Would we be having these sorts of discussions and would the problem be as complex if George Bush had kept his focus on Osama and Al Q and treated them as criminals rather than launching a war.

If the focus had been directed on Afganistan and if there was no war in Iraq, would these extremists be feeling so extreme as to blow themselves up and would the problem be so prolific.

If the people who carried out 9/11 had not been allowed to hijack Islam and been assisted in this by the Bush administration which highlighted the issue of Islamism over criminality, would we have this tension between peoples and with muslims?

Bush and his great War on Terrorism has started something, I stated once before, a whirlpool. Round and round, faster and faster we spin, till we flush ourselves down the tube.

Treating these people as deranged criminals would have been so much more helpful and effective I feel, than elevating them as has been done.

Thanks for the round up Arta.

Caribdude

There are some interesting items here, I posted it also in the London Silent thread.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/0,16136,1524273,00.html

of any outsider or al Qaeda-type connections:

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/new-leads-in-london-bombing-british.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/breaks-in-london-bomb-case-british.html

mho, he is a good one to watch for this type of thing because he understands the beliefs of the different jihadi (using for want of a better term) groups and the national loyalities, etc.

Police are hunting the London bombers' accomplices, as it emerged explosives found in Leeds are similar to those used in other al-Qaeda-linked attacks.

Explosives in a house are thought to have been made from ingredients available from high-street chemists.

Police are hunting the London bombings mastermind, and an Egyptian chemistry student who has fled his Leeds home.

Detectives said they wanted to know who had "supported, financed, trained and encouraged" the bombers.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4684869.stm

How very, very interesting.  Jobs for stooges?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0713051fbi1.html

Does British intel have a similar program?  Available at several places on the web is this excerpt from an ITV interview with former Scotland Yard investigator, Peter Power, is certainly enough to prompt the conspiracy theorist in the most bovidae ovis brain amongst us.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/london.terror.games.wmv

July 17, 2005

A Black Market for Bomb Materials Is Said to Flourish in Europe

By HEATHER TIMMONS

LONDON, July 16 - With experts now suspecting that the London suicide attackers used crude homemade bombs made from common commercial products, the spotlight has shifted to the wide availability of black-market explosives in Europe.

Nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, it is easier than ever to obtain these materials in Europe, security experts say. A glut of undocumented, military-quality explosives emanating in large part from the former Eastern bloc countries, combined with more porous borders, has left a wide variety of these materials washing through Europe, say current and former military officers and police in Britain and Europe.

"It is much, much easier now that we have a new E.U. border system" to bring explosives and firearms into Britain, said Michael Coldrick, a former antiterrorism officer with Scotland Yard. "People are coming and going across international borders all the time with relatively minor checks." Mr. Coldrick estimates that there are "thousands of tons" of explosives available on the black market in Europe.

A year after the bombings in 2004 in Madrid, which killed 191 people using stolen Goma-2, a nitroglycerin-based explosive, the European Union still has no way to track stolen explosives.

Of particular concern are the powerful, plastic bonded explosives, known as PBX, a favorite of terrorists for decades because they are hard to detect with X-ray machines. Semtex, a plastic explosive produced by a company called Explosia in the Czech Republic, was believed to be the material responsible for the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Dozens of small and midsized companies in Europe, Iran, Canada the United States and Asia produce plastic explosives. The manufacturers have tightened up screening and registration processes, and have introduced a tracking system that tags some explosives with their maker and point of origin. But the new controls do not cover products ordered previously, and many plastic explosives have a shelf life of 20 years.

It is not yet clear whether the London bombings involved anything that sophisticated. Traces of TATP,....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/international/europe/17explosives.html

INTERNATIONAL / MIDDLE EAST | July 17, 2005    

Iran Arrests 200 in Sweep for Terrorists

By NAZILA FATHI in Tehran   (NYT)   News  

TEHRAN, July 16 - Iran said Saturday that it had arrested 200 people and deported another 800, all of whom it said were part of a terrorist cell.

The intelligence minister, Ali Younessi, said the arrests were made last week after the ministry started a "fifth wave" of a crackdown against operatives linked to Al Qaeda, the ISNA news agency reported. It was the largest roundup of terrorism suspects announced by the Iranian authorities.

