Posted on 08/25/2007 2:26:58 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3202
Why is Islam critic who claims she needs millions for protection against Islamist threats represented by the terrorist lawyer?
Lawyer Britta Bohler leaks secret documents about clients security to Green Left party where she is a member
October 7, 2007
“Freedom party PVV leader Geert Wilders doesn’t think the Netherlands should foot the bill for Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s security in the US. If someone settles abroad he says it is “absurd to expect the Netherlands to continue to pay forever.”Wilders, who himself has been under protection for years because of death threats against him, said this on Tuesday. His comments come in response to Hirsi Ali’s return to the Netherlands after the government decided to stop paying for her security costs in the US.
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=44511
Why Is The Netherlands’ Terrorists Favorite Lawyer, Britta Böhler, Representing Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
October 3, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Now that American Enterprise Institute scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali has returned to the Netherlands, searching for sufficient funding to cover her prodigious “security” detail [estimated to cost upwards of $2 million per year], an extremely troubling relationship comes into clearer focus; Ali is represented by Britta Böhler, a naturalized citizen of Holland and a notorious defense attorney for European Marxist and Islamist terrorists.
“Former VVD politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali feels that she must ultimately arrange her personal security herself. As long as she is unable, the Dutch government will bear a responsibility for her protection however.
Lawyer Britta Böhler said this on Wednesday on behalf of Hirsi Ali. Böhler hopes the statements will create more clarity on the situation in which the former politician finds herself. “ [source, http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=44566]
As Dutch author & terror researcher Emerson Vermaat notes, during the trial of Samir Azzouz [the leader of “The Hofstadgroep” formerly headed by Mohammed Bouyeri, the Islamist who butchered Theo van Gogh in November 2004] Azzouz’ attorney Britta Böhler threatened the judge, warning him to honor the “vox populi” [as represented by Azzouz’ supporters in the courtroom’s spectator gallery] and sumarily release the defendant.
Another member of Azzouz’ defense team, Viktor Koppe asserted to the judges that the friends and supporters of defendant ‘agreed’ with him - implying that they constituted a “proxy jury.”
“The ‘NRC Handelsblad’ on November 10th, the article ‘Spirit of the times the motor behind the trial of Samir Azzouz’ cited the lawyer Britta Böhler. She warned the judges for the vox populi, if the court didnt acquit the defendants in this case.
I myself observed the trial and heard Böhler’s office colleague Victor Koppe declare during one of the hearings that he had the impression that the people in the spectators gallery agreed with him. In their deposition both public prosecutors referred to Koppe’s remarks.
Since 2002 I have been closely following all the important terrorism trials closely and this year I wrote a book about the Hofstadgroep trial [Nederlandse Jihad’ publisher Aspekt 2006]. I have never experienced that a lawyer at a sitting called attention to the ‘vox populi’ from the spectator’s gallery. In addition to journalists, both friends and family of the suspects were sitting there, showing their support for the defendants.
Whenever something negative was said about the defendants in the courtroom the spectators in the spectators gallery made throat cutting gestures and I even heard someone say ‘Cancer Jew.’” [source, Emerson Vermaat, as quoted in http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2544]
Born in Germany, Böhler was an early devotee of Marx and Lenin as a student and a supporter of the Red Army Faction, a German terrorist group. As an attorney, Böhler’s vigorous defense of terrorists and left-wing activism has brought her acclaim within both revolutionary and radical Islamist circles.
“She happened to be a great admirer of Abdullah Öcalan, a Turk-Kurdish macho with a preference for blond European women and the leader of the PKK, an extremely violent Kurdish terrorist network which specialized in liquidating opponents. In Ocalan’s terrorist camps, there were a few German women who previously belonged to, or sympathized with the Baader-Meinhof gang.
When Turkey finally captured Ocalan, Britta Böhler simply announced she was his lawyer. Just before Ocalan was captured, Böhler tried to arrange his flight to the Netherlands, but the Dutch authorities did not give Ocalan’s plane permission to land - for reasons of State security. Böhler was upset, claiming that Ocalan’s “right to asylum” had been ignored. It so happens that Böhler and her associates played a legal role - as attorneys - in virtually every major terrorism court case in the Netherlands.” [source Emerson Vermaat, as quoted in Front Page Magazine, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={5B52E75F-E0F8-40AF-B325-46B73F55D557}]
Given Böhler’s career, it seems inconceivable that she would be now be representing someone whose political ideology is seemingly diametrically opposed her own...that is unless Ms. Ali is not exactly what she has been representing herself as being. This is especially true when one considers that Böhler defended Volkert Van der Graaf, the assassin of Dutch MP Pym Fortuyn who was murdered for voicing concerns about the Netherland’s Muslim population that were far less antagonistic than Ali’s normal litany of charges.
As Ali’s newest international theatrical dance plays out, the American Enterprise Institute had better give serious thought as to whether her continued “scholarship” at that esteemed institution has any value and whether she should be allowed to return, if and when she arranges private financing for her multi-million dollar “security” blanket.
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=alibohler10.3.07.htm
Free At Last Redux - Ayaan Hirsi Ali Flees Again, Leaving U.S. For Holland
October 1, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Adding another mysterious note to her already confusing relationship with the highly respected conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has fled the United States and has once again taken up residence in Holland, the country from which she departed only last year, claiming that it couldn’t properly provide for her security.
Since she came to prominence in the Netherlands as a critic of Islam [having fraudulently gained citizenship due to misrepresentations made on her asylum papers], Ali’s entire career has been one of lies and controversy demarked by a remarkable degree of self-promotion bordering on the shameless. Her abrupt and unannounced departure from America merely adds to a wake of destruction including a murdered and nearly decapitated film maker Theo Van Gogh - butchered by Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri who was allegedly incensed over Ali’s script for Van Gogh’s controversial short film “Submission,” as well as being responsible for the resignation of Dutch PM Jan Peters Balkenende and his entire cabinet in June of 2006 over its treatment of Ali. As we wrote in a May 22, 2004 piece Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 24 x 7
“What is it about Ayah Hirsi Ali that makes terror experts, conservatives and secular Jews lose their grasp on reality?
Ali came to general public attention outside of the Netherlands on November 2, 2004 the day Theo van Gogh was slaughtered by Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri.
Bouyeri killed van Gogh because of the perceived anti-Muslim nature of his controversial film “Submission,” scripted by Hirsi Ali who received 18,000 Euros for her efforts.
Since then it has been non-stop self promotion on the part of Ali, who fled Holland in the wake of the van Gogh murder only to return in hip new duds and sporting a movie star coif to pursue further self-aggrandizement.”
Contacted this afternoon by PLN regarding Ali’s sudden and mysterious departure, AEI spokesman Veronique Rodman was not exactly forthcoming, refusing to comment on speculation that Ali left the United States because the Dutch had refused to continue paying for her security detail while she resided here, only stating for the record that, “She is still an AEI scholar...there has been no change in her scholar status.”
Ali’s lying and theatrics prompted one Dutch paper to comment:
“Ayaan Hirsi Ali is once again back in what she herself called ‘the pressure cooker of Holland.’ At the beginning of February she said in an interview that she was glad that an end had come to the pressure cooker. She felt well in the United States and in spite of the security was “much more a normal person in the melting pot.” [source, http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/72066201/Hirsi_Ali_terug_in__snelkookpan_Holland_.html]
In a Dutch interview with the Trouw newspaper several years ago Hirsi Ali characterized herself as a “consummate liar.” Today’s development in the Ali saga demonstrate that her skills along those lines have not diminished at all with time.
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=ali10.1.07.htm
MIM: More theatrics as Britta Bohler leaks secret documents about Hirsi Ali’s security in the United States to Green Left members of parliament. Not surprisingly Bohler is also a member and parlimentarian from the same party.
Cabinet angry at lawyer of Ayaan Hirsi Ali 910/9/07
Kamer bos op advocaat Hirsi Ali
http://www.nos.nl/nosjournaal/artikelen/2007/10/9/091007_hirsi_ali_stukken.html
De Tweede Kamer is boos op Hirsi Ali’s advocate Britta Böhler. Böhler stuurde een aantal Kamerleden dinsdag een aantal vertrouwelijke stukken over het overleg tussen Hirsi Ali en Nederlandse autoriteiten over haar beveiliging in de Verenigde Staten.
De Kamer begon vanmiddag aan een spoeddebat over de beveiliging van het oud-VVD-Kamerlid.
Het debat begon met een verklaring van minister Hirsch Ballin van Justitie die Böhlers actie “zeer ongewoon” noemde en de Kamer verzocht de stukken niet in het debat te betrekken.
Diverse Kamerleden spraken daarop hun verontwaardiging uit over de actie van Böhler, die behalve advocaat ook namens GroenLinks lid van de Eerste Kamer is.
Volgens CDA’er Haersma Buma is het “een schandaal dat dit soort zaken openbaar worden gemaakt.” VVD-kamerlid Griffith zei “ronduit verbijsterd” te zijn.
Beide parlementariërs suggereerden daarbij een verband met het feit dat het spoeddebat over Hirsi Ali’s beveiliging door GroenLinks werd aangevraagd.
MIM: According to this article it was Hirsi Ali who told Bohler to leak the documents.
http://www.ad.nl/binnenland/article1727590.ece
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3202
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3201
Americans Against Hate website provides proof of ICNA’s Ties to Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas
October 7, 2007
AAH SITE PROVIDES PROOF OF ICNA’S TIES TO MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND HAMAS
WEB POST WAS IN RESPONSE TO NEGLIGENT MEDIA REPORTS ABOUT DALLAS SIX FLAGS PROTEST
(Coral Springs, FL) Americans Against Hate (AAH) has placed on its website a series of screenshots providing proof that the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) currently has a physical relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood of Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). As well, the screenshots show exactly how ICNA was the top donor to a JI charity that, just one year ago, provided $99,000 to the head of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal.
The material was posted on the anti-hate group’s website, in response to media reports that ignored evidence supplied by AAH validating the strong ties between ICNA, JI and Hamas. AAH will be protesting ICNA on Sunday, October 14th, outside Six Flags Over Texas, where ICNA is holding its Muslim Family Day event.
AAH Chairman Joe Kaufman stated, “Members of the Dallas-area media have been negligent, with regard to their refusal to publish the proof of what we are saying about ICNA. We cannot understand why vital information concerning the terror ties of a so-called mainstream Muslim group are being ignored. The citizens of North Texas have a right to know what is living and lurking in their backyard.”
One can access the proof, at http://www.americansagainsthate.org/HamasDonorICNA.htm.
Kaufman will be speaking about ICNA’s ties to terrorism, during his speech on October 14th, outside Six Flags Over Texas, in Arlington.
All are welcome to help protest ICNA with Americans Against Hate. Attendees are asked to bring American flags to show their patriotism. ALL SIGNAGE WILL BE SUPPLIED BY AMERICANS AGAINST HATE.
When: Sunday, October 14, 2007, 12:00 noon till 2:00 pm
Where: Outside Six Flags Over Texas, across the street from Steak & Ale at 916 Six Flags Dr.
Joe Kaufman is available for interview. E-mail: info@americansagainsthate.org.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3201
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3204
Homegrown terrorism in Germany: The case of Christian Ganczarski by Emerson Vermaat
October 8, 2007
Osama bin Laden called him his “German general,” to other high level Al-Qaeda operatives he was known as “Ibrahim the German or “Abu Ibrahim.” Christian Manfred Ganczarski, a Muslim convert from Germany, was one of bin Laden’s personal couriers who had direct access to Al-Qaeda’s top leadership. He passed messages from Khaled Sheikh Mohammed on to Osama bin Laden or visa versa. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (”KSM”) or “brother Mukhtar” was the high level Al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan who planned the 9/11 operation.
It was in April 2000 that Ganczarski gave a handwritten letter from brother Mukhtar to Osama bin Laden. The letter introduced and recommended an Australian convert named Jack Roche who had traveled with Ganczarski from Karachi, Pakistan, to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Jack Roche was to set up a terror cell in Sydney, Australia, with a view to planning terrorist attacks. But first, Mr. Roche needed to be trained in the use of explosives in one of Al-Qaeda’s training camps. Bin Laden was friendly. The Al-Qaeda leader liked converts from Western countries and invited Christian en Jack to share a meal with him.[1] On his return to Australia in June 2000, Jack Roche or “Jihad Jack” planned to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. He was arrested in November 2002 and sentenced to nine years in June 2004.
Roche converted to Islam in 1992, and later met an operative from Jemaah Islamiya in a Sydney mosque. Jemaah Islamiya was Al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asian branch. An Indonesian man named Encep Nurjaman or “Hambali” was the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiya. Hambali closely cooperated with Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and he was also involved in the preparations of 9/11.[2]
When he met bin Laden in Kandahar in the Spring of 2000, Jack Roche hoped that Al-Qaeda would ask him to join to Taliban to fight in their ranks. Al-Qaeda had other plans for him. They wanted him to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Canberra and kill a Jewish businessman.[3]
Recruited in the radical Al-Taqwa Mosque in Duisburg
Christian Ganczarski himself was also recruited after visiting a radical mosque in Germany. The inconspicuous Al-Taqwa Mosque in Duisburg was a meeting point for radical Islamists.[4]
Ganczarski was born in Gliwice, Poland, in October 1966. His devout Catholic parents were of German origin. The family moved to Germany in 1976. They settled in Müllheim in the industrial Ruhr valley region. As a teenager he lost his faith in the Catholic Church and got involved in petty crime. He found a job in the firm of Düwag in Krefelt where he met so-called “guest workers” from Muslim countries. One of his friends was a Tunisian who encouraged him to read the Koran. It was in the Summer of 1986 that Ganczarski became a Muslim himself saying the “shahada” (Muslim confession) in a mosque. He was also circumcised and became active in a local Müllheim mosque. The 19-year old Muslim convert adopted the name of “Ibrahim.” He married another Muslim convert, Nicola (”Maymuna”). They had a daughter who suffered from diabetes. People in Mülheim told me they still remember the Ganczarskis: he had a heavy beard, was dressed like a Pakistani and his wife wore a niqab.
