Time magazine reported on Thursday that "the source for the tip that al-Qaeda leaders are attempting to mount another multi-pronged airline hijacking attack" against targets in the United States, Britain, Italy and Australia is none other than Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, alias Abu Bakr al-Azdi.
Two official sources report that al-Ghamdi is providing an intelligence windfall about potential a-Qaeda plots against the U.S., western and Saudi governments. The sources say Saudi authorities passed al-Ghamdi's allegations about what could be multiple airline hijackings to the CIA, which then briefed President Bush and also provided them to the Department of Homeland Security.
The al-Ghamdi revelations could partly explain why the Bush administration is so determined to maintain smooth relations with the Saudi government in the wake of a congressional report which blanks out 28 pages of information about informal financial links to terror groups.
However, also on Thursday, CNN (hat tip Dan Darling), while confirming that al-Ghamdi is indeed the source for the new hijack warnings, reports that a "government source" has told the cable news channel that the Riyadh bomber is being held at Guantanamo.
CNN adds that "all the detainees who provided information relating to a possible hijacking plot are being held at Guantanamo, according to the source, but he would not disclose any other names."
So, did the Saudis pass along to the US information on new al-Qa'ida hijack plots provided by al-Ghamdi or did they hand over al-Ghamdi himself, or both?
It seems a certain 28 page redaction is proving to be an effective tool in leveraging an unprecedented degree of cooperation from House Saud in the war on terror.
While it is apparent that the Saudis are falling all over themselves in their eagerness to provide information on al-Qa'ida, don't be fooled into thinking they're our partners in the war on terror. They're only interested in saving their own royal asses.
A U.S. Senate committee is demanding a list of Saudi Arabian citizens that the U.S. Treasury Department has secretly identified since Sept. 11, 2001, as financiers of terrorist front groups.
Treasury has published the names of 202 individuals from several nations who have provided funding to either al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Another 79 people have been named for funding other terror groups, allowing the U.S. and United Nations member states to freeze their assets.
The Treasury has been blocked from seizing the bank accounts of another list of Saudis and others whom the department has identified as funding terrorism, senators and U.S. officials said at a Government Affairs Committee hearing in Washington.
"There is a considerable concern here in the Congress about Saudi Arabia being shielded for foreign policy purposes," said Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. He and Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin asked the Treasury to provide the Senate panel within 24 hours with the names of people who've been kept off the lists by State or other agencies.
The committee is looking into Saudi Arabian financial and ideological links to al-Qaeda and Hamas. The two groups have claimed responsibility for terrorist bombings against the U.S. and Israelis.
Richard Newcomb, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in response to senators' questions that his office had documented the financial ties of some individuals to terrorist organizations and then been prevented from identifying them.
"There are a whole range of targets that we are prepared to move forward on, can move forward on and have developed evidentiary packages," Newcomb said.
Often the U.S. State Department objects to listing Saudi citizens on diplomatic grounds, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation insists on not naming individuals it has under investigation or surveillance, Newcomb said.
"We look very strongly to the State Department and the State Department is a very active player in all of these," Newcomb told Government Affairs.
"The people have a right to know about the trail of money that made it possible for the Sept. 11 terrorists to murder our people," said Jonathan Winer, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration.
The Saudi government has called for release of the report's 28 classified pages. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said after meeting with Bush Tuesday that his country has been accused "by insinuation" because of speculation about what the secret section contains.
"The paper trail of Saudi money, funneled through a network of charities and religious organizations, leads to some of the most violent terrorist groups in the world, including al-Qaeda and Hamas," said Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project, a group that conducts research on Islamic terrorists.
Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and author of the 2003 book "Hatred's Kingdom; How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism," will cite documents seized by Israel and the FBI showing Saudi funds going to terrorists.
"The Israeli national assessment is that Saudi Arabia today funds more than 50 percent of the needs of Hamas and the Saudi percentage in the total foreign aid to Hamas is actually growing," Gold said, according to prepared testimony.
The prepared testimony of the four gentlemen in bold face above, as well as that of John S. Pistole - the FBI's acting assistant director of counterterrorism, can be found here. Posted
5:31 PM
by Robert
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Mr. Gill rightfully asserted that the engine that drives al-Qai'da is a 'brain trust' of radical Islamic clerics (In the same AFPC forum, Mr. Gill claimed that elements of Pakistan's ISI know where Usama bin Laden is).
The Al Qaeda network may be driven by an extremist religious 'brain trust', operating behind the scenes and providing its followers with ideological underpinnings for terrorist attacks, according to counter-terrorism expert K P S Gill, who is credited with wiping out militancy from Punjab.
"It is a brain trust bent on world conquest, Islamic conquest," Gill said in a speech at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington.
Echoing Gill's view, a senior US official was quoted by the Washington Post saying that the idea of a 'secret religious hierarchy behind the Al Qaeda network' was being investigated.
One key piece of evidence was the videotape obtained in Afghanistan, in which Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is seen explaining the September 11 attacks, the official said.
On the tape, Laden spoke as though reporting to a Saudi cleric named Al Ghamdi.
Investigators are probing whether Al Ghamdi is connected to a network of Islamic extremist religious leaders who are behind Al Qaeda, the official said.
[ed. note: The cleric bin Ladin is seen reporting to in the videotape is now known to be the Saudi Shaykh Khaled al-Harbi (aka Abu Sulaiman al-Makki).]
It should be noted that the videotape in which bin Laden is seen explaining the 9-11 attacks to Khaled al-Harbi was most likely made in the same Kandahar guest house where the final details of the plot were hammered out during an al-Qa'ida council consisting of the the four 'pilots' (Atta, Jarrah and Al-Shehhi of the Hamburg cell along with the Saudi Hanjour) and other key players (including Binalshibh of the Hamburg cell, who would have participated in the attacks had he been able to obtain a visa, along with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) in late November-early December, 1999.
