Posted on 05/28/2002 4:07:45 PM PDT by gubamyster
There's an arrticle on the Voice there about *gasp*... Coca Cola selling 'old' soda in minority neighborhods.
The horror!
Never mind that until a few years ago there was no such thing as an 'expiration date' on pop. And no one cared. The idea to add dates was a marketing ploy to begin with, and maybe, just maybe, intended to reduce litigation from people finding caramel lumps in the bottles.
04/26/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09846
BLOCKING TERRORISTS ASSETS
The United States, in coordination with its allies, continues to block the flow of money to terrorist organizations. U.S. banks have been ordered to freeze assets held by nine more individuals and another organization linked to Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist network.
U.S. officials have identified the Aid Organization of the Ulema as the re-named Al Rashid Trust. The Al Rashid Trust was cited as a source of funds for terrorists in September 2001. The group changed its name in an attempt to avoid having its assets frozen.
The latest individuals listed as having links to terrorists include Ahmed Idris Nasreddin. He provided direct support for Youssef Nada, one of the top executives at Nada Management, which set up Bank Al Taqwa. Bank al Taqwa and Nada were designated as terrorist financiers of al-Qaida last November.
Abdelkadir Mahmoud Es Sayed has been indicted for conspiring to traffic in arms, explosives, chemical weapons, and identity papers in Italy. Es Sayed is considered to be the organizer of al-Qaida's Milan, Italy, cell. He is also a fugitive under a death sentence, having been convicted of involvement in a 1997 terrorist attack in Luxor, Egypt, carried out by Gama’at al Islamiyya.
Another person on the list is Abu Hamza al-Mazri, an influential Egyptian sheik. He identifies himself as the legal officer of the Islamic Army of Aden -- an affiliate of al-Qaida -- which claimed responsibility for the 2000 bombing of the U-S-S Cole in Yemen.
Khalid Al-Fawaz has also been added to the list of terrorist financiers. He was indicted in the U.S. for conspiring to bomb the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In 1994, bin Laden sent al-Fawaz to London to serve as a conduit for al-Qaida cells.
Four Tunisians are serving prison sentences in Italy. They were members of an al-Qaida cell operating in Italy and were convicted of trafficking in weapons and explosives.
As U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said, we have blocked "the finances of an assortment of terrorists involved in financing and carrying out bombings, kidnappings, and murder. We will continue to expose and shut down these thugs wherever we find them."
November 30, 2001
Italian police raid Islamic centers, arrest two accused of recruiting for al-Qaida
By PIERO VALSECCHI
Associated Press Writer
MILAN, Italy — Police raided mosques and Islamic centers in northern Italy on Thursday, arresting two people accused of recruiting fighters for Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.
As part of its crackdown on suspected Islamic militants, authorities intercepted cryptic phone conversations between members of a Milan cell and bin Laden operatives in Afghanistan, according to Bruno Megale, a deputy chief with Italy’s anti-terrorism unit.
The two men arrested were identified as Nabil Benattia, a 35-year-old Tunisian, and Yassine Chekkouri, 35, of Morocco. Their arrests come two weeks after police picked up Abdelhalim Hafed Remadna, 35, of Algeria, as he boarded a train in Milan on Nov. 14. He had phony Italian residency papers and was trying to leave the country.
The three men and an Egyptian fugitive named Abdelkadir Es-Sayed are suspected of membership in a Milan cell and of plotting to produce false documents and recruit fighters to train in bin Laden’s Afghan camps.
Es-Sayed was identified as a former preacher at another Milan mosque who was sentenced in Egypt for terrorist activities, Megale said. Prosecutors described him as a key member of the Islamic cell in Italy, with links to Islamic extremists in several countries.
Wiretaps of telephone conversations between the cell and al-Qaida operatives revealed codes that bin Laden officials used to indicate they were ready for new recruits.
“We are opening new gymnasiums. We need instructors and materials,” Megale quoted one of the officials as saying in an intercepted conversation.
Both Remadna and Chekkouri worked at Milan’s Cultural Center and mosque, a converted garage that the U.S. government has described as “the main al-Qaida station house in Europe.”
Italian investigators have been watching the center for months and have arrested at least one worshipper there but the arrests of Remadna, who was a secretary at the center, and Chekkouri, the center’s librarian, were the first of anyone directly working for the center.
In overnight raids, police seized documents from the Islamic center, another Milan mosque and Islamic centers in the Italian cities of Pavia, Vercelli, Venice, Aosta and Bergamo, Megale said.
