News
Daily Terrorism Update
General security, policy
1. Georgia chaos halts nuclear security effort
US was helping track smugglers; Traffickers could take advantage
By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff | August 19, 2008
WASHINGTON - The chaos in Georgia has forced the United States to halt a high-priority program that was helping the former Soviet republic to identify possible smugglers of nuclear bomb components across its borders, long considered a transit point for terrorists seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to US officials. A team from the US Nuclear Security Administration was providing Georgian authorities with radiation equipment and training at key border crossings and the Batumi airport on the country's Black Sea coast when Russia invaded two weeks ago. The advisers were forced to flee the country within days, according to a spokesman from the Department of Energy. The program is part of a series of US-led international "threat reduction" projects in Georgia - totaling nearly $50 million - to improve the security of nuclear research facilities and prevent the spread of radioactive materials that terrorists could use to build a crude nuclear weapon or a so-called "dirty bomb" designed to spread radiation over a wide area. With the effort now on hold, and a general breakdown in order throughout the republic, American officials fear would-be nuclear traffickers could take advantage of the situation..
2. U.S. Fighter Pilot Helmet at Center of Sting Operation
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, New York Sun August 19, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/us-fighter-pilot-helmet-at-center-of-sting...
IPT NOTE: The US Attorney’s Office press release is posted at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/August08/pengextraditionpr.p...
A Taiwanese engineering company employee has been extradited to America on charges he sought to purchase a specialized helmet that allows fighter pilots to aim missiles by moving their heads. So far it's unclear whether the allegations speak of attempted espionage or merely the efforts of a Taiwaenese man with a penchant for eBay bidding to expand a personal collection of military gadgetry. Prosecutors have noted in court papers that the man, Yen Ching Peng, works for a firm that reverse engineers military technology. But the charges he faces so far deal only with allegations that he sought to violate American export controls on military technology. He is not accused of attempting to reproduce any equipment. Defense attorneys for Mr. Peng, who is in his early 30s, say he is simply a collector. "He has a 'Top Gun'-type collection," one of his lawyers, David Katz, said, referring to the iconic film about fighter pilots. Mr. Peng was arrested in Hong Kong last year, extradited on Saturday, and arraigned yesterday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan...
3. WTF? Hez Submarines in South America?
By David Axe August 19, 2008 | 10:00:00 AM Wired News - The Danger Room
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/wtf-hez-sails-s.html
Is Shi'ite terror group Hezbollah using submarines to run drugs in South and Central American waters ... and funneling the proceeds into the Middle East? Last month the Royal Navy's HMS Iron Duke (pictured), with Prince William on her crew, nabbed a suspicious submersible off of Mexico's Pacific coast. The Royal Navy painted the capture as a blow against "the flow of cocaine into Europe," but if we believe one U.S. admiral, it might also have been a hit on Hezbollah's finances… "In 2006, we were tracking ... around three of these," said Admiral James Stavridis, southern Command boss, referring to the crude, four-man, fiberglass semi-submersibles that have become favorite tools of drug smugglers down south. "In the year 2007," Stavridis continued, "it jumped to about 30. This year so far, in three months, we've seen about 30." (British magazine Warships International Fleet Review reported Stavridis' comments in its latest issue.) So what's the Hezbollah connection? "I continue to be concerned about the tri-border area [between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay]," Stavridis said. "It is, in my view, principally Hezbollah activity. There is clearly fund-raising, money laundering, drug trafficking. And, certainly a portion of the funds that are raised in that are making their way back to the Middle East." …
4. Terrorism charges: Court can use Georgia Tech student’s jihad statement
Judge’s ruling in case against Syed Haris Ahmed is a victory for federal prosecutors
By BILL RANKIN The Atlanta-Journal Constitution Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Atlanta terrorism defendant Syed Haris Ahmed’s acknowledgments to agents that he considered planning a terrorist attack and dying a martyr waging jihad can be used against him at trial, a federal judge has ruled. Handing federal prosecutors a major victory, U.S. Magistrate Gerrilyn Brill turned aside arguments that the former Georgia Tech student was coerced by agents into making the statements. Ahmed and his co-defendant, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, are charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. If convicted, they face decades of prison time. Both men have pleaded not guilty and are being held without bail while awaiting trial. During five interviews in March 2006, Ahmed admitted traveling to Washington, D.C., to take “casing videos” that were sent to “jihadi brothers” overseas. He also said that when he visited Pakistan in 2005, he hoped to be recruited into a jihadi training camp to learn how to fight against Muslim oppressors. During a trip to Canada during the same year, Ahmed also told agents he met with “brothers” and discussed the idea of attacking oil refineries, a military base or the satellite system that controls the global positioning system. Tape recordings of the interviews were played during the lengthy suppression hearings held early this year. The interviews portray Ahmed as an impressionable, soft-spoken student who was transfixed by Internet sites and chat rooms that were popular with extremists and which promoted the annihilation of the enemies of Islam. But Ahmed also told the agents he was intent on committing a terrorist act in the United States...
