The Daily Terrorist Round-Up 8/27/05

U.S. hits suspected terror base in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. warplanes launched multiple airstrikes Friday against a suspected "terrorist safe house" in the western Anbar province, destroying the building where up to 50 militants were believed to be hiding, the U.S. military said.

Coalition ground forces were alerted by local residents that a number of members of the terror group Al-Qaida in Iraq had gathered in an abandoned building northeast of Husaybah, near the Syrian border about 200 miles west of Baghdad.

Saudi says arrests militants, stops imminent attacks

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi security forces have arrested 41 suspected militants in a series of raids across the kingdom, thwarting imminent attacks, the Interior Ministry said on Friday. The world's top oil producer has been fighting a wave of al Qaeda inspired attacks over the past two years, which have killed 91 foreign nationals and Saudi civilians.

"Security forces succeeded in surrounding elements of this criminal gang and was able to expose their plans ... and prevent imminent attacks," the ministry said in a statement.

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite channel broadcast footage of the raids, showing special security forces exchanging fire with gunmen. The footage also showed security forces blowing up buildings where the suspected militants had been hiding.

2 militants killed, one detained in Russia's south

MOSCOW, August 26 (RIA Novosti) - A policeman and two militants were killed and one militant was detained in a special operation in the Stavropol territory, bordering Chechnya and Ingushetia, a police source said Friday.

The source said two policemen were wounded in a clash with three gang members, and one of them later died.

"The house the militants were hiding in was burned down during the operation," the source said.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26, 2005 – U.S. soldiers from Task Force Liberty and Iraqi army soldiers captured six terrorists during a joint raid in Barwannah, Iraq, military officials said today. The troops also discovered two weapons caches, containing one 82 mm mortar system, 14 rocket-propelled grenades, three remote-control detonators, and two assault rifles.

Task Force Liberty and Iraqi army soldiers killed a suspected terrorist and wounded and captured another when the individuals fired on the combined force. In another incident, Task Force Liberty soldiers captured two key terrorists in a pair of overnight raids Aug. 25 and today. The terrorists are suspected of financing and enabling terrorist acts in north-central Iraq, according to Multinational Force Iraq news releases.

Soldiers detained the first suspect after receiving information that he was attending a meeting in Dwar, which is located between Tikrit and Bayji. The second terrorist was captured along with two other suspects in Hawija, a rural area of northern Iraq.

Iraqi security forces and coalition forces from Task Force Freedom Aug. 25 and today detained 16 individuals suspected of terrorist activity in western Mosul.

Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment captured two of the terrorists. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment detained four individuals suspected of terrorist activity and discovered weapons, ammunition, and explosives during separate operations in eastern Mosul. The suspects are in custody, and no injuries were reported among coalition or Iraqi security forces.

In another raid, U.S. soldiers from 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, detained nine individuals suspected of terrorist activity at a checkpoint in Rawah.

Soldiers from 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, captured one individual suspected of terrorist activity during a raid east of Tal Afar, a key staging point for foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq via minor roads from the Syrian border to the west.

Responding to reports of a drive-by shooting at the market in Haswah, Iraqi police captured the shooters Aug. 25. Police were told that a white Opel car carrying four passengers fired on civilians in the market causing a small fire, which was extinguished by the fire department while police chased the suspect vehicle. The police apprehended three suspects, but the driver fled the scene.

In news from Baghdad, officials said on Aug. 25 that Iraqi security forces continue to respond capably to reports of improvised explosive devices and unexploded ordnance.

Soldiers with the 4th Iraqi Army Division concluded Operation Lightning Strike, which consisted of a series of cordon and search missions in Abayach, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Soldiers discovered the command end of a command-wired improvised explosive device and traced it back to the explosive device. The IED was a 130 mm round rigged for detonation. An explosive ordnance disposal team destroyed the IED in place. Soldiers detained one male suspect at the scene.

