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Terror Networks

Daesh wants to take over Middle East, India, Pakistan by 2020

2015-08-11

The Daesh plans to take over large parts of the world, including almost the entire Indian subcontinent, by the next five years, according to a chilling map that features in a new book on the dreaded terror group. According to the map, the Daesh group plans to take control of the Middle East, North Africa, most of the Indian subcontinent and parts of Europe, within the next five years, to complete its caliphate. The caliphate --- a state governed by Sharia law which Daesh plan to claim - covers areas from Spain in the west to China in the east, the Mirror reported citing the map. The map reveals the calculated way Daesh plans to take over the world by 2020. Let's just say that the hard boys at Daesh are a little .. optimistic. Not even the French and Italians can surrender that quickly. Though Obama might help it along... According to the map, Andalus is the Arabic name given to the parts of Spain, Portugal and France that were occupied by the Moors from the 8th to the 15th century while the Indian subcontinent would come under 'Khurasan'. BBC reporter Andrew Hosken, who includes the map of the targeted areas in his new book 'Empire of Fear: Inside the Islamic State', said Daesh wants "to take over all of what they see as the Islamic world. A seven-step Daesh programme, dating back almost 20 years, includes the US being provoked into declaring war on the Islamic world between 2000 and 2003 and an uprising against Arab rulers between 2010 and 2013, the report said. Daesh have up to 50,000 members and cash and assets of nearly 2 billion pounds, partly due to their control of oil and gas fields in Iraq and Syria, it said. "They want to take over all of what they see as the Islamic world. Once they have their caliphate, they plan to turn against the rest of the world. They envisage the whole world being under their rule," Hosken was quoted as saying. "They have 60 nations against them, including the United States and Russia, so one would think that is pretty unlikely. But one would have thought the first steps were unlikely as well," he said. Hosken says in his book that Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who founded the terrorist group that would later become Daesh, in 1996 described the seven-step programme that would lead to Muslim victory by 2020. "We were so close to destroying them back in 2010-11. Eighty per cent of their leaders had been captured or killed and they ended up as a little rump. We didn't finish them off and like a cancer they came back," Hosken said. Thanks Barack...

