London Bomb Terror : Al-Hesbah is Fake Terrorist Made By US

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Was London Bomb Plot Heralded On Web?

Internet Forum Comment From Night Before: “London Shall Be Bombed”

LONDON, June 29, 2007

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British police officers secure the area near to Piccadilly Circus in London, where cops found a vehicle that contains a suspected bomb, June 29, 2007. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)(CBS) This article was written by CBSNews.com’s Tucker Reals.

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Hours before London explosives technicians dismantled a large car bomb in the heart of the British capital’s tourist-rich theater district, a message appeared on one of the most widely used jihadist Internet forums, saying: “Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed.”CBS News found the posting, which went on for nearly 300 words, on the “al Hesbah” chat room. It was left by a person who goes by the name abu Osama al-Hazeen, who appears regularly on the forum. The comment was posted on the forum, according to time stamp, at 08:09 a.m. British time on June 28 — about 17 hours before the bomb was found early on June 29.

Al Hesbah is frequently used by international Sunni militant groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban, to post propaganda videos and messages in their fight against the West.

There was no way for CBS News to independently confirm any connection between the posting made Thursday night and the car bomb found Friday.

Al-Hazeen’s message begins: “In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Is Britain Longing for al Qaeda’s bombings?”

Al-Hazeen decries the recent knighthood of controversial author Salman Rushdie as a blow felt by all British Muslims. “This ‘honoring’ came at a crucial time, a time when the whole nation is reeling from the crusaders attacks on all Muslim lands,” he said, in an apparent reference to the British role in Iraq.

“We say to Britain: The Emir of al Qaeda, Sheikh Osama, has once threatened you, and he carried out his threats. Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed,” the message reads.

Speaking at a news conference Friday after the bomb scare in central London, the Metropolitan Police force’s Counter-Terrorism Commander Peter Clarke said that officials had “no indication that we were going to be attacked this way”.

Prior to the Thursday night posting by al-Hazeen, there had been no specific allusions to threats against London or Britain seen on al Hesbah, or any other major jihadist forums in recent weeks.

Several responses to the posting by other forum members expressed hope that an attack against London would be realized in the near future.

In response, al-Hazeen urges patience, saying, “Victory is very close, but you are just rushing it.”

Reached by CBSNews.com Friday, the Metropolitan Police’s media office could not confirm whether investigators were aware of the Internet posting on al Hesbah.

Intelligence sources who spoke to CBS News Friday morning seemed to express surprise at the discovery of the device, suggesting there had been “no warning, no intel, no smell” as a prelude to the plot ­ a vacuum of information which reportedly had Britain’s domestic intelligence agency “very, very worried”.

The attempted bombing in London’s Haymarket area came one week before the second anniversary of the July 7 bombings that killed 52 people on London’s transportation network.

Also Friday, a London jury was expected to hand down a verdict in the case against five young men who were charged with trying to blow up city buses and trains in 2005.

The men, all from London, were arrested after police found homemade devices on trains and buses that had failed to detonate properly ­ sending puffs of smoke from backpacks that frightened commuters, but injured no one.

Early reports from law enforcement officials indicate that the car bomb found Friday morning may also have failed to detonate properly ­ causing smoke to appear in the passenger area. It was the smoke that prompted people to call explosives officers to the scene.

One explosives expert told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the device ­ comprised of gas canisters and nails ­ appeared to be a fairly crude construction, and not the work of anyone with an extensive knowledge of weaponry.

Britain has wrestled since the July 7, 2005, over how to deal with the threat of “homegrown” terrorism. Young men from the country’s large Muslim population are easy prey for radical clerics and propaganda campaigns propagated on Internet forums such as al Hesbah.

In addition to messages calling for jihad in Britain, detailed video demonstrations of how to construct bombs using gas canisters are readily available on the forums.

By Tucker Reals

source:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/29/terror/main2997517.shtml

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Revealed Muslims as Victim : testimony that casts doubt on Lockerbie verdict

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Revealed: testimony that casts doubt on Lockerbie verdict

As the man convicted of the 1988 Pan Am 103 atrocity awaits his second appeal, Home Affairs Editor John Bynorth reveals the existence of crucial evidence unheard at his trial

CRUCIAL EVIDENCE that could have cleared the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was not presented at his trial, the Sunday Herald can reveal. A senior airport baggage handler is believed to have made statements which might have cast doubt on the prosecution’s claim that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 55, arranged for an unaccompanied case containing the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103 to travel on an Air Malta flight from the island’s Luqa airport.

