* Al Qaeda anthrax lab tech says he had been part of Malaysian Armed Forces biological weapons program
Posted by DXer on March 23, 2012
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Al Qaeda anthrax lab tech says he had been part of Malaysian Armed Forces biological weapons program
http://www.freemalaysiakini2.com/?p=21471
Excerpt
A biological warfare programme
Among the longest-serving ISA detainees in history, Yazid, currently under travel, asset and arms deals sanctions imposed by the United Nations, believes his incarceration has to do with his “expertise”.
Trained as a biochemist on a government scholarship in the United States, this top student of the Royal Military College who retired as a captain with the army was part of a biological warfare programme under the Defence Ministry.
Osama Laden, Yazid was hesitant to reveal details about the government’s “secret” programme which was later scrapped, describing it “a long story”.
“When they (the police) first took me in, I didn’t tell them (about the government programme). I didn’t want them to know, didn’t want the liability to fall on the government, to pass the buck to someone else.
“Finally, they managed to get a report from their ‘friend’ and they wanted me to clear things up. I didn’t want to clarify (anything), so they took my wife in,” said the father of four.
His wife, Sejahratul Dursina @ Chomel Mohamed, was held under ISA for two months and after this was placed under a movement restriction order for six years.
“If you want to be released from ISA, just follow what they say and admit to all the charges… I refused to do so and they kept me for seven years… because I don’t want to sing (Negara-ku).
“I don’t want to sing. Why should I (when) the country had betrayed me?” Yazid asked.
***
The other two individuals linked to 9/11 who stayed in the Sungai Long condominium were Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi – two of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon.
The duo, according to the United Nations, had stayed at Yazid’s condominium in January 2000 to attend what the UN termed an “al-Qaeda conference” in Kuala Lumpur.
“I was not there. At that time I was in Pakistan and Afghanistan, building a hospital there,” Yazid said.
Next to the hospital, he said, was a laboratory where he is accused of developing biological weapons – an accusation not levelled at him during his detention under the ISA, but earning him the moniker “Anthrax CEO”.
Favourite bugs
CBS News reported that US intelligence doubts that Yazid developed the anthrax strain, while a leaked Guantanamo Bay document posted on Wikileaks noted that a Yemeni detainee said Yazid had “poor lab techniques”.
But Yazid said that he was in fact “successful” in developing some “bugs”, but the laboratory was destroyed when the Northern Alliance forces bombed Kandahar.
“I can still find (anthrax) if I want to, but what for? It has no commercial value. Anthrax is only good for sabotaging, it cannot kill.
“It’s not my favourite bug, anyway. I’d rather use bacteria or virus yang betul-betul(really) hit you and give you one or two hours before you die.”
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CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
This formerly TOP SECRET document, declassified in 2016, characterizes Al-Barq as head of Al-Qaida’s anthrax Yazid Sufaat, tell me it’s not so. Was this claim about your background in this interview mere puffery? Or was al-Barq merely your assistant. Better evidence (from interview statements) confirms he was just one of your two assistants — and the other one was killed years ago. Right? So the chain of command could be understood to be Atef, Zawahiri, KSM, Hambali, you and then Al-Barq and a second technician. That barely qualifies as middle management. Al Barq was a lab technician.
Click to access 53-2._decl._of_tara_m._la_morte_exhibit_a2_10.17.16ocr.pdf
Perhaps the most significant information about Al-Qa’ida obtained from detainees is on the subject of the group’s planned use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) � the United States. WMD Analysts had long suspected Al-Qa’ida was attempting to develop a. capability, and information from Abu Zubaydah and . Ibn al-Ahaykh al-Libi (a.k.a. Zubayr) hinted at such ·efforts. It was the information from Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, however, that · confirmed the analysts’ suspicions. In addition to·information on anthrax; chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear programs; and training in the use of poisons and explosives, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad provided inf�rmation that has led to the capture of individuals who headed the programs to develop WMD capabilities, . including Sayed Al-Barq who was the head of Al-Qa’ida’s anthrax · (b)(1 ) program.
DXer said
As to Yazid Sufaat, in Filippa Lenzos urging that the world focus on the risk of state (rather than terrorist) misuse of biological weapons, might her thoughtful commentary in the future usefully also address Yazid Sufaat’s claim that while in the Malaysian army he had worked on biological weapons? (This was when Malaysia was not signatory to the treaty).
Yazid Sufaat was detained in December 2001 and the FBI first interviewed him for 20 minutes in November 2002. The two agents mainly focused on his friendship with Zacarias Moussauoi who had made the cropduster inquiries.
Doesn’t knowledge travel in the mind of the individual? And doesn’t Bill Gate’s expressed concern rely, in part, on the low barriers to entry?
Biological treaties of state sponsored programs are beyond the scope of this blog’s focus on the 2001 whodunnit — or at least my personal interest. But I wish those in the field of promoting the nonproliferation of biological weapons would realize the importance of persuasive attribution in connection to the 2001 mailings. There are important lessons to be learned — to include those relating to the evidence of the infiltration of the UK and US biodefense establishment. It appears that CYA among government workers is international and not just an inside-the-beltway phenomenon.
UK, in particular, has suppressed disclosure of the second lab that Rauf Ahmad visited. You will be shocked even though you should be able to make an educated guess.
And the US, to this day, is withholding the contemporaneous notes from Bruce Ivins’ notebook from the day of mailing and the week prior. There has been a reason for the FBI’s decade’s long suppression and intentional concealment of the documents. I mean, evidence that he had reason to be in the lab on those days, working on small animal experiment, certainly would be inconvenient to the premise of the FBI’s theory — that he had no reason to be in the lab. As it is, the FBI’s theory has Ivins’ pulling an all-nighter and travelling from a small house with 3 adults in it unnoticed.
http://thebulletin.org/ignore-bill-gates-where-bioweapons-focus-really-belongs10876
3 July 2017
Ignore Bill Gates: Where bioweapons focus really belongs
Filippa Lentzos
Filippa Lentzos is a senior research fellow jointly appointed in the Departments of War Studies and of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. Her research focuses on…
Bioterrorism seems to be back in fashion. In the past, it has received bursts of attention that arose from particular incidents—the “anthrax letters” sent through the mail to US politicians and media outlets in 2001, for instance, or the purchase of plague bacteria by white supremacist Larry Wayne Harris in 1995. This time, it’s an unlikely individual calling attention to the bioterror threat—Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder turned philanthropist. Over the last several years, the world’s richest man has spent vast sums of money on global health, and in the last few months he has turned his attention to bioterrorism. At a high-profile security summit in Munich in February, he warned that bioterrorism could kill tens of millions. At a London security meeting a couple of months later, he said terrorists could wipe out 30 million people by weaponizing a disease such as smallpox.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
I’m up to page 118 of Graeme McQueen’s book 2001 Anthrax Deception” and he still hasn’t mentioned Yazid Sufaat, Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab director. It’s as if he is writing in the book in 2002.
DXer said
Graeme, whose field is religious study and not bioweapons, reasons that the mailed anthrax was too sophisticated to be prepared by any single person.
Part 3, 3:19.
http://911blogger.com/news/2010-05-10/dr-graeme-macqueen-connection-between-911-anthrax-and-iraq-05-01-10-walkerton-1-5
I have corresponded with numerous experts from the US and Russia programs who have made or supervised the making of anthrax and anthrax aerosols. No one I have corresponded with in the past 10 years agrees with Graeme.
For example, one did controlled experiments making the aerosol with and without silica in a fluidized bed dryer — and found that it floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee with or without the silica. (He used to do work with the Dugway fellow).
But, I’ll bite. Graeme, how many do you need? Sufaat had two assistants. Does two assistants cut it? Or do you need three. Can we count the microbiology PhD Saeed Mohammed who was handling procurement from Karachi?
Dr. Ayman’s anthrax program had two years of anthrax processing learning through other avenues, including the processing tricks claimed to have been learned by Rauf Ahmad. Rauf Ahmad infiltrated the annual anthrax conferences attended by the USAMRIID and Porton Down bioweapons scientists.
Know-how travels with an individual — sometimes all expenses paid. Sometimes even by the internet.
Indeed, Yazid Sufaat says he was a member of the Malaysian biological weapons program while in the Army. He privately tells me that he could work “magic.”
He does not deny responsbility for the anthrax mailings. (He then was thrown in jail).
Graeme says the anthrax was cultured and dried and cleaned of all dead cells and refuse. This is pretty standard stuff. They were very fine and of uniform size, he says (ranging from 1.5 to 3). This is pretty standard stuff.
Heck, the tech rep for the Bucchi lap minidryer told me that particles for years (before 2001) could produce a standard 1 micron size. And they had an unavoidable unipolar charge because of the velocity that they came out of the nozzle.
Is perhaps the problem that Graeme is not consulting with the technical experts and instead is consulting with political activists rather than bioweapons scientists?
What do you think Rauf Ahmad, for example, was doing at each of the annual Porton Down conferences in 1999 and 2000? Playing Words With Friends?
Now, admittedly, I know a DIA analyst who was pretty dismissive of Rauf as a no-talent. I couldn’t get Rauf Ahmad to open up because he wanted money.
But Ottilie Lundgren deserves more than the bald assumption by Graeme, Meryl and Barry that in 6 months of trying that Yazid Sufaat could not make a dried powder in the Kandahar lab that was up and running beginning May 2001. I know Yazid Sufaat’s family to be smart and very hard-working. I have no reason to doubt that Yazid, who was a well-off head of a successful head of a lab company, was not a talented fellow. In any event, he does not deny responsibility for the anthrax mailings and instead urges that he could do magic.
Yazid Sufaat says he was mad at his country for throwing him in jail. Feeling betrayed, Yazid Sufaat tells me did not tell his interrogators of his work in the secret biological weapons program. When a “friend” told his interrogators of his work in February 2002, he then remained resolved that the CIA would never hear it from his lips.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
In talking about the sophistication of the anthrax, Graeme MacQueen seems unaware that in the Canadian simulation done in 2001, the powder immediately floated across the room upon the opening of the envelope.
Part 3
5:20
http://911blogger.com/news/2010-05-10/dr-graeme-macqueen-connection-between-911-anthrax-and-iraq-05-01-10-walkerton-1-5
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA399955
That anthrax was made at a Wisconsin dairy processor and then merely tweaked at Dugway. Source: Matsumoto, Science.
As Alibek always has said, relatively simple methods can result in a sophisticated product. And as many others have said, know-how travels in the head of a single individual.
After a January 2001 anthrax threat, a Canadian research team undertook to assess the risk. The report titled “Risk Assessment of Anthrax Threat Letters” issued September 2001. The Canadian study found considerable exposure to those in the room resulted when such a letter was opened. Bacillus globigii spores (in dry powder form) were donated by the US Department of Defense (Dugway Proving Ground, Utah). Stock concentration powder was -1 x 10 11 cfu/gm. The anthrax sent to the Senators had a smaller particle size –tending toward a uniform 1 micron, subject to clumping that easily broke apart. Bacillus globigii (BG) spores are routinely used as a simulant for Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) spores. “The letter was prepared by putting BG spores in the center of a sheet of paper, folding it over into thirds, placing the folded sheet into the envelope and sealing using the adhesive present on the envelope. The envelope was then shaken to mimic the handling and tumbling that would occur during its passage through the postal system.” The aerosol, produced by opening the BG spore containing envelope, was not confined to the area of the desk but spread throughout the chamber. Values were almost as high at the opposite end of the chamber, shortly after opening the envelopes. 99% of the particles collected were in the 2.5 to 10 µm size range. The report explained: “In addition, the aerosol would quickly spread throughout the room so that other workers, depending on their exact locations and the directional air flow within the office, would likely inhale lethal doses. Envelopes with the open corners not specifically sealed could also pose a threat to individuals in the mail handling system.”
More than 80% of the B anthracis particles collected on stationary monitors were within an alveolar respirable size range of 0.95 to 3.5 µm. Thus, the simulant performed very well. The CIA and CSIS apparently feared that the Vanguards of Conquest would use the good stuff. Al Qaeda anthrax lab director, Yazid Sufaat, before being charged recently with terrorism, told me on Facebook that he could perform magic.
The CIA knew EIJ intended to use anthrax — from the proclamations of Jaballah’s friend, the captured military commander Mabruk and Jaballah’s brother-in-law’s former law partner al-Zayat. Authorities knew Al Qaeda was getting technical assistance from scientists — and that many of the senior Egyptian leaders had advanced or technical degrees. The specifications provided by Dugway perhaps involved treated fumed silica and a spraydryer (with a last critical step reserved to be done at Dugway) may have been based on what Al Qaeda might send with a little help from their friends.
Canadian officials explained they e-mailed the study to the CDC soon after reports of the discovery of anthrax at the American Media Inc. headquarters in Florida. The e-mail, however, was never opened, reports the lead CDC anthrax investigator, who regrets that he never read the email. “It is certainly relevant data, but I don’t think it would have altered the decisions that we made.” At one point, about 2,000 CDC employees were working on the anthrax matter. This Canadian report was perhaps the single most important scientific data point for the CDC to take into account. It certainly was one of the most important reports for the FBI to take into account.
Bail was denied by decision on October 5, 2001. Then highly potent anthrax was sent the next day just as had been promised. But Ayman apparently had returned to the target of his greatest interest — rather than a Canadian immigration minister, he and Shehata and their colleagues targeted the minister who oversaw the Department of Justice and appropriations to Egypt and Israel, and who gave his name (”the Leahy Law”) to the law that permits continuing appropriations to Egypt in the face of allegations of torture. Zawahiri never makes a threat he doesn’t intend to try to keep.
Bill Patrick, who often worked with George Mason University students in northern Virginia, had written a report in 1999 for a consultant SAIC at the request of Dr. Steve Hatfill. As one bioterrorism expert commented about the report: “Anytime you pick something up like this, and it seems to layout the whole story for you months or years before the fact, your immediate response is to step back and say ‘whoa, something may be going on here. “Our attacker may very well have used this report as something of a — if not a template, then certainly as a rule of thumb.”
The Canadian experiments in 2001 showed that if anthrax spores were finely powdered, a letter could release thousands of lethal doses of the bacteria within minutes of being opened. Furthermore, large amounts of material leaked out of sealed envelopes even before they were opened. By then, more than two dozen federal government employees knew of the Canadian studies, which showed that a real anthrax threat letter was a far more dangerous weapon than anyone had believed. Within days, a dozen more people were informed of the now highly relevant experimental findings. Over the course of the next decade, one FBI investigative squad was focused on people who may have known of the study — such as William Patrick’s friend, Dr. Steve Hatfill. Another squad would be focused on the usual suspects and their friends. For the next seven years, the investigation would be shrouded in great secrecy.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, in its March 31, 2005 “Report to the President of the United States” concluded:
“Pre-War
Information in the Intelligence Community’s possession since the late 1990s indicated that al-Qa’ida’s members had trained in crude methods for producing biological agents such as botulinum toxin and toxins obtained from venomous animals. But the Community was uncertain whether al-Qa’ida had managed to acquire a far more dangerous strain of agent (an agent we cannot identify precisely in our unclassified report and so will refer to here as “Agent X”). The Community judged that al-Qai’da operatives had “probably” acquired at least a small quantity of this virulent strain and had plans to assemble devices to disperse the agent. While the Community believed that a facility to which the group had access provided the potential capability and expertise to produce biological agents, it had no evidence that the facility was being so used. Likewise, the Intelligence Community assessed that al-Qai’da was “highly unlikely” to have acquired two other dangerous agents, and had no credible reporting that it was attempting to do so.
Post-War
In fact, al-Qai’da’s biological program was further along, particularly with regard to Agent X, than pre-War intelligence indicated. The program was extensive, well-organized , and operated for two years before September 11, but intelligence insights into the program were limited. The program involved several sites around Afghanistan. Two of these sites contained commercial equipment and were operated by individuals with special training. Documents found indicated that while al-Qai’da’s primary interest was Agent X, the group had considered obtaiining a wide variety of other biological agents. The documents obtained at the training camp included scientific articles and handwritten notes pertaining to Agent X.
Reporting supports the hypothesis that al-Qai’da had acquired several biological agents possibly as early as 1999, and had the necessary equipment to enable limited, basic production of Agent X. Other reporting indicates that al-Qai’da had succeeded in isolating cultures of Agent X. Nevertheless, outstanding questions remain about the extent of biological research and development in pre-war Afghanistan, including about the reliablity of the reporting described above.”
Agent X is anthrax.
In March 1999, as described above,al-Najjar, who had once served Ayman in Yemen before betraying him, made a dramatic confession about Ayman’s plan to use weaponized anthrax against US targets.
In a remarkable feat of journalism, Alan Cullison of the Wall Street Journal obtained the computer used by Al Qaeda officials. It was looted after a US bombing raid and Cullison bought it from a dealer. The documents evidence Zawahiri’s thinking on the subject of anthrax.
In an April 1999 memorandum, Zawahiri wrote that “the destructive power of these weapons is no less than that of nuclear weapons. * [D]espite their extreme danger, we only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concern that they can be produced simply.” The memorandum read:
“To: Muhammad Atef
From: Ayman al-Zawahiri
Folder: Outgoing Mail– To Muhammad Atef
Date: April 15, 1999
I have read the majority of the book [an unnamed volume, probably on biological and chemical weapons] [It] is undoubtedly useful. It emphasizes a number of important facts, such as:
a) The enemy started thinking about these weapons before WWI. Despite their extreme danger, we only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concerns that they can be produced simply with easily available materials.
b) The destructive power of these weapons is no less than that of nuclear weapons.
c) A germ attack is often detected days after it occurs, which raises the number of victims.
d) Defense against such weapons is very difficult, particularly if large quantities are used.”
It continued: “I would like to emphasize what we previously discussed–that looking for a specialist is the fastest, safest, and cheapest way [to embark on a biological- and chemical-weapons program]. Simultaneously, we should conduct a search on our own. *Along these lines, the book guided me to a number of references that I am attaching.
Perhaps you can find someone to obtain them.”
The memorandum goes on to cite mid-twentieth-century articles from, among other sources, Science, The Journal of Immunology, and The New England Journal of Medicine, and lists the names of such books as Tomorrow’s Weapons (1964), Peace or Pestilence (1949), and Chemical Warfare (1921).
The April 1999 email to Atef indicated Ayman had read one USAMRIID author’s description of the secret history of anthrax reported by USAMRIID — the book was called Peace or Pestilence. That was 2 1/2 years before the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. Post-9/11, we have had the same history avidly reported to us by critics of the biodefense industry. Ayman, well-aware of USAMRIID”s history with anthrax, may have had a US-based or UK-based operative or some other sympathizer arrange to obtain the US Army strain that would point the public and authorities to this history — confounding true crime analysis at the same time providing moral justification for the use anthrax under the laws of jihad. His interpretation — alluded to in the repeated citation to a particular koranic verse — is that jihadists should use the weapons used by their enemies.
According to a May 7, 1999 file, $2,000 to $4,000 had been marked for “startup” costs of the program. A letter dated May 23, 1999 written by one of Zawahiri’s aliases mentions some “very useful ideas” that had been discussed during a visit to Abu Khabab. “It just needs some experiments to develop its practical use.” Especially promising was a home-brew nerve gas made from insecticides and a chemical additive that would help speed up penetration into the skin.
Mr. Cullison explains in an Wall Street Journal article:
“Particularly encouraging, the letter in the computer files said, was a home-brew nerve gas made from insecticides and a chemical additive that would help speed up penetration into the skin. The writer said Khabab had supplied a computer disk that gave details of ‘his product’ in a WinZip file, and ‘my neighbor opened it by God’s will.’
U.S. officials, citing satellite photos and intelligence gathered from local residents, say Abu Khabab experimented with nerve gas on dogs and rabbits at a camp near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. The camp, one of several in the area hit by U.S. bombs after Sept. 11, was known as Abu Khabab in honor of the scientist.
In a letter dated May 26 and stored in the computer under the same alias as earlier correspondence, the author says he was ‘very enthusiastic’ about the Zabadi [yogurt] project and was especially pleased with Abu Khabab’s ‘significant progress.’
A June 1999 memo found on the hard drive and addressed to ‘Abu Hafs’ Atef’s alias gave instructions for building a laboratory, ordering that walls be covered with oil paint and floors with tiles or cement ‘to facilitate cleaning with insecticides.’ But, noted the memo, ‘construction should not start until electricity is installed.’ It also called for evasive action to avoid detection: ‘Periodically (for example about every three months) one of the locations is to be canceled and replaced by another.’
A progress report complained that the use of nonspecialists had ‘resulted in a waste of effort and money,’ urging the recruitment of experts as the ‘fastest, safest and cheapest’ route. A June 1999 memo said the program should seek cover and talent in educational institutions, which it said were ‘more beneficial to us and allow easy access to specialists, which will greatly benefit us in the first stage, God willing.'”