5. Khawaja didn't know of London plot, lawyer says as terror trial resumes
Tim Shufelt The Ottawa Citizen Tuesday, August 19, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/5wh2jb
OTTAWA - Momin Khawaja may have wanted to wage violent jihad in Afghanistan, but he had no knowledge that the detonator he is accused of building was to be used in the foiled London fertilizer bomb plot, defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said as Mr. Khawaja's terrorism trial resumed Tuesday. On that basis, Mr. Khawaja does not fit the criminal definition of a terrorist, Mr. Greenspon said. "There is more than sufficient evidence of Momin Khawaja's intention to fight, to be a soldier," he said. "The fact that he didn't get to fight in Afghanistan doesn't really matter." The trial of Mr. Khawaja, an Orléans computer programmer formerly under contract to Foreign Affairs, resumed with Mr. Greenspon asking for all seven terrorism charges to be quashed. The Crown already argued that Mr. Khawaja built a remote detonator, dubbed the "hifidigimonster," for a British terror cell that wanted to blow up a number of potential targets, including a night club in central London, the largest shopping centre in Europe or the country's utilities grids. Just before the trial adjourned for three weeks, however, the Crown broadened the allegations beyond the bomb plot to include violent jihad, Mr. Greenspon said. He called it an "unjust, unprecedented expansion."…
6. Fort Dix suspects ask judge to postpone trial
by John P. Martin The Newark Star-Ledger Tuesday August 19, 2008, 12:50 PM
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/08/fort_dix_suspects_ask_judge_to....
IPT NOTE: The Star-Ledger maintains a special section on the Ft Dix case at http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/fort_dix_terror_plot/
The five men accused of plotting to attack Fort Dix want to delay their September trial date because they say one of their key witnesses has been called to serve in Iraq. In a motion filed late Monday in federal court, attorneys for the defendants said that the expert, Gregory Lee, had spent 142 hours reviewing evidence and preparing to testify for the defense. A former federal agent with experience in terrorism cases, Lee is also chief warrant officer with the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. Last month, he learned that his unit was being activated and sent to Iraq from September to January. In its filings, the defense told U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler that it has been "extremely difficult -- and to date impossible" to find a sufficient replacement before jury selection begins in Camden on Sept. 29… If granted, the request could postpone by weeks or months the most prominent terrorism trial in New Jersey since 9/11…
7. Academics protest treatment of Syed Hashmi, suspected of helping Al Qaeda
BY THOMAS ZAMBITO New York Daily News August 19, 2008
IPT NOTE: The US Attorney's Office 5/26/2007 press release on the case is posted at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/May07/hashmiextraditionpr.pd...