The witness, understood to have been the airport’s head baggage loader at that time, is believed to have told the Maltese police investigating the disaster that there were no unaccompanied items among the luggage that he counted on to flight KM180 to Frankfurt.

Prosecutors claimed the brown Samsonite case containing the bomb went through the German hub’s computerised baggage systems on to a feeder flight, Pan Am 103A to Heathrow. There, the bomb inside a Toshiba BomBeat cassette player went on flight 103 to New York. It blew up over Scotland with the loss of 270 lives on December 21, 1988.

It is understood this evidence was not heard at the original trial and the baggage loader was not called to give evidence.
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The Sunday Herald knows the identity of the baggage handler but has agreed not to reveal it. It is understood his evidence was not presented at al-Megrahi’s nine-month trial at Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, which ended in 2001. His detailed statements, running into thousands of words, could cast renewed doubt over the Crown’s case after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) last Thursday referred al-Megrahi’s conviction to the high court for a second appeal.

The commission’s 800-page examination of new evidence and witness statements in a three year investigation costing £1.1 million concluded there had been a possible miscarriage of justice, and the lord advocate, Elish Angiolini, immediately appointed leading advocates Ronald Clancy QC and Nick Gardiner to head up the Crown’s case at the appeal, for which a date has not yet been set.

The Sunday Herald understands that the head loader told the Maltese police in November 1989 that, as far as he was aware, KM180 was loaded as normal. It was loaded in his presence and he insisted he would have checked the number of items of luggage twice, once on the trolley and once going up the conveyor belt, when he would have checked the logs for the flight were correct. He insisted he would not have guessed the number of pieces of luggage and would not have allowed someone to count them on his behalf.

He said he was aware of claims by the authorities in Germany that it was possible that an extra bag was recorded as going into their computerised system at the time KM180 was being unloaded, but he ruled out any suggestion that it came from KM180.

The Crown indictment alleged that al-Megrahi conspired with his co-accused al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah. But Fhimah, a former station manager with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, was acquitted by trial judges Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean at the trial.

If true, the head loader’s evidence could have major significance in al-Megrahi’s appeal, because Wilfred Borg, general manager of ground operations at Luqa airport, told the trial it was theoretically possible for someone with inside knowledge of the tiny airport to put unaccompanied baggage on the plane.

His claims were supported by suggestions from computer documentation from Frankfurt that an unaccompanied piece of baggage arrived from flight KM180 and was transferred through their baggage hall on December 21.

Al-Megrahi was a senior Libyan intelligence officer who was head of security at Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa airport. Campaigners such as the former Labour MP Tam Dalyell maintain he was nothing more than a sanctions-buster who smuggled airline parts to Libya.

The head airline loader is believed to have told Maltese police in November 1989 that he had been shown the ramp progress sheet and the distribution sheet for flight KM180 and that he had signed both documents.

It is understood that he reiterated his claims two months later, when he insisted to police that he always counted the bags on the trolley and on the conveyor belt when the bags were going into the hold. He passed on his figures to the aircraft dispatcher, usually between 10 and 20 minutes after departure. If there was any discrepancy between his figures and those of the check-in staff, a baggage identification check would be held. It is believed that he said no such baggage identification check was held on that date, so he assumed the total he gave must have tallied with the total given to the aircraft dispatcher by the check-in staff.

It is understood he considered it impossible for any extra suitcase to have been put on board the aircraft at loading and ruled out any suggestion that one could have been smuggled on board. Had there been a bomb on board, he said, it must have been in checked-in baggage.

Al-Megrahi’s solicitor, Tony Kelly, claimed that, had the loader given evidence at the original trial, it might have cast doubt in the minds of the three senior judges trying him over the Malta connection.

The Sunday Herald understands that the head loader’s evidence is to be submitted in support of al-Megrahi’s appeal, together with evidence from Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci after clothing and other items from the bomb case were traced back to his shop, Mary’s House, in the resort of Sliema. The SCCRC pointed out that Gauci had had “exposure” to a photograph in a magazine linking him to the bombing before the identity parade, which, their report said, “undermines the reliability of his identification of the application at that time and at the trial itself”.

