FBI, 7 July 2010: The Justice Department today announced charges against five members of an al Qaeda plot to attack targets in the United States and United Kingdom. The charges reveal that the plot against New York’s subway system uncovered in September 2009 involving Colorado resident Najibullah Zazi was directed by senior al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, and was also directly related to a scheme by al Qaeda plotters in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United Kingdom.
The superseding indictment, which was returned and unsealed today in the Eastern District of New York, charges the following defendants each with several terrorism violations:
- Adnan El Shukrijumah, also known as “Hamad;”
- Adis Medunjanin, also known as “Mohammad;”
- Abid Naseer;
- Tariq Ur Rehman;
- a fifth defendant known as “Ahmad,” “Sohaib,” or “Zahid.”
Each of the defendants faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
According to the indictment, court filings and plea proceedings in the case, the plot involving Zazi was organized by Saleh al-Somali, Rashid Rauf, and El Shukrijumah, who were then-leaders of al Qaeda’s “external operations” program dedicated to terrorist attacks in the United States and other Western countries.
Between September and December 2008, Saleh and El Shukrijumah recruited Zazi and Zazi’s co-conspirators, Zarein Ahmedzay, and Medunjanin, to conduct suicide bombings in New York City using improvised explosive devices made from supplies such as hydrogen peroxide, acetone, flour, and oil. According to the indictment and court filings, Saleh communicated with Zazi through “Ahmad,” an al Qaeda facilitator in Peshawar, Pakistan. In early September 2009, after Zazi constructed the detonator explosives for the attack, he e-mailed with “Ahmad” in Pakistan about the proper ingredients for the flour-based main charge explosive. Zazi pleaded guilty to his role in the New York subway plot on February 22, 2010; Ahmedzay similarly pleaded guilty on April 23, 2010.
The indictment adds formal charges against El Shukrijumah, a 34-year-old native of Saudi Arabia who served as one of the leaders of al Qaeda’s external operations program. According to the indictment, El Shukrijumah recruited Zazi, Ahmedzay, and Medunjanin to return to the United States and conduct terrorist attacks there. El Shukrijumah has been wanted by the FBI for several years and is the subject of a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest. He remains at large.
The investigation by authorities in the United States and United Kingdom has revealed that “Ahmad” was also communicating with Manchester-based, United Kingdom resident Naseer. Naseer, like Zazi, was in Peshawar, Pakistan in November 2008, according to the court filings.
After returning to the United Kingdom, Naseer sent messages back and forth to the same e-mail account that “Ahmad” was using to communicate with the American-based al Qaeda cell on behalf of Saleh, the indictment and court filings allege. In the messages, Naseer used coded language to refer to different types of explosives. At the culmination of the plot, in early April 2009, Naseer, again using coded language, told “Ahmad” that he was planning a large “wedding” for numerous guests between April 15 and 20, 2009, and that “Ahmad” should be ready. Notably, “Ahmad” and Zazi had agreed on a similar code to mean the attack was ready to be executed, and Zazi e-mailed Ahmad that “the marriage is ready” just before he left Colorado for New York in early September 2009.
On April 8, 2009, Naseer and Rehman were arrested in the United Kingdom on terrorism charges. In connection with the arrests, U.K. authorities conducted searches of the plotters’ homes, where they found large quantities of flour and oil, as well as surveillance photographs of public areas in Manchester and maps of Manchester’s city center posted on the wall, with one of the locations from the surveillance photographs highlighted. Naseer is currently in custody in the United Kingdom. The United States intends to seek his extradition to face trial. Rehman is not in custody.
The superseding indictment also adds new charges to the pending indictment against Medunjanin. Specifically, the indictment charges that, in furtherance of the New York plot, and, after Zazi was already in custody, Medunjanin attempted to crash his car into another car on the Whitestone Expressway in Queens, N.Y. as a last attempt to carry out a suicide attack on American soil. Just before crashing his car, Medunjanin called 911 to identify himself and announce his intentions. Medunjanin remains in federal custody in the United States. No trial date has been set.
Medunjanin is charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction; conspiring to commit murder abroad; providing and conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda; receiving military training from al Qaeda; committing and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries; and using firearms and a destructive device in relation to the above offenses.
Shukrijumah and “Ahmad” are each charged with providing and conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda; conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction; assisting the receipt of military training; committing and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries; and using firearms in relation to the same offenses. “Ahmad” is also charged together with Naseer and Rehman with providing and conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda and conspiracy to use a destructive device in relation to the U.K. branch of the plot.
“These charges underscore the global nature of the terrorist threat we face. They further reflect the effectiveness of mutual investigations and cooperation with our global partners in disrupting terrorism threats. I thank our counterparts in the United Kingdom for their assistance in this investigation,” said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.
“As today’s charges demonstrate, we will not rest in our pursuit of those responsible for plotting terrorist attacks,” said Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Ms. Lynch also expressed her gratitude to the law enforcement personnel, both domestic and foreign, who took part in the investigation.
