T hhink the biggest Terror threat we have and have had for some time now is really an ECONOMIC THREAT, that is the weapon of mass destruction . The smoking gun or mushroom cloud will be $5.00 /gallon at the pump.,and a ressission.
- 1
- 2
All Locked Up and No Place to Go
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
SPONSORED BY
Meanwhile, British security agencies have struggled with the country's courts over how to deal with Islamic militants and Al Qaeda sympathizers who have taken up residence there. The U.S. Treasury Department named Abu Qatada as an alleged terrorist financier. His U.S. assets were frozen immediately following the 9/11 attacks, an indication at the time that American authorities believed he was a guru to pro-bin Laden extremists in Europe. Officials in the U.S. and the U.K. subsequently alleged that Qatada had served as a spiritual guide to Zacarias Moussaoui, the convicted associate of the 9/11 hijacking team, and Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a transatlantic airliner in late 2001 using a bomb planted in his shoe.
In the months after 9/11, the British government, then led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, passed tough new antiterrorism laws designed to empower authorities to take alleged troublemakers like Abu Qatada off the streets, even if there was insufficient evidence to charge and convict them for any specific crime. When authorities initially went to arrest Abu Qatada under the new laws in late 2001, however, he disappeared. He was found nearly a year later hiding out at an apartment not far from the central London headquarters of both M.I.5, Britain's counterintelligence service, and M.I.6, the legendary U.K. foreign spy agency.
Abu Qatada was arrested and offered the choice of either returning voluntarily to Jordan or remaining in detention in the U.K. without trial. He chose to stay in Britain. During his imprisonment, some British and American officials believed he still managed to pass messages to extremists that may have triggered terrorist plots, though no charges were ever brought. After the U.K. courts invalidated one version of the post-9/11 detention law, Abu Qatada was temporarily released from prison, only to be locked up again after a new version of the law was passed. With the latest court decision blocking moves to forcibly deport him to Jordan, Abu Qatada remains in legal limbo.
A summary of British intelligence reporting on Abu Qatada is included in the now-invalidated government ruling that authorized the cleric's deportation to Jordan. Among other things, the dossier alleges that Abu Qatada had "long established connections with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda," and that he declared in a sermon three days after 9/11 that the attacks were part of a wider battle between Islam and Christianity and were a response to America's unjust policies. The dossier says that since 1995, Abu Qatada had encouraged terrorism outside the U.K. by groups such as the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), North Africa's GSPC and Egyptian Islamic Jihad (all of which eventually became associated to some degree with Al Qaeda). The dossier says numerous videos featuring Abu Qatada were found in the Hamburg, Germany, apartment of lead 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta; the papers also claim that Abu Qatada was friendly with Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Though Abu Qatada "is not formally a member of Al Qaeda," the report says, quoting M.I.5, "their interests overlap to a high degree."
The British government dossier includes an intriguing acknowledgement that in 1996-97, Abu Qatada was interviewed on three occasions by M.I.5 officers. The dossier says that Abu Qatada agreed to use his influence to "minimize the risk of a violent response" in the event that authorities went ahead with the deportation and extradition of a U.K.-based leader of the GIA. After Abu Qatada went underground when authorities came to get him in late 2001, some media reports alleged that he was a British intelligence informant and that M.I.5 or M.I.6 had somehow stashed him away. British officials repeatedly denied these charges, and the official U.K. government dossier says that even though Abu Qatada did talk to M.I.5 some 10 years ago, he never provided any information "enabling attacks to be prevented, warned his congregation to be wary of M.I.5's approaches, and provided them with physical descriptions and names of M.I.5 officers approaching Muslims."
Terror Watch appears weekly on Newsweek.com
© 2008
- 1
- 2
Discuss