WELCOME TO IWPR'S TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 470, September 29, 2006
KRAJISNIK JUDGEMENT CONDEMNED ACROSS BOSNIA Serbs say 27-year sentence
too severe, while Muslims very disappointed by acquittal on genocide
charges. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo and Caroline Tosh in The Hague
COMMENT: BOSNIA'S "ACCIDENTAL" GENOCIDE The acquittal of Krajisnik on
genocide charges sparks debate in academic circles on the very
definition of this gravest of all crimes. By Edina Becirevic in Sarajevo
PERILS OF REPORTING JUSTICE The indictment of another Croatian
reporter for contempt has fueled debate over professional ethics and press
freedom. By Caroline Tosh in The Hague
NINE-MONTH DELAY EXPECTED IN LUBANGA CASE Lubanga's lawyers demand
more time to go through thousands of pages of prosecution documents. By
Katy Glassborow in The Hague
BRIEFLY NOTED:
SESELJ TO HAVE HIS SAY
CONTEMPT OF COURT APPEALS DISMISSED
TENTATIVE DATE SET FOR TAYLOR TRIAL
**** NEW AT IWPR
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/18855.html
West African Busted for Illegal Weapons Export Plot
September 29, 2006 03:30 PM EST
by Jim Kouri - SAN DIEGO -- A West African man was arrested in San Diego last Tuesday by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service for attempting to illegally export various handguns and high-capacity magazines to the Ivory Coast
The Ivory Coast has suffered from widespread warfare and violence over the years.
Forty-year old Yssouf Diabate made his initial appearance in federal court on Wednesday to face one felony count of violating the Arms Export Control Act. The Act requires that anyone seeking to export items on the US Munitions List must first register with the US State Department and receive a license or other approval for the export of such articles.
The self-employed electronics salesman from New York was taken into custody yesterday afternoon after meeting with an ICE undercover agent at a storage facility in the Oak Park area.
There, Diabate paid the agent $13,200 for the weapons and accessories. That money was in addition to a $10,000 down payment the New York man made last month. After taking possession of the items, the defendant concealed them inside two television security monitors and packaged them for shipment. Diabate and the agent then drove to a local UPS store in Kearny Mesa where the suspect paid to ship one of the boxes before agents arrested him in the store's parking lot.
The investigation into Diabate began about three months ago after ICE received a tip from an industry source. During the subsequent probe, the ICE undercover agent negotiated with Diabate by email and telephone, and met with him twice in San Diego.
“In the wrong hands, arms and sensitive technology pose a serious threat to national security,” said Mike Unzueta, special agent in charge for the ICE office of investigations in San Diego.
“This case demonstrates the pivotal role ICE plays not only in protecting our country, but in ensuring the safety of other nations as well,” he added.
“The illegal transfer of Department of Defense weapons and technology is one of the top investigative priorities at DCIS,” said Rick Gwin, special agent in charge for the DCIS Western Field Office.
The weapons Diabate purchased and attempted to export are all listed on the United States Munitions List. The cache included 38 handguns manufactured by Glock, Beretta, Smith and Wesson, and Sig-Sauer. In addition to the weapons, Diabate purchased 10 high-capacity magazines, 10 tactical flashlights, and 5 laser sights.
Diabate, who is a legal permanent resident of the United States, immigrated to this country from West Africa in 1995. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
At last, they have written a program, only for me.
If I forget a name, all I will need to do, is invent a new one.
Actually the program, might be useful and I am sure will be fun.
http://www.freewarefiles.com/screenshot.php?programid=23404
[Off topic, or the devil is at work today....LOL]
[links to several of the accident reports]
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30157809.htm
Brazil plane plunged nose first into ground-official
30 Sep 2006 13:49:06 GMT
Source: Reuters
BRASILIA, Brazil, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The Brazilian passenger plane that crashed with 155 people on board likely plunged into the ground nose first, the president of airport authority Infraero said on Saturday, meaning there is little chance that anyone survived.
Jose Carlos Pereira told reporters that rescue planes found a concentrated wreckage site in the Amazon jungle, indicating that the plane hit the ground in a vertical position.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30282635.htm
Brazilian Senate president hurt in copter crash
30 Sep 2006 20:38:21 GMT
Source: Reuters
Printable view | Email this article | RSS XML [-] Text [+]
BRASILIA, Brazil, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The president of Brazil's Senate, Renan Calheiros, was slightly hurt when the helicopter in which he was traveling crashed in northeast Brazil on Saturday, a congressional spokesman said.
The incident occurred in Arapiraca city in Alagoas state on the eve of general elections in Brazil and one day after an Amazon plane crash in which 155 people are feared to have been killed.
Another senator, Teotonio Vilela, was also hurt. He is running for governor of Alagaos in the election for the opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Movement.
An aide and a third politician were also on board as well as the pilot. All were taken to a local hospital then discharged without serious injury.
Federal Police, aviation officials and a Senate security team were investigating the cause of the crash.
The helicopter belonged to a businessman, Agencia Estado said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30885264.htm
Egypt busts Sinai arms ring - security sources
30 Sep 2006 22:02:17 GMT
Source: Reuters
Background
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
More
(Adds MENA says two arrested, denies Palestinian involvement)
AL-ARISH, Egypt, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Egyptian police busted a weapons-dealing ring on Saturday that sold guns and grenades in Egypt's Sinai peninsula and whose members included security men, security sources said.
"Nine members of this network were caught red-handed while selling weapons and explosives on one of the streets in al-Arish to a group of Bedouin and Palestinians," one of the sources told Reuters, asking not to be named.
The Sinai peninsula has been the scene of a string of three deadly bomb attacks targeting popular Red Sea beach resorts over the past two years that have killed scores of people.
Palestinian militants have also used Sinai to smuggle weapons through tunnels across the border into the Gaza Strip for use in fighting Israel.
continued.......................
http://www.eacourier.com/articles/2006/09/29/update/friday/news01.txt
Plane torn to pieces in crash near Safford Regional Airport
By Adam Gaub, Assistant Editor
An Oklahoma man was able to walk away from a horrific plane crash when it ran out of fuel and crashed near Safford Regional Airport on Wednesday evening, police reports stated.
Jerald Pate, 48, of Muskogee, Okla., a pilot who was flying equipment for Phelps Dodge for the construction at the new Safford Mine, was able to walk nearly a mile and a half from the wreck to the airport hangar. He was in good enough condition to refuse medical treatment, police reports stated, despite the wreck causing Pate's plane to be torn apart.
Safford Regional Airport Manager Doug Benson, who later went and viewed the wreckage, said it was a miracle Pate was able to walk away from that crash.
"I really can't conceive how anyone could have walked away from (the crash)," Benson said. "How he went through all that sheet metal and Plexiglas without getting torn up is incredible."
Benson said other than a few scrapes and being dusty, Pate looked otherwise unharmed when he talked to him at the airport. Medics checked Pate and the airport, but Pate refused to be taken to a hospital, police reports stated.
Pate told Graham County Sheriff's deputies that he took off from Austin, Texas, after refueling there at 1:50 p.m. He was approaching Safford when he ran out of fuel and his engines shut down. He said his gauges were not reading properly.
Pate told deputies he tried turning on auxiliary tank, but the plane stalled anyway, dropping from 6,000 feet at speeds estimated to be as high as 80 mph.
The plane slammed into the ground near a ravine about a mile east of the airport, police reports stated, tearing the front half of the twin engine Beechcraft Baron apart.
The plane is registered to Bruce Hensley, also of Muskogee. Pate told deputies the plane was uninsured.