At Remadna’s offices, police seized a false Yemeni passport, a false Italian driver’s license and faxes of a map detailing a route to Afghanistan through Iranian territory, Megale told a press conference.
Lawyers for Remadna and Chekkouri said their clients hadn’t been charged with terrorism and that the wiretaps provided no evidence of terror involvement.
The Islamic center’s president, Abdel Hamid Shaari, defended his mosque and said he had cooperated fully with the overnight searches.
“We are not giving any cover to anybody,” he told reporters. “If they are guilty, they will have to pay for it.”
Separately Thursday, a Tunisian preacher who ran a mosque in the Italian city of Bologna was convicted in Tunisia on Thursday and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Mohamed Saidani, 35, was extradited this summer from Italy on charges of “belonging to a terrorist organization.” But a military court sentenced him for two separate offenses, according to his lawyer, Samir Ben Amor, who did not provide further details.
Saidani had previously been convicted in absentia to a total of 56 years in jail for three offenses, including having ties to an Islamic extremist group called Ennahdah, banned by Tunisian authorities in 1992.
Italian authorities have said that several cities there serve as centers for Islamic extremism.
The latest arrests were part of a probe that includes the April arrest of Essid Sami Ben Khemais, a Tunisian whom European officials now believe was sent from Afghanistan to supervise bin Laden’s terrorist operations in Europe.
He and five others arrested in Italy and Germany are accused of plotting a foiled attack against the U.S. Embassy in Rome and Spanish authorities say Ben Khemais met with Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta earlier this year in Spain.
© 2000, 2001 The Bryan/College Station Eagle
[LatelineNews: 2001-11-29] MILAN, Italy - Authorities raided several Islamic centers overnight in northern Italy and arrested two people accused of recruiting fighters for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, police said Thursday.
Police said a third man already detained in Milan, Abdelhalim Hafed Remadna of Algeria, had spoken directly with top bin Laden operatives in Afghanistan by satellite phone about sending new recruits to al-Qaida camps, AP reported.
Remadna and Yassine Chekkouri of Morocco, arrested early Thursday, both worked at Milan's Islamic Cultural Center and mosque, which U.S. officials say served as the base of bin Laden's operations in Europe.
Police raided the center along with another Milan mosque and several Islamic centers in northern Italy, said Bruno Megale, a deputy chief of Italy's anti-terrorism police.
In recent months, police have arrested a dozen people in and around Milan as part of the investigation, but Remadna and Chekkouri were the first directly affiliated with the center to have been detained.
In Remadna's office at the center, police seized a false Yemeni passport, a false Italian driver's license and faxes of a map showing how to cross into Afghanistan from Iran, Megale told a news conference.
The faxes, as well as wiretaps of telephone conversations between Remadna and bin Laden operatives in Afghanistan, showed that new recruits were advised in recent months to enter Afghanistan from Iran because it was easier than crossing from Pakistan, he said.
The wiretaps also revealed codes bin Laden's operatives used to indicate they needed new fighters, saying they were opening a new ``gymnasium'' and needed new gym instructors, Megale said.
Police initially said Remadna and the two other men arrested, as well as an Egyptian who remained at large, were suspected of criminal association aimed at possessing explosives and dangerous chemicals and producing false documents.
But at the news conference, Megale said the key charges were criminal association, producing false documents, arranging clandestine immigration and recruiting combatants to fight in Afghanistan. He was vague when pressed for details on the chemical charge.
Megale said an Italian chemist who converted to Islam had been questioned as part of the investigation and had his home searched but had not been charged.
Remadna was arrested Nov. 14 while boarding a train with allegedly false Italian residency documents, and police said he had intended to leave the country. He had been a secretary at the Milan center, a converted garage that the U.S. government recently described as ``the main al-Qaida station house in Europe.''
Chekkouri was a librarian at the center and was arrested during the overnight raid. The other detainee, Nabil Benattia of Tunisia, was arrested Wednesday, Megele said. The Egyptian suspected of being a key bin Laden operative, Abdelkadir Es Sayed, 39, remained at large, police said.
The Islamic center's president, Abdel Hamid Shaari, said it ``intends to defend its honor and its legal status. After all, it wasn't the center that was searched, but only the offices and workplaces of certain people who work at the center.''
The arrests were part of a probe that led to the April arrest of Essid Sami Ben Khemais, a Tunisian who police in Europe now believe was sent from Afghanistan to supervise bin Laden's terrorist operations in Europe.
Spanish investigators say Ben Khemais may have met in Spain earlier this year with Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, and with members of an Algerian group in Spanish custody.
The guy who met with Atta might be of interest too.
