posted May 25, 2005 12:07 AM            

The public isn't going for it, however. The leftist media have been taking a direct hit for their outrages against the truth and in the case of the flagship of the left, the NY Times, only 21% believe what they report.

While the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, that same Constitution doesn't require anyone to believe a word they say. And no one should ever believe a word Greg Palast says.

These publications think they're going to fix their problems with boards and talk but that isn't going to fix the stench of press bias the public smells and doesn't appreciate.

I think putting the American Flag in the trash can on the cover of Newsweek was a master stroke...genius, in fact but I doubt it's going to produce a result Newsweek needs at this point of their diminishing credibility. Most Americans haven't heard about it...yet.

ALL THE LIES FIT TO PRINT
N.Y. Times writer protested
at event, then wrote about it

Freelancer fails to tell paper she participated in campus demonstration against Sen. Bill Frist
WorldNetDaily.com

The New York Times has admitted it ran an article by a freelance reporter who covered a demonstration in which she participated.

The May 6 story described a protest at Princeton University against the proposal by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist – a Princeton graduate and board member – to bar filibusters on judicial nominees.

The Times, in a correction run Saturday, said the writer, Elizabeth Landau, "did not disclose to The Times that before she was assigned the article, she had participated in the demonstration."

The Times said it "does not ordinarily allow its writers to cover events in which they have taken part, and the paper's staff and contributors are not permitted to join rallies or demonstrations on divisive issues. The writer says she was unaware of these policies."

In her story, Landau, a Princeton student, said, "Since April 26, students have been conducting a round-the-clock filibuster to protest Dr. Frist's proposal to bar filibusters on judicial nominees."

The Times continues to suffer from the Jayson Blair scandal and a national survey showing only 21 percent of readers believe what they read in the paper.

In a Times report published May 9, a panel of editors suggested a variety of steps including limiting the number of unnamed sources used and responding more assertively to critics. The paper also is considering an increase of coverage of religion in America and more reporting from rural areas of the country.

Bill Keller, the executive editor who charged the panel with the study said there was "an immense amount that we can do to improve our journalism."

posted May 25, 2005 06:17 PM              

********

FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran
25 May 2005 20:57:45 GMT

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, May 25 (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

The release of the declassified document came the week after the Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk.

The magazine retracted the article, which had triggered protests in Afghanistan in which 16 people died.

The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and a series of other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.

"Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote.

"The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things," the FBI agent wrote.

The Pentagon stated last week it had received "no credible and specific allegations" that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had put a Koran in the toilet.

The documents indicated that detainees were making allegations that they had been abused and that the Muslim holy book had been mishandled as early as April 2002, about three months after the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo.

In other documents, FBI agents stated that Guantanamo detainees also accused U.S. personnel of kicking the Koran and throwing it to the floor, and described beatings by guards. But one document cited a detainee who accused a guard of dropping a Koran, prompting an "uprising" by prisoners, when it was the prisoner himself who dropped it.

The Pentagon had no immediate comment on the documents.

The United States currently holds about 520 detainees at Guantanamo, a high-security prison it opened in January 2002 for non-U.S. citizens caught in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Former detainees and a lawyer for current prisoners previously have stated that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had placed the Koran in a toilet, but the Pentagon last week said it did not view those allegations as credible.

'MORE CREDIBLE'

"Unfortunately, one thing we've learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.

Jaffer said the latest documents show the U.S. government had heard detainees complain as early as 2002 about desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, including at least one mentioning it had been placed in a toilet.

In another document, written in April 2003, an FBI agent related a detainee's account of an incident involving a female U.S. interrogator.

"While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head," the memo stated.

A similar incident was described in a recent book written by a former Guantanamo interrogator.

The U.S. military launched an inquiry after the Newsweek article was published into whether Guantanamo personnel placed the Koran in a toilet, but the review was limited to searching through official day-to-day log entries.

posted May 25, 2005 06:57 PM            

The lie in this Reuter's story is right in the premise, right in their headline.

quote:

---

FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran
25 May 2005 20:57:45 GMTSource: Reuters

---

The FBI memo did NOT report guards WERE flushing the Koran.

quote:

---

WASHINGTON, May 25 (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

---

The memo said a detainee had accused American jailers of flushing a Koran. Of course we all know captured terrorist tell the truth. But that's beside the point here. Reuters misrepresented in their headline what the memo actually said.

I wonder how many jailers it took to flush that Koran down the toilet...since the plural of the word was used.

Tell me Petron, is every accusation against America automatically true?

posted May 25, 2005 07:11 PM              

it wouldnt happen to be this guy would it?

posted May 25, 2005 07:43 PM              

Newsweek Blunder Doesn't Absolve White House: Margaret Carlson
May 19 (Bloomberg) -- ``I feel terrible.'' Period. Full stop.

So Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker finally said May 16, after a retraction of the magazine's May 1 report, based on an unnamed source, that guards at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Koran down the toilet. In riots that ensued in the Muslim world, at least 16 people died, for which the Bush administration blames Newsweek.

Whitaker should have moved faster. When a source, no matter how previously reliable or highly placed, goes south, the news organization is always in the wrong. It shouldn't fall back on any ``if such and such happened, then I apologize'' constructions of the type perfected by government officials and corporate executives.

Claiming that the situation is ``murky'' and they're still on the story, as Newsweek did, came perilously close to sounding like O.J. protesting that he's still searching for the real killers.

This is not one of those endless media navel-gazing controversies -- the excessively flawed coverage of Michael Jackson or the runaway bride, for example. Lives were lost and Newsweek has become a whipping boy for the White House and the Pentagon.

More Serious Than CBS

This case is far more serious than the recent CBS fracas. In an effort to confirm once and for all the previously published reports that Lieutenant George W. Bush received preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard, Dan Rather relied on documents that were discredited. By the time the White House finished with him, you'd have thought Rather tried to make a liar out of a war hero with three Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars.

Newsweek tripped up in a similar race for a scoop. Earlier, the New York Times reported that British detainees released from Guantanamo claimed that guards would ``kick the Koran, throw it in the toilet and generally disrespect it.'' Newsweek moved the story forward with its unnamed source stating the Pentagon would report that U.S. military interrogators flushed a Koran down the toilet to rattle suspects.

The retraction should have come quicker, but the administration should slow its attempt to shift blame for the deadly protests to a weekly publication. They've yet to explain why two Defense Department officials passed up the chance to correct the source's assertion when the magazine took the unusual step of submitting the report prior to publication. The reporter took silence as confirmation.

Inconvenient Questions

Wrong in retrospect? Sure. Silence is always ambiguous. But the Pentagon has managed to dodge the inconvenient question of why it didn't raise a red flag when given the opportunity or at least warn Newsweek of the potentially grave consequences of publishing.

The administration is also ignoring the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers, who cited a senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan saying that the protests were ``not at all tied to the article.''

That didn't stop the White House from insisting the opposite. ``The report had real consequences,'' spokesman Scott McClellan said. ``People have lost their lives.'' On May 17, when Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita was specifically asked if, in light of General Myers's statement, he still believed that ``people died because of this erroneous report,'' he said, ``I do, I absolutely do.''

