WSJ : U.S. Blocks Former Sailor's Request for New Trial

U.S. Blocks Former Sailor's Request for New Trial

December 22, 2008

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Federal prosecutors said a former Navy sailor was properly convicted of leaking details about ship movements to suspected terrorist supporters and shouldn't get a new trial.

Hassan Abu-Jihaad was the only member of the military communicating with the group and had access to the classified information, prosecutors said in new court documents in New Haven. Mr. Abu-Jihaad was convicted in March of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense information.

Mr. Abu-Jihaad, who was a signalman aboard the USS Benfold, was accused of passing along details that included the makeup of his Navy battle group, its planned movements and a drawing of the group's formation to pass through the dangerous Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf on April 29, 2001. The details also included statements such as, "They have nothing to stop a small craft with RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) etc., except their SEALs' stinger missiles."

The ship wasn't attacked.

The leak came amid increased wariness on the part of U.S. Navy commanders whose ships headed to the Persian Gulf in the months after a terrorist ambush in 2000 killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole.

Mr. Abu-Jihaad, who is from Phoenix, sought a new trial in October, saying prosecutors lacked evidence and inflamed the jury by playing videos he had purchased that promoted violent jihad, or holy war. The case is before the U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn. because the internet service provider where the investigation started was based in Connecticut.

Prosecutors argued in court papers Friday that limited portions of the videos were properly introduced to show Mr. Abu-Jihaad's intent. They said the glorification of martyrs on the videos helped resolve a likely question by the jury over why Mr. Abu-Jihaad would provide information that could be used to launch a deadly attack on his own ship.

Authorities say there was sufficient evidence for a conviction.

They cited one e-mail he wrote to the suspected terrorism supporters in which he called the attack on the USS Cole a "martyrdom operation" and praised "the men who have brong (sic) honor ... in the lands of jihad Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, etc."

Prosecutors said Mr. Abu-Jihaad also made coded references to providing support for attacking U.S. military bases.

Authorities said the information had to have been leaked by an insider because it was not publicly known and contained military jargon. The leaked documents closely matched what Mr. Abu-Jihaad would have had access to as a signalman, authorities said.

Authorities also noted that the leaked information ended with a bold plea, "Please destroy message," that was further proof it came from an insider.

Mr. Abu-Jihaad's attorneys acknowledged he held what many would consider radical beliefs, but said his emails do not prove he leaked the details of the ship movements. They said the leaked details were full of errors that Mr. Abu-Jihaad would not have made.

Prosecutors say investigators discovered files on a computer disk recovered from a suspected terrorist supporter's home in London that included the ship movements, as well as the number and type of personnel on each ship and the ships' capabilities.

Mr. Abu-Jihaad was charged in the same case that led to the 2004 arrest of Babar Ahmad, a British computer specialist accused of running Web sites to raise money, appeal for fighters and provide equipment such as gas masks and night vision goggles for terrorists. Mr. Ahmad, who lived with his parents where the computer file was allegedly found, is to be extradited to the U.S.

Mr. Abu-Jihaad, who was honorably discharged in 2002, faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced in February.

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press

Boston Globe : Antiterror sweep nets 14 in Belgium

Antiterror sweep nets 14 in Belgium

By Sebastian Rotella | Los Angeles Times | December 12, 2008

MADRID - In a major antiterrorism sweep carried out as European leaders arrived in Brussels for a summit, Belgian police yesterday arrested 14 suspects allegedly linked to Al Qaeda, including one who police said might have been close to launching a suicide attack.

The arrests were made by 242 officers who executed 16 searches in Brussels and Liege, Belgium, while French police arrested two more suspects tied to the group, antiterrorism officials said.

The raids came after a yearlong investigation in which police tracked militants, mainly Belgians and French of North African origin, who traveled to Al Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, fought against Western troops and then returned to Europe, investigators said.

Authorities said they grew alarmed during the past week when surveillance showed that a key suspect returned from South Asia last year and began making what police suspected were preparations for a suicide attack.

Investigators feared an attack might target the 27 leaders of the European Union who began a two-day summit in Brussels yesterday.

"We don't know where this suicide attack was envisioned," chief federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said at a news conference.

"It could concern an operation in Pakistan [or] Afghanistan, but it could not be totally ruled out that Belgium or Europe [was] a target."

The investigation featured one of the largest recent deployments of antiterrorism investigators and wiretaps in Belgium.

The allegations resemble a pattern detected in Britain and other European countries: Militants travel to the Afghan-Pakistani border zone and return to target their homelands, often directed from afar by Al Qaeda masterminds.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

Al Jazeera : Belgium charges 'terror' suspects

Belgium charges 'terror' suspects

Police carried out the raids hours before the start of a European Union summit [AFP]

December 12, 2008

The Belgian authorities have charged six people for suspected membership of al-Qaeda, including a woman whose husband was involved in the assassination of an Afghan commander opposed to the Taliban.

Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman from the federal prosecutor's office, said the six constituted the hard core of a "terrorist" group and included one person who was allegedly plotting a suicide attack.

The suspects had been arrested in police raids on Thursday, hours before the start of a European Union summit of 27 government leaders in the Belgian capital.

Eight other suspects had been picked up, but a judge decided that there was insufficient evidence to hold them.

Belgian nationals

All suspects under arrest are Belgian, and include Moroccan-born Malika El Aroud, whose first husband died in a 2001 suicide attack in Afghanistan that killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, who had been fighting against the Taliban.

Most of the other suspects are in their 20s or early 30s and only one of those was known from other police investigations, Pellens said.

El Aroud was detained in a raid in December last year, but was released because of insufficient evidence.

Pellens said that despite a year-long investigation, it remained unclear whether any attack was imminent.

Nearly 250 police officers raided 16 locations in Brussels and one in the eastern city of Liege early on Thursday, confiscating computers, data storage equipment and a pistol.

Police said they considered that they had to move at that point because it was too risky to have the suspects at large when the EU summit opened.

Pellens said it was unlikely, though, that the suspects would have picked such a high-security target.

She said a possible attack might have been planned in Iraq, Pakistan or a European location.

Johan Delmulle, a federal prosecutor, said one of the suspects had recently "said goodbye to his loved ones because he could go to paradise with a clear conscience".

Investigators waited a year before moving in, opting to detain the entire alleged cell rather than a single part.

The investigation centred on people linked to Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 for planning to drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of a Belgian air base where about 100 American military personnel were stationed.

Security services in several European nations suspect Trabelsi, who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, had links with groups in Britain, France and elsewhere in Europe.

CNN : Suicide bomber's widow soldiers on

Suicide bomber's widow soldiers on

Wife of assassin professes undying affection for bin Laden

By Paul Cruickshank | Special to CNN | August 24, 2006

(CNN) -- Malika el Aroud still loves Osama bin Laden. And she loves him even though he sent her husband, Abdessater Dahmane, to die.

On September 9, 2001, Dahmane and another man assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

It was a vital mission: Taliban support needed to be shored up in anticipation of al Qaeda's attack on America. Dahmane, a Tunisian al Qaeda recruit was, like his wife, devoted to bin Laden.

"It's easy for me to describe the love my husband felt because I felt it myself," she said. "Most Muslims love Osama. It was he who helped the oppressed. It was he who stood up against the biggest enemy in the world, the United States. We love him for that."

Our CNN crew was quite taken aback at these words. Before the interview she had kindly fussed over us with an amazing array of cakes and Moroccan tea. But now she was professing devotion to bin Laden and his cause.

We met el Aroud on a cold February day in Guin, a small town in Switzerland north of Fribourg. She lives there with her new husband, a Tunisian named Moez Garsalloui, whom she gently bosses around. She is a woman who says what she thinks.

El Aroud is a passionate believer in bin Laden's jihad and, together with her new husband, devotes her time to running a Web site promoting it. Because of the Web site, Swiss authorities detained the couple for several days last year for inciting terrorism. An investigation is ongoing.

El Aroud is in her 40s now. She is covered in black robes from head to toe with just a small slit for her large, expressive brown eyes, dramatically illuminated by our TV lights in her first television interview.

Gazing into CNN's cameras she told us, "It's the pinnacle in Islam to be the widow of a martyr. For a woman it's extraordinary."

Religious conversion

El Aroud was born in Morocco but her family emigrated to Belgium. She was a free-spirited and rebellious teenager. At home she was required to dress in Islamic garb; outside the home she shunned her religion, drinking with her friends and wearing tight miniskirts.

Her life changed dramatically after she was expelled from school for striking a teacher who el Aroud said uttered a racial taunt. She descended into a whirlwind of unsuitable men, drugs, alcohol and nightclubs until she tried to kill herself with a drug overdose.