With the help of the Saudi gynaecologist Dr. Nadeem Elyas from the Bilal Mosque in Aachen, Ganczarski received permission to study in Saudi Arabia in 1992. The Saudi royal family had asked Dr. Elyas to target German converts with a view to winning them over to “Wahhabism,” the arch-conservative Saudi branch of Islam. (This was also done in other European countries.) Elyas had first contacted Ganczarski’s imam in Müllheim asking him if he knew suitable candidates. The imam knew a good candidate and mentioned the name of Christian Ganczarski. The Saudi doctor was well connected: he also played a leading role in the Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland (ZMD), the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. Consequently, he was in a unique position to contact mosques and imams. Money was no problem. So Ganczarski’s wife and daughter were able to join him one year later.
Due to insufficient knowledge of the Arab language Christian “Ibrahim” Ganczarski was unable to finish his studies. He returned to Germany in 1994 to live in the city of Duisburg. In the Al-Taqwa Mosque he met Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian who had just graduated from the local Gerhard-Mercator University with a degree in electronic engineering. Ould Slahi came to Germany in 1988. He became a student in Duisburg and through the internet he came into contact with radical Chechen groups. He joined the jihad in Bosnia.[5] He traveled to Aghanistan twice and received training from Al-Qaeda. His brother-in-law was Al-Qaeda financier Khaled Al-Shanquiti, also known as “Abu Hafs the Mauritanian.” Al-Shanquiti was very close to Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 Commission Report refers to Ould Slahi as “a significant Al-Qaeda operative.”[6] After graduation he set up an import and export firm in Duisburg (”Ould Slahi GmbH”) which served as a cover for Al-Qaeda activities. He also claimed social security benefits to which he was not entitled at all. Huge sums of Al-Qaeda money were transferred through the account of his firm. Much of the money came from his brother-in-law Al-Shanquiti in Sudan who was involved in the preparations of the Al-Qaeda suicide bombings of the American Embassies in Kenia and Tanzania in 1998.
In Duisburg, Ould Slahi (”Abu Musab”) successfully recruited Christian Ganczarski and Karim Mehdi, a young and fanatical Moroccan. They often met in the Al-Taqwa Mosque in Duisburg and in another mosque in Müllheim.
Ould Slahi was in touch with Marwan Al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah and Ramzi Binalshibh, three key members of the Hamburg 9/11 terror cell led by Mohammed Atta. He met them twice in his Duisburg apartment and advised them to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan. After his arrest in 2002, Binalshibh was interrogated by U.S. intelligence officials.
“Binalshibh said they were initially suspicious of Abu Musab, but came to trust him as the meeting progressed. Abu Musab told them that the first step was to get Pakistani visas, as Pakistan would serve as their point of entry for onward travel to Afghanistan. He instructed them to apply for the visas using their authentic passports and to return in a specific period of time. Binalshibh was unsure how much time passed between the first and second meetings, but estimated it was approximately two or three weeks.
Binalshibh said that, although Mohammed Atta (the lead hijacker) did not attend the meetings, he also decided to go to Afghanistan.”[7]
Mohammed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah and Ramzi Binalshibh became core members of the 9/11 plot – with Atta designed as its operational leader.[8] All of them met with Osama bin Laden and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Al-Qaeda’s operational leader. It was during these meetings that the 9/11 plot began to take shape. The idea to use hijacked planes as bombs originated in the mind of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and bin Laden approved his proposal in April 1999. Within Al-Qaeda the plot was now referred to as the “planes operation.”[9] There are no indications that Mohamedou Ould Slahi knew about the plot or recruited Binalshibh, Jarrah, Atta and Al-Shehhi into Al-Qaeda. This was done later after they arrived in Afghanistan at the end of 1999. But without Ould Slahi’s advice the three 9/11 suicide pilots from Hamburg would never have considered going to Afghanistan. They originally planned to go to Chechnya. Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri were agreeably suprised when they met these promising new recruits. They were the perfect candidates for the 9/11 suicide mission.
Ganczarski’s trips to Afghanistan
Ganczarski, too, traveled to Pakistan at the end of 1999. In the Pakistani town of Quetta he visited a guesthouse run by Al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban. He probably did so on the advice of his Duisburg friend Ould Slahi. The Mauritanian had similarly instructed Binalshibh, Atta and Jarrah to travel to Quetta first and visit the Taliban office.[10] From Quetta the Taliban escorted Ganczarski to Kandahar in Southern Afghanistan. He was then sent to the north to fight in the Taliban ranks against the Northern Alliance led by Ahmed Shah Massoud. This kind of action soon damped his initial enthousiasm and he went back to Kandahar’s guesthouse number 2 and then decided to return to his family in Müllheim, Germany. He had three children now: one daughter and two sons. But he had promised the Al-Qaeda people in Kandahar that he would soon return to Afghanistan. Just before Christmas 1999 the whole Ganczarski family left Germany and traveled to Afghanistan. They were housed in Osama bin Laden’s compound. Ganczarksi, who happened to know a lot about computers, was working in the House of Logistics, the same place where the Al-Qaeda leadership and Western converts were staying.[11] Bin Laden obviously liked the new and promising Al-Qaeda recruit, “Ibrahim the German.” Ibrahim’s detailed knowlegde of computers and telecommunication was very useful to Al-Qaeda and to Osama bin Laden personally.[12] He was employed in the propaganda and communication department and also served as a courier between Osama bin Laden and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed.
In August 2000, Ibrahim the German called his friend Karim Mehdi in Duisburg telling him he needed 4800 German Marks (2400 Euro). He also talked about a boat filled with explosives which was successfully tested on a lake near Kabul. “Using boats or remote control model airplanes in a strike against military bases, boats or embassies was an old plan of Al-Qaeda, and in particular of my friend Christian,” Mehdi later said.[13]
Ganczarski’s wife did not like Afghanistan and there also was no more insuline for her daughter. After eight harsh months in the land of the Taliban, she now wanted to go back to Germany. Abu Ibrahim’s wife and the children settled in the town of Haan, he himself stayed with two German Muslim converts in Müllheim. One of them, Uwe D. (”Nadim”), traveled with Ganczarski to Afghanistan on August 8, 2001. (Ganczarski had also paid a two-week visit to Pakistan/Afghanistan in February 2001 and was arrested near the Georgian-Chechen border in March 2001 as he tried to travel to Chechnya.) Prior to his conversion to Islam, Uwe D. had been involved in petty crime and drug activities.[14] Both went to an Al-Qaeda training camp to be trained in the use of explosives and guerrilla warfare. Ganczarski returned to Germany just one week before the attacks of September 11, 2001. A few days after his return he claimed his passport had been lost. (During a house search after the Al-Qaeda attack on Djerba, Ganczarski’s old passport was found and all the Pakistani stamps were there.) These kind of tactics were often followed by Al-Qaeda operatives who did not want to have passes with conspicuous Pakistani entry and exit stamps as they traveled to other countries.[15] Similarly, the three 9/11 suicide pilots Mohammed Atta, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan Al-Shehhi also quicky got new passports shortly after their visits to Pakistan/Afghanistan.[16] Ganczarski paid at least five visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan, so he must have had a lot of stamps in the summer of 2001. He also traveled between the two countries to pass on personal messages and secret letters from Osama bin Laden to Khaled Sheikh Mohammed in Karachi or vice versa.[17]
Ould Slahi fled to his home country Mauritania after German authorities discovered that he had wrongly claimed social benefits for years. Another reason for going back to Africa was the discovery that he had been involved in the so-called “millennium plot,” a plan to blow up Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). He had traveled to Canada at the end of November 1999 to give instructions to Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian Al-Qaeda operative in Montreal who was to blow himself up in truck laden with explosives. The plot failed and Ould Slahi left Canada in January 2000 to open an internet café in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritaria. He was arrested in 2001 and later turned over to the Americans who eventually sent him to Guantanamo Bay.
In February 2001, Ganczarski mailed Ould Slahi that his friend “Mo(u)nir” was with him, probably a reference to Monir (or Mounir) Al-Motassadeq, a member of the Hamburg terror cell. In 2002, investigators would find a piece of paper in Ganczarki’s apartment with the bankaccount of Motassadeq’s Russian wife Maria Pavlova written on it. In Karim Mehdi’s apartment they found a piece of paper with a telephone number which once belonged to Ramzi Binalshibh (who had left for Pakistan/Afhanistan shortly before 9/11).[18]
The attack on the Synagogue of Djerba
It was probably in Montreal that Ould Slahi first met a young Tunisian national named Nizar Nawar.[19] Ganczarski also knew Nawar quite well. He had met him in Afghanistan in August 2001. Nizar Nawar, code named “Seif” (=Sword) was close to the Al-Qaeda leadership, especially to Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. After 9/11, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed instructed Nawar to blow up the ancient synagogue on the Tunisian tourist resort of Djerba. He returned to Tunisia to make the necessary preparations. The target was well chosen by Al-Qaeda. It would be the first major attack after 9/11 and it would also be a Jewish target. This fitted very well into bin Laden’s evil, demonic and anti-Semitic diatribes against the Jews:
“The hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them... And whoever claims there is permanent peace between us and the Jews has disbelieved what has been sent down through the prophet Muhammad; the battle is between us and the enemies of Islam, and it will go on until the Hour...”[20]
The La Ghriba Synagogue in Djerba is the oldest synagogue in the world. It is here that one finds the oldest Jewish community in the Maghreb. It was as early as five centuries before Christ that Jews began to settle here. Local Berber tribes converted to Judaism, but later most of them converted to Islam. La Ghriba became a symbol of peace and reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. (No wonder Osama bin Laden ordered to bomb this wonderful place.)
After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, most Tunisian Jews emigrated to the new Jewish state. The peace and quiet of Djerba and La Ghriba were disturbed in 1985 after the Israeli airforce bombed the PLO headquarters in the Tunisian capital of Tunis. Some 150 people were praying in the synagogue when a policeman suddenly fired at random into the crowd. Three people died, one of them was a child. The action of the Israeli airforce infuriated the policeman so much that he could no longer control himself and decided to pull the trigger, killing praying Jews whom he was supposed to protect.[21] After this tragic incident Tunisian authorities did everything they could to protect the Jews and their synagogue. But they could not foresee the Al-Qaeda attack which occured in April 2002. For years nothing had happened and lots of tourists had visited La Ghriba and made their pictures. Many of these tourists came from Germany, Israel and the United States.
On Thursday morning April 11, 2002, a tourist bus full of German tourists arrived at the La Ghriba Synagogue. Forty five tourists got off the bus and entered the narrow street leading to the entrance of the synagogue. Some of them saw an old Iveco tanker truck just opposite the entrance. Most German tourists entered the synagogue, the men among them had to place a kippa on their head. Others were still near the entrance. There were also some French tourists. It was half past eleven in the morning and suddenly there was a flash of light followed by an explosion: the innocent looking truck turned out to be car bomb.[22] Its huge tank was filled with liquid propane. It was the 24-year old Al-Qaeda operative Nizar Ben Mohammed Nasr Nawar who had ignited the explosion killing 14 Germans, 2 French tourists and 5 Tunisians. Although a huge fire quickly destroyed the interior of the synagogue, most tourists managed to escape. Andrea Esper was one of the survivors. She saw how some local Tunisians raised their fists towards the survivors and laughed at them as if they rejoiced over what had happened.[23]
Tunisian authorities first claimed it was an accident. To admit that it were an act of terrorism, could deal a severe blow to the Tunisian tourist industry. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Green Party) initially tended to believe the Tunisian version (on Monday April 15) but Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD) and Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm had reason to believe it was a real terrorist attack targeting foreign tourists. Schily visited Tunisia on April 22, 2002, and laid flowers at the synagogue wall. He now officially confirmed that it had been a terrorist attack.[24] By that time the Tunisians, too, had to admit that this was the case.
After 9/11 terrorism was one of Schily’s main priorities as Interior Minister. He immediately pressed for tougher anti-terror laws but the leftist Greens staunchly opposed his proposals. After the attack on Djerba they finally accepted that a long overdue article on membership of a terrorist association (Article 129b) be inserted in the German penal code. Recruiting others for a domestic or foreign terrorist organization, however, was not made punishable, due to strong opposition by the Green coalition party.[25]
In an important speech on February 4, 2003, in Washington, Mr. Schily, issued a strong warning against “cells of North African terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda,” and said:
“Islamist-extremist terrorism, like that practiced by Al-Qaeda, wants above all to destabilize Western societies and terrify their citizens.
Such terrorism consciously chooses so-called ‘soft targets’: tourists vacationing in Bali and Djerba and working fathers and mothers, nearly 3000 of them killed in the World Trade Center. It’s about terror for terror’s sake. And that means: If we allow ourselves to give in to panic, the terrorists will already have won...
We are currently conducting two major criminal trials against suspected Islamist terrorists. One involves the Meliani group, accused of planning a bomb attack on the Christmas market in the French city of Strasbourg. This group was made up of five North African Muslims who trained as terrorists in Afghanistan and had access to Osama bin Laden’s logistical network. But German police investigations uncovered the planned attack in time, already in late 2000 – and thus before the September 11th attacks – resulting in the arrest of those now on trial.
