German Police Seek Terror Suspect In Afghanistan

Germany’s federal police are reported to have taken an unusual step of distributing posters in Afghanistan, warning of a German terrorism suspect thought to be hiding in one of the tribal areas.

Authorities have identified a 27-year-old German convert to Islam as the al-Qaida associate suspected of traveling to Afghanistan and planning to attack German targets

According to the report, red-framed posters have been placed in the capital Kabul and other Afghan cities, alerting people to the 27-year-old Muslim convert known as “Jan Sch.”, whom the poster describes as possibly “violent and armed”.

The Kazakhstan-born German from Saarland is believed to be hiding in the remote border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan and is suspected of having links to terror network Al-Qaida.

His targets could be German military bases or civilian reconstruction facilities, the report said.

The federal police (BKA) have aimed the posters at international forces in the war-torn country and have therefore put them up mostly at security checkpoints and facilities where foreigners work.

Jan Sch. is regarded by German anti-terrorism officials as part of the so-called “Sauerland group”, led by another convert, Fritz Gelowicz, who was caught along with three co-conspirators while planning a major terrorist attack in Germany in 2007.

via Sourcel.

New Bin Laden Videotape Not New According To Experts

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden released a new videotape on Friday however it appears to actually be the Pashto-language version of a tape released by al Qaeda several months ago.

The tape, titled “To Our People in Pakistan,” was broadly released in Arabic and Urdu on July 12, IntelCenter said. Excerpts had been aired by the Al Jazeera television network on June 3, it added.

Earlier on Friday, IntelCenter had said al-Qaeda’s as-Sahab Media had released a new video from bin Laden.

In his remarks broadcast by Al Jazeera in June, Saudi-born bin Laden said U.S. President Barack Obama had planted the seeds of “revenge and hatred” toward the United States in the Muslim world and warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.

In an audio message posted on an Islamist website in September, Osama warned Americans over their government’s close ties with Israel.

Osama is believed to be hiding in the mountainous border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

via Bin Laden videotape not new, monitoring site says | Reuters.

al Qaeda Terror Threat Warns Germany Of October Plans

MEMRI reports that a message released on the Al-Falluja jihadist forum warns of an al Qaeda terror attack against Germany, to be carried out on an apparently ‘random’ Sunday during the month of October. The message entitled “To the Infidel German Nation: We Bestow on You the Kindness, for the Third Time, of Specifying the Appointed Day,” is apparently receiving a lot of attention on the Al-Falluja site, however there is no way to ascertain if in fact the threat is real.

MEMRI has the details…

This message had a strange rollout. Early on October 3, 2009, a forum member called Abu Hamza 2005 wrote a post titled “Welcome to the new member Mou10ra11bitt18oun25!” He wrote that when browsing the Al-Falluja forum he had come across this newly-registered user, and that the username reminded him of “p2l0a0g8u9e,” a member on the now-defunct Al-Ekhlaas forum who, in May 2008, posted a video threatening the destruction of the U.S. in a nuclear strike.

The Al-Falluja moderators made Abu Hamza 2005’s article a featured post. [3] About 12 hours later Mou10ra11bitt18oun25 posted his threat; [4] it was a featured post, and was later given a banner on the top of the Al-Falluja home page.

A jihadist media workgroup that had been formed ahead of time to distribute threats to German forums and emails [5] took the post by Mou10ra11bitt18oun25 as their go signal and began to distribute it. [6]

As with the other threats on Al-Falluja, it is difficult to know whether Mou10ra11bitt18oun25 is really privy to Al-Qaeda attack plans (if these exist), or whether the post is just meant to spread panic and/or disinformation. The circumstances of the release of his message do seem to indicate that the Al-Falluja moderators had advance knowledge of it. Al-Falluja has a direct link to Al-Fajr, the media group Al-Qaeda uses to distribute its propaganda.

