World Terror Watch - News and Discussions

[ajtr]

Pakistani arrested with Rs 2.5 m in fake Indian notes​

Wednesday, 11 August 2010 12:10


A Pakistani citizen has been arrested along with counterfeit Indian currency notes, state-owned news agency RSS reports.

Indian currency worth Rs. 2.5 million including 3,000 notes of 500 denomination and 1,000 notes of 100 denominations have been confiscated from Mohammad Farooqui who arrived here on Monday from Pakistan, according to the Central Police Newsroom.

The accused has confessed of receiving the fake currency notes from a person call Ali to be delivered to an 'agent' in Kathmandu. A case has already been filed against Farooqui.

Meanwhile, seven traders involved in the business of selling fake Mehendi have been arrested from various parts of Kathmandu. Some 115 packets of Mehendi were seized from the accused and a case of fraud has been filed against them, police said. nepalnews.com

 

[ajtr]

Warlord behind Moscow blasts killed by Russian security forces​

PTI
Vinay Shukla Moscow, Aug 21 (PTI) In a major success, Russian security forces today gunned down a top militant, trained in Pakistan, said to be the mastermind of the March suicide bombings on Moscow metro.The notorious warlord Magomedali Wagabov (Wahabov), was reportedly married to one of the Moscow suicide bombers, was killed in a raid in the Daghestani village of Gunib, along with four other wanted militants. The double bombing in March 29 carried out by two women suicide bombers, left 40 people dead and 100 wounded."Wagabov was killed along with four other militants in a joint operation by the police and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)," National Anti-terror Centre (NAC) announced. Wagabov, according to Russian security forces, was trained in Pakistan, and was the Emir of Daghestani Jamaat since 2005. Russian security forces had been in the hunt for Wagabov for the past several months.Wagabov, who had declared himself "Emir Abdullah of Gubden" in 2005 was number two in "Imarat of Caucasus" headed by fugitive Chechen warlord Doku Umarov."After getting military training in sabotage in Pakistan, he maintained direct contacts with the representatives of international terrorist organisations and was receiving financial assistance from them for carrying out terrorist acts," Russia's National Anti-terror Committee (NAC) said in its press release. According to reports, Wagabov was the husband of Mariyam Sharipova, one of the two suicide attackers of the busy Lubyanka and Park Kultury stations of the Moscow metro. Immediately after the blasts President Dmitry Medvedev had ordered the security services to trace all the perpetrators and organisers of the Moscow metro blasts right up to the top and eliminate them.Wagabov was actively involved in enrolling youth in his underground cells and had organised the training of female suicide bombers, NAC said.RIA Novosti reported that one of the other four militants killed today along with Wagabov was also so called "Amir of Khasavyurt district" Rustam Munikiyev.

 

[Neil]

Power Struggle Among Russia's Militants

On Aug. 12, four members of the militant group the Caucasus Emirate (CE) appeared in a video posted on a Russian militant website withdrawing their support from CE founder and leader Doku Umarov. The reason for the mutiny was Umarov's Aug. 4 retraction of his Aug. 1 announcement that he was stepping down from the top leadership position. STRATFOR and many others noted at the time that the Aug. 1 resignation was unexpected and suggested that Umarov may have been killed. However, the Aug. 4 retraction revealed that Umarov was still alive and that there was considerable confusion over who was in control of the militant group.

The mutineers were all high-level members of the militant group: Hussein Gakayev, commander of the CE's Chechen forces; Aslambek Vadalov, commander of Dagestani forces and to whom Umarov had briefly turned over control in his Aug. 1 resignation; an Arab commander named Muhannad; and a veteran field commander known as Tarkhan. The four CE commanders said Umarov's renunciation showed disrespect for his subordinates and that, while the four leaders continued to pledge support to the CE, they no longer supported Umarov. Gakayev, Tarkhan and Muhannad had all appeared in a video that aired Aug. 1 in which they supported Umarov's decision to appoint Vadalov CE emir.

To further confuse the issue, a video released Aug. 11 by Emir Adam, the CE leader in Ingushetia, pledged his and his followers' loyalty to Umarov. The next day, another video appeared featuring the group's new leader in Dagestan, Emir Seyfullakh Gubdensky (who succeeded Vadalov after he became deputy leader of the CE), similarly endorsing Umarov's reclamation of the top CE post.

These disparate messages from top leaders paint a picture of confusion and dissension in the CE that appears to mark a serious crisis for a group, which, until recently, had been consolidating militant groups across the Caucasus under a single, more strategic leadership structure. STRATFOR has collected insight from sources familiar with the group and its leadership turmoil that explains what happened and the nature of the threat that the CE poses to Russian security in the Caucasus.

The Inside Story
According to a Russian source, the confusion caused by Umarov's apparent indecision over the CE leadership position was a deliberate operation by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). According to that source, the operation that ultimately appears to have undermined Umarov's position as leader of the CE began in early 2010. However, the FSB received intelligence only over the past two months that set the stage for executing the operation. That intelligence allegedly came from the CE's former leader in Ingushetia, Emir Ali Taziyev, who was arrested by the FSB on June 9 in an Ingushetian village. Taziyev allegedly provided the FSB information on the CE's training, ideology, weapons procurement and leadership structure. This information then allowed the FSB to activate a sleeper agent, Movladi Udugov, who served directly under Umarov as the CE's head of media and publicity. According to our source, Udugov was responsible for the unauthorized release of the video in which Umarov announced that he was stepping down and named Vadalov as his successor.

The story goes that Umarov had recorded the video with the intent of saving it and releasing it only in the event of his demise. This would ensure that a crisis of succession wouldn't erupt because of his death or disappearance. The fact that Vadalov was named as his successor on July 25 means that each of the regional leaders within the CE had likely agreed to the decision. It is important to note that the leadership crisis did not occur because Vadalov was assigned to the post, but because Umarov appeared to have stepped down and then reclaimed his title. Udugov provided the crucial blow to Umarov's status as leader of the CE by releasing the resignation video prematurely, laying the foundation for dissension among Umarov's followers.

The resulting flurry of approval and disapproval from the CE's corps of commanders shows just how damaging the videos were. We have to be critical of the Russian source's account of how all of this transpired, since the source is likely interested in promoting the FSB's capabilities and its penetration of Russia's most dangerous militant group. The account is logical, however, since it does explain the unusual sequence of videos, and the FSB is capable of infiltrating such a group. There are, of course, other explanations for what could have motivated Udugov to release the tape: Perhaps he was trying to trigger a power struggle within the group on his own, or perhaps someone else inside the CE obtained the tape and released it in hopes of weakening Umarov or promoting Vadalov. However, it is very unlikely that the release was a mistake, since Umarov and his commanders have proved very competent at running a successful militant movement.

Looking deeper, it becomes obvious that a video alone would not have caused dissension on the scale that we are seeing now within the CE. Had everything been perfect in the CE and had Umarov enjoyed unwavering support, he could have dismissed the video as an attempt to undermine his authority, promised to punish those responsible and gone on with business. It is very apparent that Umarov was not able to do this. The release of the videos exacerbated divisions among CE factions that Umarov and his deputies were trying to consolidate. By releasing the video of Umarov stepping down as commander, Udugov (allegedly under FSB guidance) forced the divisions into the public spotlight.