It would appear then that the documentary evidence indicates that beginning in 1999, Al Qaeda sought expertise among the “cover and talent of educational institutions” to weaponize anthrax. Dr. Ayman’s plan to use weaponized anthrax is real.
Below are selected document references of literature found in the possesion of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in Fall 2001 a few kilometres from the lab with the drying equipment. (see online supplement to 12 December 2003, Vol 302, SCIENCE,www.sciencemag.org. A sample FOI request is provided at the link so that you can obtain the same fascinating documents described by Leitenberg, as well as obtain copies or excerpts of the following:
Darlow, HM, and Pride, NB. (1969). “Serological diagnosis of anthrax.” Lancet ii (7617): 430.
Green, DM, and Jamieson, WM. (1958) “Anthrax and bone-meal fertilizer.” Lancet, ii: 153-154.
Mangold, T, and Goldberg, J. (1999) “Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare.” MacMillan, Great Britain.
Morris, EJ. (1955). “A selective medium for Bacillus anthracis,” J. Gen. Microbiol., 13: 456-460.
Pearce, TW and Powell, EO. (1951) “A selective medium for Bacillus Anthracis.” J. Gen. Microbiol. 5: 387-90.
Semple, AB, and Hobday, TL. (1959). “Control of anthrax: Suggestions based on survey of imported hides,” Lancet, ii.(October 3): 507-508.
Stanley JL and Smith H (1961) “Purification of factor 1and recognition of a third factor of the anthrax toxin.” J. Gen. Microbiol. 26: 49-66.
Thorne, CB, and Belton, FC. (1957). “An agar-diffusion methods for titrating Bacillus anthracis immunizing antigen and its application to a study of antigen production.” J. Gen. Microbiol. 17: 505-516.
Here are selected supplementary references from handwritten notes recovered on site:
Brachman, PS, Plotkin, SA, Bumford, FH, and Atchison, MM. (1960). An epidemic of inhalation anthrax: The first in the twentieth century. II. Epidemiology. Am. J. Hyg. 72: 6-23.
Clarke, R (1968). We All Fall Down: The Prospects of Biological and Chemical Warfare. Penguin Books, London.
Knisley, RF. (1966). Selective medium for Bacillus anthracis. J. Gen. Microbiol. 13: 456.
Miller, JK. “Human anthrax in New York State.” N.Z. Med. J. 61: 2046-2053.
Murphy, S., Hay, A. and Rose, S. (1986). No Fire, No Thunder: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Weapons. Pluto Press, London.
Proceedings of the Conference on Airborne Infection (1961). Bacteriol. Rev. 25: 173-382.
Roberts, B. (1993) Biological Weapons: Weapons of the Future. Significant Issues Series XV (1). Center for Strategic and International Studies. Washington, D.C.
Rothschild, JH. (1964). Tomorrow’s Weapons. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/01/western-intelligence-suspects-assad-has-a-secret-chemical-stockpile.html
The al Qaeda conglomerate has been trying to develop biological weapons since before 9/11. A lab was operating in Afghanistan in those days. It even had its master bug-maker, the Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, who has been in and out of prisons in his home country. Then in 2009, dozens of AQ acolytes in Algeria were reported to have died of bubonic plague when an experiment went awry, although the organization vehemently denied those stories.
DXer said
Microbiologist Robert J. Hawley, PhD, in his civil deposition produced today under FOIA by DOJ Civil, testified:
(at p. 123) that “I was asked to go to Boca Raton to provide some assistance to the CDC and the EPA. I was also asked to to go Washington, D.C. to provide some advice to the EPA for decontamination of the Senate Hart Office.
Q. I’m sure you have had conversations in general about it, but other than Dr. Ivins, did you ever have any specific conversations with the commander of USAMRIID or any other officers at USAMRIID about th[e] anthrax attacks?
A. No, not specifically. I mean, there were some general comments made about somebody said something, hearsay, and the purity of the samples and probably came from an overseas location and things like that, but nothing specific, no.” (p. 124)
***
Q Do you have an opinion — and you may not — but do you have an opinion as to whether you think Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator?
A. At the present time, I have no opinion either way, because of what I consider a lack of — the paucity of scientific and information.” (p. 126)
DXer said
Terrorism suspect’s court hearing fixed July 22
New Straits Times, 14 April 2014
http://www.nst.com.my/latest/terrorism-suspect-s-court-hearing-fixed-july-22-1.566259#ixzz2ytB0vjLU
DXer said
Mr. Yazid grew up in Paloh, a small town nestled among palm-oil and rubber plantations in the southern Malaysian state of Johor. He was the son of a rubber tapper.
This article provides an early good profile — akin to Lawrence Wright’s wonderful profile of Dr. Ayman in the New Yorker in September 2002.
On a minor note, rather than arriving in June 2001, Mr. Yazid and his assistants were already working in a makeshift anthrax lab at Omar Hospital in May 2001, while waiting for the equipment to be shipped to Kandahar.
Malaysian Social Experiment Creates Islamic Militant Instead
By LESLIE LOPEZ Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Updated Jan. 13, 2003
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1042394757992180384?mg=id-wsj
DXer said
There was what I believe was a sidebar about Yazid Sufaat in a story titled “Fighting to outsmart the terrorist scientists” last month in the Straits Times. (I am reading a computer version). It says that Yazid attempted to load anthrax into weapons. What were the weapons?
“Old laws useful against terrorism
IN THE battle against terrorist-scientists, old-fashioned laws still matter. Take the case of Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian former army captain with a science degree from the United States, and an Al-Qaeda operative.
Terror groups handpick their terrorist-scientists, suggesting the importance of chemical or biological weapons for terrorists.
Yazid was chosen by Hambali, the operations chief for the regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah. The duo travelled to Indonesia some time before 2001 to interview a microbiologist working in a government research facility, said research analyst Idznursham Ismail.
But Hambali did not see leadership potential in the Indonesian, and Yazid was chosen to head the anthrax programme instead. Yazid is believed to have tried to cultivate and load anthrax onto weapons in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
His home in Kuala Lumpur was allegedly used for meetings of senior Al-Qaeda members, including one to discuss plans to crash planes in the United States on Sept 11, 2001.
He was detained in Malaysia under the Internal Security Act (ISA) in 2001, and held for seven years.
In 2011, the ISA was repealed. Last year, he was charged in Malaysia with promoting acts of terrorism in Syria.
But the Malaysian courts ruled that he cannot be put on trial under the new law, the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act, as it does not cover terrorism activities conducted outside Malaysia.
Yazid was rearrested a week later and accused of being a member of a terrorist group, Tanzim Al-Qaeda Malaysia. …
M. NIRMALA
DXer said
This gathering of 20 relates to Yazid Sufaat’s detention a year ago.
Flash mob ‘jangan lupa undang-undang zalim’
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/254485
DXer said
http://en.harakahdaily.net/index.php/berita-utama/8481-two-sosma-detainees-detained-for-over-a-year.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mycenews+(MyCen+News)
Two Sosma detainees detained for over a year
Harakahdaily,
11 February 2014
Two detainees under the draconian Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) have been incarcerated for over a year, Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram) coordinator Syukri Razab said.
Syukri said on Feb 7 this year, Yazid Sufaat and Hilmi Hasim had been incarcerated for a year. Yazid, Hilmi and Halimah Hussein were the three first victim of Sosma who have been detained since Feb 7, 2013.
They were charged under Section 130 G(a) of the Penal Code for allegedly trying to stir an ideology or taking part in an action that could undermine the safety of the public in Syria.
They were released on May 20 last year due to technicalities by the Kuala Lumpur High Court, but a week later they were re-detained under Section 130K(a) of the Penal Code for allegedly being a member of Al-Qaeda. Under the section they were not eligible to be on bail and therefore they would be incarcerated until their proceeding is completed.
In a statement Feb 7, Syukri said apart from Yazid, Hilmi and Halimah, 30 detainees from Sabah were also placed under the same predicament.
He pointed out that Sosma had violate the rights for the detainees to receive fair trials and that prosecutors were given wide berth to abuse the proceeding.
He said that the prosecutors were allowed to called any witness without the need to disclose the identities of the witness to the defence. Testimonies could also just be done on recording and that testimonies from children were also admissible to the Court.
Syukri pointed out that in the case of detainees from Sabah, proceedings were not held in Court but in Kepayan prison. As such he said the proceedings were not made accessible to the public and that the practice run contrary to the international convention.
He also pointed to the current trend for the police to threaten the public with Sosma.
DXer said
Relying on the newspaper reports that they read, rather than the one cited above that apparently was not in World News Connection that the authors used, the authors about JI and the Anthrax Plot are disrespectual of Yazid’s ability. There is that hearsay mention in an interrogation report reporting the opinion of Saaed Mohammed, a microbiology student, who was rendered in October 2001. (Saaed Mohammed was involved in procurement from Karachi and told Batarfi, as I recall, that he was critical of Sufaat’s lab technique upon going once to the lab in Karachi).
But if you are going to assess Yazid’s ability, the starting point is to study his own words about how he kept secret his role in Malaysia’s biological weapons program — long since abandoned. He says he did not tell his interrogators because he had felt betrayed. Then when a “friend” told authorities about his earlier government work, they arrested his wife, Chomel, and kept her for two months while trying to get leverage. FWIW, Yazid Sufaat told me he could work “magic.” Given the drying instructions on Hawsawi’s laptop and Hawsawi’s connection to the same Media group where Hambali was located, I have no reason to doubt that Sufaat and his assistants, all of whom were vaccinated, were up to making the powder used in the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. What do you think they were doing from May 2001- September 2001. Playing video games?
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat has never publicly given the details of his work for the since abandoned Malaysian biological weapons program.
DXer said
In his civil complaint for civil damages, Dr. Hatfill alleged “that the FBI sought help from police in Kuala Lumpur, investigating any possible connection with Dr. Hatfill and a former girlfriend from Malaysia.” The FBI knew that Al Qaeda anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat, who had told KSM he was working with virulent anthrax, had come in 2001 from Kuala Lumpur.
Yazid’s gracious and beautiful wife, Chomel, had been imprisoned for a couple of months in 2002. Yazid says it was done in an effort to try to force him to cooperate. He had not told interrogators that he had been a member of a secret state-run biological weapons program (long since abandoned by Malaysia). He felt betrayed by his country. A “friend” told interrogators in early 2002. FBI Director Mueller flew to Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur police investigated the possible Hatfill-KL lead. Meanwhile, Yazid continued to refuse to cooperate because he was peeved.
Meanwhile, throughout 2002, detainees at Gitmo were talking about “Jafar the Pilot” who KSM, upon his capture, clarified was Adnan El-Shukrijumah. He was “the next Atta.” His announced travel to the US immediately after the 911 mailings — from where the anthrax lab was located in Kandahar — is a matter of public record. He called his mother from KSM’s house to tell her was coming to the US and planes started landing by September 14.
Correspondence between Adnan El-Shukrijumah and Abu Khabab, the chemistry/WMD guy, is quoted below.
I asked Yazid Sufaat about the experiments led by Egyptian Abu Khabab killing rabbits with poisons under during the month before 9/11 at a camp outside Kabul. But he pled the equivalent of “the Fifth.”
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 26, 2011
Recipient Abu Khabab was the Egyptian chemical engineer who was on the 3-member AQ WMD committee with the blind sheik’s son who was recruiting anthrax scientists. That son spoke alongside Ali Al-Timimi at charity conferences in 1993 and 1996 — the year of WTC 1993 and OBL’s Declaration of War. In 2000, the blind sheik’s son’s voice was on the video with Zawahiri and OBL The voiceover commanded that followers should “go to the spilling of blood” to avenge the blind sheik’s Abdel-Rahman’s imprisonment in a US prison.
Jafar the Pilot aka Adnan El-Shukrijumah was part of the BOLO issued as the same time Aafia Siddiqui, who an AUSA said in federal court was prepared to participate in an anthrax attack if asked.
Jafar the Pilot wrote chem expert Abu Khabab:
Peshawar Islamic Center
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Praise to the Lord of worlds and peace to the Imam of Mujahdeen, Prophet Muhammad,
as well as to his companions.
Dear Abu Khabab:
Salaam, God’s mercy and blessings to you.
Happy Ramadan Holiday. May God accept your fasting.
Dear Brother:
I would like to advise you that Zubair (Zubayr) is a member of our group. He is from Qatar, trained in Al-Badr Camp, and intends to go to Kashmir. But because of snow over there, he could not go, so we appeal to you to accept him. He is trustworthy, and we hope that you can help take a vocational training course. You have a lot of new things [trades that Zabair may be trained to do].
Thanks
Yours truly
Ja’far At-Tayyar) [At-Tayyar the pilot)
DXer said
What does Al-Barq, one of Yazid Sufaat’s assistants, say about the instruction Yazid gave him?
Family Al Qaeda Terrorist Held by Israel Denies Charges
Terrorist’s mother claims son ‘just wanted to study microbiology’; officials say he planned to release anthrax into urban center.
By Tova Dvorin
First Publish: 11/19/2013, 11:31 AM
Illustration: Islamist fighters in N. Africa
Reuters
The mother of Samer Halmi Abdel Latif Al-Barq, the Senior al-Qaeda terrorist revealed to have been held in Israel for the past three years, has insisted in an interview with Israeli media that her son was “never” involved in building biochemical weapons.
Al-Barq, 39, was detained by security forces as he attempted to enter Israel from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge. He faces allegations of planning a large-scale biological weapons attack against Jews via Jordan, and officials say he had elaborate plans to recruit a suicide bomber to release anthrax in a major urban center.
Al-Barq’s family – Kuwaiti nationals – lives in the Palestinian Authority settlement of Jayyous, near Qalqiliya. While reports have been surfacing across the nation of her son’s capture, Al-Barq’s mother vigilantly denies his involvement, Channel 10 / Nana revealed Monday.
“I know my son,” Al-Barq’s mother claims. “If he only got the chance to say his side of the story, there would be no reason to continue the administrative detention he is in now.”
Al-Barq’s family claims that the terrorist’s odyssey from Arab country to Arab country was a quest to learn the best biology at local universities – nothing more. In his youth, he left Kuwait for Pakistan, ostensibly to study, then continued to Afghanistan.
There, officials say, he began to prepare biochemical weapons. Al-Barq has reportedly told Israeli investigators that he performed initial tests in Afghanistan, using nerve gas on a dog. “Within seconds, the dog died,” he told them coolly. “I began talking to friends about possible plans to go back to the West, and use weapons like this against Israel.”
Al-Barq also described how he was recruited into the terror organization, Nana reports, by the organization’s leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. “I met him in Afghanistan. He said I should be in touch with him to learn about producing anthrax,” al-Barq stated. “We talked about the possibility of a suicide attack by releasing anthrax into a major urban center.”
While he has yet to be charged with a specific crime in Israel, al-Barq can be legally detained indefinitely if shown that he poses a threat. On Monday, the State told the High Court that the terrorist must remain in jail for the time being.
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat would have been in the position of giving training to his two assistants, one a PhD and one a Masters degree, because he had been in a secret, long abandoned biological weapons program. Yazid himself had a simple bachelors degree. His training was on-the-job while working for the secret state program.
I am posting the news articles today describing the court filings about Sufaat’s assistant, Al-Barq, but in the end the court filings will be the best guide to what they say.
Al Qaeda Terrorist Planned Biological Attacks in Israel and Jordan
The Jewish Press-14 hours ago
The terrorist was identified as 39-year-old Samer Abed al-Barak, who had been arrested by American authorities and jailed in Guantanamo Bay in 2003. He was released three months later to Jordan, where he was a free man but later was arrested for terrorist activities. Jordan let him go in 2008 and apparently tipped off Israel that he would try to cross into Israel, according to documents filed in court by the Justice Ministry in response to a petition to free him. Authorities said Al Barak had studied microbiology in Pakistan and tried to enter Israel via the Allenby Bridge in 2010 to put his knowledge to good jihad use and train Palestinian Authority terrorists to manufacture poisons for a biological attack in Israel. Al-Barak also was planning a similar attack on Jewish tourists in Jordan.
The government’s defense in court said that al-Barak is from Kuwait and moved with his family to Jordan and then to Kalkilya, in Samaria, before landing up Pakistan in 1995, where he obtained a masters’ degree that gave him his background for producing biological weapons. Al Barak moved on to Afghanistan to engage in military training. He joined Al Qaeda in 2001 after being recruited by the terrorist organization’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/al-qaeda-terrorist-planned-biological-attacks-in-israel-and-jordan/2013/11/18/
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat first learned of Al-Barq’s capture when he was shown a picture of him by his interrogators.
8 November 2013 Last updated at 07:21 ET
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24984373Share this page
Israel secretly detained al-Qaeda suspect Baraq
Samir al-Baraq was recruited by al-Qaeda in 2001, Israel prosecutors allege
Israel has secretly held a suspected al-Qaeda biological weapons expert since 2010, it has been revealed.
A military court placed Samir Abdul Latif al-Baraq in “administrative detention”, which allows indefinite detention without charge or trial, after he was arrested in July 2010.
His detention was revealed on Monday when lawyers petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court for his release.
Israeli prosecutors say the Palestinian was planning attacks on Israelis.
They claim that releasing Mr Baraq would endanger the entire Middle East, but his lawyers have challenged them to produce any evidence.
‘Point of no return’
According to court documents disclosed on Monday, Mr Baraq was born in Kuwait in 1974 and moved to Pakistan in 1997 to study microbiology.
The following year, he attended a militant training camp in Afghanistan, and in 2001 was recruited by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, the documents say.
If he is such a senior terrorist, then why hasn’t he been prosecuted?”
He then allegedly acquired “knowledge and experience” in non-conventional weaponry.
Israeli prosecutors said Mr Baraq spent three months at the US military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, and was imprisoned in Jordan between 2003 and 2008 for “terrorist activity” and involvement in an al-Qaeda biological weapon project.
He was expelled from Jordan on 11 July 2010 and was subsequently arrested by Israeli troops at the Allenby Bridge border crossing while trying to enter the West Bank.
Mr Baraq was then placed him in administrative detention, which is subject to renewal every six months by a military court.
The Israeli military says it uses administrative detention only when it fears an immediate risk to security or to protect informants.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 135 Palestinians were being held under administrative detention in September 2013.
Israel’s justice ministry said it wanted to extend Mr Baraq’s detention, arguing that releasing him would mark a “point of no return for the development of significant jihadist infrastructure in the region”.
But his lawyer, Mahmid Saleh, told Israeli Army Radio: “If he is such a senior terrorist, then why hasn’t he been prosecuted? There is no evidence against him.”
DXer said
Dr. Majidi writes:
“Today we know that while al Qaeda was attempting to start an offensive bioweapons program, they never got beyond the initial stages. Al Qaeda simply lacked the necessary expertise …”
Dr. Majidi evidences no awareness — even today — that Sufaat was a member of the since abandoned Malaysian biological weapons program. There is no indication that the CIA knew that. The Malaysian interrogators didn’t even know that until a friend told them.”
DXer said
Vahid Majidi writes:
“Spore power concentrations ranged from ….. an extraordinarily high concentration. This simply implied that the starting material came from a good stock and the person who produced this material was a true subject matter expert. A novice production from make-shift stock material would be unable to achieve these high spore concentrations.” Additionally, the spores in Senate letters were very high in purity. Once again, indicating that these samples were derived from high quality spore preparations by a subject matter expert.”
Dr. Majidi evidences no awareness that Sufaat had been part of the Malaysian Armed Forces biological weapons program. Sufaat tells me he could do magic.
DXer said
In his new book on the Fall 2001 anthrax investigation, Vahid Majidi says that not only did the FBI not give the NAS classified information, but the FBI selectively went through Al Qaeda-anthrax stuff and chose what they wanted to give. He says that the best intel was in the 911 report and quotes a passage that cites a mid-December 2001 interrogation report in which Sufaat describes his education (at Sac State). (He attended Sac State as an undergrad with his lovely wife Chomel).
But as Yazid has explained, he was lying at the time. He did not tell his interrogators that he had been a member of Malaysian biological weapons program because he was mad at his country for arresting him. A “friend” told his interrogators –well AFTER the mid-December 2001 interrogation relied upon by Dr. Majidi as the best intel.
One man’s “hyperbole” is another man’s powerful circumstantial evidence. It wasn’t the FBI’s place to selectively cull documents in support of an Ivins Theory. (And the FBI’s withholding of the rabbit documents was very seriously wrong)..
