Category Archives: al-Qaeda

National Post: Canada’s role in Al Shabab recruitment for Islamic terror

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Canada not refuting extremist ideologies, U.S. committee told

Feisal Omar/REUTERS

Feisal Omar/REUTERS

New recruits belonging to Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab rebel group celebrate during a passing out parade at a military training base in Afgoye, west of the capital Mogadishu February 17, 2011.

  Jul 27, 2011 – 6:50 PM ET | Last Updated: Jul 27, 2011 6:56 PM ET

A U.S. Congressional committee on terrorist recruitment of American Muslims turned its attention north on Wednesday, as a prominent Somali-Canadian leader testified that Ottawa had failed to tackle the ideology of extremists.

Ahmed Hussen, president of the Canadian Somali Congress, told U.S. lawmakers that the Canadian government was concentrating on detecting and arresting terror suspects while leaving their rhetoric unchallenged.

“The strategy of Canadian officials as they confront this phenomenon in my community has been to view this serious matter only through the prism of law enforcement,” he said. “There has not been a parallel attempt to counter the toxic anti-Western narrative that creates a culture of victimhood in the minds of members of our community.” Continue Reading →

U.S. formally accuses Iran of working with Al Queda

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From The Wall Street Journal:

By JAY SOLOMON

WASHINGTON—The U.S. for the first time formally accused Iran of forging an agreement with al Qaeda, helping operatives move money, arms and fighters through Iranian territory to the terrorist group’s bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Treasury Department outlined on Thursday what it said was an extensive fund-raising operation devised by al Qaeda that utilizes Iran-based operatives and draws from donors in oil-rich Persian Gulf countries such as Kuwait and Qatar.

0728iran

The Treasury said it had sanctioned six al Qaeda members for allegedly overseeing this network. The network’s head, Syrian-national Ezedin Abdul Aziz Khalil, is based in Iran and has been operating there under an agreement with Iranian authorities since 2005, according to senior U.S. officials.

“Khalil moves money and recruits from across the Middle East into Iran, then on to Pakistan for the benefit of al Qaeda’s senior leaders,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a written statement.

U.S. officials alleged Mr. Khalil requires all operatives transiting through Iran to deliver the equivalent of $10,000 to al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. The officials also said that Mr. Khalil has worked closely with Iranian authorities to secure the release of al Qaeda militants held in Iranian prisons who are then returned to Pakistan-based camps.

“By exposing Iran’s secret deal with al Qaeda allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory, we are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism,” David Cohen, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said on Thursday.

Please click through to the WSJ for the rest of this article.

Al Shabaab: Recruitment and Radicalization within the Muslim American Community and the Threat to the Homeland

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From Homeland Security.gov

311 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 | Jul 27, 2011 10:00am

On Wednesday, July 27, 2011, the Committee on Homeland Security will hold the third in the series of hearings on domestic radicalization entitled “Al Shabaab: Recruitment and Radicalization within the Muslim American Community and the Threat to the Homeland.” The Committee will meet at 10:00 a.m. in 311 Cannon House Office Building.

Note: Please note the time change from 9:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Chairman King on the hearing:

“In our first two hearings, the Committee has examined radicalization of Muslim-Americans generally and focused on the problem of radicalization in U.S. prisons.

“At this hearing, the third in a series, we will examine Somalia-based terrorist organization al Shabaab’s ongoing recruitment, radicalization, and training of young Muslim-Americans and al Shabaab’s linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

“In Minnesota, Ohio, and other states, dozens of young Muslim males have been recruited, radicalized, and then taken from their communities for overseas terrorist training by al Shabaab. In a number of cases, the men – including both Somali-Americans and other converts — have carried out suicide bombings or have otherwise been killed, often without their families even knowing where their sons have gone. There has not been sufficient cooperation from mosque leaders. In at least one instance, a Minnesota imam told the desperate family of a missing young man not to cooperate with the FBI.

“There are growing concerns that al Shabaab in Somalia is linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen to better train these radicalized young men in order to attack Americans around the world, as well as launch attacks against our homeland.

“This coordinated and ongoing recruitment and radicalization of young Muslim men in the U.S. is a serious and growing threat to our homeland security and simply cannot be ignored.”