Abu Ghraib? Chalabi?

It's understandable that the administration might want to flush Newsweek down the toilet and spread the blame for its mistakes. But how can anyone believe that one errant story about prisoner mistreatment is equivalent to the actual mistreatment of prisoners? How cathartic it must be to have something other than those famous photos from Abu Ghraib to blame for rampant anti-Americanism? How comforting, after Ahmad Chalabi, to have someone other than the CIA or White House publicly burned by a bad source.

As the high priests of journalism rake through this latest debacle, it wouldn't hurt to look at the messy subject of investigating leaks. Journalists must honor promises of confidentiality, even to the hopelessly wrong, or lose every source who fears retribution for speaking out. But there's no such duty on the other side, especially when the stakes are so high.

In the Valerie Plame case, a high White House aide blew a CIA agent's cover to punish her husband for undercutting the White House claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium ``yellowcake,'' used to make nuclear bombs. The president said how much he wanted to get to the bottom of it. All he had to do was walk down the hall and pose a direct question to a very small circle of aides. He didn't, so two reporters are about to go to jail for protecting the thug who jeopardized the lives of Plame's contacts abroad.

posted May 25, 2005 08:16 PM            

quote:

---

'the point would be that abu graib made accusations like this by detainees....whether true or false....actually credible.......pretty pathetic eh?

---

Every story stands or falls on it's own truth of falsity Petron. Only the truth is credible and when a publication as anti-America as Newsweek is willing to swallow any lie to further their own anti-America agenda, they deserve the contempt they've earned.

The government was and is under no obligation whatsoever to deny a story which is false. The duty to pursue the truth until it's found falls on those who intend to publish or broadcast a story. That's their job, a job the press doesn't take very seriously. The United States government is not obligated to tell the press the time of day, let alone vet their stories.

If the press now has their panties in a bunch, that's their own problem. They were not elected to any office; they have appointed and anointed themselves as the 4th branch of government but they are in reality a bunch of brain dead leftist morons...for the most part who couldn't get elected dog catcher of Dog Patch USA. That, by the way includes Helen Thomas and Margaret Carlson. Margaret Carlson who, in a round about way attempts to blame the Bush Administration for Newsweek getting their facts wrong.

posted May 26, 2005 12:02 AM              

"We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents. We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth "---
George W. Bush

posted May 26, 2005 11:31 PM              

By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has identified five incidents of "mishandling of a Koran" by U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay, but found no credible evidence that the Muslim holy book had been flushed down a toilet, the commander of the prison said on Thursday.

Brig. Gen. Jay Hood refused to specify the nature of the mishandling of the Koran at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, other than to say it did not involve placing it in a toilet.

An FBI agent quoted a detainee in an August 2002 document made public on Wednesday as saying guards had thrown a Koran in a toilet. Hood said military investigators interviewed that man this month, but did not directly ask him whether he had seen U.S. personnel put a Koran in a toilet.

But Hood told a Pentagon briefing: "I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Koran down a toilet."

Hood said two U.S. Guantanamo staffers had been disciplined. One was transferred to other duties, Hood said. He did not describe the other case.

Giving preliminary findings of a 12-day-old military inquiry into treatment of the Koran at Guantanamo, Hood said investigators turned up 13 allegations of mishandling the Koran, with five confirmed cases of "what could be broadly defined as mishandling of a Koran."

Four U.S. guards and one interrogator were involved in the cases, three of which appeared to be deliberate mishandling and two accidental, Hood said.

Four of the five cases took place before written guidelines were issued in January 2003 on handling the Koran at Guantanamo, Hood said.

Hood also said U.S. military investigators this month interviewed the detainee quoted in the August 2002 document. Hood said this detainee did not mention during the May 14 interview that U.S. personnel had placed a Koran in a toilet.

"The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote, summarizing the detainee's comments.
Hood said the detainee, who U.S. officials have not identified, said at the May 14 interview he had not been beaten or abused but that he had heard rumors that other detainees had been.
"We then proceeded to ask him about any incidents where he had seen the Koran defiled, desecrated or mishandled, and he allowed as how he hadn't, but he heard that guards at some other point and time had done this," Hood said.

But Hood said investigators did not directly ask the detainee about a Koran being placed in a toilet. "I do not believe they used that word toilet," he said.

FBI documents also contained accounts of detainees telling FBI agents that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo kicked the Koran or threw it to the floor and beat prisoners.

The issue of whether the Koran had been thrown in a toilet at Guantanamo has generated controversy globally in recent weeks.

Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article, later retracted by the magazine, that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk. Violent protests erupted in some Muslim countries following the article's publication and at least 16 people died in rioting in Afghanistan.

The United States now holds about 520 detainees at Guantanamo, a high-security prison opened in January 2002 for non-U.S. citizens caught in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Eight allegations of mishandling the Koran were not confirmed, Hood said. These involved six in which guards either accidentally touched a Koran, touched it within the scope of their duties or did not touch the book at all, he said. Two additional incidents involved interrogators who either touched or stood over a Koran, Hood said.

Hood said the inquiry turned up 15 incidents in which detainees themselves "mishandled or inappropriately treated the Koran," including one case in which a detainee ripped pages from his own Koran.

Hood said investigators have combed through 31,000 pages of documents such as day-to-day logs at the base, but did not say how many people had been interviewed in the inquiry.

posted May 27, 2005 01:04 AM            

The Guantanamo detainee who told an FBI agent in 2002 that U.S. personnel there had flushed a Koran in a toilet retracted his allegation when questioned this month by military investigators, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

"We've gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation and he has said it didn't happen. So the underlying allegation, the detainee himself, within the last two weeks, said that didn't happen," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.

An FBI document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made by the detainee in two interviews with an FBI special agent at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The names of the detainee and the agent were redacted.

"The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote.

Di Rita told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. military, as part of an inquiry into Koran treatment at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, interviewed the same detainee on May 14, and that the man did not corroborate the earlier allegation. But Di Rita at the time said he did not know whether the man actually had recanted his earlier statement.

During his news conference on Thursday, Di Rita said he changed his account of what the detainee had said after getting more information from the commander of the Guantanamo prison, Brig. Gen. Jay Hood.

NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE

Di Rita did not identify the detainee or release his exact words.

Another senior Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the detainee "indicated, when asked about the desecration, that he was not knowledgeable of anything."

The American Civil Liberties Union released the FBI document and a series of others it obtained from the government through the Freedom of Information Act. In other documents, FBI agents stated that Guantanamo detainees also accused U.S. personnel of kicking the Koran and throwing it to the floor, and described beatings by guards.

The Bush administration has denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk. The magazine retracted the article.

The ACLU on Thursday released another FBI document that stated that Defense Department personnel at Guantanamo impersonated State Department and FBI officials during prisoner interrogations at the jail. Most of the document is redacted.

posted May 27, 2005 10:03 PM              

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Thousands of Islamic hardliners launched fresh protests across Pakistan after the United States admitted some guards at Guantanamo Bay had mishandled the Koran, witnesses and party officials said.

Armed and mounted police as well as anti-terrorist commandos watched over several thousand people, including a number of women, who gathered outside the parliament building in Islamabad in response to a call by Islamic parties.

