posted August 07, 2005 12:41 AM              

Sat Aug 6, 7:25 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - Saudi officials alerted Britain several weeks before the deadly July 7 bombings in London that a terror attack was being planned, two Sunday newspapers reported.
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The Observer quoted a security official in the Saudi capital Riyadh as saying that information was passed to MI5 and MI6, Britain's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies respectively.

The Sunday Telegraph quoted the Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, as saying that details of a possible conspiracy to attack London -- apparently extracted from terrorism suspects in Saudi Arabia -- had been given to British intelligence.

"There were reports passed on to your authorities several months ago (in April-May) in general terms of a heightened expectancy of attacks on London," said the ambassador, a former chief of Saudi intelligence.

Security sources played down the reports. The Observer quoted one source as "categorically" denying that any specific information had been received that could have averted the July 7 attacks.

The source said they "did not recognize" the details of the Saudi claims, which came to light one month to the day after the attacks.

There was no immediate comment from the Foreign Office or the Home Office, but Prime Minister
Tony Blair has previously rejected suggestions of an intelligence failure.

Fifty-six people were killed, including four apparent suicide bombers, in the July 7 morning rush-hour bombing of three Underground subway trains and a double-decker bus.

It was the deadliest attack ever in the British capital, and was followed two weeks later by an attempted copycat attack in which the explosives, stuffed into rucksacks, failed to go off.

Saudi security sources were reported Sunday to be investigating whether two al-Qaeda operatives were in phone contact with a British ringleader of the plotters of the July 7 bombings.

Money transfers were thought to have been made from Saudi Arabia to Britain in the first six months of the year through businesses in the two countries, it was reported.

The Observer and the Sunday Telegraph said the investigations revolve around two Moroccans, identified as Kareem al-Majati and Younes al-Hayari, both alleged to have been senior figures in
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The two were killed in separate shoot-outs in Saudi Arabia in the weeks before July 7.

The Observer quoted a Saudi official as saying: "It was clear to us that there was a terror group planning an attack in the United Kingdom. We passed on all this information to both MI5 and MI6."

The official was quoted as saying that investigations were underway into whether calls made by the two Moroccans to Britain were directly to the London bombers.

"It is our conclusion that either these were linked or that a completely different terror network is still at large in Britain," he added.

Prince Turki was quoted in The Observer as saying in a statement: "There was certainly close liaison between the Saudi Arabian intelligence authorities and the British intelligence authorities some time ago, when information was passed to Britain about a heightened terrorist threat to London."

To the Sunday Telegraph, he said: "In the course of an exchange of information between the kingdom and the UK, there were reports passed on to your authorities several months ago (in April-May) in general terms of a heightened expectancy of attacks on London."

"This information came in the form of statements made under interrogation from terrorists who had been arrested in the kingdom and other places," he said, without indicating where the "other places" were.

posted August 07, 2005 12:55 AM              

********

Was a "Bomber" Superimposed onto Metropolitan Police Surveillance Camera Photo?

Below is a CCTV image circulated by the Metropolitan Police.

As Peter Kofod wrote,"Take a look at this photo of the four alleged London bombers."
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050724/photos_pl_afp/050724214150_vesdc65b_photo1

"At first, (almost) everything looks fine, but look closer... look at the guy with the white hat... check out his left arm (HIS left arm).... the lower of the rails of the railing is IN FRONT of his left arm... where of course it shouldn't be! I'm NO image specialist, but this sure looks ridiculous. I'd say it´s a fake."

The CLG has also inspected this image. "The white-hatted man was apparently superimposed onto the photo. Not only is his arm 'behind' a railing that is supposedly several feet behind HIM, but also, upon magnification in Photoshop, part of the bar actually goes into his head. This was 'touched-up,' but pixels of his head mix unmistakably with pixels from the railing." --Michael Rectenwald.

posted August 11, 2005 11:15 AM            

Since the London bombings, there has been a palpable feeling in the air here in the U.S. that another terrorist attack is imminent. Maybe not as bad as 9-11, perhaps a train or subway bombing. Or maybe it will be something worse. There were fevered rumors circulating over the last few weeks about massive attacks on New York and Washington scheduled for Aug. 6 and 9, to mark the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But now Aug. 6 and 9 have come and gone. More significantly, 47 months have come and gone since 9-11 without a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The closest thing we had to a major bombing was the new Pauly Shore show on TBS.