Iran rarely discloses information about the operations of Qaeda suspects or the arrests it makes, and Mr. Younessi's public comments were unusually detailed. Still, much remained unknown about the operation and the suspects, including where they were deported to.

Mr. Younessi said Al Qaeda had organized and formed different groups in eastern Iran to carry out terrorist attacks in larger cities, including Tehran, the capital. Iranian "theology students and Sunni leaders" were singled out in the roundup, he added. Iran has a majority Shiite population.

Although Iran has refused to identify those it has arrested, citing security reasons, Mr. Younessi gave the name of a ringleader he said was still at large. The man, Abdul Malek, was linked to a group of fighters close to Osama bin Laden who collaborated with drug traffickers, Mr. Younessi said. "The group intended to sabotage and carry out terrorist attacks in Iranian cities, especially in Tehran," the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. "Most of their members were identified and arrested. Their ringleader is Abdul Malek who lives in Baluchistan in Pakistan but sometimes enters eastern Iran illegally," he added.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/international/middleeast/17iran.html

Very interesting in light of how Al-Libi's arrest played out in the media here--the U.S. and Pakistani governments played it up as an important arrest, and some of the media and blogs questioned that or even ridiculed it! Jury is still out, but Juan Cole apparently thinks it's very interesting.

Informed Comment

Monday July 18

Leeds Cell Linked to al-Libi?

The Mystery of the Egyptian Chemist

<snip>

Evidence is emerging that Muhammad Siddique Khan, the oldest of the bombers, may have had links to the al-Qaeda cell of Abu al-Faraj al-Libi, an al-Qaeda leader of the new generation recently captured in Pakistan. The London bombings may have been planned at a summit in Pakistan in March of 2004. Muhammad Siddique Khan may have also had links to the two British-South Asian suicide bombers who mounted an attempted attack in Israel.

<snip>

posted by Juan @ 7/18/2005 06:08:00 AM

suggestion to check out his comments on the Egyptian chemist story at the above, too, adds valuable straightforward insights you won't get in the media

....The case of the Egyptian suspect in the London July 7 bombing grows curioser and curioser

....On the other hand, the Egyptian Interior Ministry seems convinced of Elnashar's innocence and is refusing to hand him over to the UK authorities. The Egyptian Interior Ministry despises al-Jihad al-Islami and wouldn't hesitate to toss Elnashar into prison and throw away the key if they thought he was involved with them.

I don't pretend to understand what in the world is going on here. The guy hangs around with very shady characters everywhere he goes. One possibility is....

-----

NYT on the Egyptian chemist

INTERNATIONAL / EUROPE | July 16, 2005    

Egyptian Biochemist Is Arrested in Cairo and Questioned in the London Bombings

By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and ELAINE SCIOLINO   (NYT)   News

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/international/europe/16intel.html

July 19, 2005

3 Bombers Visited Pakistan, Land of Their Roots, in 2004

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 18 - Pakistani government officials reported Monday that three of the four men identified as the London bombers visited this country last year. Two of them arrived together and stayed for three months.

A private Pakistani television station broadcast images of two of the men, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan, arriving at the Karachi airport in November 2004, and leaving in February 2005. The third, Hasib Mir Hussain, arrived in July 2004. Two Pakistani officials confirmed that the television images were accurate, but refused to be identified because the investigation was still under way.

The disclosure that three of the men Scotland Yard has identified as bombers visited Pakistan provided the strongest indication yet of a Pakistani connection to the London bombings.

Still, it was not clear what the men did during their visits. Intelligence officials want to know whether they were in contact with Islamic militant groups or known associates of Al Qaeda, or whether the men met with someone who helped plan or finance the bombings.

Over the weekend, leaders of two radical Islamic seminaries that have been linked to extremist groups in Pakistan denied that the men had studied there, or that their schools were promoting terrorism. The police in Islamabad searched a half dozen seminaries, known as madrasas, in the area.

Pakistani officials would not say where the three men traveled inside Pakistan, nor with whom they met. The men, all British citizens of Pakistani descent, were among the 56 killed in the July 7 attack.