The other trial involves Mounir El Motassadeq accused of aiding Mohammed Atta and belonging to the same terrorist cell. This trial is the first in the world in connection with the September 11 attacks.”[26]
The Djerba Synagogue attack and Al-Qaeda
Nizar Nawar, the man who carried out the attack on the La Ghriba Synagogue in Djerba, was one of those North African terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda. Three hours before the attack, Nawar phoned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Klaus Ulrich Kersten, Director of Germany’s federal anticrime agency (BKA) told The New York Times in August 2002. “There are indications that this attack in Djerba was perpetrated with the blessing or approval of Al-Qaeda,” he said.[27]
A few hours before the attack Nawar also called Christian Ganczarski in Duisburg. It was a rather strange call:
Nawar: “I am Seif.”
Ganczarski: “Who?”
Nawar: “Seif, Seif!”
Ganczarski: “I see, wellcome. How are you doing?”
Nawar: “How are you doing? Are you okay?”
Ganczarski: “I am fine, praise be to God. Praise be to God, everything is okay. May God reward you. How are you doing?”
Nawar: “Don’t forget it...”
Ganczarski: “No.”
Nawar: “Praise be to God.”
Ganczarski: “Praise be to God. Praise be to God.”
Nawar: “Don’t forget. Don’t forget to include me in your prayers, to mention me in your prayers, if God wants it.”
Ganczarski: “If God wants it, how are you doing? Fine?”
Nawar: “Fine, fine, if God wants it.”
Ganczarski: “Praise be to God, where are you? Are you here?”
Nawar: “No, I am outside.”
Ganczarski: “Oh yes, if God wants it, do you need anything?”
Nawar: “No, thank you. I called you. I only need Dawa (=God’s blessing).”
Ganczarski: “If God wants it.”
Nawar: “Thank you.”
Ganczarski: “Okay?”
Nawar: “Good bye. Go in peace.”
Ganczarski: “Go in peace. May God’s grace and blessing be with you.”[28]
It was clear that Nawar wanted to get the green light for the Djerba bombing. His phone call to Ganczarski was tapped by the German security service BfV (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz). But Nizar Nawar placed another phonecall to Pakistan, to one of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s many cellphones.[29] This phone call was intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA) which passed the information on to the CIA. Ganczarski himself had also made a phone call to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was a short and silent call which lasted less than a minute. The two men did not speak. It was this call which would later betray KSM’s whereabouts. The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph revealed in March 2004 that Swiss cellphone chips are popular with Al-Qaeda operatives. The chips also helped to pin down KSM:
“Through electronic surveillance German authorities traced the call to Mohammed’s Swisscom mobile phone although they did not at first know that it belonged to him. Two weeks later they searched Ganczarski’s house and found a list of Swisscom numbers, which they passed on to the Swiss for further investigation.
By checking their records the Swiss realized that other Al-Qaeda suspects used Swisscom chips. Liaising with American and Pakistani intelligence they monitored cellphone trafic and were able to confirm that Mohammed was among the Swisscom users.
It took months to find him ‘because he wasn’t always using that phone, he had many many other phones,’ one official told the newspaper.
He was finally caught in a joined CIA and Pakistani operation.
The Swisscom investigation also led to the capture of a top Saudi-born Al-Qaeda suspect, Abdullah Oweis, in Qatar last July. One official said: ‘They’d would switch phones but use the same cards. It was a very good thing for us.’”[30]
It was clear that “KSM” was the chief planner of the Djerba operation, he and Al-Qaeda were deeply involved.[31] Ganczarski was also involved. He was arrested on April 15, 2002, but immediately denied everything, saying he had no links whatsoever to a terror network. He was released one day later due to lack of evidence.[32] German anti-terror laws were not tough enough to detain him for a longer period.
Five days after the Djerba attack, the “Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites” claimed it was responsible. This was just another name for Al-Qaeda. In 1998, the same “Islamic Army” had claimed responsibility for the Al-Qaeda attacks on the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.[33]
On April 16, 2002, the London based Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi published a message from the “Islamic Army” saying the Djerba attack had been “a response to Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in the Westbank and Gaza.” The suicide action “was a response to the refusal of governments to allow their peoples to start a jihad against the Jews.” The statement also praised “the heroic martyr Nizar Ben Mohammed, also known as Saif Eddine Tounsi,” who carried out the attack.” “He received his orders from the leadership of the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites.” He operated on his own, he did all the necessary reconnaissance work, making photos of the target. A testament written by Nawar was added saying that he sacrificed his life on the road to Allah. He also appealed to his parents, brothers and sisters to join him and struggle on the road to Allah.[34]
One month later, the attack on the La Ghriba Synagogue in Djerba was claimed by Abdel Azeem Al-Muhajir, a senior military leader in the Pakistani-Afghan border area. He told the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that the attack “was carried out by brothers in the Al-Qaeda network.” He also said Al-Qaeda had regrouped since the Taliban ouster, it now planned to give Americans “ a more painful hit” than the Tunisian attack. “Our network is not confined to a single spot on this earth. We are scattered all over the globe.”[35] Al-Qaeda’s official spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith also warned the United States “to fasten its seatbelt “ in preparation for more attacks. He said the Djerba operation “was undertaken by a young man from the Al-Qaeda organization who couldn’t bear to see his brothers in Palestine being killed while Jews walk around enjoying themselves and freely carrying out their rituals.”[36]
The family of suicide bomber Nizar Nawar lives in the French city of Lyon, a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. Nizar also lived in Lyon and it is likely he was recruited in one of the city’s radical “Salafist” mosques. There are large numbers of disaffected, unemployed and frustrated North Africans in the suburbs of Lyon. They were and are easy targets for firebrand clerics who want to recruit them for the jihad. One of the most notorious firebrand clerics is Abdelkader Bouziane, also known as the “Sheikh of Vénissieux” (a suburb of Lyon). He believes that wife beating is perfectly alright. He believes in polygamy and is married to two wives and has 16 children. He wants to establish “an Islamic Republic in France.” Claiming to be against terrorism he refuses to condemn Osama bin Laden, “because there is no proof bin Laden organized the attacks in New York and Madrid.”[37] Sheikh Bouziane arrived in France in the early 1990s. Before his arrival in Lyon in 2003, there were other firebrand clerics who preached jihad, praised suicide bombers and sympathized with Al-Qaeda. One of them could have recruited Nizar Nawar.
Nizar’s brother Walid was arrested in November 2002. He bought the satellite telephone used by Nizar when he made his phone calls to Pakistan and Germany.[38] Walid claimed he did know anything about his brother’s terrorist connections. He said his brother was not a practicing Muslim.[39] But Walid happened to have the telephone number of a Spanish national named Enrique Cerda Ibanez whose bank acount was used by Al-Qaeda to finance the Djerba operation. Walid also possesed a letter from Essa Ismail Muhammad (”Isaac de Karachi”), a Karachi based Al-Qaeda operative. This letter was addressed to Walid’s brother Nizar, the Djerba suicide bomber, asking him to to get 5000 euros from Enrique Cerda. Walid traveled to Spain himself to get the money from Cerda and and then sent it to his brother in Tunisia.[40]
Enrique Cerda was jailed in March 2003 along with Ahmed Rukhsar, a Pakistani national operating in northern Spain who was also suspected of collaborating with Al-Qaeda. Two years later, the Spanish police rounded up a criminal Pakistani network involved in Islamic or “hawala” banking. The Spanish police believed the network was also used by terrorists to finance their operations.[41] Similar Pakistani networks operate in other countries.
In April and July 2007, several criminal hawala networks were dismantled. They operated in Holland, the United States, Spain and Australia. One of the accused was involved in money laundering on behalf of Al-Qaeda. Among those who were arrested in July were the Pakistani citizens Mohammad Ahsan and Abdul Rehman who operated in Amsterdam.[42]
If one takes into account the dubious nature of many of these hawala networks, it is rather strange that Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos, a Social-Democrat, said in July 2007 that he wanted the Netherlands to develop into a center of Islamic banking. London, in his view, is a good example.[43] But dubious Pakistani hawala networks in Britain, with its huge Pakistani immigrant community, should not be a model to follow.
One explanation for the fact that the Dutch Finance Minister expressed such controversial views may be that his party, the PvdA, strongly depends on Muslim immigrant votes. Leading party members espouse the ideology of “multiculturalism.”
France arrests Ganczarski
German investigators and prosecutors knew that Christian Ganczarski was an Al-Qaeda operative having access to the highest leadership echalons,[44] yet they claimed they could not detain or charge him with any crime. Much needed tougher German anti-terror laws were not in place yet. Ganczarski knew, of course, that he was being investigated in Germany and decided to travel to Saudi in November 2002. He was accompanied by his wife and children. All of them had a pilgrim visa. The Germans alerted the Saudis that Mr. Ganczarski was the subject of a terror investigation.
Meanwhile, Ganczarski and his Moroccan friend Karim Mehdi were planning a terrorist attack on the French island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean. A wellknown tourist resort with fine beaches, not very far from Mauritius and Madagaskar. Mehdi first planned to make a reconaissance visit to La Réunion. In May 2003, Mehdi, who only received social security benefits, booked himself an expensive 14-day visit to the island. One month earlier German investigators discovered that Mehdi was collecting information on remote control systems. The German security service BfV alerted the French. Mehdi was arrested near Paris on June 1, 2003 as he planned to fly to La Reunion.[45] He was then interrogated by the well known French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Brugière and quickly admitted that a group of bin Laden sympathizers in Germany planned an attack on La Réunion. The idea was to bring a model boat laden with explosives near a beach promenade, the bomb was to be exploded by remote control. The conspirators also wanted a suicide bomber to detonate a car bomb near a tourist hotel. They felt inspired by what happened in October 2002 when Al-Qaeda suicide bombers killed 202 Western tourists in the peaceful Indonesian island of Bali.[46] The sadistic mind of these killers enjoyed seeing people dying and burning in the flames, they hoped that many of the survivors would suffer from burn injuries for the rest of their lives. This is what happened in Bali and Djerba.
During the interrogations in Paris, Mehdi mentioned the names of two German converts: Christian Ganczarski and Uwe D. The former was to contact Al-Qaeda and secure adequate funding for the operation. The latter was to travel to Kenia to contact the suicide bombers. Explosives were be smuggled from Madagaskar to La Réunion in a boat. There are Al-Qaeda terror cells operating both in Kenia and Madagaskar. Mehdi claimed he had discussed the Réunion plan with Ganczarski already in November 2002, before the latter left for Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis knew perfectly well who Ganczarski was and they wanted to send him back to Germany. He had also overstayed his visa. They put him under house arrest in April 2003 and contacted the Germans. The problem, however, was that German Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm did not believe he could successfully prosecute Ganczarski under existing Germans laws. Interior Minister Schily had pressed Nehm for one year now to take action. The French were also upset: French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy fully agreed with his German colleague Schily that Ganczarski was a dangerous high level Al-Qaeda operative who should have been behind bars long ago. The French had their own reasons to be interested in Ganczarski: two French citizens had died in Djerba and there were strong indications that this man was involved in the attack. As French anti-terror laws are much tougher, the French would not hesitate to prosecute Ganczarski.
So the Germans asked the Saudis to put this embarrassing German citizen and his family on an Air France flight to Paris. From Paris the Ganczarskis were then supposed to fly on to Frankfurt in a Lufhansa Plane. But when the Air France Plane from Riad landed in Paris on June 3, 2003, the French arrest team was already waiting for Christian Ganczarski. His wife and children were allowed to travel to Frankfurt. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told parliament that Ganczarski was an “information and telecommunications specialist” and a “senior leader of Al-Qaeda who was in personal contact with Osama bin Laden.”[47]
A Paris court convicted 37-year old Karim Mehdi in October 2006 to nine years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack on the island of La Réunion and membership of a terrorist organization (Al-Qaeda). French prosecutor Patrick Laberche pointed out that Mehdi had already purchased materials in preparation of the attacks. He also mentioned Mehdi’s highly interesting jihadist trips to Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mauritania. Another indication for Mr. Mehdi’s links to Al-Qaeda is the fact he possessed the telephone numbers and addresses of Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the 9/11 planners, and of Ziad Jarrah, one of the 9/11 suicide pilots. “In this case we are as close as it gets to the core of Al-Qaeda operations,” the prosecutoir said and he demanded a 10-year prison sentence.[48]
Some homegrown terrorists visit terrorist training camps
Christian Ganczarski was both a homegrown terrorist and an Al-Qaeda operative. Homegrown terrorists do not necessarily stay in their own countries. In a number of cases they visit training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Jason Walters and Ismail Akhnikh, two prominent members of the Dutch homegrown terror network “The Hofstad Group” also visited training camps in Pakistan in 2003.[49]
Ganczarski and Jason Walters are converts. So are Fritz Gelowicz and his friend Daniel Martin Schneider who planned a series of spectacular terrorist attacks in Germany but were arrested in September 2007. Fritz Gelowicz, too, was trained in one of those Pakistani training camps.[50] “Recent converts to Islam are particularly vulnerable,” says the New York Police report on Radicalization in the West.[51] Pakistan is still very important: two of the 7/7 London suicide bombers received training there. Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan were not converts but homegrown terrorists.
