Daily Terrorist Round-Up 5/6/05 (Pakis arrest more terrorists; Coalition kills 64 Taliban)

5/6/05

[Straight Vermonter]

Pak rounds up 2 dozen al-Qaeda suspects following Liby's arrest (Excerpt)

ISLAMABAD: Using information from al Qaeda’s third-in-command — he was arrested on Wednesday by Pakistani forces — security forces have rounded up about two dozen suspected al Qaeda members, officials said on Thursday.

Officials said that Abu Faraj Farj al Liby, who US counter-terrorism agents say became al Qaeda operations chief and third-in-command two years ago, could provide leads to the whereabouts of leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

Al Liby’s capture was announced late Wednesday, and he has been brought to Rawalpindi for questioning. “Raids are being carried out in several cities after his interrogation,” a Pakistani intelligence official said. However, some officials doubted whether al Liby’s arrest would have been trumpeted if security forces were hot on the trail of two of the world’s most wanted men. Security analysts thought likewise.

---

US forces kill 64 Taliban militants

KABUL: In the bloodiest fighting in Afghanistan in nine months, the US and government forces killed 64 Taliban-led militants, the US military said on Thursday; nine Afghan troops and a policeman were also killed.

Seven US soldiers were wounded in the fighting, which began on Tuesday. American warplanes and helicopters pounded bands of militants in clashes in Zabul and Kandahar.

The Afghan troops died when insurgents ambushed their patrol near Spin Ghar in Kandahar province on Wednesday, the worst-ever loss for the new US-trained army, the defence ministry said.

A US spokesman, Lt Cindy Moore, said the troops were killed after climbing out of their trucks. Warplanes from the US-led coalition were called in to help them, and 20 militants were killed in the ensuing battle, Moore said.

"There was an estimated 20 killed in action," Moore said, adding that another six militants were detained.

The US military also more than doubled the death toll from a clash the previous day in neighbouring Zabul province, saying that 44 militants as well as an Afghan policeman had died in several hours of fighting in an area that has seen repeated large-scale fighting.
 
SV-I am all in favor of this new Taliban strategy.
  

---

US seeks Somali terror suspects

US marines have landed on the coast of Somaliland and questioned locals about terror suspects, officials say.  About 20 marines spoke to fishermen and handed out photographs before sailing back into the Red Sea, in an unusually visible anti-terror operation. The US has an anti-terror task force in neighbouring Djibouti.

Somaliland's declaration of independence from the rest of Somalia has not been internationally recognised but it has enjoyed relative peace.

It is not clear who the marines were looking for when they landed in the village of Maydh on Tuesday.

Anti-terror agreement

"They met some of the fishermen and the people and they showed some pictures they were carrying, saying that these people are terrorists that they are trying to capture," said Assistant District Commissioner Ali Abdi.

Three US ships, including a helicopter carrier were also spotted in the port of Las Qorei.

The BBC's Hussein Ali Nur in the capital, Hargeisa, says there is no history of terror groups working in Somaliland.

The authorities accuse terror cells based in Mogadishu of carrying out four killings of expatriates in Somaliland in 2003 and 2004. Western diplomats say that terror cells operate in the anarchy of the rest of Somalia.

Somaliland has an agreement to work with the US forces in Djibouti.

---

Message from al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia Asks bin Laden for Help and Calls for Attacking America Immediately

A message from al-Qaeda in the Land of al-Haramain (Saudi Arabia) asking bin Laden for help was posted to the internet today, May 5, 2005.

The message is a plea to bin Laden to aid the al-Qaeda Organization in Saudi Arabia, which, according to the communiqué, has “suffered greatly…[and] we call upon you, our father asking you to fulfill your promise”

The message calls upon bin Laden to attack the US immediately as he promised: “The blows, the blows that you promised to give America our sheikh. The zero hour has come and there is no way back.”

Following the message, the poster of the message, Hareth Ben Harran, posted his own comments saying he is “fed up with woman appearing more than before on Arabic channels especially the Saudi (women) when they talk and issue fatwas which nobody controls. We are fed up with people who attack the mujahideen everywhere.”

SV-Does anyone else remember what the kids in Iraq say "Mujahadeen" means?
 

---

Russia foils terror plot, seizing poisons, truck carrying ton of explosives

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia – Russia's Federal Security service said Thursday it foiled planned terror attacks ahead of Victory in Europe celebrations, discovering a truck packed with more than a ton of explosives and a cache of poisons allegedly intended for chemical attacks.

The truck was found near the Chechen capital of Grozny, said Maj. Gen. Ilya Shabalkin, chief spokesman for the federal forces in the North Caucasus region. Its frame and chassis were outfitted with about 2,600 pounds of explosives for an attack allegedly planned by Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev, Doku Umarov and Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev – the successor to slain rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov.
 
The truck was discovered on a road Thursday morning, Shabalkin said.

Security services have been on watch for major terrorist attacks around Monday's holiday, which this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over the Nazis in Europe. It is one of the biggest holidays on the Russian calendar.

Militants have struck twice in the past on the holiday, killing Kremlin-backed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and up to 24 others attending a Grozny parade last year, and killing 43 people by bombing a parade in the southern Russian town of Kaspiisk in 2002.

"The truck was fully prepared for a blast, the only thing left to do was to put a suicide-bomber behind the wheel and turn on the electric detonator," Shabalkin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

He said two men who drove the truck were detained and were being interrogated.

The Federal Security Service also said rebel leaders planned to use poisons and toxic substances for attacks in the capitals of the North Caucasus region and several large regional centers elsewhere in Russia.

A cache containing a cyanide-based substance was discovered during combat in an unnamed settlement on the Chechen-Ingush border, said a statement from the Federal Security Service's press service. The components, which are not produced in Russia or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, were brought in from abroad – possibly an Arab state, the service said.

"Experts have concluded that the application of these strong-acting poisons in minimal doses in crowded places, in vital enterprises and water reservoirs could produce numerous victims," the security service said.

It said less than an ounce of the poison could kill about 100 people.

The security service said a militant group operating in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, was involved in the planned chemical attacks. The main organizer was a Jordanian named Abu Majahid, who arrived in Chechnya in 1992 and served as an emissary of al-Qaeda, it said.

The attack was to have been carried out by the so-called Amanat (Silence) jamaat, a group of adherents to the extremist Wahhabi branch of Islam, the security service said.

The group is headed by Alash Daudov, a former police official accused of complicity in the 2002 Chechen rebel seizure of a Moscow theater that left 129 hostages dead, attacks on police in Grozny and Nazran in neighboring Ingushetia in summer 2004 and the rebels' seizure of more than 1,200 people in a southern Russia school in September, it said.

The security service alleged that Daudov received the poisons from an Arab state, through Abu Mujahid.

---

Bin Laden aide (al-Liby) had ten-strong British network
By Daniel McGrory
   
AL-QAEDA’S third-in-command, being interrogated after his capture in Pakistan, was in close contact with ten militants working for him in Britain, according to investigators.
So far Abu Farj al-Libbi has refused to reveal the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his key accomplices.
 
His British cell is said to include a radical cleric and a terror suspect awaiting trial but the eight other men are still at large.

Their role was allegedly to carry cash around the world for the network using a number of aliases. Counter-terror officials are not certain of the identity of the eight suspects, who are said to be of Pakistani and North African origin. British officials hope that they will eventually be allowed to question al-Libbi.

Officials say that one of al-Libbi’s couriers unwittingly led the CIA and Pakistani security officials to the Libyan-born mastermind in a town close to the Afghan border. He and four close aides were hiding at a shrine on a hilltop outside Mardan, near Peshawar.

Witnesses described yesterday how armed undercover agents in burkas ambushed al-Libbi on Monday as he rode pillion on a motorcycle through a graveyard. Al-Libbi, who was disguised as a woman, shot at his pursuers.

Bystanders dived for cover as a dozen people — all in black burkas — returned fire. The 42-year-old militant with a $5 million (£2.6 million) price on his head fled to a nearby guesthouse shouting to staff that he was “a jihadi” and pleaded for help.

Amanullah Khan, the deputy superintendent of police in Mardan, said that his officers fired teargas into a room in which al-Libbi barricaded himself but it took 45 minutes before he surrendered.

He emerged after apparently making a number of calls on his mobile phone. “He came out unarmed with his hands in the air and his head slightly bowed,” Mr Khan said. He was hooded and bundled on to a special forces helicopter then flown to an army barracks in Rawalpindi for questioning.

SV-Calling Mom or OBL?

---

Sipah-e-Sahaba member arrested from NY

NEW YORK: The ring leader of defunct Sipah-e-Sahaba was arrested from New York city the other day, reported New York Post on Thursday.

Tariq Javed a member of Sipah-e-Sahaba which is aligned with Al Qaeda and International Islamic front was seen taking pictures last year of the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges in New York city was arrested yesterday for allegedly lying on his immigration papers about his terror links, officials said.

He had declared jihad against Americans, according to the complaint issued by Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley.

Group members were also implicated in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Afghanistan in 2003. The government of Pakistan has banned the group as a destabilizing force according to post.

Anti-terror investigators had been tracking Javed's movements around the city for several years after getting tipped off that a suspected terrorist cell located on Newkirk Avenue in Brooklyn a Pakistani immigrants neighborhood was planning to bomb a subway station.

Meanwhile, a man on the terror watch list was arrested last night by New Jersey police in Bergen County. Sami Ibrahim Isa Ardel Hadi had a valid ID to work as a painter on the George Washington Bridge a painting job all the work on the project has been halted and ordered to produce the legal documents of the workers a special task force has already tracking down illegal immigrants through motor vehicles and driving licences.

---

Four Islamists tried in Jordan  Islamists, accused of plotting to attack tourists, alcohol traders in Aqaba, deny charges.
 
AMMAN- The trial of four Islamists accused of plotting attacks on foreign tourists in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba and on alcohol traders opened in Jordan's state security court Thursday, court sources said. The defendants, who could face the death penalty if found guilty, denied the charges read out at the hearing, which was adjourned until May 17.

On April 4, the state security court upheld death sentences against two Islamist militants convicted of plotting attacks against Jewish and Western tourists during millennium celebrations. The military tribunal also upheld jail sentences against seven other defendants convicted in September 2000 of planning bombings using sulphuric and nitric acids against tourist sites.

The group was at first accused of links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network but that charge was dropped for lack of proof.

---

Syria detains Saudis for trying to cross into Iraq Report 137 Saudis are detained in various Syrian prisons after attempting to infiltrate into Iraq from Syria.

RIYADH - Syrian authorities have detained 137 Saudis after they attempted to cross into Iraq from Syria to take part in the anti-US insurgency there, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The would-be infiltrators are held in various Syrian prisons, said Al-Watan, which published the names of 17 of the detainees.

Quoting "informed sources," the paper said Syrian authorities released other Saudis after ascertaining they had no plans to infiltrate into Iraq.

US Central Command chief General John Abizaid charged in remarks published by a Kuwaiti newspaper Thursday that Syria had ignored US demands to stop foreign fighters crossing the border into Iraq and "terrorists" operating from Syrian territory.

The United States accuses Syria of backing terrorism and seeking to destabilize Iraq, but Damascus denies the charges.

---

(Israeli) Border Police Nab Arab with Gun Used in Terrorist Attack  

(IsraelNN.com) Israel Border Police this afternoon arrested an Arab who possessed the gun used in the murder of a guard several months ago several miles north of Be'er Sheba. He was arrested near Edna, between Kiryat Arba and Bet Guvrin, where the guard was murdered.

Earlier today, terrorists shot at IDF soldiers patrolling the Philadelphi Route on the Israel-Egyptians border. Defense officials also announced they neutralized a 40-kilogram (88 pound) bomb that was discovered several days ago.
 


 
 

[Straight Vermonter]

Let me know if you want on/off the terrorist roundup ping list

Terrorist Scorecard

The Iraqi "Deck of Cards" Scoreboard

Centcom's New Iraq Scorecard

Saudi Arabia's Most Wanted Scorecard

[537cant be wrong]

more good news,
and the hits just keep a rollin'.

[penelopesire]

please put me on the list. Great round-up! I was just bitching tonight about the media in the US being more concerned with runaway brides, Michael Jackson/pedophiles and freeway shootings in LA(which are actually DOWN from last year). Even FOX is getting lame these days!

[musicman]

BTTT !!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Good stuff, thanks!

[Deetes]

Did you see we were watching Al Liby since February ? Witch leads me to believe a certain "laptop" had something to do with it.

[Straight Vermonter]

Al-Qaeda suspect bullies judges (Jordan)

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1700195,00.html

Amman - The prime suspect in an al-Qaeda-linked plot to strike Jordan with chemical weapons threw his shoes at military judges during a stormy hearing and told them terror mastermind Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi will "chop off" their heads.

Al-Zarqawi - a Jordanian who is al-Qaeda's point man in Iraq - and three other fugitives are being tried in absentia in Jordan's military court along with nine men in custody, including prime suspect Azmi al-Jayousi. All 13 are accused in what Jordanian officials say was al-Qaeda's first chemical attack.

Al-Jayousi disrupted Wednesday's proceedings in a rage over the killing of four alleged co-conspirators in gun battle with police a year ago, detailed by a forensic doctor in court. The doctor testified that the four men died of severe wounds caused by bullets penetrating different vital organs, like the brain, lungs, neck or abdomen.

Slippers hurled at judge

An angry al-Jayousi took off his slippers and hurled it at the chief judge, Colonel Fawaz Buqour. "Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi will chop off your heads and stuff it up your mouths, you God's enemies," he then growled, pointing his finger at the three-man tribunal.

Court officials said that al-Jayousi's action was tantamount to contempt of the court, which is punishable by three years in jail. But instead of handing down punishment, Buqour adjourned for a 10-minute break only to return to more turbulent defendants.

"The blood of our brothers will not go wasted," shouted another defendant, Ahmad Samir, at the judges as they reconvened.

"Await death, Obeidat, for you are God's enemy," he roared, addressing the military prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel Mahmoud Obeidat.

Some of the other defendants recited versus from the Koran, Islam's holy book, or shouted insults at the judges. All nine suspects - sporting beards and standing in the dock - later turned their backs to the bench and knelt in prayers.

Ordered out of the courtroom

Buqour ordered al-Jayousi and two other defendants out of the courtroom in a bid to restore order. But when he failed, he adjourned the hearing to an unspecified date.

Last year, al-Jayousi said in televised confessions that his group had plotted a chemical attack in Jordan under instructions from al-Zarqawi, who is blamed for scores of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners in neighbouring Iraq.

In an audiotape posted on the internet in May 2004, a man who identified himself as al-Zarqawi acknowledged his group was behind the plot in Jordan but he denied it involved chemical weapons.

The Jordanian plot was uncovered and foiled on April 21 2004, when the four alleged cell members were killed in a shootout with police.

Al-Zarqawi and the other men on trial face charges that include conspiring to commit terrorist attacks, possessing and manufacturing explosive material and affiliation with a banned group identified as Kata'eb al-Tawhid, Arabic for the Battalions of Monotheism - a previously unknown cell said to be linked to al-Qaeda.

If convicted, 12 of the men - including al-Zarqawi - could be sentenced to death. The 13th man was charged with the lesser crime of assisting two fugitives.

[Dog]

I wonder who those Marines were looking for in Somalia

[BayouCoyote]

Great update, thanks!

[Coop]

Pak rounds up 2 dozen al-Qaeda suspects following Liby's arrest

Sweet! Of course I hope this evil bastard has some info on OBL and al Z, but I was eagerly anticipating some lieutenants and various underlings would be rolled up soon. Let's hope they're all legit captures.