According to our Russian source, the resignation scandal has split the CE three ways. The first split concerns operational security. The CE knew that penetrating the group was a top priority for the FSB and that it had to remain vigilant against outsiders attempting to do just that. Simply the allegation that one of Umarov's top advisers was working for the FSB undermines the sense of operational security throughout the entire group. Already, accusations of FSB involvement in the CE leadership crisis have emerged in the open-source network, on sites like globaljihad.net. In such an atmosphere, the level of trust among commanders decreases (as they begin to wonder who is reporting to the FSB) and the level of paranoia increases. Infighting at the top of any organization can quickly create operational gridlock and reduce the organization's effectiveness. This is exactly why the Russians might try to claim credit for the tape's release, even if they were not responsible.

The second split is generational and ideological. According to our source, a younger faction of the CE (led by Vadalov) has accused Umarov and his cadre of not protecting the ideological unity of the CE. It is no secret that Umarov is much more experienced in and knowledgeable of military strategy and tactics, while his background in Islamism is weak. He has bungled religious protocol and terminology a number of times, undermining his authority as emir of the group. Meanwhile, the older, more military-oriented faction accuses the younger faction of being willing to work with Moscow and sell out the movement.

The third and possibly most volatile fault line is the tension between regional groups within the Caucasus Emirate. The northern Caucasus republics of Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan each have their own, independent histories of militancy, with Chechen militants traditionally being Moscow's highest-profile antagonists. Without the support of the Chechen commander of the CE (Khusein Gakayev, who withdrew his support for Umarov in the Aug. 12 video), Umarov has a serious deficit of support in controlling the Caucasus Emirate. The advantage of having the support of the current Ingushetian and Dagestani militant leaders is diluted by the fact that Chechnya geographically lies directly between them, rendering any trans-Caucasus network incomplete. Also, Chechens have been the more successful leaders of militant movements in the Caucasus. Umarov himself is Chechen, as was Shamil Basayev, a commander of Chechen separatist forces in two wars against Russia.

Threat and Inherent Weaknesses
It is exactly because of Doku Umarov's ability to bring together militants of different motivations, generations and locations under the umbrella of the Caucasus Emirate that made his group so threatening to the Russian state. As a unified militant group, the CE proved capable of launching a suicide attack against Moscow's subway system in March 2010 and carrying out relatively sophisticated attacks targeting security forces and infrastructure. The CE leadership structure provided strategic guidance to the individual militant groups operating in the separate republics that actually carried out the attacks. With the recent crisis in leadership, these capabilities will likely be severely weakened.

Umarov announced the formation of the CE only in 2007, which means the group was just three years old when the leadership turmoil broke out Aug. 1. This is precious little time to consolidate militant groups across a region with sharp geographic fragmentation that traditionally has caused groups to be isolated and independent. Moscow has had plenty of problems controlling the region and is faced with the same geographic challenges as the Caucasus Emirate. A different source familiar with the CE said that Umarov has most recently attempted to consolidate the CE by broadcasting his statements in different languages, such as Avar, which is widely spoken in Dagestan. But Avar is only one of 10 languages spoken across Dagestan alone, which makes communicating efficiently to an audience across the Caucasus a difficult task.

That same source has said that the CE has had trouble moving food, supplies, weapons and people across the Caucasus (this effort is complicated by Russian security forces as well as geography), which means that each group is responsible for providing for itself. This prevents standardization across the militant movement and complicates cooperation among groups. It also reduces the reliance of regional militant groups on the Caucasus Emirate leadership, decreasing Umarov's control over the movement. If militant commanders in Chechnya are supplying and recruiting on their own, they are less likely to take orders on what to do with those resources from detached leaders. However, lack of unity among the groups does not necessarily make them less able to carry out the small-scale attacks that are common in the Caucasus. On Aug. 17, five days after a split in the CE leadership became apparent, a suicide bomber (most likely affiliated with a group linked to the CE) attacked a police checkpoint along the border of Ingushetia and North Ossetia.

Militant groups existed in the Caucasus long before the Caucasus Emirate was formed and will continue to exist long after it is gone. The strategic importance of the Caucasus and the fragmentation of its inhabitants due to ethnicity, culture and geography (which makes for ideal guerrilla-warfare terrain), ensure that whoever attempts to control the region will face serious challenges from local populations who want to govern themselves. With varying levels of success, these groups will continue to use violence to undermine their respective governments, especially those seen as Moscow's lackeys.

Indeed, even though the Caucasus Emirate may be seriously disrupted by recent turmoil in its leadership structure, the regional militant groups that made up the CE will certainly continue to conduct attacks against security forces and even civilians as they try to loosen Moscow's control over the region. But the turmoil will reduce the strategic threat the combined efforts of these disparate groups had posed to Moscow for the foreseeable future.

Read more: Power Struggle Among Russia's Militants | STRATFOR

 

[ajtr]

For terror investigators, all roads lead to Pakistan​

Analysis by Peter Goodspeed

Pakistan has repeatedly been described as "the epicentre of terrorism," "a hub of global militancy" and "a breeding ground for jihadis" simply because terrorists-in-training flock there from Europe, North America, Africa and Asia to be groomed for attacks on the West.

Conspirators in disrupted terror plots in Canada, the United States, Britain, Germany, Denmark and Spain were all trained as terrorists at secret camps in Pakistan. Two years ago, Gordon Brown, then British prime minister, told Pakistan's leaders, "Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan."

In the latest arrests in Canada, police claim the three men detained have links with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Dubai. There have been no formal allegations they received overseas training, but authorities believe at least one of the suspects travelled to the Pakistan-Afghanistan region for instruction. British officials estimate as many as 4,000 British Muslims may have passed through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Royal Air Force intelligence-gathering aircraft tracking Taliban radio signals in Afghanistan regularly reported hearing fighters speaking to each other with Yorkshire and Midlands accents. Pakistani links to emerging terror threats have surfaced again and again. The bombers who hit the London transport system in 2005, Momin Khawaja, the Ottawa computer expert and would-be car bomber — the first person convicted under the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act — and Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square bomber, were all trained for their missions there.

The harsh mountain territory in the lawless northwestern tribal lands — which the government in Islamabad does not control and which is off-limits to NATO troops based in Afghanistan— has become a breeding ground for jihad and al-Qaeda's chief training centre. U.S. officials say North and South Waziristan and surrounding territories are the new headquarters for the group's global operations. The area is also the centre for terror plots and assassination attempts that reach deep into Europe and North America.

But unlike the large military-style camps — with firing ranges and parade squares — that al-Qaeda ran in Afghanistan before 9/11, its new training programs are spread out in small groups, affiliated with local insurgents and radical madrassas. It is believed 100 to 200 hard-core al-Qaeda leaders and operatives flit in and out of the region, staging training programs at between 25 and 50 temporary bases along the border with Afghanistan.

A course can last 10 days, then shift to another place. "All you need is a shack or a house to learn how to fabricate explosives, using homemade or commercially available ingredients," said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University.

