Tag: Terrorism

Terrorist hysteria in Indiana

Al Qaeda hates freedom, but it especially hates freedom in the Midwest. At least that what the US database of potential terrorist targets suggests:

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

. . .

In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor,” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.”

Even people connected to some of those businesses or events are baffled at their inclusion as possible terrorist targets.

“Seems like someone has gone overboard,” said Larry Buss, who helps organize the Apple and Pork Festival in Clinton, Ill. “Their time could be spent better doing other things, like providing security for the country.”

Maybe soon they’re going to start having metal detectors all over the place that beep constantly without any of the guards caring, just like in Egypt.

Algeria’s secret torture chambers

A new report by Amnesty International on Algeria’s secret torture chambers is out. The full 44-page report could be found here.
Algerian security services have inherited the French school of torture and counterinsurgency that was ironically developed by Frech colonialists against Algerians themeselves… and sure the jackboots gained more expertise in their dirty war against Islamist militants during the 1990s civil war.
Currently Algeria is one of America’s and Europe’s allies in the “war on terror” together with Bin 3ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt. The CIA-chartered Ghost Flights reportedly landed in Algerian airports. Several Europe-based militant suspects were also sent back to Algeria, where Bu Tafliqa’s secret services’ custody, other EU members are still trying hard.
Related Article:
Algeria admits killing 17,000 Islamists

Finally!!!! Gitmo detainees to get Geneva Conventions protection

The US has admitted that all detainees held by the military, including those at Guantanamo, should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

Aywa! Finally! This is great news! Really great!… Let’s hope the Gulag would be shut down soon, and the illegal renditions to end…
Check this funny animation I found on zazou’s blog.

Related Links and Resources:
Rights groups hail Guantanamo ruling

HRW on Counterterrorism

AI fears abusive govt powers in new “anti-terror law”

Amnesty International issued a statement Friday expressing concerns over the govt’s new “anti-terror law” currently in the making.
One of Mubarak’s promises during his “electoral campaignâ€� last year was the abolishing of the notorious Emergency Law, with which he ruled Egypt since 1981, and replace it with an “anti-terror law.â€� The Emergency law is regarded as the Grim Reaper in the nation’s political scene. It gives the government abusive powers to lock any suspect for 6 months, break demonstrations, and stiffle political life. Though the government claims it’s only used against “terrorists and drug dealers,” it’s clear who is the law used against: Sharqawi, Sha3er, 3alaa, Ibrahim, Kamal, Wael, and hundreds of other activists from the movement for change, as well as thousands of detainees who are languishing in prisons since 1981, and millions of Egyptians in their daily life encounters with the Egyptian police.
Of course, as we know, our president’s promise went with the wind (together with few others) as the NDP-controlled parliament voted last April to extend the law for another two years, fearing a “legal vacuum if the emergency law is abolished nowâ€� as Mubarak put it.
Now that the regime’s legal experts are well cooking the new anti-terror law, Amnesty International echoed the fears expressed by Egyptian rights activists and opposition group in a statement and memorandum sent to Mubarak.

New tale of rendition

The New York Times published today a touching story on the rendition of an Algerian suspect from Tanzania to Afghanistan. The man was held for 16 months in the US-run gulag, before he was freed and flown back to Algiers without being tried or charged.

Algerian Tells of Dark Odyssey in U.S. Hands
By CRAIG S. SMITH and SOUAD MEKHENNET
ALGIERS — Two years ago, a motley collection of prisoners spent night after night repeating their telephone numbers to one another from within the dark and dirty cells where they were being held in Afghanistan. Anyone who got out, they said they agreed, would use the numbers to contact the families of the others to let them know that they were still alive. Continue reading New tale of rendition

Zarqawi’s successor imprisoned in Egypt?!

The debate around the identity of Zarqawi’s successor is getting really “Kafkaesque” as Arabist reader SP wrote me in an email exchange.
Now Islamist lawyer, and former Egyptian Islamic Jihad activist, Mamdouh Ismail is saying Abu Ayub al-Masri, Zarqawi’s alleged successor, actually is and has been in an Egyptian prison for the past seven years.
This comes after Islamist lawyer Montasser al-Zayat suggested he was another man by the name Youssef al-Dardeeri, while London-based Egyptian Islamist exile, Yasser al-Sirri, claimed the man did not even exist.