Demonstrators waving anti-US placards and banners also vented their anger in southern Karachi and eastern Lahore, Pakistan's two largest cities, and many other towns around the Islamic republic of 150 million people.

The demonstrations came a day after visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca assured Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf the US would take action if anyone was found guilty of abusing the holy book.

"The US is indulging in desecration of the Koran as part of its anti-Islam policy," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of the main Islamic fundamentalist party Jamaat-i-Islami and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance of six religious parties, told the rally in the capital.

Ahmed said a bomb blast at a Muslim shrine near Islamabad earlier Friday, which left at least 19 people dead, was "exploded to divert attention from the protest against the United States and to trigger Sunni-Shiite violence."

Liaquat Baloch, deputy chief of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, said the alliance had contacted Muslim organisations in 34 countries.

In neighbouring Indian-admninistered Kashmir, shops, schools and banks shut in a one-day strike called by Islamic parties, while several hundred Muslims protested the alleged abuse outside the US embassy in Malaysia.

In Pakistan, about 2,000 protesters chanted anti-US slogans in Lahore while a crowd of 800 gathered in the southwestern city of Quetta where protesters trampled on a US flag, witnesses said.

About 5,000 people staged a one-kilometer (less than a mile) march in politically volatile Karachi, carrying banners inscribed with anti-US and anti-Musharraf slogans.

"The policies adopted by Musharraf and the majority of Muslim rulers has encouraged Americans to desecrate the holy Koran and humiliate Islam and its believers," senior MMA leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said.

"America should tender an unconditional apology otherwise we'll wage jihad against it," he said.

Earlier, hundreds of Shiite Muslims gathered in Karachi, shouting vitriolic abuse aimed at the United States and Musharraf, who is a key ally in what Washington calls its war on terrorism.

About 100 women clad in Muslim veils and waving placards took to the streets in Peshawar, the main town in deeply conservative North West Frontier Province. A large rally held in the city later was addressed by Pakistani opposition leader and Islamic radical Fazlur Rehman.

"We do not believe in the investigation promised by the United States. It does not meet the requirements of justice," Rehman told a rally of some 2,000 people in Peshawar.

In the remote northwestern town of Miranshah near the Afghan border, about 5,000 tribesmen carrying black banners attended a rally which demanded "the US hand over the culprits to Pakistan just like Pakistan was handing over people wanted in the United States."

Protests erupted across the Muslim world after a report in Newsweek magazine early this month that interrogators at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, threw a Koran in a toilet to rattle Muslim inmates.

In neighbouring Afghanistan, violence left 15 people dead.

The US-based magazine retracted the story last week after its source expressed doubts.

posted May 28, 2005 02:47 PM              

From Iftikhar Ali
NEW YORK - A leading US newspaper report says a confidential U.S. Army reports has detailed widespread abuse of Afghan detainees by American soldiers, in what increasingly appears to establish that their brutality was part of a pattern.
In a front-page story Friday, The New York Times reported the abuse, along with graphic details of the deaths of two detainees at the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan in late 2002, emerged from a file of the Army's criminal investigation into the deaths.
The Times report said the nearly 2,000-page file obtained by the newspaper depicts "young, poorly trained soldiers" in repeated incidents of abuse. The newspaper cites testimony from soldiers who say some harsh treatment was for interrogation or punishment, but other torment was driven by boredom or cruelty.
American officials have characterized previously reported incidents of prisoner abuse as isolated problems. But the file by criminal investigators is said to indicate such abuse was routine.
The Times says seven soldiers have been charged with criminal offenses and two Army interrogators have been reprimanded.
The Times said it had obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths.
The report centers on the death of a 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died at Bagram six days earlier in December 2002.
According to the report, Dilawar was chained by his wrists to the top of his cell for several days before he died and his legs had been pummeled by guards.
The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths," the newspaper said.
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers described mistreatment ranging from a female interrogator stepping on a detainee's neck and kicking another in the genitals to a shackled prisoner being made to kiss the boots of interrogators as he rolled back and forth on the floor of a cell, according to the newspaper.
Another prisoner was made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum filled with a mixture of excrement and water to soften him up for interrogation, the report said.
U.S. officials say that the incident were were thoroughly investigated, according to the newspaper. . "What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment," Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita told the newspaper. "We're finding some cases that were not close calls."
The Army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded last October that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case and 15 of them were cited in the Habibullah case, the Times said.
Here is how the Times described U.S. interrorgators' behaviour:

posted June 03, 2005 08:36 PM              

*******
U.S. jailers splashed Koran with urine -Pentagon
03 Jun 2005 23:44:04 GMT
Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - American jailers at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects splashed a Koran with urine, kicked and stepped on the Islamic holy book and soaked it with water, the U.S. military said on Friday.

U.S. Southern Command, responsible for the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, described for the first time five cases of "mishandling" of a Koran by U.S. personnel confirmed by a newly completed military inquiry, officials said in a statement.

In the incident involving urine, which took place this past March, Southern Command said a guard left his post and urinated near an air vent and "the wind blew his urine through the vent" and into a cell block.

It said a detainee told guards the urine "splashed on him and his Koran." The statement said the detainee was given a new prison uniform and Koran, and that the guard was reprimanded and given duty in which he had no contact with prisoners.

Southern Command said a civilian contractor interrogator, who was later fired, apologized in July 2003 to a detainee for stepping on his Koran. In August 2003, prisoners' Korans became wet when night-shift guards had thrown water balloons in a cell block, the statement said. In February 2002, guards kicked a prisoner's Koran, it added.

In the fifth "confirmed incident" of mishandling a Koran, Southern Command said a prisoner in August 2003 complained that "a two-word obscenity" had been written in English in his Koran. Southern Command said it was "possible" a guard had written the words but "equally possible" the prisoner himself had done it.

posted June 05, 2005 12:00 AM              

Al Qaeda Clashes Caught on Tape
New Training Camps Seen in Pakistan
Insurgent Attack

Propaganda video obtained by ABC News appears to show militants training and fighting in Pakistan. (ABC News)
By BRIAN ROSS and JILL RACKMILL

June 3, 2005 — Never-before-seen propaganda videos obtained by ABC News showcase the intensely violent fighting and unique difficulties that surround the hunt for Osama bin Laden in the remote tribal areas of northwest Pakistan.

It is a view from al Qaeda's side of the battle. The videotapes were said to be made last year, when the Pakistani army undertook a major offensive into south Waziristan, a mountainous region bordering Afghanistan where the fiercely independent Waziri tribe reside and where bin Laden is believed to be in hiding.

At the time, the Pakistanis declared the campaign in Waziristan a major victory against terrorists.

"A den of miscreants has been busted," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's chief military spokesman. "The facilities for terrorist training and planning have been completely dismantled. Those who slipped away are on the run and dispersed."

But in at least four cases, the video shows Pakistani army troops were driven into ambushes. One scene shows the insurgents tracking a Pakistani convoy from the mountains above before opening fire. Another scene focuses on the fiery aftermath of an attack on an army convoy.