President Pervez Musharraf, speaking to a youth convention here in the capital on Monday, accused some madrasas....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/international/europe/19bombings.html

June Report Led Britain to Lower Its Terror Alert

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

July 19

Less than a month before the London bombings, an intelligence memo said no group had the intent or the ability to strike.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/international/europe/19intel.html?

July 19, 2005

German High Court Blocks Qaeda Suspect's Extradition

European law is superseded by German law

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

BERLIN, July 18 - In a ruling seen as a sharp blow to coordinated counterterrorism efforts in Europe, Germany's highest court refused Monday to turn over to Spain a citizen suspected of aiding Al Qaeda, arguing that a recent European agreement to streamline extradition procedures violated the rights of German citizens.

The case involves Mamoun Darkazanli, 46, a German of Syrian origin suspected by Spanish authorities and independent experts on terrorism of having provided logistical and financial support to Al Qaeda.

Mr. Darkazanli, who runs a trading company in Germany, is pictured on a videotape at a wedding in Hamburg in 1999 attended by two of the pilot-hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Judge Baltazar Garzón of Spain, using the new European procedure, issued a European warrant against Mr. Darkazanli last year, accusing him of being the "permanent interlocutor and assistant" in Europe for Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden.

But on Monday the German Constitutional Court declared the law creating the European warrant void, even though it was ratified by the German Parliament in November. The court reasoned that the law infringed on the right of every citizen of Germany, enshrined in its Basic Law, to a court hearing in this country before extradition can take place.

The ruling will surely be seen as a setback in a Europe that has closer coordination to prevent terrorism at the top of the public agenda and is still reeling from the terrorist attacks in London this month.

"He must be set free following this ruling, which is a blow for the government in its efforts and fight against terrorism," said the German justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, referring to Mr. Darkazanli.

Mr. Darkazanli, who was interrogated by German investigators for several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, has denied having engaged in any terrorist activity, saying he was a businessman who knew members of the Qaeda cell in Germany only "by sight."

"The Darkazanli case is very important," said Daniel Keohane, a security expert at the Center for European Reform, in London, "first because it involves an alleged Al Qaeda connection, and second because it raises questions about whether the European arrest warrant can work at all."

The European arrest warrant, enacted by European Union members early in 2002,

allows prosecutors in any member country to request extradition of a person accused in any of about 30 areas of criminal activity from another member without bureaucratic delay or restrictions.

"One argument was that in a modern world, where terrorism crosses borders without restrictions, we needed modern methods that would overcome the traditional high national frontiers to law enforcement," said Hugo Brady, a terrorism expert also at the Center for European Reform. "So if a country's authorities issue a European arrest warrant, the person has to be extradited immediately, with very little room for objection."

The German court first stepped into the Darkazanli case in November, blocking the extradition at the 11th hour....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/international/europe/19germany.html?

_{The Increasing Radicalisation of Sunni Politics}

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/7/14/15614/3114/46#46

July 21, 2005

British Seeking Cleric's Top Aide in Connection With July 7 Attack

By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

This article was reported by Don Van Natta Jr., Elaine Sciolino, William K. Rashbaum and Douglas Jehl and written by Mr. Van Natta.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/international/europe/21intel.html?ex=1279598400&en=231bcacbdac
9d535&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Sion Touhig/PolarisAbu Hamza al-Masri, center, at a prayer service in February 20

Beginning excerpt

LONDON, July 20 - The police investigating the terrorist bombings here have begun a worldwide hunt for a former aide to one of Britain's most militant Islamic clerics who they believe may have played a key role in the July 7 attacks, according to British, European and American intelligence and law enforcement officials.

The man, identified as Haroon Rashid Aswat, 31, originally from Dewsbury in north-central England, was a senior aide to Abu Hamza al-Masri, the blind, one-armed militant cleric who preached at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London until his arrest in April 2004. Mr. Masri, who urged young men to wage jihad in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, is now facing extradition to the United States to face terrorism-related charges.

Several intelligence and law enforcement officials said they believed that Mr. Aswat was also involved in a plan to set up a training camp for Al Qaeda in Oregon six years ago.

A theory now being pursued by Scotland Yard is that Mr. Aswat provided the four British bombers with support for the coordinated attacks in London's public transportation system, killing 56 people and wounding 700, several senior intelligence and law enforcement officials said Wednesday night.

