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Sri Lanka
Day 8: Sri Lanka bans groups suspected to be behind attacks; more arrests -100 now detained
2019-04-28
Day 7 reports can be seen here and here.
[Jpost] Sri Lanka’s president on Saturday outlawed two Islamist groups suspected to be behind the Easter Sunday suicide kabooms on churches and luxury hotels while the wife and child of the suspected ringleader were maimed during a military raid in safe house, his family and police said.

The National Thawheedh Jamaath (NTJ) and Jamathei Millathu Ibrahim were banned under his emergency powers, President Maithripala Sirisena said in a statement, nearly a week after the attacks that killed 253 people. Authorities could not act earlier to ban the two little-known groups because the law required them to show firm evidence against them, officials said.

Police believe the suspected criminal mastermind of the bombings, Mohammed Hashim Mohammed Zahran, led either the NTJ or a splinter group. Less is known about Jamathei Millathu Ibrahim, whose members are also believed to have played a role in the bombings.

Security forces have detained 100 people, including foreigners from Syria and Egypt, police said.

A shootout erupted on Friday during a raid on a safe house in Sainthamaruthu in Ampara district on the island’s east coast, killing at least 15 people, including three people with boom jackets and six children, a military front man said.

The maimed included the wife and a daughter of Zahran, his family said.

"Yes, the wife and daughter were maimed in the attack," said Mohammed Hashim Mathaniya, sister of Zahran. "I was asked to come to identify them but I am not sure I can go," she told Rooters from the town of Kattankudy in the east where Zahran was originally based.

Zahran’s driver was detained in a separate raid, according to a police statement. Bomb-making materials, dozens of gelignite sticks and thousands of ball bearings were found in a search of a separate house in the same area, along with Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're 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 the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 banners and uniforms, the military said.

Authorities have said there could be more attacks against religious centers. Last Sunday’s bombings shattered the relative calm that the Buddhist-majority country has seen since a 26-year-long civil war with mostly-Hindu ethnic Tamil separatists ended a decade ago.

The national police chief had refused to accept President Sirisena’s request to step down, two sources told Rooters on Saturday, a further embarrassment for the president.

The security forces’ response has included raids on mosques and homes of people in the city of Negombo where scores died in the bombing of a church.

Suspected mastermind of Sri Lanka attacks spent 'substantial time in India'

[DAWN] Mohammad Zahran Hashim ‐ the suspected criminal mastermind of the Sri Lankan Easter bombings ‐ spent a "substantial amount of time in south India", The Hindu reported on Friday citing a top source within the Sri Lankan military.

"We are looking into the IS angle. We also suspect that some of those radical youth (suspected bombers) were indoctrinated and trained in India, possibly Tamil Nadu," revealed the senior military official, who wished to remain anonymous.

While Indian officials did not state that Hashim had travelled to India, they did point out that he had maintained virtual links with youth believed to be of Indian origin, said The Hindu.

Hashim's ties with south India were also confirmed by Hilmy Ahamed, vice-president of the Moslem Council of Sri Lanka.

Local Muslims say they reported mastermind of Sri Lanka terror attacks years ago

[IsraelTimes] Community leaders in the Muslim-majority town of Kattankudy sounded the alarm about Zahran Hashim after seminary expelled him for ‘hardline’ views; Hashim had dozens of hate-filled sermons uploaded to YouTube

When Hashim sought to influence his fellow students, parents complained to the seminary chiefs and the school asked him to leave.

After a few years away he returned to Kattankudy, founded the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) group, and worked with some former classmates to build a mosque where he could preach and share his rabble-rousing sermons.

“He was a good orator… he would pick and choose words from the Quran and twist and misuse them,” one official at a local mosque told AFP. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was terrified of reprisals from Hashim’s followers.

Hashim’s violent streak attracted police attention three years ago when he brandished a sword during clashes with members of another Muslim organization, the official said.

