* DXer: The Blind Sheik’s Lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat Announced In 1999 That Ayman Zawahiri Would Use Anthrax Against US Targets To Retaliate For Imprisonment Of Senior EIJ Leaders, Most Notably Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman
Posted by DXer on June 3, 2013
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CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
DXer said
Al Qaeda leader circulates video; dispels rumor of his death
By Associated Press
April 6, 2022
https://nypost.com/2022/04/06/al-qaeda-leader-ayman-al-zawahri-circulates-video-dispels-rumor-of-his-death/
DXer said
Heck, if the agents on the National Geographic tv show didn’t know that Dr. Ayman Zawahiri planned on using anthrax against US targets, maybe it was because Louis Freeh wouldn’t let them use a computer. Ah, if only FBI agents would have visited their public library.
Now as for reporters, they apparently didn’t read CIA translations of foreign press (on FBIS). But that’s okay, That’s why I came online in December 2001 — because I have a library card.
DXer said
“Nihad Jariri
@NihadJariri
·
Nov 23
He lashes out at UN conferences on women and the population, claiming that the UN “affirms the freedom of men and women to free themselves of the dictates of morality and religion.”
Nihad Jariri
@NihadJariri
·
Nov 23
He dedicates a chapter for attacking the UNESCO as an organization that promotes “atheists and enemies of Islam.” He mentions here Taliban’s Mullah Omar’s decision to demolish the Buddha statues & how the UNESCO “led a vicious smear campaign against” them.”
Comment: I was once walking to the Strand bookstore in NYC and met a wonderful woman from the UK who was at the UN for a conference on women. The UN does very important work on the subject and should be commended.
DXer said
I would think that Khalid Batarfi knows whether Dr. Ayman Zawahiri is still alive or passed due to natural causes.
Al-Qaeda’s top man in Yemen captured last year, UN reveals
Khalid Batarfi was reportedly handed over to Saudi authorities in the latest hammer blow to the leadership of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2021/02/qaeda-yemen-capture-leader-un.html#ixzz6lmyLH8pM
Feb 6, 2021
The head of al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, Khalid Batarfi, was captured in the country’s eastern Mahra governorate in October, according to a new United Nations report.
***
The report did not say who conducted the operation. A spokesperson for US Central Command credited Yemen’s armed forces with capturing Batarfi, one of the highest-ranking al-Qaeda officials ever taken alive. He was later turned over to Saudi Arabia, according to the UN report.
***
His capture is a likely intelligence windfall for the United States and its regional partners.
***
Batarfi, who is believed to have trained in Afghanistan in 1999, led the group’s takeover of Yemen’s southern Abyan governorate in 2010 before being captured shortly thereafter. He and other senior al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leaders escaped the Central Prison in al-Mukallah in 2015.
***
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden announced his administration would end support for offensive military operations in Yemen’s civil war and redouble Washington’s diplomatic effort to end the conflict. But national security adviser Jake Sullivan said policy change will not affect operations against Islamist extremist groups in Yemen.
***
Al-Qaeda’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, remains at large. No member state has confirmed reports of his death in October, the UN report read.
DXer said
Sometimes an express warning is given that is ignored.
In Amerithrax, even to this day, not a single media outlet reported on the stated intention that Zawahiri would use anthrax to retaliate for the imprisonment of the blind sheikh and other detainees.
Nashville bomber’s girlfriend warned he was building explosives in 2019
PUBLISHED WED, DEC 30 20205:39 AM ESTUPDATED WED, DEC 30 20205:40 AM EST
KEY POINTS
• More than a year before he detonated a bomb in downtown Nashville on Christmas, officers visited Anthony Warner’s home after his girlfriend told police that he was building bombs in an RV trailer at his residence.
• Officers went to Warner’s home and saw the RV in the backyard, the report said, but the yard was fenced off and officers couldn’t see inside the vehicle.
***
Officers were called to Pamela Perry’s home in Nashville on Aug. 21, 2019 after getting a report from her attorney that she was making suicidal threats while sitting on her front porch with firearms, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said Tuesday in an emailed statement. A police report said Raymond Throckmorton, the attorney, told officers that day he also represented Warner.
When officers arrived at Perry’s home, police said she had two unloaded pistols sitting next to her on the porch. She told them those guns belonged to “Tony Warner,” police said, and she did not want them in the house any longer. Perry, then 62, was then transported for a psychological evaluation after speaking to mental health professionals on the phone.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/30/nashville-bombers-girlfriend-warned-he-was-building-explosives-in-2019.html
DXer said
Off-topic:
Meet the Last Living Member of Dutch Schultz’s Gang
Clip: Season 18 Episode 6 | 2m 13s To air November 18, 2020
Comment: This clip is a nice way of introducing the history of Dutch Schultz’s legal troubles and his loot. It is necessary to understand the timeline of his legal travails to understand his whereabouts (and when he had the chest and when he didn’t) during his final weeks and months.
Background:
Getman, “The Ongoing Search For Dutch Schultz’s Missing Millions”
https://www.treasuretracer.com/dutch-shultz/ongoing-search-for-dutch-schultzs-missing-millions/
DXer said
Mr. Grauso has a book! I couldn’t seem to drop a link to the clip from YouTube. But I hope I look so dapper at 104!
And to publish a book no less. Many good wishes! (And it’s good to see you have turned away from the crime of your misspent youth).
Stanley Grauso On The Lam Paperback – April 24, 2012
by Mr Stanley Grauso (Author)
See all formats and editions
Paperback
$11.68
1 Used from $11.68
DXer said
I’m sad to be reminded that Mr. Grauso has passed away though it is unsettling that he acknowledged murders.
Everything he said in this wonderful piece below from the mob museum rings true and squares with the historical evidence, to include the evidence in Dewey:
I upload the related historical evidence about the Connecticut hotel he discusses here:
“Dutch Schultz in Fairfield County, Connecticut in 1935: his horses, his hiding places, and his missing millions”
https://www.blurb.com/b/1475537-dutch-schultz-in-fairfield-county-connecticut-in-1
And I am utterly fascinated by his discussion of the brothel in Troy. The address of the Troy brothel, where the boys tended to hangout, has been (and remains) unknown to me.
The Ongoing Search For Dutch Schultz’s Missing Millions
https://www.treasuretracer.com/dutch-shultz/ongoing-search-for-dutch-schultzs-missing-millions/
https://themobmuseum.org/blog/working-for-lucky-and-dutch/
“Working For Lucky And Dutch”
“Stanley Grauso, a real Prohibition-Era hoodlum who died recently at age 104, sat down with The Mob Museum two days before his 103rd birthday to reminisce about his life in bootlegging, prostitution and the numbers rackets in Connecticut and New York in the 1920s and 1930s, the several people he claims to have shot dead and his experiences working for two of the most notorious gangsters in American history, Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Dutch Schultz.
Blessed with a remarkable memory, Grauso recently co-wrote a self-published autobiography, On the Lam, tracing his life growing up in his native Bridgeport, Connecticut, as a mid-level hood during and after Prohibition. Grauso’s stories are difficult to verify. Sometimes his statements sounded a bit cliché. But his responses to our questions about events in his gangster past were spontaneous and detailed.
Grauso, born in 1912, was fifteen when his Mob-connected father, Alexander, a bail bondsman for organized criminals, got him a job working for brothel owner “Don Ernesto” Cozza during Prohibition. At age seventeen, Grauso joined up with veteran hood Phil Musica to smuggle liquor from Canada in trucks for Cozza.”
During one such run, they parked at a rest stop and Musica got out to meet a rival mobster. The mobster shot and killed an associate of Musica’s, then pointed the gun at Musica. Grauso said he exited the truck and shot the mobster dead, saving Musica’s life. Musica later admitted his real name was Frank Coster and that he owned a pharmaceutical company used as a front for bootlegging liquor and trafficking military weapons. He told Grauso that two brothers, Joseph and Barnett Cohen, had threatened to expose Musica’s operation. He asked Grauso to assist him in killing them. Grauso, who said he was so close to Musica and would do anything for him, agreed. Grauso said he fatally shot Joseph at a racetrack in Jamaica, New York. Musica gunned down Barnett at another location.
“In 1929, nobody found out – until today – who whacked the two of them,” Grauso said.
Musica told him to lay low for a while, one of the many times Grauso said he had to stay “on the lam,” frequently moving from place to place to avoid recriminations.
With Prohibition about to end in the early 1930s, Grauso said he took up with a hoodlum named Big Dietz, who managed brothels in Albany and elsewhere in New York State for Luciano. Grauso, who worked as an enforcer at Luciano’s brothels with Dietz, said he recalled meeting Luciano at the kingpin’s coffeehouse in midtown Manhattan.”
DXer said
Compare
Gangster Dutch Schultz’s $150 million treasure is supposedly buried in New York
By Michael KaplanNovember 14, 2020
https://nypost.com/article/searching-for-gangster-dutch-schultzs-gold/
with
Getman, “The Ongoing Search For Dutch Schultz’s Missing Millions”
https://www.treasuretracer.com/dutch-shultz/ongoing-search-for-dutch-schultzs-missing-millions/
DXer said
Wikipedia describes the reliability of the source that these searchers use for Schultz’s last words
The Last Words of Dutch Schultz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Burroughs creates his own dying words for Schultz to actually speak, and which reflect Burrough’s narrative; occasionally, these made-up snippets of speech include Schultz’s actual words.”
If people value their time, they should rely on reliable historical evidence and not fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Words_of_Dutch_Schultz
DXer said
Dr. Ayman Zawahiri reportedly died of natural causes at his home last month.
DXer said
Official preview of TEHRAN.
DXer said
In Tunisia, in the 19 letters, was it traces of ricin rather than traces of anthrax?
Vidéo : Lettres empoisonnées – C’est quoi la ricine ? Lecture zen
07/03/2019 http://www.businessnews.com.tn/video–lettres-empoisonnees–cest-quoi-la-ricine,534,86187,4
DXer said
For excellent reporting on this general subject, see this article in The Daily Beast by Florian Flade. He is Chief National Security Reporter for the WELT and WELT am Sonntag newspapers. He is based in Berlin and blogs about jihadism at ojihad.wordpress.com. Follow @FlorianFlade
If we are to learn anything more on this report of letters (containing traces of ricin?) sent in Tunisia, Florian Flade may have reliable insights. I don’t know if there is a connection between the matter in Tunisia and the matter last year in Germany. But I expect that if we are to learn anything, it will come from someone who provides such detailed and interesting factual narrative.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-new-frontier-in-jihadi-bio-terrorism
DXer said
A LA UNE
Le cadeau empoisonné des terroristes
01/03/2019 1http://www.businessnews.com.tn/le-cadeau-empoisonne-des-terroristes,519,86072,3
Machine translation:
The case of poisoned letters is reminiscent of the infamous anthrax scandal that killed five people in the United States. In 2001, exactly one week after the 9/11 attack, poisonous letters were sent to several political figures, including the Capitol. Containing the bacillus of the disease of the coal, they had made five deaths, including two employees of Washington. 18 years later, it seems that Tunisian terrorists were inspired by this case that had martyred the United States at the time and others, similar have followed the years after. If the attack could be foiled in time in Tunisia and no victim was deplored, vigilance remains in place. “The security situation is stable but the threat threshold is high and the security preparation is ready for months,” said Hichem Fourati, who added today, “the abortion of this affair has avoided the country’s real disaster “. “This operation proved, once again, that the Tunisian security forces have proved their great preparation and seriousness and that Tunisia has managed to defeat terrorism,” Youssef Chahed concluded on the case today. …
DXer said
Would we be surprised to learn that there was a similar threat with respect to the pending prosecution in Tunisia?
MHJ’s recent comment on PRO-MED:
“the basic microbiologic culturing of _B. anthracis_ is not that complicated, whatever the Tunisian claims. Without wanting to go into details of what might or might not be involved in these letter contents, the coincident timing of the letter mailings with the public sentencing of the 31 terrorists and other suspects would rally public support of their government, both in the present situation and down the road. – Mod.MHJ”
My Note: I agree that such letters, whether hoax or actual, are pointless and commonly have the opposite of the intended effect.
In the case of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings, 99+% of observers did not realize that Zawahiri, through surrogates, had ANNOUNCED his EXPRESS intention to use anthrax to retaliate for the detention of the Blind Sheikh. (This included all of the US press even to this day — go figure).
Of course, a motive may be mixed.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
https://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
ANTHRAX TOXIN LETTERS (02): (TUNIS) SOURCE IDENTIFIED, PURPOSE?
***************************************************************
A ProMED-mail post
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
http://www.isid.org
Date: Thu 7 Mar 2019, 8:00 AM
Source: Asharq Al-Awsat [edited]
Tunisia’s Criminal Court on terrorism cases in the capital’s Court of Appeal has sentenced 31 people to death over the 2014 terrorist attack on the house of former Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou. Among the 31 suspects are Seifallah Ben Hassine, known as Abu Ayyad, an associate of late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and founder of the militant group Ansar al-Sharia. He is also the main suspect in a series of terrorist acts, including the assassination of Tunisian leftist Chokri Belaid and MP Mohamed el-Brahmi. The 31 suspects, who include Algerians as well as Tunisians, were sentenced in absentia. Some of them are reportedly dead.
Algerian Khalid al-Shayeb, known as Luqman Abu Sakhr, was among them. He was allegedly killed in 2015 during armed clashes in the Gafsa region of southwestern Tunisia.
The court also sentenced one defendant to 3 years in prison and 7 others to 10 years, while a number of other suspects received 20-year or life sentences. In addition, the Tunisian judiciary acquitted 7 defendants of terrorism charges.
In May 2014, a terrorist group attacked Ben Jeddou’s house in Kasserine, killing 4 Tunisian security agents and injuring several others.
In other news, 19 letters [sic, 20] containing potentially deadly toxins addressed to prominent journalists, politicians, and trade unionists have been intercepted by police at the central post office in Tunis and taken for testing. The National Unit of Investigation for Terrorist Affairs and Organized Crime revealed that the toxic substance was made in Tunisia inside a laboratory.
The Ministry of Interior indicated that it is monitoring the movements of the terrorist cells that plotted the attack, especially [given] that the deadly poison was made with local Tunisian expertise and required huge financial support.
—
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail
[Tunisia is a small country, and any laboratory is probably government funded and staffed. Also, the basic microbiologic culturing of _B. anthracis_ is not that complicated, whatever the Tunisian claims. Without wanting to go into details of what might or might not be involved in these letter contents, the coincident timing of the letter mailings with the public sentencing of the 31 terrorists and other suspects would rally public support of their government, both in the present situation and down the road. – Mod.MHJ
DXer said
R. Scott Decker wrote in his book “Recounting the Anthrax” attacks published last year:
“Our team was on heightened alert for more than shaky buildings and falling glass. Behind the scenes and known only to a few, government officials feared a second attack — one completely different from the violent, earthshaking events of 9/11. An assault so quite it would not be noticed until its lethal efforts emerged days later.
Late on September 11, with the help of Epidemic Intelligence Service Investigators from the Centers for Disease Control, the public health department had placed New York City area hospitals under a twenty-four-hour watch. By September 14, they had instituted a citywide syndromic surveillance system, monitoring more than two dozen hospitals for any illness resulting from biological terrorism. The same scrutiny was in place around the Pentagon, the site of the third commercial airliner attack thirty-four minutes after the second World Trade Tower was hit.
Rumors of the hijackers carrying improvised bombs — combined with speculation they might have had biological weapons — prompted scientists from the Department of Defense and the Secret Service to set up air-monitoring stations around the Pentagon and on the roofs of executive buildings in Washington, DC. …
Day and night, technicians removed samples of those particles, driving them fifty miles north to the nation’s premier biological defense laboratory; the Maryland-based US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, known as USAMRIID. On the receiving end of those deliveries was Dr. John Ezzell, a skilled scientist who had spent the five years developing methods for the detecting and identifying the tiny signatures of biological weapons. Day after day, Ezzell and his team analyzed the trapped dust for indications of aerosolized bioweapons, with anthrax at the top of the list.”
Comment: John Ezzell, who has been very forthcoming with this blog and demonstrated himself to be a man of great integrity in speaking before the filmed conference moderated by Lew Weinstein. He worked closely with Decker’s FBI unit, had made a dried powder out of Ivins’ Flask 1029. Decker can explain why the FBI never has acknowledged this fact. Ezzell’s lab did not submit a simple from Flask 1029 that it had in its unlocked refrigerator in 1412 — and then inexplicably threw out Ivins’ submitted sample. Somehow Decker construed this as evidence of Ivins culpability when instead it pointed to a conflict of interest that was off the Richter scale. It constituted a breath-taking conflict of interest.