Some 500 academics have penned a letter protesting the harsh, post-9/11 conditions keeping accused terror suspect and Brooklyn College grad Syed Hashmi under 23-hour-a-day lockdown. The Flushing, Queens, man was extradited from London last year after being accused of providing Al Qaeda terrorists with cash and military supplies to wage jihad against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He's expected to face trial in the coming months. Among those signing onto the letter are several Brooklyn College professors as well as political columnist Katha Pollitt and Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates… The letter came to light yesterday after Hashmi made a brief appearance in Manhattan Federal Court for a hearing conducted mostly behind closed doors. Hashmi's lawyer, Sean Maner, is challenging Judge Loretta Preska's decision forbidding him from discussing classified information with his client…
Air, rail, port, health & communication infrastructure security
IPT NOTE: For more infrastructure news, see Dep’t of Homeland Security Daily Open Source Infrastructure Reports http://www.dhs.gov/xinfoshare/programs/editorial_0542.shtm; Public Safety Canada Daily Infrastructure Report http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/dir/index-eng.aspx
8. Four different approaches to thwarting a terrorist attack
By Jacob Goodwin, Editor-in-Chief Government Security News August 18th, 2008
http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/features/news-analysis/959.html
Because a terrorist attack in the U.S. using explosives could come from a variety of directions -- and take a variety of shapes and sizes – the U.S. Government is moving forward in a variety of ways to thwart such attacks. Different technical concepts and different business models are being pursued by different agencies to address these dire scenarios. The Science and Technology Directorate of DHS is eager to push the development of Coherent X-Ray Scattering (CXS) technology as an enhanced way to detect explosives in airport baggage. It believes that CXS could be used as a stand-alone detection device at an airport or in a secondary screening role, on either checked or carry-on baggage. While no vendor appears to have pushed this technology to the point that it could manufacture fully-functioning CXS systems today, DHS hopes that such a day isn’t too far down the road… DHS is hoping to develop a CXS system that can detect military, commercial and homemade explosives; discriminate between explosives and non-threat substances; have a false alarm rate of less than five percent; process each bag in fewer than 10 seconds, and have a "minimum system throughput" of 300 bags per hour…
9. Anthrax case raises concerns about highly secure programs
By GREGG CARLSTROM August 19, 2008 Federal Times
http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3679886
Bruce Ivins, the biologist suspected of sending anthrax-laced letters to politicians and journalists in 2001, began showing signs of mental illness as far back as 2000 — but he was allowed to access sensitive research facilities until as recently as last year. And that has caught the attention of military officials and Congress, who are calling for a review of the personnel procedures at secure installations that conduct biological research. Army Secretary Pete Geren has convened an investigative team to look at the lab where Ivins worked — the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.. Ivins continued working there for years after the attacks, even after the FBI began investigating him. The Army’s investigation will examine Detrick’s security procedures, such as background checks, medical exams and behavioral screening. Collectively, they’re called the Personnel Reliability Program, an initiative started in 2003 at the behest of Congress…
10. Court: Passengers can challenge no-fly list
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday, August 19, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/18/BA2212DEQU.D...
IPT NOTE: The court's opinion is posted at http://tinyurl.com/645uav
Critics of the government's secret no-fly list scored a potentially important victory Monday when a federal appeals court ruled that would-be passengers can ask a judge and jury to decide whether their inclusion on the list violates their rights. In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a suit by a former Stanford University student who was detained and handcuffed in 2005 as she was about to board a plane to her native Malaysia. The ruling is apparently the first to allow a challenge to the no-fly list to proceed in a federal trial court, said the plaintiff's lawyer, Marwa Elzankaly. The decision would allow individuals to demand information from the government, present evidence on why they should not have been on the list, and take the case to a jury, Elzankaly said…
Financing, identity theft, money laundering
11. RCMP DETAILS TERROR FUNDING
Banned group linked to Tamil Tigers wired $3M from Canada
Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Tuesday, August 19, 2008
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=732610
Read the RCMP documents on the case at
http://www.nationalpost.com/documents/Project-Osaluki-18-08-08.pdf [3.9 MB]
TORONTO - A Toronto nonprofit group wired more than $3-million to overseas bank accounts, some of them linked to the Tamil Tigers, before it was shut down by the government in June for alleged terrorist financing, says an RCMP report released yesterday. The report, marked "Secret" but unsealed by order of a Federal Court judge, provides the first detailed look at the banking activities of the World Tamil Movement (WTM), a Toronto-based group accused of bankrolling Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers guerrillas. Most of the money, $1.9-million, went to an account at the Bumiputra Commerce Bank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that the RCMP report says "is utilized as a vehicle to forward money to the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] from Canada." The 83-page financial report is the fruit of two years of analysis of banking records seized by Canadian anti-terrorism police who are investigating a financial network run by supporters of the Tamil Tigers that allegedly raised money in Canada to buy arms for the guerrillas… The RCMP's Feb. 1, 2008, financial report, however, paints a more detailed picture of a complex network made up of 20 Canadian bank accounts... The Canadian account holders wired money regularly to accounts in Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Tamil Tigers-controlled areas of Sri Lanka… The Project Osaluki financial report claims the WTM's most lucrative fundraising method was a pre-authorized payment program, in which the group persuaded hundreds of its supporters to sign forms allowing money to be withdrawn from their bank accounts each month… In addition, the WTM made money through bake sales, car washes, newspaper sales, merchandise sales and festivals, the report says. "To date, the total amount of Canadian dollars that have been forwarded to accounts internationally from accounts controlled by the World Tamil Movement in Canada is $3,101,803.33."
