*** The amount it costs for one 'smart' bomb - you could run TEN anti-violent jihad websites for YEARS. Our silence is just deafening. MS ***
FROM: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/01/al-qaida-online-inspire-magazine
Al-Qaida puts celebrities and bombs online with Inspire magazine
Website appears to be brainchild of fugitive US-born radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki
Like many new publications it has a vivid mix: news, features, celebrity opinion pieces and a smart digital-era commitment to interactivity – keeping in close touch with the readers. But for the casual browser of the internet, al-Qaida's new English-language online magazine may prove a step or two beyond the pale.
Entitled Inspire, and designed for aspiring jihadis who cannot read Arabic, it offers tips on bomb-making and encryption for beginners as well as heavyweight Qur'anic commentary and crude propaganda.
Inspire appears to be the brainchild of Anwar al-Awlaki, a fugitive US-born radical preacher and key figure in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap), based in Yemen's remote tribal areas – and suggests a drive to recruit terrorists.
But the launch of its summer 2010 edition has so far been troubled. It advertised an article by Awlaki – "May our souls be sacrificed for you" – that failed to appear, as did all but the first three pages of the entire 67-page magazine. The rest of a PDF file posted on friendly websites showed only garbled computer code.
Other missing items, according to the contents index, included a "detailed, yet short, easy-to-read manual" entitled "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom", wittily bylined "the AQ chef". Another article, by "terrrorist", was about "sending and receiving encrypted messages". Nor was there a promised "exclusive interview" with Sheikh Abu Basir, aka Nasser al-Wahayshi, Aqap's leader.
Outside talent should have been represented by an Osama bin Laden piece on "The Way to Save the Earth" and a "Message to the People of Yemen" by his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Inspire's partial appearance prompted suspicion in the jihadi community. Al-Qimmah, a website linked to the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab movement in Somalia, warned anyone who saw the magazine to delete it — without explanation.
It also alerted readers that al-Falluja, a popular jihadi forum, had been taken over – an apparent reference to cyber-manipulation by hostile intelligence services. Inspire's problems could well have been caused by deliberate disruption such as infecting it with a virus.
Inspire looks similar to Aqap's slick Arabic-language webzine Sada al-Malahim (Echoes of Epic Battles) – and is also published by Malahim Media. It is subtitled: "Inspire the Believers". Its authenticity could not be confirmed, but it was not being treated as a spoof by experts.
It appears to have taken on board cutting-edge thinking about the media, urging readers to submit articles, comments and suggestions. "It is our intent for this magazine to be a platform to present the important issues facing the ummah [Islamic nation] today to the wide and dispersed English-speaking Muslim readership," its unnamed editor promised.
Inspire promotes itself as "the first magazine to be issued by the al-Qaida organisation in the English language", although Jihadi Recollections, published in the US last year, was a polished effort.
Awlaki, famous for his online sermons and video messages to Americans – in fluent English – is an official target for assassination by the US government because of his links to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian "underpants bomber" charged with an attack on a Dutch airliner over Detroit last Christmas Day, and to the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad.
Other foreigners are said to have joined Aqap after studying Arabic in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a.
"This magazine is clearly intended for the aspiring jihadist in the US or UK who may be the next Fort Hood murderer or Times Square bomber," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer now with the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen said: "The idea is that Aqap can reach, influence and inspire other like-minded individuals in the west. No longer do these individuals need to travel to Yemen or read Arabic in order to take instructions from Aqap. Now they can just download and read the magazine in English."
Showing posts with label american al qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label american al qaeda. Show all posts
Friday, July 2, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
ATTACKING AMERICA THROUGH HOMEGROWN JIHAD
*** I see so many of these propaganda videos put out there complete with theological justifications of jihad by Muslims living in the West YET I have not seen a SINGLE counter-jihadist video or communique. If you lose the war of ideas, you lose. MS ***
Can al-Qaeda Use Islam to Justify Jihad in the United States? A Debate in Progress
Jack Barclay
Having committed itself to the battle against the “far enemy,” al-Qaeda’s leadership issued in March its most explicit call yet to Muslims living in the United States to independently plan and execute terrorist attacks on American soil. In a video entitled “A Call to Arms,” al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Yahyeh Gadahn claimed such attacks are a religious obligation on all able-bodied Muslims living in the “Zionist-Crusader countries, and the United States in particular” (As-Sahab Media Productions, March 7). Adam Yahyeh Gadahn (real name Adam Pearlman) is a U.S. national who is thought by U.S. government and media sources to be an important personality in al-Qaeda’s propaganda operations. He is believed to be in hiding somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Gadahn seized upon the example of Major Nidal Malik Hassan, the Muslim U.S. Army officer who last November shot dead 13 fellow service personnel at Fort Hood, Texas, as a “role model” to be emulated by Muslims in the United States:
"Nidal Malik Hassan is a pioneer – a trailblazer and role model who has opened the door…and showed the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself amongst the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah and play a part in the defense of Islam and Muslims."
However, ignoring the practical operational challenges facing those with a potential interest in emulating Nidal Hassan, the theological basis for such attacks remains contentious even among Salafi-Jihadist supporters and is thus an issue worthy of greater appreciation by counterterrorism officials. In light of the 9/11 attacks and several subsequent foiled terrorist conspiracies in the United States, it may seem surprising that such debates have not already been concluded within militant Islamist circles. However, these continued doctrinal fissures offer an opportunity for authorities if they can be harnessed as part of strategic communication initiatives contributing to a wider strategy of domestic terrorism risk mitigation.
Gadahn’s Sales-Pitch
Speaking in English, Gadahn reminded Muslims in the United States that it was their individual obligation to wage jihad against the United States and that lack of connections to jihadist groups should not deter them from action. He reminded his viewers; “Jihad is not the personal property, nor the exclusive responsibility of any single group, organization or individual. Instead it is the personal duty of every able-bodied Muslim on the face of the earth.”
He encouraged Muslims to use whatever means were at their immediate disposal to carry out terrorist attacks synchronous with al-Qaeda’s aims and objectives, stressing that prior instruction at foreign training camps was not necessary. He reminded viewers that individuals such as Major Hassan carried out their attacks with the weapons they had at hand and the knowledge and expertise they developed through self-study. He also praised Mir Imal Khasi, who shot dead two CIA employees and wounded three others in Virginia in 1993, and Mohammed Bouyeri, who murdered controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in a knife and gun attack in 2004, as further examples of individuals who had recognized their duty as Muslims and independently decided to take direct action in accordance with these obligations.
Perhaps in an attempt to reduce the perceived threshold for an operational “success” and overcome a would-be jihadist’s fear that their limited, lone-wolf actions might have little strategic consequence, Gadahn said; “We must keep in mind that even apparently unsuccessful attacks on western mass transport systems can bring many cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his companies into bankruptcy.” Gadahn also states:
"He [Nidal Hassan] has reminded us of how much pride and joy a single act of resistance and courage can instill in the hearts of Muslims everywhere. That’s why I am calling on every honest and repentant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance and the United States in particular to prepare to play his duty and role in responding to and repelling the aggression against the enemies of Islam. Unsheathe your sharpened sword and rush to take your place among the defiant champions of Islam."
Loyalty and Disavowal
While Gadahn does not address in detail the theological imperative for domestic “individualized jihad,” he certainly alludes to some of the important doctrinal concepts involved, concepts discussed more fully elsewhere by his al-Qaeda associates and Salafi-Jihadist supporters.
At the heart of the Salafi-Jihadi movement’s doctrinal justification for such attacks, and indeed much of the violence it advocates in the name of defending Islam and Muslims, is their interpretation of the concept of Tawhid, or the oneness of Allah. At the outset, it should be emphasized that Tawhid is a core element of Islam as a monotheistic religion and one intrinsically accepted by virtually all Muslims. It does not explicitly advocate or encourage violence.
However, it is the manner in which Tawhid is not just believed but practiced which is where Muslims of various sects disagree, and it is here that Salafi-Jihadists believe that violence is often obligatory in order to defend Tawhid’s supremacy. For many Salafi Muslims it is impossible to be a true Muslim unless one’s belief in Tawhid is turned into action. However, adherents of more militant interpretations of Salafism contend that the concept requires them to oppose both by word and deed (with violence if necessary) any attempts by Muslims or non-Muslims to establish “partners with God” or systems of governance other than that decreed in the Shari’a. This means that followers of the Salafi-Jihadi manhaj (methodology) are fundamentally opposed to any and all non-Muslim political and legal systems including liberal democracy.
However, to more fully understand the doctrinal basis for Nidal Hassan’s actions, appreciation of a further important Islamic concept is necessary. One of the concepts which gives life to Tawhid in a Muslim’s everyday affairs is “Loyalty and Disavowal” (al-wala w’al-bara - loyalty [towards the believers] and disavowal [of the disbelievers]). This is given particular emphasis in Salafism and a unique interpretation by Salafi-Jihadists. Loyalty and Disavowal teaches a Muslim to show obedience to Allah’s word and disobedience to, and separation from, anything that deviates from it or challenges it. In Major Nidal Hassan’s case, this is likely to have included the U.S. military hierarchy of which he was a part as well as the many non-Muslim service personnel with whom he would have worked.
The Loyalty and Disavowal concept is emphasized indirectly by Gadahn in his video when he says, “This is why I believe that defiant Brother Nidal is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes who, like him, has come to the correct conclusion that true Islam isn’t in a name or a set of rituals but in fact is in total submission and obedience to Allah and total disobedience to and disassociation from the unbelievers [author’s emphasis].”
The importance of Loyalty and Disavowal in guiding Nidal Hassan’s actions was also alluded to in statements and discourse by supporters of the Salafi-Jihadi movement in the West. One noteworthy statement to emerge from this constituency was issued on November 24, 2009 by members of the Salafi-Jihadi web forum Ansar al-Mujahideen (www.ansar1.info). [2] In addition to praising Major Nidal Hassan’s attack, the statement argues that the Quran makes it clear that Muslims should disassociate themselves from “unbelievers” and that in most cases they should leave the United States if they are unable to fully and freely practice their religion. They emphasize that this must include being able to fulfill an obligation to Loyalty and Disavowal. Yemeni-American Salafi-Jihadi ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki said in an interview with Salafi-Jihadi media organization al-Malahim that one of the reasons he left the United States was that the post-9/11 security environment had made it more difficult for Muslims scholars there to preach practices such as Loyalty and Disavowal (Islamicawkening.com, May 23).
Essentially, Salafi-Jihadists argue that Nidal Malik Hassan’s attack was not only a declaration of his devotion to Tawhid but also a practical demonstration of Loyalty and Disavowal, in that he decided to abandon allegiance to all others except Allah, fulfilling in the process what Gadahn and others maintain was his obligation to wage jihad at home as long as his co-religionists were under attack abroad.
A Covenant of Security?
An issue not explored by Gadahn in his video, but which is relevant to the permissibility of domestic jihad in the United States, is the applicability of the Islamic “Covenant of Security” (aqd aman). Many Salafi-Jihadists argue that acts of domestic terrorism by U.S. Muslims are permissible because U.S. policy toward Muslims at home and abroad negates the mutual non-aggression enshrined within that Covenant. However it is here that evidence of some theological disagreement exists.
In this context, the non-aggression pact enshrined in a Covenant of Security relates to the agreement between Muslims living in non-Muslim countries and the governments of those countries. There are rules concerning a Muslim’s behavior under a Covenant of Security but Islamist scholars differ on the specific details, in particular the conditions under which a Covenant should be considered void.
It is most commonly agreed that a Covenant of Security between Muslims living in the West and their non-Muslim hosts applies when:
• A Muslim identifies himself as such in his host country.
• The Muslim maintains Western forms of identification.
• The Muslim receives government benefits.
• A Muslim has entered the country officially, for example on a work or study visa.
In return, the Muslim is forbidden to fight his host or take his host’s money or goods as booty.
However, some Salafi-Jihadi scholars contend that the Covenant is voided when one or more of the following occurs:
• A Muslim in that country is prevented from freely and fully practicing his religion, including the practice of Loyalty and Disavowal.
• A Muslim in that country is subject to harassment, imprisonment, torture, degrading treatment, or unfair levels of intrusive surveillance.
• The Muslim Ummah is threatened by the foreign policies of that country.
The Ansar al-Mujahideen statement specifically mentions this:
"No covenant exists between Muslims in the United States and the U.S. government and army. If there was initially some covenant, that covenant is now void due to the various crimes the United States has committed to break it, from engaging in war with the Muslims, imprisoning Muslims and by the rape and abuse of Muslim men and women, to name but a few."
While many Salafi-Jihadist supporters in the United States and other countries such as the UK would doubtlessly agree that any such Covenant of Security had been voided years ago, there remain significant opposing voices. One point of contention is that, in the view of some scholars, even if an attack is permissible it can only be carried out by an expeditionary group of mujahideen from abroad arriving in the country for such a purpose. In doing so, they would have to act in a clandestine manner which does not require them to adhere to any Covenant – in other words those Muslims already resident in the country are not permitted to participate directly. Some highly respected Salafi-Jihadist scholars such as the UK-based Syrian Shaykh Abu Basir al-Tartusi have issued important judgments stating this point.
Some radical scholars disagree with al-Tartusi’s position, arguing that under present conditions where Muslims are under attack worldwide and when Muslims living in the West are now subject to perceived persecution, it is now obligatory for all Muslims to fight regardless of where they are. Shaykh Omar Bakri Muhammad, former spiritual leader of the UK-based group al-Muhajiroun (The Émigrés) said in early 2005 that new anti-terrorism legislation which he claimed was designed to restrict Muslims’ right to freedom of expression was among the reasons why the Covenant of Security between the UK and the Muslims living there should be considered void (See Times Online, July 24, 2005; Asia Times, June 12, 2008).
However, this widely-held opinion within Salafi-Jihadist circles regarding obligatory jihad is contradicted by scholars such as al-Tartusi. In his book On the Covenant of Security in Islam, al-Tartusi lists extensive proofs from the Quran and Hadith to underscore what in this context is a critical ruling – namely that it is possible for Muslims to live under a Covenant of Security in a non-Muslim country even if the government of that country is engaged in transgressions against other Muslims abroad. [3]
Significance for Counterterrorism
While the depth of such doctrinal disagreements may appear slight in some cases, they nevertheless represent a potential wedge issue that might be exploited by strategic messaging to cast doubt on the religious permissibility of the types of attacks al-Qaeda is now directly encouraging. For groups motivated primarily by a radical religious imperative, doctrinal legitimacy of a proposed action is critical.