Elsewhere, Iraqi police discovered and cleared a small cache of munitions in Tuz, 110 miles north of Baghdad. Police found three 122 mm Russian rounds, one 120 mm Russian mortar, nine 82 mm Russian mortars, one 82 mm Chinese mortar, and one rocket-propelled grenade.

The munitions were transported to the Joint Command Center, where an explosive ordnance disposal team secured them for later destruction.

In Mosul, Iraqi Police killed a suspected terrorist in an exchange of small-arms fire.

In other news, a fire caused by mechanical failure broke out at an oil pipeline in southern Baghdad around 8:30 p.m. Aug. 25. The pipeline valve was shut off, minimizing the amount of time the fire burned. Iraqi and U.S. soldiers secured the area around the pipeline.

Earlier this week, Iraqi army and coalition forces, working together and independently, took 19 suspected terrorists into custody while conducting a series of combat operations in and around Baghdad on Aug. 21. Tips received from Iraqi citizens led to the detention of 12 of the 19 terror suspects.

Thirteen of the suspects were captured during five pre-dawn raids carried out in western, central and southern Baghdad. Iraqi army and U.S. Task Force Baghdad soldiers also netted a computer, two AK-47 assault rifles, and improvised-explosive-device fuses during the raids.

A combined force of Iraqi army and Task Force Baghdad soldiers carried out the largest operation of the day at noon. Acting on information provided by another Iraqi citizen, soldiers searched an insurgent safe house in southern Baghdad and captured six suspects thought to be involved in terrorist activities.

At about the same time, Task Force Baghdad soldiers manning a traffic control point stopped a vehicle at a busy intersection in eastern Baghdad. When the soldiers searched the car, they found a shotgun and four pistols hidden inside. The patrol detained the suspect and brought him into custody for questioning.

In other combat operations Aug. 21, a Task Force Baghdad unit patrolling in northwest Baghdad struck an improvised explosive device. No one was injured in the attack, and when the soldiers searched a nearby house they found an AK-47 assault rifle and a machine gun with 10 ammunition magazines.

The unit also found binoculars, a periscope and 40 to 50 circuit boards, which could have been used to detonate bombs. The patrol took the owner of the house into custody for questioning.

(Compiled from Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, Multinational Force Iraq, and Task Force Baghdad news releases.)

Jakarta: Slain bomber not Patek (Damn)

Indonesian police said Friday a key suspect in the Bali bombings that the Philippine military said was dead is believed to still be alive. Police spokesperson Ariyanto Budiarjo said Indonesia’s consulate in Davao was informed by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that suspected militant Omar Patek was thought to be alive.

Patek is a senior member of the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror group and one of the top suspects sought by police for his role in the October 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people.

Security forces in the Philippines said earlier this month they had recovered what they identified as the skeletal remains of Patek on a creek bed near the town of Datu Odin Sinsuat on Mindanao island on Aug. 5.

Patek’s remains were with those of Hamad Idris, a Filipino guerrilla from the Al Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group, the report said, adding both men were believed to have been killed in a clash with Filipino special forces troops last month and their corpses abandoned by their comrades.

Dhaka nabs Mujahideen responsible for serial blasts, sounds nation wide alert:

By Nazrul Islam, Dhaka: The Bangladesh government has admitted that the banned Islamist outfit, Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), was responsible for the August 17 serial blasts across the country. Following the admission on Thursday, eight days after the blasts, the authorities beefed up securities across the country fearing fresh attack by the Islamist militants.

A Joint Secretary of the Home Ministry, Mohamamd Mohsin at a press briefing formally said, referring to the confessional statements of the arrested militants that the Mujahideens were involved in the attack that killed two people and injured 150 others. “It seems that the organisation is responsible for the bombings,” Mohsin told reporters adding that four of the detainees confessed to the investigators that they perpetrated the attack.

Although the government identified Sheikh Abdur Rahman, who leads the Mujahideen in Bangladesh, as the mastermind of the bombing, it failed to trace his whereabouts. Police lodged five cases against him in the country s southern Satkhira district.