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Iraq

Back to Fallujah

2014-01-09

[DAWN] ONE can only wonder whether there was an element of déjà vu involved in this week's urgent despatch of armaments by the US to the Iraqi military as the latter prepared to re-conquer Fallujah. After all, it was 10 years ago that four American contractors working for Blackwater were ambushed by one of the many gangs resisting the US occupation, and their charred corpses were subsequently suspended from a bridge across the Euphrates. This grotesque display led to some of the most vicious battles of the Iraq war. It was several months before Fallujah could be retaken. The names Anbar and Ramadi -- the western governate encompassing about one-third of Iraq, and its capital city -- may also ring a bell. The province was insurgency central until the occupying army coerced, cajoled and bribed tribal leaders into what was dubbed the Sunni Awakening, which made it much harder for the outfit known as Al Qaeda in Iraq to use the area as a base for its operations. That modus vivendi was falling apart even before the US completed its military withdrawal, with the successor regime of Nouri al-Maliki ... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party.... reluctant to cultivate the tribal sheikhs it viewed as sectarian adversaries, just as it diverged more broadly from American recipes for relative Shia-Sunni harmony. Resentments have consequently been building up, and the attack by government forces on a Sunni protest camp in Ramadi -- not for the first time -- brought matters to a head. It also offered an opportunity for the reincarnation of Al Qaeda in Iraq, now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS), which stepped into the breach and occupied large parts of Fallujah and relatively smaller segments of Ramadi. Maliki responded by threatening military action unless local forces drove out what is invariably referred to as an Al Qaeda affiliate. It appears, though, that many of the tribal sheikhs are as wary of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... 's army as they are of the jihadists aiming at a caliphate encompassing Iraq, Syria and possibly even Leb. When ISIS took control of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi at the turn of the year, an Iraqi government source suggested its immediate intent was to declare a caliphate encompassing Anbar and segments of Syria. Nothing of the sort had come to pass at the time of writing, but it wasn't an inaccurate assessment of the ISIS aim, with the 'Al Sham' part of its nomenclature assumed to include Leb. It is widely believed that during the initial Iraq conflict, Syria's President Bashar Al Assad facilitated the influx of Salafist jihadis into the war zone. It is possible, of course, that he merely turned a blind eye to the phenomenon. The point, however, is that the Iraq-Syria border hasn't become particularly less porous in the interim (although it has been reported that Turkey has been the most popular conduit for jihadis into Syria), and ISIS has long been active on the Syrian side. It has lately encountered a few road bumps, though, with even Salafist elements in the Syrian opposition choosing to combat it in rebel-held areas of the country. Internationally, though, its leading role in the Syrian conflict has prompted some rethinking, with the likes of Ryan Crocker -- a former US ambassador in Damascus, Storied Baghdad, Kabul and Islamabad -- suggesting that Assad should not be written out of the picture, and vociferous local opponents of the Syrian president admitting that, given a choice between ISIS and Assad, they would opt for the latter. During the Iraq war, it was claimed more than once that Al Qaeda had been more or less eliminated from the country, without, not surprisingly, any mention of the fact that its very genesis in Iraq was a direct consequence of US intervention. That claim was at the very least a gross exaggeration. It could be argued that ISIS and its predecessor organization were only whimsically offshoots of the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now beyond all cares and woe... 's and Ayman Al Zawahiri ... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area. That is not a horn growing from the middle of his forehead, but a prayer bump, attesting to how devout he is... 