August 25, 2006

SAUDI SECURITY FORCES ADDRESS ANOTHER BLOW TO THE TERRORIST CELLS. SAUDI SECURITY DETAINS SOME OF THE WANTED INCLUDING TWO WHO ESCAPED FROM AL MALAZ PRISON. SCOTLAND YARD CONFIRMS THAT ELEVEN OF THE 23 SUSPECTS HELD IN CONNECTION WITH THE ALLEGED PLOT HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH OFFENCES UNDER THE 2006 ANTI-TERRORISM ACT. GERMANY UNVEILS THE ROLE OF THE LEBANESE INTELLIGENCE IN THE DETENTION OF THE STUDENT ACCUSED IN THE PLOT TO BOMB TRAINS. THE AMERICANS DETAIN SUSPECTS INVOLVED WITH OF AL QAEDA AND FOLLOW UP THE FOILED ATTACKS AGAINST AIRLINERS IN BRITAIN. Four militants surrendered to security forces in Jeddah after a 17-hour gun battle. They included two men who had escaped from a prison near Riyadh in July. Authorities came under fire as they attempted to enter and arrest the suspects in a residential building in Jeddah's Al-Jama'a district, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Al-Turki. The arrested militants had light injuries. The security operation began at around 3 a.m. and ended at eight in the evening. During the operation, police were seen using rocket-propelled grenades according to Arabnews. At times, the shootout between the suspects and authorities was intense. One eyewitness said he saw "hundreds" of bullet holes in surrounding buildings. Three families were evacuated from the rooftop of the four-story building by a crane. Nearby hospitals were told by the Ministry of Health to be on Code Yellow preparedness, which is typically reserved for natural disasters. Witnesses reported hearing sounds of gunfire early in the morning. Helicopters were seen hovering over this middle class neighborhood. Authorities did not want to say whether the operation was linked to last Sunday's detention of seven suspected militants in the Al-Ajwad district, a middle class neighborhood in Jeddah's far eastern suburbs. Last Sunday, Saudi security forces arrested the seven, including one believed to be a Yemeni national. No casualties were reported in that operation. Security forces had blocked out the area for more than eight hours and arrested the suspects in a villa. Al-Turki said that the seven arrested are not on the Kingdom's most-wanted list but are being interrogated. In July, authorities said six Saudis and a Yemeni escaped from Riyadh's Malaz Prison. The Interior Ministry did not say how the prisoners escaped. The seven prisoners were identified as Abdul Aziz Abdullah Sulaiman Al-Masoud, Osamah Abdul Rahman Sulaiman Al-Wihabi, Turki Hilal Sanad Al-Mutari, Ghazi Muhasan Al-Usami Al-Utabi, Abdul Aziz Mohammed Saleh Al-Falaj, Mohammed Abdul Aziz Al-Qahtani and the Yemeni Abdul Rahman Ta'ha Al-Hatar. Al-Turki said that two of the seven escapees were apprehended in the arrests. A month earlier security forces had arrested 43 suspected militants in raids over the previous few months throughout the Kingdom. Al-Jama'a neighborhood is located in the southeast of Jeddah near the old airport. A majority of residents in the area are foreign nationals, mostly Africans. The area has witnessed many security raids and several arrests of criminals and wanted people were made there recently. The gun battle is the second witnessed in the neighborhood. The first happened during Ramadan last year when police engaged in a gunfight with terrorists hiding inside a house in the neighborhood near King Abdul Aziz University. The Ministry of the Interior issued the following statement: The security forces pursued a group of suspects to a building at the University neighborhood in Jeddah, said an official source at the interior ministry, and added The security forces were met with heavy shooting from an apartment in the building. The official source pointed out that the security forces immediately evacuated the building's residents and secured the area. A supplementary statement said: supplementing a statement on security forces' chasing of suspects to a residential building in Al Jama'a neighborhood in the province of Jeddah and exchanging fire with them, a responsible source at the ministry of interior said that all people present at the site, four in number, surrendered to the security forces. Among them, two had escaped from Al Malaz prison on 10/6/1427 H. No citizens or security men were injured in the fire exchange incident. In London the wheels of justice are finally catching up with the suspects in the alleged London airport terror plot. Scotland Yard confirmed that eleven of the 23 suspects held in connection with the alleged plot have been charged with offenses under the 2006 Anti-terrorism Act. The charges were announced as lawyers acting for some of the detained suspects started proceedings at the High Court in London challenging their clients' continued detention by police. Eleven days ago MI5 and officers from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism unit raided a number of premises in London, Birmingham and High Wycombe and arrested 24 people in connection with an