It is in the terrorists' interest to keep as low a profile as possible. For the past three years, the Central Intelligence Agency has been waging a relentless air war over Pakistan's borderlands, with pilotless assassination drones constantly hunting for terror training camps. As a result, al-Qaeda is moving its trainers and resources around, operating within camps run by other insurgent groups in Pakistan, said Vahid Brown, a researcher at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy.

While support facilities, such as safe houses and weapons dumps, tend to be fixed, the smaller training camps can be easily moved and hidden, trying to blend in with surrounding mountain compounds. Former Taliban and al-Qaeda students say a typical training day might start before dawn. After prayers, the students — who seldom number more than 20 — undergo hours of physical training, before listening to lectures on military tactics. They also train with a variety of weapons — Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars — and receive instruction in bomb-making.

Some camps specialize in training suicide bombers or Kashmiri or Afghan insurgents; others may focus on al-Qaeda operatives. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and terror expert with the Brookings Institution, says al-Qaeda has placed a priority on recruiting from South Asian communities in North America and Europe because someone with a U.S., British or Canadian passport is "a gold mine." They can travel back and forth with ease, without attracting undue attention.

"It is obvious that their value to these groups is not fighting on the battlefield in South Asia, but in being deployed back to their home or adopted countries as sleepers," he said.

National Post, with files from news services



Read more: Goodspeed Analysis: For terror investigators, all roads lead to Pakistan | Posted | National Post

 

[Neil]

Pakistan mourns as Lahore bombing toll rises to 31

A three-day period of mourning has begun in Pakistan after bomb attacks on a Shia Muslim procession in Lahore city killed 31 people on Wednesday.

At least 170 people were injured when three bombs exploded targeting the procession. At least two of the attacks were suicide bombings, police said.

The Pakistani Taliban said it carried out the attacks in revenge for the killing of a Sunni leader last year.

Lahore has been the scene of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias.

However, there had been a lull in such attacks in the past month, as floods devastated Pakistan.

Strongly condemn
On Thursday morning, Lahore residents crowded the street outside the Shia mosque, Karbala Gamay Shah imambarah, the scene of the blast.

"This is the holy month. No-one can dare think of carrying out such things," news agency Reuters quoted Lahore resident Mohammad Ammar as saying.

"We strongly condemn it. At least one should think that it kills innocent people, innocent children. It should never happen."

"This is not the work of Muslims. I can't understand who carry out such things. It does not matter whose procession it was but such things should never happen," the agency quoted another resident, Arshad, as saying.

Meanwhile, in a press release, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP] said it took the "responsibility of the three suicide attacks (Fidaee Hamla)".

"It is the revenge of Mulana Ali Shair Haidree who was martyred by Shia extremists," the release said and warned the Shia community of further "harsh attacks on them everywhere".

Mr Haidree was a firebrand anti-Shia leader of the proscribed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) group, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says.

He was killed in Sindh province in August 2009.

Officials at the time said he was killed due to personal enmity, but Sunni hardline groups have been blaming Shia activists for the murder, our correspondent says.

The first explosion came shortly before nightfall on Wednesday, at the end of a procession by some 35,000 Shias to mark the death in the 7th Century of the first Shia imam, Ali bin Abi Talib.

Minutes later, as hundreds of people fled, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an area where food was being prepared for the marchers to break the Ramadan fast.

A second suicide bomber then detonated his explosive belt at an intersection near the end of the procession.

It is not known whether the first blast was a suicide bomb attack, but one local government official said that investigators had collected the bodies of three bombers.

Following the bombings, members of the public turned on police, attacking officers, their vehicles and nearby facilities.

At least one police station and one police truck had been set on fire. Other vehicles in the city were also set alight.

Officers had fired tear gas in an attempt to control the crowds.

Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani described the bombings as "cowardly acts of terrorism", and said that the perpetrators would be punished

BBC News - Pakistan mourns as Lahore bombing toll rises to 31

 

[Neil]

Gauging the Threat of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack Read more: Gauging the T

Over the past decade there has been an ongoing debate over the threat posed by electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to modern civilization. This debate has been the most heated perhaps in the United States, where the commission appointed by Congress to assess the threat to the United States warned of the dangers posed by EMP in reports released in 2004 and 2008. The commission also called for a national commitment to address the EMP threat by hardening the national infrastructure.

There is little doubt that efforts by the United States to harden infrastructure against EMP — and its ability to manage critical infrastructure manually in the event of an EMP attack — have been eroded in recent decades as the Cold War ended and the threat of nuclear conflict with Russia lessened. This is also true of the U.S. military, which has spent little time contemplating such scenarios in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union. The cost of remedying the situation, especially retrofitting older systems rather than simply regulating that new systems be better hardened, is immense. And as with any issue involving massive amounts of money, the debate over guarding against EMP has become quite politicized in recent years.

We have long avoided writing on this topic for precisely that reason. However, as the debate over the EMP threat has continued, a great deal of discussion about the threat has appeared in the media. Many STRATFOR readers have asked for our take on the threat, and we thought it might be helpful to dispassionately discuss the tactical elements involved in such an attack and the various actors that could conduct one. The following is our assessment of the likelihood of an EMP attack against the United States.

Defining Electromagnetic Pulse

EMP can be generated from natural sources such as lightning or solar storms interacting with the earth's atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetic field. It can also be artificially created using a nuclear weapon or a variety of non-nuclear devices. It has long been proven that EMP can disable electronics. Its ability to do so has been demonstrated by solar storms, lightning strikes and atmospheric nuclear explosions before the ban on such tests. The effect has also been recreated by EMP simulators designed to reproduce the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear device and study how the phenomenon impacts various kinds of electrical and electronic devices such as power grids, telecommunications and computer systems, both civilian and military.

The effects of an EMP — both tactical and strategic — have the potential to be quite significant, but they are also quite uncertain. Such widespread effects can be created during a high-altitude nuclear detonation (generally above 30 kilometers, or about 18 miles). This widespread EMP effect is referred to as high-altitude EMP or HEMP. Test data from actual high-altitude nuclear explosions is extremely limited. Only the United States and the Soviet Union conducted atmospheric nuclear tests above 20 kilometers and, combined, they carried out fewer than 20 actual tests.

As late as 1962 — a year before the Partial Test Ban Treaty went into effect, prohibiting its signatories from conducting aboveground test detonations and ending atmospheric tests — scientists were surprised by the HEMP effect. During a July 1962 atmospheric nuclear test called "Starfish Prime," which took place 400 kilometers above Johnston Island in the Pacific, electrical and electronic systems were damaged in Hawaii, some 1,400 kilometers away. The Starfish Prime test was not designed to study HEMP, and the effect on Hawaii, which was so far from ground zero, startled U.S. scientists.

High-altitude nuclear testing effectively ended before the parameters and effects of HEMP were well understood. The limited body of knowledge that was gained from these tests remains a highly classified matter in both the United States and Russia. Consequently, it is difficult to speak intelligently about EMP or publicly debate the precise nature of its effects in the open-source arena.