's outfit, given that neither Abu Musab Al Zarqawi nor Abu Bakr Al Storied Baghdadi were inclined to strictly follow instructions, but that is somewhat besides the point in view of the broad ideological convergence. Notwithstanding the strategic and tactical differences, the obscurantist goal is generally the same. It was a long time ago, or so it seems, that US determination to invade Iraq spurred warnings of what it would mean for the 'Arab street'. That street remained fairly quiet for a while. And when it erupted, it did so in a manner that threw Washington off balance. The crucial venue, it has turned out, is not the street but the battlefield, where the Islamist equivalents of the ideologically driven American neocons are now determined to have their way. Hopefully, in this case too, their ambitions will ultimately be thwarted. As before, though, it may take a while.

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Africa North

Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, a harsh and violent leader within AQIM

2010-09-24

[Ennahar] Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, who holds the French hostages kidnapped in Niger, is one of the most radical and violent leaders of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who gradually extended his field of action in the Sahara, according to experts. "For two years," said French researcher Jean-Pierre Filiu, author of "Nine Lives of Al Qaeda," Abu Zeid has dramatically expanded his field of action, with great mobility, kidnapping of tourists in southern Tunisia, opening the front of Niger which did not exist before." Born 44 years ago in the small town of Touggourt (600 km south of Algiers), he joined at the age of 24 the local committee of the Islamic Front (FIS) and then switches to the armed activity in late 1991. "According to his family," says Algerian journalist Mohamed Mokeddem, who runs the daily Ennahar, "he went into hiding shortly after the attack on the barracks of Guemmar (November 1991) He was accompanied by his brother Bachir, who was killed by the Algerian army in 1995. Until the end of year 90, he operates in the bush of Batna (eastern Algeria). In 2003, during the spectacular kidnapping of 32 European tourists in what was still known the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat ... now known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb... (GSPC) in southern Algeria, Abu Zeid appears for the first time as an Assistant Chief of the kidnappers, Abderazak the Para. "The first pictures of him were taken by those hostage who have published them in the German media after their release," adds Mohamed Mokeddem, specialist of Algerian jihadist networks. These images show a small man, almost frail, with a short beard. In an amateur shot film by a member of AQIM in 2007, AFP was able to view in Mauritania, Abu Zeid appears briefly, looking somber and disapproving, alongside jihadists who play in the water around a their Toyotas stuck in a river. In 2006, when a quarrel broke out between Mokhtar Belmokhtar, one of the principal leaders of the GSPC in the Sahara and the organization's supreme leader, Abdelmalek Droukdal, installed in northern Algeria, Abu Zeid aligned the direction of movement. As an assistant of the "Emir of the Sahara" Yahia Djouadi, he commanded Katiba (group of jihadists) Tariq ibn Ziyad, some 200 men (mainly Algerian, Mauritanian and Malian) well equipped and highly mobile, based mainly in northern Mali. "He has a direct connexion with al Qaeda, including with the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, known for anti-French virulence," said Jean-Pierre Filiu. "This abduction will last, but what is worrying is that there were two cases of kidnappings in which it has ended badly," he recalls, referring to the English tourist Edwin Dyer, killed in June 2009 and the French Germaneau Michel, who died this summer, both captured by Abu Zeid and his men. A concern shared by Louis Caprioli, former assistant director in charge of the fight against terrorism to the DST (French intelligence). "Abu Zeid will make every effort to mediate the matter. He will set ultimatums. He builds on the strategy of terror (of the former head of Al Qaeda in Iraq) Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, and this is very worrying." Shortly after the announcement of the death of Edwin Dyer, a Malian official who had participated in the negotiations told AFP: "Abu Zeid is a violent and brutal man. he is very hard in negotiations. He has criticized us for working for whites, who for him are infidels ".