Gadahn spends a notable amount of time attempting to persuade viewers to shun the opinions of U.S. Muslim scholars who argue that jihad in present circumstances is illegitimate. He warns; “No fatwa in this world can possibly justify breaking the clear and unambiguous and agreed upon laws of the Shari’a like the law forbidding the killing of Muslims or the law ordering loyalty to the believers and disloyalty to the unbelievers.”
MS: I would respond that Gadahn is himself giving a fatwa for which he is not qualified. I would respond that the obligation is for the people of a place to follow the scholars who live, work and worship in that place - not some Grand Wizard pontificating from somewhere over there.)
Both Gadahn and Western Salafi-Jihadist supporters appear to acknowledge in their statements that Muslims considering waging a domestic jihad are likely to encounter resistance from their co-religionists and rulings against such actions by Muslim scholars. They claim that carrying out such attacks is a religious obligation that no amount of fatwas (Islamic legal rulings) can overturn – perhaps a tacit acknowledgement that competing religious rulings still have enormous potential to damage al-Qaeda’s theological justification for such attacks and frustrate their attempts to galvanize considerable numbers of U.S. Muslims to raise arms against their government.
Jack Barclay is an independent consultant on the use of strategic communication to counter violent extremism. He is based in the United Kingdom, where he holds a Fellowship in Strategic Communication at the UK Defence Academy.
Notes
1. For Gadahn, see U.S. Department of State; http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=gadahn&language=english
2. A copy of the statement regarding the Fort Hood shootings can be found at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefa_ansar1109.pdf
3. A copy of translated excerpts of this book can be found at the web site http://www.en.altartosi.com/
Can al-Qaeda Use Islam to Justify Jihad in the United States? A Debate in Progress
Jack Barclay
Having committed itself to the battle against the “far enemy,” al-Qaeda’s leadership issued in March its most explicit call yet to Muslims living in the United States to independently plan and execute terrorist attacks on American soil. In a video entitled “A Call to Arms,” al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Yahyeh Gadahn claimed such attacks are a religious obligation on all able-bodied Muslims living in the “Zionist-Crusader countries, and the United States in particular” (As-Sahab Media Productions, March 7). Adam Yahyeh Gadahn (real name Adam Pearlman) is a U.S. national who is thought by U.S. government and media sources to be an important personality in al-Qaeda’s propaganda operations. He is believed to be in hiding somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Gadahn seized upon the example of Major Nidal Malik Hassan, the Muslim U.S. Army officer who last November shot dead 13 fellow service personnel at Fort Hood, Texas, as a “role model” to be emulated by Muslims in the United States:
"Nidal Malik Hassan is a pioneer – a trailblazer and role model who has opened the door…and showed the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself amongst the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah and play a part in the defense of Islam and Muslims."
However, ignoring the practical operational challenges facing those with a potential interest in emulating Nidal Hassan, the theological basis for such attacks remains contentious even among Salafi-Jihadist supporters and is thus an issue worthy of greater appreciation by counterterrorism officials. In light of the 9/11 attacks and several subsequent foiled terrorist conspiracies in the United States, it may seem surprising that such debates have not already been concluded within militant Islamist circles. However, these continued doctrinal fissures offer an opportunity for authorities if they can be harnessed as part of strategic communication initiatives contributing to a wider strategy of domestic terrorism risk mitigation.
Gadahn’s Sales-Pitch
Speaking in English, Gadahn reminded Muslims in the United States that it was their individual obligation to wage jihad against the United States and that lack of connections to jihadist groups should not deter them from action. He reminded his viewers; “Jihad is not the personal property, nor the exclusive responsibility of any single group, organization or individual. Instead it is the personal duty of every able-bodied Muslim on the face of the earth.”
He encouraged Muslims to use whatever means were at their immediate disposal to carry out terrorist attacks synchronous with al-Qaeda’s aims and objectives, stressing that prior instruction at foreign training camps was not necessary. He reminded viewers that individuals such as Major Hassan carried out their attacks with the weapons they had at hand and the knowledge and expertise they developed through self-study. He also praised Mir Imal Khasi, who shot dead two CIA employees and wounded three others in Virginia in 1993, and Mohammed Bouyeri, who murdered controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in a knife and gun attack in 2004, as further examples of individuals who had recognized their duty as Muslims and independently decided to take direct action in accordance with these obligations.
Perhaps in an attempt to reduce the perceived threshold for an operational “success” and overcome a would-be jihadist’s fear that their limited, lone-wolf actions might have little strategic consequence, Gadahn said; “We must keep in mind that even apparently unsuccessful attacks on western mass transport systems can bring many cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his companies into bankruptcy.” Gadahn also states:
"He [Nidal Hassan] has reminded us of how much pride and joy a single act of resistance and courage can instill in the hearts of Muslims everywhere. That’s why I am calling on every honest and repentant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance and the United States in particular to prepare to play his duty and role in responding to and repelling the aggression against the enemies of Islam. Unsheathe your sharpened sword and rush to take your place among the defiant champions of Islam."
Loyalty and Disavowal
While Gadahn does not address in detail the theological imperative for domestic “individualized jihad,” he certainly alludes to some of the important doctrinal concepts involved, concepts discussed more fully elsewhere by his al-Qaeda associates and Salafi-Jihadist supporters.
At the heart of the Salafi-Jihadi movement’s doctrinal justification for such attacks, and indeed much of the violence it advocates in the name of defending Islam and Muslims, is their interpretation of the concept of Tawhid, or the oneness of Allah. At the outset, it should be emphasized that Tawhid is a core element of Islam as a monotheistic religion and one intrinsically accepted by virtually all Muslims. It does not explicitly advocate or encourage violence.
However, it is the manner in which Tawhid is not just believed but practiced which is where Muslims of various sects disagree, and it is here that Salafi-Jihadists believe that violence is often obligatory in order to defend Tawhid’s supremacy. For many Salafi Muslims it is impossible to be a true Muslim unless one’s belief in Tawhid is turned into action. However, adherents of more militant interpretations of Salafism contend that the concept requires them to oppose both by word and deed (with violence if necessary) any attempts by Muslims or non-Muslims to establish “partners with God” or systems of governance other than that decreed in the Shari’a. This means that followers of the Salafi-Jihadi manhaj (methodology) are fundamentally opposed to any and all non-Muslim political and legal systems including liberal democracy.
However, to more fully understand the doctrinal basis for Nidal Hassan’s actions, appreciation of a further important Islamic concept is necessary. One of the concepts which gives life to Tawhid in a Muslim’s everyday affairs is “Loyalty and Disavowal” (al-wala w’al-bara - loyalty [towards the believers] and disavowal [of the disbelievers]). This is given particular emphasis in Salafism and a unique interpretation by Salafi-Jihadists. Loyalty and Disavowal teaches a Muslim to show obedience to Allah’s word and disobedience to, and separation from, anything that deviates from it or challenges it. In Major Nidal Hassan’s case, this is likely to have included the U.S. military hierarchy of which he was a part as well as the many non-Muslim service personnel with whom he would have worked.
The Loyalty and Disavowal concept is emphasized indirectly by Gadahn in his video when he says, “This is why I believe that defiant Brother Nidal is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes who, like him, has come to the correct conclusion that true Islam isn’t in a name or a set of rituals but in fact is in total submission and obedience to Allah and total disobedience to and disassociation from the unbelievers [author’s emphasis].”
The importance of Loyalty and Disavowal in guiding Nidal Hassan’s actions was also alluded to in statements and discourse by supporters of the Salafi-Jihadi movement in the West. One noteworthy statement to emerge from this constituency was issued on November 24, 2009 by members of the Salafi-Jihadi web forum Ansar al-Mujahideen (www.ansar1.info). [2] In addition to praising Major Nidal Hassan’s attack, the statement argues that the Quran makes it clear that Muslims should disassociate themselves from “unbelievers” and that in most cases they should leave the United States if they are unable to fully and freely practice their religion. They emphasize that this must include being able to fulfill an obligation to Loyalty and Disavowal. Yemeni-American Salafi-Jihadi ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki said in an interview with Salafi-Jihadi media organization al-Malahim that one of the reasons he left the United States was that the post-9/11 security environment had made it more difficult for Muslims scholars there to preach practices such as Loyalty and Disavowal (Islamicawkening.com, May 23).
Essentially, Salafi-Jihadists argue that Nidal Malik Hassan’s attack was not only a declaration of his devotion to Tawhid but also a practical demonstration of Loyalty and Disavowal, in that he decided to abandon allegiance to all others except Allah, fulfilling in the process what Gadahn and others maintain was his obligation to wage jihad at home as long as his co-religionists were under attack abroad.
A Covenant of Security?
An issue not explored by Gadahn in his video, but which is relevant to the permissibility of domestic jihad in the United States, is the applicability of the Islamic “Covenant of Security” (aqd aman). Many Salafi-Jihadists argue that acts of domestic terrorism by U.S. Muslims are permissible because U.S. policy toward Muslims at home and abroad negates the mutual non-aggression enshrined within that Covenant. However it is here that evidence of some theological disagreement exists.
In this context, the non-aggression pact enshrined in a Covenant of Security relates to the agreement between Muslims living in non-Muslim countries and the governments of those countries. There are rules concerning a Muslim’s behavior under a Covenant of Security but Islamist scholars differ on the specific details, in particular the conditions under which a Covenant should be considered void.
It is most commonly agreed that a Covenant of Security between Muslims living in the West and their non-Muslim hosts applies when:
• A Muslim identifies himself as such in his host country.
• The Muslim maintains Western forms of identification.
• The Muslim receives government benefits.
• A Muslim has entered the country officially, for example on a work or study visa.
In return, the Muslim is forbidden to fight his host or take his host’s money or goods as booty.
However, some Salafi-Jihadi scholars contend that the Covenant is voided when one or more of the following occurs:
• A Muslim in that country is prevented from freely and fully practicing his religion, including the practice of Loyalty and Disavowal.
• A Muslim in that country is subject to harassment, imprisonment, torture, degrading treatment, or unfair levels of intrusive surveillance.
• The Muslim Ummah is threatened by the foreign policies of that country.
The Ansar al-Mujahideen statement specifically mentions this:
"No covenant exists between Muslims in the United States and the U.S. government and army. If there was initially some covenant, that covenant is now void due to the various crimes the United States has committed to break it, from engaging in war with the Muslims, imprisoning Muslims and by the rape and abuse of Muslim men and women, to name but a few."
While many Salafi-Jihadist supporters in the United States and other countries such as the UK would doubtlessly agree that any such Covenant of Security had been voided years ago, there remain significant opposing voices. One point of contention is that, in the view of some scholars, even if an attack is permissible it can only be carried out by an expeditionary group of mujahideen from abroad arriving in the country for such a purpose. In doing so, they would have to act in a clandestine manner which does not require them to adhere to any Covenant – in other words those Muslims already resident in the country are not permitted to participate directly. Some highly respected Salafi-Jihadist scholars such as the UK-based Syrian Shaykh Abu Basir al-Tartusi have issued important judgments stating this point.
Some radical scholars disagree with al-Tartusi’s position, arguing that under present conditions where Muslims are under attack worldwide and when Muslims living in the West are now subject to perceived persecution, it is now obligatory for all Muslims to fight regardless of where they are. Shaykh Omar Bakri Muhammad, former spiritual leader of the UK-based group al-Muhajiroun (The Émigrés) said in early 2005 that new anti-terrorism legislation which he claimed was designed to restrict Muslims’ right to freedom of expression was among the reasons why the Covenant of Security between the UK and the Muslims living there should be considered void (See Times Online, July 24, 2005; Asia Times, June 12, 2008).
However, this widely-held opinion within Salafi-Jihadist circles regarding obligatory jihad is contradicted by scholars such as al-Tartusi. In his book On the Covenant of Security in Islam, al-Tartusi lists extensive proofs from the Quran and Hadith to underscore what in this context is a critical ruling – namely that it is possible for Muslims to live under a Covenant of Security in a non-Muslim country even if the government of that country is engaged in transgressions against other Muslims abroad. [3]
Significance for Counterterrorism
While the depth of such doctrinal disagreements may appear slight in some cases, they nevertheless represent a potential wedge issue that might be exploited by strategic messaging to cast doubt on the religious permissibility of the types of attacks al-Qaeda is now directly encouraging. For groups motivated primarily by a radical religious imperative, doctrinal legitimacy of a proposed action is critical.
Gadahn spends a notable amount of time attempting to persuade viewers to shun the opinions of U.S. Muslim scholars who argue that jihad in present circumstances is illegitimate. He warns; “No fatwa in this world can possibly justify breaking the clear and unambiguous and agreed upon laws of the Shari’a like the law forbidding the killing of Muslims or the law ordering loyalty to the believers and disloyalty to the unbelievers.”
MS: I would respond that Gadahn is himself giving a fatwa for which he is not qualified. I would respond that the obligation is for the people of a place to follow the scholars who live, work and worship in that place - not some Grand Wizard pontificating from somewhere over there.)
Both Gadahn and Western Salafi-Jihadist supporters appear to acknowledge in their statements that Muslims considering waging a domestic jihad are likely to encounter resistance from their co-religionists and rulings against such actions by Muslim scholars. They claim that carrying out such attacks is a religious obligation that no amount of fatwas (Islamic legal rulings) can overturn – perhaps a tacit acknowledgement that competing religious rulings still have enormous potential to damage al-Qaeda’s theological justification for such attacks and frustrate their attempts to galvanize considerable numbers of U.S. Muslims to raise arms against their government.
Jack Barclay is an independent consultant on the use of strategic communication to counter violent extremism. He is based in the United Kingdom, where he holds a Fellowship in Strategic Communication at the UK Defence Academy.
Notes
1. For Gadahn, see U.S. Department of State; http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=gadahn&language=english
2. A copy of the statement regarding the Fort Hood shootings can be found at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefa_ansar1109.pdf
3. A copy of translated excerpts of this book can be found at the web site http://www.en.altartosi.com/
Saturday, June 12, 2010
OBAMA & HOMEGROWN TERROR
*** Mr. President: I can help you whenever you're ready. MS ***
FROM: http://services.newsweek.com/id/238688?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsweek%2FTopNews+%28UPDATED+-+Newsweek+Top+Stories%29
The car bomb was a dud. But if Faisal Shahzad had taken just a few more hours of lessons in the art of bomb making, available on the Internet, there might still be a crater in Times Square. Law-enforcement officials are worried that the next homegrown terrorist will be a little smarter and luckier. "Somebody's going to get through," says a former undercover cop who has worked closely with counterterror operations in New York (and, like other police and intelligence officials quoted in this article, refused to speak for the record). Since the beginning of 2009, at least 25 American citizens have been arrested on federal charges related to Islamist extremism. "These cases clearly suggest that an increasing number of U.S. citizens, both native-born and naturalized citizens, appear to be getting involved in the terrorist cause," says Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. "It's not an encouraging trend."
