Five American Muslims Retract Statement on Joining Jihad

Apparently a few weeks in a Pakistani jail will give you plenty of time to rethink the idea of jihad. Five American Muslims arrested for allegedly plotting terror attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan today retracted their statement about plans to join the jihad against US forces during an appearance in an anti-terrorism court.

When the young men were produced in the anti-terrorism court in Sargodha district of Punjab province, they told the judge that they were innocent and had neither committed any crime nor had plans to do so.

The men Ramy Zamzam, 22, Waqar Hussain Khan, 22, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, 20, Iman Hasan Yemer, 17 and Omar Farooq, 24 also told the court that they had been subjected to torture by the FBI and the Pakistani police.

The FBI had sent a team to Pakistan last month to question the youths. The youths slipped a note written on toilet paper to the media while leaving the court. The note read: “We have done nothing wrong. Please help us.” The court adjourned the hearing of the case against them till February 16.

Earlier, police had submitted a chargesheet in the court that alleged the US nationals wanted to join hands with militants fighting in Afghanistan. The chargesheet also said they had plans to target important installations in Pakistan and to embrace ’shahadat’ (martyrdom).

Five American Muslims retract statement on joining Jihad – Source.

al Qaeda Seeks to Trigger India-Pakistan War

The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said al Qaeda is working with an array of local militant groups to destabilize South Asia and trigger a war between India and Pakistan, an indication of growing U.S. fears about new terror attacks throughout the volatile region.

Mr. Gates said al Qaeda had formed alliances with the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as well as with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group that carried out the attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that left more than 160 dead.

The American defense chief, who is in the middle of a three-day visit to India, said the al Qaeda-led “syndicate” is trying “to destabilize not just Afghanistan, not just Pakistan, but potentially the whole region.”

Speaking to reporters here, Mr. Gates said the Islamist groups were focusing particular attention on India and Pakistan, regional rivals who have fought three major wars since 1947. He said that Pakistani-based militants were trying to carry out strikes within India in hopes of provoking an Indian counterattack that could escalate into a new conflict between the two nations.

Read Full Article.

U.S. Suspects in Pakistan Say It Was Jihad, Not Terrorism

Apparently there is a difference between jihad and terrorism, jihadists and terrorists. Five Northern Virginia men arrested in Pakistan indicated Monday that they plan to fight terrorism charges that Pakistani police are recommending by using a strategy seen in U.S. courtrooms: that they were preparing for jihad but not planning any terror attacks.

The men told a Pakistani court that they had neither sought nor established contact with extremist groups, and traveled to the region only “to help the helpless Muslims,” according to their Pakistani attorney. As they entered the courtroom, one of the men, Ramy Zamzam, told reporters: “We are not terrorists. We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.

No charges were filed during the hearing in Sargodha, but Pakistani police said their formal recommendation that the men be charged under anti-terrorism laws — and sentenced to life in prison — would be filed by Tuesday. A judge would decide whether to prosecute the five Americans, who are due back in court on Jan. 18.

The men, all from the Alexandria area, left the United States shortly after Thanksgiving without telling their parents, who alerted the FBI. They were arrested Dec. 8 at the family home of Khalid Farooq Chaudhry, the father of one of the men, Umar Chaudhry. The elder Chaudhry was released from custody on Monday by the judge because of insufficient evidence against him, officials said.

Source

Pakistan Turns Down Key U.S. Antiterrorism Requests

Washington’s relationship with Pakistan suffered a fresh blow this week with reports that Pakistan’s leader has rejected a personal request from U.S. President Barack Obama to expand the army’s operations in tribal areas where members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are known to enjoy safe haven.Pakistani military officials and diplomats say President Asif Ali Zardari told Obama in late November, before the White House’s new “Af-Pak” strategy was announced, that the country’s military would move against the Islamic extremists in the border areas on its own schedule, and not the accelerated pace Washington requested.

Pakistan’s military chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, has also reportedly told General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, that no major military operations are planned anytime soon in North Waziristan.The area is a known sanctuary for the Afghan-Taliban-allied Haqqani network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a Taliban commander. According to U.S. military officials, Siraj’s fighters pose the biggest threat to U.S. forces in the eastern part of Afghanistan.

Source

Pakistan To Deport 5 U.S. Terror Suspects

Pakistan is planning to deport five Americans held on terror links to the United States after they were grilled by a special FBI team in the capital Islamabad, local media reported Saturday.

The five-member team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with Pakistani intelligence officials, a legal advisor and a political counsellor of the U.S. embassy to Pakistan is engaged in grilling the five Americans about their alleged links with militant organizations and future plans, a senior interior ministry official told media.

