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Brothers Charged in Terror Plot - Illegally in U.S. 23years

FOXNEWS.COM HOME > U.S.

Brothers Charged in Terror Plot Lived Illegally in U.S. for 23 Years
Wednesday, May 09, 2007


Brothers Eljvir Duka, left, and Shain Duka are seen in an artist's drawing during a court appearance at the U.S. District Courthouse in Camden, N.J.
FORT DIX, N.J.  Three brothers charged in the alleged Fort Dix terror plot have been living illegally in the U.S. for more than 23 years and were accepted as Americans by neighbors and friends who had no idea they would scheme to attack military bases and slaughter GIs.

A federal law enforcement source confirmed to FOX News that the three  Dritan "Anthony" or "Tony" Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir "Elvis" Duka, 23  also accumulated 19 traffic citations, but because they operated in "sanctuary cites," where law enforcement does not routinely report illegal immigrants to homeland security, none of the tickets raised red flags.

The brothers entered the United States near Brownsville, Texas, in 1984, the source said, which would put their ages at 1 to 6 when they crossed the border.

The source said there is no record of them entering by way of a regular border crossing, so they are investigating whether they were smuggled into the country.

The brothers plus three other suspects in the alleged plot  Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22; Serdar Tatar, 23; and, Agron Abdullahu, 24  were ordered held without bail for a hearing Friday.


Five were charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. military personnel; the sixth, Abdullahu, was charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in obtaining weapons.

Four of the arrested men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and the sixth is a U.S. citizen.

Federal investigators are now checking whether the latter three lied on their immigration paperwork to remain in the United States.

One drove a cab, three were roofers. Another worked at a 7-Eleven and a sixth at a supermarket. Their alleged plot to attack Fort Dix was foiled by another blue-collar worker: a video store clerk.

The foreign-born Muslims are accused of planning to assault the Army base and slaughter scores of U.S. soldiers with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

The unidentified clerk is being credited with tipping off authorities in January 2006 after one of the suspects asked him to transfer a video to DVD that showed 10 men shooting weapons at a firing range and calling for jihad, prosecutors said.

"If we didn't get that tip," said U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, "I couldn't be sure what would happen." FBI agent J.P. Weis called the clerk the "unsung hero" of the case.

Authorities said there was no direct evidence connecting the men to any international terror organizations such as Al Qaeda. But several of them said they were ready to kill and die "in the name of Allah," prosecutors said in court papers.


Weis said the U.S. is seeing a "brand-new form of terrorism," involving smaller, more loosely defined groups that may not be connected to Al Qaeda but are inspired by its ideology.

"These homegrown terrorists can prove to be as dangerous as any known group, if not more so. They operate under the radar," Weis said.

One of the suspects, Tatar, worked at his father's pizzeria  Super Mario's Restaurant  in Cookstown and made deliveries to the base, using the opportunity to scout out Fort Dix for an attack, authorities said.

"Clearly, one of the guys had an intimate knowledge of the base from having been there delivering pizzas," Christie said.

Tatar's father, Muslim Tatar, 54, said the accusations against his son were hard to accept.

"He is not a terrorist. I am not a terrorist," he told The Star-Ledger of Newark.

The elder Tatar told ABCNews he had gotten no indication his son harbored a deep hatred of the United States.

"I came here from Turkey in 1992, and this is my country. I love this country," Muslim Tatar told ABC.

FOX News has also learned that there were 19 traffic citations against the Duka brothers, but according to a federal law enforcement source, because they operated in so-called "sanctuary cites," where law enforcement does not routinely tell the Homeland Security Department about illegal immigrants in their towns, none of the tickets raised red flags.

The group often watched terror training videos, clips featuring Usama bin Laden, a tape containing the last will and testament of some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and tapes of armed attacks on U.S. military personnel, authorities said.

The men trained by playing paintball in the woods in New Jersey and taking target practice at a firing range in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, where they had rented a house, authorities said.

"We believe they are their own cell," said Christie. "They are inspired by international terror organizations. I believe they saw themselves as part of that."

Fort Dix last was in the international spotlight in 1999, when it sheltered more than 4,000 ethnic Albanian refugees during the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

In addition to plotting the attack on Fort Dix, the defendants spoke of assaulting a Navy installation in Philadelphia during the annual Army-Navy football game and conducted surveillance at other military installations in the region, prosecutors said.

After the video clerk's tip, investigators said they infiltrated the group with two informants and bided their time while they secretly recorded the defendants.

The six were arrested Monday night trying to buy AK-47 assault weapons, M-16s and other weapons from an FBI informant, authorities said. It was not clear when the alleged attack was to take place.

"We had a group that was forming a platoon to take on an army. They identified their target, they did their reconnaissance. They had maps. And they were in the process of buying weapons. Luckily, we were able to stop that," said Weis.

The arrests renewed worries among New Jersey's Muslim community. Hundreds of Muslim men from New Jersey were rounded up and detained in the months after the 2001 terror attacks, but none were connected to that plot.

"If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law," said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks. "But when the government says `Islamic militants,' it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous."

"Don't equate actions with religion," he said.

Mario Tummillo lives near Tatar's father in Cookstown and said he worked with Tatar at the pizza parlor. Tummillo, 20, described Tatar as a religious man who "wasn't violent at all."

The restaurant's chef, Joseph Hofflinger, 35, quit after learning the owner was the father of one of the suspects.

"My son is in the 82nd Airborne," Hofflinger told ABC. "I won't work for a place that supports terrorism so I'm out."

FOX News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.


source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270892,00.html


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Fort Dix Terror Suspects' Lives Gave Few Clues About Alleged Plot
Wednesday, May 09, 2007


Brothers Eljvir Duka, left, and Shain Duka are seen in an artist's drawing during a court appearance at the U.S. District Courthouse in Camden, N.J.
CHERRY HILL, N.J.  To neighbors, they looked like anything but terrorists.

Each summer, the family two doors down from Michael Levine in this affluent suburb of Philadelphia would bring over baskets of vegetables they had grown in their backyard.

The three brothers owned a roofing business, and the women in the ethnic Albanian family wore head scarves. They kept farm animals in the backyard until others in the neighborhood of tidy two-story houses complained, Levine said.

Authorities say the brothers' unremarkable blue-collar lives belied the mayhem they allegedly planned to unleash with others in a plot to kill hundreds of soldiers at Fort Dix. They and three other foreign-born Muslims living in the area were arrested Monday night.

"You would not think that they would be capable of plotting something like this," Levine said of the brothers. "When I found out this morning, my heart stopped."

Eljvir Duka, 23, Dritan Duka, 28, and Shain Duka, 26, were charged in the alleged plot to storm Fort Dix with automatic machine guns and semiautomatic rifles and kill as many soldiers as they could.

Also arrested were Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22, of Cherry Hill; Serdar Tatar, 23, of Philadelphia; and Agron Abdullahu, 24, of Buena Vista Township. Shnewer and Tatar were charged in the alleged plot; Abdullahu was charged with aiding and abetting the Duka brothers' illegal possession of weapons.

• Click here to read the complaint (FindLaw pdf)

The Duka brothers were born in the former Yugoslavia and residing illegally in the U.S. Shnewer, a native of Jordan; Tatar, a native of Turkey; and Abdullahu, who was born in the former Yugoslavia, are legal residents. Eljvir Duka called himself 'Elvis.'

Dritan and Shain Duka once owned a pizza shop in Turnersville, N.J., about 35 miles from Fort Dix. They sold it in June 2005 to Tony Giordano, who now operates it as Tony Soprano's Pizza, Giordano said. He said it was "a filthy rat trap" before he remodeled it.

"I had a brief encounter with" Dritan Duka, who goes by Tony, Giordano said. "They weren't the friendliest people, but then again, who would know something like that?"

According to Levine, there often were many people in the house, as many as 14 at a time, who came and went at different times, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. He thought nothing of it, believing that was their custom to have families live together.

"Until I know all the facts, I don't believe this. But then, the FBI doesn't kick in doors for nothing," he said.

Click here to read the Philadelphia Inquirer story about the suspects

Shain Duka is the only brother to ever get a driver's license, thought it expired in 2003, the newspaper reported. But each brother has tallied at least 19 points for moving violations.

Levine recalled seeing some of the Dukas shooting paintballs at trees in their front yard, an incident that seemed harmless at the time. Authorities say the group spoke of playing paintball as a training exercise for the attack.

Shnewer, a cab driver in Philadelphia who comes across in the criminal complaint as the group's dominant figure, lived just a few miles away.

Danielle Lee, a dispatcher for All City Taxi in Philadelphia, told The Philadelphia Inquirer she was shocked by Shnewer's arrest.

"He's such a nice man," she said. "We never had any complaints. He always kept to himself. No problems."

Neighbors in Cherry Hill say Shnewer had roosters that escaped and broken-down vehicles parked on the street. They said four or five families appeared to be living in the house and there were frequent visitors, but they did not mingle with their neighbors.

"They kept to themselves," said Don Bauer, 40, who lives across the street.

Abdullahu had worked recently at a ShopRite food market, according to authorities. He worked as a bakery supervisor after emigrating to the United States from Kosovo in 1999, said his cousin, Arsim Abdullahu, of New York City, in a telephone interview.

They last spoke by phone about seven months ago and have not seen each other for about five years, he said. Arsim Abdullahu said he could not remember anything that would suggest his cousin would get involved in an alleged terrorist plot.

"It's nothing I did and it's not like it's my problem," he said. "We have a law here. The law should take care of him, not me."

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Abdullahu was a former sniper in Kosovo who trained with the Egyptian military and is a legal U.S. resident.

At Abdullahu's house, family members were busy boarding up their windows and front door with plywood. "Go away," came a voice from behind the door when an Inquirer reporter knocked. "There's no side to tell."

According to a neighbor in northeast Philadelphia, Tatar didn't have much money and lived in a large apartment building with his pregnant wife, who was expecting twins. Authorities said his last known job was at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Philadelphia near Temple University.

A 7-Eleven official told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Tatar "got along with his coworkers. He was friendly towards the customers."

Neighbor Stacie Gandlina said she saw the federal agents who raided Tatar's apartment and tried to console his in-laws after his arrest Monday night.

"I said, 'If he is nice, they will let him go. If he is bad, why do you need a bad son-in-law? They have to check,'" Gandlina said Tuesday.

According to authorities, Tatar worked at Super Mario's Ristorante in Cookstown, at the northwestern edge of Fort Dix. Mario Tummillo, who lives near Tatar's father in Cookstown, said he knows Tatar and had worked with him at the pizza parlor.