November 30, 2001
TAPES of telephone calls show how a gang of Italian-based Islamic fanatics linked to Osama bin Laden and a London Muslim cleric were ready to launch an attack in France using poisonous gas.
Two alleged members of the gang, arrested in Milan yesterday, were found with dangerous chemicals and false documents to be used by al-Qaeda terrorists. Police also recovered what they believe is al-Qaeda’s codebook.
The group’s alleged leader was still on the run last night. Abdelkadir Es-Sayed, 39, an Egyptian, is accused of taking part in a bombing in Luxor in 1997 which killed 58 foreign tourists. For three months the Italian secret service (Digos) listened in to the gang’s calls including frequent contacts with Abu Qatada, who lives in Acton, West London, and has been described as Bin Laden’s European ambassador.
The alleged link with the 41-year-old cleric came a week after a Spanish judge said that Qatada was the “spiritual adviser” to a terrorist cell in Madrid. Mr Qatada denies all links with terrorism and says that as a Koranic scholar he receives calls from across Europe. The calls were made from the suburban Milan apartment where five members of this group lived, according to Le Nouvel Observateur, a French news magazine.
Some alleged members of the gang, who were of North African origin, were arrested last spring after the gang were recorded talking about using “a suffocating gas” somewhere in France. They spoke in code and never revealed precise plans for the attack.
Extracts from the transcripts offer a glimpse of life in an alleged terrorist cell of the GSPC, an Algerian-based group said by security services to operate as a European arm of al-Qaeda.
French security police say that 1,000 trained agents from the network are still at large in Western Europe despite the dismantling of a dozen cells in France, Germany, Spain, Britain and elsewhere.
Last December German police defused an alleged GSPC plot to attack the European Parliament in Strasbourg with sarin poisonous gas.
The leader, given the codename Saber while training in Afghanistan, is alleged to be Essid Sami Ben Khemais. The Milan group are heard discussing bomb-making, preparing false papers, fretting about their security and watching al-Qaeda videos.
Saber gives a running commentary on his chemical plans to strike “the enemies of God”. He needs a team of 12. Gas is more effective than plastic explosives, which are now outmoded, he says. “It’s a liquid. As soon as it’s opened, people suffocate. . . It’s difficult to transport but you can do it in tomato cans. . .”
The target was identified as “la Dame” — a possible reference to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, according to the magazine. Saber says he needs a formula for the poison gas that had been developed by a Libyan chemistry professor.
“He has devised a way of mixing the vapours of the substance with an explosive. Seems it’s easy but I don’t know how to do it. . .” The activists refer to bin Laden variously as “the director”, the “Sheikh Ali Abdullah” and “the unknown one”.
At one point another al-Qaeda member living in Munich, who calls himself Mohammed, says the time has come to strike in France but authorisation must first come from bin Laden. “Unfortunately if you want to be a martyr you need to ask for authorisation from Sheikh Ali Abdullah.”
What emerges from the calls is the belief that Britain is regarded as a haven for al Qaeda agents. European intelligence agencies believe that the British authorities are poor at monitoring mobile phone conversations.
Key to coded messages
The transcripts show the alleged terrorists using code-words in phone conversations. Police say that the terms, in Arabic, are standard code used by Muslim terrorists in Europe.
Turkey, or chicken: bomb
To be tired: to be under police surveillance
The town hall: prison
Get married: to escape or flee
Trousers: false identity papers
Open a shop, or restaurant: commit a terrorist attack
Couscous: nails (used in a bomb)
Poison: identity control
A book: false passport
The U.S. Treasury Department has blocked the assets of nine individuals and one organization that, it says, are linked to the terrorist activities of Usama bin Laden and the al Qaida network.
Following is the text of the Treasury fact sheet issued April 19 to explain the action:
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Office of Public Affairs April 19, 2002
Designation of 10 Terrorist Financiers Fact Sheet
"Today we block the finances of an assortment of terrorists involved in financing and carrying out bombings, kidnappings and murder. We will continue to expose and shut down these thugs wherever we find them." -- Treasury Secretary Paul 'Neill
Today the Department of Treasury designated nine individuals and one organization, all linked to al Qaida and Usama bin Laden, under President Bush's Executive Order 13224 and took blocking action against them. Today's action will block all assets these entities have in the United States and prohibits any financial interaction between U.S. persons and these entities and individuals. Including today's designation, the Department of Treasury has blocked the assets of 202 entities and individuals. 161 countries have joined us in issuing blocking orders against these groups and individuals and $104 million has been frozen worldwide. $34 million of that has been blocked domestically in the United States with the remaining $70 million blocked by our international partners.
