http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681439/posts
Drugs Worth $22 Million Stolen From Area Company (two tractor-trailers full)
WRAL ^ | 8/10/06
Posted on 08/10/2006 3:11:48 PM PDT by Libloather
Drugs Worth Millions Stolen From Area Company
UPDATED: 12:07 am EDT August 10, 2006
WAKE COUNTY, N.C. -- Federal, state and local authorities are investigating an interstate drug heist, after millions of dollars in medications never made it to their intended destination.
Authorities said that the alleged heist occurred at Longistics Corporation in Wake County near Research Triangle Park late Saturday. According to police, at least three suspects targeted the company, which handles shipments for the health care industry, and stole two tractor-trailers full of prescription and over-the-counter drugs.
"The FBI estimates that the total value of the prescription and non-prescription drugs that were on those two trailers is about $22 million," said Jim Sughrue of the Raleigh Police Department.
Sughrue said that the suspects then headed to a truck stop on Jones Sausage Road off Interstate 40 East, where they left one of the cabs, hooked up the trailer to another cab and made their getaway. Authorities recovered the abandoned truck on Tuesday.
The truck stop is a popular stopping point for many truckers on I-40 and nearby I-95. Authorities said that the alleged stolen goods could have been transported anywhere in the United States.
**SNIP**
Since the alleged heist could involve the transport of stolen goods across state lines, several state, local and federal law enforcement agencies are investigating the incident. For that reason, many details related to the investigation aren't being released, including information about possible suspects.
The trailer tags on the missing trailers are Tennessee-issued T-290478 and Z-83247. The license tag on the missing truck is North Carolina-issued LM-1752. If you have any information relating to this case, contact your local law enforcement office.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681646/posts
Bank of England names 19 terror suspects
AP on Yahoo ^ | 8/10/06 | AP
Posted on 08/10/2006 9:33:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON - The Bank of England froze the assets of 19 people early Friday, naming them as people arrested Thursday in connection with an alleged terror plot to bomb British passenger jets.
"On the advice of the police and security services, the Treasury has instructed the Bank of England to issue notices to effect a freeze of the assets of a number of individuals arrested in yesterday's operations," a Treasury statement said.
Most of those named in the list were London residents, and many bore Muslim names.
Scotland Yard had no immediate comment.
The bank released the following names: Abdula Ahmed Ali, Cossor Ali, Shazad Khuram Ali, Nabeel Hussain, Tanvir Hussain, Umair Hussain, Umar Islam, Waseem Kayani, Assan Abdullah Khan, Waheed Arafat Khan, Osman Adam Khatib, Abdul Muneem Patel, Tayib Rauf, Muhammed Usman Saddique, Assad Sarwar, Ibrahim Savant, Amin Asmin Tariq, Shamin Mohammed Uddin, and Waheed Zaman..
The oldest person on the list, Shamin Mohammed Uddin, is 35. The youngest, Abdul Muneem Patel, is 17.
___
On the Net:
Bank of England release: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/news/2006/082.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1681629/posts
Jet Stuck in Mud at Mississippi Airport
AP ^ | 8/10/6
Posted on 08/10/2006 9:06:06 PM PDT by SmithL
Jackson, Miss. -- A jetliner strayed off the runway Thursday night at an airport and got stuck in the mud, stranding more than 200 passengers for hours, authorities said.
The Delta Airlines jet, bound for Atlanta from San Francisco, was diverted to Jackson because of bad weather in the Atlanta area, an airport official said.
After refueling, pilots edged off the runway at Jackson-Evers International Airport and the plane became stuck.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Qatar airline attemted hijack:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681160/posts?q=1&&page=51
.....................9/11, 8/10, 7/9?.........................
Interesting progression of numbers.
63 posted on 08/10/2006 8:13:34 AM PDT by DoctorMichael
Thanks to Milford421 for this update...........
Posted: Thursday, 10 August 2006 8:18PM
"The outage most likely affected some traveler's at LaGuardia and
JFK airports." Such a coincidence.
http://www.1010wins.com/pages/67428.php
NEW YORK -- A water leak
damaged equipment in a central office
facility owned by Verizon, causing cell phone service to be knocked
out to Sprint Nextel customers in Queens on Thursday.
continued..............
August 10, 2006 PM Anti-Terrorism News
British: Thwarted plot involved 10 jets
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060810/ap_on_re_eu/britain_terror_plot
(London Airline Terror Plot) Pakistani intelligence helped foil bombing
plot
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2306811,00.html
Pakistan Puts Leader of Militant Group Under House Arrest - Hafiz
Muhammad Saeed, founder of Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT), put under house arrest by
Pakistani authorities
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/asia/10cnd-pakistan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
London Police Seek Up to 10 More Suspects in Plane Bomb Plot
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207682,00.html
Terror suspects planned to use liquid explosives to blow up planes -
"US News & World Report" with new details
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060810/10london.htm
White House: Terror plot 'a direct threat'
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/10/washington.terror.plot/index.html
Liquid explosives are easy to smuggle
http://www.cnn.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1225032,00.html
Experts: Air security focuses on past threats
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/terror.newthreat.ap/index.html
(London Airline Terror Plot) Was this al-Qaeda's Big One?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2307076,00.html
Terror Threat: Changes to Airline Ticketing Policies
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207770,00.html
Tactics that have kept the Middle East's most powerful army at bay -
"In the eyes of Arabs and Muslims Hezbollah has already “won†the
month-long war simply because it has not been defeated" by Israel
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2306510,00.html
Muslims bristle at Bush term "Islamic fascists"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060810/us_nm/security_usa_muslims_dc
(Philippines) Marines and Abu Sayyaf clash anew on Jolo Island
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/aug/10/yehey/prov/20060810pro1.html
Swiss To Send Details On Alleged Terrorist Funding
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/9658176/detail.html
The Man Who Is Planning the Next Attack on America - ABC News report on
Matiur Rehman, keeper of log of recruits who attended al Qaeda training
camps in 1990s
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/08/the_man_who_is_.html
Israel Takes Hold of Key Lebanon Town, Vows 'Painful' Expansion
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207679,00.html
mid://00001386/#AMERICAN MUSLIM NEWS BRIEFS TOP
CAIR: 'Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism'
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 8/10/06) - A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today expressed concern over President Bush's use of the term "Islamic fascists" in a news conference about the arrest of 21 suspects in a plot to bomb airliners flying between Britain and the United States.