Witnesses

Mr. Ahmed Hussen
Canadian Somali Congress National President
[full text of testimony]

Mr. Thomas Joscelyn
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
[full text of testimony]

Mr. William Anders Folk
Former Assistant United States Attorney
District of Minnesota
[full text of testimony]

Mr. Tom Smith
Chief of Police
Saint Paul, Minnesota
[full text of testimony]

Dutch department of Al Qaeda rent Brabanthallen for a big Islamic demonstration

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Written and translated from Dutch by Ethan

Dutch chapter of Al Qaeda rented Brabanthallen for a big Islamic convention.On Sunday the 6th of June a Salafist congress took place in the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch. The main guest at this happening was “the noble great scholar Sheikh Abu Ishaq al-Hoeweyni”.

This sheikh is a prominent member of “Jama’a al-Islamiya’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Gama%27a_al-Islamiyya), one of al Qaeda’s affiliated organizations.

Three weeks ago (June 11th), there was an item in the news (and video) about an Egyptian Sheikh Hoeweyni, who made de following statements:

We are in the era of jihad. The era of Jihad Has Come to us and jihad in the path of Allah is a pleasure. It’s a real pleasure. The companions (of the Prophet) used to compete to (perform jihad). That we are in poverty — is it not due to our Abandonment or jihad? But if we could conduct one, two, or three jihadist operations every year, many people would become Muslims Throughout the earth. And whoever rejected this da’wa, or stood in our way, we would fight against him and take him prisoner, and confiscate his wealth, his children, and his women — all of this MEANS money. Every mujahid who returned from jihad, his pockets would be full. He would return with three or four slaves, three or four women, and 3 or 4 children. Each head Multiply by 300 dirhams, or 300 dinars, and you have a good amount of profit. If he were to go to the West and work on a commercial deal, he would not make that much money. Whenever things became difficult (financially), he could take the head (i.e. the prisoner) and sell it, and ease his (financial) crisis.

Huwaini actually made these scandalous assertions some eighteen years ago. But because they were only recently exposed, and he was invited to “clarify” his position on Hikma TV last week. Amazingly, though he began by saying his words were “taken out of context,” he nonetheless reasserted, in even more blunt language, that Islam justifies plundering, enslaving, and raping the infidel. (Al Youm 7 has the entire interview, excerpts of which I translate below.)

According to Huwaini, after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation—in the course of waging an offensive jihad—the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis are to be seized as ghanima or “spoils of war.”

Huwaini cited the Koran as his authority — boasting that it has an entire chapter named “spoils” — and the sunna of Muhammad, specifically as recorded in the famous Sahih Muslim hadith wherein the prophet ordered the Muslim armies to offer non-Muslims three choices: conversion, subjugation, or death/enslavement. Continue Reading →

Somalia: US took bodies of militants after strike

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I believe that it was Clinton who said, “Never again” referring to the notion of ever sending forces in to help Somalia after the awful results last time it was attempted. Somali gratitude for the help looked a lot like brutal, grotesque hatred of anything white or Western. However the Muslim threat to the world clearly supersedes any Clintonian promise as this AP report shows:

By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED
Associated Press

The operation is at least the second time U.S. troops have landed in Somalia after a targeted strike, though no forces have been stationed there since shortly after the “Black Hawk Down” battle that left 18 Americans dead in 1993.NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.S. military forces landed in Somalia to retrieve the bodies of dead or wounded militants after a U.S. drone strike targeted a group of insurgents, Somalia’s defense minister told The Associated Press on Friday.Defense Minister Abdulhakim Mohamoud Haji Faqi called on the U.S. to carry out more airstrikes against the al-Qaida-linked militants, though he admitted that Somali officials appear not to have been informed about the June 23 operation near the southern coastal town of Kismayo beforehand.

“But we are not complaining about that. Absolutely not. We welcome it,” Faqi told AP. “We understand the U.S.’s need to quickly act on its intelligence on the ground,” he said. “We urge the U.S. to continue its strikes against al-Shabab because if it keeps those strikes up, it will be easier for us to defeat al-Shabab.”