THE AID ORGANIZATION OF THE ULEMA
When President Bush initiated the financial war on terrorism in September 2001, the al Rashid Trust was among the first organizations named as a financial facilitator of terrorists. The organization changed its name to The Aid Organization of the Ulema (AOU) and remains active. The AOU is headquartered in Pakistan, and continues to operate offices there. They have been raising funds for the Taliban since 1999. This designation captures the re-named office and identifies additional locations of other branch offices in Pakistan.
NASREDDIN, Ahmed Idris
Ahmed Idris Nasreddin provides direct support for Youssef Nada and Bank Al Taqwa, both of which were designated as terrorist financiers by the Department of Treasury on November 7, 2001. On the same date, Treasury named four additional individuals as terrorist financers connected to al Taqwa: Zeinab Mansour-Fattouh, Mohamed Mansour, Albert Friedrich Armand Huber, and Ali Ghaleb Himmat. The al Taqwa group has long acted as financial advisers to al Qaida, with offices in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and the Caribbean. Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and Youssef Nada are both founders and directors of Bank Al Taqwa. Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization received financial assistance from Youssef Nada. Al Taqwa provides investment advice and cash transfer mechanisms for al Qaida and other radical Islamic groups.
Es Sayed, Abdelkadir Mahmoud
An order for preventive detention of Es Sayed, an Egyptian national, has been issued in absentia by the prosecutor's office in Milan, Italy. He has been indicted for participation in a criminal conspiracy to traffic in arms, explosives, chemical weapons, identity papers, and for aiding illegal immigration. Es Sayed is considered to be the organizer of al Qaida's Milan cell. Numerous wiretaps have been collected by investigators in the past months which show that Es Sayed was in contact with the leadership of al Qaida. In one of the conversations, he says that he had been sent to Milan to reorganize the "Muslim brothers" who were hit by the investigations starting in the early 1990s. Es Sayed was convicted in Egypt for the massacre at Luxor in which 58 foreign tourists were killed.
AL-FAWAZ, Khalid
Khalid Al-Fawaz was indicted in the United States for conspiring to bomb the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The United States is seeking his extradition from the United Kingdom. Al Fawaz was sent to London by Usama bin Laden in1994, where he set up an office to serve as a conduit among various al Qaida cells.
AL-MASRI, Abu Hamza
Abu Hamza al-Masri identifies himself as the Legal Officer for the Islamic Army of Aden, the terrorist organization that claimed credit for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. The President designated the Islamic Army of Aden as a financier of terrorism when he launched the financial war on terrorism on September 24, 2001. In written statements, Hamza seeks support and backing for jihad against the Yemeni regime and the return to Islamic law. The Islamic Army of Aden has taken responsibility for the kidnapping of foreigners, including the kidnapping of 16 tourists in December of 1998, that resulted in the killing of three Britons and one Australian. In interviews, Hamza has endorsed the killing of non-Muslim tourists visiting Muslim countries.
INDIVIDUALS LINKED TO SALAFIST GROUP FOR CALL AND COMBAT
The following four individuals are members of an al Qaida cell operating in Italy that carried out logistical tasks in collaboration with similar groups active in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Algeria. The cell is part of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algerian terrorist organization that continues to terrorize North Africa. The President designated the Salafist Group for Call and Combat as a financier of terrorism when he launched the financial war on terrorism on September 24, 2001. The Salafist Group for Call and Combat was designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on March 27, 2002.
Aouadi, Mohamed Ben Belgacem
Aouadi, a Tunisian national, has been convicted in Italy and is serving a five-year term in prison for being part of a group involved in trafficking of arms and explosives. He acted as a liaison with the Algerian-Spanish cell of al Qaida and was the man who procured the false documents for other al Qaida cell members.
Bouchoucha, Mokhtar
Bouchoucha, a Tunisian national, has been convicted in Italy and is serving a five-year term in prison for being part of a group involved in trafficking of arms and explosives.
Charaabi, Tarek
Charaabi, a Tunisian national, has been convicted in Italy and is serving a four-year term in prison for being part of a group involved in trafficking of arms and explosives.
ESSID, Sami Ben Khemais
Essid has been convicted in Italy and is serving a five-year term in prison for being part of a group involved in trafficking of arms and explosives.
