I think of the super secret terrorist prisons as an Easter egg hunt.......they are in plain sight, if you know where to look.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1538138/posts
Terror threat to 'crowded areas' (Nationwide
Warning in UK)
UK Times ^ | Dec. 11, 2005 | David Leppard
Posted on 12/10/2005 9:47:52 PM PST by FairOpinion
SCOTLAND YARD has issued a nationwide alert that Islamist terrorist
cells may be plotting a Christmas bombing campaign. The warning
was distributed to police chiefs nine days ago by the Yard’s
anti-terrorist branch. It follows a series of operations by police and
MI5 aimed at disrupting possible attacks by terrorists linked to
Al-Qaeda.
The latest warning was sent to the chief constables of the 51 forces in
Britain on December 2. It said there was evidence to suggest that
Islamist terrorists were planning to carry out bomb attacks against
“crowded areas” such as shopping centres, football grounds and train
stations.
Senior officers say the alert is not routine and are to increase patrols
and searches of potential suspects.
Whitehall officials say Britain remains on the second highest state of
alert, Severe (specific). It was raised from the third highest state,
Severe (general) to the highest, Critical, on July 7, the day of the
London suicide bombings.
It was due to have been lowered on July 21, but the four failed attacks
of that day delayed the decision. It was reduced to Severe (specific) in
mid-August. Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner,
revealed two weeks ago that since then police had foiled two further
attacks on Britain. Senior police officers have briefed the cabinet that
the threat remained high.
Blair said police are preparing for attacks in the next few months. “The
sky is dark,” he said. “Intelligence exists to suggest that other groups
will attempt to attack Britain in the coming months.”
Terrorists linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,
are feared to have established a network in Britain. Some are involved
in recruiting young Muslim men to travel to Iraq to fight the coalition.
Others are believed to be planning suicide attacks in Britain itself.
Patrick Mercer, the Tory homeland security spokesman, said he was
concerned about further attacks against the underground system:
“The government needs to explain what further efforts it plans to
make the tube safer.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1535747/posts
Oil prices climb after Al-Qaeda call for attacks on oil
facilities
AFP ^ | 7-Dec-2005
Posted on 12/07/2005 9:28:32 AM PST by jmc1969
Oil prices rose, holding above 60 dollars per barrel in New York after
Al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared to call for
attacks on oil installations in the Middle East.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in January,
added 45 cents to 60.39 dollars per barrel in electronic dealing on
Wednesday.
In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for January delivery
gained 55 cents to 58.16 dollars per barrel.
"This morning (on Thursday) light crude futures were higher after a
top Al-Qaeda official urged attacks on oil sites in the Middle East,"
analysts at the Sucden brokerage firm said.
"In a video, Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri called on
mujahideen to concentrate their attacks on Muslims' 'stolen' oil."
(Excerpt) Read more at todayonline.com ...
Posted on 12/10/2005 10:19:19 PM PST by rhainw
A senior State Department official is warning that terrorists are continuing to seek nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for use in future attacks. "If terrorists acquire these weapons, they are likely to employ them, with potentially catastrophic effects," said Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and the senior Bush administration arms proliferation policy-maker.
Mr. Joseph also said the U.S. government will not back off from sanctions imposed on an Asian bank that the Treasury Department said was part of the North Korean government's illegal counterfeiting and money-laundering program.
On terrorism, Mr. Joseph said a well-organized terrorist group with technical expertise could fashion a crude nuclear device once it obtains the fissile material for the bomb's fuel.
Biological weapons also would be used in an attack by terrorists because of the availability of dual-use equipment and access to pathogens, some of which occur naturally, he said. "The bioterror challenge presents a low-cost means of a potentially high-impact attack,"
Mr. Joseph said in a speech Friday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. A copy of his remarks was obtained by The Washington Times.
"We cannot rest as long as enough material for even one nuclear weapon remains unsecured," he said.
U.S. intelligence officials have said al Qaeda was working on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
Documents obtained from al Qaeda facilities there showed that the group had conducted research and some experiments.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden also has said that obtaining nuclear arms is a religious duty for his extremist followers.
On North Korea, Mr. Joseph said the administration will not back off the sanctions imposed in September on Macao-based Banco Delta Asia. /
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Sami's Guardian Angel - FBI MUSLIM AGENT: Gamal Abdel-Hafiz
Sami's Guardian Angel By
Paul Sperry FrontPageMagazine.com | December 9, 2005
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20487
"I didn't see the evidence," explained one male juror who this week voted to acquit former Florida professor Sami al-Arian on charges he conspired to help Palestinian terrorists kill Israelis and Americans.