The reason I knew of Zawahiri’s threat that anthrax would be used to retaliate for the rendering of the Blind Sheik and other Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders was because in 2001 I read the publicly available, CIA FBIS system, courtesy of a local University. The database was available at both SU and Cornell, and I used it at both places. The database later was made a paid service through DIALOG.
DXer said
In his book published last year, R. Scott Decker wrote:
“But the rumors that al-Qaeda operatives had biological weapons had reached their ranks as well. One of them, anthrax vaccine expert Dr. Bruce Ivins, emailed a colleague: “I heard tonight that Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas.”
Comment:
Yes, the report appeared in the national news that day. So anyone watching the news (as everyone was) would have known that.
The claim of Zawahiri’s intention to use the anthrax had been published a long time before. In fact, the issue had been the subject of letters between Bin Laden and a radical imam in Europe. At one point, Bin Laden had posted his response to the request that biological weapons be used. Bin Laden’s position was always that he would use biological weapons in a manner and under the circumstances of his own choosing, and that it was permitted as a defensive measure.
At one point, Bin Laden’s letter had been posted on the internet but the CIA had it taken down.
In announcing an Ivins Theory in early August 2008, the FBI stupidly used Ivins’ email as somehow demonstrating an undue interest in the subject and evidencing guilt of murder.
No. It was evidence that he read or watched the news — it appeared in both print and broadcast that day.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Michael B. Mukasey has an OpEd in the WSJ today on the subject of Mueller and Amerithrax. Mukasey was the United States District Court Judge in the trial of the Blind Sheik and his followers. He then was Robert Mueller’s boss at the time the FBI announced its Ivins Theory at a press conference in early August 2008.
Michael B. Mukasey
April 17, 2018 6:52 p.m. ET
After anthrax spores killed five people, infected 17 others, and showed up in envelopes mailed to U.S. senators and media organizations in 2001, the current special counsel, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, spent years chasing and destroying the reputation of a microbiologist named Steven Hatfill, zealous in the belief that Mr. Hatfill was the guilty party. Another zealot, James Comey, then deputy attorney general, said he was “absolutely certain” no mistake had been made.
After Mr. Hatfill was exonerated—he received more than $5.5 million in damages from the government—Mr. Mueller then decided that another microbiologist, Bruce Ivins, was the culprit. When Ivins committed suicide, Mr. Mueller pronounced the case closed. A subsequent investigation by the National Academy of Sciences suggests Ivins too was innocent.
Mr. Mukasey served as U.S. attorney general (2007-09) and a U.S. district judge (1988-2006).
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Britain’s Novichok Chaos Brings Back Memories of Anthrax Attacks
• By Peter Isackson
• • April 6, 2018
“Traditionally, great detectives solve crimes by asking the question, Cui bono?”
https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/novichok-sergei-skripal-poisoning-britain-anthrax-attacks-us-news-41521/
Comment: Great detectives, rather bullshitting unduly about motive, set about determining the anthrax strain that the people who had announced an intention to use anthrax against US targets were using. Now, the FBI did not issue a press release or leak Zawahiri’s announced motive. But should they have to? Given that we all can research and read? The French are the worst on the motive — with a large percentage thinking that Al Qaeda was not responsible for 9/11.
DXer said
Al Qaeda urges Egyptians to topple government as Egypt preps for …
Reuters-Feb 16, 2018
CAIRO (Reuters) – Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged Egyptians to topple their government in the second message from Islamist militants this week calling for violence … In an undated audio recording, the Egyptian-born Zawahiri did not issue any specific threat, and did not mention any election.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-security-qaeda/al-qaeda-urges-egyptians-to-topple-government-as-egypt-preps-for-vote-idUSKCN1G01OS
Florida governor to FBI: We want details on ‘failure’ to act in school shooting
By AKELA LACY
02/19/2018 02:31 PM EST
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/19/rick-scott-fbi-school-shooting-417104
DXer said
From an August 2017 interview of Dr. Zaki of the CDC.
Click to access Defining%20Moments_Anthrax_8-28-17.pdf
“Dr. Zaki] Yes, indeed, it was considered. And in fact several years, maybe three years prior to
2001, we were asked to develop more sensitive tests to diagnose anthrax among other bio threat
agents, such as small pox and others. So we worked in our lab with tissue diagnostics to develop
the tests we used in the Florida case and the New York case. So those tests were ready when it
happened, and it was only the foresight of our leadership to ask us to do that which made us able
to respond quickly after these incidents.”
Comment: It wasn’t foresight so much as intelligence based on open source accounts of what Zawahiri’s captured military commander Mabruk was saying. The EIJ military commander (and Zawahiri’s confidante) Mabruk was captured in Azerbaijan (reportedly by the CIA) in 1998 and his laptop seized. His laptop identified 100 targets against which Zawahiri might use biological weapon.
Mabruk, along with al-Najjar and the blind sheik’s lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat, were the ones publicly announcing Zawahiir’s intentions in public at their 1999 trial, but the same had been gleaned from their interrogation in Egypt and the contents of Mabruk’s laptop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Salama_Mabruk
Arrest and imprisonment in Russia
On December 1, 1996, Mabruk and Mahmud Hisham al-Hennawi – both carrying false passports – accompanied Ayman al-Zawahiri on a trip to Chechnya, where they hoped to re-establish the faltering al-Jihad. Their leader was traveling under the name Abdullah Imam Mohammed Amin, and trading on his medical credentials for legitimacy. The group switched vehicles three times, but were arrested within hours of entering Russian territory and spent five months in a Makhachkala prison awaiting trial. The trio pleaded innocence, maintaining their disguise and having other al-Jihad members from Bavari-C send the Russian authorities pleas for leniency for their “merchant” colleagues who had been wrongly arrested; and Russian Member of Parliament Nadyr Khachiliev echoed the pleas for their speedy release as al-Jihad members Ibrahim Eidarous and Tharwat Salah Shehata traveled to Dagestan to plead for their release. Shehata received permission to visit the prisoners, and is believed to have smuggled them $3000 which was later confiscated from their cell, and to have given them a letter which the Russians didn’t bother to translate.[12]
In April 1997, they were sentenced to six months, and were subsequently released a month later and ran off without paying their court-appointed attorney Abdulkhalik Abdusalamov his $1,800 legal fee citing their “poverty”.[12] Shehata was sent on to Chechnya, where he met with Ibn Khattab.[12] Zawahiri and Mabruk accompanied al-Hennawi to Baku, Azerbaijan where he’d managed to secure himself a position.[19]
In June 1998, tired of Mabruk’s criticisms of his relationship with Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri allegedly banished him from al-Jihad’s central operations. He subsequently remained in Azerbaijan when Zawahiri left, and set up his own militant cell under the Bavari-C name, replacing Eidarous as the regional commander, after his transfer to London.[13][20]
1998 arrest in Azerbaijan
In August 1998, a wiretapped phonecall tipped off the Israeli Mossad that a rendez-vous between Ihab Saqr and an Iranian MOIS official was planned in Baku, Azerbaijan. Without a bureau in Azerbaijan, they contacted the American CIA, who allowed a Canadian-raised Mossad agent to unofficially tag along as seven or eight CIA officers based in Frankfurt oversaw a local police raid on the Baku hotelroom on August 20.[21][22][23]
When the Azeri police received confirmation that Saqr was in his hotelroom drinking coffee with others, they stormed the room grabbing all three people they found present and brought them still barefoot to the police station. It was now realised that the Iranian official hadn’t yet shown up, and they had instead arrested Saqr, as well as Mabruk and Essam Marzouk.[21][24] They were brought to the police station, where the Mossad agent says the police “beat the crap out of them”.[21] His laptop computer was seized, and yielded information on an Albanian cell, leading to a raid which saw five more arrested and extradited to Egypt.[25][26] It also ostensibly confirmed the identity of more than a hundred others who were, or had been, arrested based on their links to the group.[27]
An alternative telling of his arrest suggests that he had been arrested outside a Baku restaurant after American authorities had been tipped off by an informant inside al-Jihad.[25]
DXer said
I believe CNN national security commentator and “Security Mom” author Juliette Kayyem (HLS ‘ 95) was working for Rep. Gephardt in 1999 in profiling the emerging terrorist threat when this threat was made. It would be interesting to hear if she imagines that the pronouncement by the Blind Sheikh attorney that Zawahiri would use anthrax — made at the same time that the detained Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders Mabruk and Al-Najjar were saying the same thing — was an empty threat.
…whether she thinks Ayman Zawahiri was a fellow who didn’t try to execute on his threats.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Former NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, said to be under consideration by President Trump to replace FBI Director Comey, has written a book.
Vigilance: My Life Serving America and Protecting Its Empire City Hardcover – September 8, 2015
by Ray Kelly (Author)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Two-time New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly opens up about his remarkable life, taking us inside fifty years of law enforcement leadership, offering chilling stories of terrorist plots after 9/11, and sharing his candid insights into the challenges and controversies cops face today.
The son of a milkman and a Macy’s dressing room checker, Ray Kelly grew up on New York City’s Upper West Side, a middle-class neighborhood where Irish and Puerto Rican kids played stickball and tussled in the streets. He entered the police academy and served as a marine in Vietnam, living and fighting by the values that would carry him through a half century of leadership-justice, decisiveness, integrity, courage, and loyalty.
Kelly soared through the NYPD ranks in decades marked by poverty, drugs, civil unrest, and a murder rate that, at its peak, spiked to over two thousand per year. Kelly came to be known as a tough leader, a fixer who could go into a troubled precinct and clean it up. That reputation catapulted him into his first stint as commissioner, under Mayor David Dinkins, where Kelly oversaw the police response to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and spearheaded programs that would help usher in the city’s historic drop in crime.
Eight years later, in the chaotic wake of the 9/11 attacks, newly elected mayor Michael Bloomberg tapped Kelly to be NYC’s top cop once again. After a decade working with Interpol, serving as undersecretary of the Treasury for enforcement, overseeing U.S. Customs, and commanding an international police force in Haiti, Kelly understood that New York’s security was synonymous with our national security. Believing that the city could not afford to rely solely on “the feds,” he succeeded in transforming the NYPD from a traditional police department into a resource-rich counterterrorism-and-intelligence force.
In this vital memoir, Kelly reveals the inside stories of his life in the hot seat of “the capital of the world”-from the terror plots that nearly brought a city to its knees to his dealings with politicians, including Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama as well as Mayors Rudolph Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Bill DeBlasio. He addresses criticisms and controversies like the so-called stop-question-and-frisk program and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and offers his insights into the challenges that have recently consumed our nation’s police forces, even as the need for vigilance remains as acute as ever.
DXer said
The cleric who altered the course of modern history
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 1:17 PM ET, Sun February 19, 2017
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/19/opinions/9-11-spiritual-guide-dies-bergen/
DXer said
Al-Qaeda chief calls on militants to kidnap Westerners in exchange for jailed jihadists
Ayman al-Zawahiri’s calls come as al-Qaeda urges followers to carry out lone wolf attacks during Olympics.
By Romil Patel
July 24, 2016 20:18 BST
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged militants to kidnap Westerners and swap them for jihadi prisoners, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. The chief of the terror organisation made the proclamation in a recording which was posted online.
Egyptian-born al-Zawahiri called on fighters worldwide to take Western hostages “until they liberate the last Muslim male prisoner and last Muslim female prisoner in the prisons of the Crusaders, apostates, and enemies of Islam.”
IBTimes UK could not independently verify the recording. Earlier this week The Foreign Desk obtained material revealing the jihadist group had called on its followers to perpetrate lone wolf attacks during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which are set to get underway in less than a fortnight on 5 August.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/al-qaeda-chief-calls-militants-kidnap-westerners-exchange-jailed-jihadists-1572260
Comment:
Anyone else feel that Dr. Ayman Zawahiri is pretty irrelevant in an age of natural disasters and random violent crime? As to the Olympics, he is literally less significant than a mosquito.
We have more shootings on a nightly basis in my small city that his worldwide following commits in a week. He instead should concentrate on reading to his grandchildren.
DXer said
A tree grows in Brooklyn:
Orlando gunman tied to radical imam released from prison last year, say law enforcement sources
By Malia Zimmerman
Published June 12, 2016
FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/12/orlando-gunman-tied-to-radical-imam-released-from-prison-last-year-say-law-enforcement-sources.html?intcmp=hpbt1
FoxNews.com has reported extensively on Robertson, a former U.S. Marine who served as a bodyguard to the Blind Sheik involved in the 1993 World Trade Center Attack and led a gang of New York bank robbers called “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves” before resurfacing in Orlando, where he started an Islamic seminary. …
While in the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole County, Robertson was considered so dangerous, he was kept in shackles and assigned his own guards. Whenever he was transported to court, a seven-car caravan of armed federal marshals escorted him. He was initially moved into solitary confinement after prison authorities believed he was radicalizing up to 36 of his fellow prisoners.
***
During the same period, federal authorities claimed Robertson served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel Rahman, nicknamed the “Blind Sheik,” who led the terrorist group that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and donated more than $300,000 in stolen funds to mosques he attended, both claims Robertson denied. Robertson has adamantly denied the claims.
After he was arrested in 1991 along with most of the other members of the gang, prosecutors cut a deal with Robertson, and let him serve four years in prison before going to work undercover for the FBI between 2004 and 2007 to document terrorists’ plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.
DXer said
Veteran Egyptian jihadist now an al Qaeda leader in Syria
Thomas Joscelyn | March 21, 2016
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/03/veteran-egyptian-jihadist-now-an-al-qaeda-leader-in-syria.php
Mabruk, captured by the CIA in 1998, had anthrax planning documents on his laptop.
The article states:
“Mabruk spoke with journalists at his trial, saying that Osama bin Laden had acquired chemical weapons and was planning to use them in the West.”
He said Zawahiri was planning to use anthrax. .
DXer said
Is Ayman Zawahiri going to be killed tomorrow? It seems that authorities have had success in targeting some individuals who reported directly to him.
Al-Qaida’s Bangladesh chief arrested
Times of India-4 hours ago
DHAKA: Al-Qaida’s Bangladesh chief and his top advisor were among 12 militants belonging to the group arrested by police which also seized …
Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri had said, in a video message, the new chapter would take their fight to Myanmar, Bangladesh and India.
Al-Qaida’s Pakistan network head killed in security raid: Government
PTI | Jul 1, 2015
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Al-Qaidas-Pakistan-network-head-killed-in-security-raid-Government/articleshow/47897475.cms
“One of the four terrorists killed on Monday during a raid of law enforcement agencies near Lahore was the head of Al-Qaeda networks in Pakistan and in Punjab province,” Khanzada said.
The minister also claimed that Al-Qaida network’s Indian sub-continent head Maulana Asim Umer is an Indian national who is hiding in Afghanistan.
Earlier, American national Mahmood was the head of Al-Qaida’s network in the sub-continent. He was killed in a drone attack.
Al-Qaida’s leader Ayman al-Zawahri had announced the creation of al-Qaida in the Indian sub-continent in September. The raid on Monday was the first known operation against the group in Lahore.
DXer said
This trial likely is weighing heavily on Dr. Ayman.
‘Al-Zawahiri cell’ trial postponed to 31 May
Daily News Egypt / May 17, 2015
Al-Qaeda affiliated group is charged with attacking security personnel and targeting Christians
Cairo Criminal Court postponed Sunday the trial of 68 defendants of “Al-Zawahiri cell” to 31 May.
The defendants are accused of establishing and managing a terrorist organisation linked to Al-Qaeda. They would have conduct attacks on army and interior ministry officers, in addition to Christians and their houses of worship. They are also accused of committing “terrorist acts” with the aim of spreading chaos in the country.
Among the defendants is Mohamed Al-Zawahiri, brother of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Out of the 68 defendants, 18 are still at large.
DXer said
The new FBI 911 Commission Report (p. 103) discusses a planned attack on a Los Angeles Masonic Lodge that was approved by Al Qaeda’s spiritual leader, blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman in 1992-1993. Adnan El-Shukrijumah was in Brooklyn with the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman — he was the son of the Blind Sheik’s translator.
