ADRIAN MORGAN: PAKISTAN’S LINKS TO WESTERN TERROR PLOTS
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7550/pub_detail.asp
October 4, 2010
Pakistan’s Links to Western Terror Plots
On September 29, 2010, I wrote about the concerns about a major terror plot that was thought to be developing in Britain, France and Germany. I wrote then that the plot appeared foiled. This now does not seem to be the case. The revelations of the plot’s existence in newspapers have not diminished its potential for enactment.
The United States, according to the BBC yesterday, was preparing to issue warnings to American travelers to Britain, France and Germany, suggesting that they stay away from crowded areas. That official warning never came. Yesterday Voice of America news issued an article by Lisa Bryant discussing the warnings, stating:
Washington urged American tourists in Europe to be extra vigilant, while London raised its threat assessment to high for citizens traveling to France and Germany.
This morning, the article had been pulled, and is only visible from its Google cache. The British Daily Mail newspaper for today suggests that:
Fears of an Al Qaeda plot to massacre thousands in Britain appeared to heighten last night.
The threat of a Mumbai-style machine gun assault is now rated so severe that the U.S. is warning its citizens they could be in danger if they travel to the UK.
At the same time, Britons are being told by the Foreign Office that they could face ‘indiscriminate’ attack from Osama bin Laden-inspired fanatics if they travel to France or Germany.
The Sunday Times (only available online by subscription) reported that GCHQ, Britain’s “listening center” at Cheltenham, had been monitoring “chatter.” GCHQ was then sending the information to the United States, which acted on the information by sending Predator drones into North Waziristan in Pakistan’s border regions. Here,Hellfire missiles were used to destroy targets. During September there were twice as many drone strikes than take place in a normal month.
At the end of 2009, a jihadist website had posted information of a proposed bomb attack similar to that which took place at Mumbai in India over a few days, starting on November 26, 2008. Through this year, the communications of a range of suspects have been monitored, via Blackberrys, walkie-talkies, satellite phones and cellular phones. The Sunday Times (p. 7) stated:
Sources said there may have been up to 15 or 20 Britons whose voices have been picked up by GCHQ intercepts. Several of these have accents linked to the Rochdale area and towns in the Midlands.
The main breakthrough came in July with the arrest of an Afghan-born German national who was apprehended in Kabul and who is currently in US custody. German news sources refer to him as Ahmad S., but his real name is Ahmed Siddiqui. Apparently being questioned at the American base at Bagram, a German official was recently allowed to visit him. It is from Ahmed Siddiqui that most of the information relating to the plot and its related counter-terror operations have come.
According to the Sunday Times, British MI5 operatives are angry that the US press was given information by a senior US official last week, thus exposing an operation which they had been monitoring for some time, involving British suspects, and of a scale that could cause devastation. There are still real fears that British-based jihadists have plans to mount grenade and machine-gun attacks against “soft” targets, such as hotels and restaurants.
David Headley and the Mumbai Attacks
The Mumbai attacks involved an American citizen whose father was a Pakistani diplomat and whose mother was American. David Coleman Headley lived in Chicago. In 2006 he had changed his name from Daood Sayed Gilani, in order to gain easy entry into India. Headley was arrested on October 3, 2009 at O’Hare airport, as he prepared to fly to Philadelphia. On October 18, a Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, a Pakistani Canadian, was arrested in Illinois.
Headley had acted as a “scout,” looking for potential target sites in Mumbai, to assist the terrorists who subsequently made their attacks. In March this year, Headley pleaded guilty in a federal court in Chicago to 12 charges of assisting in the reconnaissance that led to the attacks.
Headley’s plea arrangement had also provided more details of another plot, to attack the staff at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Headley had traveled to Denmark twice, in relation to do reconnaissance for an attack. On September 30, 2005, Jyllands-Posten had published the notorious Mohammed cartoons after Kåre Bluitgen, an author for a children’s book on Mohammed, had said that artists were too scared to assist him, for fear of Muslim violence.
Headley’s plea bargain had saved him from the potential of a death penalty, and had also stopped him from being deported to India (where he could also have received a death penalty) or to Denmark. In this plea bargain, he gave useful information. Headley told prosecutors that he had been actively involved with the terrorist group Lashkar e-Toiba (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba or Lashkar-e-Taiba) since 202, and it was this group who had urged him to change his name in 2006.
The fact that there has already been a case of a Chechen bomber arrested after bungling an attempt to send a letter-bomb to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, and the fact that three Norwegian residents have also been arrested in relation to plots to kill Jyllands-Posten cartoonists, suggests the enormity of the reach of Al-Qaeda inspired terrorists.
On October 15, 2009, Colleen LaRose was arrested in at her home in Pennsburg, Philadelphia, and subsequently indicted for attempting to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who had made several line drawings of Mohammed as a dog. On March 9, 2010, hours after three women and four men had been arrested in Ireland for also plotting to kill Vilks, Ms LaRose’s indictment was released.