alleged terror plot to blow up nine trans-Atlantic airliners, flying out of major UK airports to US cities, using liquid explosives disguised in soft drink bottles and smuggled on to the planes in hand luggage. Britain was immediately placed on "critical" alert the highest terror alert level in response to the threat. The action also saw a security clampdown at major UK airports, especially Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. That severely disrupted flights into and out of the UK, causing unprecedented chaos and misery for passengers who were arbitrarily informed that they could no longer take hand luggage on to the planes and no liquids of any kind, except essential medicines which had to be certified and baby's milk which had to be test drunk by the mother before being allowed on to the plane. The alert level was downgraded to "severe" after a week following one of the largest counterterrorism investigations, codenamed "Operation Overt", undertaken in British criminal history. Following subsequent searches at premises linked to some of the suspects and in King's Wood, which is adjacent to one location in High Wycombe, police have found "matyrdom videos" in which some of the suspects appear; a bombmaking kit in a suitcase; two firearms; and 19,000 pounds in cash. Scotland Yard working with the Crown Prosecution Service, both apparently in a "very buoyant" mood yesterday stressed that eight people have been charged with conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism. Two other suspects have been charged with failing to disclose information concerning acts pertaining to terrorism and a 17-year-old with possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism. One woman has been released without charge. This leaves another eleven still detained without charges. They will either have to be released tomorrow or police will have to go to a High Court judge to seek a week-long extension to their detention period. No further information was released as to the identity of those charged and whether police expect to bring charges against the remaining eleven suspects. Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, speaking to journalists, warned that the investigation would go on for many months. "I can assure the public that we are doing everything we can to keep you safe so that you can live your lives without being in constant fear. The threat from terrorism is real. It is here, it is deadly and it is enduring. We cannot afford to be complacent," he added. Clarke confirmed that video and audio recordings, bombmaking equipment, electrical components, hydrogen peroxide and martyrdom videos had been found during police investigations. In Berlin German politicians and security officials warned of a growing terrorism threat over the weekend as police arrested a Lebanese student suspected of planting a bomb on a train last month that failed to detonate. A German court last Sunday issued an arrest warrant for Youssef Mohammed, a 21-year-old Lebanese student nabbed in Kiel by police in a swoop on Saturday. He stands accused of membership in a terrorist organization and of attempted murder. Mohammed is suspected of planting one of two crude bombs in two abandoned suitcases that were discovered on July 31 on separate trains in the western German cities of Dortmund and Koblenz. Police say they were set to go off 10 minutes before the trains arrived in the two cities. The explosives failed to detonate, but if they had, police say they would have killed a "high number" of people. It has now emerged that Mohammed along with an accomplice, who are believed to be part of a wider Islamic network, had come close to exploding the two makeshift train bombs last month. "The situation is very serious," German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said in an interview with German public television. "The danger has never been as high." German Federal prosecutor Monika Harms said Youssef Mohammed's fingerprints and DNA matched that taken from one of two abandoned suitcases that were discovered on July 3. The two men were captured on security cameras in the Cologne train station, dragging suitcases which contained the explosive devices onto the trains. Harms said the logistical sophistication of the plot suggested the suspect was part of a broader terrorist organization. A massive manhunt is still on for the second suspect, suspected of planting the other device, whose identity has not yet been established, Harms said. The two men were not acting alone but within a "criminal organization with a solid structure," she added. Citing sources close to the inquiry, Focus magazine said on its website that Mohammed was a Lebanese student who lived in Kiel. Local media reports said police were searching the suspect's residence, a student dormitory in the town. Quoting fellow students who lived near him, news magazine Spiegel said the Lebanese student was described as "friendly, polite, devout but relatively