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/protecting-the-homeland-in-the-21st-century
“(U) Alleged FBI Source with Access to Usama bin Laden
(U) On February 25, 2014, the Washington Times reported that the FBI had “placed a human source in direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and ascertained that the al Qaeda leader was looking to finance terrorist attacks in the United States.” 339 The article claimed to be derived from the courtroom testimony of a Supervisory Special Agent, who in the 1990s was in charge of a counterterrorism squad in the Los Angeles Field Office, on which Special Agent Bassem Youssef worked. Youssef had developed the confidential source referenced in the Washington Times article. According to the witness, Youssef’s source was close with Omar Abdel-Rahman, a radical Egyptian cleric living in the United States known as the “Blind Sheik,” who was subsequently convicted on terrorist charges arising from the 1993 bombing of New York City’s World Trade Center. The Washington Times reported that the witness, Youssef’s former supervisor, testified that Youssef arranged to have the source travel overseas to meet personally with UBL and that UBL “had a target [a Masonic lodge] picked out for an explosion in the Los Angeles area.”340
(U) The Review Commission interviewed Youssef. He said that “99 percent of the story was accurate.”341 He explained that from late 1992 to early 1993, Abdel-Rahman was “spewing anti- Egypt stuff at the mosque” but was not calling for attacks in or against the United States. In 1993, Youssef identified an individual, the aforementioned confidential source, who was in frequent contact with Abdel-Rahman—but not directly with UBL. Youssef learned from the source’s wife and from two other informants about a plot to bomb a Masonic Lodge in Los Angeles “because it was frequented by Jews.”342 The plotters had sought Abdel-Rahman’s approval who, in granting it, had mentioned in passing that “when they wanted to do something overseas,” they should “talk to Usama” in order to obtain financing.343 At the time, Abdel- Rahman was one of UBL’s spiritual advisers. According to Youssef, he reported to FBI Headquarters in 1994 that “UBL is building an Islamic army, has a lot of money, and is charismatic” but, according to Youssef, UBL was not at that stage known to be “a criminal or a terrorist.”344 This is consistent with other, contemporaneous, USIC assessments.345 With respect to the plot against the Masonic Lodge, Youssef stated that it had nothing to do with either UBL or al-Qa’ida and, in any event, never materialized. Moreover, the source in question was in fact in direct contact with Abdel-Rahman, and not directly with UBL. Youssef said that the source was killed while fighting in Chechnya in 1995.346”
337 (U) Memorandum for the Record, October 24, 2014.
338 (U) Ibid.
339 (U) Guy Taylor and John Solomon, “EXCLUSIVE: FBI had human source in contact with bin Laden as far back as 1993,” Washington Times, February 25, 2014, http://www.washingtonstimes.com/news/2014/feb/25/fbi- source-had-contact-with-osama-bin-ladin-in-1993 (accessed on November 19, 2014).
DXer said
Fn. 340 states:
“The actual testimony is less clear. The Supervisory Special Agent actually testified, “[Youssef] was able to develop two sources that were directly involved with Abdel Rahman. . .. [T]he one source came back, had direct contact with Osama bin Laden. He had indicated to Abdel Rahman that he had a target picked out for an explosion in the Los Angeles area, I believe it was a Masonic lodge. Abdel Rahman went and told him to go get money from Usama back in the Middle East.” See Testimony of Edward Curran, Bassam Youssef vs. Federal Bureau of Investigation, et. al., CA No. 03-1551 (September 15, 2010). It is unclear to whom the term “he” refers. 341 (U) Memorandum for the Record, November 10, 2014.”
DXer said
Does Ayman Zawahiri strike you as someone who doesn’t follow through on his threats? On what evidence?
DXer said
The former blind sheik lawyer was sentenced to 18 months yesterday here in Syracuse by a federal district court judge who denied Stanley’s request for an additional several week delay.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/21/us-usa-binladen-soninlaw-idUSKCN0J52FS20141121
Lawyer for bin Laden son-in-law gets 1-1/2 years prison in tax case
BY NATE RAYMOND
NEW YORK Fri Nov 21, 2014
Stanley Cohen, the lawyer, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue in Syracuse, New York, after pleading guilty earlier this year to obstructing and impeding the Internal Revenue Service and willful failure to file income tax returns.
Prosecutors said Cohen failed to file tax returns between 2005 and 2010, and routinely stored cash received from clients in a safe deposit box at an upstate bank. …
In a Twitter post after his sentencing in the tax case, Cohen said: “The machine goes on, 18 months-self surrender January 6th. Up the Rebels.”
Putting aside the merits of the tax prosecution — about which I know nothing — I still have no idea what Attorney Cohen thinks about Amerithrax. I was hoping to get him out at Dinosaurs
— his treat, under the circumstances — but it didn’t happen. It’s not like Dr. Ayman Zawahiri or Yazid Sufaat or even former Brooklynite Adnan El-Shukrijumah know Stanley or share with him. So Stanley would know only what he reads in the newspapers.
In any event, lawyers lie to themselves before their clients ever do.
Stanley’s got more fortitude than me. I would be drinking Dos Equis on some Ko Samui beach for the duration before I reported to jail.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US BIodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
The sentencing is not going forward today.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/10/convicted-tax-cheat-stanley-cohen-re-pledges-allegiance-to-hamas/
What are the odds Stanley will go on the lam?
He hates the US. He owes a bucket of money that he has to pay back with penalties. (I believe that is a necessary pre-condition of getting the 18 months).
And of course, then there is the going to jail part.
He likely still rents in NYC. He likes hanging out with fellow, educated supporters of Hamas. He saw how hard health-wise jail was for Lynne Stewart. He communicates widely through electronics or through travel abroad. He can follow the Yankees and write his book from abroad.
So while I guess he is just trying to making arrangements to pay and/or engaged in a related negotiation over the details of repayment — and taxpayer privacy justifies the sealing — what would the scenario look like if he was just going to be a no-show? And go on the lam? Wouldn’t it look exactly like what we are seeing?
I think the chance of him cooperating — which is what I would want and why it is of such great interest to me — is pretty much nil.
But if it turns out he cannot pay the huge amount he owes, isn’t the deal off? And where is going to come up with the money if he was behind on his rent?
I’ve always been interested in the loquacious and tenacious Mr. Cohen because I blog about the anthrax mailings and I think they were committed by someone associated with Brooklyn-based Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman’s Services Organization (to wit, Adnan El-Shukrijumah is the anthrax mailer). The GAO is going to issue a report that reviews the FBI’s case in Amerithrax later this Fall.
I think the mailer was the son of the Blind Sheik’s translator, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, and I think in the Virginia Paintball case the FBI was working an anthrax lead. See Wash Po “Hardball” article discussing Wade Ammerman and his colleagues efforts.
I think Attorney Cohen knows all this because he’s not stupid.
Indeed, Stanley himself thinks he was targeted by Gordon who is the lead prosecutor in US v. Al-Timimi. For a while, Stanley represented Ismail Royer, who led the young men in the paintball group.
I’m not political (or jewish) and am just interested in the whodunnit of the anthrax mailings — but I think it would be very exciting if Stanley went on the lam and could be part of an international manhunt.
But he would have a world audience with his cogent, testosterone-laden 140 character blasts.
Stanley Cohen @StanleyCohenLaw
Follow
Off to a meeting. For the 327,459th time I support the armed struggle of the Palestinian Resistance- that means Hamas.
8:30 AM – 20 Oct 2014
I was hoping to get Stanley out to DInosaurs to ask him what he really thought. :0)
I don’t know the law about “material support.”
Do lawyers get a pass because they are such useless tools?
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
New tweet –
Stanley Cohen
@StanleyCohenLaw
“My new court date is the 31st of October.”
DXer said
Summary Criminalizing Speech … Teaching a Terrorist … Tilting at Straw Men Some Straw Men . . .
Material Support.
A Summary by Mary DeRosa
http://apps.americanbar.org/natsecurity/patriotdebates/material-support
Comment:
This summary is from a long time ago and I don’t know what the current law is. But it seems to thoughtfully raise the issue of criminalizing free speech.
When I knew Mary she was always the one among us who was knowledgeable about criminal law. So let’s see what she said at the time about criminalizing speech and what constitutes material support.
Certainly, I would think, it does not constitute material support to be gracious or think that the person comes from a nice family — such as Stanley has said of Al Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaith and his family. Or I have said of the Al Qaeda anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat and his family.
Yazid Sufaat was happy with the anthrax work when he stayed with KSM for 6 days in 2001 and when he reported to Dr. Ayman on the results of his research with virulent anthrax in August 2001 with Hambali; in his correspondence with DXer, he seems happy today also (and very much in love).
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 1, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/yazid-sufaat-reported-he-was-happy-with-the-anthrax-work-when-he-stayed-with-ksm-for-6-days-in-august-2001-at-the-time-he-reported-to-dr-ayman-on-the-results-of-his-research-with-virulent-anthrax/
Al Qaeda anthrax lab technician tells DXer that he realizes that by addressing these issues he may “jack myself up” but says that the “plan is on the way” — what does he mean when he says the “plan is on the way”?
Posted by Lew Weinstein on May 1, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/al-qaeda-anthrax-lab-technician-tells-dxer-by-chat-that-he-realizes-that-by-addressing-these-issues-he-may-jack-myself-up-but-says-that-the-plan-is-on-the-way-what-does-he-mean-when-he-s/
But at what point does Attorney Cohen’s support and advice to Hamas go beyond protected free speech? (I have no idea and it is beyond the scope of the blog.) But I believe Hamas is a designated terrorist organization in the US and a number of other countries.
Personally I don’t know why Attorney Cohen would be returning to the US. Hamas is not a designated terrorist organization in a number of countries, to include a number of Arab countries. So why wouldn’t he settle somewhere outside the US doesn’t have an extradition treaty? Why does one show up for jail when one can simply make a nice life in another country?
Was it wise to allow him to travel when so much money was owed — with the 18 months entirely conditional on the payment of the money owed, including penalties? In hindsight, although we don’t have the benefit of knowing what the sealed letters are about, was he a flight risk?
DXer said
There is a renewed petition effort on change.org for Stanley Cohen. Stanley reports he has already put on a $600k defense on the charges for nonpayment of the last 5 years of taxes.
I’ve never understood why lawyers working for a cause they think righteous need to be paid so much; if it were so righteous, they wouldn’t require such high fees — they would do it for free. Stanley’s aggressive PR and twitter campaign more often than not seems just part of a fundraising effort. Stanley says he openly supports Hamas, a designated terrorist group. (Signing a petition does not persuade a federal district court judge but does facilitate fundraising through the mailing list created and made available to the sponsoring group).
The mute swans in New York State — also subject to a petition at change.org — aren’t so lucky. Lend your voice to the underdog that truly needs your voice.
Stand up against the murder of innocents. Don’t support or promote violence while purporting to stand against it.
Add your voice that says: “Stop the killing.”
“Stop New York State’s Swan Killing Plan”
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-state-department-of-environmental-conservation-stop-new-york-state-s-swan-killing-plan
This petition — one of several — has 30,000 petitions but should not be overlooked because Governor Cuomo still needs to sign the bill passed this year that would require that DEC prove the actual harm before killing the swans.
One week last December he vetoed 50% of the bills presented.
For cutting-edge research on swans, to include mute swans, see the Abstracts at this 2014 conference.
Click to access Program%20ABSTRACTS%202.pdf
The tundra and trumpeter swans are indicated by the research to be the interspecies aggressors relative to the mute swan — just the opposite of what is claimed without scientific basis by proponents of the NY kill plan.
On Monday, the family of 7 we have in my county came up behind me and glided at the same speed alongside my rowboat. It was a beautiful thing.
This 173-age PhD thesis by Gayet from 2010 is also a useful portal into the literature.
Click to access MANUSCRIT_ANGLOPHONEok.pdf
NYS DEC should embrace the 2-year moratorium. The request by some local sportsman that Cuomo veto the bill is misguided. Moving forward with the killing plan would be a public relations debacle for the NYS DEC, which we need to do so much important work in the State.
http://www.syracuse.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2014/10/swan_fight_downstate_state_senator_and_animal_rights_advocate.html
If DEC moves forward, a suit to enjoin the “arbitrary and capricious” agency action would be brought pro bono because it is a righteous cause.
Hint: a cause may not be righteous if it costs $600k.
Heck, for that money, you could represent cigarette companies and kill 300,000 a year — and you could tell your supporters it was righteous because it was all legal.
DXer said
Attorney Stanley Cohen, the US-based lawyer for Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman, is to be sentenced here tomorrow in Syracuse, NY for tax evasion.
He says he was targeted by AUSA Gordon Kromberg.
The Ordeal of Stanley L. Cohen: Justice as Farce – Truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/justice_as_farce_20141005
“Oct 5, 2014 … Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg, who has carried out witch hunts … Reportedly, each client has an X marked on his face and Cohen’s …”
I have no idea whether that is true. But I figure if you avoid taxes on $3 million in taxes over the course of 5 consecutive years, it is surprising that it took them this long to act. It must be nice to be able to mount a $600k defense.
AUSA Kromberg is the lead prosecutor, by the way, in the prosecution of “anthrax weapons suspect” (his defense counsel’s term) in US v. Ali Al-TImimi.
I’ve never met Gordon and he’s only ever sent me a filed brief in the matter at my emailed request.
The federal district court judge has numerous pending motions in front of him in the long pending and hard-fought Al-Timimi matter.
I believe 911 imam Anwar Awlaki figures centrally in the sealed motions.
I cannot prove that Attorney Cohen is wrong about being targeted.
Indeed, I suspect he is right.
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Attorney Stanley Cohen, the Blind Sheik’s lawyer in the US, also represented the lead defendant in the Virginia Paintball case.FN/ That case separately prominently featured “anthrax weapons suspect” Ali Al-Timimi (once his name was unsealed) — but the inside baseball was that Ismail Royer had the leading role in the Virginia Paintball group. (Ali Al-Timimi then came to be represented pro bono by the daughter of the lead Amerithrax prosecutor, Daniel Seikaly. Attorney Seikaly was born in Haifa in 1948 and comes from a politically active Palestinian family; he came over from the CIA in mid-September 2001). Mr. Seikaly was the one who derailed Amerithrax with the leaks about the BS anthrax-smelling bloodhounds.
FN/ CNN.com – ‘Jihad network’ suspects plead not guilty – Jul. 3, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/03/terror.arraignment/index.html?…
Jul 3, 2003 … The suspects are Randall (Ismail) Royer … At Thursday’s hearing, Stanley Cohen, an attorney for Royer, …
The very minute Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse was raided, 100 agents came here to Syracuse and simultaneously interviewed 150 people. Eight agencies, including the iRS, had been on the case for months. There had been 30 extensions of warrants. In July and August 2001, the doctor here had spoken alongside Anwar Awlaki and Ali Al-TImimi in Canada and the UK.
At his core, Attorney Cohen must be a law-and-order type. A rebel wouldn’t come back into the country to report for jail.
U.S. Jewish lawyer to Hamas goes on anti-Israel Twitter tirade
Stanley Cohen, who also represented Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, to be sentenced Tuesday for tax offenses.
By Haaretz and Reuters | Oct. 20, 2014
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.621762
In April, Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in Syracuse, New York, to obstructing and impeding the Internal Revenue Service. He will be sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison, according to reports.
Prosecutors said he failed to file tax returns between 2005 and 2010, and routinely accepted cash from clients, storing it in a safe deposit box at a bank. NBC reported that prosecutors believe he failed to report more than $3 million in income.
The tax case is expected to cost Cohen his law license, which he received in 1984.
“Am I someone who would intentionally, willfully sell government secrets or engage in activity with the intent to hurt America or American citizens? Absolutely not,” Cohen told NBC News.
DXer said
Terror Suspects’ Lawyer Stanley Cohen Rants Before Prison Sentence
BY BILL BRIGGS
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/terror-suspects-lawyer-stanley-cohen-rants-prison-sentence-n228656
Comment:
The Blind Sheik’s US lawyer is going to jail. I wonder if he thinks he was targeted in part because of the anthrax mailings.
I am not Jewish and don’t follow politics — remaining focused on the “whoddunit” of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. But I’ve always been interested in the loquacious and tenacious Stanley Cohen because of his politically-motivated defense of the people on the peripheries (IMO) of the Amerithrax case, such as Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. I once noted to Attorney Cohen that I had read Clarence Darrow’s biography as a kid and so could appreciate his point of view. (Archibald Cox and Ralph Nader came to be my heros, rather than Clarence Darrow).
I was always hoping Stanley had a moment to spare from his representing drug dealers, mass murderers and political activists to have a beer and ribs at “Dinosaurs” here and tell me what he really thought. He gets sentenced here in Syracuse on tax evasion this week.
For example, he represented the fake doctor who was a listed author in the article published in JAMA on Nguyen’s anthrax infection.
In October 2001, NATO forces raided the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and seized before-and-after photographs of the World Trade Center, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole; maps of government buildings in Washington; materials for forging U.S. State Department badges; files on the use of crop duster aircraft; and anti-Semitic and anti-American material geared toward children. An employee of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and another cell member was in telephone contact with Osama bin Laden aide and al-Qaeda operational commander Abu Zubayda. The employee’s planned immigration to the United States was going to be sponsored by Dr. Hassan Faraj, who worked at the hospital where the first New York inhalational anthrax victim died. The doctor was a co-author of a leading article in the Journal of American Medical Association (“JAMA”) about the causes of the woman’s death. Dr. Faraj lived in the building next to Al-Timimi until 1999 when he moved to Brooklyn to take an internship at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
An arrest warrant issued for a former Falls Church, Virginia resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. He had been working as an intern and resident at hospital in Manhattan for the past three years.