The 'religious' figure that "operated behind the scenes" of the Hamburg cell and provided it with it's "ideological underpinnings for terrorist attacks" would be Mohamed Fizazi, alias Abou Mariam.
Fizazi was the imam of Hamburg's al-Quds mosque which the Hamburg conspirators frequented during their radicalization in 1998 and 1999.
[German] Police and intelligence officials said the imam...preached an unusually heated stream of anti-Western and anti-Jewish abuse at the mosque.
The German police have no evidence that Mr. Fazazi was involved in the attacks on Sept. 11. But investigators are intrigued by the number of paths that cross his door. His hate-filled message, the fact that he left Hamburg before Sept. 11 and his ties with people involved in the attacks have all attracted the attention of the German police.
Mr. Fazazi said that "Christians and Jews should have their throats slit" and called on followers to "fight the Americans as long as they are keeping Muslims in prison," according to videotaped sermons seized earlier this month in raids by the Hamburg state police on a bookstore two blocks from the mosque, the police said.
The police said they believed that the sermons offered a religious justification to the extremists who organized the attacks. Mr. Atta and two other suspected pilots of hijacked aircraft were among five Arabs implicated in the attacks who attended Al Quds.
Like some of the other conspirators, Mr. Atta came to Hamburg as a university student in 1992 and gradually embraced a radical brand of Islam, people who knew him said. Authorities now believe that Mr. Fazazi may have played a role in Mr. Atta's transformation into a suicide pilot, but the stages of Mr. Atta's conversion from student to plotter remain unclear.
Fizazi, from Tangiers, left Germany for Morocco prior to September 11, where he continued his incitement of jihad and attacks against Western and Jewish targets.
It turns out that Fizazi is the chief 'theoretician' for the Islamist terror group Salafia Jihadia.
SJ and its members are accused of planning and carrying out the Casablanca attacks in May of this year in which 44 persons were killed and plotting yet more carnage in Morocco.
Fizazi now sits in a Casablanca jail awaiting trial, set to begin on Friday. Officially, Fizazi is charged with "inciting Jihad and violence" but is also accused of sending coded messages about future terror targets in an interview with a Moroccan newspaper in late May.
Mohamed Fizazi it can undoubtedly be said, using K. P. S. Gill's phrase, is a member of an "extremist religious 'brain trust', operating behind the scenes and providing its followers with ideological underpinnings for terrorist attacks."
It also stands to reason that this maniac should be indicted as a co-conspirator in the 9-11 attacks. Posted
6:00 PM
by Robert
The man was furious with the bride's brother for taking the photograph to keep as a memento, Al-Madinah reported.
Conservative Islam does not allow photographs to be taken, since images of living beings are forbidden.
After being dissuaded from attacking his brother-in-law, the man promptly divorced his wife of minutes.
Islamic law in force in the kingdom allows Saudi men to have up to four wives, whom they can divorce by telling the woman three times that he divorces her.
And in a twisted example of Saudi idiocy, a Saudi couple tortured their Asian maid to death simply because she could not speak Arabic.
An 18-year-old maid has died as a result of severe burns inflicted by her employers, Al-Madinah [newspaper] reported.
The woman of the house poured scalding water on the maid because she could not understand Arabic, the paper said, while the husband tied her up. Both husband and wife are teachers. When the maid’s condition worsened following the assault, the woman took the maid to her mother’s house with the intention of having her deported for failure to fulfill her contractual obligations.
The mother attempted to treat the maid with aspirin, but the girl, of Asian nationality, succumbed to her injuries soon after, the paper said.
A court sentenced the husband to four years and the wife to two years in jail. The wife’s mother will receive 80 lashes for conspiring to conceal the crime.
Click on 15. PRIVILEGES OF THE HOUSE--MANNER OF CONDUCTING MARKUP OF LEGISLATION IN COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS -- (House of Representatives - July 18, 2003)
Finally, click on the Page links to read the remarks.
Rep Row Fox News has the best blow by blow of the brouhaha including an account of the most side-splittingly hilarious moment of the day.
The committee reporter captured the essence of Stark's less-than-soaring rhetoric, read on the House floor by Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Mo.
"Oh, you think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp? Come over here and make me. I dare you," Hulshof recited.
According to the stenographer's transcript, the room then broke out in laughter, at which point Stark raged, "You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake. I said you are a fruitcake."
I've pulled a few headlines and leadins on the story from around the web. Some are more imaginative than others.
The Baltimore Sun takes the, ahem, fruitcake for most imaginative.
Fracas turns chamber into animal House - Baltimore Sun
It was a scene more worthy of a smoky bar than of one of the most powerful committees in the House of Representatives.
Insults were hurled, threats were made and the police were summoned. In the end, there was even a trial of sorts. But this was no barroom brawl.
It started with the mind-numbing reading of a 200-page pension overhaul bill, erupted into a remarkably bitter name-calling match between House Republicans and Democrats, and ended with a GOP lawmaker summoning Capitol Police to evict an outraged gaggle of Democratic colleagues from a congressional library.
Partisan brawl stops House in its tracks, Cops called, invective flies on Capitol Hill - San Francisco Chronicle
Was it Bakersfield Rep. Bill Thomas' famous temper? Or was it Fremont Rep. Pete Stark's famous mouth?
Simmering tensions in the U.S. House turned into a heated debate when Democrats tried but failed to pass a resolution reprimanding a senior Republican committee chairman for calling Capitol Police to try to quell a Democratic outburst during a hearing
Sound, Fury, Pension Rules: Nasty Party Clash in House - NY Times
As protests go, it wasn't much. There were no nightsticks or tear gas, and nobody was arrested.
Tempers Flare in House Over Pension Bill - NY Newsday
The House put on a partisan spectacle Friday, with a Republican chairman calling in police, one member calling another a "wimp" and a "fruitcake" and Democrats accusing the GOP of running roughshod over the Constitution.
Capitol Police were called Friday to a contentious House committee meeting marked by a Democratic walkout and accusations of name-calling, vulgarity and physical threats.