Forum members have speculated that the numerals in Mou10ra11bitt18oun25’s username refer to the month of October (“10″) and the dates October 11, 18, and 25, all of which are Sundays. [7] One forum member voiced the opinion that the numerals in the username mean that the attack will be on October 11 at 18:25 (6:25 PM). [8]

via Read Full Article – MEMRI.

New Bin Laden Audio Tape May Indicate Upcoming Attack

al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s latest message, released today, contains language considered by many in the Intelligence community to be a valid indicator of an upcoming attack.

An AFP news report posted this afternoon cites the the concern.

“This indicator when viewed in light of the five Abu Talha videos this year, three of which have been released in the last eight days and their focus on the upcoming elections in Germany, significantly raises the threat level even further,” IntelCenter said.

News Article

Site Intelligence Group Has More

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, addresses European peoples in a new audio message released on jihadist forums on September 25, 2009.

The audio comes in a 4 minute, 47 second video produced by al-Qaeda’s media arm, as-Sahab, and shows only a still image on bin Laden.

Bin Laden asks Europeans to cease their alliance with the US and withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, saying: “An intelligent man doesn’t waste his money and sons for a gang of criminals in Washington, and it is a shameful thing for a person to be in a coalition whose supreme commander has no regard for human life…

Site Intelligence Group

Thomas Hegghammer at Jihadica thinks bin Laden may be laying the groundwork for an attack that is months away, or hoping to inspire a grassroots group or individual in Europe to take action on his behalf.

…My guess is that these messages are primarily intended to influence German public opinion at a crucial juncture in the Western campaign in Afghanistan. Germany is a pivotal player in the coalition; her withdrawal could initiate a vicious (or virtuous, depending on one’s preferences) circle of European withdrawals from the Afghanistan enterprise. Al Qaida is focusing the weakest link in the coalition, just as the Madrid bombers were advised to do.

jihadica

Germany Warned of Pre-election Terror Attack

Al Qaeda is planning a major attack on Germans before September’s election to wreak revenge for the deployment of troops in Afghanistan, a German magazine cited security officials as saying on Saturday.

Der Spiegel said German intelligence officials and the Federal Crime Office believed German firms based in Algeria and German citizens in northern Africa were in particular danger.

The officials also warned of attacks in Germany. The new assessment is largely due to a warning from the U.S. government, believed to be based on information from al Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, said the weekly.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry declined to comment on the report of a fresh threat. In recent months, however, officials have repeatedly warned that Germany is a likely target for Islamist militants.

Source

Terror Suspects Arrested Moments Before Take-off – Germany

German police arrested two terrorist suspects on board a Dutch airliner Friday, minutes before it was due to take off from Cologne-Bonn airport for Amsterdam. A police spokesman said a Somali man aged 23 and a 24-year-old German born in Mogadishu were escorted off the KLM Flight 1804 at 6:55 am (0455 GMT).

The two men had been under observation for several months. A search of their apartment had turned up farewell letters in which they declared their readiness to die in a jihad or holy war, the police spokesman said.

In Amsterdam, KLM spokeswoman Ellen van Ginkel confirmed the arrests, but denied that police had stormed the aircraft.

“After the doors had closed and the plane was ready for departure, the German border police re-opened the doors and arrested two men,” Van Ginkel said.

“Then, all passengers were let out of the plane and all luggage was also taken out and checked outside,” Van Ginkel added.

The plane ultimately left 70 minutes behind schedule and landed safely in Amsterdam at 9:17 am.

The arrests came a day after police appealed to the public to help track down two missing Islamists, one of them a German convert, who were suspected of membership in a terrorist group called the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), often described as a successor to al-Qaeda.

Police said they were pursuing about 20 leads related to Eric Breininger, a 21-year-old German, and Houssain al-Malla, a 23-year-old Lebanese, were last seen in the zone along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Police suspect they might have secretly returned to Germany.

Police said Breininger, who is from Saarland state in the west of the country, had recorded an internet video in which he spoke of carrying out a suicide attack and supported jihad or holy war.