Latest Updates: Al Qaeda recruiting RSS

  • johnpi 1:45 pm on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    CBS News is reporting that Abdulmutallab has said that Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attempted suicide bombing against a US airliner.

    The suspect in a failed Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt told federal investigators that radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attack, CBS News has learned.
    ….

    The source said Abdulmutallab told investigators he was guided by al-Awalki to detonate the bomb over U.S. soil, unlike the failed British bomber plot in 2006 when the bombers were instructed to detonate bombs on airliners over the ocean on the way to the U.S. so that there would be no evidence left behind.

    There’s also a discussion of the legality of the US government targeting al Awlaki:

    CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports that al-Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship – he was born in New Mexico – will have little bearing on American military and intelligence efforts to locate and kill him.

    U.S. officials, both current and former, tell Logan that if an individual is deemed to be part of a terrorist network that is a threat to American security in any way, they can be targeted legitimately.

    Al Awlaki denied in another report giving Abdulmutallab permission or issuing a fatwa approving the attack.

     

  • johnpi 9:48 pm on January 12, 2010 | 12 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Al Qaeda recruiting,

    Saudi cleric bans Muslims from joining al-Qaeda.

    A prominent Saudi scholar has issued a fatwa banning Muslims from joining al-Qaeda and labeled it a violation of Islam’s teachings, press reports said on Tuesday, amid concerns about the growing strength of operatives in Yemen.

    Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al-Obeikan, a top religious scholar and an advisor in the court of King Abdullah, said Muslims who join the militant group and engage in terrorist operations are deviating from the right path of Islam, Saudi newspaper Okaz quoted him as saying.

    “Affiliation with the so-called al-Qaeda group is haram,” meaning banned in Islam, al-Obeikan told the paper, adding “It is strictly prohibited to legitimatize the shedding of blood of other Muslims without having the right to do so.”

     

  • johnpi 9:54 am on January 7, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Yemen says Abdulmutallab may have met Anwar al-Awlaki, but avers that he was initially recruited into Al Qaeda in Britain.

    The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a U.S. passenger plane on Christmas met in a remote mountainous area of Yemen with regional al-Qaida leaders, possibly including a radical American cleric who was also in contact with the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Yemen’s deputy prime minister said Thursday.

    However, Rashad al-Alimi insisted that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was recruited by al-Qaida in Britain, before he arrived in Yemen last summer, and that he obtained the explosives used in the failed attack after he left Yemen.

     

  • johnpi 12:46 pm on January 4, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
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    The Pakistani Taliban have been trying to take credit for the recent bombing that killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan, but Syed Saleem Shahzad reports that it was actually Ilyas Kashmiri and his 313 brigade, which is comprised of veteran combatants from the Kashmir conflict that were highly trained by the Pakistani military.

    Supporting Kashmir ain’t what it used to be: Militant groups fighting for Kashmiri liberation seem to have largely been colonized and absorbed into Al Qaeda’s global caliphate project. Some Islamist national liberation movements, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, have resisted being assimilated into the Al Qaeda borg.

     

  • johnpi 11:19 am on December 30, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
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    Karzai says foreign troops massacred teenagers and two adults in Kunar province.

    “A unit of international forces descended from a plane in the Narang district of Kunar province and took 10 people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and 10, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” the statement said, quoting the head of the investigating team.

    The investigation was headed by Asadaullah Wafa, an advisor to Karzai and a former governor of Kunar province.

    Politics may be involved.

    “When this story first broke, the local officials were adamant that they were all Taliban” until several members of parliament from the area called Karzai, the NATO official said.

    Whether true or not, it’s great recruiting propaganda for martyrs the world over.

     

  • johnpi 9:26 am on December 27, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
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    Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s chat room messages.

    ABC News claims it has tracked down more than 100 posts that Abdulmutallab wrote.

    One very sad post stands out:

    He wrote of being lonely and sought friends on-line. “Can you be my friend?” he wrote. “I get lonely sometimes because I have never found a true Muslim friend.”