Sheriff's deputies went out to locate the plane the night of the crash so they could turn off the plane's emergency locator transmitter signal. When deputies located the aircraft, it was broken in two behind where the seats were located, Commander Dwayne Elders stated in his report.
Pate was transporting eight concrete vibrators and tools to be delivered to the Phelps Dodge mine project just north of Safford. When Sheriff's deputies returned to the scene, they were able to help Pate get the mostly intact equipment from the wreckage, and helped him get it loaded for delivery the next day, Benson said.
Contact Adam Gaub at 428-2560, ext. 240, or e-mail him at adam@eacourier.com.
September 30, 2006 Anti-Terrorism News
(Sudan) Al-Qaeda's Al-Zawahri calls U.N. resolution to send
peacekeepers into Sudan's war-torn Darfur region a "Crusader plan," imploring the
Muslims of Darfur to defend themselves (my title)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060930/ap_on_re_mi_ea/al_qaida_tape;_ylt=ApOv3Z1gWuk_HX5OmLC7bdILewgF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
(Afghanistan) Twelve killed in Kabul suicide blast
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20503314-1702,00.html
NATO meeting fails to solve Afghan troop shortfall
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2381434,00.html
Indian police: Pakistan behind bombings - Mumbai police chief A.N. Roy
"The whole attack was planned by Pakistan's ISI and carried out by
Lashkar-e-Taiba and their operatives in India."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060930/ap_on_re_as/india_train_bombings
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1235708,00.html
(India) July 11 blast probe: Police search for Students Islamic
Movement of India (SIMI) activist
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1809894,001302390000.htm
Pakistan 'the West's main ally': Musharraf warns warned the West would
be "brought to its knees" without his country's co-operation in the war
against terror
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5394278.stm
Yemen arrests 5 suspected of kidnapping
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060929/ap_on_re_mi_ea/yemen_arrests;_ylt=Amx7Mdm8FzEHxLGfXWbLbEBvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-
Bomb explodes in Indonesia's Poso
http://english.people.com.cn/200609/30/eng20060930_307886.html
Congress pushes through security measures - Homeland security, border
fence bills passed
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15058456/
US House passes ports security bill
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193345623&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Detainee Legislation Puts CIA Interrogations Back on Track
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,216818,00.html
Report says detainee plan would pardon U.S. officials
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52217
Bush says terrorists seek new base
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi/20060929-121755-5456r.htm
Commander: Iraq insurgents losing ground
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060929/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq
Iraq shuts down Baghdad with one-day curfew
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15066939/
(Iraq) U.S. Detains Sunni Politician's Bodyguard on Suspicion He
Planned Attacks in Iraq
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,216819,00.html
(Iraq) Shia's flee reign of terror in mixed Iraqi city
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2006/September/focusoniraq_September195.xml§ion=focusoniraq
(France) Teacher forced into hiding after attacking Islam
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2381435,00.html
France: Women's Rights Group Protests Entry of Pro-Stoning Muslim
scholar Hani Ramadan
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.345250300&par=0
(Israel) Syria threat over Golan puts Israel on war alert
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/30/wmid30.xml
Israel Infrastructure Minister: 'Liquidate Hizbollah Chief'
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1235705,00.html?f=rss
Kenya: Muslims in Demo Over Terror Suspects' Arrests
http://allafrica.com/stories/200609290921.html
(UK) Terror police shake-up proposed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5393578.stm
Kuwaiti emir pressed Bush for Guantanamo detainees release: lawyer
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2006/September/theworld_September1043.xml§ion=theworld
(Australia) Hicks trial 'unlikely this year'
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20502333-1702,00.html
Canadian pledges better airport security
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060929-042135-9615r
(NYC) Man placed dummy bomb in JFK parking lot arrested
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193345166&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(Philadelphia) Imam guilty of selling guns & ammo
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15626500.htm
(Iran) Woman Accused of Supporting Terror Group - supporting MEK group
to overthrow Iranian regime
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/entrefinance/feeds/ap/2006/09/30/ap3056740.html
Beijing secretly fires lasers to disable US satellites
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=QH5T1Z30W4AMRQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/09/26/wchina226.xml
Fresh violence claims 15 more lives in Sri Lanka
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/September/subcontinent_September1135.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/jonsson092906.htm
The Rise of the East Asian Caliphate
The rise of a potential caliphate in East Asia takes on added significance when we recognize the close association between Chavez of Venezuela and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Further increasing the risk for the Sunni faction's goal of reconstructing a caliphate was that the Russian military recently held its annual RUBEZH ('Border') maneuver in the Caspian Sea region. (Reference MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1296 September 22, 2006) 'The Iranian website Baztab, affiliated with Expediency Council Secretary and former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezai, presented the maneuver, based on a report in the Central Asian press, as aiming to prepare the Russian army to respond to a possible U.S. military assault on Iran.'
'The maneuver, called 'RUBEZH 2006,' [which included] 2,500 troops from the armed forces of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was held the week of (August 24-29) in the port of Aqtau, [Kazakhstan]... on the basis of the 'Collective Security Treaty' [CST]. Uzbekistan participated, as an observer in this exercise; Belarus and Armenia did not take part in it.'
'In parallel with the Aqtau maneuver, the armed forces of Kazakhstan and China conducted joint military operations in Kazakhstan in the context of the Shanghai Cooperation Pact (SCO). These military operations revealed more clearly the signs of cooperation and military-security coordination between the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the member states of the Collective Security Treaty.'
' Iran , which is a member with observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), continues to maintain informal relations with the Collective Security Treaty.'
Google Alert - mujahideen
Russian Invaders Attacked in Chechnya and Dagestan
Kavkaz Center - Istanbul,Turkey
Russian media reported Saturday a landmine attack by Chechen Mujahideen
on a Russian military convoy consisting of two jeeps and one truck on
the highway ...
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/09/30/5760.shtml
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&hl=en&client=google&ncl=http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/09/30/5760.shtml
Iraqi Mujahideen Attack US Troops Every 15 Minutes On Average
Kavkaz Center - Istanbul,Turkey
... CBS news that the US government is concealing the full extent of
violence
against the US occupation forces in Iraq, noting that the Mujahideen
activity
have ...
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/09/30/5763.shtml
Musharraf blames West for terrorism
Hindustan Times - India
... Mujahideen, who were brought, trained and financed by the West to
fight
Soviet troops coalesced into Al-Qaeda after the withdrawal of the
invading
(Soviet ...
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7598_1810158,000500020000.htm
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&hl=en&client=google&ncl=http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7598_1810158,000500020000.htm,
[Poems and note the description of the time filmed, does it match the Zawihiri tape, description too....photos at link.]
As-Sahab Releases "Jihad Poems of Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi"
By Nick Grace
September 17, 2006
As-Sahab, al Qaeda's media propaganda unit, today released a new 23-minute video on radical message boards called "Jihad Poems of Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi" that features Mohammad Hassan (alias Abu Yahya al-Libi), an al Qaeda fighter originally from Libya who escaped from Bagram prison in July 2005. He appears wearing a suicide vest as he reads handwritten notes in front of at least 14 al Qaeda militants, some of which clutch kalashnikovs. During the introduction of the video the crowd fires the weapons into the air.
This is the fourth known video to feature al-Libi. Previous as-Sahab videos that include him include a sermon in celebration of Eid, a eulogy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and an interview about his imprisonment and escape from Bagram. Unlike most of as-Sahab's recent video products, this new video is not subtitled in English.
An animated gif banner was posted in advance on the Ekhlaas Forum, the main portal for al Qaeda messaging, on Friday, September 15.