The Syrian-born doctor, Hassan Faraj, formerly worked for the Al Qaeda front charity, BIF, in Zagreb, Croatia. He was accused in late June 2004 of supporting an Al Qaeda terrorist. He was listed in 2002 as an author of a key article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“JAMA”) about the fatal anthrax inhalation exposure of 61- year-old Kathy Nguyen. She had worked in the stockroom of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (MEETH), which was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. The doctor, Hassan Faraj, was an intern there at the time and then finished his residency at Lenox Hill in 2004. The article explained that an epidemiological study of her workplace and residence had not turned up any explanation of how she was exposed. The United States government charged Dr. Farah with immigration violations, accusing him of providing aid to a supporter of Osama Bin Laden and making false statements. In early November 2004, federal prosecutors alleged that they found shredded blueprints for a suburban Washington overpass in a bag in his Brooklyn apartment. His lawyer claimed that they were from his brother, a lecturer at an unidentified Washington-area university who had left the country. Prosecutors said that Faraj’s duties included running recruits to camps in Bosnia. In November 2004, the Daily News reported that “Computers seized at the foundation’s office in Chicago contained a deleted file stating, ‘Hassan has spent substantial amount of time with us in Bosnia . . . and had said that he is willing to do anything.'”
In an April 11, 2005 letter (provided to me by intelwire.com, an Assistant United States Attorney explained to a federal magistrate the “defendant had engaged in repeated fraud in pursuing a medical career in this country, including lying to obtain his Virginia medical license.” The Virginia medical licensing website, there is a Consent Order confirming that he had surrendered his license. His license in Connecticut was also allowed to expire that year after it had been granted.
The AUSA in the 2005 letter explained that on June 29, 2004, the defendant had been arrested on charges of falsely obtaining his United States citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1425. The defendant gained his citizenship in part because he had fraudulently obtained asylum. The government summarized:
“To get asylum, the defendant claimed that he was a Bosnian citizen, that his Bosnian wife … had been killed by Serbs during the Balkan conflict, that he had been studying medicine at Sarajevo University in Bosnia, and that he had been forced to flee Bosnia due to the conflict. These claims were a sham. The defendant was not a Bosnian citizen, [his wife] never existed, the defendant never studied medicine at Sarajevo University, and the defendant was not forced to flee Bosnia (indeed, he did not even reside in Bosnia, but rather in Croatia).”
At his initial appearance on June 30, 2004, the defendant was released pursuant to an agreed upon bail amount of $100,000, co-signed by two sureties.
On August 12, 2004, the defendant was indicted on the immigration charge. Sitting outside the courtroom in November 2004 before his hearing on whether his bail would be revoked, Mr. Faraj told the New York Times reporter: “I have nothing to be afraid of. They have nothing else to do but to make things up.”
In early November 2004, the government learned that the defendant had violated his pre-trial release conditions by making false statements in his August 2004 Virginia medical licensing application. The defendant made at least two false statements to the Virginia board: (i) falsely asserting that he had not engaged in any plea bargaining in any matter; and (ii) falsely asserting that he had never been censured or warned in regard to his medical background. The February 2007 Consent Order in Virginia explains that he had been warned about his job performance on February 28, 2003.
The government argued that false statements to the Virginia board were part of a larger pattern of medical fraud by the defendant, dating back several years. In essence, the defendant satisfied two other essential medical requirements beyond the state licensing requirement through fraud: (i) fraudulently securing a required medical residency position at Lenox Hill hospital, and (ii) fraudulently securing a required certification from the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMGO). The government contended that in 2001, the defendant told at least two significant lies to secure the residency. “First, in his personal statement and application submitted to Lenox Hill, the defendant falsely claimed that, “[f]rom January 1996 to January 1997, I did an internship in Zvijezda Hospital in Zagreb where I rotated in all departments.” The government continued: “In fact, the defendant did not intern at that hospital and was in the United States eleven months of the twelve he was supposedly doing the internship in Croatia.”
The defendant engaged in similar fraud, the government explained, in his submissions to the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates, which regulates the practice of foreign medical graduates in the United States. Among other things, the defendant falsely asserted to the ECFMG that he was an intern at yet another hospital in Croatia in 1996, the Venograd Hospital. The defendant even went so far as to submit a fraudulent certification to ECFMG that he interned at Sestre Vinogradska (Sisters of Misericordy) hospital in Croatia from September 1, 1996 to January 31, 1997.
The good doctor came under suspicion, in part, because of his support for suspected foreign terrorist Amir Abdulrazzak. Associated Press reported in November 2004 that “Sources familiar with the case said Abdulrazzak’s immigration documents were found on a computer recovered during a raid by U.S. Special Forces on a building in Bosnia housing the Saudi High Commission for Relief, an independent group linked to the Saudi Arabian government. The building, also known as “Mecca House,” was targeted after intelligence reports indicated terror suspects using it as a meeting house were planning to attack U.S. and NATO targets in Bosnia, according to a 2001 report by Army Times, a weekly for military personnel.”
In the 2005 letter to the federal magistrate, the Department of Justice formally provided additional detail:
“In the fall of 2004, the government discovered that the defendant used his fraudulently-obtained United States citizenship in January 2002 to sponsor the attempted entry into the United States by suspected foreign terrorist Amir Abdulrazzak, also known as Amir Amrush. At the time, Amir Abdulrazzak was an employee of the Saudi High Commission for Refugees (SHCR) in Bosnia. In October 2001, just a few months before the defendant’s sponsorship of Abdulrazzak, NATO forces raided the SHCR Sarajevo office where Abdulrazzak worked. The search recovered computers containing, among other things, the following information:
– confirmation of Abdulrazzak’s SHCR employment, including as acting manager of SHCR
– Abdulrazzak’s obtainment of software to hack into Hotmail e-mail accounts;
– an inventory of chemical protective clothing;
– anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda;
– a German magazine article regarding Usama Bin Laden’s travel to Bosnia in 1993; and
– documents concerning the appearance of United States State Department identification.
Due to SHCR’s terrorism ties, the Saudi government eventually closed the SHCR Sarajevo office.”
The government claimed that “the defendant’s attempt to assist Abdulrazzak was only the most recently known example of the defendant’s support for terrorism-related organizations.”
As noted above, when he was not sponsoring Al Qaeda operatives, he was serving as a listed author on an article in a prestigious journal addressing the epidemiological puzzle of the anthrax spores that infected a fellow Lenox Hill employee Kathy Nguyen — who worked in the stock room at MEETH. It seems that one never knows what one is hiding in the closet.
Attorney Stanley L. Cohen represented Hassan Faraj. “The defendant had nothing to give and wouldn’t become one of their snitches,” Cohen told the press in November 2004. Attorney Cohen was the law partner of radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who represented blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. The blind sheik’s son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, was on Al Qaeda’s 3-member WMD committee. Mohammed was in frequent contact with the blind sheik’s paralegal, Post Office employee Abdel Sattar. He would use Lynne Stewart as a “dove” to send messages to his father. The blind sheik once bemusedly said that they’ll stop using doves when the US stops using secret evidence. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was captured on February 13, 2003 in Quetta, Pakistan, and that had quickly led to the seizure of anthrax spraydrying documents at the home of a bacteriologist and the raid on Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse on February 26, 2003. According to the February 2007 Virginia Consent Order, two days later — “on or about February 28, 2003” — Lenox Hill had issued a warning to Dr. Faraj about his job performance.
Those massive searches and numerous arrests would be enough to distract even the most committed doctor from their work.
DXer said
Graeme MacQueen, who has written a highly politicized treatment of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings, seems unaware that the Blind Sheik’s lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat — along with various of Ayman Zawahiri’s detained confidantes in trial in Egypt — had announced Ayman Zawahiri’s intention to use anthrax to retaliate for the rendering of senior EIJ leaders.FN/ Al-Zayat came to Brooklyn to help with the Nosair trial and over the years was in regular in touch with the Blind Sheik’s paralegal Abdel-Sattar and Egyptian Islamic Group’s military commander.
The Brooklyn imam Gulshair El-Shukrijumah translated for the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Gulshair El-Shukrijumah was a Saudi government employee and missionary whose son is now leading Al Qaeda’s plans to attack the United States, including New York City. If Graeme had read those reports — instead of first reading on the subject of anthrax in 2010 — in his 2014 book “2001 Anthrax Deception” he might have listed this announced intention to use anthrax as the first reason to be concerned that Al Qaeda was going to next use anthrax.
The greatest deception is when we deceive ourselves as the result of not informing ourselves and taking advantage of available factual information. (Many people have busy daily lives that limits how much factual information they can process). Where do his advisors Meryl Nass, Barry Kissin and Frances Boyle mention those reports? For that matter, where do book authors like Guillemin, Willman, or Nadler? Or how about the fellow who thinks a First Grader wrote the anthrax letters? (I’m not kidding). Where does he discuss the reports.
Put simply, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri was the planner behind Bin Laden and his confidantes had announced his plans to use anthrax against the US. This was known both by the decision-makers and those who read on the subject. People need to inform themselves of the facts in forming their views.
see also
Ayman Zawahiri, Anwar Awlaki, Anthrax, and Amerithrax: The Infiltration Of US Biodefense
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 12, 2011
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/ayman-zawahiri-anwar-awlaki-anthrax-and-amerithrax-the-infiltration-of-us-biodefense/
DXer … if we knew what President Bush knew in February 2001, Amerithrax would be seen with entirely different eyes
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 2, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/dxer-if-we-knew-what-president-bush-knew-in-february-2001-amerithrax-would-be-seen-with-entirely-different-eyes/
This is the Summer 2001 Briefing That President Bush Received On Bin Laden and Planes But The February 2001 PDB On Bin Laden And Anthrax That President Bush Received From The CIA Is Still Classified
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 13, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/this-is-the-summer-2001-briefing-that-president-bush-received-on-bin-ladens-and-planes-but-the-february-2001-pdb-on-bin-laden-and-anthrax-that-president-bush-received-from-the-cia-is-still-classif/
FN/
Graeme MacQueen writes:
“The al-Qaeda Hypothesis
There were four main reasons the al-Qaeda hypothesis was attractive to many people.
(i) Al-Qaeda had been accused publicly by the President of the United States, and convicted in the media, of having carried out the 9/11 attacks. It seemed natural to many people that the same perpetrator would follow up with a second round of terrorist attacks.
Senator Tom Daschle says in his memoirs: “For weeks following September 11, there was a somewhat fatalistic expectation in the minds of many that we would be attacked again. The only question was where and how.”4 When he heard of Robert Stevens’ death he thought this might be “round two.”5 He says that “the first thought most people had was that the letters were somehow connected to the September 11 attacks, that they were the work of a terrorist group such as al-Qaeda.”6 As a matter of fact, already by mid-September the fear had been publicly expressed that biological attacks by al-Qaeda were in progress. On September 22 the Washington Post noted:7
Soon after last week’s terrorist attacks, federal health authorities told public health agencies to be on the alert for ‘unusual disease patterns associated with today’s events,’ a bureaucratically phrased but nonetheless chilling hint of fear that the nation might be under biological attack.
The author of the article explicitly mentioned anthrax as a disease that could be unleashed on the population and expressed concern that the disease might not be diagnosed since it could “at first be mistaken as an ordinary cold or a flu.” How odd that the anthrax attacks were, indeed, already in progress at this time. People started showing symptoms virtually on the day the article came out—symptoms that were, as the writer of the article had worried, not initially recognized as associated with anthrax.8 As September wore on, the “anthrax scare” reached impressive proportions— Chapter 6 takes up the topic. All of this prescient commentary on anthrax assumed that the party that had carried out the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden’s group, would be the leading actor in any attack using anthrax.”
DXer said
I am writing these posts as I read Graeme’s book. No sooner than I raise the issue, on the next page Graeme evidences some awareness of that announced intention. Perhaps the difference is that I am pointing to the EIJ military commander Mabruk (who was Ayman’s close confidante) and the Blind Sheik lawyer saying that Ayman Zawahiri was going to USE anthrax — rather than just acquire it.
“(iii) Osama bin Laden and his group were said to be on record as expressing interest in acquiring biological weapons: these allegations were held to establish intent. Various spokespersons and authorities also said that al-Qaeda would have been able to develop at least a crude form of anthrax to use in an attack, and may have already developed it: these allegations were held to establish capacity. (See, for example, the September 27 Washington Post article, “Al Qaeda May Have Crude Chemical, Germ Capabilities.”10)”
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Below is an article today from Press TV, Iran’s television network, broadcasting in English round-the-clock. Based in Tehran.
The Administration (to include the CIA and Secret Service advising Cipro) knew that Dr. Zawahiri’s confidantes had announced Zawahiri’s intention and active plan to use anthrax against US targets. Thus, to use that fact, without much more, as evidence that the neocons in the Administration were responsible is utterly baseless.
Yazid Sufaat, Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab director in the Summer 2001, in written exchanges with me does not deny responsibility for the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. (He “pleads the Fifth”.)
Kevin Barrett might more usefully interview Montasser Al-Zayat and the other Zawahiri confidantes, including those who have lived for years in Iran, about Zawahiri’s anthrax program from 1999-2001.
Neocons confess: “We did 9/11-anthrax”, PressTV, September 6, 2014
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/06/377832/neocons-confess-we-did-911anthrax/
See
This is the Summer 2001 Briefing That President Bush Received On Bin Laden and Planes But The February 2001 PDB On Bin Laden And Anthrax That President Bush Received From The CIA Is Still Classified
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 13, 2012
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/this-is-the-summer-2001-briefing-that-president-bush-received-on-bin-ladens-and-planes-but-the-february-2001-pdb-on-bin-laden-and-anthrax-that-president-bush-received-from-the-cia-is-still-classif/
DXer … if we knew what President Bush knew in February 2001, Amerithrax would be seen with entirely different eyes
Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 2, 2010
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/dxer-if-we-knew-what-president-bush-knew-in-february-2001-amerithrax-would-be-seen-with-entirely-different-eyes/
Anthrax, Al Qaeda and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
See also
Suspicious letters to NBC, N.Y. Times sent from St. Petersburg, authorities say, St. Petersburg Times, October 13, 2001
http://www.sptimes.com/News/101301/TampaBay/Brokaw_s_aide_tests_p.shtml
“In a briefing at the Pentagon, a senior defense official confirmed that al-Qaida, bin Laden’s global network, is thought to have crude facilities in Afghanistan where it could produce chemical or biological weapons. If al-Qaida has biological warfare agents, they could include anthrax, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.”
In connection with the St. Petersburg letters, the book by Graeme MacQueen “The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy Paperback” – September 1, 2014
by Graeme MacQueen notes the “reversed N’s.”
see also http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=howard_troxler_1
Did the same person write the powder-containing hoax letters to Howard Troxler of the St. Petersburg paper, Judith Miller of the New York Times (author of Germs), and to NBC’s Tom Brokaw as wrote the letters containing anthrax spores? The Troxler letter read: “Howard Troxler .. 1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. Oklahoma-Ryder Truck! Skyway bridge-18 wheels.” Judith Miller is the author of the pre-9/11 book Germs.
DXer said
The reversed “N’s” is a fascinating objective detail to focus on given the nebulousness of other data points.
DXer says: Adnan El-Shukrijumah is the anthrax mailer … on or about 9/13/2001, he phoned from KSM’s house to tell his mom he was coming to the US
Posted by Lew Weinstein on June 6, 2014
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/dxer-adnan-el-shukrijumah-is-the-anthrax-mailer-on-9132001-he-phoned-from-ksms-house-to-tell-his-mom-he-was-coming-to-the-us/
For example, Atta is associated with Clearwater, 20 miles from St. Petersburg — although the connection did not come out for a half decade after 9/11.
St. Petersburg Times, “9/11 hijackers practiced here”
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/30/Northpinellas/911_hijackers_practic.shtml
Similarly, the details of Atta and El-Shukrijumah’s connections to Sarasota, 38 miles from St. Petersburg, is still the subject of hard-found FOIA litigation.
http://www.browardbulldog.org/tag/sarasota-saudis/
And one of the most famous connection to the area is whether there was a report of a sighting at a subway shop in the area.
Man resembling terrorist seen in sandwich shop
A customer sees someone he thinks matches an FBI photograph. Authorities search the city on the eve of a presidential visit.
By KATHRYN WEXLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 26, 2003
“Several minutes later, Tampa Police Capt. Bob Guidara stopped by the Subway for dinner. The customer told the officer of his suspicions.
Guidara showed the customer a wanted poster of El Shukrijumah, and the customer said he thought that was the man who had just left. The officer also showed the poster to the clerk, who also said it looked like the man who was in his store.”