Tummillo, 20, described Tatar as a religious man who "wasn't violent at all."

He recalled Tatar praying in the back of the restaurant and said Tatar often talked about religion, bringing it up in conversations about other subjects.

"He would start talking about how you should worship God," Tummillo said.

In the Poconos...

While staying in the Pocono Mountains to practice at a state firing range, some of suspects damaged their vacation rental with paintball pellets and drew the attention of security guards.

Cassy Herman told The Associated Press on Tuesday that suspect Eljvir Duka paid cash to rent her four-bedroom house in the Big Bass Lake development in February, and was very polite. But before the weekend was over, the community association's security department had called her to complain.

She phoned Duka at the rental house from her home in southern New Jersey.

"He said, 'Cassy, they're making too much of this, and it really wasn't anything,"' Herman said. She was later fined by the homeowner's association for the paintball shooting.

Duka, who lives near Herman's home in Blackwood, N.J., paid for damage to several lights that line the driveway of the rental property.

Federal authorities said at least five of the six men arrested Tuesday spent time at the house in the Poconos during a four-day period. Besides using paintball guns, they traveled about five miles to a shooting range on Pennsylvania state game land to practice with semiautomatic rifles, a shotgun and a 9 mm handgun, a federal affidavit said.

It was the same range where members had been videotaped more than a year earlier.

The state Game Commission maintains a handgun and rifle range on 26,000-acre Gameland No. 127 in Monroe County. Spokesman Jerry Feaser said commission ranges are generally not manned, except during peak use around rifle deer season.

Inside the Poconos rental house, about 90 miles north-northwest of the Philadelphia area and New Jersey's Fort Dix, Shnewer played laptop computer videos that showed U.S. military vehicles being attacked and destroyed, the federal affidavit said.

"Shain Duka pointed out that a United States Marine's arm had been blown off, at which point laughter erupted from the group," the affidavit said.

A few days after Duka rented the house, landlord Herman said she got a call from an FBI agent who wanted to rent the property for a weekend vacation.

"They said, 'Yeah, we're just trying to get away,"' she said. "They didn't stay long at all. They were there for maybe a couple hours, a half a day."

Big Bass Lake Community Association security director Rob O'Donnell said Tuesday "there were no firearms used on the property whatsoever," but declined further comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270938,00.html



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8 years ago, Fort Dix took in Kosovo refugees

8 years ago, Fort Dix took in Kosovo refugees

By MATT KATZ
Courier-Post Staff


FORT DIX
The arrest of four ethnic Albanians for plotting to attack Fort Dix came with an ironic twist.

Exactly eight years ago to the week, beginning on May 5, 1999, ethnic Albanians found refuge at the same Burlington County military installation following the war in Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia.

It is not yet known if the four men -- three from Cherry Hill and a fourth from Atlantic County -- were among the 4,025 people who came to Fort Dix as part of an American government mission called Operation Provide Refuge.

The refugee crisis began after Yugoslavian forces and Serbian paramilitary groups attacked Muslim Albanians living in Kosovo, prompting a NATO response and the ouster of President Slobodan Milosevic.

During their time at the refugee village at Fort Dix, the refugees provided authorities with critical information about Serb atrocities in Kosovo, including the location of at least one mass grave.

They were visited by South Jersey residents eager to help, and three babies were born there.

The refugees stayed at Fort Dix until July of 1999, when they were hooked up with relatives, sponsors or charities for resettlement not just in South Jersey but in 40 states and 100 cities around the country. Many settled in North Jersey and New York because of the relatively large Albanian community there.

Still, of the total 14,129 refugees who went to Fort Dix and elsewhere, many returned to Kosovo after the war ended.


Published: May 08. 2007 7:30PM


source: courier post online


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Plot illustrates Balkans' role as Islamist foothold

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published May 9, 2007

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The six foreign-born Muslims accused of planning a shooting attack at the U.S. military base included four ethnic Albanians, and U.S. officials say their arrests highlight how Islamist groups are using the Balkans region to help in recruiting and financing terrorism.

Prosecutors described the men as "radical Islamists," with four coming from the province of Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia, where the ethnic Albanian population of Muslims fought one of the several wars that grew out of the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Suspect Agron Abdullahu, who faces only weapons violations in the case, was described in court papers as a "sniper in Kosovo."

U.S. officials said the Islamists were motivated by al Qaeda sympathies and that ringleader Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, who was born in Jordan, had copies of the wills of two September 11 terrorists on his laptop computer.

The other suspect in the group -- accused of seeking to kill hundreds of soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. -- was born in Turkey.

U.S. officials said intelligence reports from the Balkans have identified a support structure for several terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, among the Muslim communities in Albania and in the former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia.

"When it comes to extremists, we're talking about very, very small pockets in Albania, as well as among the ethnic Albanian populations in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and other parts of the Balkans," said one official with access to intelligence reports.

The official pointed out that the Albanian government has been supportive of U.S. efforts to counter Islamic terrorist activities, including curbing logistics and financial aid, and working to prevent terrorists from receiving training and weapons.
But a Congressional Research Service report produced in 2005 said instability in Albania during the 1990s gave al Qaeda a "foothold" there. "Poor internal security, lax border controls, and high rates of crime produced an environment conducive to terrorist activity," said the report by CRS specialist Steven Woehrel. "Some foreign Islamic extremists used Albania as a safe haven and gained Albanian citizenship."

Balkan Muslims also have been targets of al Qaeda recruitment efforts because they have an easier time blending in or evading U.S. and European security measures and border controls, which often are geared to identifying Middle Eastern extremists.

The State Department's latest annual report on international terrorism said the Albanian government has taken steps to stop terrorism financing but noted that "government and police forces faced substantial challenges to fully enforce border security and combat organized crime and corruption."
The Albanian government identified seven financial holdings by terrorist groups last year that were frozen.

Israeli government sources have said that agents for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as well as the Shi'ite Hezbollah, have been actively buying weapons from organized-crime groups in the Balkans.
Bosnia also has a large Muslim community that in the past has provided a base of support for al Qaeda and other terrorists. After the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, most Islamic radicals, who were helping Bosnia's Muslims fend off the Orthodox Christian Serbs, left the Balkans, but some remained behind.
"It is estimated that several hundred former fighters stayed behind in Bosnia after the war and became Bosnian citizens by marrying Bosnian women," the CRS report said. "Some al Qaeda operatives in Bosnia reportedly had connections to members of Bosnia's intelligence service."
European intelligence agencies estimate that as many as 750 Muslim former fighters remain hidden in Bosnia and have acted as a supply network to send guns, money and documents to terrorists passing through the region.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders often mention Bosnia as an important example of jihad, or holy war.
"Terrorist recruiting videos often include footage of combat in Bosnia," the CRS report said.

According to the Associated Press, a joint U.S.-Croatian intelligence report produced last year stated that Algerian extremists were active in the Balkans. Bosnia's intelligence service last year published information on 15 extremists living in that country: eight Algerians, two Syrians, two Tunisians and an Egyptian, Kuwaiti and Yemeni.

Officials also said the nongovernmental organization Revival of Islamic Heritage Society remains active in the region and spreads the radical Wahhabi form of Islam that animates al Qaeda.


source: washingtom times


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WHOA!!!!! :o


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Suspects scoped out other targets


Wednesday, May 9, 2007


Courier-Post staff

The men accused of plotting a terrorist attack on Fort Dix also considered attacks on a number of other military locations and events in the area, including the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, the government alleges.

The "beauty" of the Army-Navy game, one of the alleged conspirators is heard on tape saying, "is that you can hit it, from where, do you know? From New Jersey."

Among other sites that the conspirators had under surveillance or considered as targets are the Philadelphia Navy Base and a Coast Guard building in that city; Dover Air Force Base in Delaware; and Lakehurst Naval air station in New Jersey.

In discussing Lakehurst, which he refers to as a Navy base near Fort Dix, Mohamad Shnewer told the FBI informant recording their conversation: "Maybe it is easy to hit them, there are nights when the squad is out and doing exercises without weapons . . . the only problem is that they may have protection and scouts watching. You know what we can do is go one day to a nearby restaurant and observe the whole base."

After a surveillance trip to Dover Air Force Base, Shnewer concluded that security there was too tight to make that a target.

On Dec. 6, 2006, Shnewer lamented in a conversation with the FBI informant that they had missed an opportunity to attack military personnel at the Army-Navy game.

And on Feb. 5, 2007, Shnewer discussed the possibility of attacking two American warships "next year" when they dock in Philadelphia.

On March 16, 2007, the informant asked Shnewer if he had changed his mind about Fort Dix.

"Quite honestly there is the Navy base," Shnewer responded. "You know where the stadiums are in Philadelphia? There is the Navy base and every year they have the Army-Navy ballgame and they come stay one or two weeks . . . the Navy base will then be full of people . . . You see this is an opportunity and the beauty of this location specially if you have the proper weaponry, is that you can hit it from where, do you know? From New Jersey."



source: courier post online


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[jgredline]

A picture is worth a thousand words.....

http://bibleprobe.com/christianmartyrs-armenia.htm

 

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Hezbollah builds a Western base

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Hezbollah builds a Western base
From inside South America’s Tri-border area,
Iran-linked militia targets U.S.

By Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem
NBC News
Updated: 9:29 a.m. ET May 9, 2007


CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay - The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it, according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the continent.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.

They are men like Mustafa Khalil Meri, a young Arab Muslim whom Telemundo interviewed in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city and the center of the Tri-border region. There is nothing particularly distinctive about him, but beneath the everyday T-shirt he wears beats the heart of a devoted Hezbollah militiaman.

“If he attacks Iran, in two minutes Bush is dead,†Meri said. “We are Muslims. I am Hezbollah. We are Muslims, and we will defend our countries at any time they are attacked.â€Â


Straight shot to the U.S.
U.S. and South American officials warn that Meri’s is more than a rhetorical threat.

It is surprisingly easy to move across borders in the Triple Frontier, where motorbikes are permitted to cross without documents. A smuggler can bike from Paraguay into Brazil and return without ever being asked for a passport, and it is not much harder for cars and trucks.


The implications of such lawlessness could be dire, U.S. and Paraguayan officials said. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Hezbollah militiamen would raise no suspicions because they have Latin American passports, speak Spanish and look like Hispanic tourists.

The CIA singles out the Mexican border as an especially inviting target for Hezbollah operatives. “Many alien smuggling networks that facilitate the movement of non-Mexicans have established links to Muslim communities in Mexico,†its Counter Terrorism Center said in a 2004 threat paper.