The video was released in two file formats (MPEG and RealMedia) and compressed in the RAR format. The RAR files are password-protected, presumably to block the video from being opened and viewed by Web surfers who discover the files through random searches. The password, "qwert55," is included in the text of as-Sahab's post on the Ekhlaas Forum.
A total of five different file sizes have been posted to exactly 300 links on free file transfer sites, including sendspace.com, badongo.com, openupload.com, megaupload.com, depositfiles.com, filehostia.com, quicksharing.com, share2net.com, filecities.com, filefactory.com, bigupload.com, desiupload.net, clonefile.com, filehosting.cc, savefile.info, fileblob.com, uploadr.com, spywork.info, axifile.com, mytempdir.com, savefile.com, easy-share.com, sharex1.com, bigupload.com, rogepost.com, share42.com, rapidshare.de, zshare.net, ez-files.net, yourfilelink.com, quickdump.com, savefile.info, oron.com, storeandserve.com, crazefiles.com, reshare.co.uk, up4world.com, filecoast.com, uploadyourfiles.de, transferbigfiles.com, razr-host.net, uploadpalace.com, and hyperupload.com.
227 Megs (MPEG): 44 links
38.1 Megs (RM): 89 links
16.9 Megs (RM): 73 links
7.96 Megs (RM): 58 links
3.52 Megs (RM): 36 links
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060917_assahab.rm [38.1 Megs]
The video appears to have been recorded recently during the Summer months with two cameras. Wide shots reveal background topography, especially two distant hills behind al-Libi, but it remains unclear where this product was taped. Trained analysts may, in fact, be able to identify the location. The lighting is also rather poor in comparison with other videos and there does not appear to be any visible direct sunlight. It is possible that al-Libi's speech was conducted either at sunrise or shortly before dusk.
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9-11-06 zawihiri
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060912.php
Zawahiri's Attack on Fellow Muslims and Threat Against Jordan
By Nick Grace
September 12, 2006
The 12th message from Ayman al-Zawahiri was released on September 11, "Hot Issues with Shaykh Ayman al-Zawahiri," which is dated September 2006. The video, which lasts 01:16, is not as well produced as as-Sahab's more recent products but is subtitled in what appears to be colloquial American English. The video features a one-on-one interview with the al Qaeda operations chief and an off-camera interviewer. Zawahiri sits in front of a bookshelf. As evidenced with shoddy editing during some of the questions, the original interviewer's voice has been replaced with a slick and deep-voiced presenter.
The video contains three main points: promotion of the fight to establish Islamic Emirates in Iraq and Afghanistan, criticism of Muslims who do not support al Qaeda or its Jihad, and a declaration that the looming theater in Jordan will lead to the biggest conquest - Israel.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911_zawahiri.rm [55.3 Megs]
"Hot Issues" was advertised on September 10 in the form of a promotional animated gif banner and was finally posted across the Internet in the Real Media and 3GP file formats.
Real Media 782 Megs: 6 links
Real Media 227 Megs: 19 links
Real Media 55.3 Megs: 86 links
3GP 30.4 Megs: 21 links
Total: 132 links
An Arabic-language transcription zipped as a RAR file was also posted across 89 free file transfer Web sites, some of which advertise pornography.
The video has three main messages:
1)To convey the importance of converting Iraq and Afghanistan into Islamic Emirates for the ultimate goal of establishing the global Caliphate superpower.
2)To criticize fellow Muslims who refuse to support al Qaeda and its Jihad either through donations or manpower. He spends a great deal of time on this issue, calling them religion-trading charlatans, defeatists, and collaborators. Interestingly, this is a theme that Adam Gadahn in his "Invitation to Islam" as-Sahab video also hit upon. Gadahn said: "What is really surprising is that some among us want to suffice with invitation (to Islam) alone without resorting to self-defense."
3)To threaten Jordan and Israel. Zawahiri states: "(I)f the Islamic Emirate arises in Iraq... and is able to infiltrate the traitorous Jordanian entity to stand on the borders of Palestine and... the Mujahideen come one after another from both inside and outside Palestine, then we will see the biggest conquest and greatest victory, with Allah's permission."
On the Defeatists:
"(T)hey in fact are striving for the secularization of Islam... (O)ur fundamental difference with them is in their backsliding from the faith..."
On the Collaborators:
"They have three things in common: abandonment of the rule of Shari'ah, recognition of the legitimacy of the corrupt status quo, and cursing and abusing the Mujahideen."
On the Followers:
"I call on every Muslim to make use of every opportunity afforded him to take revenge on America for its imprisonment of Shaykh 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman."
To the Western Peoples:
"Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster which will shock you... (T)he days are pregnant and giving birth to new events with Allah's permission and guidance."
Below is a revealing exchange:
Question: And what is al-Qaeda's wider vision regarding the Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Zawahiri: The wider vision of the Mujahideen in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of an Islamic Emirate in both of them which will be a launch pad for the defense of Islam and the Muslims and a step on the road to the restoration of the Caliphate. And in Iraq, we must not forget that Jerusalem is a stone's throw from Baghdad, so if the Islamic Emirate arises in Iraq, with Allah's help, and is able to infiltrate the traitorous Jordanian entity to stand on the borders of Palestine and - Allah permitting - the Mujahideen come one after another from both inside and outside Palestine, then we will see the biggest conquest and greatest victory, with Allah's permission.
Speaking of America and the spreading of democracy, you mentioned just now that America cooperates with three groups to detour around the Islamic Jihadi resistance against it, and you mentioned one group, which you called the religion-trading charlatans. What are the other two groups?
Yes. We mentioned the first one, which is the group of religion-trading charlatans. As for the second, it is the group of defeatists, and as for the third, it is the group of beggars.
Amazing. You choose for them strong descriptions: charlatans, defeatists and beggars!
Yes, because of the ugliness of what they do.
OK. Who, as you see it, is this group of defeatists?
After the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate, a wave of psychological defeatism and doctrinal breakdown spread, and there crept into the people a tendency - through good intentions - that held that we should benefit from the status quo to rescue what can be rescued and achieve what can be achieved. And this trend, with the continuation of the blows aimed at the Muslims, continued to retreat one step after another, until, int he end, they pledged allegiance to Hosni Mubarak as president of the republic, 'Ali 'Abdullah Salih as commander of the believers, 'Abdullah bin al-Husain as leader of the Muslims, and Al al-Sabaah as guardians of the Muslim's affairs. And they entered Kabul on the backs of American tanks, with the protection of America's bombers, and in the shade of its cross; took Erdogan and friends as their role-models for success and superiority; declared their total observance of majority rule and abandonment of Shari'ah rule; and defined their affiliation by the nationalistic, territorial affiliation that prefers the patriotic unbeliever to the foreign Muslim. They have adopted a new creed which is incompatible with the creed of Islam and based on majority rule, national affiliations, restriction to the borders of Sykes/Picot, and allegiance to the nationalist state, as opposed to the creed of Islam which is based on the rule of Divine Shari'ah, the brotherhood of Islam, the unity of the Islamic lands, and the establishment of the Caliphate state. So they in fact are striving for the secularization of Islam... Thus, he calls for removing religion from life and making it a personal matter, and flees from the frank, serious ideological confrontation, which is that if the religion is a flase creed, then it must be removed from all aspects of life, whether public or private...So if the secularists are more cowardly than the atheists, then you can imagine the condition of those who strive for secularism under the cover of Islam.
Let us concentrate on the connection of those whom you call the defeatists to what you mentioned just now about the American attempt to detour around the Mujahid Islamic resistance to Crusader aggression.