The importance of the EMP threat should not be understated. There is no doubt that the impact of a HEMP attack would be significant. But any actor plotting such an attack would be dealing with immense uncertainties — not only about the ideal altitude at which to detonate the device based on its design and yield in order to maximize its effect but also about the nature of those effects and just how devastating they could be.

Non-nuclear devices that create an EMP-like effect, such as high-power microwave (HPM) devices, have been developed by several countries, including the United States. The most capable of these devices are thought to have significant tactical utility and more powerful variants may be able to achieve effects more than a kilometer away. But at the present time, such weapons do not appear to be able to create an EMP effect large enough to affect a city, much less an entire country. Because of this, we will confine our discussion of the EMP threat to HEMP caused by a nuclear detonation, which also happens to be the most prevalent scenario appearing in the media.

Attack Scenarios

In order to have the best chance of causing the type of immediate and certain EMP damage to the United States on a continent-wide scale, as discussed in many media reports, a nuclear weapon (probably in the megaton range) would need to be detonated well above 30 kilometers somewhere over the American Midwest. Modern commercial aircraft cruise at a third of this altitude. Only the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China possess both the mature warhead design and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability to conduct such an attack from their own territory, and these same countries have possessed that capability for decades. (Shorter range missiles can achieve this altitude, but the center of the United States is still 1,000 kilometers from the Eastern Seaboard and more than 3,000 kilometers from the Western Seaboard — so just any old Scud missile won't do.)

The HEMP threat is nothing new. It has existed since the early 1960s, when nuclear weapons were first mated with ballistic missiles, and grew to be an important component of nuclear strategy. Despite the necessarily limited understanding of its effects, both the United States and Soviet Union almost certainly included the use of weapons to create HEMPs in both defensive and especially offensive scenarios, and both post-Soviet Russia and China are still thought to include HEMP in some attack scenarios against the United States.

However, there are significant deterrents to the use of nuclear weapons in a HEMP attack against the United States, and nuclear weapons have not been used in an attack anywhere since 1945. Despite some theorizing that a HEMP attack might be somehow less destructive and therefore less likely to provoke a devastating retaliatory response, such an attack against the United States would inherently and necessarily represent a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland and the idea that the United States would not respond in kind is absurd. The United States continues to maintain the most credible and survivable nuclear deterrent in the world, and any actor contemplating a HEMP attack would have to assume not that they might experience some limited reprisal but that the U.S. reprisal would be full, swift and devastating.

Countries that build nuclear weapons do so at great expense. This is not a minor point. Even today, a successful nuclear weapons program is the product of years — if not a decade or more — and the focused investment of a broad spectrum of national resources. Nuclear weapons also are developed as a deterrent to attack, not with the intention of immediately using them offensively. Once a design has achieved an initial capability, the focus shifts to establishing a survivable deterrent that can withstand first a conventional and then a nuclear first strike so that the nuclear arsenal can serve its primary purpose as a deterrent to attack. The coherency, skill and focus this requires are difficult to overstate and come at immense cost — including opportunity cost — to the developing country. The idea that Washington will interpret the use of a nuclear weapon to create a HEMP as somehow less hostile than the use of a nuclear weapon to physically destroy an American city is not something a country is likely to gamble on.

In other words, for the countries capable of carrying out a HEMP attack, the principles of nuclear deterrence and the threat of a full-scale retaliatory strike continue to hold and govern, just as they did during the most tension-filled days of the Cold War.

Rogue Actors

One scenario that has been widely put forth is that the EMP threat emanates not from a global or regional power like Russia or China but from a rogue state or a transnational terrorist group that does not possess ICBMs but will use subterfuge to accomplish its mission without leaving any fingerprints. In this scenario, the rogue state or terrorist group loads a nuclear warhead and missile launcher aboard a cargo ship or tanker and then launches the missile from just off the coast in order to get the warhead into position over the target for a HEMP strike. This scenario would involve either a short-range ballistic missile to achieve a localized metropolitan strike or a longer-range (but not intercontinental) ballistic missile to reach the necessary position over the Eastern or Western seaboard or the Midwest to achieve a key coastline or continental strike.

When we consider this scenario, we must first acknowledge that it faces the same obstacles as any other nuclear weapon employed in a terrorist attack. It is unlikely that a terrorist group like al Qaeda or Hezbollah can develop its own nuclear weapons program. It is also highly unlikely that a nation that has devoted significant effort and treasure to develop a nuclear weapon would entrust such a weapon to an outside organization. Any use of a nuclear weapon would be vigorously investigated and the nation that produced the weapon would be identified and would pay a heavy price for such an attack (there has been a large investment in the last decade in nuclear forensics). Lastly, as noted above, a nuclear weapon is seen as a deterrent by countries such as North Korea or Iran, which seek such weapons to protect themselves from invasion, not to use them offensively. While a group like al Qaeda would likely use a nuclear device if it could obtain one, we doubt that other groups such as Hezbollah would. Hezbollah has a known base of operations in Lebanon that could be hit in a counterstrike and would therefore be less willing to risk an attack that could be traced back to it.

Also, such a scenario would require not a crude nuclear device but a sophisticated nuclear warhead capable of being mated with a ballistic missile. There are considerable technical barriers that separate a crude nuclear device from a sophisticated nuclear warhead. The engineering expertise required to construct such a warhead is far greater than that required to construct a crude device. A warhead must be far more compact than a primitive device. It must also have a trigger mechanism and electronics and physics packages capable of withstanding the force of an ICBM launch, the journey into the cold vacuum of space and the heat and force of re-entering the atmosphere — and still function as designed. Designing a functional warhead takes considerable advances in several fields of science, including physics, electronics, engineering, metallurgy and explosives technology, and overseeing it all must be a high-end quality assurance capability. Because of this, it is our estimation that it would be far simpler for a terrorist group looking to conduct a nuclear attack to do so using a crude device than it would be using a sophisticated warhead — although we assess the risk of any non-state actor obtaining a nuclear capability of any kind, crude or sophisticated, as extraordinarily unlikely.

But even if a terrorist organization were somehow able to obtain a functional warhead and compatible fissile core, the challenges of mating the warhead to a missile it was not designed for and then getting it to launch and detonate properly would be far more daunting than it would appear at first glance. Additionally, the process of fueling a liquid-fueled ballistic missile at sea and then launching it from a ship using an improvised launcher would also be very challenging. (North Korea, Iran and Pakistan all rely heavily on Scud technology, which uses volatile, corrosive and toxic fuels.)

Such a scenario is challenging enough, even before the uncertainty of achieving the desired HEMP effect is taken into account. This is just the kind of complexity and uncertainty that well-trained terrorist operatives seek to avoid in an operation. Besides, a ground-level nuclear detonation in a city such as New York or Washington would be more likely to cause the type of terror, death and physical destruction that is sought in a terrorist attack than could be achieved by generally non-lethal EMP.

