and from Sky news:
Posted on 06/17/2004 11:16:30 PM PDT by AdmSmith
ISLAMABAD (CNN) -- A tribal leader accused of harboring Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan's western border region was killed Thursday night in a targeted missile strike, according to Pakistan intelligence sources. The Associated Press quoted an army spokesman Friday as identifying the tribal leader as Nek Mohammed, a former Taliban fighter.
He was killed late Thursday at the home of another tribal chief, the spokesman said.
"We were tracking him down and he was killed last night by our hand," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
"Al-Qa'ida Announces Sheikh Usama Bin Ladin, Aiman al-Zawahiri To Make Public Appearance Soon"
http://alphabetcity.blogspot.com/2004/08/bin-laden-zawahiri-tape-soon-surprise.html
I'm not buying this - First if UBL is alive, he isn't going to jeopardize his safety by giving away the possibility of his whereabouts by making a "public appearance" -
Regardless, I just hope many more US SOF are roaming the Pakistan border region then anyone is thought to believe (which is quite possible) - I am not confident in the Pak military ability to bring in an HVT from the border region -
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/breakingnews/view.asp?msgID=6881
Al Qaeda-linked cleric dies in Pakistani custody
ISLAMABAD, Aug 18 (Reuters) - An Islamic cleric arrested on suspicion of links with members of the al Qaeda network died in custody in Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said.
Pakistani security forces arrested cleric Qari Mohammad Noor along with three associates last week in a raid on an Islamic school, or madrassah, in the central city of Faisalabad.
Intelligence officials said Noor, who was suspected of helping al Qaeda members find accommodation in Faisalabad, died in police detention and an autopsy said he had wounds on his body.
"He has signs of torture and wounds on his body," one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Faisalabad police chief Abid Saeed confirmed Noor's death, but said details would be released later.
"He was suspected of involvement in anti-state activities," he said, without giving any more details.
Noor was arrested as part of a crackdown since the arrest in Pakistan last month of an al Qaeda computer expert, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan.
Khan has proved a key source of information on the identity of operatives from Osama bin Laden's organisation and its plans to launch attacks on British and U.S. targets. His arrest has led to the detention of more than 60 suspected militants in Pakistan.
News of Noor's death came as Pakistan published pictures of six "most wanted terrorists" on Wednesday, and offered $340,000 each for information leading to the arrest of two militants wanted for assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf.
A large number of al Qaeda men are thought to be hiding in Pakistan's rugged tribal region, near Afghan border, or in major cities after fleeing U.S.-led war on terror waged in Afghanistan in the wake of September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=3123
Pakistan seeks public help to nab al-Qaeda
8/18/2004 3:30:00 PM GMT
Source: AP
Pakistan published photos Wednesday of six wanted terror suspects, including a top al-Qaeda member accused of masterminding two attempts to assassinate Pakistani president, and offered large rewards for information leading to their arrests.
The advertisement published in the country's leading newspapers carried a photograph of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan accused by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf of being behind two failed attempts on his life.
Musharraf escaped unhurt in both attacks in December, when rebels tried to blow up his motorcade on a road near the capital, Islamabad. There were no casualties in the first attack, but 17 people died in the second one.
Since then, Pakistani police and security agencies have been looking for al-Libbi and other suspects believed responsible for the two attacks.
On Wednesday, Pakistan offered a $345,000 bounty each for information leading to the arrest of al-Libbi, who is allegedly linked to al-Qaeda network, and Amjad Hussain, who is best known as Amjad Farooqi, a Pakistani who is believed to have played key role in the two attacks.
The four other suspects, whose photos were published in the newspapers, were Mati-ur-Rahman, Qari Ehsan, Omar Aqdas and a man identified as Mansoor with an alias Chota Ibrahim. It was not immediately clear why those four were being sought and differing rewards were offered for their arrests.
The advertisement gave no details about the nature of charges, saying only that the men are "most wanted terrorists" and "wanted for acts of terrorism."