House Committee Erupts Into Partisan Maelstrom - LA Times (best coverage by a liberal pub btw, reg. req.)
A committee deliberation exploded into a near-brawl in the House of Representatives on Friday, as epithets and insults like "wimp" and "fruitcake" filled the air and Capitol police were summoned to the scene.
Drudge Report banner readsSUMMER OF DISCONTENT: POLICE CALLED ON HILL AFTER FIGHT, INSULTS(Matt's caps - Jeez, shoo pop-up, shoo) and links to Washington Post piece.
A fairly innocuous markup session on a pension-reform bill erupted into a Democrat challenging 3rd District Congressman Scott McInnis to a fight and calling him a "little fruitcake" Friday.
REP. PETE STARK’S STATEMENT ON EVENTS SURROUNDING TODAY’S WAYS AND MEANS MARK-UP
Much has been made today about my conduct in the Ways and Means Committee markup of HR 1776. Let’s be clear. I am not the issue here. Never was I approached by a police officer or questioned about what happened.
The issue is that the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee called the police to throw Democrats out of a room where they were meeting to determine how to respond to a bill we first saw this morning. It is yet another step in their continued effort to shut out Democrats and stifle debate.
Sometimes I feel so passionate about an issue that I am not as diplomatic as I should be. Whatever was said, I never physically threatened anyone. I did exchange words that were not becoming of my office. I regret that.
Republicans are using my intemperate words as a diversionary tactic. Republicans cannot stand up and defend the calling of the police to remove Democrats from a room in the people’s House. Chairman Thomas’ behavior today should not be allowed in a democracy. It’s reminiscent of a police state, not America. That’s the issue.
"I've already seen enough to convince me," said Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector, in an interview aired Tuesday with "NBC Nightly News" anchorman Tom Brokaw.
"We're finding progress reports. [Iraqi scientists] also got financial rewards from Saddam Hussein by breakthroughs, indicating breakthroughs. They actually took--went to Saddam and said 'We have made this progress.'" the top WMD prober explained. "There are records, there are audiotapes of those interviews which give us that."
"According to Kay, the Iraqis seem to keep documents on even the most damning evidence," said Brokaw.
In assessing the scope of Kay's find, the NBC newsman proclaimed, "This is a mother lode, an estimated seven and a half miles of documents, many of them collected by U.S. military from [Iraq's] official buildings, but many others handed over by Iraqi civilians."
Iraq's WMD files are currently undergoing a painstaking analysis, said Brokaw, who explained, "Many of them [are] handwritten, have to be scanned onto a computer in this small, highly secure facility."
Working with Arabic translators, U.S. weapons experts look for certain clues, including personnel records, foreign purchases and lab results.
The Pentagon's chief weapons prober said he didn't want to go public with details of his find until the case is an indisputable lock. "I know if we can't explain the WMD program of Iraq we lose credibility with regard to other states like Iran, Syria and North Korea," he told NBC.
How long will it take before President Bush is able to reveal what could be smoking gun justification of his decision to make war on Iraq?
"I think we will have a substantial body of evidence before six months," Kay told NBC.
Brokaw ended his report on Kay's find with a clip of Tuesday's comment by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; a move the newsman apparently intended as a reminder to Democrats who continue to carp about the lack of WMD evidence, that they're liable to be humiliated when the full story is known.
Give the idiots enough rope; they will surely hang themselves. Posted
9:05 PM
by Robert
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Cuba is responsible for jamming the satellite uplink signals of LA-based Iranian sat-tv stations.
A U.S. government agency on Tuesday echoed what Los Angeles-based satellite television station providers who transmit news to Iran have been saying for days: Cuba appears to be jamming their signals into Iran, where pro-democracy protests have been raging.
While Cuban authorities have long jammed U.S. government programming to their own country just off the coast of Florida, blocking transmissions to a third country in a distant hemisphere would be unprecedented, said Kenneth Tomlinson, who oversees the Voice of America as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
"This has ominous implications for the future of international satellite broadcasting," Tomlinson said by telephone from Washington, D.C.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors issued a resolution Tuesday calling on the State Department and Federal Communications Commission to lodge a formal protest with the Cuban government for "this unwarranted and wrongful interference."
A Cuban government spokesman in Havana did not return a call for comment from The Associated Press.
Iran's Islamic government has accused U.S.-based satellite stations of stoking unrest by providing unfiltered information into a country that does not otherwise have a free press.
Iran itself can't block the programming because the signals must be jammed over the Atlantic Ocean, where the satellites are positioned.
U.S. officials believe Iran contracted with Cuba to do the job this month, on the eve of the four-year anniversary of large-scale student protests, "to block the flow of news in a period of time when they obviously thought they were going to lose control of their own people," Tomlinson said.
"The war in Iraq against insurgents, guerillas or whatever you want to call them will not be lost there. But it sure as hell can be lost in Washington or in the press or anywhere a liberal pundit or politician seeks to score imaginary political points by weakening the President, the DoD and US intelligence agencies. For every imaginary point a Howard Dean scores the Baathists and Islamists score real points."
I'm afraid my assessment was correct
Today, the Associated Press ran a story on an Al-Arabiya report which covered a statement by a group calling itself the Iraq Liberation Army.
The statement was addressed to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The previously unknown group said any such deployment of troops "serves the occupying American and British forces, minimises their great losses, and legitimises occupation".
The statement goes on to threaten any peacekeeping force sent in relief of British and American forces.
But why, according to the ILA, are the US and UK illegitimate and illegal occupiers?
You won't find the answer in the AP report: "An Al-Arabiya editor contacted by The Associated Press said the network's Baghdad bureau received the statement. The editor gave no further details."
Luckily, alphabet city can provide that detail thanks to MidEast Web News Backgrounder which has a translation of the al-Arabiya report.