In New York City, there is a palpable sense of impending danger, if not inevitability, among senior law-enforcement officials. In Washington, national security officials already are worrying about the overreaction that could follow a terrorist attack. Politicians will demand severe new laws—and revenge—and accuse the Obama administration of going soft on terrorism. The cycle of repression and violence will beget more violence, and the "long war" against terrorism will enter a new and darker phase, which is just what terror organizations want.
All of which raises a dilemma for Obama and his advisers: how do you aggressively fight terror at home and abroad without exacerbating the very conditions that fuel the jihadist cause? This problem is particularly acute at a time when many new jihadists are "self-recruiting." Some alienated Muslims decide to join a terrorist outfit after reading or listening to English-speaking Qaeda ideologues on the Internet, or after downloading videos showing the effects of American military actions. Yet most Muslim Americans have no interest in extremist ideology and don't want to be stereotyped. The very act of spying on them, or treating them as potential enemies, could make matters worse.
Overseas, the Obama administration clearly has no inclination to stop trying to kill Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or even in Yemen or Somalia.
During Obama's 17 months in office, the CIA and the military have launched nearly 100 drone attacks against targets in the wilds of Waziristan and other Taliban and Qaeda hideouts. The total is more than twice as many as President Bush ordered during his entire second term. Attacks on remote sites have also killed civilians: a cruise-missile strike in Yemen in December eliminated 14 terrorists but also killed 41 other people, including 14 women and 21 children, according to Amnesty International. But along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, "targeted killing" by drones has become increasingly effective. Anyone serving as the No. 3 in Al Qaeda, working under Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, has particular cause for concern. American drones have killed several of these Qaeda operations chiefs, most recently (in late May) Sheik Saeed Al-Masri, one of the founders of Al Qaeda and the terror organization's top financial officer.
Nonetheless, there is some evidence that these remote-control attacks risk what the intelligence community calls "blowback." Both Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi, an earlier American-resident terrorist who was arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subways, told investigators they were at least partly motivated by a desire to seek revenge for drone strikes. Any military action in a foreign country produces new incentives for the enemy. Jihadi sources in Afghanistan told NEWSWEEK's Sami Yousafzai that the Taliban had no interest in attacking America directly—until the U.S. military started taking out their leaders (and sometimes their families). "The Americans are attacking us in our country, our villages, and our houses, so why shouldn't we attack them in their country?" asks a senior Taliban intelligence officer, who did not want to be named for security reasons. Taliban chat rooms claim to be receiving hundreds of offers from Western Muslims seeking to bring jihad to America.
Revenge is only one motivation, and may not be the most important one, for jihadist wannabes in the United States. Investigators interviewed by NEWSWEEK, as well as court affidavits, suggest a familiar pattern in the evolution of a self-recruited terrorist. The process usually starts with second or third generation Americans of Muslim descent or more recent converts (rarely first-generation immigrants, who tend to be patriotic about their new country, although Shahzad is an exception). They are disaffected, usually middle-class, but often have trouble finding or holding a good job, and they're sometimes eager to show up or rebel against their more successful fathers. They encounter a charismatic Islamic fundamentalist and begin cruising the Internet, where there is no shortage of propaganda videos showing Muslims suffering at the hands of wicked Americans—and brave young jihadists fighting back. The videos are becoming slicker—and sicker. Here's one from Assadullah al-Shishini, an Internet balladeer believed to be living somewhere in Pennsylvania, delivered rap style:
When the Jew's blood reds my knife
Then my life is free of strife
Hiding behind rocks and trees
I'll find them with greatest ease
Throw them in the ovens hot
Soap and lampshades sold and bought
Made of the Jews that we shot
Mercy's something I have not.
The two New Jersey men arrested two weeks ago and charged with plotting to kill and maim people outside the United States are vivid case histories. Mohamed Alessa, 20, of Palestinian descent, and Carlos Almonte, 24, a Muslim convert from a family of Dominican immigrants, were often in trouble in high school (where Alessa, for one, talked about mutilating homosexuals, subordinating women under the name of Islam, and blowing up the school). They began collecting combat gear like night-vision goggles and training with paintball guns, while listening to the Internet raps of Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, the Alabama-born spokesman for Al-Shabab, a jihadist group in Somalia. After a tip, an undercover New York City cop befriended the men and began recording their conversations. They vowed to go to Somalia and become martyrs—or possibly to bring jihad back to America. "Only way I would come back here is if I was in the land of jihad and the leader ordered me to come back here and do something here. Ah, I love that," Alessa allegedly declared in one bugged conversation.
At the center of the debate over how to counter Islamic radicalization is a longtime intelligence mandarin, John Brennan, the president's top counterterror adviser. A former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, Brennan has been warning against going overboard in the war on terror by undermining the American judicial system.
After Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underpants bomber, was read his Miranda rights and retained a lawyer, a hue and cry went up from conservatives. Not a few lawmakers are demanding that terror suspects be locked away and interrogated for a few days or weeks before getting to see their lawyers. At the urging of the White House, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has suggested expanding an exception to reading terror suspects their rights as soon as they're detained. But other administration officials, including Brennan, are pushing back, wary of denying anyone their rights under the Constitution. "Brennan and others are keenly aware of the dilemma between aggressive offensive action and not taking steps that could create new [homegrown terrorists]," says a senior administration official, who did not want to be named discussing White House deliberations.
Of course, top officials know what will happen if a homegrown terrorist strikes inside the United States. The Obama administration will come under tremendous pressure to hit back (somehow, somewhere) while cracking down at home. The FBI may begin routinely bugging mosques. But finding self-recruited terrorists in America's scattered Islamic community is very difficult. All the experts emphasize that law enforcement needs to work with the local Muslim citizenry to head off potential terrorists.
The Obama administration is very sensitive to avoid alienating Muslims. In a draft of a report sponsored by the State and Defense departments and the RAND Corporation on dealing with the terrorist threat, the title was changed: the term "radical Islamism" became "violent extremism." Obama officials even resist having a formal public strategy for dealing with Islamic radicalization because they don't want to label the Muslim community as a security problem.
In a recent speech, Brennan all but predicted that the United States would be attacked soon. "We must be honest with ourselves," he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies on May 26. "No nation, no matter how powerful, can prevent every threat from coming to fruition." He added that the risks are greater in the U.S. because the terrorists could take advantage of America's free and open society and rely on lone wolves and self-radicalized terrorists. But if an attack comes, said Brennan, we have to "resist succumbing to overreaction." Americans have been down that road before; it will be hard for them to resist going there again.
FROM: http://services.newsweek.com/id/238688?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsweek%2FTopNews+%28UPDATED+-+Newsweek+Top+Stories%29
The car bomb was a dud. But if Faisal Shahzad had taken just a few more hours of lessons in the art of bomb making, available on the Internet, there might still be a crater in Times Square. Law-enforcement officials are worried that the next homegrown terrorist will be a little smarter and luckier. "Somebody's going to get through," says a former undercover cop who has worked closely with counterterror operations in New York (and, like other police and intelligence officials quoted in this article, refused to speak for the record). Since the beginning of 2009, at least 25 American citizens have been arrested on federal charges related to Islamist extremism. "These cases clearly suggest that an increasing number of U.S. citizens, both native-born and naturalized citizens, appear to be getting involved in the terrorist cause," says Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. "It's not an encouraging trend."
In New York City, there is a palpable sense of impending danger, if not inevitability, among senior law-enforcement officials. In Washington, national security officials already are worrying about the overreaction that could follow a terrorist attack. Politicians will demand severe new laws—and revenge—and accuse the Obama administration of going soft on terrorism. The cycle of repression and violence will beget more violence, and the "long war" against terrorism will enter a new and darker phase, which is just what terror organizations want.
All of which raises a dilemma for Obama and his advisers: how do you aggressively fight terror at home and abroad without exacerbating the very conditions that fuel the jihadist cause? This problem is particularly acute at a time when many new jihadists are "self-recruiting." Some alienated Muslims decide to join a terrorist outfit after reading or listening to English-speaking Qaeda ideologues on the Internet, or after downloading videos showing the effects of American military actions. Yet most Muslim Americans have no interest in extremist ideology and don't want to be stereotyped. The very act of spying on them, or treating them as potential enemies, could make matters worse.
Overseas, the Obama administration clearly has no inclination to stop trying to kill Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or even in Yemen or Somalia.
During Obama's 17 months in office, the CIA and the military have launched nearly 100 drone attacks against targets in the wilds of Waziristan and other Taliban and Qaeda hideouts. The total is more than twice as many as President Bush ordered during his entire second term. Attacks on remote sites have also killed civilians: a cruise-missile strike in Yemen in December eliminated 14 terrorists but also killed 41 other people, including 14 women and 21 children, according to Amnesty International. But along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, "targeted killing" by drones has become increasingly effective. Anyone serving as the No. 3 in Al Qaeda, working under Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, has particular cause for concern. American drones have killed several of these Qaeda operations chiefs, most recently (in late May) Sheik Saeed Al-Masri, one of the founders of Al Qaeda and the terror organization's top financial officer.
Nonetheless, there is some evidence that these remote-control attacks risk what the intelligence community calls "blowback." Both Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi, an earlier American-resident terrorist who was arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subways, told investigators they were at least partly motivated by a desire to seek revenge for drone strikes. Any military action in a foreign country produces new incentives for the enemy. Jihadi sources in Afghanistan told NEWSWEEK's Sami Yousafzai that the Taliban had no interest in attacking America directly—until the U.S. military started taking out their leaders (and sometimes their families). "The Americans are attacking us in our country, our villages, and our houses, so why shouldn't we attack them in their country?" asks a senior Taliban intelligence officer, who did not want to be named for security reasons. Taliban chat rooms claim to be receiving hundreds of offers from Western Muslims seeking to bring jihad to America.
Revenge is only one motivation, and may not be the most important one, for jihadist wannabes in the United States. Investigators interviewed by NEWSWEEK, as well as court affidavits, suggest a familiar pattern in the evolution of a self-recruited terrorist. The process usually starts with second or third generation Americans of Muslim descent or more recent converts (rarely first-generation immigrants, who tend to be patriotic about their new country, although Shahzad is an exception). They are disaffected, usually middle-class, but often have trouble finding or holding a good job, and they're sometimes eager to show up or rebel against their more successful fathers. They encounter a charismatic Islamic fundamentalist and begin cruising the Internet, where there is no shortage of propaganda videos showing Muslims suffering at the hands of wicked Americans—and brave young jihadists fighting back. The videos are becoming slicker—and sicker. Here's one from Assadullah al-Shishini, an Internet balladeer believed to be living somewhere in Pennsylvania, delivered rap style:
When the Jew's blood reds my knife
Then my life is free of strife
Hiding behind rocks and trees
I'll find them with greatest ease
Throw them in the ovens hot
Soap and lampshades sold and bought
Made of the Jews that we shot
Mercy's something I have not.
The two New Jersey men arrested two weeks ago and charged with plotting to kill and maim people outside the United States are vivid case histories. Mohamed Alessa, 20, of Palestinian descent, and Carlos Almonte, 24, a Muslim convert from a family of Dominican immigrants, were often in trouble in high school (where Alessa, for one, talked about mutilating homosexuals, subordinating women under the name of Islam, and blowing up the school). They began collecting combat gear like night-vision goggles and training with paintball guns, while listening to the Internet raps of Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, the Alabama-born spokesman for Al-Shabab, a jihadist group in Somalia. After a tip, an undercover New York City cop befriended the men and began recording their conversations. They vowed to go to Somalia and become martyrs—or possibly to bring jihad back to America. "Only way I would come back here is if I was in the land of jihad and the leader ordered me to come back here and do something here. Ah, I love that," Alessa allegedly declared in one bugged conversation.
At the center of the debate over how to counter Islamic radicalization is a longtime intelligence mandarin, John Brennan, the president's top counterterror adviser. A former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, Brennan has been warning against going overboard in the war on terror by undermining the American judicial system.
After Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underpants bomber, was read his Miranda rights and retained a lawyer, a hue and cry went up from conservatives. Not a few lawmakers are demanding that terror suspects be locked away and interrogated for a few days or weeks before getting to see their lawyers. At the urging of the White House, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has suggested expanding an exception to reading terror suspects their rights as soon as they're detained. But other administration officials, including Brennan, are pushing back, wary of denying anyone their rights under the Constitution. "Brennan and others are keenly aware of the dilemma between aggressive offensive action and not taking steps that could create new [homegrown terrorists]," says a senior administration official, who did not want to be named discussing White House deliberations.
Of course, top officials know what will happen if a homegrown terrorist strikes inside the United States. The Obama administration will come under tremendous pressure to hit back (somehow, somewhere) while cracking down at home. The FBI may begin routinely bugging mosques. But finding self-recruited terrorists in America's scattered Islamic community is very difficult. All the experts emphasize that law enforcement needs to work with the local Muslim citizenry to head off potential terrorists.
The Obama administration is very sensitive to avoid alienating Muslims. In a draft of a report sponsored by the State and Defense departments and the RAND Corporation on dealing with the terrorist threat, the title was changed: the term "radical Islamism" became "violent extremism." Obama officials even resist having a formal public strategy for dealing with Islamic radicalization because they don't want to label the Muslim community as a security problem.
In a recent speech, Brennan all but predicted that the United States would be attacked soon. "We must be honest with ourselves," he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies on May 26. "No nation, no matter how powerful, can prevent every threat from coming to fruition." He added that the risks are greater in the U.S. because the terrorists could take advantage of America's free and open society and rely on lone wolves and self-radicalized terrorists. But if an attack comes, said Brennan, we have to "resist succumbing to overreaction." Americans have been down that road before; it will be hard for them to resist going there again.
TERROR SUSPECTS - TROUBLED TEENS
*** Counter culture syndrome? MS ***
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/nyregion/12suspects.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
NORTH BERGEN, N.J. — One was a spoiled child so prone to fits of rage — fights, screamed insults, threats — that his parents began taking him to psychiatrists at age 6 and medicating him in a vain struggle to control his moods. By their count, his short fuse and incendiary tongue forced him to change schools no fewer than 10 times.
