Recent Appearances...

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Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

al-Qaeda

India-Pakistan

Captured

20030302

Home Front: WoT

Pentagon prosecutors working on deal to SAVE 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his accomplices from death penalty before his Guantanamo Bay trial

2022-03-16

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]

Guilty pleas in exchange for a life sentence could finally bring to a close the over two decade-long case, the longest ever at the war court

The cases have been bogged down in pretrial proceedings due to the CIA's use of terrorism, but plea agreements could ignite fury from 9/11 families

The al-Qaeda terrorists have been charged with terrorism; hijacking aircraft; conspiracy; murder in violation of the law of war; attacking civilians and more

The five men were allegedly directly involved with hijacking four airplanes and carrying out the coordinated attacks across the US that led to the death of 2,977

They are: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

...also Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo...
Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash,

... Walid bin Attash and Waleed bin Attash, a Yemeni who ran an al-Qaeda training camp in Logar, Afghanistan, where two of the 19 hijackers were trained. Bin Attash is believed to have been bin Laden's bodyguard. Authorities say bin Laden selected him as a hijacker, but he was prevented from participating when he was briefly detained in Yemen in early 2001...

Ramzi Bin al-Shibh ,

...a.k.a. Ramzi ibn Al-Shaiba, senior Al Qaeda man involved in the famous Hamburg cell. The unhandsome Yemeni helped find flight schools for the hijackers, helped them enter the United States, and assisted with financing the operation. He was supposed to be a hijacker, but was unable to get a U.S. visa. He also took the lead in a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport...

Ali Abdul Aziz Ali,

...KSM’s nephew and one of KSM’s many relatives in the Karachi cell, also known as Ammar al-Balochi, helped nine of the hijackers travel to the United States and sent them money for expenses and flight training. He was also part of the Heathrow team ...

and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi ,

... also Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and no doubt other variations. Saudi Arabian accused of giving financial backing to the group, he testified in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaeda guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in early 2001, but somehow was never introduced to him or conducted operations with him...

all expected to face the death penalty if convicted

Update from PJ Media at 10:10 a.m. ET

During the Trump administration, prosecutors tried to work out a plea deal that would have sent the plotters to a supermax prison in Florence, Colo. with life sentences. Those negotiations fell through when the prisoners demanded they serve their life sentences in Guantanamo, which is far less restrictive.

Now the Biden administration, the guys that caused the debacle in Afghanistan

Biden administration, the guys that caused the debacle in Afghanistan

...the pack of self-imagined masterminds of strategy and intrigue at the service of the Biden Crime Family and a grateful nation...
is trying once again to settle the legal situation for KSM and the other plotters and has opened negotiations that would give the snuffies life sentences.

Even with successful negotiations, any deal would have to secure the Pentagon’s approval.
Lapdogs Milley and Austin would surely do whatever they're told
Even the suggestion of a deal during the Trump administration enraged then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who complained to Defense Secretary James N. Mattis about the convening authority, Harvey Rishikof. Shortly after that, Rishikof was fired.

Link

India-Pakistan

Man acquitted in Daniel Pearl’s killing moved to Pakistan safe house

2021-03-23

[IsraelTimes] Police say Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, who was on death row for 18 years before being acquitted of murdering the US journalist, transferred for safety reasons.

A Pak-British man who was on death row for 18 years before his acquittal in the 2002 beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl was transferred Monday to a government safe house for security reasons, police said.

Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh

...also in our archives as Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Ahmed Omar Sheikh. He spent nearly two decades in various Pak government safe houses, protected from being either hanged or transferred to the U.S. for his not-minor role in Israeli-American Daniel Pearl’s heinous murder. He’d been a brilliant but violent lad, growing to be a violent and possibly brilliant man who hit all the jihadi hotspots at their peak: the London School of Economics, Bosnia during their little war, running Al Qaeda’s Afghan training camps, then jailed by India for kidnapping Western tourists in Kashmir for Pakistan’s ISI. He and two Harkat-ul-Mujahideen emirs were traded for the passengers and crew of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999, after which he wandered down to Karachi to hang with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s (KSM) gang. This may yet turn out to have been a fatal error...

was handed over to the Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
Counter-Terrorism department amid tight security, a police brass hat Suhail Sukhera told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.