And footage shows al Qaeda seems to have set up new training camps inside Pakistan, similar to the ones that were dismantled in Afghanistan. The tapes show a new generation of militants, some no older than 10 or 12, carrying automatic weapons.

"These are infidels and they deserve to be killed," one of the young fighters says to the camera.

An Ominous Sign

Gary Schroen, former CIA station chief in Pakistan, saw the footage as an ominous sign in the hunt for bin Laden.

"There's always the question of why we don't have bin Laden. You can see now the kind of resistance that the Pakistanis face and the kind of resistance the U.S. military faces on the Afghan side of the border," he said. "It is propaganda, but the core message for us here in America is it's going to be very, very tough to convince the Pakistanis to go after bin Laden."

the Pakistani soldiers were shown leaving behind their dead and abandoning trucks full of arms and ammunition, which were then collected by the militants.

Those weapons added to an already impressive arsenal, according to the tapes. In one scene, the fighters can be seen using what appears to be a Russian multiple rocket launcher against the Pakistani troops.

The well-armed fighters move with ease through the rugged terrain, using donkey and mules to move the weapons.

posted June 09, 2005 07:27 PM              

Terrorism inquiry expected to spread
Federal agents question Bay Area residents associated with suspects arrested in Lodi
Christian Berthelsen, Mark Martin, Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writers

Thursday, June 9, 2005

Sacramento -- Federal authorities said Wednesday that the arrests of a Lodi man suspected of involvement in terrorist training and his father were a prelude to "further developments" in the case, but they added they had found no evidence the men planned to carry out terrorist attacks.

The two men -- Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer Hayat, 47 -- were arrested Sunday on charges of lying to the FBI less than a week after the younger Hayat was detained aboard a San Francisco-bound plane from the Far East when authorities discovered he was on a "no-fly" list of suspected Islamic extremists.

"We fully anticipate there will be further developments in the hours and days ahead," McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the eastern district of California, said at a news conference here.

Although the initial investigation appeared to be focusing on the Hayats and their immediate circle in Lodi, a source told The Chronicle that federal agents also were questioning people living in the Bay Area who have associated with the two suspects.

Federal officials at the news conference confirmed that men associated with two Muslim groups in Lodi -- Muhammad Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed -- were being detained on alleged immigration violations. They did not say whether there was any connection between the two men and the Hayats.

Late Wednesday, federal authorities detained another person, Mohammad Hassan Adil, 19, of Lodi, on alleged immigration violations, FBI spokesman John Cauthen said. Adil is Khan's son.

According to a seven-page FBI affidavit, Hamid Hayat, after failing a lie- detector test, admitted that he had spent six months in an al Qaeda-run camp in Pakistan where he trained to "kill Americans," using photos of high-ranking U.S. officials, including President Bush, as target practice.

The affidavit says Hayat, a U.S. citizen, told interrogators that he wanted to carry out his attacks in the United States.

Scott, however, stressed Wednesday that federal officials had not uncovered evidence of a specific plot or targets.

"They were not caught in the process of planning any attack on the United States," Scott said of the Hayats. "We did not find these guys in the middle of a plot or executing an attack."

The FBI affidavit released to reporters Wednesday, signed by Agent Pedro Tenoch Aguilar, deleted a number of details that the agency had included in a version released Tuesday. For example, the first affidavit included the sentence, "Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores," which was removed from Wednesday's version.

An FBI statement released Wednesday said the agency "has no information about specific threats to hospitals or food stores.''

Also deleted from the second affidavit was a paragraph saying that Hamid Hayat had seen "hundreds of attendees from various parts of the world" at the Pakistani camp.

The first affidavit said the camp was run by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, identified as a friend of Umer Hayat's father-in-law. The reference is believed to be to Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, a well-known training-camp leader in Pakistan. In the updated affidavit, his name was removed.

Cauthen said the information had been deleted as part of a normal review to ensure the government was presenting the "most accurate" evidence possible.

According to the FBI affidavit, Umer Hayat said his son became interested in attending a terrorist training camp as a teenager after being influenced by a classmate in Pakistan and an uncle who had fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan.

Hamid Hayat left Pakistan on May 27, the affidavit says. Federal agents found his name on a no-fly list after his plane left South Korea two days later, and they had the flight diverted to Japan, where he was questioned and let go.

On June 3, Hamid Hayat was interviewed by the FBI in the United States and denied attending terrorist training, saying "he would never be involved with anything related to terrorism," the affidavit said.

But a day later, the affidavit added, after two hours of questioning and failing the lie detector test, Hamid Hayat "admitted that he had, in fact, attended a jihadist training camp in Pakistan" for about six months.

His father, after initially denying his son's involvement in the camp, said after viewing a videotape of his son's alleged confession that he knew his son had attended the camp and that he had given him an allowance of $100 a month, the affidavit said.

FBI Special Agent Keith Slotter said Hamid Hayat had been under investigation "for an extended period of time" but would not be more specific.

The Hayats were being held in Sacramento County Jail and declined to be interviewed by The Chronicle.

Lawyers for the father and son pointed out that the charges did not involve allegations that they engaged in terrorist activity, only that they made false statements to a federal agent -- in their initial denials.

Wazhma Mojaddidi, a lawyer for Hamid Hayat, said the suggestion that he was engaged in terrorism is a "false statement."

Neither Mojaddidi nor Johnny Griffin III, a lawyer for Umer Hayat, would comment on the affidavit's assertions that their clients had ties to a terrorist training camp.

In Lodi, neighbors of the Hayats were stunned to learn of the allegations. Along Acacia Street, a street of small, weathered homes with wood or stucco siding, everyone knew Umer Hayat as the friendly driver of a tan ice cream van.

Karina Murill, 21, said her 3-year-old daughter and other kids in the area all referred to Umer as "el barbon," which means "the bearded man" in Spanish. Murill rents a home owned by Umer Hayat and said Hayat learned some Spanish so he could speak with customers in the mixed neighborhood of Pakistanis, Latinos and Caucasians.

"I have nothing bad to say about them; they were so nice," she said.

A relative of the Hayats said the father and son had simply told federal agents what they wanted to hear after two days of interrogation.

"It's a bunch of B.S., that is what it is, it's all lies,'' said Usama Ismail, 19, who is Hamid Hayat's cousin.

Hamid Hayat had spent much of his youth in Pakistan studying the Quran and never graduated from high school, Ismail said. Hayat had just returned after spending two years in Pakistan, where he was married last fall, and had started work Monday picking cherries for a Lodi company, he said. Hayat's wife is still in Pakistan.

"There are no terrorist training camps in Pakistan, and even if there was, Hamid would not go to anything like that,'' Ismail said. "The only thing the FBI has, after two days of investigation, is statements. But they told them what they wanted to hear.''

The connection, if any, between the Hayats and the three men detained on immigration charges was unclear.

Members of the Lodi Muslim Mosque, a few blocks from the Hayats' home, said father and son worshiped there. Khan, one of the men detained on immigration charges, has been described as a onetime imam at the mosque, but in recent months there apparently was a falling-out.

Joe Rishwain Jr., a lawyer for the Lodi Muslim Mosque, said Khan came to the United States three years ago and arranged with mosque trustees to create a school. The mosque came up with $200,000 for land and other start-up costs, he said, but the deal ran into complications.