DXer said
FBI informant emerges from the shadows
Two decades have passed since Emad Salem went deep undercover for the FBI and infiltrated the terrorist cell behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Now 64, with no job, no home equity and no pension, Salem has decided to talk about his past.
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80456186/
http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Emad-A-Salem/dp/1493541560/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402737373&sr=8-1&keywords=Emad+Salem
Comment:
In promoting his book, what can he tell us about the people who attended the Nosair trial?
To summarize my view of Amerithrax and how they trace to Brooklyn in 1995 — and to put things simply — I am suggesting that Adnan El-Shukrijumah, son of blind sheik translator, is the anthrax mailer. He is now a head of Al Qaeda’s external operations. What can Emad tell us about Adnan?
I am suggesting that Al Qaeda anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat is the processor and simply has been slow in admitting it. A stubborn but affable chap, he has told me that the CIA is not going to hear it from his mouth.
Note that Ayman Zawahiri and Atef went to Indonesia in June 2000 at a time Sufaat and Hambali were planning the anthrax lab and looking to recruit a scientist. Thus, the narrative about introductions by Hambali being made in 2001 seems some detainee’s fiction. As for whether Al Qaeda lab in Kandahar was using virulent Ames, rather than some other strain, I would refer you to Dr. Relman’s article in Science and the documents explaining the plan to decontaminate labs with insecticide. The plan was to paint the walls so they could be wiped down.
As for the mailer, my vote is for Adnan El-Shukrijumah. This apple didn’t fall far from the tree — just interview his mom in Florida and see for yourself. The asthmatic and dimunitive Adnan was the son of the Blind Sheik’s translator in Brooklyn, at about the time when Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli visited. In September 2001 upon the planes attack on the WTC, Adnan El-Shukrijumah called his mom from KSM’s house and told her he was coming to the US. (She protested but he insisted). That residence was where Yazid Sufaat had stayed when he explained to KSM that both he and his assistants were vaccinated for their work with the virulent anthrax.
We may learn more about El-Shukrijumah and his connections to Atta and the hijackers if the newspapers have success in their suit against the FBI in Florida.
For those like researcher Milton L. who argued for a half decade that Sufaat was not working with virulent anthrax, Milton and others understandably appear not to have had access to read KSM’s detainee report and were just making rash assumptions that squared with their preconceptions. They then never bothered to correct their commentary and news reports. Milton in his 2005 treatise did not even disclose the first sentence in Rauf Ahmad’s 1999 letter to Ayman Zawahiri: “I have achieved the targets.” As a scholarly researcher, it was incumbent on Milton to disclose the sentence and then share his view that Rauf Ahmad was merely telling Dr. Ayman that he was making progress on his list of things to do. (Then people could have judged the reasonableness of the interpretation in light of the fact that had been Rauf Ahmad’s mission to acquire virulent anthrax). Milton reversed the order of the handwritten and typed letters and then Eric at the NYT mistakenly adopted that view. All the while, Milton had failed to make the actual correspondence available. We don’t need more spin or asserted conclusions — what we need is the transparency that comes about from uploaded documentary evidence. Much later, Joby at the Washington Post did a more thorough and insightful job on Rauf Ahmad’s role.
But the proof in Amerithrax is going to have to be simply framed and start with the actual players — not historical background involving a cast of dozens of educated Salafist supporters of the Egyptian jihadists. Indeed, unfolding events in places like Iraq are of sweeping historical nature — there simply would be far too much detaill consuming intelligence analysts.
Which brings us back to the news of the week.
What insight is provided by the manuscript titied “Undercover” of the FBI’s informant in the WTC 1993 bombing? … about Adnan El-Shukrijumah and his father, the blind sheik’s translator? … about Abdel-Sattar, the post office employee who acted as the blind sheik’s paralegal? About Montasser Al-Zayat, who helped with Nosair’s defense? … about the subtilis expert Walied Al-Samarrai who was calling the apartment of the WTC 1993 mastermind/bomber up until the minute of the blind sheik’s arrest?
I’ve suggested that Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli visited Brooklyn in 1995 while Adnan El-Shukrijumah was living there with his father. Can Emad Salem confirm that is correct?
DXer said
Abu Hamza ‘worked with British intelligence’, The TImes, May 8, 2014
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/americas/article4083886.ece
Abu Hamza secretly worked with British intelligence and advised Scotland Yard on terrorist activities in the years before he was convicted for inciting murder, his lawyer claimed yesterday.
Joshua Dratel, the lawyer defending the Egyptian imam at his trial in New York, said documents from Scotland Yard showed Abu Hamza was in “constant dialogue with British security forces”.
DXer said
I once asked a childhood friend of Ayman Zawahiri whether Montasser Al-Zayat worked for Egyptian Security services — because I wondered how he had such great access to Torah prison. Dr. Zawahiri’s and my mutual friend said something like “absolutely not.”
Anthrax, Al Qaeda, and Ayman Zawahiri: The Infiltration of US Biodefense
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so eloquent at Colgate, knows the name Mohammed Zawahiri and his potential significance to intelligence analysis well.
Are there telephone recordings of phone conversations between Mursi (Morsi) and al-Qaeda Ayman Zawahiri that discussed the release of his brother?
Wasn’t the release of his brother, Blind Sheik Abdel Rahman and other EIJ officials the motivation of the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings?
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
http://shoebat.com/2013/10/23/source-recordings-mursi-colluding-al-qaeda/
His name is Dr. Abdel Reheem Ali and he is widely regarded as the most reputable source for all things Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Ali is also credited with revealing what could be extremely explosive evidence to be used in the upcoming trials of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, to include former President Mohammed Mursi. That evidence reportedly includes recordings of phone conversations between Mursi and al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Abdel Reheem Ali: Recordings of Mursi colluding with al-Qaeda leader.
Though what follows below should be considered a stand alone piece, some context may be added by reading Addendum M to our “Ironclad” Report. This addendum is about the familial relationship between Rifa’a El-Tahtawi, Mursi’s former chief of staff, and al-Qaeda’s number one, Ayman al-Zawahiri; these two men are first cousins.
We must emphasize that while we have neither come into possession of these recordings nor heard them, we felt it warranted to report on this news because of the veracity of the source(s) that have done so already. Another reason is how the detailed descriptions of the contents of the recordings comport with other news that has been reported during Mursi’s tenure as president.
Via Al-Bawabh News (translation):
Al-Bawabth News obtained recordings that took place between ex-president Mursi and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The details of the recordings ensured that Mursi would not arrest Jihadists or Takfirists during his tenure and to ensure that they continue their activity with absolute freedom.
In addition, the agreement included opening military camps to train jihadists in Sinai.
Formidable sources in private settings revealed the nature of the communication between the two sides. First, the release of Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of the al-Qaeda leader through the intervention from Rifa’a Tahtawi, Mursi’s chief of staff.To also ensure the freedom of movement and preventing them from being watched. {emphasis ours}
As we reported previously via Al-Nahar, when Tahtawi was asked about his relationship with his cousin, Ayman al-Zawahiri, he is said to have had no comment. If the reports about these recordings are correct, Tahtawi was very involved in the release of Mohammed Zawahiri from prison. This is significant not just because the two men are first cousins but because Tahtawi was an arm of Mursi.
Al-Bawabth News obtained recordings that took place between ex-president Mursi and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The details of the recordings ensured that Mursi would not arrest Jihadists or Takfirists during his tenure and to ensure that they continue their activity with absolute freedom.
In addition, the agreement included opening military camps to train jihadists in Sinai.
Formidable sources in private settings revealed the nature of the communication between the two sides. First, the release of Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of the al-Qaeda leader through the intervention from Rifa’a Tahtawi, Mursi’s chief of staff. To also ensure the freedom of movement and preventing them from being watched.
DXer said
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Where are the recordings alleged by Shoebat to exist? If they exist, they should be made available — instead there is only this unsubstantiated claim. Without more, the story should promptly be dropped. Let the prosecutor or government come forward with such evidence if it exists.
DXer said
Writing the BIn Laden Story
http://www.meforum.org/3595/bin-laden-story
DXer said
Mustafa Hamza has been charged with terrorism along with Zawahiri’s brother. Mustafa Hamza was the one in three way conversations with the Blind Sheik’s paralegal in which they were discussing tactics that might lead to the Blind Sheik’s release. The issue was also the focus discussion of a Arabic language publication of the Ann Arbor charity IANA which had its spin-off here in Syracuse. Did Mustafa Hamza know about Zawahiri’s anthrax planning?
Accusations of ‘terrorism’ follow Jihadist leaders
Fady Ashraf / August 19, 2013
15-day-detention for Al-Zawahiri and Hamza for further interrogation
Mohamed Al-Zawahiri, founder of Al-Salafeya Al-Jihadeya and the brother of Al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman El Zawahiri was detained for 15 days by the Supreme National Security persecution office, along with Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya leader Mostafa Hamza, with accusations of joining a terrorist group and the disruption of national peace, state-owned MENA reports.
Al-Zawahiri and Hamza were arrested after arrest warrants were issued for them.
Both leaders were previously charged with similar accusations.
Al-Zawahiri was accused of joining the Returnees from Albania terrorist group. He was sentenced to be executed before the court later overruled the verdict.
Hamza was accused of planning the assassination of former president Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia, but was later found innocent. [This dates when the key players were in Khartoum, Sudan].
Background:
Tracing Militants on a Staten Island Phone – The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/nyregion/02sheik.html?…print...
by Julia Preston – in 23 Google+ circles
Oct 2, 2004 – Also on the line with Mr. Sattar were Mustafa Hamza, another exiled Islamic Group leader, and Montasser al-Zayat, a lawyer representing its …
It’s fascinating that the change of regime and then back again did not result in a massive leak of Egyptian security files.
What materials unavailable today will become available to historians?
I once told my friend who grew up down the street from Dr. Ayman that Montasser Al-Zayat must cooperate with Egyptian security to have had such access to Torah prison — and he said no way.
Egypt bloodletting rages with Islamic militants killing 25 police in Sinai Peninsula
CBS News – 59 minutes ago
Report: Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to be freed
Fox News – 17 minutes ago
By analogy, did this Rutgers history professor in his new book out this summer unearth any information pertinent to my quest for Dutch Schultz’ legendary missing millions?
See Dutch Schultz in Fairfield County, Connecticut in 1935 : his horses, his hiding places, and his missing millions
Rutgers history teacher writes book about Prohibition gangsters
MyCentralJersey.com-Jul 30, 2013
http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20130730/NJNEWS/307310015/Rutgers-history-Prohibition-gangsters
Prohibition gangsters : the rise and fall of a bad generation /
• Title:Prohibition gangsters : the rise and fall of a bad generation / Marc Mappen.
DXer said
The background of Mustafa Hamza as it relates to Amerithrax is as follows.
Cairo -based writers of the Ann Arbor charity Islamic Assembly of North America (“IANA”) , Kamal Habib and Gamal Sultan, approached the blind sheik Abdel Rahman about starting a political party in early 1999. On March 1 and 2, 1999, Lynne Stewart and translator Yousry visited Abdel Rahman in prison. On March 9, following that visit, Abdel Rahman issued a statement rejecting a proposal that the Islamic Group form a political party in Egypt. That day, the Islamic Group military commander Mustafa Hamza — the fellow recently arrested and charged with terrorism — spoke with the blind sheik’s liaison, US Post Office employee Abdel Sattar. In March, Cairo attorney Montasser Al Zayat told the press that Ayman likely was going to use weaponized anthrax against US targets to retaliate against the rendering and detention of the Egyptian militants. The next month, the Blind Sheik’s publicist Sattar spoke with Taha, the IG head close to the Taliban and Bin Laden, in a three-way call with Cairo attorney Al-Zayat. Sattar also spoke on the telephone with Vanguards of Conquest spokesman Al Sirri (based in London). From the beginning, the weaponization of anthrax for use against US targets was inextricably linked to the detention of senior militant Egyptian leaders, including the blind sheik.
It likely was a happy coincidence for Ayman Zawahiri, Mustafa Hamza and Mohammed Islambouli, that an active supporter of the Taliban — and associate of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali — was a US biodefense insider. Al-Timimi was IANA’s lead speaker and had spoken alongside Anwar Awlaki and a Syracuse doctor in Canada and England in July and August 2001. Ali Al-Timimi was a graduate student in the same building where famed Russian bioweapon Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey worked at George Mason University. The three worked at the secure facility at Discovery Hall at the Prince William 2 campus. Ames anthrax researchers Dr. Alibek and Dr. Bailey headed a biodefense program funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”). Al-Timimi had a top security clearance and had previously worked for SRA International doing mathematical support work for the Navy. In 2000 and 2001, Timimi was a graduate student in computational sciences. His field was bioinformatics. Al-Timimi tended to travel to give speeches on interpretation of the koran only during semester breaks.
DXer said
Brother of al-Qaida’s top leader Ayman al-Zawahri arrested in Egypt
Fox News – 13 minutes ago
CAIRO – An Egyptian security official says the brother of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri has been arrested in Egypt. The official said Saturday that Mohammed al-Zawahri, leader of the ultraconservative Jihadi Salafist group, was detained at a checkpoint in …
Comment:
Mohammed was arrested years ago in Spring of 1999, sharpening Dr. Ayman’s resolve to use anthrax against US targets in retaliation. Mohammed’s microbiologist sister Heba understandably cried herself to sleep with worry for months, even years, after his arrest — the family received no word of Mohammed’s whereabouts.
The Muslim Brotherhood, after achieving power in the election, should have protected minority rights.
At the same time, the military, after assuming power recently, should protect prisoner’s rights. In 1999 and the years following, the lack of news relating to his imprisonment was not in keeping with accepted standards relating to the humane treatment of prisoners.
We all reap what we sow.
Given the absence of evidence against Bruce Ivins, my concern remains that Heba taught Tarek and Tarek was supplied virulent Ames by Bruce E. Ivins and wouldn’t answer my questions relating to Amerithrax when I wrote him (and yet his former Cairo Medical classmates had been recruited by Dr. Zawahiri).
Who does Mohammed Zawahiri think was responsible for the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings?
Who does microbiologist Heba think was responsible?
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Who does Al Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaith say was responsible for the mailings? A different lawyer for the Blind Sheik, Stanley Cohen, represents Abu Ghaith in ongoing proceedings.
Although I haven’t read the filing, the blind sheik’s lawyer Attorney Cohen appears to argue that Abu Ghaith was “tortured” on his trip over and yet his claimed proof reveals only hyperbole.
When the word “torture” is used to describe a strip search (as with other detainees) or a long flight, the word loses its meaning. Such photographs would be necessary to avoid, well… false claims of torture.
My young daughter recently pulled an all-nighter this week returning from overseas. International flights, jet lag and the business of the day often are like that. Abu Ghaith should have asked for an aisle seat and slept (longer than he did).
Many people think airline food is torture.
As for missing the bowl while peeing and being scolded — that’s a lot like being married.
If Abu Ghaith wanted to travel first class and have extra leg room, then he shouldn’t have urged the killing of 4 million civilians using anthrax.
The blind sheik’s famous complaint was that the guards didn’t cut his fingernails often enough. Why didn’t he just tear them like a lot of men do?
Mass murderers (and their accessories after the fact and conspirators) should stop being such cry babies. It’s undignified.
Claims of torture should be reserved for more suitable circumstances. (And, torture indeed does occur and the rights of those prisoners needs to be zealously guarded).
Of course, on the issue of the duration of the interrogation, Attorney Cohen may have a more sound point and that can be considered under the relevant precedent as it applies in the context of a necessarily long international flight.
It’s all academic given the videos of Abu Ghaith’s murderous rants — but the world would still benefit by learning what Abu Ghaith has to say.
Abu Ghaith, a grown man, chose to be a chatty Cathy on the plane ride. Does the blind sheik’s lawyer representing him really think that excluding this or that statement will help? Does he really think that the statute of limitation applies to 911 and the conspiracy to murder Americans?
Wasn’t Abu Ghaith understandably upset about facing life is prison — rather than being scolded for missing the toilet bowl while peeing?
Ex-bin Laden spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith: U.S. tortured me on plane
NEW YORK — Lawyers for Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law claimed in court papers Friday that he was tortured by the U.S. and asked a judge to dismiss the terrorism case against him.
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s attorneys said in papers in Manhattan federal court that their client is charged in a flawed document that fails to adequately explain how he was part of a conspiracy to kill Americans. They said the statute of limitations had expired and that he was denied due process.
They also said he was interrogated at length during a 14-hour flight to the United States earlier this year during which “he was subjected to a variety of deprivation techniques and harsh treatment which constitute torture.”
Abu Ghaith, 47, has been held without bail since he was brought to the United States in March to face charges that he conspired against Americans in his role as al-Qaida’s spokesman after the Sept. 11 attacks. Authorities say he had appeared in propaganda videos that warned of further assaults against the United States as devastating as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000 people. Abu Ghaith, who has pleaded not guilty, would be the highest-ranking al-Qaida figure to stand trial on U.S. soil since 9/11.