Even if the next attack comes tomorrow, it is worth pondering that we've gone 47 months without the savages being able to mount another terrorist attack in a country virtually designed for terrorist attacks, a country where we search the purses of little old ladies so that recent immigrants from Saudi Arabia named "Mohammed" wearing massive backpacks don't get singled out.

But instead of news stories about how we must be doing something right in the war on terror, we're being carpet-bombed with news stories about how Bush doesn't have a "plan," the war was based on "lies," we're losing the war, the redcoats are coming!

As Republicans were saying repeatedly – captured on Lexis-Nexis for a year before it showed up in a Frank Luntz talking-points memo in 2004 – the savages have declared war, and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender). That strategy appears to be working. Then again, maybe it's just that it's so damnably hard to find parking in New York ...

Two weeks ago, Gen. Jack Keane, a former deputy chief of staff for the Army, said our forces in Iraq have killed or arrested more than 50,000 insurgents in the past six or seven months. It appears the majority of those were captured and released, but that may be good enough.

Consider the intriguing diary entries of British jihadist Zeeshan Siddique, reported in the New York Times this Monday (somewhat less prominently than the 4 billion front-page stories on Abu Ghraib). Siddique was captured last April in Pakistan by that country's security forces. His diary is a sort of Plan-a-Jihad journal, much like California seventh-graders were required to write in 2002. (There's also talk of publishing his diary under the title "Hello, Allah? It's Me, Siddique.")

In addition to heartwarming entries like the one on the pope's death – "Allah will throw him in hell" – a number of Siddique's diary entries suggest that it's not all sunshine and song for the Islamo-fascists these days. Day after day for six weeks, it was nothing but bad news for Siddique – except for the good news about the pope's death, Saul Bellow's death and the Prince of Monaco's death, all of which cheered him considerably.

After visiting his fellow jihadists in early March, Siddique reports that he received "bad news" – and something tells me it wasn't about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. He writes: "The relaxing place was done over" and "7-8 of the guys taken whilst asleep." He was told "guys need 2 make a move soon. Cant stik round."

A week later, he is informed by someone, probably not the Prince of Monaco, that "the situation is really bad" and he should "just sit tight & wait it out until things get a bit better." Oddly enough he is also a Mets fan, so this spring was an all-around bummer for Siddique.

A few weeks later, Siddique is vowing to make "an all out immense effort" to "rejoin my contingent." And then he was captured, too, along with his diary and phone numbers for other al-Qaida operatives and his co-religionists in Britain involved in the failed subway bombing. If you made a movie of this bumbling nincompoop's misadventures, you'd have to call it "Dude, Where's My Car Bomb?"

Siddique's diary entries refer to Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari as "the dog of the hell fire" and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as "Satan." That's not the talk of a winner! Siddique's future as a jihadist may be fading, but he has a good shot at writing speeches for Howard Dean. (He also describes Maya Angelou as "America's national treasure," so I guess some things are universal.)

Meanwhile, every time Americans get a gander at these lunatics ranting about the "Great Satan" and the "Zionist entity," we can't believe we're at war with such a comical enemy. No wonder they dream of an afterlife with 72 hot teenage girls. These guys are klutzes. Nerds. Dweebs. In the Las Vegas of life, they're at the convention center with the other "Star Trek" fans. Even in Pakistan, Siddique says he is "constantly laughed at & ridiculed."

Ahmed can't get a date, and now the rest of us have to suffer.

posted August 13, 2005 06:59 PM              

THE PRESIDENT:"Let me finish... There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on!!"
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/02/sprj.nitop.bush/

since he said that there have been 1,640+ u.s. troops killed in iraq and thats not counting other coalition fatalities or civilian deaths.....

plus some 12000+ wounded since then.....

posted August 13, 2005 10:35 PM              

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush yesterday raised the possibility of a U.S. military response to Iran's decision to restart its nuclear energy program.

``All options are on the table,'' Bush said in an Israeli television interview from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, according to a transcript provided by his staff today. He said military force would be a last resort.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=alUi.3E60JJw&refer=top_world_news

****

posted August 23, 2005 12:22 AM              

Police officers and station managers were at odds last night over the existence of crucial CCTV-footage of the shooting of a Brazilian man wrongly suspected of being a suicide bomber.
By Nigel Morris, Jason Bennetto and Barrie Clement
Published: 23 August 2005

None of the cameras at the scene of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July were working, a police document revealed.