Sheikh was moved to his home city of Lahore from the southern port city of Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
. Sukhera provided no further details and only said Sheikh was being kept at a well-guarded place.

Sheikh was acquitted by the Sindh High Court in April 2020 and since then Pearl’s family and Pakistain’s government have been fighting a legal battle to overturn the acquittal. Washington has also expressed its concern over the acquittal of Sheikh.

Sheikh has been in jug despite his acquittal under a special law allowing the government to detain people deemed a security risk.

The transfer comes more than a month after Pakistain’s Supreme Court ordered Sheikh moved to a safe house from a special jail cell for inmates sentenced to death.

Authorities say Sheikh will not be allowed to leave the safe house.

So it’s just like bring in a nicer prison. I can live with that.

Pearl disappeared on January 23, 2002, in Karachi where he was investigating links between Pak terrorist groups and Richard C. Reid, dubbed the "shoe bomber." Reid had attempted to blow up a flight from Gay Paree to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes. Sheikh was convicted of helping lure Pearl to a meeting in Karachi, during which he was kidnapped.

Pearl’s body was discovered in a shallow grave soon after a video of his beheading was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi. The Pentagon in 2007 released a transcript in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammad
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistan orders man acquitted in Pearl murder off death row and into safe house

2021-02-04

Home again, home again jiggity jig! And thus the ISIS, pretending to be the elected government of Pakistan, protects their lad from the wrath of the stupid Americans.

[IsraelTimes] Pakistain’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Pak-British man acquitted of the 2002 gruesome beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl off death row and moved to a so-called government "safe house."

Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, who has been on death row for 18 years, will be under guard and will not be allowed to leave the safe house, but he will be able to have his wife and children visit him.

"It is not complete freedom. It is a step toward freedom," said Sheikh’s father, Ahmad Saeed Sheikh, who attended the hearing.

The Pakistain government has been scrambling to keep Sheikh in jail since a Supreme Court order last Thursday upheld his acquittal in the death of Pearl, triggering outrage by Pearl’s family and the US administration.

In a final effort to overturn the acquittal, Pakistain’s government as well as the Pearl family filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, asking it to review the decision to exonerate Sheikh of Pearl’s murder. The family’s lawyer, Faisal Siddiqi, however, said such a review had a slim chance of success because the same Supreme Court judges who ordered Sheikh’s acquittal sit on the review panel.

The US government has said that it would seek Sheikh’s extradition if his acquittal is upheld. Sheikh has been indicted in the United States on Pearl’s murder as well as in a 1994 kidnapping of an American citizen in Indian-ruled sector of the divided region of Kashmir
...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there....
. The American was eventually freed.

The order sending Sheikh to a safe house would seem to be a concession to the federal government, as well as the government of southern Sindh province where Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
is the capital. The Sindh government has refused successive orders to release Sheikh, even courting contempt charges from lower courts.

In the government-run safe house, Sheikh will be under a 24-hour guard — often military personnel — and will not be allowed to leave the house. Locations of such safe houses are usually kept secret; Pakistain’s security establishment has several such facilities across the country.

Pearl disappeared on Jan. 23, 2002, in the port city of Karachi where he was investigating links between Pak holy warrior groups and Richard C. Reid, dubbed the "shoe bomber" after his attempt to blow up a flight from Gay Paree to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes.

Pearl’s body was discovered in a shallow grave soon after a video of his beheading was delivered to the US Consulate in Karachi.

The Pentagon in 2007 released a transcript in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammad
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

...Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo...
, the alleged criminal mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, said he had killed Pearl.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl," the transcript quoted Mohammed as saying. Mohammad first disclosed his role while he was held in CIA custody and subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture. He remains in the US prison in Guantanamo Bay and has never been charged with the journalist’s death.

