slim
06-06-2006, 07:51 PM
Most of these guys didn't even know each other ....but ........they planned car bomb attacks through e-Mails and intercepted telephone calls.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2214663,00.html
British Computer Whizz-Kid Exports Terror Via Internet
An e-mail trail has led to the arrest of suspects across the world who were recruited and then schooled in bombmaking
By: Daniel McGrory
AN INTERNET trail left by a British computer expert has led investigators to an intricate terror network spreading from the backstreets of Baghdad through cells of young militants living in European capitals to Islamic extremists plotting car-bomb attacks in North America.
For nine months police and intelligence agents in eight countries have patiently worked through a forest of e-mails and intercepted telephone calls that have so far led to the arrest of up to 30 men.
Most of these suspects have never met. They had no need. They were recruited, groomed by skilled propagandists and schooled in bombmaking via the internet.
A senior security source told The Times that there is a far greater number of terror networks operating in Britain than had been thought, all using the internet to plot attacks here and abroad.
A series of criminal trials in Britain, the US, Canada and Bosnia over the coming months will determine whether the much maligned Western security agencies have successfully disrupted a dangerous ring of al-Qaeda sympathisers or been duped by faulty intelligence.
In a week when the competence of Scotland Yard and MI5 is being questioned, the outcome of what police here codenamed Operation Mazhar will demonstrate whether the long-promised co-operation of rival international intelligence agencies is succeeding. The operation is not connected to the raid in Forest Gate, London.
The arrest of 17 suspects, many of them teenagers, picked up in the suburbs of Toronto at the weekend is said to be the latest stage in dismantling a terrorist nexus that, worryingly, has its links with one of the world’s most wanted men — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
On his website al-Zarqawi has encouraged young Muslims to take up the fight in their own countries and spread his religious war further than Iraq and Afghanistan.
One aim is to create an army of “white-skinned” militants, men born in Europe and America who can convert to Islam and become harder for the authorities to detect as they cross the world on their missions, including suicide attacks. Using skilled computer operators around the world, al-Zarqawi’s outfit passes on bombmaking manuals, advice on how to sustain terror cells and even ways to use credit card fraud to hack into vital internet sites.
These are home-grown recruits planning to follow the example of the 7/7 bombers in London and bring devastation to their own backyards. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police claims that the gang it intercepted was set to bomb the country’s financial centre and the Parliament in Ottawa using vans packed with explosives.
These rival cells had no need to visit one another and risk being shadowed. Instead, with a few key strokes, the groups reportedly kept in touch with each other’s progress and synchronised their attacks.
A series of raids in recent months in a number of Europe’s capitals and in Atlanta in the US has passed virtually unannounced.
One US official told the Wall Street Journal: “We let the operation run as long as we had to make sure we could identify as many would-be terrorist operators as we could and then picked them off one, two, three and finally 17 at a time.”
The first arrests came in a scruffy apartment in Sarajevo in October last year when Bosnian police picked up 18-year-old Mirsad Bektasevic.
Born in Sweden to Serbian parents, he had converted to Islam, grown a beard and was known as “Maximus”. He had been watched since arriving in Sarajevo on September 27.
Along with him was a 20-year-old Danish-born man and, police say, a cache of explosives and a suicide belt. The suspected target was the British Embassy in the Bosnian capital.
Maximus had allegedly been in touch by computer with a group based in London. Within hours counter-terrorist police had raided an address in London and arrested a young man, described as a computer expert.
Two more men were picked up and all are now waiting their turn in a backlog of terror trials. All three deny any involvement with terrorism.
Experts were struck by how the network was radicalising non-Arabs to alter the profile of its operatives. This included using women recruits, such as the 38-year-old Belgian waitress, born to a white, middle-class Christian family, who died in a suicide attack against US troops in Baghdad last November.
In Atlanta in March FBI agents arrested Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, who had broken with the usual pattern and allegedly visited fellow extremists in Canada, where they discussed possible targets in Washington, including the Capitol building.
The FBI says that Ahmed’s associate, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, fled to Bangladesh but has been returned to the US to await trial. It claims that the duo considered bombing oil refineries and airport control towers in the hope that planes would crash on landing.
The FBI alleges that they swapped ideas in e-mails with the London cell. Both men deny the claims.
The Canadian cell is made up of a collection of high-school students and university graduates, many of them described by friends and neighbours as models of middle-class respectability.
Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Mississauga, west of Toronto, is a recent graduate of health sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He is said to be a son of a doctor who emigrated to Canada from Trinidad and Tobago more than 40 years ago.
Saad Khalid, 19, who also lives in Mississauga, is said to be a successful business student at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus.
Just like the 7/7 bombers in Britain, a number of those arrested are married with young families. Zakaria Amara, 20, of Mississauga, is said to have moved into his mother-in-law’s home recently, where he lives with his wife and their infant daughter.
