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Challenging the Islamists: The “Other Muslims” Demand Their Say

10 March 2010

Investigative Project on Terrorism, 9 March 2010: The “most important ideological struggle in the world today is the battle over the future of Islam,” writes Hudson Institute scholar Zeyno Baran. Baran is the editor of an important new book, which goes on sale March 16, entitled The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular – a compilation of personal analyses from 10 American and European Muslims who warn of the danger posed by radical Islamism. . . .

. . . . For several decades, Wahhabists and Muslim Brotherhood groups have been courted by Western governments and treated by the media as representatives of a near-monolithic “Muslim community.” But an alternate narrative has emerged in the Muslim world – one that rejects the Islamist worldview as anti-democratic. Baran, director of Hudson’s Center for Eurasian Policy, minces no words in describing the danger.

“Islamism has much [in] common with totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism, Fascism, and Marxism-Leninism, including anti-Semitism, ethno-religious hatred, ambition to restructure the world, and an embrace of violence,” she writes in the introduction to the book. “However, unlike purely political totalitarian movements, Islamism has a profound and deeper appeal that derives from its claim to stem from the will of Allah.”

At a March 3 Hudson Institute forum launching The Other Muslims, Baran, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, and Hedieh Mirahmadi, an Iranian-American lawyer and activist, said that officials in Western democracies mistakenly try to promote nonviolent Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood as “alternatives” to violent Islamists like Al Qaeda.

But the real differences between these organizations are tactical in nature. Both believe that Islam is superior to other religions and seek to impose sharia law in order to regulate virtually every aspect of life. “The West has lost sight of a fundamental truth: empowering Islamists, regardless of whether or not they are violent, sows the seeds for future radicalization that undermines our civilizational structures and breeds terrorism,” Baran writes. “It is difficult to understand that ‘nice people’ who may even share an outwardly secular lifestyle still firmly believe that their lives should be governed according to a legal code of seventh-century Arabia.”

The book’s other contributors are Muslims from a wide variety of backgrounds who also oppose Islamists. Some are devoutly religious, while others are relatively secular. They are united in the belief that Islam is fully compatible with Western liberal democracy, and that Western governments should not be yielding to Islamist demands for the creation of “parallel societies,” where they will be forced to live under Sharia. . . .

Tagged as: Storm Petrels, war of ideas

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Adam Gadahn, Traitor

10 March 2010

Human Events/Robert Spencer, 10 March 2010: Al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn in a new videotape released Sunday declared:

“I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance in general and America, Britain and Israel in particular to prepare to play his due role in responding to and repelling the aggression of the enemies of Islam.”

He called upon Muslims to be imaginative in their choice of jihad targets:

“You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage.”

Gadahn, who is known in jihadist circles as “Azzam the American,” is the first U.S. citizen to be indicted for treason since World War II. His new video shows that the charge is entirely justified.

In it, he held up 9/11 as a model for jihad attacks: “As the blessed operations of September 11th showed, a little imagination and planning and a limited budget can turn almost anything into a deadly, effective and convenient weapon.” He exhorted Muslims to sow mayhem in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West “by killing or capturing people in government, industry and the media.”

As surprising as it may be to hear an American fantasizing about mass murders in his native land, it is no surprise coming from Gadahn, who in a September 11, 2006 message called America “enemy soil.” And in his new communiqué, the pudgy Al-Qaeda operative even praised Nidal Hasan, the Islamic jihadist who murdered thirteen people at Fort Hood in November 2009, as

“the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes,” and as a “pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers.”

Earlier videotapes show that mass murders on American military bases, such as the one eventually committed by Hasan, were long the stuff of Gadahn’s dreams. In July 2006, while engaging in an extended exercise in grievance theatre over alleged murders of children by American troops in Iraq, he said: “It’s hard to imagine that any compassionate person could see pictures, just pictures, of what the Crusaders did to those children, and not want to go on a shooting spree at the Marines’ housing facilities at Camp Pendleton.” He was anxious to demonstrate his own bloodlust, declaring: “We love nothing better than the heat of battle, the echo of explosions, and slitting the throats of the infidels.”

And therein lies the core of the problem. Gadahn has become a traitor who plots violence against Americans because of his allegiance to Islam, and his concomitant belief that he has a responsibility before the supreme deity to kill Infidels whom he believes to be at war with Islam. Yet aside from vague and loophole-laden condemnations of terrorism, Muslim groups in America have done nothing to counter the appeal of jihad recruiters to young men like Gadahn. We know from the recent flow of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis back to their homeland to wage jihad that jihad recruitment is continuing on American soil; and the people who converted Adam Gadahn to Islam and convinced him that Allah was pleased when he murdered people are still active, still spreading Islam among unsuspecting and alienated young Americans.