Sheikh had long denied any involvement in Pearl’s death, but Pakistain’s Supreme Court last month heard that he acknowledged writing a letter in 2019 admitting a minor role — raising hopes for some that he might remain behind bars.

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Pearl’s family urged followers to "call your politicians in Pakistain, in the US, the world to support Danny’s parents," to keep Sheikh behind bars.

Last week’s ruling that exonerated Sheikh also exonerated another three men accused in Pearl’s murder who had been serving life sentences. It wasn’t clear whether they would be freed or also moved to a safe house.

Siddiqi, the Pearl family lawyer, said the original murder trial back in 2002 charged all four as one, which complicated the case and allowed the court to free all if there was doubt about the guilt of even one of the suspects.

Pakistan denies handing over Pearl murder suspect to US

Pakistain is not handing over the prime suspect who was convicted and later acquitted in a murder case of US journalist Daniel Pearl to Washington, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Wormtongue Qureshi
Mehmood <q>Wormtongue</q> Qureshi

...a Pak political shape-changer. He is undistinguished except for his habit of periodically needing to have his lips reattached...
said on Sunday.

He was commenting on reports doing rounds in Islamabad after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered to prosecute British-born accused Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh in the US for his "horrific crimes against an American citizen" during a telephone conversation with him on Friday.

"Reports regarding handing over of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to the US are baseless," a private TV channel cited the foreign minister as saying. "I spoke to the US secretary of state, who expressed his concern over the Supreme Court judgement," he said while referring to the acquittal of all four accused, including Sheikh by the apex court on Thursday. "I told him [Blinken] that our courts are independent," he went on saying.

However,
a woman is only as old as she admits...
Qureshi added that the government has filed a review petition against Sheikh’s acquittal, which will be heard on Monday by the same court. Pearl’s parents have also announced joining the review proceedings.

Link

-PC Follies

American taxpayers have spent jaw-dropping amount on keeping 9/11 mastermind alive

2021-02-01

[FoxNews] Guantanamo Bay has grown into what seems to be the most expensive prison on earth

Built nearly 18 years ago to detain suspected terrorists on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, Guantanamo Bay has grown into what seems to be the most expensive prison on earth.

The U.S. government has spent an estimated $161.5 million housing the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And up until Saturday, Mohammed was to receive a coronavirus vaccine so that he could be tried and put to death, if convicted.
A .22 cartridge costs 2 cents (when you could buy ammo) and makes for a most satisfying conclusion.
Captured in 2003, Sheikh Mohammed confessed to being a mastermind behind some of the most prolific terror attacks in the past few decades, most notably the 9/11 attacks.

Mohammed's death penalty trial was originally set for Jan. 11, 2021, but it was delayed due to the pandemic.
Or Joe Biden, like his sire Barack, will find a way to trade him and many others for some American traitor.
A lack of vaccinations had reportedly made it difficult for federal prosecutors to move forward with war crimes hearings at the base, which is why Terry Adirim, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs under President Biden, signed an order Jan. 27 to vaccinate the suspected terrorists, a Pentagon spokesperson told the New York Post. Two defense officials confirmed the plan to Fox News.

The Defense Department reversed course Saturday. "No Guantanamo detainees have been vaccinated," Defense Department press secretary John Kirby tweeted. "We're pausing the plan to move forward, as we review force protection protocols. We remain committed to our obligations to keep our troops safe."

It's not exactly clear how much the federal government spends housing its Gitmo prisoners, but it's somewhere between $9.5 and $13 million per prisoner, per year. The prison currently has 40 inmates. That's compared to $78,000 spent per inmate at a "supermax" prison in Florence, Colo., home to some of the highest-risk prisoners in the U.S.

Using the $9.5 million figure NPR reached in a 2020 report, U.S. spending in the 17 years Mohammed has spent at the prison has topped $161 million.