...This faction detours around the Ummah's Mujahid vanguard and tries vainly to divert the Muslim masses from it with a fabricated deception which says that the violent confrontation with the ruling regimes which violates the positive law imposed by the traitorous rulers is forbidden and Haram, while they flee from Jihad against the foreign enemy, permitting it, but on two conditions: that it be in the occupied country only, and after permission is given by their local ruler to travel to the field of battle. And then, in the occupied country like Iraq and Afghanistan, they seek to cooperate with the Crusader occupation authorities in resisting Jihad - which they call terrorism - and entering the fraudulent political process under the supervision of the international false witness, the UN. So tell me by Allah, after this ploy - or predicament - how is it possible for the Jihad to come into being? And the American Crusaders couldn't be happier about these ploys...
About Global Crisis Watch
Global Crisis Watch is a weekly current affairs podcast that brings listeners to the front lines on the War of Ideas with people who are fighting tyranny and terror with the pulse of freedom. More >>
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Be alerted via e-mail when new shows are posted. E-mail addresses will not be sold or given to third parties and will only be used for the purpose of sending show alerts.
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Satalite photos of N. Korea and an area of activity.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060820.php
The photos at this website, load easily, do not bog down on dial up phone line.
photos and also Atta photo in banner:
You must see these photos snipped from the video, in memorial to the killers that were on the planes on 9-11:
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060910.php
As-Sahab and al-Eklhaas Media Network Release 9/11 Videos
By Nick Grace
September 10, 2006
The highly anticipated as-Sahab 9/11 anniversary video, "The Manhattan Raid," was released this afternoon in two parts. Part 1 (55:18) focuses on al Qaeda's justification for the attacks, an argument that is practically lifted from Michael Moore's works, and features heavy use of b-roll. Part 2 (36:23) focuses on the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and includes footage of the hijackers as they trained for the operation. Predictably, there is little mention of United 93. Adam Gadahn and Ayman al-Zawahiri appear in the video, discussing the hijackers and the attacks. Archival footage of Usama bin Laden is prominently featured. Both segments are subtitled in English.
Part 1: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911a_assahab.rm [21 Megs]
Part 2: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911b_assahab.rm [14 Megs]
"The Manhattan Raid" was released in 2 different file formats and in 3 different sizes across exactly 500 individual file transfer links. 374 Real Media file links and 126 3GP file links.
As-Sahab Media has now begun to promote its next propaganda package, a new video of al Qaeda operations chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Shortly before the as-Sahab release, the al-Ekhlaas Media Network posted a 19-minute video "on the anniversary of the invasion of the country of the brave Americans" that features never before seen clips of the hijackers, including B-roll of Ahmed al-Haznawi al-Ghamidi's martyr video and shots of muscle hijacker Ahmed Alnami.
Subtitled in English and posted in 4 different file sizes (123, 31.5, 14.1 and 7.7 Megs) across 242 file transfer links. The video spends 7 minutes eulogizing the 19 hijackers and 12 minutes on news footage of the attacks with a war nasheed soundtrack.
Production is poor in comparison to recent as-Sahab products but standard with Global Islamic Media Front and al-Boraq Media products, which now produces materials for the Islamic Army of Iraq.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060910_ekhlaas.wmv [125 Megs]
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http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060914.php
Salafist Group for Call and Combat Reaffirms Allegiance to al Qaeda
By Nick Grace
September 14, 2006
The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), which seeks to convert Algeria into an Islamic emirate by force, has reaffirmed its alliegance to al Qaeda with a communique dated September 13, 2006 and posted both on their own Web site and the Ekhlaas Forum (as a downloadable RAR file).
http://www.moonnight9876.com/pages/join_qaeda.html
The file as posted on a total of 27 free file transfer sites, including sendspace.com, rogepost.com, 9q9q.net, turboupload.com and uploading.com.
Note: It is interesting that the radicals use the RAR format to compress files rather than the more popular ZIP format.
The communique, according to a SITE Institute report, is a statement by GSPC head Musab Abdul Wadud to declare the group's joining al Qaeda's call for Jihad and thus becoming "one stone in building the coming Islamic nation." The statement cites the balkanization of the ummah through the "disease" of nationalism and declares full support to Usama bin Laden, declaring that "He can use us to strike whomever and wherever he wishes and he will find nothing but obedience from us and shall only receive what pleases him."
Relations between al Qaeda and the GSPC was briefly discussed by Ayman al-Zawahiri in his September 11 "Hot Issues" video, where he stated "All the praise is due to Allah for the blessed union which we ask Allah to be as a bone in the throats of the Americans and French Crusaders and their allies, and inspire distress, concern and dejection in the hearts of the traitorous, apostate sons of France. We ask Him to guide our brothers in the Salafist Group for Call and Combat to crush the pillars of the Crusader alliance, especially their elderly immoral leader, America."
The French government is alarmed. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has just been quoted across the wires as saying that Zawahiri's statement falling on the 9/11 anniversary could not have been by chance.
Although this communique and the resulting implications on France are now being widely reported, the GSPC has declared an alliance with al Qaeda in the past. In 2003 GSPC head Nabil Sahraoui announced an allegiance with al Qaeda. Various GSPC videos released in 2004 and 2005 also contained images and footage of Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It appears, as Cindy of TruthUSA.com pointed out to me, this latest communique is a reaffirmation of its pledge of allegiance to al Qaeda.
While the history of GSPC terror attacks have led some analysts to conclude that the group is more committed to a nationalist agenda than a global one, it cannot be denied that this group has, in fact, operated on an international scale. In September 2005 French authorities rolled up a GSPC cell that was planning an attack on the Paris metro system. Later that year, in November, Italian authorities broke up a GSPC terror cell that was planning attacks on Jewish targets in Norway. In December 1994 members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which GSPC splintered off from in 1998, hijacked an Air France jet in Algiers for the purpose of using it to strike the Eiffel Tower (and probably served as the inspiration for al Qaeda's Bojinka Plot in late 1995). And in December 1999 Ahmed Ressam was arrested while attempting to enter the United States from Canada with a trunk of explosives. While the foiled Millenium attack is associated with al Qaeda, Ressam was a GSPC operative.
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http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060907.php
[there are hidden links in all these posts]
Note: The video has been released. Read our report and see the videos here.
As-Sahab 9/11 Documentary on the Way
By Nick Grace
September 7, 2006
A new video is slated to be released by al Qaeda's propaganda wing, as-Sahab media. The animated gif promotional banner for the video that has been posted on the radical Ekhlaas Forum and is awaiting a link. You will note that both Ayman al-Zawahiri and Adam Gadahn are advertised as appearing in this video. It appears to promote the 90-minute video that was leaked to al-Jazeera on Thursday, of which only 3 minutes were broadcast.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060907_aljazeera.wmv
Segments of the video included in al-Jazeera's package include pre-9/11 footage of Usama bin Laden, Mohammed Atef, combat training exercises in Afghanistan and the martyr videos of 9/11 hijackers Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri. The video is likely to be a documentary on the 9/11 attacks.
Here are my observations on the video that deserve attention:
Keeping in line with recent as-Sahab products, this new video is extremely well produced and subtitled in English - a trend that began with the July 7 documentary on the 2005 London attacks.
Practically all of as-Sahab's products this year have relied upon the nebulous distribution network of supporters on radical message boards. It is unusual that this new video has been leaked or pre-released to al-Jazeera.
The martyr videos of al-Ghamdi and al-Shehri have been heavily modified with Adobe AfterEffects. The background design that was used in the July 27 Zawahiri video is used again but two of the background "image panels" have been replaced.