12. 7 charged with stealing $8M worth of retail goods
Posted on Tue, Aug. 19, 2008 Miami Herald By MONICA HATCHER
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/648343.html
Seven people have been charged by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale of trafficking in nearly $8 million worth of stolen over-the-counter medications and health and beauty products from drug stores including Walgreens, Target, CVS and Rite-Aid, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. The charges stem from a four-year investigation by several South Florida law enforcement agencies into organized retail theft, which is a multibillion-dollar industry. The most common schemes involve ''boosters'' who shoplift from stores and resell goods to a multilayer network of ``fences.''…
Two brothers indicted for running retail-theft ring
By JANE MUSGRAVE Palm Beach Post Tuesday, August 19, 2008
WEST PALM BEACH — Two Fort Lauderdale brothers are in the Palm Beach County jail, accused of master-minding a sophisticated retail-theft ring that extended from Broward County to North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, according to federal agents. Nasir "David" Khan and Asif "Jordan" Khan are accused of using professional shoplifters, known as boosters, to steal over-the-counter medicine and health and beauty products from chain stores, such as CVS, Target, Rite-Aid and Walgreens. They would then buy the merchandise from the boosters at sharply reduced prices, repackage it at a warehouse in Sunrise and re-sell it, according to a federal indictment handed up by a Broward County federal grand jury. The government alleges that the two, with the help of five others who were also indicted and other unindicted co-conspirators, bought and sold more than $8 million worth of stolen goods. Roughly $50 million has passed through their company, PharmaCare Health, since 2003, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office…
13. Cigarette taxes are up -- so is smuggling
Md. officials report 46,000 packs seized
By Laura Smitherman Baltimore Sun August 15, 2008
www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.md.cigarettes15aug15,0,747418.story
When Maryland doubled the cigarette tax to $2 a pack, some residents may have found a reason to quit. Smugglers, on the other hand, seem to have found a motive to step up their activities. Since the tax increase took effect in January, agents with the Maryland Comptroller's Office have seized more than 46,000 packs of contraband cigarettes - smokes brought illegally across state lines. That's a nearly four-fold increase from about 13,000 packs seized over the same period in 2007. And in the largest bust so far this year, agents confiscated nearly 8,000 cigarette packs after stopping a man driving a Chevrolet Astro van on Interstate 495 this month. State officials say they would be hard-pressed to blame the sharp rise in smuggled smokes solely on higher taxes, but they suspect that the levy is a factor. Maryland has one of the highest tobacco taxes in the nation; neighboring states have some of the lowest… "It's just become even more profitable for smugglers now," said Jeffrey A. Kelly, director of the comptroller's field enforcement division, adding that his agents on surveillance duty also have spotted more Maryland residents in Virginia buying cigarettes…
Feds break up DC area cigarette-smuggling ring
Aug 18, 2008 9:03 AM Associated Press
http://www.examiner.com/a-1542245~Feds_break_up_DC_area_cigarette_smuggl...
ANNANDALE, Va. (Map, News) - Authorities say they've broken up a major cigarette-smuggling ring in northern Virginia. According to documents filed in federal court, conspirators in New York paid smugglers in Fairfax County more than $4 million for about 200,000 cartons of cigarettes over two years. Officials say many of the deals were done at an Annandale restaurant. Cigarettes were delivered from northern Virginia to warehouses in Queens and the Bronx. Traffickers in black-market cigarettes pocket the money that would have otherwise gone to the state as taxes. In New York City, that amounts to an extra $4.25 per pack.