Don't blame federal prosecutors for that. They did the best they could with the reams of circumstantial evidence they had, which was powerful enough by itself to sway even al-Arian's defense team to admit he had at least "some affiliation" with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and may have cheered news of the terror group's attacks.
But prosecutors could have had an open-and-shut case if it weren't for a reluctant FBI agent who in hindsight turned out to be al-Arian's guardian angel. Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, a devout Muslim from Egypt who speaks fluent Arabic, refused to secretly tape-record his fellow Muslim brother al-Arian in defiance of repeated requests from FBI colleagues working the al-Arian case.
And that ultimately hurt the government's chances of putting al-Arian away. Rewind to 1998 That year, Abdel-Hafiz met a Muslim activist through a friend at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center outside Washington, a hard-line Wahhabi mosque the agent regularly attended at the time, and the same mosque that would later give aid and comfort to some of the 9/11 hijackers. The two men exchanged business cards. Not long afterward, Abdel-Hafiz got a call from al-Arian in Florida.
The Tampa professor and Muslim activist said he got the agent's business card from the mutual acquaintance and wanted to know if he would do him a favor and, among other things, poke around the FBI to see if it had ever opened an investigation into alleged death threats against terrorism researcher Steve Emerson. Al-Arian wanted to try to catch the pro-Israel Emerson possibly exaggerating claims he made in congressional testimony about such threats. Remarkably, Abdel-Hafiz agreed to look into the issue for al-Arian, bureau sources tell me.
Hearing of the encounter, the FBI's Tampa field office asked Abdel-Hafiz to follow up by asking al-Arian several questions related to a counterterrorism case they were building against him -- and secretly record his answers. Abdel-Hafiz agreed to speak to al-Arian by phone but said he would not record the conversation without al-Arian's knowledge. The lead Tampa agent on the case, Barry Carmody, was scandalized by his refusal, calling it "outrageous."
Then Abdel-Hafiz met, unexpectedly, with al-Arian at an American Muslim Council conference in Washington and wrote a summary of their conversation, which he had not coordinated with Tampa. The report he filed was not well received by Carmody and his team of investigators in Tampa -- or by FBI agents John Vincent and Robert Wright, whose Chicago investigation dovetailed with the al-Arian case.
"After Gamal had a conversation with Sami al-Arian, he made a lot of self-serving statements for al-Arian and denigrated the FBI agent (Carmody) who was investigating the case," says Vincent, who also had a run-in with Abdel-Hafiz over his refusal to wear a wire to record another Muslim under terror investigation -- Soliman Biheiri, who is tied to al-Arian (investigators found the his phone number in Biheiri's computer address book). Abdel-Hafiz tried to explain to Vincent that a "Muslim does not record another Muslim."
"So we knew there was a problem," Vincent adds. "We had suspicions about whether Gamal would write down conversations accurately."
What's more, "There were also complaints that he was meeting with subjects of investigations in Washington without advising the Washington field office," he says. Abdel-Hafiz, 46, is a good friend and former college roommate of Biheiri's Washington-based ex-bookkeeper, Abbas Ebrahim, as I first revealed in my book, "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington."
Agent Carmody says Abdel-Hafiz hurt the al-Arian probe by refusing to record the professor in the bureau's effort to get him to admit financing Palestianian terrorist acts. Al-Arian even bragged to Abdel-Hafiz that the Tampa office did not have a strong case against him -- thanks in large part to Abdel-Hafiz.
'Sami is a very smart man' In an exclusive interview for my book, I asked Abdel-Hafiz why he did not record al-Arian at their private meeting. And he told me, simply, "I had no recording equipment with me." Hmm.
But then he went on to say the Tampa office of the FBI handled the case clumsily. "These people think Sami al-Arian is an idiot," he says. "But Sami al-Arian is a very smart man."
Or at least smart enough to get a little help from a friend on the inside.
Abdel-Hafiz, a devout Sunni Muslim whose Egyptian father is known as a Quran memorizer, showed a pattern of pro-Islamist behavior, say agents who worked with him. Yet FBI headquarters overlooked it and even promoted him.
Carmody, Vincent, and Wright all complained to headquarters about Abdel-Hafiz twice refusing on religious grounds to tape-record Muslim terrorist suspects. Despite that, he was handpicked in early 2001 by former FBI Director Louis Freeh to become the FBI's deputy legal attache at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- a key post in the battle against al-Qaida, which had hit American military barracks inside Saudi and a warship in neighboring Yemen.