July 27 al-Zawahiri video
Image panels (L-R): Mohammed Atef, airbrushed WTC graphic, Mohammed Atta
al-Shehri martyr video
Image panels (L-R): Airbrushed WTC graphic, Pentagon reconstruction, burning WTC building
al-Ghamdi martyr video
Image panels (L-R): Airbrushed WTC graphic, Pentagon reconstruction, WTC collapse graphic
First, note the pixelzation evident on the top of Zawahiri's turban and the discoloration of his left hand as he swats at a fly in the July 27 screenshot. As I have previously argued, he was green-screened onto a "studio" graphic that was most likely designed in Adobe Photoshop. The studio graphic has been used in the al-Shehri and al-Ghamdi martyr videos in the segments of the new as-Sahab package aired on al-Jazeera. Interestingly, the burning WTC graphic that appears in the center panel of the July 27 Zawahiri video, which is heavily airbrushed and practically repainted, is used for the far left panel of both martyr videos. As-Sahab's designer has placed a graphic of the Pentagon with a construction crane in the center panel. And oddly uses two different graphics for the right-hand panel. Also note the graphic of what appears to be a static 3-D image of an American Airlines jet that changes position in the martyr videos.
Will this new video contain surreptitious messages to sleeper cells? This cannot be known, of course, but we should recall that as-Sahab's July 7 documentary contained liquid bombmaking training footage at a time when, as we now know in retrospect, a large cell in London whose members had trained in Pakistan were planning to destroy muliple aircraft over the Atlantic using liquid bombs. The image panels that flank Zawahiri in the July 27 video are also an interesting coincidence considering that they focused entirely on the 9/11 hijacking. I have been told from an extremely reliable source that the transatlantic hijackings were originally planned for September 11 but suddenly pushed to August 16. The plot was ultimately foiled on August 10.
Based on recent video releases by as-Sahab, this new video, the 9/11 documentary, is likely to be released in its entirety on the Internet on Friday. Expect new speeches by Zawahiri and Gadahn.
The questions on my mind:
* Why is as-Sahab using heavily airbrushed WTC graphics in the image panels when the original graphics are already dramatic?
* Is there a significance of the WTC graphic that appears in both the July 27 video and the 9/11 documentary?
* Why does as-Sahab feature a graphic of the Pentagon under reconstruction when images of its destruction are easily accessible?
* Will this video be as-Sahab's feature presentation between now and September 11 or is a significant message from UBL, who we have not heard from since July 1, being prepared for release?
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http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/060910.php
As-Sahab and al-Eklhaas Media Network Release 9/11 Videos
By Nick Grace
September 10, 2006
The highly anticipated as-Sahab 9/11 anniversary video, "The Manhattan Raid," was released this afternoon in two parts. Part 1 (55:18) focuses on al Qaeda's justification for the attacks, an argument that is practically lifted from Michael Moore's works, and features heavy use of b-roll. Part 2 (36:23) focuses on the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and includes footage of the hijackers as they trained for the operation. Predictably, there is little mention of United 93. Adam Gadahn and Ayman al-Zawahiri appear in the video, discussing the hijackers and the attacks. Archival footage of Usama bin Laden is prominently featured. Both segments are subtitled in English.
Part 1: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911a_assahab.rm [21 Megs]
Part 2: http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060911b_assahab.rm [14 Megs]
"The Manhattan Raid" was released in 2 different file formats and in 3 different sizes across exactly 500 individual file transfer links. 374 Real Media file links and 126 3GP file links.
As-Sahab Media has now begun to promote its next propaganda package, a new video of al Qaeda operations chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Shortly before the as-Sahab release, the al-Ekhlaas Media Network posted a 19-minute video "on the anniversary of the invasion of the country of the brave Americans" that features never before seen clips of the hijackers, including B-roll of Ahmed al-Haznawi al-Ghamidi's martyr video and shots of muscle hijacker Ahmed Alnami.
Subtitled in English and posted in 4 different file sizes (123, 31.5, 14.1 and 7.7 Megs) across 242 file transfer links. The video spends 7 minutes eulogizing the 19 hijackers and 12 minutes on news footage of the attacks with a war nasheed soundtrack.
Production is poor in comparison to recent as-Sahab products but standard with Global Islamic Media Front and al-Boraq Media products, which now produces materials for the Islamic Army of Iraq.
http://www.globalcrisiswatch.com/aq/060910_ekhlaas.wmv [125 Megs]
About Global Crisis Watch
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-2382788-524,00.html
The Sunday Times October 01, 2006
Focus: Chilling message of the 9/11 pilots
A video shows two of the world’s most infamous terrorists joking and laughing while filming their ‘death wills’ at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan. The journalist and author Yosri Fouda explains the terrible significance of the new find
See the video from noon today
Two bearded young men laugh and joke for the camera. They appear relaxed, well groomed, intelligent; they might be high-achieving students quietly celebrating an exam success. They look at a piece of paper and laugh some more.
What is so funny? Certainly not the piece of paper. There is Arabic script on it. Easily decipherable is the word “al wasiyyah”. This means “the will”.
It is the handwritten last testament of Ziad Jarrah, the lighter-haired and better-looking of the two young men. A well educated, middle-class Lebanese, he has been studying in Germany. So has his dark-haired companion, Mohammed Atta, also middle class and university educated, but born in Egypt. Atta has his will, too. Unsmiling, both men read them to camera.
These images are part of a videotape, nearly an hour long, that was filmed at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan 6½ years ago. They are revealed today for the first time, and they are a missing chapter in the searing story of the attacks on America on September 11, 2001.
Atta led the team of 19 suicide attackers and flew American Airlines flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Jarrah piloted United Airlines flight 93. His assigned target was Capitol Hill, but the plane crashed.
ATTA and Jarrah have never been pictured together before. Indeed, a key element of their tradecraft was that they steered clear of each other. They were leading figures in the September 11 story, not only because they flew the planes but also because they apparently had everything to live for. Unlike most of the other hijackers, who were mainly provincial Saudi fundamentalists, Atta and Jarrah fitted easily into western society.
To the Germans who knew them in Hamburg they seemed entirely normal. The tape explains this mistake. It would be hard to look less homicidal — until the camera pulls back and reveals that Atta is sitting next to an AK-47.
So the tape not only fills a gap in the story of September 11 but also provides chilling proof of the difficulty of fighting Islamic terrorism: these two “normal”, happy, unthreatening individuals turned out to have an explosive effect on the history of the 21st century.
The unedited video was passed to The Sunday Times through a previously tested channel. On condition of anonymity, sources from both Al-Qaeda and the United States have confirmed its authenticity. It has no sound — and lip-readers have failed to decipher it, according to a US source — but the images speak loudly for themselves.
The tape not only features Atta and Jarrah. It also gives a rare and intriguing sight of Bin Laden with his inner court.
It opens with 100 or so Al-Qaeda hardcore members sitting on the ground in the open air, obviously expecting something to happen. Among them are several children.
A very tall man surrounded by three armed bodyguards arrives in a sedate, presidential manner. It is Bin Laden, dressed in white from head to toe with an all-enveloping, light brown robe. He looks serene as he makes his way to a makeshift podium and beings to speak into a microphone.
The date recorded on this section of the video is January 8, 2000. That makes the occasion Eid ul-Adha, the end of Ramadan.
There are a few recognisable faces among the audience, including Ramzi Binalshibh, Atta’s Hamburg flatmate who was later to become the co-ordinator of the September 11 attacks. And among the bodyguards is Abu Jandal, who was the only one with the authority to put two bullets in Bin Laden’s head if he was about to fall into enemy hands.
