posted June 13, 2005 11:45 AM            

quote:

---

If they had wanted his opinion, they would surely have given it to him.

---

Martin Samuel has just delivered your opinion to those of you who are on the left. See, there really are places the left can go to have their opinion delivered to them.

Just to make sure the left really gets it, let me consolidate and summarize your opinion...and marching orders.

If western nations are not willing to declare World War III and take on every dictator, bad guy and terrorist in the world simultaneously; then it is not permissible to take any of them out. You are to whine, screech, wet your pants, march, sign impeachment petitions and oppose your own government anytime your government takes action, military or otherwise, against one dictator without going after them all..at the same time.

Of course, you're supposed to be hiding behind the cover of being antiwar but you blew that when you failed to wet yourselves over Clinton bombing the hell out of Bosnia and launching missiles at a pill plant in the Sudan...not to mention Clinton's half hearted missile attacks against Saddam. A principle is a principle..now isn't it?

I prefer a different model and this model is the one adopted by Bush, Blair, Howard and other leaders of the coalition. Simple and irrefutable.

posted June 13, 2005 05:06 PM              

******
President's Press Conference
The Rose Garden
10:43 A.M. EDT

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 31, 2005

Q Two questions about the consistency of a U.S. foreign policy that's built on the foundation of spreading democracy and ending tyranny. One, how come you have not spoken out about the violent crackdown in Uzbekistan, which is a U.S. ally in the war on terror, and why have you not spoken out in favor of the pro-democratic groups in Egypt that see the election process there unfolding in a way that is anything but democratic?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I thought I did the other day, in terms of the Egyptians. I think you were traveling with Laura, maybe just got back, but I was asked about the Egyptian elections, and I said, we expect for the Egyptian political process to be open, and that for people to be given a chance to express themselves open -- in an open way, in a free way. We reject any violence toward those who express their dissension with the government. Pretty confident I said that with President Abbas standing here -- maybe not quite as articulately as just then.

In terms of Uzbekistan -- thanks for bringing it up -- we've called for the International Red Cross to go into the Andijon region to determine what went on, and we expect all our friends, as well as those who aren't our friends, to honor human rights and protect minority rights. That's part of a healthy and a peaceful -- peaceful world, will be a world in which governments do respect people's rights. And we want to know fully what took place there in Uzbekistan, and that's why we've asked the International Red Cross to go in.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050531.html

*********

Uzbekistan Rejects International Probe into Andijan Violence
By VOA News
02 June 2005

Uzbekistan has rejected a call from NATO's inter-parliamentary assembly for an international inquiry into recent violence in Andijan, but said foreign diplomats can monitor its own probe.

Uzbek Foreign Minister Elyor Ganiyev proposed setting up a group of representatives of foreign embassies in Tashkent that would monitor the probe.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer asked for the investigation after allegations that Uzbek troops used excessive force against unarmed civilians. NATO parliamentarians urged member states to halt support for Uzbek armed forces unless a probe was conducted.

posted June 13, 2005 06:58 PM              

The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has made repeated efforts to gain access to those injured and arrested since the violent protests erupted three weeks ago. But, so far, it says, it has had no response to its requests. http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-06-07-voa27.cfm
*********

Rights groups seek probe of Uzbekistan 'massacre'
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press
Moscow- A human rights group Tuesday called Uzbekistan's crackdown on protesters last month a "massacre" and urged Washington to suspend talks on long-term plans for the U.S. military base there until the Central Asian nation agrees to an international investigation.

Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 50 victims and witnesses who testified that government troops fired repeatedly on demonstrators gathered in a square in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan on May 13 and killed many others as they fled. It said it couldn't give a precise number of casualties, but that hundreds had been slain.

"The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre," the New York-based group said in a report. Its executive director said retreating protesters and hostages were cut down by gunfire he likened to a "shooting gallery."

Another group, the International Committee for the Red Cross, said Uzbekistan's govern ment had denied it access to people injured or arrested in the unrest.

It said it also has been unable to establish contact with regional authorities in Andijan.

Uzbekistan hosts a U.S. military base that was established to help fight the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

But Human Rights Watch urged the Bush administration not to hold further discussions about a long-term arrangement for the base until the country permitted an international investigation into the deaths.

If Uzbekistan rejects the inquiry, the United States should "bring an end to its post-Sept. 11 strategic partnership" and terminate its military presence, the group said.

The Uzbek government has denied firing on civilians, and President Islam Karimov has branded the protesters Islamic extremists. But the rights group said the protesters were civilians demonstrating against poverty, corruption and official repression.

posted June 30, 2005 07:43 PM              

********

Bush Administration Support for Repression in Uzbekistan Belies Pro-Democracy Rhetoric

By Stephen Zunes| June 20, 2005

Editor: John Gershman, International Relations Center (IRC)

Recent revelations that the United States successfully blocked a call by NATO for an international investigation of the May 13 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the government of the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan serves as yet another reminder of the insincerity of the Bush administration’s claims for supporting freedom and democracy in the Islamic world and the former Soviet Union.

A recent report from Human Rights Watch, based on interviews with scores of eyewitnesses, determined that government troops in the city of Andijan used ''indiscriminate use of lethal force against unarmed people,'' killing more than 500 people. And, while HRW noted that a small number of armed men were apparently present among the demonstrators, the report asserted that the Uzbek government's use of force against the crowd was ''neither proportionate nor appropriate to the danger they posed.''

By contrast, rather than condemning the massacre, the Bush White House called for “restraint’ from both sides in an apparent effort to convince Americans that unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators were somehow just as guilty as the those who shot at them. A Bush administration spokesman also claimed that Islamic “terrorist groups” may have been behind the protests that prompted the shootings.

Such claims are contradicted by those familiar with the political situation in the eastern Uzbek city as well as by the Human Rights Watch report, which noted that there was “no evidence that any of the speakers at the protest promoted an Islamist agenda. According to numerous witnesses, their grievances were overwhelmingly about poverty, corruption, and government repression.” Similarly, Amnesty International reported that ''The vast majority of the thousands of protestors gathered in the town's main square calling for justice and an end to poverty were unarmed and peaceful.”

Uzbek troops reportedly killed an additional 200 demonstrators the following day in the nearby city of Pakhtabad and still more civilians were shot while attempting to flee into neighboring Kyrgyzstan. The British newspaper The Independent reported that Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov had flown from the capital or Tashkent into the area Friday morning “and almost certainly personally authorized the use of...deadly force.”
Dictators and Double Standards

The massacres took place not long after an overseas trip in which President George W. Bush extolled the democratic revolutions in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia. American NGOs which supported these pro-democracy movements, such as Freedom House and George Soros’ Open Society Institute, have been threatened and expelled by Uzbek authorities. The ongoing U.S. support for the repressive Karimov regime, then, stands as yet another example of the crass double-standards in U.S. policy.

Such double-standards are not new. During the Cold War, both Republican and Democratic administrations would bewail the human rights abuses of Communist and other leftist governments while sending arms and economic assistance to even more repressive right-wing allies. In Central Asia during the 1980s, the U.S. government was even willing to back extremist Islamist groups as part of its anti-Communist crusade.

Now, however, the United States is using Communists to fight Islamists.

Karimov became leader of the Uzbek Communist Party in 1989 and backed the unsuccessful coup by Communist Party hard liners against reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Soon after Uzbekistan became independent later that year, he banned leading opposition parties and has since held onto power through a series of rigged elections and plebiscites. Though acknowledging such votes “offered Uzbekistan voters no true choice,” the Bush administration has yet to called for free and fair elections. And while supporting “human rights training,” the U.S. government has refused to give the kind of support to pro-democracy groups challenging the pro-American dictatorship in Uzbekistan as it did for similar opposition groups challenging less compliant regimes in Ukraine and Georgia.

The Karimov dictatorship has received over one billion dollars in U.S. aid, the vast majority of that coming under President Bush, who has justified the U.S. invasion, occupation, and ongoing counter-insurgency wars in nearby Iraq because of the need to promote democracy in the Islamic world. An estimated 1000 American troops are currently stationed in Uzbekistan and U.S. forces have engaged in military training exercises with Uzbek forces as far back as 1995.