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Britain

Jordanian terror suspect speaks about life under 'house arrest'

2010-06-17

A man judged to be a threat to national security has decided to break his strict bail conditions so he can speak out about the difficulty of his life under virtual house arrest. Hussain Saleh Hussain Alsamamara, a Jordanian living in London, has been filmed over the past six months by two independent film-makers who then passed the material to the BBC's Newsnight programme. The government says Mr Alsamamara is a committed Islamist extremist and a danger to Britain. Almost all of the evidence against him is thought to be intelligence material which neither he nor his lawyers have seen. Mr Alsamamara arrived in Britain in 2001 and claimed asylum. That claim was rejected and in 2004 he was arrested by police and imprisoned, pending deportation to Jordan. The Jordanian intelligence department has told the British government it wants to question him in relation to alleged contact with the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, and over claims that he underwent paramilitary training in Afghanistan. Mr Alsamamara denies any links with terrorism and says he faces torture if he is returned. So what is the nature of the evidence against Mr Alsamamara? Very little is in the public domain but some indications are given in a document published in 2007 by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). Back then, SIAC dismissed his appeal against deportation, largely on the basis of secret intelligence which was excluded from Mr Alsamamara and his lawyers. However, SIAC's judgment does refer to two open strands of evidence. Police found two CDs in a rack on his bedroom floor when they searched his house in 2004. The contents were discussed in closed sessions so we cannot be sure what was on these CDs, but it is likely to be propaganda material. Mr Alsamamara denies any knowledge of these CDs. Police also found a will in an envelope on a notice-board. SIAC said it was written in "lurid terms". It includes references to "jihad" and records his wish "to slaughter" members of the Jordanian government and the police. Mr Alsamamara does not deny writing this will but argues it simply quotes from the Qur'an and the hadiths, and it reflects his natural hatred of the Jordanian authorities who tortured him in the past. SIAC disagreed, stating: "This is the will of an Islamist extremist... it is a declaration by an Islamist extremist that he wishes, if possible, to meet his fate in fighting the enemies of Islam." Newsnight showed the wording to an imam and expert, Dr Usama Hasan. He knows the jihadi mindset, having volunteered as a young man to fight with the Afghan mujahideen. Now he works to counter radicalisation in the UK. Dr Hasan told Newsnight: "This is someone who is clearly inspired by jihadi ideas, what I would call al-Qaeda ideas, and is very passionate about the jihad, going as far as to regard the Muslim governments and police and armies as legitimate targets... not a normal will at all."