She said she then became a born-again Muslim and embraced a fundamentalist interpretation of the religion. The strict laws gave her a sense of boundaries. It was in this circle that in 1999 she met and married the man who would kill Massoud.

Her brown eyes seemed to enlarge as she told me about her husband's desire to meet bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan.

"Abdessater dreamed of being under Osama bin Laden's orders," she said. "Yes, he dreamed of pledging allegiance to him. Oh yes. That was his dream. It was to meet Osama bin Laden and to shake his hand and put himself under his orders."

Her husband became transfixed with bin Laden when he appeared on television calling for jihad against the United States and other countries who oppressed Muslims, she said.

In her self-published book, "Soldiers of Light," she wrote, "He had the impression that it was to himself in particular that Osama was delivering a message."

In mid-2001 Abdessater went to Afghanistan. El Aroud said he was determined to find a theater to fight in, preferably Chechnya. But bin Laden recruited him into al Qaeda, and he trained at a camp in Jalalabad.

When el Aroud went there, determined to open an orphanage, what she saw shocked her. Absolute destitution and the ravages of war were thick in the air, and the couple blamed the United States, which had just implemented sanctions against the Taliban.

Yet el Aroud described this as a happy time; she was reunited with her husband and had been accepted into a close-knit community. Only later did she realize that she had lived in the "middle of Osama bin Laden's clan," a circle, she told CNN, that included bin Laden's wives.

"They seemed happy from what I could tell," she said. "They were radiant, even. Otherwise they wouldn't be married to him. I don't think he was forceful with them."

She said she never met bin Laden -- the women did not socialize with men -- but the al Qaeda leader had a magnetic appeal on her husband and others.

Becoming a martyr's widow

Dahmane never told his wife that he was going to be a suicide bomber, el Aroud said. She said that before he left on his trip he told her he would be back "in a fortnight."

Instead, he and a fellow Tunisian, Bouraoui el Ouaer, posing as television journalists arranged an interview with Massoud. A bomb that had been hidden in the camera exploded.

El Aroud said she learned of her husband's death on September 12, 2001. As she described how the families around her came to congratulate her for her husband's actions there was noticeable tension in her voice. It was a huge shock to her, and for weeks after she was numb with grief, she said.

An al Qaeda courier dropped off a letter from bin Laden that included $500. She said bin Laden had wanted to settle a debt. With the letter came a tape, chillingly from her dead husband in which he told her he loved her but that he was "already on the other side."

Her mourning was interrupted by the beginning of the U.S. bombing campaign on Afghanistan. She escaped to Pakistan where, exhausted, she walked into the Belgian Embassy and asked to go home.

But in Belgium, Malika was put on trial for complicity in the murder of Massoud. The case was dismissed in 2003 for lack of evidence.

She is undaunted by the investigation into her Web site and she ushered us into her bedroom to show us how she runs the forum. As the crew recorded from behind her, a large image popped on her computer monitor -- Osama bin Laden.

Paul Cruickshank is a Fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University. He helped to set up and conduct the interviews for CNN's documentary, "In the Footsteps of bin Laden."

UPI : Belgians arrest widow of Massoud assassin

Belgians arrest widow of Massoud assassin

December 11, 2008

BRUSSELS, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The widow of one of the men who assassinated Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud was one of 14 people arrested Thursday in Belgium, officials said.

Investigators described Malika el-Aroud as "an al-Qaida living legend," CNN reported.

Massoud, known as "the lion of the Panshir," was a leader in the fight against the Soviet Union and later against the Taliban. He was killed two days before the terrorist attacks of 2001 by two men posting as journalists.

Belgian investigators said they believed Malika el-Aroud was planning to travel to Afghanistan to support the Taliban insurgency.

Aroud had been open about her support of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

"Most Muslims love Osama. It was he who helped the oppressed. It was he who stood up against the biggest enemy in the world, the United States. We love him for that," she told CNN then in a 2006 interview."It's the pinnacle in Islam to be the widow of a martyr. For a woman it's extraordinary."

Meanwhile, raids at 16 addresses in Brussels and and one in Liege came a few hours before the start of a European Union summit in Brussels, the BBC reported.

Johan Delmulle, the federal prosecutor, said one of the targets had been given permission for a suicide operation, although he said investigators were unsure whether the attack was planned for Europe, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

"He had said goodbye to his loved ones, because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience," Delmulle added.

© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

FOX : Al Qaeda Arrests in Belgium: Victory for the Good Guys

Al Qaeda Arrests in Belgium: Victory for the Good Guys

By Walid Phares | Terror Analyst/FOX News Contributor | December 11, 2008

Agence France Presse and the Associated Press are reporting that Belgian authorities have arrested 14 suspected Al Qaeda terrorists including a jihadi who was allegedly planning a suicide attack. Sixteen raids were executed by 242 police officers in Brussels and in the eastern city of Liege. Security and judicial sources described the arrests as the “most important anti-terrorism operation in Belgium.” Citing the Federal prosecutor’s office, AFP reported that the move was targeting “a Belgian Islamist group involved in training as well as fighting on the Pakistan-Afghan border in cooperation with important figures in Al Qaeda.”

Expanding on the arrests campaign, Le Parisien wrote that since 2007 four Belgians and individuals from other nationalities joined a middleman by the name “M.G” in Pakistan (to undertake jihadist activities). A few months ago, two of the men came back to Belgium and were put under surveillance. A third man joined them on December 4. The initial investigation began last year based on information related to a plot to liberate Tunisian Nizar Trabulsi, an Al Qaeda cadre who is currentlly serving 10 years for preparing an attack against a Belgian base.

Sources added that a woman by the name of Malika al Aroud “has played an important role in the investigation.” Al Aroud was married to the assassin of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban commander in September 2001. Her second husband is a member of the arrested group.

The Nouvel Observateur wrote that the current investigation which was opened in December 2007 “may have prevented an attack in Brussels.” Based on reports in France Info, Le Figaro and other specialized sources, the most likely target of the Al Qaeda network could have been European institutions in Brussels. It should be noted that the arrests were made on the eve of an important European economic summit scheduled to take place in Brussels.

What should we learn from this preemptive strike in Belgium aimed at Al Qaeda’s European network? Based on the scope of the operation, its precision and its timing and my own knowledge gleaned from four years of meetings with European counterterrorism officials as well Belgian national security officials, the short answer is we can learn a lot from this December 11 strike against terror:

1) Belgian authorities have demonstrated significant success by waging an all out investigation against Al Qaeda for over a year without being infiltrated. This accomplishment alone is a victory at a time when jihadists are trying to penetrate Western security systems. Knowing the enemy, its ideology and its tactics are paramount elements for gradual victories. In this case the Belgian security forces and judicial authorities got it right. For example, Glen Audenaert, the director of the Federal Belgian Police, as well as his counterterrorism deputies have educated themselves on the nature of the beast they are dealing with inside this small European democracy. They were aware of the ideological nature of the group and thus were equipped to pursue it. This is a lesson for other democracies in general and the U.S. in particular: Know your enemy, learn about its ideology and make sure your institutions aren’t penetrated.

2) The arrests and just released reports about them reveals the link between European-based cells and overseas Al Qaeda battlefields. The detained Al Qaeda members have traveled back and forth to Pakistan. One of their members was killed as he assassinated a major anti-Taliban leader in 2001. His wife was also involved with the group and remarried a member of the network. — Female jihadists have been indoctrinated in Belgium for suicide operations in the Middle East, including a convert married to a jihadist and the list goes on. There is a highway between the “jihad lands” in the region and the “jihad bases” in the West, including in Belgium. They also exist between the UK, France, Germany and Spain. This should only call for increased international cooperation against a “world jihadi network.”

3) The issue isn’t local. This is yet another example that demonstrates that while many assert that the root causes for terrorism are found in suburban disenfranchisement, in this case Brussels, revelations from the dismantled network prove otherwise. The jihadists “cause” is not the socio-economic situation in Brussels. They most likely were aiming at the Place Luxembourg in order to crumble the political will of the European Parliament. Their aim was not to send a message on social security or healthcare. They were targeting Greens, socialists and liberals as well as conservatives; they had marked democracy as a whole, not one of democracy’s debates.

4) Last but not least, this episode should remind strategists that the campaign against jihadism is much bigger than the wars in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Like India, Belgium was opposed to the invasion of Iraq and isn’t a main partner in Afghanistan. Yet it was and remains a target for the combat Salafists. This is further evidence that the jihadi threat is truly global and that the response must also be global. Today the Belgians have scored a daring victory for the international community.

Dr. Walid Phares is a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy and the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is the author of “The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.”

The Sun : Al-Qaeda plot to blow up summit

Al-Qaeda plot to blow up summit

By GEORGE PASCOE-WATSON, Political Editor, and SIMON HUGHES, Chief Investigative Reporter | December 12, 2008

AN al-Qaeda suicide plot was foiled last night as Gordon Brown arrived for an international summit.