“Non-Mexicans often are more difficult to intercept because they typically pay high-end smugglers a large sum of money to efficiently assist them across the border, rather than haphazardly traverse it on their own.â€Â

Deadly legacy of a lawless frontier
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Tri-border has become a top-level, if little-publicized, concern for Washington, particularly as tension mounts with Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor. Paraguayan government officials told Telemundo that CIA operatives and agents of Israel’s Mossad security force were known to be in the region seeking to neutralize what they believe could be an imminent threat.

But long before that, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies regarded the region as a “free zone for significant criminal activity, including people who are organized to commit acts of terrorism,†Louis Freeh, then the director of the FBI, said in 1998.

Edward Luttwak, a counterterrorism expert with the Pentagon’s National Security Study Group, described the Tri-border as the most important base for Hezbollah outside Lebanon itself, home to “a community of dangerous fanatics that send their money for financial support to Hezbollah.â€Â

“People kill with that, and they have planned terrorist attacks from there,†said Luttwak, who has been a terrorism consultant to the CIA and the National Security Council. “The northern region of Argentina, the eastern region of Paraguay and even Brazil are large terrains, and they have an organized training and recruitment camp for terrorists.â€Â

“Our experience is that if you see one roach, there are a lot more,†said Frank Urbancic, principal deputy director of the State Department’s counterterrorism office, who has spent most of his career in the Middle East.


A mother lode of money
Operating out of the Tri-border, Hezbollah is accused of killing more than 100 people in attacks in nearby Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the early 1990s in operations personally masterminded by Hezbollah’s military commander, Imad Mugniyah.

Mugniyah is on the most-wanted terrorist lists of both the FBI and the European Union, and he is believed to work frequently out of Ciudad del Este.

For President Bush and the U.S.-led “war on terror,†the flourishing of Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere demonstrates the worrying worldwide reach of Islamist radicalism. In the Tri-border, Hezbollah and other radical anti-U.S. groups have found a lucrative base from which to finance many of their operations.

Smuggling has long been the lifeblood of the Tri-border, accounting for $2 billion to $3 billion in the region, according to congressional officials. Several U.S. agencies said that Arab merchants were involved in smuggling cigarettes and livestock to avoid taxes, as well as cocaine and marijuana through the border with Brazil on their way to Europe. Some of the proceeds are sent to Hezbollah, they said.

Many Arabs in the Tri-border openly acknowledge that they send money to Hezbollah to help their families, and the man in charge of the local mosque in Ciudad del Este, who asked not to be identified by name, declared that Shiite Muslim mosques had “an obligation to finance it.â€Â

But the U.S. government maintains that the money ends up stained with blood when it goes through Hezbollah, which is blamed for the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1980s, as well as the kidnappings of Americans, two of whom were tortured and killed.

Patrick M. O’Brien, the assistant secretary of the Treasury in charge of fighting terrorist financing, acknowledged flatly that “we are worried.â€Â

“Hezbollah has penetrated the area, and part of that smuggling money is used to finance terrorist attacks,†he said.

In Paraguay, looking the other way
The biggest obstacle in the U.S. campaign to counter Hezbollah close to home is Paraguay, whose “judicial system remains severely hampered by a lack of strong anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism legislation,†the State Department said in a “Patterns of Global Terrorism†report.

Since 2004, a draft bill to strengthen money laundering laws has been stalled in the Paraguayan legislature, and the government of President Nicanor Duarte has introduced no draft legislation of its own.

Hampering reform efforts is an endemic reluctance in Paraguay to acknowledge the problem.

Interior Minister Rogelio Benitez Vargas, who supervises the national police, claimed that Hezbollah-linked smuggling was a relic of the 1980s. Today, he said, the Triple Frontier is a safe and regulated “commercial paradise.â€Â

But authorities from the U.S. State and Treasury departments to Interpol to the front-line Paraguayan police agencies all paint a different picture. Eduardo Arce, secretary of the Paraguayan Union of Journalists, said the government was widely considered to be under the control of drug traffickers and smugglers.

Without interference, thousands of people cross the River Parana every day from Paraguay to Brazil over the Bridge of Friendship loaded with products on which they pay no taxes. As police look the other way, he said, some smugglers cross the border 10 to 20 times a day. Earlier this year, Telemundo cameras were present as smugglers in Ciudad del Este loaded trucks headed for Brazil. They could have been laden with drugs or weapons, but no authorities ever checked.


Direct link to Iran alleged
José Adasco knows better than most why Hezbollah has the region in a grip of fear.

In 1992 and 1994, terrorists believed to be linked to Hezbollah carried out two attacks against Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital. In the first, a car bomb exploded at the Israeli Embassy, killing 29 people. Two years later, a suicide bomber attacked the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, a Jewish community center, killing 85 more.

Adasco, who represents the Jewish association, has never been able to forget that day and the friends he lost.

“Really, to see the knocked-down building, [to hear] the screams, the cries, people running  it was total chaos. Chaos, chaos. It is inexpressible,†he said.

An investigation by Interpol and the FBI found not only Hezbollah’s involvement, but Iran’s, as well. The Argentine prosecutor’s office said the Iranian president at the time, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, ordered the attack to retaliate against Argentina for suspending nuclear cooperation with Iran.

A warrant for Rafsanjani’s arrest remains outstanding, and the prosecutor’s office continues its investigation 13 years later.

Hezbollah tells its story
Alberto Nisman, the Argentine district attorney leading the investigation, said the connection between the Hezbollah attack and the Tri-border is unquestionable. Among other things, he said, the suicide bomber passed through the area to receive instructions.

In the intervening years, Hezbollah has spread throughout Latin America.

On their Web page, local Hezbollah militants in Venezuela call their fight against the United States a “holy war†and post photographs of would-be suicide terrorists with masks and bombs. There are also Web sites for Hezbollah in Chile, El Salvador, Argentina and most other Latin American countries.

“The Paraguayan justice [ministry] and the national police have found propaganda materials for Hezbollah†across the hemisphere, said Augusto Anibal Lima of Paraguay’s Tri-border Police.

And it is not only propaganda. In October, homemade bombs were left in front of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, which is next to a school.

Police arrested a student carrying Hezbollah propaganda in Spanish. One of the pamphlets showed a picture of children and said, “Combat is our highest expression of love and the only way to offer a healthy and uncorrupted world.â€Â

Caracas police were able to detonate the bombs safely. Police Commissioner Wilfredo Borras said they appeared to be “explosive devices made to make noise and publicity† very different from what would be used if the United States attacked Iran.

“In [the] United States, there are many Arabs  in Canada, too,†said Meri, the Hezbollah member who spoke with Telemundo. ââ¬Å“If one bomb [strikes] Iran, one bomb, [Bush] will see the world burning.

“... If an order arrives, all the Arabs that are here, in other parts in the world, all will go to take bombs, bombs for everybody if he bombs Iran.â€Â

© 2007 MSNBC InteractivePablo Gato is a correspondent for Telemundo. Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News.
source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17874369/


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[jgredline]

 

[jgredline]

Have some of you forgotten about the innocent lives that were taking by these peaceful loving muslims

Lets not forget who murdered over 3000 innocent folks....... :-?

 

[Relic]

Waiting for al-Qaeda's next bomb
May 3rd 2007

From The Economist print edition

A group plotting to bomb Britain has been successfully prosecuted. But the danger of al-Qaeda is growing, and the intelligence services are struggling to cope

PA
THE young men debated endlessly how best to carry out their attack. Co-ordinated explosions on Britain's gas-distribution network were a “beautiful planâ€Â, but difficult. Poisoning London's water supplies was a “weak ideaâ€Â. Seizing an airliner and crashing it would be “easyâ€Â, while blowing up the “slags†(loose women) dancing in the Ministry of Sound nightclub would have a “crazy†impact.

This was no idle bravado from disenchanted Muslims. Omar Khyam, now 25, and six fellow plotters had stashed away 600kg of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, the main ingredient for one or several remote-controlled bombs. At one point, during a conversation in a house in west London, one plotter asked: “Bruv, you don't think this place is bugged, do you?†No, replied Mr Khyam: “Do you know, I think we give them too much credit, bruv.â€Â


As it turned out, their words were being recorded by Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5. The fertiliser had been secretly switched with an inert substance, and an MI5 agent posed as a receptionist at the storage centre where it was kept.

Mr Khyam was arrested within weeks, as he was preparing to leave for Pakistan. Six others were also arrested, and an eighth suspect is awaiting trial in Canada. During a trial lasting more than a year, the court heard of other possible targets, such as blowing up the British Parliament (“a jokeâ€Â, claimed Mr Khyam). On April 30th, Mr Khyam and four other suspects were sentenced to life in prison. Two others were acquitted.

“Operation Creviceâ€Â, as the investigation was known, was at the time the biggest anti-terrorist operation in Britain. At its peak in February and March 2004, it consumed some 34,000 man-hours of intelligence and police work. The plotters' homes and cars were bugged, hidden cameras recorded them in internet cafés and undercover agents followed their movements around the clock.

The British authorities' ability to neutralise the bombing campaign is an important success, but it will also be remembered for a catastrophic failure: two of the four suicide-bombers who blew themselves up in London on July 7th 2005, at first said to have come “out of the blueâ€Â, had in fact been spotted with Mr Khyam's gang several times (in our picture, the two bombers flank Mr Khyam, who is second from right). But they were thought to be peripheral and were not followed up.

Relatives of some of the 52 victims want an independent inquiry into the London bombings. The government says this would “divert†the security services from their real job of seeking terrorists. MI5 took the unusual step of issuing a detailed rebuttal of “myths†surrounding the case. “The Security Service will never have the capacity to investigate everyone who appears on the periphery of every operation,†said its head, Jonathan Evans.

The limits of intelligence
In contrast with the small, tightly organised bombing cells of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which did everything to protect their own and often gave warnings to reduce casualties, MI5 and the police now have to contend with an opposite threat: a diffuse nebula of overlapping jihadi groups, ready to destroy themselves in order to kill as many people as possible. “We are seeing networks within networks, connections within connections and links between individuals that cross local, national and international boundaries,†said Peter Clarke, the head of the counter-terrorism branch of London's Metropolitan Police, on April 24th. More than 100 people are currently awaiting trial in Britain on terrorism charges. But in Mr Clarke's view, “The only sensible assumption is that we shall be attacked again.â€Â

Britain is a particularly attractive target for global jihadists because of an unfortunate coincidence of factors: its prominence as America's ally in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that al-Qaeda's resurgent core leadership, based in Pakistan's frontier region, has easy access to the thousands of Britons who visit their ancestral country every year.