SEE: Religious Group Bristles at Bush Term 'Islamic Fascists' (Reuters)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14290351/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14290351/
In a letter to President Bush, Parvez Ahmed, board chairman of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wrote in part:
"American Muslims have consistently condemned all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by individuals, groups or states. We repudiate anyone who plans or carries out a terrorist act. The American Muslim community remains dedicated to the protection of our nation's security. . .
"Unfortunately, your statement this morning that America 'is at war with Islamic fascists' contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community. Just today, Gallup released a poll indicating that four out of ten Americans feel 'prejudice' toward Muslims.
SEE: Anti-Muslim Sentiments Fairly Commonplace
http://poll.gallup.com/content/?ci=24073
http://poll.gallup.com/content/?ci=24073
"You have on many occasions said Islam is a 'religion of peace.' Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism.
"The use of ill-defined hot button terms such as 'Islamic fascists,' 'militant jihadism,' 'Islamic radicalism,' or 'totalitarian Islamic empire,' harms our nation's image and interests worldwide, particularly in the Islamic world. It feeds the perception that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam. . .
"American Muslims stand ready to serve as a bridge of understanding to the Islamic world. We can best fulfill that role by offering advice that can help prevent misperceptions and misunderstandings between different nations and cultures."
CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
This page has a collection of the most important terror attacks we have had, the news clips for them....good site to remind us of what has gone on.
granny
http://homelandsecurity.osu.edu/focusareas/domestic.html
This caught my eye:
ome fear lessons from ’95 bombing have been lost
Monday, April 17, 2006
Tim Talley
ASSOCIATED PRESS
OKLAHOMA CITY — Before her two grandsons died with 166 other people in the Oklahoma City bombing, Jannie Coverdale thought that terrorist acts were committed only in foreign countries.
"Before the bombing, we didn’t know there were Timothy McVeighs and Terry Nichols and all those stupid people in this country," Coverdale said. "After the bombing, we found out that we didn’t have to go overseas to find those people. They’re right here."
Eleven years after the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, survivors, terrorism experts and law-enforcement authorities fear that lessons learned from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing are being forgotten as the nation focuses on international threats.
"The minute we forget, some of those people are going to strike again," Coverdale said.
Six years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, a rented truck packed with 2 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was detonated in front of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people — including 19 children — and injuring hundreds more.
"The loss of life there and the children — it was a staggering crime and a staggering attack," said former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who headed the agency during the bombing investigation.
Prosecutors said the bombing was a twisted attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in a government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.
In the largest criminal case in U.S. history, FBI agents conducted 28,000 interviews and collected 3.5 tons of evidence and almost 1 billion pieces of information in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
McVeigh, apprehended less than two hours after the bombing, was convicted of federal murder charges and executed June 11, 2001. Nichols, who met McVeigh in the Army, was convicted on federal and state bombing charges and is serving multiple life prison sentences.
Another Army buddy, Michael Fortier, pleaded guilty to not telling authorities in advance about the bomb plot and agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols. Fortier was released from a federal prison in January after serving about 85 percent of a 12-year sentence.
The number of organized hate groups in the United States has risen 33 percent since 2000 and the potential for another domestic terrorist attack is on the rise, said Mark Potok, director of Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which monitors hate groups.
"One of the great lessons of the Oklahoma City bombing is that the domestic radical right poses extremely serious threats," Potok said.
He said that since the Oklahoma City bombing, authorities have foiled 60 domestic terrorist plots, including one in Texas in 1997 in which four suspects allegedly plotted to blow up a natural-gas processing plant.
There were 803 organized hate groups in the United States in 2005, including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, up from 602 just six years earlier, according to the center.
"We just don’t have the luxury of ignoring these other groups in favor of the current threat of the day," said Chip Ellis, of the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City.
[is this the Indiana sniper?]
Six KKK members plead guilty in gun plot
March 21, 2006
RALEIGH, N.C. --Six members of a Ku Klux Klan splinter group have pleaded guilty in a plot to steal and sell guns as a way to raise money to blow up a courthouse and kill a county sheriff, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.
All six pleaded guilty Monday to charges including theft of firearms and possession of stolen firearms, in return for other charges being dropped, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Goulian said. They were indicted in December.
They allegedly raised at least $1,650 by selling some stolen guns, and Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell said the money was intended to finance plans that included killing him.
He said they were angry with him over their failed plans to march in a popular community festival, Benson Mule Days. A local KKK leader related to two of the defendants had invited a Klan figure from Indiana to watch them march and was embarrassed when the group was barred from the event, Bizzell said.
The charges carry up to 10 years in prison. Sentencing dates have not been set, Goulian said.
Charges against a seventh defendant are still pending, he said.
[same link as last post]
[more from the same page, note the second one]
Activist is charged with teaching arson
By Seth Hettena, Associated Press Writer | February 22, 2006
SAN DIEGO --Federal prosecutors on Wednesday unsealed an indictment charging an environmental activist with teaching others how to start an arson fire during a 2003 lecture in San Diego, where the costliest act of ecoterrorism in U.S. history had just occurred.
Prosecutors said Rodney A. Coronado gave the lecture 15 hours after a $50 million fire destroyed a massive apartment complex in a north San Diego neighborhood. The indictment, however, does not link Coronado to that fire.
Coronado, 39, was arrested Wednesday in Tucson, Ariz., on a charge of distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction. He will be arraigned there Thursday.
His attorney did not return a message left seeking comment.
Coronado previously served four years in federal prison for a 1992 blaze at a Michigan animal research facility.
Daniel Dzwilewski, agent in charge of the San Diego FBI office, alleged that Coronado was a national leader of the radical Earth Liberation Front. ELF is an underground movement with no public leadership, membership or spokesperson, according to its Web site. An e-mail sent to the Web site didn't elicit an immediate response.
The 2003 fire destroyed a five-story apartment complex, an underground parking garage and a construction crane in San Diego. No one was injured. A banner found at the scene read "If you build it, we will burn it" with the initials of the ELF.
Coronado's subsequent talk covered animal rights and militant environmental activism. According to an account and photos of the speech posted on the Internet, he demonstrated how to build a crude ignition device using a plastic jug filled with gasoline and oil.
While he repeatedly insisted that he had no role in the arson, Coronado has said he sympathized with the arsonists.