[Interview via satellite with Al-Arabiyah correspondent in Baghdad Sa'd al-Silawi, by anchorman Ibrahim al-Qasim in the Dubai studios -- live]
[Al-Qasim] For the latest developments in Baghdad, I have with me our correspondent Sa'd al-Silawi. Sa'd, what are the overall political and security developments in Baghdad so far?
[Al-Silawi] A leaflet has been distributed containing a message to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The message is singed [sic] by the Iraq Liberation Army [jaysh tahrir al-Iraq]. It affirms that resistance was not decided by anyone, perhaps in reference to former President Saddam Husayn.
We [not clear whether Silawi means the statement or al-Arabiya] announced two days ago that Saddam has formed four Iraqi army divisions for resistance. The message also affirms that everyone, and not a certain group, is contributing to the resistance, including Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Sunnis, and Shiites. It notes that the sons of the armed forces with all its corps declare jihad and that all [religious] authorities [marji'iyat], especially the holy Al-Hawzah [Shiite seminary] in Al-Najaf, also support that.
The message calls on the Arab countries, the Arab League, and the countries that opposed what the message called aggression on Iraq to support the resistance.
The message says that it has been confirmed that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction as claimed by President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair. Bush and Blair, the message adds, should therefore face an international trial, the two countries [The United States and Britain] should bear all the losses, and the Iraqis should be compensated for these losses.
The message also says that Kuwait bears responsibility for the losses suffered by public institutions and that all Iraqis should verify the losses they suffered. The message strongly rejects any military intervention by the United Nations or any international forces, vowing that should any Arab or foreign forces enter Iraq, they will face fierce resistance by the Iraq Liberation Army.
The message tells Kofi Annan: We announce to the world that the decisions made after 9 April, the day Baghdad fell, are null and void and completely illegal.
The message warns all foreigners who have entered Iraq against cooperating with the occupation forces or with recently opened embassies, saying these embassies will be targets for resistance by the Iraq Liberation Army.
The Niger yellowcake flap is the means, of course, by which George Bush's Democrat and Euro critics seek to weaken him. In doing so, they indirectly strengthen Iraqi resistance.
Maybe the ILA gets its talking points from Scheer himself.
Joking aside, what we are now witnessing is the coalescing of the, until now, numerous Iraqi resistance groups into an organized network under the banner of the ILA. And this is occurring because "for every imaginary point a Howard Dean scores the Baathists and Islamists score real points."
A loose end to tie up: We have heard from the ILA before.
In response, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema could bar government evidence or even dismiss charges in the only U.S. case to arise from the 2001 attacks.
If the Alexandria, Va.-based trial judge reacts by damaging the government's case, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., has indicated it would intervene on the witness access question, though not immediately. The full court voted 7-5 on Monday to deny, for now, reconsideration of a three-judge panel's refusal to step in at this stage.
However, the appellate court said it would expedite consideration of the government's appeal.
The government said it recognizes that its objection means the deposition of Al Qaeda prisoner Binalshibh cannot go forward. The Justice decision also "obligates the court now to dismiss the indictment unless the court finds that the interests of justice can be served by another action."
If the court considers an alternative to dismissal, prosecutors asked that they be heard before action is taken. The government also asked Brinkema to postpone any action pending a ruling by the appellate court.
The eventual outcome of this dispute could affect future cases by deciding whether terrorism defendants will have access to enemy combatants, especially those, like Binalshibh, who are being held in secret locations overseas.
Should the courts favor a defendant's access to potential witnesses over national security, the government could decide the Moussaoui case, and future terrorism proceedings, should be prosecuted by military tribunals -- where national security clearly would be paramount.
Repeating earlier arguments, the government said Monday: "The deposition, which would involve an admitted and unrepentant terrorist (the defendant) questioning one of his Al Qaeda confederates, would necessarily result in the unauthorized disclose of classified information."
"Such a scenario is unacceptable to the government, which not only carries the responsibility for prosecuting the defendant, but also of protecting this nation's security at a time of war with an enemy who already murdered thousands of our citizens."
Moussaoui has admitted he's an Al Qaeda loyalist, but denied he was part of the Sept. 11 plot.
So, either Judge Brinkema dismisses the indictment against Moussaoui or imposes another sanction on the US government.
Moussaoui would not necessarily walk if she orders a dismissal. The US could appeal to the US Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court.
Although the US would rather try Moussaoui in a civilian court, if they decide national security concerns are more important he could be tried before a military tribunal.
Since Moussaooui's ineptness (if only all 19 had been so) prevented him from taking part in the attacks of 9-11-01, he is now attempting to hijack the American legal system and fly it into the US Constitution, so to speak.
Due to Moussaoui's stupidity, he may even be one of Usama bin Laden's most prized jihadis.
The logic of Judge Brinkema, sworn to uphold the civil rights of the accused, is that if the organizer of the 9-11 attacks, Binalshibh, can prove that Moussaoui was not involved in the 9-11 plot then he has the right to question Binalshibh in order to prove his innocence.
Clearly, this deranged piece of human filth is not entitled to the same constitutional protections that you and I are since said piece of excrement's stated intent is to destroy the entity that gaurantees those constitutional rights.
The Justice Department wants to try him in a civilian court so that future terror trials would be held to the precedent it is seeking to have the Moussaoui trial set; terrorists are not entitled to introduce evidence which would threaten the national security of the United States.
Also, it wouldn't hurt to have a civillian jury sentence Moussaoui to death as opposed to the military.
Although I say let the military try him, it would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court would rule on this matter were our esteemed jurists to hear it.
Oh yeah, I just had to slip this in; Judge Brinkema is a Bill Clinton appointee. Posted
9:18 PM
by Robert
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Burke's information was obtained by the Observer from Arab, US and British intelligence dossiers.
The two individuals were Hamza al-Ghamdi (United Airlines 175, WTC, south tower) and Wali Mohamed al-Shehri (American Airlines Flight 11, WTC, north tower).
According to Burke, Al-Shehri was linked to UBL by Arab and US intelligence which revealed his stay at al-Farooq, a key al-Qa'ida training camp in Afghnistan.