The other was arrested three times in less than four months for petty crimes, and seemed like an aimless youth — until he developed a passion for a strict version of Islam that shocked and alienated his Dominican family. Within a few years, he was posting extremist views on the Internet and assailing the United States while predicting its downfall.
Their stories began like many others: troubled teenagers who scare and mystify their neighbors; run-ins with the police while still in high school; parents who cannot compete with the sense of belonging or purpose their boys find elsewhere.
“Of course we tried everything we could,” said Nadia Alessa, mother of Mohamed M. Alessa, the one so given to angry outbursts. “We couldn’t just keep him at home.”
The next chapter in such tales often charts a descent into drugs or gangs, but Mr. Alessa, 20, and Carlos E. Almonte, 24, who both grew up in the New Jersey suburbs, apparently had other plans. They were arrested Saturday as they prepared to fly separately to Egypt — and, the authorities say, to join a militant group in Somalia and kill non-Muslims.
How they went from troublemakers to terrorism suspects may never be understood. But conversations with many people who have known them — including the first interviews given by Mr. Alessa’s parents since the arrest — make clear that both men were struggling for years, constantly at odds with authority and their immigrant parents. Law enforcement officials had been keeping tabs on them for nearly four years.
Many of their peers dismissed them as hapless blowhards, more pathetic than perilous; friends said they liked to play Ping-Pong, or go into Manhattan and hang out at a halal restaurant. Yet there they are, in transcripts of secretly recorded conversations, talking about shooting and beheading people, and sending American troops home “sliced up in 1,000 pieces.”
Mr. Alessa’s parents, Palestinian immigrants, are Muslim, but Ms. Alessa was at a loss to explain her only son’s recent transformation. She recalled asking why he was growing a beard: “He said real men grow their beards.”
‘Now Everyone Hates Us’
After years of building a life in the United States — an apartment in North Bergen, a deli in nearby Bergen County where Mr. Alessa’s father, Mahmood, is quick to extend credit to customers, who call him “Pops” — the parents now see it all endangered by a son they do not understand.
“Sixteen years we’ve lived on that street,” Ms. Alessa said. “Everyone loved us. Now everyone hates us.”
A neighbor who has known Mohamed most of his life, Wilmer Precilla, said the young man alternated between craving confrontation and acceptance, making derogatory remarks about Hispanics in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood, then trying unsuccessfully to join a Dominican gang, Patria. “He was always trying to be more gangster than everyone else,” Mr. Precilla said.
Family friends watched Mohamed scream at his mother, smash up his father’s car and, in anger, knock the food off a shelf in the deli. When his shaken parents tried to take him to therapists, he screamed, “I’m not crazy.” At times he took medication for anger management, but about three years ago, his mother said, he stopped taking it and stopped seeing therapists.
Mr. Alessa’s friends, who knew his temper, told him he needed medical help — an idea he rejected. His parents gave him the latest clothes and cellphones, friends and neighbors recalled. One said he acted like a typical “American rich kid,” even though his parents were not wealthy.
“He was a spoiled kid,” Ms. Alessa conceded. “He acted like a teenager. He thought he was a king.”
She said Mohamed attended the local public elementary school, two Catholic grade schools, a boarding school in Connecticut, a school for troubled youth, three Muslim schools and two public high schools, repeatedly getting into trouble for fighting or mouthing off.
At the two public high schools, North Bergen and KAS Prep, Mr. Alessa made an escalating series of threats against students and staff members through 2005 and 2006, saying that he would blow up the school, mutilate gays and punish women who were not subordinate to men, according to officials granted anonymity to discuss confidential matters. Both schools alerted the Department of Homeland Security.
As a 10th grader at North Bergen High, he had to receive his lessons at a local public library under the eye of a security guard, said Paul Swibinski, a school spokesman, because “administrators felt that his presence in school posed a safety threat to other students and staff.”
In those years, neighbors say, the police were called to the Alessa home several times. The North Bergen police declined to give details, noting that juvenile records were not public, but Lt. Frank Cannella said: “He was known to us, I can tell you that much.”
The Suspects Meet
Around 2005, when he was 14 or 15, Mr. Alessa met Mr. Almonte, who lived in Elmwood Park, but was spending much of his time in North Bergen, 10 miles away. The two hung out with a group of young men who called themselves the PLO. Mr. Alessa was not particularly religious then, but Mr. Almonte, a recent convert to Islam, was becoming more so.
Growing up, Carlos Almonte had a less turbulent childhood. But by the time he was 18, he, too, was running afoul of the law.
In May 2004, with a month left in his senior year at Elmwood Park Memorial High School, Mr. Almonte, a naturalized citizen, was arrested for taking a knife to campus. That August, he was arrested for punching a youth in the parking lot of a supermarket. Two weeks later, he was caught drinking beer in a park.
It was around then, family friends say, that Mr. Almonte turned to Islam. He told Priscilla Caicedo, a young woman he met last year, that his interest began when he heard someone preaching at the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus. He visited mosques in Paterson and Union City, and called himself Omar.
Mr. Almonte’s conversion, his compulsion to proselytize, and his friendship with Mr. Alessa all alienated his family, though he continued to live with them. The friction culminated in their living room on May 23, 2009, when, according to a police report, Mr. Almonte began preaching about Islam to his younger brother, Elvin, who demurred, and “Carlos became angry and they both began fighting.”
Their mother tried to separate them and Elvin bit her arm, thinking it was his brother’s. Carlos then struck Elvin in the back of the head with a picture frame.
One young man who befriended both suspects said that Mr. Almonte was more easygoing and supportive than Mr. Alessa, and that he liked to read and use computers. Another friend, Martin Robert, said that sometimes while playing Ping-Pong and basketball, Mr. Almonte would try to turn the conversation to Islam but would not insist. “He seemed like a nice, peaceful guy,” Mr. Robert said.
Another student who knew them casually, Mostafa Higazi, said the pair were “very oriented to politics.” He called Mr. Alessa “really a talker, just bragging,” while Mr. Almonte was quiet. He said that he did not recall specific things Mr. Alessa said, but that none of it resembled the bloody talk in the criminal complaint.
Ms. Caicedo met Mr. Almonte more than a year ago when she took her computer for repairs to a store where he worked near his home. Even in the store, she recalled, he began proselytizing, and gave her a book on Islam, which she said she never read.
They talked and traded instant messages, and went out once, as friends, last December. He took her to a Spanish-language service at a mosque in Union City and then to dinner at T.G.I. Friday’s. Quiet and serious, he told her he wanted to find a wife who knew that her role was to stay home to cook and clean. “He was like one of those men that had to be the dominant one,” she said.
Recently, Ms. Caicedo said, he told her he was moving to North Carolina, and arranged for her to get his job at the computer store. Hours before he was arrested at Kennedy Airport, they were at the store, Mr. Almonte training her.
But others saw a darker side to the suspects and their friendship. In October 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a tip that Mr. Alessa and Mr. Almonte talked about holy war and killing non-Muslims, and law enforcement agencies began keeping a watch on them. From the start, the authorities were in touch with Mr. Almonte’s family.
“I had a good rapport with the father,” said Detective Anthony DiPasquale of Elmwood Park. “I acquired information and I passed it along to the F.B.I.”
In February 2007, while Mr. Alessa was a high school senior, he and Mr. Almonte traveled to Jordan; the F.B.I. says it was in the vain hope of being recruited by a militant jihadist group.
On a Facebook page started in October 2008, Mr. Almonte posted long quotations from medieval Islamic scholars and present-day radicals like Abu Qatada, considered by many countries to be a terrorist, and the jihadist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri.
Mr. Almonte was also outraged at the treatment of Muslim prisoners accused of terrorism. He posted a comment concerning Omar Khadr, a prisoner who said he was abused by American interrogators. Mr. Khadr is charged with throwing a grenade when he was 15 that killed an American soldier in Afghanistan. Mr. Almonte wrote: “We feel for our brothers unjustly locked up even afghanistan at the time didn’t pose a threat to america for them to attack them over 2 towers but the end of them will be like the end of persia, rome, n the soviet union.”
He posted a photo of himself at a Dec. 28, 2008, protest in Manhattan, holding a sign saying “DEATH TO ALL JUICE,” with the word “ZIONIST” written faintly above “JUICE.”
Mr. Almonte dismissed the religion of American Muslims, saying, “In truth, it isn’t Islam.” He showed a particular fixation on the ideas that Muslim men should be bearded, and should hold one another’s hands.
In the last two years, Mr. Alessa, too, started lecturing about God and grew a beard. A new friend, Bassem, became a frequent companion of the two men. Friends and Mr. Alessa’s parents now believe that Bassem, who offered to put the young men up at the house he said he had in Egypt, was an undercover New York police officer who is cited in the criminal complaint, and who recorded their conversations.
“He pushed them,” Mahmood Alessa said. Ms. Alessa said Bassem “wanted to be a hero, on the backs of these stupid kids.”
Recently, Mr. Alessa told his parents he planned to go to Egypt to study Arabic; he spoke the language, but did not read or write it well.
About two weeks ago, Ms. Alessa snapped a picture of her son that she keeps on her cellphone, a reminder of a serene moment in their home. It shows Mohamed lying on a floral quilt, snuggling Princess Tuna, his cat.
He wanted to take the cat with him to Egypt, but his mother said no, and they argued. When he headed to the airport, he went instead with a big bag of candy from his parents’ deli. The F.B.I. seized the candy, his mother said.
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/nyregion/12suspects.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
NORTH BERGEN, N.J. — One was a spoiled child so prone to fits of rage — fights, screamed insults, threats — that his parents began taking him to psychiatrists at age 6 and medicating him in a vain struggle to control his moods. By their count, his short fuse and incendiary tongue forced him to change schools no fewer than 10 times.
The other was arrested three times in less than four months for petty crimes, and seemed like an aimless youth — until he developed a passion for a strict version of Islam that shocked and alienated his Dominican family. Within a few years, he was posting extremist views on the Internet and assailing the United States while predicting its downfall.
Their stories began like many others: troubled teenagers who scare and mystify their neighbors; run-ins with the police while still in high school; parents who cannot compete with the sense of belonging or purpose their boys find elsewhere.
“Of course we tried everything we could,” said Nadia Alessa, mother of Mohamed M. Alessa, the one so given to angry outbursts. “We couldn’t just keep him at home.”
The next chapter in such tales often charts a descent into drugs or gangs, but Mr. Alessa, 20, and Carlos E. Almonte, 24, who both grew up in the New Jersey suburbs, apparently had other plans. They were arrested Saturday as they prepared to fly separately to Egypt — and, the authorities say, to join a militant group in Somalia and kill non-Muslims.
How they went from troublemakers to terrorism suspects may never be understood. But conversations with many people who have known them — including the first interviews given by Mr. Alessa’s parents since the arrest — make clear that both men were struggling for years, constantly at odds with authority and their immigrant parents. Law enforcement officials had been keeping tabs on them for nearly four years.
Many of their peers dismissed them as hapless blowhards, more pathetic than perilous; friends said they liked to play Ping-Pong, or go into Manhattan and hang out at a halal restaurant. Yet there they are, in transcripts of secretly recorded conversations, talking about shooting and beheading people, and sending American troops home “sliced up in 1,000 pieces.”
Mr. Alessa’s parents, Palestinian immigrants, are Muslim, but Ms. Alessa was at a loss to explain her only son’s recent transformation. She recalled asking why he was growing a beard: “He said real men grow their beards.”
‘Now Everyone Hates Us’
After years of building a life in the United States — an apartment in North Bergen, a deli in nearby Bergen County where Mr. Alessa’s father, Mahmood, is quick to extend credit to customers, who call him “Pops” — the parents now see it all endangered by a son they do not understand.
“Sixteen years we’ve lived on that street,” Ms. Alessa said. “Everyone loved us. Now everyone hates us.”
A neighbor who has known Mohamed most of his life, Wilmer Precilla, said the young man alternated between craving confrontation and acceptance, making derogatory remarks about Hispanics in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood, then trying unsuccessfully to join a Dominican gang, Patria. “He was always trying to be more gangster than everyone else,” Mr. Precilla said.
Family friends watched Mohamed scream at his mother, smash up his father’s car and, in anger, knock the food off a shelf in the deli. When his shaken parents tried to take him to therapists, he screamed, “I’m not crazy.” At times he took medication for anger management, but about three years ago, his mother said, he stopped taking it and stopped seeing therapists.
Mr. Alessa’s friends, who knew his temper, told him he needed medical help — an idea he rejected. His parents gave him the latest clothes and cellphones, friends and neighbors recalled. One said he acted like a typical “American rich kid,” even though his parents were not wealthy.
“He was a spoiled kid,” Ms. Alessa conceded. “He acted like a teenager. He thought he was a king.”
She said Mohamed attended the local public elementary school, two Catholic grade schools, a boarding school in Connecticut, a school for troubled youth, three Muslim schools and two public high schools, repeatedly getting into trouble for fighting or mouthing off.
At the two public high schools, North Bergen and KAS Prep, Mr. Alessa made an escalating series of threats against students and staff members through 2005 and 2006, saying that he would blow up the school, mutilate gays and punish women who were not subordinate to men, according to officials granted anonymity to discuss confidential matters. Both schools alerted the Department of Homeland Security.
As a 10th grader at North Bergen High, he had to receive his lessons at a local public library under the eye of a security guard, said Paul Swibinski, a school spokesman, because “administrators felt that his presence in school posed a safety threat to other students and staff.”
In those years, neighbors say, the police were called to the Alessa home several times. The North Bergen police declined to give details, noting that juvenile records were not public, but Lt. Frank Cannella said: “He was known to us, I can tell you that much.”
The Suspects Meet
Around 2005, when he was 14 or 15, Mr. Alessa met Mr. Almonte, who lived in Elmwood Park, but was spending much of his time in North Bergen, 10 miles away. The two hung out with a group of young men who called themselves the PLO. Mr. Alessa was not particularly religious then, but Mr. Almonte, a recent convert to Islam, was becoming more so.
Growing up, Carlos Almonte had a less turbulent childhood. But by the time he was 18, he, too, was running afoul of the law.
In May 2004, with a month left in his senior year at Elmwood Park Memorial High School, Mr. Almonte, a naturalized citizen, was arrested for taking a knife to campus. That August, he was arrested for punching a youth in the parking lot of a supermarket. Two weeks later, he was caught drinking beer in a park.