The commission added that evidence suggested the items found in the case could have been bought before December 6, the day before Gauci claimed the sale to al-Megrahi took place, when he was not on the island. Kelly told a press conference after the SCCRC report that if this were the case, his client could not stand convicted of this crime.

One of several theories put forward for al-Megrahi’s conviction is that he was a victim of international politics in a deliberate, concerted attempt to scapegoat Libya for the attack rather than Iran after the Gulf war.

The country is said to have ordered the Lockerbie bombing as revenge for the US’s downing of an Iranian passenger plane in the Persian gulf with the loss of 300 lives in July 1988, five months before Lockerbie.

The Egyptian terrorist Mohammed Abu Talb, a former member of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF), was said to have carried out the attack. He is serving a life sentence in a Swedish prison for the 1985 bombing of a Danish synagogue. Talb was known to have visited Malta several weeks before the bombing, and Scottish police investigating the Pan Am bombing discovered clothing bought on the island in his flat in Germany during an operation in May 1989. However, Talb was granted immunity from prosecution after giving evidence at Camp Zeist, where he denied being responsible for Lockerbie.

Luqa’s security came under scrutiny during the trial when Borg admitted it was possible a passengerless piece of baggage could have been loaded.

During the trial, Alan Turnbull QC, senior counsel for the prosecution, asked Borg: “From what you’ve told us, if the head loader miscounted by one, then an extra bag could be carried, over and above the total that was meant to be?

Borg replied: “If he miscounted, yes.” Turnbull went on to suggest that someone who worked at the airport would have been able “with that knowledge and that access, to have deliberately circumvented the checks that you have in place?”

Borg replied: “Anything is possible. Whether it is probable is a different story.”

Despite Borg’s admission that there was a theoretical possibility that the case containing the bomb boarded at Malta, it was never proved conclusively.

He admitted that a head loader could have “deliberately” not counted a particular bag to beat the baggage checks in place. He also replied “yes” when Turnbull asked if that was an example of the type of methods that could have been used to put unaccompanied baggage aboard.

However, the judges said they were satisfied after hearing evidence which suggested that an unaccompanied bag appeared to have gone through the computer controlled baggage system at Frankfurt on to flight Pan Am 103A to Heathrow. In their verdict, trial judges Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean conceded that “counsel for the defence pointed out that neither the head loader nor the other members of the loading crew were called to give evidence, and submitted that, in their absence, the Crown could not ask the court to draw any inference adverse to them. The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 is a major difficulty for the Crown case, and one which has to be considered along with the rest of the circumstantial evidence in this case.”

The significance of al-Megrahi’s conviction resting on the bomb being put on at Luqa was emphasised when Lord Kirkwood, the presiding judge at his appeal in January 2002, asked Turnbull: “Is the ingestion at Luqa of a bag containing the bomb an essential part of the Crown case against the appellant? Turnbull replied: “Yes, it is, my Lord. Yes.”

The judges in their summing-up dismissed claims made by al-Megrahi’s defence that doubts existed over the accuracy of computer printouts at Frankfurt from December 21, 1988, suggesting that an unaccompanied bag had passed through their system from Air Malta KM180.

They said: “None of the points made by the defence seems to us to cast doubt on the inference from the documents and other evidence that an unaccompanied bag from KM180 was transferred and loaded onto PA103A.”

Evidence from a CIA informer that al-Megrahi was seen at Luqa airport on the day KM180 flew was also discredited.

Abdul Majid Giaka, a member of the Libyan intelligence service, the JSO, claimed that al-Megrahi had collected a brown Samsonite suitcase from a luggage carousel at Luqa which he had seen him taking through customs on the day before the bombing.

Giaka’s testimony, which had at first linked al-Megrahi and Fhimah, was fatally damaged when it was revealed that he would receive $4 million from the US government if his evidence was instrumental in gaining a conviction for the Lockerbie bombing.

Kelly said: “This information came from the person responsible for loading the flight on that day. You can’t get any clearer how serious it is. In my opinion it utterly discredits the indictment and puts a totally different complexion on what happened at the trial in relation to this aspect of the evidence.