Meanwhile, Moulana Farid Uddin Masuod, the former director of the state-run Bangladesh Islamic Foundation, was still being quizzed by the members of the Joint Interrogation Cell. He denied his involvement in the bombings.

The investigators are now concentrating on spending of funds received by Masuod from foreign countries, an official source close to the top investigators said. “Masuod received a huge amount of money from foreign donors and spent it within short time,” he said.

Masuod, arrested at Zia International Airport prior to his departure for London on Monday, is now on a five-day remand. Police have sent back 26 detainees to their home districts from the Joint Interrogation Cell in Dhaka as the investigators did not find any evidence to prove their involvement in the bombings.

Newspapers reported on Friday that the government sounded fresh alerts across the country following the intelligence reports that militants might strike again at different places across the country. “By analysing the post-blast threats by Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which resorted to the August 17 blasts, and the statements of the arrested persons, it is suspected that another attack may be carried out at any part of the country any time,’ Daily New Age reported quoting an unnamed intelligence agency official.

Five Sentenced to Death for Plot to Kill Musharraf
Huma Aamir Malik & Agencies

ISLAMABAD, 27 August 2005 — Five people, including a soldier, were sentenced to death for their involvement in a 2003 attempt to kill President Pervez Musharraf in which 15 people lost their lives. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said a low-ranking member of the army and four civilians were handed down the sentence a few days ago, but would not say which court heard the case.

The sentences relate to Christmas Day 2003, when two suicide bombers rammed explosives-laden vehicles into Musharraf’s motorcade in Rawalpindi.

“Five people have been given the death sentence,” Sultan told AFP. It was the second attempt on Musharraf’s life that month. A soldier linked to the other plot — the bombing of a Rawalpindi bridge seconds after Musharraf’s convoy passed on Dec. 14, 2003 — was hanged on Saturday.

Both attacks were allegedly masterminded by the Al-Qaeda network, which opposed Musharraf’s support for the US-led campaign to oust the Taleban regime in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001.

All five have the right to appeal their sentences. The final word will rest with Musharraf himself.

The soldier who was sentenced for the Christmas Day attempt was named as Naik Arshad Mahmood, and the civilians were named as Zubair Ahmed, Rashid Qureshi, Ghulam Sarwar Bhatti and Akhlas Ahmed.

Sultan said another three people convicted of involvement in the plot were jailed. Rana Mohammad Naveed was sentenced to life imprisonment, Adnan Khan got 15 years behind bars and Aamir Sohail 20 years.

“I cannot say where the case was tried,” the military spokesman added. “They were tried under the relevant provisions of law.”

Pakistani authorities in September shot dead local Al-Qaeda lynchpin Amjad Farooqi, a co-planner in the Christmas Day attempt on Musharraf’s life.

In May, Pakistani forces captured Libyan national Abu Faraj Al-Libbi, the Al-Qaeda’s alleged number three. Musharraf has publicly accused Al-Libbi of leading the two failed bids to assassinate him.

Al-Libbi has since been handed over to the custody of the United States.

Last year three extremists were sentenced to 10 years’ hard labor for an earlier plot in Karachi in April 2002, when a remote-control device failed to detonate an explosives-laden van near the president’s motorcade.

On Saturday, officials said former Pakistani soldier Islam Siddiqui, 35, was hanged before dawn in central Pakistan’s Multan prison, for involvement in the Dec. 14 attempt. Musharraf turned down his appeal for clemency.

The general narrowly survived that attack because a high-tech jamming device on the president’s Mercedes had delayed the explosions of five bombs. No one was injured in the attack. In May, a Pakistani Air Force official who escaped from jail late last year after being sentenced to death for the same plot was re-arrested.

British Intelligence Bares Link Between Detainees, Al-Qaeda
Mushtak Parker

LONDON, 26 August 2005 — As British police prepare the first deportations of so-called “preachers of hate and intolerance”, which Home Secretary Charles Clarke yesterday confirmed could happen “very quickly — in the next few days”, new evidence has emerged about the direct terror links of the ten men detained on Aug. 12, including radical Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada, pending deportation.