It was around then, family friends say, that Mr. Almonte turned to Islam. He told Priscilla Caicedo, a young woman he met last year, that his interest began when he heard someone preaching at the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus. He visited mosques in Paterson and Union City, and called himself Omar.
Mr. Almonte’s conversion, his compulsion to proselytize, and his friendship with Mr. Alessa all alienated his family, though he continued to live with them. The friction culminated in their living room on May 23, 2009, when, according to a police report, Mr. Almonte began preaching about Islam to his younger brother, Elvin, who demurred, and “Carlos became angry and they both began fighting.”
Their mother tried to separate them and Elvin bit her arm, thinking it was his brother’s. Carlos then struck Elvin in the back of the head with a picture frame.
One young man who befriended both suspects said that Mr. Almonte was more easygoing and supportive than Mr. Alessa, and that he liked to read and use computers. Another friend, Martin Robert, said that sometimes while playing Ping-Pong and basketball, Mr. Almonte would try to turn the conversation to Islam but would not insist. “He seemed like a nice, peaceful guy,” Mr. Robert said.
Another student who knew them casually, Mostafa Higazi, said the pair were “very oriented to politics.” He called Mr. Alessa “really a talker, just bragging,” while Mr. Almonte was quiet. He said that he did not recall specific things Mr. Alessa said, but that none of it resembled the bloody talk in the criminal complaint.
Ms. Caicedo met Mr. Almonte more than a year ago when she took her computer for repairs to a store where he worked near his home. Even in the store, she recalled, he began proselytizing, and gave her a book on Islam, which she said she never read.
They talked and traded instant messages, and went out once, as friends, last December. He took her to a Spanish-language service at a mosque in Union City and then to dinner at T.G.I. Friday’s. Quiet and serious, he told her he wanted to find a wife who knew that her role was to stay home to cook and clean. “He was like one of those men that had to be the dominant one,” she said.
Recently, Ms. Caicedo said, he told her he was moving to North Carolina, and arranged for her to get his job at the computer store. Hours before he was arrested at Kennedy Airport, they were at the store, Mr. Almonte training her.
But others saw a darker side to the suspects and their friendship. In October 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a tip that Mr. Alessa and Mr. Almonte talked about holy war and killing non-Muslims, and law enforcement agencies began keeping a watch on them. From the start, the authorities were in touch with Mr. Almonte’s family.
“I had a good rapport with the father,” said Detective Anthony DiPasquale of Elmwood Park. “I acquired information and I passed it along to the F.B.I.”
In February 2007, while Mr. Alessa was a high school senior, he and Mr. Almonte traveled to Jordan; the F.B.I. says it was in the vain hope of being recruited by a militant jihadist group.
On a Facebook page started in October 2008, Mr. Almonte posted long quotations from medieval Islamic scholars and present-day radicals like Abu Qatada, considered by many countries to be a terrorist, and the jihadist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri.
Mr. Almonte was also outraged at the treatment of Muslim prisoners accused of terrorism. He posted a comment concerning Omar Khadr, a prisoner who said he was abused by American interrogators. Mr. Khadr is charged with throwing a grenade when he was 15 that killed an American soldier in Afghanistan. Mr. Almonte wrote: “We feel for our brothers unjustly locked up even afghanistan at the time didn’t pose a threat to america for them to attack them over 2 towers but the end of them will be like the end of persia, rome, n the soviet union.”
He posted a photo of himself at a Dec. 28, 2008, protest in Manhattan, holding a sign saying “DEATH TO ALL JUICE,” with the word “ZIONIST” written faintly above “JUICE.”
Mr. Almonte dismissed the religion of American Muslims, saying, “In truth, it isn’t Islam.” He showed a particular fixation on the ideas that Muslim men should be bearded, and should hold one another’s hands.
In the last two years, Mr. Alessa, too, started lecturing about God and grew a beard. A new friend, Bassem, became a frequent companion of the two men. Friends and Mr. Alessa’s parents now believe that Bassem, who offered to put the young men up at the house he said he had in Egypt, was an undercover New York police officer who is cited in the criminal complaint, and who recorded their conversations.
“He pushed them,” Mahmood Alessa said. Ms. Alessa said Bassem “wanted to be a hero, on the backs of these stupid kids.”
Recently, Mr. Alessa told his parents he planned to go to Egypt to study Arabic; he spoke the language, but did not read or write it well.
About two weeks ago, Ms. Alessa snapped a picture of her son that she keeps on her cellphone, a reminder of a serene moment in their home. It shows Mohamed lying on a floral quilt, snuggling Princess Tuna, his cat.
He wanted to take the cat with him to Egypt, but his mother said no, and they argued. When he headed to the airport, he went instead with a big bag of candy from his parents’ deli. The F.B.I. seized the candy, his mother said.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
NJ TERROR SUSPECTS LOOKING FOR HONOR, DIGNITY
*** There is no honour (<-Canadian spelling) and dignity in terrorism only humiliation for yourself and those close to you and regret by yourself and by those close to you. Seek light, not darkness - it will guide you to what is better. MS ***
FROM: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/06/07/2010-06-07_they_were_looking_for_dignity__honor.html
They were alienated young losers when they first turned to radical Islam to feel like winners.
"What's better than sitting back here and working like a dog - being somebody's puppy, basically what I call it - than moving forward to a life of dignity, life of honor," Carlos Eduardo Almonte explained to the undercover cop taping him in March.
In Somalia, Almonte, 24, and his 20-year-old pal, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, apparently expected to find bullets and blood and battle - an escape from their humdrum New Jersey suburban lives. Their arrests Saturday at Kennedy Airport stopped all that, officials say.
But in the years before they were nabbed, they often went to mall stores and played first-person-shooter computer games - assuming the terrorist role.
And they watched propaganda videos online, bought military gear and pumped iron to make themselves strong soldiers.
"I'm going to get a gun. I'm the type of person to use it at any time," Alessa bragged to the undercover cop recording their every word. "I'll have more bodies on it than the hairs on my beard."
Alessa, the son of Palestinian immigrants, and Almonte, the son of Dominican parents, turned against the country their parents struggled to get to.
Both had strained relationships with their fathers, who could not understand their sullen, rebellious sons.
Neighbors and classmates say they were normal, outgoing kids who liked sports and Nintendo but grew distant and hostile - and beards - when they began to see themselves as holy warriors as far back as 2006.
In high school, Alessa started hanging out with older kids and getting into trouble.
"He grew out a beard and started getting into fights all the time," said Daniel Forbes, 20. "He isolated himself. He said, 'Nobody gets me.'"
"He wasn't the most popular kid," said Kristen Fernandez, 22, another classmate.
Almonte, though older, became Alessa's follower years ago, after graduating from Elmwood Park High School in 2005.
He converted to Islam, renamed himself "Omar" and started talking about hating America.
"He was kind of a loner. He didn't have a lot going on," said James Fracione, 22, who knew both men. "Then he grew a beard and started talking like [Alessa], saying what America was doing was wrong."
Raj Merchant, 22, who once took an art class with Almonte, said he dropped his high school friends.
"Once he converted, he just disappeared and nobody heard anything from him at all. And then this happened," Merchant said.
"The kid completely changed," said neighbor Jeffrey Strickland, whose son went to school with Almonte. "He went from this fun-loving kid to a real serious, political kind of guy."
Neighbors said Alessa's father was an engineer in Jordan who came to America more than two decades ago and works at a candy store. The family has lived in the same North Bergen, N.J., apartment for 16 years.
They sometimes fought loudly with their son, neighbors said.
"He had anger-management problems," said Alessa's landlord, Hemant Shah. "He doesn't like it here. He wanted to go."
FROM: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/06/07/2010-06-07_they_were_looking_for_dignity__honor.html
They were alienated young losers when they first turned to radical Islam to feel like winners.
"What's better than sitting back here and working like a dog - being somebody's puppy, basically what I call it - than moving forward to a life of dignity, life of honor," Carlos Eduardo Almonte explained to the undercover cop taping him in March.
In Somalia, Almonte, 24, and his 20-year-old pal, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, apparently expected to find bullets and blood and battle - an escape from their humdrum New Jersey suburban lives. Their arrests Saturday at Kennedy Airport stopped all that, officials say.
But in the years before they were nabbed, they often went to mall stores and played first-person-shooter computer games - assuming the terrorist role.
And they watched propaganda videos online, bought military gear and pumped iron to make themselves strong soldiers.
"I'm going to get a gun. I'm the type of person to use it at any time," Alessa bragged to the undercover cop recording their every word. "I'll have more bodies on it than the hairs on my beard."
Alessa, the son of Palestinian immigrants, and Almonte, the son of Dominican parents, turned against the country their parents struggled to get to.
Both had strained relationships with their fathers, who could not understand their sullen, rebellious sons.
Neighbors and classmates say they were normal, outgoing kids who liked sports and Nintendo but grew distant and hostile - and beards - when they began to see themselves as holy warriors as far back as 2006.
In high school, Alessa started hanging out with older kids and getting into trouble.
"He grew out a beard and started getting into fights all the time," said Daniel Forbes, 20. "He isolated himself. He said, 'Nobody gets me.'"
"He wasn't the most popular kid," said Kristen Fernandez, 22, another classmate.
Almonte, though older, became Alessa's follower years ago, after graduating from Elmwood Park High School in 2005.
He converted to Islam, renamed himself "Omar" and started talking about hating America.
"He was kind of a loner. He didn't have a lot going on," said James Fracione, 22, who knew both men. "Then he grew a beard and started talking like [Alessa], saying what America was doing was wrong."
Raj Merchant, 22, who once took an art class with Almonte, said he dropped his high school friends.
"Once he converted, he just disappeared and nobody heard anything from him at all. And then this happened," Merchant said.
"The kid completely changed," said neighbor Jeffrey Strickland, whose son went to school with Almonte. "He went from this fun-loving kid to a real serious, political kind of guy."
Neighbors said Alessa's father was an engineer in Jordan who came to America more than two decades ago and works at a candy store. The family has lived in the same North Bergen, N.J., apartment for 16 years.
They sometimes fought loudly with their son, neighbors said.
"He had anger-management problems," said Alessa's landlord, Hemant Shah. "He doesn't like it here. He wanted to go."
TEXAS MAN CALLED AL QAEDA 'BROTHERS'
*** He wanted a sense of belonging and a sense of being part of something greater than his mundane existence. Just part of the equation but fully, the new trend. MS ***
FROM: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ii_ruznz1EBnYNi2cUI4BdHNCMUwD9G78JR00
HOUSTON — A Texas man accused of trying to help al-Qaida referred to members of the terrorist group as his "brothers," was eager to prove his dedication to the organization and wanted to die fighting alongside them, according to court documents.
Barry Walter Bujol was set to be in court Tuesday for arraignment on charges he tried to help al-Qaida by trying to supply the terrorist network with personnel, currency and other items. He was arrested last week after a two-year investigation by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Bujol, 29, is facing one charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one charge of aggravated identity theft. Bujol, who is from Hempstead, which is located about 50 miles northwest of Houston, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
A recently unsealed FBI search warrant application described Bujol as eager to prove his dedication to al-Qaida by engaging in physical and covert communications training.
He used at least 14 e-mail addresses to hide his activities from authorities and advocated attacking U.S. facilities where military weapons were manufactured, according to the court document.
The FBI task force determined Bujol had been e-mailing Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born, al-Qaida-linked cleric believed to be hiding in Yemen.
Al-Awlaki also is believed to have exchanged e-mails with Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in last November's Fort Hood shootings. He is also accused of helping inspire the Times Square bombing attempt in May and the failed Christmas Day airline bombing.
In one of the e-mails, al-Awlaki allegedly gave Bujol a document titled "42 Ways of Supporting Jihad."
Joseph Varela, Bujol's attorney, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.
According to the search warrant application, Bujol referred to al-Qaida members in the Arabian peninsula as "brothers" and that he wanted to "die with the brothers for the cause of Allah, and to be in Heaven."
Bujol made three unsuccessful attempts during February and March 2009 to travel overseas to Yemen or the Middle East. After this, an informant working for the FBI befriended Bujol in November 2009, and Bujol believed the informant was a recruiter of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Bujol created a secret code that he used to communicate with the informant and gave himself the Arabic moniker of "Abu Abuadah," according to the search warrant application.
The informant had Bujol retrieve items from "dead drops," pre-arranged secret locations in public places used to exchange messages and other items. In one of these dead drops, Bujol retrieved two false identification cards from a hollowed rock FBI agents placed in a park, the warrant application said.
The cards were supposedly identification cards issued by the Transportation Security Administration that Bujol used on May 30 to gain access to a secure part of a Houston-area port with the alleged intention of boarding a ship bound for the Middle East, the court documents said.
Bujol was arrested after he boarded the ship. He had been given a military-issue compass and other materials that he allegedly agreed to courier to al-Qaida operatives in a Middle Eastern country.
The informant had previously given Bujol currency, prepaid telephone calling cards, mobile telephone SIM cards, global positioning system receivers and public access-restricted U.S. military publications, according to the court documents.
Before he was arrested, Bujol told the informant during a May 3 meeting that "if he never saw 'this place' (i.e., the United States) again it would be fine with him," the warrant application said.
Neighbors at Bujol's apartment complex in Hempstead said Tuesday that he and his family kept mostly to themselves.
Esmerelda Villanueva said Bujol's wife wouldn't let her daughter talk to other kids in the complex and that Bujol didn't talk to anybody.
"I can't believe that would happen here in Hempstead," she said. "They looked like a normal American family, you would never think."
FROM: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ii_ruznz1EBnYNi2cUI4BdHNCMUwD9G78JR00
HOUSTON — A Texas man accused of trying to help al-Qaida referred to members of the terrorist group as his "brothers," was eager to prove his dedication to the organization and wanted to die fighting alongside them, according to court documents.
Barry Walter Bujol was set to be in court Tuesday for arraignment on charges he tried to help al-Qaida by trying to supply the terrorist network with personnel, currency and other items. He was arrested last week after a two-year investigation by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Bujol, 29, is facing one charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one charge of aggravated identity theft. Bujol, who is from Hempstead, which is located about 50 miles northwest of Houston, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
A recently unsealed FBI search warrant application described Bujol as eager to prove his dedication to al-Qaida by engaging in physical and covert communications training.
He used at least 14 e-mail addresses to hide his activities from authorities and advocated attacking U.S. facilities where military weapons were manufactured, according to the court document.