In an affidavit filed to support a request to suppress a 22-page statement he made to authorities, the Kuwaiti-born Abu Ghaith said he left Afghanistan in 2002 and entered Iran, where he was arrested in mid-year and held by elements of the Republican Guard before he was detained in prisons and interrogated extensively. He said he was told by Iranian government officials that the U.S. government was aware he was being held in jail in Iran and that Iran had turned over a number of prisoners to the United States already.
Abu Ghaith said he was released from Iranian custody on Jan. 11, when he entered Turkey, where he was detained and interrogated before he was released on Feb. 28. He said he was heading home to Kuwait on a plane to see family when the flight landed instead in Amman, Jordan, where he was handcuffed and turned over to American authorities.
He said he had learned through other detainees and news sources over the years that the U.S. had engaged in waterboarding, beatings, freezing rooms, sleep deprivation, electrical shocking, the use of dogs and noise torture, humiliation while naked and other practices.
“I believed that I was now in American custody, and I anticipated increasing degrees of physical and psychological torture, which terrified me,” he wrote.
He said he was kept naked on the plane for several minutes as a man in military clothing photographed his body.
“I was terrified, and I saw that there were several men on board, and at least one woman present, who observed me while I was naked from her location behind a partially-drawn curtain at the front of the plane,” Abu Ghaith said.
DXer said
I invited the blind sheik’s attorney (Mr. Cohen) to have some Dinosaur’s barbecue in the course of the proceedings on his indictment here in Syracuse. But in the rush of summer goings-on haven’t had a chance to follow up. Stanley is just doing his job in seeking to exclude Abu Ghaith’s statement and arguing statute of limitations. The fact that (without reading the papers) I think they are losing arguments is no reflection on the excellent defense he seems to provide his clients. Sometimes a defendant simply is undeniably gulity and worthy of life in prison.
DXer said
Bin Laden’s Son-In-Law Seeks Terrorism Case Dismissal
By Patricia Hurtado – Jul 19, 2013 2:03 PM ET
Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law said U.S. charges that he was part of a global conspiracy to kill Americans should be dismissed because prosecutors waited too long to file them.
Sulaiman Abu Ghayth, a Kuwaiti indicted by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office, is charged with plotting to kill Americans after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was captured as he sought to travel from Jordan to Kuwait by the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation after a decade-long manhunt, the U.S. said. He was brought to New York in March.
His lawyer, Stanley Cohen, said prosecutors missed the conspiracy statute’s five-year deadline to file any charges under U.S. law and also failed to specify any actions that furthered the alleged conspiracy after the 2001 attacks.
DXer said
Fugitives
A provision exempting fugitives accompanied passage of the first federal statute of limitations.74 The language has changed little since (“no statute of limitations shall extend to any person fleeing from justice,” 18 U.S.C. 3290), but its meaning remains a topic of debate.75 Most circuits, taking their lead from Streep v. United States, 160 U.S. 128 (1895), have held that the government must establish that the accused acted with an intent to avoid prosecution.76 Yet two have held that mere absence from the jurisdiction is sufficient.77 Even in the more demanding circuits, however, flight is thought to include the accused’s concealing himself within the jurisdiction,78 or remaining outside the jurisdiction when he becomes aware of the possibility of prosecution,79 or fleeing before an investigation begins80 or to avoid prosecution on another matter,81 or to avoid civil or administrative justice rather than criminal justice.82
Click to access RL31253.pdf
Comment: Without reading Attorney Cohen’s brief, I do not know why he reasons the 5 year statute of limitation is not extended given Abu Ghaith’s absence from the jurisdiction and status as a fugitive.
DXer said
Syracuse native pleads guilty to planning violent jihad, hoping to form al-Qaeda branch in U.S.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/syracuse_native_pleads_guilty_to_planning_violent_jihad_hoping_to_form_al-qaeda.html#incart_river_default
According to court documents, Abukhdair said that the purpose of Islam is to conquer the world with violent means. He suggested that he and Wilson could form “AQUSA” – al-Qaeda in the USA. He proposed seizing hostages in the U.S. and demanding the release of convicted terrorists. …
Abukhdair was born in Syracuse on Oct. 3, 1987. Court documents do not say how long he lived in the area, but in 2007 he moved from the U.S. to Cairo, Egypt.
***
Abukhdair wanted to demand the release of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and Aafia Siddiqui. Rahman is the alleged mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist who reportedly shot at law enforcement agents looking into her bomb-making instructions.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
Para 24 explains the young man’s reasoning.
His colleague had objected to the idea of kidnapping on the grounds that the US has a don’t negotiate with terrorists policy. KSM initially had the idea of the Planes Operation as leading to the Blind Sheik’s release — he was going to land and make his demand. OBL rejected the idea as not viable. The movie “Siege” was prescient in regard to the importance of the Blind Sheik and was must-see television after 9/11.
The Complaint alleged:
Abukhdair responded by saying that, “Well at the every least we kill them all and it’s going to make the government look bad if they just let all of their citizens die.”
That essentially is Dr. Zawahiri and Al Qaeda’s strategy. It is an incredibly stupid (and highly immoral) strategy which will not be judged kindly by history. Indeed, under their belief system, they are going to have to answer to the Big Guy.
Abukhdair then noted that at least there would be an opportunity to shoot it out with police.
This provides relevant context for the Police Chief’s request this week for an armored vehicle — although in an age of municipal bankruptcies, I still don’t see why the Syracuse police cannot simply rely on the Sheriff’s vehicle,
In a time of fiscal crisis, the Council needs to find ways to avoid expenditures through pooling of resources. (The federal grant money could be spent instead on more cameras).
Syracuse council accepts federal grant to buy armored vehicle for police
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/syracuse_council_will_allow_police_to_use_federal_grant_to_buy_armored_vehicle.html
DXer said
Zawahiri failed to rebuild Qaeda core leadership in Pakistan: UN
PakistanToday.com.pk-Aug 8, 2013
The report, delivered to the UN Security Council by a group of experts, said al Qaeda’s Egyptian leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri had failed to rebuild …
US withdraws staff from consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, over terror threat
Published August 09, 2013
FoxNews.com
The State Department has evacuated non-emergency U.S. government personnel from the U.S. Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, and has warned Americans to defer all non-essential travel to Pakistan due to ‘specific threats’ to that mission, a U.S. official said.
In the travel warning issued Thursday night, the State Department advised Americans to defer all nonessential travel to Pakistan.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/09/us-evacuates-non-essential-staff-from-consulate-in-lahore-pakistan-over-terror/#ixzz2bTUpAp95
DXer said
Capitol Hill intelligence committee leaders: Terror threat ‘specific’ and ‘serious’ included dates
Published August 04, 2013
FoxNews.com
The sources said the chatter included Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri demanding that key leaders of the terror network in the Arabian Peninsula step up their activities in the wake of recent killings of top terrorists.
A Mideast diplomat said al-Zawahiri’s “pressuring” of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to launch new terrorist attacks on American and other Western targets is “unprecedented.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/04/chambliss-sources-terror-chatter-beyond-anything-heard-since-before-11/#ixzz2b27aTENF
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
DXer said
If officials fear a liquid explosive and the threat is specific as to date, it seems that if they disclose the date, people can choose not to travel or have their loved ones travel on that date. A failure to disclose the date will put the government in a very awkward position in the event flights are targeted on those dates.
Heba, Ayman’s microbiologist sister who taught Tarek (who worked alongside Bruce Ivins in the B3) should be ashamed of Ayman.
Targeting civilians immediately causes one to forfeit the moral high road (in addition to one’s soul under Dr. Ayman’s belief system).
Mohammed in Cairo should be kept under close surveillance.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-threat-officials-fear-ingenious-liquid-explosive/story?id=19871892&google_editors_picks=true
DXer said
I’ve told Attorney Cohen, the blind sheik attorney from the US, that I think it will get worse for him before its gets better in the ongoing prosecution here in Syracuse. I sense that there will be a superseding indictment based on the arrest of Blind Sheik supporter Odeh and many others in connection with a North Carolina cigarette smuggling operation that included sales within the Northern District of New York in the Albany area.
Those supporters of the Blind Sheik who do not believe in the murder of innocents — and even Blind Sheik bodyguard Nosair, the assassin and WTC 1993 plotter, is singing to a different drummer — may very well want to collect the $5 million reward and tell authorites what they know about Adnan El-Shukrijumah in Brooklyn during the 1993-1995 period. Often, intelligence analysis is who knew who, and sometimes with these matters of ideology the relevant relationships may date back years.
As a criminal defense attorney, Attorney Cohen understandably sneers at the idea of anyone cooperating, but that’s the reality. People are going to act in their best interest.
In connection with the ongoing prosecution of the Blind Sheik Attorney Cohen in Syracuse, the judge initially directed the status conference go forward tomorrow. But then Attorney Cohen wrote with an update and the status conference now has been canceled. It appears that Terrence Kinsella will file a notice of appearance on Attorney Cohen’s behalf.
Attorney Cohen wrote:
3 June 2013
Dear Judge:
A short while ago I reached an agreement with Mr. Kinsella, who will enter my case as attorney of record, and in that regard I have executed his retainer agreement, and have satisfied his requirements in full.
Inasmuch as Mr. Kinsella is in court today, I do not know whether he will file a formal Notice of Appearance by close of business today or tomorrow. Under these circumstances, I would ask the Court to continue the proceedings without the necessity of my appearance tomorrow.
Respectfully submitted,”
Mr. Kinsella apparently does not have the appearance of a conflict that the other former AUSA did.
DXer said
Attorney Kinsella, highly experienced, has been out of the United States Attorney Office since 2004 and so would have no potential conflict. It will be interesting to see if Attorney Cohen’s prosecution has the same appeal for fundraising purposes as Attorney Stewart’s did. Legal defense by someone as experienced as Attorney Kinsella won’t be cheap.
Of Counsel
Driver Greene LLP
Law Practice industry
October 2010– Present (2 years 9 months)
Principal
Law Offices of Donald T. Kinsella
October 2004– Present (8 years 9 months)
AUSA
United States Attorney’s Office NDNY
March 1989– April 2002 (13 years 2 months)
Chief of Criminal Division 1998-2002
Narcotics Chief – Lead OCDETF 1992-98
Trial Attorney
US DOJ Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force
June 1980– September 1981 (1 year 4 months)
Assistant Attorney General
NY Statewide Organized Crime Task Force
April 1978– June 1980 (2 years 3 months)
Assistant District Attorney
Madison County District Attorney’s Office
March 1974– April 1978 (4 years 2 months)
DXer said
For several months in the Spring of 2002, anthrax letter suspect Adnan El-Shukrijumah lived with Al-Hawsawi in safe houses in Karachi. Al-Hawsawi had the laptop with the anthrax spraydrying documents on it.
After 911, Al-Hawsawi met with Abu Ghaith. Al-Hawsawi had helped the hijackers and received excess money wired from Atta a few days before 911.
What did Al-Hawsawi and Abu Ghaith discuss?
Blind Sheik Attorney Cohen today in an email notes to me that he represents Abu Ghaith. Abu Ghaith appeared on the famous video in early October alongside Bin Laden and Zawahiri claiming responsibility for 9/11.
So perhaps the folks defending the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman would help out with Amerithrax not just from the Brooklyn end — but from the Afghanistan end.
What does Abu Ghaith say about Al Qaeda’s anthrax project?
Will Attorney Cohen be granted secret clearance needed to review classified documents?
What has Abu Ghaith already shared back at the hotel and then the long plane ride here?
Assuming Miranda is not an issue, I think Attorney Cohen will want to embrace what Abu Ghaith told his questioners — and Abu Ghaith cooperated — and argue that getting him to New York from Turkey via Jordan somehow did not comply with the rule of law.
But as for false denials of anthrax … or pleading the Fifth. …
Please…. if anyone is ashamed for what they did, they shouldn’t have done it.
A good rule of thumb in life is don’t do anything if you wouldn’t want your mom to know about it.
Now in the case of the Boston marathon bomber and Adnan’s mother, we can see that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Those moms are pretty hard to shame.
The problem ultimately is that these men had such lousy parenting that they lack moral values. The loss of innocent life means nothing to them.
Abu Ghaith, in the book he published, may have come to grapple with the morality of Al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks and his views may have evolved from his claim that 4 million could be killed, to include women and children. (I don’t know yet, not having read his book).
But if Abu Ghaith is not a truth-teller then it merely is acknowledgement that he has reason to be deeply ashamed.
The United States Attorney in the Northern District of New York lost his sister in the Lockerbie bombing.
Unlike these mass murderers, he has compassion for victims and took the job to vindicate the rights of the likes of Ottilie Lundgren and Kathy Nguyen.
Hawsawi And Laptop As Possible Hub for Anthrax Planning
November 18th, 2007 by Ross E. Getman
On March 23, 2003, the Washington Post reported on documents allegedly discovered at the Abdul Qadoos Khan residence — on a seized laptop — relating to biochemical weapons. The documents indicated that Al Qaeda leaders may already have manufactured some of them. The documents at the Qadoos home reveal that Al Qaeda had a feasible production plan for anthrax. Confronted with scanned handwritten notes on the computer, Mohammed reportedly began to talk about Al Qaeda’s anthrax production program. KSM, however, denies that it was his computer — he says it was the computer of Mustafa Hawsawi, who was captured at the home the same day. In 2001, before departing for the UAE, Al-Hawsawi had worked in the Al Qaeda media center Al Sahab (Clouds) in Kandahar. (The letter containing the first anthrax went to the American Media in Florida had blue and pink clouds on it.)
Hawsawi worked under KSM who in turn worked for Zawahiri. Al-Hawsawi was a facilitator for the 9/11 attacks and its paymaster, working from the United Arab Emirates, sending thousands to Bin Al-Shibh in the summer of 2001. After 9/11, he returned to Afghanistan where he met separately with Bin Laden, Zawahiri and spokesman Abu Ghaith. KSM worked closely with al-Hawsawi and it would make perfect sense that the computer is actually al-Hawsawi’s. The fact that the anthrax spray drying documents were on that computer, however, and that he had worked under for Al Sahab in Kandahar in 2000, serves to suggest that the undated documents predated 9/11, particularly given that extremely virulent anthrax was later found in Kandahar. At the same time, it suggests that Al-Hawsawi has personal knowledge relevant to anthrax.
Hawsawi worked as a financial manager for Bin Laden when he was in Sudan. He was associated with Mahjoub, who was Bin Laden’s farm manager in Sudan. Mahjoub was the subject of the anthrax threat in January 2001 in Canada, upon announcement of his bail hearing. The day after Mahjoub’s bail was denied on October 5, 2001, the potent stuff was sent to US Senators Daschle and Leahy.
The Washington Post explained that “What the documents and debriefings show, the first official said, is that “KSM was involved in anthrax production, and [knew] quite a bit about it.” Al Qaeda had recruited competent scientists, including a Pakistani microbiologist who the officials declined to name. “The documents describe specific timelines for producing biochemical weapons and include a bar graph depicting the parallel processes that must take place between Days 1 and 31 of manufacture. Included are inventories of equipment and indications of readiness to grow seed stocks of pathogen in nutrient baths and then dry the resulting liquid slurry into a form suitable for aerosol dispersal.” The Washington Post story notes that U.S. officials said the evidence does not indicate whether al Qaeda completed manufacture. The documents are undated and unsigned and cryptic about essential details.
The unclassified memo below lists some of the contents of the computer that had the anthrax spraydrying docs.
In addition to establishing him as paymaster for the hijackers, Al-Hawsawi’s computer disks reportedly also included lists of contributors worldwide, to include bank account numbers and names of organizations that have helped finance terror attacks. In press accounts, one unnamed government official confirmed that the information has yielded the identities of about a dozen suspected terrorists in the US. Thus, when former CIA Director Tenet says the anthrax planning was done in parallel in 9/11 and compartmentalization was done at the highest levels of Al Qaeda, Hawsawi’s laptop may be a graphic illustration.
In his substituted testimony in the Moussaoui case, Al-Hawsawi says he became part of Al Qaeda’s media committee in Afghanistan in about July 2000, and KSM joined the committee in February 2001. Hawsawi lived at the media office. For about 4-5 months in 2000, Hawsawi worked as a secretary on al Qaeda’s media committee. Hawsawi’s role “was to copy compact discs and reprint articles for the brothers at the guesthouse in Qandahar. After 2000, Hawsawi worked at the direction of Sheikh Mohammed, transferring funds, and procuring goods.”