Those officials declined to say what specifically made them believe that Mr. Aswat was linked to the bombers, all of whom died in the attacks.

One official noted that Mr. Aswat was raised in Dewsbury, the same area where Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, one of the four bombers, lived. On Wednesday, Mr. Aswat's family said he had not lived at the family's home near Dewsbury for 10 years.

Mr. Aswat's whereabouts are unknown, but several senior investigators said they were almost certain that he was not in Britain now.

Officials say he is of Pakistani descent, like three of the four bombers, but his family's neighbors said the family was from Gujarat, India.

"Nobody's tying him in or making him the mastermind yet," a senior American official said. "There's no real substantiation yet. But people are looking at some of his confederates and connections, and saying that it's a possibility."

An American official and two European officials said Mr. Aswat spent several weeks in Bly, Ore., in late 1999 and early 2000....

UK Ban on Preparing, Inciting or Glorifying Violence

http://agonist.org/story/2005/7/20/82436/7970

Troops raid Islamic school in Thailand

by

Friday 22 July 2005 1:49 PM GMT

Several Muslim men, seized by police in a raid on an Islamic boarding school in Thailand's far south, are being held for interrogation at a military camp, an army officer has said.

Soldiers and police, on Thursday, raided the Islam Suksa Wittaya school in Pattani's Yarang district, the first such operation under a state of emergency declared in the three provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat on Tuesday.

Under a new emergency law that came into effect last week, security forces can hold suspects without charge for up to 30 days with court permission. Suspects must be held in areas other than prison cells.

In Thursday's raid, police were looking for suspects in connection with violence in the three provinces over the past 18 months that has cost about 900 lives and which the government blames on an Islamic insurgency.

In the latest violence to hit the area, Nual Dindaeng, a 58-year-old local official, was shot dead by motorcycle gunmen in his pickup truck in Narathiwat's Bacho district, said police Major Chalong Wattanapakdi. Insurgents have generally targeted local officials and security personnel.

Colonel Worraphon Wisarutphit, the deputy commander for Pattani province, said seven men were rounded up at the Islamic boarding school. They are being held at an army base in Pattani, the biggest of the three southernmost provinces.

Dictatorial powers

However, a police officer in the area, Colonel Chaiyan Supachaiyakit, said that only five men were being held, including one Cambodian and two fMalaysians. He did not explain the discrepancy in numbers.

Security officials had conducted many raids on southern Islamic schools before the state of emergency, and it was not clear whether the circumstances of Thursday's raids were any different from previous ones.

The government has repeatedly blamed Muslim teachers for fuelling the area's unrest. The new law allows Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in areas he declares as emergency zones, to impose curfews, ban public gatherings, limit travel, censor news and ban publications, detain suspects without charge, confiscate property and tap telephones, among other measures.

The government has come under heavy criticism from the press, politicians and activists, who charge that it gives the prime minister dictatorial powers, and may antagonize southern residents and make the situation worse.....

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7B8EF4F8-4020-4944-A517-4E6BD7EF34FF.htm

July 22, 2005

Family Members Deny Suspect Was a Supporter of bin Laden

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

LAHORE, Pakistan, July 21 - Relatives of one suspect in the July 7 London bombings confirmed on Thursday that he had visited their family house in a remote village in central Pakistan late last year, but denied statements attributed to them in the Pakistani press that he was an ardent supporter of Osama bin Laden.

In Kota Chotiya, a dusty village whose landmarks were a mosque, a bakery and several languorous water buffaloes chewing cud, relatives of the bombing suspect, Shehzad Tanweer, a 22-year-old Briton, said he had come to visit the family home in December, and stayed for over a month.

In an interview published Thursday in the Pakistani English-language daily, family members had described Mr. Tanweer as having been upset about what he saw as atrocities committed against Muslims worldwide and as being a fan of Mr. bin Laden.

But on Thursday, in another interview, his maternal uncle, a poultry farmer named Tahir Pervez, denounced the reports as false. Mr. Pervez portrayed his nephew as knowing nothing of politics, and spending his days playing cricket in the unpaved alleys of the village and learning to ride a motorcycle. Mr. Tanweer spoke only broken Punjabi, he said, and did not take well to Pakistani food; he had a bad case of diarrhea during his visit.