Authorities said the charge on which Coronado was indicted has been used only four times since it was written in 1997, most recently in an Ohio case unsealed Tuesday against three men charged with attempting to wage terror attacks against the United States. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Coronado was previously sentenced to nearly five years in prison for a crime in which he said he did not participate: the 1992 firebombing of a Michigan State University laboratory and the offices of two animal researchers that caused $1.2 million in damage.
In December, a federal jury in Tucson, Ariz., convicted Coronado of illegally entering the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area to interfere with efforts to trap and relocate mountain lions. He faces up to 7 1/2 years in prison when he's sentenced in March. That indictment called Coronado a member of Earth First!, perhaps best known for forest protests aimed at halting logging.
Boston.com
Pennsylvania man accused of terrorist plot: report
February 12, 2006
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Federal investigators have accused a Pennsylvania man of trying to conspire with al-Qaeda to blow up major U.S. oil and gas pipelines and wreck the economy, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Sunday.
The FBI says Michael Curtis Reynolds, 47, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. attempted to provide material aid to al-Qaeda to disrupt the federal government, to change its foreign policy, and to turn the public against the war in Iraq, the newspaper said.
The allegations were disclosed in a federal transcript obtained by the Inquirer on Friday.
Reynolds has not been formally charged with terrorist offenses but has been held in a Pennsylvania jail since December 5 on the unrelated charge of possessing a hand grenade, the paper said.
Reynolds, who is unemployed, was drawn into an FBI sting operation in Idaho two months ago in which he meet with a purported al-Qaeda operative who was really a Montana judge who monitors extremist Muslim Web sites looking for potential terrorist activity, according to the report.
At that meeting, Reynolds expected to receive $40,000 to finance a plot to blow up sections of the Transcontinental Pipeline which carries natural gas from the U.S. Gulf Coast to New York City via Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The alleged plot also included a plan to detonate propane trucks along the Alaska Pipeline, and to blow up oil refineries in New Jersey and Wyoming.
The newspaper quoted John Gurganus, a federal prosecutor, as saying Reynolds hoped to "disrupt government function," provoke opposition to the war in Iraq, drive up fuel prices, and "lend to the efforts by al-Qaeda to terrorize this nation."
Reynolds was arrested on the hand grenade charge in December. He told federal agents he was not a terrorist but a patriot trying to trap al-Qaeda operatives, the newspaper said. FBI agents obtained search warrants for his computers and e-mail accounts, which contained information on the alleged plot.
Reynolds, who has lived in many parts of the United States, has a string of bad debts and criminal convictions, including one for attempted arson, according to the Inquirer.
[is this related to the current threat? 2005 threat]
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1855238,00.html
Plans to 'top' 9/11 strikes
23/12/2005 21:13 - (SA)
!
# Pullout 'will lead to attacks'
# US at risk for more attacks
# US had 'bomber' in their hands
# Why is Osama so quiet?
Rome - Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday.
The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11 2001 strikes by al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed about 2 700 people, Pisanu said.
The Algerians, suspected of belonging to a cell established by an al-Qaeda-linked Algerian extremist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were named as Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama.
The first two were arrested on Friday in the Salerno area south of Naples, and in Curingia, in the southern Calabria region, respectively.
Bouhrama, 32, had been in jail in Naples since November 15 in connection with another investigation of the GSPC.
He is believed to be the head of the Salerno cell and to have liaised with other cells in Milan, Brescia and Naples.
The three in custody are also alleged to have procured false papers and funds to finance the GSPC, a hardline fundamentalist movement that rejects the Algerian government's attempt to draw a line under years of Islamist rebellion.
Pisanu said Friday's swoop was part of a wider operation involving other countries.
Links were uncovered between the GSPC's Italian activities and groups in Britain, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.
Remember this? from Jan 2006, we need more google alerts, 2 reports here, much more on the site....
I am thinking of all the cells called to action and their prior plans, and that means the planning is already done, or so I would expect....granny...................
http://uncooperativeblogger.com/2006/01/22/web-site-calls-for-terror-attacks-against-alaskas-oil-pipeline/
Jan. 22, 2006
Web Site Calls for Terror Attacks against Alaska’s Oil Pipeline
by The Uncooperative Blogger on 01-22-06 @ 12:08 pm MT.
Filed under U.S. News & Politics
From FNC:
A Web site claiming to be affiliated with Al Qaeda has called for attacks against the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
The posting calls on jihadists to shower the pipe with bullets or hide and detonate explosives along its length, the Anchorage Daily News reported. It also calls for attacks on the Valdez tanker dock.
The unknown author encourages small cells of four or five mujahedeen, or Muslim guerrillas, living in the United States or in Canada or Mexico to mount the attacks.
The 10-page posting includes numerous links to Web sites providing maps and other information about the pipeline.
Attacking oil and gas targets in the United States and other countries is key to bringing down the economy of the “American devils,” the author wrote, saying the message was posted in response to calls from Usama bin Laden and his top Al Qaeda deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
The Arabic posting was discovered and translated in late December by the SITE Institute, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization that tracks international terrorists.
Trans-Alaska Pipeline
It could be something, but it appears to be nothing but a website calling for cells in the U.S. to make the attack. This assumes there are cells in the U.S. and that they are in Alaska. Remember you have to cross two borders to get from the lower 48 to Alaska, or take a ferry.
Linked With:
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The URL says it all, sometimes, I do not understand people.
http://www.prisonradio.org/revolutionary-ecology.htm
a sept. 2001 post with forgotten reports in it...granny
http://www.sundayherald.com/print18498
Sunday Herald - 16 September 2001
CHAPTER ONE: The Terror Trail
The roots of the worst terrorist attack in history
By Neil Mackay
THE evening had gone superbly well. Osama bin Laden bade farewell to his guests and retired to his room. February 22 1998 was a crisp, silent evening in Kandahar, and the desert surrounding the bombed-out town in southern Afghanistan was patrolled by small squads of Taliban fighters and a cadre of bin Laden's personal bodyguard.
The Saudi millionaire, then aged 41, sat at his desk, picked up his pen and began to draft the most important announcement of his life. The handful of paragraphs he wrote that night -- for dissemination among his own supporters and Islamic terrorist leaders sympathetic to his particular brand of militancy -- set in motion the train of events which were to climax with suicide dive bombers in America.
