Taliban Internet Recruiting Through The Eyes of a Detainee

The young Taliban detainee, shackled at the wrists, with his head covered with a black canvas bag, was chillingly clear about his life's mission: “The Taliban have only one objective: to continue killing the Americans.”

The tools this particular terrorist had adopted to accomplish that goal were not suicide bombs or sniper rifles, but laptop computers and other high-tech equipment. The purpose of his Taliban cell was to reach potential recruits online over the Internet.

In interviews spread over several hours, I was given a rare glimpse into the mind of this youthful insurgent.

As the sessions were occurring, back in the United States people were reading accounts of Jihad Jane and Jihad Jamie, American women who had allegedly been indoctrinated to attack their birth country through the Internet.

What I was hearing in the spare interview room would shed light on how the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan reached potential recruits around the world.

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Spencer Pratt to Join Fight Against Cyberterrorism

Spencer Pratt is ready to jump into the fight against cyber-terrorism according to a report on FoxNews.com.

In the report, Bill Beasley, president of American Defense Enterprises, a firearms training firm in Los Angeles, told FoxNews.com that he and Pratt are in the “beginning stages” of negotiations to start a cybersecurity venture.

[...]

Beasley said Pratt contacted him a few years ago after receiving death threats pertaining to him and his wife, Heidi Montag, who announced last week that Pratt would no longer serve as her manager.

“He wanted to learn how to protect himself,” said Beasley, adding that Pratt is a test away from being certified as a firearms instructor for the firm.

[...]

Pratt, who could not be immediately reached for comment, told People he’s recently discovered a “new passion and new purpose” in life and decided to “take a break” from MTV’s hit reality show for the remainder of the season.

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Some Thoughts on Jihad Jamie and Jihad Jane

Judging by what we know them so far, both of the white American female converts to Islam who were recently taken into custody Jihad Jane in the U.S., Jihad Jamie in Ireland were lonely, troubled indiduals see here and here. What’s becoming clear is that international jihadists are redoubling their efforts to recruit disaffected U.S. citizens via the Internet.

If these outcast types are white females who don’t fit the typical terrorist profile and are capable of slipping detection in Western countries, even better. If the “Jihad Chicks” as a friend labeled them this weekend weren’t lured in by Islamic jihadists, they probably would have found another bizarre or dangerous outlet or cult among the endless array of choices presented in cyberspace.

Unfortunately, they and a growing number of others like them were seduced by the message of jihad–suckered in by online sweet talk and a sense of belonging, then quickly radicalized. And there appears to be no shortage of fresh–and unlikely–converts to the cause.

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Mumbai – Terror Attack Thwarted, Two Arrested

Indian police have arrested two men suspected of plotting a series of terror attacks in Mumbai. The pair aimed to attack a market, a shopping center and a state-owned gas facility, according to anti-terrorism officers. Police said the men had links with terror groups in Pakistan and were acting on directions from handlers there.

Vinesh Agarwal, an inspector with Mumbai’s anti-terrorism squad, said: “We believe they were taking instructions from across the border to attack three or four targets in Mumbai.”

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From CBS News

Indian police said Sunday they prevented a major terrorist strike in Mumbai by arresting two men who were preparing to attack several targets in the city, the country’s financial and entertainment hub.

K.P. Raghuvanshi, chief of Mumbai’s anti-terrorism squad, said the two Indian men – both residents of the city – had targeted a popular shopping mall, a market and a state-owned gas facility. He said Abdul Latif Rashid and Riyaz Ali were arrested late Saturday in Mumbai’s Matunga suburb.

Source

Colorado Mom Arrested in Ireland Terror Case Released

UPDATE: Irish police release U.S. woman held in plot. An American woman and three others arrested in Ireland over an alleged plot to assassinate Swedish artist Lars Vilks have been freed without charge, Irish police said Saturday.

Seven people — including the American woman, three Algerians, a Libyan, a Palestinian and a Croatian — were arrested Tuesday in Ireland. Irish police said three others who were also arrested remained in custody and were being questioned.

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Original Post

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a Colorado mother has been arrested in connection with an assassination attempt on a Swedish cartoonist. This is the second American woman to be arrested in terror investigations this week.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, was arrested in Ireland with several other suspected terror conspirators. She is in the custody of the Irish police, along with six other individuals, arrested as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit murder.

Ramirez is described as a mother who had a $30,000-a-year job as a medical assistant in Leadville.

Ramirez disappeared on Sept. 11 and later told her family she went to Ireland with her 6-year-old son and married an Algerian whom she met online, her mother Christine Mott of Leadville told The Associated Press. The Wall Street Journal, quoting anonymous sources familiar with the case, reported on its Web site that Paulin-Ramirez was being held in the alleged plot.