CIA disbands bin Laden hunt team

The CIA has decided to disband the Osama Bin Laden Unit, that was set up back in 1996 to hunt the Saudi-born militant. The unit’s agents will be distributed to different departments working on militant Islamist groups. One US intelligence official quoted in this report said:

“Al-Qaeda is no longer the hierarchical organisation that it was before 9/11. Three-quarters of its senior leaders have been killed or captured,” the official said.
“What you have had since 9/11 is growth in the Islamic jihadist movement around the world among groups and individuals who may be associated with al-Qaeda, and may have financial and operation links with al-Qaeda, but have no command and control relationship with it,” he added.

With the start of the “war on terror” Bush officials and self-described counterterrorism experts tried to picture Al-Qa3da as an professional army, with bin Laden as its commander in chief. The discourse of the US intelligence community was to change later, to allow room for recognizing that the Al-Qa3da was more of a network, or more accurately an “idea,” than it being an organization. Dissolving bin Laden’s office marks the official end of this stupid view.
A good book I recommend on Al-Qa3da is Jason Burke’s “Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror.”
Here’s also another article on the decentralization of Al-Qa3da: Crusaders and Allah’s Soldiers

Most foreign Jihadis in Iraq are Egyptians, US military says

A journalist friend of mine sent me an AFP report, including allegations by the US military that most foreign jihadis in Iraq come from Egypt.
I’ve been a bit interested in that issue since early 2003. In interviews prior and during the war, experts in Cairo were warning then of the prospects of Iraq breeding a new generation of Islamist militants, or “Iraqi Arabs� (a la Afghan Arabs).
President Mubarak himself expressed his concern over the war in 2003 saying it would produce “100 Bin Ladens.”
(Mubarak expressed privately more urging concerns. In the rather long and extremely boring memoirs of General Tommy Franks, the former head of US army CENTCOM recalls his visit to Cairo on January 23, 2003:

Hosni Mubarak was as friendly as always. But he was clearly concerned with our military buildup and the tension in Iraq.
He leaned close and spoke to me in an accented but readily comprehensible English. “General Franks,� he said, choosing his words carefully, as (Jordanian King) Abdullah had done. “You must be very, very careful. We have spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is a madman. He has WMD—biologicals, actually—and he will use them on your troops.�
An hour later, in the Embassy communications room, I passed this message to Don Rumsfeld.

This is mentioned in Tommy’s–again, rather long and extremely boring–memoirs, American Soldier, on pages 418-9)
Since the start of the war, the US has inflated the Arab volunteers’ importance and involvement in attacks. I myself admit I was guilty of the same mistake. I was following the Iraqi scene from my comfortable place in Cairo. Media reports and Islamist sources in Egypt and Europe were my sources of information. And I think it suited everybody in the beginning to blame the attacks on the “foreign terrorists.â€� The US then U-turned after the first all out assault on Fallouja, and I recall coming across reports saying it was “discoveredâ€� the foreign fighters constituted actually a minority of the Islamist jihadis caught.
The cycle of exaggerating or underestimating the contribution of foreign jihadis has been ebbing and flowing… and always the question of which country has the lion share of volunteers, comes up.
There have been conflicting reports. A former colleague of mine at the LA Times told me once she obtained some study claiming Algerians constituted the majority. And if I’m not mistaken, I recall coming across reports that talked about either the Saudis, Syrians, or Jordanians constituting the majority.
I don’t honestly buy the reports about “Zarqawi’s networks� in Europe and about how he was exporting fighters there. I think these reports are trumped up by the European security agencies. Still, the threat of “Iraqi Arabs� or “returnees from Iraq� is present. Up till now, the militancy has spilled over to Jordan, with the suicide bombings that targeted the tourist hotels, and the attacks on Eilat and US warships in 3aqaba Gulf.
(I am not monitoring the situation in Saudi, but if any of you dear readers are, please inform us if the recent spate of attacks in the kingdom involved an “Iraqi link.�)
This new report on Egyptian jihadis in Iraq, as well as the presence of an Egyptian on top of Iraq’s Al-Qa3da now, means there will be more “cooperation” between the US and our Egyptian Mukhabarrat… i.e., it’s an additional incentive to forget “democracy” issues when it comes to bilateral relations, since “counterterrorism” (a terrorism produced ironically by the lack of democracy in the first place) tops everybody’s agendas. Continue reading Most foreign Jihadis in Iraq are Egyptians, US military says