The PM jetted into Brussels as 14 terror suspects held in dramatic swoops across the Belgian capital were grilled.

Just hours earlier Mr Brown had kept his cool as the terror threat unfolded — casually attempting some fancy footwork with Strictly Come Dancing’s Lisa Snowdon.

The PM — who was kept up to speed with the arrests in Brussels — then headed to catch his plane.

Suicide bombers were said to have been poised to make the “ultimate sacrifice” as he joined 26 fellow EU leaders for talks on the credit crunch, climate change and the stalled Lisbon treaty.

But the plotters were unaware their terror cell was being monitored by security services.

Anti-terror cops swooped after learning the extremists had been given the “green light” to activate their plot.

Almost 250 officers were involved in 16 raids across Brussels and one in the eastern city of Liege.

Federal prosecutor John Delmulle revealed one terrorist had “said goodbye to his loved ones because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience.”

He added: “There was no other choice than to intervene.”

Among those held was the Moroccan widow of a suicide bomber.

She and the other suspects were feared to be linked to convicted al-Qaeda terrorist Nizar Trabelsi — an ex-Tunisian soccer star.

Trabelsi, 37, is behind bars over a plot to car bomb a Belgian airbase where US soldiers are stationed.

He is known to have had past contacts with Brit shoe bomb terrorists Richard Reid and Saajid Badat. Police yesterday seized computers and a pistol.

Mr Brown’s 9.30am twirl with Capital FM beauty Lisa, 37, came as he opened the new Global Radio HQ in London’s Leicester Square.

One wag joked as beaming Mr Brown mistakenly adopted a WOMAN partner’s dance stance: “He was even worse than John Sergeant.”

g.pascoe-watson@the-sun.co.uk

Telegraph : Belgian police 'thwart imminent al-Qaeda attack'

Belgian police 'thwart imminent al-Qaeda attack'

Belgian police say they have thwarted an imminent al-Qaeda suicide bomb attack as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other European Union leaders arrived for a summit in Brussels.

By Bruno Waterfield | December 12, 2008

The arrival of EU leaders and intelligence that a terror attack was on the way triggered a massive police operation, involving 242 officers, in overnight house raids in Brussels and Liege.

Police have arrested 14 suspects, three of whom, including the suspected suicide bomber, had just returned from Afghanistan, where it is thought they had received orders from al-Qaeda commanders.

Police have been closely watching the suspected suicide bomber, one of four Belgian citizens in the group.

He returned from Afghanistan on Dec 4 and three days later police received information he was planning to send a video message to close relations.

Johan Delmulle, Belgium's Federal Prosecutor, revealed that police had swooped because he had "received the green light to carry out an operation from which he was not expected to come back".

"He had said goodbye to his loved ones, because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience," he said.

"This information, related to the fact that a European summit is proceeding at this time in Brussels obviously did not leave us any other choice than to intervene today."

Belgian police investigations have focused on an individual only identified as MG "located in Pakistan and in Afghanistan and important people in the al-Qaeda organisation".

Mr Delmulle described the raids as "the most important" anti-terrorism operation in Belgium following a one year investigation of a Belgian Islamist group involved in training as well as fighting on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

He said that police investigators believed the suspects had been working with and under the control of "important figures" in al-Qaeda.

"We don't know where the suicide attack was to take place," he said.

"It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can't be ruled out that Belgium or Europe could have been the target."

EU leaders were informed of the raids via national embassies as Belgian police officers went into action.

Heads of state and government are currently arriving in Brussels for a two-day summit to discuss the economic crisis and climate change.

The British Embassy in Belgium said there was "no increased alert" following the operation.

CNN : Belgian police arrest 'al Qaeda legend'

Belgian police arrest 'al Qaeda legend'

* Three suspects have alleged al Qaeda links, Belgian report says
* One had been given the green light to carry out a terrorist act
* Police detained 14 people with links to a Belgian branch of al Qaeda

December 12, 2008

(CNN) -- Belgian police Thursday arrested a woman they called an "al Qaeda living legend" as part of an operation to thwart a terror attack being planned to coincide with an EU summit in Brussels, a Belgian police source told CNN.

Police seized 14 people, one of whom was planning to carry out a suicide attack in Belgium, the source said. They had contacts at the "highest levels of al Qaeda," the source said.

The police source said officers "had only 24 hours to act."

The leaders of the European Union's 27 member states are meeting in Brussels Thursday and Friday. It is not clear that the heads of state and government themselves were the target of the planned attack.

The federal prosecutor's office in Belgium identified one of the suspects as Malika El-Aroud, the widow of one of the men who assassinated a key opponent of the Taliban in Afghanistan two days before September 11, 2001.

El-Aroud's late husband was one of two men who killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, a leader of the Northern Alliance, in a suicide mission ordered by Osama Bin Laden.

Belgian police aimed to prevent El-Aroud, whom the police source called an "al-Qaeda living legend," from moving to Afghanistan to play a role in the fight against the coalition forces there, the source said.

She is thought to be a recruiter for the anti-Western network, rather than a fighter, the source said.

El-Aroud described the "love" she and her late husband felt for Osama bin Laden in a 2006 interview with CNN.

"Most Muslims love Osama. It was he who helped the oppressed. It was he who stood up against the biggest enemy in the world, the United States. We love him for that," she told CNN then.

Gazing into CNN's cameras she said, "It's the pinnacle in Islam to be the widow of a martyr. For a woman it's extraordinary."

"Most of those arrested" Thursday had Belgian passports, the police source said. All 14 are of Moroccan descent.

Three of the suspects had traveled to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region to participate in fighting or training camps, and were in contact with an unnamed suspect who had direct links to important al Qaeda figures, police said.

Two of those three returned to Belgium several months ago and started surveillance operations, and the third returned to Belgium a week ago, police said. Intelligence showed that third person was ready to carry out a suicide attack, police said.

Information showed the suspect who was to carry out the attack had received the green light to execute the operation, police said. Investigators noted the suspect had said goodbye to his family "because he wanted to go to paradise with a clear conscience," police said.

Authorities also found a video meant for the suspect's family, which police said was probably a farewell tape. They did not find any explosives, the police said in a statement.

The 14 suspects were arrested after police carried out 16 search warrants in Brussels and one in the western Belgian city of Liege. During those searches, police seized computer equipment and documents and the 14 people, including the three who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and 11 others suspected of having given them logistical and material support.

Police said their investigation has been under way intensively since the end of 2007.

--CNN's Andrew Carey and Paula Newton contributed to this report.

FOX : 14 Alleged Al Qaeda-Linked Extremists Detained in Belgium

14 Alleged Al Qaeda-Linked Extremists Detained in Belgium

December 11, 2008

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Police detained 14 suspected Al Qaeda-linked extremists on Thursday in raids in Brussels and eastern Belgium, including one militant who allegedly was plotting a suicide attack.

The terror sweep came only hours before a European Union summit brought together the heads of 27 countries in Brussels, though the site of the purported attack was unclear. Nearly 250 police officers raided 16 locations in the capital and one in the eastern city of Liege overnight, confiscating computers, data storage equipment and a pistol.

"There was no other choice than to intervene today," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. He said one suspect had recorded what looked like a martyrdom video, including a farewell message.

"It is clear that we have to take the terror threat seriously," Prime Minister Yves Leterme said as he entered the EU summit building.

Helicopters flew overhead and police guarded dozens of motorcades traveling to the summit cordon.

Delmulle said it was unclear where the attack had been planned to take place. The suspects had traveled to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and it was possible the suicide bombing might have been drawn up there.

Thursday's raids were linked to a similar pre-Christmas sweep last year and Delmulle said the investigation showed at the time "a group of people were in Brussels with the task of committing an attack."

Investigators waited a year before moving in — opting to ferret out the entire cell rather a single part.

"It is now clear to all that we were dealing with a real risk," the justice and interior ministers said in a statement. "It is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."

The investigation centered on people linked to Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 for planning to a drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of a Belgian air base where about 100 American military personnel are stationed.

Security services in several European nations suspect Trabelsi, who trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, had links with extremists in Britain, France and elsewhere in Europe.

At the time of last year's arrests, authorities tightened security, warning of a heightened threat of attacks despite the arrests. Police stepped up patrols at Brussels airport, subway stations and the downtown Christmas market, which traditionally draws large crowds of holiday shoppers.

Leterme told reporters that the investigation justified the extreme security measures that were taken over the past year.

Authorities did not give a rundown of all the people under detention.

But Claude Moniquet, the president of the Brussels-based think tank European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, and national media said they included Moroccan-born Malika El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian who writes online in French under the name of Oum Obeyda.