The FBI task force determined Bujol had been e-mailing Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born, al-Qaida-linked cleric believed to be hiding in Yemen.
Al-Awlaki also is believed to have exchanged e-mails with Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in last November's Fort Hood shootings. He is also accused of helping inspire the Times Square bombing attempt in May and the failed Christmas Day airline bombing.
In one of the e-mails, al-Awlaki allegedly gave Bujol a document titled "42 Ways of Supporting Jihad."
Joseph Varela, Bujol's attorney, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.
According to the search warrant application, Bujol referred to al-Qaida members in the Arabian peninsula as "brothers" and that he wanted to "die with the brothers for the cause of Allah, and to be in Heaven."
Bujol made three unsuccessful attempts during February and March 2009 to travel overseas to Yemen or the Middle East. After this, an informant working for the FBI befriended Bujol in November 2009, and Bujol believed the informant was a recruiter of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Bujol created a secret code that he used to communicate with the informant and gave himself the Arabic moniker of "Abu Abuadah," according to the search warrant application.
The informant had Bujol retrieve items from "dead drops," pre-arranged secret locations in public places used to exchange messages and other items. In one of these dead drops, Bujol retrieved two false identification cards from a hollowed rock FBI agents placed in a park, the warrant application said.
The cards were supposedly identification cards issued by the Transportation Security Administration that Bujol used on May 30 to gain access to a secure part of a Houston-area port with the alleged intention of boarding a ship bound for the Middle East, the court documents said.
Bujol was arrested after he boarded the ship. He had been given a military-issue compass and other materials that he allegedly agreed to courier to al-Qaida operatives in a Middle Eastern country.
The informant had previously given Bujol currency, prepaid telephone calling cards, mobile telephone SIM cards, global positioning system receivers and public access-restricted U.S. military publications, according to the court documents.
Before he was arrested, Bujol told the informant during a May 3 meeting that "if he never saw 'this place' (i.e., the United States) again it would be fine with him," the warrant application said.
Neighbors at Bujol's apartment complex in Hempstead said Tuesday that he and his family kept mostly to themselves.
Esmerelda Villanueva said Bujol's wife wouldn't let her daughter talk to other kids in the complex and that Bujol didn't talk to anybody.
"I can't believe that would happen here in Hempstead," she said. "They looked like a normal American family, you would never think."
Monday, June 7, 2010
SOMALIS GOING FOR CIVIL WAR NOT JIHAD?!
*** The civil war IS between Islamist groups - Muslim killing Muslims, it's what we do best. MS ***
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/nyregion/07shabaab.html
WASHINGTON — The Islamic extremist group in Somalia that two New Jersey men were seeking to join when they were arrested in New York on Saturday has recruited several hundred foreign fighters to help wage an intensifying civil war in a destitute East African country, American officials said on Sunday.
Related
But interest in the movement, Al Shabab, among American recruits appeared to have waned in recent years as news spread in Somali communities in Minneapolis and other cities that some of the recruits had been killed.
“Since the 2007-2008 period, when foreign fighters were flowing in, you haven’t heard about too many other Americans going there,” said Andre Le Sage, a senior research fellow who specializes in Africa at the National Defense University in Washington.
About 20 Americans have joined Al Shabab, and at least half a dozen have been killed in fighting in Somalia, according to their friends and relatives. Law enforcement officials fear that the recruits, often young men in their 20s who hold American passports, could be tapped to return to the United States to carry out attacks here, though so far there is no evidence of any such plot.
The arrests Saturday were the latest in a growing number of radicalized Americans who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses. They include Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen accused in the failed car bombing in Times Square last month.
“We have seen an increasing number of individuals here in the United States become captivated by extremist ideologies or causes,” John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism chief, said last month.
American counterterrorism officials have been putting more focus on safe havens in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia functioning as militant incubators. The United States has observed many ad hoc training camps in southern Somalia, intelligence officials said.
For several years, an intense civil war has raged in Somalia between a weak American-backed government and radical Islamist groups that are trying to overthrow it.
The insurgents include fighters from Al Shabab, which has sent hundreds of young recruits to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and a rival group, Hizbul Islam.
The two groups used to be close, and their hard-line Islamist ideologies, which called for amputations and public stonings for violations of Islamic law, were virtually identical. American and Somali security officials said that the leaders of both groups have worked closely with wanted terrorists of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Pakistan. Yet in the past few months, as the government geared up for a major offensive, the two groups openly clashed with each other. And in recent days there have been reports that dozens of civilians have been wounded in areas held by insurgents and areas held by the government.
Moreover, the insurgents’ harsh rules prohibiting music, television and even bras, as well as the unrelenting fighting, have steadily alienated much of Somali society, making it harder for the militants to raise money and find recruits.
That did not seem to deter the two suspects arrested Saturday, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, who, according to the criminal complaint, discussed which of the rival groups to join. “Shabab is the main one,” Mr. Almonte told Mr. Alessa and an unidentified federal informer. “The main thing.”
Mr. Le Sage said that Al Shabab relied on mobilizing several thousand militia fighters from Somali clans, but that the foreigners could play important roles as commandos, intelligence agents or suicide bombers.
While Al Shabab have threatened to attack East African neighbors as well as Australia, the United States and Scandinavian countries, Mr. Le Sage said the organization had not yet carried out any strikes outside of Somalia. “That’s always a cause for concern,” he added.
The two suspects may have been misled in thinking that they were going to kill Americans in Somalia; there are actually very few in that country.
After 1993, when American forces were humiliated by clan militiamen in the episode that has come to be called Black Hawk Down, the United States has shown little appetite to send conventional forces back into Somalia.
But Al Shabab have been telling followers, for propaganda purposes, that the United States might get involved again.
There are American contractors working in Somalia managing logistics for the African Union peacekeepers there. Somali officials have also said that American intelligence agents frequently visit Somalia in an effort to improve the capacity of Somalia’s fledgling security services.
Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/nyregion/07shabaab.html
WASHINGTON — The Islamic extremist group in Somalia that two New Jersey men were seeking to join when they were arrested in New York on Saturday has recruited several hundred foreign fighters to help wage an intensifying civil war in a destitute East African country, American officials said on Sunday.
Related
But interest in the movement, Al Shabab, among American recruits appeared to have waned in recent years as news spread in Somali communities in Minneapolis and other cities that some of the recruits had been killed.
“Since the 2007-2008 period, when foreign fighters were flowing in, you haven’t heard about too many other Americans going there,” said Andre Le Sage, a senior research fellow who specializes in Africa at the National Defense University in Washington.
About 20 Americans have joined Al Shabab, and at least half a dozen have been killed in fighting in Somalia, according to their friends and relatives. Law enforcement officials fear that the recruits, often young men in their 20s who hold American passports, could be tapped to return to the United States to carry out attacks here, though so far there is no evidence of any such plot.
The arrests Saturday were the latest in a growing number of radicalized Americans who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses. They include Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen accused in the failed car bombing in Times Square last month.
“We have seen an increasing number of individuals here in the United States become captivated by extremist ideologies or causes,” John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism chief, said last month.
American counterterrorism officials have been putting more focus on safe havens in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia functioning as militant incubators. The United States has observed many ad hoc training camps in southern Somalia, intelligence officials said.
For several years, an intense civil war has raged in Somalia between a weak American-backed government and radical Islamist groups that are trying to overthrow it.
The insurgents include fighters from Al Shabab, which has sent hundreds of young recruits to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and a rival group, Hizbul Islam.
The two groups used to be close, and their hard-line Islamist ideologies, which called for amputations and public stonings for violations of Islamic law, were virtually identical. American and Somali security officials said that the leaders of both groups have worked closely with wanted terrorists of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Pakistan. Yet in the past few months, as the government geared up for a major offensive, the two groups openly clashed with each other. And in recent days there have been reports that dozens of civilians have been wounded in areas held by insurgents and areas held by the government.
Moreover, the insurgents’ harsh rules prohibiting music, television and even bras, as well as the unrelenting fighting, have steadily alienated much of Somali society, making it harder for the militants to raise money and find recruits.
That did not seem to deter the two suspects arrested Saturday, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, who, according to the criminal complaint, discussed which of the rival groups to join. “Shabab is the main one,” Mr. Almonte told Mr. Alessa and an unidentified federal informer. “The main thing.”
Mr. Le Sage said that Al Shabab relied on mobilizing several thousand militia fighters from Somali clans, but that the foreigners could play important roles as commandos, intelligence agents or suicide bombers.
While Al Shabab have threatened to attack East African neighbors as well as Australia, the United States and Scandinavian countries, Mr. Le Sage said the organization had not yet carried out any strikes outside of Somalia. “That’s always a cause for concern,” he added.
The two suspects may have been misled in thinking that they were going to kill Americans in Somalia; there are actually very few in that country.
After 1993, when American forces were humiliated by clan militiamen in the episode that has come to be called Black Hawk Down, the United States has shown little appetite to send conventional forces back into Somalia.
But Al Shabab have been telling followers, for propaganda purposes, that the United States might get involved again.
There are American contractors working in Somalia managing logistics for the African Union peacekeepers there. Somali officials have also said that American intelligence agents frequently visit Somalia in an effort to improve the capacity of Somalia’s fledgling security services.
Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
TEXAS TERROR STING - A PROFILE
*** Disenfranchisement, feelings of inferiority, no job - the list goes on. This problem will quickly get out of hand if there is no systematic effort to counter the rhetoric of the extremists. MS ***
FROM: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7037645.html
HEMPSTEAD — Barry Bujol Jr., the man accused of trying to aid al-Qaida terrorists, and his wife were a reserved couple, neighbors said, who became devout Muslims about four years ago and who occasionally expressed feelings of disenfranchisement as black Americans.
“They'd talk about white people always wanting to overpower everything,” recalled Cindy Celis, a nearby neighbor in a subsidized apartment complex. “But they prayed three times a day, kept to themselves and never caused any trouble. They have a 6-month-old baby and a 2-year-old, and our children often played together.”
The 29-year-old Bujol is in federal custody, accused of trying to provide terrorists with global positioning instruments, cell phones and a restricted publication on the effects of U.S. military weapons in Afghanistan. Authorities said he had been exchanging e-mails with the charismatic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, the native-born U.S. citizen who also was in communication with the man accused in the 2009 mass killings at Fort Hood, Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan.
Those accusations surprised relatives, including Bujol's aunt, Beverly Bujol. Reached at her home in Kenner, La., she recalled her nephew once toyed with giving himself a Muslim name, but she said she had no idea he was apparently using a dozen other aliases. The last his father heard from his son was a recent letter that included a picture of the new baby, she said.
‘We never dreamed … '
She described her nephew as “bright but moody.”
“We never dreamed he could be a terrorist of any kind,” she said.
None of Barry Bujol's three siblings, who reside in the Dallas area; nor his late mother, Sandra Platt; nor his father, were ever Muslim, she said.
When Bujol Jr. decided to change his faith, she said, “We didn't think much about it. We just thought he saw things different.”
Bujol had once been a student at Prairie View A&M but had not been enrolled for the last year and a half, although investigators allege he once used the computers at the school's library for e-mailing.
The university's police chief, Algray Pettus, issued a statement expressing full cooperation with the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, but declined to say what if anything was found on the school's computers. “We take this matter very seriously,” he said.
Watched for past 2 years
Neighbors said Bujol Jr. had his own laptop and also spent hours on computers at WorkSource Solutions on U.S. 290 in Waller. The program, funded through the Texas Workforce Commission, provides computer access and other assistance for job searches.
The FBI, who had Bujol under surveillance for the last two years and had even placed a camera in his apartment, said they never saw any evidence of gainful employment by either Bujol or his wife, Ernestine Johnson.
At their home on Friday, Johnson, dressed in traditional Muslim garb — a long black dress and gray head scarf — shooed bystanders off her front porch when she returned to her apartment. Asked if she would tell her side of the story, she replied “no” before closing and locking her door.
No criminal arrests
Margie McDade, a neighbor, said she saw Bujol using the WorkSource computers many days until the offices closed for more than a year.
“He'd be on Yahoo. I kept wondering if he was cheating on his woman or what,” she said. “You are supposed to stay on sites that are job related.”
Misty Blaylock, a resource room specialist there, said she monitors computer use, but someone checking an e-mail would not draw suspicion.
Bujol had no previous criminal arrests. Twice last year when he was arrested by the Waller County Sheriff's Office for driving with a suspended license, said the chief deputy, John Kremmer.
He also was picked up in New Jersey for a suspended license during one of his three unsuccessful attempts to travel to Yemen and other spots in the Middle East.
Wife charged with fraud
He and his wife were detained at a Houston airport on an outstanding traffic warrant in February 2009. They had booked tickets to travel to Yemen.
Ernestine Johnson's cell phone has been confiscated. She has not been charged with terrorist activity. She is charged, along with her husband, with fraud for allegedly conspiring to obtain housing subsidies.
Investigators say their rent had been reduced from $715 a month to only $6, because the husband claimed to be earning $75 a week from a bogus window washing company.
After his arrest, a dozen mostly unmarked cars swooped down on Bujol's Pine Meadows apartment off U.S. 290 and yellow crime scene tape was stretched across the front door.
“At first, we thought somebody had been murdered, or maybe it was a drug bust,” said Sharon Moore, a resident.
“But the next day everyone was appalled to learn a terrorist could be living next door.”
FROM: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7037645.html
HEMPSTEAD — Barry Bujol Jr., the man accused of trying to aid al-Qaida terrorists, and his wife were a reserved couple, neighbors said, who became devout Muslims about four years ago and who occasionally expressed feelings of disenfranchisement as black Americans.
“They'd talk about white people always wanting to overpower everything,” recalled Cindy Celis, a nearby neighbor in a subsidized apartment complex. “But they prayed three times a day, kept to themselves and never caused any trouble. They have a 6-month-old baby and a 2-year-old, and our children often played together.”
The 29-year-old Bujol is in federal custody, accused of trying to provide terrorists with global positioning instruments, cell phones and a restricted publication on the effects of U.S. military weapons in Afghanistan. Authorities said he had been exchanging e-mails with the charismatic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, the native-born U.S. citizen who also was in communication with the man accused in the 2009 mass killings at Fort Hood, Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan.
Those accusations surprised relatives, including Bujol's aunt, Beverly Bujol. Reached at her home in Kenner, La., she recalled her nephew once toyed with giving himself a Muslim name, but she said she had no idea he was apparently using a dozen other aliases. The last his father heard from his son was a recent letter that included a picture of the new baby, she said.