U.S. officials have increased their warnings that the threat from Somalia’s al-Shabab militant group is growing and that militants are developing stronger ties with the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Continue Reading →

Al-Quds Al-Arabi’: Al-Zawahiri’s Test – Swift Revenge for the Killing of Bin Laden

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The MEMRI BLOG:

An editorial in the London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi claimed that the selection of Ayman Al-Zawahiri as leader of Al-Qaeda was drawn out for bureaucratic reasons, and not due to a disagreement regarding the choice.

According to the daily, Al-Zawahiri is a man of action who hates Israel, and hates the U.S. for supporting it, so attacks on Israeli targets must be expected.

It added that the decentralization in the organization will assist it in its activities and that Al-Zawahiri’s real test will be his ability to carry out a revenge attack for the killing of Bin Laden within one month, as he threatened to do.

Source: Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), June 17, 2011.

 

Kansas: Muslim driver hits, kills man, drives for three miles with corpse on the roof of his van

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It would be interesting if someone did a study to see if these killings of people by vehicular homicide by Muslim drivers occur shortly after the release of the magazine, ;Inspire’, the Al Queda glossy that tells Muslims to do exactly the things you are about to read below. For the whole article please click over to Jihad Watch linked right below.

From Jihad Watch.

 

Part of the article…

New York City cabdriver Mohammed Azam ran over two of his passengers for no apparent reason. Another cabbie, Hassan Daly, who was described as a “devout Muslim,” plowed his cab into a crowd on a sidewalk in San Diego, injuring over 24 people. Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar explicitly grounded his hit-and-run in the teachings of the Koran. Munir Muthana told the police who arrested him that “the Muslims will fix this country.” Omeed Aziz Popal, we were told, was suffering from stress from an arranged marriage. Ismail Yassin Mohamed, we were informed, was mentally ill, suffered from depression, and hadn’t being taking his medication. And Muhammad Teshale, according to “law enforcement officials,” “did it to be famous.”

Coincidence or jihad? Certainly there are a lot of hit-and-run and incidents involving people hit by cars that have nothing to do with Muslims, but in the cases listed here there is a degree of intentionality in these that we do not usually see.

“Kansas Motorist Drives for Three Miles with Dead Man on Roof of Van,” from FoxNews.com, June 11 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

WICHITA – After fatally striking a lawn mowing contractor, the driver of a van continued on for another three miles (4.8km) with the body on the roof of his vehicle in Wichita, Kansas on Friday — sparking 911 calls from people who saw the disturbing sight.The victim, an unnamed 32-year-old man, was working with a weed-eater near a street outside a Hawker Beechcraft plant when he was struck about 7:15am, The Wichita Eagle reported citing local police capital [sic] Hassan Ramzah.

 

Al Qaeda’s New Video: A Message of Defeat

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“Al Qaeda’s New Video: A Message of Defeat is republished with permission of  STRATFOR.”

Al Qaeda's New Video: A Message of Defeat

 

By Scott Stewart

A new video from al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab, became available on the Internet on June 2. The video was 100 minutes long, distributed in two parts and titled “Responsible Only for Yourself.” As the name suggests, this video was the al Qaeda core’s latest attempt to encourage grassroots jihadists to undertake lone-wolf operations in the West, a recurrent theme in jihadist messages since late 2009.

The video, which was well-produced and contained a number of graphics and special effects, features historical footage of a number of militant Islamist personalities, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdullah Azzam and Abu Yahya al-Libi.

In addition to al-Libi, who is considered a prominent al Qaeda ideological authority, the video also features an extensive discourse from another Libyan theologian, Sheikh Jamal Ibrahim Shtaiwi al-Misrati. Al-Misrati (who is from Misurata, as one can surmise from his name) was also featured in a March 25 As-Sahab message encouraging jihadists in Libya to assume control of the country and place it under Shariah once the Gadhafi regime is overthrown. The still photo used over the March message featuring al-Misrati was taken from the video used in the June 2 message, indicating that the recently released video of al-Misrati was shot prior to March 25. The video also contains a short excerpt of a previously released Arabic language Al-Malahim media video by Anwar al-Awlaki and an English-language statement by Adam Gadahn that is broken up into small segments and appears periodically throughout the video.

Despite the fact that many of the video segments used to produce this product are quite dated, there is a reference to bin Laden as a shaheed, or martyr, so this video was obviously produced after his death.