Karimov was invited to the White House in March 2002, where he and President Bush signed a strategic partnership agreement, which included an additional $120 million in U.S. military aid. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has praised Karimov for his “wonderful cooperation” with the U.S. military. President Bush’s former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill spoke admirably of the dictator’s “very keen intellect and deep passion” for improving the lives of his people.
George Bush’s “Man in Central Asia”

The largest country in Central Asian in population and its capital Tashkent is the region’s largest city, with a subway system and an international airport built during the Soviet era. As an independent state under Karimov’s rule, Uzbekistan remains one of the poorest of the former Soviet republics despite its generous natural resources, including one of the world’s largest sources of natural gas and sizable but largely untapped oil reserves. Karimov, however, pockets virtually all of the revenue generated by the country’s natural endowments. Corruption is rampant and his brutal militsia routinely engage in robbery and extortion. Businessmen who refuse to pay bribes are frequently labeled as Islamic extremists and then jailed, tortured and murdered.

Uzbekistan’s jails hold more than 7000 political prisoners, where torture is widespread and systematic. Not long after the Bush administration provided Uzbek police with $79 million worth in assistance in 2002, two prominent political prisoners were found to have been boiled to death. The elderly mother of one of the victims was sentenced six years of hard labor when she protested.

Despite this, Craig Murray, who served as the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 until last year, observed how “Karimov is very much George Bush’s man in Central Asia” and that no Bush administration official has ever said a negative word about him.

As a result of growing criticism for its support for such repression, the Bush administration reduced its support for “security and law enforcement” last year to $10 million, though much larger amounts of indirect funding from the American taxpayer continues to flow. The State Department has emphasized that, despite the reduction in U.S. aid, Uzbekistan remains “an important partner” and has pledged to “continued cooperation.”

Indeed, U.S. intelligence officials have privately confirmed widespread reports that the Bush administration has been sending suspected Islamic radicals arrested in third countries to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation.

As a result of the Karimov regime’s imprisonment and torture of nonviolent Muslims who dared to worship outside of state controls, a radical armed group known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has emerged to challenge the regime. The Bush administration blamed a series of IMU suicide bombings in the capital of Tashkent last year on Al-Qaeda, though British and other intelligence sources report no direct links between the IMU and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

Attacks by the dictatorship’s armed forces have resulted in widespread civilian casualties, not just within Uzbekistan, but also in neighboring Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Amnesty International documented widespread human rights violations during a 2001 counter-insurgency campaign, where “villages were set on fire and bombed, livestock were killed, houses and fields destroyed.” By contrast, the Bush administration went on record supporting what it called “the right of Uzbekistan to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity” and praised the army’s measures “to minimize casualties and ensure the protection of innocent civilians.”

Since even this spring’s massacres have not led to a lessening in the Bush administration’s support for the Karimov regime, it is unlikely that there will be a change in policy until the American people demand it. Campaigns in recent decades against U.S. support for repressive regimes in Latin America and Southeast Asia were often successful in limiting or cutting off aid to dictators. Similar campaigns could emerge to challenge the Bush administration’s support for dictators like Karimov. Indeed, given that the U.S.-led counter-insurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank have been justified in the name of advancing the cause of freedom and democracy, the Bush administration is perhaps more vulnerable to criticism than previous administrations for its support of autocratic regimes in the Middle East and Central Asia. The question is whether the American people care enough to make it an issue.

Stephen Zunes, Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (www.fpif.org), is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003). Portions of this article originally appeared in the May 27 issue of the National Catholic Reporter. http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0506uzbekistan_body.html

posted June 30, 2005 07:44 PM              

Iranian president linked with US Embassy siege
July 1, 2005 - 8:10AM

A1979 file photo shows one of 60 US hostages being displayed to the crowd outside the US Embassy in Tehran by Iranian hostage takers. The bearded man, circled, is believed to be the Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pictured in the inset).

A1979 file photo shows one of 60 US hostages being displayed to the crowd outside the US Embassy in Tehran by Iranian hostage takers. The bearded man, circled, is believed to be the Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pictured in the inset).
Photo: AP

US President George W. Bush said today he wanted answers on whether Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a leader in the 1979 US Embassy siege as some former hostages have said but Iranians have denied.

Several Americans who were held said they recognised the ultraconservative Ahmadinejad as a ringleader.

But two Iranians who were leading figures in the storming of the embassy said he did not take part.

Bush said he did not know whether Ahmadinejad was involved and officials were analysing photographs and other information on the saga to see if they shed light on the matter.

"Obviously his involvement raises many questions, and knowing how active people are at finding answers to questions, I'm confident they will be found," Bush told reporters.

Bush warned Ahmadinejad that he and European leaders would take a unified stance in their concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The US president has said little until now about Ahmadinejad, the 48-year-old hardline Tehran mayor who was elected president in a landslide on Friday and takes over from reformist President Mohammed Khatami.
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Ahmadinejad has struck a defiant stance on Iran's nuclear fuel program, which Washington sees as part of an effort to build atomic weapons, and has dismissed calls for efforts to improve Iran's relationship to the United States.

Involvement by the new Iranian leader in the 1979-1981 hostage crisis would send a chill through the US government, which has not resumed diplomatic relations with Iran since then. Fifty-two Americans were held for 444 days.

In interviews with US television networks, retired Navy Capt. Donald Sharer and Bill Daugherty said they were convinced Ahmadinejad was one of their Iranian captors.

"He wasn't a very nice fellow at the time. He called us pigs and dogs. He's very hard-line, he's a guy we are not going to get along with," Sharer told ABC's "Good Morning America."

Daugherty said he had "no doubts at all" that Ahmadinejad was one of his hostage-takers.

"When your country is being humiliated and being embarrassed, the individuals that do that really stick in your mind. You don't forget people who do things like that to you and your family and your country," Daugherty said.

One US official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Ahmadinejad seemed to have moved "through the same circle" as the hostage takers but added, "Was he a hostage taker? That's the open question."

White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said no determination had been made on photographs that some hostages believe show Ahmadinejad taking part in the siege, but a review of photographs and other information was underway.

In Iran, Abbas Abdi, who helped to orchestrate the raid, said Ahmadinejad "was not among those who occupied the American Embassy after the revolution." Mohsen Mirdamadi, another ringleader, said reports of Ahmandinejad's involvement were untrue.

Bush, who in 2002 branded Iran as part of an "axis of evil," said he had spoken to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder about efforts to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear arms, and he said he would also speak to French President Jacques Chirac.

The United States accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons but the country's leaders insist they want to produce nuclear energy for purely peaceful purposes.

"My message is that it's very important at this moment for the EU-3 to send a strong message to the new person (in Iran), that the world is united in saying that you should not be given the capabilities of enriching uranium which could then be converted into a nuclear weapon," Bush said.

"In other words, we've got a new man who's assumed power, and he must hear a focused message," he added.

Reuters http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/iranian-president-linked-with-us-embassy-siege/2005/07/01/1119724782805.html

posted July 01, 2005 10:10 PM              

26 June 2005

Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he will look toward all groups in Iranian society when he forms his new cabinet.

The ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran received 62 percent of the vote to win Friday's presidential runoff against former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed for national unity Saturday, saying his goal is creating a modern and advanced Islamic society.

He directed much of his campaign toward the poor, condemning corruption and promising to redistribute oil wealth. He also vowed to defend Iran's nuclear program against threats from the West.

Some Iranian reformists fear the the new president will turn back hard-won freedoms.

International reaction was mixed. The United States said voters had no choice in the election because the unlelected clergy on the Guardian Council chose the candidates.

British, French, and German officials said they hope the new government will continue nuclear talks.

posted July 02, 2005 05:39 PM              

Wow what a coincidence our bills have symbols that say that.

Idiots.

posted July 05, 2005 06:53 PM            

American troops on the Syrian border are enjoying a battle they have long waited to see - a clash between foreign al-Qa'eda fighters and Iraqi insurgents.

Tribal leaders in Husaybah are attacking followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist who established the town as an entry point for al-Qa'eda jihadists being smuggled into the country.

The reason, the US military believes, is frustration at the heavy-handed approach of the foreigners, who have kidnapped and assassinated local leaders and imposed a strict Islamic code.

Fighting, which could be clearly heard at night over the weekend, first broke out in May when as many as 50 mortar rounds were fired across the city. But, to the surprise of the American garrison, this time it was not the target.

If a shell landed near the US base, "they'd adjust their fire and not shoot at us", Lt Col Tim Mundy said. "They shot at each other."