The four men bin Laden had earlier entertained -- with a meal of mutton stew, rice and nan bread, accompanied by black and green tea -- were no ordinary guests. They had travelled a long way to see him and spent days thrashing out the text now lying in front of him. Those men were Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of Islamic Jihad; Adbul Salam Mohamed from Bangladesh; Abou Yassir Ahmed Taha from Egypt's Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, representing all Islamist groups in north Africa, and Fadhi Errahmane Khalil, leader of the Pakistani movement, Ansar.
Between them they were responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the 1990s, including the 1997 massacre of 57 foreign tourists at Luxor. That night, they founded a new pan-Arab terrorist organisation with the clumsy but sinister name, the International Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. The document which ushered it into existence was in essence a fatwa from its de facto leader, bin Laden. In it he railed against the presence of the US and its allies in the Middle East. It read: 'The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military, is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible ... This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God.' On February 24, when the CIA passed a classified memo on this meeting to Senator Jon Kyl, then chairing Senate hearings into foreign terrorism, they were clear that this was a declaration of war. The touch-paper which would finally ignite in New York, had been lit.
Bringing the war to mainland America wasn't a new plan, but now, thanks to the Kandahar meeting, it had fresh impetus. Bin Laden had attempted to take out New York's twin towers in 1993, when his protŽgŽ Ramzi Yousef, the British-educated and Kuwaiti-born career terrorist, tried to topple the World Trade Centre with a massive car bomb.
He failed, but within a year he had infiltrated America with new teams of sleeper agents ready for one more big push. One of the members of Tuesday's four suicide teams, Walid Al Shehri, had been living in Daytona Beach in Florida since 1995. This suggests some sort of renewed attack on symbolic American buildings had been planned for at least six years.
But bin Laden had probably been training his men for Tuesday's atrocities for even longer. He bought a commercial jet and began recruiting his first pilots in the US in 1993. The plane had a range of around 1500 miles -- not far off the distance between Boston and Los Angeles -- and it was purchased in Arizona. One of bin Laden's main men in America then was Essan Al-Ridi, who worked as a flight instructor in Texas. He was contacted that year by Wadih El-Hage -- who was later jailed for his part in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa which killed 244 people -- and asked to help buy jets.
The deal went through for about $250,000, and bin Laden offered Al-Ridi a job as a pilot. The plane was later flown out of the US to bin Laden's former base in Khartoum in Sudan. America aided bin Laden both by funding his Mujahidin forces that fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and also by unwittingly giving flight training to the suicide pilots who attacked the Pentagon and the twin towers. This aircraft was used to transport the missiles from Pakistan which killed American special forces in Somalia. The plane was also bought at the 'bone yard' in Tucson, Arizona -- the local name for the storage unit at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Centre at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base where retired aircraft are kept. The US military, therefore, sold the plane to bin Laden -- and it was the Pentagon which gave permission for the aircraft to leave the base.
Such slipshod intelligence by the US itself has plagued the American authorities in the wake of the attacks. Intelligence chiefs admit they just don't have enough 'humint' -- human intelligence, gathered by double agents -- on bin Laden's terrorist network, Al Qaida. They knew he was planning something, but they didn't know what. The CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) were overly reliant on satellite tracking and high-tech surveillance rather than concentrating on getting agents inside bin Laden's group.
As Frank Cilluffo, a senior analyst at the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says: 'It's not easy to knock on bin Laden's cave and say we'd like to join. These are hard targets for Americans to infiltrate.' Instead of getting inside Al Qaida, the best the US did was store a voice-recording of bin Laden in the NSA vaults and trawl every communi cation by phone that was intercepted in Afghanistan for a match. Bin Laden knew exactly what the US was up to and simply got his underlings to do the ringing for him.
Electronic surveillance in the hours after the attack did, however, apparently pick up communications between terrorists linked to bin Laden claiming that 'targets had been hit'. But by then it was all too late. The head of the NSA, General Mike Hayden, has admitted that bin Laden 'has better technology' than the US. The Saudi terrorist is now using some of the most sophisticated encryption codes on earth to relay orders over the internet.
America's intelligence failures also ran straight up against the new enemy that is extreme fundamentalism. While it might be possible to slip a Muslim intelligence officer into the ranks of Al Qaida, it is almost impossible to 'turn' an active Islamic terrorist. They are, after all, fighting for their faith, something most people are unlikely to betray easily. To add further to American woes, the US badly dropped the ball over a tip-off from the French intelligence service, the DST, which passed information to the FBI prior to last week's suicide attacks about a 31-year-old French-Algerian arrested in Boston a month ago carrying a false passport. The French told the Americans that the man, who was taking flying lessons in the US, had made frequent trips to Afghanistan and was linked to bin Laden. The FBI made no request for more information until 24 hours after the World Trade Centre tumbled to the ground. Even worse, an Iranian, know as Ali S, phoned the American authorities from a deportation cell in Germany to warn of an attack 'which would change the world'. The Justice Ministry has confirmed that the man called 'several times' but was ignored. A ministry spokesman, Frank Woesthoff, said the US secret service did not tell the ministry about the calls from Langenhagen jail until after the attacks. The 29-year-old was apparently dismissed as mentally unstable. Similar warnings also came from a Moroccan in a Brazilian jail.
By 1998, Florida-based Walid Al Shehri had graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical science, the university's commercial pilot training degree. He also had a pilot's licence. Bin Laden's plan to train his men in America, where they would learn the tools of their trade, was by now well under way.
Around the same time, two men who would go on to be key co-conspirators with Al Shehri, Mohammad Atta and his cousin Marawan Alshehhi, were in Hamburg in Germany studying construction and electronics at the city's Technical University.
Atta, who was born in United Arab Emirates but carried a Saudi Arabian passport, was implicated in a 1986 bus bombing in Israel. The men's trip to Germany was the beginning of their education in terrorism. According to the German equivalent of MI5, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, there are more than 800 members of the fundamentalist Islamic group Hezbollah in the country, and at least 1000 Islamic extremists in Hamburg alone.
It is still unclear, says Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, whether the suicide teams were directly under the control of Al Qaida or were members of another Islamic terror group that was working to fulfil the aims of bin Laden. Atta and Marawan lived in a quiet cobbled street called Marienstrasse. They were peaceable, spoke fluent German with scarcely a hint of an accent, and set up their own Islamic student society. It is a pattern, intelligence sources say, that has been repeated time and again across the world: extremists enter a Western country, usually on the pretext of seeking an education, and lay the foundations of a terrorist sleeper cell which can wait, sometimes almost indefinitely, to be activated.