Cameras on the platform and the train were not operational, officers told the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). The submission by the Metropolitan Police, obtained by ITV News, puts officers at odds with a statement from Tube Lines, the company operating the station.

The police document says: "Stockwell station and environs has been surveyed and all existing CCTV has been seized.

"During the course of this it has been established that although there was onboard CCTV in the train, due to previous incidents the harddrive has been removed and not replaced.

"It has also been established that there has been a technical problem with the CCTV equipment on the relevant platform and no footage exists."

However in a statement to The Mail on Sunday, Tube Lines said: "We are not aware of any faults on CCTV cameras at that station on that day. Nothing of that nature has been reported to us." Yesterday the company refused to elaborate.

While some sources denied police had deliberately wiped the tapes, others remained convinced there was a cover-up.

One union official argued however that the on-board cameras may have been empty.

Employees' representatives said Met officers emptied the cameras the day before police killed Mr de Menezes as part of their investigation into the failed bombings on 21 July.

According to a report he would have passed eight cameras, two in the station entrance pointing at the barriers, another aimed at the Northern Line escalator and another on the way down.

When Mr de Menezes reached the bottom of the escalator, another camera would have captured him. And as he turned on to the platform one above the track and three more at each end of the platform would have caught him on film, the reports say.

This information should have been sent to a control room and passed to video tape. Yet there is apparently no footage of him in and around the platform.

The source, who is close to the investigation, said reports of a cover-up were "absolute rubbish''. The source said reports that the tapes had been handed back to London Underground staff were "nonsense'' because such material would have been kept as evidence in the ongoing inquiry.

A spokesman for the IPCC said: "We are not willing to comment about every story that comes up.''

But confusion still surrounds the contents of surveillance tapes taken from Stockwell station. Sources have suggested that the tapes had been recovered from the station booking hall, which had shown images of Mr de Menezes and that there was limited footage from cameras inside the carriage where the shooting took place.

All Northern Line Tube trains are equipped with CCTV - at either end of the carriages, but the only photograph published of the incident seems to have been taken from a doorway.

The confusion deepened as two senior Brazilian officials flew into London to examine the background to Mr de Menezes' death. The officials will want to know if CCTV footage of the incident exists. The Brazilian government has expressed "shock and bewilderment" over the death and has said it wants answers to "a number of matters".

Wagner Goncalves, of the federal prosecutor's office, and Marcio Pereira Pinto Garcia, of the ministry of justice, went from Heathrow airport to Scotland Yard, where they met senior officers led by deputy assistant commissioner John Yates. They are also due to meet members of the IPCC tomorrow.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has faced unrelenting pressure since it emerged last week that initial police accounts of the killing were at variance with the facts.

Members of the Metropolitan Police Authority yesterday said Sir Ian still had their full confidence, but admitted that a public inquiry into the death appeared inevitable.

For the second time in two days, Downing Street issued a statement declaring the Prime Minister's complete confidence in the Commissioner.

A spokeswoman said Mr Blair, who is on holiday in Barbados, had been kept fully up to speed with the matter. She added: "The Prime Minister recognises that the Metropolitan Police, led by Sir Ian Blair, do a very difficult job and they do it very well."

Clare Short, the former Cabinet Minister, said it was now clear that the public had been misled over the death of Mr de Menezes. She told ITV News: " We've been lied to. This should be bigger than just calling for Sir Ian Blair to go. We need to find out exactly what happened. Who was telling the lies?"

As relatives and supporters of Mr de Menezes began a vigil outside Downing Street, his mother, Maria de Menezes, demanded justice for her son.

She said of the officers who shot: "They took my son's life. I am suffering because of that."

Speaking from Brazil, she told the BBC: "I want the policeman who did that punished. They ended not only my son's life but mine as well."

Mr de Menezes' cousin, Alessandro Pereira, handed a letter to Downing Street demanding a public inquiry.

The unanswered questions

* If the CCTV cameras showed Mr de Menezes using his Oyster card to open the ticket barrier, why did police sources suggest he vaulted it?

* Were cameras trained on the platform in full working order? Police and Tube sources contradict each other.

* How could all four cameras around the platform have failed at the same time?

* If the cameras had failed, why did the station log book contain no details of the fault?

* Why had CCTV onboard the train been removed?

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article307649.ece

posted April 25, 2006 10:23 PM              

Jury Convicts Calif. Man in Terrorism Case
Apr 25 7:19 PM US/Eastern
Email this story

By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO, Calif.