Richard Clarke once said that most intel is “open source.” Given the FBI’s admitted “selective” provision of info on AQ and anthrax to NAS — and the withholding ALL classified information — you can take little comfort from a fellow who seems not to have known that Yazid Sufaat says he had been a member of Malaysians biological weapons program. Note that his book is newly published and Yazid’s public revelation now is more than a year old.
Dr. Majidi should at least be addressing Yazid’s public interview on the very issue. (Disclaimer: I’m still reading the book and will study the footnotes when I’m done).
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat and Muhammad Hilmi to be charged for terrorism
T K Letchumy Tamboo| Updated: May 27, 2013
“I received a phone call from Yazid’s daughter Fatin, around 8am today. She said that some policemen are trying to arrest her father at their residence in Taman Bukit Ampang and asked me what they should do.
“I told her to ask the policemen the grounds of arrest and was told that Yazid is being arrested for terrorism offences. The answer was very general and after persisting, we found out that he was arrested under Section 130 K (A) of the Penal Code for harbouring terrorists for terrorist activities,” she said.
Read more at:http://english.astroawani.com/news/show/yazid-sufaat-and-muhammad-hilmi-to-be-charged-for-terrorism-15048?cp
DXer said
Malaysia Court Orders Release of 3 Terror Suspects
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia May 20, 2013 (AP)
A Malaysian court has ordered the release of an al-Qaida-linked former army captain and two other suspects charged with inciting terrorist acts.
The verdict underlines the legal limits of a security law introduced last year to replace legislation that allowed indefinite detention without trial.
Authorities invoked the law for the first time in February to arrest three Malaysians suspected of leading efforts to recruit militants who might participate in violence in Syria.
The Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled Monday that the use of the law against the three was unconstitutional because the allegations did not involve a domestic threat.
The suspects include Yazid Sufaat, who previously spent seven years in detention without trial until 2008 after being accused of working on a [anthrax] weapons program for al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
DXer said
Film reveals new footage of Soviet bioweapons program
ByLinda B. Glaser
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/05/film-reveals-new-footage-soviet-bioweapons-program
May. 13, 2013
Film reveals new footage of Soviet bioweapons program
ByLinda B. Glaser
The purpose of a secret Soviet facility was to produce tons of anthrax bacteria to kill Americans, according to a U.S. government official.
The facility was capable of producing 300 metric tons of anthrax in 10 months – more capacity than the entire Iraqi biological weapons program. “The scale is just chilling,” Andrew Weber ’82 said.
Weber was part of a group of U.S. experts the Kazakhstan government called in after the fall of the Soviet Union to dismantle Soviets bioweapons-manufacturing facilities the Soviets left behind. Weber, now assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, is a featured expert in “The Anthrax Diaries,” a 26-minute pilot documentary film about the Soviet bioweapons program. Also featured is the man who ran the anthrax factory, Gennadiy Lepeshkin.
The film is by Slava Paperno, director of Cornell’s Russian Language Program in the Department of Comparative Literature; Kathleen Vogel, associate professor of science and technology studies and the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies; and bioweapons expert Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley. Award-winning filmmaker Slawomir Grunberg is director of photography.
The U.S. offensive biological weapons program ended in 1969; the USSR and the United States agreed to outlaw development and stockpiling of biological weapons in 1972. All the bioweapons work Lepeshkin led occurred after the USSR signed the treaty.
Making the film has not been without risk. Three months after “The Anthrax Diaries” was posted online, Lepeshkin was named a traitor in an anti-American video posted by a state-run TV studio in Russia.
“This was really a return to the bad old Stalin days,” said Paperno. “We remain concerned for Lepeshkin’s future.”
The filmmakers’ goal is to produce a PBS-style documentary and accompanying educational website that will inform the broader public on the ethical, moral, social and security issues of biological weapons, including what happens when weapons experts lose their jobs.
“The Anthrax Diaries” is part of a decades-long Russian Language Program tradition of producing documentaries for language and culture studies. The documentaries are designed to provoke strong intellectual and emotional reactions. According to Paperno, the theme of biological weapons, with its broad range of ethical, political and historical situations, seemed perfect to stimulate discussion.
“Language teaching is inseparable from teaching about culture,” noted Paperno, “and students learn the language best when they’re excited about the issues being discussed.”
The filmmakers are building a website that includes more than 40 hours of interview and location footage, articles, photos and personal stories.
“This project has many different elements that serve the educational mission of the university, and it also helps inform the larger public,” said Vogel, who has been researching the proliferation of former Soviet bioweapons pathogens and personnel since she was a postdoctoral associate at Cornell. She’s given talks at the Cornell Center for Teaching Excellence on how she and Paperno have used the project in their classes.
Vogel and Paperno have applied for funding to continue their examination of the moral dimensions of the weapons scientists.
Lepeshkin, for example, grew up on a military base. He objected when they told him to close the anthrax facility and when the Communist Party folded. “Gorbachev said to turn in your card but I didn’t. In my heart I’m still a Communist,” Lepeshkin said.
Paperno, a St. Petersburg native, comes from a dissident family. “Lepeshkin was my first real close contact with the kind of ideal Soviet person that the Soviet propaganda machine was trying to create,” said Paperno. “It’s been an eye opener for me.”
Linda B. Glaser is staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
DXer said
Congratulations to all those involved in the Cornell project. I love documentaries where the actual actors give meaty interviews. I think Malaysiakini should win rewards and accolades for their groundbreaking interviews of Yazid Sufaat, This Cornell project seems equally impressive.
DXer said
Did the hijacker who came in June 2001 from Kandahar where Yazid Sufaat had his lab know Sufaat? Did he help out with Yazid’s work? He had just arrived when he went to see Dr. Tsonas about the blackened lesion — and so its cause would have been back in Kandahar.
The Bioterrorist Attacks on America, by Yuril V. Ezepchuk (Director of Biological Sciences, University of Colorado) … hypothesis: the hijacker Ahmed Alhaznawi had been infected with the skin form of anthrax
Posted by Lew Weinstein on September 4, 2012
DXer said
In connection with a May 6 hearing on an unrelated charge, is anthrax going to be addressed at all? Are the Affidavits filed in Court? Are they in the Malay language? At their root, the allegations likely just involve religious discussion with some younger men headed for Syria. Yazid Sufaat’s wife Chomel is also very charming. Can Chomel say what the affidavits address?
DXer said
I can’t imagine why the Bukit Aman thinks they should interview the Star Reporter about sources. The reporters sources are evident and not even problematic. They include, for example, Yazid’s wife Chomel, Yazid’s son, and Bukit Aman special task force (operations and counter terrorism) director Comm Datuk Mohamad Fuzi Harun.
The Star reported:
“However, he is believed to have been one of the al-Qaeda’s main anthrax developers and is wanted for questioning by the US government in relation to the Sept 11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.”
If the police in addressing an extradition request from the US want to know the facts, I have uploaded them here. My sources are the documents.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
Absent extradition, if there is an anthrax attack on the US by Al Qaeda, it will be the fault of Malaysia and the FBI Director Mueller and the State Department who failed to arrange for his extradition in March 2002 — or over the next decade.
DXer said
In October 2011, Yazid said that 8 million RM — which I think is about $2.6 million US — was still frozen.
So while a $5 million US reward may impress me, it seems that all Yazid would need to be financially well-off is for his assets to be unfrozen.
http://www.wasukalu.com/2013/02/saintis-melayu-yazid-sufaat-ditangkap.html
DXer said
Washington wants extradition of retired Malaysian soldier Yazid
Middle East News Online [Durham] 08 Feb 2002: N/A.
Kuala Lumpur — Washington is “negotiating” with the Malaysian government in the hope that retired Malaysian soldier, Yazid Sufaat, 37, could be extradited to face charges in the US in connection with the Sept 11 terror attacks.
The Malaysia’s afternoon daily, The Malay Mail, on Thursday quoting the New York Times report that Bush administration officials, said an Al-Qaeda operative arrested in Malaysia “has begun cooperating with investigators and provided new evidence to show that the country was a major staging area for the Sept 11 terror attacks in the United States.” It said the suspect, a former Malaysian Army captain, had acknowledged meeting in Malaysia with at least two of the Sept 11 hijackers, as well as with Zacarias Moussaoui, the 33- year-old French citizen, who is now in Virginia jail cell.
Officials said [Yazid] appeared to have operated as a paymaster for Moussaoui, who was arrested in the US last August after he raised suspicions among his instructors at a Minneapolis flight school, and to have provided him with phony business credentials from a Malaysian technology company.
Comment: That was some pretty lousy negotiation to not obtain an agreement for extradition after service of any domestic crimes.
DXer said
CIA seizes bin Laden son-in-law: report
(AFP) – 5 hours ago
ANKARA — Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was seized by CIA agents and taken to the United States after Turkey deported him to Jordan this month, a Turkish newspaper reported on Thursday.
Abu Ghaith, the former spokesman of the Al-Qaeda network, was seized last month at a luxury hotel in Ankara after a tip-off from CIA and was held there by the police despite a US request for his extradition.
Turkish authorities deported Abu Ghaith to Jordan on March 1 to be sent back to Kuwait but he was seized by CIA agents in Jordan and taken to the United States, the Hurriyet newspaper said.
DXer said
Here is a copy of Abu Ghaith’s statement in which he “Declares Intentions to Kill 4 Million Americans with Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
‘Why We Fight America’: Al-Qa’ida Spokesman Explains September 11 and Declares Intentions to Kill 4 Million Americans with Weapons of Mass Destruction
http://triceratops.brynmawr.edu/dspace/handle/10066/5058
DXer said
Here is a text of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s Video Statement Broadcast on al-Jazeera Television
October 09, 2001
Click to access GHA20011009.pdf
Here in the background is a video of him speaking.
DXer said
Abu Ghaith, co-founder of WAFA, in a 2010 book titled “21 Guidelines for Jihad” explained that it was wrong for Bin Laden to attack the US from Afghanistan given assurances to his host, Mullah Omar, that he would not launch an attack from Afghanistan.
This was prudent tact for someone who hoped to be allowed safe haven.
DXer said
Osama bin Laden’s Son-in-Law Captured, Brought to US
Investigators have been conducting interviews with him since his arrival in the U.S. and he is expected to appear in a New York court Friday, the law enforcement official said.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-ladens-son-law-captured-headed-us/story?id=18675492
DXer said
Bin Laden Son-in-Law in Custody in New York
The suspect was flown to New York by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week, and he has been talking to interrogators since then, according to the people familiar with the case.
U.S. officials believe Mr. Abu Ghaith traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 and joined up with al Qaeda there. He has appeared on public videos defending the 2001 attacks.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324034804578346243937198214.html
DXer said
Everyone involved in his capture should get a medal.
But it is very important now that the media turn to Abu Ghaith’s book.
Yazid too should study Abu Ghaith’s teaching and take it to heart.
Former al-Qaeda spokesman criticises ‘culture of killing’
Abu Ghaith says there is no shame in identifying, fixing mistakes
By Rajeh Said in London
2010-12-21
In a book titled “Twenty Guidelines on the Path of Jihad,” Abu Ghaith affirmed his rejection of jihadist work as “the project of one individual using the blood of others to act out what seems correct to him.” …
The book was published on the website of an Egyptian Islamist known as Mustafa Hamid, author of the “Mutarid” book series and a veteran “Arab mujahid” in Afghanistan. Hamid is a known critic of bin Laden.
…
Abu Ghaith gives advice on jihad
Abu Ghaith’s book contains 20 pieces of “advice” about “jihad work,” but it never addresses al-Qaeda by name, despite the fact that its author was the organisation’s spokesman in 2001. Abu Ghaith also does not mention bin Laden by name nor any other leader of the organisation. But much of the “advice” seems directed toward the leaders of al-Qaeda specifically, in addition to leaders of other groups that describe their work as “jihadist.”
In his book, Abu Ghaith writes, “Jihad, as I have said repeatedly, is a mission of the Umma (Islamic nation) and should not be hijacked or monopolised. Those who think that jihad means carrying arms and fighting the enemy are mistaken. This would mean that the culture of killing and destruction is what drives us, not a culture of life and building.”
…
Abu Ghaith said that it was a mistake to believe that jihadists should not be concerned with building the state and its institutions, spreading science and knowledge, and “securing a better life for all who live with Islam and in the Islamic state.”
Jihadists should be concerned with “drawing the real picture of jihad and bearing arms for justice and not injustice, building and not destruction, security and not fear, compassion and not punishment, consensus and not division.”He added that jihadists should be concerned with “drawing the real picture of jihad and bearing arms for justice and not injustice, building and not destruction, security and not fear, compassion and not punishment, consensus and not division.”
Although Abu Ghaith did not specify who is “hijacking” or “monopolising” jihad, his words could be interpreted as applying to al-Qaeda, which is criticised for carrying out actions that limit the meaning of jihad to carrying weapons, offering nothing but destruction.
Addressing the “mujahids,” Abu Ghaith said taking up arms is an act based on responsibility that should make fighters “fear God in shedding people’s blood, and not spill blood except for rightful reasons.”
Critics also accuse al-Qaeda of going overboard in shedding blood, even though the organisation denies this.
Jihadists should be concerned with “drawing the real picture of jihad and bearing arms for justice and not injustice, building and not destruction, security and not fear, compassion and not punishment, consensus and not division.”
The former al-Qaeda spokesman wrote, “Today we need to stop the chaos of putting the statements of humans ahead of the words of God and the words of (the prophet Muhammad).”
He added, “There is no shame in examining our mistakes and fixing them. Indeed, this is the correct thing to do. But the shame of all shame is to see our mistakes and bury them.”
Abu Hafs the Mauritanian
Abu Ghaith’s book includes an introduction by Mahfouz Ould al-Walid (Abu Hafs the Mauritanian), the former head of al-Qaeda’s Sharia Committee who was among those who fled Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime.
Ould al-Walid is believed to be one who outwardly rejected the September 11 attacks before they occurred. His position caused a public dispute between him and al-Zawahiri.
Abu Hafs introduced the book as one in a series of “educational” books about jihad to “set the path straight and guide the actions” of jihadists.
If proven that Abu Ghaith, through his “Twenty Guidelines” intended to direct criticism against al-Qaeda’s leaders, he will be the latest “jihadist” figure to publicly criticise bin Laden and the leaders close to him, foremost among them Ayman al-Zawahiri.
One of the most prominent critics is Sayed Imam al-Sharif (Dr. Fadl), described as the “jihadists’ theoretician,” who sharply criticised al-Qaeda’s actions in several studies published while he was in prison in Egypt.
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group leadership also directed implicit criticisms toward al-Qaeda in a large study published last year.
DXer said
The 3/4 indictment for conspiracy to kill Americans has been unsealed. 911.
DXer said
His federal public defender, I believe, is Phiilip L. Weinstein, who for years was head of the Legal Aid Criminal Appeals bureau. Said to be a methodical and precise lawyer.
Already, on Thursday, anonymous DOJ officials were telling the NYT that Abu Ghaith had not participated in 911 or other attacks on Americans. While Peter King is predicting a trial that might take months or years, is our system that broken? Doesn’t the video evidence make it a pretty simple case? In fact, isn’t Abu Ghaith not just provably part of a conspiracy but wasn’t he an accessory after the fact for 9/11? The indictment, according to the commentary on Lawfare, is the 13th amendment of the indictment used in the 1998 embassy bombings.
It seems that Attorney Weinstein’s client would greatly benefit from distribution to the press Abu Ghaith’s 2010 book “Twenty Guidelines.” Even a propagandist for a mass murdererer might want to get credit for this propaganda. The book might have suited the interest of his host, Iran — emphasizing that you should never launch attacks from a country where your host didn’t approve. Other senior Al Qaeda operatives have published similar criticisms arguing that 911 was a catastrophe for the jihadist cause. For any addle-minded impressionable religious cultists looking to be brainwashed, Abu Ghaith’s might provide a more moderate alternative that steers young men away from violent extremism. In the meantime, what he publicly says — whether his statements pose a public threat or an amelioration of that threat — might determine what conditions he experiences in jail — to include restrictions on communication with family.
What does Abu Ghaith know about what Saif Adel was up to in Iran all those years?
DXer said
Is Abu Ghaith on the videotape of a private meeting involving Bin Laden in December 2001?
Did he help write Ayman Zawahiri’s January 2002 speech “Why Attack America?”
Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin have published a compilation of documents that helps place Abu Ghaith’s statements in context.
Abu Ghaith’s June 2002 statement threatening WMD certainly was an important statement.
Description: xv, 392 p.
Contents: The radical critique of Islam (The Islamist view of life as a perennial battle / David Zeidan —
On the doctrine of the Muslim Brothers (1940s) / Hasan Al-Banna —
Islam is not a religion of pacifists (1942) / Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini —
Paving the way (1955) / Sayyid Qutb —
Speech at Feyziyeh Theological School (August 24, 1979) / Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini —
On the nature of the Islamic state (September 8, 1979) / Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini —
Suicide operations are legitimate defense (April 8, 1997) / Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi —
Speech to Organization of Islamic Countries meeting (December 9, 1997) / Ali Al-Husseini Al-Khamene’i —
Fatwa on the Taliban (November 29, 2000) / Sheikh Hammoud Al-Uqlaa) The revolutionaries (The importance of Afghanistan for the Islamist revolution (January 2002) / Ayman Al-Zawahiri —
Program (Feburary 1985) / Hizballah —
Charter (August 1988) / Hamas —
The letter of demands to the king of Saudi Arabia (April 1992) / Saudi Islamists —
Abdullah Azzam, the struggling sheikh (July 1996) / Abdullah Bin Umar —
Interview with Umar Abd al-Rahman (April 1997) / —
The Islamic state in Egypt is approaching (April 1997) / Sheikh Rifa’ey Ahmad Taha —
On the Islamist revolution in Egypt (January 2002) / Ayman Al-Zawahiri —
Interview with Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdissy (December 1997) —
Interview with Mullah Ma’soum Afghani (April 1997) American policy and anti-Americanism (The truth about U.S. Middle East policy / Barry Rubin) —
The United States will not intervene militarily (November 7, 1979) / Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini —
No room for leniency (November 12, 1979) / Radio Tehran —
Memo to President Jimmy Carter on Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (December 26, 1979) / Zbigniew Brzezinski —
State of the Union Address (January 23, 1980) / President Jimmy Carter —
Speech to Syrian soldiers (October 1, 1981) / Syrian President Hafiz Al-Asad —
U.S. policy views Mideast as “U.S. possession” (February 16, 1985) / Syrian Government Radio —
On U.S. hostages (February 1987) / Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah —
On U.S. policy (February 17, 1987) / Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah On U.S. hostages (February 1987) / Subhi Al-Tufayli —
A strategy for the Arab world (February 24, 1990) / Iraqi President Saddam Hussein —
Indictment again the Khobar Towers bombers of June 1996 (June 21, 2001) / U.S. Department of Justice —
Second speech to Organization of Islamic Countries meeting (December 9, 1997) / Ali Al-Husseini Al-Khamene’i —
The new barbarism (December 2, 1998) / Saqr Abu Fakhr —
Letter to President Bill Clinton (December 3, 1998) / Atallah Abu Al-Subh —
An anti-American sermon (October 2000) / Ahmad Abu Halabiya —
Why attack America (January 2002) / Ayman Al-Zawahiri) —
Usama bin Ladin and his movement (Declaration of war (August 1996) / Usama Bin Ladin —
Interview with Usama bin Ladin (October 1996) Statement : Jihad against Jews and Crusaders (February 23, 1998) / World Islamic Front —
Interview with Usama bin Ladin (December 1998) —
Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad : training manual (December 1999) / Al-Qa’ida —
Testimony of Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl (February 6-7, 2001) —
Testimony of Ahmad Ressam (July 3-5, 2001) —
Al-Qa’ida recruitment video (2000) / Usama bin Ladin) —
Al’Qa’ida’s war on America (FBI most wanted (October 10, 2001) —
Letter to al-Qa’ida cell (August 1997) / Haroun Fazul —
Report on the bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania (January 1999) / U.S. Government Accountability Review Board —
Testimony of Ali A. Muhammad (October 21, 2000) – Testimony of John Michael Anticev (February 27-28, 2001) —
Responsibility for the terrorist atrocities in the United States, September 11, 2001 (October 4, 2001) / British Government Executive order : sanctions on the Afghan Taliban (July 6, 1999) / President Bill Clinton —
Resolution 1267 (October 15, 1999) / UN Security Council —
Testimony on the Taliban (July 20, 2000) / Karl F. Inderfurth —
Testimony of Ahmad Ressam (July 3-5, 2001) —
Worldwide threat 2001 : national security in a changing world (February 7, 2001) / George J. Tenet) —
September 11, Al-Qa’ida, and the Taliban (Suicide note (September 18, 2001) / Muhammad Atta —
Responsibility for the terrorist atrocities in the United States,September 11, 2001 (October 4, 2001) / British Government —
The hijackers of September 11 (September 27, 2001) / Federal Bureau of Investigation —
Videotape of a private meeting (December 13, 2001) / Usama bin Ladin —
Interview with Mullah Umar Muhammad (September 21, 2001) Broadcast by Usama bin Ladin (October 7, 2001) —
Al-Qa’ida statement (October 10, 2001) / Suleiman Abu Ghaith —
Al-Qa’ida statement (October 13, 2001) / Suleiman Abu Ghaith —
Broadcast by Usama bin Ladin (November 3, 2001) —
‘Dawn’ interview with Usama bin Ladin (November 10, 2001) —
Interview with Usama bin Ladin (December 27, 2001) —
Indictment against Zacarias Moussaoui (December 2001) —
September 11 as a great success (February 27, 2002) / Abu Ubeid Al-Qurashi —
Pre-attack videotape (Summer 2001) / Ahmad Al-Haznawi Al-Ghamidi —
Post-attack videotape (Fall 2001) / Ayman Al-Zawahiri) —
Middle East reaction to September 11 (Broadcast by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (September 12, 2001) —
A blow from within (September 13, 2001) / Ali Yusefpur The American government had contaminated my humanity (September 15, 2001) / Ali Uqleh Ursan —
Interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri (October 7, 2001) —
To anthrax (November 1, 2001) / Atallah abu Al-Subh —
Is Usama bin Ladin the culprit? Has World War III started? (September 14, 2001) / Rif’at Sayyid Ahmad —
We would help the United States if it would help us (September 17, 2001) / Fahd al-Fanik —
A little justice to help uproot terrorism (September 21, 2001) / Makram Muhammad Ahmad —
Open Letter to President George W. Bush (October 19, 2001) / Safar Bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-Hawali —
Egypt is a sovereign state (October 19, 2001) / Ibrahim Nafi —
Address to the UN General Assembly (November 10, 2001) / Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf Editorial in ‘Ha’aretz’ (September 12, 2001) —
September 11 and Islamic ‘Sharia’ (September 14, 2001) / Salih bin Muhammad Al-Luheidan —
After Afghanistan : liberating Islam (September 17, 2001) / Ahmad Bishara —
Envy and hate (September 22, 2001) / Ilter Turkmen —
Sharon is a terrorist–and you? (November 3, 2001) / Admad Al-Baghdadi —
The fight against terrorism must begin with curricular, educational, and media reform in the Arab world (November 29, 2001) / Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari) —
September 11 and the war against terrorism (Address to the nation (September 11, 2001) / President George W. Bush —
Address to Joint Session of Congress (September 20, 2001) / President George W. Bush —
Address to the nation (October 7, 2001) / President George W. Bush —
Address to the UN General Assembly (November 10, 2001) / President George W. Bush Speech to the Labor Party conference (October 1, 2001) / British Prime Minister Tony Blair —
Executive order on blocking terrorist financing (September 24, 2001) / President George W. Bush —
Executive order on establishing the Office of Homeland Security (October 8, 2001) / President George W. Bush —
Executive order on detention, treatment, and trial of certain non-citizens in the war against terrorism (November 13, 2001) / President George W. Bush —
Analysis of U.S. counterterrorim legislation (October 25, 2001) / Congressional Research Service —
Resolution 1373 (September 28, 2001) / UN Security Council) —
Appendix : chronology of Middle-East connected terrorism against Americans.