Other Western governments are closely watching developments in Britain. Europeans are worried that their own Muslim minorities could become radicalised as al-Qaeda seeks to exploit other diaspora linksâ€â€Algerians in France, Moroccans in Spain and Italy, Turks in Germany. The violent re-emergence of Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (known by its French acronym, the GSPC), which has rebranded itself as al-Qaeda's branch in the Maghreb, is particularly alarming. Muslims farther south, across the largely ungoverned Sahara desert, might be indoctrinated, trained and sent back to Europe.

For America, the worry is that “clean skin†European citizens, with no known record of radicalism, could be used to attack the United States. The alleged conspiracy last summer to blow up as many as ten aircraft flying between London and the United States with liquid explosives, if proven in pending trials, would reinforce the belief that al-Qaeda has regenerated and is growing again in ambition.

The first line of defence is intelligence, not least because very little information on extremists is being provided by Muslim minorities. In Britain MI5 is expanding substantially, from 1,800 staff in 2001 to a projected 3,500 in 2008. But the number of suspected terrorist networks is growing exponentially, roughly doubling every year since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5's recently departed head, said in November that her service was tracking more than 1,600 known active militants (up from 250 in 2001, according to a parliamentary report). Those extremists operated in a pool of perhaps 100,000 sympathisers who, according to one poll she cited, thought the London bombings were justified. Referring to a popular British television series about MI5, Dame Eliza said: “I wish life were like ‘Spooks’, where everything is (a) knowable and (b) soluble by six people.â€Â

In fact, surveillance uses manpower intensively. Dozens of people are required to keep track of a single suspect 24 hours a day. Those deemed to pose a “threat to life†take precedence, but these days there are so many of them that MI5 has to decide which threat to life appears to be the most acute. Indeed, some security officials suspect al-Qaeda may be deliberately flooding Britain with terrorist plots in the hope of overwhelming its defences.

Shadows on the path
Operation Crevice was a turning point in the British authorities' understanding of the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Until early 2004, the main terrorist danger to Britain was deemed to come from extremists outside the country. At most, some British Muslims were thought to be supporting such groups abroad and sometimes setting out to join them in jihad.

PA

Khyam inspecting the fertiliser...
In April 2003 two Britons of Pakistani descent set off explosive belts outside a beach-front bar in Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis. At the time, says Mr Clarke, Britain was “a net exporter of terrorismâ€Â. The worst fears of the police came true on July 7th 2005, when four Britons (three of Pakistani descent, one of West Indian) blew themselves up on the London Underground and on a bus. Although security forces had been expecting attacks, the fact that they were dealing with suicide-bombings came as a surprise. Just a month earlier the Joint Intelligence Committee, which draws up assessments from information gathered by several intelligence services, had concluded that suicide-attacks were not likely and would not become the norm in Europe. After all, the Madrid bombs in 2004 had been detonated with mobile telephones, while Mr Khyam and his plotters also planned to use a remote-controlled device.

More surprises were to come. During the investigation into the July 7th bombings (and into the alleged attempted bombings two weeks later), MI5 soon discovered that the two main instigators of the successful attack, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, had crossed their path before, particularly on the fringes of Operation Crevice. Khan had been spotted on five separate occasions and had even been followed, but was not identified. MI5 picked up some of Khan's conversations with Mr Khyam, and said these dealt mainly with financial scams. But a transcript shows that during one rambling conversation they also talked about doing “operations†from Pakistan. At one point Khan asks Mr Khyam: “Are you really a terrorist, eh?â€Â

After the arrest of the Crevice plotters in March 2004, MI5 drew up a list of 55 suspects who had come into contact with Mr Khyam's group. Fifteen were deemed “essential†targets; Khan and Tanweer were on the lower-priority list of 40 “desirable†suspects who should be followed up when resources permitted.

By July 2004, however, MI5 and the police diverted their manpower into another, even bigger investigation in which one suspect, Dhiren Barot, a Hindu convert to Islam, pleaded guilty last November to planning several possible attacks and received a 40-year prison sentence. Mr Barot had considered a series of attacks, including a radioactive “dirty bomb†and a plot to blow up limousines filled with gas cylinders in London. He had also planned attacks in America. Six others have pleaded guilty to assisting him, while a seventh alleged conspirator is standing trial.

Mr Clarke admitted that at the time of Mr Barot's arrest police did not have any evidence admissible in court. Only at the end of the 14-day detention period then allowed by law did police find the required evidence on Mr Barot's computers.

By the time of the London bombings in July 2005, investigators still did not know (or had not tried hard enough to find out) Khan's name. The first clues came from the wreckage of the London Underground. A SIM card identified a smashed mobile telephone as belonging to one of the men who had been in contact with Mr Khyam (although at the time the owners of pre-paid phones did not have to provide identity details). The picture from a passport found at the site was circulated among surveillance staff, who identified Khan as one of those seen during Operation Crevice. After the London bombings Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani-American computer programmer now in jail in America on terrorism-related charges, identified newspaper pictures of Khan as someone called “Ibrahimâ€Â, who attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan with Mr Khyam (alias “Ausmanâ€Â). But there is some dispute over whether he was shown the right surveillance pictures of Khan in 2004.

Critics of MI5 say it should have been able to join the dots. The House of Commons' Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) concluded last year that the decision not to give Khan greater priority was, given limited resources, “understandableâ€Â. Not everyone is convinced, however, that the committee saw all the material the security agencies had. Rather than agreeing to an independent inquiry, Tony Blair, the prime minister, has asked the ISC to take another look instead.

The Pakistan connection
As MI5 went back through its records, it found it had other information on Khan (but under a slightly different spelling) dating back to 2003, when he was identified as a “facilitator†for extremists in Pakistan. Mr Khyam, too, had originally come to the attention of counter-terrorism officials in 2003 as a suspected “courier†carrying cash and outdoor equipment for Kashmiri militants. Clearly the security agencies had, and still have, great difficulty in identifying who, among the many sympathisers and supporters of jihadi causes abroad, will make the transition to carrying out attacks in Britain. There is no obvious profile of a suicide-bomber, and both Mr Khyam and Khan were comparatively well integrated into British society.

AFP

...and training in PakistanA central factor in radicalising some British Muslims has undoubtedly been Britain's involvement in the war in Iraq, but other factors are at play. Militant preachers, and the proliferation of jihadi websites and internet chat rooms, have helped to create a climate in which many Muslims accept al-Qaeda's simple unifying narrative: Muslims across the world are being attacked, from Algeria to Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya and Kashmir; Muslims everywhere must therefore rise up against their principal oppressor, America, and its fellow Western “crusadersâ€Â.

Security sources say jihadi activity has moved away from mosques to clubs, gyms and private homes, where it is harder to monitor. The internet has proved to be an “ungoverned space†where al-Qaeda and its followers have thrived. On April 23rd, a British court started hearing the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism overseas. They include Younis Tsouli, of Moroccan origin, who is alleged to be a prolific internet propagandist going by the name of “Irhabi 007â€Â, or “Terrorist 007â€Â. He and another suspect are also accused of conspiracy to murder in a case linked to suspects arrested in Bosnia. “Of all the things I have seen over the past few years,†says Mr Clarke, “one of the most worrying has been the speed and apparent ease with which young men can be turned into suicidal terrorists.â€Â

Self-starting terrorism is an ever-present danger. But over several investigations, counter-terrorism officials have usually found direct links leading back to Pakistan, often to al-Qaeda figures. Key British suspects travel back to Pakistan for training and indoctrination. Mr Khyam and Khan are alleged to be linked, through a British middleman, to Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, the alleged number three in al-Qaeda, who was taken to Guantánamo Bay last week.

This is both reassuring and alarming. It indicates that, for the moment, British networks still need outside help. At the same time, it shows that al-Qaeda has regenerated itself despite its eviction from Afghanistan and the killing or arrest of several key figures. Its networks, says Mr Clarke, “are large, fluid, mobile and incredibly resilientâ€Â. Counter-terrorism experts disagree on what is more important: the “push†provided by al-Qaeda leaders seeking to mastermind attacks in the West, or the “pull†of local extremists who adopt al-Qaeda's ideology and modes of action.

Either way, in Britain al-Qaeda has found an easy source of recruits. Sometimes they are amateurish, but even unsophisticated attacks can cause devastation. In any case, security sources say, other networks are learning from the mistakes of their peers, and from the information gleaned in court prosecutions.

The British government has reorganised its counter-terrorism effort. Four joint police and MI5 regional offices are being established to strengthen counter-terrorism work outside London. Meanwhile, the Home Office is losing responsibility for probation and prisons to a separate ministry of justice, freeing it, in theory, to focus on security, terrorism and immigration. Within the department a special office for security and counter-terrorism has been created, while the prime minister will chair monthly meetings of a national security committee.

The struggle for Muslim allegiance
However, the problem goes far beyond the security bureaucracy. The effort to counter radicalisation in Britain has barely begun. The secretary of state for communities and local government, Ruth Kelly, has announced a “hearts and minds†campaign. It includes strengthening moderate imams and preventing mosques from being taken over by extremists.

But extremist thinking is often best confronted on its own terms. In countries such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the authorities send Muslim scholars into prisons to try to convince jihadi detainees that their actions run counter to Islamic jurisprudence. In Britain, though, prisons are still a recruiting ground for jihadi groups.

Those fighting terrorism are acutely aware that much of their work, based on intelligence, is regarded with suspicion. Tensions with many Muslims have been exacerbated by raids, searches and incidents such as the shooting of a man (accidentally, say police) during a raid in the Forest Gate neighbourhood of London in 2006, when police searched in vain for evidence of a chemical bomb.

Counter-terrorism officials feel frustrated that the succession of court cases, such as the conviction of Mr Khyam and his fellow plotters, is failing to build more public trust. Partly this is because it can take two years for cases to come to court, and partly it is because of legal restrictions on public reporting before trials (and increasingly during and even after them, to avoid prejudicing other prosecutions).

Greater public trust is vital to improving the flow of information about extremists. For the moment, says Mr Clarke, most terrorism-related investigations begin with intelligence gathered from foreign governments, intelligence agencies or electronic eavesdropping. In other words, many Muslims are reluctant to report co-religionists to the police, even if they disagree with their militant views. Unless the code of silence is broken, more bombers will inevitably get through.


source: http://www.economist.com/world/displays ... id=9111542

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[Relic]

Islamist-Left Alliance A Growing Force
The MEMRI Report

By STEVEN STALINSKY
May 9, 2007


"Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, people from the revolutionary left and the antiwar movement from around the globe?"