But just as the net seemed to be closing in, he went into hiding with some followers, operating what appeared to be an NTJ breakaway group that was linked to vandalism attacks on Buddhist statues in Sri Lanka in December.

In 2014, a group called the “Peace Loving Moderate Muslims in Sri Lanka” published a newspaper commentary saying that the NTJ was “fast becoming a cancer” within Sri Lanka’s Muslim community and warned that the group was making mosque attendance compulsory, forcing a strict implementation of Islamic law and making women cover their faces and wear long robes.

According to Hilmy Ahamed, vice-president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, Hashim shifted base to southern India.

“All his videos have been uploaded from India. He uses boats of smugglers to travel back and forth from southern India,” he told AFP.

Though complains were made about Hashim’s videos, YouTube declined to remove them on breach of policy grounds until after the attacks, according to Britain’s Sky News. The video sharing platform told Sky on Thursday it was deleting all of Hashim’s sermons, and other videos mentioning him other than news reports.

India has warned Sri Lanka that suicide attacks were possible weeks before Hashim and the other bombers walked into three churches and three hotels on Easter Sunday.

India’s warning was based on videos and other Islamic State-influenced material seized from raids in southern Tamil Nadu state in 2018.

Islamic state claims attack on east coast city of Sri Lanka
[TWITTER]

Amaq releases picture of two of the two attackers of Kalmunai
[TWITTER]

President of Sri Lanka has taken steps to ban National Thawheed Jammath (NTJ) & Jamathei Millathu Ibraheem (JMI)
[TWITTER]

Navy has arrested a man with a motorcycle & 51 explosive sticks (approx 130g each), 27 ft of safety fuse and 215 detonators in Erakkandi
[TWITTER]

15 killed in raid on Islamist hideout: Sri Lanka police
[TWITTER]

Analysis of Accents of Sri Lanka bombers
[twitter]
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India-Pakistan
Four Al Qaeda men killed in 'encounter'
2015-01-11
[DAWN] Four suspected holy warriors belonging to the Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) were rubbed out in an encounter by a special unit of police in Qayyumabad
...a suburb of Korangi Town, if you know where that is...
, adjacent to the Defence Housing Authority, on Friday morning, according to officials.

They were allegedly planning an attack on a security intelligence officials vehicle that usually passed through the area, said CID counterterrorism unit official-in- charge Raja Umer Khattab.

He said the police received a tip-off that the suspects planning to carry out a gun attack on the vehicle of the intelligence official, followed by a suicide kaboom, were sitting near a truck stand in Qayyumabad. The police conducted a raid there and four suspects were bumped off in an ensuing exchange of fire. One of the dear departed was identified as Sajjad alias Kargil
... three months of unprovoked Pak aggression, over 4000 dead Paks, another victory for India ...
, a commander of the AQIS in 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...
, Mr Khattab said.

The other dead men were identified as Mohammed Hashim, Yasir Arafat and Shamim alias Commando.

The officer said Sajjad had gained expertise in preparing suicide jackets and kaboom. Till 2009, he was a citizen of Bangladesh and a member of the Jamaat-ul-Moslemeen, a religious party in Bangladesh. He shifted to Pakistain following a crackdown against the group there. He got a computerised national identity card issued in his name through an agent in Karachi. He then shifted to Wazoo, where he joined holy warriors namely Asif alias Chotu, Qari Zafar and Umer Farooq, who was recently killed in a drone attack there, said the CID counterterrorism unit head.

Sajjad did his Bayat at the hand of Asim Umer, head of the AQIS in 2014. He was made the commander of the AQIS in Karachi and was tasked by Asim Umer to recruit Bengalis to establish a network for Jehadi activities there, said Mr Khattab.

Sajjad had allegedly killed seven coppers, the officer said, adding that he had also been involved in four blasts through improvised bombs in Karachi.

He had allegedly done full recce of the route of the intelligence officer and was planning to target him when the encounter took place at 7.30am, said the CID officer.