Reports Sunday that Gadahn had been captured just as his videotape was released turned out to be false. In fact, another American convert to Islam who is active in Al-Qaeda was the one who was captured – which shows anew that officials have ignored the conversion of rootless young Americans and their recruitment for the jihad to our great detriment. Gadahn himself, in any case, is still at large — and while American forces should continue to hunt for him in Pakistan and Afghanistan, law enforcement officials stateside should be on the lookout for an even greater threat emanating from those Muslims in this country who have taken his words, and the words of those who inspired and influenced him, to heart.

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 362–Informant Development for Law Enforcement to Fight Terrorism

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine

Tagged as: Adam Gadahn, Convert, homegrown jihadist, Islamic Ideology, Jihadist Threat Doctrine, Robert Spencer, Targets

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Dubai Police chief asks spies to leave the region

10 March 2010

Gulf News, 10 March 2010: Dubai Police have warned spies operating in the Gulf to leave the region within one week or face consequences. “Those spies that are currently present in the Gulf must leave the region within one week — if not, then we will cross that bridge when we come to it,” Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told Gulf News. . . .

. . . . The ultimatum indicates that Dubai Police are aware of the identities of spies operating in the UAE and the Gulf region and appears to be a warning of exposure if they do not comply. Asked if the alleged spies are holders of European passports, the police chief said: “Europeans and others”, but he did not respond when asked if he was also referring to spies holding Arab passports. It is unclear if Dahi was referring to spies working for European governments or those who use European passports to spy for others. . . .

Tagged as: Dubai

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‘JihadJane’ indictment alleges threat from within U.S.

10 March 2010

Los Angeles Times, 10 March 2010: Using e-mail, YouTube videos, phony travel documents and a burning desire to kill “or die trying,” a middle-aged American woman from Pennsylvania helped recruit a network for suicide attacks and other terrorist strikes in Europe and Asia, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday.

Colleen R. LaRose, who dubbed herself “JihadJane,” was so intent on waging jihad, authorities said, that she traveled to Sweden to kill an artist in a way that would frighten “the whole Kufar [nonbeliever] world.” With blond hair and green eyes, the 46-year-old woman bragged that she could go anywhere undetected, boasting in one e-mail that it was “an honour & great pleasure to die or kill for” jihad, or holy war, the indictment said. . . . .

. . . “She appeared to be one of those people who spend a lot of time online and go to all these radical websites and chat rooms,” said one law enforcement source, who, like others interviewed, requested anonymity when discussing the case. “If there was some moment in her life that changed her, I don’t know,” another law enforcement source said. . . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine

♦ CI CENTRE BRIEFING: Inside Jihad: Recruited and Radicalized Into Terrorism

Jihad Jane, an American woman, faces terrorism charges

Tagged as: Colleen LaRose, Cyberjihadism, Female Jihadists, JihadJane

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Iran calls political opponents enemies of Islam

10 March 2010

AP, 9 March 2010: A traditional Islamic concept about protecting the faith and its followers has become a judicial weapon for Iran’s rulers: charging opponents as so-called enemies of Allah with the threat of possible death sentences. Iran’s accusations of “moharebeh” — literally “waging war” in Arabic — have opened deep rifts between ruling clerics and Islamic scholars questioning how an idea about safeguarding Muslims can be transformed into a tool to punish political protesters.

The outcry increased last week after an appeals court reportedly upheld the death sentence for Mohammad Amin Valian, a 20-year-old student convicted of moharebeh crimes, which Iran’s legal code defines as “defiance of Allah” — or the state — and punishable by hanging. . . .

. . . . On Sunday, Iran’s semi-official ILNA news agency reported that a former Tehran University dean, Mohammad Maleki, was charged with moharebeh for alleged contact with unspecified foreign groups and working to undermine the Islamic system. In January, Iran hanged two men on moharebeh offenses — convicted of plotting to overthrow “the Islamic establishment” and planning assassinations and bombings. They were arrested months before the June election, but were brought before judges last summer in a trial of more than 100 pro-reform activists and politicians. Some were sentenced to death, while more than 80 received prison terms ranging from six months to 15 years.

A hard-line cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, described the executions in ominous terms in a nationally broadcast sermon in January. “If you show weakness now, the future will be worse,” Jannati said. “There is no room for Islamic mercy.” . . . .

. . . . The concept has its roots in a Quranic verse that calls for death, maiming or banishment for those who “wage war” against Allah, the Prophet Muhammad or bring corruption into society. Many Islamic scholars interpret the references to acts that defy universal codes such as intentionally killing civilians during warfare or causing random destruction.

