Stadiums, Hotels Warned of Terrorists

Stadiums, Hotels Warned of Terrorists

By DEVLIN BARRETT and EILEEN SULLIVAN

AP

DENVER (Sept. 22) — Counterterrorism officials have issued security bulletins to police around the nation about terrorists' desire to attack stadiums, entertainment complexes and hotels — the latest in a flurry of such internal warnings as investigators chase a possible bomb plot in Denver and New York.

In the two bulletins – sent to police departments Monday and obtained by The Associated Press – officials said they know of no specific plots against such sites, but urged law enforcement and private companies to be vigilant. These two bulletins followed on the heels of a similar warning about the vulnerabilities of mass transit systems.

The bulletin on stadiums notes that an al-Qaida training manual specifically lists "blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin... and attacking vital economic centers" as desired targets of the global terror network.

A joint statement from DHS and FBI said while the agencies "have no information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack, we believe it is prudent to raise the security awareness of our local law enforcement partners regarding the targets and tactics of previous terrorist activity.

A bulletin issued about possible terrorist plots notes that an al-Qaida manual calls for "blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin." That, authorities said, would include stadiums, like Chicago's Soldier Field.

Officials noted the law enforcement bulletins are not intended for the public. Bulletins – particularly about hotels as possible targets – are common, and often don't make news. However, a half-dozen alerts issued in the last week have received increased attention amid the ongoing investigations in New York and Denver. The first of these, about hydrogen peroxide-based explosives, specifically referred to the investigation in New York.

Separately, law enforcement officials said a Colorado man may have been planning with others to detonate backpack bombs on New York City trains in a terrorism plot similar to past attacks on London's and Madrid's mass-transit systems.

The investigation and the earlier warning about mass transit system have already prompted officials around the nation to step up patrols.

Two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation told The Associated Press late Monday that more than a half-dozen individuals were being scrutinized in the alleged plot.

In a statement, the FBI says that "several individuals in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere" are being investigated.

Investigators say Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghanistan-born immigrant who is a shuttle van driver at the Denver airport, played a direct role in the terror plot that unraveled after an overnight 1,600-mile trip from Denver to New York City around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He made his first court appearance Monday and remains behind bars.

Zazi and two other defendants have not been charged with any terrorism counts, only the relatively minor offense of lying to the government. But the case could grow to include more serious charges as the investigation proceeds.

Backpacks and cell phones were seized last week from apartments in Queens, where Zazi visited.

Zazi has publicly denied being involved in a terror plot, and defense lawyer Arthur Folsom dismissed as "rumor" any notion that his client played a crucial role.

Publicly, law enforcement officials have repeatedly said they are unaware of a specific time or target for any attacks. Privately, officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case said investigators have worried most about the possible use of backpack bombs on New York City trains, similar to attacks carried out in London in 2005 and Madrid in 2004.

Backpack bombs ripped apart four commuter trains and killed 191 people in Madrid on March 11, 2004. On July 7 the next year, bombing attacks in London killed 52 subway and bus commuters.

In a bulletin issued Friday, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warned that improvised explosive devices are the most common tactic to blow up railroads and other mass transit systems overseas. And they noted incidents in which bombs were made with peroxide.

In that bulletin, obtained by The AP, officials recommended that transit systems conduct random sweeps at terminals and stations and that law enforcement make random patrols and board some trains and buses.

Investigators feared Zazi may have been involved in a potential plot involving hydrogen peroxide-based explosives, according to two law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.

The FBI said they found notes on bomb-making instructions that appear to match Zazi's handwriting, and discovered his fingerprints on materials – batteries and a scale – that could be used to make explosives. He also made a trip to Pakistan last year in which he received al-Qaida explosives and weapons training, the government said.

Zazi, a legal resident of the U.S. who immigrated in 1999, told the FBI that he must have unintentionally downloaded the notes on bomb-making as part of a religious book and that he deleted the book "after realizing that its contents discussed jihad."

A strange sequence of events began to unfold nearly two weeks ago when Zazi – already under surveillance by federal agents – rented a car in Colorado and made the 1,600-mile trek across the heartland to New York. He told reporters that he went to New York to resolve an issue with a coffee cart he owned.

He went to his friend's place in Queens. Once there, his car was towed and authorities confiscated his computer. He was told by an NYPD informant that detectives were asking about him, and decided to cut the trip short and fly back to Colorado, authorities said.