Denver FBI officials said they did not have an open case on Paulin-Ramirez. Her stepfather, George Mott, said the FBI seized a desktop computer in late September but did not tell the family what they found.

WSJ Article Source.

KDVR Denver – Source

Suspected Terrorist Offered To Join Flight Crew During Strike

A British Airways worker who allegedly wanted to be a suicide bomber has been accused of offering to take advantage of the airline’s approaching strike to join the cabin crew.

Rajib Karim, 30, allegedly arrived in Britain from Bangladesh in 2006 to gain a passport for terrorist purposes.

He worked at a BA call centre in Newcastle dealing with passenger bookings and had access to the company’s computer system and details about airport security procedures.

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Internet Bloggers Tracked Jihad Jane for 3 Years

While the rest of America was stunned to hear that a suburban Pennsylvania woman allegedly used the Internet identity of Jihad Jane and tried to join militant jihadists, for a group of ‘Net vigilantes it was old news.

In fact, at least one of the Web sleuths claims to have alerted the feds to Colleen LaRose’s alleged efforts to raise money and recruit fighters for Islamic terrorists and to carry out her own jihad.

[...]

They also said “Jihad Jane” is not the only one on the Internet that the groups are monitoring.

“There are certainly many others out there who are more eloquent and appear to be more dangerous from the way they talk,” a man calling himself Rusty Shackleford told ABC News.

Shackleford, a pen name, says he is a libertarian college professor who created the blog JawaReport in 2004 after he was enraged that Iraqi Islamists had beheaded an American named Nick Berg.

“It was my way of venting. But mostly it was about countering violent Islamist propaganda, specifically the videos that were being produced by al Qaeda in Iraq and other Salaafist jihadists fighting our troops,” he said.

Shackleford said his goal from the beginning was combating violent Islamist material and support on the Web. Read Article

Read – I turned in Colleen “Jihad Jane” LaRose to the FBI — A Jawa Report Exclusive

al-Qaida Seen Eyeing Less Complex Attacks On US

Ever since al-Qaida attacked the United States in 2001, U.S. authorities have worked to detect and prevent the next big terrorist strike.

But officials and counter-terrorism experts say the Christmas airline plot and last November's shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, may have shown al-Qaida that smaller-scale attacks also can prove unsettling, without the complexity and risk of bigger attempts.

The Christmas Day attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound flight — allegedly by a young Nigerian man with explosives in his underwear — was not successful. The attempt, however, shook the government, set agencies against each other and led to months of political second-guessing.

Short of mass casualties, the attack produced the kind of reaction that al-Qaida desires.

Now it appears that the group, which has prided itself on its ideological purism, seems to be eyeing a more pragmatic and perhaps more dangerous shift in tactics. The emerging message appears to be that big successes are great, but sometimes simply trying can be just as good.

It's not clear what Osama bin Laden and his senior leaders are thinking and plotting. But U.S.-born al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn made a public pitch for such smaller, single acts of jihad in a recent Internet video.

“Even apparently unsuccessful attacks on Western mass transportation systems can bring major cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his corporations into bankruptcy,” Gadahn said in the video.

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Internet Aids Terrorist Recruiting, Radicalization, Pentagon says

Militant and terrorist groups are using the Internet to streamline their terrorist recruiting, radicalization, and training. The man who allegedly attempted to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day was contacted, recruited, and trained in just six weeks, officials say.

Militant groups can radicalize individuals and train them to carry out terrorist acts much more quickly today, in part thanks to the Internet, according to military and counter terrorism experts testifying on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

Militant groups and some individuals have “maximized” the use of technologies such as the Internet. Government officials say the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly attempted to blow up an American airliner in Detroit on Christmas Day, points to just how fast groups can radicalize an individual. Mr. Abdulmutallab was identified, contacted, recruited, and trained all within six weeks, according to a Pentagon counterterrorism official. That’s much faster than the two and a half years it took for Osama bin Laden to hatch the plan to attack the US nine years ago. While the two plans vary widely in scope, the faster time frame indicates how adaptive radicalized groups and individuals have become, say experts.

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Virus Sent To Sabotage Terror Watch List Computers

Colorado’s 9News reports federal prosecutors have charged a former Transportation Security Administration employee with attempting to sabotage terror watch list computers.

According to the report, Douglas Duchak, 46, of Colorado Springs, faces two charges of attempting to damage protected TSA computers.

Duchak pleaded not guilty and was released from custody.

The suspect allegedly tried to send a virus into the computer system’s servers, after learning he would be terminated, 9Wants to Know confirms.