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Iraq

US top court rules against Americans held in Iraq

2008-06-14

Federal judges cannot block US military officials from turning over two Americans held in Iraq to local authorities who want to prosecute them for involvement in the insurgency or criminal activity, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The Supremes actually turned down an opportunity to extend their reach? I'm surprised ... The high court's decision was a defeat for two Americans who say they are innocent and who are being held by US soldiers at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport. Chief Justice John Roberts said in the court's opinion that the two lawsuits should have been promptly dismissed. Their lawyers say the two men might be tortured or even killed if they are transferred to Iraqi custody and that they should have access to US courts to challenge their detention and to stop their transfer to Iraqi authorities. One case involved Mohammad Munaf, an Iraqi-American with dual citizenship. He was convicted in Iraq and sentenced to death for his suspected role in the 2005 kidnapping of three Romanian journalists. His conviction was later overturned by an Iraqi court and his case sent back for further investigation. The other case involved Shawqi Omar, an American-Jordanian citizen who is accused of being a senior associate of the late insurgent leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. A federal judge in Washington DC, and then a US appeals court blocked Omar's transfer to Iraqi custody. The Bush administration has argued that US courts have no jurisdiction over the cases, partly because the two men are being held under the auspices of multinational forces in Iraq, of which US troops are only a part. The court rejected the administration's arguments that the two men have no rights whatsoever to habeas corpus-the right to challenge their imprisonment. Roberts said the right extends to American citizens held overseas by American forces operating subject to an American chain of command. But he held that US courts do not have the power to block their transfer to a foreign country for criminal prosecution. Roberts said the two men's claim that they would be tortured if transferred to Iraqi custody was a serious concern. But he said the issue had to be addressed the political branches of government, not the judiciary.

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India-Pakistan

Spotlight falls on Baitullah Mehsud

2008-01-28

Sometime in mid-December, as winter winds howled across the snow-dusted hills of the country’s inhospitable border regions, 40 men representing Taliban groups all across the country’s northwest frontier came together to unify under a single banner and to choose a leader. The banner was Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, with a fighting force estimated at around 40,000. The leader was Baitullah Mehsud, the man the government accuses of murdering former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The move is an attempt to present a united front against the army, which has been fighting insurgents along the border with Afghanistan. It is also the latest sign of the rise of Mehsud, considered the deadliest of the Taliban mullahs in the country’s northwest. Mehsud is based South Waziristan, where Western intelligence says Al Qaeda is regrouping. Building a base: “Al Qaeda has succeeded in building a base in the last two or three years mostly with help from Mehsud,” said Ahmed Zaidan, a reporter for Al-Jazeera Television in Qatar who interviewed Mehsud three weeks ago. “They are moving freely in the Tribal Areas where it is difficult for the Pakistan Army to move.” During the interview, Mehsud said in halting Arabic that he had never met Osama Bin Laden but knew Abu Musab Al Zarqawi well. Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a US air raid two years ago. Logistical advice: Al Qaeda gives Mehsud money and logistical advice, according to one of his Taliban allies, Maulvi Muslim, who spoke to AP. The Al Qaeda funds don’t always come in cash. Rather, Afghan and Pakistani businessmen - usually in the UAE – are given money to buy high-priced goods like cars. The goods are shipped to Pakistan and sold, often tripling Al Qaeda’s investment. The businessmen, with sympathies to Al Qaeda, take a small cut while Al Qaeda spreads the wealth among its allies. The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan share ideological goals but have separate structures, Muslim said. The spiritual head of both is Mullah Muhammed Omar, the leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban before being ousted by the US-led coalition in November 2001 and to whom Mehsud swore allegiance in 2001, according to Muslim. Free of all vices: Mehsud, thought to be in his 40s, is secretive and, like Mullah Omar, hates to be photographed. He is described as devoted to the Taliban and not well educated. “They say he is free from all vices, walks around covering almost half his face all the time,” said Brigadier (r) Mehmood Shah, who was the government’s former point man for the Tribal Regions. “He is very modest in his manners and polite.” President Pervez Musharraf has also accused Mehsud’s men of carrying out most of 19 suicide bombings in Pakistan over just three months. Newspapers quoted him as threatening Benazir’s life, but he denied it, and also denied accusations that he was behind her assassination. Mehsud is also quoted as saying jihad is the only way to peace, a belief reflected in his history. Muslim says Mehsud’s first battlefield experience was in Afghanistan in the late 1980s against Soviet invaders. His mentor at the time was Jalaluddin Haqqani, a powerful commander in eastern Afghanistan backed by the United States against the Soviets. Now Haqqani is wanted as a terrorist by the US and NATO. According to both Muslim and another Taliban source, when the US invaded in 2001, Mehsud fought with the Taliban in Shah-e-Kot in eastern Afghanistan. Mehsud’s ascent reflects the failure of Pakistan’s army with its US funding to win control of its tribal areas. When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Mehsud was not prominent among the Pakistani militants who supported Afghanistan’s Taliban, according to Shah, the former army officer. “Mehsud was a small fry, but I could see in time he could be of some problem,” Shah said. “I was trying to get big tribal people onto the government side and religious people onto the government side to isolate these hardcore types like him.” But by the end of 2004, the army had started negotiations with the militants, Shah said. The pressure to negotiate came from the provincial government of the frontier, a coalition of right-wing religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban and opposed to the Western troop presence in Afghanistan. 100 to 20,000: Musharraf, whose rule as both president and army chief was being challenged in 2004, agreed to talks in exchange for the support of the provincial government. As a result, the government on February 7, 2005 signed a peace agreement with Mehsud. According to Shah, Mehsud’s troop strength then went from less than 100 to about 20,000, or roughly half the total thought to be under Taliban command in the northwest region that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The agreement gave Mehsud the time to consolidate his forces and kill pro-government tribal leaders. “The government policy of appeasement gave Mehsud a free hand to recruit and motivate,” said Shah, who described Mehsud as “very cool and calculating”. Within a year of the agreement, Shah said, around 123 pro-government tribal leaders were gunned down on Mehsud’s orders, accused of spying. Other suspected spies were publicly hanged or beheaded. In the Bajaur region of the tribal belt, many residents say they buy Taliban protection by letting one son join its ranks. Mehsud also negotiated a prisoner exchange with Musharraf in November. Mehsud handed over a couple of hundred soldiers who had surrendered to the Taliban without firing a shot. In exchange, Musharraf gave up 19 men who were in custody on terrorism charges, including a son of Mehsud’s mentor, Jalaluddin Haqqani.