 British Trotskyite John Rees at the Cairo Anti-War Conference, April 2007

Over the past year, multiple international conferences have featured leaders of the anti-global left and Islamist groups working together. Go to any anti-war or anti-globalization demonstration in the West and chances are you will see the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas waved by people wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. And at some of these meetings, members of such radical Islamist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah have enjoyed starring roles.


The roster of Islamist-left alliances quietly grows every day: Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky praises Hamas and denounces America on Hezbollah's Al-Manar television. :o London Mayor Ken Livingstone invites a leading Islamist, Sheikh Yosef Al-Qaradawi, who is known for supporting suicide attacks, to visit his city. Iranian President Ahmadinejad calls for a world without America even as he plays host to a Tehran peace conference attended by American Mennonites, Quakers, Episcopalians, Methodists, and leaders of the National Council of Churches. :o

The key forum at this year's annual Cairo Anti-War Conference was titled "Bridge-building Between the Left and Islam," and focused on practical ways to increase cooperation. The aim of the conference sessions were described in one piece of literature as tackling "the challenges and prospects facing the international anti-war and pro-intifada movements" and planning "strategy and tactics for bridging the gap and uniting Islamist and leftist ranks in the face of U.S. imperialism and Zionism."

The Arabic press has lauded this phenomenon. An article in Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly praises what it refers to as "Arab activists taking the lead in the growing anti-war movement worldwide."



Some Islamist issues on which the anti-global left appears to have found common ground are countering the international boycott of Hamas, calling for the boycott of Israel, supporting Iran against the threat of a U.S. attack (as well as supporting its "right" to develop nuclear weapons), supporting avowedly anti-American countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, and, above all, opposing the war in Iraq.

Many leftist blogs and Web sites monitored by MEMRI have been increasingly open to working with Islamist groups on the goals they both share  most notably the desire for America to leave Iraq. British Trotskyite John Rees, a regular at the Cairo conference since it started in 2002, told Al-Ahram in April that at this year's gathering he had discussed in particular the "ongoing dynamic between the anti-war movement and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood." Mr. Rees also believes that the Islamist-Left coalition is gaining strength, while what is known as the "coalition of the willing" has faltered.

In addition, MEMRI researchers monitoring jihadi Web sites have recently found Islamists trying to influence American anti-war efforts. On the Islamist Al-Mohajroon Web site, someone with the username Al-Wathiq Billah instructs readers on how to infiltrate popular American Internet forums to distribute jihadist films and spread disinformation about the war.

"There is no doubt, my brothers, that raiding American forums is among the most important means of obtaining victory in the fierce media war ... and of influencing the views of the weak-minded American who pays his taxes so they will go to the infidel American army. This American is an idiot and does not know where Iraq is ... Every electronic mujahid" must engage in this raiding, Mr. Billah writes. :o

Mr. Billah advises his jihadist readers to "register yourself using a purely American name" and to "invent stories about American soldiers you have personally known (as classmates... or members in a club who played baseball and tennis with you) who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service by hanging or shooting themselves." The writing should, he says, provoke "frustration and anger towards their government, which will ... render them hostile to Bush ... and his Republican Party, and make them feel they must vote to bring the troops back from Iraq as soon as possible." :o

Such an emerging alliance can only be expected to play a negative role in the ongoing war on terror.

Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.



source: http://www.nysun.com/article/54077

and

http://www.nysun.com/article/54077?page_no=2



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[jgredline]

Why Muslims Hate Us

This page should be titled why fundamentalist Muslims hate us. Most Muslims are not fundamentalists. They do not hate us, they simply view us as hypocrites. They know that the U.S. is the Christian nation. They do not understand why so many Americans fail to show the love of Christ or follow Christian morality, and they do not understand why we who claim the name of Christ seem to do nothing about this.

We must show love to Muslims and to Americans who do not know Christ by sharing our faith with them. The devil would like nothing more than to keep these people - whom Christ died for - in bondage to idolatry and sin.

Fundamentalist Muslims hate non-Muslims because the Koran tells them Allah hates non-Muslims and they should to. The Koran is perverse, but it is logical, and a man of pious reflection can see the hand of God at work when Muslims attack our apostate nation.

Here's the logic of Koran:

1. Unbelievers are those who do not accept Islam, especially Jews and Christians:

To those who have received the Scriptures [Jews & Christians] and to the Gentiles say: 'Will you surrender yourselves to Allah?' If they become Muslims they shall be rightly guided; if they pay no heed, then your only duty is to warn them. God is watching all His servants.

Sura 3:20

2. Because unbelievers do not accept Islam, Allah hates them and does not guide them:

Say: 'Obey Allah and the Apostle.' If they pay no heed, then, surely, God does not love the unbelievers." Sura 3:32

You have a good example in Abraham and those who followed him. They said to their people: 'We disown you and the idols which you worship besides Allah. We renounce you: enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah only.".... Sura 60:4

Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number. Allah does not guide the wrongdoers. Sura 5:51

3. Because Allah does not guide them, unbelievers beome evil-doers, they commit additional sins besides rejecting Islam:

You see many among them vie with one another in sin and wickedness and practise what is unlawful. Evil is what they do.

Why do their rabbis and divines not forbid them to blaspheme or to practise what is unlawful? Evil indeed are their doings.

Sura 5:62-63

4. Muslims will see the sins of unbelievers plainly, both in non-Muslim society and in dealings with non-Muslims:

They listen to falsehoods and practise what is unlawful. If they come to you [Muhammad], give them your judgment or avoid them. If you avoid them, they can in no way harm you; but if you do act as their judge, judge them with fairness. Allah loves those that deal justly.

But how will they come to you for judgment when they already have the Torah which enshrines God's own judgment? Soon after they will turn their backs: they are no true believers.

Sura 5:42-43

5. Therefore, Muslims must fight unbelievers both to limit sin and give unbelievers a chance to go to heaven by becoming Muslims. (Only Muslims can go to heaven, but Muslims are not assured of going to heaven unless they die in Jihad. Muslims who do not fight Jihad will have their good deeds weighed against their bad deeds. Refusing to fight Jihad is a very bad deed.)

Those that make war against Allah and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land. They shall be held up to shame in this world and sternly punished in the hereafter: except those that repent before you reduce them. For you must know that Allah is forgiving and merciful. 5:33-34

Let not the unbelievers think that We (Allah) prolong their days for their own good. We give them respite only so that they may commit more grievous sins. Shameful punishment awaits them. Sura 3:178

Those that fled their homes or were expelled from them, and those that suffered persecution for My sake and fought and were slain: I shall forgive them their sins and admit them to gardens watered by running streams, as a recompense from Allah; Allah dispenses the richest recompense. 3:195

6. Now here's the rub - the Koran does share many of the moral rules of the Bible. Although the Koran says moral rules like don't kill and don't steal only apply between Muslims - Muslims can kill non-Muslims, take the property of non-Muslims as tribute (called Jizya, this was the cause of the Barbary Pirate War in the early 19th century), take their wives, or make non-Muslims slaves - there are enough similarities that the modern, post-Christian West looks as evil to Muslims as Koran tells them it will look.

For example:

7. Koran and the Bible say God forms babies in their mothers' wombs, but the U.S. has legalized abortion.

It is he who shapes your bodies in your mothers' wombs as He pleases. There is no god but Him, the Mighty, the Wise One.

Sura 3:6

8. Koran and the Bible teach that God is the Creator, but the West embraces evolution.

Such is God, your Lord. There is no god but Him, the Creator of all things. Therefore serve Him. Of all things He is the Guardian.

Sura 6:102

9. Koran and the Bible both teach chastity, but we in the West practice free love, and display this to the world in our movies and TV programs.

Let those who cannot afford to marry live in continence until God shall enrich them from His own bounty. As for those of your slaves who wish to buy their liberty, free them if you find in them any promise and bestow on them a part of the riches which God has given you. You shall not force your slave-girls into prostitution in order that you may enrich yourselves, if they wish to preserve their chastity. If anyone compels them, God will be forgiving and merciful to them."

Sura 24:033

10. Koran and the Bible both forbid homosexuality, but we in the West are legitimizing this and many other perversions, and again it shows up in our media.

And Lot, who said to his people: 'Will you persist in these lewd acts which no other nation has committed before you? You lust after men instead of women. Truly, you are a degenerate people.'

Sura 7:80-81

11. Koran is full of contradictions. One of the strangest is Koran says it confirms the Bible, and tells Muslims to read Torah and the Gospels. Koran tells Muslims that Jews and Christians - the People of the Book - don't keep their own scriptures and don't teach them to others.

When God made a covenant with those to whom the Scriptures were given He said: 'Proclaim these to mankind and do not suppress them.' But they cast the Scriptures over their backs and sold them for a paltry price. Evil was their bargain. Sura 3:187

He (Allah) has revealed to you the Book with the Truth (Koran) confirming the scriptures which preceded it; for He has already revealed the Torah and the Gospel for the guidance of mankind, and the distinction between right and wrong. Those that deny God's revelations shall be sternly punished; God is mighty and capable of revenge. Sura 3:3-4

12. Koran and the Bible also condemn gambling, drunkenness, and the occult (horoscopes, witches, etc.) but in the U.S., our own state governments now run numbers, we are legalizing drugs, and there is an explosion of interest in the occult, including pagan religions like wicca.

Believers, wine and games of chance, idols and divining arrows, are abominations devised by Satan. Avoid them, so that you may prosper.

Sura 5:90

13. CS readers know that God's moral rules like don't steal and don't lie are essential to free markets and prosperity. While Islam says Muslims should not lie or steal from each other, corruption is rampant in Muslim countries, because they don't have the Holy Spirit to help them keep the Commandments. The Koran perversely tells Muslims that the riches of Christians and Jews come from our sinfulness while the poverty of Muslims is a test from Allah to see who loves prosperity more than Islam,

You shall be sorely tried in the matter of your possessions and your persons, and will hear much that is hurtful from those who were given the Scriptures before you, and from the pagans. But if you endure with fortitude and guard yourselves against evil, you will surely triumph. Sura 3:186

Do not be deceived by the fortunes of the unbelievers in the land. Their prosperity is grief. Hell shall be their home, an evil resting place. Sura 3:196-197

14. Last, Koran adds a rule that can't be found in the Bible. Where the Bible says that there are neither male nor female in Christ, and that God is no respecter of persons, Koran tells Muslims that men are superior to women. The West's Feminist movement thus looks evil and sinful to Muslims.

Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain the. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they disobey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme. Sura 4:34

Women are your fields: go, then, into your fields whence you please. Sura 2:223

The bottom line is that Muslims hate the West because the Koran tells Muslims that the West rejects Islam, and consequently is evil.

The Koran is confirmed to be true in the minds of Muslims by our own desire to throw out God's rules.


http://www.citizensoldier.org/hateus.html
http://www.citizensoldier.org/hateus.html

 

[jgredline]

Islamic evil for today :o

http://kenlydell.typepad.com/islamic_evil/

 

[Relic]

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Radical Muslim paramilitary compound flourishes in upper New York state
By Paul L. Williams Ph.D., (author of THE DAY OF ISLAM)

With the able assistance of Douglas Hagmann, Bill Krayer and Michael Travis

Friday, May 11, 2007

http://www.canadafreepress.com/images/p ... 0511-2.jpg
Dr. Paul Williams at the entrance of Islamberg


Situated within a dense forest at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the outskirts of Hancock, New York, Islamberg is not an ideal place for a summer vacation unless, of course, you are an exponent of the Jihad or a fan of Osama bin Laden.

The 70 acre complex is surrounded with "No trespassing" signs; the rocky terrain is infested with rattlesnakes; and the woods are home to black bears, coyotes, wolves, and a few bobcats.

Muslim Lane
The entrance to the community is at the bottom of a very steep hill that is difficult to navigate even on a bright sunny day in May. The road, dubbed Muslim Lane, is unpaved and marred by deep crevices that have been created by torrential downpours. On a wintry day, few, save those with all terrain vehicles, could venture forth from the remote encampment.

A sentry post has been established at the base of the hill.

The sentry, at the time of this visit, is an African American dressed in Islamic garb - - a skull cap, a prayer shawl, and a loose fitting shalwat kameez. He instructs us to turn around and leave. "Our community is not open to visitors," he says.

Behind the sentry and across a small stream stand dozens of inhabitants of the compound - - the men wearing skull caps and loose fitting tunics, the women in full burqa. They appear ready to deal with any unauthorized intruders.

The hillside is blighted by rusty trailers that appear to be without power or running water and a number of outhouses. The scent of raw sewage is in the air.

The place is even off limits to the local undertaker who says that he has delivered bodies to the complex but has never been granted entrance. "They come and take the bodies from my hearse. They won't allow me to get past the sentry post. They say that they want to prepare the bodies for burial. But I never get the bodies back. I don't know what's going on there but I don't think it's legal."

On the other side of the hill where few dare to go is a tiny village replete with a make-shift learning center (dubbed the "International Quranic Open University"); a trailer converted into a Laundromat; a small, green community center; a small and rather squalid grocery store; a newly constructed majid; over forty clapboard homes; and scores of additional trailers.

It is home to hundreds - - all in Islamic attire, and all African-Americans. Most drive late model SUVs with license plates from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The locals say that some work as tollbooth operators for the New York State Thruway, while others are employed at a credit card processing center that maintains confidential financial records.

While buzzing with activity during the week, the place becomes a virtual hive on weekends. The guest includes arrivals from the inner cities of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and, occasionally, white-robed dignitaries in Ray-Bans from the Middle East.

Venturing into the complex last summer, Douglas Hagmann, an intrepid investigator and director of the Northeast Intelligence Service, came upon a military training area at the eastern perimeter of the property. The area was equipped with ropes hanging from tall trees, wooden fences for scaling, a make-shift obstacle course, and a firing range. Hagmann said that the range appeared to have been in regular use.

Islamberg is not as benign as a Buddhist monastery or a Carmelite convent. Nearly every weekend, neighbors hear sounds of gunfire. Some, including a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, have heard the bang of small explosives. None of the neighbors wished to be identified for fear of "retaliation." "We don't even dare to slow down when we drive by," one resident said. "They own the mountain and they know it and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can't even do that. Who wants to buy a property near that?"

Islamberg's Grocery Store

Islamberg's Grocery Store

The complex serves to scare the bejeesus out of the local residents. "If you go there, you better wear body armor," a customer at the Circle E Diner in Hancock said. "They have armed guards and if they shoot you, nobody will find your body."

At Cousins, a watering hole in nearby Deposit, a barfly, who didn't wish to be identified, said: "The place is dangerous. You can hear gunfire up there. I can't understand why the FBI won't shut it down."

Islamberg is a branch of Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who refers to himself as "the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr," Gilani, has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra or "community of the impoverished," an organization that seeks to "purify" Islam through violence.

Though primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has operational headquarters in New York and openly recruits through various social service organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in hamaats or compounds, such as Islamberg, where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority. Additional hamaats have been established in Hyattsville, Maryland; Red House, Virginia; Falls Church, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; York, South Carolina; Dover, Tennessee; Buena Vista, Colorado; Talihina, Oklahoma; Tulane Country, California; Commerce, California; and Onalaska, Washington.
Others are being built, including an expansive facility in Sherman, Pennsylvania.

Before becoming a citizen of Islamberg or any of the other Fuqra compounds, the recruits - - primarily inner city black men who became converts in prison - - are compelled to sign an oath that reads: "I shall always hear and obey, and whenever given the command, I shall readily fight for Allah's sake."

In the past, thousands of members of the U.S. branches of Jamaat ul-Fuqra traveled to Pakistan for paramilitary training, but encampments, such as Islamberg, are now capable of providing book-camp training so raw recruits are no longer required to travel abroad amidst the increased scrutiny of post 9/11.

Over the years, numerous members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra have been convicted in US courts of such crimes as conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers' compensation fraud. Others remain leading suspects in criminal cases throughout the country, including ten unsolved assassinations and seventeen fire-bombings between 1979 and 1990.

The criminal charges against the group and the criminal convictions are not things of the past. In 2001, a resident of a California compound was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff's deputy; another was charged with gun-smuggling' and twenty-four members of the Red House community were convicted of firearms violations.

By 2004 federal investigators uncovered evidence that linked both the DC "sniper killer" John Allen Muhammed and "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid to the group and reports surfaced that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded in the process of attempting to obtain an interview with Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan.

Even though Jamaat ul-Fuqra has been involved in terror attacks and sundry criminal activities, recruited thousands of members from federal and state penal systems, and appears to be operating paramilitary facilities for militant Muslims, it remains to be placed on the official US Terror Watch List. On the contrary, it continues to operate, flourish, and expand as a legitimate nonprofit, tax-deductible charity. :o
:o :o


(Paul Williams is the author of THE AL QAEDA CONNECTION and forthcoming THE DAY OF ISLAM. Lee Boyland is the author of THE RINGS OF ALLAH).

source: http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/pau ... 051107.htm



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[Relic]

Al Qaedism, Again - Another straw on the back of the...

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May 11, 2007, 6:00 a.m.

Al Qaedism, Again
Another straw on the back of the proverbial American camel.

By Victor Davis Hanson


Why would Albanian-speaking Muslim refugees from the Balkans try to murder American soldiers? After all, the United States  not bin Laden’s rag-tag jihadists  saved Bosnia and Kosovo? And we did that by bombing the capital of a Christian European nation.

But then, why did a mixed-up Albanian Muslim in Salt Lake City, one Sulejman Talovic, go on a shopping-mall shooting spree? Five innocents were killed in the attack before the murderer himself was shot and killed.

And why, after pouring billions of dollars into Afghanistan, did poor, mixed-up Omeed Aziz Popal, an Afghan Muslim, try to run over several innocents in San Francisco near a Jewish center in September 2006?

Or, for that matter, why did an angry Muslim Pakistani gun down Jews in Seattle?

Or, again, why earlier last year, did a 22-year-old Iranian-American Muslim drive his sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone at the University of North Carolina?

The Phenomenon of al Qaedism
About a year after 9/11, I made use of a word “al Qaedism†in a National Review Online essay to describe such seemingly isolated terrorists, both amateurs and the more organized, both the deranged and the more focused. At that time we were all discussing the careers of those like John Williams, John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla, or Richard Reid (or rather John Mohammed, Abdul Hamid, Abdullah al-Muhajir, or Abdel Rahim).

Yet, both then and now, we waste our time wondering whether such terrorists are al Qaeda-controlled or not. The question is academic. It matters little whether they were explicitly ordered to kill by central terrorist command (they probably were not) or were inspired by CDs, the Internet, or the local mullah.

The point is simply that, for purposes of harming America, lone-wolf jihadists need only to feel the same rage and perceived grievances  al Andalus, Israel, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir, etc.  as their pin-up heroes like bin Laden or Zawahiri.

But, again, why do these residents in our midst, who have voluntarily come to America, and some of whom have had America itself spend billions abroad on their brethren, wish to kill us?

Such questions are nonsensical. The aggrieved Islamist, whether born here or abroad, lives in a world of emotion, never reason, in which pride, envy, and a sense of inferiority always trump logic.

When, as an individual or collectively, he constructs someone or something culpable for his own  or his people’s  sense of failure, then a primordial urge to lash out follows. His mind returns to the seventh-century never-never land of scimitars and sharia law mixed in with rote chanting of “Allah Akbar!†while his body and material appetites are stranded in our cosmos of Baywatch reruns and professors on the BBC and CNN whining on about the dangers of Islamaphobia. What, then, are the catalysts for the al Qaedist that turn him from hothouse anti-Americanism to deadly violence?

The Creation of an Al Qaedist
The first is the goad of radical Islamic indoctrination through globalized communications. A nut in New Jersey can feel as close to a Wahhabi megaphone in Jeddah as a Bedouin just a desert away. Fiery sermons of hate-filled imams on the West Bank (now they employ Mickey Mouse as a prop), or videos of Americans losing limbs in Iraq, or sit-coms from Iran depicting Satanic Americans and Jews, are as cheaply disseminated as they are cheaply produced.

To the degree that capital for such Goebbels-like hatred is required  opening radical mosques, printing propaganda, funding madrassas  we should remember that, with recent oil-price spikes, there are annually another $500 billion floating around the Middle East from Shiite Iran to the Sunni Gulf monarchies.

Second is the nature of the assumed grievance that goes unexamined and unchallenged by Westerners. Instead, we seek with the logic and reason of the 21st century to sort out why they hate us  a phenomenon well known to crybaby Islamists who can produce new complaints as fast as the old ones are shot down.

So sympathetic Western observers must damn Israel for not giving up all of the West Bank (never asking why Cyprus, the Kuriles, or Tibet have not fostered suicide bombers).

Or is it our presence in Iraq (as if it predated 9/11)? Or is it that we have demonized poor Muslims (as if we have not saved the starving, enslaved, and targeted in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Somalia, or subsidized the failed in Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine; or as if the Chechen-killing Russians or Muslim-burning Hindus are as targeted as we are).

