Sunday Mercury, 27 Dec 09: TERROR mastermind Rashid Rauf has reportedly devised a new code to trigger attacks in Europe from his hideaway in Pakistan.
MI5 believe the Birmingham-born militant, suspected of plotting the 2006 failed Transatlantic airliners liquid bomb attacks, is behind a code which talks about “weddings” to give instructions to Islamist cells in the UK.
The discovery of the code has sparked fears that Al Qaida could be planning attacks in Britain in the near future, although no details of a possible location have been revealed.
Details of Rauf’s code emerged after the sentencing of Adam Khattib, a member of the Al Qaida cell which planned to use Lucozade bottles and digital cameras to bring down eight transatlantic jets, and kill more than 3,000 in the summer of 2006.
In one message Rauf reportedly wrote: “Remember your wedding is a big day. We will all celebrate with you.” MI5 analysts say the words were aimed at triggering an attack. . . .
The Guardian, 27 Dec 09: . . . .Yemen has become the international jihadi’s destination of choice from which to prepare, plot and launch future terror attacks. “Only Pakistan’s tribal regions rival Yemen as a terrorist Shangri-La”, the Wall Street Journal said this year, citing American estimates that up to 1,500 al-Qaida-linked fighters are based there.
Now Abdulmutallab, the well-to-do, well-educated Nigerian recruit, has demonstrated what the Yemeni terrorist melting pot is capable of producing – and just how far its malice can reach.
The signs have been there for those who wished to read them. In an under-reported incident in August, a suicide bomber crossed from Yemen into pro-western Saudi Arabia, passed two security checks, and blew himself up only yards from Prince Mohammad bin Nayef, the Saudi counter-terrorism chief.
The same military explosive, pentaerythritol, that Abdulmutallab attached to his leg was used by the bomber in the Saudi attack, though the latter concealed it in his rectum. Like the Northwest passengers, Nayef escaped serious injury.
Another grim message of intent came in October when al-Qaida’s Yemen-based “emir of the Arabian peninsula”, Nasir al-Wahayshi, urged supporters to use any means to kill western unbelievers. He identified preferred targets. They were “airports in the western crusade countries that participated in the war against Muslims; or on their planes”. . . .
. . . . all thanks to Jihadists who are motivated by Islamic Doctrine
New York Times, 27 Dec 09: As Detroit’s airport was rattled on Sunday by a second frightening incident in three days, passengers at airports in the United States and around the world encountered stiff layers of extra security, with international travelers undergoing newly required bag inspections, body searches and questioning at security checkpoints and before they boarded planes.
. . . .The incident came amid security measures that were begun by the Transportation Security Administration in response to Friday’s terrorism attempt.
The T.S.A. issued an update on its Web site Sunday that said passengers would be subject to greater security, but its information was not as detailed as the memorandums sent by the agency to airlines this weekend. The airlines said the new T.S.A. measures required an additional round of searches, including body pat-downs at airport gates overseas.
International travelers were also told that they could not leave their seats for the last hour of a flight, during which time they also could not use a pillow or blanket. They were also limited to one piece of carry-on baggage, including a purse or briefcase, and that piece had to be stowed in an overhead compartment for the last hour of a flight.
Airlines were ordered to turn off in-flight entertainment systems with maps showing a plane’s location, and pilots and flight crews were told not to make comments about cities or landmarks below the flight path.
There also were unspecified measures at airports in the United States, where lines at screening machines grew long.
. . . .Henry Chen, 48, a businessman who lives in San Francisco, said he was shocked to have a female flight attendant barge in on him in the restroom while he was washing his face during a flight from Seoul. “It was kind of weird, to have a lady try to get in,” he said. “She said that they had to watch people being in the restroom too long.” . . .
New York Times, 27 Dec 09: When a prominent Nigerian banker and former government official phoned the American Embassy in Abuja in October with a warning that his son had developed radical views, had disappeared and might have traveled to Yemen, embassy officials did not revoke the young man’s visa to enter the United States, which was good until June 2010.
Instead, officials said Sunday, they marked the file of the son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, for a full investigation should he ever reapply for a visa. And when they passed the information on to Washington, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name was added to 550,000 others with some alleged terrorist connections — but not to the no-fly list. That meant no flags were raised when he used cash to buy a ticket to the United States and boarded a plane, checking no bags. . . . .
Guardian, 27 Dec 09: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s path towards apparent Islamist militancy took him to University College London and a luxury block just off the city’s Oxford Street.
But no part of his life was so seemingly anomalous to a would-be terrorist as the manicured lawns and tennis courts of the British International school in Togo, where he is believed to have first expressed extreme views.
Today, investigators were trying to establish exactly what provoked him to try to detonate an explosive device as a Northwest Airlines jet made its final descent into Detroit airport on Christmas Day.
It certainly wasn’t a life of poverty. He was born in extreme privilege, of the sort few Nigerians could ever dream of, and his education reflected this. His father, Umaru Mutallab, 70, is one of the country’s most respected businessmen, who retired earlier this month as chairman of Nigeria’s FirstBank, the oldest bank in the country, with offices in London, Paris and Beijing.
While the family comes from Katsina state in the Muslim-dominated north of Nigeria, where funding of hardline Islamist schools by Saudi Arabia and Iran has raised concerns of militancy among young people, Abdulmutallab first became noticeably religious while studying abroad at a very different institution.
He undertook his secondary education as a boarder at the British school in Lomé, Togo’s capital, which is mostly staffed by teachers from the UK and attracts wealthy students from across west Africa. Set up in 1983, the school gives pupils a decidedly English-style curriculum, taught in air-conditioned classrooms set amid grassy grounds which also feature a swimming pool and tennis courts.
While pursuing his international baccalaureat, with impressive results, Abdulmutallab’s preaching to his schoolmates earned him the nickname “Alfa” – a local name for Islamic scholars, according to Nigeria’s This Day newspaper.
Michael Rimmer, who taught Abdulmutallab history, and escorted him and other pupils on a school trip to the UK, said the teenager had been a model student who was keen, polite and eager to learn. However, Rimmer recalled a classroom discussion on Afghanistan’s then-Taliban leaders following the September 11 attacks in 2001. All the other students, Muslims included, expressed their abhorrence of the regime, he said.
“But [Abdulmutallab], actually, thought that they had it right and he thought their views were acceptable. . . .
. . . . The newspaper spoke to another unnamed relative who said the family had become concerned in recent years that Abdulmutallab was involved with Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group also known as the Nigerian Taliban, which seeks to impose sharia law across the country. Hundreds of people were killed when security forces tried to crack down on the group in July this year.
“We know Farouk’s extreme views and were always apprehensive of where it may lead him to,” the relative said. “He has maintained his distance from us and we never bothered him much. He wanted to be left alone so we respect his wishes.” . . . .