In the tribal areas of Waziristan there were, and possibly still are, at least 15 Al-Qaeda camps.[52] German investigators suspect that Aleem Nasir, a Pakistani “businessman” living in Germany, has also been in one of these training camps. What else does a man like Nasir have to seek in South Waziristan where the real power lies in the hands of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? Nasir’s arrest in Pakistan in July 2007 did cause concern among German investigators who feared that the Al-Qaeda threat in their country is not waning. There is no evidence yet that Nasir is a real terrorist or a terrorist recruiter. But if he is, there is reason to worry.
In its Annual Report 2006, the Dutch Security and Intelligence Service points to “the growing influence of foreign jihadists on local autonomous networks.”[53] Homegrown terrorists do not operate in a vacuum, they are not detached from what happens elsewhere, on the contrary. The internet and itinerant preachers play a vital role in the radicalization of young European Muslims.[54] But these radical websites and preachers invariably focus on the suffering of Muslim brothers and sisters elsewhere. It is what happens in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan or Chechnya that makes these young European Muslims so angry. Samir Azzouz, another leading member of the Hofstad Group, is a case in point. He radicalized after 9/11 when “Sheikh” Osama bin Laden became his big hero. He radicalized even further after visiting radical websites and participating in anti-Israel and anti-American demonstrations in Amsterdam. This fanatic teenager tried to travel to Chechnya in January 2003 but was stopped at the Ukranian-Russian border. And then he tried to make a bomb but failed because he had never been trained to do so. He wanted to become the first suicide bomber in the Netherlands and praised bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri in his testament.
Emerson Vermaat is a Dutch expert on international terrorism and crime. His website is: www.emersonvermaat.com.
[1] Uli Rauss and Oliver Schröm, Osamas Deutscher General. Wie Christian G. aus Duisburg zum Top-Terroristen wurde, in: Stern, August 4, 2005, p. 38-50. Part of the information on Ganczarski is based on this article and also on research by the author in Müllheim, Duisburg and Essen.
[2] Maria A. Ressa, Seeds of Terror. An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia (New York: Free Press, 2003), p. 71.
[3] BBC News, 1 June 2004 (”Jack Roche: The Naive Militant”).
[4] Especially the mosque’s “Gemeinnützliche Verein Internationale Treff, e.V.” was a meeting point for young Muslim radicals. The author visited this location. The Ganczarski case shows that radical mosques, apart from the internet, play an important role in recruiting jihadists. This was also the case in the Netherlands (Eindhoven). Northern Italy (Milan) and England (London).
[5] Emerson Vermaat, De Dodelijke Planning van Al-Qaida (Soesterberg: Uitgeverij Aspekt, 2005), p. 196.
[6] The 9/11 Commision Report. Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), p. 165.
[7] Peter L. Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know. An Oral History of al Qaeda’s leader (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 309.
[8] The 9/11 Commission Report, op. cit., p. 166.
[9] Ibid., p. 154. As early as May 1995, Philippine and U.S. investigators discovered an important plot. Project Bojinka “was a plan to blow up 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific in a day of rage against the United States.” According to investigators, it called for five Muslim terrorists to plant virtually undetectable bombs aboard the planes, all jumbo jets, in an intricately synchronized plan that had the bombers changing planes as many as four times a day.” The Sun, May 28, 1995 (”Terrorists plotted to blow up 11 U.S. jumbo jets”).
[10] Ibid., p. 166.
[11] Uli Rauss and Oliver Schröm, op. cit., p. 44, 46.
[12] “Ohne ihm, so die Erkenntnisse von Polizei und Geheimdiensten, könne Osama bin Laden wieder telefonieren noch ins Internet.” (According to the findings of the police and secret services, bin Laden does not have access to telephone and internet without Ganczarski’s assistance.”) (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Kyber/Christian_Ganczarski).
[13] Uli Rauss and Oliver Schröm, op. cit., p. 46.
[14] Focus, April 22, 2002, p. 25 (”Jetzt hat die Angst Saison”).
[15] Der Spiegel, April 22, 2002, p. 114 (”So Gott Will”).
[16] Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof, Anklageschrift gegen den Studenten Mounir El Motassadeq, p. 65, 66.
[17] Der Spiegel, 16 June 2003, p. 42 (”Zugriff in Paris”).
[18] Der Spiegel, 22 April 2002, p. 108, 109.
[19] Emerson Vermaat, op. cit., p. 197. Because of his connections with Osama bin Laden, Ould Slahi was regarded as a “sheikh” (kind of leader) by radical Muslims in Canada.
[20] Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World. The Statements of Osama bin Laden (London/New York, Verso, 2005), p. 125 (Osama bin Laden in an interview with Al-Jazeera bureauchief Taysir Alluni, broadcast on October 21, 2001).
[21] La Synagogue de Djerba est la plus Ancienne du Monde www.nouvelles.com/dossier/Djerba, November 11, 2004. Excellent essay on the history of the beautiful La Ghriba Synagogue, a Jewish holy site, a cultural monument and a tourist attaction.
[22] Focus, April 22, 2002, p. 16 (”Aus unsere Serie ‘Schräge Dementis’”).
[23] Ibid. p. 22 (”Sie lachten uns aus”).
[24] Die Welt (internet), April 22, 2002, 16:12 Uhr (”Bundesregierung hat Beweise für Terrorakt auf Djerba”).
[25] Der Spiegel, April 22, 2002, p. 24-26 (”Die Stauffenberg-Lücke”).
[26] Speech by Otto Schily, Federal Minister of the Interior, at the closing session of the American-German Workshop on Cooperation in Combating Chemical and Biological Terrorism, Washington February 4, 2003:”What can and must Germans and Americans do to fight terrorism?”
www.germany-info.org/relaunch/politics/speeches/020403.htm. Otto Schily is a remarkable figure in German politics. In the 1970s he was one of the defense attorneys of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang, a leftist terror network. He later joined the Green Party, after that he became a Member of Parliament for the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) and finally Interior Minister in the Schröder-Fischer coalition. From a devouted leftist in the 1970s, Schily later moved to the center and even began to espouse conservative positions after 1999.
The author interviewed Schily twice for Dutch television, the first time when he was still in the Green Party, the second time when he was a member of Parliament for the SPD. The second interview was about Iran’s role in the assassination of a political opponent in Berlin, Germany.
[27] The New York Times, August 24, 2002, p. 1 (”Germans lay out early Qaeda ties to 9/11 hijackers”).
[28] Der Spiegel, April 22, 2002, p. 113 (”So Gott Will”).
[29] The New York Times, August 24, 2002, p. 1.
[30] Telegraph.co.uk, March 5, 2004 (”Phone call helped to smash Al-Qaeda web”).
[31] Verfassungsschutzbericht 2002 (Cologne: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, 2003), p. 175: “Er war nach bisheringen Ermittlungen auch in den Anschlag auf Djerba eingebunden.”
[32] Hans Leyendecker, Handy-Spur ins Ruhr Gebiet, Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 17, 2002, p. 2.
[33] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 17, 2002, p. 1 (”Die Hinweise verdichten sich: Es war ein Terroranschlag”).
[34] Al-Quds Al-Arabi, April 16, 2002, p. 1 (author’s file on Djerba).
[35] Yahoo!news, May 18, 2002 (”Report: Al-Qaida commander says the group carried out the Tunisian synagogue attack, will strike U.S. shortly”); BBC News, May 18, 2002 (”Al-Qaeda ‘responsible’ for Tunisia blast”). Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, said in August 2002 that Al-Qaeda associates recently told him the network regained confidence after facing intense U.S. bombing. “Now they said he (bin Laden) is fully in command again and they have regrouped and are organized again.” He was told bin Laden was in good health and safe and was planning new attacks on the United States. (Reuters.com, August 27, 2002: “Bin Laden Reportedly Back at Helm of Al-Qaeda”).
[36] Al-Jazeera, June 23, 2002; Theage.com, June 24, 2002 (”Al-Qaeda Spokesman says bin Laden is alive”).
[37] Proche-orient.info, April 19, 2004 (”Les Imprécations du Cheikh de Vénissieux). Interview with Abdelkader Bouziane.
[38] Fidesjournal.com, November 12, 2002 (”Attentat de Djerba: L’étau se referme autour de Walid”).
[39] Fides.com, November 7, 2002 (”Walid Nawar dans le collimateur de la DST”).
[40] Elmostrador.cl, March 12, 2003 (”Espana: Encarcelan a dos presuntos financistas de Al-Qaeda”); Ministerio del Interior (Madrid), March 7, 2003 (”Detenidas cinco personas en Valencia y Logrono por su presunta vinculación con la trama financiera de Al Qaeda”); Elmundo.es, March 11, 2003 (”La Audiencia Nacional amplía la investigación sobre la red financiera de Al Qaeda en Espana”; author’s sources.
[41] Author’s sources.
[42] De Telegraaf, July 23, 2007, p. 7 (”Ondergrondse bankiers opgepakt in Amsterdam”).
[43] NRC Handelsblad, July 16, 2007, p. 16 (”Minister Bos: Nederland moet spil van islamitisch bankieren worden”); NRC Handelsblad, 18 July 2007, p. 1 (”Londen pionier islamitisch bankieren”).
[44] Panorama (ARD TV, Germany), October 17, 2002: Generalbundesanwalt (Federal Prosecutor) Kay Nehm “hält es für möglich, dass der zum Islam konvertiere Christian G. aus Müllheim ‘Zugang zum ersten Führungszirkel von Al Qaida hatte.’”
[45] Uli Rauss and Oliver Schröm, op. cit., p. 50; Der Spiegel, June 16, 2003, p. 40, 42 (”Zugriff in Paris”).
[46] Ibid., p. 50.
[47] Assemblée Nationale, Débats Parlementaires, Première Séance (First Session), June 11, 2003, p. 4995: “Ganczarski... un haut responsable d’Al Qaida, en contact avec Oussama Ben Laden lui même, ayant été en Afghanistan et en Bosnie.”
[48] AFP, October 26, 2006 (”Attentats des 11 septembre: K. Mehdi condamné à 9 ans de prison”); International Herald Tribune, September 29, 2006 (”French prosecutor seeks 10-year prison sentence for Moroccan suspect of Sept. 11 ties”).
[49] Emerson Vermaat, Nederlandse Jihad. Het proces tegen de Hofstadgroep (Soesterberg: Aspekt Publishers, 2006), p. 31, 133, 134, 275.
[50] Der Spiegel, September 17, 2007, p. 140 (”Wo der Terror wohnt”). One reads the following words on the cover of this issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel: “Terror-Basis Pakistan: Bin Laden’s deutsche Jünger” (Terror-basis Pakistan: Bin Laden’s German Followers).
[51] Police Department City of New York, Radicalization in the West. The Homegrown Threat, p. 23 (New York: NYPD, 2007).
[52] Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan. The Struggle with Militant Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 144.
[53] General Security and Intelligence Service (AIVD), Annual Report 2006 (Leidschendam: General Intelligence and Security Service, 2007), p. 20.
[54] General Security and Intelligence Service (AIVD), From Dawa to Jihad. Current Trends in the Islamist Terrorist Threat (Leidschendam: AIVD, 2006), p. 18.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3204
Sorry about all the long and very long posts of tonight.
You may want to check for things not pinged to you.
Post 2643 is a good article with lots of details on the
al-qaeda in Germany and all the dots connect, includes part on 9-11.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3208
New Dutch Intelligence Report: Radical Islamic following increasing in Holland and becoming more “professional”
October 9, 2007
Number of radical Dutch Muslims growing, says intelligence report
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/121246.html
Amsterdam - The Dutch intelligence and security service AIVD published a report on Tuesday indicating the number of radical Dutch Muslims is on the rise. The reports speaks about an “extremely intolerant and anti-democratic” movement which would however not be violent. The report, presented to Minister of Internal Affairs Guusje ter Horst, says Muslim neo-radicalism is characterized by an increasingly professional leadership. The non-violent neo-radicals are substantially less fragmented than radical Muslim groups that use violence, the AIVD says. According to the intelligence services’ information, there are 15 to 20 Salafist preachers in the Netherlands, who are active in 30 to 35 mosques and youth centres. Another 20 salafist preachers are currently in training. Salafism is a radical and ultra-orthodox movement in Islam. The AIVD reports the radical message of Salafi Muslims appeals to some 20,000 to 30,000 of the Netherlands’ 1 million Muslims. Moderate Muslims, Muslim gays and those who have renounced Islam are the primary target of neo-radical Islam, the AIVD writes. The Dutch intelligence service says neo-radicals may consciously obstruct the freedom and civil rights of the moderates. The chance that violence will eventually be used, is not to be excluded.
AIVD-rapport: ‘Radicale dawa in verandering, de opkomst van islamitisch neoradicalisme in Nederland’
Downloads
* Aanbiedingsbrief Tweede Kamer (50 Kb)
* Rapport AIVD radicale dawa (2466 Kb)
https://www.aivd.nl/actueel-publicaties/aivd-publicaties/aivd-rapport
MIM: For an excerpt of the report in english see:
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/10/netherlands-aivd-report-on-radical.html
http://www.trouw.nl/laatstenieuws/laatstenieuws/article816276.ece/Aanhang_radicale_islam_neemt_toe
Aanhang radicale islam neemt toe
(Novum) - De aanhang van de radicale islam neemt toe. Dat concludeert de Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) dinsdag in een rapport over moslimradicalisme in Nederland. Volgens de AIVD is de radicale islam een nieuwe fase ingegaan. Die zou zich kenmerken door een grotere professionele en strategische aansturing
Het karakter van dit zogenoemde islamitisch neoradicalisme is niet gewelddadig, stelt de AIVD. Wel is deze stroming ‘zeer onverdraagzaam en antidemocratisch’. Zo streven aanhangers van de ‘radicale dawa’, die zich in Nederland vooral manifesteert in het politieke salafisme, volgens de AIVD naar een verregaande vorm van isolement en intolerantie tegenover andersdenkenden.