Their surveillance blown and their main suspect flying back to Colorado, officials speeded up the investigation and launched raids on several Queens apartments in a search for explosives, but found none.

Zazi and his 53-year-old father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, were arrested Saturday in Denver. Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, was arrested in New York, where he is an imam at a mosque in Queens. The three are accused of making false statements to the government. If convicted, they face eight years in prison.

Associated Press Writers Ivan Moreno, P. Solomon Banda, and Catherine Tsai in Denver, and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.

The War No One Knows We Won

Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.

London's Sunday Times called it "the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror." A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.

Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved "satisfactory" progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks — a big change for the better from a year ago.

Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad — an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, "the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks" that signaled political progress.

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Religious Head Incites Mumbai Attack

Religious head incited killers

Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | December 01, 2008

Article from: The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/

THE al-Qa'ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists suspected over the Mumbai massacre were trained in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, and were incited by speeches from their leader in Lahore.

As the sole surviving terrorist was interrogated in Mumbai, security sources told The Australian that 10 terrorists were picked by LET for the suicide mission.

They were ordered to "kill until your last breath" and murder up to 5000 people.

They did so after provocative speeches by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed last month in Lahore, capital of the Punjab.

Saeed, described as LET's supreme religious and political head, declared in one speech: "The only language India understands is that of force, and that is the language it must be talked to in."

The email claiming responsibility for the Mumbai attack minutes after it started last Wednesday was generated on a computer based in Pakistan.

And a satellite telephone captured from the terrorists revealed calls made to numbers in Pakistan during the attacks, reports said.

Officials said the terrorists' route to Mumbai had been recorded on GPS co-ordinates contained in the satellite phones.

Sources said the 10 terrorists -- most of whom were believed to be Pakistanis -- were ordered to undergo training to attack Mumbai.

The captured gunman, Ajmal Amir Kamal, 21, reportedly told intelligence sources the group had trained openly in Muzaffarabad before heading to the nearby Mangala dam for lessons in marine commando techniques.

The group then visited Rawalpindi, which adjoins Islamabad, the Pakistan capital and site of the Pakistan army headquarters.

From there, the group took a train to the port city of Karachi, where, heavily armed, they boarded a freighter for the trip to Mumbai. Along the way, they became nervous about Indian coastguard activity and almost aborted the mission.

They "dragooned" a less conspicuous, passing fishing boat into service, shooting dead four of its crew members. The skipper of the fishing boat and another crew member took them closer to Mumbai before they, too, were killed. One was decapitated and the other had his throat slit.

Close to shore, they transferred to small speedboats for the run into the two landing points they had selected in Mumbai - Sassoon Docks and Badhwar Park, on Cuff Parade.

Conflicting evidence obtained by intelligence agencies suggests that the group may have had local support, and that one or more of its members may have been staying locally, possibly even in the Taj Mahal hotel.

A British link to the attacks was raised over the weekend when a senior Indian official claimed that Britons were among the militants.

Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, in which Mumbai lies, was quoted on an Indian television station as saying that British citizens had been detained.

British MP Patrick Mercer, a former Tory security spokesman, said he had been given information that at least two of the terrorists had credit cards and other identifying documents that linked them to Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in northeast England.

The claims, however, were not substantiated by official British sources, who said there was no evidence "at this stage" that Britons had taken part in the attacks, although they acknowledged that events were "moving fast" and more information was emerging about the nationality of the terrorists.

MI5 and British counter-terrorist police are keeping in close touch with their counterparts in India and are alert to the possibility that Britons with Pakistani origins might have been involved. Significant numbers of young British Pakistanis have taken part in terrorist training in Pakistan.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that there was no evidence of Britons being involved, and the Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "We obviously will want to work very closely with the Indians but it is too early to say whether or not any of them are British."

Malaysian police are investigating reports that Malaysian-issued credit cards were found in the belongings of the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks.

Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Malaysia had no links with the terrorists, responding to an Indian report that nine of the gunmen claimed to be Malaysian students when they travelled to Mumbai several months ago.

Terror analyst Praveen Swami said that at a meeting of key LET leaders in Lahore on October 19, LET leader Saeed, who insists he is only head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa welfare organisation, made plain his view of Pakistan's neighbour.

"India, he claimed, was building dams in (Indian-controlled) Jammu and Kashmir to choke Pakistan's water supplies and cripple its agriculture," Mr Swami reported Saeed as saying.

"Earlier, in an October 6 speech, Saeed claimed that India had 'made a deal with the United States to send 150,000 Indian troops to Afghanistan' and that it agreed to support the US in its existential war against Islam.