The police claimed to have seized a suicide jacket. Mr Khattab said he had never seen such a suicide jacket since he had started dealing with terror cases in Karachi. A Kalashnikov assault rifle was also seized from the custody of the suspects, he added.
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India-Pakistan
Daniel Pearl case... Remember him?
2014-08-20
[DAWN] The Sindh High Court directed the trial court to expeditiously conclude the trial of a defendant in the murder case of Wall Street Journal news hound Daniel Pearl.

With this direction, a division bench headed by Chief Justice Maqbool Baqar disposed of an application of Mohammed Hashim who had sought the transfer of the murder case of the news hound from an anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad to 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...
Pearl, 38, was kidnapped in Karachi on Jan 23, 2002 while he was working on a story about Islamist Lion of Islams. Later, he was decapitated by his captors.

Omer Saeed Sheikh, who criminal masterminded the murder, was sentenced to death, while Salman Saqib Sheikh, Fahad Naseem and Mohammad Adil were sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2002. But the court had shown seven other accused, including Hashim, as absconders. Hashim was incarcerated
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
 on Sept 6, 2005.

The applicant's counsel, Syed Mehmood Alam Rizvi, submitted before the court that Hashim had been behind bars since his arrest, while the trial court had examined eight prosecution witnesses so far. He said the trial of the accused could not proceed further as the presiding officer of the ATC in Hyderabad, Javed Alam, had been transferred and the newly posted presiding officer of the ATC Abdul Ghafoor Memon had already refused to hear the case when he was the presiding officer of the ATC-II, Karachi.

On Monday, the applicant's counsel informed the court that the trial was in progress as the depositions of the prosecution witnesses were being recorded.

He asked the court to direct the trial court to expeditiously conclude the trial. The court accepted the request and disposed of the application.
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Iraq
Iraq: At least 16 dead in suspected sectarian slayings
2007-10-21
In violence across Iraq on Friday, at least 16 people were killed or found dead in apparent sectarian slayings. In the latest of a series of attacks on Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite political party, gunmen killed the organization's leader in a city south of Baghdad.

Mohammed Hashim, leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council's party operations in Iskandariyah, was shot to death as he walked near his home, police said. Iskandariyah is 50 kilometers south of Baghdad in a mixed Sunni-Shi'ite region.
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India-Pakistan
Taliban talk radio
2006-03-06
Pakistan's North West Frontier Province is always hard to control, but it now poses a new challenge, with scores of illegal radio stations transmitting a message of jihad and sectarian hatred.

This has so alarmed the central government in Islamabad that it is has closed 40 stations in the mountainous region along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Charsadda is a town bristling with the antennae of pirate radios. Mullah Mohammed Hashim, 45, keeps his "radio station" - a car battery, radiator-shaped transmitter and amplifier - in a cupboard. "We are not aggressors, but if we are attacked, then we tell our listeners to be ready for jihad," he declares.

His radio station condemns the actions of Pakistan and US armed forces continuing antial-Qa'eda and Taliban operations in the tribal areas, where Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are believed to be hiding, describing the operations as "part of a wider conspiracy to shed the blood of innocent Muslims". Mullah Hashim uses basic equipment and setting up a radio station costs less than £100.

The radicalising effect of unlicensed stations has been keenly felt in Bara village in the Khyber tribal agency. There, two "FM mullahs", as they were dubbed by the local press, one who followed a Sufic tradition and another, a newcomer who is a disciple of a more austere form of Islam, waged a turf war via their private channels.

After inciting their followers to bloody riots, a jirga (tribal council) ruled last week that both should be expelled from the area. Now the government is under pressure from secular-minded local leaders who doubt the commitment of President Pervez Musharraf's government to crack down on the stations.

"We have closed over 40 stations during the last four months as they are creating differences and sectarian issues," said the information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. "There are still a few preaching jihad but we are closing them down."