It was hard to imagine what a young man raised in Leeds would do with himself in such a sleepy place. Mr. Pervez described his nephew, the second of four siblings, as a shy, simple young man who prayed five times a day and spoke of no higher ambitions than to help his father run a fish and chips shop in Leeds.

Before his December visit, they last saw Mr. Tanweer three years ago, when he visited with his parents and siblings, Mr. Pervez said....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/international/asia/22pakistan.html

http://agonist.org/story/2005/7/22/16614/4883

reminder, Zawahiri's video June 17:

The deputy leader of al-Qaeda has appeared in a new videotape and warned Muslim nations against adopting the "US concept of reform".

http://www.agonist.org/story/2005/6/18/101845/315

also

Beirut explosion follows Rice visit

Saturday 23 July 2005, 1:42 Makka Time, 22:42 GMT    

Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has condemned the bombing

Twelve people have been wounded in a bomb blast on a busy Beirut street known for its nightclubs, cafeterias and restaurants, officials and witnesses said.

The blast came late on Friday, hours after US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice left Beirut after a surprise visit in support of Lebanon's new government....

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/529B530C-886C-49BF-A6E2-AEF92317ED8A.htm

Militant London Sheik Had Predicted More Terror Attacks

Souad Mekhennet and Don Van Natta Jr. | London | July 22

NYT -

http://agonist.org/story/2005/7/22/54917/3548

Many Bombs But Links Are Unclear

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: July 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 23 - First came Bali, then Riyadh, Casablanca and Istanbul, then Madrid, Taba, London, and now, Sharm el Sheik, all sites in the last three years of major terrorist attacks involving big bombs aimed at soft targets.

In each case, the attack was quickly described by authorities as having "the hallmarks of Al Qaeda," in the sense that it involved synchronized strikes or sophistication in planning. But to date, none have been traced to Osama bin Laden, the fugitive leader of Al Qaeda, or to other pivotal leaders of what American officials now call Al Qaeda central, to distinguish from its offshoots, admirers and those who its successes have simply inspired.

No one can yet say who was ultimately behind the attacks in London's Underground trains and double-decker buses this month, although the four dead bombers and a handful of other suspects have been identified. The question of who was responsible for the attacks on Saturday in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt's most cosmopolitan Red Sea resort, appears even more of a mystery.

But like the previous strikes that left resort hotels, housing complexes and train cars shattered well beyond Iraq, Israel and the occupied territories, the latest wave has demonstrated the awful utility of a common tactic, even if employed by different groups for different reasons.

In Sharm el Sheik, as in London and the other cities that became killing fields, attackers have proved again and again since Sept. 11, 2001, just how much damage and death they can inflict when they focus on the least protected of targets, particularly when they are willing to sacrifice themselves in the process.

None of the nearly dozen major terrorist attacks carried out outside the war zones of the Middle East and Chechnya since Sept. 11 have come anywhere close to inflicting the kind of toll levied on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But in each case, the number of deaths has been in the dozens, and the impact on national psyches and economies has been considerable.

Most recently, the July 7 attacks in London apparently crossed one major threshold, as the first in Europe of what the police say they believe were suicide attacks....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/international/middleeast/24sharm.html

by two Brits of Pakistani heritage,

sub-thread:

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/7/21/55431/5901/92#92

Two injured in Istanbul explosion  

Police have been investigating the scene

An explosion in a restaurant in the Turkish city of Istanbul has injured two people - a Dutchman and a Turkish restaurant worker.

The restaurant where the blast took place is under the Galata bridge in the historic part of the city.

The cause is not known, but police said they had ruled out a gas leak.

Istanbul has been the target of bomb attacks by illegal left-wing organisations, Kurdish separatists and Islamic militants.

bit more

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4711595.stm

Thanks Nick

Sunday, July 24, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

Effort here to charge London suspect was blocked

By Hal Bernton and David Heath

Seattle Times staff reporters

THE SUNDAY MAIL

Haroon Aswat, a suspect in the London bombings, once lived at a Seattle mosque.