Rishwain said Khan put the land in the name of a group called the Farooqia Islamic Center. He said the group was "named for a group in Pakistan that is anti-America.''

The Lodi mosque sued the Farooqia group in March, he said, seeking its cash back or title to the property.

Rishwain said Hamid Hayat had ties to the Farooqia organization. "I understand the son was over at the center -- he's been in and out of there," he said.

Gary Nelson, civil attorney for Khan and others named in the civil suit, said, "My clients who are involved in Farooqia are anything but anti-American. They are all business people from Lodi, basically upstanding people, American citizens, family people.''

He said his clients had never heard of the Hayats.

Khan is being held by federal authorities in the Santa Clara County Jail, while Ahmed, an administrator of the Farooqia Islamic Center and imam at the Lodi Muslim Mosque, was being held at an unknown facility in Sacramento, according to their immigration lawyer, Saad Ahmad. It was unclear where Khan's son was being held.

The lawyer predicted they would be cleared of all immigration violations.

"Let me say for sure: They are not terrorists. They are not involved in terrorism,'' Ahmad said.

Ahmad had met with Khan in jail Wednesday and said, "He's doing well. He's very eager to show that he is completely innocent.''

Khan and Ahmed were both present at a community meeting in October with Scott, the U.S. attorney, and Slotter, the FBI agent, a Muslim activist said Wednesday.

The meeting was set up by the Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and dealt with the FBI's pre-election plan to heighten security in the area as well as other issues, including racial profiling in the Islamic community.

Basim Elkarra, executive director for the group that set up the meeting, said Khan and Ahmed "had a relationship with the FBI, they had spoken to the FBI and cooperated. For all of a sudden this to happen, people are really disappointed.''

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The connection: Lodi to Pakistan
Hamid Hayat was arrested in Lodi, where he had just taken a job picking cherries after spending two years in Pakistan. According to an FBI affidavit, he admitted that he had received terrorist training at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan, using the images of high-ranking U.S. officials, including President Bush, as target practice..

The investigation: key figures

Hamid Hayat, 22, admitted to the FBI that he had spent six months in a Pakistani camp where he trained to "kill Americans," according to an FBI affidavit.

Shabbir Ahmed and Muhammad Adil Khan, who have ties to Muslim groups in Lodi, are accused of immigration violations. So is Khan's son, Mohammad Hassan Adil.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terrorism-related cases in the United States
Here is a list of the people arrested in the United States on terror- related charges and the status of their cases after Sept. 11, 2001:

Zacarias Moussaoui: Indicted December 2001 by a federal grand jury on six conspiracy counts, including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, destroy aircraft and murder U.S. employees. He is the only person who has been charged in an American courtroom for direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. He was arrested after taking flight lessons that were deemed suspicious. Lawyers for Moussaoui petitioned the Supreme Court in January for permission to interview detained al Qaeda captives they believe can help his case.

Suspected Detroit sleeper cell: Karim Koubriti, 26, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 38, were arrested in September 2001 and charged with ID fraud and providing material support to terrorists. The two accused men were found guilty in 2003, but the judge dismissed the convictions after discovering that prosecutors had kept some evidence from the defense.

Ali S.K. al-Marri: The Qatari student was arrested at his home in Peoria, Ill., in December 2001 on suspicion of being a sleeper agent. He was declared an enemy combatant in 2003, and is being held without charge in a naval brig.

Richard Reid: British citizen arrested for attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001, with explosives hidden in his shoe. Reid pleaded guilty to eight charges on Oct. 4, 2002, including: attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction; attempted homicide; placing an explosive device on an aircraft; attempted murder; two counts of interference with flight crew and attendants; attempted destruction of an aircraft; and using a destructive device during a crime of violence. He was sentenced to life in prison on Jan. 30, 2003.

Jose Padilla: Arrested on May 8, 2002, he is accused of training with al Qaeda and plotting to detonate a "dirty" bomb. He is being held as an enemy combatant, but he continues to challenge his status.

James Ujaama: Born James Earnest Thompson in Seattle, he was indicted on Aug. 29, 2002, by a federal grand jury in Seattle on one charge of conspiracy to provide material support and resources for al Qaeda by plotting to establish a jihadi training camp in Bly, Ore., and another charge of using, carrying, possessing and discharging firearms during a crime. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, and has since been released from prison on probation with time served.

Lackawanna Six: Six U.S. citizens of Yemeni descent, Shafal Mosed, 25; Mukhtar al-Bakri, 23; Faysal Galab, 27; Sahim Alwan, 30; Yahya Goba, 26; and Yasein Taher, 25, were arrested in September 2002 after a series of raids in Lackawanna, N.Y. They were accused of traveling to Afghanistan in May 2001 to train with al Qaeda. In plea bargain deals, they admitted receiving weapons training at an Afghanistan camp. All six pleaded guilty and were given prison sentences ranging from seven to 10 years.

Portland Seven: In October 2002, seven Muslims from Portland, Ore., were indicted on charges of conspiring to wage war against the United States by trying to join the Taliban shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Patrice Ford, 32, and Jeffrey Leon Battle, 33, were each sentenced to 18 years in prison. Maher Hawash, 39, received seven years, while brothers Ahmed Bilal, 25, and Muhammad Bilal, 23, received 10 and eight years respectively. Martinique Lewis was sentenced to three years in prison after she pleaded guilty to providing money to help the group.

Lyman Faris: In May 2003, Faris, an Ohio truck driver, pleaded guilty to training with Osama bin Laden and plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. He had been arrested after being named by captured al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

The paintball jihad: In June 2003, 11 men were indicted for training -- sometimes with paintball sessions in Virginia -- to fight with Islamists in Kashmir. Six of the men pleaded guilty; three were convicted; two were acquitted on all charges. The guilty received sentences ranging from four years to life in prison.

Nuradin Abdi: A Somali native charged in November 2003 with conspiring to strike an unnamed Columbus, Ohio-area mall. According to the FBI, the plot was devised shortly after Abdi returned to the United States after attending an al Qaeda training camp in 1999. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in an Ohio jail.

Mohammad Hossain, Yassin Aref: After a yearlong FBI sting operation, the two men were arrested in August 2004 in Albany, N.Y., on charges of money laundering and attempting to conceal material support for a terrorist organization. A federal magistrate set bail for the two mosque leaders, saying the case against the men is not as strong as it once looked.

Hamid Hayat, Umer Hayat: The father and son were arrested by FBI agents in Lodi this week after the son allegedly admitted attending al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan that taught participants "how to kill Americans."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/09/MNG7GD5RNH1.DTL

posted June 09, 2005 07:35 PM              

By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

Washington, DC, Jun. 8 (UPI) -- The arrest of two Pakistani-Americans on charges that they lied to federal agents about undergoing terror training in Pakistan has highlighted the threat posed by "second generation" Islamic militants and the persistent presence of terrorist bases in a country that says it is an ally in the U.S. war on terror.

An FBI affidavit says that Hamid Hayat, 22, told agents he had spent six months in 2003-2004 at a camp near Rawalpindi in Pakistan, where he received paramilitary training and anti-American religious indoctrination.