Make no mistake: EMP is real. Modern civilization depends heavily on electronics and the electrical grid for a wide range of vital functions, and this is truer in the United States than in most other countries. Because of this, a HEMP attack or a substantial geomagnetic storm could have a dramatic impact on modern life in the affected area. However, as we've discussed, the EMP threat has been around for more than half a century and there are a number of technical and practical variables that make a HEMP attack using a nuclear warhead highly unlikely.

When considering the EMP threat, it is important to recognize that it exists amid myriad other threats, including related threats such as nuclear warfare and targeted, small-scale HPM attacks. They also include threats posed by conventional warfare and conventional weapons such as man-portable air-defense systems, terrorism, cyberwarfare attacks against critical infrastructure, chemical and biological attacks — even natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and tsunamis.

The world is a dangerous place, full of potential threats. Some things are more likely to occur than others, and there is only a limited amount of funding to monitor, harden against, and try to prevent, prepare for and manage them all. When one attempts to defend against everything, the practical result is that one defends against nothing. Clear-sighted, well-grounded and rational prioritization of threats is essential to the effective defense of the homeland.

Hardening national infrastructure against EMP and HPM is undoubtedly important, and there are very real weaknesses and critical vulnerabilities in America's critical infrastructure — not to mention civil society. But each dollar spent on these efforts must be balanced against a dollar not spent on, for example, port security, which we believe is a far more likely and far more consequential vector for nuclear attack by a rogue state or non-state actor.


Read more: Gauging the Threat of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack | STRATFOR

 

[Patriot]

Oslo terror suspect says Chinese interests targeted: report

by Staff Writers
Oslo (AFP) Sept 28, 2010
A man in custody in Norway on suspicion of plotting bombings with two accomplices, said Tuesday the planned attack was aimed at Chinese interests and not a Danish newspaper, his lawyer told the NTB news agency.

Mikael Davud, a 39-year-old ethnic Uighur from China who is a Norwegian citizen, "has confessed under interrogation to plans to hit Chinese interests," his lawyer Arild Humlen told NTB.

"He has used the two other suspects as errand boys for the plans, and they knew nothing of his motives," he added.

Davud's confession runs counter to the accounts of his accomplice Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, who said the three men had planned to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, renowned for having published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005.

earlier related report
Danish cartoon daily target of new terror plot: police
Oslo (AFP) Sept 28, 2010 - An Iraqi Kurd already in custody in Norway on suspicion of planning bombings has admitted plotting an attack on a Danish daily which published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, police said Tuesday.

Investigators "extracted a confession about terror attack plans" from the man, a spokeswoman for Norway's security police said, naming him as Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, 37.

"Based on his declarations, everything indicates that the target was the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark," spokeswoman Siv Alsen told AFP.

The Danish newspaper published 12 controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005, sparking outrage and protests across the Muslim world.

Bujak, who moved to Norway in 1999 and holds a Norwegian residency permit, was arrested in Germany on July 8 while on holiday with his family.

Two other suspects, Mikael Davud, a 39-year-old ethnic Uighur from China who is a Norwegian citizen and believed to be the mastermind, and David Jakobsen, a 31-year-old Uzbek with a legal residence permit in Norway, were arrested the same day near Oslo.

The three men are suspected of preparing one or several attacks on targets that police until now believed were in Norway.

Davud, however, has said the planned attack was aimed at Chinese interests and not the Danish newspaper, his lawyer Arild Humlen told the NTB news agency on Tuesday.

He said he had "confessed under interrogation to plans to hit Chinese interests."

"He has used the two other suspects as errand boys for the plans, and they knew nothing of his motives," he added.

According to police, the three had attempted to lay their hands on the necessary ingredients to produce explosives, including hydrogen peroxide, which the PST security police preventively swapped with a harmless liquid.

"This is the second time in a very short period that the public has learned that Jyllands-Posten has probably been the target of organised terrorist acts," the head of the Danish Intelligence Service PET, Jakob Scharf, said in a statement.

"This naturally illustrates that, among Islamic militants, it is a priority objective to lead terrorist attacks against Denmark and symbols related to the caricature case," he added.

Jyllands-Posten has repeatedly been targeted by threats and on September 10, Danish police arrested a Chechen-born man after a letter-bomb most likely destined for the newspaper exploded at a Copenhagen hotel.

Kurt Westergaard, the 75-year-old creator of the most controversial of the 12 drawings has also faced numerous death threats.

On January 1, a Somali man suspected of having ties to the radical Shebab Islamic movement and the leaders of Al-Qaeda in east Africa broke into Westergaard's home armed with an axe.

The artist saved himself by hiding in a bathroom with an armoured door until the suspect could be arrested.

Westergaard has since been given round-the-clock police protection, while Jyllands-Posten has been forced to raise a barbed-wire fence and install surveillance cameras around its headquarters

Tuesday's revelation of the new plot against the daily "is very shocking for the paper's employees and their families," editor in chief Joern Mikkelsen said on its website.

In Oslo, Norwegian police said Davud and Jakobsen were being questioned Tuesday.

Some media have reported that Davud participated in an Al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and had been in contact with one of the terror group's leaders.

Brynjar Meling, one of Bujak's two lawyers, however rejected that link Tuesday.

Bujak "has rejected allegations that he is part of a terror cell. He also says he is not aware of any connections with Al-Qaeda," Meling told the VG daily.

 

[ajtr]

Chechen Terrorist Trained and Studied in Pakistan, Received Money from Jordan​

Russian Special Forces in a gunfight with Mr. Abdullah and his friends

Djennet Abdurahmanova and her husband Umalat Magomedov. Umalat was killed by Russian forces in December 2009, Djennet--17 years old--blew herself up in March 2010.
Today, in Dagestan--that neighbors with Chechnya--one of the masterminds of the Moscow subway attacks Mr. Vagabov was killed together with his gang. The intelligence found out some very interesting facts about Mr. Vagabov, who was self-renamed and crazy-islamic-jihadists-blessed as Amir Abdullah. Mr. Amir Abdullah received his college education in Karachi, and proceeded to training in terrorists camps in Pakistan. When a Jordanian Doctor Muhammad was killed in 2009, Amir Abdullah married the widow, former Mrs. Muhammad. Upon becoming Mrs. Abdullah, the lady provided access to infinite Jordanian money, and then--in search of a better afterlife--blew herself up at one of the subway stops in Moscow.

Amir Abdullah was not necessarily looking forward to that same afterlife, as he and his gang offered a very strong resistance to Russian Special Forces. Russian SWAT team helped Mr. Abdullah reunite with his wife by killing the entire team of jihadists. Another suicide bomber of the Moscow attacks, 17-year-old Djennet Abdurahmanova, has joined her husband Umalat Magomedov--one of the Dagestan's Islamic terrorist leaders--who was killed by Russian forces in December 2009. Two aforementioned ladies detonated themselves, killing 40 and injuring 160 civilians in two Moscow subway stations during a rush hour on March 29, 2010. Russia Blog congratulates Russian Special Forces with the successful operation and wishes them luck in safety in their future raids against the terrorists.

 

[ajtr]

Swedes attending Pakistan terror camp​

A small number of people have travelled from Sweden to Pakistan and Afghanistan to participate in terrorist training camps, according to the Swedish Security Service (Säpo).
Sweden raises terror alert (1 Oct 10)
"We adjudge that it is a question of a handful of people who have travelled there to take part in training camps and to participate in illegal violent acts," said Patrik Peter at the Security Service.