Border security, immigration, customs
14. 'Virtual fence' work is halted
Interior Dept. hasn't given its required OK to use land for border surveillance towers
By Brady McCombs The Arizona Daily Star Published: 08.19.2008
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/253456
Work on "virtual fences" planned for Arizona's stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border has been brought to a halt. The Interior Department has not granted the Homeland Security Department permission to use the land for constructing the surveillance towers that form the backbone of the virtual fences, said Barry Morrissey, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C. Without authorization to use the land, no work could begin, which prompted agency officials to instruct the lead contractor on the project, Boeing Co., to suspend activities until further notice, Morrissey said. No date has been set to resume work…
Other items
15. Accused killers of teen make court appearance
By: Louie Rosella August 19, 2008 10:45 AM Mississauga News (Ontario)
http://www.mississauganews.com/article/17857
A preliminary hearing will begin much sooner than expected for the father and brother of a 16-year-old Mississauga girl who was murdered last year in her Applewood area home. Waqas Parvez, 27, and Muhammad Parvez, 57, are both facing murder charges in the case. They made a brief court appearance last Thursday and were told to return to court Sept. 5 for a preliminary hearing that will determine if the Crown has enough evidence against them to warrant a trial. Both were originally scheduled to begin their preliminary hearing Dec. 17, but the date was pushed up at last week's court appearance. The preliminary hearing is expected to last at least a week. Evidence given during the hearing will be under a publication ban. A first-degree murder charge alleges Parvez's death was deliberate and pre-meditated. Last Dec. 10, Aqsa Parvez was rushed from her family's Longhorn Trail home to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto with life-threatening injuries. She died later that night. An autopsy revealed she was strangled, police said. The high-profile case garnered international attention. Friends of the slain teen said she feared for her life and had been threatened by family members over a religious dispute in the weeks prior to her death. The Parvez family came to Mississauga from Pakistan.
MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA
16. Resilient Sunni Stronghold Tests the Iraqi Army's Best
Bombs, Booby Traps Require U.S. Assistance
By Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post Monday, August 18, 2008; A01
SOUTH BUHRIZ, Iraq -- Two Iraqi soldiers stumbled out of the thick, black smoke, their faces bathed in blood that glistened in the sun. They clutched their heads, mumbling "Hamdullah" -- "Thanks to God." They had survived the explosion. A third Iraqi soldier was being carried on an olive-green stretcher. He was unconscious, curled like a baby… The offensive unfolding here in Diyala province, one of the most resilient strongholds of Sunni extremists, is proving to be one of the Iraqi army's biggest challenges. Muhammed, the bomb sweeper, is at the front lines of the conflict. He and other soldiers of the 1st Division, 3rd Battalion are examples of the army that U.S. commanders hope will one day be able to stand on its own and allow American soldiers to leave Iraq. But these elite soldiers, among Iraq's best, believe that turning point is still many years away. And the crater in front of Muhammed helps explain why. In this conflict, insurgents, mostly members of the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, have fled villages but left behind large swaths of farmland and thoroughfares dotted with roadside bombs and booby-trapped houses... The Iraqis' approach to bomb-clearing is nothing like the Americans.' "These guys are crazy. They just get an IED and snip the wick," said Capt. Ben Michaels, a burly Texan, referring to an improvised explosive device. "We collect the bombs and put them together and detonate it. These guys just blow them on the spot."…
17. Algeria Suicide Attack Kills at Least 43 People
By MARIAM FAM Wall Street Journal August 19, 2008 3:25 p.m.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121913921575952707.html
An apparent suicide-car bomb attack against an Algerian police academy killed at least 43 people and injured scores more Tuesday in the latest in a spate of deadly attacks plaguing this oil- and natural-gas-rich North African country. The vast majority of the casualties were civilians, the Algerian minister of interior said. By late Tuesday, no group had claimed responsibility for the bombing in Boumerdes, about 35 miles east of the capital, Algiers. The attack, however, follows a string of violence claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The extremist group started off as a local insurgency movement, but has more recently tied up with Osama bin Laden's global terror network, adopting the al Qaeda name. The group has claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings and other headline-grabbing attacks against government and Western interests in Algeria. In December, near-simultaneous car bombs exploded outside United Nations offices and a government building in Algiers. The death toll in that attack was 41, included 17 U.N. workers. The group also claimed responsibility earlier this month for a suicide attack on a police station in northern Algeria. The series of attacks have raised worries that while al Qaeda affiliates have suffered setbacks in places like Iraq, the network appears suddenly on the rise in Algeria. In recent years, Algeria seemed to be moving beyond a deadly insurgency in the 1990s, when fighting between security forces and Islamist rebels left more than 150,000 dead…
ASIA / PACIFIC
18. Ten French soldiers killed in Taleban ambush
From Times Online (London) August 19, 2008 Charles Bremner, Paris
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4564729.ece
Ten French soldiers have been killed in an ambush by Taleban fighters near the Afghan capital in the biggest battle loss for French forces since 1983. President Sarkozy announced that he will travel later today to Afghanistan after the attack, which has shocked France and will stiffen opposition to his recent reinforcement of the Nato security operation. The 10 lost their lives in fierce clashes that began with an attack yesterday on an International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) patrol in Sarobi district, about 30 miles east of Kabul, according to Afghan officials. About two dozen soldiers from the force were wounded. Afghan defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said that 13 rebels including a Pakistani national had also been killed in the clashes as troops thwarted a second attack on a key US military base in as many days...