Guantanamo has reportedly cost U.S. taxpayers over $6 billion since its inception. Included in that figure are charter planes to and from the island with few passengers, hundreds of thousands' worth of government devices that are destroyed each year to spills of classified information, Pentagon-funded defense attorneys priced at half a million dollars per year and total legal costs amounting to $60 million, even though Guantanamo has only ever had one finalized conviction.

But the New York Times tally edges the number up to $13 million per prisoner, per year. "I think it's crazy," former President Trump said of the cost.

Link

Afghanistan

Eight Security Force Members Killed in Nangarhar Blast: Official

2021-01-31

[ToloNews] Eight security force members were killed in a boom-mobile explosion that targeted a civil order forces unit in Shirzad district of the eastern province of Nangarhar
The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country..
on Saturday morning, the provincial governor’s office confirmed.

The civil order forces unit operates under the Afghan National Army, according to local officials.

The explosion happened in the Gandumak area in Shirzad district, a statement by the Nangarhar governor’s office read.

Meanwhile,
...back at the pond, Gloria slowly backed away from the eight-foot bull frog. If the creature croaked she would surely be deafened...
Obaidullah Shinwari, the deputy head of the provincial council in Nangarhar, said that at least 14 security force members were killed in the attack.

Taliban
Taliban

...Arabic for students...
grabbed credit for the attack.

An Nahar adds:

The eight were killed when the bomber hit the base with a Humvee, the office of Nangarhar's governor said in a statement.

The deputy head of Nangarhar provincial council, Ajmal Omar, confirmed the attack but put the number of dead soldiers at 15 with five maimed.

Taliban front man Zabihullah Mujahid said his group had carried out the attack.

The governor's office said security forces had seized another vehicle loaded with explosives near the city of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar.

Nangarhar province has seen several recent deadly attacks carried out by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....

Link

India-Pakistan

US condemns Pakistan’s overturning of death sentence in Daniel Pearl murder

2020-04-03

[IsraelTimes] The United States criticizes a Pak court’s overturning of a death sentence

...the barbaric practice of sentencing a murderer to be punished for as long as his/her/its victim is dead...
handed down over the gruesome killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl, calling the decision an "affront."

"The overturning of the convictions for Daniel Pearl’s murder is an affront to victims of terrorism everywhere," says Alice Wells, the top US diplomat for South Asia.

She welcomes indications that Pak prosecutors will appeal the decision on British-born terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Mr. Sheikh, after all, only helped deliver Daniel Pearl to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, he didn’t actually help cut off his head. So clearly he is innocent, to a certain kind of mind.

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistan court overturns conviction in death of Daniel Pearl

2020-04-02

[NBC] KARACHI, Pakistan — A Pakistani court Thursday overturned the murder conviction of a British Pakistani man found guilty of the 2002 kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Instead, the court found Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh guilty of the lesser charge of kidnapping and sentenced him to seven years in prison.

Pearl disappeared Jan. 23, 2002 in Karachi while researching links between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, who became known as the “shoe-bomber” after he was arrested on a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoes. Prosecutors said Saeed lured Pearl into a trap by promising to arrange an interview with an Islamic cleric who police believed was not involved in the conspiracy.

One of Saeed's lawyers, Khwaja Naveed, said Saeed could go free unless the government chooses to challenge the court decision. Faiz Shah, prosecutor general for southern Sindh province, said the government will appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Saeed has already spent 18 years in prison in southern Hyderabad on death row. The seven-year sentence was expected to be counted as time served, said Naveed.

The Sindh High Court also acquitted three others accused in the case: Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib, who were earlier sentenced to life in prison. The defendants were also collectively fined $32,000.

Saeed, a former student at the London School of Economics, and the others were convicted in 2002.

A videotape received by U.S. diplomats in February, 2002 confirmed that Pearl, 38, was dead. He had been beheaded.