The trigger was the assassination of a tribal sheikh, from the Sulaiman tribe, ordered by Zarqawi for inviting senior US marines for lunch. American troops gained an insight into the measures the jihadists had imposed during recent house-to-house searches in nearby towns and villages.

Shops selling music and satellite dishes had been closed. Women were ordered to wear all-enveloping clothing and men forbidden from wearing western clothes.

Anyone considered to be aiding coalition forces was being killed or kidnapped. That included those with links to the government - seen as a US puppet - such as water or electricity officials. As a result local services had collapsed.

Captain Thomas Sibley, intelligence officer of 3rd battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, based in Qaim, said: "People here were committed supporters of the insurgency but you cannot now even get a marriage licence.

"The tribes are the only system or organisation left and they appear to have stepped in.

"In the last week our camp in the town was attacked and the attackers got ambushed on the way back by two machineguns and mortar fire. That is good news for us."

Baghdad recently warned that Iraqi insurgents, many of them nationalists rather than Islamists, and al-Qa'eda cells were working more closely together than in the past. That was brought into doubt when the bodies of three foreigners, believed to be insurgents, were discovered in Ramadi, apparently killed by Iraqis.

But the extent of the jihadist presence in Hasaybah - and therefore the subsequent tension - is unique.

Foreign fighters first started to arrive two years ago after Zarqawi bought properties to use as safe houses for arrivals before they could be funnelled east towards Baghdad and other major cities.

The police fled in November. In mid-June, al-Qa'eda units took over key buildings, including mosques and government offices. "Al-Qa'eda in Iraq" flags were raised.

The city, 240 miles north-west of Baghdad and adjacent to the insurgent centre of Qaim, is so dangerous that soldiers in the US base sleep in bunkers because of mortar and rocket attacks.

Following al-Qa'eda's seizure of the main buildings a number of residents fled. Arkan Salim, 56, who left with his wife and four children, said: "We thought they were patriotic. Now we discovered that they are sick and crazy.

"They interfered in everything, even how we raise our children. They turned the city into hell, and we cannot live in it anymore."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=V200CY1JBFIR1QFIQMFSM54AVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2005/07/04/wirq04.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/04/ixworld.html

posted July 09, 2005 06:59 PM              

ANI[ SATURDAY, JULY 09, 2005 08:51:18 PM ]

PESHAWAR: Pakistani authorities are interrogating a British national, Zeeshan Siddique, suspected of having links with al-Qaeda and militants in the UK, for his possible role in Thursday's serial bomb blasts in London.

Security agencies had picked up the man from near Peshawar in May.

Though Sidddique's links with some of the militants belonging with Al-Muhajiroun, a radical Muslim group in the UK, have been established, his association with the group as such has not been proved.

However, the interrogators have recovered several phone numbers from his possession allegedly linking him to al-Qaeda operatives, and feel he may be the missing link in the plot.

The interrogators have also recovered from him a CD containing programmes regarding circuit works, aeronautical mapping and digital simulation. He has reportedly disclosed to the interrogators, that he was a suspect in a failed plot to bomb pubs, restaurants and rail stations in London.

According to The Dawn , they are now focusing on a note in which Siddique states that one of his comrades had informed him that 'wagon' had now been called off. According to the paper, the reference to 'wagon' has prompted security officials to take a fresh look at the whole case with particular reference to the bombings in London's underground tubes.

Quoting official sources, the paper reported that the US and the UK security agencies are taking keen interest in Siddique, on whom they have a great deal of information , adding that lately the UK agencies had requested for his immediate deportation.

The interrogators feel that the suspect possesses a lot of information with him, but he works himself into a fit to avoid interrogation. "It is still premature to say anything. We believe that the guy is holding back a lot of information," the paper quoted an investigator as saying.

posted July 09, 2005 11:10 PM              

That is why I trust no government.

posted July 10, 2005 04:52 PM              

New York and Washington. Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid. And now London.

When will it end? Where will it all lead?

The experts aren't encouraged. One prominent terrorism researcher sees the prospect of "endless" war. Adds the man who tracked Osama bin Laden for the CIA, "I don't think it's even started yet."

An Associated Press survey of longtime students of international terrorism finds them ever more convinced, in the aftermath of London's bloody Thursday, that the world has entered a long siege in a new kind of war. They think that al-Qaida is mutating into a global insurgency, a possible prototype for other 21st-century movements, technologically astute, almost leaderless. And the way out is far from clear.

In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA analyst, rather than move toward solutions, the United States took a big step backward by invading Iraq.

Now, he said, "we're at the point where jihad is self-sustaining," where Islamic "holy warriors" in Iraq fight America with or without allegiance to al-Qaida's bin Laden.

The cold statistics of a RAND Corp. database show the impact of the explosion of violence in Iraq: The 5,362 deaths from terrorism worldwide between March 2004 and March 2005 were almost double the total for the same 12-month period before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Thursday's attacks on London's transit system mirrored last year's bombings of Madrid commuter trains, and both point to an al-Qaida evolving into a movement whose isolated leaders offer video or Internet inspiration — but little more — to local "jihadists" who carry out the strikes.

The movement's evolution "has given rise to a 'virtual network' that is extremely adaptable," said Jonathan Stevenson of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Washington office.

The movement adapted, for example, by switching from targeting aviation, where security was reinforced after the Sept. 11 attacks, to the "softer" targets of mass transit.

Such compartmentalized groupings, in touch electronically but with little central control, "are going to be a prototype for understanding where terrorist movements are going in the 21st century," said the University of North Carolina's Cynthia Combs, co-author of a terrorism encyclopedia.

Bruce Hoffman, the veteran RAND Corp. specialist who fears an "endless war," dismisses talk of al-Qaida's "back" having been broken by the capture of some leaders.

"From the terrorists' point of view, it seems they have calculated they need to do just one significant terrorist attack a year in another capital, and it regenerates the same fear and anxieties," said Hoffman, who was an adviser to the U.S. occupation in Iraq.

He and most of the other half-dozen experts said the world's richer powers must address "underlying causes" — lessen the appeal of radicalism by improving economies, political rights and education in Arab and Muslim countries. Stephen Sloan, another veteran scholar in the field, said the American, British and other target publics must give their intelligence and police agencies time to close ranks globally and crush the challenge.

"The public has to have the resolve to face the reality there will be other incidents," said Sloan, of the University of Central Florida.

Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit for nine years, sees a different way out — through U.S. foreign policy. He said he resigned last November to expose the U.S. leadership's "willful blindness" to what needs to be done: withdraw the U.S. military from the Mideast, end "unqualified support" for Israel, sever close ties to Arab oil-state "tyrannies."

He acknowledged such actions aren't likely soon but said his longtime subject bin Laden will "make us bleed enough to get our attention." Ultimately, he said, "his goal is to destroy the Arab monarchies."

For James Kirkhope, the outlook is "depressing."

His Washington consultancy, Terrorism Research Center, sometimes "red-teams" for U.S. authorities, playing a role in exercises, thinking like terrorist leaders. That thinking increasingly seems focused on a struggle for Islamic supremacy lasting hundreds of years, he said.

posted July 12, 2005 11:08 PM              

Police said they believe four men including the three Pakistani origin persons who arrived at King's Cross last Thursday morning on a train from Leeds were behind the terrorist bomb attack that killed at least 52 people and injured 700 on three tube trains and one bus.

Detectives are still unsure about the identity of the fourth bomber. CCTV footage at King's Cross station showed the four suspected bombers together at 8.30am, Deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan police's anti-terrorism branch, told a press conference here last night. The three tube blasts - at Aldgate, King's Cross and Edgware Road - came within a minute of each other at 8.51 am.

The bus bomb detonated 57 minutes later as the No 30 passed through Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, central London. The bus bomber is believed to be dead, and police said there was "strong forensic and other evidence" a second bomber died at Aldgate. Investigators are now trying to establish if the other two are alive or died in the explosions. A relative of one of the suspects was arrested in West Yorkshire on Tuesday and was being brought to London to be quizzed by the anti-terrorist branch.

Police sources said they were working under the assumption that the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers. Suggestions that the bus was targeted by a suicide bomber were initially denied by police, but witnesses claimed an "agitated" passenger was seen rummaging in his bag. Clarke said police were now trying to establish the movements of the four men in the week before the bomb attacks.

"We are trying to establish their movements in the run-up to last week's attack and specifically to establish whether they all died in the explosions," he said. Six search warrants were served yesterday under the Terrorism Act on houses in and around Leeds, during the operation. "These included the home addresses of three of the four men," he said.