“As soon as the investigations are over, they will be deported to their country,” the official said.

Pakistani authorities arrested the five people on Wednesday in the northeastern city of Sargodha, about 180 km south of Islamabad.

Police said that the suspects were arrested from a house of a local leader of banned militant organization Jaish-e-Muhammad.

Their local host has been handed over to police on a remand by a local court.

Pictures of the detainees shown on the private TV station Friday showed the five young men, most of them clean-shaven, in Western clothing.

It’s not a matter concerning to the U.S. only, said the interior ministry official.

“We too are concerned about this. Therefore, our interrogators are also grilling them to know about their aides here, and their future plans,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has promised an investigation into how and why the five men left the U.S. for Pakistan.

Pakistan is in the grip of a fierce insurgency, with hundreds of people killed in attacks in the past months.

Source

Are Pakistans Nuclear Weapons Safe?

The prospect of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of al Qaeda or the Taliban in Pakistan is perhaps the most immediate threat facing the US. It’s thought that Pakistan has an arsenal of nearly 100 missiles, however; no one is certain of the total, or for that matter where many of the nuclear weapons are located. While government officials have publicly stated that our military is poised and ready to enter the country should it appear the safety of Pakistan’s nukes is at risk, the challenge to locate and protect each missile and missile site would be daunting if not impossible should this nuclear nightmare ever begin to unfold.

Seymour M. Hersh has written an article in the New Yorker detailing the situation

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

via Read The Full Article.

Terror Attack Warnings Issued in Pakistan

Pakistan continues to face terrorist threats and intelligence agencies have issued increased security warnings in face of possible terror strikes across the country.

According to local media reports, the county’s major government building, offices and officials from law enforcement agencies have been placed on militant hit lists.

Awami National Party (ANP) leaders including North Western Frontier Province information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain and other leaders are among the target list of pro-Taliban militants, a Press TV correspondent reported on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the military said at least five militants were killed and eight others injured during an offensive in the South Waziristan Agency in northwest Pakistan.

Security forces have also claimed to have seized several landmines and rocket launchers in Quetta city in southwest Pakistan late on Saturday.

via Source.

Suicide Bomber Strikes Near Nuclear Facility in Pakistan

A Taliban suicide bomber has killed seven people near a nuclear weapons complex in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal has the details .

The suicide bomber detonated outside a security checkpoint near the Kamra Air Weapon Complex in the district of Attock, Geo News reported. Three security personnel and four civilians were killed in the blast, and 12 more were wounded.

[...].

The Kamra Air Weapon Complex is one of three military industrial production facilities in the Wah Cantt, according to Global Security. The Pakistani Ordnance Factories, a collection of 14 factories that produce arms and ammunition for the Pakistani armed forces, and Heavy Industries Taxila are also contained within the Wah Cantt. More than 40,000 Pakistanis are employed at the factories.

Read Full Article

UPDATE: A Taliban suicide bomber killed seven people outside a key Pakistani air force facility yesterday, with officials quick to deny suggestions the target was linked to the country’s nuclear program. Source

Terror Threats Closes Pakistan Schools

In the southern Sindh province, which is home to Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi, 50 000 schools and colleges have shut down until Sunday according to several news reports.

Pakistani schools and colleges have closed because of fears about militant attacks after twin suicide bombings at a university campus on Tuesday, officials said.
The federal government and armed forces already announced that they were closing their schools as a precaution against terrorism.

Two suicide bombers attacked the International Islamic University in Islamabad on Tuesday, killing four students and wounding at least 18 others. The bombers struck at mid-afternoon inside a women’s cafeteria and a faculty office in the Islamic law department at the school, which is popular with foreign students.
Source

“This is an internal security lapse. We have already advised the educational institutions to tighten their security,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters after the Islamabad university blasts on Tuesday.

Source

India PM Warns of Credible Terror Threat From Pakistan

Alarmed by evidence that Pakistan-based terror groups were plotting fresh attacks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday sounded an alert about the continuing threat. “There is credible information about ongoing plans of terrorists in Pakistan to carry out fresh attacks. The area of operation of these terrorists today extends far beyond the confines of Jammu and Kashmir and covers all parts of our country,” Singh said while addressing a meeting of chief ministers on internal security in the capital.

The PM did not name any specific group.

Sources, however, said the warning was based on intercepts of chatter among terrorist leaders, including 26/11 accused Lashkar operatives Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi, Zarar Shah and Abu al Qama.

The intercepts pointed to a plot for another massive terror attack via sea route, but this time involving local Lashkar modules, not Pakistani jihadis. The conspiracy has not ripened yet because of the disarray among Lashkar’s local collaborators due to the crackdown on Indian Mujahideen.

via PM sounds terror alert: Credible threat from Pak – India – NEWS – The Times of India.