Iranian authorities, however, have pushed the meaning to cover any challenges to the stability and survival of the Islamic state — built largely around the idea that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is divinely empowered. “Iran’s leaders use the Quran as the cornerstone of their rule. They also are using the Quran to justify the punishment of those challenging the existing order,” said Azzam Tamimi, director of Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London. “In this sense, Iran’s leaders see no contradiction.”

Blurring religious and political muscle is not new in the region, with the Taliban using Islamic law to rule Afghanistan until being ousted after the 9/11 attacks. But Iran’s case has evolved in a distinct way: starting as a political clash over disputed elections and gradually turning into a defense of the Islamic Revolution. . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 1700–Fundamentals of Iran Training Program — 1701: Crossroads of Conflict in the Middle East, 1702: Iranian Terrorism and Counterintelligence in the Modern Age

Tagged as: Iran, Islamic Ideology, Moharebeh, Political Islam

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Jihadist pleads not guilty to aiding terrorists

10 March 2010

AP, 9 March 2010: Evidence collected by the United States against an East African charged with providing support to a Somali terrorist organization linked to al-Qaida includes lengthy statements he made to authorities, a prosecutor told a judge Tuesday. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher LaVigne made the revelation during a plea proceeding for Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed in Manhattan. Ahmed’s lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Ahmed, 35, a citizen of Eritrea, was brought to the United States on Saturday from Nigeria on charges that he supported al-Shabaab, a violent extremist group in Somalia. Prosecutors say he gave the organization 3,000 euros and studied weapons and explosives at a training camp. They say he bought an AK-47 rifle, ammunition and two grenades in April in Somalia. Al-Shabaab was designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group in 2008. . . .

. . . . An indictment charging Ahmed with providing material support to the organization and receiving training from the group said a former leader of al-Shabaab who trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan prior to 2001 had called for foreign fighters to go to Somalia to join al-Shabaab in a “holy war” against the Ethiopian and African Union forces in Somalia. The indictment said al-Shabaab’s recruitment efforts had led men from other countries including the United States to go to Somalia to engage in violent jihad — holy war.

The indictment said al-Shabaab was believed to have provided protection and safe haven for al-Qaida operatives wanted for a 2002 hotel bombing in Kenya and the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that resulted in 224 deaths, including 12 Americans.

It said al-Shabaab in April declared it was responsible for mortar attacks against a U.S. congressman visiting Somalia. A year before that, al-Shabaab leaders declared that their fighters would “hunt the U.S. government” and warned that the U.S. and Ethiopia should keep its citizens out of Somalia, the indictment said.

Al-Shabaab is the most active group of violent extremists targeting Somalia’s weak U.S.-backed transitional government. The indictment said it has carried out assassinations of civilians and journalists and had distributed a videotape depicting the slow decapitation of an accused spy. . . .

Tagged as: al-Shabaab, jihadist, Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed, Somalia

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Jihad Jane, an American woman, faces terrorism charges

10 March 2010

Washington Post, 10 March 2010: A petite, blond-haired, blue-eyed high school dropout who allegedly used the nickname JihadJane was identified Tuesday as an alleged terrorist intent on recruiting others to her cause, as federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges that could send her to prison for life.

Colleen Renee LaRose, 46, has been quietly held in U.S. custody since October on suspicions that she provided material support to terrorists and traveled to Sweden to launch an attack, according to federal officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is continuing to unfold.

LaRose, who lived in suburban Philadelphia, allegedly recruited men and women in the United States, Europe and South Asia to “wage violent jihad,” according to an indictment issued in Pennsylvania. She fueled her interests on the Internet over the past few years and used Web sites such as YouTube to post increasingly agitated messages, the court papers said.

As an American citizen whose appearance and passport allowed her to blend into Western society, LaRose represents one of the worst fears of intelligence and FBI analysts focused on identifying terrorist threats. She is one of only a handful of women to be charged with terrorism offenses in the United States, national security experts said. . . .

Pennsylvania Woman Indicted in Plot to Recruit Violent Jihadist Fighters and to Commit Murder Overseas (DOJ, 9 March 2010)

David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and Michael L. Levy, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, together with Janice K. Fedarcyk, Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI in Philadelphia, today announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Colleen R. LaRose, aka “Fatima LaRose,” aka “JihadJane,” with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to a government official, and attempted identity theft.

The indictment charges that LaRose (an American citizen born in 1963 who resides in Montgomery County, Pa.) and five unindicted co-conspirators (located in South Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the United States) recruited men on the Internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe, and recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad.

The indictment further charges that LaRose and her unindicted co-conspirators used the Internet to establish relationships with one another and to communicate regarding their plans, which included martyring themselves, soliciting funds for terrorists, soliciting passports, and avoiding travel restrictions (through the collection of passports and through marriage) in order to wage violent jihad. The indictment further charges that LaRose stole another individual’s U.S. passport and transferred or attempted to transfer it in an effort to facilitate an act of international terrorism.