De groep die wordt bereikt door de radicale dawa groeit, stellen de onderzoekers vast. Deze moslims keren zich af van de samenleving. Dit is een sluipend proces, dat ‘op den duur de cohesie en onderlinge solidariteit in de samenleving en de vrije uitoefening van (klassieke) grondrechten kan aantasten’, waarschuwt de AIVD.
De veiligheidsdienst laakt de beeldvorming over de radicale islam waarin sprake is van ‘een krachtige beweging die over niet al te lange tijd het Nederlandse politieke bestel van binnenuit omver zal werpen’. Zo erg is het niet, stelt de dienst. Toch mag de problematiek niet worden onderschat. De AIVD pleit voor een ‘gerichte benadering op maat’.
Vorige maand zei minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Guusje ter Horst (PvdA) dat twintig- tot dertigduizend mensen in Nederland ontvankelijk zijn voor het salafisme. Onder hen zou zich een harde kern van 2500 activisten bevinden. Verder zijn in Nederland zo’n twintig salafistische jongerenpredikers actief.
AIVD: De organisatie van moslimradicalisme professionaliseert
van onze verslaggever
Het moslimradicalisme is een nieuwe fase ingegaan, zegt de Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst AIVD. De dienst constateert dat de radicale dawa (bekeren en werven) in Nederland en West-Europa steeds verder professionaliseert.
De AIVD waarschuwt voor „de opkomst van islamitisch neoradicalisme in Nederland”, in een rapport dat de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties vandaag naar de Tweede Kamer heeft gezonden.
In Nederland manifesteert deze stroming zich vooral in het politieke salafisme, een ultra orthodoxe stroming. Ondanks het niet-gewelddadige karakter van de radicale dawa, is deze stroming zeer onverdraagzaam en antidemocratisch, staat in de AIVD-rapportage. Zo streven aanhangers van de radicale dawa naar een verregaande vorm van isolement, gecombineerd met intolerantie ten aanzien van andersdenkenden.
De AIVD benadrukt dat de groep die bereikt wordt door de radicale dawa, groeit. De AIVD stelt dat de problematiek van het huidige moslimradicalisme niet mag worden overschat, net zo min als onderschat.
Minister Guusje ter Horst vertelde eerder dat het aantal moslims dat in Nederland mogelijk te beïnvloeden is door de ideeën van het salafisme, tussen de 20.000 en 30.000 ligt. Er zijn ongeveer 2500 ‘potentiële activisten’.
Datum nieuwsfeit: 09-10-2007 Dit is een authentiek persberichtBron: VVD
VVD
http://www.nieuwsbank.nl/inp/2007/10/09/L013.htm
9-10-2007
VVD verbaasd over laconieke reactie op rapport AIVD
De VVD vindt de reactie van het kabinet op het rapport van de AIVD bizar.
Laetitia Griffith: “Het betreft hier een groep die weliswaar geen geweld gebruikt, maar zich afsluit van de Nederlandse normen en waarden. Een groep die het vrije democratische debat op deze wijze beperkt, moet worden aangepakt. Het kabinet reageert wederom te slap. Praten en theedrinken is het voorstel. Deze mensen willen niet praten, ze willen niets met de Nederlandse maatschappij te maken hebben.”
VVD “surprised” over “laconic” reaction to AIVD report
The VVD finds the reaction of the House to the AIVD report bizarre.
Latetitia Griffith: “The may be about a group which does not use violence,but closes themselves off from Dutch norms and values. A group which limits free democratic debate in this way has to be dealt with. The Kabinet reacts lamely as usual. Talking and drinking tea is the proposal. These people don’t want to talk, they want nothing to do with Dutch society”
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3208
France fears double terrorist threat
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22575
France fears double terrorist threat
Intelligence chiefs say France risks repeat of wave of 1990s Islamist
bombings by Algerian extremists.
PARIS - France risks a repeat of a wave of bombings by Algerian
extremists
in the 1990s now that militants have rallied Al-Qaeda, intelligence
chiefs
warned in a French newspaper Monday.
“We are facing a double threat,” Bernard Squarcini, head of the DST
counter-intelligence agency, said in an interview in daily Liberation.
“There is a threat from the international movement, from (Osama) bin
Laden,
but also from our proximity with Algeria, and therefore the risk of a
repeat
of what we experienced in 1994-95.”
Algeria’s main radical Islamist movement, the Salafist Group for
Preaching
and Combat (GSPC), formally pledged allegiance to bin Laden last year,
renaming itself Al-Qaeda in Maghreb.
The group is thought to have a large support network in Europe and has
singled out former colonial power France as its “enemy number one.”
The GSPC was created after a split in the Armed Islamic Group (GIA),
the
main force in Algeria’s long insurgency and responsible for a wave of
bombings on the Paris metro and other targets that left eight dead and
200
injured in 1994-95.
“The adoption of the label Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa represents
a
great danger for France and French interests,” Joel Bouchite, head of
the RG
police intelligence unit, told Liberation.
“A group once limited to the Algerian territory is now part of
international
jihadism and equates the Algerian authorities — which it strongly
rejects
— with the French authorities.”
France announced last month it plans to merge the RG and the DTS into a
new
intelligence agency to improve its response to security threats.
Both Bouchite and Squarcini said they were working to tackle extremist
recruitment networks operating in Islamic groups, prisons and mosques,
involving people convicted for the 1990s bombings, former Islamic
fighters
in Afghanistan and common law criminals.
Date: Sun 7 Oct 2007
Source: The Telegraph (Calcutta) [edited]
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071008/asp/northeast/story_8406647.asp
India (Manipur) - mystery ailment kills 7: request for information
villages along the boundary over the past week [1-6 Oct 2007]. The
additional director of public health, Th Biren Singh, said the state
health
directorate received an SOS from Chandel district yesterday [6 Oct
2007].
Patients suffering from the disease have complained of high fever,
stomach
pain, and vomiting. Health department officials said some of the
victims
had convulsions and seizures before they died. The directorate is still
clueless what the killer ailment is since the symptoms are common to
several diseases, including gastroenteritis, cholera, dysentery, and
acute
stomach infection.
We have received preliminary information of some deaths in the border
town
in the past few days. We sent a medical team there today and will do
everything necessary to contain the outbreak, the health minister said,
ruling out the possibility of the disease assuming epidemic
proportions.
The first death occurred on 28 Sep 2007 and the last on 5 Oct 2007. We
are
preparing to send another batch of medical staff once we receive a
detailed
report. We will also send in specialists, Biren Singh said. He said
blood
samples of patients would be collected and tested to identify the
disease
type. The disease could have been triggered by contaminated water. We
are
in the process of finding the exact cause, the health minister said.
Moreh, the main trade link between India and Myanmar, has only one
primary
health care centre, which was upgraded to a community health centre
earlier
this year. A couple of months later, the community health centre was
shifted to Sugnu in neighbouring Thoubal district, as the state
government
planned to construct a 50 bed hospital in the town. The medical staff
at
the health centre were also moved to Thoubal along with the new
recruits,
rendering the Moreh unit defunct.
Acknowledging that healthcare programmes had failed in the border town
because of lack of adequate manpower, Parijat Singh said the government
would soon deploy trained personnel at the health centre.
—
communicated by:
ProMED-mail
promed@promedmail.org
[The description of this “mysterious disease” is insufficiently
specific or
consistent to suggest a probable explanation. Contagion, inadequate
water
supply and defective waste disposal, or inadequate health care
facilities
could be responsible for this incident. The predominant feature appears
to
be gastrointestinal illness, but the occurrence of convulsions and
seizures
preceding the deaths of a few patients might be indicative of the
occurrence of some more unusual disease such as Nipah virus infection,
which has been reported elsewhere in the north east of India in recent
times. Further information from any informed source in the region would
be
welcomed.
A interactive map of the India-Myanmar border region can be viewed at
http://www.maplandia.com/india/mizoram/
- Mod.CP]
Thanks to Milford421 for this report:
Hotel Atrium Collapses In Hunt Valley - MD
Oct 10, 2007 10:24 pm US/Eastern
http://wjz.com/topstories/local_story_283142353.html
Hotel Atrium Collapses In Hunt Valley
SLIDESHOW: Click here to view slideshow.
Kathryn Brown
Reporting
(WJZ) COCKEYSVILLE, Md. Chaos at a Baltimore County hotel moments
after a glass skylight breaks loose and falls eight stories.
Kathryn Brown reports it happened in Hunt Valley at the Embassy
Suites, and that hotel remains evacuated.
It is amazing that no one was hurt. The entire roof of an atrium,
which was about half the length of a football field, came crashing
down just after lunch time Wednesday.
Now hotel managers and investigators are still trying to piece
together what caused it to fall.
“Glass starting to break, people screaming...sounded like the
building was collapsing,” said a hotel guest.
A crush of confusion and frustration for hundreds of hotel guests
who were evacuated and forced to find another place to stay after
the glass atrium came crashing to the ground.
“And I got out as quickly as possible,” said Sheila Margolis who was
in town for a wedding.
It happened in Hunt Valley, and right now the hotel remains
evacuated.
Esther Marks, in town visiting her son, was one of the many guests
allowed back into her room only for a moment to grab her bags.
“I don’t think more than 15 minutes, we were fast,” said Marks.
A view from Sky Eye Chopper 13 shows it best. The two atrium are
supposed to be identical, but now the one on the right is missing
its glass top.
Hotel managers still aren’t sure what caused it to collapse down
eight stories.
“It is now fully covered with shards of glass and aluminum
structure, and we are very very fortunate that no one was in there
at the time,” said Lt. John Cromwell of the Baltimore County Fire
Department.
“It could have been a catastrophe,” said a hotel guest.
The hotel has 203 rooms and about 130 of them were occupied when the
atrium fell in and the building had to be evacuated.
The hotel’s general manager Greg Pedersen says there were no known
problems on the roof and no warning signs.
“No, I think that’s what surprised us all is that there wasn’t ...it
was business as usual,” said Pedersen.
But for dozens of tourists, business groups, and wedding guests
forced to relocate, it’s anything but business as usual.
“It’s a great place to look at, but it’s unbelievable,” said a hotel
guest.
All of the hotel’s guests have been relocated to area hotels.
Structural engineers were at the hotel Wednesday and will return
Thursday morning to continue investigating what steps need to be
taken to make the building structurally sound.
DEVELOPMENT: ‘Poverty an Issue in Europe Too’
IPS
October 5, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39541
By Sabina Zaccaro
Preparing for Oct. 17 in India
ROME, Oct 5 (IPS) - Civil society groups in Central and Eastern Europe
want to remind their governments Oct. 17 that poverty exists in their
own countries, and not just in those usually considered developing
countries.
People around the world are asked to “stand up and speak out” on the
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty Oct. 17 against poverty
and in support of the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight
goals agreed in 2000 to reduce poverty and to improve health and education.
The ‘Stand Up and Speak Out Against Poverty’ initiative is a part of
the campaign organised by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty
(GCAP) alliance and the UN Millennium Campaign to get people into public
spaces for 24 hours from 9pm GMT Oct. 16 to demand more urgent political
response to the growing global poverty crisis.
On this date last year an estimated 23.5 million people stood up to
demand an end to poverty, setting what organisers claimed to be a world
record. This year they want to “send an even louder message which
politicians cannot ignore.”
The global mobilisation represents a chance for civil society groups
seeking more participation in the current debate on aid, debt
cancellation, trade negotiations and public accountability monitoring to have
their say, but it is also an opportunity to strengthen communication on
domestic problems with governments in Central and Eastern Europe.
“This year’s key issue is to make the public understand that GCAP is
not only a coalition of people looking at developing countries but also
looking at poverty and inequality in the north,” Julien Vaissier of the
GCAP Europe Secretariat told IPS.
“If we look at countries like Romania, there is a huge domestic problem
with poverty. GCAP is a way to open people’s minds and make them
understand that through its global echo they can try to bring about a change
in their countries.”
Some increase in people’s participation in such moves has been recorded
in Hungary, which joined GCAP in 2005.
“I wouldn’t say that peoples’ participation is big enough, but it is
growing year by year,” Balazs Frida of the Hungarian coalition told IPS.
“First it was quite hard to mobilise people because the case of Central
Europe is a particular one...people consider themselves not exactly
poor, but still needing help from outside.”
At the same time, he says, “we are committed with the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, a grouping of 30 wealthy
nations) and the UN to support foreign countries that are in a tricky
situation.”
According to Frida, “sensitising people is a challenging mission; you
must help them understand that they are not poor any more, they are
normal European Union members.” At the same time, he said, they need to
understand “there are poorer people outside Europe, and we don’t have to
concentrate only on domestic poverty or homelessness and underdeveloped
rural regions.”
The Hungarian coalition will organise conferences, street
demonstrations and a full day programme with films, public discussions and a seminar
on aid policies on Oct. 17.
The Czech Republic also joined the global group in 2005. “Each year
it’s an effort to reach out to new groups, new cities, and engage other
groups like students, who had never been approached before,” Petr Lebeda
of the Czech Republic national coalition told IPS.
“Though it is difficult to monitor people’s involvement, we collected
around 527,000 signatures under the statement to be delivered to the
Prime Minister and to the UN General Assembly.
