insurgents were transported to a secure facility for questioning.
Later in the day, the same patrol located an improvised explosive device near a bridge in Hit. The IED consisted of a 130 mm artillery round, a one-liter container of flammable fluid, a trigger mechanism, and a 12-volt car battery. The troops secured the area while an explosive ordnance disposal team destroyed the IED in place. No injuries or damages were reported.
In Mosul, Iraqi soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division, and U.S. soldiers with 1st Battalion, 25th Infantry Regiment, discovered a small cache during a raid today.
The cache consisted of an AK-47 automatic rifle, a Glock pistol, a revolver, and a large amount of small-arms ammunition. Seven suspected insurgents were detained and transported to a secure facility for questioning. No injuries or damages were reported.
Elsewhere in Iraq, Iraqi army and coalition forces conducted a cordon-and-search operation in Baghdad to disrupt anti-Iraqi activity.
On Aug. 14, Iraqi soldiers with 3rd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, and U.S. soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, found seven AK-47 automatic rifles and a machine gun during a search in Baghdad. Eight suspected insurgents were detained.
(Compiled from Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq news releases.)
Bali bomb-maker dies in shoot-out
Martin Chulov
ONE of the two terrorists who made the Bali bombs has been shot dead during a gun battle with soldiers near a militant stronghold in the southern Philippines.
The remains of Umar Patek, a member of Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiah, and those of an al-Qa'ida-linked Abu Sayyaf commander were recovered from a creek bed on August 5, three weeks after they were ambushed by special forces.
Security agencies formally identified Patek's remains yesterday, bringing an end to a three-year hunt to find one of the region's most dangerous bomb-makers.
Only three of the terrorists responsible for the Bali atrocities remain at large. They are master-bomber Azahari Hussein, his deputy Dulmatin and logistics man Noordin Mohammad Top. Patek had been responsible for mixing the chemicals used to make the 1-tonne potassium chlorate bomb that destroyed the Sari Club in Bali on October 12, 2002, claiming 202 lives, among them 88 Australians.
The Philippines Government had claimed for several months that Patek and JI cohort Dulmatin had been hiding with the Abu Sayyaf in the restive province of Mindinao, controlled by Filipino Muslim militants.
Special forces soldiers launched an intensive operation in early July to find the pair thought at the time to be protected by Khadaffy Janajalani, the Abu Sayyaf leader responsible for dozens of kidnappings of Western hostages since 2000.
Shortly after the offensive began, military officers claimed Dulmatin narrowly fled a helicopter gunship attack on a ramshackle Mindinao village.
Dulmatin and Patek are thought to have been on the run ever since, taking refuge in Abu Sayyaf jungle hideaways and joining in combat operations against Filipino soldiers.
The death of Patek in the southern Philippines has reaffirmed suspicions long held by the Australian Government that JI and Abu Sayyaf have formed alliances to plot attacks against the West.
Until early 2003, the two groups were thought to have remained largely separate, though working to a common end of establishing an Islamic stronghold governed by sharia law throughout the Indonesian archipelago and southern Philippines.
Regional security officials believe dozens of Indonesian militants continue to conduct paramilitary training each month in Mindinao, before returning to their homelands.
A spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer last night said the Government had not been formally advised of Patek's death.
"However, in principle we welcome all reports of capture, or elimination of any of the terrorists connected with Bali," Mr Downer's spokesman said.
MOSCOW, August 15 (RIA Novosti) - Over 7,000 militants have voluntarily surrendered weapons in Chechnya since 2000, Chechen State Council Chairman Taus Dzhabrailov said Monday at a press conference in Moscow.
"Since 2000, as a result of talks, and mediation through relatives of the militants, over 7,000 members of bandit groups have surrendered their weapons, of which 600-700 surrendered weapons this year," Dzhabrailov said.