    He still hasn’t found a ‘true Muslim friend.’

     

  • johnpi 3:06 pm on December 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Anwar al Awlaki’s name being thrown about in relation to yesterday’s attempt to bomb a passenger jet.

    ABC is also now reporting that the attacker wasn’t a ‘lone wolf’ and that the attack was definitely planned by Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen.

    According to the authorities, Abdulmutallab says he made contact via the internet with a radical imam in Yemen who then connected him with al Qaeda leaders in a village north of the country’s capital, Sanaa.

    Authorities say they do not yet know if the imam was the same one who was in contact with Maj. Nidal Hasan prior to his alleged attack on soldiers at Fort Hood last month. American-born Anwar Awlaki has lived in Yemen since 2002 and is considered a major recruiter for al Qaeda by U.S. authorities. He survived a U.S.-backed air strike earlier this week.

    Also, as with the case of the five Americans recently arrested in Pakistan, Abdulmutallab came to the attention of US authorities six months ago when worried family members contacted the US embasssy and reported that he might have become radicalized.

     

  • johnpi 9:26 am on December 10, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
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    Militant recruited the Pakistan 5 on Youtube.

    The men appeared to have come to the attention of a “Saifullah” — an Islamic militant with links to Al Qaeda — through their YouTube activities, the police chief said. Saifullah traced their e mail addresses through YouTube, Chief Anwar said.
    ….

    It was not clear, according to the police here, whether the men had been recruited to a specific militant or terrorist organization.

     

  • johnpi 6:46 am on November 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Mark Lynch takes on the right-wing response to Fort Hood that has especially focused its attacks on ‘political correctness.’

    A lot of people — some well-meaning, some clowns or worse — evidently want the American response to the Ft. Hood shootings to revive the post-9/11 “war of ideas” and “clash of civilizations” anti-Islamic discourse. It’s a jihad, they shout, demanding careful scrutiny of the loyalty of American Muslims. That’s what they seem to mean by the demand to throw away “political correctness” and confront the ideological menace. The overall effect of their recommendations, however, would be to revive the flagging al-Qaeda brand and to greatly strengthen the appeal of its narrative. And that’s exactly what we should not want.

    I don’t think it’s going to happen. President Obama and his national security team clearly rejects such strategic misconceptions. They understand the importance of combining effective police work and international cooperation with a carefully calibrated rhetoric and strategic communications campaign. Americans have learned a lot since 9/11. And if the careful police work and investigation uncovers real ties to al-Qaeda, then I expect they will pursue those leads and carry out the appropriate response quietly and efficiently — but without inflaming public hostilities, scoring cheap political points, or fueling the al-Qaeda narrative.

     

  • johnpi 9:53 pm on October 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Task force created to combat al Qaida in Afghan prisons.

    The Obama administration took steps Thursday toward confronting a troubling al Qaida presence in Afghanistan’s prison system, announcing the creation of a military task force to oversee detention operations there and naming a prominent military lawyer to be its deputy commander.

    Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had called for the task force’s creation last month in a strategic assessment that included dire warnings about the prison system.

    “There are more insurgents per square foot in corrections facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan,” McChrystal wrote. “Unchecked, Taliban/al Qaida leaders patiently coordinate and plan, unconcerned with interference from prison personnel or the military.”

    The Afghan prison system, including a U.S-operated detention center at Bagram Air Base, also helps create future insurgents, McChrystal said. That’s because “the Afghan people see U.S. detention operations as secretive and lacking in due process” and because “hardened, committed Islamists are indiscriminately mixed with petty criminals and sex offenders,” McChrystal said.

     

  • johnpi 8:38 pm on September 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Al Shabaab has put out a new call for reinforcements from foreign militants after a US commando operation killed one of the region’s most wanted al Qaeda suspects.

