Times of London, 4 March 2010: Germany’s biggest terrorist trial of recent times has wound up with jail terms of between 5 and 12 years for four Muslim radicals who plotted to blow up US military installations, airports and night clubs in the Frankfurt area.
The men, said Judge Otmar Breidling, were planning to bring the Islamic Holy war to the heart of Europe and spark explosions that would have been several times more destructive than the London Tube bombs of July 7, 2005. They collected about 750kg of hydrogen peroxide — the same substance used in the London attack — arranged for detonators and had scouted out targets. Thanks to electronic phone intercepts supplied by the CIA and a series of blunders by the plotters, the German police got wind of the gang, kept it under observation and secretly swapped the deadly chemicals for a harmless diluted mixture.
The group, which had contacts with the Uzbek-based Islamic Jihad Union, was arrested in 2007. At first the men — two Muslim converts and two German Turks — were defiant but ended up making the most elaborate confessions heard in a terrorist trial since 9/11, detailing how they moved out of smalltown German communities, into training camps on the Afhan-Pakistan border. The confessions persuaded the judge to hand down milder sentences than that demanded by the prosecutor. . . . .
. . . . The intercepts read out in court recorded Gelowicz saying “Ramstein sounds fine” — a reference to a US airbase in Germany — “but we should have something on top of that, a pub or a disco. If each [of the devices] kills 50, injures a few, then that should be 150 dead”. Gelowicz’s Turkish wife Filiz was detained by police last week because police suspect that she is continuing to collect money for Islamic Jihad Union. . . . . Gelowicz simply pledged: “We want to wage the Jihad, Jihad against the Americans”. . . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2010: Daniel Houghton, 25, was caught in a sting operation after allegedly approaching a foreign intelligence agency offering to sell them information he had collected while working for the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6. The files, which belonged to the domestic security service MI5, allegedly related to the capabilities of the security and intelligence services and the techniques they have developed to gather intelligence, sources said, and were labeled “top secret” and “secret.”
Houghton, who worked for MI6 between September 2007 and May 2009, allegedly telephoned the foreign intelligence service three months after leaving MI6 to try and arrange a deal. But undercover MI5 officers, known as “spy catchers”, met him in February to view the material on his laptop and allegedly negotiated a price of £900,000, while recording the meeting with hidden listening devices.
Houghton allegedly told them he had downloaded the information onto a number of CDs and DVD disks which he then copied onto a secure digital memory card of the type used in cameras. He also allegedly told the undercover MI5 officers that he had copied material onto a second memory card which he had hidden at his mother’s home in Devon.
They arranged to meet him again at a central London hotel where he allegedly showed them the material on a laptop and then handed over two memory cards and a computer hard drive. Sources said he was allowed to leave the hotel room with £900,000 in a suitcase before he was arrested as he waited for a hotel lift by plain clothes officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command. It is understood Houghton told them: “You’ve got the wrong man.”
Police have conducted a series of raids since the arrest on Monday at Houghton’s shared flat in Hoxton, east London and at his mother’s home, a farm house in Holne, near Newton Abbot in Devon. They are understood to be looking for any copies of the material he may have downloaded and any other material he may have stolen. Sources said they had found additional hard copies of material marked “top secret,” “secret” and “restricted.”
Houghton, who is single and has dual British and Dutch citizenship, is understood to have been born abroad before his mother moved back to Britain. He was brought up in the Netherlands and Devon, went to university in Birmingham where he studied computing. He has an older brother aged 28, and two sisters aged 26, and 23. His flatmate, Kimberly Peterson, 27, a student from the US, said he had told her he was working for Lloyds Bank as a graduate trainee and she had no idea he used to work for MI6. . . . .
Ex-MI6 agent ‘tried to sell top secret files for £2million’ (Daily Mail, 4 March 2010)
. . . . The arrest of the Birmingham University graduate has stunned family and friends, many of whom thought he worked for a bank. Outside court on Wednesday, his mother, Elizabeth Havinga, said: ‘I’m very, very shocked. It’s come as a great surprise.’ Older brother Aren, 28, said: ‘It’s really bad. I certainly had no idea what was going on.’