CLIVE LIMPKIN / THE SUNDAY MAIL

Radical cleric Abu Hamza al Masri, left, rides in a car in London on Jan. 20, 1999, with Haroon Aswat, a suspect in the London bombings. Abu Hamza has been described in a federal indictment as "a terrorist facilitator." He lost both hands in an explosion.

-----

The Justice Department blocked efforts by its prosecutors in Seattle in 2002 to bring criminal charges against Haroon Aswat, according to federal law-enforcement officials who were involved in the case.

British authorities suspect Aswat of taking part in the July 7 London bombings, which killed 56 and prompted an intense worldwide manhunt for him.

....But long before he surfaced as a suspect there, federal prosecutors in Seattle wanted to seek a grand-jury indictment for his involvement in a failed attempt to set up a terrorist-training camp in Bly, Ore., in late 1999. In early 2000, Aswat lived for a couple of months in central Seattle at the Dar-us-Salaam mosque.

A federal indictment of Aswat in 2002 would have resulted in an arrest warrant and his possible detention in Britain for extradition to the United States.

"It was really frustrating," said a former Justice Department official involved in the case. "Guys like that, you just want to sweep them up off the street."....

But that plan was rejected by higher-level officials at Justice Department headquarters, who wanted most of the case to be handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York City, according to sources involved with the case.

Ever since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department had funneled terrorism cases to its New York office, which had a lot of experience in that area. This frustrated law-enforcement officials in Seattle, who thought they also had a track record for handling terrorism prosecutions -- such as that of Ahmed Ressam, trained by al-Qaida and arrested Dec. 14, 1999, in Port Angeles with the makings of a powerful bomb hidden in his rental car.

Justice Department supervisors in Washington, D.C., gave the Seattle office the go-ahead to seek an indictment against Ujaama only.

Ujaama was indicted by a Seattle grand jury in August 2002, charged with trying to set up the Bly camp and with aiding the Taliban. He pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban and agreed to testify against Abu Hamza and others.

Aswat was not charged but was referred to in the indictment as "co-conspirator #2.".

In May 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced an 11-count indictment by a federal grand jury in New York against Abu Hamza, who allegedly sent Aswat to Oregon to scout out the proposed training camp. A department news release said "the indictment alleges that Abu Hamza was a terrorist facilitator with global reach -- from aiding hostage takers in Yemen, to attempting to set up a jihad training camp in Oregon."

At the time, however, federal prosecutors chose not to indict Aswat for reasons that are not clear. Asked why Aswat wasn't indicted, a federal official in Seattle replied, "That's a great question."

There had been some confusion about whether Aswat was alive. But three years after the Ujaama indictment, the Justice Department has yet to follow through with the indictment of Aswat sought by its Seattle office.

Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman, said he could not comment on the discussions leading up to the August 2002 indictment that named Ujaama but not any of his co-conspirators.

Sierra said that co-conspirators, though not named in an indictment, may still be the subject of continuing investigations.

Mark Bartlett, an assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle involved with the Ujaama prosecution, also declined to comment on department discussions before the indictment.

Bartlett said the Bly investigation was very thorough: "They turned over every stone. This is not one where you say that, in hindsight, you could have taken extra steps."

This past week, there have been conflicting reports about Aswat's whereabouts.

Pakistani officials denied reports that they had taken him into custody. Other sources, including a U.S. law-enforcement official with knowledge of the case, say Aswat has been taken into custody.

Citing a federal source, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer two days ago cast doubt on whether the Aswat suspected in the London bombing is the same person who was involved in the Bly camp. But a U.S. law-enforcement official involved in the London investigation told The Seattle Times on Friday that it is the same person.

Ujaama, released from U.S. prison last spring, has been questioned recently about Aswat, The Associated Press reported, citing confidential sources.....

more @

http://agonist.org/story/2005/7/24/194111/406

Al Qaeda Leaders Seen in Control

Craig Whitlock | London | July 24

Experts Say Radicals In London, Egypt May Have Followed Orders

WaPo -

http://agonist.org/story/2005/7/24/193543/221

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29633

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 (IPS) - The rash of terrorist bombings in Britain, and most recently in Egypt, have prompted Secretary-General Kofi Annan to prod the U.N.'s 191 member states to speed up a long-delayed decision on one of the most politically sensitive issues in the world body: a definition of "terrorism".