In Germany more than 60,000 federal detectives have investigated if it is the European nerve-centre of bin Laden's network. The country's federal prosecutor, Kay Nehm, believes a terrorist group was quickly established in Hamburg to 'attack the United States in a spectacular way through the destruction of symbolic buildings'.
Last week's attacks on the US involved at least 50 terrorists, including 19 hijackers, most of whom have distinctive tribal names from Saudi Arabia. A few others appear to be Yemeni. Among them were seven pilots, most of whom trained in Florida. At least another 50 people are wanted for questioning. Two of the hijackers were in the US on visas, and the United Arab Emirates was the last known address of another. Speculation about the nationalities of these 'soldiers without frontiers' has ranged across the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Afghanistan. A few have been connected to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. It is this, the FBI says, which connects the hijackers directly to bin Laden.
Three of the hijacked planes were taken over by cells of five terrorists and one by a cell of four. There was a support and logistics cell in Florida, where at least a dozen of the suspects lived, looking after details such as the acquisition of false documents, hiring cars, misappropriating the identities of innocent Arabs living in the US and preparing credible cover stories for the assassins. Other cells were strung out across the country, including one in New York which was apparently filming the attack on the World Trade Centre, and ones in Boston, Newark in New Jersey, and Washington. There are also thought to be cells operating in Arizona, California and Rhode Island. None of the cells knew precisely what the others were doing, but one command cell headed by the mission leader, thought to be part of Al Qaida's 055 brigade, was in full control of the plot. There may also have been a plan to hijack a fifth plane in either Texas, Atlanta or Richmond, according to FBI investigators who interviewed people linked to the suicide teams on the day of the attacks as the huge emergency response operation swung into action. In a coast to coast operation, the FBI detained two men -- Mohammed Azmath and Ayub Khan -- in Fort Worth, Texas. They had tried, on the day of the attacks, to fly from the east coast to Texas, but eventually travelled by train. During the journey they were found with box cutters similar to those used by the hijackers. A man, who tried to board a plane at Kennedy airport after showing a pilot's licence issued to his brother, was also arrested in New York by the Joint Terrorist Task Force.
At least two of the men named as hijackers were on an FBI 'watch list'. Information about them was received two weeks ago and the CIA asked the Immigration Service to stop them from entering the US. They were, however, already in America. When the FBI alerted its German equivalent, the BKA, to the fact that at least two of the World Trade Centre terrorists -- Atta and Alshehhi -- lived in Hamburg, eight flats were raided and two people detained -- a black-veiled Egyptian woman, who police say is not a suspect, and an airport worker, who was close to Atta and who was later released. But there was nothing, not a shred of evidence, to be gleaned from Atta and Marawan's former home. When they left Germany in May, they made sure the flat was stripped eradicating all clues. All that can be proved is Atta was a master of hiding the truth about himself. He is remembered as a student who wanted to promote 'harmony among the religions'.
Ironically, for a man who flattened Manhattan, he also studied urban renewal. His professor, Dittmar Machule, said Atta -- who claimed at that time to be from the UAE and shared a flat with a Yemeni and another man from UAE -- frequently returned to Syria and Egypt, and often changed his appearance by growing a beard and then shaving it off. A third hijacker has also been identified as having a former base in Bochum in Germany. The home of Ziad Jarrah, who went down on the flight which crash-landed in a field near Pittsburgh, was searched by police and a suitcase with airline papers was removed.
After Germany, Atta and Alshehhi's trail was soon picked up on the other side of the Atlantic. Atta, says the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, made his way into America from Nova Scotia by catching a tourist ferry to Portland in Maine, as did another suspect, Ahmed Al Haznawi, who took part in the hijack of the fourth plane which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Certainly, Atta was in Florida by July, moving to the town of Venice, which bills itself as a beach paradise on the Gulf of Mexico. He and Alshehhi enrolled in the Huffman Aviation School, paying for the courses with $10,000 cheques apiece, training on small Cessna aircrafts and sharing a room together once again. This time it was one owned by the school's book-keeper, Charles Voss. His wife, Dru, said the pair kept themselves to themselves but became increasingly insulting to her when her husband was out, saying things such as: 'It must be nice to sleep all day.'
She threw them out and they moved to Coral Springs. After completing the basic Huffman course, they needed to learn how to fly bigger jets. Coral Springs, close to Palm Beach Airport, was just the place to hone their skills. Marian Smith, who owns Palm Beach Flight Training, said: 'I remember [they said they] wanted to get in 100 hours.' The hijack team also trained on computer flight simulators which had the topography of New York -- including the twin towers -- stored in their memory banks. Atta took two three-hour courses at SimCentre Inc in Florida, where he trained on a Boeing 727 full-motion flight simulator. Two weeks ago, the FBI detained an Arab man in Minnesota, on immigration reasons. At the time he was trying to find a simulator for large airliners.
Chuck Clapper, who owns the Lantana Air charter in Florida, said several Florida flight schools had contracts with Saudi Arabian airlines and some had exemptions from visa checks. Some Arab nationalities have to satisfy the State Department of their suitability to obtain flight instruction in the US, but Clapper explained: 'Saudis don't. Iranians do. Libyans do. But the Saudis are allies, so they don't.' Marawan Alshehhi lived in Saudi before going to Florida, as did another hijacker called Wail Alsheri, aka Waleed Alshehri, who held a commercial pilot's licence for Saudi Arabian Airlines in Jeddah. Wail may have been schooled in the Yemeni border town of Khamis, attending teacher training college there. He then spent several years in bin Laden's terrorist training camp at al-Farouk in Afghanistan. Another Florida-based hijacker, Aabdul Alomari, lived for nearly a year in Vero Beach with his wife and three children, but was last seen at his home on September 3. By then his family had already left, claiming they were returning home. He and Amer Kamfar also took flying lessons in the state with Flight Safety International. Both said they were Saudis working for Saudi airlines. Kamfar, according to the FBI, is on the loose, armed with an AK-47. It is thought he was a member of one of the ground cells. An all-points bulletin has been posted for his arrest. He also lived in Vero Beach, telling neighbours he was a flight engineer, but abruptly left the home he shared with his wife and four children two weeks ago. Neighbour Debbie Habora says they threw everything out in the trash -- clothes, dishes, furniture, pots and pans.
