Posted on 03/26/2006 5:13:04 AM PST by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
Edited on 03/26/2006 6:10:41 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1761584/posts?page=639#639
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603333/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761584/posts?page=622#622
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Note: Adding to post no. 622:
http://www.internet-haganah.com/harchives/005852.html
11 January 2007
"Allahu Akbar!
Three jailed in Bosnia for planning suicide attack"
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stepping back in time...
http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/005490.html
01 March 2006
"The Decline and Fall of Irhabi007: Episode Two, The Bust"
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The point of this story is simple but important:
There is no wall, no dividing line, nothing separating online jihadist activity from off-line/real-world jihadist activity (i.e terrorism). The two are inseparable.
The story of how Irhabi007 came to reside in Belmarsh Prison starts in Bosnia."
639 posted on 01/11/2007 1:18:20 PM PST by Cindy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1761584/posts?page=982#982
http://www.google.com/search?q=irhabi007+%2B+threatmatrix&hl=en&lr=&filter=0
http://www.google.com/search?q=irhabi007+%2B+threat+matrix&hl=en&lr=&start=10&sa=N&filter=0
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=irhabi007
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=terrorist007
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=YounisTsouli
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http://cryptome.org/jihad-dk.pdf
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Note: We've covered this here already, but posting this article (snippets) for archival purposes.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070111.MAXIMUS11/TPStory/TPInternational/Europe/
POSTED ON 11/01/07
"First 'homegrown' terrorists convicted
Swede gets 15 years; related hearings to start Monday in Canada, U.K."
COLIN FREEZE
With a report from Reuters
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "A teenaged Swede and his two accomplices yelled "God is Great" in a Bosnian courtroom yesterday, as they were convicted of plotting a suicide-bombing attack.
Mirsad Bektasevic, 19, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a planned terrorist strike in Sarajevo. He is better known as "Maximus," the code name he used to post messages on jihadist Internet forums."
The sentences represent the first successful prosecutions against members of an alleged global network of "homegrown" extremists, whose tendrils stretched from the Middle East to Western countries such as Canada.
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "In the months after the Bosnian arrests in 2005, authorities moved to round up suspects in London, Copenhagen, Dhaka, Atlanta and, finally, Toronto -- where a total of 18 young suspects were arrested last June."
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "A variety of distinct terrorist conspiracies have been alleged, but in all cases the ringleaders stand accused of taking inspiration from al-Qaeda and from one another."
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The extent of the network began to unravel in October of 2005, after Sarajevo police arrested Maximus. They searched his apartment and found martyrdom videos and a suicide bomber's belt laden with explosives. The plan was to strike an unspecified target in the capital of Bosnia, the war-torn European country that has long been a crossroads for extremists.
"These gentlemen were connected through websites, e-mail and mobile phones to other jihadists planning attacks in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe," Aaron Weisburd, director of a U.S.-based anti-terrorism Web service, told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail yesterday.
"They represent the 'new al-Qaeda.' ''
He added that Maximus was a "high-value" suspect whose case highlights the fact that "the Internet is a place, and terrorists dwell in that cyberspace and use it as a virtual safe haven."
Global anti-terrorism agencies are cagey about how their investigations are flowing together, but the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has said these investigations are linked.
Mr. Weisburd is acknowledged as a leading authority on extremist networks. His site, known as Internet Haganah, exists to expose jihadist activity on the Internet.
One suspect that Haganah has long tracked is Younis Tsouli, a 22-year-old arrested in Britain two days after the Bosnian suspects were rounded up. It is alleged that he is the hacker who went by the name Terrorist 007 on the Internet. Now charged with conspiracy to murder, plotting an explosion and stealing money, his trial is set to begin Monday in London.
Preliminary hearings for four young people charged in the Toronto case are also to begin on Monday. Like most of the 18 accused, the youngest suspects are charged with attending a terrorist training camp. A core group of seven adults further stands accused of plotting to detonate truck bombs against government targets.
The alleged ringleader of the Toronto plot was reportedly in contact with Terrorist 007 as well as two other young men now facing trial in the United States. The Atlanta-based suspects allegedly videotaped U.S. targets in Washington and sent the surveillance to Terrorist 007 in Britain."
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "A related case involving alleged extremists in Denmark is also under way."