Pakistan: Corruption and Terror
The sole survivor among the terrorists who carried out the Mumbai attacks was a young Pakistani called Ajmal Amir Kasab. He had been a member of Jamaat ud-Dawa, whose headquarters were in Muridke in Lahore province, Pakistan. Jamaat ud-Dawa was founded by Hafiz Saeed (pictured below), who had also founded the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Jamaat ud-Dawa had been designated as a terrorist entity by the United States on April 28, 2006, even though the Pakistan government at that time refused to outlaw it.
Ajmal Amir Kasab was caught on video brandishing machine guns during the 2008 Mumbai siege. His facial expressions showed he was enjoying the experience. On May 5, 2010, Kasab was sentenced to death, a decision that was greeted with celebrations by Mumbai Muslims. Six days ago, on September 28, Kasab filed an appeal against his death sentence.
After the Mumbai attacks, the Pakistan government announced that it had banned the Jamaat-ud-Dawa group. However, the group has managed to use Pakistan’s corrupt legal system to have bans overturned, and at the start of this year, the group has been increasingly active. It frequently calls for the deaths of those who insult Islam. In May this year, the Supreme Court overturned attempts by the Pakistan government to keep Hafiz Saeed in detention.
Jamat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba are one and the same, with the latter group more closely linked with terrorist operations in Indian territory, while Jamaat ud-Dawa operates in Pakistan. On July 11, 2006, seven crowded commuter trains were subjected to bomb attacks in Mumbai, within eleven minutes of each other. This attack, which killed more than 200 people, was the handiwork of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Previous deadly attacks by the group have also taken place in Delhi and other locations.
In June this year, it was revealed that the Punjab provincial government in Pakistan had given $1 million in funding to Jamaat ud-Dawa. Like many Islamist groups, it operates under aliases. Such techniques are used frequently to allow a group to continue unaffected under another name when subjected to bans. Jamaat ud-Dawa, aka Lashkar-e-Taiba, is also known as Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq and currently it also operates under the name Falah-e-Insaniyat.
Why is it so hard to gain convictions for individuals like Hafiz Saeed, even though he has previously issued death fatwas against Danish cartoonists and also Pope Benedict XVI? In a country where Islam is the basis of its constitution (as happened to Pakistan even though at Independence, under the leadership of Jinnah, it had a secular constitution) criticism of Islamic extremists is seen as an attack upon Islam. When courts are set up to impose sharia law, as happens in Pakistan, the situation is compounded.
Paksitan’s corrupt police allow lynch mobs to murder with impunity, and its own laws demand that anyone accused of blasphemy be immediately arrested until trial. Since 1992, the crime of insulting the prophet Mohammed (Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code) has had a mandatory death penalty for anyone convicted, though so far no-one has been executed.
Whenever attempts are made to reform the blasphemy laws, hardline Islamist groups (often groups who also support terrorism, like Jamaat ud-Dawa) have mobilized protests and the governments have backed down. This happened in 2000 under General Musharraf and when in February 2010 the current Pakistann government suggested it would reform the blasphemy laws, nothing happened.
The Times Square Bomber
Faisal Shahzad stood trial at the Federal District Court in Manhattan, accused of trying to set off a car bomb in New York. On Saturday May 1 this year, street sellers in Times Square noticed smoke coming from a Nissan Pathfinder. Two days later, Shahzad was arrested at John F. Kennedy airport as he sat inside a Dubai-bound plane. Fortunately, Shahzad was an incompetent, and his car bomb had not been set up properly. Faisal Shahzad had arrived from Pakistan and though not an American citizen, he had spent much time working in Connecticut.
US investigators rigged up a car bomb as it was originally planned by Faisal Shahzad, and the results can be seen below:
On Monday, June 21 , Faisal Shahzad had pleaded guilty on 10 counts. He told US District Court Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum: “It’s a war. I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people.”
Faisal Shahzad had been linked to the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban. In February, it was reported that Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, had been killed after a US drone strike carried out in mid-January 2010, though he is now believed to have survived the attack. A video circulating on YouTube shows Faisal Shahzad meeting Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan:
Several people had been arrested in Pakistan immediately after Shahzad’s arrest, including members of Jaish-e-Mohammed and also Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhvangi, vigilante groups related to Al-Qaeda who specialise in attacks against people who are not Sunni Muslims, including Ahmadi and Shia Muslims and also Christians. Many of those were subsequently released. One of the people arrested was Shahzad’s father Baharul Haq, who had previously been an Air Vice Marshall in the Pakistan air force.
On July 14, 2010, Al-Arabiya TV released a video in which Faisal Shahzad is shown sitting on a chair beside a gun, and reads from a booklet. In this video, Shahzad declares that it is an obligation upon all Muslims to commit jihad and threatening that democracy will be defeated and Islam will take over the world. The video can be seen below:
In September, three of Shahzad’s alleged accomplices were arrested in Pakistan. These men were said by Pakistan police to have given financial assistance to Shahzad. They were members of the Pakistan Taliban.