The Security Service declined to comment on whether there was a link with the raised terror alert announced to the public on Friday.

The CIA has recently carried out a series of attacks with so-called unmanned drones against militant Islamists in Northern Waziristan in Pakistan. Several international media have connected the attacks with warnings over planned terrorist attacks in Europe which became known earlier in the week.

Terrorists carrying European passports have been reported to be heading for Europe with the intention of carrying out spectacular attacks in Germany, France and the UK.

The warnings are rumoured to have their basis in information obtained from a German citizen who was arrested in Afghanistan in July.

It became known on Friday that the Swedish Security Service had raised the terror alert in mid-September from level two to three, "elevated" - the highest level for five years.

"It is a question of a number of individuals in Sweden who have the intention and capacity to carry out attacks against Swedish targets. It is too early to say what motivates these individuals," said John Daniels at the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST) on Friday.

 

[ajtr]

CSIS looking for Manitoba university students that left for Pakistan in 2007, have not been seen since​

WINNIPEG The involvement of Canada's spy agency in investigating the apparent disappearance of three Muslim university students from Manitoba has been very stressful on the young men's families, says a spokeswoman for a support group familiar with the case.

The Globe and Mail newspaper reported Friday that Ferid Imam, Miawand Yar and Muhannad al-Farekh suddenly left their studies at the University of Manitoba in 2007 and boarded a plane for Pakistan. The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said the men were later spotted in the Peshawar area near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The case has spawned one of the largest security investigations in Canada since Sept. 11, 2001, and has involved U.S. authorities, the newspaper said.

"It's CSIS mostly, asking 'who knew them, did you know them?'," said Shahina Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association in Manitoba, a nonprofit group that helps Islamic immigrants.

"The families are quite stressed out and have come to see me for that."

The RCMP confirmed Friday they are looking for three missing students, but would not reveal details. A top Mountie official refused to comment on a media report that said the students may have fled to an area of Pakistan controlled by al-Qaeda.

"I can't ... confirm or deny that there is an investigation going on, but I can tell you this — that the RCMP, as with many other police organizations, are concerned with radicalization of youth in Canada, whether they be Muslim or otherwise," said assistant commissioner Bill Robinson, commanding officer of the RCMP's D Division.

Siddiqui said she only knows one of the missing men's families. They haven't heard from their son since he disappeared. The CSIS investigation, media attention and what Siddiqui calls "speculation" about the men's whereabouts is taking a toll on the local Islamic community, she said.

"In this environment, to throw questions and speculation out can be so detrimental," she said. "Any kind of speculation of that nature can destroy lives and reputations."

It's the second time in recent weeks that Winnipeg's Muslim community has been in the spotlight. In August, Hiva Alizadeh, a 30-year-old who spent much of his life in Winnipeg before moving to Ottawa, was charged with helping to commit terrorist activity and possessing an explosive substance with intent to harm.

Alizadeh, along with two other men from Ontario, were arrested in connection with an alleged plot to bomb government buildings and public transit systems.

The Canadian Press

 

[ajtr]

Pakistan: Dozens of Europeans in terror training​

ISLAMABAD – Dozens of Muslim militants with European citizenship are believed to be hiding out in the lawless tribal area of northwestern Pakistan, Pakistani and Western intelligence officials say, training for missions that could include terror attacks in European capitals.
Officials have used phone intercepts and voice tracking software to track militants with ties to Britain and other European countries to areas along the Afghan border. Al-Qaida would likely turn to such extremists for a European plot because they can move freely in and out of Western cities.
Fear that such an attack is in the planning stage has prompted the U.S. State Department to advise Americans traveling in Europe to be vigilant. American and European security experts have been concerned that terrorists based in Pakistan may be plotting attacks in Europe with assault weapons, similar to the deadly 2008 shooting spree in Mumbai, India. U.S. intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden is behind the plots.
A senior official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, told The Associated Press that there are believed to be "several dozen" people with European citizenship — many of Pakistani origin — among the Islamic extremists operating in the lawless border area.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to talk about classified information to the media, said foreigners in the area also include Chechens, Uzbeks, Arabs and Turks, one of whom was a former F-16 pilot in the Turkish air force.
"That shows you that some of the people who are coming are very well educated," he said.
The official also said Pakistan authorities arrested four Russian jihadis who infiltrated into Pakistan along with their families. "It was very surprising for us but they come thinking this is the pure (Islamic) ideology that they are seeking," he said.
Britain's communications monitoring agency, the Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, estimates there are as many as 20 British-born militants in the border area, especially in the North Waziristan district that has been the focus of recent missile strikes carried out by unmanned aircraft operated by the CIA.
Mobile phone communications have been tracked from the border area to points in Britain, particularly England's Midlands, where there is a heavy Pakistani immigrant population, according to a British government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the terror plot investigation is ongoing.
Voice-printing software enables British intelligence to identify and track specific individuals believed connected to terror plots, he said.
In addition, a spokeswoman with Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office said last week that there is "concrete evidence" that 70 people have traveled from Germany to Pakistan and Afghanistan for paramilitary training, and that about a third of them have returned to Germany.
The presence in the border areas of Islamic militants with Western connections has been known for years.
Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who confessed to the May 1 failed car-bombing in New York's Times Square, said the Pakistani Taliban trained him for the mission. Shahzad is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday in a U.S. court.
During an operation last year, Pakistani soldiers discovered a passport in the name of Said Bahaji, which matches the name of a member of the Hamburg, Germany, cell that conceived the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. Bahaji is believed to have fled Germany shortly before the attacks in New York and Washington.
A Spanish passport found by the Pakistani military during the same operation bore the name of Raquel Burgos Garcia. Spanish media reported that a woman with the same name was married to Amer Azizi, an alleged al-Qaida member from Morocco suspected in both the 9/11 attacks and the Madrid train bombings in 2004.
Concern over the pool of Europeans capable of carrying out attacks abroad rose about a month ago when U.S. intelligence heard of a European plot and began monitoring the people involved, according to two U.S. officials. The CIA recently stepped up airstrikes from unmanned aircraft in northwestern Pakistan, in part to disrupt the plot. In September there were at least 21 attacks — more than double the highest number fired in any other single month.
A Pakistani official said some information about the plot came from a suspect who had been interrogated at the military prison at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul, the main U.S. and NATO base in Afghanistan. A U.S. official identified him as Ahmed Siddiqui, a German citizen of Afghan origin who was captured in Afghanistan in July.
The plot apparently called for several gunmen to fan out across Germany, Britain and France in hopes of launching attacks similar not only to the Mumbai assault but also to so-called "swarm attacks" that extremists have mounted in Kabul and other Afghan cities. The tactic calls for small teams with automatic rifles, grenade launchers and suicide vests to strike simultaneously at several targets in a city and cause as much havoc as possible before they can be killed or captured.
Reports of the alleged plot again cast the spotlight on the Pakistani district of North Waziristan, where Washington believes al-Qaida and its allies plan attacks against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan as well as targets abroad.
Although the Pakistani military has mounted ground operations elsewhere in the border region, it has been reluctant to do so in North Waziristan, saying its forces are stretched too thin. Some within Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment privately say an escalation in drone attacks in North Waziristan and recent cross-border incursions by NATO helicopter gunships are aimed at forcing the army into an operation.
However, the incursions have frayed relations between Pakistan and the U.S. and NATO. Pakistan has blocked its main border crossing to NATO supply trucks for the past four days in response to alleged incursions last week by NATO helicopters, including firing that shot dead three Pakistani paramilitary soldiers who had fired warning shots at the choppers.
___
Associated Press writer Paisley Dodds contributed to this report from London.