After 9/11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers turned out to be Saudi nationals, Abdel-Hafiz was in a prime position to run down leads in the Saudi capital. Only, that didn't happen, at least not as often as headquarters had hoped. Agents back in Washington complained about his performance there, saying they were not getting answers to the hundreds of leads they were sending him in Riyadh. Abdel-Hafiz says he was one of only two people manning the office there and was further hobbled by an antiquated computer system.
But he and his boss Wilfred Rattigan, a black convert to Islam, had nonetheless found time to fly off to Mecca for the hajj, where they surrendered their FBI cell phones to Saudi nationals and were out of contact with officials back in the U.S. who were trying to ring them up about investigations into al-Qaida and 9/11. Both Rattigan and Abdel-Hafiz, who have since been reassigned within the bureau, wore traditional Muslim headgear and robes while on the job in Saudi Arabia, further outraging fellow agents.
When a senior supervisor was sent to the Riyadh office nearly a year after 9/11, she found secret documents strewn all over the office, some even wedged between cabinets. She also found a huge backlog of boxes each filled with three feet of paper containing secret, time-sensitive leads. Much of the materials, including information on Saudi airline pilots, had not been translated or reviewed.
It's anyone's guess how many terror cases were compromised in the Saudi office. But agents who worked with, or tried to work with, Abdel-Hafiz on domestic terror cases have no doubt he hurt their efforts to put away al-Arian. And if prosecutors don't retry al-Arian on any of the counts the jury deadlocked over, investigators fear they might lose momentum in a related terror-financing case in the Washington suburbs involving the so-called Safa group -- a case that is potentially bigger than the al-Arian case.
Safa case now in jeopardy?
A key conduit in the alleged Safa terror-financing network, a think tank called the International Institute of Islamic Thought, or IIIT, is headquartered in a three-story brick office building at 500 Grove Street in Herndon, Va. (this site and others raided after 9/11 can be viewed by clicking on the "Wahhabi Corridor" link posted on the companion website to my book at http://www.sperryfiles.com). Investigators traced funds from IIIT to al-Arian, who had been accused of heading the U.S. wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Taha al-Alwani, an Islamic scholar at IIIT, was an alleged unindicted co-conspirator in the al-Arian indictment. Investigators have accused al-Alwani -- who also heads one of the nation's most prestigious Islamic institutions, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (which has trained Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and U.S. prison system) -- of taking steps to conceal alleged payments to Palestinian terrorists. In a letter seized by investigators, al-Alwani advised his pal al-Arian to construct a "facade" to disguise a $50,000 donation to one of al-Arian's alleged PIJ terror fronts in the U.S.
Despite the government investigation, IIIT is still in business, still listed in the lobby directory on the second floor of the Herndon building.
What's more, IIIT president al-Alwani once signed a copy of a fatwah declaring that violent "jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine," according to a federal affidavit for a search warrant used to raid the think tank in 2002. In a search of al-Arian's home computer, investigators back in Tampa found copies of a document called "The Manifesto of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine," which shuns any peaceful resolution to the conflict with Israel. It also calls the U.S. "the great Satan America."
Another Safa group leader, Jamal Barzinji, is also directly connected to al-Arian -- and closely tied to Palestinian terror causes, according to the same affidavit.
"Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] but also with Hamas," alleges senior federal agent David Kane in the affidavit, which was also used to obtain warrants to search the homes of Barzinji and his partner al-Alwani.
In addition, Barzinji is a long-time associate of al-Qaida fundraiser Abdurahman Alamoudi, now serving time in federal prison. Al-Arian is also close to Alamoudi.
Some of the information gleaned from the Herndon raids aided the conviction of Alamoudi. And investigators say their investigation of Barzinji, al-Alwani and their Saudi-backed Safa group entities is still alive.
But they had hoped for a conviction of al-Arian, because it would have moved the Safa case forward. "We were hoping for a snowball effect," says a law enforcement official who originally helped the feds build the case.
Right now he says only a small share of the hard drives and other materials confiscated from the homes and offices raided more than three years ago have been fully translated. "They don't have the damn resources," explains the official, who works with the FBI and the National Counter Terrorism Center in McLean, Va. "They don't have the (Arabic) language skills or computer forensic personnel to go through it all. And yet it's a gold mine of information."
Secret plot to 'infiltrate' Washington
One of the more disturbing developments from both investigations so far is the allegation that al-Arian and al-Alwani and other Islamic activists in the Washington area may have hatched a secret plan, according to other confiscated documents, to "infiltrate the sensitive intelligence agencies" in Washington, and spy for the enemy.