Hamza Al-Ghamdi was linked to UBL by a British Police dossier which revealed that al-Ghamdi had spent time in the UK before flying to America to take part in the attacks of 9-11 and that "Al-Ghamdi is from Saudi Arabia... From the beginning of the jihad he was a bodyguard of Osama and has participated in fighting [with the Islamist guerillas] in Tajikistan... He is an adviser of Osama." Posted
4:01 PM
by Robert
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Brinkema was citing Royers explanation that the AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammunition he was in possession of, when stopped by police in September of 2001, was intended for hunting and target practice.
Karen Branch-Brioso, writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, adds that Royer's claim to the officer who stopped him in 2001, that he possessed the AK-47 because he was trying to sell it to a gun shop, was not "definitively answered" at Friday's ruling.
According to an FBI interview with the officer who stopped Royer, the officer, after stopping Royer, went to the gun shop where Royer claimed he had tried to sell the A-K 47. The workers there recalled Royer coming in, but they could not recall if he had tried to sell them the gun.
The Post-Dispatch's Branch-Brioso report also includes important information on Judge Brinkema's ruling surprisingly absent from the AP report:
Brinkema said "the most significant piece of evidence" was the transcript of an April 7, 2003, phone conversation between Royer and Kwon.
In the transcript, Royer and Kwon discussed the federal probe into their activities -- as part of a group of Muslim friends in the Washington suburbs that had played paintball together regularly. Some, including Royer and Kwon, had also gone to Pakistan in trips that prosecutors said was to train and fight with Lashkar-e-Taiba: a militant group fighting Indian forces over the disputed Kashmir region. The U.S. government designated it a terrorist group in December 2001, after the men allegedly aided the group.
Royer and Kwon discussed the potential case against another man in the group: Ibrahim al-Hamdi, the first of the group to be arrested on March 18.
"The prosecutor told (al-Hamdi's) lawyer that, 'We're trying to think of what we're gonna charge him with.' And then he was like, 'You can't charge him with terrorism, because the group is not on the terrorist list,' Royer told Kwon. "So he was like, 'Well, we're thinking about charging him with participating in a conflict in which America is not a participant.'It shows like a maximum of 70 days in jail. I mean, some kind of garbage like that."
Royer's attorney, Stanely Cohen, said the fact that Royer was aware of the probe and yet, did not flee, was evidence he would not flee pending trial. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg said the April phone call showed that Royer had no idea of the maximum penalty he could be facing: "He was convinced the maximum penalty was 70 days."
Instead, the government has noted that Royer faces significantly longer -- 55 years on weapons charges alone -- if convicted. The men, who practiced with AK-47-style weapons at firing ranges, are alleged to have done so with the intent of traveling abroad to fight with Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Brinkema's decision overturned a magistrate judge's order that said Royer could post bond, making him the last of five defendants to be detained in the case. Three others were allowed to post bond.
'You had better sit down for this' Update Brinkema is the trial judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui case - the same judge who ruled in January that Moussaoui has the right to question Ramzi Binalshibh via closed circuit tv.
On Friday, Moussaoui's defense team filed a written motion arguing that Judge Brinkema should be allowed, for now, to handle the dispute over Moussaoui's right to interview Binalshibh, suspected coordinator of the 9-11 attacks.
The defence's written motion Friday, if successful, would allow a trial judge to penalize the government if prosecutors refuse to produce the witness, Ramzi Binalshibh.
The motion opposed the government's attempt Thursday to have the appeals court reconsider its earlier decision to stay on the sidelines.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., has not ruled on the prosecutors' motion for reconsideration.
The government wants the 4th Circuit to intervene because the trial judge, Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Va., has upheld Mr. Moussaoui's right to interview Mr. Binalshibh.
If the government refuses to produce Mr. Binalshibh via a satellite hookup, Mr. [sic] Brinkema could restrict the prosecution's evidence or, at worst, dismiss some or all of the charges against Mr. Moussaoui.
The government has argued that national security would be irreparably damaged if Mr. Moussaoui, an acknowledged loyalist of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, is allowed to question a former superior who could reveal classified information if his comments were used at trial.
Mr. [sic] Brinkema ruled that Mr. Moussaoui has a constitutional right to interview Mr. Binalshibh, after concluding the captured al-Qaeda leader may support Mr. Moussaoui's contention that he was not part of the Sept. 11, 2001, conspiracy.
While Mr. [sic] Brinkema has imposed a Monday deadline for the government to state whether it would produce Mr. Binalshibh, the defence lawyers argued in Friday's motion that penalties would not be imminent.
"The district court has ... not scheduled a hearing or even set a briefing schedule on the issue of sanctions," the defence said.
"This is because no one has any idea what the government's answer will be.
"For all that anyone knows, the government may decide to produce the witness rather than face the possibility of sanctions - and thus moot this entire appeal."
Charged as a conspirator with the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, Mr. Moussaoui has acknowledged membership in al-Qaeda but denied any role in the attacks.
Look for a military trial if the US is not allowed to appeal Judge Brinkema's January ruling that it is Moussaoui's constitutional right to question Binalshibh in order to prove he was not part of the 9-11 plot.
Of course it could be argued that Moussaoui has no constitutional rights since he is, self-admittedly, a member of al-Qa'ida. A fascist, mass-murdering gang of international terrorists whose stated purpose is the destruction of the nation which is founded upon the very constitutional rights that Moussaoui has invoked.
Oh, and someone please inform the Globe and Mail that Judge Brinkema is a woman. Posted
3:40 PM
by Robert
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After giving his statement on Operation Iraqi Freedom General Franks told the House Panel "we need to not develop an expectation that all of these difficulties will go away in one month or two months or three months."
The "difficulties" General Franks refers to are the constant hit and run attacks on US troops by.....well, for the moment, let's just say 'the perpetrators of the difficulties.'
Just who the 'perps' are, and the degree of coordination among them, is a growing point of contention between the Bush Administration and its critics.