"Hamid further stated," the affidavit goes on, "that he and others at the camp were being trained on how to kill Americans."

Hayat and his father Umer Hayat, 47, both from Lodi near Sacramento, Calif., face charges of lying to federal agents about the training.

The admissions allegedly made by the Hayats will undoubtedly raise questions about the status of Pakistan as a U.S. ally in the war on terror, especially given the location of the camp -- just a few miles from the capital, Islamabad.

"That's a bit like having a terrorist training camp on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.," said Richard Clarke, former White House counter-terror czar.

"The closer to the capital (these facilities are) the more obvious it is that the (Pakistani) authorities are turning a blind eye," Hassan Abbas, a former senior Pakistani law enforcement official told United Press International.

According to the affidavit, "hundreds of attendees from various parts of the world" were trained at the camp and then sent to "carry out their jihadi mission" to countries "including the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq, (and) Kashmir."

U.S. authorities have long been aware of the danger posed by these camps, and of the possibility that U.S. citizens might be trained in them.

In June 2004, a special alert from the Customs and Border Protection division of the Department of Homeland security warned of the danger posed by "individuals traveling to train at terrorist camps in Pakistan."

The bulletin -- obtained by journalist Paul Sperry and reported in his book "Infiltration" -- enjoined agents at several airports to "increase scrutiny of passengers who are naturalized citizens or legal permanent residents of Pakistani descent," especially those who had made "trips to regions of Pakistan not normally associated with business activity or tourism," or who might have rope burns or other unusual bruising or injuries resulting from paramilitary training.

So-called second generation jihadis -- the grown children of Muslim immigrants who turn to extremism or follow their parents into it -- have been identified as a threat by authorities in Europe and Canada, but U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have not hitherto publicly warned about the phenomenon.

"This is the first time that a second generation Muslim-American in the post-Sept. 11 era has been accused of receiving this kind of training," said terrorism expert and analyst Peter Bergen.

In spring 2003, six Yemeni-Americans from the town of Lackawanna in upstate New York pleaded guilty to having visited an al-Qaida camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, but that visit happened months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Second generation jihadis "represent a clear and present danger to Canada and its allies," according to a recently declassified report from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, "and are a particularly valuable resource for the international Islamic terrorist community in view of their language skills and familiarity with Western culture and infrastructure."

Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish investigating magistrate who heads that country's effort to prosecute Islamic terrorists, told a conference in Florence, Italy, last month that second generation extremists, some of them as young as 16, pose a serious threat in Europe.

The Hayats, according to the complaint, were related by marriage to an Islamic religious leader and notorious militant Qazi Saeed Ur Rehman. According to the affidavit, Rehman ran an Islamic school, or madrasa, that funneled would-be jihadis to the training camp.

The declassified Canadian report notes that Islamic culture places a premium on "obedience to parental figures," adding that, "The duty to obey also explains why some youth have agreed to go to Afghanistan and Pakistan for terrorist training."

Noting that Hayat might well be a Pashto name from Pakistan's lawless North-West Frontier Province, Abbas told UPI, "The nature of the family structure in that part of the world is so close-knit... that it is very likely that, if a father or other older relative is involved (in Islamic extremism) the younger generation will be, too."

The situation is complicated -- and made more dangerous -- by the fact that the training camp attended by Hayat was apparently overseen by a Pakistani militant leader long associated with the activities of jihadi groups in Kashmir -- the Muslim-majority region divided and disputed between Pakistan and majority-Hindu India.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil is leader of the jihadi group once known as Harkat-ul-Mujahedin -- set up with the support of Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus to wage a low-intensity war against the Indian authorities in their part of Kashmir.

According to Abbas, who profiled the militant leader in his recent book "Pakistan's Drift into Extremism," Khalil "has been closely aligned to Pakistan's intelligence services."

Abbas said that despite several requests from the United States very little action was ever taken against him. He was briefly detained and questioned last year and has been under house arrest, but was released earlier this year and has now vanished.

"He still has acquiescence (in his activities) and sympathy, if not outright support, from the intelligence agencies," said Abbas.

Talat Waseem, spokeswoman for the Pakistani embassy in Washington, told UPI that she had "never heard of" Khalil and couldn't answer any questions about him. "There are no terrorist training camps in Pakistan," she asserted.

Khalil was the only prominent Pakistani jihadist to sign al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, urging Muslims everywhere to kill Israelis and Americans. Later that year, when the United States retaliated for the al-Qaida truck bomb attacks on its East African embassies with cruise missile strikes against the group's camps in Afghanistan, Khalil denounced the move, and pledged revenge against America.

According to Abbas, "many security people I've spoken to in Pakistan say he is exactly the kind of person who should have been in (the U.S. detention center in) Guantanamo Bay."

More worryingly still, according to Roger Cressey, the former deputy White House counter-terrorism adviser, "You have a network of people here in the United States who are at least sympathetic to -- and perhaps actually supportive of -- the Kashmiri jihadists."

As recently as the late 1990's there was an active network in many U.S. Muslim communities raising money for the Kashmir cause, according to one expert who has studied the global jihadist movement. "There are still elements in some mosques that are supportive," said the expert, who asked for anonymity.

The vision of a U.S.-based support network for Islamic terrorists is the nightmare that haunts counter-terrorism specialists. "It's one of the things that still keeps me awake at nights," Sept. 11 Commission member Tim Roemer told UPI, explaining that he believed law enforcement agencies had never entirely settled the question of whether the 19 suicide hijackers had witting help from other Muslims in the United States.

The arrest of the Hayats and two other Lodi Muslims -- being held by immigration authorities for allegedly violating the terms of their religious worker visas -- are part of an "ongoing, long-term inquiry," according to Dean Boyd of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Although some law enforcement officials have been anonymously hinting that more arrests might be in the pipeline, Boyd was non-committal. "It's ongoing, that's all I can say," he said.

Bergen is skeptical that the investigation will reveal any kind of extensive Fifth Column. "I doubt that this will be the tip of an iceberg," he said. "I don't think that suddenly there will be dozens of other people in the Sacramento area who turn out to be involved in this conspiracy."

Former CIA and State Department counter-terror chief Cofer Black agreed, telling UPI the arrests were "not so much the tip of an iceberg we can't see, but rather a measure of the increasing capability of our law enforcement agencies to conduct effective counterterrorism and to utilize intelligence to identify and arrest terrorists."

Nonetheless, the case is likely to re-ignite fears of a network of Islamic sleeper cells in the United States.

"Assuming these allegations (against the Hayats) are all true," said Cressey, "this is a very disturbing picture... You have an al-Qaida (training) infrastructure in Pakistan into which recruits are funneled from all over the world, and you have al-Qaida operatives then able to come to the United States to prepare."

Although Cressey said that as far as he knew the Kashmiri jihadis had "never looked at the United States as a target."

There is a significant degree of cross-over between those groups and al-Qaida, according to Husain Haqqani, a former senior Pakistani government official, now based in Washington.

Haqqani, who examines the issue in his forthcoming book "Pakistan: Between the Mosque and the Military," says that represents a serious problem for the United States because Pakistan has never been able to sever the link between its military and intelligence apparatus and the militant jihadists that they supported in both Kashmir and Afghanistan.