Both Alamoudi and al-Arian were no strangers to the White House. During the trial, al-Arian's lawyers used his meetings with senior government officials, including Karl Rove in the White House, to defend him against charges he was involved in terrorist activities. They argued that official Washington would not have embraced a terrorist (even though they had embraced convicted terrorist Alamoudi).
But that may have been part of the plan. Al-Arian had ingratiated himself with Rove's best friend Grover Norquist, a powerful GOP operative in Washington sympathetic to Muslim causes. Norquist, whose name was invoked by al-Arian's lawyers in the trial, started an Islamic lobbying group several years ago and recently married a Palestinian Muslim activist. The Islamic group, which was founded with seed money from Alamoudi, has placed a number of questionable Muslim activists -- including the son of a Wahhabi preacher who helped Osama bin Laden's second in command raise money -- inside the Bush administration, including the White House, the Transportation Department and the Homeland Security Department, as well as other sensitive agencies.
Al-Arian, who has met privately with Norquist in his Washington offices, has said that Norquist "delivered" on his promise to get President Bush, via Rove, to agree to end the government's use of undisclosed evidence to deport suspected Middle Eastern terrorists. A paid lobbyist for Norquist's Islamic Institute -- David Hossein Safavian -- in fact lobbied the government hard on that issue, as I first reported in my book. (Safavian also shows up on Senate lobbying records as a paid agent for terrorist Alamoudi.) And before 9/11, al-Arian was scheduled to meet with Bush in person to discuss the issue. It seems plausible to some investigators now that al-Arian may have also got Norquist to deliver on the placement -- or infiltration -- operation.
Even Safavian ended up inside the White House with a high-level job, before getting caught up in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal and losing his coveted position.
And loyal Muslim brother Abdel-Hafiz all the while was inside the FBI also doing al-Arian favors -- and he is still working there as an agent with access to classified information. And believe it or not, the bureau is busy hiring more Muslim agents like him.
That's right: before Abdel-Hafiz graduated from the FBI academy in 1995, there were no other Muslim agents in the bureau. Now there are seven, and FBI Director Robert Mueller is busy recruiting more.
"We are recruiting Muslims as special agents," he said. "We have been very active in pushing more for Muslim Americans to consider a career with the FBI."
How comforting.
Paul Sperry, formerly Washington bureau chief of Investor's Business Daily, is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington" (Nelson Current, 2005). Email:
sperry@sperryfiles.com.
(Note: The backdrop to this story is the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement that gave rise to Hamas, PIJ and al-Qaida. The more famous members of this Muslim mafia include Osama bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But it has a large American presence, too, and its known American members include Alamoudi. Before going to the slammer, he attended 9/11-tied Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., which is run by several members of the Muslim Brotherhood who also run the Muslim American Society, or MAS, which is headquartered in neighboring Alexandria, Va. -- in the same office park where bin Laden's nephew ran a charitable front.
Investigators believe MAS operates as the U.S. front for the Brotherhood. Dar al-Hijrah's original deed of trust was signed by Alamoudi pal Barzinji. Their associate Biheiri is also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Biheiri's ex-bookkeeper is pals with FBI agent Abdel-Hafiz, who is from Egypt, birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdel-Hafiz also attended Dar al-Hijrah. I will stop there.)
Al Qaeda’s Passage to China
"The skirmishing between Washington, Moscow and Beijing over who
should tackle the al Qaeda menace â€" if anyone â€" had the result of
opening the door for al Qaeda to move a force across half the globe
from Iraq to the Far East unhindered and plant it in western China and
eastern Uzbekistan."
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1118
Al Qaeda’s Passage to China
Exclusively from DEBKA-Net-Weekly 230
December 6, 2005, 10:26 PM (GMT+02:00)
In mid-September, Al Qaeda diverted a small but potent force from Iraq
to a new mission: the opening of a new front in China. The unit was
smuggled into the Chinese border town of Kushi in the Xinjiang Uygur
province in November, after a meandering journey traced by
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror sources. There, the terrorists were
quickly absorbed by the al Qaeda infrastructure of local Uygur Muslim
extremist cells.
(See DEBKA Exclusive Map attached to this article.)
http://www.debka.com/pictures/Kyrg_Afg_t.jpg
Their plan of campaign in the first stage was to reach Beijing,
Guangzhou and Shanghai for strikes against US embassies and
consulates, American firms operating in China and American tourists.