Always we forget that the jihadist mind is of the 7th century, nursed on illusions of ancient grandeur lost to purported Zionism, capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. And why not such writs when they are far easier to manufacture than the necessary introspective self-criticism that might  in search of answers for the miasma that is now the Middle East  focus on warped schools, massive illiteracy, statism, authoritarianism, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, or polygamy?

It is not easy, after all, for a region to turn twenty million $65-barrels of oil sold each day  found, developed, and handed over by someone else  into a recipe for utter catastrophe.

Worse still, not only does the jihadist place the blame on those who are more successful, he learns much of his strategy of victimization from our own postmodern Western Left. We saw that clearly enough in the videos of the clownish Zawahiri and bin Laden that cite by title and author leftwing attacks on the United States by kooky Chomskyites. Nothing is more absurd than a bearded, robed imam dryly reciting from his mud-brick hideout why America needs to implode  due to our sins of global warming, environmental desecration, and our lack of campaign-finance reform.

The third impetus for the idiosyncratic jiahdist is the lack of any consequences. Or rather, he shares a general perception  never mind whether it is a misconception  that the European and American criminal-justice systems will not promptly find, arrest, indict, try, convict, and sentence wannabe jihadists. Our popular culture instead emphasizes more the injustice of Guantanamo Bay, our shame over the sexual grotesqueries of Abu Ghraib, and the worry over the excesses of the Patriot Act than the need to show no mercy to the radical Islamist on our shores.

Indeed, the jihadist believes the West in general cares little about its own sense of citizenship. He knows that we ask of the legal immigrant little familiarity with our language, history, or culture, and even less of the illegal immigrant.

With 12 million here illegally from Mexico, why would any visitor think we could or should enforce the law? A jihadist must think it an ideal spot a country where it was deemed more illiberal to turn in an illegal alien than to be one.

A Three-Tiered War
There are many theaters in this global war. The nation-states of Afghanistan and Iraq are now foci. Eventually hearts and minds inside Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia must be persuaded  by varying means  that it makes no moral, and still less practical, sense to subsidize the hatred and killing of Americans. All that is an impossible task unless we can stabilize Iraq and restore the sense of American prowess and unpredictability.

At the second tier, organized terrorist cells, whether al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, or the various other appendages, have to be cut off from their sanctuaries and cash through counterinsurgency, better intelligence, and constant pressure on their state sponsors. The sooner we get over the fact that a Hamas or Hezbollah differs from al Qaeda only in method and capability, but not in venom or desire, the better off we will be.

But there is also a third war that we saw at Fort Dix, at this more insidious al Qaedistic level. Thousands of seething Muslims in Europe and America  fill in the blanks for the reasons for their anger  must come to learn that shooting up a mall, or driving an SUV into students, or killing soldiers, is going to ensure long incarceration for the guilty.

More importantly, such serial provocations are also creating a larger culture of anger and, with it, zero tolerance for any activity deemed a precursor to Muslim extremism  whether flying imams flaunting airline protocols or demands for special dispensations deemed at odds with traditional American custom and practice.

A Tested Patience
So, in the end, what are we to make of Fort Dix  yet another post-9/11 straw on an increasingly tired camel’s back?

We know that CAIR will neither seriously admonish Muslims charged with terrorist crimes nor introspectively examine the larger Islamic culture that seems to so incite the jihadist.

Such organizations will not do so as long as they can far more easily play on the self-doubt and guilt of the affluent and leisured citizen, who is supposed to believe that the dangers of radical Islam, both at the state and individual level, are mostly fictions inspired by our own prejudices. :-? The sermonizing here in the United States by an Ayatollah Khatami, readily received by complaint listeners, and the satellite-beamed sophistry of Tariq Ramadan prove that well enough.

Most Americans will not remember Fort Dix in a week  just as they have forgotten Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Lodi, Portland, and all the rest; just as they want out of Fallujah now and probably Kandahar tomorrow.

Yet, at some point, the jihadists will go too far. Many of us, erroneously as it turned out, thought that, after twenty years of serial provocations, radical Islam had done precisely that on 9/11.

Apparently not. But such forbearance, even at this late hour in the post-West, is still not limitless.

The more a Palestinian imam promises us our death, the more the Iranian president promises a world without America, the more these al Qaedists, like the most recent keystone clowns at Fort Dix, do their small part in trying to reify such mad rhetoric, and the more the sophisticated apologists assure us that we, not they, are the real threat, the more likely the sofa-sitting, channel-surfing American will some day very soon blow up, rather than be blown up. :o :o :o
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

source:national review


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[Relic]

Palestinian interior minister quits after fighting
Hamas-Fatah fighting claims six lives, threatens coalition government

Updated: 7:59 a.m. ET May 14, 2007

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The Palestinian interior minister stepped down Monday after six people were killed in an outbreak of factional fighting that has threatened the survival of the new Palestinian coalition government.

The departure of Interior Minister Hani Kawasmeh was a major setback for the government, which was formed in March by the pragmatic Fatah party and the Islamic militant group Hamas to end months of factional violence.

The two sides had selected Kawasmeh as a compromise candidate for the sensitive interior ministry post, and his resignation highlighted the deep rifts that remain on security matters.

Kawasmeh threatened to resign two weeks ago to protest the violence and lawlessness plaguing Gaza. After earlier rejecting the resignation, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas accepted it on Monday.

“Ismael Haniyeh has accepted the resignation of the minister of the interior and this issue will be discussed today in the Cabinet meeting,†government spokesman Mustafa Barghouti said. Officials said Haniyeh would take control of the Interior Ministry until a replacement for Kawasmeh is found.

Two Fatah fighters slain in new clashes
In the latest fighting, Hamas and Fatah gunmen traded fire Monday, killing two Fatah fighters and wounding at least 10 people despite an Egyptian-brokered agreement to end the violence.

At midday, Hamas gunmen exchanged fire with security men at the headquarters of the pro-Fatah National Security force in Gaza City. Masked National Security men had taken up positions around the building shortly before the gunfire erupted.

Monday’s fighting came despite an Egyptian-mediated deal the previous night in which Hamas and Fatah agreed to withdraw forces and exchange captives.

In all, six people have been killed and 52 wounded since fighting broke out on Sunday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. It is the most serious factional violence since the unity government was formed.

The unity deal, sealed in Saudi Arabia, was meant to bring an end to months of violence in Gaza. While fighting between Hamas and Fatah had largely slowed, the area remains plagued by deadly family feuds, crime gangs, kidnappings, carjackings and attacks on foreigners and Internet cafes.

Kawasmeh recently proposed a security plan to restore law and order in Gaza. But the plan  which called for reforms and coordination among the numerous Palestinian security forces  never got off the ground.

Center of the dispute
Control of the interior ministry has been at the heart of the dispute between Fatah and Hamas. The minister oversees several security forces.


Mohammed Salem / Reuters
Palestinian Interior Minister Hani Kawasmeh addresses a news conference in Gaza on Monday after declaring his resignation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

President Mahmoud Abbas controls the other security forces, and his long-ruling Fatah party has been reluctant to yield any power  despite losing to Hamas in January 2006 parliamentary elections.

The new round of violence followed last week’s deployment of 3,000 police in Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas, over Hamas objections.

Amid the chaos inside Gaza, Palestinian militants also have continued to fire homemade rockets into southern Israel almost daily, openly violating a November truce agreement.

On Sunday, Israel’s Security Cabinet decided to hold off on a major military operation in Gaza. The decision came after talks over how to respond to the intensifying rocket fire and the army’s warnings that Hamas is stockpiling weapons smuggled into the strip.

Instead, the army was given permission to step up targeted attacks against those firing the rockets, said Defense Minister Amir Peretz. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.

“The decision to go into Gaza, to occupy Gaza is one that can be taken at any time but we have to understand its significance,†Peretz told Israel Radio.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
source: msnbc



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[Relic]

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May 16, 1:47 PM EDT


Israeli Aircraft Fires on Hamas Targets

By SARAH EL DEEB
Associated Press Writers


GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israeli aircraft launched missiles at Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least five people, after Hamas fired rocket barrages into Israel in an apparent attempt to draw Israel into increasingly violent Palestinian infighting.

Hamas gunmen fatally shot six guards from the rival Fatah movement and mistakenly ambushed a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five. In all, 16 Palestinians were killed in Palestinian infighting Wednesday - the bloodiest day since violence broke out in the Gaza Strip four days ago.

The streets of central Gaza City echoed with gunfire and were empty except for gunmen in black ski masks. Terrified residents stayed home from school and work, huddling in dark homes after electricity to some neighborhoods was cut off by a downed power line.

At nightfall, Hamas announced its intention to begin observing a unilateral cease-fire, and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah also called on the warring parties to hold their fire. However, similar truces the two previous evenings did not hold.

In four days of fighting, 41 people have been killed and dozens more have been injured - not including the dead from the Israeli airstrikes. Most of the dead have been from Fatah. The violence threatened to bring down the Palestinians' two-month-old unity government - and brought the Palestinians dangerously close to all-out civil war.

Despite Israel's vow to stay out of the fray, its missile strikes added another layer of complexity to Gaza's mayhem, and raised the specter of a large-scale Israeli invasion.

"What is happening in Gaza endangers not only the unity government, but the Palestinian social fabric, the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian strategy as a whole," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Abbas was expected to meet with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in Gaza on Thursday to discuss the situation, Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said. One option was declaring a state of emergency, he said. Abbas also spoke by phone with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Syria on Wednesday, and the two agreed to work to end the violence.

Hamas officials said the organization's men launched eight rockets at Israel, following a barrage of around 20 rockets Tuesday. That salvo at the Israeli town of Sderot, just outside Gaza, wounded five Israelis, one seriously, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

There were no casualties Wednesday, but school was canceled in Sderot and residents huddled in bomb shelters.

Hamas said its rockets were retaliation for Israeli violence, but more likely it was an attempt to draw Israel into the fighting as a way of uniting the Palestinians against a common foe.

Before that attack, Israel launched an airstrike at the Hamas military building in the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian officials and the army said. Medics said four Hamas gunmen were killed and 30 others were wounded. In a rare display of unity, Hamas and Fatah men worked together to evacuate the casualties.

Later in the day, an Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying a group of Hamas militants in the northern Gaza Strip, killing one person and wounding two others, Palestinian medical officials said. The attack came shortly after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel "cannot continue to restrain itself" in the face of repeated rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

The army said the airstrike was aimed at a Palestinian squad that had just fired rockets into Israel, and did not strike a vehicle.