"She is extremely active as a Jihadist who motivates" terrorists, Moniquet said in an interview. "She was writing online as recently as three weeks ago. She is very dangerous."

He did not elaborate on how he knew she had been detained.

El Aroud, who moved to Belgium from Morocco when she was very young, began writing online after her first husband died in the suicide attack in Afghanistan that killed anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud.

NYT : Terror Arrests Ahead of E.U. Summit

Terror Arrests Ahead of E.U. Summit

By STEVEN ERLANGER | December 11, 2008

PARIS — The Belgian police arrested 14 people suspected of having terrorist links in raids early Thursday, including a woman who writes jihadist screeds on the Internet and three men the Belgian authorities said had just returned from training camps along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

One had “said goodbye to his loved ones,” according to the Belgian federal prosecutor, Johan Delmulle, leading to fears of an imminent suicide attack.

Though the possible target was not clear, the arrests came on a day when European Union leaders began a two-day summit meeting in Brussels. “We don’t know where the suicide attack was to take place,” Mr. Delmulle said in Brussels. “It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can’t be ruled out that Belgium or Europe could have been the target.”

An investigation into the suspects had been under way for a year. But given the summit meeting, which effectively marks the end of the French presidency of the European Union, Mr. Delmulle said the Belgian authorities felt they had “no choice but to take action” or to sharply raise security around the meeting.

The police carried out 16 raids in Brussels and one in Liège. Those arrested include Malika El Aroud, 49, who accompanied her husband to Afghanistan in 2001, where he trained in a camp run by Al Qaeda and then, days before the 9/11 attacks, helped kill the anti-Taliban resistance leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud. Ms. El Aroud, whose husband was eventually killed, writes online as “Oum Obeyda.”

Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office, described Ms. El Aroud as “a very important and serious lady” and said the prosecutor would argue that she was a decision maker and fund-raiser. The case, Ms. Pellens said, is about terrorism but also about “grand theft and robbery” to finance the group.

Ms. El Aroud’s current husband, Moez Garsalloui, was also believed to have been arrested on Thursday, according to Claude Moniquet, president of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center in Brussels. But there was no official confirmation of his arrest.

Mr. Garsalloui was released in July 2007 after serving three weeks for promoting violence, and then disappeared. Belgian officials said he fled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Mr. Moniquet believes that he was one of three suspects prosecutors identified as having recently returned from training camps along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Another such person was tracked to South Asia but has not yet returned, Belgian officials said.

A statement from the federal prosecutor’s office said that several suspects seemed to have ties to Al Qaeda, and that there were “direct contacts between the group around the suspect ‘M. G.’ ” — the initials of Mr. Garsalloui — “and important people of the organization Al Qaeda.”

Ms. Pellens said she believed that the cases against the 14 were strong, based on the long period of investigation, surveillance and wire-tapping carried out by a team of 80 police officers.

The investigation stemmed from a case a year ago, when the Belgians arrested about a dozen people after the United States provided information that an attack in Brussels was imminent, Ms. Pellens said. Mr. Moniquet said that the pressure from Washington was so strong that the arrests were made before good cases could be made against the suspects, and all were released the following day. The target was believed to have been an American installation.

Both cases center on those close to Nizar Trabelsi, a former soccer player and member of Al Qaeda, the federal prosecutor’s office said. He has been jailed in Belgium since 2001 for involvement in a plot to blow up a NATO installation there, and was also accused of being involved in a Qaeda plot to blow up the American Embassy in Paris.

To justify the arrests a year ago, Belgian authorities said the suspects then were involved in an effort to help Mr. Trabelsi break out of jail, even though evidence for such a plot was at least six months old at the time, Belgian officials said Thursday. The group arrested on Thursday also has ties to Mr. Trabelsi and his wife, Belgian officials said. Mr. Trabelsi is fighting an extradition request from Washington.

Mr. Moniquet, noting that some of those arrested on Thursday were returning from Afghanistan, said he assumed that the target was in Europe. And, he said, with President-elect Barack Obama pledging to put more troops in Afghanistan and pressing European countries to step up their presence there, “it’s a good moment for those in Afghanistan to make an attack.” Mr. Moniquet added, “Strategically speaking, it makes sense for them to hit Europe.”

Basil Katz contributed reporting.

TIME : Belgian Police Break Up Plot Linked to al-Qaeda

Belgian Police Break Up Plot Linked to al-Qaeda

By Bruce Crumley | December 11, 2008

A planned terror strike in Europe that Belgian police claim to have foiled on Thursday was linked to al-Qaeda, authorities say. Some of the 14 suspects arrested had recently traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, officials said, and had planned to launch a suicide strike — although the target remains unknown. "When you have people returning from Afghanistan, as most of these people had, they're sufficiently hard-core that the question isn't whether they'll be undertaking plotting activity but when, and in what form," said a European counterterrorism official with knowledge of the case. "What's important for us to learn is, if the Taliban or their al-Qaeda allies decide to strike us today, who are they going to do it with: their old European networks, [or] via Pakistani groups, jihadist organizations in North Africa or maybe other operatives? The situation evolves constantly, and we've got to keep up with it."

Thursday's raids were carried out in Brussels and the eastern city of Liege, where police confiscated computers, hard drives and at least one gun. Though Belgian authorities say they have no firm idea of exactly how, when or where an attack was to have been carried out, they decided to move on the group after learning that one member had recorded a farewell video to his family. "We don't know who the suicide bomber was targeting, but we know he was ready to go," says Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the Belgian Public Prosecutor. "He had said his goodbyes."

The arrest of the network — which had been monitored by 80 police and antiterrorism officers working full-time since the start of the year, according to Pellens — came just hours before leaders of the European Union were set to open a two-day summit in the Belgian capital. That meeting doesn't appear to have been a target of a plot whose details authorities say remain hazy. Still, Belgian officials said the decision to seize the group had become urgent to prevent the designated suicide bomber from possibly launching an attack before police could discover the target and stop him.

Still, some experts wonder whether the arrests were premature, given the lack of information on the plot. "Could more evidence have been obtained? Might a full plot with targets and the weapons of attack have materialized if more time had been taken to just sit, watch and listen?" asked the European counterterrorism official. "Was everyone [in this network] under watch back from Afghanistan and [are they all] now under arrest? If not, that's a problem."

That question reflects the resurgence of Pakistan and Afghanistan as prime destinations for aspiring Europe-based jihadists in search of training. Following the ouster of the Taliban and the scattering of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq became the theater of choice for the volunteer jihadist, like 38-year-old Belgian convert Muriel Degauque, who blew herself up in an attack on U.S. troops north of Baghdad in November 2005.

"Now we're seeing growing numbers of European extremists turning up in the Afghan-Pakistan region again — often aided by networks created specially to help them get there," confides a French intelligence official. "This isn't a return to the pre–Sept. 11 situation, but it's certainly the closest to it we've seen since the fall of the Taliban."

Some of those arrested in Belgium connect with earlier episodes of al-Qaeda violence. First among them is Malika El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian national whose Tunisian husband Abdessater Dahmane was one of two men recruited from Belgian extremist networks to assassinate Afghanistan's key anti-Taliban commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two days before 9/11. Since then, blogging under the pseudonym Oum Obeyda, El Aroud has been a fiery advocate for the jihadist cause, urging Muslim men and women to take up the fight.

Having become a conspicuous figure to which like-minded radicals tend to flock has made El Aroud of particular interest to investigators. In December she was among several people arrested, but eventually released, on suspicion that they were planning to break a convicted jihadist out of prison. If her visibility turns out to have aided Belgian cops in breaking up a jihadist plot, El Aroud's vocal radicalism may prompt future plotters to avoid her like the plague.

"She is extreme in her beliefs and her expression of them, which makes a lot of things she says and those who rush to echo them on radical websites somewhat transparent," says the European official, who declined to say whether such web communications were part of what led to Thursday's arrests. "This group she's been arrested with were real in their intent. The big question now is, Will we learn everything about it and its direction that we could have?"

— With reporting by Leo Cendrowicz / Brussels

Guardian : 14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

Probable terrorist attack prevented, say ministers
'Martyrdom' video found but target unknown

Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor | December 12, 2008

Belgian police detained 14 people alleged to have links to al-Qaida in Brussels yesterday as the EU summit got under way. One of those held had made a "martyrdom video", including a farewell message, according to Belgian authorities.

The arrests took place during a series of raids in Brussels and included suspects who had been under surveillance for more than a year and had previously travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The police action came just hours before the heads of 27 countries assembled in Brussels for the summit, although there was no evidence that the meeting itself had been specifically targeted.

During the course of Wednesday night and yesterday morning, about 250 police officers raided 16 locations in the capital and one in Liège. Among items seized, according to police, were computers, data storage equipment and a pistol.