In addition, according to the indictment, LaRose received a direct order to kill a citizen and resident of Sweden, and to do so in a way that would frighten “the whole Kufar [non-believer] world.” The indictment further charges that LaRose agreed to carry out her murder assignment, and that she and her co-conspirators discussed that her appearance and American citizenship would help her blend in while carrying out her plans. According to the indictment, LaRose traveled to Europe and tracked the intended target online in an effort to complete her task.

“Today’s indictment, which alleges that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face,” said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. “I applaud the many agents, analysts, and prosecutors who worked on this important investigation.”

“This case shows the use terrorists can and do make of the Internet,” said U.S. Attorney Michael L. Levy. “Colleen LaRose and five other individuals scattered across the globe are alleged to have used the Internet to form a conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism, culminating in a direct order to LaRose to commit murder overseas. LaRose—an American citizen whose appearance was considered to be an asset because it allowed her to blend in—is charged with using the Internet to recruit violent jihadist fighters and supporters, and to solicit passports and funding. It demonstrates yet another very real danger lurking on the Internet. This case also demonstrates that terrorists are looking for Americans to join them in their cause, and it shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance.”

“This case demonstrates that the FBI and our partners in the law enforcement and intelligence communities must continue to remain vigilant in the face of the threats that America faces, in whatever form those threats may present themselves or no matter how creative those who threaten us try to be,” said Special Agent-in-Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk of the Philadelphia Division of the FBI. “We must use all available technologies and techniques to root out potential threats and stop those who intend to harm us.”

If convicted of the charges against her, LaRose faces a potential sentence of life in prison and a $1 million fine.

This case was investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. It is being prosecuted by Jennifer Arbittier Williams, Assistant U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Matthew F. Blue, Trial Attorney from the Counterterrorism Section in the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

INDICTMENT: US v Colleen R. Larose aka Fatima LaRose, aka JihadJane (.pdf)

Tagged as: Colleen LaRose, Fatima LaRose, Female Jihadist, homegrown jihadist, Jihad Jane, Jihadist Threat Doctrine, JihadJane, recruitment

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Why the al-Qaeda Seven Matter; In counterterrorism, personnel is policy

10 March 2010

National Review/Andrew McCarthy, 9 March 2010. McCarthy is the author of the highly recommended Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad

My flight had been delayed, so I arrived late to a 2004 academic conference, a law school gab-fest exploring legal issues in the War on Terror. The professor giving the keynote address was well into his remarks when I sheepishly entered the rear of the hall, trying to muffle the creaky door. I wasn’t paying Professor Keynote much mind until I heard him begin to inveigh against the “American Taliban.”

That was an attention grabber. Righteous rage was not the usual tone of discussions about John Walker Lindh on college campuses. That was usually reserved for George W. Bush. But fear not: Lindh was not the target of the good professor’s wrath. No, the “American Taliban” the professor decried was . . . me.

Not me specifically, at least on this occasion — though this insult and others in the same vein were ones I’d hear any number of times at law schools and legal conferences throughout the Bush years. The professor was talking more generally: The “American Taliban” were all the lawyers who worked for the Justice Department under John Ashcroft. He meant the prosecutors who exploited the Patriot Act, detained suspects on material-witness warrants, used the immigration laws to deport illegal aliens who popped up in terrorism investigations, put Islamic “charities” out of business for funding terrorist organizations, etc. The prof’s wrath was directed at people like me (it was known that I’d be a panelist at the conference) who’d supported such counterterrorism policies as indefinite detention for enemy combatants, military-commission trials, aggressive interrogation of top jihadists, warrantless surveillance of enemy communications, and who hold the general view that jihadist terror is driven by Islamist ideology, not by American policies abhorred by the Left.

I couldn’t help remembering that 2004 incident over the past several days as we’ve endured a new round of precious pining from the American legal profession’s emirs. Their suddenly tender sensibilities are offended because seven Justice Department lawyers who volunteered their services to al-Qaeda detainees were called “the al-Qaeda Seven” in a television ad. The spot called for the Justice Department to identify those lawyers, because, as is its wont, the “most transparent administration in history” was stonewalling on the issue. . . . .

. . . . Many of the detainees represented by these volunteers have returned to the jihad against America. Some of them have already committed more mass murders. Others are now in top positions, planning operations against our troops and our homeland. . . . .