The latest government move came a day after the father of an alleged al-Qaeda computer whiz filed a lawsuit challenging what he called the illegal detention of his son, who was arrested last month.
Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan was caught by Pakistani intelligence agents July 13 in the eastern city of Lahore, and a search of his computers uncovered surveillance documents of five financial institutions in the United States, which led to a security alert in three major U.S.
cities.
Later, Khan led the police to a hide-out of Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, another Al Qaeda suspect, accused of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa. Ghailani was nabbed July 25 after a 12-hour shootout in eastern industrial city of Gujrat.
Babar Awan, a defense lawyer, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Khan's father has filed a lawsuit in a court at Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad, "against illegal detention of his son."
"Whatever the allegation against the boy may be, he has a right to be defended through a counsel of his own choice," Awan said.
He said Khan's family had learned about his detention only through the media.
"We don't know why and where he (Khan) is being held."
Awan said the court has yet to act on the petition of Khan's father, a flight attendant with Pakistan International Airlines.
Under Pakistani laws, such lawsuits are usually admitted for hearing and the government is asked to give reasons for detaining any particular suspect. However, there is another law that grants the government the right to detain any terror suspect for up to one year.
Some info about Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Sami
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/1_19.htm
The leaders of the MMA are now 'repackaging' themselves as democrats and Parliamentarians, and it is crucial that the current avatar of the MMA as a 'democratic political party' is not allowed to cloud the history of its many constituent members, including several of its most prominent elected representatives, many of whom comprise the frontline of the terrorist leadership in Pakistan, and have direct linkages with Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The most significant of these are the MMA's prime ministerial candidate, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman of the JuI-Fazlur, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq of the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (Sami-ul-Haq faction) and Maulana Azam Tariq of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).
Fazl-ur-Rahman, who heads a faction of the JuI, is not just, as is generally believed, a 'supporter' of the Taliban. He - with Sami-ul-Haq - was its creator and remained intimately linked with both Mullah Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden throughout the period of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and had spearheaded street demonstrations in Pakistan, vociferously protesting the American campaign in Afghanistan after 9/11. He is also the creator of the banned terrorist organisation Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM, earlier called Harkat-ul-Ansar) and is closely linked with the activities of the Harkat ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HuJI), and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). HuM and HuJI are active in India, Bangladesh, Chechnya, the Arakan areas of Myanmar and southern Philippines, while the JeM is currently active only in India.
Sami-ul-Haq, who heads his own faction of the JuI, runs the Haqqani Madrassa at Akora Khattak, which produced much of the Taliban leadership. Haq was the principal advisor to Mullah Omar and was closely associated with Osama bin Laden.
"Was Qari Noor Muhammad the right man?"
Maybe not.......
http://www.observerindia.com/cps/from_pak/news.htm
100,000 troops deployed along Afghan border
For the first time, it has been officially stated there are “over 100,000”
Pakistani troops on the country’s border with Afghanistan. The surprise
admission from Mohammad Sadiq, acting Pakistani ambassador to the
Untied States, was made during a panel discussion on Fox television
regarding an earlier report that a terrorist summit had taken place in the
area. He said the Pak Afghan border was a territory where troops had
never been stationed in history. Since soldiers were in the border area and
they were taking action there, a number of terrorists from that area had
dispersed to other places and they were on the run. In the past, the figure
for Pakistani troops deployed in the area had been placed at a maximum
of 70,000. What implication this has from the point of view of the
country’s defense against sudden or possible attack will appear to be in
need of careful analysis.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_19-8-2004_pg7_7
"WANA: Paramilitary troops in the Zari Noor camp on Wednesday evening attacked militants’ hideouts in the Joni Mela area with mortar guns. Acting on a tip-off, the troops continued firing for some time but no loss of life was reported."
Janimela is located one kilometer due east of Mandorai on the Shawal Valley Relief map, adding support for locations regarding this series of operations discussed earlier.
100,000.........wow!
100,000!!....That news must have made a few of the enemy nervous.
Hope he wasn't exaggerating
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FH20Df04.html
Pakistan serves the US heads, not tales
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Tiring of the carrot and stick approach, and with US presidential elections only a few months away, the US has taken an aggressive role in Pakistan in the hunt for "big-name" al-Qaeda figures.
Yet the Pakistanis, although appearing to accommodate their "most trusted" American allies in the "war on terror", remain obdurate.
Qari Mohammad Noor, an Afghan, was arrested with three associates last week in the central city of Faisalabad, where he had been teaching at a madrassa (seminary) for the past three years. The arrest followed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) specifically pointing him out to Pakistani authorities, although he was a well-known figure in the area. He was suspected of being in contact with top Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives and running one of their powerful rings in Faisalabad.
On Wednesday this week, while still in Pakistani custody, he died, and his body was dumped in front of his house. According to police officials, Noor died of cardiac failure, yet according to an unidentified police official, his body was full of torture marks.
Security sources who spoke to Asia Times Online point out that Noor had openly lived in Faisalabad for three years, yet no action had been taken against him over alleged al-Qaeda ties despite the fact that the city's madrassas are well known for their links to firebrand jihadi groups. Further, the sources questioned why he was not handed over to US authorities, raising the fact that "dead men tell no tales".
In the past, the FBI and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have collaborated, but in terms of a recent agreement any people taken into ISI custody at the behest of the ISI must be handed over within a matter of days to what is called the Special Investigation Cell (SIC). The SIC includes representatives from Pakistani security forces and the FBI, who conduct joint interrogations, but most of the time the FBI on its own grills suspects.
In another incident, following information provided by the FBI and being told to take action, Pakistani authorities drew a bead on Abdul Aziz, the head of a madrassa in Islamabad, Lal Masjid, which is located just over a kilometer from the headquarters of the ISI. Al-Qaeda operators are known (once again from the US) to have visited the madrassa, while Aziz received a letter from Uzbek Tahir Yuldevish, the leader of the Harkatul Islami Uzbekistan, which has al-Qaeda links. In the letter, Yuldevish is said to have commended Aziz for denouncing the Pakistan army's ventures into South Waziristan tribal agency in search of foreign suspects.
A large raid was launched on Lal Masjid, but Aziz was nowhere to be found. He is still at large.
News of Noor's death on Wednesday came as Pakistan published pictures of six "most wanted terrorists" and announced rewards totaling US$1.1 million for information leading to their arrest. The six included al-Qaeda's Libyan planner Abu Faraj Farj, described as the new number three in Osama bin Laden's network, and Pakistani militant Amjad Hussain Farooqi. More than 60 suspected al-Qaeda figures have been arrested in the past weeks in Pakistan. A person named Usman, believed to be bin Laden's personal servant, is also believed to have been rounded up in Islamabad.
At the same time, raids were conducted on seminaries in Lahore, Islamabad and Faisalabad, again at the insistence of the FBI, which provided strong evidence of untoward goings-on. These operations followed the recent high-profile arrests of Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalid and Qari Saifullah Akhtar.
The raids in Faisalabad are significant in that they are the first to be made against seminaries in that city, even though they are known as radical hot-beds.
Over two years ago, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl became deeply involved in investigations into the arrest of Abu Zobaida, a chief al-Qaeda operator, in Faisalabad. He was in the process of making a connection between ISI-backed groups and the seminaries of Faisalabad when he was abducted and subsequently murdered. One of the characters involved in Pearl's murder was Amjad Farooqi, who hails from a district in Faisalabad (Toba Tek Singh) and whose face was splashed all over newspapers in Pakistan on Wednesday as one of the six most-wanted terrorists. He belongs to the militant Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.
The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, an alliance of six religious parties on the opposition benches in parliament, has reacted strongly to the raids, and already set into action a series of street protests, as well as using covert channels within the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf to have the hound dogs called off.
However, this time the game is beyond Pakistan's control. The US will have its way, and the best Pakistan can do is obfuscate, while at the same time the opposition fires that burn across the country glare all the brighter.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL304969.htm
Pakistan arrests two al Qaeda suspects
ESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Pakistani police arrested an Algerian and one other foreigner suspected of links with al Qaeda on Thursday in the northern city of Peshawar after a shoot-out, intelligence officials said.