Last Friday Atta, the most prominent face of the hijack teams and the man who linked them together, and two other Middle Eastern men were spotted at a bar in Holly-wood in Florida called Shuckums. They ran up a bill and started rowing with waitress Patricia Idrissi over the cost of their vodkas and rums. Atta shouted at the manager: 'You think I can't pay? I'm a pilot for American Airlines. I can pay my f***ing bill.' He pulled out a wad of $100 and $50 bills and threw money at Idrissi, leaving her an insultingly small tip. The day before the attack they may also have been in the lapdancing bar, The Pink Pony, in Daytona Beach. One man matching the description of Atta and two other Arabs were overheard voicing anti-American sentiments, and speaking of 'coming bloodshed'.
On the eve of the attack, Atta and Marawan stayed at the Panther Motel in Deerfield Beach, New Jersey. They rented a Mitsubishi sedan and made their way to Logan Airport in Boston. It was later found abandoned containing flight manuals written in Arabic and suicide notes to the men's parents. In the parking lot they argued with another driver over spaces. Even the seats they sat on in the departure lounge have been taken away and scoured for possible DNA clues from hair they might have left behind.
Atta, Marawan, Waleed Alsheri, Aabdul Alomari and Walid Al Shehri all bought one-way tickets at Logan Airport. Waleed and Walid are believed to be brothers who fought together in Afghanistan. Many of the other hijackers also appear to be related. Two had employee passes, thought to come from a robbery in Italy where American Airlines staff had a pilot's uniform, passes and badges stolen. Another cell of Islamic fundamentalists is suspected of operating in the country.
Beyond America, the trail leads around the world. Just like the regime it proclaims to hate, Al Qaida -- which translates as 'the Base' -- operates along the principles of globalisation. Bin Laden, in an irony not lost on the FBI, runs a network that is effectively baseless, with units in 34 countries, including Britain, whose members are now in hiding, according to Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad. Although the FBI appears to have got to grips with the number of hijackers and support terrorists involved, the logistics of the plot are colossal. Arrests, detentions and raids are gathering pace, indicating that the back-up and planning of these atrocities spanned the globe. London, Rotterdam, Brussels, Mexico, Manila and the Azores have all been areas of intense police activity.
On the day of the dive-bombings, there were also plans by Muslim extremists in the Philippines to hijack a commercial jet in Manila which was destined for the US. The general manager of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Edgardo Manda, said the target was Philippine Airlines. An Omani who was on board one of the hijacked American jets, had been questioned in Manila three days before the terrorist attacks for filming the US embassy in the Philippines. Raids on hotel rooms in Manila revealed residue of bomb-making equipment. The three Omanis who stayed there are now in Thailand. A pilot for Saudi airlines in Manila was also taken in for questioning. He is apparently the brother of one of the US hijackers.
Money, knowledge and manpower from every corner of the world were now, obviously, being channelled to the shores of the US for bin Laden's final attempt to destroy the twin towers.
Last Tuesday, American Airlines Flight 11 from Logan Airport in Boston showed just how slick, controlled, ruthless and professional his followers really were. Flight 11 was bin Laden's blueprint hijacking. It worked like a dream. On board were Mohammad Atta, Walid Al Shehri, Aabdul Alomari, Satam Sugami and Waleed Alsheri. Piloted by John Ogonowski and Tom McGuinness, the aircraft received clearance for take-off to Los Angeles at 7.45am on Tuesday. Among the 92 passengers on board were Berry Berenson, the actress and widow of actor Anthony Perkins, and David Angell, executive producer of Frasier and former writer of Cheers. The hijackers struck at 8.10am at 10,000ft, seizing three air stewardesses and dragging one, screaming, to the end of the plane.
Atta and his team tried to break into the cockpit but the pilots had barricaded themselves in. The hijackers threatened to start killing passengers and crew unless the controls were handed over to them. It was then that calls started to come from the plane as passengers used their mobile phones. Some said two stewardesses were dead ; another was intercepted by the emergency services as a passenger screamed: 'Oh God, they are killing us ... help us ... help us ... we will die up here.' The pilot and co-pilot left their cabin after keying their mic so everything could be heard on the ground by horrified air traffic control teams. One of the hijackers, believed to be Atta, told passengers over the PA system in perfect, almost accentless English: 'Don't be afraid, you're not going to get hurt.' The plane was tracked turning left to fly over the Hudson River to New York City, and the ground crew heard the hijacker tell Ogonowski: 'Don't do anything foolish. You're not going to get hurt. We have more planes, we have other planes.'
The plane's transponder, which allowed it to be tracked and to communicate with air traffic control, was switched off as it began to make its descent over New York. The hijackers ordered anyone with a phone to contact their loved ones. It was time to say their goodbyes.
Peter Hanson, a Massachusetts architect, was in economy class with his wife, Susan, and his 11-year-old daughter, Christine. His father, Lee, said he called twice. The first time he said an air stewardess was stabbed to death, but he was then cut off. The second time he said the plane was going down and that he loved his mother and father. The plane hurtled along the line of the Hudson and at 3000ft and travelling at 400 mph, circled Manhattan and New York harbour. At 8.45am it smashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre.
Next into the air was United Airlines Flight 175. It left Logan just seconds after Flight 11 was hijacked in the air. On board were Ruth Clifford McCourt and her four-year-old daughter Juliana. Ruth's brother, Ronnie Clifford, an Irish businessman, escaped from the rubble of the north tower minutes before the plane his sister was on crashed into the south tower. Along with the innocent passengers was another five-man hijack crew -- Marawan Alshehhi, Fayez Ahmed, Mohald Alshehri, Hamza Al Ghamdi and Ahmed Al Ghamdi.
The pattern was the same -- the hijackers jumped the air crew, stabbed flight attendants, broke into the cockpit and told passengers they would be all right. This time, however, the passengers fought back. One, Charles Falkenberg, rang his neighbour saying: 'We've been taken hostage, but they've promised not to harm us. We've tried to fight them off but they have weapons.' He was then cut off. At 9.03am the aircraft slammed into the second tower, killing all 56 passengers and nine crew. One American Airlines captain said he believed the hijack teams were 'the equivalent of crack commandos'. He also said pilots and co-pilots were extremely vulnerable to an attack. Sitting in the cockpit with their backs to anyone entering, they would be dead in seconds if a hijacker was planning murder. 'These guys obviously acted very quickly, snapping necks and slitting throats,' he said. 'There was nothing the crew could have done.'