Tagged as: Andrew McCarthy, war of ideas

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Head of Pakistan’s Spy Agency Gets Term Extended

10 March 2010

ABC News, 9 March 2010: Pakistan’s top spy can remain in his position for another year, Pakistan’s army announced today, keeping in place a three-star general who United States officials have become convinced is committed to flushing militants out of his country. Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director-general of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, would have had to take mandatory retirement later this month without the one year extension, which was officially declared today but informally granted weeks ago. United States officials, many of whom are deeply suspicious of the ISI’s relationship with the Taliban, have come to believe that keeping Pasha in place will facilitate efforts to flush out Taliban safehavens from Pakistan. . . . .

Tagged as: Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Inter-Services Intelligence agency, ISI, Pakistani intelligence

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Men arrested ‘days before suspected UK terror attack’

10 March 2010

BBC, 9 March 2010: Two students fighting deportation to Pakistan were arrested days before a terror strike they were planning to carry out in the UK, a court has heard. Abid Naseer and Ahmed Faraz Khan are appealing against the deportation on the grounds they are a security risk. Mr Naseer was among 12 people held after raids in north-west England in April 2009 but who were never charged.

An MI5 officer told the Special Immigration Appeals Commission they planned an atrocity last April. This is the first time MI5 has gone on record about why the men were arrested. The British intelligence officer – identified only as ZR – told the court Mr Naseer was the ringleader and compared the alleged plan to the attacks on London on 7 July 2005 and the 2006 plot to blow up US-bound planes. . . .

. . . . The officer told the hearing Mr Naseer exchanged coded emails with an al-Qaeda operative called Sohaib while planning the attack. Mr Bannathan said Mr Naseer and Sohaib used women’s names because as Muslim men this was the only way they could access certain websites. . . . .

Tagged as: Jihadists, MI5, OPSEC, Targets, UK

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How Easy is It to Score a Fake ID?

10 March 2010

Fox News/Phoenix, 8 March 2010: A recent legal case in Hawaii revealed hundreds of illegal aliens have traveled on U.S. airlines using cheap, low quality fake IDs. But while most illegals are not much of a security threat, what does that say about day-to-day TSA screening? FOX’s William Lajeunesse went undercover, to see just how easy it was.

Tagged as: Airport Security, IDs, Passports, TSA

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Spy tales more thrilling than travelogue

10 March 2010

Victoria News, 9 March 2010: To Gordon Scott, he was known as Mr. de Graaf, the nice German man who lived down the block. To others, de Graaf was known as Johnny X, a double agent working for Britain’s MI6 Secret Intelligence Service, while pretending to work for the Soviets during the Second World War. . . . . Johnny: A Spy’s Life is the biography of a man who had nearly 70 aliases and, among other things, worked as a secret agent for Britain’s MI6, falsified his death to the Russian military and was hired by the RCMP to infiltrate a pro-Nazi nest in Montreal. . . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 502–Double Agentry: Offensive Counterintelligence Operations

Tagged as: Book, Double Agentry, History, Johnny X, MI6, Soviets

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Tehran’s master of clandestine operations, Qassem Suleimani, could hold the key to Iraq’s future—if he were not so busy back in Iran.

10 March 2010

General Qassem Suleimani

Newsweek, 4 March 2010: The text message was cryptic and sent through an intermediary, but its spookiness has become legendary among the Americans tasked with trying to stabilize Iraq. The moment was May 2008, and once again all hell was breaking loose. Shiite militias had gone to battle against each other. The fighting threatened to spread to Baghdad. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were scrambling to find somebody to broker a truce. Then the text message was passed to the American commander. “General Petraeus,” it began, “you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.” Within days it was Suleimani who brokered the truce.

What surprised Petraeus and Crocker was not the Iranian’s role. They knew that already. It was the blunt confidence with which Suleimani stated it. As the head of the infamous Quds Force, he commands all the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operations outside Iran’s borders—whether covert, overt, or outright terrorist. In the fractious politicking almost certain to follow Iraq’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, this 53-year-old Iranian general could pull the strings that make or break the new government in Baghdad.

Long before America’s troops occupied Iraq, Suleimani’s forces occupied the shadows. In the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion, he was the go-to guy for much of the Iraqi Kurdish and Shiite opposition to Saddam Hussein. Suleimani’s networks of agents, collaborators, military advisers, client militias, and secret informers give him a degree of power that is difficult to gauge, but it often seems proconsular: “I, Qassem Suleimani,” his text read, like an emperor’s decree. And his real message in 2008 was that he could turn up the heat, or turn it down, at will. . . . .