While the issue hasn't yet developed into a conflagration between the two camps, the Niger yellowcake devlopment is sure to embolden the Democrat's push to force the 'gw' phrase into the mouths of Pentagon, State and White House.
Thursday's hearing convened before the Niger story broke of course. Still, Democrats on the House Panel snivelled as they scolded General Franks.
Their remonstrations did not, however, evoke the 'gw' phrase from the former CentCom boss, but they came close.
"I'm deeply disturbed by the kind of happy face we're trying to put on this situation," Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., said during a sharp exchange with Franks, who stepped down Monday as head of the military command overseeing Iraq and Afghanistan.
Franks said he was confident that his successor, Gen. John Abizaid, and the civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, would succeed in bringing stability and representative government to Iraq.
"We must be there for the entire journey (to democracy), and we will not fail," Franks said.
The House panel's top Democrat, Ike Skelton of Missouri, said he worried "we may find ourselves in the throes of guerrilla warfare for years." And Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., spoke up to Franks and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about what she said was a reluctance to talk about guerrilla warfare.
"Why are we playing word games when our troops are facing a trained and determined enemy every day in Iraq?" Sanchez challenged Franks.
"It does not bother me if someone refers to this as guerrilla or insurgency warfare," the general replied. Franks said he wouldn't use those terms because the attackers in Iraq don't have broad public support or signs of nationwide coordination.
The Kurds in the north pose no threat. In the south, the Shi'ite, except in the instance of the mob-killing of six British soldiers, are not a problem.
The resistance is in the Sunni controlled area of central Iraq. It is fierce and and it is persistent.
Is the resistance there organized?
Will there be resistance from Saddam loyalists and radical Islamists in the Kurdish and Shi'ite sectors of Iraq in the future as well?
"We have many more people and we're a lot better organized than the Americans realize," said Khaled, 29, who gave an hour-long interview yesterday on the condition that only his first name be published. "We have been preparing for this kind of guerrilla war for a long time, and we're much more patient than the Americans. We have nowhere else to go."
Khaled described the workings of a loosely organized network of former Baath Party members, Iraqi soldiers, intelligence officers and other die-hard Hussein supporters who have been responsible for an unknown number of the attacks that have killed 29 U.S. soldiers and injured dozens since May 1.
He said the network operates in cells of five or six members that answer to a secret leadership structure. It goes by various names - the Fedayeen, the Iraq Liberation Army, Muhammad's Army - and Khaled said only a handful of people know its full reach. He said its members draw inspiration from Hussein and from the belief that the ousted Iraqi leader is alive and will regain power once U.S. troops are forced to leave.
Propped against cushions on the floor of a friend's sparsely furnished living room, Khaled described himself as a former operative for one of Hussein's intelligence services, although he would not say what he did. His account offers details that may help explain the 6-week-old escalation in anti-U.S. attacks throughout central Iraq. It adds to the evidence that U.S. forces face an organized movement that aims to drag them into a long guerrilla war fed by a combination of nationalist and Islamic sentiments.
Khaled described cells that are studying the tactics of Palestinian militant groups and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which drove Israeli forces from southern Lebanon after a 22-year occupation. While suicide attacks have not been a significant tactic in Iraq, he said his network is planning to sendsuicide bombers to attack American military convoys and installations. And he said a network of Iraqis provide food, shelter and other help to militia members trying to evade U.S. forces.
It is an account that contradicts statements by several U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who argue that the Iraqi insurgency is a disorganized movement of former Baathists and thousands of criminals who were released from prison by Hussein last year.
"There seems to be a widely held impression that the regime loyalists are operating freely throughout the country attacking coalition forces at will," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. "That's clearly not the case."
Khaled said remnants of the Fedayeen, intelligence services and the elite Special Republican Guards are regrouping throughout Iraq and digging in for a long underground war.
"We know each other and we have ways of communicating with one another," said Khaled, a tall, muscular man with a trim mustache and short-cropped hair. "The Americans made a big mistake by thinking that we all disappeared after the war."
Currently, Khaled said he is responsible for "three or four" Fedayeen cells. He said they have been involved in carrying out attacks on U.S. troops in Fallujah and Baghdad with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
He said specialized cells have been created to deal with procuring weapons, developing more sophisticated bombs, identifying informers and creating systems of coded communication. These units, Khaled said, are small and do not know one another - a policy meant to reduce the potential for infiltration or arrests that lead the cells to unravel.
That strategy has been used by Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and by Algerian nationalists who fought a bloody war to drive France out of Algeria in the 1960s.
The Fedayeen have been trying to develop more powerful explosives to use
against U.S. military convoys, Khaled said. The process involves wiring several bombs or cannon shells together, burying them beneath sand or dirt on the sides of major roads and detonating the explosives when convoys pass by. It is reminiscent of a strategy used by Hezbollah guerrillas in their war against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
My two cents?
It doesn't take a pundit to know that Saddam needs to be found and either killed by US forces or, even better, delivered to the Iraqi citizens who would administer their own brand of justice and punishment for years of torture, rape and mass murder.
The longer Saddam remains free the more the loosely configured resistance grows into an organized resistance ranging the entirety of Iraq.
George Bush's critics and disputers should shut the hell up and get behind the man and the full prosecution of this war in Iraq and the wider war on terror.
Howard Dean et al. are behaving like opportunists who are concerned only with gaining the White House and the Senate.
The war in Iraq against insurgents, guerillas or whatever you want to call them will not be lost there. But it sure as hell can be lost in Washington or in the press or anywhere a liberal pundit or politician seeks to score imaginary political points by weakening the President, the DoD and US intelligence agencies.
For every imaginary point a Howard Dean scores the Baathists and Islamists score real points.
I'm begining to wonder, are the liberals waging insurgency warfare too? Posted
7:20 PM
by Robert
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Fatija was one of 15,000 Bosnian Muslims that gathered for the funeral ceremony of 300 newly-identified males who were massacred by Serb forces eight years ago this month, along with 8,000 other Muslim men and boys, in a Srebrenica field after they were separated from the women.