"A detailed forensic examination will now follow and this is likely to take time to complete." The investigation has already established that personal documents bearing the names of three of the four men were found close to three of the explosions.

Property in the name of the suspected bus bomber - reported missing by his family on the morning of July 7 - was found on the No.30. Property of a second man was found at Aldgate, and property belonging to a third was found both at Aldgate and at Edgware Road. In another development, police have found explosives inside a car left outside Luton railway station in Bedfordshire.
http://www.manoramaonline.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=manorama/MmArticle/CommonFullStory&cid=1121220701024&c=MmArticle&p=1002366458912&channel=Home&count=9

posted July 12, 2005 11:29 PM              

July 13, 2005

The suicide bomb squad from Leeds
By Michael Evans, Daniel McGrory and Stewart Tendler
FOUR friends from northern England have changed the face of terrorism by carrying out the suicide bombings that brought carnage to London last week.

It emerged last night that, for the first time in Western Europe, suicide bombers have been recruited for attacks. Security forces are coming to terms with the realisation that young Britons are prepared to die for their militant cause.

Three of the men lived in Leeds and the immediate fear is that members of a terrorist cell linked to the city are planning further strikes. The mastermind behind the attacks and the bombmaker are both still thought to be at large.

The man who planted the bomb at Edgware Road was named last night as Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, the married father of an eight-month-old baby, who is believed to have come from the Leeds area.

Two other terrorists were Hasib Hussain, 19, who bombed the bus in Tavistock Square, of Colenso Mount, Leeds, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, the Aldgate bomber, who lived at Colwyn Road, Leeds.

Police are still trying to identify the fourth, whose remains are believed to be in the bombed Tube train carriage on the Piccadilly Line. It is thought that he comes from Luton.

Armed police raided six addresses in West Yorkshire yesterday, including the homes of three of the men, who they now know travelled to Luton in a hired car last Wednesday to join the fourth man. They boarded the 7.40 Thameslink train to King’s Cross the next day, each armed with a 10lb rucksack bomb.

Police found a bomb factory in Leeds containing a “viable amount of explosives”. Explosives were also recovered from a car left parked near Luton station. The raids came after the discovery of driving licences and credit cards at the scenes of the explosions, and a telephone call from the mother of Hasib Hussain, who asked police to try to trace her son.

A relative of one of the bombers was arrested and taken to London for questioning. Intelligence agencies say that at least two of the men had recently returned from Pakistan. All four were British, but with origins in Pakistan. MI6, MI5 and British diplomats were in touch with the Pakistani authorities last night to try to track down any connections with terrorists there. Security sources confirmed that none of the bombers was on any MI5 file, although one had links to a person investigated by police.

The four were captured on CCTV cameras at King’s Cross Thameslink station, laughing together and carrying rucksacks, minutes before they set off for their targets at 8.30am on July 7.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1691994,00.html

posted July 15, 2005 12:02 AM              

Officials tell ABC News the London bombers have been connected to an al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

The laptop computer of Naeem Noor Khan, a captured al Qaeda leader, contained plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway system, as well as on financial buildings in both New York and Washington.

"There's absolutely no doubt he was part of an al Qaeda operation aimed at not only the United States but Great Britain," explained Alexis Debat, a former official in the French Defense Ministry who is now a senior terrorism consultant for ABC News.

At the time, authorities thought they had foiled the London subway plot by arresting more than a dozen young Britons of Pakistani descent last August in Luton, a city known for its ties to terrorism.

"For some time, the locus of terrorism in Britain has been around the Luton area and in some of the northern cities," said Michael Clark, professor of defense at King's College in London.

Security officials tell ABC News they have discovered links between the eldest of the London bombers, Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, and the original group in Luton. Officials also believe it was not a coincidence the subway bombers all met at the Luton train station last week.

"It is very likely this group was activated last year after the other group was arrested," Debat said.

One of Khan's friends informed the BBC today that Khan had undergone training for explosives at terror camps in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. This piece of information only strengthened the London-Pakistani connection.

posted July 20, 2005 10:23 PM              

Terror investigators hunting the London bombing mastermind are to question a suspected Al Qaeda planner held in Pakistan.

British-born Haroon Rashid Aswad was seized at a religious school with a suicide bomb belt, explosives and GBP 13,000 in cash.

Security sources in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, claim he had up to 20 telephone conversations with London bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. One of these is believed to have been just hours before the blasts.

The UK's DAILY MAIL reports on Thursday: Security sources say he trained at an Afghan camp which was visited by Osama Bin Laden and that he is linked to two of Bin Laden's planners and an Al Qaeda suspect held in America.

U.S. investigators have been told that Aswad attended the Khalden camp in Afghanistan, favoured by foreign terror trainees. British shoe bomber Richard Reid is among those who attended the camp and it has been reported that London bomber Khan also went there.

Developing...
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash1.htm

London bombs

July 21, 2005

Top al-Qaeda Briton called Tube bombers before attack
By Zahid Hussain in Islamabad, Daniel McGrory and Sean O’Neill
THE British al-Qaeda leader linked to the London terrorist attacks was being questioned by police in Pakistan last night after the discovery of mobile phone records detailing his calls with the suicide bombers.

Haroon Rashid Aswat has emerged as the figure that Scotland Yard have been hunting since he flew out of Britain just hours before the attacks which killed 56 people.

Aswat, 30, who is believed to come from the same West Yorkshire town as one of the bombers, arrived in Britain a fortnight before the attacks to orchestrate final planning for the atrocity. He spoke to the suicide team on his mobile phone a few hours before the four men blew themselves up and killed fifty-two other people.

Intelligence sources told The Times that during his stay Aswat visited the home towns of all four bombers as well as selecting targets in London.

Aswat has been known to Western intelligence services for more than three years after the FBI accused him of trying to set up al-Qaeda training camps in the US. When he was arrested in a madrassa (religious school), Aswat is understood to have been posing as a businessmen and using a false name. He was picked up in a raid at a madrassa at Sargodha, 90 miles from Islamabad, by Pakistani intelligence officials and flown to a jail in the capital.

Security sources there told The Times that he was armed with a number of guns, wearing an explosive belt and carrying around £17,000 in cash. He had a British passport and was about to flee across the border to Afghanistan.

Aswat, who is thought to have stayed in the madrassa with two of the British suicide bombers, is being questioned over claims that one — Mohammad Sidique Khan — telephoned him on the morning of the July 7 attack.

Intelligence sources claim that there were up to twenty calls between Aswat and two of the bombers in the days leading up to the bombing of three Tube trains and a double-decker bus. A senior Pakistani security source said: “We believe this man had a crucial part to play in what happened in London.”

Tony Blair has telephoned President Musharraf about the crackdown on militants which has led to more than 200 arrests in Pakistan since the weekend.

Officials in Islamabad say that eight men are directly linked to the London investigation, and were in telephone contact with Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Khan, 30, a former primary school assistant.

Aswat is believed to have had a ten-year association with militant groups and met Osama bin Laden while attending an al-Qaeda training camp at Khalden in Afghanistan.

FBI documents obtained by The Times reveal details of how a London-based cleric sent Aswat to America in 1999 to set up camps in Oregon for US-born recruits.

The papers indicate that Aswat spent three months in America and engaged in firearms and poisons training but decided against using a remote ranch in Bly as an al-Qaeda camp. The CIA is keeping in close touch with Aswat’s interrogation and British detectives are seeking permission to speak to him.

The FBI is to question a number of figures held in the US, including James Ujaama, an American convert to Islam who met Aswat, and a second al-Qaeda emissary in Seattle.

Ujaama has pleaded guilty to assisting the Taleban and is now a “co-operating witness” who has given details of Aswat’s activities in the US.

Aswat flew into New York on November 26, 1999, on an Air India flight with Oussama Abdullah Kassir, who has Swedish nationality.

Kassir, 38, described himself as “a hitman for Osama bin Laden” and claimed to have fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Ujaama drove the pair to the ranch but they complained that it did not have the facilities — especially barracks for otential recruits — that they had been led to believe existed.

During November and December 1999, Aswat and Kassir met potential candidates for jihad training.

The FBI document details how they secured the Bly property with guard patrols and passwords and they and others received training in firearms and “improvised poisons”.