“Peoples’ capacity to speak out for rights is improving,” he said. “It
doesn’t reach the usual standard of the European Union (EU) 15
countries; still I think it’s a bit better than others member states, and
perhaps on the level of Hungary or Poland.
“There’s quite a tradition of human rights activism in the Czech
Republic that goes back to the dissident movements under the Communist
regime; human rights were a part of the resistance that resulted in the
regime eject. There was a strong focus on that, both in official circles and
in civil society, though it was largely focused on political rights,
free speech, religion, freedom of assembly and this sort of rights.”
Now, he said there is also “a lot of activity in terms of defending
dissidents in Cuba, in North Korea, and the other problematic regime in
Belarus.”
Activists are now discovering another generation of human rights, like
food rights, “which is still a concept, I would say, not very familiar
to civil society and to the public as rights,” Lebeda said.
The government’s attitude towards poverty issues “is getting more
responsible,” he said. “The Czech Republic is realising its global
responsibilities, acknowledging the fact that it has become part of one of the
most elite groups in the world, the EU.” (END/2007)
[unknown url]
Report: conflict in Africa costs continent billions
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
DAKAR, Senegal: Imagine an Africa without a history of two dozen wars
over the last couple decades.
It might have been a continent of growth instead of the world’s
poorest, according to a report released Thursday by three international
non-governmental organizations who estimate conflicts are costing the
continent about US$18 billion (?13 billion) per year.
“This is money Africa can ill afford to lose,” Liberian President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf wrote in an introduction to the report by the British
charity Oxfam and two anti-small arms advocacy groups, Saferworld and
the International Action Network on Small Arms.
“The sums are appalling: the price that Africa is paying could cover
the cost of solving the HIV and AIDS crisis in Africa, or provide
education, water and prevention and treatment for tuberculosis and malaria,”
Sirleaf wrote. “Literally thousands of hospitals, schools, and roads
could have been built.”
That war makes economies suffer is nothing new, but few have tried to
estimate the real cost across the continent until now.
The report estimates that, compared to peaceful countries, war-battered
African nations have “50 percent more infant deaths, 15 percent more
undernourished people, life expectancy reduced by five years, 20 per
cent more adult illiteracy, 2.5 times fewer doctors per patient and 12.4
per cent less food per person.”
On average, the economies of African nations suffering armed conflicts
shrunk by 15 percent. And typically, the longer conflicts grind on, the
higher the cost.
The report based its estimates on projected growth rates in
conflict-torn countries if they had not suffered conflicts in the first place.
During Guinea-Bissau’s 1989-99 war, for example, projected growth was 5
percent, but actual growth was negative 10 percent.
“This methodology almost certainly gives an underestimate,” the group
said in a joint statement. “It does not include the economic impact on
neighboring countries, which could suffer from political insecurity or a
sudden influx of refugees. The study only covers periods of actual
combat, but some costs of war, such as increased military spending and a
struggling economy, continue long after the fighting has stopped.”
The report did not include Somalia, for which no statistics are
available. Somalia has been in a state of virtual anarchy and war since its
president was overthrown in 1991.
Between 1990 and 2005, 23 African nations were involved in conflicts,
and the total cost was about US$300 billion (?214 billion).
“This is a massive waste of resources - roughly equivalent to total
international aid to Africa from major donors during the same period,” the
report said.
The report also blamed the global trade in small arms for fueling
fighting. It said about 95 percent of the weapons used in Africa’s wars -
mostly the ubiquitous Kalashnikov automatic rifle - are imported from
outside the continent.
The report’s authors acknowledged the irony that Africa’s woes can lead
its people to take up arms in the first place - a vicious cycle for
which there are few easy solutions.
“The root causes of armed conflict in Africa - such as poverty, poor
governance, and inequality - must be addressed,” the report said.
“Indeed, these factors can lead to a high demand for arms and there is a need
for more work to address this.”
Thanks to Milford421 for this report:
Explosive Device Found on the Side of the Road in Foley, FL
http://www.nbc15online.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=c2f6811d-9cc8-4d5f-b687-1a04427f15c1
Explosive Device Found
Contributor: Leon Petite
Email: lpetite@nbc15online.com
Last Update: 8:54 pm
10/10 - Explosive devices found in Foley
(FOLEY, Ala.) Oct. 10 — Around 9:30 Wednesday morning, October 10,
2007, deputies with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office were called
to the 10000 block of County Road 65, just outside of Foley. An
inmate worker who was cleaning litter from the right of way found
what appeared to be a make-shift explosive device and several
blasting caps inside a paper bag. The objects were found on the
right of way off of County Road 65.
After examining the objects, the deputies contacted the Mobile
office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. A special
agent from ATF responded to the scene and collected the devices. A
further search of the area led to the discovery of a grenade like
device and an additional blasting cap.
According to authorities, the components which were found could have
been used to create an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), although
the construction of the device had not been completed and it was
unable to detonate at the time of its discovery.
The ATF is conducting a follow up investigation in an attempt to
find out where the items came from and who put them there.
The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office is cautioning anyone who may
find such a device to immediately call 9-1-1 and not to handle these
devices since doing so may lead to serious injury or even death.
Anyone with information about this case is urged to contact the
Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office or the ATF office in Mobile.
From: Jamestown.org
Investigation into Backgrounds of Bosnians Involved in Vienna Plot
Austrian authorities have found no evidence that two Bosnian men arrested earlier this month in connection with an attempted attack on the U.S. Embassy in Vienna had connections with radical Muslims from the former Yugoslavia. Certain circumstances, however, lead a trail that analysts say could suggest the attack was not an anomaly.
On October 1, 42-year old Asim Cejvanovic, from the Vienna suburb of Tulln, was arrested after attempting to enter the U.S. Embassy in the Austrian capital carrying a backpack filled with grenades and nails. He fled the scene after the backpack triggered a metal detector and was apprehended shortly afterwards. The backpack contained two grenades (without detonators), plastic explosives and bits of metal. A search of his apartment that same day turned up around two kilograms of explosives. It remains unclear how Cejvanovic obtained the explosives. His relatives and friends describe him as mentally unstable and prone to occasional violent behavior as a consequence of his wartime experiences in Bosnia. His mother, Suhreta, who lives in northern Bosnia, said her son had received psychiatric care in the past. Cejvanovic was wounded in Bosnia in 1992 and was transported, with his mother, to Croatia and later to Vienna for medical treatment (Dnevni Avaz, October 3). Austrian police and prosecutors have so far refrained from labeling the incident a terrorist attack and are pursuing the case as an anomaly perpetrated by a mentally unstable individual. However, a recent development has shed suspicions on that approach.
During initial questioning, Austrian officials said Cejvanovic appeared highly confused, but placed responsibility on another Bosnian man, his neighbor Mehmed Djudjic, whom Cejvanovic said had given him the explosives and instructed him to enter the U.S. Embassy. Djudjic was arrested and questioned, and he denied any involvement in the incident. According to Cejvanovic, Djudjic gave him 20 euros and the backpack, saying that he should give it to a man named “Tom” from the embassy, who would use the nails for building a house. Djudjic admitted only to giving him the money. While Cejvanovic appears to be mentally unstable and police have been unable to directly link him to any radical Islamist groups, Djudjic’s background is different. His relatives told Bosnian media that he turned to traditional Islam after a 2003 car accident and when visiting Bosnia would spend much of his time with members of the radical Wahhabi movement (Oslobodjenje, October 6).
Djudjic was seen in Bosnia most recently in April, for the funeral of Wahhabi leader and self-proclaimed sheikh Jusuf Barcic, who died in a car accident at a time when he and his followers were trying to occupy buildings belonging to the Islamic community in several Bosnian cities. Barcic’s main financier and ideological leader was former Bosnian cleric Muhamed Porca, who runs his own Islamic community in the Austrian capital. In his preaching, he calls for the creation of a parallel radical Islamic community in Bosnia. After finishing studies in Saudi Arabia in 1993, Porca spent two years as imam in Vienna. He then returned to Bosnia for a short before finally settling in Vienna.
During the arrest of Cejvanovic, police also found a book entitled Namaz u Islamu, a work published by Porca only in Vienna. The book sets out to explain why moderate Muslims must return to traditional Islam, as in Saudi Arabia (ISA Consulting, October 5). Also, three teenagers, all Austrian citizens of Arab origin, arrested last month in connection with a video posted online threatening Austria and Germany with suicide attacks unless they withdraw from Afghanistan, had attended Porca’s sermons (Nezavisne Novine, October 6). Some Bosnian Islamic community officials also accused Porca of organizing and financing visits to Bosnia for radical Muslims from Germany and Austria for the purpose of recruiting more members to the Wahhabi movement. Bosnian Islamic community officials and media named another Vienna-based Bosnian cleric, Adnan Buzar, as financier of the Wahhabi movement. Buzar is the son-in-law of Palestinian Sabri al-Banna, also known as Abu Nidal, the founder of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and the most wanted international terrorist in the late 1980s and killed in Iraq in 2002.
In Serbia, media named the leader and financier of the rapidly growing Wahhabi movement in the Muslim majority Sandzak region and Montenegro as Nedzad Balkan, alias Ebu Muhammed, another Vienna-based cleric and leader of the Sahaba Mosque. Ebu Muhammed also assisted Porca with the publication of Namaz u Islamu. Balkan, along with six other Wahhabis, three of them Austrian citizens, was involved in the beating of a Bosnian Serb in the Bosnian city of Brcko in 2006. After a short trial, the seven were given symbolic sentences on parole and some of them returned to Vienna.
Since the incidents with Barcic, the moderate Islamic community in Bosnia has stepped up its struggle against the Wahhabi movement. The community’s head, Reis-ul-Ulema Mustafa Effendi Ceric, has called on Austrian authorities to take steps to prevent the activities of radical Islamic groups there. He has also suggested that problems with radical Muslims in Bosnia have been imported from other countries, primarily Austria. Nevertheless, speaking to Bosnian media, the director of the Bosnian Security and Investigation Agency, Sead Lisak, said that there was no evidence that the two men arrested in Vienna had connections with radical Muslims being monitored by the agency.
Anes Alic is the Executive Director of ISA Consulting at http://www.isaintel.com.
From: Jamestown.org
Al-Qaeda: Beginning of the End, or Grasping at Straws?
By Michael Scheuer
Since early September, there has been a flurry of media reports and commentaries suggesting that the Saudi religious establishment has turned against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda; that a split has occurred among the Taliban, Ayman al-Zawahiri and bin Laden; and that al-Zawahiri has pushed bin Laden aside, sidelined him, and seized control of al-Qaeda. Hopefully this troika of al-Qaeda disasters is deadly accurate, but each merits consumption with a large grain of salt.
The issue meriting the least belief and most suspicion in the West is the reported development of anti-bin Laden and anti-jihad doctrines among the government-supported Islamist clerics, jurists and scholars in Saudi Arabia. On September 14, for example, the Saudi Salafi scholar Sheikh Salman al-Awda published a personal letter to Osama bin Laden—addressing him as “Brother Osama”—that is critical of the burdens placed on Muslims by al-Qaeda’s actions. Sheikh al-Awda enumerates virtually every problem currently faced by Muslims around the world and appears to place them at the feet of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Indeed, it only appears that he is placing them at bin Laden’s feet because Sheikh al-Awda’s criticism is not of the fire-breathing variety and he carefully avoids making any attempt to denigrate bin Laden’s character or even gingerly question his status as a good Muslim. “We are all humans,” Sheikh Awda said in reference to bin Laden. “No matter how much we disagree with any person regardless of his approach, we cannot remove him from the circle of Islam, unless he commits a sin of unbelief.” On this basis, it must be assumed that al-Awda has concluded that Osama bin Laden is continuing to act within the “circle of Islam,” which clearly dulls the sharp edge of al-Awda’s letter [1].
In addition, al-Awda delineates a version of Islamic theology in condemning al-Qaeda’s martial activities that not only decries war, but makes Islam and its Prophet appear to be pacifist in orientation. In rewriting Islamic history, for example, the sheikh comes up with the following claim: “The Prophet, God’s prayer and peace be upon him, conquered and subjugated the entire peninsula without any massacres. In fact, the number of those killed when the Prophet, God’s prayer and peace be upon him, was alive performing his mission—23 years [in length]—was approximately 200 or less, and the number of Muslims among them could be many times as much as their enemies” [2]. This is simply not true, and one needs only to skim Martin Lings’ extraordinary biography of the prophet—Muhammad, His Life Based on the Earliest Sources—to see the far greater casualties and deliberate executions resulting from the Prophet’s military campaigns [3].
There is every possibility that Sheikh al-Awda’s condemnation of bin Laden and al-Qaeda is part of the Saudi regime’s effort to disinform Western governments and publics, and to disguise the fading domestic authority of the country’s religious establishment. Saudi authorities clearly are engaged in a campaign to create a public record of anti-al-Qaedaism before al-Qaeda’s next attack in the United States. Coming as it does from a man who had been bin Laden’s theological role model, Sheikh al-Awda’s letter is meant to convince the West’s gullible political leaders and media that Saudi clerics have changed and now are effectively supporting the West’s anti-terrorism campaign. “Do we not hear the voices of the ulema,” al-Awda asks bin Laden in his letter, “the sincere, the believers, and the worshippers who always remember God shouting and saying the same as the Prophet, God’s prayer and peace be upon him, said when Khalid Bin-al-Walid, the supreme commander of the Muslim army, made a mistake, ‘O God, I dissociate myself from what Khalid did?...Many of these people, in fact most of them, now say: ‘O God, we dissociate ourselves from what Osama does, and from the deeds of those who work in his name or under his command” [4].