QUOTE:
http://www.internet-haganah.com/harchives/005877.html
17 January 2007
Case of Tariq Al-Daour, Waseem Mughal and Younis Tsouli
Case described as "For Application to Extend Custody Time Limit - Case to be listed for Further Mention/PAD on 23-Mar-2007" per notice here: www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk
Posted on 17 January 2007 @ 19:21
http://www.sofir.org/sarchives/005905.php
07 February 2007
"'Favorites' of the Madrid bombers"
SNIPPET: "Infamous jihadi 'Irhabi007' celebrating the Madrid bombings
with pictures of the dead and dying"
ADDING More info/links to post no. 25:
http://www.sofir.org/sarchives/005905.php
http://www.internet-haganah.com/harchives/005909.html
http://internet-haganah.org/hmedia/12mar04-jihadis_all_atwitter.jpg
PHOTO CAPTION: "nfamous jihadi 'Irhabi007' celebrating the Madrid bombings
with pictures of the dead and dying. He posted this picture on
the al-Ansar forum (www.al-ansar.biz), a members-only jihadi site
known to have been accessed by one or more of the Madrid bombers."
Correcting the photo caption in post no. 26:
PHOTO CAPTION: "Infamous jihadi 'Irhabi007' celebrating the Madrid bombings
with pictures of the dead and dying. He posted this picture on
the al-Ansar forum (www.al-ansar.biz), a members-only jihadi site
known to have been accessed by one or more of the Madrid bombers."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1795213/posts
"Terrorists Take Recruitment Efforts Online (60 Minutes)"
CBS News - 60 Minutes ^ | March 2, 2007 | Scott Pelley
Posted on 03/04/2007 4:23:47 PM PST by FreedomPoster
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1795213/posts?page=14#14
Note: This is just a snippet. Read the whole thing.
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http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/topstories_story_063203728.html
Mar 4, 2007 7:35 pm US/Central
"Terrorists Take Recruitment Efforts Online"
(CBS News)
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "That power is so menacing, General Custer wouldn’t say anything at all about how the U.S. is fighting the Jihadi Internet online. But 60 Minutes found other Americans who have started their own counter attack. Aaron Weisburd joined the battle from his home in Illinois.
"I'm in Carbondale. In the middle of middle America. Waging war against them. It makes a very small world. What works in a cave in Afghanistan, you know, works in a living room in Carbondale," Weisburd says.
Weisburd was so angered by what he saw on the Web that he quit his job as a programmer and now spends every day attacking extremist websites.
His goal is to mess with them online. "Absolutely. In as many different ways as I can," he says.
And he says he's "sowing seeds of distrust."
Weisburd cooperates with the FBI, Homeland Security and British police, all of whom know him as unrelenting. He blows the whistle on the Web sites and asks Internet providers to take them down. He says he’s helped shut down nearly a thousand.
Asked how he would describe what he does, Weisburd tells Pelley, "Part of it is, you know, rodeo clown, essentially. I jump into the ring and make the bulls angry and they come after me. And I do that to good effect. That's my own particular expertise, if you will."
"Tell me about that," Pelley says.
"Well, the Irhabi 007 case comes to mind. I simply publicized what he was saying, made fun of him, called him out and it worked," Weisburd says.
Irhabi 007 was the networking genius who helped al Qaeda regroup online after the U.S. forced them out of Afghanistan. With an ego to match, he was a legend in his own mind.
This is the kind of thing Irhabi 007 made possible for al Qaeda, posting videos long before it was common on YouTube.
"Well, he solved problems. They had content distribution. They had problems moving large files, he solved that problem," Weisburd explains.
He solved it by hacking into computers around the world and using them to store and share terrorist files. He even got into a computer system owned by the Arkansas Department of Transportation.
The Arkansas terror files were discovered and removed. And in 2005, so was Irhabi 007. Scotland Yard, raided a London house in a terrorism case involving credit card fraud. They arrested a 22-year-old Moroccan named Younis Tsouli. Later they discovered Tsouli was Terrorist 007. The network administrator was off line, but his network is still pulling recruits into jihad.
"If you want to go wage jihad, you've got to let them know that there's a jihad going on and lead them to believe that this is something they want to be involved in. And so these videos are essentially, you know, all recruitment films, you know, join the army, seen wonderful places, kill people," Weisburd says."
Interesting read bookmark.
Adding a link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-716973547969999069&q=jihad&hl=en
"Jihad.com 60 Minutes"
Avg: 4 ratings
14 min 38 sec - Mar 5, 2007
Adding 1 link to post no. 30:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1793738/posts?page=593#593
http://www.internet-haganah.com/harchives/005972.html
22 March 2007
"Can you say 'sub judice'?"
Thanks to bd476 for the ping to this thread.
Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1817993/posts
A World Wide Web of terrorist plotting
Los Angeles Times ^ | April 16, 2007 | Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writer
Posted on 04/16/2007 12:25:32 AM PDT by bd476
The Internet has become a virtual operations center replacing the Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Bosnia.
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA — They never met face to face, but the two young zealots became brother warriors in the new land of jihad: the Internet.
Investigators say their bond made them central figures in a terrorism network that spanned eight countries, involved more than 30 suspects and hatched plots in Washington, Toronto, London and Sarajevo.
Maximus was the online moniker of Mirsad Bektasevic, a lanky Bosnian refugee with a dark stare and a hunger for action. At 18, he returned from Sweden to this war-scarred city, where he assembled an arsenal for a suicide attack and filmed a “martyrdom” video.
Irhabi007 was Younis Tsouli, a Moroccan living in London with his diplomat father, investigators say. Hunched day and night over his computer, the diminutive 22-year-old allegedly served as a pioneering cyber-operative for Al Qaeda, oversaw Bektasevic’s mission and was at the hub of other plots.
Their case shows that the Internet has become a virtual training camp and operations center replacing the Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Bosnia that produced a legion of fighters, formed them into cells and launched them at targets.
The soldiers of this looser network were more technologically and culturally agile than the grim fanatics who executed attacks in the past, according to trial evidence, court documents and interviews with investigators, defense lawyers, family and friends. They spoke more English than Arabic and listened to the rap of Kanye West along with the harangues of Abu Musab Zarqawi...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Note: The following text is a quote:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/016174.php
April 24, 2007
Al-Qaeda’s ‘British propagandists’ on trial
An update on this story. “Al-Qaeda’s ‘British propagandists’,” by Sean O’Neill for The Times:
Violent al-Qaeda propaganda, including footage of the beheading of hostages, was distributed around the globe by computer by young men sitting in their bedrooms in Britain, a court heard yesterday.
Three men appeared before Woolwich Crown Court accused of inciting terrorism abroad. They were said to have a “close affiliation” with al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Younis Tsouli, 23, Waseem Mughal, 24, and Tariq al-Daour, 21, allegedly played important roles in al-Qaeda’s “media war” and had massive quantities of films, audio recordings, books and documents promoting the extremist ideology of Osama bin Laden and global jihad.
Among the footage found in police raids on their homes in London and Kent were films of the beheading of the British engineer Kenneth Bigley as well as the executions of American, Korean, Japanese, Egyptian, Iraqi, Turkish and Bulgarian hostages.
[...]
Other films found on the men’s computers or on discs in their rooms included footage of suicide attacks in Iraq, the video wills of “martyrs” and stylised productions eulogising the 9/11 hijackers.
“Possession of this material is strong evidence of the depth of their adherence to the cause,” Mark Ellison, for the prosecution, told the court.
“Collecting it, providing links for others to obtain it, applauding it, defending it — as we say these defendants did — as well as making it available to a wide audience on websites is strong evidence of the approval of it and of the ideology it seeks to justify.”
Mr Tsouli had a Powerpoint presentation entitled “carbom-bzip” and another file containing video clips of the World Bank building and the US Capitol in Washington DC and the George Washington National Masonic Memorial.
A CD was found in the home of Mr Mughal containing a file giving instructions on how to make a suicide-bomb vest.
Mr al-Daour had a CD file entitled “special course in manufacturing explosives”, a document with instructions for firing a rocket-propelled grenade and a data file, “The Mujahidin Explosives Handbook”.
Mr Ellison said that the defendants, who were arrested in October 2005, were “intelligent young men” who appeared to lead normal lives.
“Behind the apparent normality of their daily lives and for at least a year before they were arrested, the truth is that each of these young men firmly believed in, supported and set about inciting others to follow an extreme ideology of violent holy war,” he said.
[...]
Mr Ellison said: “The effective recruitment of new adherents to the cause and the inciting of them to join in the fighting and killing and become mujahidin, if not also martyrs, is the very lifeblood of achieving the religious dominance that has its root in this ideology.
“The central importance of powerfully expressed and constructed media in that process, and having the means of distributing and pushing the message to those prepared to listen and likely to be persuaded to join in themselves, is at the very heart of advancing this ideology.
[...]
All three deny possession of documents or records likely to be of use to a person preparing an act of terrorism, and incitement to commit an act of terrorism outside Britain. Mr Tsouli and Mr Mughal deny a charge of conspiracy to murder which, the jury heard, was connected to a plot involving individuals in Bosnia. The trial continues.