Responsibility: [edited] by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin.
DXer said
Prosecutors say a trial will take about 3 weeks.
DXer said
This commentary from the mideast mentions the question whether the $5 million reward for Abu Ghaith was paid.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2013/03/10/Abu-Ghaith-s-mystery-from-Iran-to-New-York.html
There is a $5 million reward for Yazid under the same Rewards For Justice program. If the drinks stall assistant Hilmi and his mother are not interested in the $5 million US reward, I have suggested that it could go to Malaysian questioners who show a little more finesse (and a little less kneejerk nationalistic defensiveness than was the case in 2002). There are actually close parallels between his case and the case of Abu Ghaith — except that Yazid’s press efforts celebrating the death of 3000 civilians was in 2012 rather than 2001. Abu Ghaith at least publicly had moderated his views (see 2010 book Twenty Guidelines) whereas Yazid has not.
In the case of Abu Ghaith, an FBI agent and NYC detective worked for 10 years to keep tabs on Abu Ghaith and then arrange for his accommodations in NYC. (And I don’t doubt that they were assisted by the CIA in this regard).
In the case of Al Qaeda’s anthrax program, the daughter of the FBI’s lead prosecutor represented Al Qaeda anthrax suspect Ali Al-Timimi for free — and the FBI closed the case based on a false claim that Dr. Ivins used a lyophilizer to powderize the anthrax and the false claim that his time in the B3 was unexplained. Wade Ammerman, who as I recall was working on Amerithrax, quashed the warrant out for Anwar Awlaki, who was coordinating with Ali Al-Timimi, and let him go to Yemen where he plotted mass attacks on the US. I realize that quashing the indictment was to allow the meeting with Al-Timimi to go forward — and to monitor the meeting — but Al-Timimi suspected a trap and played dumb. Meanwhile, the FBI had not obtained the 16 pages showing Bruce Ivins had supplied virulent Ames to a former Zawahiri associate. When the surveillance targets are hardened, it is greater care in document discovery that is more likely to bear fruit. Here, the FBI seriously dropped the ball.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
Abu Ghaith was more in the nature of a propagandist rather than planner — Yazid had a hands-on WMD role.
The CIA and FBI employees working Yazid Sufaat matter might take a page from the playbook of the CIA and FBI folks working the Abu Ghaith matter.
DXer said
On Friday, the fiery former al Qaeda spokesman walked into federal court with his hands cuffed. He was only about a mile from ground zero in the very country he had targeted in multiple video messages, warning Americans they would be attacked again after 9/11 by “airplane storms” and biochemical attacks.
Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/world/sulaiman-abu-ghaith-talks-on-plane-ride-to-jail-al-qaeda-propagandist-gives-extensive-statement#ixzz2N9y7SEZI
DXer said
You may recall that prior to Yazid’s arrest, Abu Ghaith was detained in Turkey and it was uncertain whether he was cooperating or whether he would be extradited. A leader in WAFA, Abu Ghaith had a role in authorizing the procurement for the anthrax lab. In June 2002, he opined that Yazid had a right to kill 4 million civilians, including a substantial portion of children. In early October, he was pictured sitting alongside Dr. Zawahiri and Bin Laden.
Abu Ghaith, according to the illustrious DOJ correspondent Dina Temple-Raston, has been extradited to the United States and could appear in federal court as soon as tomorrow.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/07/173717415/bin-ladens-son-in-law-arrested-brought-to-u-s
international
Bin Laden’s Son-In-Law Arrested, Brought To U.S.
by DINA TEMPLE-RASTON
March 07, 201311:51 AM
A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden has been extradited to the United States and could appear in court as soon as Friday, say sources familiar with the case.
The man, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, may be best known for his appearance in videos. He was sitting next to bin Laden when the al-Qaida leader took credit for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He has been in videos advocating more violence against the U.S. And he has been wanted by U.S. law enforcement for some time.
Ghaith was arrested in Turkey in February, the sources say, after he entered that country from Iran under a false passport. Turkey then said it would deport him to Kuwait, via Jordan. He was intercepted by U.S. officials in Jordan last week and then brought to the U.S.
Sources say Ghaith is now in Manhattan.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., tells The Associated Press that Ghaith’s arrest is a sign that “definitely, one by one, we are getting the top echelons of al-Qaida. I give the (Obama) administration credit for this: it’s steady and it’s unrelenting and it’s very successful.”
Bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011 during a raid on the compound where he had been living in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
DXer said
Foreign officials can’t interrogate terror suspects: [Final Edition]
The Record [Kitchener, Ont] 02 Mar 2002: A11.
Malaysia’s prime minister is refusing to let foreign officials interrogate Malaysian terror suspects.
“We will definitely not allow our people to be questioned by outside parties,” said Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. “We will do it ourselves.”
The comments appeared to rule out the extradition to the U.S. of Yazid Sufaat for his alleged role in an Islamic extremist group plotting to bomb U.S. targets in Singapore.
Yazid has also been accused of allowing two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to stay at his apartment in January 2000 during a stopover in Kuala Lumpur.
The comments appeared to rule out the extradition to the U.S. of Yazid Sufaat for his alleged role in an Islamic extremist group plotting to bomb U.S. targets in Singapore.
Comment: Yazid Sufaat was part of the Malaysian biological weapons program. Malaysia did not want this fact known.
FBI Director Mueller went to KL in March 2002 to try to arrange Malaysia’s cooperation. Although Yazid cooperated to the extent of explaining certain logistical matters relating to Hambali and the two 911 hijackers hosted, he did not share his biological weapons experience. The FBI still has not obtained Yazid’s cooperation.
If the FBI’s profile from the basement of Quantico had not been so messed up (and uninformed by what was already known about Zawahiri’s anthrax planning), the FBI might have tried harder to gain Yazid’s cooperation. As it was, President Bush says that they did not discover Yazid’s role until after KSM was captured in March 2003 and then Hambli was captured and interrogated in August 2003. Then as a result they also captured Yazid’s two PhD assistants. The strain that the PhD detainees said they were using — for which (Yazid told KSM) they were vaccinated against — should be made part of the historic record.
Already, the Director’s regrettable unsuccessful attempt to obtain Malaysia’s cooperation regarding the extradition of Sufaat is an important but little understood part of the Amerithrax history. It is inextricably tied to the FBI’s failure to stop Nawaf and al-Hazmi’s entry into the United States. This was at a time when FBI officials were afraid of being blamed (and fired) for allowing 911 to happen. For 10 years, the FBI withheld the fact that Jdey was detained at the same as Moussaoui and then released. Indeed, the FBI still hasn’t admitted i or the implicationst.
AUSA Kohl and Lieber reported directly to Director Mueller.
The Director’s tenure was extended for 2 years.
It is withinthe Director’s power to set things right in Amerithrax by obtaining Yazid’s extradition and cooperation — or at the very least having the classified material indicating the strain that Yazid was using declassified. It was virulent Ames.
I knew about Yazid’s role in February 2002 even if the CIA and FBI didn’t. (see my February 2002 posts)
The anthrax threat faced by the country is not something where getting it right eventually counts for anything.
The people who fancy themselves human rights advocates should try advocating to avoid the mass murder of innocents — instead of advocating for the mass murderers.
DXer said
At the trial of the two men arrested en route to Syria and alleged to be members of Al Qaeda and suicide bombers, we will learn what evidence the government has related to Yazid Sufaat. Chomel acknowledges that they had meals with the men. And she and Yazid knew that they were under close government surveillance. (See March 2012 press). But perhaps at trial today it will come out whether there is proof of the charge that they were members of Al Qaeda and proof that Yazid knew that they were on the way to commit bombings.
Channel NewsAsia
December 11, 2008 Thursday 12:55 PM GMT
Wife of freed Malaysian ISA detainee speaks about husband’s release
KUALA LUMPUR: The wife of Malaysian terror suspect Yazid Sufaat has spoken out about her husband’s release, following seven years of detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
43-year-old Sejahtul Dursina, also known as Chomel Mohd, is thankful that her husband Yazid has finally been released from detention. He was held for suspected links to regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).
The mother of four said the family was able to celebrate Hari Raya Haji or the Muslims’ Festival of Sacrifice together for the first time in seven years.
“I just want to be like anybody else in the world; I just want to be a very normal person, living very normal life among the 22 million of Malaysians,” she said.
A graduate from California State University, Chomel – as she is commonly known among her peers – was also detained under ISA for two months in 2002, the first woman to be held on terror charges.
Chomel now runs a food outlet in Kuala Lumpur.
Although she is aware of the public scepticism over Yazid’s release, she is confident her husband will be accepted back into the society.
She also added that her husband is a loving man and denied he could ever be a threat to society.
Yazid, who has been released for three weeks now, has been put on restricted residence order.
While his every move is being closely monitored by the police, the family said he has started his own business and is eager to get on with his life.
DXer said
Chomel says that this young man was merely going to Syria as a tourist. Yet his family lodged a report after he went AWOL.
He would not have failed to tell his family if he was going to Syria for tourism.
Who does his family think recruited him for the mission?
Does his mother Saripah Hasnah think Yazid was a recruiter?
Wednesday October 31, 2012
Family lodged report after Razin went AWOL
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/10/31/nation/12251071&sec=nation
MALACCA: The family of Muhamad Razin Sharhan Mustafa Kamal (pic) had lodged a missing persons report when they learnt that he had not turned up for work for three days. A police officer said the family, worrying over his safety, lodged a report on Oct 5, the third day he did not report for duty at the Farmers Organisation Authority (FOA) office here.
DXer said
Has the US shared with Malaysia trancripts of Hambali’s interviews about Yazid Sufaat? I once shard with Yazid the great fun I had at the Nyale worm festival in Lombok, an island near Bali. It was at a concert held as part of the festival. There had just been a wardrobe malfunction on the stage. Then I was standing at the side of a tent when gathered water on the tent was pushed off with a pole and landed on and drenched me. The audience had a good laugh.
For Hambali and his colleagues to defile the beauty of Bali with their murderous sickness — as happened in the nightclub bombing below — truly shows that they have no realistic conception of where paradise is found. The dolphins in Lovina could communicate paradize to Yazid better than some woman who had memorized much of some old book.
Sunday Mail (SA)
October 12, 2003 Sunday
Bali: This sacred day ;
Al-Qaida funded island bombings
BALI bombing mastermind Hambali has told his interrogators how al-Qaida funded the attack that killed 202, including 88 Australians, a year ago today.
The terrorist is being held under strict security by US intelligence agents on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
Hambali, also known as Riduan Isamuddin, has also told agents al-Qaida wanted to build a bioweapons plant in Indonesia to produce weapons to deliver the deadly biological agent anthrax.
He said the Islamic network of terrorist cells known as Jemaah Islamiya had recruited American-trained scientist Yazid Sufaat to oversee the project. Sufaat, who studied chemistry at California State University in Sacramento, is under arrest in Malaysia.
Hambali also said JI had been crippled by almost 200 arrests after the Bali blasts but boasted the organisation still had widespread grass-roots support in Indonesia and in South-East Asia.
The Sunday Mail has obtained interview transcript details in which Hambali also admitted complicity in the Jakarta Marriott Hotel blast in August which killed 12 — and explained his links to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 New York attacks.
“All the group’s savings have been lost to raids and arrests,” Hambali said. “JI is now totally dependent on al-Qaida for money.”
However, Hambali also said JI was still a strong presence in Indonesia and the Philippines.
News of Hambali’s whereabouts came as Justice Minister Chris Ellison said yesterday he had asked Washington for access to the man behind the worst terrorist attack on Australians.
“We haven’t had a reply,” Senator Ellison said.
DXer said
Personally, if $5 million US were to be paid, I would root for the assistant at the drinks stall Hilmi and his mom. Today Hilmi has just plead not guilty.
His lawyers may have seen to cause him to lawyer up — leading to him being charged in the first place.
I won’t presume to second-guess his counsel, Amer Hamzah Arshad and New Sin Yew. I don’t doubt that they have his interests at heart.
Hilmi and his mom, however, may need to hope that Hilmi didn’t say the wrong thing into the salt and pepper shaker at the drinks stall — or on occasion at the house with Yazid and Chomel’s religious instructor.
And Hilmi and his mom may have to blindly trust that Hilmi’s attorneys are not under the influence of Yazid’s counsel.
Yazid was once a successful businessman. He once was financially well enough off that he could go to Afghanistan and play at jihad.
He was financially well off enough to draw upon his experience in the abandoned Malaysian biological weapons program in developing anthrax as a weapon for Al Qaeda.
Unlike Rauf Ahmad, Yazid Sufaat was religiously motivated rather than financially motivated.
Yazid may have been wanted to talk expansively with Hilmi to emphasize that he had not always just someone who helped his wife at a drinks stall.
For the purpose of collecting a $5 million under the Rewards For Justice program, all that is required is information leading to other evidence.
Even if what Hilmi knows is both limited and hearsay, it seems that it could easily qualify for the reward.
$5 million US sure beats writing koran verses on a cell wall using the blood of swatted mosquitoes for the next 30 years.
Published: Monday February 25, 2013 MYT 2:40:00 PM
Mohammad Hilmi pleads not guilty to abetting in promotion of terror acts
KUALA LUMPUR: Muhammad Hilmi Hasim, the third individual arrested together with Yazid Sufaat, who has been charged with promoting acts of terrorism, pleaded not guilty at the High Court here Monday to abetting in the promotion of terrorism acts.
Muhammad Hilmi, 33, a shop assistant who worked for Yazid, 49, pleaded not guilty when a court interpreter read the charges in front of High Court judge Kamardin Hashim.
Yazid, who was detained under the now abolished Internal Security Act in December 2001 for alleged ties to the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network and released in 2008, was charged in the Ampang Magistrate’s Court on Feb 8 with promoting acts of terrorism in strife-torn Syria.
According to earlier reports, Yazid was accused of inciting terrorist acts that “threatened the public in Syria” while a woman who was also detained with him, was charged with abetting Yazid in inciting the act at a house in Ampang, between Aug 1 and Oct 20, last year.
The prosecution was led by deputy public prosecutor Datuk Mohamad Hanafiah Zakaria, Ishak Mohd Yusoff and Mohd Dusuki Mokhtar while Muhammad Hilmi was represented by Amer Hamzah Arshad and New Sin Yew. – Bernama
DXer said
It seems that it was a major setback for Hilmi’s defense for the court to grant the prosecutor’s request that his case be heard together with the case brought against Yazid and Chomel’s religious instructor.
The lesser actor always wants to avoid being associated with the major players.
Muhammad Hilmi pleads not guilty to abetting promotion of terror acts
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/litee/malaysia/article/muhammad-hilmi-pleads-not-guilty-to-abetting-promotion-of-terror-acts/
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
The prosecution was led by DPP Datuk Mohamad Hanafiah Zakaria, Ishak Mohd Yusoff and Mohd Dusuki Mokhtar while Muhammad Hilmi was represented by Amer Hamzah Arshad and New Sin Yew.
Kamardin fixed April 22 for case management and granted permission to hear the case together with the case brought against Yazid and Halimah on May 20.
Mohamad Hanafiah had earlier appealed to allow Muhammad Hilmi’s case to be heard together with the case involving Yazid and Halimah.
DXer said
Note that the wiretaps being relied upon apparently date only to October 2012 and before. Once his dining companions were arrested, Yazid went silent and his Facebook posts recommended that jihad be practiced between the ears and not on one’s lips.
Chomel characterizes their meal conversation with the young men as relating only to Sufaat’s advice that they bring enough money and to be safe.
Perhaps Chomel understands the younger man to have dropped out of his studies to go see the tourist sites in Syria.
We will have to wait until we see any transcripts of recorded conversations entered as evidence in trial.
If the CIA and FBI analysts were especially clever, they would understand that the heart and white powder Yazid pictured on his Facebook was the same code explained in the FAQ on azzam.com website in 2001. Relating to the word “jowl” as referring not only to heart but what was inside. That webpage was mirrored at the location the anthrax was mailed.
Two Malaysians charged in Lebanon for alleged links to al-Qaeda …
thestar.com.my
Nov 1, 2012 – Anifah said Razif was also asked if he had met with a senior member of Jemaah Islamiah group Yazid Sufaat in Malaysia and whether he had …
DXer said
Hilmi specifically is charged only with respect to window between Aug 1 and Aug 20 of last year.
Tuesday February 26, 2013
Cafeteria worker claims trial to abetting ex-ISA detainee
By MAIZATUL NAZLINA
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2013/2/26/courts/12758726&sec=courts
Muhammad Hilmi, 33, who is also Yazid’s employee, is alleged to have committed the offence at a house in Taman Bukit Ampang, Ampang, between 8.30am and 10.30am between Aug 1 and 20 last year.
He was charged under Section 130G (a) of the Penal Code, read together with Section 109 of the same Act, which carries a maximum imprisonment of 30 years and a fine.
Muhammad Hilmi, who was handcuffed, appeared calm when the charge was read to him.
Earlier, DPP Datuk Mohd Hanafiah Zakaria applied for a joint trial with Yazid, who had been charged with inciting terrorism; and religious teacher Halimah Hussein, who is charged with abetting Yazid.
Counsel Amer Hamzah Arsyad, who acted for Muhammad Hilmi, said he had no objection to Mohd Hanafiah’s application.
Amer Hamzah also told the court that he would apply to set aside the charge in a week or two.