This, of course, is not true on three levels. First, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have long been waging an incrementally successful campaign to denigrate the honesty and integrity of what they refer to as “the scholars of the king,” those clerics who will condone anything the Saudi king wants whether or not it accords with the Quran. Al-Awda, once a pro-Islamist cleric, is now preeminently a “scholar of the king” and is regarded as such by both the Islamists and many of his own countrymen. Al-Awda served time after 1994 in Saudi prisons and thereafter emerged much more amenable to the wishes and policies of the al-Sauds, an affect that seems a common post-prison reality in much of the Muslim world. “My brother Osama,” al-Awda wrote in his letter, “brothers of yours in Egypt, Algeria and other Muslim countries have realized the consequences and dangers of this road [or jihad], and have found the courage to announce through books, programs, and internet websites that this road is wrong, and does not leave to the aim, and to ask God Almighty to forgive them. They have announced their repentance of what has happened” [5]. Sheikh al-Awda does not mention that all of these repenters did so after emerging from long residence in Egyptian, Moroccan and Algerian prisons, and offers no ideas about what caused—perhaps persuaded is a better word—these men to repent.
Next, the repentant words of Sheikh al-Awda and his now right-thinking clerical colleagues have little impact on either the Islamists or their supporters, and not much more on the general Muslim public. This is not because al-Awda and the others are not smart, distinguished and respected men. It is because they are under the control of the security services of such police states as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Jordan. Islamic law, history and tradition clearly show that clerics or leaders who repent previously strongly held theological positions while in or after leaving prison are regarded as having been coerced to do so. They are, therefore, not regarded as credible and authoritative leaders. Likewise, penitent statements by men living under the control of Islamic police states are also suspect. In short, al-Awda’s letter serves the al-Sauds’ disinformation purposes, but has very little impact on al-Qaeda, its Islamist allies and their supporters [6].
The second issue—a split among the Taliban and al-Qaeda factions led by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri—also stretches credulity. Stories to this effect have appeared in the London Sunday Telegraph and Newsweek, and are attributed to Omar Farooqi—who is identified as “a Taliban liaison officer with al-Qaeda”—and unnamed U.S. and UK intelligence officials [7]. Farooqi’s motivation for providing this information to Western reporters is not described, nor is his rationale for intentionally trying to damage his Taliban masters and their interests by disclosing the Islamists’ disunity to the West. While there currently is no way to evaluate the accuracy of Farooqi’s claims, realities on the ground in Afghanistan seem to belie them. In just the past month, for example, President Hamid Karzai’s hard-pressed regime has offered to negotiate with the Taliban; the Taliban and al-Qaeda felt secure enough to hold a conference in Tora Bora, near NATO’s strongest military positions; and Taliban attacks have accelerated in and around Kabul, including three suicide car bombings in the capital between September 28 and October 6. These on-the-ground facts do not suggest the Taliban and al-Qaeda are suffering from a debilitating three-way split [8].
The third issue—al-Zawahiri’s pushing aside bin Laden—was broached in the September 9 Washington Post article by Dr. Bruce Hoffman, probably America’s most incisive terrorism analyst. In his essay, Dr. Hoffman argued that “we need to drop our preoccupation with Osama bin Laden” and understand that America’s “most formidable nemesis is not the Saudi terrorist leader but his nominal deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri” [9]. Dr. Hoffman claimed that “mounting evidence” shows that bin Laden had been shoved by al-Zawahiri into “premature forced retirement,” and that al-Zawahiri is now al-Qaeda’s main leader, operational strategist and “new public face.” As “evidence,” Dr. Hoffman cites the undeniable fact that al-Zawahiri has appeared with much greater frequency than bin laden in al-Qaeda audio and video tapes, and “Asian intelligence sources” who claim “it has been two years since bin Laden reportedly chaired a meeting of al-Qaeda’s Majlis al-Shura—the movement’s most senior deliberative body.”
As an initial response, one could argue that if the foregoing is accurate, the July National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was either troublingly ill-informed or disingenuous when it concluded that al-Qaeda is rebuilt, internationally potent, and operating with bin Laden at the helm. There is no basis for the NIE to have been as dire as it was if an al-Zawahiri-led coup had just taken place in al-Qaeda. Counting videos, moreover, hardly seems a sound basis for assessing the status of al-Qaeda leaders. If it was a reliable tool, then neither bin Laden nor al-Zawahiri would be in the running for al-Qaeda’s leadership because Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi has been seen in more videos in 2007 than either man. As the always precise IntelCenter noted in mid-September, “Abu Yahya al-Libi is now the most visible face of al-Qaeda” [10]. In addition, bin Laden for more than a decade has demonstrated that he knows something we in the West forgot long ago—the power of silence. The fact that his recent tapes dominated the media for most of a week shows that bin Laden remains a master at capitalizing fully on his long periods of silence.
Dr. Hoffman’s reference to “Asian intelligence” certainly is interesting, but one must, with respect, suggest one of four conclusions about its viability: (A) If it is true, U.S. and NATO forces should have been able to wipe out the Majlis al-Shura and much of al-Qaeda—though not bin Laden—based on Asian information about the timing and deliberations of the Shura’s meetings over two years; (B) If it is true, and the Majlis has not been destroyed, one of America’s Asian allies apparently did not share highly actionable data with Washington; (C) If it is true, and the Majlis has not been destroyed, Western authorities must have decided not to attack, perhaps because the Shura meets in Pakistan; and, (D) The information is not true.
Without the pertinent classified information, we cannot make a definitive evaluation of the “Asian intelligence” reporting. In addition to the NIE’s failure to mention what would inevitably be the damaging and perhaps fatal impact of al-Zawahiri’s takeover, we also have failed to see any comments from the many al-Qaeda members who have sworn personal allegiance to bin Laden and have intense personal affection for him. It is nearly inconceivable that such comments would not have surfaced if al-Zawahiri had forced bin Laden into “retirement.” In addition, al-Zawahiri is a sharp-edged and avuncular personality who is known more for his alienating intellectual inflexibility and arrogance, Egypt-centrism and imperiousness, rather than such attractive qualities of bin Laden as his combat experience and war wounds; his personal humility and inclusiveness; and his soaring almost poetic eloquence in the Arabic language. Al-Zawahiri’s personal prickliness was damagingly divisive when he was the chief of the all-Egyptian group known as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad—his unilateral decision to join al-Qaeda in February 1998 is only one of many examples—and these characteristics probably would cause a near-fatal fracturing of the multi-ethnic and multinational al-Qaeda faster than any other single factor.
Yet, as the saying goes, we should never say never and hope that Dr. Hoffman’s sources are correct. Al-Zawahiri’s ascendance from theologian-in-chief—which, as DNI Director Mike McConnell, said, he has long been—to al-Qaeda’s overall leadership potentially would be a major step toward its final destruction as an effective organization [11]. Aside from the intense animosities that al-Zawahiri’s harsh treatment of bin Laden would earn from the Saudi’s loyalists, his arrogance and Egypt-first orientation would decrease al-Qaeda’s focus on the far enemy, the United States.
On this point, it is difficult to find evidence to support Dr. Hoffman’s contention that it was al-Zawahiri who “more than a decade ago, defined al-Qaeda’s strategy in terms of ‘far’ and ‘near’ enemies. The United States is the ‘far’ enemy whose defeat…was an essential prerequisite to the elimination of the ‘near’ enemy,” the Muslim world’s police states [12]. Al-Zawahiri’s position always was that the ‘near’ enemy—in his case Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt—comes first; the EIJ’s motto, in fact, amounted to something akin to “the road to Jerusalem must first pass through Cairo.” In the contest between giving priority to the “near” or the “far” enemy, it was bin Laden who changed al-Zawahiri’s mind, not vice versa [13]. In this light, al-Zawahiri as leader—and the likelihood that he would favor al-Qaeda’s Egyptians for senior positions—would weaken al-Qaeda’s U.S. focus and reawaken the nationalist orientations of al-Qaeda’s constituent groups that bin Laden had never been completely successful in suppressing. This scenario would be undiluted good news for the United States and it should be ardently desired. There is no evidence at the moment, however, that we are seeing this delightful scenario play itself out, and we ought to keep in mind what Patrick Henry once warned against as “the phantom delusions of hope.”
Michael Scheuer served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999.
Notes
1. Sheikh Salman al-Awda, “Letter to Osama bin Laden,” September 14, 2007, www.islamtoday.net, and Turki al-Saheil, “Reaction to Salman al-Ouda’s Bin Laden Letter,” Asharq al-Awsat, September 18, 2007.
2. Al-Awda, “Letter to Osama bin Laden,” September 14, 2007, op. cit.
3. Martin Lings, Muhammad, His Life Nased on the Earliest Sources, Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1983.
4. Al-Awda, “Letter to Osama bin Laden,” September 14, 2007, op. cit.
5. Ibid.
6. The recent warning by the Saudi Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al al-Sheikh, against allowing young Saudis to go to Iraq to fight the U.S.-led coalition and the Shiites is a case in point of the Saudis saying what the West wants to hear. If the Grand Mufti’s strictures were efficiently implemented by the Saudi regime, he and it would be regarded as anti-Islamic by the bulk of the population, and the country’s already numerous anti-al-Saud militants would multiply. A more accurate gauge of the Saudis’ kid-glove handling of jihadis is their recent decision to give $2,600 to each of the 55 Saudis who were returned by the U.S. from Guantanamo Bay and “temporarily release” them from custody so they could celebrate the end-of-Ramadan holiday with their families. See, “Saudi cleric issues warning over Saudi militants,” Reuters, October 1, 2007, and “Saudi to temporarily release 55 former Guantanamo detainees, give them money,” Associated Press, October 6, 2007.
7. Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, “Bin Laden losing control of al-Qaeda,” reprinted from Newsweek in Pakistan’s Daily Times, September 25, 2007, and “Zawahiri Replaces Bin Laden as al-Qaeda Chief, London Sunday Telegraph, September 16, 2007, reprinted in Ibid., September 17, 2007.
8. Matthew Fisher, “Afghanistan foes ready to tango?” National Post, October 1 2007, and John Ward Anderson, “Attacks by Taliban increase, approach Afghanistan capital,” Boston Globe, September 28, 2007.
9. Bruce Hoffman, “Zawahiri: The man who brought al-Qaeda back,” Washington Post, September 9, 2007.
10. Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi, “Dots on the Letters,” IntelCenter, 12 September 2007.
11. “Zawahiri, not bin Laden, is al-Qaeda ‘intellectual leader’: intel chief,” Agence-France Presse, September 11, 2007.
12. Bruce Hoffman, “Zawahiri: The man who brought al-Qaeda back,” op. cit.
13. For a more complete discussion of who influenced who, see Through Our Enemies’ Eyes. Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Revised Edition, Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2006, pp. 182-186, and Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History of al Qaeda, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006, pp. 75-80.
Thanks to Milford421 for sending on this report:
Muslim Fanatic Radicalizes in UK
Thanks to Jeffrey Imm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=486836&in_page_id=1770
A muslim fanatic who mockingly called himself “Osama bin London”
radicalised and trained the July 21 bombers, a court heard
yesterday.
Mohammed Hamid is said to have taken his brainwashed followers on
paintballing trips and training camps in the English countryside to
prepare them for fighting.
Under his instruction, the young men allegedly performed military-
style training, brandishing sticks as if they were guns and
practising tactics to counter an armed ambush.
Scroll down for more ...
‘Corrupter’: Mohammed Hamid is said to have given his followers
weapons training
One of the paintballing trips, attended by July 21 bombers Ramzi
Mohammed and Hussain Osman, took place just four days before the
July 7 attacks and two weeks before the two men carried out their
own attempt.
On the night of July 7, 2005, after the terrorist attacks earlier
that day, Hamid allegedly texted Osman: “We fear no one except
Allah, we will not change our ways, we are proud to be a Muslim and
we will not hide.”
One of Hamid’s expeditions was even filmed by a BBC television crew
making a documentary called “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic”.
‘PREPARING FOR JIHAD’
Hamid, who ran a stall on London’s Oxford Street, is accused of
recruiting disaffected young men by handing out extremist literature
and issuing invitations to prayers at his house.
The 50-year-old encouraged his pupils to become terrorists and train
for “jihad” against non-believers, the jury was told. At meetings,
Hamid allegedly spoke of there being six or seven atrocities before
the 2012 Olympics in London and praised the “magnificent” 9/11
hijackers.
After the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 which killed 52 people, a tape
recording of Hamid allegedly has him scoffing at the death toll,
saying “52, that’s not even breakfast for me”.
The prosecution claims that there was also discussion of extremist
preacher Abu Hamza and Finsbury Park Mosque.
Woolwich Crown Court was told that Hamid’s accomplice, 43-year-old
Atilla Ahmet, has already pleaded guilty to soliciting to murder and
will be sentenced later.
Hamid, who is married with children, was put under covert
surveillance in September 2005. In April 2006, an undercover police
officer visited his stall, posing as a disaffected young man, and
was recruited by Hamid.
His evidence of what happened at the Friday prayers and training
camps will be presented to the jury. Hamid, Ahmet and four others
were arrested in September 2006.
‘TAPES OF BEHEADINGS’
After the arrests, police raided their homes and found extremist
videos and tapes featuring beheadings and suicide bombings.
David Farrell QC, prosecuting, said: “Hamid, assisted by Ahmet, was
a recruiter, groomer and corrupter of young Muslims.
“His purpose was to convert such men to his own fanatical and
extreme beliefs and having given them foundation, thereby enabling
them to move on to join others in other pursuits of jihad by acts of
terrorism.