The accused
Younis Tsouli, from Shepherds Bush, West London, was born in Morocco but was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain two months before his arrest. He studied Information Technology and computer technology at Westminster College of Computing in 2001-03 and, according to his CV, was fluent in French and Arabic
Waseem Mughal lived with his family in Chatham, Kent, and is a biochemistry graduate from the University of Leicester. While a student, he ran the website of the university’s Islamic Society
Tariq al-Daour was born in the United Arab Emirates of Palestinian parents and became a British citizen in May 2004. Shortly before his arrest he had applied to study for a law degree
Posted by Marisol at April 24, 2007 12:29 AM
STEPPING BACK IN TIME...
Note: The following text is a quote:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/008853.php
November 05, 2005
UK: 3 charged with terrorism offenses; Film of D.C. sites found
It Can’t Happen Here Update from CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
LONDON, England (CNN) — Three men suspected of involvement in terrorism have appeared in a British court, charged with an array of offenses from fund-raising to conspiracy to murder.
Waseem Mughal and Younis Tsouli, both 22, and Tariq al-Daour, 19, spoke only to confirm their names and ages during a brief hearing Friday at Bow St. Magistrates Court in central London....
Mughal and Tsouli were charged with offenses including conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion.
On the hard drive of Tsouli’s computer, police found a film demonstrating how to make a car bomb, the statement said. In addition, a film was found showing “a number of places in Washington, D.C.”
Al-Daour was charged with conspiracy to obtain money by deception, fundraising and possession of money for terrorist purposes.
Mughal is from Kent, police said, while Tsouli and al-Daour are from London.
According to details of the charges released by police, authorities found a DVD entitled “Martyrdom Operations Vest” at Mughal’s home, along with a piece of paper upon which was written in Arabic, “Welcome to Jihad.”
In addition, police found a piece of paper with the words “hospital = attack” and a “recipe for rocket propellant and guidance on causing an explosion.”
And police believe the three conspired to use stolen credit card information to obtain items, and possessed “money or other property for the purposes of terrorism,” authorities said.
Posted by Robert at November 5, 2005 08:47 AM
STEPPING BACK IN TIME...
http://www.dagbladet.no/magasinet/2006/06/29/470193.html
“Terrorist 007 er offline”
SARAJEVO (Dagbladet.no)
Første gang publisert: torsdag 29. juni 2006
UPDATE:
http://www.internet-haganah.com/harchives/006016.html
27 April 2007
“Irhabi007’s day in court finally arrives”
*dial j for jihad ping*
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9111542
Special report
“Waiting for al-Qaeda’s next bomb”
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “Security sources say jihadi activity has moved away from mosques to clubs, gyms and private homes, where it is harder to monitor. The internet has proved to be an “ungoverned space” where al-Qaeda and its followers have thrived. On April 23rd, a British court started hearing the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism overseas. They include Younis Tsouli, of Moroccan origin, who is alleged to be a prolific internet propagandist going by the name of “Irhabi 007”, or “Terrorist 007”. He and another suspect are also accused of conspiracy to murder in a case linked to suspects arrested in Bosnia. “Of all the things I have seen over the past few years,” says Mr Clarke, “one of the most worrying has been the speed and apparent ease with which young men can be turned into suicidal terrorists.”
Self-starting terrorism is an ever-present danger. But over several investigations, counter-terrorism officials have usually found direct links leading back to Pakistan, often to al-Qaeda figures. Key British suspects travel back to Pakistan for training and indoctrination. Mr Khyam and Khan are alleged to be linked, through a British middleman, to Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, the alleged number three in al-Qaeda, who was taken to Guantánamo Bay last week.”
http://members.forbes.com/global/2007/0507/062.html
“Special Report
Web Of Terror”
Rita Katz and Josh Devon 05.07.07
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “In early 2005 some of Irhabi007’s virtual associates secretly communicated on a jihadist forum to plan a spectacular attack at Naval Station Mayport, a U.S. Navy base in Jacksonville, Florida. The plot, which was to be filmed from multiple angles, involved utilizing several car bombs, as well as rocket-propelled grenades. Those organizing the plot claimed to have 45 people dedicated to the attack, including an American pilot in the U.S. Air Force and three American women who converted to Islam after Sept. 11. Whether the plot ever progressed past the initial planning stages is unclear; some of the organizers were arrested shortly after the online discussions.
We can’t take too much comfort from the fact that these particular schemes were thwarted. The plans live on. Once an idea enters cyberspace, it exists indefinitely within the online jihadist community. Any terrorist can take a proposed target or tactic and pick up the plan where a captured terrorist left off.”
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