 

[ajtr]

Voices of Pak-based terrorists identified​

London/Washington, Oct 3, PTI & NYT:

Some Pakistan-based terrorists, who were plotting a Mumbai-style attack on London and other European cities, have been identified by investigators here who matched their voices in intercepted calls with a secret database.


UK's top communication and intelligence agency has identified some of the terrorists in the recently unravelled plot in which at least 20 young British Muslims were being trained at al-Qaeda terror camps in Pakistan to launch Mumbai-style attacks in Europe.

The Government Communications Headquarters, Britain's electronic eavesdropping centre popularly known as GCHQ, identified some of these terrorists, "The Sunday Times" reported but did not name anyone.

The centre, based in Cheltenham, intercepted telephone calls made by British militants at a training camp in the tribal borders of Pakistan to identify the suspects.

Matching their voice prints allowed the security services to trace their connections to other individuals in their network.

An important aspect of GCHQ's work is the analysis of voice prints, a technique that can identify a voice speaking on a telephone in Afghanistan or Pakistan by matching it against a databank of suspects held by GCHQ. "You pick up a voice and if you find a match for it in the database, you can get a name. Then you get the call data and see who the guy has been calling," one expert said.

The method was apparently used to pick up "credible" intelligence of the plan for simultaneous attacks by British and foreign insurgents against several European cities.
An MI5 surveillance operation began tracking potential suspects in London and northwest England earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the United States issued an alert on Sunday urging Americans travelling to Europe to be vigilant about possible terrorist attacks in a statement that specifically cites the potential involvement of al-Qaida.

The decision to caution travellers comes as counter-terrorism officials in Europe and the United States are assessing intelligence about possible plots originating in Pakistan and North Africa aimed at Britain, France and Germany.

A travel alert merely urges extra caution during a specific time and does not discourage Americans from visiting Europe. An American official who confirmed the warning on Saturday, who did not want to be identified speaking about internal government deliberations, said a stronger "travel warning" that might advise Americans not to visit Europe was not under consideration.

European officials have been concerned about the impact on tourism and student travel from any official guidance to American travellers.

"Current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organisations continue to plan terrorist attacks. European governments have taken action to guard against a terrorist attack," according to the statement.

 

[ajtr]

Eight Germans with alleged links to Europe plot killed - Yahoo! India News​

Peshawar, Oct 5 (DPA) Eight German nationals thought to be Islamist militants were killed Monday night in a strike by a suspected US unmanned drone in Pakistan.

The pilotless aircraft fired two missiles at a house in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border, Pakistani security officials said.

The group was believed to be behind the recently uncovered plot to carry out terrorist attacks in Britain, France and Germany.

Three Turkmen were also injured in the strike, which took place in the Mausakee area of Mirali, one of the main towns in North Waziristan, a known hotbed of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

'The missiles hit a compound owned by a Taliban member, Sher Maula Khan, who had rented the house to the Germans,' said a local intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Khan was arrested June 21 while trying to escort a German national, later identified by authorities as Rami M., out of the tribal region.

Khan and Rami were disguised as burqa-clad women when they were arrested in the district of Bannu. Rami was extradited to Germany, while Khan remains in custody.

The official said a German called Fayyaz who was active in planning the attacks in Europe had been killed.

Pakistani and Western intelligence officials claimed last month to have uncovered a plot to carry out Mumbai-styled terrorist attacks in Britain, Germany and France - countries that have deployed thousands of troops in Afghanistan.

Ten terrorists allegedly linked to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba killed more than 160 people in Mumbai, India's financial hub in November 2008.

Dozens of Turkish-German suspected militants have moved to Pakistan's tribal region for training, and are believed to be accompanied by some native German converts.

Almost all of them are associated with Ittehad-e-Jihad Islami (Islamic jihad union), which is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) that attracts recruits from across central Asia. IJU wields tremendous influence among Islamists in the Turkish-speaking community in Germany.

The IJU has claimed to have recruited hundreds of Europeans. At least 60 of them are German nationals, some of whom have moved to Pakistan's tribal region with their families.

The group was allegedly behind a botched 2007 attack against the Frankfurt international airport and US military installations at Ramstein air base.

It also claimed responsibility for a 2008 suicide attack in the Afghan province of Khost carried out by Cuneyit Ciftci from Bavaria, western Germany.

The IJU established a separate wing in 2009 to attract European Muslim youth for what they call 'jihad against occupying forces' in Afghanistan. The new group was named Taifatul Mansura of which the German Taliban Mujahidin is one branch. Its members are mainly European jihadis already present in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In May 2010, a drone attack killed Eric Breininger, alias Abdul Gaffar el-Almani, the head of the Taifatul Mansura and the German Taliban Mujahidin. His successor was Atwal Abdur Rehman, a German-born Turk who is in his mid-20s and lives in North Waziristan.

 

[ajtr]

3 'LeT men' captured​

All Pakistanis; one is coordinator in Bangladesh, claims DB
Staff Correspondent
The Detective Branch (DB) of police yesterday claimed to have arrested Pakistan-based militant group Lashker-e-Taiba's coordinator in Bangladesh and two of his Pakistani associates.

The arrestees are LeT's Bangladesh coordinator Khurram alias Mohammad Salem, 42, and his associates Abdul Malek, 31, and Imran, 31. All the three Pakistani nationals were arrested at a hotel in the capital on Saturday.

Acting on a tip off, DB police raided the hotel and arrested the three with 160 cartons of foreign cigarettes and 153 bottles of exotic perfume, said Deputy Commissioner (DC) Monirul Islam of DB during a press briefing at his office.

The DC said Khurram's name emerged as the coordinator of India and Bangladesh chapters when Indian nationals Mufti Obaidullah and Maulana Emadullah and Pakistani national Sufian Ajhari were arrested here and interrogated for their involvement with LeT.

DB officials claimed that Khurram had also been serving the banned militant outfits Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-islami (Huji).

In the face of frequent arrests in Bangladesh, the LeT operatives have adopted the method of using several names and passports for each individual, said the DC adding, that the LeT men also use Bangladeshi passports.

He said although Khurram has Bangladeshi passport, he used his Pakistani one this time. According to his seized passport, Khurram visited the country 11 times this year so far.

Asked, the DC said the immigration cannot identify a person who use different names and passports.

He said the LeT operatives use the country as a transit for counterfeit money business although they could not establish an LeT unit in the country. However, their effort to recruit operatives from here is on, added the DC.