“This chapter of the evidence is crucial to the prosecution case. It is not something the Crown can say, But this doesn’t matter.’ It could have made a huge difference if this evidence had been available to be examined by the chief Crown prosecutor and al-Megrahi’s defence counsel. You could go further and argue that any verdict arrived at in ignorance of this evidence is a verdict that can’t be allowed to stand – it’s that fundamental.”

Kelly argues that, if believed, the head handler’s evidence could cast doubt on the “theoretical possibility” that the case was put on at Malta. He added that, when the witness “says it wasn’t possible. Can you prove it went on at Luqa? If this is not possible, it is impossible to prove the accused is guilty. Without ingestion at Malta, the case finishes.”

The Crown Office refused to comment directly when questioned over this fresh evidence. Instead, a spokesman referred us to the relevant section of the judge’s verdict dealing with the baggage issues at Frankfurt, Heathrow and Luqa.

The SCCRC said last week it would not be commenting on “media speculation” surrounding its investigation.

source:

http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/revealed-testimony-that-casts-doubt-on.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

British Inteligent MI5 ‘helped IRA buy bomb parts in US’

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

MI5 ‘helped IRA buy bomb parts in US’

Enda Leahy

From The Sunday Times

March 19, 2006

A FORMER British Army mole in the IRA has claimed that MI5 arranged a weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers.

In a book to be published next month, the spy, who uses the pseudonym Kevin Fulton, describes in detail how British intelligence co-operated with the FBI to ensure his trip to New York in the 1990s went ahead without incident so that his cover would not be blown.

He claims the technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops.

In the book, Unsung Hero, Fulton tells of his double life in which he had to play a convincing IRA man while working for the British. “You cannot pretend to be a terrorist,” said Fulton, who now lives outside Northern Ireland. “I had to be able to do the exact same thing as the IRA man next to me. Otherwise I wouldn’t be there.”

His allegations that the security services helped to obtain weapons that killed their own members follow revelations about British infiltration of terrorist groups and collusion in paramilitary killings.

The issue has been the subject of investigations by Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner.

Fulton’s book will include claims from his own experience that MI5 and the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary colluded in the murder of their own officers and soldiers and allowed agents to be killed.

Fulton, a married Catholic now in his forties, was serving in the army when he was recruited by military intelligence to infiltrate the IRA. He later worked for the Force Research Unit, a covert branch of the Intelligence Corps set up to infiltrate paramilitary groups.

For 13 years Fulton was an IRA terrorist, involved first in courier runs, later as a driver and enforcer, and finally as a master bomb-maker in a unit in Newry, Co Down, credited with numerous advances in explosive technologies. “I was recruited as a serving British soldier,” he said. “I was in the Royal Irish Rangers. I agreed to go into the IRA as a soldier.”

Security sources have said Fulton was implicated in numerous bombings and shootings, allegations on which he declines to comment. He has said his handlers knew the nature of his role but ignored his warnings of forthcoming bomb attacks, including the Omagh atrocity, which killed 29 people in 1998.

Fulton and four other members of his unit in Newry pioneered the use of flash guns to detonate bombs. This technology was used in a bomb that killed Colleen McMurray, an RUC officer, in 1992. Her colleague Paul Slaine lost both his legs in the attack. He was later awarded the George Cross for his bravery.

Fulton claims he tipped off his handlers about this attack but they allowed it to go ahead to protect agents. “Two days before the attack on Slaine and McMurray I knew my officer commanding was using what we called a doodlebug, a horizontal mortar,” he said.

“I told my MI5 handlers and they took me to London for two days. The day I came back the bomb went off. The police were taken off the streets to allow the bomber to get in, set the device and get out.”

The trip to America came after the killing of McMurray, when the IRA had built sufficient trust in Fulton for commanders to send him abroad to buy remote control infrared devices that would allow IRA teams to refine the flash technique and detonate explosives from up to a mile away.

When he told his MI5 handlers about the mission, they arranged with the FBI to procure the detonators for Fulton.

In this month’s edition of Atlantic Monthly, Fulton outlines how an MI5 agent was sent ahead of him by Concorde to make preparations. He has also described the trip in interviews with The Sunday Times over the past few months.

