Posted on 09/02/2002 12:13:51 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:08:20 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
September 2, 2002 -- The man suspected of plotting to hijack a plane in Sweden and fly it into a U.S. embassy in Europe may have had kamikaze accomplices on the plane with him, according to British intelligence sources.
Karem Chatty, a minor Swedish hood of Tunisian heritage, admitted to trying to smuggle a pistol on a flight from Vasteras to London Thursday. But lawyer Nils Uggla said Chatty, who did time for assaulting a U.S. Marine, "is very much against violence."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Later, Chatty earned his wings in North Carolina, but never got his license. He told instructor Silke Eyles he had to handle family business in Tunisia and asked her to send the license to him. An attempt to contact him failed, and Eyles forgot about Chatty - until 9/11. She notified the FBI, which interviewed her last year.
(BTW, please tell me this story was neither written nor edited by college graduates...)
Mon Sep 2, 6:12 AM ET
By Elinor Schang
VASTERAS, Sweden (Reuters) - A Swedish man of Tunisian origin seized as he boarded a plane with a gun in his luggage is accused of planning to hijack the aircraft, a Swedish prosecutor said on Monday.
A document from Sweden's International Prosecutors Office Department, obtained by Reuters, said prosecutors wanted Kerim Sadok Chatty, 29, remanded in custody. His arrest last week came just days before the first anniversary of the September 11 suicide hijack attacks on the United States.
The document said Chatty should be held in custody for "planning a hijack, aviation sabotage or airport sabotage, serious crime" and "serious crime involving weapons."
The document, from Chief Prosecutor Thomas Haggstrom, said prosecutors wanted Chatty detained because there was a risk that he would try to evade justice, that he could try to destroy evidence and that he would continue his criminal activities.
Chatty, a Swedish citizen, was arrested on Thursday when a pistol was found in his toiletries bag as he tried to board a Ryanair flight to London from Vasteras, a small airport near Stockholm.
Chatty's lawyer, Nils Uggla, said his client admitted he had a gun but denied being involved in any terrorist activities.
The prosecutor's document was read out to journalists in a Vasteras court building and a copy was obtained by Reuters.
The court will hear the prosecutor's request to hold Chatty in detention for two weeks at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT) while prosecutors finalize charges. Haggstrom asked for the hearing to take place behind closed doors.
FACES LIFE SENTENCE
The court must announce its decision by midnight (2200 GMT) and formal charges will follow later if a case is made. Chatty could face up to life imprisonment if found guilty of attempted hijacking.
Intelligence sources said the suspect was planning to hijack a plane and crash it into a U.S. embassy in Europe, but this was denied by a top security police official.
However, Margareta Linderoth, in charge of counter-terrorism at Sweden's Sapo security police, said Chatty was known to have taken flying lessons in the United States, although he failed to complete his course.
Several of the hijackers suspected of carrying out the September 11 attacks learned to fly at U.S. aviation schools.
Western governments are already tightening security as the anniversary approaches of the attacks, blamed by the United States on Osama bin Laden 's al Qaeda network.
One Sapo source said the government had instructed the agency to play down the incident, which comes at a sensitive time for Sweden, two weeks before an election on September 15.
In the United States, an FBI agent visited the flying school in South Carolina where Chatty took lessons from 1996 to 1997.
Vasteras, a small town 100 km (60 miles) west of Stockholm, is better known as the Swedish headquarters of Swiss-Swedish electrical engineering group ABB.
The town's police headquarters has been besieged by reporters and television crews from all over the world, reflecting the intense media interest generated by the case.
AL QAEDA LINKS UNLIKELY
Sapo sources told Reuters that agents from Britain's MI5 counter-espionage service and the U.S. CIA intelligence agency were helping with the investigation. Linderoth denied this too, but Palm said police were now liaising with foreign authorities.
Swedish investigators did not believe Chatty or any possible accomplices were connected to al Qaeda, the sources said. Instead they believe a copycat attack was being planned.
Chatty has a series of previous convictions for theft, assault and petty offences, including an attack on a U.S. embassy Marine guard in Stockholm in 1999.
But Swedish newspapers quoted friends of Chatty as saying he had discovered religion in recent years and studied Islam, visiting Saudi Arabia.(as soon as they get involved with that peaceful religion, they want to start killing people.)
Police sources said this had brought him to the attention of Sapo, who questioned him after September 11.
Now, SOME organization recruited him, hired him, trained him, sent him to the States for flying lessons, and provided transportation and living expenses for him over some length of time.
Was that organization the Campfire Girls?
I think not.
Leni
On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers. So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists.