Aswat and Kassir were still in the United States in February 2000. They were living in Seattle where they “expounded the writings and teachings” of their London-based mentor in lectures to young Muslims at a city mosque.

Kassir also provided what the FBI described as “urban tactical training”.

In 2002, an associate of Kassir was arrested in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, attempting to board a flight to London carrying a revolver.

Kassir, a Lebanese-born Swede, was jailed for ten months in November 2003 for possessing illegal weapons at his home in Stockholm.

Charges that he was planning a terrorist attack were dropped. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1702411_2,00.html

posted July 21, 2005 08:55 PM              

Jonathan Freedland takes to the streets of the capital and finds fear and frustration starting to replace stoicism

Friday July 22, 2005
The Guardian

London was once again a city of migrants yesterday. For the second time in two weeks, the capital's streets were filled not with the usual cars and buses but thick, snaking columns of people on the move.

These refugees from the city did not march with wagons piled high or bundles on their back, but with suitcases on wheels and mobile phones in their hands - just as they had a fortnight ago. Told that the London Underground had been closed, they were setting off on the long march back home.

Article continues
"Oh no, not again," was the first thought to pass through Isabelle Hans's mind. A charity worker, she found herself barred from her office just around the corner from Warren Street tube, the building hidden behind the blue and white plastic ribbons of a police cordon - just as it had been on July 7.

Initial word suggested a macabre rerun of that fateful day: four explosions, three trains and a bus, one blast for each point of the compass around the centre of London.

The pattern looked identical, so Londoners repeated their own behaviour, as if weary veterans of this new form of urban warfare.They texted their friends and family; they picked up snippets of news from portable radios or the internet; they cut short their working day and left offices in mid-afternoon for a journey on foot which they knew could take several hours.

Even if the ritual was a repeat, the mood seemed different. Much was made of the stoicism of Londoners on July 7, an unruffled calm exhibited even by those who narrowly escaped the attacks. Yesterday, by all accounts, was not like that.

Witnesses at the Oval station and elsewhere said that once they heard the sound of an explosion, or breathed in the acrid smell of smoke, passengers fell rapidly into a collective panic.

There were reports of desperate stampedes as people rushed to get off trains and out of stations.

One man at Warren Street station showed the television cameras a pile of sandals and flip-flops he had collected - abandoned by their owners as they "ran for their lives".

Caitlin Jackson, 22, was at Leicester Square station as it was being evacuated.

"I never saw people move as fast as that in my life. Everybody was quiet, it was all silent. But they had that panicked look on their faces."

Perhaps on July 7 the sheer surprise of the attacks numbed Londoners' reactions. The memory of July 7, the fear that they were about to experience an equally lethal rerun, seems to have had the opposite effect yesterday.

The atmosphere lifted a bit once word spread that there were no fatalities. There was little of that July 7 tremble in the voice yesterday.

"It's more fascination than panic," said David Sanderson, a business analyst at the Abbey bank, who had headed out in the lunch hour only to be shut out of his place of work. He joined the crowd behind police lines at Warren Street, waiting and watching.

He was on the normally thronging thoroughfare of Tottenham Court Road, now quiet, filled with pedestrians and the occasional fire engine or police car. In common with several roads in the capital, what is usually a traffic-filled artery had become little more than a wide pedestrian path.

But once the panic subsided, it was not the stubborn resilience of London cliche that was revealed. Instead there was frustration, irritation and a glimpse of the one thing terrorists crave most: fear and a glum recognition that maybe life cannot go on as normal.

Dean Seddon, 23, had made the salesman's journey to London from St Helens - against his wife's wishes. "She was going mad with me for coming," he said. At Charing Cross station he had been faced with a "wave of people, saying 'Run! Run!'" And now he thought his wife was right. Pulling his trolley-suitcase, hoping he could somehow get back to Merseyside, he had resolved not to come back to the capital "for a while" at least.

Heidi Ashton, 20, had her three-year-old son asleep in a pushchair and had made up her mind too. No more buses or tubes for her, and certainly not for her child. Ms Jackson had just got off the phone after speaking to her parents, back in her native Canada. They had told her that enough was enough; it was time to come home.

"Personally, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety; I'm ****** off," said Martina Leeven, 35, an officer with the Changing Faces charity. That morning, she had asked herself whether it was really safe to travel on the Underground. She had decided not. Pointing at her orange trainers, she told how she had, for the first time, done the hour's walk from Bethnal Green instead. "I'm wondering, is this my life now?"

She felt angry, not so much at the politicians or even the terrorists, but at "the state of the world".

Her colleague, Michelle Bativala, agreed. The revelation that one of the July 7 bombers had been a primary school teacher had shaken her badly. "Before you were looking for someone fanatical," she said. "Now it could be anyone."

posted July 21, 2005 09:01 PM              

Friday, July 22, 2005 at 07:23 JST
ISLAMABAD — President Gen Pervez Musharraf appealed to the people of Pakistan on Thursday to support him in the fight against terrorism and extremism which has brought Islam and Pakistan into disrepute.

posted July 21, 2005 11:24 PM              

Lahore

In her first thriller, At Risk, Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, writes about a Pakistani militant who arrives by ferry boat in Britain to blow up the commander of a US-British air force base in the Fens. His main helper is an English girl who has converted to Islam and has been in a training camp in Pakistan, while MI5 misses several signals that an attack is coming.

Not surprisingly, when you are reading a novel by someone who has spent 35 years in the secret service, fact and fiction merge. The suspected Pakistani mastermind of the July 7 bombings is believed to have arrived by boat to trigger the four bombers, then left the country a day before the attack. Yesterday's bungling bombers seemed to lack such foreign expertise.

"There is no way you can deal with this menace [of terrorism] except head-on," said Prime Minister Tony Blair. Yet the truth of the matter is that neither government has tackled the issue of Islamic extremism head-on.

Until this month, terrorist attacks were long-distance events for most British people, but not for Pakistanis - 1,000 civilians and the same number of security personnel in that country have died since September 11 in terrorist and sectarian violence.

Britain has allowed militant Muslim preachers freedom to preach their message of hate in the mosques, the meeting halls and the sitting rooms of British Muslims. Literature and videos promoting extremism have been allowed to spread deep into the Muslim community. While some outsiders saw this as typical British eccentricity or liberalism, foreign intelligence agencies have been furious with British laxity for some years.

The four July 7 bombers did not have to enrol in a Pakistani religious school or madrassa to learn about Islamic extremism, because it was available in Yorkshire. Experts now think it unlikely that the three London bombers who came to Pakistan last year enrolled in a madrassa to become ideologised. Instead, they arrived fully brainwashed and probably used their time making contact with al-Qa'eda and Pakistani militant groups to train in explosives.

And every Pakistani who saw the TV pictures of how British Pakistanis live in Leeds was shocked at how no attempt has been made to integrate them. The Leeds suburbs looked like ghettos or a typical poverty-stricken Punjabi village, except in red brick.

British Muslims also must share a great part of the blame for failing to speak out against the extremists living in their midst, refusing to integrate or agree to mixed marriages, and insisting upon bringing prayer leaders from their home villages - men who are either totally ignorant of the world or are extremists.

Immigrants are traditionally torn between their traditions and the modernity offered by the host country, but no group has more rigorously spurned modernity then Asian Muslims, which is a crying shame.

At the same time, the overwhelming anger that more than 60 per cent of Britons feel about Blair's policies in Iraq - according to a Guardian poll - is felt far more strongly in the Muslim community. The truth is that Blair will have great difficulty countering extremism among Asian Muslims while continuing to pursue the same Iraq policy.

Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervaiz Musharraf, has done even less to curb extremism, despite the daily haemorrhaging of his citizens on the streets of Pakistani cities due to terrorist attacks. On Monday, the general gave a tub-thumping speech to a youth conference, wagging his angry finger at the madrassas and repeating for the umpteenth time that banned militant groups were forcing their ideology on others.

This week, more than 250 militants have been arrested and, in a speech to the nation last night, Musharraf again asked the public to join him in a jihad against Islamic extremism. But since September 11, such crackdowns have taken place frequently, and those arrested are invariably freed after 90 days in jail.

Pakistanis now respond to such speeches with a wave of the hand and a bored look, commenting that it is all for the gallery of Western onlookers. Since September 11, the general has been through this routine so many times that people have lost count and interest. Despite all the political pressures on the military from the West since September 11, all the debt forgiveness by Western countries, the lavish foreign aid - $3 billion from Washington alone, new weapon systems and intelligence equipment and the rush of cash to reform the madrassa system - nothing much has changed.