Terror and Pakistan’s Nuclear Assets – Counterterrorism Blog

Every Pakistan watchers knew about those events. Bill Roggio has highlighted these events in his reports too (esp. in Long War Journal). But, Shaun Gregory (“The Terrorist Threat to Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons,” CTC Sentinel, Vol. 2 (7), July 2009) has analyzed these events to expose the vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, the “pillar of Pakistan’s national security”.

The paper published in the CTC Sentinel (Combating Terrorism Center, West Point) has triggered a pitched debate in the region and in the Western World whether Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructures are secure or not , especially in the face of those (mentioned below) terror attacks that occurred in the last couple of years. Gregory’s article underscores three terror strikes on nuclear weapons facilities in Pakistan, questioning the physical security of the coveted nuclear assets:

“These have included an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly sites.”

(Correction: The twin attack at the Wah Cantonment actually took place on August 21, Thursday, 2008, not on August 20 as chronicled in the paper).

Let’s revisit those terror events, all perpetrated by Taliban and Al Qaeda elements.

Read Full Article

Jihadis Have Attacked Pakistans Nuclear Facilities 3 Times

Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts.

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly.

These attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken several steps to secure and fortify its nuclear weapons against potential attacks, particularly by the United States and India, says Gregory.

In fact, the attacks have received so little attention that Peter Bergen, the eminent terrorism expert who reviewed Gregory’s paper first published in West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center Sentinel, said “he Gregory points out something that was news to me and shouldn’t have been which is that a series of attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities have already happened.”

Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists.

But Gregory, while detailing the steps Islamabad has taken to protect them against Indian and US attacks, asks if the geographical location of Pakistan’s principle nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks.

Read Article

Senior Adviser Warns of Armageddon in Islamabad

A senior adviser on South Asia to three U.S. presidents is now warning about “Armageddon in Islamabad.”

At the request of President Obama, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA expert on the region, also chaired an interagency policy review on Afghanistan and nuclear Pakistan. His latest assessment says, “A jihadist victory in Pakistan, meaning the takeover of the nation by a militant Sunni movement led by the Taliban … would create the greatest threat the United States has yet to face in its war on terror … [and] is now a real possibility in the foreseeable future.” It would bolster al Qaeda’s capabilities tenfold, Mr. Riedel concludes. It would also give terrorists a nuclear capability.

Pakistan’s “creation of and collusion with extremist groups has left Islamabad vulnerable to an Islamist coup,” concludes Mr. Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy in a lengthy study in the July/August issue of the National Interest. An Islamist coup would not be possible without the collusion of at least some army units in Rawalpindi, the garrison town 20 minutes from Islamabad. Pakistan has suffered four military coups in 60 years, living half its existence under military rule.

Beginning with the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Islamization of Pakistan was organized by the late military dictator Zia ul-Haq, and encouraged and funded by Saudi Arabia and the United States as a counter to communist ideology. This spawned thousands of single discipline madrassas (free Koranic schools) that, in turn, spawned thousands of jihadis brainwashed to hate American, Indian and Israeli apostates. It also led to the creation of such nationwide terrorist groups as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JEM) under the supervision of ISI for the Kashmir front against India. Officially banned, they moved underground.

Pakistan’s all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) also “volunteered” some 10,000 young jihadis from the Mohmand tribal agency to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but the Taliban had already collapsed and the untrained youngsters were quietly shipped back to Pakistan with denials on all sides.

After U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2000, ISI spread the word among tribal chiefs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that “Pakistan is next.” A two-star ISI general “briefed” tribal chiefs after the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 on U.S. plans “following the conquest of Afghanistan.” This reporter was briefed by one of the chiefs the next day. The Bush administration, the general had explained, plans to attack Pakistan in an attempt to seize its nuclear arsenal and “leave it naked to Indian aggression.”

Read Full Article

Paksitan – Terror Attack On Norwegian and Swedish Embassies Thwarted

A man with two tons of explosives in his possession has been arrested in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad. According to reports the man had planned to blow up the Norwegian and Swedish embassies in the city.

In addition, the Hungarian, Czech and South African embassies were also among the targets for the man’s terrorist attacks, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reports.

The newspaper quotes a central source as saying that the Swedish military presence in Afghanistan was the reason for the planned attack.

Also Norway is participating in the ISAF forces in Afghanistan. The Norwegian Foreign Office has declined to comment on the reports, but security at the Norwegian embassy has been stepped up.

One year ago the Danish embassy in Islamabad was attacked, and six people were killed.

Source

Hat Tip – Infidels Are Cool

Next Page »