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted a 23-year-old man of supporting terrorists by attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan three years ago.

Hamid Hayat, a seasonal farm worker in Lodi, an agricultural town south of Sacramento, was convicted of one count of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI.

The verdict came hours after a separate jury hearing a case against the man's father deadlocked, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.

The father, 48-year-old ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI about his son's involvement in the training camp. Defense attorneys and prosecutors will meet in court May 5 to decide whether he will be retried.

Both men are U.S. citizens and stood trial in federal court before separate juries. They have been in custody since their arrests last June.

Both cases initially generated widespread interest because they raised concerns about a potential terrorist cell centered in the wine- producing region about 35 miles south of the state capital. But the government presented no evidence of a terror network during the nine- week trial.

Instead, the case centered on videotaped confessions the men gave to FBI agents and a government informant who secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations but whose credibility was challenged by the defense.

Prosecutors described Hamid Hayat as having "a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind" who returned from a two-year visit to Pakistan intent on carrying out attacks. Possible targets included hospitals, banks and grocery stores.

They presented no evidence to show that such attacks were imminent or even planned. But in closing arguments, a prosecutors said the case was intended to prevent terrorist attacks "long before anybody is hurt."

Defense lawyers for both men argued that the government didn't have a case against their clients because it had produced no evidence that the son ever attended a terrorist training camp.

Their biggest hurdle was trying to persuade jurors to discount the men's videotaped confessions. The statements were given separately last June during lengthy interrogations by the FBI in Sacramento.

Defense lawyers said the confessions were made under duress, after the men had been questioned for hours in the middle of the night.

The father and son eventually told the agents merely what they thought they wanted to hear, without realizing the legal consequences, their lawyers argued.

The trial is the result of what the government initially thought might be a much larger case. Its investigation into Lodi's 2,500-member Pakistani community began after agents received a tip in 2001 that Lodi-area businesses were sending money to terrorist groups abroad.

That investigation ultimately fizzled, but it did lead agents to Naseem Khan. The 32-year-old former Lodi resident was working a variety of fast-food and convenience store jobs in rural Oregon when agents approached him in October 2001, just a month after the terrorist attacks.

Khan, a Pakistani native who moved to the U.S. as a teenager, was recruited to infiltrate Lodi's Pakistani community.

He initially investigated the money laundering allegations and then targeted a pair of local imams before finally befriending Hamid Hayat. The Hayats grew to eventually consider Khan almost a member of the family.

After Hamid Hayat left for Pakistan in spring 2003, Khan kept in touch and recorded their telephone calls _ some of which show Khan urging Hayat to attend a jihadi camp.

In one conversation, Khan exhorted Hayat to "be a man _ do something!"

Hamid Hayat's lawyers seized on such conversations to show that the FBI informant pushed Hayat to attend a training camp, but ultimately produced no evidence that he had.

They also questioned the informant's credibility, in part because of his own testimony. Khan said that just before he was recruited, he told FBI agents he had seen Osama bin Laden's physician and two other international terrorists living in Lodi during the late 1990s. At the time, they were wanted for attacks in the Middle East and Africa.

Defense attorneys and terrorism experts said it was highly unlikely they would have been in the U.S. at that time, a point prosecutors conceded later in the trial.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/04/25/D8H7AT885.html

posted July 12, 2006 03:03 AM              

By Khozem Merchant in Mumbai and Jo Johnson in New Delhi

Published: July 11 2006 15:14 | Last updated: July 12 2006 05:08

At least 170 people were killed and hundreds more injured on Tuesday after a series of co-ordinated explosions ripped through Mumbai’s commuter transport network in the middle of the evening rush hour.

No warning was given for the blasts, which came within hours of a wave of explosions in Srinigar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, where a series of grenade attacks killed eight people and wounded more than two dozen.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings, which echoed the attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London last year. The blasts came in quick succession – a tactic employed both by Kashmiri militants, who have repeatedly targeted India’s cities, and al-Qaeda. Intelligence sources on Tuesday night said there was a strong link between the Srinigar and Mumbai attacks.

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, appealed to people to remain calm.

“The series of blasts in Jammu and Kashmir and in Mumbai are shocking and cowardly attempts to spread a feeling of fear and terror among our citizens,” he said.

Although analysts braced for sharp decline when India’s stock markets opened on Wednesday, investors reacted calmly. The benchmark 30-share Sensex started the trading session down only 10 points. By midday, the index was down 57.15 points, or 0.54 per cent, at 10,557.20.