Shortly after this, in September a Pakstani American based in Long Island was charged with conducting an unlicensed money transfer business and conspiracy to conduct an unlicensed money transfer business. This money transfer system is said to have been used to fund Shahzad. The accused man, Mohammad Younis, is not accused of knowing that the money would be used for bombing.
Two days ago on Big Peace, Dr Andrew Bostom reported that another man had been arrested in Pakistan in relation to the Times Square bomb plot. This man, Faisal ABbasi, was a leading member of the Council for Islamic Ideology (CII), a state-run body that acts in an advisory capacity on issues of Sharia law. In August 2009, CII argued that an act to prevent domestic violence would push up the divorce rate, and therefore should be opposed.
A Pakistani intelligence official has said that while Shahzad was in Pakistan, Faisal Abbasi accompanied him for the whole time and had gone with Shahzad into the northwest of Pakistan to meet militant leaders. Acording to the CII, Abbasi did indeed work with the group, but had been “on vacation” for the last three months.
The Internationalism of Modern Terrorism
Currently, the Al-Qaeda supporting groups are raising their game, and intend to carry out major terror attacks. In Pakistan, female members of the Jamia Hafsia madrassa are said to be planning terror attacks against foreign missions. This madrassa is connected to the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) which was stormed in July 2007 after attacks upon military personnel. The leaders of the Red Mosque had links to Al Qaeda and also supported Taliban-related groups in the northwest of Pakistan. The majority of the students at the madrassas connected to the Red Mosque (Jamia Hafsia and Jamia Fareedia madrassas) came from the northwest regions. IN the recent accusations against the Jamia Hafsia madrassa, one of the girls’ tutors is said to be an explosive expert who has been training the girls.
With relatively free borders, terrorism is being allowed to actively involve plots that can involve players who live thousands of miles from each other. Insular national approaches to terror can never be able to successfully defeat the internationalists who involve themselves in terror.
In Britain, for example, there are currently 15 to 20 British Muslims who are known to be currently undergoing terror training in camps in Pakistan’s border regions.
In a climate of “multiculturalism” websites that do not use the English language are thriving in Britain and are used to promote terrorism and to recruit terrorists. One such website is called Medad al-Suyuf, and is registered to Walid ElSharkawy, who lives in Camden, North London. 4,000 registered users are members of this website, which supports the actions of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda of the Two Rivers in Iraq. Zarqawi was killed by a US missile in June 2006.
Zarqawi used to saw off the heads of his victims and post videos to Muslim websites such as the At-Tibyan website. Zarqawi’s brother-in-law Abu Qudama Salih al-Hami contributes to the Medad al-Suyuf website, as does Yassir al-Sirri. Al-Sirri is an associate of Al-Qaeda promoter Abu Qatada. Sirri was convicted of plotting a bomb attack in which a six year old girl died in Egypt. He walks free in Maida Vale, West London.
Another contributor to the Medad al-Suyuf website is Dr Muhammad al-Massari who fled to Britain from Saudi Arabia. He has a website called al-Tajdeed, which he used in late 2005 to urge European Muslims to copy the French Muslim riots. He uses his website to plot the downfall of the Saudi Kingdom, and was an adviser to the ridiculously named Islamist group “The Islamic Human Rights Commission.”
The full report on this and other websites is called “Cheering for Osama”. It is written by Mohammed Ali Musawi, and produced by the Quilliam Foundation. It can be downloaded in its entirety here.
The American administration presents to the American public a perspective that Islamic terrorism is rare, and unlikely to take place. In practice, to maintain this illusion, it has been bombarding northwestern Pakistan with Hellfire missiles. Such actions may convince people at home that everything is hunky-dory, but such actions are going to fuel more recruits to terrorism. Terrorist groups need to be fought, and fought hard, but there is a disconnect between what the administration preaches and what it practices. If Islamic terrorism were not real, it would not be bombing tribal villages. And while the terrorists are seen to be “elsewhere” the same administration is courting Muslim Brotherhood members who support terrorism in Israel.
While such tactics may work on a few voters, they do not address the problem. We are in a long slow war of attrition. If one of the first casualties of war is truth, then another of the casualties of war is freedom of expression. Today, Geert Wilders is on trial in the Netherlands, merely for expressing his freedom of speech. He is accused of stirring up hatred against Muslims by criticising their religion.
This is a fundamental problem. There is no reason why anyone in the West should respect any religion. Only fear prevents criticism of Islam, and currently Al Qaeda seems to want to terrorise the world into submission. If Western democracy is to survive, it should boldly assert itself in the face of such insidious and cowardly tactics. Dead prophets should never be regarded as more important than living, breathing sentient people.
Adrian Morgan
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