Earlier in the day, Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said Israel would not be "dragged into the Gaza Strip the way that Hamas wants. We will choose the time, the place to respond and we will protect our citizens."

In the latest infighting, police from the Fatah-allied Preventive Security force arrested five Hamas men and were driving them through Gaza City when the vehicle was ambushed by Hamas fighters, Preventive Security officials said. The five Hamas men were killed, along with two Fatah men, they said.

Hamas radio reported that a Hamas man was killed in a separate clash, and a nurse in an ambulance was shot in the head after being caught in the crossfire, hospital officials said. Her family said she was brain-dead and on a respirator.

In another incident, Hamas gunmen set fire to an 11-story apartment building housing Fatah lawmaker Nema Sheik Ali, the wife of the head of Preventive Security. Witnesses said the gunmen broke into her apartment and struck her and two of her children with their weapons. One of the children is 14 years old; the age of the other wasn't immediately known.

"They came, they broke the door," she said. "They assaulted my children and they pushed me aside, then they torched the apartment."

Shadi al-Kashir, a building resident, said his father, wife, five children and two sisters had been trapped inside by smoke in the halls and gunbattles raging in the entranceway. "They tried to send ambulances, but the ambulances came under fire," he said. They later managed to escape.

A group of about 200 Palestinians marched in central Gaza City, waving Palestinian flags and demanding an end to the fighting. Dozens of masked gunmen used the cover of the demonstration to improve their positions on the street, and then opened fire on the demonstrators, wounding one in the leg. The rest fled.

Earlier Wednesday, Hamas gunmen fired mortars and pipe bombs at the home of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak before storming it and killing six bodyguards, Palestinians security and medical officials said. Abu Shbak and his family were not home at the time.

Abdel Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, angrily accused Hamas' leadership of the attack, charging that the Islamist group "wanted to turn Gaza into a new Somalia or Darfur."

Fighting also raged close to President Mahmoud Abbas' heavily guarded compound, which was also targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight, and the bodies of two Fatah gunmen were sprawled on the street nearby. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, was not present.

Gaza's turmoil further weakened hopes for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, despite a new push by the Arab world to bring the sides to the table. The offer proposes Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from all lands it occupied in the 1967 Mideast War. But negotiations are inconceivable if the Palestinians descend into civil war.

This week's fighting was the worst since Hamas and Fatah agreed in February to share power.

At its core is the unresolved power struggle between Hamas, which won parliament elections last year, and Fatah, which dominated Palestinian politics for four decades. After a year in power and squeezed by an international aid boycott, Hamas realized it could not govern alone and brought Fatah into the government. But the two sides never worked out all their differences, particularly over who would control security forces.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
source: Associated Press



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[Solo]

PAKISTAN

Muslim Radicals Introduce Anti-Christian Law; Christians Receive Threatening Letters – VOM Sources

• The Voice of the Martyrs sources in Pakistan report that Muslim radicals have introduced a law in Parliament that any Muslim who converts to Christianity should be killed. Although the details are sketchy, intercede for this situation and ask God to move so this law does not go into effect. Pray God encourages Christians in Pakistan to be a witness for Him in spite of persecution.
  [/*:m:2406a]
• CHARSADDA – On May 7, 2007, Christians in the Charsadda District received letters warning them to shut their churches and convert to Islam. The letter that set a 10-day deadline said, "All Christians should convert to Islam within 10 days or leave Charsadda. We will execute all of you if you don't convert to Islam." Copies of the handwritten letter were delivered to two churches and several Christian homes in Charsadda. Even though the police have been alerted, Christians in the area are concerned for their safety. A similar letter was delivered to believers in Mardan district. Pray God gives Christians in Charsadda courage to stand for Him. Ask for protection and peace to surround them during these uncertain times.
  Deuteronomy 31:6[/*:m:2406a]

Information received in email from Voice of the Martyrs at http://www.persecution.com/

 

[Relic]

Sunni Vs. Shiite? - Hate Spilling Over in Michigan

MICHIGAN


Sunni Vs. Shiite? - Hate Spilling Over in Michigan


=============================================

Thursday, May 17, 2007


Dearborn Islamic center hit by vandals -- again
Gregg Krupa and Joe Menard / The Detroit News


DEARBORN -- The words "Center of the party of satan" were painted in Arabic on the front wall and back door of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center on Warren on Wednesday in the fourth episode of vandalism in the mosque where mostly Shi'a Muslims from Iraq worship.

"I don't know what happened, my friend, but whoever is doing this has to be stopped," said the leader of the mosque, Imam Husham al-Husainy.

The vandalism, in dripping red paint, was discovered at about noon and reported to police, according to Husainy and Dawud Walid, executive director of the local chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

"The mosque has been vandalized so many times, they've basically given up on law enforcement, given up on telling anyone," Walid said.

Dearborn police declined comment. Two Dearborn squad cars were parked outside the center Wednesday night as officers took a police report.

Worshipers gathered Wednesday night after the incident, worried that the violence could escalate.

"Now we worry about our imam," said Ali Edriss of Dearborn, a member of the center. "We worry someone might hit him or kill him. Maybe next time they'll shoot someone. It's scary."

The incident is one of a series of recent vandalism at local mosques. Some businesses owned by Shi'a Muslims along Warren have been vandalized, and the owners say they believe they were targeted by Sunni Muslims after the Shi'a Iraqis celebrated the execution of Saddam Hussein.

The community of Shi'a Iraqis in the area of Greenfield and Warren, surrounding the mosque, are immigrants who arrived after the Gulf War, when they challenged Saddam's regime only to face persecution. They have parted with many other members of the local Arab community in their ardent support for the overthrow of Saddam's regime in the invasion led by the United States.

Local Muslim leaders last week signed a code of conduct pledging to work and live in harmony. Rarely have differences between Sunni and Shi'a caused tensions locally, and it is unclear whether any the incidents is related to the differences between the two Islamic sects that dates to the 7th century and a disagreement over who would succeed the Prophet Muhammad.

Husainy recalled Wednesday that three of the previous incidents of vandalism coincided with his community's celebration of Saddam's conviction, his sentencing and the first day of Ashura, a religious holiday of special significance to Shi'a Muslims.

"Today? I don't know," Husainy said. "It was a particularly violent day in the Middle East."

The center will install security cameras outside, paid for in part by other mosques whose imams called Wednesday to offer support, Husainy said.

Police in Dearborn and Detroit, where some of the Shi'a-owned businesses are located, have yet to make any arrests in connection with the vandalism.

The specific term "party of satan" seems to have little significance, according to the two Muslim leaders, except that it echoes a phrase in the Koran, "party of God," which is intended to identify the people of God.

"Party of satan, whoever wrote it wanted to oppose or condemn these Muslim worshipers," Husainy said.


source: Detroit News



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[Relic]

St. Louis




Eight Muslim men in St. Louis charged with buying automatic weapons and explosives


"We're going to war" --Thaer Abde SUMAD, defendant

By Douglas J. Hagmann, Director

3 May 2007: In the HQ INTEL-ALERT Private Intelligence Report issued on February 4, 2007, we reported extensively about Muslim men inside the U.S., adhering to the Islamist ideology of jihad, preparing for war on the streets of America. The “insider†reports are very troubling and are purposely being downplayed by official sources and go largely unreported in the media. One case, however, can serve as an example of what is taking place all across the U.S. involving the procurement and disbursement of weapons to Muslim "jihadists." On Tuesday, May 2, 2007, a federal indictment was unsealed in the U.S. federal court in St. Louis naming eight Islamic men as defendants in a case involving the buying, selling or hiding of automatic weapons, an anti-personnel mine and other explosives.

Defendant Thaer Abde SUMAD, 23"We're going to war"

The case originated with the arrest of Mousa M. ABUELAWI, 22, of Creve Coeur, MO on December 29, 2006. He was charged with three counts of illegal possession or distribution of a machine gun and conspiracy to violate machine gun statutes. A superseding indictment unsealed yesterday, charges ABUELAWI and seven others with machine gun charges and charges of conspiracy, lying to the FBI and other firearms violations. The other seven defendants identified in the indictment are identified as: Thaer Abde SUMAD, 23, of Florissant, MO, Abdikarin WARSAME, 28, Charley M. HUNT Jr., 45, Darnell T. THORNTON, 25, and Hussein Ali NURE, 29, all from Jennings, MO, Mohamed JUDEH, 20, of Maryland Heights and Otha L. BAKER, 20, of St. Louis. If found guilty of the charges, the men face 5-10 years in prison.

As we reported last February, the more important aspect of this matter involves the stockpiling of weapons, including significant explosives, by core groups of Islamic terror cells inside the U.S. According to our investigation, these types of incidents are on the rise, but are being downplayed by federal officials and the media. A law enforcement source interviewed for our newsletter report stated: "Public information officers or spokesmen for law enforcement agencies are purposely downplaying and in some cases, lying outright to the public about arrests of Muslims in the U.S.," stated one federal law enforcement official during our discussion last week. "We have been told what to say and just as important, what not to say, and warned not to deviate from that ‘template.'"

"We are discovering more and more trafficking in arms and even explosives, the stuff you see in the Middle East. These are the kind of things I saw after my stint in Desert Storm, when I was coming back and would see actual open-air markets where you could buy just about anything."

This source agreed that the men involved in what has become known as the "paintball jihad" case are good examples of activities by Muslim men in the U.S. that is on the rise. In addition to buying weapons and whatever else they can get their hands on, they are practicing urban combat. Since it has become more difficult for them to leave the country or train with actual weapons, they will get together and train using paintball guns. They will engage in paramilitary-style training right under our noses, and lie about it to our faces. They are protected, in some cases, by the religious Imams, some who even encourage or schedule such outings.

"We’re talking about professional Muslim men, mosque leaders, leaders within our communities who are actually helping young men train for the eventuality of urban combat. They know what they are doing, yet they lie right to our faces about these activities… and we’re told by our supervisors that we have to accept what they tell us at face value when they know damn well they are lying." This federal official also added that they have to be cautious about what they write (in terms of reports, investigative files), and are told to write them as if they would be given to the local mosque. "In some cases, I think they are [showing Muslim leaders sensitive files]."

In the case of ABUELAWI and the other seven defendants, the men met at gas stations located in north St. Louis between August 2006 and January 2007 to buy or transfer automatic weapons and explosives. In the original documents charging Abuelawi, Sumad is quoted in a meeting with ABUELAWI and a government informer as saying that "he wants to buy as many explosives as possible because, 'we're going to war.'"


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