The Pakistani foreign ministry promptly condemned the attacks in Mumbai, which, if linked to Islamabad-backed Kashmiri groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, have the potential to derail a slow-moving peace process.

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan president, who has been repeatedly criticised for failing to do more to rein in militant groups, condemned the blasts, saying they were “despicable acts of terrorism”.

The seven timed blasts hit railway carriages and platforms within 20 minutes during Mumbai’s evening rush hour, crippling the city’s transport system. The biggest blast took place in Bandra, a suburb with a big Muslim community.

Thousands fled the city’s mainline stations, turning to cars and buses to travel home. Mobile phone networks went down, hampering attempts by commuters to contact their families.

Many travellers initially thought the blasts may have been linked to rioting at the weekend in Mumbai’s suburbs, triggered by the apparent desecration of a statue of a revered political figure in a local Hindu fundamentalist party.

Police would not comment on the link but said terrorists rather than party activists were responsible for the sophistication of the devices.

The explosions were reminiscent of a series of blasts in the city in 2003, which began on suburban buses and spread to the heart of the city, killing dozens.

In 1993, India’s business capital was also brought to a halt after 13 co-ordinated blasts killed more than 300 people, many near the Bombay Stock Exchange.

More than a dozen rebel groups, many operating from Pakistan, have been fighting since 1989 to wrest Kashmir from India. The conflict has killed more than 67,000 people.

Proved links of Tuesday’s attack to Pakistan would be a severe blow to the slow-moving peace process and would undermine progress made with recent confidence-building measures, including the resumption of a bus service across the line of control in Kashmir.

The blasts come after the capital New Delhi was rocked by three explosions in October, which killed at least 59 people.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e7b47e02-10e6-11db-9a72-0000779e2340.html

posted October 20, 2006 07:52 PM              

However, the Paki nation is not extremist. There are some extremist groups in the NWFP because, surprise surprise thats where the Afghan immigration infiltrated the nation, bringing arms and drug culture and gang violence.

alchemiest, Id like to know why you would think that Pak is responsible for terrorist in Kashmir, when it has been clear since the beginning that it was Hari singhs fault for not giving the then majority Muslim parcel of land to Pakistan, just as Rajastan (a majority Hindu province with a Muslim leader) had been given to India in accordance with the partition rules... Now Indian govt has been for several years ethnically cleansing the Muslims and incorporating Kashmir into India by pumping Indian army and Indian civilians in there. Whats the purpose of that? Of course to gain a Hindu majority before it agrees to a vote (which it never has, and Pakistan HAS), so that then it can be declared as rightfully belonging to India. How Hypocritical is that? More than the attempts of the Paki govt (wrongfully through the ISI I will admit) , to regain access to the land that is rightfully theirs, by financing violent groups in Kashmir.

You have to look at the political backdrop. Its similar to blaming Hamas or HEzbollah without understand that they have developed in reaction to ethnic cleansing occuring which is institutionalized policy by the govt of Israel.

India is the Israel of Kashmir...

and this is comin from a girl with a Kashmiri background...

posted October 20, 2006 11:33 PM              

quote:

---

unlike America, Pakistan is not as divided when it comes to Musharraf. Most expat Pakis support him, but most Pakis within Pakistan DO NOT. Overall most Pakis just plain do NOT support Musharraf. Similar to how most Iraqis do NOT support the war on iraq, but some expats do).

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Yup yup thats the only opinion I hear of from Pakistanis...most even outside of Pakistan.

quote:

---

alchemiest, Id like to know why you would think that Pak is responsible for terrorist in Kashmir, when it has been clear since the beginning that it was Hari singhs fault for not giving the then majority Muslim parcel of land to Pakistan, just as Rajastan (a majority Hindu province with a Muslim leader) had been given to India in accordance with the partition rules... Now Indian govt has been for several years ethnically cleansing the Muslims and incorporating Kashmir into India by pumping Indian army and Indian civilians in there. Whats the purpose of that? Of course to gain a Hindu majority before it agrees to a vote (which it never has, and Pakistan HAS), so that then it can be declared as rightfully belonging to India. How Hypocritical is that? More than the attempts of the Paki govt (wrongfully through the ISI I will admit) , to regain access to the land that is rightfully theirs, by financing violent groups in Kashmir.

---

What SGA said!