Evidence presented to the Home Office by British intelligence agency MI5 and Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch, according to the London Evening Standard yesterday, pointed to direct links between some of the detainees and Al-Qaeda and its financing.

Eight of the ten detainees are Algerians who have been granted asylum in the UK over the last few years.

There are believed to belong to a cell operated by Abu Doha, who is in British custody pending extradition proceedings to the US over an alleged plot in 1999 to attack Los Angeles International Airport. The Abu Doha cell is also accused of planning a ricin poison attack on the London tube system and plans to attack popular tourist sites in the West End.

According to the report, the evidence against some of the detainees is clear and overwhelming. One Algerian was an explosives expert who taught at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Another sponsored young British Muslims to travel to Afghanistan for training. A third Algerian supplied satellite telephony to militants in Chechnya who are fighting for independence from Russia. Another of the detainees pleaded guilty in 2002 in a fraud conspiracy, which police said funded international terrorism. Police also found a credit card cloning machine and over 300 card numbers in his home.

The ten detainees have already started appeals proceedings against the detention and deportations. Legal sources say that the eventual cost to the taxpayer of expelling then detainees could exceed 5 million pounds. This would depend on how long the appeal process takes.

Gareth Peirce, the lawyer who represents most of the detainees, said that the appeals could be drawn out to up to three years. However, Clarke’s measures includes ways of speeding up the legal process for deportations.

Despite the “strong” evidence and the sweeping measures announced on Wednesday by Home Secretary Charles Clarke including a list of ‘unacceptable behaviors’ by foreigners which Britian would not tolerate anymore, some of the radicals are effectively challenging the might of the British state.

One Yasser Al-Siri, an Egyptian convicted for the murder of a six-year-old girl who died in a bomb blast in Cairo, yesterday mocked Clarke’s measures saying that the British courts would never allow detainees to be deported to Middle East countries where they would be certainly tortured and abused.

“I am not worried about expulsion,” boasted Al-Siri yesterday in an interview in the Evening Standard, “My legal team thinks it is impossible. I don’t think any British judge can accept any agreement between the UK and any Middle Eastern country like Egypt. Any judge here can take this agreement and throw it in the rubbish basket. I still trust the UK with human rights, while Tony Blair may want to change the laws, there is still the Magna Carta.”

Al-Qaida will retreat to Africa, says general
Richard Norton-Taylor

A senior US military officer yesterday predicted that al-Qaida fighters in Iraq will move to the "vast ungoverned spaces" of the Horn of Africa once conditions in the country get too tough for them.

The warning came from Major General Douglas Lute, director of operations at the US' central command. "There will come a time when Zarqawi will face too much resistance in Iraq and will move on," he predicted, referring to the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born Islamist who has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, kidnappings and beheadings.

Looking ahead to a time when he said Iraq would be "stabilised", Gen Lute predicted that Zarqawi would take the "path of least resistance" and leave for such countries as Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia.

But before that, he suggested, Zarqawi would make a show of force in the run-up to the Iraqi constitutional referendum and subsequent elections. "He has to go down fighting," he said.

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Terrorism Headlines of the Week

Domestic

Bail denied for terror suspects, as prosecutor speaks about imams

SACRAMENTO - A federal magistrate rejected a request for a bond hearing for a Lodi father and son held on terror-related charges.
In a related development, the government's chief prosecutor revealed for the first time why two Lodi religious leaders caught up in the same investigation were deported without being charged with a crime.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale Drozd ruled Tuesday there were no new circumstances that would justify releasing Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer Hayat, 47. In June, both were ordered held without bond on charges of lying to federal investigators about the younger man's alleged attendance at an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
Drozd said there is "an extremely high flight risk" if the two were freed, given their financial and family ties to Pakistan. But he told defense attorneys they can try again by presenting evidence that they can post a higher bail than they had previously proposed.