"That relationship is so deep-rooted that it is not easy to break ... people don't change their beliefs, their ideology overnight," Haqqani said.

He added that one of the reasons the link was so hard to break is that "the military-intelligence apparatus has never admitted that ... the creation of these irregular armies imbued with the spirit of jihad was a mistake." Even Pakistan's military leader and enthusiastic U.S. ally Gen. Pervez Musharraf still defends Pakistan's support to the Taliban, says Haqqani.

posted June 12, 2005 01:22 PM              

Sunday, June 12, 2005

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Political leaders in Pakistan and Islamic scholars in the United States have questioned an FBI claim that "terrorist training camps" operate on the outskirts of Pakistan's capital city.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz denied Saturday there is a jihadist training center outside Islamabad near Rawalpindi, where federal agents say a 22-year- old Lodi man was taught "how to kill Americans" over a six-month period in 2003 and 2004.

"There are no such camps," said Aziz, who said at a news conference in Islamabad that he has asked Pakistan's embassy in Washington for details of the FBI allegations.

Anita Weiss, a University of Oregon professor who has done extensive research on Muslim movements in Pakistan, also questioned the details in an FBI affidavit about the alleged activities of Hamid Hayat, the Lodi man at the center of a widening federal investigation.

"There are mosques with fiery preachers ... but there is no way there is a terrorist training camp near Rawalpindi," said Weiss, who was in Pakistan on Sept. 11, 2001, and as recently as last October.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Weiss noted that Rawalpindi is just outside Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and "in the backyard of the Pakistani security forces."

Experts say terrorist camps do exist in other parts of Pakistan and in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

But Weiss and other experts on the region say the FBI may have confused a militant Muslim and accused terrorist, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, with the similarly named Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a Pakistani opposition leader affiliated with a religious school that Hayat attended in Pakistan.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman was mentioned in an early version of the FBI affidavit, but his name and other key details were later deleted.

"We're standing by the affidavit filed in court," said Sacramento FBI spokesman John Cauthen.

Islamic scholar John Esposito said the federal authorities need to exercise caution as they broaden their investigation of the Lodi mosque.

"In the current climate, you have to question the credibility of the FBI, '' said Esposito, editor of the three-volume encyclopedia, "The Islamic World. " "There have been thousands of arrests and very few convictions directly connected to terrorism.

"We have to be careful about overreacting,'' he said. "If someone is critical of American foreign policy, does that make them 'anti-American'? It gets very dicey.''

So far, five Northern California men have been detained in the FBI investigation of the Farooqia Islamic Center in Lodi, which had been raising money to build a new school and worship center in that Central Valley town.

Muslim scholar Hussain Haqqani said the center appears to be part of a new offshoot of an Islamic religious sect founded in 1867 in Deobandi, a town in north India.

The sect, known as the Deobandis, grew out of a traditional religious school established by a 19th century Muslim preacher who warned that the faithful were falling under the spell of Western materialism and moral decay.

Haqqani said the movement -- founded just 10 years after the British formally added India to their global empire -- was part of a broader Islamic revival among Muslims who lost prestige and power under British rule.

Eighty years later, in 1947, the establishment of Pakistan, an Islamic nation carved out the predominantly Hindu society of India, allowed the Deobandi to expand their control over the religious education system in the new Muslim state.

Haqqani, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Pakistani military allowed the Deobandi to gain even greater strength in the 1980s during the Muslim jihad, or holy war, against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan.

Afghan refugees and militant Pakistanis flocked to religious schools, or madrasas, set up by the Deobandi, which gave rise to the Taliban, the traditionalist Muslim sect that assumed control of Afghanistan and gave refuge to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Haqqani said the Farooqia are "a little more militant" than the larger Deobandi sect.

"They are not a separate sect. They are part of the Deobandi clergy,'' he said. "They are a little more serious about taking up arms.''

Last Sunday, federal agents arrested Hayat and his father, a 47-year-old Lodi ice cream truck driver named Umer Hayat. Both men are U.S. citizens, and both have been charged only with making false statements during earlier interviews with the FBI.

Federal authorities have also detained the president of the Farooqia Islamic Center of Lodi, Muhammed Adil Khan, 47, and his 19-year-old son, Muhammad Hassan Adil, on immigration charges. Both are Pakistanis.

Khan, a resident of East Palo Alto, has served as the imam at the Lodi mosque at the center of the FBI probe and was raising money for the school at the Farooqia Islamic Center, where Hayat and his father worshiped.

The fifth man in the FBI round-up, Shabbir Ahmed, 38, was an administrator at the Lodi mosque and Islamic center. Ahmed, a Pakistani, was also detained on immigration charges.

Haqqani, the Carnegie scholar, said federal agents and the public should not assume that rank-and-file worshipers at the Lodi mosque have anything to do with the Deobandi movement or terrorism.

"There are few choices for mosques in outlying areas,'' he said. "It's not like everybody going to the mosque is Deobandi or Farooqia.''

Vali Nasr, an authority on South Asian religion and politics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, agreed:

"Are they just mimicking the name or are they really sympathetic to the movement?''

Nasr said followers in the Deobandi sect -- itself an offshoot of the broader Sunni school of Islamic thought -- "are not necessary preaching violence.''

At the same time, Haqqani said the Deobandi offshoots founded by Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the Harkat-ul-Ansar (Movements of Supporters of the Faith) and Harat-ul-Majahideen (the Movement of Holy Warriors) have a documented history of terrorism.

Fazlur Rehman Khalil was among a group of Muslim extremists who signed Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa declaring war against the United States.

Chronicle news services contributed to this report.

posted June 13, 2005 01:11 AM              

U.S. ALLY DELIVERS SWIFT DEFEAT TO TERRORISTS

**********
Scores of Uzbek Protesters Gunned Down by Troops

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 15, 2005; Page A19

MOSCOW, May 14 -- Scores of civilians were killed when Uzbek troops opened fire on protesters, some of them armed, in the eastern city of Andijon on Friday, human rights groups and witnesses said. The president of the Central Asian republic said Saturday that the use of force was necessary to quell unrest that he called the work of "criminals" and "Islamic radicals."

At a news conference in Tashkent, the capital, President Islam Karimov said 10 soldiers were killed in clashes after troops entered a central square and government buildings where thousands of protesters had gathered. Karimov said "many more" protesters than troops were killed but did not provide specific numbers.

Human rights groups said as many as 200 people may have been killed, and local activists and witnesses said troops had removed dozens of bodies from the city center.

The protests spread Saturday to the city of Ilyichevsk, 20 miles southeast of Andijon and on the border with Kyrgyzstan. Thousands of Uzbeks have streamed to the area, demanding access to the neighboring country. About 500 broke through a closed border.

"They torched a car belonging to a policeman and pushed a border guard's car into the canal and demanded to be allowed to pass through unhindered" into Kyrgyzstan, a Kyrgyz police official, Ravshan Abdukarimov, told the Reuters news service.

Uzbek state television is providing almost no information about the events in Andijon or elsewhere in the country.