Unlike the As-Sahab message on the same topic featuring Adam Gadahn released in March 2010 and the English-language efforts of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s “Inspire” magazine, this video is primarily in Arabic, indicating that it is intended to influence an Arabic-speaking audience.

To date, much of the media coverage pertaining to the release of this video has focused on one short English-language segment in which Adam Gadahn encourages Muslims in the United States to go to gun shows and obtain automatic weapons to use in shooting attacks. This focus is understandable given the contentiousness of the gun-control issue in the United States, but a careful examination of the video reveals far more than just fodder for the U.S. gun-control debate.

 

Contents of the Video

 

The first 36 minutes of the video essentially comprise a history lesson of militants who heard the call to jihad and then acted on it. Among the examples are individuals such as ElSayyid Nosair, the assassin of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane; Abdel Basit (also known as Ramzi Yousef), the operational planner of the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the thwarted Bojinka plot; Mohammed Bouyeri, the assassin of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh; and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. Others include the leader of the team of assassins who killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the militants behind the Mumbai attacks.

Then, after listing those examples, the video emphasizes the point that if one is to live in the “real Islamic way,” one must also follow the examples of the men profiled. Furthermore, since the “enemies of Islam” have expanded their “attacks against Islam” in many different places, the video asserts that it is not only in the land of the Muslims that the enemies of Islam must be attacked, but also in their homelands (i.e., the West). In fact, the video asserts that it is easy to strike the enemies of Islam in their home countries and doing so creates the biggest impact. And this is the context in which Gadahn made his widely publicized comment about Muslims buying guns and conducting armed assaults.

Now, it is important to briefly address this comment by Gadahn: While it is indeed quite easy for U.S. citizens to legally purchase a wide variety of firearms, it is illegal for them to purchase fully automatic weapons without first obtaining the proper firearms license. This fixation with obtaining fully automatic rifles instead of purchasing readily available and legal semi-automatic weapons has led to the downfall of a number of jihadist plots inside the United States, including one just last month in New York. Therefore, aspiring jihadists who would seek to follow Gadahn’s recommendations to the letter would almost certainly find themselves quickly brought to the attention of the authorities.

When we look at the rest of Gadahn’s comments in this video, it is clear the group is trying to convey a number of other interesting points. First, Gadahn notes that jihadists wanting to undertake lone-wolf activities must take all possible measures to keep their plotting secret, and the first thing they should do is avail themselves of all the electronic manuals available on the Internet pertaining to security.

A few minutes later in the video, Gadahn remarks on a point made in a segment from a U.S. news program that the Hollywood perception of the capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA) is nowhere near what those capabilities are in real life and that, while the NSA and other Western intelligence agencies collect massive amounts of data, it is hard for them to link the pieces together to gain intelligence on a pending attack plan. This is true, and the difficulty of putting together disparate intelligence to complete the big picture is something STRATFOR has long discussed. Gadahn notes that the downfall of most grassroots operations is loose lips and not the excellence of Western intelligence and urges aspiring grassroots jihadists to trust no one and to reveal their plans to no one, not even friends and family members. This claim is also true. Most thwarted grassroots plots have been uncovered due to poor operational security and sloppy tradecraft.

The video also contains lengthy theological discussions justifying the jihadist position that jihad is a compulsory, individual obligation for every able-bodied Muslim. As the video turns to the necessity of attacking the enemies of Islam in their homelands, Gadahn notes that Americans are people who crave comfort and security and that terrorist attacks scare them and take away their will to fight Muslims. According to Gadahn, terrorist attacks also cause the people to object to leaders who want to attack Islam, and the people will not vote for those leaders. Continue Reading →

British govt. still doesn’t get it at all.

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Ok it appears to be a step in the right direction. This video claims that the British government will attempt to block access to Al Queda’s glossy magazine, ‘Inspire’, although they do not name it as such, clearly that is what they are on about.

But Inspire is just a manifestation of Islam. No matter what criteria you use to block Inspire, it will equally or greater apply to the Koran, the Sunna (example of Islam’s thug-lord Mohamed) a point that Geert Wilders attempted to make in vain in the Netherlands when he demanded that the Koran be banned as the reasoning used to ban Hitler’s manifesto applies even more accurately to Koran. For his trouble, he was arrested and is being endlessly tried until they can find a grand inquisitor that is ready to convict him despite it being contrary to Dutch law and more importantly, to the entire spirit of Dutch law.