Born in Holland, Houghton has dual British-Dutch nationality and is fluent in English and Dutch. Educated at Dartmouth Community College in Devon where his family live in nearby Holne, Houghton studied graphic design at Exeter College. At Birmingham University, he studied computer interactive systems, achieving top marks which brought him to the attention of the security services. But he kept his job a secret from even close friends. . . .
. . . On Wednesday a friend who runs a cycling club in Devon which Houghton was a member of said he was stunned by the news. Michael Jones said: ‘I have known him since he was a young man. I never knew anything about what he was doing since he went to university. I thought he was working for a bank. ‘I know he loves Japan and had often been there and travelled a lot in South Korea. He is exceptionally bright and considers himself one of the brightest of those his age. To be honest, he thinks a lot of himself.’
Reuters/Haaretz, 3 March 2010: The Israel Defense Forces called off a raid in Palestinian territory after a soldier posted details, including the time and place, on the social networking website Facebook, Army Radio reported on Wednesday. The soldier – since relieved of combat duty – described in a status update how his unit planned a “clean-up” arrest raid in a West Bank area, Army Radio said. “On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home,” the soldier wrote on his Facebook page, refering to a West Bank village near Ramallah. The soldier also disclosed the name of the combat unit, the place of the operation and the time it will take place. Facebook friends then reported him to military authorities. . . . .
Fox News, 3 March 2010: Exiled Iranian dissidents, human rights campaigners and Iranian-American advocacy groups are fearing for their lives as they receive what they say are ongoing death threats from Iranian intelligence agents and regime sympathizers working in the United States.
“I have to change my phone number every month because Iranian intelligence are threatening to kill me,” human rights activist Ahmad Batebi, who fled to the U.S. from Iran in 2008, told FoxNews.com. Now working with the Voice of America, the international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government, Batebi says he spent nine years in Iranian prisons, where he was tortured for his affiliation with student groups working against the Tehran government.
He said the Iranian agents who are threatening him are working under diplomatic cover at the Iranian mission to the United Nations or coming here on political visas to spy on regime opponents. The U.S. broke formal diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980. “They say, ‘You are not safe in the U.S. or anywhere, and if we don’t get you in America we will get you in Europe,’” he said.
Another Iranian, Mohsen Sazegara, a former politician-turned-activist who now lives in Virginia, says he routinely receives death threats and was singled out recently by Iran’s deputy minister for intelligence, who Sazegara says declared, “We will catch you wherever you are.” He said silencing human rights advocates is Tehran’s goal, and he accused Iran’s “cyber army” of hacking his Virginia-based Web site and his YouTube account, on which he posted videos critical of the regime. (YouTube did not return calls seeking comment.)
The threats have not been limited to activists, others say. “I’m worried about the safety of my children,” said a prominent Iranian-American democracy advocate in Washington, who asked to remain anonymous because he says he and his family routinely receive death threats from male callers speaking Farsi. “Iran keeps a very close eye on the Iranian Diaspora in the United States, and I’m concerned that they will act on these threats,” he said. He said he has contacted the FBI and turned over voice mails left on his answering machine to police. Mary Ann Jennings, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, said the man had turned over MP3 audio files containing the threats, and “The case has been turned over to our criminal investigators.”
An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau would not comment on whether it was investigating the threats.
But former CIA agent Robert Baer, who maintains contact with Iranian opposition groups, said Iranians living in America have reason to be afraid. He said Iran has a history of murdering its opponents in Europe, and it has maintained informal networks of illegal operatives in the U.S. for years. “If the Iranians think that somebody is a threat to the regime, they will kill them here. These are guys you don’t want to mess with,” said Baer, a 21-year CIA veteran with extensive experience in the Middle East. . . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 270–An Introduction to Iranian Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies
Reuters, 3 March 2010: The hackers behind the attacks on Google Inc and dozens of other companies operating in China stole valuable computer source code by breaking into the personal computers of employees with privileged access, a security firm said on Wednesday. The hackers targeted a small number of employees who controlled source code management systems, which handle the myriad changes that developers make as they write software, said George Kurtz, chief technology officer at anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc. The details from McAfee show how the breach of just a single PC at a large corporation can have widespread repercussions across the broader business. . . . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 101–Elicitation Techniques and the Recruitment Process from the Intelligence and Counterintelligence Perspective (Counterelicitation)