"There was no other choice than to intervene today," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. He said a "martyrdom" video had been found in which the suspect allegedly "said goodbye to his loved ones so as to be able to enter paradise with a clear conscience".

Delmulle said it was unclear where the attack had been planned to take place. He said it was possible that a suicide bombing plan might have been drawn up during visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was not clear if any planned attack was aimed at Europe or elsewhere, he added.

Belgian politicians supported the police action. "It is now clear to all that we were dealing with a real risk," the justice and interior ministers said in a statement. "It is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."

Yves Leterme, the prime minister, commended the police action. "It is clear that we have to take the terror threat seriously," he said before the first session of the summit.

No details of the nationalities of those held by police were given but it is understood that they included four Belgians.

The investigation is focusing on individuals linked to Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian former footballer sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 in Belgium for planning to a drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of the Kleine Brogel airbase, where about 100 American military personnel were stationed.

Almost exactly a year ago, Belgian police arrested 14 people alleged to be extremists planning to free Trabelsi. At the time, the government also claimed that it had information suggesting the "preparation of an attack". Trabelsi is also said to have had links with extremist groups in Britain and France.

British counter-terrorism officials said last night that they were working with Belgian and other European security services to try to establish whether the EU summit was the target. They said they were keeping an "open mind". There was no suggestion the target was a British one.

The summit went ahead yesterday under heavy security, with police helicopters flying overhead.

Claude Moniquet, the president of a Brussels-based thinktank, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre, said that those detained included Moroccan-born Malika el-Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian who writes online in French under the name of Oum Obeyda.

In an interview with the New York Times last May, she said: "It's not my role to set off bombs, that's ridiculous. I have a weapon. It's to write. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb."

Reuters : Senate report ties Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib abuse

Senate report ties Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib abuse

By David Morgan | December 11, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to portions of a report released on Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The report's executive summary, made public by the committee's Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed to the abuse by authorizing aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay on December 2, 2002.

He rescinded the authorization six weeks later. But the report said word of his approval continued to spread within U.S. military circles and encouraged the use of harsh techniques as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report concluded that Rumsfeld's actions were "a direct cause of detainee abuse" at Guantanamo and "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq."

"The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the executive summary said.

"Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at (Guantanamo)."

The detainee scandal at Abu Ghraib and later revelations of aggressive U.S. interrogations such as "waterboarding" led to an international outcry and charges that the United States allowed prisoners to be tortured, a claim denied by the Bush administration.

The Bush administration has since recanted the policies under pressure from Congress, while President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The report found that the military derived the techniques from a Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape program, or SERE, which trains U.S. soldiers to resist enemy interrogation that does not conform to the Geneva Conventions or international law.

"These policies are wrong and must never be repeated," McCain, who last month ended an unsuccessful bid for the White House, said in a statement released with the executive summary.

McCain said the report revealed an "inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody."

The full report, billed as the most thorough examination of U.S. military detainee policy by Congress, remains classified.

Committee staff said the full report was approved on November 20 in a unanimous voice vote by 17 of the panel's 25 members. The panel consists of 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans.

The executive summary also traces the erosion of detainee treatment standards to a Feb,. 7, 2002, memorandum signed by President George W. Bush stating that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the U.S. war with al Qaeda and that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or legal protections.

"The president's order closed off application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment," the summary said.

Members of Bush's Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed, according to the report.

The committee also blamed former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers for undermining the military's review of interrogation methods.

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

NYT : India Presses Pakistan on Terrorism but Finds Its Own Options Limited

India Presses Pakistan on Terrorism but Finds Its Own Options Limited

By SOMINI SENGUPTA | December 11, 2008

NEW DELHI — Even as Indian officials on Thursday lambasted Pakistan as the “epicenter” of terrorism and dismissed its crackdown on extremist groups as inadequate in the wake of last month’s attacks in Mumbai, they all but ruled out the prospect of a military confrontation.

Rather, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told members of Parliament that it would take time for India to turn off the tap of support for militant groups operating across the border, and that war was “no solution.”

“We shall have to patiently confront it,” he said. “We have no intention to be provoked.”

His words signaled India’s delicate and somewhat circumscribed options. If it were to carry out even limited military strikes against Pakistan, it would be likely to lose the support of its allies, namely the United States, which fears that Pakistan would then divert troops from its western border with Afghanistan to its eastern one with India.

Second, India confronts a weak civilian government in Pakistan, which, as Indian officials have long acknowledged privately, has little muscle to counter the powerful military and spy agency.

India’s options include suspending peace talks and what military analysts call limited punitive strikes on terrorist training camps.

Mr. Mukherjee said Thursday that he had no “quarrel” with the administration of President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan but pressed him to do more to dismantle support for militants. Initially after the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Zardari had described the suspects as “nonstate actors” over whom the Pakistani government had no control. On Thursday, that statement met with a stinging retort from Mr. Mukherjee.

“Are they nonstate actors coming from heaven, or are they coming from a different planet?” Mr. Mukherjee asked. “Nonstate actors are operating from a particular country. What we are most respectfully submitting, suggesting to the government of Pakistan: Please act. Mere expression of intention is not adequate.”

India’s coalition government, led by the Congress Party, is keenly aware of a wave of public outrage over the administration’s failure to heed intelligence warnings or stop the attackers more quickly. On Thursday, it unveiled an overhaul of the national security system. The government said it would set up a national investigative agency to coordinate with various state and local law enforcement agencies, increase coastal security and modernize the police forces.

“Given the nature of the threat, we can’t go back to business as usual,” Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a speech to Parliament. He said it would require “hard decisions to prepare the country and people to face the challenge of terrorism.”

The gunmen who carried out the three-day siege of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, killed 171 people. Nine of the gunmen were killed and a 10th was arrested. The Mumbai police said all of the attackers were Pakistani citizens who traveled across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai, formerly Bombay. They are believed to have belonged to a Pakistan-based group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is officially banned in Pakistan.

This week, in response to appeals by India and the United States, the United Nations Security Council declared that a charity called Jamaat-ud-Dawa was a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba and subject to United Nations sanctions, including the freezing of its assets and a travel ban on four of its leaders. Those leaders include Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, the head of the charity, and Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who India said had planned the Mumbai attacks and whose arrest the Pakistani government announced last Sunday.

Indian officials dismissed the arrests as inadequate. They pointed out that Pakistan had placed many of the same men under house arrest after the attacks on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, which India said was the work of Pakistan-based groups, but quietly released them later.

“We have noted the reported steps taken by Pakistan, but clearly much more needs to be done,” India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, told Parliament on Thursday evening. He called for the dismantling of “the infrastructure of terrorism” across the border and then issued a warning to India’s allies abroad. “The political will of the international community,” he said, “must be translated into concrete and sustained action on the ground.”

India’s wait-and-watch approach seems to be primarily directed at the United States, political analysts here say, and particularly at President-elect Barack Obama, who India hopes will exert a stronger hand against Pakistan. “India will have to wait until the logic of this is going to work out and the United States will have to act,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a strategic affairs analyst in New Delhi. “What we are waiting for is when Obama takes over, there will be a showdown between Pakistan and the United States, unless Pakistan is prepared to mend its ways.”

The United States has sought to temper India’s reaction and has pushed Pakistan to do more. The deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte, was in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Thursday, a week after visits by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“There is a lot of pressure to do something meaningful and see Pakistan take long-term irreversible steps, but the Indian government has up to this point been very cautious,” said Xenia Dormandy, a former Bush administration official who now runs the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

If Pakistan does not go further, she added, India would be likely to act with a heavier hand. “Whether it is as forward leaning as bombing camps in Jammu and Kashmir, I don’t know,” she said. “I think you will see India take some stronger steps in the next two, three weeks.”

Adding to the difficulty of dealing with Pakistan, Indian and foreign analysts point out, is that the civilian government itself confronts a powerful army and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the spy agency. Indeed, immediately after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan’s civilian administration announced that it would send its spy chief to India; within hours, that offer was withdrawn.

“Who do you deal with, who do you talk to?” a Western diplomat in India said. “If you get the government to do something about it and if the real organization is the ISI — and I say if — then any action by the government is going to be of limited use, really. It is a problem. It is one everybody is thinking about.”

Press TV : Suspects with al-Qaeda links arrested

Suspects with al-Qaeda links arrested

December 12, 2008

Belgian officials say that the police have arrested 14 people suspected of terrorist links, allegedly close to committing an act of terror.

The arrests made on Thursday took place as officials said the suspects were allegedly going to commit an al-Qaeda-style terrorist act.

A Belgian government statement said that the target remained unknown but added, "it is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."

Following 16 overnight raids by police in Brussels and Liege, the suspects were taken into custody. This was just hours before EU leaders were to begin a two-day summit meeting in Brussels to debate an economic stimulus plan and environmental proposals, UPI reported.