The Pearl Project, an investigative journalism team at Washington's Georgetown University, carried out a three-year investigation into Pearl's kidnapping and death. They concluded the reporter was beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later described as the architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Mohammad is a prisoner at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Soon after Pearl disappeared, Pakistani and U.S. news organizations received emails from the previously unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. The group demanded better treatment for Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners at Guantanamo.

FBI agents traced the emails to Saeed, who admitted his role in the kidnapping during his first court appearance but later recanted.

Saeed had been arrested in 1994 by Indian authorities, accused of kidnapping three Britons and an American, who were all freed unharmed, in Indian-ruled Kashmir, Hindu India's only Muslim dominated region.

In 1999, India freed Saeed and two other militants in exchange for the release of 155 passengers and crew aboard an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

The Pearl kidnapping was the first of five attacks against Westerners in Pakistan in 2002. A grenade attack against a Protestant church in Islamabad on March 17 killed five people, including two Americans and the attacker, were killed.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Sept 11 suspect asks that US judge step down, cites evidence destruction

2016-06-02

[DAWN] The United States (US) military judge overseeing the trial of the accused criminal mastermind of the Sept 11 attacks should step down and the case should be scrapped because he effectively conspired with prosecutors to destroy evidence, defence lawyers said in a court filing.

The motion said Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, and prosecutors had tainted the case against Pakistain-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

...Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo....
by keeping defence lawyers from learning that the evidence had been destroyed.

The motion was filed on May 10 and recently cleared for release. It raises a potential hurdle in the slow-moving capital case against Mohammad and four others charged in the hijacked airliner attacks of Sept 11, 2001, in which 3,000 people died.

Pohl, along with prosecutors, "manipulated secret proceedings and the use of secret orders to mislead the defence and unfairly deprive Mr Mohammad" of ways to keep the evidence from being destroyed, the motion said.

Commissions spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Henderson referred questions to the prosecutor's response, which is expected to be made public in a few days.

Pohl presided over a pretrial hearing on Tuesday in the case at the US Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The filing alleges that Pohl authorised prosecutors to destroy evidence six months after he agreed to a defence request that it be preserved.

Link

Afghanistan

Pakistan says DNA report confirms Mullah Mansoor’s death

2016-05-30

[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The authorities in Pakistain have said DNA report have confirmed that the man killed in a US drone strike was the Taliban supreme leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.
We knew he was dead when they named his successor. But this is the Official Verification. Mullah Mansour has departed the building.
According to the local media reports, citing the local authorities, a DNA report said it was definite that the man killed in the US strike on May 21 was Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
He is One with the Ages.
The country’s interior ministry has said the confirmation was made following the DNA matching of DNA samples collected from the charred body against the relative who came forward to claim the remains.
He is no longer oxygen-dependent.
Pakistain’s foreign affairs adviser Sartaj PrunefaceAziz
Problem, not solution

...Adviser to Pak Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on National Security and Foreign Affairs, who believes in good jihadis and bad jihadis as a matter of national policy...
earlier said "All indicators confirm that the person killed in the drone strike was Mullah Akhtar Mansour who was travelling on a fake identity. The DNA test result will be available shortly."
That's the secret: just put on a pair of fake glasses and nobody will recognize you.
The country’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar had earlier said the government could not confirm the death without a scientific and legal basis.
He was killed in Pakistain, just like Osama bin Laden. That's where Abu Zubaidah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad were all captured. The Quetta Shura is located in Pakistain. So is the Haqqani Network. Do we see a pattern here?
Mullah Mansoor was killed in a US drone strike in Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
province of Pakistain in the afternoon of 21st May as he was travelling in a vehicle.
But he was wearing glasses and carrying a Pak passport and ID, so nobody in Pakistain recognized him.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Sept 11 case at Guantanamo hits yet another snag

2016-04-07

This seems odd -- perhaps various parties are working at cross purposes?

[AlAhram] An effort to prosecute five men held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the Sept. 11 terrorist attack has hit another snag.