DC Monirul Islam said that so far they have arrested three Pakistani and three Indian LeT adherents and their several Bangladeshi aides.

 

[Rebelkid]

I can bet all these Europians are of Asian origin than of European orgin, I can't figure why Europeans would do this

 

[ajtr]

Bangladesh police detain fourth Islamist militant​

(Reuters) - Bangladesh police arrested another foreign militant on Saturday, raising to four the number of activists detained from the Pakistan-based group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in six days, a senior police officer said.

Explosives and bomb making materials were captured, along with a Bangladeshi accomplish, at a hideout at Tongi, on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka.

"We have made the latest haul in a continuing crackdown on militancy," Mohammad Sohail, a senior officer of the elite Rapid Action Battalion force told a news conference.

Police on Monday arrested three militants, all Pakistani citizens, including the LeT chief in Bangladesh, at a Dhaka hotel. Sohail said another RAB raid on Friday had netted a large explosives cache in another outlying district

In recent months, police have arrested dozens of militants, including several Lashkar activists, in Bangladesh.

LeT, one of the largest and best-funded Islamist militant groups in South Asia, was blamed for the 2008 attack on the Indian commercial capital of Mumbai.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh has several outlawed militant groups which are trying to broaden their bases even though six top leaders of the biggest group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), were hanged in 2007.

Police say their followers, committed to making Bangladesh a sharia-based Islamic state, have regrouped and teamed up with overseas militants like the LeT.

 

[ajtr]

Lashkar's explosives expert captured​

L-R: Abu Bakkar and Wazed Khan
Staff Correspondent
Yet another Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative, this time an explosives expert, and his local aide were arrested by Rab in the city's Uttara early yesterday with a huge amount of explosives and bomb making materials.

It was the first arrest of any LeT bomb expert in the country, according to Commander Mohammad Sohail, Rab's legal and media wing director.

He said the battalion had recovered 30 kilograms of high explosive with the capacity equivalent to trinitrotoluene (TNT) and six bottles of liquid chemical from their possession.

However, it couldn't be learnt whether the Pakistan-based militant outfit is plotting any bomb attack in Bangladesh or neighbouring country.

The LeT man, Wazed Khan alias Zafar alias Salman, 27, is a Pakistani national.

His aide Abu Bakkar Siddique, 49, is a stranded Pakistani and a resident of Turag Housing in the city's Mohammadpur area.

The Rab arrested LeT members first on February 28, said Sohail. So far nine operatives of the internationally banned organisation have been caught by the battalion and of them, four are locals and the rest are Pakistanis.

A joint team of Rab intelligence wing and Rab-1 made yesterday's arrests around 12:15am from Abdullahpur, Uttara after a tip-off from LeT man Maulana Mohammad Imran, another Pakistani arrested on September 29 in Narayanganj.

Another Rab team recovered huge explosives from a house at Shahibagh, Savar on October 6 acting on Maulana Imran's information, Sohail added.

Wazed Khan came to the country on April 7 this year with a tourist visa on orders from a top LeT leader, Abdul Kuddus alias Abdul Karim Tunda alias Babaji.

Wazed while a Lahore Islamic University student received training on explosives from Abdul Kuddus.

Sohail said, Abdul Kuddus alias Tunda, who is now detained in a Pakistani jail, visited Bangladesh and held meetings with JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman, who was later executed.

In Bangladesh Mohammad Imran received Wazed and introduced him to Bakkar, the owner of Anika Chemical, Sohail said adding, Bakkar arranged Wazed's accommodation at his residence in Turag Housing.

Maulana Imran and Bakkar provided Wazed with different chemicals to produce explosives. The bomb expert was asked to handover the finished explosives to Maulana Imran, said Sohail.

During interrogation, Bakkar admitted he had bought the chemicals from Lalbagh, Old Dhaka.

In 2007 Bakkar got acquainted with Maulana Imran while Bakkar was residing at a rented house in Mirpur. The two became involved in the business of fake Indian currency.

Several Pak operatives of LeT are active in the country and they have made explosives. But their targets are yet to be known, said Sohail.

The Pak operatives were not given the address of the other LeT teams for their safety. The law enforcers could not learn how many of them are now in Bangladesh.

Sohail said the LeT has no unit in the country. But it is trying to use the country as a haven for running business of fake currencies and making explosives.

Rab personnel also seized passports of the two detainees. The passport of Bakkar shows he made eight trips to Pakistan and three trips in India recently.

 

[ajtr]

LeT leader held in N'ganj​

Mohammad Imran (C), coordinator of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Bangladesh wing. Photo: STAR
Star Online Report
Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) members arrested the Bangladesh chapter coordinator of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant organisation, at Madaninagar in Siddirganj upazila of Narayanganj Wednesday night.

The arrestee was identified as Maulana Mohammad Imran, son of Mohammad Ali of Paikpara in Baniachang upazila of Habiganj, reports our Narayanganj correspondent.

Gazi Mohammad Ahsanuzzaman, director of Rab-11, said this at a press conference at the Rab-11 office at Adamji in Narayanganj town at noon.

A huge amount of counterfeit foreign currency, one mobile phone set and books on Jihad were seized from his possession.

 

[ajtr]

Yemeni forces arrest five Pakistanis​

Thursday, 21 Oct, 2010


SANAA: Yemeni security forces have arrested 10 people, among them five Pakistanis, for spreading extremist religious ideas in the outskirts of the capital Sanaa, Yemen's interior ministry said on Thursday.

The 10, whose ages ranged from 27 to 65, were spreading "extremist jihadi ideas" among the population of the Dilaa Hamdan area, the ministry said on its website.

The other five people arrested were Yemenis, it said. All 10 have been bound over for legal proceedings.

 

[ajtr]

Student gets 15 years for plot to help Taliban​

Pakistani studying in Houston also sentenced for firearms

A Pakistani who came to the U.S. on a student visa to attend college in the Houston area was sentenced to federal prison Friday for having firearms and planning to help the Taliban.
Adnan Mirza, 33, was given 15 years without parole for unlawfully possessing firearms and conspiring to provide material support to the extremist Islamist movement, federal officials announced Friday.
He also was fined $9,000.
Mirza was convicted in May after a jury trial.
As a foreign citizen who had entered the U.S. on a student visa to attend a local community college in 2005 and 2006, Mirza is not permitted by federal law to possess firearms while in the U.S., federal officials said.
Authorities said an FBI undercover investigation found that Mirza and others had engaged in weekend camping/training and practice sessions with firearms to prepare for a jihad — or "holy war" — on six occasions beginning in May 2006 at a location on the north side of Houston.
The investigation also found that Mirza and others had intended to send money to the Taliban, officials said.
Mirza's attorney, David Adler, has said in court that his client did express anger about U.S. actions overseas and about war casualties ,but also argued that any money collected was for families, hospitals and women and children who were casualties of war, not for any groups that support the Taliban.
Adler told jurors that Mirza was a good student who regularly fed Houston's homeless and worked with Houston police on a local public access channel to explain Muslim ways to police and citizens.