DXer said
Yazid’s assisttant at the drinks stall, Hilmi, now has been charged.
Cafe assistant charged with abetting Yazid in promoting ideology
By Jennifer Gomez
AMPANG: Cafe assistant Muhammad Hilmi Hasim was charged at the magistrate’s court here with abetting former Internal Security Act detainee Yazid Sufaat in promoting an ideology intended to incite the people of Syria.
He was alleged to have committed the offence at Yazid’s house in Taman Bukit Ampang between Aug 1 and Oct 20 last year.
No plea was recorded from the 32-year-old Hilmi yesterday, who was brought to court dressed in civilian clothes, but with his hands handcuffed at his back.
He appeared calm throughout the proceedings which lasted five minutes.
Hilmi was then whisked into a waiting white van by a special action squad team about 15 minutes after he was charged.
He was arrested with Yazid, who runs a cafe at the Jalan Duta court complex cafeteria, on Feb 7.
The duo, along with Yazid’s friend Halimah Hussein, 52, were detained under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act.
On Feb 8, Yazid, 49, was charged at the magistrate’s court with the main offence of incitement while Halimah was charged with abetting him. Their cases were mentioned at the Jalan Duta High Court on Wednesday.
Yesterday, deputy public prosecutor Datuk Mohamad Hanafiah Zakaria applied for the case to be transferred to the High Court.
Magistrate Zulyana Zollkapli allowed the application.
Hilmi’s lawyer, New Sin Yew informed the court that his team reserved the right to take action against the police for his client’s unlawful detention.
Hilmi’s lawyers, had on Monday, filed a habeas corpus application seeking his release from detention.
Read more: Cafe assistant charged with abetting Yazid in promoting ideology – Latest – New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/cafe-assistant-charged-with-abetting-yazid-in-promoting-ideology-1.222328#ixzz2LWa8zW00
DXer said
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v7/ge/newsgeneral.php?id=929406
Hilmi was alleged to have committed the offense in the same house during the same period — in his case the time period is reported in this article to have been between 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. between Aug 1 and 20 last year.
He was denied bail and reportedly faces 30 years years.
DXer said
KUALA LUMPUR: Lawyers for canteen assistant Muhammad Hilmi Hasim and the Inspector General of Police seeking his immediate release from detention.
Speaking to reporters after filing the habeas corpus application at the High Court registry yesterday, counsel Fadiah Nadwa Fikri said that Hilmi’s detention under the
Security Offences (Special Measures) Act was unconstitutional.
Read more: Lawyers seek canteen assistant’s release – Latest – New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/lawyers-seek-canteen-assistant-s-release-1.220616#ixzz2LFDciXBG
Question: Can the attorney represent both Hilmi and Yazid and Chomel’s religious instructor simultaneously? Don’t the three criminal defendants need to be separately represented? (In the US, they would have separate counsel).
If Yazid does not want to cooperate, then it is doubly in Hilmi’s interest to cooperate — as whoever cooperates then likely will get a free pass.
The Attorney (who I believe is connected to Amnesty) seems to be doing excellent work and there seems to be no shortage of lawyers interested in the matter — and so Hilmi, it seems, should have a separate counsel who can zealously advocate HIS interests (rather than Yazid’s interests) — those interests may diverge.
Although an outside observer, I’ve suggested, moreover, there effectively is a $5 million reward for information relating to the anthrax program under the Rewards For Justice program.
DXer said
Yazid’s daughter corrects herself as to the date- his hearing is February 20, rather than March 20. That’s in just 4 days. All the family got to see Yazid and visit with him for 45 minutes.
On the general subject of Yazid’s skill level, one or two have said he had poor lab technique. For example, Qasim, a PhD microbiology student rendered in December 2001 (at the same time as the former head of the Vanguards of Conquest) said that Yazid had poor lab technique. Qasim and Yazid were waiting to purchase additional lab equipment in Karachi before Qasim was picked up.
Soraya Yazid @sorayaanur
Correction its on 20/2 not 20/3
Soraya Yazid @sorayaanur
Met Bapak tadi alhamdulillah. 45 mins is short but alhamdulillah, we all got to see and talk to him.
DXer said
Razif appears to have falsely denied he had meals with Yazid and knew him.
This is an example where admitting to the lunch would have been innocuous.
Lying about it makes it impossible to believe other denials.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/11/1/nation/20121101065223&sec=nation
Thursday November 1, 2012
Two Malaysians charged in Lebanon for alleged links to al-Qaeda militant group plead not guilty
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman said Razif acknowledged that he had met several of the people, and admitted that he had previously been arrested in Yemen and was questioned by the special branch in Malaysia during the hearing.
Anifah said Razif was also asked if he had met with a senior member of Jemaah Islamiah group Yazid Sufaat in Malaysia and whether he had acted as a recruiter for al-Qaeda, to which he answered no.
DXer said
His daughter, Soraya Yazid (@sorayaanur), on Twitter, can attest that Yazid is a loving father, as can friends of the family who have confirmed he is a nice guy. (I also confrm that). Aidila Razak says: “yazid sufaat has always been v nice to me. it’s terrible that his family is going through this ordeal again.” To the same effect, Redzanur Rahman reports: “Just went through Yazid Sufaat’s daughter’s TL. Hm, I pray that this thing wld settle amicable for her family & the country.
I would have thought that Yazid’s lawyers might have advised him to avoid his former JI colleagues. I mean, really. What possibly is gained — in this world or any hereafter — by a young man blowing himself up to kill civilians? That is addled thinking. Hambali at least was a little more self-aware about how his religious training had resulted in brainwashing on the subject of violent extremism. See Detainee Assessment.
But without second-guessing the choices Yazid has made in the past, or presuming to judge another’s religious beliefs, I would venture that in this world it would help his prospects for release and an amicable resolution if he stops withholding on Al Qaeda’s anthrax program.
I further would suggest the possibility that all he has to do is identify the strain of anthrax that he was using in order to get a “get out of jail free” card. (It was the US Army Ames strain). See David Relman piece in SCIENCE. He was the Vice-Chairman of the NAS review committee.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
Chomel, it is totally unnecessary that Yazid stay another day in prison. You should take to heart the right PR approach — and it doesn’t involve continued false denials relating to anthrax or “pleading the Fifth” relating to the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. No one respects a liar. They respect a truth-teller. Your family might even be entitled to a $5 million Rewards For Justice reward given that he has served his 7 year sentence already for the events.
While I have no information on the subject beyond what is reported in the media, I am thinking that Abu Ghaith, Al Qaeda’s spokesman in 2001-2002, is saying things that favor his rejoining his family in Saudi Arabia — and weigh against Yazid joining his family if Yazid remains resolute and uncooperative on the subject of anthrax as he was during his past 7 year detention.
On the other hand, if he is garrulous, affable — and cooperative — about the historical facts relating to anthrax, then I see a quick, no-fuss, no-muss release. As for the young men with whom he dined before they left Syria, he can just pitch that as no different as many third parties sending off people they know to the country.
DXer said
Here is Yazid Sufaat’s Twitter.
Chomel Mohamad @DursinaMohamad
The best relationship is when you can act like lovers and best friends at the same time. love u @marwanhadeed~
Retweeted by Yazid Sufaat
29 NovYazid Sufaat @marwanhadeed
@smellthedeen how do you define extremist~
Yazid Sufaat @marwanhadeed
Happiness is wearing a white pagoda tshirt!
Yazid Sufaat @marwanhadeed
Lazy sunday morning~
Yazid Sufaat @marwanhadeed
I want Italy to win tonite, anybody with me
DXer said
What is Abu Ghaith, detained in Turkey, telling about Yazid?
DXer said
Some star Malaysian reporter should get the details of Yazid’s work for the secret offensive (now abandoned) Malaysian biological weapons program from Chomel.
Chomel should also be asked where Al Qaeda got the virulent anthrax that they were using.
Ex-ISA detainee charged with suspected terror link
UPDATED @ 10:14:00 PM 08-02-2013By Syed Jaymal ZahiidFebruary 08, 2013
http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=53961:police-use-isa-replacement-law-to-arrest-duo-at-workplace&Itemid=2
DXer said
We should check out the 2013 “Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?: A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons.” It likely is very noteworthy that Milton Leitenberg reviewed the manuscript. I’ve been a big fan of ML, even though we don’t agree about much, ever since he called me in 2002 and asked me if I was Mossad. He asked how I knew things before they happened. I explained that I just googled a lot — so at best I knew them a few minutes after they were reported. But I admire any researcher who has the sense to pick up the phone or make direct contact in an attempt to get his questions answered. ML was the one who actually first obtained the Rauf Ahmad correspondence (and had it declassified) and I was just playing catch-up. I encourage him to interview Sufaat and ask whether it was the Ames strain. ML mistakenly assumed that AQ had not acquired virulent anthrax. I also encourage him to interview Rauf Ahmad. If he is not afraid to call up someone he suspects is a Mossad agent, then certainly he should not be afraid of these idiotic Al Qaeda religious cultists given he thinks so poorly of their technical skills.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
I long ago suggested to ML that in featuring Rauf Ahmad’s correspondence in his treatise he should have quoted “I have achieved the targets” sentence and then given his interpretation so people could judge what was being said. I further have also suggested that ML reversed the order of the undated two letters between Zawahiri and Ahmad. Compare NYT treatment of issue vs. Warrick’s treatment in Wash Po article. Reasonable people can disagree on conclusions and interpretations but uploading the actual documents permits people to see the evidence.
DXer said
A leading FBI scientist has said that the reason the DOJ withheld documents from NAS regarding overseas testing in Afghanistan — and never provided any classified documents at all — was that it did not want to embarrass a foreign government. Which government was that?
Pakistan? (due to the bioweapons work done by Al Qaeda operatives at the Karachi Technical Institute under the West’s nose?)
Britain (due to Rauf Ahmad’s annual attendence at Porton Down-sponsored conferences with Porton Down and USAMRIID Ames researchers?
Or Malaysia . When did the FBI first learn about Yazid’s participation in the former Malaysian offensive program?
Yazid was closely associated with Moussaoui who was studying cropdusters.
DXer said
Congress needs to find out when the FBI first learned that Sufaat had been a member of the Malaysian biological weapons program. This should have been a game-changer for analysis.
DXer said
When did FBI Director Mueller first learn that Yazid Sufaat had been part of the Malaysian biological weapons program? Although captured in December 2001, he was first interviewed by the FBI in November 2002.
DXer said
When did NYPD Intelligence first learn that Yazid Sufaat had been part of the Malaysian biological weapons program? Who told NYPD Intelligence?
DXer said
July 17, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Chomel, who also graduated Sacramento State, agrees with my assessment of Yazid as a loving man. She emphasizes that they now only want to return to a normal life. She was gracious in contributing her own comments in the Facebook discussion. I am hoping Yazid writes a book to tell us his story. He says he will if Allah wills it. I suspect Allah would want someone to be a truth-teller and to be unafriad in speaking the truth. Although I never stayed long in KL, I love that part of the world. I believe he may be serving as an imam at his local mosque. Hopefully he will reconsider, through study of the hadiths, his relgiious views and conclude that the koran and hadiths do not sanction the killing of innocents.
Channel NewsAsia
December 11, 2008 Thursday 12:55 PM GMT
Wife of freed Malaysian ISA detainee speaks about husband’s release
KUALA LUMPUR: The wife of Malaysian terror suspect Yazid Sufaat has spoken out about her husband’s release, following seven years of detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
43-year-old Sejahtul Dursina, also known as Chomel Mohd, is thankful that her husband Yazid has finally been released from detention. He was held for suspected links to regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).
The mother of four said the family was able to celebrate Hari Raya Haji or the Muslims’ Festival of Sacrifice together for the first time in seven years.
“I just want to be like anybody else in the world; I just want to be a very normal person, living very normal life among the 22 million of Malaysians,” she said.
A graduate from California State University, Chomel – as she is commonly known among her peers – was also detained under ISA for two months in 2002, the first woman to be held on terror charges.
Chomel now runs a food outlet in Kuala Lumpur.
Although she is aware of the public scepticism over Yazid’s release, she is confident her husband will be accepted back into the society.
She also added that her husband is a loving man and denied he could ever be a threat to society.
Yazid, who has been released for three weeks now, has been put on restricted residence order.
While his every move is being closely monitored by the police, the family said he has started his own business and is eager to get on with his life.
DXer said
Chomel was also detained for a couple of months. The Malaysian authorities wanted to put pressure on Yazid to come clean about his microbiological pursuits for Al Qaeda once a “friend” told Malaysia that he had been part of Malaysia’s biological program. They married in Sacramento. Chomel’s mom was afraid she was spending too much time in malls and becoming too westernized. Chomel and Yazid then, at her urging, took religion classes 5 times a week. But my sense is that the description of their personality of “easygoing” is still apt. They certainly were gracious in responding to questions.
Associated Press Worldstream
May 14, 2002 Tuesday
From students in United States to jail in Malaysia _ a couple’s strange detour to alleged Sept. 11 connections.
BYLINE: JASBANT SINGH; Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
They could once have been a shining example of Malaysia as a modern, moderate Muslim country. But a yearning by Yazid Sufaat and his wife to be more devout Muslims became a detour into extremism and prison on accusations of links to the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The couple, who met in the mid-1980s as students in the United States, are among 62 people arrested in Malaysia over the past year for alleged involvement in Islamic militant groups.
The crackdown has led to wide praise for Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who met President Bush in Washington on Tuesday to receive American thanks for his role in the war on terror.
Most of the allegations relate to a grand scheme to transform Malaysia, Indonesia and the predominantly Muslim southern Philippines into a single fundamentalist state.
But the claims against Yazid point to deeper involvement in the region by the radical Jemaah Islamiyah movement – a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Singapore and a connection, if marginal and possibly unwitting, to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Yazid is accused of offering his apartment outside Kuala Lumpur as a meeting place two years ago for two future Sept. 11 hijackers – Saudi nationals Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The men commandeered the jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon.
Yazid’s wife, Sejahratul Dursina, helped provide a letter of employment that enabled Zacarias Moussaoui to enter the United States, police say. Moussaoui is on trial in U.S. District Court in Virginia for conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks. He faces the death penalty if convicted.
Sejahratul, called Chomel by friends and family, was arrested April 18 and is the only woman among the detainees.
It appears unlikely that either will play a role in Moussaoui’s trial. Jury selection is set for September. Senior U.S. officials say they have not questioned Yazid, nor sought his extradition.
The couple deny the accusations. They and the other suspects are being detained without trial under Malaysia’s national security law.
The guide on their journey from Malaysia’s middle class to the fringes of extremism was a soft-spoken Islamic teacher named Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali.
Officials say Hambali, an Indonesian, had deep connections with al-Qaida and was in charge of recruiting militants for Jemaah Islamiyah.
In their youth, the couple were emblematic of Mahathir’s long campaign to build a modern country. Each was a top student and won government scholarships to California State University at Sacramento, where they met in 1983. They spoke good English, wore jeans and shorts and made American friends.
Yazid, who had attended Malaysia’s military college since he was 15, studied microbiology. Sejahratul pursued civil engineering. They married in Sacramento a year after meeting.
In 1987, they came home. Yazid became a microbiologist in the army and made captain. His wife joined Sapura Holdings, a large telecommunications company, rising from marketing executive to product manager.
In the early 1990s, they went into business for themselves, founding Infocus Tech, a small firm dealing in computers.
Yazid loved Cerutti jackets, and Sejarahtul would spend hours at shopping malls, treating the kids to Hollywood movies and Cokes, family members said.
Sejarahtul’s sister, Suri Hanim Mohamad – whose husband, Ahmad Yani, has also been detained – described the couple as “easygoing” with a passion for shopping and discotheques.
Their lifestyle changed after Sejarahtul’s mother encouraged them to attend classes on Islam in 1994.
“Mom felt Chomel was becoming too Westernized and urged her to attend religious classes,” Suri Hanim said. “My sister, being the obedient one in the family, obliged.”
The lessons had a powerful impact.
The couple attended up to five classes a week. Their three children were sent to private Islamic schools instead of state-funded secular institutions. Sejarahtul began wearing ankle-length robes and Islamic headscarves – though her husband retained a liking for designer clothes.
“They were not biased against Americans,” Suri Hanim said. “They always spoke fondly of their stay in the U.S.”
How much Yazid knew of Hambali’s role in Jemaah Islamiyah or his connections to al-Qaida is unknown, as is the extent to which Sejarahtul knew what her husband was doing.
Under Hambali’s instructions, officials say, Yazid in late 2000 bought four tons of ammonium nitrate, which can be used to make explosives. Officials believe it was to be used in the Singapore bomb plot.
Yazid, in affidavits filed with government officials and made available to The Associated Press, said he bought the chemical as part of a business deal with an Indonesian quarry company.
Authorities think Hambali asked Yazid to issue a letter from Infocus Tech describing Moussaoui as its overseas sales representative to help him get into the United States.
Yazid was arrested Dec. 9 as he returned to Malaysia from a trip to Pakistan, where he claimed he was studying pathology, and Afghanistan, where he planned to do medical support work.
Hambali’s whereabouts are unknown.
DXer said
She helped her husband form Infocus Tech, the company that permitted Moussaoui the false pretense used to get into the United States.
University Wire
April 24, 2002, Wednesday
Former Cal State-Sacramento students linked to al Qaeda
BYLINE: By Danielle Anselmo, The State Hornet
SOURCE: California State U.-Sacramento
LENGTH: 346 words
DATELINE: Sacramento, Calif.
Two former California State University-Sacramento students were charged Thursday with helping suspected al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui enter the United States.
Sejarahtul Dursina and her husband, Yazid Sufaat, allegedly employed Moussaoui solely for the purpose of making his entry into the United States seem more legitimate.
According to an FBI report, in October 2000 Sufaat gave Moussaoui a letter identifying him as a marketing consultant for Infocus Tech, a Malaysian computer company for which Dursina is a partner. The report states Sufaat also gave Moussaoui $ 35,000, which may have been meant to fund flight training and preparations for Sept. 11.
Moussaoui, believed to be the missing 20th hijacker, was arrested on immigration charges less than a month before the attacks.
According to the Office of Public Affairs, Sufaat graduated from Sac State in 1987 with a degree in biology, but records on Dursina were harder to find.
“Our file first shows her name as Mohamed Chomel, and then we show her as Sejahratul Dursina and finally as Chomel B.T. Mohamed,” said Ann Reed, associate vice president of public affairs. “We have to admit cultural ignorance on that one. Even while she was here, we had to change her records several times because we had the names wrong.”
Dursina graduated with a degree in civil engineering in 1988. Malaysian police arrested Dursina Thursday, but Sufaat has been in custody since early December on charges of aiding Sept. 11 hijackers Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi.
Under Malaysian law, suspects can be held for up to two years without trial. In a February press conference Malaysian officials told local media terrorism suspects most likely will not be extradited to the United States.
“As far as we are concerned, he has committed a serious offense and we cannot hand him over to others to be extradited,” Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.
DXer said
Chomel, who also graduated Sacramento State, agrees with my assessment of Yazid as a loving man. She emphasizes that they now only want to return to a normal life. She was gracious in contributing her own comments in the Facebook discussion. I am hoping Yazid writes a book to tell us his story. He says he will if Allah wills it. I suspect Allah would want someone to be a truth-teller and to be unafriad in speaking the truth. Although I never stayed long in KL, I love that part of the world. I believe he may be serving as an imam at his local mosque. Hopefully he will reconsider, through study of the hadiths, his relgiious views and conclude that the koran and hadiths do not sanction the killing of innocents.
Channel NewsAsia
December 11, 2008 Thursday 12:55 PM GMT
Wife of freed Malaysian ISA detainee speaks about husband’s release
KUALA LUMPUR: The wife of Malaysian terror suspect Yazid Sufaat has spoken out about her husband’s release, following seven years of detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
43-year-old Sejahtul Dursina, also known as Chomel Mohd, is thankful that her husband Yazid has finally been released from detention. He was held for suspected links to regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).
The mother of four said the family was able to celebrate Hari Raya Haji or the Muslims’ Festival of Sacrifice together for the first time in seven years.
“I just want to be like anybody else in the world; I just want to be a very normal person, living very normal life among the 22 million of Malaysians,” she said.
A graduate from California State University, Chomel – as she is commonly known among her peers – was also detained under ISA for two months in 2002, the first woman to be held on terror charges.
Chomel now runs a food outlet in Kuala Lumpur.
Although she is aware of the public scepticism over Yazid’s release, she is confident her husband will be accepted back into the society.
She also added that her husband is a loving man and denied he could ever be a threat to society.
Yazid, who has been released for three weeks now, has been put on restricted residence order.