Umer Hayat's attorney, Johnny Griffin III, said the Hayats will offer to put up as collateral Lodi properties he valued at more than $500,000, though Drozd said even that wouldn't likely be enough to prompt their release pending trial.
The two men are the only ones criminally charged despite a federal investigation into alleged terror activities among Muslims in Lodi, an agricultural town of 62,000 about 35 miles south of Sacramento.

Two Islamic religious leaders were ordered deported to Pakistan after the government said they overstayed their religious visas. They were never charged with any crime, despite the government's allegations that they intended to set up a terror training camp in Lodi.

Source: The Associated Press

Judge OKs Use Of Interview That Led To Al-Arian Probe

TAMPA - Federal prosecutors will be allowed to show jurors excerpts of a 1994 interview Sami Al-Arian gave to a freelance reporter that helped trigger the criminal investigation into Al-Arian and his nonprofit groups.
In a closed-door hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Moody rejected defense objections to showing about 10 minutes of Al-Arian's interview with Steven Emerson for the documentary ``Jihad in America.''
That program claimed law enforcement officials considered Al-Arian's charity the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's primary support organization in the United States. It also sparked a Tampa Tribune investigation published in May 1995 that connected Al-Arian's think tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, to the University of South Florida.

Al-Arian and three other men are on trial on racketeering and conspiracy charges. Prosecutors say the men helped finance and run the terrorist group.
Federal prosecutor Terry Zitek said outtakes from the interview would show jurors that Al-Arian lied to protect an Islamic Jihad cell operating in Tampa.
Defense attorney William Moffitt said prosecutors already have entered evidence in an attempt to make that point, including a series of 1995 calls with a St. Petersburg Times reporter.

Source: Tampa Bay Tribune

FBI Eyeing Islamic Author

The activities of a Garden Grove grocery store owner, who has been identified as the U.S. leader of a little-known radical Islamic group, are under scrutiny by the FBI, an agency spokeswoman said.

Iyad K. Hilal, an Islamic author and philosopher, has lived in Orange County for more than a decade with little attention to his writings or his role in the group.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which means Party of Liberation, has been banned in parts of Europe and the Middle East. After the July 7 bombings in London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair proposed banning the group there.

It advocates a return to the days when all Muslims were governed by a religious leader known as the caliph.
(excerpt)

Source: Los Angeles Times

Prosecutors collect DNA of men targeted in federal terror probe

TORRANCE – Prosecutors collected DNA samples Tuesday from two robbery suspects despite defense concerns that the evidence might be improperly shared with federal authorities investigating the pair in a possible terrorist plot.
A judge agreed to the request by Los Angeles County prosecutors for samples from Levar Haley Washington, 25, and Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21, at a pretrial hearing involving a string of gas station robberies in Southern California.
The two men, who sat quietly during the proceeding, have pleaded not guilty to the robbery counts.

County prosecutors said they planned to use the DNA in the robbery case, but defense attorneys worried that it would be turned over to federal counterterrorism officials investigating the two men in a possible terrorist plot.
"I just want to be extra careful that this isn't a backdoor way of getting some information from my client that they wouldn't ordinarily be able to get," said Jerome Haig, who represents Washington.

Source: The Associated Press

International

Jordan Arrests Key Suspect in Rocket Attack

AMMAN, Jordan, Aug. 22 - The Jordanian government said Monday that it had arrested a prime suspect in the rocket attack on two American warships last week in Aqaba, and for the first time it directly tied the attack to Iraqi insurgents.
Late Monday, state-run Jordanian television announced the arrest and identified the suspect as Muhammad Hassan al-Sihli, a Syrian. The report said Mr. Sihli, who it said was in charge of planning the attack, was part of a terrorist cell that included three Iraqis, including his two sons, Abdullah and Abdelrahman al-Sihli, and another man identified as Muhammad Hamid Hussein.

The cell was reported to be directed by an unidentified insurgent group in Iraq. According to the government statement, the men were "in constant touch with their organization in Iraq during preparation for the attack." But the government stopped short of linking the attack to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of a terrorist group in Iraq who faces a death sentence here for his involvement in previous attacks.
The police were also believed to be searching for a fifth man, a Jordanian blacksmith who may have helped the men organize the attack, former security officials said Monday.