In the background are the tall mud-red walls of an impressive compound. It is clear that the location is part of a complex of about 80 buildings called Tarnak Farm in the desert near Kandahar airport. It was Bin Laden’s clan base during his Afghan sojourn — where he lived with his family and the inner core of Al-Qaeda.
American intelligence knew all about Tarnak Farm. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Laden’s wives and the one where he himself was most likely to sleep”.
Less than two years before the video was recorded, the CIA had a plan to work closely with some of the local tribes to grab Bin Laden as he slept. It was a clear-cut, well rehearsed “perfect operation”, according to Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA Bin Laden unit at the time. But it was never executed and there is still controversy in America about who cancelled it.
TEN days after Bin Laden’s Eid speech, according to the date on the film, Atta and Jarrah read their martyrdom wills to the camera. This proof of their presence in Afghanistan at that time is just about the final main piece of the jigsaw: Atta, the man who decided zero hour on September 11 is for the first time on video, getting ready to record his “martyrdom” will.
Investigators have pieced together most of Atta’s life from his childhood as the son of a lawyer in Giza, northern Egypt, to the moment he boarded flight 11 — except for an unexplained absence from Hamburg in early 2000. The date on the tape perfectly corresponds with this.
Those who have been closely following the story had little doubt where Atta had been. Binalshibh told me, “Afghanistan, what else?” when I asked him during a secret meeting four years ago. But in their painstaking efforts to find the proof that connected the dots, US investigators and, especially, their German counterparts, have struggled with little more than circumstantial evidence and presumed facts.
This played nicely into the hands of conspiracy theorists, both in the Muslim world and in the West. Now the investigators have the proof, and only the flakiest of anti-American fantasists can go on claiming that Bin Laden, Atta, Jarrah and co had no hand in September 11.
We can now even reveal Atta’s itinerary. On November 29, 1999 he boarded Turkish Airlines flight TK1662 from Hamburg to Istanbul, Turkey, where he changed to flight TK1056 bound for Karachi, Pakistan. From there he would have crossed into Afghanistan by road, most probably through Quetta. On the return journey, he left Karachi on February 24, 2000 by flight TK1057 to Istanbul where he changed to flight TK1661 to Hamburg. Five months later he entered the United States to start flight training.
Unedited, the extraordinary footage also gives us a glimpse into the superficially ordinary character of the man who would later spearhead the devastating terrorist attack.
Wearing western clothes — black trousers and a dark brown, zip-collared sweater with zigzag stripes — Atta appears uncomfortable putting on a typical Pashtun hat.
He gives a how-do-I-look glance at the camera. The hat goes off, on, off and he throws it away with wry smile. Ready now. He crosses his legs and picks up his handwritten will.
Cool, gathered and deliberate, Atta reads to camera for 10 minutes before the tape cuts to a collector’s item: Atta and Jarrah together for the first time on camera.
With his stylish glasses, the handsome Lebanese is wearing a white, Saudi-style robe but appears to have western clothes on underneath.
Smiling, laughing and exchanging remarks, they discuss Jarrah’s will as he holds it — a superb set-up shot. Jarrah then gets his seven-minute exclusive appearance to tell the camera his last words.
THE significance of even a single frame of any of the September 11 pilots in Afghanistan could not be overestimated, let alone the sudden appearance of nearly 6,000 frames of the two most important and most puzzling hijackers.
Distinctively the black sheep of the whole lot — plotters and hijackers — Atta and Jarrah came from the two most liberal Arab countries, both from the heart of their respective communities, both from middle-class families, both intelligent, pleasant and trusted wherever they went, and both with impressive educational track records. Jarrah went to a Christian school in Beirut; Atta advanced his English at The American University in Cairo.
Then they both had ambitions beyond what they thought their countries could offer. They both went to Germany; Atta in 1992 to end up preparing a masters degree in city planning; and Jarrah in 1996 to end up preparing his in aeronautical engineering.
Again, they both could not cease to impress. So much so that Professor Dittmar Machule, who taught Atta at the Technical University in Harburg, a quiet suburb of Hamburg, still cannot understand what happened to the brilliant student he used to pick to fill in for him in seminars whenever he was busy.
While they lived in Hamburg, Atta and Jarrah were never meant to be seen together in one place at the same time, almost certainly on instructions.
Atta lived with other members of the Hamburg cell in a small flat while Jarrah was kept apart in a nicer part of Hamburg, living with a girlfriend and drinking alcohol. Yet in Afghanistan they appear at ease in other’s company.
When in mid-2000 they travelled to Florida, they were separate once again — even though they enrolled at flying schools that stood virtually next to each other.
If the appearance of this video solves one mystery, the big question about both Atta and Jarrah is still with us: how on earth did such impressive young men with everything to live for develop such a mindset? Neither was mad and neither was brainwashed. If anything at all they were both the antithesis of such naive and easy explanations.
One would confidently argue that someone of the calibre of Mohammed Atta would have been incapable of being brainwashed.
When Atta taped his will, he was not yet the leader of the hijackers. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the organiser of the plot, had earmarked two other men — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar — as his spearhead and had sent them to flight school in California. But he quickly changed his mind.
His protégés failed to live up to his expectations. One flight instructor actually called them “dumb and dumber”.
Much more importantly, Atta’s exceptional abilities had just been discovered.
The perfect soldier was here and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could not have asked for more. I would even argue that had not Atta accidentally appeared on Khalid’s radar, the “aeroplanes operation”, as it as known to Al-Qaeda, may never have stood a chance of success.
# Yosri Fouda is the chief investigative reporter for Al-Jazeera Television Pictures: The Sunday Times Tarnak Farm, near Kandahar, where Mohammed Atta’s video was shot, has a special place in the history of Al-Qaeda: it was once Osama Bin Laden’s personal kingdom within Afghanistan.
Exclusively Arab, it was home for Bin Laden’s wives and children, as well as for the elite fighters being trained for special operations. And, as we now know, for a few weeks in early 2000 it was home to Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers.
The farm, which covered about 100 acres, lay on a patch of desert about three miles south of Kandahar airport. It had originally been constructed by the Afghan government as an agricultural co-operative.
A mud-brick wall was built 10ft high to create a compound; inside there were about 80 one and two-storey buildings, including dormitories, storehouses, a small mosque and a building that Bin Laden converted into a medical clinic for his family and followers.
US intelligence knew Bin Laden, already a wanted terrorist, used Tarnak as his base, and in spring 1998 the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center began working on a plan to capture him at the compound, partly with the help of Afghan tribal fighters.
Afghans scouted and mapped the farm, and the CIA photographed it from space. The plan called for about 30 fighters to assemble at a staging post before driving to a second position a few miles from Tarnak.
From there the main raiding party would walk to the farm, arriving at 2am and avoiding minefields by crawling through drainage ditches. A second group would make its way towards the front gate, taking out the two guards as the main party attacked the group of huts where Bin Laden’s wives slept.
The plan was to bundle Bin Laden into a Toyota Land Cruiser and drive him to to a cave complex 30 miles away already stocked with food and water.
However, getting the plan accepted at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, was not straightforward. It was known that dozens of women and children lived in the compound, and security chiefs feared there would be many casualties.
By June 1998, much to the disappointment of the field officers responsible for devising the plan, nobody at a senior level within the CIA seemed willing to support it. Nor was there any support within the White House.