. . . . When senior American military officers and diplomats in Baghdad talk about Suleimani, it’s with something of the same hint of awe that George Smiley, the hero of John le Carré spy novels, had when he spoke about the East German spymaster Karla, who was nicknamed “the Sandman” because “anyone who comes too close to him has a way of falling asleep.” . . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 1700–Fundamentals of Iran Training Program — 1701: Crossroads of Conflict in the Middle East, 1702: Iranian Terrorism and Counterintelligence in the Modern Age

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 270–An Introduction to Iranian Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies

Tagged as: Iran, Iranian intelligence, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, Qassem Suleimani, Quds Force

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Muhammad cartoonist had $100,000 bounty on head

9 March 2010

Guardian, 9 March 2010: Lars Vilks, the Swedish artist at the centre of an alleged assassination attempt, was put under police protection in 2007 when al-Qaida offered a reward for his “slaughter”. Vilks’s depiction of the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog in a series of drawings prompted the terrorist group to put a $100,000 bounty on his head. The sketches had sparked a furious reaction from Muslim groups and countries including Pakistan and Iran. Some Islamic traditions consider it blasphemous to make or show an image of the prophet, and Vilks’s drawings were regarded as especially derogatory as dogs are a symbol of filth for many Muslims.

"Dogs are a symbol of filth in Islam"

In 2006 there were riots over Danish cartoons of the prophet, including one by Kurt Westergaard depicting Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb. Westergaard was subjected to death threats and attempts on his life. . . . .

Seven held over plot to kill cartoonist (Irish Times, 9 March 2010)
Gardaí have arrested seven suspects in Waterford and Cork as part of an international investigation into an alleged plot to murder a cartoonist who drew images of the Prophet Muhammad.

The four men and three women – all of whom are foreign nationals – were arrested in a major search operation by Garda specialist units this morning. The operation’s main focus was on Co Waterford, where three of the men and two of the women were arrested. The Irish Times understands most of those arrested are from Algeria, Croatia, Libya, the United States and Palestinian, and that they are legally resident in Ireland.

They were arrested as part of an international investigation into an alleged plot to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. Mr Vilks had been placed in special police custody for his own safety after his life was threatened in 2007 when his cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed with the body of a dog were published in the Swedish Nerikes Allehanda newspaper. The leader of an al-Qaeda faction in Iraq offered a reward or $100,000 for anybody who killed Mr Vilks. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, upped the reward to $150,000 if Vilks was “slaughtered like a lamb” and offered $50,000 for the head of the editor of the newspaper. . . . .

Irish arrest 7 over threat to kill Swedish artist (AP, 9 March 2010)
Irish police arrested seven Muslims Tuesday over an alleged plot to kill a Swedish artist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog. Police said four men and three women were detained in morning raids in the counties of Cork and Waterford on Ireland’s south coast. Under Irish anti-terrorist law they could be interrogated for up to a week before being charged or released.

Two police officers close to the investigation said those arrested were foreign-born Irish residents, mostly from Yemen and Morocco. The officers said the suspects had been under surveillance since November and were identified based on intelligence intercepts of e-mails and telephone calls monitored with help from anti-terrorist officials in the United States, Interpol and Sweden. . . .

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We love dogs!

Tagged as: Islamic Supremacism, war of ideas

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Powerful & Compelling ‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’ Arrives on DVD

9 March 2010

Big Hollywood, 9 March 2010: The 2010 Oscar ceremonies have come and gone without a word spoken about “The Stoning of Soraya M.” The searing drama, based on true events, follows the torture of an innocent Iranian woman charged with adultery. It’s the kind of message movie Hollywood doesn’t much care for, stories showcasing horrors that can’t be directly blamed on western culture. But the drama, released today on DVD and Blu-ray, deserved a smattering of Oscar buzz all the same. What other movies bring the issue of Sharia law to light in such fashion? More importantly, why didn‘t Shohreh Aghdashloo’s blistering performance earn her a place in the Best Actress category?

“Stoning,” directed and co-written by “The Path to 9/11” screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, takes us to a remote Iranian village under the thumb of Sharia law. Young, attractive Soraya (Mozhan Marno) is raising four children with little help from her husband, Ali (Navid Negahban). When Ali decides he’d rather be married to a 14-year-old Iranian girl, he tries to pressure Soraya into granting him a divorce. When she refuses, Ali accuses her of sleeping with a villager for whom she provides housekeeping duties. She’s clearly innocent, but Ali is able to muster enough manufactured evidence to reinforce his case. What follows is a harrowing march to the titular stoning, an unblinking vision of a culture which subjugates women and human decency. . . .

Tagged as: Iran, Islamic Supremacism, Sharia Law

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Senior intelligence officer Robert A. Harding nominated to lead the Transportation Security Administration

9 March 2010

White House, 8 March 2010: Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Major General Robert A. Harding, U.S. Army (Retired), as Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (Transportation Security Administration). President Obama said, “I am confident that Bob’s talent and expertise will make him a tremendous asset in our ongoing efforts to bolster security and screening measures at our airports. I can think of no one more qualified than Bob to take on this important job, and I look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead.” President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key administration post:

Robert A. Harding, Nominee for Assistant Secretary, Department of Homeland Security (Transportation Security Administration)

Major General (Retired) Robert A. Harding has spent over 35 years working in the Intelligence Community, as a leader in both the military and the private sectors. General Harding served as CEO of Harding Security Associates (HSA), a company he founded in 2003 and sold in July 2009. HSA’s workforce, of more than 400 professionals, provide subject matter expertise and strategic security solutions to U.S. government agencies in the Intelligence and Defense communities.