(excerpt)
Source: The New York Times

Syrian suspect killed, two police injured in clash in northern Turkey

ANKARA (AFP) - A Syrian suspect was killed and two officers injured overnight in Macka, northeast Turkey, as gunbattles erupted between police and three suspects they were tracking, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
Anatolia quoted a report by the governorate of Trabzon, to which Macka is attached, identifying the victim as a "terrorist", the term officials use to describe rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) or leftist extremists, although northeastern Turkey is not part of the PKK's usual stomping grounds.

A statement from the local governor's office said the dead person was Syrian. Turkey has previously arrested Syrian nationals on charges of being members of PKK or the Al-Qaeda network.
A first gunbattle erupted when police surrounded a supermarket after being tipped off that the three suspects were inside and one policeman was injured, the agency said.
The three managed to flee but were cornered several hours later and a fresh firefight erupted, in which one suspect was killed and a second policeman was wounded, it said.
A second suspect was captured and the third escaped, Anatolia reported.

Police seized several AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition, hand grenades and C-4 plastic explosives in the suspects' hideout, the governor's office said.
The PKK, which has been designated a terrorist group by both the United States and the European Union, operates mainly in the Kurdish majority southeast Anatolia region where it launched a bloody armed campaign for autonomy in 1984.
The group has stepped up violence in recent months after calling off a five-year unilateral truce in June 2004 on grounds that Ankara's moves to expand Kurdish freedoms were insufficient.

Source: Agence France Presse

Libya says to be taken off U.S. terrorism list

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya expects the United States to remove it from Washington's list of sponsors of terrorism this year to seal their rapprochement after Tripoli abandoned a program of prohibited weapons, the Libyan leader's son said.
"Lifting Libya from this list will take place at the end of this year after a series of steps from both sides," Saif al-Islam Gaddafi told reporters late on Monday.
He did not elaborate on what steps would be taken but said the two countries would exchange ambassadors for the first time in more than three decades, likely in the next few days.

A State Department spokesman said on Monday Libya still had work to do before resuming full diplomatic ties with Washington and being removed from the terrorism list, and declined to say whether there were plans to open a U.S embassy in Tripoli soon.

Source: Reuters

Two Egyptian elite police killed during Sinai sweep

CAIR0 (AFP) - Two senior Egyptian police officers were killed in a bomb blast in the northern Sinai where security forces have launched a sweep for militants behind deadly bombings.
"This morning as police were carrying on their search in Jabal Halal ... two booby-trapped devices exploded, killing two officers and wounding two others," the interior ministry said Thursday.

Police were hunting for "a criminal group implicated in the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks and hiding out in the region", it said, referring to the July 23 bombings in the Sinai resort on the Red Sea that killed almost 70 people.
The official MENA news agency named the dead men as General Mahmud Adel Salam and Lieutenant Colonel Amr Abdelmuneim Gharib and said they belonged to an elite police unit.

According to hospital sources in Al-Arish, a civilian identified as Mohammed Ahmed Higab was also wounded in the clashes and all hopitals in the area were put on a state of alert.
On Wednesday, six policemen were wounded in an explosion in the same area.

Source: Agence France Presse

Spaniard arrested for threats in name of al Qaeda

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police said on Thursday they had arrested a Spanish man on suspicion of sending threatening faxes in the name of al Qaeda.
The man, identified only as J.R.M., would be charged with "making threats in the name of a terrorist group", a police spokesman said.

The faxes were written in Arabic and sent to four or five editorial offices, including newspapers and a television and radio station, the spokesman said.
Newspaper ABC said it had received one of the faxes and that the threat it contained was against the Vatican and connected with the war in Iraq.