"What has happened in the last few weeks, from London to Sharm el-Shaikh and others, gives us one more reason to press ahead and get a good definition of terrorism that we can all live with," he told reporters Monday.

Annan called on member states to finalise the 13th -- and perhaps the last -- of the U.N. conventions against terrorism, which has remained stalled, largely over definitions, since 2000.

"We know what we are living with, and I think the whole world is now standing together in the fight against terrorism. And the United Nations and its General Assembly must lead in that fight," he added.

Titled "A Comprehensive Convention Against Terrorism", the proposed treaty has been touted as the last word against terrorism.

Palitha Kohona, head of the U.N. Treaty Section, told IPS the treaty made "significant progress" at the last session of the Ad Hoc Committee responsible for drafting the convention.

The treaty incorporates most of the key provisions from the existing 12 U.N. conventions against terrorism. The new omnibus treaty covers subjects ranging from hijacking and hostage-taking to terrorist bombings and funding for terrorism.

The key sticking points in the draft treaty revolve around several controversial yet basic issues, including the definition of "terrorism".

For example, what distinguishes a "terrorist organisation" from a "liberation movement"? And do you exclude activities of national armed forces, even if they are perceived to commit acts of terrorism? If not, how much of this constitutes "state terrorism"?

...what happened to the harsh rhetoric regarding "those who harbor terrorists." Pakistani ISI helped start the Taliban, Osama is probably sheltering or has previously sought refuge in Pakistan and now this London connection.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/london-bombing-egypt-pakistan-and.html

<snip>

The French have ... alleged about the roundup of al-Qaeda last summer (see below) that:

"Out of "the 13 presumed terrorists identified by the British only 8 were arrested and 5 escaped.

The arrests were part of an operation which recovered 600kg of explosives," said the senior French police officer, who yesterday revealed to Libération the fact that amongst the five who escaped from the operation was Mohammed Kahn, one of the alleged suicide bombers who struck on the London Underground.

 This Briton of Pakistani descent has been on the list of Scotland Yard's "targets" for the last 15 months, only with a different age and a different first name - Kayoun* instead of Sidique, but "it's the same man" who gave the police the slip."

If Mohammad Sadique Khan had been named by Noor Khan in Pakistan, and managed to escape British surveillance because the Bush administration splashed details of an ongoing investigation all over the press to throw John Kerry into the shade, that really is criminal.

The initial French statements by Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy were reported a little inaccurately, so that he looked as though he were saying that the British police had had the four bombers in custody last year.

That would have made the British police look like dangerous incompetents and it elicited a sharp rebuke from British Home Secretary Charles Clarke. [Sarkozy mentions "March of 2004" but appears to have the date wrong. The arrest of 8 of 13 suspects came in August after Noor Khan's name was leaked.)

The Bush administration's political maneuvering in early August, 2004 did enormous damage to the British and Pakistani attempt to use Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan to out al-Qaeda members in the UK planning an attack on the London Underground.

posted by Juan @ 7/15/2005 01:17:00 PM    

That is the kind of shit the FBI does for a living.

Too bad they were so lousy at that kind of infiltrating and role playing with the networks of Timothy Mc Veigh and Eric Rudolph that so many people lost their lives.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/eric-rudolph/

Juan Cole:

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Breaks in the London Bomb Case

....Legislators in democratic societies who are thinking about how to respond to this problem should give serious thought to RICO-like laws that could be used to curb religious cults, which typically isolate members, indoctrinate them, manipulate them, and sometimes coerce them. Cults avoid scrutiny by harassing critics and whistleblowers, often in ways that police find it difficult to respond to. The enormous problems modern societies have had with groups like Christian Identity, the Koreishites, Aum Shinrikyo, and now al-Qaeda, suggests that current legal frameworks are inadequate to address this problem. Ex-members, victims and critics of cults need a legal basis for protection from the cults. The American Family Foundation is doing excellent work in this regard.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/breaks-in-london-bomb-case-british.html

I see the answer is in hiring extremely competent people to do your law enforcement, with good ideas, and then with tons and tons of oversight. I have hoped since 9/12/01 that we'ed have a government that would put a major campaign into that. Instead we did shit like take out Saddam Hussein in an attempt to make over the Middle East hearts and minds or something like that whatever.

