MARYLAND MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY TO ACT AS AN IRAQI AGENT

Courtesy of the FBI

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

http://www.usdoj.gov   

Defendant Shredded Documents and Lied to FBI Agents

WASHINGTON—Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy, age 67, an Iraqi national living in Maryland, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, specifically, as an agent of Iraq, announced Patrick Rowan, Assistant Attorney General for National Security and U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein.

“Since coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003, the Justice Department has charged at least a dozen people who served in the United States as illegal agents for the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein or its feared intelligence service, the Mukhabbarat. The number of these cases underscores the reach of Saddam’s intelligence service in America and the extent to which the former Iraqi regime was concerned with defectors and expatriate groups here,” said Patrick Rowan, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

“Documents recovered in Iraq by the United States Military led to Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy’s confession that he secretly worked as an agent of the Iraqi Intelligence Service under Saddam Hussein, using his restaurant as a meeting place and passing information to Iraqi agents,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “Mr. Al-Dellemy lied about his work for Saddam Hussein regime when he was questioned by FBI agents in 2008, long after he became a lawful permanent resident of the United States.”

“The FBI is committed to rooting out and prosecuting those individuals who enjoy the benefits of residing in this country but who are acting on behalf of hostile foreign Intelligence services,” said Amy Jo Lyons, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office.

According to the plea agreement, under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) routinely recruited individuals, either currently in the United States or to be placed into the United States, to support the IIS and the Government of Iraq. Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy, who became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2000, was one of these individuals. He was born in Iraq and was a member of the Ba’ath Party. He came to the United States as a student in the 1980s. His education in the United States was paid for by the Ba’ath Party. In exchange, Al-Dellemy was expected to provide information to the Government of Iraq on matters of interest to the government and the IIS.

Following the invasion of Iraq by coalition forces in March 2003, the U.S. military obtained confidential IIS documents establishing that beginning in 1989, and continuing through the Saddam Hussein regime, Al-Dellemy, referred to in many instances by the code name “Adam,” had been providing information to officials of the Government of Iraq and intelligence officers with the IIS. This information included reporting on the identities and activities of individuals and organizations in the United States that were opposed to Saddam Hussein and his regime, and specifics regarding U.S. policy and actions towards the Iraqi government. The seized documents also established that Al-Dellemy periodically received payments from the IIS and the Iraqi government as compensation for his assistance and information.

Specifically, according the plea agreement, throughout the conspiracy Al-Dellemy performed tasks at the Iraqi Embassy and at the Iraqi Interests Section (ISEC), formed in 1991 within the Algerian Embassy in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Iraq for invading Kuwait. For example, in 1990, around the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Al-Dellemy assisted in the shredding of Ba’ath Party and other diplomatic documents maintained at the Iraqi Embassy that could compromise the Saddam Hussein regime and identify those individuals in the United States who had been acting as agents of the IIS. Al-Dellemy also attended and organized social gatherings at the Iraqi Embassy and the ISEC, which were used to recruit individuals to work for the IIS; to interact with individuals who were already working with the IIS and Saddam Hussein’s regime; and to maintain the loyalties of the participants to the Ba’ath Party and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Throughout the conspiracy Al-Dellemy made a restaurant he operated in Maryland available as a meeting place for IIS officers and Iraqi government officials, and utilized his restaurant as a means to gather information pertaining to U.S. government agencies near the restaurant, such as the National Security Agency and Fort George G. Meade.

Throughout the conspiracy, Al-Dellemy relied on fellow Ba’ath Party members and/or sympathizers to provide him with information about the Iraqi opposition in the United States, including members of the Iraqi community in Detroit, Michigan. Al-Dellemy also gathered information in Maryland regarding U.S. military training and travel concerning U.S. actions in Iraq.

Al-Dellemy, at the request of Iraqi government officials, sought out individuals for employment at the ISEC and in 2000, arranged for a coconspirator to be employed full-time at the ISEC as an accountant and a driver. This coconspirator continued his employment at the ISEC through March 2003, then resumed his employment at the Iraqi Embassy when it reopened in Washington, D.C., in December 2003. The coconspirator continued to work at the Iraqi embassy until March or April 2004. The coconspirator acted as a conduit between Al-Dellemy, Ba’ath Party members and loyalists in Detroit, and IIS and ISEC officials to transmit information of interest to the IIS, the Saddam Hussein regime, and the Ba’ath Party. Al-Dellemy was never recognized by the Department of State or the Attorney General of the United States as a diplomatic or consular officer of the Government of Iraq, or officially or publicly acknowledged and sponsored as an official, representative, or employee of Iraq.