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Terror Networks

EDITORIAL: Iran and Al Qaeda today

2007-02-12

Iran has caught two Al Qaeda terrorists who were making their way from Pakistan, through Afghanistan and Iran, to Iraq, where Al Qaeda is fighting a bloody sectarian war against the Shia. The two were caught on a very familiar route used by Al Qaeda men to go to the Caucasus and Iraq to make things tough for the United States. Of late, however, Iran has been catching the Al Qaeda terrorists and turning them over to the US allies even though not long ago it had sheltered Osama bin Laden’s son and the leader of Al Qaeda’s Iraq jihad, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Ironically, Washington is making ready to accuse Iran of collaborating with Al Qaeda. In fact some observers think that President Bush might be about to order an air attack on Iran. According to them, Vice President Dick Cheney and some conservative think-tanks are in favour of punishing Iran from the US military build-up in the Gulf, while the Defence and State Departments are opposed to any such action. While Iran’s president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and the American president George W Bush send verbal lightening bolts at each other, the two countries are also watching their interests coalesce in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, however, ruling politicians are telling the Karzai government and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces in Afghanistan to ‘consult’ with the old warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to get rid of the Taliban curse. Iran has changed tack on Al Qaeda because it has been punished for its past policy of helping its terrorists pass through for Kurdistan in Iraq. The Iranians must have regretted especially their act of letting Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, then Al Qaeda chief in Herat in Afghanistan, use Iranian territory for his adventures. Zarqawi turned the Islamic jihad into a Sunni jihad, which now has to be fought against the Shia and Iran. In 2006 he destroyed the Askari shrine in Samarra containing the remains of two Shia imams and one structure dedicated to Imam Mahdi. Zarqawi was killed by the Americans the same year near Baghdad, as an unintended gesture to Iran. Zarqawi sat at the Islam Qila crossroads giving access to Turkey through Iran, on the one hand, and to Chechnya through Turkmenistan, on the other. He was closely watched by the Iranians although there was agreement between Iran and Al Qaeda on the right of passage for the mujahideen. Zarqawi knew that the Iranians were financing the Shia militias against the Taliban. Osama bin Laden was impressed with Zarqawi’s efforts at training jihadists in explosives and chemicals (there was even a rumour that Al Qaeda’s nuclear material was also stored in Herat) and therefore did not hesitate to give him money for his plan to carry out terrorists attacks in Israel in 2000. Zarqawi landed first in Kurdistan and promptly divided the leadership there. He also took advantage of the Saudi funds injected into Kurdistan for Salafism although that was anathema to Osama bin Laden. Far from attacking Israel he thought of leading the Sunnis of Iraq against the Shia and Iran. He pushed the Kurdish extremist leader Mullah Krekar — nurtured by Pakistan as a teacher at its Islamic University in Islamabad — to run away and seek asylum in Norway. Zarqawi them moved to the Anbar province and began supporting the sectarian writers funded by Saudi Arabia and posting intensely ant-Shia harangues on his websites. Osama and Al Zawahiri at first disapproved of Zarqawi’s new policy but were defeated by the funds Zarqawi was able to attract from Europe for his programme. (The expat funding from Europe was manifestly anti-American but subliminally ant-Shia.) In December 2006 Osama bin Laden finally gave in and agreed to change Al Qaeda’s policy. Al Qaeda is now a sectarian outfit and jihad is turned against Iran. It is because of this change that Iran has acted against Al Qaeda men passing through its territory. For the information of Senator Mushahid Hussain in Pakistan, Iran may no longer look kindly at Hekmatyar who once hid there when his total lack of direction in policy had exhausted his options in Afghanistan. Pakistan is shooting itself in the foot backing the Taliban. In Washington, policy-makers must wake up to the fact that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are America’s major enemy in the region and not Iran. Pakistan’s own interest too lies with Iran, which will be its only source of energy in the coming years. America is already in the same bed with Iran on its backing to the Northern Alliance and its non-Pushtun components. Ironically it may be the Northern Alliance that might be willing to recognise the Durand Line, not Hekmatyar or the Pushtuns of Afghanistan. *

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Home Front: WoT

US court blocks handover of detainee to Iraqis

2007-02-10

WASHINGTON - A Washington appeals court blocked Friday the US military’s plan to turn a US citizen arrested in Baghdad over to Iraqi authorities to be tried on terror charges. In a ruling that was the most recent setback to US government war-on-terror detainee policy, the district appeals court affirmed a lower court decision that Shawqi Ahmad Omar, born in Kuwait and a US citizen by marriage, is protected by the US constitution from unlawful imprisonment. Gullible woman marries Omar, Omar tells her he's going out to get milk from his cousin's store, and next thing you know he's in Baghdad. She still loves him, of course. It accepted that Omar has the right to challenge being held by the military without charges and being summarily handed over to a foreign court without due process. Other US detainees in Iraq, including deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, previously petitioned US courts to block their transfer to Iraqi hands, but none with success. US-led multinational forces in Iraq seized Omar, who has dual US and Jordanian citizenship, in 2004 in Baghdad on the belief that he was part of the network of the late Iraq Al Qaeda chief Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, according to court documents. After a military hearing he was declared an “enemy combatant” in the war on terror, he was held at various detention facilities in Iraq without ever being formally charged or convicted, the documents said. Hmmm: captured in Iraq in a battlefield environment. If we consider him an 'enemy combatant', we can hold him til the war is over or turn him over to the Iraqis. If we instead consider him an American, the proper charge is 'treason'. In August 2005 US forces decided to hand Omar over to Iraqi authorities to be tried in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. In reaction Omar’s wife and son petitioned the US District Court in Washington for his freedom by in a writ of habeas corpus, saying his detention violated Omar’s rights under the US constitution, and that turning him over would amount to an “illegal extradition.” They also alleged that in Iraqi hands he faced the risk of torture. If the military would not release him, they added, Omar should be brought into a US court where they should demonstrate why he should remain in detention. After the lower district court blocked Omar’s transfer, the government appealed the ruling, arguing the lower court had no jurisdiction in the case and that in fact by freeing him in Iraq his petition for release would be satisfied. He can buy a plane ticket home, assuming he lives that long. But in a decision experts said was likely to be challenged to the Supreme Court, the appeals court Friday ruled that the lower court had been correct. “Omar has not been charged with a crime related to the allegation now lodged against him, much less convicted of one,” the court said. It noted that Omar’s challenge was not to have his ultimate guilt or innocence declared, but to “test the lawfulness of his extrajudicial detention in Iraq, where he has remained in the control of US forces for over two years without legal process.” All military prisoners of war are held that way. Other US detainees in Iraq, including deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, previously petitioned US courts to block their transfer to Iraqi hands, but none with success. But the Washington appeals court is now considering the case of another US citizen, Mohamed Munaf, who was convicted and sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for kidnapping three Romanian journalists in Baghdad in 2005. Convicted by the Iraqis? Let them carry out their sentence. Mind the drop tables.