Slim
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2214663,00.html
British Computer Whizz-Kid Exports Terror Via Internet
An e-mail trail has led to the arrest of suspects across the world who were recruited and then schooled in bombmaking
By: Daniel McGrory
AN INTERNET trail left by a British computer expert has led investigators to an intricate terror network spreading from the backstreets of Baghdad through cells of young militants living in European capitals to Islamic extremists plotting car-bomb attacks in North America.
For nine months police and intelligence agents in eight countries have patiently worked through a forest of e-mails and intercepted telephone calls that have so far led to the arrest of up to 30 men.
Most of these suspects have never met. They had no need. They were recruited, groomed by skilled propagandists and schooled in bombmaking via the internet.
A senior security source told The Times that there is a far greater number of terror networks operating in Britain than had been thought, all using the internet to plot attacks here and abroad.
A series of criminal trials in Britain, the US, Canada and Bosnia over the coming months will determine whether the much maligned Western security agencies have successfully disrupted a dangerous ring of al-Qaeda sympathisers or been duped by faulty intelligence.
In a week when the competence of Scotland Yard and MI5 is being questioned, the outcome of what police here codenamed Operation Mazhar will demonstrate whether the long-promised co-operation of rival international intelligence agencies is succeeding. The operation is not connected to the raid in Forest Gate, London.
The arrest of 17 suspects, many of them teenagers, picked up in the suburbs of Toronto at the weekend is said to be the latest stage in dismantling a terrorist nexus that, worryingly, has its links with one of the world’s most wanted men — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
On his website al-Zarqawi has encouraged young Muslims to take up the fight in their own countries and spread his religious war further than Iraq and Afghanistan.
One aim is to create an army of “white-skinned” militants, men born in Europe and America who can convert to Islam and become harder for the authorities to detect as they cross the world on their missions, including suicide attacks. Using skilled computer operators around the world, al-Zarqawi’s outfit passes on bombmaking manuals, advice on how to sustain terror cells and even ways to use credit card fraud to hack into vital internet sites.
These are home-grown recruits planning to follow the example of the 7/7 bombers in London and bring devastation to their own backyards. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police claims that the gang it intercepted was set to bomb the country’s financial centre and the Parliament in Ottawa using vans packed with explosives.
These rival cells had no need to visit one another and risk being shadowed. Instead, with a few key strokes, the groups reportedly kept in touch with each other’s progress and synchronised their attacks.
A series of raids in recent months in a number of Europe’s capitals and in Atlanta in the US has passed virtually unannounced.
One US official told the Wall Street Journal: “We let the operation run as long as we had to make sure we could identify as many would-be terrorist operators as we could and then picked them off one, two, three and finally 17 at a time.”
The first arrests came in a scruffy apartment in Sarajevo in October last year when Bosnian police picked up 18-year-old Mirsad Bektasevic.
Born in Sweden to Serbian parents, he had converted to Islam, grown a beard and was known as “Maximus”. He had been watched since arriving in Sarajevo on September 27.
Along with him was a 20-year-old Danish-born man and, police say, a cache of explosives and a suicide belt. The suspected target was the British Embassy in the Bosnian capital.
Maximus had allegedly been in touch by computer with a group based in London. Within hours counter-terrorist police had raided an address in London and arrested a young man, described as a computer expert.
Two more men were picked up and all are now waiting their turn in a backlog of terror trials. All three deny any involvement with terrorism.
Experts were struck by how the network was radicalising non-Arabs to alter the profile of its operatives. This included using women recruits, such as the 38-year-old Belgian waitress, born to a white, middle-class Christian family, who died in a suicide attack against US troops in Baghdad last November.
In Atlanta in March FBI agents arrested Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, who had broken with the usual pattern and allegedly visited fellow extremists in Canada, where they discussed possible targets in Washington, including the Capitol building.
The FBI says that Ahmed’s associate, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, fled to Bangladesh but has been returned to the US to await trial. It claims that the duo considered bombing oil refineries and airport control towers in the hope that planes would crash on landing.
The FBI alleges that they swapped ideas in e-mails with the London cell. Both men deny the claims.
The Canadian cell is made up of a collection of high-school students and university graduates, many of them described by friends and neighbours as models of middle-class respectability.
Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Mississauga, west of Toronto, is a recent graduate of health sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He is said to be a son of a doctor who emigrated to Canada from Trinidad and Tobago more than 40 years ago.
Saad Khalid, 19, who also lives in Mississauga, is said to be a successful business student at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus.
Just like the 7/7 bombers in Britain, a number of those arrested are married with young families. Zakaria Amara, 20, of Mississauga, is said to have moved into his mother-in-law’s home recently, where he lives with his wife and their infant daughter.
Slim