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Showing posts from March 13, 2011

What Do the Uprisings in The Middle East Mean for al-Qaeda?

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Publication: Terrorism Monitor March 17, 2011 By: Michael W. S. Ryan There are currently two arguments about what the recent uprisings across the Middle East mean for al-Qaeda.  The optimists argue that non-violent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have stripped al-Qaeda’s narrative of its power. The pessimists counter that al-Qaeda is far from finished and will wait for the dust to settle, disappointment to set in, and the revolutionary spirit to turn bitter before it takes advantage of countries weakened by revolution. Perhaps, a better approach to this question is to be found in al-Qaeda’s strategic literature and its traditional relationship to each country in question. Al-Qaeda represents a revolution within Islam.  Its strategic literature recounts that Bin Laden commissioned a series of detailed regional studies to inform him about the best approach to jihadist revolution based on the facts of each case.  Several years before 9/11, these studies were distribute

Insurgency-Related Violence Reported in Dagestan and Ingushetia

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Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor  March 18, 2011 By: The Jamestown Foundation The body of an officer of the Dagestani branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service was found in the republic’s capital on March 17. The officer, whose was a captain, was killed with two shots to the head, and two shell casings were found along with his body. Meanwhile, a policeman was killed in a separate shooting in Makhachkala on March 17. The incident occurred around 2:15 a.m., local time, when an unidentified gunman shot the officer as he was sitting behind the wheel of his car. Also on March 17, a bomb went off at a women’s clothing store late in the evening in the city of Buinaksk. The bomb, which was placed near the entrance of the store, caused serious damage to the premises, but no one was hurt in the blast. It was the latest in a series of attacks targeting stores in Dagestan. A food store was blown up in Buinaksk on March 11 and another shop was bombed in the city

Al-Shabaab Threats Panic Kenya as Fighting Erupts on the Border with Somalia

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Publication: Terrorism Monitor March 17, 2011 By: Muhyadin Ahmed Roble African Union peacekeepers from Burundi walk along the streets of Mogadishu. Since the 1998 al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and the 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned hotel and Israeli airliner in Mombasa, Kenya has considered Somalia a key security threat. To combat this threat, Kenya has tightened its border with Somalia and engaged in the training of troops for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG).  Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki said last year that the Somali Islamists had grown from a regional challenge to a global problem. [1] Kibaki expressed the Kenyan government’s total commitment to working closely with Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) member states, the African Union and the TFG in the search for a sustainable peace. This statement angered al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist movement that is currently bat

Jihad in China? Marketing the Turkistan Islamic Party

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Publication: Terrorism Monitor March 17, 2011 By: Jacob Zenn A Uighur terrorist from a videotape released by the Turkistan Islamic Party in 2008. Since its creation in 2008, the Uyghur-based Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has vowed to carry out jihad against the Chinese occupiers of Xinjiang, the massive western province of China that is known to its Muslim inhabitants as East Turkistan. While evidence of actual operations in China is slight and the movement appears to remain confined to its training camps in tribal Pakistan, the TIP has tried to reach out to the larger Islamic world through a sophisticated and glossy internet magazine, Islamic Turkistan. All eight editions of Islamic Turkistan have been written exclusively in the Arabic language. Thus, the intended readership is not the Muslims of Turkistan. The majority of Muslims in Xinjiang Province are Uyghurs who speak a Turkic language unrelated to Arabic, but there

Mohammed Junaid Babar left prison still advocating violence

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Newly unsealed documents shed more light on terrorist who set up camp for jihadis attended by 7/7 bomber Shiv Malik guardian.co.uk , Wednesday 9 March 2011 19.45 GMT   Mohammed Junaid Babar was freed after four and a half years in jail because of his ‘extraordinary’ co-operation. Photograph: John Gilbert A New York terrorist who set up a training camp for British jihadis, including the leader of the 7/7 bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, was still expressing support for violence against Americans in "occupied" Muslim countries at the time of his early release in December, it has emerged. Mohammed Junaid Babar was facing a possible sentence of 70 years for his terrorism activities, which also included gun running, supp

Jihadist who took BA job to plot terror attack from inside jailed for 30 years

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Rajid Karim, an IT expert and a disciple of an extreme Islamist cleric, joined the airline in order to blow up a plane Vikram Dodd , crime correspondent guardian.co.uk , Friday 18 March 2011 19.59 GMT Article history   Police took months to break encrypted messages on Rajib Karim's laptop computer. Photograph: PA A disciple of an extremist Islamist cleric, who got a job at British Airways to plot terrorist attacks, has been jailed for 30 years. Rajib Karim, 31, a follower of the Yemen-based Anwar al-Awlaki, used his position as an IT expert with the airline to try to help stage attacks on the west. Karim was convicted earlier this month at Woolwich crown court of terrorist offences including plotting to blow up an aircraft. Awlaki is believed by wester