‘We never dreamed … '
She described her nephew as “bright but moody.”
“We never dreamed he could be a terrorist of any kind,” she said.
None of Barry Bujol's three siblings, who reside in the Dallas area; nor his late mother, Sandra Platt; nor his father, were ever Muslim, she said.
When Bujol Jr. decided to change his faith, she said, “We didn't think much about it. We just thought he saw things different.”
Bujol had once been a student at Prairie View A&M but had not been enrolled for the last year and a half, although investigators allege he once used the computers at the school's library for e-mailing.
The university's police chief, Algray Pettus, issued a statement expressing full cooperation with the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, but declined to say what if anything was found on the school's computers. “We take this matter very seriously,” he said.
Watched for past 2 years
Neighbors said Bujol Jr. had his own laptop and also spent hours on computers at WorkSource Solutions on U.S. 290 in Waller. The program, funded through the Texas Workforce Commission, provides computer access and other assistance for job searches.
The FBI, who had Bujol under surveillance for the last two years and had even placed a camera in his apartment, said they never saw any evidence of gainful employment by either Bujol or his wife, Ernestine Johnson.
At their home on Friday, Johnson, dressed in traditional Muslim garb — a long black dress and gray head scarf — shooed bystanders off her front porch when she returned to her apartment. Asked if she would tell her side of the story, she replied “no” before closing and locking her door.
No criminal arrests
Margie McDade, a neighbor, said she saw Bujol using the WorkSource computers many days until the offices closed for more than a year.
“He'd be on Yahoo. I kept wondering if he was cheating on his woman or what,” she said. “You are supposed to stay on sites that are job related.”
Misty Blaylock, a resource room specialist there, said she monitors computer use, but someone checking an e-mail would not draw suspicion.
Bujol had no previous criminal arrests. Twice last year when he was arrested by the Waller County Sheriff's Office for driving with a suspended license, said the chief deputy, John Kremmer.
He also was picked up in New Jersey for a suspended license during one of his three unsuccessful attempts to travel to Yemen and other spots in the Middle East.
Wife charged with fraud
He and his wife were detained at a Houston airport on an outstanding traffic warrant in February 2009. They had booked tickets to travel to Yemen.
Ernestine Johnson's cell phone has been confiscated. She has not been charged with terrorist activity. She is charged, along with her husband, with fraud for allegedly conspiring to obtain housing subsidies.
Investigators say their rent had been reduced from $715 a month to only $6, because the husband claimed to be earning $75 a week from a bogus window washing company.
After his arrest, a dozen mostly unmarked cars swooped down on Bujol's Pine Meadows apartment off U.S. 290 and yellow crime scene tape was stretched across the front door.
“At first, we thought somebody had been murdered, or maybe it was a drug bust,” said Sharon Moore, a resident.
“But the next day everyone was appalled to learn a terrorist could be living next door.”
Friday, June 4, 2010
TEXAS TERROR STING
*** I'm telling you: they will adapt - they will learn which people to engage (sensitive site access in this case) - they will use EVERY (dirty) trick in the book and we will still be debating the merits of obsolete morality. MS ***
FROM:
A Texas man has been indicted on two counts for allegedly attempting to support al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and communicating with one of its top leaders Anwar Al Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric who U.S. officials have placed at the center of several recent terrorist plots involving U.S. targets and Americans, including last year's deadly Ft. Hood shooting, which left 13 dead.
The man, Barry Walter Bujol, 29, allegedly was in contact with Awlaki going back to 2008, when he gained the attention of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Houston.
Agents determined that Bujol, who they said used aliases including "Abdul Bari," "Abyu Najya," "Pat Lex" and "Abdul-Bari Al Ameriki Al Aswad," was in e-mail communication with Awlaki.
The cleric allegedly provided Bujol with a document entitled, "42 Ways of Supporting Jihad." Bujol also allegedly asked Awlaki for guidance on how to provide materials and funds to foreign fighters overseas.
The two-count indictment charging him with providing material support to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and aggravated identity theft was unsealed late on Thursday.
The identity theft charge involves Bujol being in possession of a controlled identification card for transportation workers called a TWIC card (Transportation Workers Identification Card), which can be used to gain access to sensitive locations at ports and at other areas of critical infrastructure.
According to federal law enforcement officials, Bujol allegedly tried to leave the United States on several occasions. In February 2009, as he was attempting to fly to Yemen, according to law enforcement officials, Bujol was arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant.
Bujol, who attended Prairie View A&M University in Texas, later tried to leave the United States at the U.S.-Canadian border in March 2009 near Detroit but was denied entry by Canadian authorities.
Weeks later, he was arrested in New Jersey for driving on a suspended license.
Bujol allegedly has told investigators after his arrest on May 30, 2010, that he was attempting to leave the country to fly to Egypt.
According to Justice Department officials, in November the FBI used a confidential human source who Bujol believed was affiliated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was acting as an operative for the group.
During meetings, Bujol allegedly stated his interest in traveling oversees to engage in fighting with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
In the course of meetings, the human source being run by the FBI gave Bujol the TWIC card so that he could use it to board a ship he believed was heading to the Middle East from the port in Houston. The source also allegedly gave Bujol pre-paid calling cards, mobile phone SIM cards, GPS receivers and publications and information about unmanned aerial vehicle operations and U.S. military weapons systems.
Bujol allegedly believed he was to courier the items to AQAP operatives -- but in reality it was all an FBI sting operation. Bujol boarded the ship on May 30 in Houston and was arrested by FBI agents.
"This arrest is a sobering reminder of the threat we continue to face," said FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge Richard Powers.
Joseph Varela, an attorney for Bujol, declined to comment on the case.
Bujol is scheduled to have an arraignment on June 8, 2010 in Houston.
Bujol is the latest American terrorism suspect tied to Anwar al-Awlaki. Besides the Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan, in March a New Jersey nuclear plant worker, Sharif Mobley, was arrested by Yemeni security forces with 10 other suspected Al Qaeda members. Awlaki also allegedly was in contact with the so-called Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , who attempted to detonate a bomb on Northwest Airlines flight 253.
FROM:
A Texas man has been indicted on two counts for allegedly attempting to support al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and communicating with one of its top leaders Anwar Al Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric who U.S. officials have placed at the center of several recent terrorist plots involving U.S. targets and Americans, including last year's deadly Ft. Hood shooting, which left 13 dead.
The man, Barry Walter Bujol, 29, allegedly was in contact with Awlaki going back to 2008, when he gained the attention of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Houston.
Agents determined that Bujol, who they said used aliases including "Abdul Bari," "Abyu Najya," "Pat Lex" and "Abdul-Bari Al Ameriki Al Aswad," was in e-mail communication with Awlaki.
The cleric allegedly provided Bujol with a document entitled, "42 Ways of Supporting Jihad." Bujol also allegedly asked Awlaki for guidance on how to provide materials and funds to foreign fighters overseas.
The two-count indictment charging him with providing material support to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and aggravated identity theft was unsealed late on Thursday.
The identity theft charge involves Bujol being in possession of a controlled identification card for transportation workers called a TWIC card (Transportation Workers Identification Card), which can be used to gain access to sensitive locations at ports and at other areas of critical infrastructure.
According to federal law enforcement officials, Bujol allegedly tried to leave the United States on several occasions. In February 2009, as he was attempting to fly to Yemen, according to law enforcement officials, Bujol was arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant.
Bujol, who attended Prairie View A&M University in Texas, later tried to leave the United States at the U.S.-Canadian border in March 2009 near Detroit but was denied entry by Canadian authorities.
Weeks later, he was arrested in New Jersey for driving on a suspended license.
Bujol allegedly has told investigators after his arrest on May 30, 2010, that he was attempting to leave the country to fly to Egypt.
According to Justice Department officials, in November the FBI used a confidential human source who Bujol believed was affiliated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was acting as an operative for the group.
During meetings, Bujol allegedly stated his interest in traveling oversees to engage in fighting with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
In the course of meetings, the human source being run by the FBI gave Bujol the TWIC card so that he could use it to board a ship he believed was heading to the Middle East from the port in Houston. The source also allegedly gave Bujol pre-paid calling cards, mobile phone SIM cards, GPS receivers and publications and information about unmanned aerial vehicle operations and U.S. military weapons systems.
Bujol allegedly believed he was to courier the items to AQAP operatives -- but in reality it was all an FBI sting operation. Bujol boarded the ship on May 30 in Houston and was arrested by FBI agents.
"This arrest is a sobering reminder of the threat we continue to face," said FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge Richard Powers.
Joseph Varela, an attorney for Bujol, declined to comment on the case.
Bujol is scheduled to have an arraignment on June 8, 2010 in Houston.
Bujol is the latest American terrorism suspect tied to Anwar al-Awlaki. Besides the Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan, in March a New Jersey nuclear plant worker, Sharif Mobley, was arrested by Yemeni security forces with 10 other suspected Al Qaeda members. Awlaki also allegedly was in contact with the so-called Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , who attempted to detonate a bomb on Northwest Airlines flight 253.
Monday, May 24, 2010
PAK STUDENT ADNAN BABAR MIRZA & THE BATTLESPACE
*** In this war - it seems all venues are battlespace. I note though this is a common defense in cases like this. Lawmakers need to work this out properly. MS ***
FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100524/world/us_terror_charges
HOUSTON - A Pakistani student accused of conspiring to aid the Taliban and undergoing training to fight U.S. troops never intended to commit "battlefield Jihad" or help a terrorist group, his attorney told jurors Monday.
But a prosecutor said during opening statements in the trial of Adnan Babar Mirza that the student collected money for the Taliban and went through weapons training so he could fight U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Mirza, 33, was one of four men arrested in 2006, accused by authorities of taking part in paramilitary training exercises at camp sites around the Houston area so they could engage in a holy war. He was indicted on nine counts, including conspiracy to help the Taliban and federal charges related to being an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm.
Prosecutors said Mirza was in the country illegally because he violated his student visa by working.
If convicted, Mirza faces up to 10 years in prison. His trial was to continue through the rest of this week.
Prosecutor Jim McAlister told jurors authorities learned about what Mirza and the other men were doing when one of their friends, James Coates, decided "things were getting out of hand" and became an FBI informant.
"They were training to go overseas and fight in Afghanistan and not for the Americans," McAlister said.
David Adler, Mirza's attorney, denied his client violated his student visa by working and portrayed Mirza as a caring person who collected food for Houston's homeless and promoted Islam and Muslim culture by working with Houston police and through a public access television program.
Adler told jurors Mirza went on camping trips but denied they involved paramilitary training exercises. He accused Coates of being the one who was militant and promoted violence.
An undercover officer taped conversations with Mirza and the other men in which they allegedly talked about ambushing U.S. soldiers and triggering a bomb with a cellphone, according to court documents.
FBI Special Agent John McKinley, the prosecution's first witness, told jurors Mirza can be heard on the taped conversations talking about sending money to support Taliban families. Prosecutors have said Mirza collected about $900 for Taliban fighters and their families.
But Adler said it's not against the law to send money to the families of Taliban fighters and Mirza collected money for hospitals and other groups but not specifically for the Taliban.
He also said Mirza can be heard in these taped conversations expressing anger about injustices Muslims around the world have experienced, but his client was just expressing emotion and didn't intend to act on it.
The three other men who were arrested have pleaded guilty or been convicted.
Kobie Diallo Williams, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced in August to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to join the Taliban and fight against U.S. forces.
Syed Maaz Shah, a former Pakistani engineering student at the University of Texas at Dallas, was sentenced in 2007 to 6 1/2 years in prison on federal firearms charges. Shiraz Syed Qazi, also a Pakistani student and Mirza's cousin, received a 10-month prison sentence in 2007 on a firearms charge.
FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100524/world/us_terror_charges
HOUSTON - A Pakistani student accused of conspiring to aid the Taliban and undergoing training to fight U.S. troops never intended to commit "battlefield Jihad" or help a terrorist group, his attorney told jurors Monday.
But a prosecutor said during opening statements in the trial of Adnan Babar Mirza that the student collected money for the Taliban and went through weapons training so he could fight U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Mirza, 33, was one of four men arrested in 2006, accused by authorities of taking part in paramilitary training exercises at camp sites around the Houston area so they could engage in a holy war. He was indicted on nine counts, including conspiracy to help the Taliban and federal charges related to being an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm.
Prosecutors said Mirza was in the country illegally because he violated his student visa by working.
If convicted, Mirza faces up to 10 years in prison. His trial was to continue through the rest of this week.
Prosecutor Jim McAlister told jurors authorities learned about what Mirza and the other men were doing when one of their friends, James Coates, decided "things were getting out of hand" and became an FBI informant.
"They were training to go overseas and fight in Afghanistan and not for the Americans," McAlister said.
David Adler, Mirza's attorney, denied his client violated his student visa by working and portrayed Mirza as a caring person who collected food for Houston's homeless and promoted Islam and Muslim culture by working with Houston police and through a public access television program.
Adler told jurors Mirza went on camping trips but denied they involved paramilitary training exercises. He accused Coates of being the one who was militant and promoted violence.
An undercover officer taped conversations with Mirza and the other men in which they allegedly talked about ambushing U.S. soldiers and triggering a bomb with a cellphone, according to court documents.
FBI Special Agent John McKinley, the prosecution's first witness, told jurors Mirza can be heard on the taped conversations talking about sending money to support Taliban families. Prosecutors have said Mirza collected about $900 for Taliban fighters and their families.
But Adler said it's not against the law to send money to the families of Taliban fighters and Mirza collected money for hospitals and other groups but not specifically for the Taliban.
He also said Mirza can be heard in these taped conversations expressing anger about injustices Muslims around the world have experienced, but his client was just expressing emotion and didn't intend to act on it.
The three other men who were arrested have pleaded guilty or been convicted.
Kobie Diallo Williams, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced in August to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to join the Taliban and fight against U.S. forces.
Syed Maaz Shah, a former Pakistani engineering student at the University of Texas at Dallas, was sentenced in 2007 to 6 1/2 years in prison on federal firearms charges. Shiraz Syed Qazi, also a Pakistani student and Mirza's cousin, received a 10-month prison sentence in 2007 on a firearms charge.