According to the plea, Al-Dellemy never revealed his affiliation with the Ba’ath Party in applications to the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (now U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) for residency status in the United States, in an effort to conceal his activities as an agent for the Iraqi government. In addition, at the end of March 2003, Al-Dellemy and others destroyed numerous Ba’ath Party documents and related literature in his possession that would have compromised the activities of Al-Dellemy and his coconspirators as agents of the Iraqi government in the United States. On Oct. 13, 2008, during an interview with FBI agents, Al-Dellemy falsely denied passing information to the IIS and the Iraqi government, denied receiving payment from the IIS, and denied collecting information on the Iraqi opposition movement and reporting that information to the IIS.

Al-Dellemy faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for conspiracy to act as an agent for a foreign government. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett has scheduled sentencing for March 5, 2009 at 2:00 p.m.

Patrick Rowan, Assistant Attorney General for National Security and U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their investigative work. Mr. Rosenstein commended Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Manuelian, who is prosecuting the case, as well as Senior Trial Attorneys Robert E. Wallace and Clifford I. Rones, from the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who provided assistance in the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Harvey E. Eisenberg, Chief of National Security, who supervised this case.

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Technorati tags: al dellemy, baath party, ins, saddam hussein, Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy, foreign agents, iraq, conconspirator, Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), Mukhabbarat

Portents of A Nuclear Al-Qaeda

Courtesy of Washington Post and by permission from the author, David Ignatius, Link to the article: Here

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen is paid to think about the unthinkable. As the Energy Department‘s director of intelligence, he’s responsible for gathering information about the threat that a terrorist group will attack America with a nuclear weapon.

With his shock of white hair and piercing eyes, Mowatt-Larssen looks like a man who has seen a ghost. And when you listen to a version of the briefing he has been giving recently to President Bush and other top officials, you begin to understand why. He is convinced that al-Qaeda is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that will leave the ultimate terrorist signature — a mushroom cloud.

We’ve all had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime. Indeed, we have become so frightened of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, that we have begun doing the terrorists’ job for them by undermining the legal framework of our democracy. And truly, I wish I could dismiss Mowatt-Larssen’s analysis as the work of an overwrought former CIA officer with too many years in the trenches.

But it’s worth listening to his warnings — not because they induce more numbing paralysis but because they might stir sensible people to take actions that could detect and stop an attack. That’s why his boss, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, is encouraging him to speak out. Mowatt-Larssen doesn’t want to anguish later that he didn’t sound the alarm in time.

Mowatt-Larssen has been gathering this evidence since a few weeks after Sept. 11, when then-CIA Director George Tenet asked him to create a new branch on weapons of mass destruction in the agency’s counterterrorism center. He helped Tenet prepare the chapter on al-Qaeda’s nuclear efforts that appears in Tenet’s memoir, ” At the Center of the Storm.” Now that the uproar over Tenet’s mistaken “slam dunk” assessment of the Iraqi threat has died down, it’s worth rereading this account. It provides a chilling, public record of al-Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions.

Mowatt-Larssen argues that for nearly a decade before Sept. 11, al-Qaeda was seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As early as 1993, Osama bin Laden offered $1.5 million to buy uranium for a nuclear device, according to testimony presented in federal court in February 2001. When the al-Qaeda leader was asked in 1998 if he had nuclear or chemical weapons, he responded: “Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so.”

Even as al-Qaeda was preparing to fly its airplane bombs into buildings, the group was also trying to acquire nuclear and biological capabilities. In August 2001, bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met around a campfire with Pakistani scientists from a group called Umma Tameer-E-Nau to discuss how al-Qaeda could build a nuclear device. Al-Qaeda also had an aggressive anthrax program that was discovered in December 2001 after bin Laden was driven from his haven in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda proclaimed a religious rationale to justify the WMD attacks it was planning. In June 2002, a Kuwaiti-born cleric named Suleiman Abu Ghaith posted a statement on the Internet saying that “al-Qaeda has the right to kill 4 million Americans” in retaliation for U.S. attacks against Muslims. And in May 2003, at the same time Saudi operatives of al-Qaeda were trying to buy three Russian nuclear bombs, a cleric named Nasir al-Fahd issued a fatwa titled “A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels.” Interrogations of al-Qaeda operatives confirmed that the planning was serious. Al-Qaeda didn’t yet have the materials for a WMD attack, but it wanted them.