Bomb injures Canadian soldier, kills interpreter
Canwest News Service and Agence France Presse Tuesday, August 19, 2008
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=734412
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- A Canadian soldier was injured and an Afghan interpreter was killed in a suicide bomber attack Tuesday morning, on a particularly bloody day that also saw 10 French soldiers die in battles with the Taliban near the Afghan capital of Kabul. The attack on a joint Canadian-Afghan National Army dismounted patrol occurred at 7:45 a.m. local time near the Panjwaii district centre of Bazaar-e-Panjwaii. According to Panjwaii district police Chief Muhammad Essa, troops spotted a suspicious-looking man and sent their interpreter to question him. As the interpreter approached, the man blew himself up, killing the interpreter instantly and wounding the soldier and a 12-year-old Afghan boy...
19. Dozens dead as Muslim rebels attack in Philippines
by Angelo Timonera Mon Aug 18, 8:11 AM ET Agence France Presse
http://tinyurl.com/6g927e
Muslim separatist rebels killed at least 28 civilians and three soldiers Monday in a series of pre-dawn attacks in the restive southern Philippines, witnesses and officials said. President Gloria Arroyo branded the attacks by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas as "sneaky and treacherous" and in clear violation of peace negotiations, and ordered the army to "defend every inch" of soil. AFP reporters saw nine bodies lying bloodied by a roadside in one village in Kauswagan town as black smoke billowed from burning houses. Five other civilians were killed in another village by the marauding MILF fighters, while six more bodies were found, also in Kauswagan, later Monday… Some of the dead had been hacked by machetes. The near-simultaneous assaults by hundreds of MILF rebels were in towns in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Sarangani, all on the island of Mindanao...
20. Indian bomb squad lets slip the street dogs of war against Naxalite threat
The Times (London) Rhys Blakely in Bombay August 18, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4552895.ece
India's legion of street dogs are being offered the chance to make their country proud by joining a crack cadre of the country's military. The elite Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College (CTJWC) last year picked four mongrel puppies from the streets with the hope of transforming them into a unit of explosive-detecting sniffer dogs. The mongrels — Lily, Sally, Teja and Kareena — have just passed an intensive nine-month training course with flying colours. After they were found to be “tougher, harder and sharper in battle” than their pampered pedigree peers, there are plans to collect more for similar work… The dogs' main job will be to counter the Naxal movement of Maoist rebels whose influence extends across half of India. Described by Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, as the “single biggest internal challenge ever faced by our country”, Naxalites have stretched security forces close to breaking point in recent months with a series of increasingly audacious raids on security force bases and convoys carrying cash and gold bullion…
EUROPE
21. Islamic terror cell 'may have been plotting to attack Queen'
A terror cell caught with details of bomb-making and suicide vests may have been plotting to attack the Queen and members of the Royal family, it can be disclosed.
By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:55PM BST 19 Aug 2008 The Daily Telegraph (London)
http://tinyurl.com/5udh5g
The cell, which included Britain's youngest ever terrorist, arrested on his way home from his GCSE chemistry exam, was found with information about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh along with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex and the Princess Royal. Also on the list were Princess Michael of Kent, The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and The Duke and Duchess of Kent. Aabid Hussain Khan, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, had compiled pictures, maps and details of the opening hours of official residences from information available on the internet. There were also details of London landmarks including the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and the underground as well as the New York and Washington metros and a home-made video of the Washington Memorial and World Bank in the US. A counter-terrorism source said: "They had details of explosives and poisons along with information about London landmarks and a computer folder on Royal residences. We would be foolish to rule out the fact that they may have been planning an attack." …