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Europe

Mujahedin fighters return to Spain from Iraq

2006-12-18

MADRID - Mujahedin fighters have returned to bases in Spain after gaining combat experience in Iraq and are now a potential threat to European security, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Sunday. According to El Pais the fighters worked alongside cells controlled by late Al Qaeda senior leader and Jordanian extremist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, killed in June. ‘They are the new Trojan horse of Al Qaeda and its satellites on our territory and they are already preparing themselves,’ deputy director of the European police network Europol, Mariano Simancas, told El Pais. ‘They represent a serious threat for the countries of the European Union,’ Simancas added. El Pais quoted anti-terrorist sources as saying that an unspecified number of formerly Spanish-based Algerians and Moroccans who had gained experience in handling arms and explosives in Iraq had now returned. ‘But they are doing nothing for the moment. They are biding their time, which complicates things when it comes to making arrests,’ one unnamed expert told El Pais. I believe the Spanish security forces will work on this; they're as competent as the rest of the Euro security apparatus (that is to say, darned good). The question is whether the government will unleash the hounds and let the security teams do their job. I suspect Zappie wants to sweep this under the rug. They could start with the staff of El Pais, methinks. Don't spare the #9 truncheon gents, we have spares. On general principles or for reporting this? I don't mind this reporting; it's keeping us informed. Not surprising at all that the mooks are returning to Y'Urp; it's safter there for them and they can plot the return of Andalusia. So, how do they know? ESP(aña)? Lol. I'm just sayin...

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Iraq

Confusion Over Al-Qaeda Leader's Fate

2006-10-05

Baghdad, 5 Oct. (AKI) - A US military spokesman in Iraq has denied reports that the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been killed. Satellite television network Al Arabiya on Thursday quoted Iraqi security sources saying that US forces had killed al-Masri and three other suspected terrorists in an operation in Haditha, west of Baghdad. Egyptian born al-Masri, whose battle name is Abu Hamza Al Muhajir, took over the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was killed in June. US coalition sources said that there had been an operation in which militants were killed, and that initially it was thought one of them was al-Masri. Iraqi sources said the raids on Wednesday afternoon followed a long series of clashes in the Sunni province of Diyala, in which scores of 'foreign terrorists' were killed, and the arrest of more than 200 Iraqi insurgents. The US military authorities are believed to be waiting for the results of DNA tests on those killed in the raid.