Most chilling of all was Zawahiri’s decision in March 2003 to cancel a cyanide attack in the New York subway system. He told the plotters to stand down because “we have something better in mind.” What did that mean? More than four years later, we still don’t know.

After 2004, the WMD trail went cold, according to Mowatt-Larssen. Many intelligence analysts have concluded that al-Qaeda doesn’t have nuclear capability today. Mowatt-Larssen argues that a more honest answer is: We don’t know.

So what to do about this spectral danger? The first requirement, says Mowatt-Larssen, is to try to visualize it. What would it take for al-Qaeda to build a bomb? How would it assemble the pieces? How would the United States and its allies deploy their intelligence assets so that they could detect a plot before it was carried out? How would we reinvent intelligence itself to avert this ultimate catastrophe?

A terrorist nuclear attack, as Tenet wrote in his book, would change history. If we can see how this story might end, perhaps we can deflect the arrow before it hits its target.

The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is davidignatius@washpost.com.

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Technorati tags: george tenet, cia, iran, nuclear weapons, al qaeda, David Ignatius, Mowatt-Larssen, Bush, Energy Department, DOE, Osama bin Laden, wmd, new york subway, Nasir al-Fahd, fatwa, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Pakistani scientist, us intelligence, Iran, Iraq, global war on terror, bin laden, Umma Tameer-E-Nau

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The Evolving Terroris Landscape

AL QAEDA TODAY

The Evolving Terrorist Landscape

Courtesy of the FBI

A 22-year-old student—code-named “Irhabi 007”—creating a global virtual support network for terrorist plotters in Canada, Denmark, Bosnia, and the U.S., all from his basement apartment computer in London.

Small but sophisticated groups tapping into the larger al Qaeda brand—perhaps even receiving funding and training from bin Laden & Co.—but operating largely as independent terrorist franchises.

Homegrown, self-radicalized extremists inspired by the violent dogma of al Qaeda germinating plans to gun down soldiers at Fort Dix and blow up a pipeline at J.FK. Airport.

It’s the new shape of terrorism—specifically al Qaeda driven or inspired—as outlined Friday by Director Mueller at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In the speech, the Director describes the new three-tiered threat posed by al Qaeda and its diverse band of affiliates and supporters around the world, whether that is in suburban basements, in ungoverned spaces or tribal areas in places like Pakistan and Africa, or in the shadows of the Internet.

“When America’s hammer fell on al Qaeda, al Qaeda broke into a hundred pieces,” the Director said. “Some of our adversaries were stopped, but others spread. The network is now diffuse.”

Especially in cyberspace, which the Director called “terrorism’s new frontier, offering both persuasive inspiration and practical instruction.” In the case of Younis Tsouli—aka “Irhabi 007” or “Terrorist 007”—the web was a tool to teach both the ideology and technology of terrorism. Tsouli, traced through a telephone number found in a terrorist safe house in Bosnia, posted thousands of files online, ranging from “videotaped beheadings to detailed manuals for constructing car bombs and suicide vests.”

And how to respond to this ever-evolving threat? With a united front that transcends national boundaries, agency jurisdictions, and national security disciplines. The Director says the FBI’s goal is to be an “effective bridge” in exactly those areas…and he gave several examples of how we’re filling that role today:

• By working alongside the military in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, operating as a team to “search safe houses, collect biometric evidence, analyze explosive devices, and trace terrorist financing.”
• By becoming a fully integrated member of the Intelligence Community, with stronger than ever relationships with the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security.
• By sharing information “on a daily basis with our intelligence counterparts on every continent, from MI5 in Britain to the Mabahith in Saudi Arabia.”
• By working closely with our 800,000 state and local law enforcement partners in the U.S. and with our counterparts overseas through our international offices now located in 60 capitols worldwide.
• And by being a part of globally coordinated investigations, where in the Tsouli case, for example, many different countries “made joint decisions as to when to move in and disrupt the plots, so as to protect the integrity of each other’s operations.”

To learn more about the new face of terrorism and our role in intersecting the work of militaries, intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies, we encourage you to read the full speech.