A two-week pretrial hearing scheduled to start Tuesday was abruptly canceled late last week by the military judge presiding over the case after he received a confidential notice from Justice Department lawyers.

The document is sealed, its contents not even disclosed to prosecutors or the defense. But there are indications the filing has raised issues that will result in further delays in a case that has been mired in the pretrial stage for years.

"I suspect we are back in this limbo stage and it will take some time to get out," said Jim Harrington, a lawyer for Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the five men facing a tribunal known as a military commission for his alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking plot.

From what little information can be gleaned from the judge's brief cancellation order, the new issue appears to be at least tangentially related to an FBI investigation of a possible security breach involving members of the Binalshibh defense team. The investigation was closed without criminal charges and the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, ultimately decided that it did not create a conflict of interest that required Harrington to step down.

Pohl had directed a special review team of Justice Department lawyers to look into the FBI investigation and any potential conflict. He also told them to notify him of any new investigations. That may have happened Friday, when the judge received the notice that prompted him to cancel the session.

"My best guess, and this is purely speculation, is that there is some new investigation that the special review team is advising the commission of," said James Connell, a lawyer for defendant Ammar al-Baluchi.

A Justice Department front man declined comment Tuesday.

The revelation of the FBI investigation in April 2014 stalled proceedings in the case for 18 months. Though the judge ruled there was no conflict, Harrington said he is still receiving court-ordered information into what he called a "gross violation of the attorney-client privilege" and there may be future revelations that the judge will have to address.

The five defendants, including self-proclaimed criminal mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, face charges that include terrorism and nearly 3,000 counts of murder. They could get the death penalty if convicted.

All five men were held in secret CIA prisons for interrogation before they were brought to Guantanamo in September 2006 for military prosecution. The case has been dogged ever since by legal and political issues as well as the logistics of trying a case at the isolated base in southeastern Cuba. They were arraigned for a second time in May 2012 and more than a dozen pretrial hearings have been held since.

The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, is legally barred from any involvement with the work of the special review team and did not predict when the proceedings would resume in a statement on the cancellation of the hearing. He said prosecutors are still working seven days a week to compile classified evidence for the defense by a Sept. 30 deadline.

"We pledge to the families of the 9/11 fallen that the United States will not rest until justice is fully achieved," Martins said.

The next hearing is to start May 30 but the judge said in his order that "further adjusting the schedule" may be necessary.

Link

India-Pakistan

Daniel Pearl murder convict attempts suicide in Pakistan

2014-02-16

A British-Pakistani man convicted of the killing of US reporter Daniel Pearl has attempted to commit suicide in a Pakistani prison, an official said Saturday.

How can we help?

"Omar Sheikh, a British-Pakistani, who is serving life imprisonment in Hyderabad prison, tried to hang himself with the exhaust of the prison cell late Friday," senior police official Akram Naeem told AFP.

Pearl was working for the Wall Street Journal when he was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan in 2002. British-born extremist Omar was arrested with three others and convicted in June 2002 of Pearl's murder by an anti-terror court.

Akram said Saturday that security officials saw Omar and rescued him quickly.

"His condition is stable now and a case has been filed against him in the local police station," he added. In Pakistan prisoners who attempt to commit suicide can face additional punishment.

Death?

Pearl, 38, was the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he was abducted in Karachi on January 23, 2002, while researching a story about Islamist militants. A graphic video showing his decapitation was delivered to the US consulate in the city nearly a month later.

In January 2011, a report released by the Pearl project at Georgetown university following an investigation into his death made chilling revelations when it claimed that the wrong men were convicted for Pearl's murder.

The investigation, led by Pearl's friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown University professor, claimed the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged brains behind the September 11 2001 attacks, not Omar Sheikh.

Pearl's body was found four months after he disappeared, cut into a dozen pieces, the head severed, the upper torso still clad in a light blue track suit that his kidnappers made him wear, the report said.