     

  • johnpi 5:04 pm on September 4, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
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    Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, the American commander serving in the al-Shabaab militia and who is the star of this slick recruiting video, has been identified as Omar Hammami, a former computer science major at the University of South Alabama. He is originally from Daphne, Alabama.

    Hammami was president of the university’s Muslim Student Association right after 9/11, and spoke about how difficult it was to be a Muslim after the attack.

    “Everyone was really shocked. Even now it’s difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this.” The story quoted him as saying, “The only way to diffuse this is to get the word out. With ignorance comes fear and with fear comes violence.”

    Hammami told the newspaper that Islamic students were faced with a fear of retaliation on their country. Hammami also said many Muslims at the university come from India and Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan.

    “An action against Afghanistan is an action against Pakistan,” Hammami told the newspaper.

    There is also a report on his father:

    The elder Hammami also serves as president of the Islamic Society of Mobile and heads the Al-Iman Academy (translated as “The Faith Academy”) on East Drive in Mobile.

    The academy educates about 70 students yearly and is the only Muslim K-12 school in the region.

     

  • johnpi 5:57 pm on August 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
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    Jihadists find fertile recruiting in global Somali communities.

    To Somali experts, however, the recruitment effort reflects the influence of al Shabaab’s “foreign wing,” a small group of commanders with links to extremist groups in the Middle East and other regions. Under their leadership, al Shabaab has morphed from a homegrown law-and-order movement into a wanna-be al Qaida affiliate in East Africa, with designs on carrying out attacks in foreign lands.

    “Their agenda is to internationalize al Shabaab,” said Mohamed Mohamud Gurre, an expert with the Center for Peace and Democracy, a Somali research center. “The foreign wing has the resources; they can mobilize people. They like Somalis who are holding international passports. If there’s recruitment going on, that group is directing it.”

     

  • johnpi 9:40 pm on July 31, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Al Qaeda recruiting, , , Bryant Vinas, , ,

    CNN dumped a half dozen stories today onto their website about Al Qaeda, Pakistan, Anjem Choudhary and Al Muhajiroun in America, the ‘Islamic Thinkers Society’ and other assorted hot buttons with this editor’s note:

    This story is based on interrogation reports that form part of the prosecution case in the forthcoming trial of six Belgian citizens charged with participation in a terrorist group. Versions of those documents were obtained by CNN from the defense attorney of one of those suspects. The statement by Bryant Vinas was compiled from an interview he gave Belgian prosecutors in March in New York and was confirmed by U.S. prosecutors as authentic. The statement by Walid Othmani was given to French investigators and was authenticated by Belgian prosecutors.

    Bryant Vinas is an American citizen who left the US to go fight jihad in September 2007 and was arrested in November 2008 in Peshawar. Somehow this guy seems to have gotten a lot of mileage with Al Qaeda during the time he was over there.

    To access all the stories just scroll dow a little ways and you will see the hotlink box to the others on the left.

     

  • johnpi 5:26 am on May 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Al Qaeda recruiting, , , ,

    And a smaller refugee crisis developing in Somalia too…

    Thousands of people have fled the Somali capital after scores of people were killed over the weekend.

    People left Mogadishu in taxis, cars and lorries piled with mattresses, suitcases and furniture on Monday, witnesses said.

    Also in the news about Somalia, a bit about the foreign fighters there from AllAfrica.com, including this report about the action they are seeing:

    There is no reliable statistics on the number of foreign fighters active in Somalia, but Mogadishu residents expressed serious concern about the number of foreign fighters seen publicly alongside Al Shabaab during the past five days of heavy fighting in the seaside capital.

     

  • johnpi 6:05 pm on May 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Al Qaeda recruiting,

    The Al Shabab militia in Somalia is out with a slick new video produced by an American fighter shown “training and counseling” Somalis, Somali Americans and Europeans in good ole’ American English. CNN is hyping it as “an Al Qaeda video with a hip-hop vibe,” the alleged purpose of which is to reach more potential recruits in America.

     

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