Resources:

• Director’s remarks
• FBI Counterterrorism operations

Technorati tags: terror cell, terrorists, Younis Tsouli, Irhabi 007, Terrorist 007, radical Islam, afghanitan, iraq, safe house, bimetric evidence, terrorist financing, internet terrorism, Homegrown, self-radicalized extremists, al Qaeda, Fort Dix, J.FK. Airport, counterterrorism

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Bin Laden set to release another (NEW) video

Courtesy of Drudge Report

As al Qaeda chatter picks up just before the 6th anniversary of 9/11, AP is reporting this morning that Bin Laden is set to release another video. Apparently, Bin Laden will be presenting the last testament of one of the Sept. 11 homicide hijackers on the new video set for release today.

If you recall that last week, Bin Laden tried to justify the 9/11 attacks, which, he claimed, “further harmed America’s reputation and its prestige worldwide…” Bin Laden mocked the Democrats for failing to stop the war in Iraq and called for the Michael Moore crowd to step up their anti war rhetoric, “Now that your representatives in the Democratic party failed to fulfill your desire to stop the war, you can keep marching in the streets of big [U.S.] cities holding up anti-war signs……”

Bin Laden appeared to be issuing a warning (da’wa) to the infidels of America and the west to convert to Islam or perish, “The biggest and most irreversible error one can commit in this world is to die without surrendering oneself to Allah, namely, to die without embracing Islam……”

The Sahih Muslim Hadith, [Book 019, Number 4294] indicates that a Muslim da’wa is required before an all out onslaught with the infidel western enemies.

Is an attack imminent? Only the radical Islamists know for sure. We should be prepared to unite against them and drive them from the face of the earth. My message for the liberal crowd is that you don’t know what you are up against.

Be ever vigilant.

UPDATE: Latest on Fox News regarding the new video, 9/10/2007

Sept. 11 Hijacker’s ‘Last Testament’: Al Qaeda announces it will release new video of Usama bin Laden presenting last testament of one Sept. 11 hijacker

Bin Laden’s Video Message to the American People

Special Dispatch – Jihad & Terrorism

September 10, 2007 

No.1709

Osama Bin Laden’s Video Message to the American People

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
Osama Bin Laden’s Video Message to the American

On September 8, 2007 the Islamist forum http://al-ekhlaas.org, hosted by Layered Technologies, Inc. in Texas, USA, posted a video message from Osama bin Laden to the American people titled “The Solution.”
The following are excerpts.

Bin Laden opens his message by discussing the effect of the 9/11 attacks, which, he claims, “further harmed America’s reputation and its prestige worldwide…” He goes on to characterize U.S. policies throughout history, and more recently in Iraq, as morally reprehensible. For example, he presents Bush’s claim that the U.S. is “cooperating with Al-Maliki’s government in order to spread freedom in Iraq” as an attempt to cover up Bush’s “true intentions,” which are “to work with leaders of one sect in Iraq against another sect” in hope that this will turn the war in his favor, while in fact this policy has precipitated a civil war “which [Bush] can no longer control.” Thus, bin Laden claims that while the U.S. “proclaim[ed] the slogans of justice, freedom, equality, and humaneness,” in reality its policies yielded “fear, destruction, killing, famine, illness, and vagrancy.” As a result of this war, he continues, “there are more than one million orphans in Baghdad alone, and hundreds of thousands of widows… The American’s [own] statistics… [reveal] that more than 650,000 people have been killed in Iraq as a result of the war and its consequences.”

Bin Laden then points out that the Democrats have so far failed to stop the war in Iraq, despite winning the congressional elections. He interprets this as an indication that wealthy individuals still dominate policy decisions, and says to the Americans, “Now that your representatives in the Democratic party failed to fulfill your desire to stop the war, you can keep marching in the streets of big [U.S.] cities holding up anti-war signs,” but this will be to no avail.