One of the suspects had already 'said goodbye to his loved ones' in a farewell video, federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. Another suspect, Malika el-Aroud, is the widow of one of the men who assassinated a key opponent of the Taliban in Afghanistan two days before Sept. 11, 2001, CNN reported.

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme meanwhile told reporters as he arrived at the EU summit, "The very effective reaction of law-enforcement authorities shows that these security measures are really necessary."

SM/HAR

AHN : Suicide Bomber Hits Iraqi Restaurant, Kills 50

Suicide Bomber Hits Iraqi Restaurant, Kills 50

AHN Staff | December 11, 2008

Baghdad, Iraq (AHN) - A suicide bomber walked in and blew himself up inside a restaurant near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk killing about 50 people and injuring 100 hundred others on Thursday.

Officials and witnesses said women and children were among those killed and injured from the explosion that struck during lunch hour and on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Kirkuk deputy governor Saeed Rakan suspect that the suicide bomber was targeting Kurdish politicians and Arab tribal officials having a lunch meeting at the restaurant.

Last year, a car bomb exploded and killed 25 people in a branch of the same restaurant, which was regarded as safe and frequented by Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen politicians.

Reuters : Pakistan acts against one of India's most-wanted

Pakistan acts against one of India's most-wanted

By Krittivas Mukherjee and C. Bryson Hull | December 11, 2008

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pakistan put the founder of a militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks under house arrest on Thursday, responding to intense pressure to wipe out what India called "the epicenter of terrorism."

The detention of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group who now runs the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity seen as its front, came after the United Nations placed him on its terrorism sanctions list.

"Police have encircled the house of Hafiz Saeed in Lahore and told him he cannot go out of the home. They have told him detention orders will be formally served to him shortly," Saeed's spokesman Abdullah Montazir said.

India blames LeT for the Mumbai attacks which killed 179 people last month and also for earlier ones, including a 2001 assault on parliament that nearly thrust the nuclear-armed south Asian rivals into their fourth war since independence from Britain in 1947.

A spokesman for Pakistan's central bank said directives had been issued to banks to freeze the accounts of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Saeed and three associates included in the U.N. sanctions, which also impose a travel ban on the blacklisted individuals.

Police in Karachi and Hyderabad sealed the offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Television reports said the charity would be banned though no official announcement had yet been made as yet.

But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking to parliament before the lower house passed a largely symbolic resolution condemning the attacks and pledging to find those responsible, said Pakistan's efforts had not been enough.

"We have to galvanize the international community into dealing sternly and effectively with the epicenter of terrorism, which is located in Pakistan. The infrastructure of terrorism has to be dismantled permanently," he said in comments that preceded Saeed's house arrest.

"WAR NO SOLUTION"

Singh said he had told world leaders that India "could not be satisfied with mere assurances."

"We have noted the reported steps that have been taken by Pakistan. But clearly much more needs to be done and the actions should be pursued to their logical conclusion," he said,

He also reiterated that "all means and measures" needed to wipe out militants would be used.

India has been angry at what it sees as the Pakistani government's tolerance of militants, and Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee earlier on Thursday said India had given Pakistan a list of 40 people it wants handed over.

Asked by an angry lawmaker why India was not attacking Pakistan after so much proof of its complicity in fomenting trouble in India, Mukherjee replied: "That is no solution."

Indian officials had previously demanded that Pakistan hand over 20 suspected militants and others it wants for past attacks.

Keeping up the pressure on Pakistan, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arrived in Islamabad on Thursday to follow up visits by his boss, Condoleezza Rice, to India and Pakistan last week.

Washington has engaged in intensive diplomacy to stop tensions from mounting between Pakistan and India, and to keep Islamabad focused on fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Global pressure has seen Pakistan raid several Islamist militant training camps and detain or arrest some of the militant leaders India wants extradited.

Pakistani security forces have arrested around 20 militants in raids, an intelligence official told Reuters on Thursday.

Analysts say Pakistani intelligence has ties to some of those India wants, and that its civilian government risks political fallout if it acts against them.

Saeed led the LeT militant group until December 2001, when he quit a few days before Pakistan complied with a U.S. move to put the group on a list of individuals and organizations with links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Saeed, one of the most wanted men in India, has since headed Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

Newsweek : Pakistan’s Big Risk

Pakistan’s Big Risk

The ban on an Islamist group linked to the Mumbai attacks gives Islamabad one more enemy to worry about.

Ron Moreau | Newsweek Web Exclusive | December 11, 2008

When a devastating earthquake shook mountainous Kashmir in October 2005, killing 80,000 people, burying entire villages under landslides, one of the first and best-equipped relief organizations on the scene was the Jamaat-ul-Dawa charity. It brought in physicians, surgeons and nurses. It set up emergency surgical and first-aid clinics. It pitched tents to house the homeless and distributed food and medicine to tens of thousands. It stayed behind and helped to build some 5,000 permanent homes for the displaced.

It's no wonder that Jamaat was able to react so quickly. Kashmir has long been a recruiting and training ground for Jamaat's other face—the Islamist, anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrilla organization, which both Indian and U.S. intelligence have singled out as the planner and organizer of last month's murderous Mumbai attacks. Lashkar's main aim is to wrest the Indian sector of Kashmir from New Delhi's control through violence.

Today Islamabad took the extraordinary and surprising step of banning Jamaat from Pakistan. Police quickly closed dozens of Jamaat's offices across the country, including nine in the sprawling port city of Karachi, the country's largest. The government also issued an arrest warrant for the Jamaat's amir, or supreme leader, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is based at a mosque and madrassa complex in Lahore. "We are required to take action against Jamaat and its leaders under the Security Council resolution," said Sherry Rehman, the information minister told NEWSWEEK.

In a startling admission for a Pakistani leader, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said today that his government was investigating links between Jamaat and Lashkar, and admitted that "the two groups have the same leadership." This is the first time any Pakistan leader has acknowledged the link between the two groups.

The crackdown is the Pakistani government's most serious action taken against an extremist organization since soon after 9/11, when it banned Lashkar. It could be a dangerous gamble for Islamabad. Many Pakistanis, who may be sympathetic to Jamaat and its charitable works and therefore willing to overlook its association with Lashkar's gunmen, could oppose the government's iron-fisted policy. Islamist groups and the religious parties will no doubt try to organize public anti-government and pro-Jamaat organizations. The group's suppression may also drive many of its adherents underground where they could hook up with still-active Lashkar operatives and begin a violent action against the government.

Pakistan's move against Jamaat comes after weeks of pressure on Islamabad by India and the United States. Jamaat's top operatives, such as Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, one of Lashkar's founders, recruited, trained and controlled the 10 gunmen who carried out the killing of more than 170 people in Mumbai, according to Indian and U.S. intelligence. Pakistan at first firmly denied that any Pakistanis were involved in the massacre, but this week, as evidence of Lashkar's involvement mounted, the government belatedly took action against the Lashkar-Jamaat combine. It started by raiding a riverside Jamaat madrassa complex near Muzaffarabad last Sunday. After a brief firefight it arrested Lakhvi and several other key Lashkar leaders.

That move was not enough to satisfy New Delhi and Washington. To increase the pressure, a United Nations Security Council committee on Wednesday declared Jamaat a terrorist organization and slapped it with U.N. sanctions, including the freezing of its assets, a travel ban on its members and an arms embargo on the organization. On Thursday, to ramp up the pressure, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arrived in Islamabad on Thursday on the heels of Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen. Sensing that further resistance could seriously damage relations with Washington, Pakistan launched what appeared to be a nationwide crackdown on Jamaat and its leadership.

There's little doubt that the distinction between Lashkar and Jamaat, which roughly translates as "enter into the fold of Islam," is more apparent than real. Both organizations fed into the other. Saeed, a onetime university professor and adherent to the harsh Wahhabi school of Islam, had founded Jamaat back in 1985 as a relief organization to help flood victims. Soon afterwards he and Lakhvi founded Lashkar with the assistance of the Pakistani military's powerful Inter-Service Intelligence spy agency. The ISI and the Pakistani military used Lashkar as they did other similar extremist guerrilla groups they created as an inexpensive foreign-policy arm of the Pakistani state. Lashkar's men fought in both Afghanistan and inside Indian Kashmir, furthering Pakistani goals.

Saeed, from his lair in Lahore, regularly gives anti-Indian and anti-American speeches and denounces Pakistan's cooperation with Washington in the war against armed extremists. Just before the warrant for his arrest was issued, Saeed told a news conference in Lahore: "If India or the U.S. has any proof against Jamaat-ul-Dawa, we are ready to stand in any court. We do not beg, we demand justice." He denied that his group was involved in the Mumbai attacks. "We will challenge the [U.N.] decision in the international court of justice," he said. Not long after he spoke, a large contingent of police surrounded his house in Lahore and ordered him not to venture out.