Source: Reuters

Egypt's Sweep in Sinai Seeks Terror Links to July Attack

CAIRO, Aug. 23 - Egyptian security forces swept through the craggy mountains of northern Sinai on Tuesday morning, arresting suspects as part of their effort to determine if the attack on Sharm el Sheik last month was solely the work of local citizens or if there was some link to international terrorist groups, government officials said.
The authorities said they were confident that they had caught, killed or at least identified the group of people who carried out the attack that rocked Sharm el Sheik, Egypt's premiere beach resort, on July 23. Those bombings killed more than 60 people and undermined tourism, a cornerstone of the national economy.

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said the authorities were still working with two theories concerning who was actually behind the attack. One theory holds that security forces were so aggressive after the bombing attack on a resort in Taba in October that local people became infuriated and retaliated with strikes against Sharm el Sheik. The other, he said, is that local people were somehow linked to international terrorist groups, like Al Qaeda.
"I don't think that we have enough evidence to prove the second assumption," Mr. Nazif said in an interview with The New York Times on Monday. "So for now we are taking things as they really look and looking at the people living there."

(excerpt)
Source: The New York Times

'Le sheriff' warns on globalisation of terrorism

After hunting down Islamic terrorists for 20 years, often at great personal risk, Jean-Louis Bruguière is better placed than most people to predict al-Qaeda's next move.
France's best known anti-terrorist judge says he was “unfortunately not very surprised” by the July 7 bombings in London. “Since the Madrid attacks [in March 2004] there has been a strong upsurge in the threat to Europe,” says the 62-year-old, nicknamed “le sheriff” for his old habit of carrying a handgun in public.

He says there were signs the UK was likely to be the next target well before July 7. “In my opinion the most interesting attack for analysis is the one in Istanbul [in November 2003]. It is incontestable that the real target was British, with the consulate and HSBC [bank] being hit. It was a direct warning.”

The state visit by President George W. Bush to the UK on the same day as the bombs in Turkey also had great symbolic value, he says. “It is the first time that al-Qaeda interfered with the political agenda of states.”
“The symbolism is a fundamental element that we neglect in the overall problem.” For the terrorists, he says “the issue is not just about the number of victims, it is also the value of the event in a media, political and geopolitical context”.

The UK also faces a particular problem because of its large Pakistani population, he says. “The importance of the radical Pakistan-based organisations linked to al-Qaeda and operating around the world, notably in Europe, is another remark you can make.” He says the UK “is more affected by this problem than other states”.

Source: Financial Times

Howard says Australia could be Al Qaeda target

SYDNEY - Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Friday acknowledged that his country could be a terror target as he responded to a report that Al Qaeda was preparing to attack an Asia-Pacific financial centre such as Sydney.
Howard said he agreed Australia was a potential target after the Financial Times quoted French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere as saying that Sydney, along with Tokyo and Singapore, could be hit by an attack aimed at undermining investor confidence in the region.
“I have said for a long time this country can’t imagine that it’s free from the prospect of a terrorist attack,” he said.
“We are, in my view, well prepared. But the important thing is not to have an effective response mechanism after the attack, the aim is to try and stop it occurring in the first place.
“The best way you do that is by having as good an intelligence as possible and also working very hard to make sure that any people within our own community that might have a disposition to behave like a terrorist is identified and dealt with.”

Earlier this week Howard met with Australian Muslim leaders in a bid to prevent a London-style bombing from being carried out on home soil by disaffected members of the country’s small Islamic community.
Bruguiere told the Financial Times that there was information that countries in the Asia-Pacific region could be Al Qaeda targets.
“We have elements of information that make us think that countries in this region, especially Japan, could have been targeted” by Al Qaeda, he told the newspaper.

Source: Agence France Presse

Britain's Islamist clampdown risks stirring up terror threat: experts

LONDON (AFP) - The terrorist threat in Britain will remain despite a set of new rules by the government to combat Islamic extremism, experts say, warning that the risk may even rise in the short term.
Britain finalised a plan this week to bar or deport foreign Islamist radicals in the wake of the London bombings.