“The fact that some did exactly as he desired is highly relevant to
his real purposes and his continued purpose in training others after
July 21.”
The prosecution do not claim that Hamid knew about the July 21
bombers’ plans.
Scroll down for more ...
Accused: (left to right) Mousa Brown; Kader Ahmed; Kibley da Costa;
Mohammed Al Figari
Instead he is accused of soliciting to murder, providing weapons
training, providing training for terrorism and possessing a record
of information of a kind likely to be useful to a terrorist.
He is standing trial with four other men: Mousa Brown, 41, of
Walthamstow, North London, Kibley da Costa, 24, of West Norwood,
South London, Kader Ahmed, 20, of Plaistow, East London, and
Mohammed Al Figari, 43, of Tottenham, North London.
All the men deny all the charges brought against them in the first
use of the Terrorism Act 2006.
Hamid came to the attention of police in October 2004 when he and
July 21 bomber Muktar Ibrahim were arrested at his “dawa” stall on
Oxford Street.
They had been behaving aggressively toward members of the public and
when police arrived, Hamid racially abused one of the officers.
The court heard that he told police that his name was “Osama bin
London” and on the way to the police station he said to an
officer: “I’ve got a bomb and I’m going to blow you up.” He was
later convicted of public order offences.
COVERT SURVEILLANCE
The court heard that in September 2005, after Ibrahim’s arrest for
21/7, Hamid was questioned by police then put under covert
surveillance.
There was also “extensive” telephone contact between Hamid and the
July 21 bombers between Autumn 2004 and July 2005.
He called or texted Osman, Mohammed, Ibrahim and fourth bomber
Yassin Omar 173 times in total.
On the evening of July 7, after the terrorist attacks earlier that
day, Hamid allegedly texted Osman and Mohammed.
In the early hours of July 22, 2005, the day after the failed
attacks, allegedly trained at the East Sussex Jameah Centre, an
Islamic school near Crowborough.
Scroll down for more ...
Guilty: 21/7 bomber Ramzi Mohammed on a training camp allegedly run
by Hamid
Hamid took a group, including the July 21 bombers Osman, Mohammed,
Ibrahim and Omar, to a training camp at Baysbrown Farm, near
Elterwater in Cumbria, on at least three occasions in 2004.
The court heard that Osman took his son to make the trip look like a
family outing.
The men were watched by surveillance officers who saw them carrying
sticks as if practising holding a rifle, doing sit-ups and press-ups
and moving in military-type formation.
They pretended to fire imaginary weapons and remove pins from
grenades before throwing them. They were also seen leopard crawling
through streams and up hills. At night they practised “ghost
walking” - how to walk with minimum noise.
Farmer Bruce Rowland, who owned the site, called the group “My
Taliban” and was not initially concerned by them.
But when Osama Bin Laden became headline news, he told them to stop
using the field.
On a trip to a paintballing centre near St Albans, Hertfordshire, in
March 2006, the men asked to play separately from other people. The
manager said she thought it looked like an Al Qaeda training camp.
On another trip that month, they travelled to Bournemouth and ran up
and down steps leading to the beach.
‘KILL NON-BELIEVERS’
On July 3, days before 7/7, Osman and Mohammed went on a
paintballing trip with Hamid to the Springwood Centre in Tonbridge,
Kent.
Hamid held Friday prayers at his house in Clapton in East London
where, the prosecution claims, he, along with Ahmet, encouraged his
pupils to murder non-believers. The talk, it is claimed, was anti-
Semitic and anti-American.
Hamid was said to have prepared the men for life as a mujahideen, a
soldier, and they discussed future camping trips.
The court heard that at the meetings, mobile phones were turned off,
collected and put in a box.
The group would eat and pray and discuss how to target other Muslim
youths.
At meetings after the July 21 bombings, discussions centred on the
arrest of the bombers.
The prosecution say there is no doubt that Hamid and the others knew
only too well that the bombers had attended his training sessions.
In one meeting, Ahmet spoke of his dislike of the Muslim Council of
Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain and said they
needed “to be taken out”.
Hamid was recorded in East Sussex allegedly saying: “Remember this
people that never get caught right, don’t let your ego go forward.
“Let your intelligence go forward for the sake of Allah, use your
hikmah [wisdom] and be effective, effective, see how long you can
last out, then if you have to go, then you’re going for a good
reason.”
‘BRING ON THE JIHAD’
Brown is said to have been recorded as saying: “Bring the Jihad on,
brother” and expressing the desire to be a sniper after the group
discussed a report on a sniper who had shot 100 U.S. soldiers in
Baghdad, said Mr Farrell.
Brown also praised the 7/7 bombers, calling them “the fantastic
four” and denouncing moderate Muslim women.
Ahmet could be heard boasting about a CNN news report in which he
was labelled “the number one Al Qaeda in Europe”.
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2007/oct/11/yehey/world/20071011wor1.html
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Al-Qaeda aims to get nukes
WASHINGTON: Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network remains bent on getting nuclear and biological weapons to unleash apocalyptic destruction, a new White House report on national security warned Tuesday.
The report, which called for redoubled antiterror coordination at all levels of the government, said al-Qaeda remains “the most serious and dangerous manifestation” of extremist threats against the United States.
“We also must never lose sight of al-Qaeda’s persistent desire for weapons of mass destruction, as the group continues to try to acquire and use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material,” it said.
The White House called anew on the Democratic-led Congress to expand the power of US intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists “while protecting the civil liberties of Americans.”
And following the administration’s failure to push immigration reform through Congress, the report called for improved capacity to find and expel illegal aliens, “including criminals and potential terrorists.”
The appraisal followed a “National Intelligence Estimate” in July that warned that al-Qaeda is back in business, sparking Democratic complaints that the war in Iraq has proven a dangerous distraction.
The NIE, which prefigured much of Tuesday’s report, said al-Qaeda had regrouped in Pakistan “and would not hesitate” to use weapons of mass destruction on the United States.
During a testy media conference call, White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend rebuffed suggestions that the Iraq war had only served to revive al-Qaeda in the years since the September 11 attacks of 2001.
“Every time I walk into the press briefing room we go through this, and what I will say to you is there should be no question that there were like-minded Islamic extremists inside Iraq and throughout the region,” she said.
“And certainly that there is extremism inside Iraq and throughout the region is not a result of the war in Iraq, it is a fundamental front in the continuing war on terror.”
Also Tuesday, the White House denied being the source of a leak involving a recent bin Laden video that a private intelligence firm said had sabotaged its secret ability to intercept al-Qaeda messages.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” SITE Intelligence Group founder Rita Katz told the Washington Post.
According to the White House evaluation, the US-led “war on terror” has deprived al-Qaeda of its sanctuary in Afghanistan and eliminated many of those responsible for planning 9/11.
Nevertheless, bin Laden’s group has protected its top leadership, found new lieutenants, and “regenerated a safe haven” in a lawless tribal area of Pakistan on the Afghan border.
The network has also spawned regional offshoots including an aggressive affiliate in Iraq, and is also likely to “intensify its efforts” to place agents in the United States.
In a letter accompanying the report, entitled “National Strategy for Homeland Security,” President George W. Bush said: “Today, our nation is safer, but we are not yet safe.”
He stressed that “our efforts also must involve offense at home and abroad,” vowing to “disrupt the enemy’s plans” and lessen the impact of future disasters through measures to bolster the US economy and its critical infrastructure.
Other organizations that pose a potential threat to the United States include the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, the strategy report said.
“Hezbollah may increasingly consider attacking the homeland if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or Iran, its principal sponsor,” it said.
Neither is the United States immune to homegrown radicals, it cautioned.
“We will continue efforts to defeat this threat by working with Muslim-American communities that stand at the forefront of this fight.”
The report also urged nationwide readiness against natural catastrophes, following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and said infectious diseases “pose a significant and ongoing hazard.”
—AFP
http://in.news.yahoo.com/071004/48/6likj.html
Osama bin Laden alive: Al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan chief
By IE
Thursday October 4, 09:33 AM
Al-Qaeda’s chief in Afghanistan urges Muslims around the world to come fight for the country’s “independence” and insists that Osama bin Laden is alive and well, according to an audio clip released by a US-based monitoring group.
“In every corner of the world, Muslims should be concerned about Afghan Muslims and help them,” Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said on Wednesday in the audio message, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist websites.
“Every Muslim who has the feeling of sacrifice in his heart should come forward and fight for the independence of Afghanistan,” Yazid says in Arabic in the 28-minute audio, accompanied by a video showing him in a still image.
Yazid, in the speech titled “The Truth of Belief,” also claims that insurgents are scoring victories in the battlefield despite the death of top Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah in May.
Yazid calls on Muslims to support Dadullah’s successor, Mullah Mansour.
He also says that bin Laden, the al-Qaeda terror network’s chief, supervises all activities and is alive and in good health.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/071011/139/6lt0k.html
Muslim fanatic named ‘Osama bin London’ ‘trained 21/7 bombers’
By ANI
Thursday October 11, 12:53 PM
London, Oct.11 (ANI): A Muslm fanatic, mockingly calling himself “Osama bin London” told a court here on Wednesday that he radicalised and trained the July 21 bombers.
Mohammed Hamid was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying that he brainwashed followers on paintballing trips and training camps in the English countryside to prepare them for fighting.
Under his instruction, the young men allegedly performed military-style training, brandishing sticks as if they were guns and practising tactics to counter an armed ambush.
One of the paintballing trips, attended by July 21 bombers Ramzi Mohammed and Hussain Osman, took place just four days before the July 7 attacks and two weeks before the two men carried out their own attempt.
Fifty-year-old Hamid, who ran a stall on London’s Oxford Street, is accused of recruiting disaffected young men by handing out extremist literature and issuing invitations to prayers at his house.
He encouraged his pupils to become terrorists and to train for a “jihad” against non-believers, the jury was told.
After the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 which killed 52 people, a tape recording of Hamid allegedly has him scoffing at the death toll, saying “52, that’s not even breakfast for me”.
The Woolwich Crown Court was told that Hamid’s accomplice, 43-year-old Atilla Ahmet, has already pleaded guilty to soliciting to murder and will be sentenced later.
Hamid, who is married with children, was put under covert surveillance in September 2005. In April 2006, an undercover police officer visited his stall, posing as a disaffected young man, and was recruited by Hamid. His evidence of what happened at the Friday prayers and training camps will be presented to the jury. Hamid, Ahmet and four others were arrested in September 2006.
After the arrests, police raided their homes and found extremist videos and tapes featuring beheadings and suicide bombings.
He is standing trial with four other men: Mousa Brown, 41, of Walthamstow, North London, Kibley da Costa, 24, of West Norwood, South London, Kader Ahmed, 20, of Plaistow, East London, and Mohammed Al Figari, 43, of Tottenham, North London.
All the men deny all the charges brought against them in the first use of the Terrorism Act 2006.
The prosecution say there is no doubt that Hamid and the others knew only too well that the bombers had attended his training sessions. The trial continues. (ANI)
http://in.news.yahoo.com/071011/139/6lsw4.html
Maoist round-table meet starts
By ANI
Thursday October 11, 11:41 AM
Kathmandu, Oct.11 (ANI): A three-day round table conference organised by the Maoist-affiliated Seti-Mahakali Rastriya Mukti Morcha (SMRMM) has begun in far western town of Dipayal on Wednesday.
A total of 225 participants in the conference from far western districts will discuss over the structure of federal system and proportional representation of all groups, sectors and ethnic communities as proposed by the Maoist party.
According to nepalnews, the Seti-Mahakali Revolutionary People’s Council, the governing council of the party; will be formed after the conference. The profile of the Seti-Mahakali Rajya Samiti (SMRS) will also be discussed.
In the meantime, Maoist chairman Prachanda said government decision to provide three months’ salary to PLA personnel has opened a new scope for political consensus.
“The new consensus could be on announcement of a republic, full proportional representation system of elections or a referendum,” Annapurna Post quoted Prachanda as saying. He also warned to resume stir if consensus could not be reached. (ANI)
http://in.news.yahoo.com/071011/139/6lt4c.html
Islamists damage giant rock Buddha in Pakistan’s Swat region
By ANI
Thursday October 11, 01:17 PM
London, Oct.11 (ANI): Islamist radicals in Pakistan’s volatile Swat region have attempted to destroy an ancient carving of Buddha by drilling holes in the rock and filling them with dynamite. he Buddha is thought to date from the seventh century AD According to The Telegraph, the 23 foot high carving was damaged during an attack, and brought back memories of the Taliban’s destruction of the giant Buddhas at Bamiyan, in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001.
The Buddha, in the Swat district, is considered to be the largest in Asia, after the two Bamiyan Buddhas.
The explosion on Monday night damaged the upper part of the rock. (ANI)
Bin Laden more likely holed in a city: Ex-ISI chief
Web posted at: 10/10/2007 4:2:0
Source ::: REUTERS
LONDON • Osama bin Laden could hide more easily in a city than a remote tribal region, a former Pakistani intelligence chief said yesterday, challenging the notion that the Al Qaeda leader is probably holed up in a mountain cave.
Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani, former head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), said news of outsiders’ presence travels fast in the tribal areas and it would be hard to keep it secret for years.
“In the countryside or in tribal areas ... it’s difficult to hide yourself because there people live ... and operate in a manner in which finding out about unusual presence is very important,” Durrani said in an interview in London.
Such information would have travelled or been divulged, given the incentives, Durrani said in a reference to the $25m US bounty on bin Laden’s head.
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