This isn't the first time Saeed has been placed under house arrest. Shortly after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, New Delhi accused Lashkar of involvement, which led to then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to ban Lashkar from Pakistan. Saeed was detained and spent most of 2002 under house arrest. He then let it be known that he had severed his links with Lashkar. Upon his quiet release he ostensibly concentrated on leading Jamaat, but he continued to spew his hard-line hateful messages.

It's unlikely that Saeed ever cut any ties with Lashkar because the two groups were one in the same. Jamaat was always the organization's public, philanthropic face, while Lashkar was its militant arm. Funds generated for Jamaat and its charitable relief efforts may have been channeled to Lashkar's militants. Led by Saeed, Jamaat's followers openly preached jihad against India, a wresting of Kashmir from India by any means, and virulent anti-Americanism. They are bitterly opposed to any rapprochement between India and Pakistan, seeing it as being a sellout of the Kashmiri cause of independence or Pakistani control.

Over the years Jamaat has morphed into a respected and popular charity. It has a nationwide footprint. Recently when an earthquake leveled hundreds of villages in Baluchistan, Jamaat was quickly there with a Kashmir-like relief effort. Its followers even traveled to Iran to help the victims of the earthquake in Bam in 2003. It sent aid to Indonesia following the 2006 tsunami. It operates mobile medical camps in poor, remote areas, carrying out surgery and eye treatment for free. It operates 150 or so free pharmaceutical dispensaries around the country. It publishes a weekly newspaper, three monthly magazines and even a bimonthly for children. Not surprisingly, the publications' message is strongly Islamist and anti-Indian. According to its Web site, Jamaat has local offices in "almost every town and city" in Pakistan. It claims to have spent at least $8.74 million since 2003 on various charitable initiatives.

Its flagship operation is located in a poor rural area near Muridke, just west of Lahore. The 150-acre, gated complex, called Markaz-e-Taiba, or "Center of the Pious," features a mosque, a madrassa for 3,000 students— including some girls, a hospital and a farm. At the school, the students who are largely drawn from the dirt-poor villages surrounding the complex not only learn the Koran by heart but also study with the use of computers and science labs. "There is no fear here," says Yahya Mujahid, a Jamaat spokesman. "It is upsetting," Mujahid told NEWSWEEK just before the crackdown, "to be doubted and misrepresented when all we have done and all we want to do is to help our fellow man."

So far Lashkar has not attacked the Pakistani security services in retaliation. But it could follow the example of other Kashmiri guerrilla groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad, which was also banned and subsequently struck back violently against the government. Now Lashkar, and disgruntled Jamaat supporters, may strike back. Islamabad may have taken a giant step toward satisfying Indian and American demands for tough action. It may also find itself facing not only the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda along the Afghan border, but another armed and dangerous enemy as well.

With Zahid Hussain

MSNBC : 9/11 suspects ask to make 'confessions'

9/11 suspects ask to make 'confessions'

Select relatives of victims attend proceedings at Guantanamo Bay

December 8, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four co-defendants told a military judge Monday they want to immediately confess at their war-crimes tribunal, setting up likely guilty pleas and their possible executions.

The five said they decided on Nov. 4, the day President-elect Barack Obama was elected to the White House, to abandon all defenses against the capital charges — in effect daring the Pentagon to grant their wish for martyrdom.

The judge ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon can apply the death penalty — which military prosecutors are seeking — without a jury trial.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others said they would postpone entering pleas until the military determines their two co-defendants are mentally competent. "We want everyone to plead together," he said.

Mohammed and another defendant have said they would welcome execution as a path to martyrdom, but the announcement came as a shock to some of the victims' families.

Families attend hearings

"When they admitted their guilt, my reaction was, 'Yes!' My inclination was to jump up and say 'Yay!' But I managed to maintain my decorum," said Maureen Santora, of Long Island City, N.Y., whose firefighter son Christopher died responding to the World Trade Center attacks.

Santora was one of nine victims' relatives watching the proceedings, the first time relatives of the 2,975 people killed in the attacks have been allowed to observe the war-crimes trials. She watched from the back of the courtroom, wearing black and clutching a photo of her son in uniform.

Alice Hoagland, of Redwood Estates, California, was there for her son Mark Bingham, who is believed to be one of the passengers who fought hijackers on United Flight 93 before it crashed in rural Pennsylvania. She said the defendants' announcement was "like a real bombshell to me."

She told reporters during a break that she hoped Obama, "an even-minded and just man," would ensure the five alleged mass murderers are punished. She said she welcomed the opportunity to see the trial because it was a "historic" moment. But she said it did not heal the loss of her son.

"I do not seek closure in my life," she said as she blinked back tears.

'I don't trust you'

In a letter the judge read aloud in court, the five defendants said they "request an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions."

The judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, asked all five if they were prepared to enter a plea, and all five said yes. But Henley said competency hearings for two of the detainees precluded them from immediately filing pleas.

The letter implies the defendants want to plead guilty, but does not specify whether they will admit to any specific charges. It also says they wish to drop all previous defense motions.

However, that didn't mean they had repented.

"I reaffirm my allegiance to Osama bin Laden," defendant Ramzi Binalshibh blurted out in Arabic at the end of the hearing. "I hope the jihad continues and I hope it hits the heart of America with weapons of mass destruction."

Their letter was so unexpected that Henley was unsure how to proceed. He noted that the law specifies that only defendants unanimously convicted by a jury can be sentenced to death in the tribunals. No jury has been seated.

Mohammed, who has already told interrogators he was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, also said Monday that he has no faith in the judge, his Pentagon-appointed lawyers or President George W. Bush.

Sporting a chest-length gray beard, Mohammed said in English: "I don't trust you."

He also dismissed one of his standby military attorneys because he had served in Iraq.

Guantanamo expected to close

The first U.S. war-crimes trials since World War II are teetering on the edge of extinction. Obama opposes the military commissions — as the Guantanamo trials are called — and has pledged to close the detention center holding some 250 men soon after taking office next month.

Even if a trial were held, it is all but certain none would begin before Obama takes office on Jan. 20. Still, the U.S. military is pressing forward with the case until it receives orders to the contrary.

"We serve the sitting president and will continue to do so until President-elect Obama takes office," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.
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Human-rights observers said the judge's uncertainty about sentencing is further evidence that the Guantanamo trials should be shut down.

"The fact that the judge doesn't know whether they can be sentenced to death in one of the most important trials in U.S. history shows the circus-like atmosphere of the military commissions," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "These cases belong in federal court."

One observer who lost his parents in the attacks said he supports holding the trials at Guantanamo Bay.

"The U.S. is doing its best to prove to the world that this is a fair proceeding," said Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, Md., whose parents Donald and Jean were on United Flight 93.

"It was stunning to see today how not only do the defendants comprehend their extensive rights ... they are explicitly asking the court to hurry up because they are bored with the due process they are receiving."

Guardian : 14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

• Probable terrorist attack prevented, say ministers
• 'Martyrdom' video found but target unknown

Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor | December 12, 2008

Belgian police detained 14 people alleged to have links to al-Qaida in Brussels yesterday as the EU summit got under way. One of those held had made a "martyrdom video", including a farewell message, according to Belgian authorities.

The arrests took place during a series of raids in Brussels and included suspects who had been under surveillance for more than a year and had previously travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The police action came just hours before the heads of 27 countries assembled in Brussels for the summit, although there was no evidence that the meeting itself had been specifically targeted.

During the course of Wednesday night and yesterday morning, about 250 police officers raided 16 locations in the capital and one in Liège. Among items seized, according to police, were computers, data storage equipment and a pistol.

"There was no other choice than to intervene today," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. He said a "martyrdom" video had been found in which the suspect allegedly "said goodbye to his loved ones so as to be able to enter paradise with a clear conscience".

Delmulle said it was unclear where the attack had been planned to take place. He said it was possible that a suicide bombing plan might have been drawn up during visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was not clear if any planned attack was aimed at Europe or elsewhere, he added.

Belgian politicians supported the police action. "It is now clear to all that we were dealing with a real risk," the justice and interior ministers said in a statement. "It is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."

Yves Leterme, the prime minister, commended the police action. "It is clear that we have to take the terror threat seriously," he said before the first session of the summit.

No details of the nationalities of those held by police were given but it is understood that they included four Belgians.

The investigation is focusing on individuals linked to Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian former footballer sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 in Belgium for planning to a drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of the Kleine Brogel airbase, where about 100 American military personnel were stationed.

Almost exactly a year ago, Belgian police arrested 14 people alleged to be extremists planning to free Trabelsi. At the time, the government also claimed that it had information suggesting the "preparation of an attack". Trabelsi is also said to have had links with extremist groups in Britain and France.