Bin Laden then adds that “there are [nevertheless] two [ways] to bring [the war] to an end. The first… is for us to continue killing and fighting you with ever increasing intensity [until we defeat you]… The second is… [for you] to liberate yourselves from the deception and restrictions… inflicted upon you by the capitalistic system… in the same way you liberated yourselves from the monks and kings that once enslaved you, and from feudalism.” The goal of the capitalist system, he warns, is to turn the entire world into a fief controlled by large corporations…”

As an alternative to the capitalist system, bin Laden offers Islam. He calls upon the Americans to embrace Islam, saying: “The biggest and most irreversible error one can commit in this world is to die without surrendering oneself to Allah, namely, to die without embracing Islam.” He warns that, once the owners of the major corporations realize that the Americans people have lost confidence in the democratic system and have started searching for an alternative, i.e., Islam, “they will run after you to please you and fulfill your every desire, in order to turn you away from Islam.” He therefore advices the Americans not to waver in their pursuit of Islam, since the benefits they will receive by embracing it are numerous, including a significant reduction in taxes, since Islam does not impose taxes beyond the mandatory 2.5% Zakat (i.e., alms) tax.

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Al Qaeda’s Nuclear ‘9/11’ Plan

Courtesy of NewsMax.com

This Man Leads Al Qaeda’s Nuclear ‘9/11’ Plan

He is the most wanted man in America yet most Americans have never heard his name. He has been described as the “Fixer” of the Sept. 11 attacks. Several captured al-Qaeda operatives have revealed this is the same man who bin Laden has tapped to lead the terror group’s diabolical scheme to detonate nuclear devices simultaneously in several U.S. cities. Read The Full Story At NewsMax.Com:  Go Here Now

Special: Al Qaeda Targets 7 U.S. Cities for Nuclear Attack

Technorati tags: al-Qaeda, terror, newsmax.com, bin laden, nuclear bomb, targets, Adnan el-Shukrijumah, Saudi Arabia

Report: Al Qaeda Plans to hit Britain?

Courtesy of Fox News and Times of London

Click here to view the full Times of London report.

The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.

The report was compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center (JTAC) — based at MI5’s London headquarters. It draws a distinction between Usama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda’s core leadership, who are thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and affiliated organizations elsewhere.

The document states: “While networks linked to AQ [Al Qaeda] Core pose the greatest threat to the UK, the intelligence during this quarter has highlighted the potential threat from other areas, particularly AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq].”

Technorati tags: British troops, Great Britain, London, al-Qaeda, terrorism, terrorists, war-on-terror, mi5, Usama Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden, Afghan, Pakistan, Joint Terrorism Task Force, JTAC, attack, nuclear threats, nuke, wmd, weapons of mass destruction, civilian casualties

American Hiroshima

Nuclear terror: How likely is it? 50% chance of detonation within 10 years, says expert

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Courtesy of WorldNetDaily.comWASHINGTON – How likely is it that terrorists will some day be successful at detonating a nuclear device in a major American city?

That was the question debated in an online forum sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations this week.

And while Harvard’s Graham T. Allison and the CFR’s Michael A. Levi may disagree over the likelihood of such an attack, they agreed it is a serious threat and much more needs to be done to avoid the disastrous consequences.

Levi, the skeptic, said: “Al-Qaeda has grand ambitions and seeks mass casualties. And regardless of the probability of nuclear terrorism, the potential consequences of a successful attack should be enough to prompt us to more urgent action than we are currently taking.”   For the rest of the story:   American Hiroshima

Technorati tags: Hiroshima, Nuke, Nuclear bomb, world net Daily, nuclear device, council on foreign relations, harvard

Algerian and Arab Press on Al-Qaeda Attacks in Algiers

Special Dispatch-North Africa/Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project
April 17, 2007
No. 1546

Reactions in the Algerian and Arab Press to the Al-Qaeda Attacks in Algiers
To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD154607 .

The suicide bombings in Algeria on April 11, 2007, the first spectacular attack carried out by the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, brought the region to the forefront of the headlines in the Arab press – especially as they occurred in tandem with a number of abortive suicide bombings in Casablanca. In Algeria, fears for the future were underscored by memories of the dark years of the 1990s, and the press was unanimous in calling for concerted action against terrorism. Many also criticized government policies, in particular the National Reconciliation plan, which aims to reintegrate radical Islamists into society.
In the international Arab press, well-known commentator  ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed criticized what he described as fallacious assumptions about the root causes of terrorism, saying that the terrorists are driven by religious extremism, and not by poverty, nor by the lack of democracy – which, he emphasized, they consider to be heresy.