But I need your help.
As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist. How do I differentiate between the true Arab-Muslim-Americans and the Arab-Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter those very same good neighbors and children?
The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of it's religions, with ALL of it's different citizens, with all of it's faults. It is time for every Arab-Muslim in this country to determine it for me.
I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to it's flag? Do you proudly display in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it?
Or do you pray that Allah with destroy it in one of your "Jihads"? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America?
If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it. Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America.
Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. And no more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you.
I am not interested in any more sympathy ...I am only interested in action.
What will you do for America-our great country-at this time of crisis, at this time of war?
I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America". I want to see young Arab-Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.
The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are.
Hand them over to us, now!
But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action.
Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals. The very few Arab-Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States prove who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat.
If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance. It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if large numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion.
A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members defended Johnny Cochran and O. J. Simpson after the latter butchered his wife and murdered an innocent friend. A form whose members (some as young a five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.
Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate Christmas? Do you and you fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized democratic nation in the entire middle-east? And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here? Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us?
If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion.
We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world.
I want to know where every Arab-Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand." "
Until then ... you worry me." ""
LOL.
I'm sure Mohammad Atta's attorrney wouild have said the same: "He is but a peace-loving family man."
Well, I'm all for violence. And I say try him and kill him. Method of execuition: Drag him by the feet through his home town, on a twelve foot length of rope being pulled by a stampeding stallion. Then crucify him upside down in the town square.
Leni
Just your run-of-the-mill "professional journalist".
And, yes, the reporter and the editor almost certainly have a degree from a top-of-the-line J-school. Which, evidently, taught them nothing...
HF
The Swedish security police seem to be trying to play down the attempted hijacking incident, at a “politically sensitive time.”
Margareta Linderoth, a Sapo official responsible for several departments including the one handling international terrorism, denied that police believed the arrested man was planning to attack an embassy or that four more men were being sought.
"I have never heard that the man has planned to do what you say he has," she told Reuters. "We are not looking for four other men."
Linderoth told Swedish radio that the suspect had taken flying lessons in the United States but had not completed his training. It was possible he had qualified since then, she said.
Another Sapo source told Reuters the security police were working on the theory that the group were planning to crash at least one plane, and possibly more, into a U.S. embassy. They did not know which embassy had been targeted.
LGF reader Mikael Nussdorf emailed us with many details we haven’t read elsewhere; following are his translations from Aftonbladet articles.
--------------------
Following Reuters' earlier report quoting a security official from SÄPO confirming Chatty's intention to crash the plane into a US Embassy, the SÄPO Security Service's Head of Counter-Terrorism, Margareta Linderoth denies that the agency has any such information, in an interview with Swedish radio.
- "The suspect has not made the kind of confessions regarding any intention to crash into a US Embassy that Reuters is reporting", she said.
The Counter-Terrorism chief created an uproar in Sweden last year, when she said she could "understand Swedish Muslims who go to training camps in Afghanistan, as they are merely fighting for what they believe in".
Asked to confirm statements from British police to the effect that British anti-terrorism expertise had been sent to Sweden to assist in the investigations of the hijacking attempt, Mrs. Linderoth denied, saying the Scotland Yard was not needed.
- "We're handling this ourselves".
Despite Mrs. Linderoth's sudden retractions, American embassies in Europe were put on alert, and French media highlighted the fact that Kerim Chatty had close links to the Shoe-Bomber, Richard Reid. Both are members of the puritan Islamic so-called Salafi Movement ( the doctrine of which the 9/11 hijackers, the notorious British Islamic group Al Mujahiroun and the arrested European al-Qaida suspects also adhered to).
Meanwhile, John Trautman of the North American Institute of Aviation (NAIA) revealed to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Kerim Chatty had been a student at the South Carolina Conway Flight School (1700 Airport Road in Conway, South Carolina) between September 1996 and June of 1997.
He was training to become a pilot of smaller planes, but NAIA says it is probable he is able to command bigger aircraft as well.
Involved with the Yugoslav mafia in Stockholm, working with Dragan Joksovic who was murdered in 1998, Kerim Chatty was armed like a small army. In 1998, police found automatic weapons, silencers and machine guns in his car.
Kerim Chatty's friends say he became deeply religious in recent years and stopped drinking, went to the Stockholm mosque and let his beard grow.
Checked by highway police in 1999, he told the officers he had stopped making trouble, and had committed to praying five times a day.
In 2000, the once amateur actor considered emigrating to Saudi-Arabia or Yemen to study.
Directly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, he traveled on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
(In the link above, see image of battered American marine, and murdered mafia colleague.)
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