FBI Executive Assistant Director Sean Joyce, National Security Branch said, “The threat posed by terrorists around the world is a threat to security and a threat to the rule of law. The transnational nature of this conspiracy, and its connection to plots targeted outside the U.S. underscores the importance of international coordination and collaboration to do everything we can to ensure public safety.”
“The charges announced today illustrate the coordinated and persistent attempts by our adversaries to harm American citizens,” said FBI New York Acting Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos. “FBI personnel around the world are dedicated to working with our international law enforcement partners to uncover and thwart attacks.”
The investigation is being conducted by the New York, Denver, and Miami FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces, as well as the Washington Field Office of the FBI. The North West Counter Terrorism Unit and Greater Manchester Police Department have also provided significant assistance. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, with assistance from the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida has also provided assistance in the investigation. The public is reminded that an indictment contains mere allegations and a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
Haaretz, 30 May 2010: “The spy shall not be concerned about any of his friends. If he knows about the existence of an important target at a certain place and time, and he relays information about this to his commanders who have decided to carry out an attack there – for example to blow up a hotel where the target is lodging – it is to be expected that the spy will be inclined to tell one of his journalist friends to avoid going there. In doing so, he will reveal that the operation is about to occur.”
This instruction, actually, has a precedent in the life of the Prophet Mohammed. But Sami al-Matiri, who is known as Abdullah al-Hajj, cites it at length in his instruction manual for people working for Al-Qaida. Matiri is a Kuwaiti citizen who began his career as a leftist in the movement known as Democratic Center; he later changed his spots and embraced radical Islam. He was convicted of the murder of an American citizen in Kuwait in 2002, and after spending a few years in prison was released and became a prominent Al-Qaida commander in the Arabian Peninsula. According to documents obtained by Haaretz, he is in charge of coordinating Al-Qaida activities in Palestine.
Matiri’s instruction manual for intelligence agents is part of a series of documents he has written. These include pointers on explosives, building an organization and recruiting agents. There are also explanations about Islam’s enemies. . . . .
. . . . One of the most difficult issues is collecting the names and job descriptions of the enemy’s intelligence officers. To overcome this problem, Matiri suggests that spies join human rights organizations and even establish such groups to gather testimonies from people who have been interrogated or tortured by enemy intelligence officers. They should be asked to give the names of these officers, so the spy can build up his file.
As an example of a successful operation, Matiri discusses the activities of a certain spy who gained the trust of the Arab Commission for Human Rights in Paris. He learned its ways and established a branch in a country where he hoped to gather intelligence.
Matiri says that after collecting the names of foreign intelligence officers or interrogators, one has to choose carefully the best officer from whom to extract information. It’s important to choose low-ranking people or those with financial problems. “We prefer mainly blacks, Hispanics or members of other minorities because they are the ones who understand what discrimination means in America,” he writes.
Matiri distinguishes between short-term and long-term spying, giving several examples from what he calls the activities of the Mossad, including Israeli operations in the 1950s in Egypt. He also discusses what he knows about operations by Islamic organizations.
Thus, for example, he writes about the Moscow theater siege in 2002, in which about 50 Chechen fighters held about 850 hostages. (Many of them were killed when Russian special forces broke into the building ). Before the siege, the Chechen commander had his people established a catering company; they even took the trouble of obtaining the franchise to open a cafeteria in the theater. They were thus able to bring in bombs and explosives and become familiar with its halls and corridors. . . . .
Wall Street Journal, 28 May 2010: There is an obvious tension between a democratic public’s need for information—its right to know—and the government’s need, at times, for operational secrecy. A broad sense of what officials are doing is at the heart of any democracy, and not only in principle: Collective wisdom in the long run tends to thwart government’s bad schemes and improve its better ones. But secrecy is essential to statecraft. By keeping our enemies ignorant of our intentions, and hiding our knowledge of their own, we help to keep the country safe. Any administration—President Barack Obama’s is no exception—will find itself engaged in a perpetual struggle with reporters over the fate of its classified material.
Gabriel Schoenfeld brilliantly illuminates this fundamental dilemma in “Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law
. . . . It was only in the 20th century, Mr. Schoenfeld says, that newspapers became a sluice-gate for secrets. During World War I the New York Times revealed that the government was constructing steel nets under New York Harbor to catch German submarines, something the Germans would naturally be pleased to learn. Three decades later, and even more rashly, the Chicago Tribune reported that the Navy had known ahead of the Battle of Midway the precise strength of Japanese forces in the area, clearly implying that the U.S. had covert access to Japanese plans. Yet the Roosevelt administration (understandably) declined to prosecute the Tribune, because a trial might have revealed even more secrets and drawn more attention to the breach.
During World War II and much of the Cold War, Mr. Schoenfeld notes, most of the press acted responsibly. Only relatively recently, he says, has a patriotic press morphed into an adversarial one. First, Watergate made the media distrust government claims of confidentiality, because the Nixon administration so often used secrecy to cloak illegality. Second, media competition grew as outlets multiplied, making each news service ever more eager to break stories. . . .