The computer system includes the government’s no-fly list.

Duchak worked at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operation Center where the government loads computers with data received from the federal government’s Terrorist Screening Database and the U.S. Marshal’s Service Warrant Information Network, according to a U.S. Attorney’s office spokesman.

Duchak worked at the Colorado Springs Operations Center from August 2004 to Oct. 23, 2009 as a data analyst.

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Adam Gadahn Video Indicates al-Qaeda Reeling

While many are disappointed American turncoat Adam Gadahn was not the al-Qaeda operative arrested in Pakistan, as erroneously reported on Monday, there is still good cause to celebrate: Al Qaeda is on the run.

And it is a fitting irony that Gadahn’s latest propaganda video, released last Sunday, serves as an indicator al-Qaeda’s time in Pakistan may be running out. In it, al-Qaeda’s English-language spokesman unsurprisingly praises Fort Hood murderer, Nidal Hasan, and callously calls on al-Qaeda sympathizers in the West to launch similar homicidal attacks.

“You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage,” said the first American charged with treason since World War II.

But it was Gadahn’s telling potential al-Qaeda terrorists they need not travel abroad (meaning Pakistan) for training that constituted the video’s most unusual moment as well as the least commented on.

This statement, as one analyst noted, raises the question as to whether al-Qaeda is any longer in the position to train recruits. Gadahn’s call for individual operators to instead use “a little imagination and planning and a limited budget”, like in 9/11, to stage independent attacks rather than travel to al-Qaeda’s notorious training camps on the Afghan-Pakistan border indicates it isn’t.

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Bali Bomber Mastermind Dulmatin Kiilled in Shoot-out

The alleged mastermind behind the 2002 Bali bombings is believed to have been killed in a shoot-out with Indonesian police on the outskirts of Jakarta today. Dulmatin, nicknamed “the Genius”, was an explosives expert who was believed to have set off one of the Bali bombs with a mobile phone, as well as helping to assemble the massive car bomb used in the attacks, which killed 202 people.

The shoot-out happened during a morning raid on a house in Pamulang city, west of the Indonesian capital. Police said the raid, which comes two weeks before a visit by President Obama, targeted Dulmatin and two other senior members of the militant Islamist organisation Jemaah Islamiyah.Indonesia’s counter-terrorism unit, Detachment 88, has launched a series of raids across the archipelago following the discovery of a militant Islamic training camp in Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, last month. Police have detained 21 suspected members of the group in Aceh and Java, while two have been killed.

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Jihad Jane – Woman Charged With Supporting Terrorists

Jihad Jane – A Pennsylvania woman known to authorities online as “JihadJane”  has been charged in federal court with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to a government official and attempted identity theft according to a Fox News report.

The indictment, unsealed Monday, charges that Colleen R. LaRose and five unindicted co-conspirators recruited men on the Internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe, and recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad.

The accused co-conspirators are located in South Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States.

In June of 2008, LaRose posted a comment on YouTube under the username “JihadJane,” stating that she is “desperate to do something somehow to help” the suffering Muslim people, according to the indictment.

She was also know to authorities as “Fatima LaRose.” The indictment describes LaRose as in her 40s.

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Pa. woman accused in terror plot to kill Swedish cartoonist

From USA Today – A suburban Philadelphia woman who called herself “Jihad Jane” online has been indicted for conspiring to help and recruit Islamist terrorists overseas with whom she allegedly plotted to murder a Swedish cartoonist who drew controversial images of the prophet Mohammed.

Colleen R. LaRose, 46, of Pennsburg, Pa., is accused of offering to use her American looks and identity to help foreign terrorists, The Philadelphia Inquirer writes. She was arrested Oct. 15 but her detention was kept secret until today.

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See The Indictment

Ex-Terrorist Takes CBN News Inside Al Qaeda

Western leaders are often at odds over how to take on the threat of Islamic terrorism. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, appears totally focused on its mission.

The terrorist group is obsessed with destroying the United States. And according to one former colleague of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, they don&’t care how many innocent civilians are killed in the process.

Face-to-Face with Bin Laden

CBN News recently spoke with former terrorist Noman Benotman in an extensive interview about the inner workings of Al-Qaeda's leadership.

These days, Benotman lives a quiet life in London with his wife and children. But it wasn't long ago that Benotman stood face-to-face with Osama bin Laden.

“He insists on inflicting pain to his enemies,” Benotman said of bin Laden. “Beyond your imagination. You can't miss it when you talk with him.”

via Ex-Terrorist Takes CBN News Inside Al Qaeda – World – CBN News – Christian News 24-7 – CBN.com.

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