(This al Qaeda group was previously revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 229
on Nov. 11 [A Jihadist Airlift] as having set out from Baghdad between
mid-September and early October, stopping over in Qatar and proceeding
to Konduz in northern Afghanistan for special training.)
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources report the terrorists slipped north from
Konduz into Tajikistan and onto the Kyrgyz section of the strategic
Fergana Valley which straddles Central Asia. There, they rendezvoused
at two places, Osh and Jalal-Abad close to the Kyrgyz-Uzbekistan
border, establishing jumping-off points for both China and Central
Asia.
The Islamist terrorists were guided from Konduz into Kyrgyzstan by
armed men of al Qaeda’s operational arm in Uzbekistan, the MUI, which
also has tentacles in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as training
camps in the Fergana Valley. The commander of these cells is Tahir
Yuldashev, an old comrade of Osama bin Laden who fought alongside him
in Afghanistan. In 2004, Yuldashev returned to Tashkent from the
badlands of Pakistan’s South Waziristan and was ordered to prepare
facilities in Osh and Jalal-Abad for the incoming terrorist unit. His
payment was a section of the force to boost his campaign against Uzbek
president Karimov.
The unit from Konduz accordingly divided into two heads â€" the largest
proceeding from Osh into China and fetching up in Kushi, while the
second group assembled in Jalal-Abad, turned west and crossed into
Uzbekistan to set up base in the Fergana town of Andijon.
American and British military and intelligence officials picked up the
group’s arrival at the Konduz training facility, but decided after
consultation that the large-scale forces needed to eradicate the
facility would be hard to muster. They therefore resolved to await
events and meanwhile find out where the mysterious al Qaeda force was
heading.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources, Washington
reported the arrival to Moscow, hoping the counter-terror-trained
Russian Motorized Rifle Division 201 stationed in Uzbekistan would
step in to wipe out the al Qaeda intruders. The Russians declined to
take action, but said they would not object to Beijing sending Chinese
troops over the border to tackle the incoming terrorists.
This was the first time Moscow had ever consented to the Chinese
military stepping into Central Asian soil and joining the war on
terror in that region.
Clearly, the Kremlin, which frowns on American military bases and
movements in Central Asia, was not eager to pull American chestnuts
out of the fire
The skirmishing between Washington, Moscow and Beijing over who should
tackle the al Qaeda menace â€" if anyone â€" had the result of opening
the
door for al Qaeda to move a force across half the globe from Iraq to
the Far East unhindered and plant it in western China and eastern
Uzbekistan.
The Chinese government was caught totally unprepared and did its best
to tune out the loud alarums sounded by Chinese military and security
chiefs.
However, on November 9, the Chinese police alerted the US embassy in
Beijing to a possible attack by Islamic rebels on luxury hotels
throughout China. The US embassy accordingly advised American visitors
to “review their plans†to stay at four- and five-star hotels in
China
over the coming week.
A sharper notice was issued in the southern Chinese town of Guangzhou
relaying “credible information†that a terrorist threat may exist
against official US government facilities in the city. American
citizens in south China were advised to remain alert to possible
threats.
China’s Ministry of Public Security responded to these warnings,
which
were obviously sourced in Chinese police circles, with anger. A
statement accused an unnamed “foreign citizen†of fabricating the
so-called attack on four- and five-star hotels in China. The Chinese
foreign ministry chipped in with, “Chinese public security has never
issued such a warning for foreigners on the hotel issue,†its
spokesman told reporters. “Chinese hotels are safe!†he added.
US officials diplomatically withdrew their terror alert notice.
However, while Chinese officials are doing their utmost to calm fears
that could affect the tourist industry, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s
counter-terror sources affirm that a terror alert is indeed in force
in Chinese cities.
http://www.zaman.com/ ?bl=hotnews&alt=&trh=20051210&hn=27372
Iraqi Interior Minister: Terror Attacks Decreased 70%
By AA Published: Saturday, December 10, 2005 zaman.com
Iraq Interior Minister Bayan Jabir said terror attacks in the country decreased by 70 percent and no escapee has been arrested at Syrian borders for two weeks.
In the statement to Kuwaiti reporters, Jabir indicates this figure was based on the latest statistics.
The decrease in the number of these attacks is a big success, the minister noted, declaring by the end of next year Iraqi army could take over security.
The US Army had declared after the months long operations against insurgents, suicide attacks had decreased to the lowest level in November and roadside bombings had been at its lowest level since last June. 13:23