Last night, Musharraf still failed to order the closure of madrassas controlled by extremist groups. The promised reform in 2002, which Musharraf pledged at meetings with Bush and Blair in Washington and London, has not been implemented. Until the London bombings, neither leader had bothered to ask Musharraf why not, although both have given funding for education.

Madrassas controlled by militant Pakistani groups who work for al-Qa'eda continue to function freely. One of the largest extremist groups in the country, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, has members who have helped al-Qa'eda. It now operates under a new name and has even changed the look of its largest madrassa complex to become a model it can show to the Western press. It's like the Earls Court motor show without the short-skirted models.

The enormous Islamic extremist infrastructure that the military maintained before September 11 to fight its wars in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir have not been broken up, only put to temporary sleep while clandestine training camps still spring up at new locations. Some militant groups have been banned three times, only to re-appear under different names.

posted July 28, 2005 05:40 PM              

LONDON, July 23 - Scotland Yard admitted Saturday that a man police officers gunned down at point-blank range in front of horrified subway passengers on Friday had nothing to do with the investigation into the bombing attacks here.

The man was identified by police as Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian, described by officers as an electrician on his way to work. "He was not connected to incidents in central London on 21st July, 2005, in which four explosive devices were partly detonated," a police statement said.

At the same time, the police said they had found a link between four attackers on July 7 and the men who tried to carry out carbon copy attacks July 21. The July 7 attacks killed the bombers and 52 others.

A flier in a backpack found with undetonated explosives on a London bus was for a whitewater rafting center at Bala, North Wales, where two of the July 7 bombers had been photographed just weeks before the attack, a police official said.

The police also said late Saturday that after the failed attacks on July 21, they found a mysterious package - possibly a fifth explosive device - in Little Wormwood Scrubs, northwest of London.

The explosive was "almost exactly the same" as ones in the failed attacks on that day, a police official said.

Of the fast-unfolding developments, the most overwhelming for many Londoners, was the police admission that an apparently innocent man had been gunned down in full public view - a killing that left the city even more rattled after a wave of attacks, alarms, scares and shootings that, in a brief three weeks has propelled London from the euphoria of the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park to a sense of embattled siege.

"For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets," a police statement said, noting that the police had started a formal inquiry.

The admission by the police that it had killed a man not involved in the investigation revived and fueled an already tense debate over the arming of British police officers. It also came after a series of police misstatements since July 7 when the first bombers struck. (Related Article)

The shooting shocked many of the country's 1.6 million Muslims, already alarmed by a publicly acknowledged shoot-to-kill policy directed against suspected suicide bombers. And it has dealt a major setback to the police inquiry into suspected terrorist cells in London.

"This really is an appalling set of circumstances," said John O'Connor, a former police commander. "The consequences are quite horrible." Azzam Tamimi, head of the Muslim Association of Britain, said: "This is very frightening. People will be afraid to walk the streets, or go on the tube, or carry anything in their hands."

A cousin of the dead man, interviewed on Brazil's leading television network, identified him as João Alves Menezes and said he was an electrician who had been working in England for more than three years. The cousin, Alex Pereira Alves, identified Mr. Menezes' body in London, the network said.

Mr. Menezes was from the interior state of Minas Gerais, home of the bulk of migrants from Brazil to the United States and Europe and had been in Britain legally, Mr. Alves said. He would have been on his way to work that morning, he said, and had no reason to flee the police.

"How could they have done such a thing as to kill him from behind?" Mr. Alves told the Globo Television Network. "How could they have confused and killed a light-skinned person who had no resemblance at all to an Asian?"

Another cousin, Aleide Menezes, said in an interview with Brazil's national radio network that Mr. Menezes understood English well and would have understood the officer's instructions. Other relatives, in television and newspaper interviews, said the family was Roman Catholic and that Mr. Menezes had nothing to do with Islam.

In an official statement issued late Saturday, the Brazilian government said it was "shocked and perplexed" by the killing and was waiting for an explanation.

The shooting occurred the day after the copycat attackers tried to bomb three other subway trains and a bus, but their bombs failed to explode. Plainclothes police officers staking out an apartment followed a man who emerged from it, then chased him into the Stockwell subway station and onto a train. The man tripped, and one of the officers in pursuit fired five rounds.

After the shooting, Sir Ian Blair, the police commissioner, said the man was "directly linked to the ongoing and expanding antiterrorist operation," and the police issued images from closed-circuit cameras of four suspects in the failed attacks. They said the man they shot may not have been one of the four, but he was still being sought in their inquiry.

A Friday statement said that the man's "clothing and his behavior at the station added to their suspicions," apparently referring to reports that the man was wearing a bulky jacket on a summer day.

Through most of Saturday, the police refused to give any further details. Then, in the late afternoon, Scotland Yard issued its statement admitting the "mistake." So far in the investigation, the police have detained two suspects. It was not clear whether those men were among the four caught on security cameras.

In the latest alarm on Saturday, police cordoned off an area in north-west London, and Peter Clarke, head of London's Anti-Terrorist police, said that a package that was discovered appeared "to have been left in the bushes, rather than hidden."

"Naturally this is a matter of concern," he added.

The link between the two bombing teams, at the white water rafting center in north Wales, is the latest in a series of connections made by detectives since Thursday. They have found that the bombs for both teams were made of the same homemade material, were roughly the same size and were carried in similar backpacks, officials said.

Asked if Prime Minister Tony Blair would address the killing of Mr. Menezes, a spokeswoman said Mr. Blair was "kept updated on all developments, but this is a matter for the Metropolitan Police. We have nothing to add." But with the nation jittery after the attacks and the shooting, Mr. Blair was expected to confront political passions likely to be inflamed by what his critics are depicting as excesses of a war on terrorism that have eroded freedoms.

"This policy is another overreaction of the government and police," said Ajmal Masroor, a spokesman for the Islamic Society of Britain.

Both the government and the police have sought the support of British Muslims to assist in the inquiry.

"This will turn people against the police, and this is not good," said Mr. Tamimi, of the Muslim Association. "We want that people stay beside the police. We need to convince the people to cooperate."

Civil rights groups also seemed likely to demand new curbs on the police at precisely the moment officers have been given much freer hand to pursue the investigation.

"No one should rush to judgment in any case of this kind, especially at a time of heightened tension," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, a civil and human rights group. She acknowledged, however, that officers faced "knife-edged, split-second decisions often made in times of great danger."

In a country used to unarmed police officers, the shooting seemed to be a stark turning point - one that seemed even more portentous after the police admission on Saturday.

The killing revived a never-resolved debate among the public and the police over the arming of officers. In one recent case, officers faced trial after shooting a man carrying a wooden table leg in the mistaken belief that he was armed.

Some police officers authorized to carry weapons now say they prefer not to because of the risk of prosecution if they make mistakes.

Normally British police officers are under orders to give ample warming and, if they have no choice but to open fire, to aim to wound. However, according to London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, that has given way to a shoot-to-kill policy in some circumstances.

"If you are dealing with someone who might be a suicide bomber, if they remain conscious they could trigger plastic explosives or whatever device is on them. And therefore overwhelmingly in these circumstances it is going to be a shoot-to-kill policy," he said after the shooting Friday, but before the acknowledgment by the police that the dead man was not part of the inquiry.

Police guidelines for dealing with suspected suicide bombers recommend shooting at the head rather than the body in case the suspect is carrying explosives.

Except in Northern Ireland, at airports and nuclear facilities, British police officers are not routinely armed. A small percentage of officers - roughly 7 percent in London - have weapons training, which is also required for the use of Taser stun guns, available to nearly all police forces. As routine weapons, officers carry batons and tear-gas-like spray. Of more than 30,000 officers in London, around 2,000 are authorized to carry weapons, a Scotland Yard spokesman said, speaking anonymously under police rules.

Even before Saturday's police statement, Britons had been bracing to see how their vaunted sense of fair play and civil rights survives the onslaught by attackers and the measures to combat it.

"Many civil liberties will have to be infringed to impose the requirement on all communities, including Britain's Muslims, to destroy the terrorists before they destroy us," the author Tom Bower wrote in The Daily Mail on Saturday.