The first time that Hawsawi was asked to be come involved in operational activities was about March 2001, when he took his second trip to the UAE. Although Sheikh Mohammed did not use the word ‘operation,’ Sheikh Mohammed told Hawsawi that he would be purchasing items, receiving and possibly sending money, and possibly meeting individuals whom Hawsawi would contact or who would contact him. Sheikh Mohammed also told Hawsawi that his stay would be lengthy, so he should rent an apartment. Sheikh Mohammed said Hawsawi did not need cover because he was carrying a Saudi passport, and it was a common practice for a Saudi to rent an apartment in the UAE. In approximately August 2001, Hawsawi, with Sheikh Mohammed’s blessing, decided to take an English course.
Sheik Mohammed told Hawsawi that he would be in contact with individuals called ‘Abd Al-Rahman (Muhammad Atta) and the “Doctor” (Nawaf al-Hazmi). Atta called Hawsawi four times while in the US. Hawsawi says he was never in contact with Hani or Nawaf while in the US. On September 9, Ramzi bin Shibh told the date of the planned operation and urged that he return to Pakistan. He flew out on 9/11 and after a night in Karachi, flew on to Quetta.
Hawsawi stated repeatedly that he never conducted any activity of any type with or on behalf of Moussaoui and had no knowledge of who made Moussaoui’s travel arrangements. Documents, however, reportedly show that al-Hawsawi worked with the Dublin cell to finance Moussaoui’s international travel. Hamid Aich was an EIJ operative there who once had lived with Ressam, the so-called millennium bomber, in Canada.
The indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui named al-Hawsawi as an unindicted co-conspirator. Moussaou had tried to call KSM and Hawsawi as witnessses. That indictment reported that al-Hawsawi was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Aug. 5, 1968. Hawsawi had left Kandahar for Dubai by late June 2001. The Zacarias indictment alleges that on September 11, 2001, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi then left the UAE for Pakistan.
Hawsawi has said that it was Qahtani who was to have been “the 20th hijacker” rather than Moussaoui. Qahtani, Hawsawi said, had trained extensively to be one of the “muscle hijackers.” Of Moussaoui, al-Hawsawi said he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaeda guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, sometime in the first half of 2001, but was not introduced to him and had not conducted any operations with him. At Moussaoui’s trial, the government pointed to FAA intelligence reports from the late 1990s and 2000 that noted that a hijacked airliner could be flown into a building or national landmark in the U.S., but viewed that scenario “as an option of last resort” given the motive of the attack was to free blind sheik Abdel Rahman. Flying a plane into a building would afford little time to negotiate.
Zacarias Moussaou reportedly was in Karachi with anthrax lab tech Yazid Sufaat on February 3, 2001 when they bought air tickets through a local travel agency for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They reportedly left on a flight for KL on February 8, 2001. Moussaoui began at the Norman, Oklahoma flight school on February 26, 2001. KSM says that Moussaoui’s inquiries about cropdusters may have related to Hambali and Sufaat’s work with anthrax.
Another reason not to underestimate Hawsawi’s possible role in an anthrax operation is his contact with al-Marri. Al-Marri, who entered the country on September 10, 2001, was researching chemicals in connection with a “second wave.” Al-Marri was also drafting emails to KSM. Although al-Marri denies being in contact with Hawsawi, phone records show otherwise. Email evidence also confirms messages drafted by al-Marri to KSM. The fascinating and groundbreaking article this year by Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post on al-Marri notes that al-Marri picked up $13,000 in cash from al-Hawsawi. Al-Marri made the mistake of opening the briefcase containing the money in bundles and peeling off a few hundred dollars to pay his bail after being stopped on a traffic charge a couple days after 9/11.
References to al-Hawsawi turned up in the Dublin, Ireland, office of a Saudi-backed charity suspected of having links to bin Laden upon a raid after 9/11 by Irish authorities. The fact that Hawsawi was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates as of late June 2001 — and this connection to the Dublin charity — may both be relevant in threading the anthrax needle.
UNCLASSIFIED
Department of Defense
Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
08 February 2007
To: Personal Representative
From: OIC, CSRT (8 Feb 07)
Subject: Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal – Al Hawsawi, Mustafa Ahmed
1. Under the provisions of the Deputy Secretary of Defense Memorandum, dated 14 July 2006, Implementation of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Proceduresfor Enemy Combatants Detained at US. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a Tribunal has been appointed to determine if the detainee is an enemy combatant.
2. An enemy combatant has been defined as “an individual who was part of or supporting the Taliban or al Qaida forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who committed a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.”
3. The following facts support the determination that the detainee is an enemy combatant.
a. On the morning of 11 September 200 1, four airliners traveling over the United States were hijacked. The flights hijacked were: American Airlines Flight 11, [[w:United Airlines Flight 175|United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, and United Airlines Flight 93. At approximately 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, resulting in the collapse of the tower at approximately 10:25 a.m. At approximately 9:05 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, resulting in the collapse of the tower at approximately 955 a.m. At approximately 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the southwest side of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. At approximately 10:03 aim., United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Stoney Creek Township, Pennsylvania. These crashes and subsequent damage to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon resulted in the deaths of 2,972 persons in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
b. According to United Arab Emirates General Postal Authority records, the detainee opended a Post Office Box, number 19738, in Sharjah United Arab Emirates on 24 June 2001. He opened the Post Office Box under the name Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, date of birth5 August 1968. He listed his home address as 103 Shaikh Sultan Bin Saqer Street, Al-Butheena, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. He listed his mobile phone as 050-5209905.
c. Recovered Western Union receipts show that on 8 September 2001, “9/11 hijacker” Mohamed Atta sent 2,860 United States dollars from Western Union, Safeway Store, 14100 Baltimore Avenue, Laurel, Maryland. The funds were received by the detainee at the Wall Street Exchange, Dubai, United Arab Emirates on 9 September 2001.
d. Recovered Western Union receipts show that on 8 September 2001, “9/11 hijacker” Waleed Al-Shehri sent 5,000 United States dollars from Western Union, Food Giant Store, 1009 Fairlawn St., Laurel Maryland. The funds were received by the detainee at the Wall Street Exchange, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, on 10 September 2001.
e. Recovered Western Union receipts show that on 9 September 2001, “9/11 hijacker” Waleed Al-Shehri sent 5,000 United States dollars from Western Union TravelEx #7201, Currency Booth Room 2250, Logan Airport, Boston, Massachusetts. The funds were received by the detainee at the Al-Ansari Exchange, Sharjah United Arab Emirates on 11 September 2001.
f. Recovered Western Union receipts show that on on 9 September 2001, “9/11 hijacker” Marwan Al-Shehhi sent 5,000 United States dollars from Western Union Greyhound Bus Terminal #0406, 700 Atlantic Ave, Boston Massachusetts. The funds were received by the detainee at the Al-Ansari Exchange, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates on 11 September 2001.
g. “9/11 hijacker” Mohammed Atta (Atta) sent the detainee a package with Fayez Banihammad’s Automated Teller Machine card and checkbook. One check was endorsed but not filled in, and split from the checkbook. The Federal Express receipt for this package was recovered from a trash receptacle located at a hotel utilized by Atta. The receipt indicated that the package was sent to the detainee’s Post Office box in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
h. On 11 September 2001, the detainee flew from Dubai, United Arab Emirates to Karachi, Pakistan via Pakistan International Airlines flight 212, according to United Arab Emirates immigration records.
i. A handwritten 19 page telephone and address book was found in a laptop computer case associated with the detainee. The address book contained contact information of numerous al Qaida operatives. The document was discovered where a senior al Qaida operative was captured.
j. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained al Qaida expense reports from February 2002 to April 2002.
k. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained detailed information for the families of al Qaida operatives.
l. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained detailed family information of 22 Yememi al Qaida operatives along with the the status of the operatives.
m. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained al Qaida expenditure data from 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2002.
n. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained a list of al Qaida members who were killed or wounded.
o. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained al Qaida family allowance information from November 2002 to October 2003.
p. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained detailed al Qaida expense reports from January 2002 to December 2002.
q. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained detailed al Qaida United States dollars fund serial account information from 1 January 2002 to 15 May 2002.
r. A laptop computer hard-drive associated with the detainee contained detailed al Qaida expense information through various incoming and outgoing rupee, Euro, riyal and dirham fund transactions for the period of 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2002.
4. The detainee has the opportunity to contest his designation as an enemy combatant. The Tribunal will endeavor to arrange for the presence of any reasonably available witnesses or evidence that the detainee desires to call or introduce to prove that he is not an enemy combatant and that is deemed relevant to that issue. The Tribunal President will determine the reasonable availability and relevance of evidence or witnesses.
DXer said
I am hoping to get the Blind Sheik’s lawyer Stanley Cohen — our modern-day Clarence Darrow — out to Dinosaurs Barbecue here to ask if I might obtain a copy of the trial exhibits from WTC 1993/ 1995.
There just is no reason discussion of Amerithrax needs to be so uninformed — no reason people can’t get on the same page (and then actually read the page).
For example, I would love a copy of Exhibit 818 in United States v. Salameh detailing the calls from subtilis expert Walied Samarrai to the number associated with Ramzi Yousef right up to the time the Blind Sheik was arrested.
https://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/the-addressphone-number-associated-with-the-wtc-1993-bomber-ramzi-yousef-was-frequently-called-by-subtilis-expert-walied-samarrai-in-february-1993-up-to-the-time-and-hour-of-the-first-arrests/
DXer said
In the case of Blind Sheik lawyer Stanley Cohen, today the United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York asked Judge Mordue to adhere to its current scheduling order:
“The government respectfully requests that, considering the numerous adjournments granted to date, the present ambiguous circumstances, and the interests of justice, the Court adhere to its current Scheduling Order and require all parties to appear in person before your Honor tomorrow at 10 a.m.”
For his part, Attorney Cohen is hoping to retain Donald Kinsella, Esq., former AUSA at United States Attorney’s Office NDNY. Attorney Kinsella was a Trial Attorney at US DOJ Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force, Assistant Attorney General at NY Statewide Organized Crime Task Force, and Assistant District Attorney at Madison County District Attorney’s Office.
We saw that Tom Connolly, a former DOJ prosecutor, was very effective on behalf of Steve Hatfill.
Attorney Cohen writes the judge that he hopes to finalize the retainer agreement today.
Who does Attorney Cohen think was responsible for the anthrax mailings? He argued in October 2001 that BIn Laden was not responsible for 911. That was mistaken but I can appreciate that Bin Laden had denied responsibility at the time.
DXer said
FBIS is a CIA database that was freely available to the public in 2001. Thus, the profilers in Quantico, if allowed to use the internet, would have been able to pull the previous statements about anthrax made by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad commander Mabruk, the EIJ shura member Al-Najjar, and the blind sheik’s lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat who was in regular contact with the Postal employee in the NYC area who served as the Blind Sheik’s paralegal. Now FBIS is accessible through the paid service DIALOG and the name World News Connection.
Excerpt:
Islamist Lawyer on Bin-Ladin, Groups
London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 12 Jul 99 page 2
AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT
Monday, July 12, 1999
Interview with Egyptian Islamist Lawyer Muntasir al-Zayyat by an unidentified correspondent in Cairo; date not given(Al-Zayyat) I hope that it will not do so. The United States will intensify its pursuit of Bin-Ladin and al-Zawahiri in the coming stage to arrest them.
***
(Al-Zayyat) …. It is not an easy task, especially in light of information that Bin-Ladin’s organization has biological and chemical weapons. I believe that he will resort to these weapons and use them against US targets because of the constant pressure on him. If Taleban abandons him, it will lose its unique character of commitment to shari’ah and to the protection of the Islamic movements’ leaders. It is primarily a revolutionary movement that achieved sole dominance of 90 percent of Afghanistan in record time. Many revolutionaries have joined it and its image would be severely shaken if such a case does happen.
…
(Al-Zayyat) Bin-Ladin’s departure from the mountains of Afghanistan will be the beginning of his end. It will become easy to monitor him if he does leave. Whichever country he goes to will sacrifice him at the first opportunity, regardless of any agreement concluded with it. Bin-Ladin is not thinking of going to Iraq because Saddam Husayn cannot be trusted.
There is no safety outside the areas inside Afghanistan where he is now living.
(Al-Sharq al-Awsat) How are the IG’s relations with Bin-Ladin now?
(Al-Zayyat) The IG has good relations with Bin-Ladin but this does not reach the level of the marriage that binds Bin-Ladin and al-Zawahiri. The IG does not take part in operations carried out by Bin-Ladin’s supporters.
(Al-Sharq al-Awsat) In view of the Egyptian authorities’ positive signs toward Dr. ‘Umar ‘Abd-al-Rahman, the last of which was allowing his family to travel to see him, do you expect that a demand will be made soon to have him handed over to Egypt?
(Al-Zayyat) Dr. ‘Abd-al-Rahman is suffering terribly in his US prison. In his latest telephone call last week, he complained to his wife and son about the ill treatment he was receiving, the deliberate persecution, and the paralysis in his right hand. Therefore I hope that he will return to Egypt and be tried there as an Egyptian citizen, especially after his role in and support for the initiative to stop violence and in convincing the leaders abroad to adopt it. The declaration last March was made after Shaykh ‘Umar’s blessing.
(Al-Sharq al-Awsat) In your view, what will be the IG’s stand toward the United States if the shaykh suffers some mishap inside prison?
(Al-Zayyat) Shaykh ‘Umar’s death in prison will not be in the interest of the United States. If this does happen, it will have a bad effect and increase the hatred. It will result in something that we do not like. It could prompt the IG to change its stand toward the United States and its interests.
(Al-Sharq al-Awsat) An increasing number of the groups’ leaders and members have been extradited to Egypt. What is your explanation for this and do you expect the extradition of the fundamentalist movements’ leaders to continue?
(Al-Zayyat) Around 20 defendants from the Jihad Organization have been extradited to Egypt. We do not rule out more extradition in light of the present circumstances, especially the difficult position facing the Islamic movements’ leaders abroad as a result of the security globalization and the US mobilization of this globalization’s mechanisms to pursue the groups’ leaders and members in various European countries.
This forces these leaders to look for new strategies for dealing with globalization so as to be safe from pursuit. The most important strategy is to explain the difference between Islam and terrorism. I believe that those residing in Europe who have asked for political asylum have no connection with the violence that had taken place in Egypt.
Inquiries may be directed to NTIS, US Dept. of Commerce.
AFS Document Number: FTS19990712000590
City/Source: London Al-Sharq al-Awsat
Descriptors: FBIS Translated Text
FBIS Document Number: FBIS-NES-1999-0712
NewsEdge Document Number: 200303251477.1_a33b00c4713239ad
Original Source Language: Arabic
World News Connection®
DXer said
Islamic Jihad ‘Confessions’ Described
London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 6 Mar 99 p 5
AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT
Saturday, March 6, 1999
First of three reports by Khalid Sharaf-al-Din from Cairo: “Surprises in the Trial of the Largest International Fundamentalist Organization in Egypt. Abu-al-Dahab: My Mission Was To Attack the Turah Prison After Dropping a Bomb from a Glider”
(FBIS Translated Text) In the second-biggest trial of fundamentalist organizations in Egypt, since the Jihad Organization trial of 1981 that followed the assassination of late Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat, the leading defendants being tried by the Higher Military Court at Haekstep base north of Cairo gave new information about an international organization whose policies were in accord with what has been attributed to Bin-Ladin, especially in the matter of attacking US interests around the world, particularly US embassies in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
The Egyptian security services have continued their investigations in the Returnees from Albania case throughout the past four months. More than 20,000 pages of investigation report contain the defendants’ detailed confessions to the nature of their anti-regime activities, violent acts inside Egypt, and plans to threaten the state’s stability.
The defendants’ confessions brought many surprises and details about the violent groups’ role, the extent of their activities abroad, and the political ambitions they were pursuing through their banned activities.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat has read the investigation papers.
The first thread in this case came with the arrest of defendant Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar in Albania, where he had fled after being sentenced to death in the Khan al-Khalili case in 1994 (date as published). Once al-Najjar was captured, members of the organization began to fall one after another. He revealed the names of a large number of his partners and gave detailed information about the support he got from the Islamic Jihad Organization’s leaders, foremost among them Ayman al-Zawahiri, ‘Adil ‘Abd-al-Majid, and Tharwat Salah Shihatah, who lives in Britain.
Al-Najjar, who was sentenced to death in absentia in 1997 (date as published) in the case of the attempt to blow up Khan al-Khalili in central Cairo, said: The confrontation with the United States is a challenge that concerns not only Ayman al-Zawahiri or Usamah Bin-Ladin but the entire Islamic nation.
Al-Najjar is among the 12 defendants accused of membership in the Jihad Organization who were extradited from Albania to Egypt last July. Another defendant extradited from Bulgaria to Egypt is also being tried before the court, whose sentences cannot be appealed.