But, according to news reports and Andijon residents reached by telephone, hundreds of people continued to protest there Saturday, with some carrying corpses into the central square in the early morning to register their anger at the shooting. As evening fell, however, the streets began to clear out and the city was largely calm, according to news reports.

The violence was triggered by the prosecution of 23 prominent businessmen in Andijon on charges of religious extremism, part of a wider government crackdown on all forms of Islam not sanctioned by the state in this largely Muslim country. The businessmen are reported to be followers of Akram Yuldashev, an Islamic dissident who was sentenced to 17 years in prison in 1999 on charges that he called for the overthrow of the government.

The trial of the businessmen ended this week with a call for lengthy prison sentences, angering many people in the city where the men were major employers. There were also reports that relatives of the men, who had been protesting peacefully outside the courthouse for two months, were detained after the trial ended.

Mukhammed Salikh, an exiled opposition figure, said in an interview with Georgian television from Norway that "we need to oust Islam Karimov's regime with as few losses as possible."

"This is not a rebellion of radicals," he said. "This is a rebellion of ordinary people who got tired of the Karimov regime."

Karimov said attempts to negotiate a peaceful solution in Andijon proved impossible, and he described the protesters' demands, including greater religious freedom, as excessive.

"To link these tragic events with the development of democracy is absurd," Karimov said at the news conference. "The attempts to artificially impose democracy in countries that are far from its standards may result in a third force -- radical Muslim groups -- benefiting from the situation."

Early Friday, perhaps as many as 60 supporters of the businessmen raided a military base and seized weapons, according to news reports from the city. They then stormed the prison where the businessmen were being held, freeing them and up to 2,000 other prisoners.

Armed groups then began to roam the city and engaged in gun battles with local security forces. Residents poured into the central square, demanding improved economic conditions and an end to government repression. Protesters seized a government building, holding several police and security officers hostage.

Around 5.30 p.m. Friday, with helicopters buzzing overhead, government troops raced into the square, firing from armored personnel carriers. Bodies littered the center of city after the assault, according to witnesses.

Uzbekistan is a U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, and the U.S. military uses an air base in the country to support operations in neighboring Afghanistan. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday that a "more representative and democratic government should come through peaceful means, not through violence."

Russian government officials are backing Karimov, and the Kremlin Web site said President Vladimir Putin was "seriously concerned about the danger of destabilization."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/14/AR2005051400501.html

posted June 13, 2005 01:20 AM              

Opinion - Martin Samuel
May 17, 2005

Ready, steady, cook up reasons for supporting the boiling butcher
MARTIN SAMUEL

ISLAM KARIMOV, President of Uzbekistan, boils people alive. Why? For the same reason Saddam Hussein put his enemies in a shredder: because, at the time, he could.
When the West is your pal you are able, quite literally, to get away with murder. And what murder! It is a surprise Karimov has time for governing at all, once he has spent the morning formulating new ways to poach, grill, tenderise, smoke and flambé his citizens to death. Boiling water, electrocution, chlorine-filled gas masks, drowning, rape, shooting, savage beatings, Karimov’s Uzbekistan is the absolute market leader in torture right now. The CIA would not shop anywhere else, which is why a mysterious Gulfstream 5 executive jet routinely delivers terrorist subjects from Afghanistan there for interrogation and, perhaps, percolation. Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador, drew attention to this last year, and the noted socialist Tony Blair acted immediately. He sacked him.

Mr Murray’s warnings echo louder than ever now, on the back of hundreds of corpses in the streets of Andijan. Uzbek troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd of protesters on Friday in an act of such brutality that the world finally woke up to the wickedness of the war on terror’s new best friend. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, called it a “clear abuse of human rights” — no kidding, Sherlock — but struggled to make his voice heard among our American allies. Little surprise. If they had wanted his opinion, they would surely have given it to him.

Live and don’t learn would appear to be the moral to this story. Karimov may be a vicious, murdering, malevolent despot, but he is our vicious, murdering, malevolent despot so, like Saddam, he can boil, shred and gas away until we tire of uses for him. Saddam was in the right place, sharing our hostility towards Iran at the right time, and so we armed him to the teeth in the name of a cause. Karimov, a nasty member of the regional Soviet hierarchy even before independence in 1991, stands beneath another flag of convenience. He is frightened of Islam, rich in gas and oil, and within striking distance of Afghanistan. An American airbase, which Karimov allowed to be built at Khanabad, now protects the American-owned pipeline carrying Central Asia’s black treasure through Afghanistan to the sea. Is it not strange that all our pals have the same thing in common? Just as celebrities end up latching on to other celebrities, so the West always finds itself hanging out with guys who are knee-deep in four-star.

The reason only the West could set the Iraqi people free was because our military and financial support for Saddam Hussein’s corrupt Government had made it impossible for his citizens to rise up alone. So it is in Uzbekistan. When Kabuljon Parpiyev, one of the leaders of the doomed Andijan protestors, spoke to Zakir Almatov, the Uzbek Interior Minister, at the weekend, he claims that he was told: “We don’t care if 200, 300 or 400 people die — we have the force.” It is the backing of the coalition that makes Karimov cocksure and invincible. There are countries around the world that would choose true freedom overnight: if only the coalition’s freedom-junkies would let them.

In 2002, the United States gave Uzbekistan $500 million in aid (as opposed to $36 million four years earlier) of which $120 million went to the army and $79 million to the notorious SNB, Karimov’s secret police. It was the SNB who boiled Muzafar Avazov, an Islamist activist, to death, having already beaten him severely and ripped his fingernails out. The fate of his fellow prisoner Husnidin Alimov does not bear thinking about, considering the Government restricted viewing of his lifeless body. It was also the SNB who came to collect Avazov’s 63-year-old mother, Fatima Mukhadirova, sentenced to six years’ hard labour for the crime of telling the world about the murder of her son. (She was released the day before Donald Rumsfeld was due to visit, during which he praised “the wonderful co-operation we have received from the Government of Uzbekistan” over the War on Terror.)

So the freedom our precious coalition claims to be exporting around the world is not true freedom at all. Rather, it is freedom we are giving back, having conspired with sadists to take away. What the Iraqi people enjoyed at the polling booths in January was freedom on our terms, not theirs. Considering the dreadful human toll, one would think we would then acknowledge that mistake by not repeating it, but no: there were no opposition parties in Uzbekistan’s last election and there are no arms restrictions imposed by our Government, either. Questioned on thisin Parliament in December 2003, Bill Rammell, the junior Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister, said: “Uzbekistan is a key player in a region of strategic importance to the UK, so defence co-operation is important. It is important to note that Uzbek armed forces are not implicated in human rights violations.” In other words: go boil your head. Oh, sorry, you already have done.

We mould these little monsters such as Saddam, Karimov and General Manuel Noriega and they do our dirty work until such a time when it is no longer expedient, at which point we extract revenge and dress it up as a moral crusade; or enduring freedom. There are those who believe that, whatever its motives, the war in Iraq can be justified by free elections and the removal of Saddam. Yes, but only if that policy is consistent. If the coalition agenda is to spread democracy worldwide, then it cannot be in bed with a tyrant like Karimov. And if it is, then any good in Iraq is overpowered by the stench of death and hypocrisy wafting across from central Asia.