Before entering the private sector, General Harding completed 33 years in the US Army, where he served in progressively challenging command and staff assignments. He retired as the Army’s Deputy G2 (Intelligence) in 2001. From 1996-2000, he was the Director for Operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). There, he was the Department of Defense’s senior Human Intelligence (HUMINT) officer, managed over $1 billion in intelligence collection program requirements and supervised and provided security to the Department of Defense’s Defense Attaches in more than 200 embassies/offices around the world.

From 1995-1996, General Harding served as the Director for Intelligence for the Army’s U.S. Southern Command where he planned and executed operations designed to increase regional cooperation and exchanges in Latin America. He also coordinated efforts between the DIA, DEA, FBI, CIA, and Customs on sensitive interagency counter-drug operations. From 1969-1995, General Harding served in a variety of other command and staff positions around the world. He commanded a HUMINT and Counterintelligence Battalion in Korea, and the Army’s premier Counterintelligence Group, the 902d, at Fort Meade. His staff assignments included intelligence positions in U.S. Forces Command, U.S. Forces Korea, U.S. Army Europe, U.S. Army PERSCOM, and the Army Staff.

Major General Harding currently serves on the board of directors of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO). He has served on the National Counterintelligence Review Group, on DNI’s Diversity Senior Advisory Panel, and as a member of the Obama Administrations Presidential Transition Team, where he focused on the Intelligence community.

Major General Harding’s civilian education includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Bowie State University, a Master of Science in Business from Salve Regina University, and a Master of Arts degree in National Security and Strategy from the U.S. Naval War College. His military education includes the Armed Forces Staff College and the U.S. Naval War College. General Harding was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters.

Tagged as: DHS, Homeland Security, Robert Harding, TSA

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Amnesty International Mainstreams the Jihad

9 March 2010

Islamist Watch, 9 March 2010: Amnesty International famously advocates on behalf of people persecuted just for expressing an opinion. However, last month the group suspended Gita Sahgal, the head of its gender unit, after she expressed an opinion of her own: that by working with Taliban supporter Moazzam Begg, Amnesty has betrayed its mission to advance human rights. Here is a look at the scandal that the American media — once known for championing whistleblowers — have all but ignored.

Begg, a British citizen, moved to Kabul in 2001, was captured in 2002 on suspicion of al-Qaeda links, and ended up at Guantanamo Bay after admitting that he had attended terror camps and was prepared to fight for the Taliban. Released without charge in 2005, he became the face of Cageprisoners, which implores that Gitmo be closed and displays a disturbing level of sympathy for terrorists, even convicted ones. Begg himself has called the Taliban “better than anything Afghanistan has had” in decades and cited positively jihad theorist Abdullah Azzam.

Begg’s troubling past did nothing to dampen Amnesty’s eagerness to team up with him; the two collaborated on a recent visit to Downing Street and a European tour urging countries to grant detainees “safe haven.” But while Sahgal endorses his views of Guantanamo, she thinks that the partnership is severely misguided, writing to her organization’s leaders in a January 30 email:

I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights. … To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.

Hours after she made the contents of the email public on February 7, Amnesty suspended Sahgal. She fired back by slamming the organization for having “created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights.” Care must be taken, she says, in “maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights.” A leaked memo from a senior Amnesty executive reveals that Sahgal is not alone in such fears.

Leftists and Islamists frequently portray individuals detained for possible terrorist offenses as martyrs. However, for the world’s most prominent human rights institution to collaborate so closely with a man of Begg’s track record is out of the ordinary — a result enabled by his unique station as a charismatic and articulate former Gitmo inmate released into the West.

The Amnesty-Begg convergence may be rare, but it has done quite a bit of damage — and not only to the group’s reputation. In working with Begg and standing by those efforts, Amnesty has set a dangerous precedent of making violent Islamists politically respectable. Just as worrisome, the bar now is even lower for radicals not tainted by violence to enter the mainstream.

As for the U.S. media, their ongoing blackout of this story demonstrates once again how scandals involving Islamists and left-wing icons fail to qualify for “all the news that’s fit to print.”