The country's Muslim minority has expressed vulnerability to a backlash since it was announced that the July 7 bombers were all Muslims, three of them British-born descendants of Pakistani immigrants in the northern city of Leeds. Groups linked to Al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for both sets of attacks.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission said it feared that "innocent people may lose their lives due to the new shoot-to-kill policy of the Metropolitan Police."

The rash of attacks, incidents, alarms and arrests has rocked a city that, even during the days of I.R.A. attacks, was used to being warned in advance about bombings. Indeed, after several years of an I.R.A. truce in mainland Britain, the howl of police sirens, the popping of gunfire and the thud of explosives has ended a mood of complacency underpinned by Britain's relative prosperity.

Now, after the bombings on July 7, the attempts on July 21, and the shooting incident, the city seems far less sure of itself.

"The realization that the events of July 7 were not an isolated conspiracy has changed the way that we travel on the city's public transport system, probably forever," Damian Whitworth wrote in The Times of London, recounting how "suspicion, fear and panic spread like a virus" through the subways.

The Independent said, "There seems to be a state of denial about the pervasive sense of fear that exists in London at the moment."

At the same time, British authorities are facing unusually frank criticism from officials and leaders of some Muslim states.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador, said in a radio interview on Friday that it was a "true criticism" to say Britain had offered sanctuary too easily. "Allowing them to go on using the hospitality and the generosity of the British people to emanate from here such calls for killing and such I think is wrong."

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan also noted that some Islamic groups banned in Pakistan "operate with impunity" in Britain.

posted July 28, 2005 05:40 PM              

From Kelli Arena and Justine Redman
CNN
Thursday, July 28, 2005; Posted: 2:13 p.m. EDT (18:13 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- British authorities denied a U.S. request to apprehend a man believed to have ties to the July 7 London bombings weeks before the deadly attacks, sources familiar with the investigation said Thursday.

Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, a British-born citizen of Indian heritage, is in custody in Zambia, U.S. and Zambian officials told CNN.

U.S. authorities wanted to capture Aswat, who was then in South Africa, and question him about a 1999 plot to establish a "jihad training camp" in Bly, Oregon.

According to the sources, U.S. officials had Aswat under surveillance in South Africa weeks before the July 7 attacks that killed 52 commuters and the four bombers.

U.S. authorities had asked South Africa if they could take Aswat into custody. South Africa relayed the request to Britain, but authorities there refused because he was a British citizen, the sources said.

The British government has been seeking consular access to "a British national" in Zambia since Saturday, according to the British Foreign Office. FBI officials are in Zambia, and their access to Aswat through the Zambians "is being handled at the highest levels," sources told CNN.

According to U.S. officials, Aswat was an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorist camp case, which resulted in a guilty plea in 2003 by the main defendant, James Ujaama, of Seattle, Washington. (Full story)

Ujaama struck a plea deal last year receiving a two-year sentence for agreeing to cooperate in terrorism probes.

CNN's Henry Schuster contributed to this report.

posted July 30, 2005 02:38 AM              

ISLAMABAD,PAKISTAN - All foreign students studying at Islamic schools in Pakistan will be ordered to leave the country, President Pervez Musharraf said Friday.
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About 1,400 foreign students are enrolled in madrassas, or Islamic seminaries, some of which have been linked to militant groups.

The foreign students "have to be removed from the country," Musharraf said at a news conference Friday. "Even those having dual nationality. No one in the madrassas will be allowed to spread extremism and hatred in the society."

Pakistani officials confirmed earlier this month that three of the four suicide bombers who attacked London's transit system on July 7 visited Pakistan last year and early this year.

Musharraf confirmed Friday that one of those men had stayed at a Pakistani madrassa. But he did not name the madrassa or the bomber.

Musharraf re-iterated that his government soon will require madrassas to register with authorities by December 31 and provide more mainstream education.

The government estimates that 1.7 million students attend as many as 30,000 madrassas, most of which emphasize memorization of the Quran and other lessons in Islam.

"No mosque or madrassa will be allowed to fan extremism," Musharraf said.

But he provided no details about penalties for failure to register or examples of how registration would help change the situation.

Hardline Muslim clerics, religious parties and madrassas have vowed to resist regulations.

Musharraf stressed Friday that he is very serious about the current crackdown, and told reporters he personally is supervising the operation.

"I have directed the police and law enforcement agencies not to arrest 'nobodys,' but only the leaders of banned militant organizations," Musharraf said. "The operation will continue."

Nearly 600 people were detained in the last week's crackdown against banned militant groups. But none of those detained are leaders of several known militant groups, some of whom emerged from previous crackdowns to make speeches, raise funds and publish magazines that openly advertised for recruits to attend training camps for jihad.

Afghanistan's government says numerous Taliban officials continue to live and organize in Pakistan, an assertion that Musharraf's government denies.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3288601

posted July 30, 2005 07:41 PM              

By Amir Mir

LAHORE, July 31: While no religious seminary in Pakistan is ready to admit that the three London suicide bombers ever visited them, the Pakistan Government has itself declared that the three came to Pakistan between November 2004 and February 2005.

Muhammad Siddiq Khan and Shehzad Tanweer stayed in Lahore and Faisalabad while Haseeb Hussain chose Karachi. Six months after their return from Pakistan, they committed such bloody acts of terror that it could change Europe much more than 9/11 changed America. The tragedy highlights the superficiality of Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf’s rhetoric about changing the country’s direction.

During their stay at the seminaries, the bombers learnt to make explosives from recovered Al-Qaeda manuals. The information provided to Islamabad by the UK authorities show that Khan and Tanweer came to Pakistan in mid-2004. After landing in Karachi, the two militants traveled to Lahore from where they proceeded to Faisalabad. In the interregnum, they were at the Jamia Manzurul Islamia, an extremist Sunni madrassa situated in Lahore Cantonment. There, they lived with Osama Nazir at Jamia Fatahul Rahemia, a religious school run by Qari Ahlullah Raheemi.

Raheemi, an extremist cleric, is considered close to outlawed Pakistani militant outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad, led by Maulana Masood Azhar. Azhar was released by India at Kandahar in exchange for hijacked passengers of flight IC-814. British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who has been sentenced to death for the killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, was considered close to Azhar.

British intelligence agencies have already approached their Pakistani counterparts to know whether the three were in touch with the Al-Qaeda or other Islamic groups in Pakistan, or if there was a Pakistan-based mastermind behind the London attacks. What the British authorities specifically asked the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to find out is how many more Muslim volunteers of Pakistani origin present in the UK are ready to carry out suicide bombings for their cause.

Sources say British agencies have provided vital leads to their Pakistani counterparts to track down other potential bombers who have returned to Britain in the recent past. Sources say two of the four London bombers had visited Pakistan and were being supervised by Al-Qaeda managers based in Pakistan since then. British citizenship and familial ties to Pakistan enabled them to travel freely between the United Kingdom and the South Asian state.

The bombers apparently followed a set route, though there were many who used to believe that the terror highway of Pakistan had been closed effectively after Musharraf’s oft-repeated claims of having taken concrete steps to uproot extremist elements and dismantle their Jihadi infrastructure.

Barely a month before the blasts, the June 2005 arrests of two Pakistani-Americans in the small Californian town of Lodi, and a confessional statement by one of them of having been trained at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan for six months till 2004 to carry out terrorist attacks in the US, had questioned the actual commitment of America’s most-trusted ally against terror — General Musharraf.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that the arrests would help bust the well-organised network of an Islamic militant group in California whose fighters were being imparted military training at a Rawalpindi camp run by leading Pakistani militant outfit, Jamiatul Ansar (JUA), previously called the Harkat ul Mujahideen (HUM) and formerly led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil.

One of the men arrested, 22-year-old Hamid Hayat, is accused in an FBI criminal complaint of undergoing training in an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan to learn “how to kill Americans” and then lying to FBI agents about it. His father, 47-year-old Umer Hayat, is charged with lying about his son’s involvement and his own financing of the camp. Hamid’s affidavit says that he was preparing to attack hospitals and shopping centers. It describes the investigation as beginning on May 29, 2005, when Hamid Hayat was flying from Pakistan to San Francisco. He had flown to Islamabad from San Francisco on April 19, 2003, and returned to the US on May 29, 2005 after his wedding, the FBI affidavit states.

A week after the two Pakistanis were arrested in Lodi, the visiting Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman Yasin Malik disclosed in Islamabad on June 13, 2005 that Federal Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed used to run a training camp for Kashmiri militants when the armed struggle in Jammu & Kashmir was at its peak.