The following are details:

“Algeria is Fighting a Battle of Universal Dimensions Against a Poison That Has No Borders: Islamist Terrorism”
An April 14, 2007 editorial by N. Sebti in the liberal Liberte daily, read: “Today, the entire world has understood that Algeria, beyond [the fight on] its own territory, is waging a battle of universal dimensions against a poison that has no borders: Islamist terrorism.”(1)

Omar Belhouchet, writing in the daily El-Watan, called for a combined strategy of military action and democratic reform: “It is inconceivable, inadmissible, and shocking to relive the nightmare of the 1990s… In the 1990s the Algerians knew how to resist the Islamist terrorist war machine with heroism and extraordinary self-sacrifice, and they are capable of doing so again… On the other hand, they fear the resignation, weakness, and compromises [of principle] of those who have the responsibility for bringing Algeria out of the crisis.

“It is time for the Algerian state, at the risk of plunging the country into a grave political and moral crisis, to determine, once and for all, a clear policy of eradicating terrorism. The politics of the outstretched hand has its limits…”

He added that democratic reform and a crackdown on corruption were also necessary, as political frustrations only served the Islamists.(2)

Vice-Editor of Liberte: “It’s Not Over”

Mounir Boudjema, Vice-editor of Liberte – a newspaper that lost four of its journalists to Islamist terrorism in the 1990s – wrote in an April 12 editorial: “The attacks in Algiers, which up to now had been a secure sanctuary, against the very symbol of political power, were designed to keep Algerians under the yoke of fear and resignation. [This was] a signal as powerful as the explosion [itself], telling us ‘it’s not over’ and that we need to go to bed in fright and in anguish and to wake up with fear in our hearts. [It was] a message to the Algerians to give up on life and to capitulate to fatalism.

“The terrorists are right about one thing: ‘It’s not over’. As long as they remain living and armed, taking cover in their hideouts or in their laboratories of death, ‘it’s not over’. As long as the republican and patriotic forces of this country are [still] standing, ‘it’s not over’. As long as they have not taken in the extent of their failure to turn this country into a second Afghanistan or an open-air morgue, ‘it’s not over’.”(3)
“Algeria Remains, Alas, Fertile Ground for Obscurantist Ideas”

Hakim Outoudert, writing in the regional daily La Depeche de Kabylie, questioned the Interior Minister’s assertion that the attacks were an isolated event, and called for an ideological battle against fundamentalism in order to dry up the “terrorist matrix”:

“Minister of the Interior Yazid Zerhouni… reaffirmed the ‘isolated’ and ‘diminished’ character of the group at the origin of the drama, and assured [us] as to the overall security situation, which, according to him, remains ‘in order’…

“The distinction, unencumbered by complexes… between a truly fruitful National Reconciliation program and the implacable struggle against terrorism is the only responsible attitude to be adopted in order to do away with the scourge and to rehabilitate the spirit of vigilance, as much that of the citizens as that of the security forces… It must be recognized that this vigilance has been muted for some time…

“There is another necessity, and not the least one, in order to frustrate the millenarian designs of Islamist terrorism, and consequently to lessen the political import of its murderous operations: the political-ideological struggle against fundamentalism.

“In this field, Algeria remains, alas, fertile ground for obscurantist ideas, and even for the Islamist cult of martyrdom. How [else] could a young man have internalized the idea of finding his celestial salvation in blowing himself up? How many young Algerians might be in the same state of spirit, and await only a sign from the ’emir’ in order to ‘merit’ their place in paradise, and some ‘houris’ as a bonus?

“Where did these young people contract this evil, if not from within Algerian society, through a bigoted media literature, but above all within the mosques in subversive suburbs?…

“[Should we] do away with fundamentalism, the matrix of terrorism, by drying up [its] ideological ground, or maintain [its] destructive potential by ceding it the terrain of political initiative? One day we’ll have to choose. The sooner the better.”(4)

FIS Leaders and the Founder of the GSPC Denounce the Attacks

Hassan Hattab, founder and first Emir of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (which has since become the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, the group which carried out the attacks), denied any connection with the bombings. In a telephone interview with the El-Shorouq El-Yawmi daily, Hattab said that he “washed his hands” of all those who “went down this misguided path,” and said that the attackers were acting on orders “from abroad.”(5)

‘Abbasi Madani, former head of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) who now lives in exile in Qatar, told the Qatari daily Al-Raya that the attacks were a great wrong, and that the Algerian issue was a political one which could not be dealt with in this way. He also blamed the government for the attacks, though, saying that it too encouraged the violence in order to prevent a political solution.(6)