Tagged as: Dhimmitude, Stealth Jihad, war of ideas

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Israeli spymaster and Mossad founding father David Kimche dies at 82

9 March 2010

Haaretz, 9 March 2010: Former top Mossad operative David Kimche, one of Israel’s top diplomats and a classic intelligence and spymaster, died Monday at the age of 82. Kimche, the youngest of nine siblings, was born in 1928 to a Zionist family in London. He immigrated to Israel at the age of 18 and shortly after joined the War of Independence as a combat fighter. . . .

. . . . Kimche joined the Mossad spy agency in the early 1950s, and was in essence one of the organization’s founding fathers, among those who designed its doctrine and modus operandi. He was involved in just about every aspect of the Mossad over the course of his service, eventually reaching the position of deputy head of Mossad.

While serving in the Tsomet department responsible for running agents, he recruited and operated agents which were sent to infiltrate Arab countries. While in the Mossad’s Tevel Unit – serving as liaison with foreign espionage agencies – Kimche was involved in enhancing cooperation with Mossad’s counterparts throughout the world.

He was sent by the unit to serve in Africa under a borrowed identity, – presenting himself as a journalist – during the 1960s, an era when the continent was extremely important to Israeli diplomacy. Kimche also was involved in operations of the Mossad’s Bitzur Unit, which is responsible for the security of Jews around the world, and for their immigration from Arab states. He was also one of the founders of the Mossad’s research department. . . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 220–An Introduction to Israeli Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies

Tagged as: David Kimche, israeli intelligence, Mossad

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Nokia accused of selling spy equipment to Iran

9 March 2010

Ice News, 8 March 2010: A comprehensive electronic surveillance system that was sold by the Nokia Siemens Network Group to Iran is capable of spying on almost all electronic communications, according to its brochure. “The system can monitor all voice and data communications very efficiently. In addition, it can snatch messages with content considered suspicious,” according to Professor of Data Network Technology at the Aalto University, Jukka Manner.

The system monitors internet communications in addition to text and multimedia messaging, mobile and landline telephone calls, instant messages, e-mail communications, telefax communications, data transfer over the mobile network and mobile telephone positioning. “What more would anyone need for monitoring?” asks Manner.

Helsingin Sanomat reports that Nokia Siemens has confirmed that the brochure the newspaper acquired for the Monitoring Center was of the same system sold to Iran. . . .

Tagged as: Iran intelligence, Nokia

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U.S. Liberators Tell Stories of the Horror of Liberating Concentration Camps

9 March 2010

Roll Call, 9 March 2010: We must never forget. It is the creed of the survivors who braved unspeakable horrors at the hands of the Nazis. The brave Allied soldiers who battled to free them share it, too. But the reality is, as time moves forward, fewer and fewer firsthand voices remain. As they go, so go the memories. It is for this reason that author Michael Hirsh sought to document for posterity the stories of the American heroes who swept across Europe in the waning days of World War II in order to free thousands upon thousands of Jews and others marked for death.

The Liberators: America’s Witnesses to the Holocaust is Hirsh’s homage to these GIs, and it is a fine and necessary addition to the lexicon of Holocaust literature. A compilation of 150 interviews with aged veterans, the book chronicles — in paragraphs and sometimes pages of the soldiers’ own words — the Americans’ inexorable march from the beaches of France in 1945 through Axis-controlled Germany and Austria to liberate the brutal Nazi death camps. But the book is not simply an aloof account the liberation. It is a powerful and emotional telling of the trials these soldiers faced.

As testament to the horrendous cruelty of Adolf Hitler’s death machine, war-hardened soldiers, fresh from the battlefields, were overwhelmed by the breadth of inhumanity they witnessed in the concentration camps. It is a testament to the fragility of the human psyche that these sights haunted the soldiers for the rest of their lives. . . .

~~~~~
The Importance of Knowing History

Tagged as: History, Nazis, World War 2

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Hamas slaying a spectacle of claims, spies and videotape

9 March 2010

Canadian Press, 8 March 2010: If there’s a signature moment in the plot to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, it’s likely his short elevator ride from the hotel lobby to Room 230. The Hamas commander and a woman hotel clerk enter the elevator and, just before the doors close, two men slip in. They look like [...]

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Former Canadian Research Council scientist denies spying for Iran

9 March 2010

National Post, 8 March 2010: A former National Research Council scientist has been battling the Canadian government over allegations he participated in Iran’s controversial weapons program. Mohammad Jahazi held a high-level post at the NRC’s Institute for Aerospace Research but left Canada in 2008 after Ottawa rejected him as an immigrant for security reasons.
Federal Immigration [...]

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Secrets, spies and steel: the Rio Tinto Case

9 March 2010

East Asian Forum, 9 March 2010: The 2009 arrest of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu was a watershed event in the Sino-Australian relationship. Beijing’s unexpected intervention in the name of national security demonstrates not only how grave were perceptions of its disadvantage in the iron ore trade but also the murkiness of its laws regarding [...]

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