As the second plane crashed into the side of the south tower, vice-president Dick Cheney was staring in disbelief at the television screen in his office in the White House. When the first jet crashed, many believed it had been a terrible accident, but a second smash, on the same target, meant there were kamikaze attackers dive-bombing America.
Cheney's secret service officer knew exactly that, and grabbed his boss unceremoniously by the jacket, dragging him down to the basement to the President's Emergency Operations Centre. This underground facility is able to withstand a nuclear blast.
Cheney was told that another plane was heading for the White House and got straight on the phone to President George W Bush, who had just boarded Air Force One in Florida, telling him not to return to Washington under any circumstances. Cheney was joined by Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, and transportation secretary Norman Mineta. Then more terrifying news came in: four international jets were headed across the Atlantic for Washington and another from Korea. Nobody had any idea whether they were hostile or not. US fighters were scrambled. Claims came in that seven domestic flights had been hijacked. None of these developments turned out to be true. The next communication, however, is truly frightening, especially for the US secret service. Codes known only to the most senior security and defence officials were, according to intelligence sources, used by 'terrorists to make a credible threat'. That threat was simple: 'Air Force One is next.' At that point the President was in the air. Seemingly overcome with the drama of the day, Bush became a little bullish. His senior adviser, Karl Rove, said the president got 'pretty antsy' and told him: 'I don't want some tinhorn (sic) terrorist keeping me out of Washington.'
Rove went on: 'The Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. In light of the specific and credible threat, it was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort.' Rove did not say it, but there is only one implication from the story he related: that somewhere, maybe in the White House, the NSA or the CIA, there is a mole who is selling information to terrorists.
At 8.10am, American Airlines flight 77 took off from Dulles International Airport near Washington on its way to Los Angeles. Among the 64 passengers on board was Barbara Olson, the CNN anchorwoman and wife of the US solicitor-general, Ted Olson. She should have been on an earlier flight but held off, wanting to have breakfast with her husband on his birthday.
These hijackers added an extra dimension to the horror their captives were facing. Unlike Atta's team and those Alshehhi led on board UA flight 175, this group did not lull their victims into a false sense of security with promises that everything would be all right. When they took over the controls, they told the passengers to phone their families as they were 'all going to die'. Once again it was another five-man team at the controls: Khalid Almihdhar, Majed Moqued, Nawaf Al Hazmi, Salem Al Hazmi and pilot Hani Hanjour. After telling the people on board that they were going to die, they then gave away exactly how their deaths were planned. The plane, they said, would hit the White House in a few minutes. It did not. At 9.43am, it crashed into the south-west side of the Pentagon, killing at least 800 government staff on the ground. The crash effectively wiped the voice recorder in the plane's black box, irreparably damaging the subsequent investigation, now named Penttbom.
As New York and Washington burned, chaos was breaking out in the US executive as well. Bush was now at an air force base in Louisiana, and boiling with rage that he had to make a tape for broadcast rather than go live on air in the capital and be seen to be leading his people at the centre of command. He ranted and raved at Cheney about getting to Washington, but the secret service said no. In times such as these, even the president can be over-ruled for his own safety by his security advisers. Cheney delayed going on air himself, afraid that Bush might interpret this as an attempt to usurp his authority.
United Airlines Flight 93 took off from Newark at 8.01am, heading west to San Francisco. The exact fate of the 45 people on board is shrouded in mystery. It was destined, the FBI believe, for either the presidential retreat at Camp David, an FBI facility or the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. What is known is that it was taken over by probably the most inexperienced team, this time a four-man unit. They were Ahmed Al Haznawi, Ahmed Alnami, Ziaad Jarrah and Saeed Alghamdi. Perhaps the most upsetting phonecall of all came from one of Flight 93's passengers, Thomas Burnett, who is now being hailed as an all-American hero. He called his wife, Deena, shortly after the hijackers struck. 'I know we are all going to die,' he said, 'but there are three of us who are going to do something about it.' The last words his wife heard him say were: 'I love you, honey.' At 10.10am, the plane crashed in a field in Somerset County in rural Pennsylvania, some 80 miles south of Pittsburgh. Like the other planes it was carrying around 200,000 lbs of fuel for its six-hour flight to the west coast. Unlike the Pentagon plane, the voice recorder in its black-box remained in- tact. The US authorities are now investigating whether this amount of fuel legally categorises the suicide planes as weapons of mass destruction.
At first it seemed Burnett and some of the other passengers really had fought the hijackers to a standstill and somehow the plane had ditched before reaching its target. But last Thursday federal investigators said the UA jetliner may have been shot down. FBI agent Bill Crowley said: 'We have not ruled that out. We haven't ruled out anything.' Last Tuesday, the US Defence Department vigorously denied claims that Flight 93 had been downed by the military.
However, it is now clear that fighter jets were scrambled and in the air. The Boeing 757 was also found in two large pieces six miles apart. A plane hitting the ground would have most of its wreckage confined to one crash site. Only an aircraft that broke up in the air before impact would have its fuselage scattered over such a wide area. There are also claims one of the passengers made a phonecall saying the hijackers had a bomb.
Apart from the final cataclysmic seconds of each flight, there is only one thing we can be sure of, one thing that was inevitable with the four missions. As with all the suicide-bombers who have killed hundreds of civilians in Israel, the Islamic pilots, destined for martyrdom and a place by Allah's side, would have strengthened their resolve and uttered just three last words before driving their guided missiles filled with human beings into the two towers, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania: 'Allah O Akbar', or 'God is great'.
www.interpol.int
www.whitehouse.gov
www.washingtondc.gov
www.fbi.gov
www.nyc.gov
www.fema.gov
www.nytimes.com
www.washingtonpost.com
Copyright © 2001 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088
Back to previous page
http://www.wanttoknow.info/9-11timeline60pg
This is a collection of reports/articles on terror from
1982 until 2005.
Several are interesting and unknown to me.
Have you checked this website?