Likewise, Rabah Kebir, a former top member of the Islamic Salvation Front, issued a statement on April 14 in which he “vigorously condemned this odious, unjustified criminal act, which targeted the Algerian people and its institutions” and which had killed and injured “many victims among the innocent children of the Algerian Muslim people.” He condemned “the violence that continues to [fell] victims and prolongs the sufferings of the Algerian people, thus answering to the aims of the enemies of the reconciliation.”(7)

Dissatisfaction With the Algerian Government’s Policies on Terrorism

In his column in Liberte, Mustapha Hammouche, a fierce critic of the Islamists, complained that Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni had (like Rabah Kebir) described the attackers as “enemies of the National Reconciliation”:

“In the 1990s it was still permitted in our political culture to condemn Islamist terrorism, and even to defy it, as there were still some islands of moral and political resistance. Back then it was possible to condemn a terrorist act for what it was: an abject crime…

“Today the terrorist act is [considered] condemnable solely because it contradicts the policy of national reconciliation. It is not permitted to question the official program, even if it has failed in [bringing] that which legitimates it: peace. The critics of the sacred [National Reconciliation] plan are thrown into the same camp as those who place the bombs – that of enemies of the National Reconciliation.”(8)

An April 16 editorial by Larbi Zouak in the El-Khabar daily made the same point: “The strange thing about this government is that what is important to it is not the lives of citizens who fell, and will fall, to the criminal [i.e. terrorist] groups. Rather [what is important to it is] the President’s policy and the Reconciliation… Are the lives of Algerians so cheap? Is it conceivable that [the President’s] egoism could extend to such a deadly level?”(9)

Director General of Al-Arabiya TV: The Terrorists Are Not Motivated by Poverty or by Lack of Democracy, but by Religious Extremism

The attacks in Algeria and Casablanca also made the headlines in the international Arabic press. In an April 15 editorial in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Director General of Al-Arabiya TV ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, wrote:
“I listened with annoyance to the same questions over and over when analyzing the terrorist incidents in our region, when the presenter at the international [TV] station said: ‘Don’t you think that the three incidents in Casablanca have in common that they occurred in a poor region, and that those who carried them out came from a poor neighborhood? Don’t you see that [what] ties them together is poverty?’

“And in the analysis of the Algerian incident, the Western press came out and pointed to the problem of democracy in Algeria and its connection to what happened on that bloody day.

“I say that I was annoyed, because [this is] a situation that has become repeated and which has gone on for more than a decade, and in which the personalities [involved] are well-known, and whose literature has spread in all languages…

“Bin Laden, his associate Al-Zawahiri, and others are people from rich families – rich, and not just well off. In addition, none of the terrorists, despite there being thousands of them… speaks about the issue of poverty, nor do they call for elections – to the contrary, they describe elections as heresy that must be combated.
“True, there is poverty in Morocco, and a political struggle in Algeria, and the region is full of grave issues that need to be faced, from corruption to political monopoly to totalitarian regimes… but these bombings were terrorist acts that are related to issues of another kind, and have nothing to do with poverty or elections.

This is a war of people who are religious extremists.”

“If the Americans Left Iraq Tonight, and the Jews Fled Palestine, and Extremist Governments were Established… This Would Not Satisfy Them”

“To make the picture clearer… This religious war has nothing to do even with the major issues, slogans [related to which] are raised in the terrorists’ literature itself, like Palestine, Iraq, the U.S., etc. These are people who want martyrdom, that is, they want [to fight] war, anywhere in the world, and for any cause that has a religious angle. They want to go quickly to Paradise.

“They are not fighting for money, public reform, or for… the environment, and they are not nationalists, pan-Arabists, or communists… They are not jokers, hippies, or oppositionists. They are seekers of martyrdom, meaning that they are in a hurry to go to Paradise. They are not interested in the life of this world, and they want to take with them to the grave the greatest number of people possible.

“I know that this is an issue that is difficult for the Westerner to understand. It is also difficult for many of the Muslims themselves to accept this, and they always try to justify it with… issues that they consider legitimate and comprehensible.