The government has launched several of its own radio stations, broadcasting music and more secular programmes.
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Afghanistan/South Asia
'Militants' kill doctor in Ghazni
2005-08-09
Four suspected Taleban militants have attacked a medical clinic killing a doctor and a bystander in central Afghanistan, Afghan officials say. Police reached the area and arrested two of the militants who were injured in the clash, according to Ghazni province governor Haji Sher Allam. A man claiming to speak for the Taleban said they carried out Monday's attack in Andar district. There has been a rise in violence ahead of September's parliamentary elections. "We killed the doctor, Mohammed Hashim, because he was a former communist and he was also spying for the Americans," said Abdul Latif Hakimi, who says he is a Taleban spokesman. Mr Hakimi also told the AFP news agency that the doctor was a candidate in the parliamentary elections.

The UN-supported Joint Electoral Management Body and the interior ministry both deny this. Afghanistan suffers from a severe brain drain and a lack of specialists after decades of unrest. The country is said to have only one doctor per 50,000 inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the US military said in a statement on Tuesday that they had discovered three separate weapons caches in eastern Afghanistan. One cache, discovered near Nangarhar province, included an anti-aircraft gun and hundreds of anti-aircraft rounds. The ammunition was destroyed by explosives experts, the statement said.
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Afghanistan/South Asia
Two Election Workers Killed in Afghanistan
2004-08-08
Gunmen ambushed a convoy carrying election workers into a remote Taliban stronghold, killing two of them, officials said Saturday, bringing to a dozen the number of people slain so far while preparing for the landmark presidential vote. At least 30 militants shot at the jeeps from the joint Afghan-U.N. electoral body on Friday as they passed through Char Cheno, a district of central Uruzgan province, Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan told The Associated Press. Khan said two members of the voter registration team were killed and all four vehicles were destroyed by fire after being strafed with assault-rifle and machine-gun fire. The United Nations identified the victims as Mohammed Hashim, a training officer, and driver Mohammed Hussein. A third worker was missing, it said. The world body "condemns in the strongest terms the murderous attack," spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.
That'll do it.
Khan said guards in the convoy returned fire before the assailants ran away retreated. One Taliban fighter was captured, he said. Uruzgan and neighboring Zabul have been the scene of some of the worst fighting in recent months, and attacks have increased as the nation gears up for its first post-Taliban election on Oct. 9.
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Southeast Asia
Singapore restricts rather than detains new JI suspects
2004-01-15
In an acknowledgement that different degrees of involvement with militancy merit different punishments, the Government named 12 Singaporeans with terrorist links yesterday but went on to give them a relatively light rap on the knuckles. Instead of detaining them under the Internal Security Act — a fate suffered by 37 suspected terrorists over the past two years — the authorities decided to merely place them under Restriction Orders (ROs). They will be free to go about their daily lives and hold a job.
As long as it's not a job as a prayer leader, or teaching at your friendly neighborhood madrassah...
Even their employers have not been alerted to their identities, since these men were only on the periphery of the plots or had dropped out of the outfits altogether. However, these men will not be able to change jobs or addresses without informing the authorities and cannot leave the country without permission. A new condition has also been added to their ROs — religious counselling — that reflects Singapore’s intent to reform the people who once went astray, instead of uniformly detaining everyone who was part of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) or its associate, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (Milf).
Starting to look at MILF a little more clearly, are we? At least in Singapore...
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng described this as “a calibrated and graduated approach”.
"It's an alternative to being severely beaten with a stick and then cleaning toilets in jug for 20 years. Most people seem to find it the more pleasant alternative..."
“We will not hesitate to use the ISA to defend and protect the security of Singapore and Singaporeans. But we do not invoke such powers lightly. In other words, the Government does not use the ISA to simply detain people unnecessarily,” he told reporters yesterday. “With religious counselling, we hope that they will understand the kind of teaching they had received in the past was the wrong one and the counsellors, comprising the religious teachers, will be able to put them right.”
I think any religious counseling should lead them directly to a path of agnosticism, myself, but I may be prejudiced in the matter. Or they could be converted to 7th Day Unitarianism, and sent out knocking on doors for no particular reason...
The lighter riposte to the latest group also underscores how the counter-terror measures have proceeded along different phases. The first batch of detainees consisted of ring-leaders. The next batch were the foot soldiers. As the operation reaches the mopping up stage, the men now facing scrutiny were largely on the fringes of the plot. The background, education level and the types of jobs they held were “not much different” from those of the earlier detainees, said Mr Wong.
"Petty thieves, pimps, shakedown artists, the usual..."
The only difference lay in the degree of involvement. For example, the 10 JI members now facing ROs had attended physical training exercises in Malaysia and even learnt to make fire-bombs. Three of them — Mohd Ashikin Mohd Yusof, Abu Bakar Sedek Hashim and Mohammed Hashim — were also tasked with looking for a warehouse where lorries could be parked, rigged into a truck bomb and then aimed at targets in Singapore. They made little headway and it is understood that they did not even know why they were being asked to look for a warehouse.
"Duh... Why we lookin' for a warehouse, Mohd?"
"Duh... I dunno, Abu."
Some of the others had helped conduct JI camps for children, perhaps without realising that future JI operatives were being talent-spotted there.
"Mohammed! That little brat with the orange turban just beat up all the other kids in his cabin!"
"Sign him up, Mohd!"
As if to illustrate how these pawns could unwittingly be used in plots more chilling than they imagined, JI trainer Arifin Ali — now under ISA detention — used a bus ride to one such camp to take video footage of the area where American military personnel lived. This was later incorporated as part of the video targeting the Yishun MRT shuttle bus service and passed on to an Al Qaeda military commander.