While his every move is being closely monitored by the police, the family said he has started his own business and is eager to get on with his life.
DXer said
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v6/newsfeatures.php?id=681147
Keeping Biological Weapons In Check In Malaysia
By Kurniawati Kamarudin
July 17, 2012 13:16 PM
***
DRAFT BILL
To implement preventive measures in order to control biological agents and toxins within the country call for special laws to be drafted.
So far there haven’t been any laws or regulations drafted to govern effective control and monitor biological agents, including dangerous toxins that can be used with disastrous consequences.
Abdul Ghaffar noted that The Biological Weapon and Toxin Convention bill would help in preventing irresponsible parties from producing, developing and storing biological agents and toxins with the intention of endangering others.
“The law is necessary to conform to the Biological Weapon Convention signed on 10 April, 1972 and ratified on 6 Sept, 1991. Other than that the bill also takes into account the national security interest and fast development of technologies,” he says.
Since 2008, the Ministry of Defence through STRIDE has held a series of meetings with law-makers and 23 government agencies, including the Attorney General’s Department, Health Ministry, Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Department to discuss the contents of the bill.
LAWS REGULATE CONTROL
Through the new law, Malaysia will be complying with Article III of the Convention on whose accord the country cannot transfer or in any way help and encourage any party to procure or keep biological weapons. The country also has to comply with article IV that calls for necessary steps to implement the convention clauses with the country.
The series, forum and discussions that came up with the bill have also taken note of the genuine concerns of the scientific community who were apprehensive of the fact that their research could be monitored. They were also skeptical of high fines imposed for breaching the regulations.
Under the law, based on the type of biological agent and the toxin under control, the scientist has to declare his research activities.
“We fear that the scientists will be used by certain parties without their acknowledgement of facing a serious threat to the community, economy and the nation. This is something what we want to avoid,” he says adding that the enforcement of the new act will follow after a nod from the Parliament and that it will be under the purview of a neutral party.
“The scientists cannot consider this law to be a stumbling block because the whole idea is to ensure that research activities are conducted systematically. In the event that something does go wrong, it will be easier to contain the problem effectively,” he concludes before pointing out that the country will cooperate with other nations in the region and the United States to streamline its regulatory apparatus.
— BERNAMA
DXer said
At the war court, the Pentagon takes the position that even if information is already in the public domain it cannot be discussed in open court if it is also classified elsewhere. The media argues there should be a higher standard for closure, to include a factual finding that “the disclosure of specific information would create a substantial probability of harm to a compelling governmental interest.” Did the government know that Yazid Sufaat, the Al Qaeda lab director, had been part of the Malaysian biological weapons program before he disclosed it this year in media interviews? Under the Pentagon’s logic, if it was classified, then it cannot be mentioned at trial.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/13/2894381/media-opposes-guantanamo-hearing.html#storylink=cpy
DXer said
Al-qaeda had training camps in Pakistan: CIA documents
Punjab Newsline – 6 days ago
Al-Qaeda had training camps in Pakistan and its operatives had … have experimented by crude means to make and deploy biological agents.
…
“As of Late August 2001, there were indications that an individual associated with al-Qaeda was considering mounting terrorist operations in the United States. No further information is currently available in the timing of possible attacks or on the alleged targets in the United States,” the document dated August 24, 2001 said.
These documents also provide an insight into Bin Laden’s attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
“Bin Ladin and his associates have experimented by crude means to make and deploy biological agents…Bin Ladin has sought to acquire military-grade biological agents or weapons,” said one of the documents dated 2001.
DXer said
DXer said
The authors of this April 2012 article could be asked about the difficulties in testing the environment where a party cleaned the area with insecticide, such as correspondence involving Dr. Zawahiri indicates that the anthrax lab workers planned to do. They expected to move the lab every 3 months to avoid detection. In the US, I believe paraformaldehyde can be used where there is an EPA permit.
At the various known lab sites, did the FBI test for evidence of decontamination agents that the technicians or other evidence indicated were used?
What does Yazid Sufaat say was used? Why didn’t AUSA Lieber or Kohl ask him?
Raman Spectroscopic Detection of Anthrax Endospores in Powder Samples†
• S. Stöckel1,
• S. Meisel1,
• Dr. M. Elschner3,
• Dr. P. Rösch1,
• Prof. Dr. J. Popp1,2,*
• Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2012 Apr 13. doi: 10.1002/anie.201201266. [Epub ahead of print]
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201201266/abstract;jsessionid=4BE632C53378BAA6F1774C07F60FC506.d03t04
DXer said
After he was released abruptly by Malaysia, Yazid Sufaat’s whereabouts were unknown. Did he go to Pakistan? He politely declines to respond substantively to the question.
Pakistan: Security Agencies Looking for Suspected Malaysian Al-Qa’ida Operative
Report by MANSOOR KHAN: “Qaeda suspect present in country: Report”
The Nation
Saturday, February 28, 2009 T11:03:42Z
Journal Code: 1090 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: OSC Transcribed Text
Word Count: 390
Material in the World News Connection is generally copyrighted by the source cited. Permission for use must be obtained from the copyright holder. Inquiries regarding use may be directed to NTIS, US Dept. of Commerce.
KARACHI – The secret service agencies who are looking for a suspected Malaysian national Al-Qaeda (Al-Qa’ida) operative believe that he has arrived in Pakistan, The Nation learnt here on Thursday (26 February).
According to the report, one of the masterminds of the 9 /11 and expert of Anthrax, namely Yazid Bin Sufaat who is believed to have close links with Osama Bin Laden and professionally a microbiologist has reached Pakistan.
A letter written by an intelligence agency revealed to this scribe that Yazid Bin Sufaat, an operative of Al-Qaeda had vanished since his release from the custody of Malaysian authorities.
In the letter written by a joint director of a secret agency asserted that Sufaat, who was born on January 20, 1964 at Johor, Malaysia, bears a passport number A-10472263 and Malaysian ID card number 640120-015529, has disappeared after serving a seven-year detention in Malaysia.
It is believed that Sufaat could be in Pakistan, therefore it has also been asserted, “The individual is a concrete and significant security threat and has been at the watch-list of western countries.” It was also pointed out that the said suspect has links with various terrorist groups, head a group name “Jemaah Islamiyah” and has been masterminding the Al-Qaeda’s Anthrax programme.
It has also been asserted that he may also try to conduct a terror attack in Pakistan.
In the letter, authorities have sought information about Sufaat’s whereabouts and directed to freeze his financial assets. The letter stated that it was requested that any information of Yazid including his previous visits to Pakistan must be shared with SRHQ-IB for necessary action. The said agency has dispatched the said letter to the Home Secretary Sindh Arif Ahmed Khan and Inspector General Sindh Police Salahuddin Baber Khattack.
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat was captured in December 2001. Why wasn’t he interviewed in January 2002. Why was he not interviewed until November 2002.
Malaysia yet to receive information on FBI questioning of terror suspect Yazid
Kuala Lumpur Bernama WWW-Text in English 01 Dec 02
BERNAMA
Sunday, December 1, 2002
Journal Code: 1325 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 302
Upgrading precedence and adding topic tag
(FBIS Transcribed Text) BAGAN SERAI, Dec 1 (Bernama) — The Home Ministry has not yet received any information on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) recent questioning of Yazid Sufaat, a Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM) member being held at the Kamunting detention centre.
Deputy Home Minister Datuk Zainal Abidin Zin said the ministry was supposed to have received the report last week, through Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Norian Mai.
“FBI should convey to us anything we need to know. This is because we have given our cooperation by allowing them to come to Malaysia and question Yazid,” he told reporters after presenting Hari Raya aid to 500 poor people, single mothers and orphans in Bagan Serai at the Umno building here Sunday.
On Nov 18, FBI officers questioned Yazid at the detention centre here, where he is being held under the Internal Security Act (ISA). The FBI wanted to get information on those involved in the Sept 11 terror attacks and allegedly having links with Yazid, a former armed forces captain.
Zainal Abidin said the government allowed the FBI to question Yazid because that could help the United States on matters of national security.
“Security issues are global issues. When we hear that a country’s security is under threat, we will help if we can,” he said.
He said the FBI had followed procedures when applying to question Yazid and had also accorded him the proper respect.
Zainal Abidin said the Malaysian authorities were fully aware of the FBI officers’ movements in the country.
DXer said
Consider the parallels between the famed Judi Bari case and the Amerithrax investigation. ( In the Bari case, a pipe bomb under Bari’s seat maimed her ; the FBI reasoned that she must have put it under her seat but never charged her).
One difference is that in Amerithrax the FBI conducted key forensic investigations but then simply withheld the reports from the public and NAS because they were not the issues on which they were basing their “Ivins Theory.”
The NAS should have obtained the documents relating to the issues that the FBI did NOT view as supporting. In the trade, it is called relevant and potentially exculpatory evidence. Having failed to do so, the GAO now should obtain and disclose the documents even if given the complexity of the forensic issues it does not have the wherewithal to get to the bottom of particular issues as a scientific matter. The Washington Post effort on hair analysis — and the effort in Amerithrax by ProPublic, McClatchy and their online investigative journalism partner — demonstrates what can be done with analysis when there is document disclosure.
The NAS Committee even tolerated the FBI’s withholding of the testing at foreign labs until the 11th hour, nearly a year after the last presentations of evidence were made before the NAS.
In responding to my questions, Yazid Sufaat does not deny to me that he used the Ames strain of anthrax. But for now he pleads the Fifth.
He says he realizes that his statements may lead him to get “jacked up” but says the “plan is on the way.”
GAO: Yazid Sufaat is available by email, Facebook or telephone to interview.
He can provide insight on Dr. Majidi’s reasoning that everyone other than Dr. Ivins could be excluded. .. and therefore Dr. Ivins must be guilty because he cannot prove he was sleeping on that night 7 years earlier.
My sense is that Yazid won’t lie to you. He will just choose not to respond to questions he cannot answer truthfully.
Judge orders testing of evidence in Judi Bari bombing
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-judge-orders-testing-of-evidence-in-judi-bari-bombing-20120402,0,7835080.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fscience%2Fenvironment+%28L.A.+Times+-+Environment%29
Almost 22 years after Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were car-bombed during a campaign to save old-growth trees, a federal judge has ordered the FBI to turn over evidence from the bombing for forensic testing.
In an order dated last Friday but released Monday, Claudia Wilken, United States district judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed a March 21, 2011, order by Magistrate Judge James Larson, directing the United States, through the FBI, to turn over the remnants of two pipe bombs, cardboard signs and other evidence connected to the bombing. The items have never been tested for DNA evidence or other identifying characteristics that could provide leads in the bombing case, which has never been solved. The items have been in FBI possession since the bombing two decades ago.
***
Police and federal law enforcement told the press in 1990 that they refused to look at suspects other than Bari and Cherney, and when charges were not forthcoming the case essentially went cold. The two pipe bombs – the one from Bari’s car and another that was laid at a lumber mill in Cloverdale a week or so earlier that failed to go off, and which all investigators agreed was made by the same bomber – were put in storage, along with a hand-lettered sign left at the Cloverdale mill.
Cherney, Rosenfeld and others point out that the bombs were wrapped in as much as 6 feet of duct tape, and that a hair or skin cell left on those materials could be an important break.
“The Cloverdale bomb barely exploded; it dudded more than it detonated. So it remains mostly intact,” said Rosenfeld. “And bombers didn’t know to cover their DNA tracks back then the way they do today. So there is potentially a wealth of DNA and other forensic evidence associated with those materials. And if anybody still harbored any doubt that the government has no intention of finding out who bombed Judi Bari, and worse, that they’re trying to cover that up, the fact that they’re out to destroy this evidence without ever testing it lays those doubts to rest.”
The recent twists in the case began in September 2010 when the FBI announced, as required by law, that it would be destroying this evidence. Two judges have now intervened, both ordering the testing to be done, but the wrangling might not be over yet. Cherney and his attorneys must now present the judge with a plan to bring the materials to a suitable lab, and then the U.S. attorney on the case has 14 days to file any objections.
DXer said
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?storyID=134164
Beyond the breach: Officials look back at safety and security a decade after anthrax scare
Originally published April 08, 2012
By Courtney Mabeus
News-Post Staff
Ten years ago today, a leaking flask of anthrax set off a series of events that led scientist Bruce Ivins to an unsettling discovery: Anthrax spores had made their way outside a containment lab, contaminating several areas and renewing fears that the community at large was at risk for possible exposure.
Army investigators never settled on the cause of the breach at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. No one tested positive for anthrax, but 88 people were evaluated and nine were placed on antibiotics as a precaution against illness. The experience heightened anxiety in a community that was already on edge after the Amerithrax letters, which USAMRIID was helping to test, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks only a few months earlier.
Ivins committed suicide in July 2008, just as the FBI was closing in on him as its main suspect in the anthrax mailings, which killed five people.
He was not charged, and the crimes have not been solved.
****
DXer said
Here is a new article about the requested extradition of the webmaster of the Al Qaeda website with the “jowf” (heart/ what is inside code). The website was selling the “Green Birds” video and promoting the Ann Arbor-based IANA charity on the Al Qaeda website. Some of the evidence against him is classified.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9194912/Profiles-of-the-terrorist-suspects-facing-extradition-to-the-US.html
“Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan, both from Tooting, south London, are accused of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists; providing material support to terrorists; conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country; and money laundering.
The material support is alleged to have been provided through a series of websites whose servers were based in Connecticut. The other charge is based on an allegation that the pair were in possession of classified US Navy plans relating to a US naval battle group operating in the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and that they discussed its vulnerability to terrorist attack.
The main website, known as “Azzam Publications” was named after Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar who was, according to the website, “instrumental in reviving jihad in the 20th century.” It carried a series of personal stories from fighters in Chechnya, Afghanistan and elsewhere….
[also lawyer Adel Abdel Bary, a Zawahiri associate and cell member from Cairo from years ago.and then from London in the late 1990s.]
Comment:
Lawyers, judges and legislators need to implement principles of justice, however they conceive them, more efficiently.
Judicial review of extradition requests should not take so long as they do in UK.
If one didn’t understand the history of the London Egyptian Islamic Jihad cell and its importance to Dr. Ayman’s operations, then in 2001 and 2002 one didn’t understand enough of the background to be able to analyze Amerithrax true crime facts.
Push-ups and firearms proficiency may be very important to being an FBI agent.
But in 2001 we also needed people who knew as much and were as widely read as Ali M. H — and were always reading to learn more. In 2001, the FBI did not have a use of computers and databases available even to the general public.
The bench of FBI analysts was not deep in 2001.
DXer said
Thanks for your input on the hadiths. I need to pull the Bernard Lewis article — September 2001 — that quotes the hadiths relating to such things as poisoning livestock and food.
Apart from their guidance on the permissible use of anthrax under the hadiths, however, they are very important in understanding the correct true crime and intelligence analysis of the anthrax mailings. The hadiths are very important to the mailer.
There was a video — its title derived from a hadith — advertised on the Al Qaeda website mirrored in New Brunswick. It was a favorite among Ali Al-Timimi’s followers. It was called “The Hearts of Green Birds.” The hadith looms very large to Yazid Sufaat even today. The Green Birds were symbolized by the stamp used.
By way of background, in April 1992, war broke out in the Balkans. Different organisations went to the aid of the Bosnian Muslims. There was however, another group of individuals who also went to Bosnia. One group that went got less attention — the foreign Mujahideen (volunteer Islamic fighters). Between 1992-95, hundreds came and went. Some didn’t return: the Shuhadaa’ — those killed in the way of Allah. With what Yazid Sufaat, Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab tech would view as true sincerity to Allah (Allah knows best) and an undying commitment to the Deen of Islam, the Shuhadaa of Bosnia managed, insha’Allah to attain the ultimate objective of a Muslim — the Pleasure of Allah, followed by the reward which awaits in Paradise on High, and Eternal Bliss is unfolded to enjoy. Bosnia came to be the focus of the Blind Sheikh’s group in Brooklyn and its branches. “Jafar the Pilot” and Aafia took it up as their cause. Jafar the Pilot, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, would hold garage sales to raise money.
“Greendale” School is the return address of the anthrax letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy — two Senators who played key roles in both appropriations to Israel and Arab secular regimes and the rendering of senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders. In December 2002, the Arabic paper London Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that correspondence on Zawahiri’s computer (which was obtained by the Wall Street Journal) — with whom Yazid Sufaat met and briefed in the Summer of 2001 — shows Zawahiri uses “school” as code for Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The letter was found on Al Zawahiri’s computer. The letter was designed to look innocent. It was dated 3 May 2001 and signed “Dr. Nour, Chairman of the Company.”
Green dale refers to green “river valley” — Egypt, Cairo, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and/or Egyptian Islamic Group. Put it all together and you have their new official name (though the American press does not use it) — Qaeda al Jihad. For what it is worth, at the Darunta complex where jihadis trained, recruits would wear green uniforms, except for Friday when they would be washed.
It was widely published among the militant islamists that martyrs go to paradise “in the hearts of green birds.” The stamp used in the anthrax mailings was designed by artist Michael Doret. Mr. Doret advises me that the color of the eagle is a “teal” or greenish-blue.
In the very interview in which they admitted 9/11, and described the codes used for the four targets for the planes, KSM and Ramzi Binalshibh admitted to the Jenny code, the code for representing the date 9/11, and used the symbolism of the “Green Birds.” Osama Bin Laden later invoked the symbolism in his video “The 19 Martyrs”, describing a hijacker as “A man of worship who enjoined good and forbade evil. His body was on earth but his heart roamed with the green birds that perch beneath the Throne of the Most Merciful.”
9-11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh a few months earlier in his interview with al-Jazeera, in a lengthy and articulate essay “The Nineteen Lions” published by Azzam Publications on December 2002, explained:
“One of the explanations of the Quranic verse [3:169] in which Allah says that the shuhadaa (martyrs) are not dead, is that as well as their souls being inside the hearts of green birds, they are alive because the shaheed (martyr) gives life to those around him. Indeed evidence of this is apparent throughout the Ummah today.”
Peter Finn of the Washington Post explains the symbolism:
“Around 7 one evening during Ramadan in 1998, the believers filed down a long corridor leading to the prayer room of the Al Muhadjirin mosque here, placing their shoes on the dark brown shelves before stepping onto a carpet the color of turquoise, a mixture of green for Islam and blue for heaven. Among the worshipers was a small group of men who clustered around a severe, slight Egyptian named Mohamed Atta. ..
In the [9/11/2002] interview with al-Jazeera, Binalshibh, said that Al-Shehhi, even before he learned of the operation, used to have beautiful visions that he flies in the sky with huge green birds and crashes into things.”
A FAQ on Al Qaeda’s website, the Azzam Publications website, explained that “In the Hearts of Green Birds” refers to what is inside: “The actual Arabic word used in the Hadith is not Qalb (heart) but it is Jowf which can mean any of interior, inside, or heart (as in center).” There was a video based on the hadith with the title “In The Hearts of Green Birds” about foreign mujahideen that had been martyred in Bosnia. The audiocasette was created in August 1996 and its 3rd edition was released in January 1997. The azzam.org website selling the “In the Hearts of Green Birds” audiocassette was shut down after 9/11 because authorities thought it might contain codes and instructions to militants.
Azzam.com posted an exclusive interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri and stressed the importance of cash donations and gas masks and chemical-resistant suits. Ibn Khattab, the Arab Chechnyan fighter who was Bin Laden’s good friend, had told his public that azzam.com was highly recommended and that only the two charities identified by the website should be used to route donations — announcing in 2000 that Benevolence International Foundation was one of the charities that should be used. The other was the Islamic Assembly of North America (”IANA”). Ibu al-Khattab, the late Arab-Afghan commander of foreign mujahideen in Chechnya (who in March 2002 was killed by a poison letter), expressly endorsed Azzam Publications.
Azzam.org had “no bricks and mortar address, but operates a post office box in London, and bill[ed] itself as “an independent media organisation providing authentic news and information about jihad and the Foreign Mujahideen everywhere.” One posting datelined from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and was a message to Muslim youth from top terror suspect Bin Laden. A farewell message from Azzam Publications .. exhorts “Muslims all over the World (to) render as much financial, physical, medical, media and moral support to the Taliban as they can.” Azzam also urged those with computer expertise to mirror the website so as to keep it up after authorities took it down. One can access old websites as they existed on past dates through http://www.archives.org and its wonderful Wayback Machine.
British and US intelligence sources suspected that some of Azzam.com’s jihad photos and graphics contain messages embedded with a technology known as steganography. The code instead perhaps was there separately for all to see on the stamps of the lethal missives being sent.