“[But] the truth is that these [terrorists] want death for the sake of Allah… That is, even if the Americans left Iraq tonight, and the Jews fled Palestine, and extremist religious governments were established in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt – this would not satisfy them… They want Paradise, and for this they will travel to the ends of the earth, to the North Pole and the South Pole, to fight the infidels, whose numbers, in their view, are five billion.”(10)

Endnotes:
(1) Liberte (Algeria), April 14, 2007.
(2) El-Watan (Algeria), April 12, 2007.
(3) Liberte (Algeria), April 12, 2007.
(4) La Depeche de Kabylie (Algeria), April 14, 2007.
(5) El-Shorouq El-Yawmi (Algeria), April 12, 2007.
(6) Al-Raya (Qatar), April 12, 2007.
(7) El-Watan (Algeria), April 15, 2007.
(8) Liberte (Algeria), April 15, 2007.
(9) El-Khabar (Algeria), April 16, 2007.
(10) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), April 15, 2007.

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Technorati tags: algeria, casablanca, islamic salvation front, al-qaeda, islamic maghreb, salafist group, jihadist, qatar, memri, terrorists, jews, palestine, extremists, religious war, morocco, egypt, infidels, kafir, martyrdom, muslim, islamic Militancy, islam, arabian gulf, arabists, communists

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Sudden Jihad Syndrome

In regards to the latest homicidal maniac attack on unsuspecting Americans, Sulejman Talovic’s aunt, discounted theories he may have had lingering psychological effects from the war in Bosnia, telling the Salt Lake Tribune: “We all suffered things in war, but, no, we didn’t have anything.”

Recent examples of what Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes has termed “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” include Naveed Afzal Haq of Pasco, Wash., who broke through security at the Jewish Federation Center in Seattle last July and announced to staff members: “I’m a Muslim American; I’m angry at Israel.” The 30-year-old immediately began shooting randomly, killing a woman and wounding five others. An FBI spokesman called it a case of a “lone individual acting out his antagonism. … There’s nothing to indicate that it’s terrorism-related.”

Last March, 22-year-old Iranian student Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar went on a driving rampage on the campus of the University of North Carolina, injuring nine people. As Islam scholar Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, notes, the Iranian said in a court appearance he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” He also wrote letters to newspapers presenting Quranic justification for his attacks, but officials ruled out terrorism.

In October 2005, 21-year-old student Joel Hinrichs blew himself up outside the University of Oklahoma’s football stadium where 84,000 were watching a game. Police insisted it was merely a suicide, but investigators found “Islamic Jihad” material in his apartment, and he reportedly attended a nearby mosque – the same one attended by Zacharias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In January 2004, after apparently undergoing a religious awakening, a Saudi Arabian student in Houston killed his Jewish friend by slashing his throat. Mohammed Ali Alayed, 23, pleaded guilty to the Aug. 6 attack on Ariel Sellouk, also 23, who almost was decapitated with a knife. Houston police said no clear motive had been established, but Alayed went to a local mosque after the slaying.

In a high-profile case, Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad, a convert to Islam, went on a deadly shooting spree in the Washington, D.C., area in October 2002.

Source: World Net Daily: Terrorism not ruled out in Salt Lake case Investigators pursue Islam angle despite publicly declaring ‘no evidence’

Are these fellows weak in the brain mentally ill maniacs or is there another pattern emerging regarding that Muslim on Christian violence in America. I sure would not want to say that it is organized or orchestrated by the religion of peace. But, one has to wonder? I have know exceptionally nice Muslims who would not think of harming anyone. But, there appears to be a mentally ill undercurrent similar to or own Aryan Nation, Christian Identity Movement radicals. I should hope that we get to the bottom of this Sudden Jihad Syndrome and eliminate it from the American culture.

Previous Stories from World Net Daily:

• Utah gunman, 18, was Muslim from Bosnia
• Claim: San Francisco killer called himself ‘terrorist’
• Snow won’t say whether Seattle-shooting ‘terrorism’
• 1 dead, 5 hurt in Seattle terror
• Muslim: I attacked out of love for Allah’
• Oklahoma bomber had jihad material
• Saudi pleads guilty to killing Jewish friend
• Sniper link to al-Fuqra probed
• LAX terrorist in U.S. on amnesty exemption

 

Technorati tags: Daniel Pipes, homegrown terrorist, sudden jihad syndrome, world net Daily, muslim violence, christian violence, christian identity movement, utah gunman, john muhammad, islam, jewish, mohammed, mental illness