New Book: 'Bombshell' Explodes Myths Of Female Terrorist Motivation

Source: Medical news today Often portrayed as pawns of male-dominated terrorist organizations, female terrorists are actually motivated by more complicated and diverse reasons, according to a Penn State researcher. "It's true that some women are coerced, but the truth is that motivations vary from terrorist group to terrorist group," said Mia Bloom, fellow, International Center for the Study of Terrorism. "For example, of the women in the provincial Irish Republican Army group that I talked to, not one was coerced; they were enthusiastic about their roles." Bloom, who examined female participation in the world's most recognized terrorist groups in her book, "Bombshell: The Many Faces of Female Terrorists" (Viking Canada 2011), said there are five main reasons why females resort to acts of terrorism and suicide bombings--revenge, redemption, relationship, respect and rape. "Relationship, the third R, is particularly crucial in

Muslims are helping thwart terrorism

By Michael Ledo Windsor S.C. Wednesday, March 16, 2011 If U.S. Rep. Peter King wanted to know what the Muslim community is doing to thwart terrorism (or not), he could have picked up a newspaper or quietly asked the FBI. Instead, he grandstanded in public hearings that will only be detrimental to the United States -- all for the sake of Republican King appealing to his xenophobic, Tea Party base. He has further alienated a community persecuted by his ilk. What the record states: - 2010: The Oregon Christmas tree bombing was diverted because of a Muslim informant. - 2010: Muslim Alioune Niass spotted the suspicious vehicle used as a bomb to attack Times Square in New York City. - 2010: Farooque Ahmed's alleged attempt to attack the subway system in Washington, D.C., was initially brought to the attention of authorities by a "source in the Muslim community." - 2010: Mohammed Mahmoud Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte are arrested, after

Greek police detain 7 suspects linked to domestic terrorism group

Source: Xinhua Greek counter-terrorism police Monday detained seven suspects with links to a domestic terrorism group in Athens and the central city of Volos, local media reported. During raids on at least two hideouts, police arrested five men and two women and seized a number of arms. More raids were under way in Athens. Police confiscated two AK-47 rifles, six pistols, ammunition, wigs, police uniforms, bullet-proof vests, police wireless radios and other objects, which were being examined at a police crime lab. Three of the detainees were wanted for participation in the "Conspiracy of Nuclei Cells of Fire" guerrilla group, which has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks against political, police and financial targets in the country over the past few years. The latest attacks were a strong bomb explosion at a courthouse in Athens last December, several parcel bombs against European leaders and foreign embassies in Athens in November, and a s

A bomb blast brings together students in Kolkata against terrorism

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Source: theweekendleader By Lesley D Biswas   Kolkata 16 Mar 2011 Posted 23-Feb-2011   Vol 1 Issue 7 For the Government and the media, victims of terror attacks are often mere numbers and statistics. But the grief haunts the friends and relatives of the victims long after the media and the government stop talking about the incident and move on to other issues. In Kolkata, some college students have formed an organisation called ‘Youth for Interaction, Knowledge, Awareness and Action’ (Youthikaa) to condemn all forms of terrorism, after one of them, Chitrangada Chakraborty, lost her best friend Anindyee Char in a bomb blast. Anindyee, her brother Ankik, and two other friends Shilpa Goenka and Rajeev Agarwal had died in the gruesome German Bakery bomb blast in Pune last February. They were among the nearly twenty persons who lost their lives in the incident. Art for peace :

Walter Fields...The Real Terrorism Peter King is looking in all the wrong places

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Source: Afro by Walter Fields Walter Fields (Courtesy Photo) What we witnessed March 10 on Capitol Hill during hearings led by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, was a shameful example of the excesses of power. Claiming concern over the alleged radicalization of Muslims in America, Rep. King conducted nothing short of a “witch hunt,” by singling out a single group of Americans as an internal threat to the nation’s security worthy of suspicion by their fellow citizens. The insult was enough to bring Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), one of two Muslims serving in Congress, to tears as he defended American Muslims, and emotionally described the sacrifice that some Muslims made on Sept. 11, 2001. The arrogance of Rep. King was evident as he maintained that the threat of radical elements among the nation’s Muslim population was extensive enough to warrant a McCarthy-like probe. This, despite the fact that Ki