Friday, May 21, 2010
AMERICAN HOMEGROWN TERRORISM
*** Something is just not working: first it was brown bearded types - so they lost their beards. Then it was just the brown types - so they got white guys (some with beards some without). Then it was women - white women. Now do you still think grandma cannot be the next terrorist? Think again. They will adapt and devise new tactics, new strategies. COUNTER tactics, folks, COUNTER strategies. MS ***
FROM: http://www.newsweek.com/id/238296?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsweek%2FTopNews+%28UPDATED+-+Newsweek+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
In the years following the September 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials were focused primarily on tracking down terrorists abroad. But in recent years their targets have been increasingly closer to home. At least 25 American citizens—both born and naturalized—have been charged with serious federal terrorism violations since the beginning of 2009, according to information compiled by federal authorities.
The list of 25 U.S. citizens who have been charged with such offenses in the last 18 months was compiled and provided to NEWSWEEK by a U.S. law-enforcement official, who requested not to be identified because it is not an official government publication and is not meant to be exhaustive. "These cases clearly suggest that an increasing number of U.S. citizens, both native-born Americans and naturalized citizens, appear to be getting involved in the terrorist cause. It's not an encouraging trend," said a Justice Department official who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.
The official who provided the recent information said he did not have such statistics broken down by citizenship for terrorism prosecutions during the George W. Bush administration, and a search of government and academic sources did not turn up comparable figures. By one comparison, in the 18 months before Barack Obama took office, the Department of Justice prosecuted 35 terrorism cases against all suspects—both American citizens and foreign nationals—according to DOJ information released to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (PDF).
Earlier this year the Justice Department published a comprehensive listing (PDF) of more than 400 federal-court convictions on terror charges since September 11, 2001, but it did not provide the citizenship of the defendants. Over the years the Justice Department has also issued periodic summaries of terror prosecutions, such as this one and this one, which do mention earlier, well-known cases involving U.S. citizens, including those of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, the "Lackawanna Six" (a group of men from the Buffalo, N.Y., area who were arrested in 2002 for training at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan before 9/11), and a Virginia imam convicted in 2005 for encouraging others to go to Pakistan for jihadist training. But at the time these cases surfaced, they appeared relatively isolated and not part of the kind of extended pattern that the latest statistics appear to show.
Counterterrorism experts from the Bush era say that the new cases represent an increased involvement by Americans in militant jihadism that began before Obama took office but has accelerated since then. The experts attribute the alarming trend both to increasing alienation among young American Muslims and to more effective enforcement and intelligence collection activities by the FBI and other U.S. government agencies.
To be sure, there are many different kinds of people, motivations, and actions represented on this list, and not every example can be attributed solely to radicalization of American Muslims. Also, the criminal cases are all at various stages, with some having pleaded not guilty. Marc Sageman, an independent terrorism expert who worked for the CIA during the 1980s, notes that some of the recent cases on the list—such as the Newburgh, N.Y., plot and the case of the man who wanted to bomb an Illinois courthouse—are less significant than others because they were the products of FBI "sting" operations and thus constitute what Sageman considers to be "entrapment," meaning a heavy government role in luring the suspects into what they thought was jihad. Also, said Sageman, a North Carolina case whose defendants are included on the list mainly involved plans to get involved in jihadist fighting overseas, not inside the U.S.
Still, the increase is troubling. The official who provided the list of 25 charged Americans emphasized that it was not necessarily comprehensive and features mainly high-profile cases involving serious charges. The list includes:
*Faisal Shahzad, the accused perpetrator of the recent failed Times Square car bombing.
*David Headley, a Chicago man who pleaded guilty to charges that included helping a Pakistan-based terror group gather intelligence for November 2008 terror attacks against commercial targets in Mumbai.
*Two American women, known as "Jihad Jane" and "Jihad Jamie," who are facing charges in Philadelphia for their roles in an alleged Internet-based conspiracy to attack a Swedish artist who drew a cartoon lampooning the Prophet Muhammad.
Also on the list are Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin, naturalized Americans born in Afghanistan and Bosnia, respectively, who allegedly conspired with Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born permanent resident of the U.S. in a plot to bomb the New York City subway system last September. Zazi, the alleged mastermind, is not listed as one of the 25 American citizens arrested for terrorism in the last 18 months. (Zazi and Ahmedzay have pleaded guilty in the subway bombing plot; charges against Medunjanin are still pending).
The 25 U.S. citizens on the list may be only a cross-section of a larger problem, however, officials say. The "Northern Virginia Five," a group of Americans who are currently being detained by authorities in Pakistan, are not on the list, nor is Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychologist accused—in the U.S. military-justice system—of killing 13 fellow soldiers in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, last November.
The official who provided the list noted that it does not include any of the estimated 20 Americans or U.S. residents who are alleged or reported to have traveled to Somalia to join Al Qaeda affiliates or other jihadist factions operating there. Also not on the list are a number of Americans who are believed to have gone to Yemen in recent years for suspected jihadist training. Most estimates by law-enforcement and intelligence officials put the number of Americans who may now be undergoing such training in Yemen at about a dozen, though this report (PDF) issued in January by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggested that "36 American ex-convicts arrived in Yemen in the past year, ostensibly to study Arabic"—a figure that other U.S. officials suggest is an overestimate.
Frances Fragos Townsend, White House counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush administration, says her recollection is that the involvement of American citizens or residents in terror plots actually began to grow while she still worked in government, with cases like that of the mainly Balkan expatriates (some of whom were illegal aliens) from Philadelphia's New Jersey suburbs who plotted to shoot up soldiers at the Fort Dix Army training base, and a 2007 domestically hatched plot (with alleged connections to Trinidad and possibly Iran) to blow up fuel lines leading to New York’s JFK airport. She says the raw statistics charting American citizens' involvement in serious terror plots is not just a "sudden spike" but rather a trend that has been tilting "precipitously up" for the last few years.
Sageman says there is still evidence of what he describes as a "very serious uptick" in American citizens' interest and involvement in jihadist activities in recent years. He attributes this alarming trend to three factors. First, he says, now that memories of 9/11 have faded, American Muslims are feeling more alarmed by growing manifestations of Islamophobia among non–Muslim Americans, and this is frightening and alienating Muslim-American youth. Second, Sageman agrees that a very important factor in drawing Americans into jihad is the increasing availability of radical Islamic messages in English on the Internet, particularly from Anwar al-Awlaki, a fiery imam associated with Hasan and Christmas Day "underpants bomber" Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Abdullah al-Faisal, a deeply anti-Western and anti-Semitic Jamaican-born imam who was imprisoned for a time in Britain on charges of incitement to murder. Before 2005, Sageman says, the main jihadist messages were available on the Web only in Arabic, but since that time, English-language militant Web sites, carrying messages from religiously credentialed figures like Awlaki, have proliferated.
Finally, Sageman says, some disillusioned young people have found themselves turning to violence when other, less violent forms of countercultural protest have proved ineffective. But as their estrangement from organized protest movements becomes deeper, Sageman says, such angry young people tend to withdraw into themselves or into very small groups, and pursue simple plots, rather than complex schemes like the 9/11 attacks. Eventually, Sageman hopes, unless the U.S. creates new grievances in the Muslim world through unwise foreign-policy moves, this proliferating but fragmented domestic jihadist trend might well burn itself out.
FROM: http://www.newsweek.com/id/238296?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsweek%2FTopNews+%28UPDATED+-+Newsweek+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
In the years following the September 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials were focused primarily on tracking down terrorists abroad. But in recent years their targets have been increasingly closer to home. At least 25 American citizens—both born and naturalized—have been charged with serious federal terrorism violations since the beginning of 2009, according to information compiled by federal authorities.
The list of 25 U.S. citizens who have been charged with such offenses in the last 18 months was compiled and provided to NEWSWEEK by a U.S. law-enforcement official, who requested not to be identified because it is not an official government publication and is not meant to be exhaustive. "These cases clearly suggest that an increasing number of U.S. citizens, both native-born Americans and naturalized citizens, appear to be getting involved in the terrorist cause. It's not an encouraging trend," said a Justice Department official who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.
The official who provided the recent information said he did not have such statistics broken down by citizenship for terrorism prosecutions during the George W. Bush administration, and a search of government and academic sources did not turn up comparable figures. By one comparison, in the 18 months before Barack Obama took office, the Department of Justice prosecuted 35 terrorism cases against all suspects—both American citizens and foreign nationals—according to DOJ information released to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (PDF).
Earlier this year the Justice Department published a comprehensive listing (PDF) of more than 400 federal-court convictions on terror charges since September 11, 2001, but it did not provide the citizenship of the defendants. Over the years the Justice Department has also issued periodic summaries of terror prosecutions, such as this one and this one, which do mention earlier, well-known cases involving U.S. citizens, including those of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, the "Lackawanna Six" (a group of men from the Buffalo, N.Y., area who were arrested in 2002 for training at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan before 9/11), and a Virginia imam convicted in 2005 for encouraging others to go to Pakistan for jihadist training. But at the time these cases surfaced, they appeared relatively isolated and not part of the kind of extended pattern that the latest statistics appear to show.
Counterterrorism experts from the Bush era say that the new cases represent an increased involvement by Americans in militant jihadism that began before Obama took office but has accelerated since then. The experts attribute the alarming trend both to increasing alienation among young American Muslims and to more effective enforcement and intelligence collection activities by the FBI and other U.S. government agencies.
To be sure, there are many different kinds of people, motivations, and actions represented on this list, and not every example can be attributed solely to radicalization of American Muslims. Also, the criminal cases are all at various stages, with some having pleaded not guilty. Marc Sageman, an independent terrorism expert who worked for the CIA during the 1980s, notes that some of the recent cases on the list—such as the Newburgh, N.Y., plot and the case of the man who wanted to bomb an Illinois courthouse—are less significant than others because they were the products of FBI "sting" operations and thus constitute what Sageman considers to be "entrapment," meaning a heavy government role in luring the suspects into what they thought was jihad. Also, said Sageman, a North Carolina case whose defendants are included on the list mainly involved plans to get involved in jihadist fighting overseas, not inside the U.S.
Still, the increase is troubling. The official who provided the list of 25 charged Americans emphasized that it was not necessarily comprehensive and features mainly high-profile cases involving serious charges. The list includes:
*Faisal Shahzad, the accused perpetrator of the recent failed Times Square car bombing.
*David Headley, a Chicago man who pleaded guilty to charges that included helping a Pakistan-based terror group gather intelligence for November 2008 terror attacks against commercial targets in Mumbai.
*Two American women, known as "Jihad Jane" and "Jihad Jamie," who are facing charges in Philadelphia for their roles in an alleged Internet-based conspiracy to attack a Swedish artist who drew a cartoon lampooning the Prophet Muhammad.
Also on the list are Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin, naturalized Americans born in Afghanistan and Bosnia, respectively, who allegedly conspired with Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born permanent resident of the U.S. in a plot to bomb the New York City subway system last September. Zazi, the alleged mastermind, is not listed as one of the 25 American citizens arrested for terrorism in the last 18 months. (Zazi and Ahmedzay have pleaded guilty in the subway bombing plot; charges against Medunjanin are still pending).
The 25 U.S. citizens on the list may be only a cross-section of a larger problem, however, officials say. The "Northern Virginia Five," a group of Americans who are currently being detained by authorities in Pakistan, are not on the list, nor is Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychologist accused—in the U.S. military-justice system—of killing 13 fellow soldiers in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, last November.
The official who provided the list noted that it does not include any of the estimated 20 Americans or U.S. residents who are alleged or reported to have traveled to Somalia to join Al Qaeda affiliates or other jihadist factions operating there. Also not on the list are a number of Americans who are believed to have gone to Yemen in recent years for suspected jihadist training. Most estimates by law-enforcement and intelligence officials put the number of Americans who may now be undergoing such training in Yemen at about a dozen, though this report (PDF) issued in January by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggested that "36 American ex-convicts arrived in Yemen in the past year, ostensibly to study Arabic"—a figure that other U.S. officials suggest is an overestimate.
Frances Fragos Townsend, White House counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush administration, says her recollection is that the involvement of American citizens or residents in terror plots actually began to grow while she still worked in government, with cases like that of the mainly Balkan expatriates (some of whom were illegal aliens) from Philadelphia's New Jersey suburbs who plotted to shoot up soldiers at the Fort Dix Army training base, and a 2007 domestically hatched plot (with alleged connections to Trinidad and possibly Iran) to blow up fuel lines leading to New York’s JFK airport. She says the raw statistics charting American citizens' involvement in serious terror plots is not just a "sudden spike" but rather a trend that has been tilting "precipitously up" for the last few years.
Sageman says there is still evidence of what he describes as a "very serious uptick" in American citizens' interest and involvement in jihadist activities in recent years. He attributes this alarming trend to three factors. First, he says, now that memories of 9/11 have faded, American Muslims are feeling more alarmed by growing manifestations of Islamophobia among non–Muslim Americans, and this is frightening and alienating Muslim-American youth. Second, Sageman agrees that a very important factor in drawing Americans into jihad is the increasing availability of radical Islamic messages in English on the Internet, particularly from Anwar al-Awlaki, a fiery imam associated with Hasan and Christmas Day "underpants bomber" Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Abdullah al-Faisal, a deeply anti-Western and anti-Semitic Jamaican-born imam who was imprisoned for a time in Britain on charges of incitement to murder. Before 2005, Sageman says, the main jihadist messages were available on the Web only in Arabic, but since that time, English-language militant Web sites, carrying messages from religiously credentialed figures like Awlaki, have proliferated.
Finally, Sageman says, some disillusioned young people have found themselves turning to violence when other, less violent forms of countercultural protest have proved ineffective. But as their estrangement from organized protest movements becomes deeper, Sageman says, such angry young people tend to withdraw into themselves or into very small groups, and pursue simple plots, rather than complex schemes like the 9/11 attacks. Eventually, Sageman hopes, unless the U.S. creates new grievances in the Muslim world through unwise foreign-policy moves, this proliferating but fragmented domestic jihadist trend might well burn itself out.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
AMERICAN AL QAEDA - HOMEGROWN U.S. TERRORISM
*** Governments need to take steps immediately to counter this existential threat - it has already started to take on a life of its own and by the time someone decides enough is enough, it may be well too late. Who really wants the military deployed in urban centres? This is a game of action/reaction, change the rules already! MS ***
FROM: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/11/vinas.cruickshank.analysis/?hpt=C1
See the link - it's a lengthy piece.
Story highlights state the painfully obvious: "More Americans are turning to radical Islam, U.S. counterterrorism officials say".
FROM: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/11/vinas.cruickshank.analysis/?hpt=C1
See the link - it's a lengthy piece.
Story highlights state the painfully obvious: "More Americans are turning to radical Islam, U.S. counterterrorism officials say".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