It was Europe's largest instance of mass murder since WWII.
He will bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and send them to Liberia, where they are really needed.
Howard Dean will then tell Americans that they are safe because US foreign policy is what caused Usama bin Laden's war against America and Israel in the first place.
And while the Islamist psycopaths reconsolidate, reconstitute and plot their next moves against America they will laugh at Howard Dean instead of cursing George W. Bush.
Psycopaths don't need a reason to commit mass murder and genocide Mr. Dean, although they always have one handy. Posted
3:09 AM
by Robert
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Hmmm. Interesting. A lower case 'p' in Palestinian.
Since I don't pay for the Site Meter, I am provided only a partial IP address (213.42.2.#)
However, it is enough of an address to reveal which country this IP address-block is assigned to:
inetnum: 213.42.2.0 - 213.42.2.255
netname: EMIRNET-EMIRNET
descr: Emirates Internet
descr: Public Internet Service
descr: Emirates Telecommunications Corporation
country: AE
admin-c: AH1223-RIPE
tech-c: SMA3-RIPE
tech-c: SAS88-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: ETISALAT-MNT
changed: sultan@uaenic.ae 20030617
source: RIPE
A suggestion to the to the individual from the UAE, and to other readers of alphabet city: If you want to know more about how the Saudis fund the killing of Jews through contributions of billions of dollars to 'Mujahideen Fighters' and 'Families of Martyrs' MEMRI is a good place to start.
By the way, alphabet city is in good company. Also receiving citations for the same search request are Charles Johnson, Fred Pruitt and Joe Katzman. (Correction - An error on my part. Winds of Change.net is not cited on the first two pages of the Google search for The Committee for Assisting palestinian Mujahideen. Instead, it would be Marten Barck's blog Watch/, which is affiliated with Joe's weblog. Sorry, Marten.) Posted
3:04 PM
by Robert
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The alleged mastermind of the Riyadh suicide bombings was arrested last week by the Middle East’s answer to the Keystone Kops, the security forces of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He was immediately identified as an Al-Ghamdi, the Saudi answer to the James Gang, two of whom were September 11th killers and his membership of this deadly clan is further proof that the problems the security forces face in cleaning up sections of the Middle East are equivalent to the problems that the forces of law and order faced in cleaning up the Old West. It’s time to rally the posses and run the bad guys out of Dodge.
The James Gang embarked on their career of larceny and terrorism as a result of the conditions in post-Civil War Missouri. The Al-Ghamdis come from a similar kind of place, an under-developed rural area in southwest Saudi Arabia where respect for the law is minimal and clan loyalty plays a far larger role in determining individual action than personal conscience. What motivates the bad guys is different – the James Gang were interested in robbing banks, the Al-Ghamdis in destroying the United States, but critically, they both come from the same root.
The bad guys’ followers idolise them, doing what popular culture has done in turning Butch Cassidy and Billy the Kid into romantic figures, instead of the psychopathic robbers and career criminals they really were. They are permitted to be wildly glamorous, while authority figures like George Armstrong Custer, and now also Pat Garrett, are deconstructed as fraudsters and genocidal fascists, whose standard of performance is criticised for falling below the standards required of police officers in the early 21st Century. No one in their right mind would ever dream of wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the image[s] of demented serial killers like John Wesley Hardin and Ike Clanton but Osama’s image is still on sale in many parts of the world. The only way to defeat this sickness is for Osama himself, not just his body but also his spirit, to go the way of the James’ and the Youngers, and for every one of his followers to make their own Butch Cassidy appointment with the forces of the Bolivian Army.
Ali Abd al-Ghamdi Update - Time Magazine is reporting today that "Al-Qaeda seeks Canadian operatives to get around tighter U.S. security" and that "U.S. officials believe al-Ghamdi has knowledge of conspiracies now being hatched all over the world, and that he could reveal previously unidentified sleeper cells in the U.S. and Canada."
The Paintball Cell: Part II Yesterday I posted about the asinine defense strategy concocted by Stanley Cohen, Randal Todd Royer's attorney. I also wrote about Lashkar-e-Taiba's al-Qa'ida connection. I have more on Mr. Cohen and Lashkar.
Royer's defense lawyer, Stanley Cohen, is also an attorney for the HAMAS terrorist organization. Cohen's law partner, Lynne Stewart, is awaiting trial on federal charges that she served as a courier for Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik" convicted of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
Cohen and Stewart both align themselves with the Center for Constitutional Rights which John Perazzo of FrontPage Magazine.com describes as a "Fifth Column law factory, part of the same political Left that has spent decades portraying America as a racist, corrupt, arrogant violator of human rights both at home and abroad.
B. Raman, writing in the Asia Times on Lashkar-e-Taiba, with which Royer is affiliated, has this alarming analysis of the Pakistani terror group:
In the past, the LET had kept its activities confined to its jihad in India and its assistance to the Jemmah Islamiyah and other pro-bin Laden elements in Indonesia. It did not utter any threats against the US or target American nationals or interests. As a result, American intelligence officials based in Pakistan did not pay the same attention to monitoring its activities as they did to the activities of al-Qaeda and other Pakistani organizations, despite the fact that Abu Zubaidah, then No 3 in al-Qaeda, was arrested in March last year from the house of a LET leader at Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab.
It has thus managed to retain its infrastructure and source of funding intact. Though it has changed its name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa to escape the consequences of the order banning it issued by General Pervez Musharraf on January 15, 2002, it continues to be referred to by many Afghans, Pakistanis and Arabs as the LET. Since the beginning of this year [2003], it has been trying to perform the role previously played by al-Qaeda as the coordinator of pro-bin Laden networks all over the world, as the supplier of funds to the networks in different countries and particularly in Southeast Asia and of suicide volunteers, arms and ammunition and explosives to the surviving al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan etc.