Meanwhile, the two Milf members now facing ROs — Abdul Ghani Omar and Mohd Abdul Rahman — harboured ideas of performing jihad (holy war) in Mindanao.
"Yup. Yup. We're goin' to Mindanao, yup! Yup! An' we're gonna kill infidels, yup! Yup! An' we're gonna get kilt, yup! Yup! An' we're gonna have senny-two virgins, yup! Yup!"
But that is in the past.
"[Sigh.] Mohd, I miss the good old days!"
"Oh, shuddup. You wanna be beat with a stick again?"
More pertinently, the investigators have managed to get their men without causing undue public alarm or affecting communal relations. “Therefore, this investigation has been done discreetly over the last one-and-a-half years,” said Mr Wong. But Singapore is far from relenting in its tough fight against terrorism. For one, the Orders of Detention against the 13 JI members who were arrested in December 2001 were extended recently for another two years, after a review by the ISA advisory board. Explaining the extension, Mr Wong said: “They continue to pose a threat to us and therefore they have to be detained.”
"We intend to keep them in the calaboose until they're no longer a danger to society."
"When's that gonna be?"
"Either when they reach 400 pounds or they're 88 years old."
Nor is the battle over. “That is because there are extremist religious groups in the region that continue to train people for such activities and they also send them for training in training camps. So, we’re not out of the woods and we’ll not be out of the woods for a long time,” said Mr Wong.

Twelve persons issued with Restriction Orders:
Jemaah Islamiyah members:
1. Abu Bakar Sedek Hashim, 53
2. Mohammad Hashim, 42
3. Mohd Ashikin Mohd Yusof, 33
4. Jasmani Bakran, 42
5. Zainodin Ismail, 42
6. Hamim Jaafar, 37
7. Omar Abdul Karim, 40
8. Yusri Mohd Yusof, 40
9. Mohd Yusuf Mohd Noor, 52
10. Mohd Shafiee Osman, 41

Moro Islamic Liberation Front members:
1. Abdul Ghani Omar, 28
2. Mohd Abdul Rahman Baharom, 45
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