Posted on 02/10/2002 6:21:48 AM PST by Wallaby
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Suspect confesses links to shoe-bomber By ELIZABETH BRYANT, United Press International United Press International February 10, 2002, Sunday 10:00 AM Eastern Time PARIS, Feb. 10
A man arrested in France last week for allegedly planning a terrorist attack on a French cathedral has reportedly confessed to having met two prominent terrorist suspects at the same Afghan training camp in 2000: Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe-bomber Richard Reid.
Moussaoui is currently in a U.S. prison on charges of participating in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while Reid is being held for allegedly attempting to blow up an American airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes.
Yacine Aknouche, 27, also told French investigators he met suspected terrorist Ahmed Ressam during another stint in an Afghan training camp, in 1998.
Yacine Aknouche, 27, also told French investigators he met suspected terrorist Ahmed Ressam during another stint in an Afghan training camp, in 1998, Le Journal du Dimanche reported Sunday. Aknouche, an ethnic Algerian, was among several people arrested by French police last Monday in connection with a foiled plot to bomb in Dec. 2000 the Strasbourg cathedral, in eastern France.
Ressam was arrested on the U.S.-Canadian border in 1999, after authorities found more than 100 pounds of explosives stashed in the trunk of his car. He was convicted of plotting to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations.
But according to Journal du Dimanche, Aknouche may be linked to a larger, shadowy terrorist network operating in Europe.
Among Aknouche's alleged connections are two associates of Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden -- Abu Zoubeyda and Abu Jaffar -- now imprisoned in Britain.
Le Journal offered few details about Aknouche's alleged confessions. The newspaper also reported that Belgian police have traced a call placed by Reid using a Belgian phone card last year. The card was found in the apartment of another terrorist suspect, Nizar Trabelsi. Trabelsi was arrested last year in connection with another foiled plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Paris.
Reid traveled to Belgium in early December to get a new British passport, before boarding an American Airlines flight from Paris on Dec. 22, with explosives packed in his shoes.
Reid allegedly received his marching orders in e-mailed messages from Pakistan. But police reportedly believe he may have also received assistance from extremists in France and elsewhere in Europe.
French media have also reported the type of explosives found in Reid's shoes -- a highly volatile compound known as TATP -- is the same as those found in Ressam's trunk in 1999.
You, dennisw, are simply the mirror image of the jihdists. You're no better than they are, and anything you are for, I have to look at with deep suspicion.
So Truman was just a "mirror image" of Tojo and the Japanese Imperial Army, and no better than them?
There is a subtle difference being the aggressor who uses a sneak attack in peacetime, and the defender who retaliates. Perhaps the distinction is too subtle for you.
IOW, both the Nazis and the US Army invaded and ran across France in WW2, but they were not "mirror images".
Try as hard as you can, really put your thinking cap on, and you may grasp this subtle distinction.
illbay is a meally mouthed liberal who would bake cookies for his friends the terrorists before he would EVER condemn them for their terrorist acts!!
He should look in the mirror to see the face of a collaborator!!
As one person put it...in the war against islamic terror...you are with the USA or you are against her!
I can also remember about the French alarming people that there were plans to blow up the Eifel-tower. But nothing more than a warning was given.
We were at war with Japan. We were not at war with Saudi Arabia.
Believe it or not--and I know you will "not"--there are civilized rules of warfare.
And there is terrorism, which dennisw consistently supports.
The destruction of Mecca does appeal, and if we were to lose a large city it may not be possible to resist. But that is why we need to move into the next arena soon, before the next terror strike occurs.
These regimes should be taken for their past support of terrorists, and we need not attack the foundations of Islam if we can identify the true targets. And if they use mosques for hiding places then the mosques will have to go. But I do not beleive we can simply threaten their holiest sites and come away with the victory we desire. Their use of terrorism hardens our resolve. This is not what we want to do to them.
Get real. Taking an airliner and flying it into the Mosque at Mecca is not a "strategic plan" similar to what Pres. Bush has done in Afghanistan.
To many people here, their hatred and desire for violence makes them exact equivalents of Taliban or Al-Qaeda.
"We has met the enemy, and they is us."
The whole point was to argue that Travis is not on the right path to threaten Mecca. (Although I could see how some of us would want that.) I am sorry but I guess I don't get ideas down in print well enough.
I, too, understand the visceral desire for "revenge." But I also know that this has been the madness that has shed blood through millenia on this planet.
I am only saying that if you are willing to go beyond the first impulse, that of cold, calculated vengeance and death wrought upon guilty and innocent alike, you are then become precisely as the Jihadists. You are no better than they.
Pres. Bush's example is the one we ought all to follow. I daresay he wouldn't even think of approving of the kind of vitriolic hatred that too many on this forum cultivate and obsess over.
Thank you, and I agree.
On December 7th we were NOT at war with Japan.
Cretin.
Yet the international human rights groups come banging on our door because we had them hooded during transport.
Aside from that fact, you are arguing both ends against the middle. Was it okay for Japan to attack without a declaration of war?
Would it have been all right for us to do so?
There's your difference, pal.
We aren't al-Qaeda, who are a bunch of godless monsters who slaughter innocent non-combatants right down to the last infant, and then crow about it with shouts of "Praise Allah!"
That fact makes me shake with fury every time I think of it. But I think I would be even MORE outraged if I thought WE, the U.S., were just as evil.
Well, there are minds here on FR that are exactly that evil, who wouldn't think twice about blowing away civilian non-combatants as legitimate targets of opportunity. They are as sick and depraved and disgusting as the terrorist.
They're not all that easy. The guy (who's name escapes me) who was caught with the bomb-making materials in the mid-90's took almost a month of beating before he finally confessed all to the Philippino police. The story I read said they beat him to the point (with wooden chair legs)they thought he was going to die.
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