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Home Front: WoT

Gummint wants US terror suspect tried in Iraq

2006-09-12

WASHINGTON - Government attorneys said Monday that US courts have no authority to stop the military from transferring an American citizen to an Iraqi court to face charges he supported terrorists and insurgents. The case is the latest legal challenge to the Bush administration’s authority to keep terrorism cases, even those involving US citizens, out of American courts. Shawqi Omar, a citizen of both Jordan and the United States who once served in the Minnesota National Guard, was captured in Iraq in 2004. He is being held at Camp Bucca, a prison in southern Iraq, where his family says he has not been charged or allowed to speak with a lawyer. So exactly which uniform was he wearing when he was captured? His family is demanding that Omar be brought before a US court, where prosecutors would have to show probable cause for detaining him and he could consult with an attorney. The military, which says Omar was harboring insurgents and had bomb-making materials at the time of his arrest, wants to transfer him to an Iraqi court. A judge blocked that transfer in February. On appeal Monday before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, government attorneys said American courts don’t have jurisdiction because Omar is being held by a multinational force, not the US military. Defense attorneys say that is a legal gimmick. And it's a damned good gimmick. A three-judge panel also expressed skepticism, saying the government’s theory might allow the military to arrest someone inside the United States and hold him without due process _ all under the guise of a multinational force. No, because we wouldn't allow a MNF inside the States. Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre said that wouldn’t happen but the judges noted that it could. The judges also seemed wary of saying courts had no jurisdiction over a US citizen being held by his country’s military. Let’s assume he was in Iraq seeking a job,’ Judge David S. Tatel said. How can it be that the District Court lacks the ability to prohibit his transfer to Iraq?’ Because he's in Iraq, a sovereign nations with a legal and judicial system, which is capable of judging the guilt or innocence of a man accused of a crime. The supposition that he can only be tried by Americans is an insult to the Iraqis. Judge Harry T. Edwards was even more pointed, saying the government was ignoring the Supreme Court’s 2004 ruling that an American in Afghanistan could challenge his detention in US courts. Omar is described in court papers as a relative of former Iraq Al Qaida leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Authorities say Omar also plotted to kidnap foreigners from Baghdad hotels. Moral of the story: don't take prisoners. Is that what the Court of Appeals wants? Attorneys for Omar’s family say he is innocent and likely to be tortured if handed over to the Iraqi government. They say he is a businessman who was seeking reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Despite their skepticism for the government’s argument, the three judges suggested Omar’s family’s attorney, Aziz Huq, might be reading too much into the law. Even if the court sided with Omar, the judges said the military might only be required to release him, not to transfer him to a US court. That wouldn’t prevent him from being arrested and charged by Iraqis. "Here you go, Achmed, he's all yours now!" "Thank you Tyrone. Would you like the cuffs back?" Separately, Omar was indicted in Jordan with Zarqawi and 11 others on charges they plotted a chemical attack against Jordan’s intelligence agency. Such a good lad. The court did not rule Monday. Rulings typically take months. During which Omar sits in a military prison in Iraq. Heh.

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Iraq

Stolen US Cars Used in Iraqi Suicide Blasts

2006-09-01

US troops are finding stolen cars from the United States used in suicide attacks in Iraq, including attacks by the late Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering that some of the vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior government officials. Inspector John E. Lewis, deputy assistant director of the FBI for counterterrorism, told the Globe that the investigation hasn't yielded any evidence that the vehicles were stolen specifically for car bombings. But there is evidence, he said, that the cars were smuggled from the United States as part of a widespread criminal network that includes terrorists and insurgents. Cracking the car theft rings and tracing the cars could help identify the leaders of insurgent forces in Iraq and shut down at least one of the means they use to attack the US-led coalition and the Iraqi government, the officials said. The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a bomb-making factory in Fallujah last November and found a sport utility vehicle registered in Texas that was being prepared for a bombing mission. Investigators said they are comparing several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the United States wound up in Syria or other Middle East countries and ultimately into the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups -- including Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Investigators believe the cars were stolen by local car thieves in US cities, then smuggled to waiting ships at ports in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Houston, among other cities. From there they are shipped to black-market dealers all over the world, including in places like Syria where foreign militants fighting in Iraq are thought to be transiting from countries across the region and where they gain critical logistical support. I n March of this year a Pakistani truck driver was arrested and confessed to transporting stolen cars from Syria into Iraq. Stolen United Nations cars have also been used in suicide attacks against US troops in Iraq. A US soldier on Sean Hannity today claimed that that Allied forces are still finding US cars in Iraq.

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