Ben Heni, Lased
Ben Heni, a Libyan national, served as a liaison between the al Qaida cell in Italy, led by Ben Khemais, and the cell in Frankfurt that was dismantled in December 2000, before it was able to carry out an attack in Strasbourg. He has been indicted for participation in a criminal conspiracy to traffic in arms, explosives, chemical weapons, and identity papers, and for aiding illegal immigration. He was arrested in Germany in October and then extradited to Italy. At the time of his arrest, he bragged that he had been trained in the same camps frequented by Usama bin Laden.
More anti-terror arrests in Italy
November 29, 2001 Posted: 11:11 AM EST (1611 GMT)
Frattini: People living legally in Italy "were preparing for attacks abroad"
MILAN, Italy (CNN) -- Milan police have arrested three people and are seeking a fourth in connection with a crackdown on an al Qaeda cell in Italy.
Those arrested or being sought are charged with "association with deliquent groups."
Italian authorities said they were part of a logistical cell that provided weapons, explosives, and false documents to al Qaeda terrorists.
Those arrested were named as Abdel Halim Hased Remadna, 35, from Algeria who was already in a Milan jail on other charges; Yassine Chekkouri, 35, from Morocco; and Nabil Benattia, 35, from Tunisia. Being sought was Abdel Kader Mahmoud Es Sayed, 39, from Egypt.
Police said satellite telephone calls had been traced between between Remadna and Abu Jaffa, thought to be number three in the organisation of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.
In addition, police searched two Islamic cultural centres in the city -- Viale Jenner and Via Quaranta.
Police said a number of searches were conducted in other northern Italian cities -- Venice, Bergamo, Aosta, Vercelli, and Pavia. Italian police said those searched has turned up false documents and other records which connected the suspects to al Qaeda.
In April and October, Italian authorities made a series of arrests, cracking what they said was a cell that supported al Qaeda operatives in a number of countries including Spain, Germany and France.
After an unprecedented security crackdown in the wake of September 11 they concluded that Italy was been a support base for terrorist operations -- providing false documents, money and other logistics.
The pope: No specific threat but seen as an obvious target
Last week Italian intelligence services chief Franco Frattini told CNN they had discovered a terrorist network under construction for years.
"We have been discovering, for example, people who have been living in a legal way in Italy. In some cases they have Italian citizenship through marriage. They were not doing anything strange in Italy, but they were preparing for attacks abroad," Frattini said.
The Italian security chief said contrary to newspaper reports, there has been no specific threat to the Vatican, but the faithful now pass through metal detectors on their way to Mass because Pope John Paul II and his basilica are obvious targets.
Other specific threats included a suspected plot to blow up a stretch of the Italian highway system, he said.
Why's he loose and being bugged?
Well, Abdelkader es Sayed WAS loose and being bugged but that was a long time ago; I haven't found out if he was convicted in absentia or not over the murders at Luxor. But the police probably didn't know it was him until after they cleaned the tapes and translated them, and traced the calls or figured out who was in the room with the bug on a given day. Terrorists don't walk around with name tags on them and frequently change their appearance. The police only recently released the info from that older investigation.
Here's another reason why he hasn't been caught since then: according to the following article he appears to be dead, killed in a US bombing raid, hopefully with a lot of his friends.
Al-Qaeda now Is it behind the newest attacks worldwide? How the damaged network may be plotting the next big one
May 27, 2002 Posted: 2:57 PM EDT (1857 GMT)
By Michael Elliott
Which is scarier, the noise or the silence? Long after the attacks of Sept. 11, the clangor of terror echoes worldwide. But for U.S. investigators, what they don't hear is almost as frightening as what they do.
Terrorist communications, according to Francis X. Taylor, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, have reached levels "probably as high as they were last summer." Attacks continue. In April, a truck bomb--now thought to be the work of Islamic terrorists with links to al-Qaeda, the network headed by Osama bin Laden--crashed into a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, killing 19, including 14 German tourists. On May 8, an apparent suicide bomber in Karachi, Pakistan, pulled his car up beside a military bus loaded with French contract workers, exploded the car and killed 14. Those waiting nervously for a second al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. may have forgotten: it already happened. Last December, shoe bomber Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines plane over the Atlantic in an incident that investigators have long been convinced was an al-Qaeda plot. Though that effort was foiled, the terrorists have not given up. "Just as a wounded animal is the most dangerous of all," Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week, "al-Qaeda remains a real threat."
And sometimes a silent one. The investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks is the most comprehensive the world has ever known. Yet after wading through mountains of paper seized in Afghanistan, checking out hundreds of computer discs and interviewing scores of al-Qaeda detainees, investigators have found not a single reference to the Sept. 11 hijackers. "Where's the intel on these people?" asks a senior FBI official. "Even after all this time, there are no documents and nothing in the humint [human intelligence]." Which raises the spookiest possibility of all: that there could be another al-Qaeda cell out there, just as good--just as quiet--as the one that mounted the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That's why assessing the capabilities of al-Qaeda now is so important.