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/engsite/home/default.asp
Plotter's Martyrdom Tape
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=122&id=4899&t=Last+wish+of+Indonesian+Catholic+on+death+row
Last wish of Indonesian Catholic on death row
Domani Fabianus Tibo will be unjustly executed by firing squad together with his friends da Silva and Riwu. His last words are an appeal to the president and a denunciation of the country’s legal system.
Friday, August 11, 2006
by Asia News See all articles by this author
New Stories
Chavez says Israel attacks similiar to Nazis
Last wish of Indonesian Catholic on death row
Activists face Israel military aid vigil charge
Bombers in action throughout Lebanon
Ethiopian general defects, joins rebels
US warns of likely terror attacks in India
Pakistan makes arrests in Britain terror plot
UK terror plot investigation deepens
Standing in the gap in New Orleans
5 Chinese Christians receive arrest notifications
Full Coverage
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Mel Gibson Scandal
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Rick Warren in the news
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Blogging: Tips and techniques
Zimbabwe's dictator: Robert Mugabe
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Internet and Media News
Pregnancy and Family News
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China and Christianity News
Three Indonesian Catholics on death row are only a few hours away from their execution in Palu, central Sulawesi province. Tomorrow, a few minutes after midnight (local time), they will be brought before the firing squad that will kill them. Their hopes in an act of clemency from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are dimming but have not been completely extinguished. One of the men condemned to death, Fabianus Tibo, has turned to the head of State to express the so-called “last wish” allowed him by Indonesian law. “I hope my president will be so good as to review my case,” he said last night from Petobo prison in Palu. For several months, defence lawyers and human rights groups have been calling for a review of the men’s trial that was held to be unfair and conditioned by pressure from extremist groups. New witnesses and evidence that would have absolved the three men was never taken seriously by the court.
Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus “Domi” da Silva and Marinus Riwu were condemned to death because they were found guilty of masterminding the massacre of hundreds of Muslims in Poso in 2001, during an inter-faith conflict that shook the area between 1998 and 2001. So far, not one Muslim has been tried in relation to the clashes that claimed a high death toll among Christians too.
In his last words, Tibo hit out at the Indonesian legal system “that condemned three innocent peasants to death when all they did was offer help to Catholic victims of the violence in Poso. Why will those criminals who raped, killed and looted during those times be spared?”
Visibly shaken by his fate, Tibo anyhow is continuing to socialize with other detainees. Yesterday he received a visit from his family: his wife Nurlin Kasiala, his eldest son, Robertus, and his daughter. The priest who supported the three men in these difficult times, Fr Jimmy Tumbelaka of Tentenna, was also there. The men’s relatives forcefully reiterated their negation of the “unjust” penalty. Their sorrow and frustration is echoed by the country’s Catholic community that is “profoundly saddened by one of the greatest tragedies of Indonesia’s history, where Catholics seem to have become the scapegoats.”
Everything has already been prepared for the funeral of the condemned men. Tibo himself has said his body will be buried in Poso. The funeral will be celebrated by the bishop of Manado, Mgr Peter Canisius Mandagi, in the Cathedral of Palu, where burial chambers will be prepared for Riwu and da Silva who will be buried in Maumere and Kupang, province of East Nusa Tenggara.
[unknown url]
Jihad Manual (p. 230) says:
Candidates for Recruitment Are:
1. Smugglers
2. Those seeking political asylum
3. Adventurers
4. Workers at coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels
5. People in need
6. Employees at borders, airports, and seaports
Subject: Heathrow worker one of arrestees
One must look at Muslims working in sensitive positions closely.
-CNN (talking to ITV reporter) is reporting now that one arrested worked
at
Heathrow airport and that he was wearing Heathrow pants/overalls when
arrested.
Others arrested were students. Several of them traveled to Pakistan,
and
the head of the AT squad said that their movements have been tracked,
as
well as their spending patterns.
MSNBC this morning stressed the homegrown element of the operation.
14% of Pakistanis in UK are unemployed, compared to 4% of population at
large there.
[I did not find it, from one of the newsgroups]
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 5:04 PM
To:
Subject: Breaking: Air Canada plane halted: suspicious package
Fox News is reporting that an Air Canada plane has been forced
to land in Baltimore (rather than Reagan Intl Airport) because of a
suspicious package.
Flight 7652 (I believe, by memory) left from Montreal. NFI
(no Internet supporting story yet)
Interesting, reports.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Breaking%3A+Air+Canada+plane+halted%3A+suspicious+package&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Air+Canada+plane+halted:+suspicious+package&sa=N&tab=nw
http://www.google.com/search?q=Air+Canada+plane+has+been+forced+to+land+in+Baltimore&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
[unknown url]
US judge denies bail to terror suspect who claims misgivings
By CURT ANDERSON Associated Press Writer
MIAMI
A judge denied bail Thursday to a seventh member of a group accused of plotting U.S. terror attacks despite the man's claims that he had misgivings about group's direction and attempted to break free by moving hundreds of miles (kilometers) away.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber, ruling on the same day British authorities foiled a major terror attack involving U.S.-bound airliners, agreed with prosecutors that 31-year-old Lyglenson Lemorin should remain in custody while awaiting his trial in March.
Lemorin and the other six are accused of conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and government buildings in Miami, New York, Washington and elsewhere. Authorities have said their plot never got beyond the planning stage and that they never acquired any explosives or weapons for the attack.
Garber ruled that Lemorin, a Haitian immigrant, would be a danger to the community and a risk to flee if released on bail. His co-defendants, including alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, are also being held without bail.
Lemorin gave a statement to the FBI after his June 26 arrest in Atlanta indicating that he moved because he wanted nothing more to do with Batiste's group after he and the others took an oath of loyalty to al-Qaida. The ceremony included a Middle Eastern man the group thought was an al-Qaida operative, but who was actually an FBI informant.
Lemorin's lawyer, Joel DeFabio, said Lemorin was not part of Batiste's inner circle and did not take an active role in any attack planning or reconnaissance.
"At best, they have Mr. Lemorin taking an oath, with nothing more. There are no overt acts," Lemorin said.
Federal prosecutor Richard Getchell said a video of the al-Qaida oath ceremony shows that Lemorin went first and showed no hesitation in joining "the most fearsome terrorist organization in the world."
"That's what is truly frightening about this case _ the willingness to stand up, just like that, and say 'Yes, I'll help al-Qaida destroy buildings and overthrow the government of the United States,'" Getchell said.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.