Manila - A senior leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Muslim Abu Sayyaf group was killed in a clash with government troops on a southern Philippine island, the military chief said Wednesday.
General Hermogenes Esperon said Binang Sali, chief of the Abu Sayyaf's urban terror unit, was killed late Tuesday in a brief firefight in Patikul town on Jolo island, 1,000 kilometres south of Manila. "As the chief of the Abu Sayyaf urban terror group, Sali was largely responsible for the bombings in Jolo," he said in a statement.
Esperon said troops recovered the rebel's body and a pistol after the firefight. "His neutralization translates to one bomber less that could carry out an attack on any target during the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit," he added.
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http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=115913
86 air guns, air pistols seized
And a Koran in the same shipment - surprise, surprise
Kochi,India Jan. 10, 2007: In a major seizure, Customs have seized 86 air guns and pistols from a consignment which arrived here from Dubai.
In searches conducted throughout the last night, the officials opened up the 810 cartons and found 37 air rifles and 49 air guns, both gas powered, which were concealed along with plastic furniture, flowers, baby cots and blankets, Customs Commissioner D D Ingty told PTI.
The Air rifles are of the internationally reputed foreign brand names 'Diana Airking' and 'Diana Magnum', while air pistols are of 'Baretta', 'Walther' and 'Gamma' brands, he said. No arrests have been made while efforts are being made to trace R O Koya of Thrissur who is the importer, customs sources said.
Customs officials searched the consignment, which contained a variety of 19 goods. A copy of the Koran was also found along with the air pistols and air rifles, they said.
The seizure was from the consignment which was off-loaded from the vessel 'Ming Cheng', which arrived here on December 29, they said. The consignment was suspected to have been loaded into the vessel from Jabelali port, the last port of call of the vessel.
Speaking at the State Department in 1999, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi sheik and leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, sounded an alarm about Muslim houses of worship in the United States.
"The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques . . . is the extremists' ideology," he said. "Because they are very active, they took over the mosques; . . . they took over more than 80 percent of the mosques that have been established in the US." He warned ominously that "a danger might suddenly come that you are not looking for . . . we don't know where it is going to hit."
When Kabbani was condemned by other Muslim organizations, he stood his ground. His assessment of the leadership of US mosques, he said, was based on having visited scores of them, and in a subsequent interview he explained the extremists' pattern of infiltration.
Muslim immigrants to the United States "came with a good heart . . . and they wanted a place to pray," Kabbani told the Middle East Quarterly. "They collected money and they built mosques in their community. Slowly, certain Middle Eastern groups seized these mosques, promoting political and ideological agendas rooted in their home countries' problems. . . . Slowly, such groups took over many mosques either directly or by unseen pressure on the moderate board members, and now an antagonistic mentality controls them. The extremists -- not ordinary believers -- changed the use of American mosques into centers of intolerant political dogma."
At the time, Kabbani's charges may have seemed little more than inside Muslim baseball. After Sept. 11, it became clear that mosques dominated by radical clerics were a potentially lethal threat. Many such mosques are funded by Saudi Arabia, which spends heavily to propagate Wahhabism, a fanatic and aggressive strain of Islam. The Saudi government, reported the 9/11 Commission, "uses zakat" -- Islamic charity -- "and government funds to spread Wahhabi beliefs throughout the world, including in mosques and schools. . . . Some Wahhabi-funded organizations have been exploited by extremists to further their goal of violent jihad against non-Muslims." Its findings were reinforced by Freedom House, which in 2005 documented the penetration of US mosques by Saudi-supplied Wahhabi hate literature.
It is against this background that the $24 million mosque and cultural center being built by the Islamic Society of Boston has generated such controversy.
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