Figuring out what al-Qaeda can do--and stopping it--requires a mixture of military action and persistent shoe-leather work by cops. Since last fall, 1,600 suspected operatives of al-Qaeda have been arrested in 95 countries. Sometimes you just have to wait. Sources tell TIME, for example, that after years of silence, one of the most mysterious figures in al-Qaeda's network has started talking to the FBI and a federal grand jury. Ihab Mohamed Ali, known within al-Qaeda by the nom de guerre Nawawi, is an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen who worked with bin Laden's organization in Sudan and Afghanistan after receiving flight training (as long ago as 1993) at the same Oklahoma school where Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged terrorist who was detained before the Sept. 11 attacks, studied last year. Ali later returned to the U.S. and worked as a cabdriver in Orlando, Fla. He was arrested after the al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 but clammed up. Indicted for perjury, Ali has been detained ever since. If he is talking now, he could shed some much needed light on the early days of al-Qaeda's international campaigns.
Taylor, for one, thinks those campaigns continue apace. Al-Qaeda, he believes, has "two or three operations" in the planning stage. Some al-Qaeda cells are sleepers, he figures, remaining inactive for long periods, while others will launch attacks without waiting for any go-ahead from a central authority. The Karachi bomb, in the words of a French official, was "opportunistic terrorism," targeting vulnerable Westerners where preparing an attack--and escaping the cops--is much easier than it would be in Europe or the U.S. But operations that require higher authority can still get it. U.S. intelligence believes that bin Laden--along with his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Dick Cheney of al-Qaeda--is hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and is still capable of getting messages out to followers. "They are spending a lot of time running and hiding," says a U.S. official, "but it doesn't take a lot of time to plot and scheme."
It's the maddening fuzziness of the Islamic-extremist terrorist network that makes it so hard to tackle. Throwing the term al-Qaeda like a blanket over all terrorist incidents can be misleading. "Who staged the Djerba attack?" asks a French Justice official. "Who financed the Karachi bombing? All we know is that they were Islamic extremists bent on the same sort of violence. Some groups are part of al-Qaeda, others associates of it. Still others are sympathetic fellow travelers." As if to confirm the analysis, Pakistani officials are cautious about ascribing the Karachi bomb to al-Qaeda, though they acknowledge that local militant groups share informal links with bin Laden's organization. The Djerba-synagogue bomb seems a clearer case. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites, the same group that said it bombed the American embassies in 1998. Moreover, German police investigating the Djerba incident raided the Duisberg home of a Moroccan immigrant and found the telephone number of Ramzi Binalshibh. U.S. investigators think Binalshibh, who belonged to the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell that masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, was intended to be on one of the planes that day. (He never managed to get a U.S. visa.) Binalshibh is thought to have left Europe for Pakistan last summer.
Why haven't there been more attacks like those in Karachi and Djerba? Partly because of the fighting in Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda had become a state within a state. A senior Italian investigator in Milan is explicit. "The war," he says, "has been a serious blow to the network here." Robbed of their central facilities in the Afghan camps, Italian cells have had to get by with less logistical support, like false documents and ready cash; communications have been hampered; and, crucially, key figures have been killed. Abdel Kader Es Sayed, an Egyptian-born terrorist who authorities say was placed in charge of al-Qaeda's Italian operations in 2000, was reportedly killed in the American bombing campaign. So were at least two other members of the al-Qaeda high command. Mohammed Atef, an Egyptian who was believed to be al-Qaeda's top military commander, died in November, and Abu Jafar al-Jaziri, reputedly a logistics and operations chief, is thought to have been killed in January.
Perhaps most significant of all, Abu Zubaydah was captured in March after a gunfight in Faisalabad, Pakistan, at the end of a police raid. He had played key roles both in the camps and in running al-Qaeda operations, and his arrest, says Roland Jacquard, a leading French expert on Islamic terrorism, was "an enormous, stupendous blow to al-Qaeda." Abu Zubaydah seems to have specialized in organizing al-Qaeda operatives based in Europe and North America. Ahmed Ressam, the Montreal-based "millennium bomber" captured at the end of 1999 while attempting to cross from Canada into Washington State with explosives and bomb timers, testified that Abu Zubaydah planned al-Qaeda operations in the U.S. After Sept. 11, according to a U.S. official, American intelligence learned that one of the men trailed by Ken Williams--the FBI agent who last July wrote the famous Phoenix, Ariz., memo calling attention to a pattern of Arab radicals attending U.S. flight schools--had been linked through telephone calls to Abu Zubaydah. The man has now been deported. Abu Zubaydah is being interrogated at a secret location, and his disclosures--some of them bogus--about likely al-Qaeda operations have contributed mightily to the noise level.