In New York he attended a meeting with FBI agents and British intelligence officers. There he agreed to expose IRA operatives in America to the FBI. However, the same terrorists, who were arrested months later, were first allowed to procure and send the infrared technology to the IRA. Fulton claims this technology was used in the Troubles and forms the basis for insurgent bombs in Iraq.

A spokesman for the security service declined to comment.

source:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article742783.ece

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US-NATO War and Humanity Crime : 100 Civilians Die In U.S.-NATO Air Assault In Afghanistan

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Civilians Die In U.S.-NATO Air Assault In Afghanistan

By Griff Witte and Javed Hamdard

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, July 1, 2007; A16

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 30 — Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being “careless,” Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.

The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, Afghan officials said. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad.

“More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren’t Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there,” said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area. “The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government.”

Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said that the death toll was close to 100 and that the dead included women and children. “Very few Taliban were killed,” he said.

Spokesmen for the international forces acknowledged that civilians were killed in the battle, though they disputed the numbers. Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO force, said the civilian death toll was “an order of magnitude less” than what Afghan officials reported.

Thomas said U.S. ground forces helping to carry out a NATO mission had come under fire by Taliban insurgents using small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Thomas said the troops responded by firing on insurgents who were shooting from a compound and a network of trenches. U.S. helicopters and NATO bombers were later brought in for support, he said.

Thomas said troops returned to the area after the battle and found what appeared to be civilian bodies among the dead insurgents in the trenches. “This confirms for us again that militants are willing to fire from among civilians,” he said.

“We are deeply saddened by any loss of innocent lives,” U.S. Army Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition forces spokesman, said in a statement. “Insurgents are continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields in close combat.”

Karzai has not accepted that argument, repeatedly criticizing international troops for not doing more to protect noncombatants. After a series of particularly deadly incidents in June that Karzai blamed on poor coordination, he told reporters that international troops would have to “work the way we ask them to work.”

Violence has increased in recent months in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand. A NATO soldier was killed and another injured in a separate incident in the province Saturday. The force did not identify the soldiers’ nationalities.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Saturday, three civilians were killed and seven injured when a Taliban rocket missed a NATO base in the eastern province of Kunar.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan so far this year, compared with 4,000 killed in all of last year, according to a tally by the Associated Press. The AP counts hundreds of civilians killed. Slightly more have been killed by NATO and U.S.-led forces than by the Taliban, according to several independent assessments.

Hamdard reported from Kabul.

source:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/30/AR2007063000537_pf.html

===

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US War and Humanity Crime : Iraqi faction alleges 350 dead in US military operation

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Iraqi faction alleges 350 dead in US military operation

Sunday 01 July 2007 17:02

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political faction in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s cabinet, published a statement on Sunday alleging that more than 350 people have been killed by a US military operation in Baquba to hunt down al-Qaeda-affiliated members.

They termed the operations “collective punishment” in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province which lies 57 kilometres north-east of Baghdad.

“Neighbourhoods in western Baquba have witnessed, since last week, fierce attacks by occupation forces within Operation Arrowhead Ripper,” the party said in a statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq.

“The forces shelled these neighbourhoods with helicopters, destroying more than 150 houses and killing more than 350 citizens, their bodies still under wreckage, in addition to arresting scores of citizens,” the statement added.

Also on Sunday, the Iraqi parliament’s largest Sunni bloc the Iraqi Accord Front, which has 44 seats in the 276-seat assembly, denied rumours that they would completely withdraw from parliament.

A day earlier the coalition had said that they would suspend their parliamentary membership in protest over last week’s arrest warrant issued against Culture Minister As’ad al-Hashimi, and over the standing down of parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni.

However a spokesman told Voices of Iraq on Sunday that the bloc is only boycotting the sessions.

“We just do not attend any session unless it is chaired by speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani,” the spokesman also said.

The Accord Front and the National Dialogue Front, which has 11 seats, had stopped attending parliament sessions last week.

The Accord’s confirmation of an official boycott has compounded problems for the parliament given that the Sadrist bloc – comprising lawmakers loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – is also boycotting the assembly.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had called on the Accord to use legal means and dialogue to resolve the issues of both al-Hashimi and al-Mashhadani. dpa pa ch

source:

http://jurnalo.com/jurnalo/storyPage.do?story_id=45315

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW