| Terror Networks & Islam |
| The Islamist/Neo-Nazi Alliance |
| 2005-09-01 |
| THERE HAVE BEEN rumblings of late about the developing alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis. In late May, Israeli president Moshe Katzav gave a speech before the German parliament in which he warned, "Let's not be surprised if terror organizations use neo-Nazis for carrying out terror attacks." And on August 5, WorldNetDaily reported, "Neo-Nazi skinheads are working with radical Islamists in a growing unholy alliance that has European law enforcement officials concerned about a new front in the war on terrorism." Such an alliance seems unlikely on its face; after all, neo-Nazis view most Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic extremists believe that neo-Nazis are just another flavor of infidel. However, a closer examination reveals that many white-supremacist groups have expressed solidarity with Islamic terrorists recently, and in turn some white supremacists and far-right Holocaust deniers have found newfound supporters among the Islamists. THE MOST PROMINENT recent example of white supremacists' vocal support for Islamic terrorism came from August Kreis, the new head of Aryan Nations. In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Kreis said of al Qaeda, "You say they're terrorists, I say they're freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah." Going a step further, Kreis told CNN that he had a message for Osama bin Laden: "The message is, the cells are out here and they are already in place. They might not be cells of Islamic people, but they are here and they are ready to fight." The Aryan Nations website reflects Kreis's desire to instill a "jihadic feeling" in his followers. For example, it features an article purporting to show that the idea of jihad can be found not only in Islam but also in the Bible. The article concludes with a battle cry: "All the sons of Abraham, all descendants of his three wives, Sarah, Hagar and Ketourah, the parties of the Islamic and Aryan World, all need to understand their duty to enact Holy Jihad, we need to live this Jihad; total war, death to our enemy, the insidious, poisonous and rabid satanic jEw." [sic] Aryan Nations also boasts a quote on its main page further reflecting its support for radical Muslims. Attributed to ObergruppenfÃŒhrer Gottlob Berger, the quote states that "a link is created between Islam and National-Socialism on an open, honest basis. It will be directed in terms of blood and race from the North, and in the ideological-spiritual sphere from the East." The main page also touches on other issues of importance to Muslim radicals. It demands immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East, and under the headline "Ariel Sharon: your typical domineering jew," the website features a picture of the Israeli prime minister with fire coming out of his mouth that ends in a mushroom cloud. Underneath, the website proclaims the photograph to be Sharon's "plan for Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc . . . " BEYOND THE ARYAN NATIONS, a surprising number of other white-supremacist websites openly sympathize with Islamic terrorists. The National Alliance, the country's largest neo-Nazi organization, published a 2002 essay by its founder, the late William Pierce, which claimed that the September 11 attacks were a salutary event. Pierce wrote that through the attacks, bin Laden "forced the whole subject of U.S. policy in the Middle East into the open: the subject of American interests versus Jewish interests, of Jewish media control and its influence on governmental policy." Because bin Laden broke the "taboo" about questioning Jewish interests, Pierce claimed, "[i]n the long run that may more than compensate for the 3,000 American lives that were lost." Neo-Nazi James Wickstrom has a webpage that includes a number of featured articles, the headlines of which provide a good indication of where he stands on the Islamist question. These include "Military Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan For The JEW Neo-cons," "U.S. Slaughters People At Prayer At Baghdad Mosque," "U.S. Teachers Targeted By jews If They Teach Contrary to Israeli," and "The President and his jewish handlers LIED about 9/11!" And the neo-Nazi ADLUSA website (a site designed to oppose the Anti-Defamation League) brands the Anti-Defamation League's call for Hezbollah TV to be designated a foreign terrorist organization as part of a campaign "of smear, corruption, and harassment," and promotes the conspiracy theory that Jewish hands were behind the 7/7 and 9/11 terrorist attacks. In case this doesn't make their position perfectly clear, the ADLUSA features a direct appeal to Muslims: "Moslems, lay down your guns and join our mission to remove Jews from positions of power from which they persecute one people after another; killing Americans misled by Jews only incites endless wars." This vocal neo-Nazi support for al Qaeda reaches back to shortly after 9/11. The Jewish newspaper Forward reported in November 2001 that the World Church of the Creator displayed a bin Laden quote on its website warning Americans that they needed to tend to their own interests and not those of the Jews. Around the same time, the website for Florida-based Aryan Action displayed the message: "Support Taliban, Smash ZOG." (ZOG stands for Zionist Occupation Government, a term rooted in the idea that the Jews control world affairs.) In a perverse twist on President Bush's declaration that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," Aryan Action's website voiced its unequivocal support for al Qaeda: "Either you're fighting with the jews against al Qaeda, or you support al Qaeda fighting against the jews." THUS FAR, THERE has been no proof of neo-Nazi cooperation with Muslim terrorist groups in planning attacks. Despite the lack of proof of operational links, several figures with feet in both movements have actively tried to bring them closer. One such individual is Ahmed Huber, a 77-year-old Swiss convert to Islam whose study is adorned with twin pictures of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden. Huber told the Washington Post that his goal is to build bridges between radical Muslims and the "New Right." He said that a prevalent view on the New Right is that "what happened on the 11th of September, if it is the Muslims who did it, it is not an act of terrorism but an act of counterterrorism." Certain far-right figures, such as German National Democratic Party theorist Horst Mahler, seem amenable to Huber's ideas. Mahler has spoken of the "sense of sympathy" and "common ground" that far-right European groups share with Islamists, and has admitted to "contacts with political groups, in particular in the Arab world, also with Palestinians." The neo-Nazis' newfound love for Islamists is by no means unrequited. Some radical Islamic groups have--perhaps in an effort to undercut one of the justifications for the state of Israel--forged intellectual ties with right-wing Holocaust deniers. At the forefront of contemporary Holocaust denial is the California-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which is dedicated to the idea that the Holocaust is a historical fiction. The IHR has been so heartened by the support it's received in the Islamic world that investigative journalist Martin A. Lee noted its journal's frenetic description of a "white-hot trend: the rapid growth of Holocaust revisionism, fueled by increasing cooperation between Muslims and Western revisionists, across the Islamic world." A number of Middle Eastern newspapers, in countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, have published articles endorsing the Holocaust deniers' thesis. Beyond that, neo-Nazi writers who lack legitimacy in the West have increasingly found a platform in the Arab world. For example, Lee further reported that an article by David Duke was featured on the front page of the Oman Times. Nor is the Islamic promotion of neo-Nazis confined to the Middle East. Lee reports that Muslims, a New York-based weekly newspaper, has published opinion pieces by both David Duke and William Pierce. Even some Islamic groups with more mainstream legitimacy have promoted far-right figures as featured speakers. One such speaker is William W. Baker, author of the anti-Israel screed Theft of a Nation and former president of the neo-Nazi Populist Party. (While Baker claims that he did not know at the time that the Populist Party was racist, his own words undercut these denials. The Orange County Weekly reports that, in a speech Baker delivered around the time that he headed the Populist Party, he referred to Jerry Falwell as "Jerry Jewry" and commented that he hated traveling to New York City "'cause the first people I meet when I get off the plane are pushy, belligerent American Jews.") Baker's current avocation is promoting "religious tolerance" by emphasizing the commonalities between Christianity and Islam. In this capacity, Baker has frequently spoken at events hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and various chapters of the Muslim Students' Association; he was also the featured speaker at the Assadiq Islamic Educational Foundation in Boca Raton earlier this year. THERE ARE OBSTACLES to further development of the relationship between Islamists and neo-Nazis. In Europe, ethnic Muslims are frequent targets of neo-Nazi violence, and not all neo-Nazis share the sympathy for Palestinians expressed by the likes of William Baker. As one white supremacist website puts it, "I hate Jews but that doesn't mean I automatically love the Jews' victims." And countless Muslims recoil from Nazi ideology. Nonetheless, this developing alliance is not without historical precedent. Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, famously supported Adolf Hitler during World War II, broadcasting radio propaganda on Germany's behalf and even forming Bosnian Muslim divisions of the Waffen SS. As with al-Husayni and Hitler, the current Islamist/neo-Nazi love affair is rooted in the notion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend": Both groups are united in their hatred of the Jews, and of the United States. Moving forward, this peculiar alliance presents the risk that neo-Nazis may collaborate with Islamist terrorist groups on attacks. But a second danger is that the far right's newfound legitimacy in the Arab world may allow neo-Nazi figures to claw their way out from the lunatic fringe to which they're currently relegated. |
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| Men With Ties to Hate Groups Tried to Have Bomb Built |
| 2005-05-24 |
| TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Two ex-convicts with ties to neo-Nazi groups were arrested after giving a police informant 60 pounds of fertilizer and asking him to build a bomb, authorities said. The fertilizer was the same type used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, according to court records, although the bomb would have been far smaller than McVeigh's. Authorities said they were uncertain where the bomb would have been used. Gabriel Carafa, 24, and Craig Orler, 28, were arrested Friday on federal weapons charges following a six-month investigation. The two also sold 10 stolen rifles and shotguns and one handgun to undercover officers, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Carafa is a leader in the Church of the Creator, whose head, Matthew Hale, was sentenced in April to 40 years in prison for plotting to kill a federal judge. Both men are also members of a skinhead group, officials said. Carafa was previously convicted of beating a Hindu store owner in 2002. Orler has been convicted at least three times of aggravated assault and burglary, prosecutors said. They each face 15 years to life in prison if convicted on the new charges. |
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| Terror Networks & Islam |
| Threat from terror-list nations declining, sans Iran |
| 2005-03-31 |
| A Department of Homeland Security internal report that assesses terrorist organizations, their anticipated targets and preferred weapons concludes that the threat to the United States presented by North Korea and several other countries long described as "state sponsors of terrorism" is declining. "In the post-9/11 environment, countries do not appear to be facilitating or supporting terrorist groups intent on striking the U.S. homeland," says the draft report, which is intended to help the Homeland Security agency define its spending priorities through 2011. Of the six nations identified by the State Department as terrorist sponsors, five of them - North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya and Cuba - are described by Homeland Security as a "diminishing concern." Iran, the final country on the list, alone is described as a potential threat over the next five years. "Only Iran appears to have the possible future motivation to use terrorist groups, in addition to its own state agents, to plot against the U.S. homeland," the report says, adding that "ideologically driven nonstate actors" are the biggest threat. Terrorism experts said Wednesday that while the assessment seemed accurate, it was an unusual statement for the Bush administration, which has often called North Korea and several other nations serious threats. "The administration has been very reluctant to accept that state sponsorship is a waning phenomenon," said Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a co-author of "The Age of Sacred Terror." This is the first time the two-year-old department has prepared what will now be an annual Integrated Planning Guidance Report, a document that is listed as "sensitive" but not classified, meaning it was not intended to be released publicly. The goal, said Brian Roehrkasse, a department spokesman, is to better focus the department's $40 billion in annual spending toward the most serious threats. Al Qaeda, not unexpectedly, tops a list of adversaries in the report, although the authors question if the group can still pull off attacks similar in scale to those of Sept. 11, 2001. Other predicted possible sponsors of attacks include Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a Pakistani-based group that has been linked to Muslims of America; Jamaat al Tabligh, an Islamic missionary organization that has a presence in the United States; and the American Dar Al Islam Movement. Representatives for the organizations could not be reached Wednesday for comment or did not respond to telephone or e-mail messages. The report, which was first disclosed last week on the Congressional Quarterly Web site, identifies animal rights activists and radical environmentalists as possible backers of plots. But it does not mention any domestic extremist groups, like World Church of the Creator, Aryan Nations or anti-abortion activists, which have previously been identified by federal officials as domestic terrorist threats. In assessing the most likely targets, the report says that "visual symbols" - like the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon and the C.I.A. headquarters - as well as "American popular culture icons" - including the Golden Gate Bridge, George Washington Bridge and the Statue of Liberty - top the list. The report says increasing security may simply force a change in the weapons terrorists would try to use, for example mortars or rockets to attack from a distance. Truck bombs and small boats packed with explosives are identified as other extremely likely weapons of choice. |
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| Attorney for Jailed White Supremacist Says He Was Asked to Pass Coded Message | ||
| 2005-03-09 | ||
| CHICAGO (AP) - An attorney for jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale said he was asked to give an encoded message to one of Hale's supporters, according to a published report. Hale has been a focus of the investigation into the shooting deaths of a federal judge's husband and mother. Lawyer Glenn Greenwald said Hale's mother asked him a few months ago to pass the message to a Hale supporter. "She said she didn't know what the message meant, but she was going to read it to me verbatim because Matt made her write it down when she visited him," Greenwald told The New York Times in Wednesday's editions. "It was two or three sentences that were very cryptic and impossible to understand in terms of what they were intended to convey."