…
Nonconventional Weapons (subhead) The most controversial point in the confessions of the defendants from the Albanian fundamentalist group was the confirmation that pro-Bin-Ladin elements had obtained germ and biological weapons by post at a cheap price. Factories in the former Eastern Europe supply viruses that cause fatal diseases, such as E-Coli and Salmonella, without checking the identities of the purchasers. The important thing for them is payment of the invoice in advance. One of the organization’s members secure an offer to supply samples of anthrax gas (as published) and other toxic gases from a factory in a Southeast Asian country. The germs were offered at a price of $3,685, including shipping costs. A laboratory in Indonesia exported serums to the Islamic Moro Front, which has close ties with pro-Bin-Ladin groups and with Arab Afghans and Balkans (as published). It is believed that the Moro Front has large quantities of toxic gases.
In another part of the investigation the defendants said that a laboratory in the Czech Republic had agreed to provide samples of the lethal butolinum germ at $7,500 a sample. The laboratory did not query the purpose for which this lethal substance would be used. The security services’ report on this point said that it is possible to use a microscopic quantity of these viruses (as published) to kill hundreds of people by inhaling it or eating contaminated food.
The security services monitored contacts that elements abroad made with members inside the country to urge them to carry out new operations against police officers with the aim of undermining security. The security authorities exerted great efforts to monitor these elements and succeeded in getting back 12 leading members from Albania, another group from Arab and African countries, in addition to defendants seized in the (Nile) Delta area as they were preparing to carry out new operations, specially the al-Minufiyah group.
…
The investigations conducted by the security services and the Higher State Security Prosecution Office with the defendants revealed a number of new changes in the Islamic groups’ ways of action and therefore the means of confronting and monitoring them. The defendants’ confessions showed that the organizations adopted new mechanisms, most noticeably the following: They expanded the scope of their targets. They stopped limiting them to Egyptian and Arab figures and installations and included the interests of the major powers, specially US and French interests, because of their involvement, according to the defendants, in the pursuit of the organization’s members inside and outside their territories. According to defendant Sa’id Salamah’s confessions, targeting these countries’ interests was bound to have a massive media value, and this would confirm the organization’s capabilities, which some quarters had begun to doubt.
They diversified the targets and did not limit them to the blowing up of installations. This change included the kidnapping of figures and hostages “so as to bargain with the ruling regimes and security services for the release of the detained members of the Islamic Group (IG) or other pro-loyal groups, as defendant Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar said in his confessions.
They launched joint action with other groups and organizations, both local groups and others operating outside their countries. They sought to reduce the ideological and jurisprudential differences between the various groups that were active in armed action. The defendants’ confessions revealed that coordination was indeed made between the main groups of Jihad, the Vanguards of Conquest, the IG, and the groups that split from it. Meanwhile, this new action was carried out under the umbrella of what was called the Army for the Liberation of Islamic Holy Places, which is reportedly led by Usamah Bin-Ladin, who has become the highest organizational term of reference for all the jihad groups.
***
DXer said
For years, I have urged that the son of the Blind Sheik’s translator, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, who left Brooklyn for Florida in 1995 during the prosecution of the Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman, was the anthrax mailer. His co-conspirator, Al Qaeda anthrax lab head Yazid Sufaat, does not deny to me Al Qaeda’s responsibility for the Fall 2001 mailings.
What can former postal worker Mr. Abdel Sattar, the paralegal for Blind Sheik’s lawyer in the US, Lynne Stewart, tell us about Gulshair, the Blind Sheik’s translator, and Gulshair’s son, Adnan El-Shukrijumah. Adnan is now the head of Al Qaeda’s external operations.
Is the reason Adnan does not admit it because his sister Aidah, a hospice worker, would be ashamed that Adnan killed elderly Ottilie Lundgren, who by any account was a total innocent?
That Adnan killed Kathy Nguyen, who worked at the hospital stocking supplies?
Did that make Adnan feel manly? Did that help overcome his feelings of inadequacy in his life? Did that make his mom proud?
If I were him, I wouldn’t brag about those letters either. He understandably is ashamed as is Yazid (although he puts on a cheerful front).
In his heart, Yazid knows that his soul is lost because Ottilie and Kathy and the others were total innocents in the eyes of Allah (which is the construct of their belief system).
These religious zealots by no stretch of the imagination have the moral high ground.
Letters to Sheik Were No Secret, Defendant Says
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: December 8, 2004
A co-defendant in the trial of Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer accused of aiding terrorists, testified yesterday that for several years it was “normal procedure” for him to send letters containing messages from Egyptian militants to a convicted terrorist client of Ms. Stewart’s in prison.
The defendant, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, is facing the most serious charges in the federal trial in Manhattan, including one count of conspiracy to kill and kidnap in a foreign country, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Mr. Abdel Sattar is accused of secretly coordinating communications between violent Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt and their spiritual leader, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a client of Ms. Stewart’s who is serving a life sentence for a failed terrorist plot inNew York.
Mr. Sattar, taking the stand in his own defense, said that he routinely and openly wrote letters that were carried to the sheik by Ms. Stewart and other lawyers on the defense team whenever they visited their client in prison, even after the government imposed limits Mr. Abdel Rahman’s communications in 1997.
In late 1998, Mr. Sattar said, some of the sheik’s best-known militant followers began to call him from overseas on his home telephone, and he included messages from them in his letters to the sheik.
Under questioning by one of his lawyers, Barry M. Fallick, Mr. Sattar said that his letters, and the frequent interviews he gave the press about the sheik’s prison conditions, were intended by the lawyers to fight the government’s efforts to render the sheik incommunicado. “He’s a human being before he’s a criminal,” Mr. Sattar said. “This is what we decided to remind the world.”
Mr. Sattar, 49, was born in Egypt but has lived in New York since 1982. He is a postal worker in Staten Island and served as a court-approved paralegal in the 1995 trial in which Mr. Abdel Rahman was represented by Ms. Stewart.
Mr. Sattar, a Muslim, made it clear that he was devoted follower of the sheik and said the cleric’s preachings “will come across” as anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and radically opposed to United States policy. He said he knew that the sheik advocated “self-defense violence.”
Mr. Sattar said he had “tremendous respect and admiration” for Mr. Abdel Rahman because he is “a stand-up man” who tenaciously resisted the government in Egypt. Nor did Mr. Sattar condemn the terrorist violence that the sheik’s followers carried out until 1997 against the Egyptian government.
But he insisted that he had made hundreds of phone calls over several years to help Mr. Abdel Rahman’s followers communicate with the sheik and with one another “as a favor” to the fundamentalists, and not because he was ever a member of their organization, the Islamic Group. It has been identified by the State Department as terrorist.
All the while he was writing to the sheik and talking on the phone with Islamic militants in Egypt and Afghanistan, Mr. Sattar said, he was
DXer said
When Abdel Sattar first met the Blind Sheik’s lawyer Lynne Stewart, he was active in his neighborhood mosque.
Adnan El-Shukrijumah’s father, Gulshair, was an imam at the al-Farouq mosque where the Blind Sheik preached.
How well did Ahmed Abdel Sattar know Gulshair?
From Quiet Postal Worker to Self-Styled Peacemaker
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: December 19, 2004
decade ago when Ahmed Abdel Sattar first met the defense lawyer Lynne F. Stewart, he was leading an unremarkable life, working for the Postal Service in New York and active in his neighborhood mosque.
He was appointed as a paralegal for Ms. Stewart in a 1995 terrorism trial. After that, Mr. Sattar began to pursue goals that tended toward the grandiose. He embarked on an extended round of telephone diplomacy that put him in touch with Islamic militants in Europe, Egypt and Afghanistan, which he described in eight days of testimony at his trial in Manhattan federal court, where he and Ms. Stewart are facing charges of terror conspiracy.
From the improbable base of the Staten Island apartment he shared with his wife and four children, Mr. Sattar said, he undertook a one-man global campaign to negotiate a permanent peace in more than two decades of fighting between the Egyptian government and the fundamentalist Gamaa Islamiya or Islamic Group. Among the attacks attributed to the group in its drive to topple President Hosni Mubarak and bring Islamic rule to Egypt was a 1997 rampage at Luxor that killed 58 tourists. At one point in 2000, Mr. Sattar testified, he tried to arrange by long-distance telephone the escape to exile of an Islamic Group fighter who was on the run in southern Egypt. The plans went awry and the man, Alaa Atia, was killed by Egyptian security forces.
The high point of Mr. Sattar’s self-appointed diplomacy was a two-page peace plan, which his defense lawyers presented in court. Mr. Sattar said he gave the plan to a friend who had a relative who was a high-ranking Egyptian security official.
Mr. Sattar admitted that no officials from Egypt or the United States were ever directly involved in the initiatives he said he undertook. But the F.B.I. began to wiretap Mr. Sattar’s telephone in 1993 and produced thousands of hours of audio recordings of his calls, the main evidence at the trial.
Now that testimony has concluded after six months, it is clear that Mr. Sattar is the center of the government’s case against him, Ms. Stewart and a third co-defendant, Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic translator. Ms. Stewart and Mr. Yousry are accused of smuggling messages out of prison from one of her clients, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an Islamic cleric. But Mr. Sattar is said by prosecutors to have provided the link to violent Egyptian followers of the sheik, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison for inspiring a thwarted 1993 bomb plot in New York.
Mr. Sattar was a court-appointed paralegal in the 1995 trial where Mr. Abdel Rahman was represented by Ms. Stewart.
Mr. Sattar’s testimony revealed his expanding sense of importance as he became immersed via conference call in the murky internecine intrigues of the Islamic Group. Having left Egypt as a young man to adopt a workaday life in the United States, Mr. Sattar saw an opportunity through the calls, his statements showed, to become a player in the convulsive politics of the country he had left behind. He was pleased to be the only channel of communication between the Islamic Group and the sheik, who was in solitary confinement and incommunicado, through letters he sent to prison with Ms. Stewart.
Often, Mr. Sattar admitted, he exaggerated his role to the Egyptian militants, telling them he was meeting directly with the sheik, even after prison restrictions barred him even from speaking with Mr. Abdel Rahman by phone.
In his enthusiasm, Mr. Sattar was less than prudent about who was on the other end of the line. One frequent caller, Rifai Taha, was an Islamic Group military leader who had been an associate of Osama bin Laden’s since at least 1998 and was in Afghanistan, probably with Al Qaeda, at the time of many calls. Mr. Taha was advocating an end to a cease-fire that the Islamic Group had observed since 1997.
Prosecutors showed that Mr. Sattar knew of threats Mr. Taha had made, including one in February 1998 that he signed with Mr. bin Laden saying it was the “duty” of all Muslims to murder Americans.
Mr. Sattar repeatedly warned callers to be cautious because his phone line was probably tapped. Yet he disregarded his own advice, allowing himself to be drawn ever deeper into a raging debate between Mr. Taha and other fugitive militants over whether to return to war in Egypt. He said he spent thousands of dollars a year on phone calls and struggled to keep up with the bills.
In the vast volume of transcripts that prosecutors presented, they never demonstrated that any violence resulted from Mr. Sattar’s calls. And in the end, the Islamic Group did not abandon its cease-fire.
Mr. Sattar, 45, came to the United States in 1982 to avoid persecution in Egypt for his outspoken Islamist views. Three years later he married Lisa Schreiber, an American Catholic, and became a naturalized citizen in 1989. In 1993 his wife converted to Islam.
On the stand he spoke vehemently, emphasizing his points with sweeps of the hand, and argued with the prosecutor, Christopher Morvillo.
“I yearn to see Islam,” he said, describing his political goals for Egypt, although he insisted he did not condone violence, except for what he called self-defense. Yet under cross-examination, he often appeared to be dodging. Mr. Morvillo asked him if Mr. Taha considered the United States an enemy.
“I don’t understand that,” Mr. Sattar replied. “I know he has showed some hostility toward the United States.”
One diplomatic initiative that Mr. Sattar declined came in a call from Mr. Taha shortly after the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000. Without explicitly claiming a role in the attack, Mr. Taha suggested Mr. Sattar should use it as propaganda to pressure Washington for Mr. Abdel Rahman’s release.
DXer said
The hard work of NYPD Intelligence and their colleagues and sister agencies has led to the arrest of a man named Odeh this month.
Blind Sheik Abdel-Sattar had invested $10,000 in his business years ago.
Odeh reportedly is a vocal supporter of the Blind Sheik.
What can Odeh tell us about Adnan El-Shukrijumah dating back to 1995, before he left for Florida?
“Take, for example, Yousef Odeh. Earlier this year, he said he had sold 15,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes worth about $780,000 to three customers alone. Odeh also had a business selling baby formula. And one of his investors in the 1990s was Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheikh convicted in the plot to bomb a number of New York City landmarks. Odeh also had personal and financial ties to Ahmed Abdel Sattar, who served as spokesman for the Blind Sheikh during the 1995 landmarks trial, and who had conveyed the Sheikh’s messages to his followers in Egypt and Afghanistan.”
Just because the FBI botched Amerithrax — mistakenly declaring it solved when it wasn’t — doesn’t mean that NYPD Intelligence can’t go ahead and solve the case.
http://www.amerithrax.wordpress.com
http://www.brooklynews.com/051713-remarks-by-police-commissioner-raymond-w-kelly-regarding-up-in-smoke-takedown/
Remarks by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly regarding “Up In Smoke” Takedown
Posted by BrooklyNews.com on May 17, 2013 in Local News | 0 comments
I want to commend Attorney General Schneiderman and Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge James Hayes and their personnel for their outstanding work on this important case. I also want to thank our Operation Sentry partners, including the State Police of Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, and of course our own Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence David Cohen, Assistant Chief Thomas Galati, the lead investigator on the case Detective Sean Foley, along with Intelligence Research Specialists from the NYPD Intelligence Division.
The core mission of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division since it was reconstituted in 2002 has been to prevent another terrorist attack against New York City. And so far, so good. We haven’t been successfully attacked since 9/11. But it’s not for the lack of trying. The terrorists keep coming back. We have thwarted multiple plots against the city through a combination of efforts by our Intelligence Division, through joint efforts with our federal partners and intelligence agencies overseas, and sometimes, we’ve just been lucky.
This case started because we were being vigilant about terrorism. Through combined efforts of detectives and intelligence analysts, we discovered that individuals who were on our radar for links to known terrorists were engaged in a massive raid on the New York Treasury in the form of cigarette tax avoidance. The association of some of the suspects in this case to Ari Halberstam’s killer, the “Blind Sheik,” and a top Hamas official concerned us gravely.
Take, for example, Yousef Odeh. Earlier this year, he said he had sold 15,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes worth about $780,000 to three customers alone. Odeh also had a business selling baby formula. And one of his investors in the 1990s was Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheikh convicted in the plot to bomb a number of New York City landmarks. Odeh also had personal and financial ties to Ahmed Abdel Sattar, who served as spokesman for the Blind Sheikh during the 1995 landmarks trial, and who had conveyed the Sheikh’s messages to his followers in Egypt and Afghanistan.
According to transcripts of his own 2004 trial, Sattar stated that he invested $10,000 of the Blind Sheikh’s money in Odeh’s baby formula business and was in phone contact with Odeh. In that trial, it was also alleged that Sattar used Odeh’s phone to receive sensitive calls from a fugitive leader of the extremist Egyptian Islamic Group shortly to discuss what threats they should make against the United States government in the wake of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Sattar, who himself worked with Odeh in the baby formula business, was convicted in 2005 of conspiracy to kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country and for soliciting crimes of violence.
Another of the suspects arrested yesterday was Muaffaq Askar. Like Odeh, Askar was one of the untaxed cigarette distributors in this case with links to a known terrorist. He was the confidant of Rashid Baz, the Lebanese immigrant who fired on a van full of Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, killing 16-year-old Ari Halberstam. Baz, who was convicted and sentenced to 141 years, referred to Askar as his “Palestinian uncle.”
Mohannad Seif is a sub-distributor in this case who sold untaxed cigarettes directly to bodegas and other small retailers. Seif was of interest to the NYPD because of previous intelligence reporting, and because we believe that he lived for some time in the same three-story Brooklyn walk-up occupied by Nasser al-Khatib, the personal secretary to Mousa Abu Marzouk. Marzouk was the de facto leader of Hamas in the late-1980s and early-1990s and a central fundraiser for the organization in the United States. Marzouk was deported in 1997 and remains a top Hamas official in Egypt.
While it hasn’t been established yet where the illicit proceeds in this case ended up, we’re concerned because similar schemes have been used in the past to help fund terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. Our federal partners continue to investigate the money trail. Meanwhile, we’ve arrested the principals in this massive scheme and the hemorrhaging of tax revenues they caused.
We have a responsibility both to protect the taxpayer and to make certain we are neither targeted nor exploited by terrorists. We’ve couldn’t have made this case without the dedication and skill of the people assembled before you, and others who could not be here. Again, my thanks to them all.