Dzhabrailov denied reports that many former militants had joined the Chechen police. "The Interior Ministry in Chechnya has had 16,000 officers on its staff since 2003. Most of those who laid down arms have returned to peaceful life, and the main task now is to provide them with jobs," he said.
According to police estimates, some 800-1,000 militants are active in Chechnya, of which 100-150 are international mercenaries, Dzhabrailov said. "Mercenaries fight for money, using various ideas including Islam as a pretext," he added.
Dzhabrailov said 160,000 people, mostly Russian-speaking Chechen residents, along with some 40,000 Chechens, were killed during the first and second military campaigns in Chechnya in 1994-1996 and 1999-2002.
These figures represent the total numbers killed, including losses among federal forces and police, and militants.
During the first campaign, there were numerous Russian-speaking civilians killed in the cities because they had nowhere to go, unlike the Chechens, who could escape to the homes of relatives in the villages, Dzhabrailov said.
McDonald's bombing mastermind jailed for life
An Indonesian court today sentenced the alleged mastermind of 2002 bombing of a McDonald’s restaurant to life in prison, saying the Islamic militant planned the attack that came just weeks after the Bali nightclub attacks.
Agung Abdul Hamid, 38, was found guilty of being the “field co-ordinator and financier” of the early evening bombing that killed three people in the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar. The dead and injured were all Indonesians.
“The defendant Agung Abdul Hamid … has been convincingly proven guilty of planning or inciting other people to carry out an act of terrorism that resulted in casualties and destruction of public facilities,” Judge Andi Haidar told the court.
Haidar said Hamid was guilty of violating the country’s harsh anti-terror law and the 1951 Emergency Law on illegal possession of arms and explosives.
(No word yet on whether his "life" sentence will last more than 5 months)
Security tightened after ‘Al Qaeda’ man’s death
Security was tightened yesterday in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra amid tension after the death of an alleged Al Qaeda member.
Police put up a number of checkpoints in parts of Samarra, 125km north of Baghdad, after the body of Najim Takhi, 55, was received by his family in the town.
Takhi, a well-known Samarra resident, was an alleged member of the group headed by Al Qaeda’s frontman in Iraq, the fugitive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Since his death a number of posters bearing the name Al Qaeda have appeared around Samarra denouncing and threatening to avenge the killing.
“We will kill 1,000 policemen for killing one of our loyal members,” said one such poster.
Iraqi security forces have killed a number of alleged members of Zarqawi’s group largely in northern Iraq.
Moroccan terror suspect faces court
Defence lawyers of a Moroccan terror suspect accused in Germany of helping the September 11 hijackers have called for his acquittal.
They argue that a conviction after the US refused to allow key al-Qaeda suspects to testify would hand a victory to Osama bin Laden.
Mounir el Motassadeq is charged with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership of a terrorist organisation over his links to the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell.
El Motassadeq, 31, acknowledges that he was close to the three suicide hijackers who lived in the north German city, but maintains he did not know about their plans to attack the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001.
Completing the defence's closing statements, attorney Ladislav Anisic criticised the lack of direct testimony from witnesses including Ramzi Binalshibh, a key September 11 suspect in US custody.
US authorities had supplied summaries of interrogations, but they may have been "filtered" or obtained under torture, Anisic said, urging the Hamburg state court to give his client the benefit of the doubt.
"Don't let Osama bin Laden win by neglecting the principles of the state of law," Anisic said, as the year-old trial drew toward a close.
El Motassadeq, a slight man with a full beard, had nothing to add. "I think my attorney has said everything."
Prosecutors last week demanded the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for el Motassadeq, who is accused of helping pay tuition and other bills for members of the cell to allow them to live as students as they plotted the attacks.
He was convicted in 2003 of the same charges, but the verdict was thrown out last year and a retrial ordered after an appeals court ruled el Motassadeq was unfairly denied testimony from al-Qaeda suspects in US custody.
According to statements provided by the US Department of Justice for the retrial, Binalshibh said he and suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah alone comprised the Hamburg cell.