A list of so-called "unacceptable behaviours" is the first concrete sign that the "rules of the game are changing," as promised by British Prime Minster Tony Blair in early August.
The government has embarked on a wide-ranging crackdown on Islamic extremist and other groups in the wake of the July 7 suicide bombings, which killed 56 people, and attempted copycat attacks on July 21.

But Robert Ayres, a security expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the moves were too little, too late.
"In 2003, the British intelligence services revealed that over 1,200 British citizens had gone through terror training camps in Afghanistan," he told AFP.

"What the British government has said thus far is that they're going to try to deport 10 foreign nationals," Ayres said.
"Given the order of magnitude of the potential terrorist problem within Britain I do not believe deporting 10 individuals is going to make a substantial difference one way or the other."

The 10 foreigners -- mostly Arabs, including Abu Qatada, the 44-year-old Jordanian who has been described as Al-Qaeda's "ambassador" in Europe -- were arrested on August 11 and face deportation.

Source: Agence France Presse

7 charged in Jordan with plotting to attack Israel seek acquittal

AMMAN - The lawyer for seven militants accused of planning to attack foreign tourists, including Israelis, in Jordan and launch cross border attacks against Israel urged the military court yesterday to acquit them for lack of evidence.
The seven men and one fugitive, who is believed to be hiding in Syria, are charged with conspiring to commit acts of terrorism and endangering Jordan's relations with an unnamed "foreign country" - a reference to Israel, with whom Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.
The plot was foiled in February when the seven men - mostly of Palestinian origin - were arrested. If convicted, they could face the death penalty.

Attorney Zuhair Abul-Ragheb argued before the State Security Court that no proof exists that his clients - who have pleaded not guilty - intended to carry out a crime. The trial started in June.

Source: The Associated Press

'The other jihad'

The mosque stood empty beside the road in a Christian town in Kenya. Funded by Saudis, it wasn't meant for worshippers. It was meant to stake a claim.
The mosque annoyed the locals. Windows were broken. A goat grazed in the garbage-speckled yard. Yet that shabby mosque was part of an extremist campaign that threatens widespread strife in the years ahead.

On a trip to Kenya and Tanzania last month, I saw recently built mosques wherever I went. Even along the predominantly Muslim coast, there were far more mosques and madrassahs than the worshippers needed. I counted seven mosques along one street in a Mombasa slum — most of them new but neglected.

The construction boom is part of what my personal observation convinces me is "the other jihad," the slow-roll attempt by fundamentalists from the Arabian Peninsula to reclaim East Africa for the faith of the Prophet. We dismiss Osama bin Laden's dream of re-establishing the caliphate, Islam's bygone empire, as madness. But Saudis, Yemenis, Omanis and oil-rich Gulf Arabs are every bit as determined as bin Laden to reassert Muslim domination of the lands Islam once ruled.

No region is as vulnerable as Africa. The differences between the Saudi ruling family and bin Laden aren't so much about goals as about methods. The Saudis were furious over the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam not because of the viciousness of the acts, but because the attacks threatened to call the West's attention to quiet subversion by fundamentalist Wahhabis in the region.

Source: USA Today

Militant groups vow revenge after five die in Israeli raid
(and Blah Blah Blah)

RAMALLAH - The militant Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades vowed on Thursday to extract “earthshaking” revenge for the killings of five Palestinians in an Israeli army raid.
Israeli soldiers on a search and arrest operation entered the Tulkarm refugee camp and a gun battle broke out in which the five were killed.
Israeli military sources said all five were armed and had been involved in previous attacks against Israel. One of the men killed is believed to have had a hand in planning the suicide bombings outside a Tel Aviv nightclub in February, which killed five Israelis.

Palestinian sources confirmed those targeted in the raid were suspected militants from Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa, the Fatah party’s military wing. Hospital and security sources said the dead included a 14-year-old boy, were shot and killed.
Palestinian and Israeli officials said the Israeli army unit entered the camp in the northern West Bank city to arrest Islamic Jihad militants, and a firefight broke out.
Palestinian sources said the targeted men were suspected militants from the Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of the ruling Fatah party.

Source: Deutsche Presse Agentur

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