The Algerian, identified as Mohammad Fauzi, was wounded in the neck when police opened fire at him after he threw a hand grenade at them while trying to escape along with another foreign militant in a vehicle, an intelligence official said.
The suspected militants took shelter in a religious school where Fauzi was arrested, he said on condition of anonymity.
The second suspect, believed to be an Iraqi, fled but was caught later, he added. His identity was not immediately known.
The intelligence official said Fauzi's condition was stable.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3580460.stm
Uzbek blast trial hears evidence
By Monica Whitlock
BBC correspondent in Tashkent
A court in Uzbekistan has been hearing evidence at the trial of 15 suspects allegedly involved in a series of suicide bombings and attacks.
The judge said that a total of six Uzbeks blew themselves up during three days of violence in March which killed more than 40 people.
It was the first time violence of this sort had hit Uzbekistan. The accused allegedly belonged to a radical Islamic group, which the authorities say had al-Qaeda links.
The court was aghast to see photographs of two young women and four men, who, it seems, blew themselves up in Tashkent, two near a bazaar and the rest in a house, cornered by a police chase.
Suicide belts
The 15 defendants, who sat silently in cages, are accused of a range of crimes.
A woman in her 40s said she had sewn 50 suicide belts.
Some of the men testified to training in Waziristan, in the Pakistani borderlands near Afghanistan.
The evidence put forward is dense and at times hard to follow, but the picture emerging seems to be that the Uzbek group was planning a much wider series of attacks, possibly at foreign embassies and international hotels.
This plan apparently stalled, leaving a handful of militants to hit an assortment of targets, mainly policemen.
The trial began in July, but was adjourned after three more suicide bombers blew themselves up at the US and Israeli embassies and the procurator's office.
According to the prosecution, one of those involved was a Kazakh national, heavily involved in the Uzbek radical Islamic movement.
The violence in Uzbekistan has been brewing for many years. Many people here blame political stagnation, coupled with the government's ferocious purges against Islamic groups of every sort.
The government blames world politics.
It says Uzbekistan is a victim of what it calls global terrorism.
Let's keep an eye on this arrest....I'm going to research Fauzi..
in the late-1990s, Al Qaeda appointed Ahmad Fauzi, also known as Abdul al Hakim, to co-ordinate Al Qaeda operations in Southeast Asia. Fauzi based his operations in Malaysia, while another Al Qaeda operative, Omar Al-Faruq, was first dispatched to the Philippines and then to Indonesia in 2000. In a familiar pattern, Fauzi set about establishing independent Al Qaeda cells, while at the same time grafting onto existing radical movements and fringe groups.
Probably not the same person.
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=74527
Al-Qaeda suspect arrested from Peshawar
Thursday August 19, 2004 (1409 PST)
PESHAWAR: Law enforcing agencies in Peshawar, Thursday arrested a suspected al-qaeda operative after an encounter, whereas one of his accomplice made his escape good from the scene.
According to reports, the Crime and Investigation Department (CID), Peshawar had a prior tip off about the presence of few al-qaeda operatives in one of the residential areas, bordering tribal areas.
In this connection, a raiding party was constituted which cordoned off the main entrance to the area. In the meanwhile, a Charade, which carried two passengers was signaled to stop.
The inmates, instead of stopping the car, tried to escape. The law-enforcers chased the car. The accused hurled a grenade over the law enforcers, which resulted in cross fire between the two.
As a result, the accused stopped the car in phase II of Hayatabad residential area and escaped from the scene. They were chased and the agents succeeded to arrest one of the two from a religious seminary in Hayatabad in injured condition.
He was identified as Fozi, an arab national, head of the law enforcing agency said. He said that they are expecting some vital information from the injured accused.
This is an older story. They also caught the one who got away. Turned out to supposedly be a U/I Iraqi.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.