In any case, here is an example of the latest effort by the UK government to cope with it’s own false dichotomy of ‘extremism’ Vs. some fictional kind of nice Islam.

New Al Queda video

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Thanks to Mullah Catfur for this, but really, why the Men in Black clips? (I have been informed by multiple sources this is not ‘Men in Black’ but is from Enemy of the State. Thanks P Nach and Tundra T.)

I do like the Koran quote at 8:34. Islam has a god that feels the need to plot against its own creation.

Here is the link to a working version of the video

The Bin Laden Operation: Tapping Human Intelligence

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The following report is a STRATFOR report by Fred Burton. Mr. Burton wrote a book called Ghost, which is about the search and capture of the principles involved with the first WTC attack in 91 under Clinton. I strongly recommend this highly informative and entertaining book. Once you start it, you cannot put it down, and will be well informed when you have finished it on some of the inner workings of the FBI, DSS and so on. In fact, once you have read it, you can spot both the errors and changes to the facts in the excellent three part movie, ‘The Path to 911’ which is also well worth the time to watch and is also very entertaining.

From STRATFOR:



The Bin Laden Operation: Tapping Human Intelligence

By Fred Burton

Since May 2, when U.S. special operations forces crossed the Afghan-Pakistani border and killed Osama bin Laden, international media have covered the raid from virtually every angle. The United States and Pakistan have also squared off over the U.S. violation of Pakistan’s sovereign territory and Pakistan’s possible complicity in hiding the al Qaeda leader. All this surface-level discussion, however, largely ignores almost 10 years of intelligence development in the hunt for bin Laden.

While the cross-border nighttime raid deep into Pakistan was a daring and daunting operation, the work to find the target — one person out of 180 million in a country full of insurgent groups and a population hostile to American activities on its soil — was a far greater challenge. For the other side, the challenge of hiding the world’s most wanted man from the world’s most funded intelligence apparatus created a clandestine shell game that probably involved current or former Pakistani intelligence officers as well as competing intelligence services. The details of this struggle will likely remain classified for decades.

Examining the hunt for bin Laden is also difficult, mainly because of the sensitivity of the mission and the possibility that some of the public information now available could be disinformation intended to disguise intelligence sources and methods. Successful operations can often compromise human sources and new intelligence technologies that have taken years to develop. Because of this, it is not uncommon for intelligence services to try to create a wilderness of mirrors to protect sources and methods. But using open-source reporting and human intelligence from STRATFOR’s own sources, we can assemble enough information to draw some conclusions about this complex intelligence effort and raise some key questions. Continue Reading →

Al-Qaida takes over several government buildings in south Yemen: official

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From XINHUANET:

SANAA, May 27 (Xinhua) — The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch on Friday took over several government buildings, including two state- run banks, in the southern province of Abyan, a provincial government official told Xinhua.

“Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula defeated government forces on Friday following fierce clashes in Zinjibar, the provincial capital city of Abyan, and controlled almost the whole strategic city including the government facilities,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

“They (AQAP) seized the headquarters of the General Security Camp, the building of Civil Status, and two state-owned banks of Al-Ahli and the Agricultural Cooperative Credit Bank,” he said, adding that they also seized several privately-owned companies.

He also affirmed that fighters of AQAP are now controlling almost the whole city of Zinjibar and setting up their own checkpoints at all three entrances of the city. Continue Reading →

Al-Qaeda Rising in Libya?

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From Heritage Blog H/T Richard

The Arab Spring may be becoming a long hot summer.

In the President’s major speech on the Middle East yesterday, it seemed pretty clear that he has moved on from Libya and turned his attention back to the Arab–Israeli peace process. Attention deficit disorder, however, may not be the right answer.

There is a disturbing news report that two men arrested in Tunisia were “suspected of being members of al-Qaeda.” They were picked up near the Libyan border “carrying an explosives belt and several bombs, a security source told Reuters.… The men were carrying Afghan identity papers and were of Libyan and Algerian origin, the source said, adding that they were also connected to two men arrested in Tunisia last week.…

Please click over to Heritage to read the balance of this article.