"Finally, in a sermon to a congregation at the Jamia Masjid al-Qudsia (mosque) in Lahore at the end of October, Saeed proclaimed that there was an 'ongoing war in the world between Islam and its enemies'.

"He claimed that 'crusaders of the East and West have united in a cohesive onslaught against Muslims'."

Al-Qaida on the Web

Europe facing radicalization over the Web
OLIVIER GUITTA


A few months ago Bernard Squarcini the head of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), the French equivalent of the FBI, told the French daily Libération regarding Islamic radicalization: "An ideological transformation can be done in three months on the Web. An individual can at night auto-radicalize himself via the Web and get in touch with leaders of terrorist organizations." This assessment shows how dire the situation is in Europe when it comes to al-Qaida's use of the Web.

Al-Qaida uses the web for four different tasks: propaganda; communication, mostly to instruct those in the field; training future combatants, a kind of online university of terrorism; and to send messages to the enemy, mostly to the West.

For instance, one of the most popular jihadist sites in France is one which translates books on the jihad in French and gives lessons on urban guerilla tactics. (This site got more than 3 million visits from France alone). Another Web site explains how to get weapons in the West (hide, assemble and breakdown) and how to manufacture bombs from products found in supermarkets.

The propaganda primarily targets youngsters. Some of them join the virtual jihad or "webtifada", i.e. cyber criminality.

In March 2006, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Exterieure), the French equivalent of the CIA, tracked down a forum where jihadists recruited hackers to destroy "infidels'" Web sites and government sites. The jihadists recommended: "If you can't slash their throats, then at least destroy their sites." And on May 15, 2006 the Metz, France police arrested a young man who, under the alias Yanis, had attacked 1,161 sites including 710 linked to the Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Fortunately in Europe, even though the number is growing only a minority is actually joining the virtual jihad. According to Louis Caprioli, ex-boss of the anti-terror unit of the DST, the number of French volunteers in Iraq is in the tens. Confirming this, expert Walter Akmouche states that statistically, to get one jihadi, you must contact an average 45,000 people.

Which vehicle do the jihadis use on the Web? According to the DST, the chat room Paltalk is regularly used to hide operations. They also use Instant Messaging services such as Messenger or Skype and "dead e-mail boxes" which allow them, with the username and password, to retrieve unsent messages. But they also exchange information and coded files on forums devoted to soccer, music or any topic totally unrelated to Islam.

It is important to note that to access true terrorist sites; one has to be an insider and needs to know the real number-coded URL address, which often changes.

Also after years of research, al-Qaida has developed software called "Secrets of Mujahedin," that allows secure exchange in Arabic on electronic networks. It has allegedly been in use for over a year on clandestine forums close to al-Qaida, especially for jihadist groups in Iraq and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. This has been a formidable weapon for al-Qaida and numerous intelligence services and private companies have been trying to break it.

How is Europe facing this threat? First by closely monitoring jihadist Web sites. For instance, last year, Holland devoted 10 million euros (about $15 million) to fighting extremism. Thus, more than 150 Internet sites broadcasting extremist ideology were the subject of complaints and were restricted.

In France, about 30 potentially dangerous sites are monitored by some units of the UCLAT (Unité de Coordination de la Lutte antiterroriste), the French counterterrorism coordination unit. Software allows them to trace back the origin of a server or the IP address of a user and if they act fast, they can trace the network and use it against the Islamists using it. For instance, the recent monitoring of a forum allowed the unit to trace a couple of Salafist groups in the suburbs of Paris that were recruiting jihadis and organizing their trip.

One of the main problems facing European authorities is that simply shutting down Web sites is not very efficient since these sites just end up operating under new names.

European countries are also using the legal tool to fight al-Qaida's use of the Web in Europe. In a first, a Swiss court last summer sentenced several individuals including the widow of the killer of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance's leader killed by al-Qaida on September 9, 2001, and her boyfriend, for having created and operated four Web sites and chat rooms for extremist propaganda and exchange of information by terrorist groups.

European authorities are taking this issue very seriously. On Feb. 1, France's interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie told the French daily Le Figaro that the use of the Web by terrorists was "one of my major concerns, and one of the priorities assigned to the [security] services. This requires additional material, forces specialized in fighting cyber-criminality, legal resources. I want us to be able to stop the terrorist propaganda, find the operational networks, track them down and prevent them from acting."

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Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).