In Afghanistan the remaining al-Qaeda fighters have split into small groups. Since March, when U.S. troops engaged a large al-Qaeda force during Operation Anaconda, there have been few significant battles--and even in Anaconda the body count was far lower than the hundreds the Pentagon at first claimed to have killed. Three operations led by the British Royal Marines in eastern Afghanistan this spring ended without snaring the enemy. "Countrywide," says an intelligence source in Kabul, "it's probably safe to say there are no groups of armed Taliban and al-Qaeda bigger than 60." But that doesn't mean al-Qaeda is finished. Abu Zubaydah, some sources claim, has been replaced by Saif al-Adil, a former Egyptian army officer wanted in connection with the 1998 embassy bombings. Some fighters have doubtless slipped across the border and are trying to regroup in the tribal regions of Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf has conceded that American communications experts are there helping Pakistani forces.
Just as Afghan-based fighters may live to fight another day, so al-Qaeda operatives in the West are regrouping. In Italy an investigator concedes, "We're finding new people and need to identify their roles." That puts gumshoes and prosecutors back in the front line. One of the most dogged of the breed seems to be Williams, the FBI agent in Phoenix. Indeed, Williams' memo is an unwitting case study in just how far-reaching the network of Islamic extremism has become.
The agent appears to have been keeping an eye on a number of young Arab men. As TIME has reported, two of them--permanent residents of the U.S.--remain under FBI surveillance. According to an online report by FORTUNE, one of the men Williams was following was Zacarias Mustapha Soubra, a Lebanese student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Williams thought some of the men might have links to al Muhajiroun (the Immigrant), a hard-line Islamic-extremist group headed by Omar Bakri, a London-based Islamic fundamentalist leader. In Britain, al Muhajiroun, whose political goal is the establishment of a worldwide Islamic caliphate, has been accused of recruiting young Muslims for jihad in Afghanistan. Originally from Syria, Bakri says he is careful to stay one step ahead of the law. "I may be on the edge," he told TIME in an interview last week, "but I don't pass it." French and Spanish judicial investigators have long viewed Bakri as one of three London Muslims--the others are Abu Hamza al-Masri, who preaches at the famous Finsbury Park mosque, and Abu Qatada, a Jordanian who disappeared at the end of last year--who are spiritual leaders of al-Qaeda. Jacquard claims that "every al-Qaeda operative recently arrested or identified in Europe had come into contact with Bakri at some time or other."
In the interview, Bakri named Soubra the al Muhajiroun "leader" in Arizona but denied that Soubra had any links to al-Qaeda or bin Laden. (Soubra is not enrolled for the summer session at Embry-Riddle; efforts to contact him were unsuccessful.) Bakri said he thought bin Laden is "a great man; he stands for the truth, as far as Muslims are concerned," but insisted he himself did not support the Sept. 11 attacks.
Whether Bakri is closely linked to al-Qaeda or--as some think--is just a loudmouthed bombast, al Muhajiroun is real. Bakri claims his organization has offices in 21 countries, and it certainly has a presence in the U.S. Early in May, al Muhajiroun supporters held a demonstration to support Chechnya outside the Russian consulate in New York City. On May 12, the group held a meeting at New York City's Brooklyn College, complete with videos of alleged atrocities committed against Muslims worldwide. Fahad Hashmi, a Pakistani-American student, spoke at the meeting, praising the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh. "America is directly involved in exterminating Muslims," said Hashmi. "America is the biggest terrorist in the world."
It's a long step from a student meeting to a terrorist cell. But as investigators try to work out what al-Qaeda can do now, a primary place they are bound to look is among radical Islamic groups within the U.S. That, after all, was the central message of Williams' memo. One curiosity about that document is who is not in it. Williams does not appear to have conducted surveillance of Hani Hanjour, a Saudi who lived in Phoenix, attended flight school there and is thought to have piloted the plane that on Sept. 11 crashed into the Pentagon. Hanjour completed his flight training before Williams compiled his memo; that explains the Saudi's absence from it. But the timing of his training raises a host of questions. Hanjour has always been an oddity among the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11. Unlike the others, who were based either in the Middle East or among the Arab diaspora in Europe, Hanjour had spent much of the previous decade in the U.S. He started to learn to fly not just a year or so before Sept. 11, as the other pilots did, but as early as 1996. He was not much good at it; Duncan Hastie, president of CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., remembered Hanjour as a "weak, poor student; it just seemed to me that he was not motivated to succeed." Hastie was wrong; Hanjour stuck to it, taking flying classes again and again.