"Al Qaeda" is little different than the Mafia in my own humble opinion.

Do you object, chickadee, to the FBI infringing on the Mafia cult's rights by role-playing and infiltrating?

It's not always a pretty world. Some people are bad, some people are nuts, and some of those people, they don't play fair, and it's not always nice or easy to catch 'em.

Civilization is not where the government just lets people "free" to do all kinds of crazy shit and pay no attention to what they are up to.

It's really easy for some to see conspiracies in this type of thing precisely because the ones you are watching are attempting to fight conspiracies!

Suggestion to those type of people to make your citizen's oversight more fruitful and more credible with others: first decode conspiracy #1, then after that decode the law enforcement counter-conspiracy. Do not presume right off the bat that there was no conspiracy that caused the counter-conspiracy, do not ignore and discount evidence of the original conspiracy, only considering the facts of the counter-conspiracy. Always start at the beginning, don't start at the end and then fill in with cherry-picked facts from the first conspiracy that fit the story you made up from starting with the ending.

And if your law enforcement people are not giving all the facts because they are in the middle of working in a counter-conspiracy, guess what? You don't get to know all the facts! You have to wait until it's over and the whole story is made public! That's just the way it is! You have to "hire" politicians to do that for you. The press will try to find things out, but they will not have all the facts til it's over; that's cause the leakers all have an agenda--the "rules" say they are not supposed to be leaking. When it's over, you can demand an accounting of how they all behaved (i.e., 9/11 Commission.)

Of course if you have a kumbaya wonderland view where you believe that all humans that are not in law enforcement are good-natured and well-intentioned and don't construct conspiracies, and the whole idea of law enforcement is evil, and everyone in law enforcement and militaries is bad and are the only ones that construct conspiracies, well nevermind.

P.S. http://agonist.org/comments/2005/7/13/224918/094/21#21

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/7/14/12835/5227/30#30

no bogus terrorism cases for them, nosiree. Only if they can win them and the allies don't get mad, whatever.

NYT Magazine 7/17

THE SECURITY ADVISER

Battlefields

By RICHARD A. CLARKE

Fighting terrorists in Iraq did not, and will not, immunize us from attacks at home. Here's why.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ADVISER.html?ex=1279252800&en=5c7da4bb29320178&
ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

above, and just now seeing this:

Egypt Says Suspect Has No Links to London Blasts or Al Qaeda

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Egypt-Britain-Bombings.html

I find myself "conspiracizing"--the government is so adamant in his defense that it almost seems as if he might have been an undercover agent?

July 18, 2005

Guantanamo Prisoner Extradited to Spain

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:03 p.m. ET

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- The United States on Monday extradited a Moroccan held at Guantanamo Bay who was indicted in Spain for his alleged links to an al-Qaida cell, the Interior Ministry said.

Lahcen Ikassrien was accompanied by Interpol agents as he arrived in Madrid. Also known as Chej Hasan, Ikassrien was one of four people held in the U.S. detention center for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whose extradition was sought in December, 2003, by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon.....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Spain-Guantanamo.html?pagewanted=print

Reuters | July 20

Bombings that killed at least 56 people in London have pushed security back to the top of Europe's political agenda but glaring gaps remain in anti-terrorist cooperation across the continent.

Since the suspected al Qaeda-inspired attacks on London on July 7, governments have rushed to propose new measures in Britain, Italy and Germany, where security will rank as a major issue in campaigning for elections expected in September.

But,in a rude reminder of the limits on cooperation, a German court this week blocked the extradition to Spain of a suspected al Qaeda financier ....It said the basis for handing him over -- an EU arrest warrant -- was an instrument not properly incorporated into German law.

Some politicians believe the shock of the London attacks will restore momentum for tighter laws and better cooperation, which had faded since last year's Madrid bombings, and shift the balance in a hard-fought debate over freedom versus security...

Related to parent post

United States v. Earnest James Ujaama (PDF)

Haroon Aswat, a suspect in the London bombings, is referred to in the indictment as "co-conspirator #2."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/links/usujaama.pdf

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Is Bin Laden Ordering the Bombings around the World?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/is-bin-laden-ordering-bombings-around.html