Khan, 23, was yesterday convicted of three counts of possessing articles for terrorism but the jury was not told he was part of a network of international terrorists in Europe and North America. It can now be revealed that Khan was closely connected to the alleged leader of a group of men currently awaiting trial for plotting an attack. Khan, using the name Ocean Blue, was also in regular contact with an aspiring suicide bomber in Edinburgh, Mohammed Atif Siddique. He had also communicated regularly with three terrorists who ran websites for Al-Qaeda in Iraq from London and Kent. Khan groomed Hammaad Munshi, then 15, the grandson of the head of a sharia court in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Munshi, who lived with his parents and four brothers, was carrying two small bags of ball bearings, a key component of a suicide vest, when he was arrested on his way home from Westborough High School in Dewsbury on the afternoon of June 2006. He had been running his own website selling knives and Islamic flags and using the online identity Fidadee – meaning "to die for" - on the auction website ebay…
Terrorist mentor Aabid Hussain Khan jailed for 12 years
The leader of a terrorist cell who downloaded information about the royal family has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:55PM BST 19 Aug 2008 The Daily Telegraph (London) -
http://tinyurl.com/6qtswt
Aabid Hussain Khan was told he had shown a "dedicated and unswerving devotion" to the pursuit of fanaticism." His co-accused, Sultan Muhammed, was sentenced to 10 years in jail and, Hammaad Munshi, Britain's youngest terrorist who was 16 when he was arrested, will be sentenced next month. Sentencing Khan and Muhammed, both 23, on three counts of possessing articles for terrorism, Judge Timothy Pontius told them they had not been found guilty of preparing an attack because "the particular time and place had yet to be finalised." But he said the amount of material Khan and Muhammed had compiled made it among the most serious cases to come before the courts short of preparing an attack. Much of what was downloaded, including films of executions, was of a "particularly repulsive nature" and showed his "fanatical and perverted beliefs" the judge said…
22. Teenager 'forced' to flog himself during Muslim ceremony
A teenager has told a court how he and another boy were forced to beat themselves at a Muslim ceremony until they bled.
By Nigel Bunyan Last Updated: 7:31PM BST 19 Aug 2008 The Daily Telegraph (London)
The 14-year-old boy alleged that Syed Mustafa Zaidi ordered them to carry out the act with a zanjeer zani, a wooden-handled implement with chains and five curved knives attached. A jury at Manchester Crown Court heard that the acts of self-flagellation took place at a community centre in the Levenshulme area of the city. Zaidi, 44, of Eccles, Salford, Greater Manchester, was among a large group of men who had gathered to commemorate the martyrdom of the Holy Prophet Husayn, a 7th century leader of the Shia sect. The 14-year-old boy, who was 13 at the time of the alleged incident, told the court he saw Zaidi flog himself with the bladed instrument before washing his blood from it and handing it to the other boy, aged 15. He claimed he then began to "pull and push him", compelling the boy to beat himself despite his pleas of "I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it". The younger boy said: "He kept pressuring him (to) do the knife thing, pulling and pushing him, trying to get his T shirt off. "He was saying 'Just do it, just do it'"… Zaidi is the first person in Britain to be prosecuted over the use of a zanjeer zani. He denies two charges of child cruelty. The trial continues.
23. BBC's Children in Need funded 7/7 terrorist propaganda, says Newsnight
Thousands of pounds raised by Britons for the BBC’s Children in Need charity could have been used to recruit and train the homegrown terrorists involved in the 7/7 terror attacks on London.
By Christopher Hope and Duncan Gardham
Last Updated: 11:11PM BST 19 Aug 2008 Published 20 Aug 2008 The Daily Telegraph (London)
http://tinyurl.com/5halej
Some of the cash could also have been used to fund the propaganda activities of the suicide bombers who killed 52 people in July 2005, according to an investigation by BBC 2’s Newsnight. The programme reported that £20,000 from Children in Need was handed over to the Leeds Community School, in Beeston, Yorkshire between 1999 and 2002. The school, which also received large sums from other public bodies, was run from premises behind the Iqra Islamic bookshop which the gang used as a meeting place and an opportunity to radicalise others. One former worker described those that attended the bookshop as a kind of “brotherhood.” Both Mohammed Sidique Khan, the leader of the bombers, and Shehzad Tanweer, the Aldgate bomber, were trustees of the bookshop and Sidique Khan also worked for a Saturday club at the associated Leeds Community School. Sidique Khan ran outward bound adventure courses in north Wales which were used to recruit and radicalise young Muslim men. Both the bookshop and the school were registered charities – the bookshop claimed, on Charity Commission submissions, that its aim was “the advancement of the Islamic faith”, while the school’s aim was said to be to “advance the education…of Pakistani and Bangladeshi” pupils. They handed out DVDs and books about Bosnia and Chechnya and held Arabic classes in a back room, attended by Jermaine Lindsay, who went on to become the Kings Cross bomber. They also produced a leaflet in the wake of September 11 blaming the attacks on a Jewish conspiracy…
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