What was Hanjour doing? Was he just a scrawny airhead, dreaming of rolling across the big Southwestern sky? Or did he belong to another group of al-Qaeda American operatives, one that was put together earlier and whose mission remains unknown? If so, what was he planning to do for al-Qaeda before he became one of the Sept. 11 hijackers? With whom? And where?
Noise can be scary; silence is terrifying.
--Reported by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad; Bruce Crumley/Paris; Helen Gibson/London; Ghulam Hasnain/New York; Jeff Israely/Milan; Broward Liston/Orlando; Scott MacLeod/Cairo; David Schwartz/Phoenix; Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson and Doug Waller/Washington; and Charles P. Wallace/Berlin
Can anyone answer my question about this passage?
I'm sure someone could. Those that could would probably have to shoot you afterwards over concerns of "national security" and the possiblity of a "breach of security" from you too.
Do you really want to know that bad?
That's why terrorism is difficult for countries to deal with and why countries often don't even try, if they are able to try. So long as they target someone else, terrorists are often left alone as a lost cause. The very 'facelessness' of some terrorist groups is what makes them such a useful instrument to nations which cannot risk openly using arms against other nations. Using a terrorist group as a weapon has in the past shielded states like Iran and Syria from being targetted by those whom they attack. Only in the case of Lybia and Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree, Sudan, has this safety-by-denial not been foolproof. Iraq might join them eventually, and Iran.
As for this guy, I still can't figure out if he was convicted in absentia in Egypt, or if he was convicted in person and somehow escaped into Italy. I don't know if he entered Italy illegally or legally but one article implies he had obtained refugee status... why, I don't know. He may have done so under an alias, he may have gotten it because Italy may have a PC policy on extraditions back to Egypt due to human rights issues, he may have slipped in without anyone checking his ID, or he may have entered Italy before his conviction and been in hiding. All the reporters appear to know is that he was sent a letter telling him to cross into Afghanistan from Iran and after that, he left Italy, perhaps to go to Afghanistan as the note and maps implied, or perhaps elsewhere, and that since then no one has had word on him except he possibly died in Afghanistan. How would someone know he 'possibly died' in Afghanistan? Well, it could be that a corpse which looks just like him was photographed, but concrete proof doesn't exist since we may not have fingerprints or other foolproof records to make sure (since we have been photographing prisoner and corpses that is a possibility) ; or it could be he was seen entering but not seen since and people are just assuming.
Unless he is heard from again, it is reasonable to assume he is dead, though it is not an absolute surety. If we hear from him, or hear others trying to reach him get answered, then we will try to nab him, obviously... and if we don't, then it's probably because he is still hiding, and if hiding, then he ain't doing much more than he would in a prison cell. (Admittedly, after the first WTC bombing, we had one of the SOBs in a prison cell and his lawyer was apparently playing gopher to help plan more attacks.)
The silence is terrifying to the pessimist, but to the optimist it is a good sign. It all depends on which one you are.
The nature of terrorists is such that by the time you track down all of their aliases, they have already adopted a new identity and changed locations. The best we can expect for the majority is to hear silence. We won't be lucky enough to get them all back in identifiable condition, obviously; and we won't be able to simply 'arrest them' nor would we want to do so. Arrests cost money and tend to let them go after mistrials, wimpy convictions, and early release. Turning them into gound breakfast sausage may not be as emotionally satisfying as taking their scalp or ears as proof, but it is highly effective and cheap. We will miss some, true enough, but we will get more of them this way than if we try any other alternative. Not that I've heard any other alternatives but the plaintive folks on the left who want to give up and do nothing at all.
This sure sounds as though he had asked for refugee status, perhaps claiming to have been 'persecuted' in order to stay out of Egyptian hands. If the Europeans won't run prisoners over to us for fear we will put them in Old Sparky, it is probable they wouldn't turn someone over to Egypt, either, for fear they would be tortured.
I can't find any more data on his Egyptian conviction via google, at least not in English.
I vote for the breakfast sausage, but that is just me!
I guess you missed the part in the article where they said they didn't know what it meant! Geez, the Keyboard Critics have taken over this place. It must be wonderful to have 20/20 hindsight.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
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