A man formerly known as Paul Hall, was arrested in Phoenix on a federal criminal complaint in March 2007 and agreed to be removed to District of Connecticut for further prosecution where there has been investigation of Azzam Publications website located on a server there He is alleged to have provided classified information to the London-based Azzam Publications about a U.S. Navy battle group as it traveled from California to the Persian Gulf region in 2001. He allegedly “described a recent force protection briefing given aboard his ship, voiced enmity toward America, praised Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen [and] praised the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole.”
Even Zarqawi invoked the imagery in a 60-minute audio message:
“The martyrs rejoice in the bounty provided by God. Their souls are inside the bodies of green birds that fly in heaven.”
In Fall 2004, the federal authorities indicted the fellow behind Azzam Publications selling “Green Birds,” Babar Ahmad, pointing, in part, to the “distribution of videotapes and compact discs depicting fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere, and the eulogizing of dead fighters, for the purpose of recruiting individuals and soliciting donations to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Chechnya.” Of Pakistani descent, Ahmad is a British computer specialist. He is associated with KSM, who had anthrax production documents on his laptop and admits to having headed the cell (after Atef’s death) planning to use weaponized anthrax against the United States. Ahmad is also the cousin of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested mid-2004 in Pakistan. Khan’s computers carried detailed surveillance of five financial buildings in New York, Newark and Washington and once prompted the Department of Homeland Security to elevate the threat alert level to orange.
In an affidavit, an FBI special agent and computer investigative specialist, alleged that a New Brunswick, NJ man, Mazen Mokhtar, assisted Babar in maintaining the continued operation of the Azzam sites, through the use of mirror sites, when the administrators of Azzam sites shut down the Azzam.com site down after 9/11. The mirror sites, http://www.qoqaz.net and http://www.waaqiah.com, allegedly routed people trying to access http://www.azzam.com. The affidavit alleges that Mr. Mokhtar is listed as the administrative contact for the mirror sites. He also operated minna.com. A friend reports: “He said he used to run a hosting service four or five years ago that used to resell Web hosting services to people. He said he didn’t know those guys (mentioned in court papers) and he is not involved in anything like that.” An Egyptian-born imam and political activist, he is a supporter of Palestinian cause and frequent speaker before groups in Brooklyn and the Bronx. He is said to be nice and seems a man of peace.
Of course, given that the symbolism used in this regard in the anthrax mailings had an origin in religious writing, there is no direct tie with the website — the tie could be with the hadith. The webmaster has said that the FBI allowed it to remain up (while it moved from server to server) for another year hoping to get leads on supporters.
Bin Laden was using “Green Birds” in the same way he used the repeated phrase “Looming Tower” to hint of what was to come with the planes attack on the World Trade Center. He would say:
“Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower.”
On October 7, 2001 in a prerecorded tape aired October 7, Bin Laden said “The winds of faith have come.” This would be enough to keep Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and VP Dick Cheney up at night — or when they do sleep, keep them dreaming about green birds.
But then Ed Montooth and Rachel Lieber got distracted by some stained panties and failed to master the documents showing why Dr. Ivins was in the lab in early October 2001. Indeed, truth be told, they affirmatively took deliberate steps to withhold the documents from production. The country needed better from the people tasked with keeping the innocents in New York City and Washington DC safe.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
That codes are used in public communications receives an interesting confirmation in Mohamed Sifaoui’s Mes frères assassins. Sifaoui’s an Algerian journalist who infiltrated a jihadi cell under the guise of doing a documentary. As for the Algerian jihadists in France, in 2002, they certainly thought they were receiving messages from OBL in his public statements. It really threw Sifaoui for a loop. Scared him good. To be honest, I didn’t used to believe the feds when security was given as a reason to avoid broadcasting OBL’s statements. It looks like they were right.
I’ve a couple of recordings from the early 1990s, about the Bosnian jihad, with the title In the Heart of Green Birds. I remember when they first began to circulate here in the US. They were incredibly important. Well produced, but also one of the early items to appear in English. Such a tragedy. Some many young lives ruined, by what was little more than cheap propaganda and miracle-mongering.
You’re right about jawf. It serves as a preposition. The English ‘in the heart of’ is a paraphrase. Here’s how the Dutch scholar Juynboll translates this part of the tradition, which is admitted pretty odd:
“Ibn Mas`ūd said: ‘We also asked (sc. the Prophet) about this verse; he said: ‘Their souls reside inside green birds. Lamps are hanging down for them from the Throne. They pasture in Paradise wherever they want. Then they repair to those lamps. Their Lord took a good look at them and asked: ‘Do you desire anything?’ They answered: ‘What should we desire, pasturing in Paradise wherever we want?’ He repeated the same question three times. When they saw that the questioning would not stop, they said: ‘Lord, we should like You to return our souls to our bodies in order that we be killed in Your path again.’ When He saw that they were not in need of anything, they were left alone.”
Juynboll’s correct, I think.
As for your interpretation of the symbolism of the letters, I’m inclined to agree at least on the general outline. And good lord, your’s certainly better than FBI’s monstrosity of codes within codes within a genetic code. AQ likes these little games. What good is the game if no one understands it. It’s got to be simple.
What do you think about the added element that the name ATTA is included in the letters themselves?
On which subject, have you read Hopsicker’s account of the number of people who joined Atta in shopping for crop dusters in Florida? Who might they have been?
Hopsicker can get a bit exuberant, but he does a lot of leg work and talks to a lot of people, and I do think he’s generally pretty honest about what he finds and does not find. What he concludes from the data is another matter. And I’d say, generally, the only conspiracy related to 911 on the US side of things is plain-old CYA.
QRPer 72 ..
DXer said
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92436&page=1#.T4DqgGCwOm0
Lee said Atta and as many as 12 or 15 other men appearing to be of Middle Eastern descent visited the airfield in groups of two or three on several weekends prior to the attacks, often taking pictures of the aircraft.
Crop-Dusters Grounded
“The FBI assesses the use of this type of aircraft to distribute chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction as potential threats to Americans,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said during a congressional hearing on proposed anti-terrorism legislation today. “[But,] we have no clear indication of the time or place of such attacks.”
Comment: I don’t know who visited an airport about cropdusters. Adnan El-Shukrijumah would be a prime candidate. Jdey would be another.
Scrutiny of Atta’s time in Portland on September 10 is also intriguing.
It seems that at least in Portland there would have been enough cameras to capture others on film in the company of Atta.
My friend Ken hypothesizes, quite reasonably, that Jdey came down to Portland from Montreal and that is the reason Atta went to Portland. He posits Jdey as the mailer.
My only point would be to emphasize that Dr. Majidi should be asked by GAO how he was able to exclude Jdey if he doesn’t know where he was.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
The ABC story is new to me (thanks). It confirms the general outlines of what Hopsicker reports. Don’t forget, too, there was a crop-duster scare EU-wide subsequent to the U.S. Army’s raid on the private jihadi airport in Bosnia, near Zenica — late 2001. Manuals pop up in the rubble of Afghanistan. And what of the Ross-Brayant ABC interview, where Atta is said to have tried to take out a loan to purchase a plane? That’s a lot of attention being paid to a thought experiment, occasioned by an fraction of an ounce of anthrax. But then there’s the evidence from the Albanian returnees trial in Egypt: EIJ said they purchased a toxin. From Malaysia, perhaps? To paraphrase Stalin: Comrades, this is not an accident.
I need to work some more on Jdey. I’ve been assuming he was dead.
DXer said
There is a direct connection between the charity you mention that was raided and workers there and a doctor at Lenox Hill treating and publishing about Kathy Nguyen’s illness. He hadn’t really done his medical training — he was taking jihadis to camp. He then had lived near Ali Al-TImimi at a time he allegedly was getting his medical training. He lost his medical license.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
I tried to find information on his earlier career in Croatia. No luck. As if he didn’t exist. I still think we don’t have his real name.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
Were that to have happened, it’d be about as funny as letting Ali Mohammed wear a Green Beret. Where do you suppose the feds hide such people? Houston?
Speaking of Houston, or not … Have you encountered?
– Abu Issa Radwaan/Radwan, formerly researcher at Houston medical center
Or these:
– Al-Ghamdi Jamaan Aj, adresa: 4352 Greenbury Lane Annandale, Va; asigurare sociala: 231-61-****; data nasterii: 1.6.1946
– Al-Ghamdi Lamasaeed 1730 S Federal Hwy Delray Beach, Fl sau 2840 Airport Dr. Vero Beach, Fl sau 755 Dotterel Rd. #1504 Delray Beach, Fl; data nasterii: 18.11.1980
– Al-Ghamdi Mohammed J, adresa: 4352 Greenbury Lane Annandale Va; data nasterii: 4.6.1981
Note addresses, by the way
DXer said
I emailed Aafia’s sister-in-law, Dr. Khawaja, whose office was down the hall from Dr. Koehler in Houston. TK’s lab upgraded to BL-3 in March 2001 with grad student Melissa Drysdale rendering avirulent strains virulent by inserting plasmids. But I never heard back. Aafia’s detention understandably was and remains very upsetting.
The labs to the BL-3 lab were not secured by locks. In fact, after the tropical storm, the doors were propped open.
DXer said
Such addresses are meaningless — as is the connection the DOJ draws to the address in an Ivins Theory. What is probative is the documentary evidence showing that Dr. Ayman used the word code “school” to refer to EIJ in communicating with his supporters (who date back to Sadat’s assassination). Dr. Ayman’s use of that code is not speculation. It was historical fact known to the CIA in 2001.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
> “Aafia’s detention understandably was and remains very upsetting.”
I’d imagine. Whatever it was that happened to her, I hope it wasn’t our guys who did it.
I chuckled when I first read DoJ’s deciphering. And I only noted al-Ghamdi here, in that his roommate, also at that address, was (supposedly) taken to the hospital with a case of cutaneous anthrax.
> in re Abu Issa Radwan
He is listed on the high-priority list for information collection that the US distributed in Feb 2002. An allied security service mistakenly made it public, briefly.
More recently, he’s in NC. His named popped up in connection with Daniel Boyd, online predictions of the future victory of Islam, condemnation of EU for banning burka.
He shares an address with another person on the Feb 2002 list, Amal S al-Harbi (his wife?):
Abu – Issa Radwan Adrese: 6540 Bellows Lane #1103-B Houston, Tx 77030; Tel.: 919-403-1069 Sau 845 Ivy Meadow Lane #3b Durham, Ne 27707; Asigurare Sociala: 641-36-**** Sau 271-36-***; Data Naşterii: 1.6.1963 Sau 7.6.1963
Al-Harbi Amal S Adrese: 8181 Fannin 1525 Houston, Tx 77054 Sau 845 Ivy Meadow Lane #3b Durham, Ne 27707; Asigurare Sociala: 639-60-****; Data Naşterii: 7.1.1967
8181 Fannin is housing next to the Medical Center.
Treasury issued a notice on him, in Oct of 2002.
I see that you mention that here, in connection to the Awlaki investigation:
Sperry tried to find out what the investigation was about, but couldn’t.
At any rate, Abu-Issa has a PhD, and does genetics and cytology (and may be compared to Tammimi and Aafia), and I’m curious why there was such interest in him, in early 2002.
> “inserting plasmids”
I’ve got a solid, if aging, background in chemistry. But I don’t understand most of the details of the biology here. What would one read to fill in the background? I looked at an upper-level textbook on cell biology. There was not much overlap.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
Spirit of Truth, if you’re reading….
From the other day, regarding KSM NC arrest. There’s a much fuller account of events in Miniter’s book on KSM. He talked to a lot of folks in NC and had access to the arrest record. On the whole, Minister is far the stronger on KSM’s time in the US.
I’d still like to see that arrest record. Shame it was disappeared. I wonder if the young journalist or Miniter would share?
There was also an earlier civil suit, to which KSM did not show, hence his arrest. DXer, you’re the barrister, what are the chances the original complaint is still in existence.
DXer said
I hadn’t realized, but read in an article that Ali posted, that Ramzi was just a nephew by marriage. And so my comments regarding DNA comparison don’t hold as such.
I didn’t study the sourcing but the Hunt For KSM book is quoting a fellow who taught KSM before he left for NC and then knew him upon his return.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
Curious, no? KSM’s eldest sister, Hamida/Hameda, is usually said to be RY’s mum. Ms. Lamb’s an exceedingly careful and well-informed journalist, too. Nor is she the only one to say this. If you’ve got your copy of The Eleventh Day to hand, p. 510 n. 228 looks at some of the contractions in the evidence on this point. There more, but it doesn’t much help to clear the matter up. How hard to learn this?
Think that’s weird, try this one: Where’d RY’s family live, after putative flight from Kuwait during GWI? Pakistan? The 302s from folks who ought to know say otherwise. (Weren’t Iraq, by the way.)
One imagines this sort of thing is kinda of important. It might, for instance, help answer such questions as: Why is Ramzi Yousef’s still in administrative segregation? Why are not even very senior congressmen allowed to visit him? Maybe something to do with the burgling of his school records from Swansea? If the 1st and 3rd items are true, that is.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
Try this. Compare the Gitmo report with the version that was leaked to Ms. Christina Lamb (March 2004) — our first glimpse of it.
http://www.christinalamb.net/pages/articles/confessions.html
Ms. Lamb’s version has some interesting differences. There’s some deep magic here, I suspect.
Note, for instance, what KSM said about Malaysia and Hambali (Sufaat’s jihad-buddy): “Mohammed told interrogators: “I was impressed by JI’s ability to operate regionally and by Hambali’s connections with the Malaysian government. He told me that his group had a training camp in the Philippines and a madrasah (religious teaching) programme in Malaysia on the border with Singapore.”
So, Sufaat’s working for the Malaysian military, while Hambali’s got some sort of Malaysian government connections. And they’re hanging out with KSM in Karachi. If you talk to Sufaat again, you might ask him whether he’s got some JI buds in high places.
Other things to discuss: the many, many mysteries about the Karachi crew and its duties:
— When they sent important new arrivals into Karachi on to Quetta, what was the next leg of the journey? Clearly, no one in their right mind would stay in Quetta. Were they bound for the Gulf, perhaps? Or for Iran?
— Who was Said Bahaji really? And where is he now? Sufaat will know. They forwarded him on to Quetta.
— Who was helping with the forged passports?
— What happened to Belfatmi, Hoseyni, and Moula?
— Who was paying the cell’s bills? Pakistani JI? Gulf money? A distinguished Sheikh in Qatar, perhaps? Perhaps a former employer of KSM?
— Who really ran the Malaysian company Infocus Tech? The front under which Zac Moussaoui was able to travel.
— Who came up with the idea for how to hijack IC-814? And did the 9/11 shabab also use plastic knifes?
— Who really trained Ramzi Yousef?
DXer, I don’t know your views on rendition. I’m not generally a fan. For I must admit to being eager to hear that this unrepentant mass murderer has been rendered. Perhaps there’s room available in some secret prison in Virgina. Maybe even a cell next to OBL. Give Sufaat a chance to get re-acquainted after all these years. Maybe, too, Omar Saeed can join them, soon.
Forget Peshawar. It’s hillbilly country. The deep magic was in Karachi.
DXer said
I try to avoid policy issues. With respect to true crime analysis, my focus on rendition concerns it serving as the motive for the planned use of the anthrax. The motive was expressly announced by the (1) Blind Sheih’s lawyer, Montasser Al-Zayat and (2) EIJ shura members al-Najjar, and (3) EIJ shura member and military commander Mabruk. Mabruk had been imprisoned recently for 6 months with Dr. Zawahiri and was a close confidante. So I find it disconcerting that in urging rendition, Michael Scheuer didn’t at least credit that rendition (and claimed torture) was the claimed motive for the planned use of anthrax.
I vaguely recall that Yazid said on his Facebook page that he was making plans and taking steps to get his passport together. That would surprise me if he planned any travel given he is on, for example, Australia’s terror list. I asked him about local Pakistan reports that he travelled there upon his release but he said he couldn’t answer.
Many EIJ leaders have been nabbed while in transit.
I’m old fashioned. I think FBI Director Mueller simply should have tried harder in Spring of 2002 in having Yazid extradited when he visited there for that purpose. If he didn’t realize Sufaat was an anthrax lab tech, well, then blame the misconceived profiling that came out of the FBI in October 2001. See Malcolm Gladwell’s article on profiling, describing it as akin to a parlor game and similar to astrology. The folks in the basement of Quantico were not well-suited to address the matter — what was needed was proper intelligence analysis given that Dr. Zawahiri had expressly announced his intention through proxies. And given that his organization had just attacked the US and killed 3000. The Al Hayat letter bombs had demonstrated that such letters were in fact the modus operandi of the EIJ. Indeed, Ali Mohammed, who had infiltrated the US Army, trained former medical student Dahab to make and send lethal letters.
I agree with you that Karachi looms large. Indeed, why did KSM go with Sufaat to Karachi in late Summer 2001? He was not needed to procure equipment. Rauf Ahmad and Sufaat had Saeed Mohammed — rendered in late 2001 — for that. The question I have is whether there was an anthrax lab in Karachi as well as Omar Hospital and Kandahar. Dr. Ayman had expressly contemplated moving it regularly and wiping down the walls with pesticide.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
> “I think FBI Director Mueller simply should have tried harder in Spring of 2002 in having Yazid extradited when he visited there for that purpose.”
There will likely have been much that’s not been publicly released about the negotiations, I should think. It’s surely a sensitive subject. PM Mahathir is close to some U.S. allies, but greatly dislikes the US. His head is full of Islamist and anti-semite conspiracies. US did 9/11 to itself and Jews secretly run the world, etc., etc. More ominously, he aligned Malaysia with reactionary movements based in Saudi. He and court-ideologue Anwar Ibrahim also have deep links to organizations such as IIIT, here in the US — jointly-owned Ikhwan, Saudi, and AQ, with a heavy hand in the financing of global jihad.
All that’s to say, I rather doubt Sufaat was in much of a prison. The man’s a hero to far too many compatriots. His time in the jug was probably similar to the couple dozen high-level AQ guys who ended up in Iran, or WTC-bomber Yassin’s hard-time in Iraq.
> “… why did KSM go with Sufaat to Karachi in late Summer … 2001”
Karachi would not be new in this respect. It begins to feature in the AQ narrative already by 1993, and in the Pakistani jihad scene by the mid-1980s. It’s all pretty mysterious, though. At the very least, there’s a well-protecte AQ base of operations there, in and around Gulshan-e-Iqbal, probably under the protection of JI and government elements. Lots of AQ and other terror NGO lines of contact lead into and out of Karachi, whence they flow west to Arab world and east to SE-Asia. There, too, they intersect with less-well-known elements of the city’s organized crime and with international drug trafficking. As they say, Visit Karachi, it’s the new Kandahar.
DXer said
“All that’s to say, I rather doubt Sufaat was in much of a prison.”
His time in prison sounds harsh. I credit Yazid Sufaat’s account. I’ve never known him to lie. To his credit, when he cannot answer truthfully, he tells me can’t respond. I lost touch when I came to realize he wasn’t going to address substantive issues and he was just propagandizing.
“The Experience In The Thaghut Prison”
http://theunjustmedia.com/Islamic%20Perspectives/march12/Exclusive%20Interview%20With%20Yazid%20Sufaat,%20The%20Experience%20In%20The%20Thaghut%20Prison.htm
“Twisting and turning in his 8ft by 10ft solitary confinement cell in the Kamunting detention camp in Perak one night, former army captain Yazid Sufaat, who is alleged to be an al-Qaeda operative, said he wanted nothing more than to see the a clear sky and the stars.
“One day, in prison, I felt like seeing the stars shining. I had not seen them for three years at that point, for I could not see the sky from my cell. Seeing stars is a gift.
“I prayed, ‘Ya Allah, let me see some stars’. Sometimes we take some things for granted,” he said, recalling his seven-year incarceration at the Kamunting detention camp in Perak, under the Internal Security Act 1964.
Sent behind bars without trial for his involvement in jihad activities in December 2001, including the 9/11 attacks in New York, Yazid was kept in solitary confinement for five years.
There, he used blood from the swarms of mosquitoes attacking him in the cell to write Qur’anic verses on the walls, which was sweltering hot at night, leaving him drenched with sweat after performing the solat.”
DXer said
Yazid Sufaat and his two assistants, Abu Bakr al-Filistini aka (Samir Hilmi al-Barq) and al-Hud al Sudani, were vaccinated against anthrax and in a recent 2-hour filmed interview Yazid suggested that his assistants were PhDs. Were they? Where are they now?
Was Barq the Samir Hilmi al-Barq that was detained by Jordan from 2006 to 2008 and available to members of the Amerithrax Task Force to interview?