However, prosecutors have argued that Binalshibh, who was detained in Pakistan on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, probably lied in an attempt to protect co-conspirators.
Operation in full swing to root out Taliban: US army
KABUL, Aug. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- A recently launched operation to wipe out insurgents from Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province is continuing aggressively to ensure security for the locals, US military spokesman said Monday.
"The American forces are taking the fight to these enemies of Afghanistan in order to root them out of that area," James Yonts told reporters at a news briefing.
Afghan and US troops, in their attempts to get rid the violence-hit province of Kunar from the rebels, launched a major offensive against militants in Karengal valley early Saturday but the outcome is yet to be made public.
Kunar, a former stronghold of Taliban and dissident warlord Gulbudin Hekmatyar along the border with Pakistan, has been the scene of increasing militancy since the beginning of this year.
Algeria sets referendum date for partial amnesty
By Hamid Ould Ahmed
ALGIERS, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Algeria's president said on Sunday a referendum would be held next month on a controversial amnesty aimed at ending 13 years of Islamist insurgency, but added that only a partial amnesty was on offer to rebels.
"I invite you...to voice your opinion in a referendum that will take place on Thursday, Sept. 29 over the draft charter for peace and national reconciliation," President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said in a speech.
But he said militants involved in "massacres and explosions in public areas" would be excluded from the reconciliation plan, without giving further details.
The amnesty would involve dropping legal action against Islamist rebels who have already surrendered, and against some still at large in Algeria or abroad.
Bouteflika had initially been expected to propose a full amnesty that would cover all insurgents.
But support for a general amnesty was dented when Algeria's main outlawed Islamist movement, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), praised the al Qaeda network in Iraq for killing two Algerian diplomats last month.
"The kidnapping of our diplomats is part of attempts aimed at hampering national reconciliation," Bouteflika said in his speech.
| 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 | |
|
Ping
Drop a batallion of Kopassus into the jungle and it's game over for the Islamo-fascist bastards.
Here's a Kashmiri tidbit....
Police recovered a body, chopped into pieces, of Firdous Ahmed Wani, son of Abdur Raheem, of Lajwara, from Gooripora in south Kashmir district of Pulwama, sources said, adding that he was missing since June 7 when he hadn’t returned from his shop.
http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/05aug17/news.htm#4
Glad that scum from the Bali bombing gets to me allah. Hopefully, someone will get the leader who was just paroled.
Perhaps his family and neighbors would feel more comfortable if coalition forces booby-trapped the body, perhaps detonating the explosives during a wake (or its Muslim equivalent).
found this one on cargolaw.com
Syrian believed linked to al-Qaeda taken before a Turkish court Aug. 11, on suspicion he was plotting to slam a speedboat packed with a ton of explosives into cruise ships carrying Israeli tourists. Police frantically searching for other suspects linked to the man, who had undergone plastic surgery, apparently to help conceal his identity. Authorities hunting for 2 squads of possible suicide bombers. The suspect, identified as Lu'ai Sakra, shouted that he had no regrets after he was led, handcuffed by police, into courthouse. "I was going to attack Israeli ships," he said. (Sat. Aug. 13 2005)
No better place for an Arab terrorist than a Turkish prison.
No better place for an Arab terrorist than a Turkish prison.
I was refering to the general relationship between Turks and Arabs ( Islam aside ) as a result of that little thing called WWI. The Ottoman Empire, led by what were known as the Ottoman Turks entered the war on the side of Germany and Autria-Hungary, whereas the Arabs (Ottoman subjects at the time) decided to fight alongside the British, against the Turks. The Turks were none to thrilled by this traitorous behavior by the Arabs. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (?)that ended Turkey's war the region was cut up to form countries like Syria,Lebanon,Jordan etc after 1918.
Interesting that an Arab on a piece of land for 30 years has such an overriding claim, compared to Israili "settlers" who have been there more than 40.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