The plan was called off shortly afterwards. CIA abandoned plan to snatch Bin Laden from Afghan farm
Atta's journey to mass murder
September 1, 1968 Born in Kafr el-Sheikh in the Nile delta, Egypt
October 1986 Joined Cairo University to study town planning; graduated in 1990
July 24, 1992 Arrived in Germany on a cultural exchange programme
November 23, 1992 Registered for a master’s degree in urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg
End 1997 Thought to have travelled to Afghanistan for the first time, staying close to the compound of Osama Bin Laden near Kandahar
November 1, 1998 Moved into an apartment in Germany with other members of what later became known as the Hamburg cell. Many Al-Qaeda members lived in this apartment at various times; the September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed visited repeatedly. Ziad Jarrah, the flight 93 pilot with whom Atta is pictured above, moved close by at about the same time
November 29, 1999 Atta flew from Istanbul to Pakistan. From there he travelled to Afghanistan
January 2000 At Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farm he is filmed laughing and joking with Jarrah while filming his last will and testament
March 2000 From Germany, Atta contacted 31 US flight schools to discuss pilot training
June 3, 2000 Entered US for the first time
July 2000 Atta enrolled at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Jarrah trains at a flight school nearby
November 2000 Both earned their instrument certificates from the FAA
December 29, 2000 Atta practised on a Boeing 727 simulator in Miami
January 4, 2001 Atta flew to Spain to co-ordinate with Ramzi Binalshibh, a key Al-Qaeda planner, returning to America a week later
April 11 2001 Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Florida, and assisted with the arrival of other hijackers
July-September 2001 Atta made eight or nine flights around America, some to meet other hijackers, some to carry out reconnaissance
August 28, 2001 Atta and other hijackers buy flight tickets for September 11
The other hijackers
# Nineteen men hijacked four planes. They acted in teams of five, except on United Airlines 93, which had four hijackers led by Jarrah
# Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates. Atta came from Egypt, while Jarrah came from Lebanon. Only Atta and Jarrah were highly educated
# Four weeks before the attacks Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, had been arrested, ostensibly on immigration charges, after the FBI became suspicious about his pilot training
# He later denied knowing about the September 11 attacks, but did plead guilty to conspiring to hijack planes. He is serving life in a US prison
# It is thought that 18 of the 19 terrorists recorded video wills. Before this weekend only five had come to light and none from the four pilots
The attacks and the toll
# United Airlines flight 175 and American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center towers on the morning of September 11, 2001. A total of 2,602 people died in the towers and on the ground
# American Airlines flight 77, carrying 64 people, crashed into the Pentagon shortly afterwards: 125 people died on the ground
# United Airlines flight 93 is thought to have been heading for Capitol Hill. But it crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. Forty crew and passengers died
# There were no survivors from any of the planes, which were carrying 265 people. In total, the September 11 attacks are thought to have killed 2,973 people, although some others are still listed as missing
Click here to find out more!
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
The OBL 9-11 video that shows him and hijackers in front of the rock cave: [2006]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-10889-2347222-10889,00.html
Times Online September 07, 2006
Footage of the alleged meeting between Osama bin Laden and September 11 hijackers (AL-JAZEERA)
New Bin Laden video aired
By Vik Iyer , Elsa McLaren and agencies
Video: Times Online TV
Video footage allegedly showing Osama bin Laden meeting with September 11 hijackers has been shown on al-Jazeera television today.
The previously unseen footage showed the al-Qaeda leader sitting with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a US airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001. Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is currently in custody in the US.
The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media branch. It shows Bin Laden wearing a dark robe and white head gear walking outside in a mountainous area.
The television station also broadcast a recording attributed to the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, in which he said he was sure of victory against US-led forces in the country. The recording was posted on an Islamist Internet site as well.
Earlier today the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks also planned to crash airliners into Heathrow, according to documents released by American intelligence.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of planning the Heathrow attack in 2003, as well other plots, and is dubbed "one of history's most infamous terrorists" in documents published by America’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Odni).
The information is detailed in profiles of 14 terror suspects who, the US announced yesterday, had been transferred from the secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Mohammed, one of the 14, enlisted Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, another of the suspects, as the lead operative for the planned Heathrow attack.
Mohammed, accused of devoting most of his adult life to terrorism, first came to attention after his 1995 indictment over a plan to explode a number of US commercial jets over the Pacific Ocean.
Bin al-Shibh, who was "slated" to be a hijacker for the September 11 operation, according to the documents, fled Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taleban in late 2001 and headed to Karachi.
There, he and Mohammed worked on "follow-on plots against the West, particularly the Heathrow plot," the US document said.
The statement continued: "He was tasked by KSM to recruit operatives in Saudi Arabia for an attack on Heathrow Airport, and as of his capture, Bin al-Shibh had identified four operatives for the operation."
Bin al-Shibh was captured in September 2002 at a house in Karachi, Pakistan, after a shootout.
For his part, Mohammed, a mechanical engineering graduate, is further accused of plotting to attack a skyscraper on the US west coast with a jet and a 2003 plan to smuggle explosives into gas stations, railways and a bridge in New York. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2003.
This latest information comes into the public domain weeks after British airports were plunged into chaos when police said they had disrupted a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Meanwhile, during a speech about the CIA programme yesterday, President Bush said information from those held had "helped stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and fly them into Heathrow or the Canary Wharf in London".
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Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd
[One has to ask, "how many become loved children and how many are abused to death"]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2383126,00.html
The Sunday Times October 01, 2006
Revealed: Bulgaria's baby traders
Nicola Smith Plovdiv
'Little Kalinka is yours for £11,000' – her grandmother
THE tiny baby slept snugly in the crook of her grandmother’s arm, oblivious to the ghetto filth around her and to the squalid manner in which she was being offered for sale.
The old woman may have held the infant gently, but her face was hard. This, after all, was business.
“Her name is Kalinka — it means ladybird,” she said, passing the child to me in a soft pink blanket that enveloped all of her except for a pretty face of perfect serenity.
I cuddled Kalinka for a moment, feeling her warmth while the gleam of avarice in her grandmother’s eyes chilled me.
“How much money do you want for this baby?” I asked.
“That is for her mother to negotiate. Come back at 5pm and we will wait for you at that corner over there,” she said, pointing across the mud road to a building as run down as any in the slums of Bulgaria’s second city, Plovdiv.
I had come to Plovdiv, an ancient and largely dilapidated city where a hepatitis epidemic is currently raging, to investigate claims that human trafficking is on the rise in Bulgaria, which secured terms last week to join the European Union on January 1.
Foremost among the concerns of human rights activists is the suggestion that scores or perhaps hundreds of Bulgarian babies are being sold for adoption across Europe.
I posed as a childless woman looking for a fast and easy way to adopt a baby. I said my husband was a banker and we were willing to pay.
Accompanied by an interpreter, I walked into the Sheker Mahala ghetto — home to around 4,000 impoverished Roma — last Wednesday afternoon and approached a middle-aged woman, asking whether she knew of anyone who could help. A curious crowd soon surrounded us.
“If you want to adopt children you need to go to the maternity hospital. It’s the tall building over there,” said one man.
But as we turned away, the crowd parted to make way for the old woman, whose large gold earrings and imposing presence marked her out as the matriarch of the group. “There is one baby,” she said.
She introduced herself as Bogdana and, apparently trying to impress on me the robust good health and fecundity of the family line, claimed to have 17 children and 50 grandsons. Her daughter had seven children, she said, but their father was in prison so I could adopt the youngest, who was just a month old. Someone ran off to fetch her for inspection.
When the baby arrived I asked permission to take a photograph to show my husband. Bogdana posed impassively with her granddaughter.
When I returned at 5pm to agree the terms of the deal Bogdana was nowhere to be seen but the baby’s uncle, Rumen, was waiting with his wife.
“Come and sit down inside. The baby’s mother is working. She will be here in three minutes,” he said, smiling with a flash of two prominent gold teeth and ushering me into the one-room brick home the couple share with three children.