British counter-terrorism officials said last night that they were working with Belgian and other European security services to try to establish whether the EU summit was the target. They said they were keeping an "open mind". There was no suggestion the target was a British one.

The summit went ahead yesterday under heavy security, with police helicopters flying overhead.

Claude Moniquet, the president of a Brussels-based thinktank, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre, said that those detained included Moroccan-born Malika el-Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian who writes online in French under the name of Oum Obeyda.

In an interview with the New York Times last May, she said: "It's not my role to set off bombs, that's ridiculous. I have a weapon. It's to write. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb."

MSNBC : 160 NATO supply trucks torched in Pakistan

160 NATO supply trucks torched in Pakistan

Incident is biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line to Afghanistan

December 7, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Militants blasted their way into two transport terminals in Pakistan on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, in the biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line, officials said.

The U.S. military said its losses in the raid near the northwestern city of Peshawar would have only a "minimal" impact on its operations against resurgent Taliban-led militants in Afghanistan.

However, the attack's boldness will fuel concern that Taliban militants are tightening their hold around Peshawar and could choke the supply route through the famed Khyber Pass.

Up to 75 percent of supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan pass through Pakistan after being unloaded from ships at the Arabian sea port of Karachi. NATO is already seeking an alternative route through Central Asia.

Terminal manager Kifayatullah Khan said armed men flattened the gate before dawn with a rocket-propelled grenade, shot dead a guard and set fire to a total of 106 vehicles, including about 70 Humvees.

An Associated Press reporter who visited the depot saw six rows of destroyed Humvees and military trucks parked close together, some of them on flatbed trailers, all of them gutted and twisted by the flames.

Khan said shipping documents showed they were destined for U.S. forces and the Western-trained Afghan National Army.

The attackers fled after a brief exchange of fire with police, who arrived about 40 minutes later, Khan said.

The nine other guards who were on duty but stood helplessly aside put the number of assailants at 300, Khan said, though police official Kashif Alam said there were only 30.

At the nearby Faisal depot, manager Shah Iran said 60 vehicles destined for Afghanistan as well as three Pakistani trucks were burned in a similar assault.

It was unclear if one or two bands of gunmen were involved.

Latest in a series of attacks

The attack was the latest in a series that have highlighted the vulnerability of the supply route to the spreading power of the Taliban and other Islamic militants in the border region.

Suspected insurgents also attacked the Faisal terminal last week and burned 12 trucks loaded with NATO supplies, including several Humvees. Two guards were shot dead.

In November, militants made off with a Humvee during a raid on the treacherous road from Peshawar to the Afghan border and showed it off later to reporters at a militant stronghold further south.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan said in a statement that an unspecified number of its containers were destroyed in the attack but that their loss would have "minimal effect on our operations."

"It's militarily insignificant," U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green said. "You can't imagine the volume of supplies that come through there and elsewhere and other ways."

"So far there hasn't been a significant loss or impact to our mission," she said.

Pakistan halted traffic through the Khyber Pass for several days in November while it arranged for troops to guard the slow-moving convoys.

Shahedullah Baig, a spokesman for the interior minister in Islamabad, insisted Sunday that the extra security covered the terminals.

"They are fully protected, but in this kind of situation such incidents happen," Baig said.

However, Khan, the depot manager, said that was untrue, and there were only a handful of police at the terminals on Sunday afternoon.

Khan said his business, which handles some 600 truckloads a month for foreign troops in Afghanistan, had received repeated threats. He didn't want to discuss whom they were from for fear of incurring further wrath.

"We don't feel safe here at all," he said. "It is almost impossible for us to continue with this business."

Peshawar has seen a surge in violence in recent weeks, including the slaying of an American working on a U.S.-funded aid project.

The city lies close to the lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border, where Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaida leaders are believed to be hiding.

On Saturday, a car bomb detonated in a busy market area of the city, killing 29 people and injuring 100 more. The blast wrecked a Shiite Muslim mosque and a hotel, but the motive and culprits remained unclear.

The instability in Pakistan's northwest coincides with serious tensions with its eastern neighbor India in the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

New Delhi blames the attack, which killed 171 people, on an Islamic militant group fighting Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region, heightening tension between the nuclear-armed neighbors that could distract Pakistan from its role in helping the U.S. fight terrorism.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Counterpunch : By Way of Pakistan: From Baghdad to Mumbai

By Way of Pakistan: From Baghdad to Mumbai

By PATRICK COCKBURN | December 1, 2008

I used to look out from the balcony of The Independent’s first floor room in the al-Hamra hotel in Baghdad thinking that one day the hotel would attacked and wondering from which direction the attack would come. The general consensus among the correspondents and security men in the Hamra, which boasted 65 armed guards, was that the weak point in our defences was the single blast wall about 30 yards from the back of the hotel. On the other side of it was a public car park which anybody could enter.

The consensus view turned out to be all too correct. I was out of the hotel on November 18, 2005, when two vehicles driven by suicide bombers entered the car park. The first rammed the concrete wall and detonated his explosives, the idea being that the blast would open a breach enabling the second vehicle, packed with 1,000 kilos of explosives to reach the hotel. It almost worked, but the crater created by the first bomb was so deep that the second bomber could not get through. He blew himself up just short of his target, killing half a dozen people and badly damaging this part of the hotel which has never been reoccupied.

We never knew the identity of the two men who had died trying to kill us but at that time most of the suicide bombers were Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians and Libyans. I had been emphasizing for several years that the Iraqi insurgency against the US occupation was essentially home grown. Aside from the suicide bombers themselves, almost all the guerrilla fighters who were launching attacks on American troops and fledgling Iraqi government forces were Iraqi. Most of them had been trained militarily in Saddam Hussein’s army or security forces.

At that time the White House and the Pentagon were still ludicrously pretending that the Sunni Arab uprising which spread so fast after the summer of 2003 was a mixture of foreign fighters and ‘remnants’ or ‘dead enders’ of the old regime. It was easy enough for me and other correspondents to pour scorn on this idea. Iraq was full of weapons and every household owned one. No foreign suppliers were needed. Whenever there was a successful ambush of US troops in a Sunni area local people would dance with joy amidst the blazing vehicles.

We were essentially right about the rebellion being home grown, but perhaps we should have emphasized more the significance of foreign support for the rebels. The American neo-cons were openly boasting that after overthrowing Saddam the Iranian and Syrian regimes were next on the US list. Not surprisingly both governments had an incentive to make sure US rule in Iraq never stabilized. Nor were they alone. All the conservative Sunni Arab regimes of the Middle East were alarmed by an American land army in Iraq in support of a Shia-Kurdish government. The anti-American guerrillas found they had many friends.

In the immediate aftermath of the murderous attacks in Mumbai much of the analysis has a familiar ring, but now it is the west which is downplaying foreign involvement. Indian allegations about “external linkages” of the terrorists is wearily reported as an unfortunate resumption of Pakistani-Indian finger pointing. Television and newspaper commentary on terrorist outrages is frequently provided by self-appointed ‘terrorist experts’ whose credentials remain mysterious. These supposed experts now emphasise the alienation of Indian Muslims and suggesting that the origin of the terrorist assault on Mumbai is home grown, the fruit of the radicalization of Indian Muslims by systematic discrimination against them by the Indian state.

Exactly who was behind the bloody mayhem in Mumbai is still unclear. The Hindu newspaper was yesterday reporting that three of the suspects captured by the police were members of Lashkar-i-Taiba (the Army of the Pious), which has several thousand members in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, and the gunmen had arrived in Mumbai by ship from Karachi in Pakistan. The group is one of the three largest fighting against India in Kashmir.

The origins and motives of the men who slaughtered so many people in Mumbai will emerge in the coming days. But already the butchery should be underlining one of the greatest of the many failings of the Bush administration post 9/11. Pakistan was always the real base for al-Qa’ida. It was the Pakistani ISI military intelligence which fostered and partly directed the Taliban before 2001 and revived it afterwards. It is Pakistan which has sustained the Islamic Jihadi fighters in Kashmir where half the Indian army is tied down. Yet the Bush administration in its folly allied itself to General Pervez Musharaf and the Pakistani army post 9/11 ensuring that Jihadi groups always had a base.

It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the west to lecture the Indian government now about not over-reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai. The way in which the Pakistani military has allowed Kashmiri and Pakistani militants free range in Pakistan created the milieu from which the attacks this week came. It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened.

The real political background to Mumbai is succinctly summed up by Ahmed Rashid in his excellent book ‘Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.’ In Pakistan, he writes, ‘a nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that have sponsored Islamic extremism as an intrinsic part of their foreign policy for nearly four decades have found it extremely difficult to give up their self-destructive and double-dealing policies.’ Unless Barack Obama can persuade them to do so he will achieve no more as president than Mr Bush.