Though authorities have said white supremacists are just one aspect of the investigation, Hale and other white supremacists immediately drew investigators' attention in the wake of the slayings. Hale, 33, is to be sentenced next month for soliciting an FBI informant to kill Judge Lefkow after she ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator for his group because of a trademark lawsuit. Matthew Hale has denied any involvement in the slayings, or of soliciting the judge's murder. Greenwald, who has represented Hale and his organization in several civil cases, said he told federal agents last week about the conversation he had with Hale's mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, about the message. He said he declined to deliver it. Hutcheson told the newspaper that the message was about someone her son thought should testify at Hale's April 6 sentencing. She said any coding was meant to keep federal agents from figuring out Hale's legal strategy. Hutcheson has said federal agents have asked her if Hale communicated with her in code.
Also, a source familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Chicago detectives and FBI agents also have gone to the law office of Michael Lefkow and have spent hours examining his files in search of leads. | ||
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| Task force launched in Lefkow slayings | |
| 2005-03-02 | |
But authorities declined to connect the slayings at the North Side home of U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow and the case of Matthew Hale, convicted last year of trying to arrange the judge's murder after she held him in contempt of court. "There is much speculation about possible links between this crime and the possible involvement of hate groups," said Chicago Chief of Detectives James Molloy. "This is but one facet of our investigation. Lefkow arrived Monday evening at her residence in the 5200 block of North Lakewood Avenue in the Edgewater neighborhood to find her husband and mother dead of gunshot wounds in the dwelling's basement. Investigators said they believe the victims were shot to death between 10:30 a.m., when Humphrey spoke by telephone with one of her daughters, and 6:30 p.m., when Judge Lefkow came home and discovered the bodies. The judge's daughter had stopped by the house at 4 p.m. to pick up a gym bag and had left without seeing her father or grandmother or anything amiss in the house, police said. However, Molloy said investigators believe the victims already were dead by that time. "We have a lot of physical evidence from the scene, but I'm not going to get into what type it is," Molloy said. When asked if neighbors heard gunshots Monday, the detective said, "We have some people we discovered during the canvass last night. What they told us is not going to be disclosed." Shannon Metzger, spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service, said a special protection detail had been assigned to Lefkow's home last year during the Hale trial, but that arrangement lasted only "a couple" of weeks and was discontinued with the judge's consent. The judge and her family today were under the protection of the U.S. Marshals Service, the Associated Press reported. Hale, 33, is in custody in Chicago awaiting sentencing on one count of murder solicitation and three counts of obstruction of justice. During the trial, prosecutors said Hale was furious after Lefkow ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator because it had been trademarked by an Oregon-based religious group that has no ties to Hale. Hale's father, retired East Peoria policeman Russell Hale, offered condolences to Lefkow's family, but said his son could not have been involved in the deaths because he is under constant surveillance while awaiting sentencing. Hale is only allowed visits and phone calls twice a month with his divorced parents, and those conversations are monitored and recorded by FBI agents, his father said. | |
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