Al-Qaeda has been trying to use the organizational infrastructure of the LET in Pakistan, its network in the Islamic world and its large funds for stepping up acts of terrorism against the US and Israel. The LET's close access to senior officers of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment could be exploited by al-Qaeda to prevent any action against its surviving cadres in Pakistan. Many members of Pakistan's scientific community in the nuclear and missile fields regularly attend the conventions of the LET. By making use of this, al-Qaeda should be able to seek the assistance of LET sympathizers in the scientific community for acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Although Royer and his buds are not accused of being a sleeper cell or conspiring to commit acts of terror against the United States, clearly, due to their affiliation with Lashkar which is part of bin Laden's Islamic Front, it would not be a stretch to assume that they consider the US to be their enemy. Posted
11:42 PM
by Robert
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Poshepny is most noted for having been a top CIA spook in the Agency's shadow war in Laos known as "Operation Momentum."
Poshepny trained thousands of Hmong and lu Mien tribesmen to wage guerilla war against North Vietnemese and Lao communists.
He was ordered not to fight with his guerillas but instead ignored the orders.
To prove he was killing communists he once sent a bag full of human ears to the US Embassy in Vientiane.
In a 2001 interview with Richard S Ehrlich, Poshepny confirmed that "he rewarded his fighters for bringing in enemy ears. He also confirmed that he let his Lao guerrillas erect a human head on a spike and toss pebbles at it, to boost their anti-communist fervor."
Poshepny also told Ehrlich in 2001 that he dropped the severed heads of communist guerillas onto enemy camps in Laos to terrify them. "We flew in real low, in front of that bastard's house, and I threw the head so it bounced right on his porch and into his front door."
Poshepny also trained the Tibetan Khambha tribesmen who snuck the Dalai Lama out of communist controlled Tibet in 1958.
During his military career Poshepny was awarded five purple hearts and two CIA stars.
The character of Col. Kurtz in "Apocolypse Now" is said to have been based in part on Poshepny.
Philip Smith, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Public Policy Analysis says of Poshepny:
"The posting of decapitated heads obviously sent a powerful message - especially to North Vietnamese troops seeking to invade the homelands of the Hmong and Laotian people. He successfully fought terror with terror. He strove to instill courage and respect in the tribal and indigenous forces that he recruited and trained as well as fear in the enemy. In the post-September 11 security environment, fearless men like Tony Poe are what America needs to combat and counter terrorism and the new unconventional threat that America faces from abroad in exotic and uncharted lands."
The claim from defense lawyer Stanley Cohen came as eight of the 11 men pleaded innocent in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy, firearms violations and commencing an expedition against a friendly nation. The other three defendants remain at large.
Prosecutors say the men were training to join and support a group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which wants to violently oust India from Kashmir and was labeled a terrorist organization by the government in December 2001.
Cohen, a lawyer for defendant Randall Todd Royer of Falls Church, told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema that the U.S. government has essentially supported Pakistan and its intelligence agency in its dispute with India over the Kashmir territory, despite an official position of neutrality.
The charges against the 11 men stem primarily from violations of the federal Neutrality Act, which bars citizens from engaging in hostile actions against nations with whom the U.S. is at peace. Cohen said the Neutrality Act can't be used because the U.S. has in fact favored Pakistan over India.
"The government has not been neutral with respect to Kashmir for more than 15 years," Cohen said.
Cohen further stated that the Pakistani intelligence agency has supported the Lashkar terrorist group, and that he will be demanding classified reports from the U.S. government to support his contention.
First of all, the "indirect support" the US may have given Lashkar was CIA funding of the Afghani mujahedin in its war against the Soviet Union. This "support" ended after the Soviet Union was defeated.
Mr Cohen is wrong about US favoritism of Pakistan over India. The US has been even-handed in dealing with both countries over the Kashmir issue, which became a nuclear tipping point once the Pakistanis, like the Indians, nuked up.
The only point that Mr Cohen is correct on is the ISI's support of Lashkar. And Lashkar wasn't the only terror group that the Paks were training (in Afghanistan), funding and arming to fight their proxy war against the Hindus in Kashmir.
The most important aspect of this case is who, exactly, Randall Todd Royer is and what, exactly, Lashkar-e-Taiba is.
Front Page Magazine reports that Royer "has served as a communications specialist and as a civil rights coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)."
Lashkar is Wahhabist to the core. Lashkar is the armed wing of Markaz Dawa al-Irshad, which is a member of UBL's International Islamic Front For Jihad Against the US and Israel.
The Markaz was founded in 1987, at the inspiration of Osama bin Laden, by Zafar Iqbal and Hafiz Mohammad Saeed of the University of Engineering and Technology of Lahore and Abdullah Azam of the International Islamic University, which has been funded by bin Laden.
As regards ideology, the Markaz, an Ahle Hadith organisation of Wahhabi orientation, was initially very close to Saudi Arabia, but seems to have developed differences with it because of its proximity to Osama bin Laden and of its contention that even Saudi Arabia does not have an ideal Islamic society. Its criticism of the stationing of US and other Western troops in Saudi Arabia also contributed to this. It describes the Hindus and Jews, in that order, as the main enemies of Islam and India and Israel as the main enemies of Pakistan. Its Amir [Saeed] is a strong opponent of Western-style democracy.
The Amir [Saeed] said in an interview to the "Herald": "Democracy is among the menaces we inherited from an alien government. It is part of the system we are fighting against. Many of our brothers feel that they can establish an Islamic society by working within the system. They are mistaken. It is not possible to work within a democracy and establish an Islamic system. You just dirty your hands by dealing with it. If God gives us a chance, we will try to bring in the pure concept of an Islamic Caliphate."
Even though the eleven men have not been accused of planning attacks in the US, considering their affiliation to Lashkar and Lashkar's al-Qa'ida connection and Wahhabi philosophy, it is not, I believe, a reach to consider them a threat to America. Posted
11:09 PM
by Robert
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