Self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, awaiting trial by a US military tribunal.

Link

India-Pakistan

IJT -- a sardonic joke? -- Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

2013-12-08

[Pak Daily Times] The Islami Jamaat-e-Tulaba (IJT), the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
(JI), has metamorphosed into a bit of a joke in recent times -- one that is more sardonic than funny. The IJT resorts to violence ostensibly to safeguard their much touted ideology of peace; vie to safeguard women's integrity by harassing them into conforming to their version of modesty; declare a man responsible for the killing of thousands of fellow citizens a 'martyr'; earn their proverbial bread and butter courtesy anti-US chants despite supporting the US being a part of their raison d'etre, and sometimes they set buses ablaze merely days after complaining about the lack of buses on their campus.

Last week, IJT activists clashed with coppers, the Punjab University (PU) administration and, for all practical purposes, most of Lahore, after being ordered to clear hostel number 16 for the accommodation of girls, which resulted in chaos and a traffic blockade on University Road. Hostel number 16 and hostel number one are renowned hubs of the IJT but that was not the only reason the PU administration took the decision to convert it to a girls' hostel. It was also a manoeuvre to balance skewed accommodations since, despite formulating virtually half of the student strength in the university, the girls still do not have sufficient rooms.

For the university administration, it was an act of hitting two birds with one stone but, for the IJT, the stone struck the spot where it hurts them the most since it pinched the organization's nerve centre with booze, bhang and bullets being dug out of rooms in hostel number 16. While the former is one of the many aspects that add scorn to the sardonic joke, it is the latter that makes it not quite so funny, especially after a member of al Qaeda's 'suicide squad' was placed in durance vile
Please don't kill me!
from the hostel in September this year after being sheltered by the IJT.

When the criminal mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was arrested from a JI women's wing leader's house in Rawalpindi almost a decade ago, the JI's links with al Qaeda were -- or should have been -- established. However,
today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday...
handlers of the terrorist organization's suicide squad staying in university hostels is a different kettle of fish altogether.

The newly surfacing alliance between the IJT and al Qaeda is more menacing than the many linkages that exist of the establishment and political parties, going all the way down to the grassroots. The IJT have their stranglehold in most top universities and colleges in Pakistain while the JI has a massive financial influx solely dedicated to bolstering the aforementioned alliance under the shroud of running schools, madrassas and charities.

The killing of Abdur Rehman, an IJT activist in a drone strike in North

Wazoo on November 29, 2013, has further thrown some extremely deadly cats among very vulnerable pigeons. Abdur Rehman, who was involved in the Mehran Naval Base attack, was an NED student, expelled from the university owing to severe shortage of attendance. The fact that he was killed in a drone strike adds credence to the security agencies' claim that members of the IJT are now well and truly an active part of al Qaeda. And have been for over a decade now.

While the security agencies have unravelled how IJT activists have been recruited to be trained by al Qaeda (a process started by the Islamic Medical Association's president, Dr Arshad Waheed) over the past decade, echoes of the JI and IJT being banned are reverberating from various quarters as well since the 'Shaheedgate' episode starring JI chief Munawar Hassan, which saw the establishment turn against its historic chum. Even so, a more pertinent question than the potential banning of the JI is ensuring the security of campuses all over Pakistain where the IJT is providing 'guest rooms' for al Qaeda Death Eaters to stay in. When some of the most wanted Death Eaters are seen 'hanging out' in some of the biggest universities in the country, the vulnerability of the security situation is self-explanatory.

The JI and the IJT are proving themselves to be a political smokescreen for terrorist organizations, and their reaction following Hakeemullah Mehsud's killing showcases where their allegiance lies quite unambiguously. Maybe taking a leaf out of Bangladesh's book would be a great idea for Pakistain but, before that, some serious security measures need to be taken to make sure the sardonic joke of student politics is purged out of university campuses. For, the worst of worst fears could come true if al Qaeda has the last laugh.

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