Human Rights Watch Concludes Visit to Prisons, Intelligence Detention Center. August 30, 2007
http://www.hrw.org/news/2007/08/29/jordan-rampant-beatings-prisons-go-unpunished
Was he the Samir Barq then re-arrested on April 25, 2010 by Jordan? Was he then deported to the Israeli-occupied West Bank on July 11, where he was arrested? Was he the Samir Hilmi Barq charged by an Israeli military court with membership in and training with an enemy organization and planning terrorist attacks?
If so, did AUSA Lieber interview him? Did AUSA Kohl interview him? I realize Samir might not have known why the panties taken from Dr. Ivins basement were stained but he might know the details of anthrax lab and planning, to include whether the strain he was using was the Ames strain.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Rn8f02dV8_AC&pg=PA545&lpg=PA545&dq=%22Samir+al-Barq%22++Jordan&source=bl&ots=toF1qB-KEh&sig=m2XAeJHWBYaGnWY3RlCpLmPJaIw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IRtvT-C9K8Lg0QGcv5zjBg&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Samir%20al-Barq%22%20%20Jordan&f=false
DXer said
Before his work on anthrax, Barq, one of Sufaat’s assistants, worked as a medic for the mujahideen brothers in Karachi and “knew several al-Qaida members because of the nature of his work. Abu Bakr was well connected in Karachi and, although this was not his primary role, could be called upon if a brother needed housing assistance.” “For further information on Abu Bakr al-Filistini please refer to TD-314/43889-005 and TD-314/24678-04. There is no further information on al-Hud al-Sudani.”
See KSM detainee statement, p. 7.
Click to access 20110430elpepuint_3_Pes_PDF.pdf
DXer said
London 2012 Olympics: terrorists ‘plotting cyanide poison hand cream attack’
Terrorists linked with al-Qaeda are plotting a cyanide poison attack on London Olympics by mixing chemicals with hand cream, it has been reported.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9166546/London-2012-Olympics-terrorists-plotting-cyanide-poison-hand-cream-attack.html
Comment:
I’ll leave technical details to experts. Suffice it to say that a webpost does not a plot make. It seems George Smith could usefully debunk technical viability of this story, revealing it to be obnoxious BS (and btw in violation of their own rulebook under koran and hadiths)
In the case of the London ricin plot years ago, I’m no position to choose between George’s view vs. Porton Down view of the absorbability etc. of ricin using hand cream (in the event that there is any disagreement). But I know of no evidence that Al Qaeda ever had any well-moisturized rabbits pass on from cyanide or ricin during the testing of rabbits in August and September 2001. (Last week, I asked Yazid about Abu Khabab’s experiments with rabbits the month before 9/11 but he did not feel free to respond).
By analogy, I don’t think the viability of a plan to commit an armored car robbery hinges on whether they would have succeeded getting away with the loot — if they show up with automatic weapons and a grenade, they are properly charged with the attempted robbery. I don’t see that technical viability is the key. It did not avoid a conviction. There are lots of stupid criminals in jail — as they should be.
Indeed, such a post as described in the Telegraph article constitutes a chargeable terroristic threat, without more.
George and his friend Milton L. both know that I disagree with Milton’s 2005 (or so) published assessment that Sufaat did not succeed in cultivating anthrax. The scientific evidence now is that they did and that the strain was the Ames strain. Milton had neglected to quote Rauf Ahmad’s lead sentence in the typed letter saying that he had “achieved the targets.”
ML told me that he understood that as just referring to being on schedule; but, respectfully, a researcher should quote such language so that those who might interpret it differently are in a position to do so.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001250.html
Moreover, Milton and Eric NYT inexplicably and without basis reversed the order of the handwritten and typed letters — the handwritten one had been written after going to the lab with the nonpathogenic strains. The typed letter was written after going to the lab with the pathogenic anthrax.
George and Milton are both knowledgeable about biodefense issues and their input is welcome. But Yazid Sufaat’s assistant, Abu Bakr al-Filistini aka (Samir Hilmi al-Barq), has been interrogated on this point both by the Jordanians and the Israelis. Barq’s statements in interrogation are likely more revealing and authoritative than Milton’s earnest parsing of public pronouncements. It is the parsing of what the USG does not know, or does not want to say, that is more important to analysis.
As to this website posting described in this Telegraph article, without me checking the size of cyanide vs. ricin molecules, it just seems like false BS bravado that deserves to be subject of Dick Destiny’s erudite and biting commentary. Yazid Sufaat on his Facebook is prone to the same bravado. For example, as to his hyperbolic claim that he prefers a bug that can kill in one or two hours, as I mention above, I’m told by someone who had been part of the former clandestine Soviet offensive program that there is no such bug.
Bernard Lewis in September 2001 had an article that discussed how use of poisons is governed by express hadiths. Killing of the elderly and children is strictly forbidden. Foodstuffs and crops are also off limits. The poor lab techniques of some of these Al Qaeda supporters is matched only by their poor knowledge of the koran and hadiths governing the conduct of warfare. The harshest judgment awaits such numbnuts in another world.
Extremists linked to al Qaeda plotting London Games cyanide attack, report says
By NewsCore
March 25, 2012
LONDON — Extremists on a website linked to al Qaeda have posted details on how they are plotting a cyanide attack at the London Olympics, The Sun reported Monday.
A contributor giving the name Abu Hija Ansarion wrote on the website, saying that cyanide should be mixed with handcream so it can be absorbed through the skin of victims.
In Arabic, Ansarion wrote, “Through skin: 1 — cyanide, 2 — skin cream. Mix the ingredients. The skin cream will open the pores in the skin and speed up the absorption and effectiveness of the poison.”
He added that those involved in the attack should use medical gloves to protect themselves while preparing the mixture.
Another member of the website replied to the post, saying, “It is a good idea and you need to plan well. It’s time to prepare for the event, as once again they are interfering with innocent Muslims.”
The website, accessed secretly by an investigator for the Sun, has 17,000 members around the world and has known links to six al Qaeda terrorists.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4218929/Al-Qaeda-plotting-cyanide-attack-at-London-Olympics.html
DXer said
April 13, 2005
SPECIAL National Security Notes
MORE UK TERROR TRIAL: Evil foiled or more mendacity?
George Smith
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/nsn/nsn-050413.htm
Describing Porton Down expert opinion, George Smith (Dick Destiny) summarizes:
“In different words, this means alleged plots to smear powdered castor bean on door handles are most probably rubbish, something copied from tales of American ricin trouble-makers, like the Minnesota Militia.”
***
“The collegial and gracious assistance of Duncan Campbell, expert witness and scientist for the defense in the trial, was indispensable in the putting together of this report.”
DXer said
THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2006
GUILTY OF BEING NOT GUILTY: Exonerated in ‘ricin plot’ trial, imprisoned at home — awaiting deportation to a country that tortures
http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/07/guilty-of-being-not-guilty-exonerated.html
DXer said
If Al Qaeda cultists want to kill Americans with poisons, they should go to Wharton business school or Harvard Law School and then go to work for Philip Morris or RJ Reynolds. In knowingly marketing something that was highly addictive, they could use a “freedom of choice” argument in their propaganda and be paid handsomely for their trouble.
It will be years before their family members, friends, and family of friends died of cancer — years before they realized that they had spent their life immorally. They would never be thrown in an 8 x 10 foot cell and have to write koranic verses in the blood of swarming mosquitos.
Terrorists linked to Al Qaeda ‘plotting cyanide hand-cream attack’ as MI5 mounts biggest operation since Second World War
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2120397/Terrorists-linked-Al-Qaeda-plotting-cyanide-hand-cream-attack-MI5-mounts-biggest-operation-Second-World-War.html
More Al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad scientists and former scientists are cooperating than tobacco company scientists. And that’s a shame.
Ali M. Haider (@alimhaider) said
> “Killing of the elderly and children is strictly forbidden.”
Prof. Lewis, and others, do say this, and there are a number of hadith that use precisely these words. While I have boundless respect for Prof. Lewis, I fear he’s wrong on this point. The traditional Sunni legal tradition invariably ‘specifies’ the prohibition: scil. it’s not taken to be a universal prohibition. There are some circumstances in which the killing is permitted and others in which it is forbidden.
For instance …
1. If in a war the military commander invites a town to surrender, they refuse and fight, and are conquered, the commander has what’s called _ikhtiyar_ (discretion), to determine the fate of the residents: kill, enslave, leave on land, whether some or all. This is because the city, its land, and its residents are now spoils, and their blood is forfeit, in that they did not surrender when invited. (The ruling apply only to Jews and Christians; for pagans, it’s worse.)
In the middle ages, Muslim armies were not typically paid by the state. The main incentive to participate in campaigns was a share in the spoils. Therefore, it was most common to kill the men (as too dangerous), but keep the women and children alive, so that they could be made concubines or sold as slaves on return from enemy territory. (Fortunately, too, on capture, women were automatically divorced from their husbands, so that when her new owner has intercourse with her, there was no sin involved.)
On the other hand …
2. A regular soldier may not kill women and children whom he has captured in battle. They do not belong to him, but to the army as a whole, and are destined for distribution as spoils. They are brought, instead, to the communal pot, to await the commander’s _ikhtiyar_ and then (hopefully) their distribution as spoils to the men. So too, should he have intercourse with a women before the distribution, he would be subject to punishment.
For CBRs, the more relevant discussion in classical texts is whether it’s permitted to use weapons that do not selectively target their victims. Classic examples: mangonel or diverting a river to flood a city. If there are no Muslims likely to die, there’s no problem. If there are potential Muslim victims, the question is more difficult — at least in the classical tradition. For the modern jihad, there’s no problem, in that the Muslims are unlikely to be regarded as real Muslims.
For the young recruits today, this is, I’d say, level-two Jurisprudence of Jihad. The modern-day jihadis certainly are well-versed in the classical tradition, and do try to apply it, pretty much literally. Even slavery and concubinage are to be found, if still on a local level.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to suggest that Classical Islamic Law is some ghastly monstrosity. It’s not. Medieval Muslims fought their wars like everyone in antiquity, Middle Ages, and early modern period. Immunity of civilians as a law governing armed conflict is a relatively modern concept. I would fault the modern jihadis, for being foolish in thinking a medieval legal code was revealed, or for wanting to implement it, without change and in its entirety, in the 21st century. But that’s just me, and I’ll admit, I’ve never been a fan of the enslavement of children or the raping of captive women. Then again, that’s why the jihadis would regard me as an apostate.
DXer said
Depending on the specifics of the controlling law, perhaps such posters could be indicted for the same conspiracy charge on which Bourgas was convicted. I expect the statute of limitation on such a conspiracy is tolled where it is continuing.
Yazid Sufaat tells me that he understands that he may be “jacked up” by coming forward. But he fears neither imprisonment nor death. In addition to being a devoted husband, he certainly is consistent. His views seem unchanged from 2000.
Associated Press Worldstream
April 14, 2005 Thursday
Britain’s political parties seize on alleged ricin terror case in election campaigning
BYLINE: ED JOHNSON
The conviction of only one of nine North African terror suspects accused of plotting to spread the deadly toxin ricin has thrown Britain’s immigration and anti-terror policies into sharp relief just weeks before national elections.
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government has long argued it needs more power to tackle the terrorist threat facing the country. The main opposition party has taken it a step further, saying the terrorism case shows the need for tighter immigration controls.
“There is a terrorist threat,” Home Secretary Charles Clarke said Thursday, a day after a judge lifted reporting restrictions on the case of Algerian asylum-seeker Kamel Bourgass and eight others charged in connection with the alleged terrorism plot.
Only Bourgass was convicted, but Clarke said the case “is an illustration of the fact that terrorist organizations exist and are seeking to damage our lives.” The case, he said, “has to urge us on to find better ways of dealing with the threat.”
Headlines exploded two years ago when detectives said they found what they believed was ricin – one of the world’s deadliest toxins – during a police raid on a London apartment.
It was later revealed that no ricin was actually found in the apartment – only recipes for the toxin.
After the raid, Bourgass went on the run, getting caught about a week later during a separate raid outside London where he stabbed a police detective to death.
After a judge lifted reporting restrictions Wednesday, authorities revealed that Bourgass, 31, had been sentenced to life in prison in June for the detective’s murder, and that he was sentenced to 17 years in prison Thursday on a charge of conspiracy to create a public nuisance “by the use of poisons and explosives.”
A jury cleared four fellow Algerians whose fingerprints allegedly had been found in the London apartment. Prosecutors abandoned a separate trial of four other men – three Algerians and a Libyan – supposedly associated with Bourgass.
In the end, the jury said there wasn’t enough evidence to convict the others on conspiracy charges.
Prosecutors managed to win Bourgass’ conviction on the conspiracy charge largely by proving that he wrote the recipes for the toxins found in the raid. They alleged that Bourgass was plotting to spread ricin by smearing it on car door handles and contaminating hand creams and toothpaste.
“The evidence did not stack up in court in relation to all of them though it did in relation to one of them – very importantly, very significantly, the ringleader,” Clarke said.
Ministers have long argued that it’s difficult to convict terror suspects since intelligence gathered by Britain’s spy agencies is too sensitive to reveal in court.
DXer said
Gregory Saathoff makes a lot of sense when he recommends shielding in the event of a mass attack using anthrax — where people would stay in their home. He adds: ” that self-imposed shielding offers the public more transparency than a governmental response.”
The recommendation based on the various stated reasons makes sense to me. But I think it would also increase government transparency if the Department of Justice discloses the documents that they are withholding bearing on the strain anthrax that Yazid, Barq and al-Sudani were using. If it would embarrass Jordan and Israel — who have overseen the interrogation of Barq — those countries will get over it.
Otherwise, members of the public under a mass attack using anthrax are just going to be hanging out at home musing who was responsible for the greatest failure in the intelligence analysis in the history of the United States due to the withholding of documents exculpatory of Dr. Ivins from the public, the NAS and the GAO.
University Wire
October 31, 2002, Thursday
There’s no place like home in bioterror attack
BYLINE: By Mike Layfield, Cavalier Daily
Imagine, for a second, that the grim predictions of bioterror come true. Imagine that somehow, somewhere, a terrorist group plants a lethal virus on American soil, and now it’s only a matter of time before the contagion finds a path to your doorstep. Would you flee, hoping to stay a step ahead of infection? Or would you retreat to the confines of your home, while a plague rages outside?
In a recent study, the Critical Incident Analysis Group — a University of Virginia think tank dedicated to helping the public respond to potential crises — proposes the answer. The group found that in the event of a bioterror outbreak, the public would be better off staying put than engaging in a mass exodus.
“While it is prudent to run from a burning house, it’s not prudent to leave a house during a blizzard,” said CIAG Director Greg Saathoff, one of several authors of the report.
Shielding, as the stay-at-home strategy is called, would decrease the threat of infection among the population and thus lower the body count. By hunkering down in their own homes, families would reduce their exposure to a contagion and also prevent it from spreading to other parts of the country.
Saathoff said smallpox, the virus experts expect will be used against the United States in the event of an attack, is not contagious beyond a radius of 8 feet — thus, a family is safer staying at home than leaving town.
Additionally, by monitoring their body temperatures, the family can determine if one of them has been infected. A body temperature in excess of 100 degrees would indicate infection.
“Shielding would break the back of any virus that was released. It’s not only the safest thing for a family to do, but it is also the most patriotic in a sense,” Saathoff said.
But appeals to patriotism aside, Saathoff said if given enough information, the general public will embrace the shielding strategy and check the impulse to flee.
“The logic of shielding is pretty clear when you think about it. But the thinking must be done in advance because people make the most rational decisions in a stable evironment. Clearly, a bioterror attack is not the ideal place for careful thought,” Saathoff said.
Saathoff also points out that self-imposed shielding offers the public more transparency than a governmental response.
“In the event of an attack, things could become catastrophic if we moved to government-enforced quarantines. The image of National Guard troops cordoning off neighborhoods is very painful, perhaps as painful as the attack itself. You need trust in government, and a quarantine would help unravel that trust.”
An important component of the CIAG’s proposal is public involvement in the planning of community response strategies.
“The anthrax episode teaches us that it is very important to engage the public in this effort rather than doing it behind closed doors,” Law Prof. Richard Bonnie said. “This way of thinking is not typical of national security policy, which is top down. This is exactly opposite. It’s bottom up.”
Bonnie also emphasizes that a response plan should be in place before an attack. Without one, “important decisions would be made under incredible uncertainty. Very careful advanced thinking is critical.”
“In order to have an effective policy, there will have to be cooperation among all kinds of community institutions,” Bonnie added
DXer said
AP reported in February 2002:
His wife, Sejahratul Dursina, told The Associated Press on Thursday that police questioned her about whether he knew Sept. 11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, as well as about Moussaoui, who faces conspiracy charges in the United States in connection with the suicide attacks.
Al-Mihdhar and Alhazmi visited Malaysia in January 2000, attending a meeting with al-Qaeda associates, Malaysian and U.S. officials said. The meeting was hosted by a Malaysian, they said.
Security officials videotaped the meeting, and al-Mihdhar and Alhazmi later were placed on a U.S. immigration watch list. But it was too late to prevent them from entering the United States. They were among the hijackers aboard the flight that crashed into the Pentagon.
On one occasion in 2000, Yazid asked her if it was all right if someone used the apartment, which was vacant at the time. She said she didn’t object.
Sejahratul said she couldn’t recall the names of the guests or the exact date of their stay. The names of the three alleged al-Qaeda operatives did not sound familiar, she said.
…
Yazid, a 37-year-old microbiologist, left Malaysia in June, telling his family he was attending a pathology course in Karachi, Pakistan.
_______________
Yazid Sufaat reasons that killing the elderly and an infant with poison would not cause one to lose one’s soul — where the intention was good. Ottilie Lundren’s death, however, was entirely foreseeable and the result of intentional conduct. Thus, while Sufaat may have escaped judgment in this world, the harshest judgment awaits him in the next. See koran and hadiths.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse — whether it be secular law or the law of Allah governing the conduct of the principles of warfare by salafist-jihadis.
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/192681
Understanding the sick mind of Yazid Sufaat
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/192798
Yazid and his Supporters are Lanatis, Reply to Zakir Naiki
The Kufr of Yazid
DXer said
http://www.freemalaysiakini2.com/?p=21655
‘Yazid Sufaat under constant police surveillance’
Former Internal Security Act detainee Yazid Sufaat has been under constant police surveillance since his released from Kamunting over three years ago, says inspector-general of police Ismail Omar.
…
“I can guarantee that we will not face any difficulties in overcoming this problem, with our internal expertise and our cooperation with international police, we don’t act alone.
“That is why we can detect, monitor and have the intelligence to follow up on what is happening,” assured the nation’s top police officer.
He was asked to respond to Malaysiakini’s recent interview with Yazid, which showed that the former ISA detainee still harboured militant beliefs and is in contact with former associates of several terrorist networks.
Seemingly unrepentant, Yazid had expressed an open admiration of those who conducted the 911 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, calling them “marketeers of Islam”.
DXer said
Malaysia is a State Party of the Biological Weapons Convention since 1991:
http://www.opbw.org/convention/status.html
DXer said
A top biodefense scientist, who formerly worked with a clandestine offensive program, says he doesn’t know of a bug which can kill in two hours. And so he doesn’t think Yazid has any credibility as a microbiologist if he is making such a claim. But perhaps Yazid is not speaking in a realistic matter, and merely wishes there were such a bug.
On the point of credibility, however, I would point out that the suggestion in an earlier interview that Moussaoui was paid $35k and a monthly stipend of $2.5 k to market computer software is not in any way supported by what is public about Moussaoui’s activities in the United States. Yazid does not point to any sales Moussaoui in fact ever made. Or any sales efforts he attempted. At the time (late Fall 2001 and 2002), the company denied any connection. So it seems reasonable to credit the USG position that the October 2000 letter was just a phony cover.
It’s not a good thing to lie about anything. But it is for that reason I respect Yazid’s declining to answer any of my numerous substantive questions (see Yazid’s Facebook page) — while maintaining a courteous exchange. He suggests that I created a Facebook page just to converse with him — when actually it was to enter a contest with my daughter last October and then to play Words With Friends. And with Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab technician as my first friend, I imagine it now would be hard to find a second. :0)
But I hope some established reporter gets Yazid to open up on peripheral issues that he feels comfortable discussing — even while respecting what we’ll call his Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid discussing certain aspects bearing on the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. Or that would be disloyal to one of his comrades-in-arms.
As Yazid’s wife suggested on his Facebook page when introducing me to his extremist friends, I’m the guy that thinks Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and his colleagues are responsible for the anthrax mailings. I think this would become clear to the public if GAO did its duty and prompted disclosure of the documents exculpatory of Dr. Ivins.
ANTHRAX AND AL QAEDA: THE INFILTRATION OF US BIODEFENSE
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3075859