Rumen, a streetwise man in his mid-twenties who hopes to work as a labourer in London when Bulgaria joins the EU, said there would be no difficulty in getting hold of adoption papers. He knew a lawyer who could “arrange things” in one to two days if I paid him well.
As the three minutes stretched to 20, Rumen and his wife served hot lemon tea and started negotiating the price of their niece. The figure 20,000 was written on a scrap of paper.
“Leva?” I asked, referring to the local currency. “Ne, dollari,” came the quick response: he was asking for the equivalent of £11,000.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said when I opened my purse to show I did not have much money with me. The lawyer would join us then, he added.
At this point I asked to see the baby again so that I could take some more pictures but in doing so I may have alerted the the family to my true purpose. I was told to wait on the street, where a small group of women approached.
“The baby’s mother,” said Rumen, pointing to a large woman in a blue dress. She eyed me suspiciously, and shook her right hand as if to say no. They appeared to have guessed that my visit was a ruse. “She says she is not selling,” Rumen said. It was time to leave.
The trafficking of babies from Bulgaria’s deprived Roma communities is a growing problem, according to the police and social services. An increasing number of children are sold before they are even born.
One social worker in the Burgas region in the east of the country said he knew of 60-70 such cases over the past few years.
“Baby-trafficking has existed for the past 10-15 years but in the last few years it has become very intensive. Some of the poorer women are getting pregnant on purpose,” he said.
Some women borrow money from loan sharks who take their babies in lieu of repayment; others fall prey to dealers who seek out vulnerable single mothers with unplanned pregnancies.
Many of the babies end up in Greece, where purchasers pay lawyers to fix the paperwork. According to Svetoslav Tanev, the chief of Bulgaria’s border police, some infants have been smuggled as far away as France.
In the Black Sea town of Burgas, a network has sprung up to transport pregnant women across the Greek border to rich couples willing to adopt illegally “Nikolay”, 25, who is involved in the lower levels of the network, said women were usually driven to the border town of Kulata, where they were collected by traffickers on the Greek side of the operation, then hidden until they gave birth. The market price for a newborn Roma baby is between £11,000 and £16,000, but the mother may receive as little as £1,000 to £1,500.
Some wretched women are said to have been duped by dealers whose sole intention was to steal their babies and pay them nothing.
There can be few more poignant illustrations of Bulgaria’s grinding poverty than the plight of these mothers. When it joins the EU with Romania in three months’ time it will be the poorest member. A 2005 survey suggested that almost half its 7.8m people live on less than £1.50 a day.
Nowhere is the deprivation more evident than in Roma ghettos such as Gorno Ezerovo, a slum on the outskirts of Burgas just 25 miles from Sunny Beach, a resort popular with British holidaymakers.
Entering Gorno Ezerovo is like stepping back a century into a world of hovels made with corrugated iron and scrap wood. They are connected by muddy paths where sewage pours from broken pipes amid fly-blown heaps of rubbish. The older children are often shoeless and shirtless; babies a few months old crawl around unsupervised.
It was here that I met Albena, a worn and weary single mother of six children who told a horrifying story of being conned into accepting a job in Greece while pregnant with her latest daughter.
Albena, 29, who asked for her full name to be withheld, said she had been struggling to feed and clothe her family when she was approached by a man offering “work abroad”.
Desperate for money, she agreed. Last April she was driven across the border at Kulata in a taxi at night and left in a house with three other pregnant women.
Under constant threat of violence they were imprisoned there for 10 days. A man provided cigarettes and sparse supplies of food, but the promised jobs never materialised.
Albena grew more and more suspicious. “One day I heard the man on the phone speaking about selling babies. I heard the word baby many times and I started to cry,” she said.
When she told her companions they screamed out of the windows for help. A passer-by alerted the police, the house was raided and the women were returned to the Bulgarian border and given tickets home.
Albena’s daughter Maria was born on May 17. Her head is covered with eczema and her mother has little money to treat it. But it was clear that she truly loved her child.
“I didn’t want to sell her, this was not my intention,” she said, clutching the baby close. She is now preparing to appear as a witness in the trial of the alleged traffickers.
Irina Bulanova, the head of the Burgas immigration office, said women were often threatened by criminal gangs if they went ahead with prosecutions.
“The problem of baby trafficking is a brand new thing and it is really a very negative development in our society,” said Bulanova. “But please be aware that our country knows it is a problem and Bulgarian laws are being updated.”
There was no law against selling babies until two years ago and even then it applied only to the traffickers. Later this month it will become a crime for mothers to sell their babies. They could face one to six years in prison and a fine of up to £5,000.
Kumen Kupenov, the public prosecutor in Burgas, claimed the authorities were striving to combat trafficking but were hampered by a lack of co- operation from Greek officials.
Kupenov fears that even the tough new laws may be undermined by the demand for babies to be adopted illicitly in Greece and elsewhere in Western Europe.
“If there is no buyer for certain goods, then they will not be offered for sale. If nobody in the West offered money to adopt a child and if they followed the laws of their own countries, then it would not happen,” he said.
The reality, however, is that in the eyes of the affluent childless, babies like Kalinka look cheap. The haggling over such infants is almost certain to continue, their futures determined by bargains struck for meagre sums when they are barely a few weeks old.
THE COUNTRY
Population 7.3m
Main ethnic groups Bulgarian 84%, Turkish 9%, Roma 5%
Poverty Almost half the population live on less than £1.50 a day. Average income £135 a month
Unemployment 9%
Migration to the UK Estimates range from 3,400 to 170,000 in first two years of EU membership
Challenges Corruption, organised crime. Since 2001, 150 people killed in contract killings. Nobody convicted
Life expectancy 69 years (men), 76 years (women)
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Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2383146,00.html
The Sunday Times October 01, 2006
Al-Qaeda to target westerners in Iraq
Marie Colvin and Ali Rifat Amman
THE shadowy new leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, has switched tactics to target thousands of western contractors working in the country.
In an audio tape released last week, he called on his supporters to kidnap westerners during the current holy month of Ramadan. Muhajir suggested they could be exchanged for Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed in the United States in 1995 for plotting to blow up landmarks.
Muhajir urged supporters “to capture some of the Roman dogs so as to secure his release from the darkness of his prison”.
According to intelligence sources, Muhajir has sharply altered the strategy of Al-Qaeda since a US airstrike killed his predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Muhajir has moved away from attacks on Iraq’s security forces because they were alienating many people, Iraqi and western sources confirmed.
One of his aims is to redirect his men, mostly Sunni Arabs, to attack Shi’ite militias. The intention is to promote internecine conflict between the majority Shi’ite Muslims and the minority Sunnis.
Muhajir, who has also used the the name Abu Ayoub al-Masri (the Egyptian), was little known until Zarqawi’s death in June.
He is said to be unlike Zarqawi, a charismatic Jordanian who favoured spectacular suicide bombings and loved the spotlight. In contrast, even the real name and nationality of Muhajir (foreigner) are unknown. He is believed to be Egyptian and the only published photograph of him is said to be 10 years old and shows a chubby-faced young man.
“He is older and thinner now. He was with us during the Falluja war, leading a group of fighters in Jowlan district,” an insurgent source said, referring to fighting with US forces in 2004.
The interior ministry describes Muhajir as “35-40 years of age with considerable experience in war that he gained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s”. He trained with Osama Bin Laden, it added.
In a tape released last month, Muhajir warned: “What you saw in the past is a drop of what you are going to see and what is prepared for you.” An earlier video of a man said to be Muhajir matches the voice on the tape. He is shown shooting dead a Turkish hostage.
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Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.