Malik declared: “Sheikh Rashid has played a great role for Kashmir’s liberation. He used to support the frontline Jihadis from Kashmir, and has the honor of having trained around 3,500 Jihadis. However, a few know of his contributions.”

Sheikh Rashid considers himself to be among Musharraf’s closest hands. As information minister, he happens to be the public face of the Pakistani Cabinet, as well as the launcher of the General’s political weather-balloons. Terrorism experts, therefore, say these revelations highlight the threat posed by the second-generation Pakistani militants and the persistent presence of terrorist bases in a country which is the alleged hideout of the Al-Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri.

At the same time, contrary to Musharraf’s claims, the pattern of treatment being meted out to leaders of the four major Jihadi groups he had banned in January 2002 shows that his intelligence establishment continues to maintain its long alliance with the former, primarily because of the fact that both share a common agenda: the liberation of ‘Occupied Jammu & Kashmir’.

At present, sources say, hundreds of militants are undergoing advanced training at camps in Bagh, Rawalkot, Kotli, Gulpur, Aliabad, Halanshumali, Padhar, Halan, Kaliar, Forwad Kahuta and Kacharban across Poonch district in Jammu & Kashmir.

Notwithstanding the ongoing peace process between India and Pakistan, militant circles concede that several training camps along the Line of Control (LOC) were reactivated in April 2005, facilitated by the melting of snow. They also say that hundreds of militants had gathered at various points along the LOC after rigorous training in cutting and penetrating the fence erected by India.

Although Musharraf insists that he is determined to end all forms of terrorism, there seems hardly any evidence that his Government has tried to dismantle the Jihadi network from Pakistani soil. The authenticity of his claims can be gauged from the record of his administration’s handling of the Jihadi kingpins as none of them has either been prosecuted on terrorism charges, despite the fact that all four are wanted either by the Indian Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) or by the FBI.

As things stand, the four major groups — Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), Harkat ul Mujahideen (HUM) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) — resurfaced and regrouped to run their networks as openly as before, though under different names. Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Maulana Masood Azhar, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Syed Salahuddin — the leaders of the four outfits — are once again on the loose. While JEM and HUM have been renamed Khudamul Islam and Jamiatul Ansar respectively, Lashkar and Hizbul have not camouflaged their identities.

The soft treatment these outfits enjoy in the Musharraf administration shows that they are being kept on the leash to wage a controlled Jihad in Jammu and Kashmir, whenever needed. As the political will to dismantle extremist groups that are not on the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ list seems to be absent, most of the Jihadi groups continue to pursue their agenda. Musharraf, by his own admission, no longer controls the Jihadis that the state had long supported, and the ‘holy warriors’ are far from ready to call it quits.

Also, the Lashkar and Hizbul Mujahideen, both active in J&K, have been seemingly allowed by the administration to resume training at their camps in the country. As the camps reopen, trained militants as well as aspirants are flocking to enlist for the holy war. Interestingly, a significant portion of the crowd constitutes trained militants called in for refresher courses.

Three years since Musharraf’s January 2002 announcement, the so-called modernization campaign has largely failed, and hardly a few cosmetic changes could be introduced in the madrassa system. The Federal Government’s plan for madrassa reform is a classic example of the one-step forward, two-steps backwards approach.

Musharraf’s rhetoric to modernize the country’s 10,000 seminaries has met with little success mainly due to his administration’s failure to enforce the Madrassa Registration and Regulation Ordinance 2002, which was meant to reform seminaries by bringing them into the mainstream. Most of these madrassas were self-financed but they are now being funded by the Government also for modernizing textbooks, including secular subjects and introducing computers into the classroom.

In 2001-02, Rs 1,654,000 was distributed among the madrassas. As the number of students is 1,065,277, this comes to Rs 1.55 per student per year (2.5 US cents). An additional aid of Rs 30.5 million was released for computers and changing the syllabi in 2003-04, which comes to Rs 28.6 per student (50 US cents). But since all madrassas do not accept aid, the money need not be distributed as evenly. The madrassas generally do not charge tuition fees and attract poor students.

Analysts believe that the Musharraf regime’s failure in reforming the seminaries and in cracking down on Jihadi networks has resulted in the resurgence of extremism and sectarian violence in the country. The Pakistani dictator’s priority has never been eradicating Islamic extremism, but rather the legitimization and consolidation of his dictatorial rule, for which he seems dependent on the clergy.

The clergy is hand-in-glove with the ISI and the Jihadis The nexus comes into play at the madrassas itself where young students are indoctrinated. These recruits are then picked up by the agencies or local militant outfits and trained.

During the Afghan Jihad, it was the ISI that hired indoctrinated youth from the seminaries of the NWFP and Balochistan who were then trained and sent into Afghanistan. The same was the case with those who were busy on the Kashmir front. The Pakistani military and intelligence establishments, the country’s religious leadership and the militants share a common belief in the country’s rightful claim over Kashmir.

It is amid all these developments over the last two decades that the tentacles of the July 7 blasts have reached Pakistan. As the biggest-ever probe launched in Britain explores possible Pakistani links to the blasts, it has become clear that no one could have damaged Muslims in Britain more than the suicide bombers. London’s 7/7 brings Muslims across the world back to the situation they faced after 9/11.

The 7/7 bombings and the involvement of the British nationals of Pakistani origin also proves that just as the West has failed in winning its war against terrorism, the Musharraf administration has been unsuccessful in winning its war against extremists and individuals. The bombings have led to increased pressure on Pakistan. As always, Musharraf has ordered a countrywide crackdown. As scores are picked up from seminaries, one cannot help but wonder why the cleansing had stopped after the initial rush of blood.

Analysts have described Musharraf’s July 21 address to the nation as an updated version of his January 2002 televised speech. The new administrative measures for combating terrorism are similar to those announced in the past. This raises two questions. What happened to the first campaign against terror? If these measures did not produce desired results in the past, how will they do a better job this time?

Analysts say given the military background of the Musharraf regime, the counter-terrorism policy was confined to administrative measures pursued through the civil administration, police and intelligence agencies. The narrow strategy comprised police raids on seminaries and arrests of some activists of militant outfits. However, this policy didn’t offer a sustainable solution because the Government priorities shifted and the arrested Jihadis were released later.

Another problem that adversely affected the 2002 campaign against terrorism was the divided official opinion about the role of militant groups in the insurgency in Kashmir. This is why for a long time after September 2001, Pakistan’s officials insisted on distinguishing between terrorism and wars of liberation. Some groups involved in Kashmir were advised by Pakistani intelligence agencies to keep a low profile. The underlying assumption was that if needed, these groups could be reactivated to pursue the official agenda in Kashmir.

Further, the state patronage of Islamic orthodoxy and militancy during 1979-2001 allowed a large number of people to internalize these values. Some of them continue to serve in the bureaucracy, police and intelligence agencies and sympathize with militants and the religious orthodoxy. They quietly soften administrative action against these groups.

Above all, analysts opine, the fate of Musharraf’s counter-terrorism policy and the efforts to promote Islamic moderation depends on its relations with the six-party religious alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). If the MMA is to be appeased to cope with the expediencies of power, the latest campaign against terrorism cannot be pursued to its logical conclusion.

The real problem seems to be that there is sympathy for Islamic extremists in Pakistan’s military and intelligence circles. At the same time, there is a widespread feeling that Pakistan is actually fighting the war for the West. Therefore, analysts believe that unless Pakistan makes the war on terror its own war, it cannot win it.

The writer is a senior and a courageous journalist of Pakistan who has been continuously harassed by the military regime of General Musharraf.
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_mir2.htm

posted August 05, 2005 02:36 AM            

O'REILLY: But isn't this a different situation? I mean, what if somebody had knowledge of a nuclear device going off? I mean, I think you'd have to do anything you can, right?

MCCAIN: Then -- absolutely. And then the president of the United States should make the decision that we could no longer adhere to the international agreements that we are signatories to.

Don't think that you get anything out of torture, Bill, because you don't. And I know that for a fact. And the other thing is that when people see pictures of Abu Ghraib around the world and in Arab countries, that it hurts us enormously.

O'REILLY: Terrible. Absolutely. I agree with you.

MCCAIN: And one of the reasons why those people in that prison acted the way they did, they did not have specific guidelines as to how to act. That was one of the problems.