inconspicuous." Investigators first thought that the devices were a blackmail attempt, but analysis of the contents revealed a possible link to Lebanon. "We are now working on the basis that this was the work of a terrorist group based in Germany and that it was an attempt to kill a large number of people," Rainer Griesbaum, a federal prosecutor, told a press conference. The head of the Federal Crime Office, Joerg Ziercke, said the bombs were packed into identical black cases and consisted of gas canisters, alarm clocks, wires and batteries and soft drink bottles filled with a flammable liquid. "The cases had been supposed to explode 10 minutes before the trains arrived at the stations," Ziercke said. He said a 100-strong team of investigators was still trying to establish why the devices failed to explode. A note in the case found in Koblenz contained Arabic writing and a telephone number in Lebanon, and packets of starch with labels in Arabic and English were also found. The bomb plot has created jitters in Germany which has thus far been spared any major terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001. However, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has warned he could not rule out an attack on the German public transport system to rival the bombings in Madrid and London which killed dozens of passengers. Schäuble has also warned in recent weeks that the conflict in the Middle East could inflame the Muslim community in Germany and lead to a radicalization among Arab youth. The minister said some 900 Hezbollah supporters as well 300 supporters of the Palestinian militant group Hamas were believed to be in Germany. Politicians are also warning that the incident highlights the risk that a new generation of militants unknown to security services were ready to strike. "That is the real reason for concern," Schäuble said. "We don't know anymore who is living among us. Therefore we need to use every tool at our disposal." Schäuble said the government would have to seriously consider expanding video surveillance at airports and railway stations and implementing a long-discussed central anti-terrorism database that would allow various security agencies to access and exchange information and coordinate more closely. Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy head of the conservatives in parliament, said he hoped the failed attack would be a "wake-up call" for those leery of tighter security. "We need to introduce targeted modern video technology and spot controls in specific danger zones," he said. "I think people will accept more surveillance because they don't just want to travel rapidly, but also safely." The arrest follows the release of closed circuit TV footage of two male suspects by police. The devices in abandoned suitcases on two trains failed to go off. Police said the bombers had intended to kill large numbers of people. The student had been studying in the Baltic Sea port city of Kiel, where he was arrested in the early morning. He had been in Germany since 2004. Chief prosecutor Monika Harms said he had apparently been planning to flee the country. Reports say police searched his home in the city. He is believed to be "one of the two suspects that have been sought swith the help of video footage that was made public," the public prosecutors' office said. In the video, the two suspects - dark-haired young men - are seen wheeling suitcases at Cologne station. Joerg Ziercke, head of Germany's Federal Crime Office, told reporters in the city he was confident that "we caught the right suspected bomb planter here in Kiel today". Investigators first thought the bombs were part of a blackmail attempt, but they now believe the incident was the work of a terrorist group based in Germany. A note written in Arabic, a telephone number in Lebanon, and packets of starch with labels in Arabic and English were found alongside the devices. The authorities say they are investigating a possible link to Lebanon but they also haven't ruled out a link to Pakistan. The identical suitcase bombs were fitted with timers set to go off 10 minutes before the trains arrived in Dortmund and Koblenz. Police think they failed to detonate because of a construction flaw. While the German authorities said the arrest is a major breakthrough in their investigation they warn that the second suspect is still at large. Security has since been stepped up at German airports, and the rail authorities have announced they are installing more closed circuit TV cameras at stations. On the other hand A British passenger plane en route to an Egyptian resort made an emergency landing Friday in Brindisi, southern Italy, after the pilot reported that a bomb was suspected to be on board, the Italian air traffic agency said. All passengers disembarked and were safe, state police at the airport said. Excel said the captain made the decision to land in Italy after a passenger found a note written on the back of an airsickness back that read: "There's a bomb on this aircraft." Excel Airways official Jane Sebuliba called the landing "a precautionary diversion." Italy's Air Force said it sent an F-16 to escort the plane to the airport. The airline said that all security checks where followed at London's Gatwick airport prior to departure at 1045 GMT. The plane, carrying 269 passengers and nine crew, was diverted to Brindisi three hours later. Salvatore De Paolis, a border police officer at the Brindisi airport, said authorities searching the plane had recovered a handwritten note in English that said there was a bomb on the plane. De Paolis told Sky Tg 24 television news that the search was continuing. Excel said the flight was expected to resume later Friday. The ENAV agency said the plane, a Boeing 767 with Excel Airways, was bound for Hurghada, Egypt. Located on Egypt's Red Sea coast, the large Hurghada resort is famous for snorkeling and is a prime destination for low-cost flights from Europe. The emergency landing came amid a series of terror alerts and scares centered around planes. In a major speech on security issues, Home Secretary John Reid warned that the threat from terrorists remains strong, and called for all citizens to remain alert to the possibility of terrorist activity in their communities. Calling this an 'age of uncertainty' Home Secretary Reid said police and security services are working non-stop to prevent another terrorist attack, but that they cannot do it alone. 'While I am confident that the security services and police will deliver 100% effort and 100% dedication,' he said, 'they cannot guarantee 100% success'. If more violent attacks on UK citizens are to be stopped, the public, corporations - everyone - will have to do its part to help, he said. He called on the public to do all it can to stay alert and notify authorities of any suspicious activity, and warned: 'We are probably in the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of World War II.' Dr Reid said that much of the international problems that confront us now are part of a chain reaction set off by the end of the Cold War. The subsequent porous borders, failed states, civil wars and ethnic tensions made the world a very dangerous place. And globalisation ensures that decisions taken on the other side of the globe can have immediate impact right here at home. The mass migration of recent years that concerns so many people brings big benefits, but also huge challenges, he said, and the sheer volume of international migration to and from the UK can 'carry insecurity into the heart of our communities.' The government works very hard to ensure that genuine asylum seekers who really do need help are allowed to stay and start new lives here, but the system is plagued by fakes, many of them with dangerous agendas, and they use the country's free and open system to help with their plots. The new threat to the UK, the Home Secretary said, comes not from fascist nations but from fascist individuals who are not bound by international laws or treaties, but operate as freelance criminals. An alleged terrorist plot to "commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale" by exploding up to 12 aircraft in mid-flight between Britain and America using liquid explosive was just days away, senior sources said in the UK. The plan bore all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda plot, senior British and US sources said. 24 suspects - believed to be British citizens, many of Pakistani origin - have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 in overnight raids in London, the Thames Valley and Birmingham. The number of people "processed into custody" was three more than the 21 announced earlier, the Metropolitan Police said. A spokesman added that there were no new arrests during the day. British security sources said that all the main targets had been arrested. The huge international surveillance operation to monitor the meetings, movements, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of people, began in December last year but senior officials only decided to make the raids in the last 24 hours. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan Police's head of anti-terrorism, said: "Last night the investigation reached a critical point when the decision was taken to take urgent action to disrupt what we believed was being planned," said Mr Clarke. It is believed that the raids were triggered by intelligence received from abroad. So sudden was the decision that Andy Hayman, assistant commissioner in charge of counter-terrorism at the Metropolitan Police, had to hurry home from a holiday abroad. John Reid, the Home Secretary, said that the terror threat to the public was unprecedented, the biggest that Britain had ever faced. Police said that the alleged plot had a global dimension, and that the security services were co-operating with foreign security agencies. Mr Reid said that that although it was believed that the main suspects had been rounded up, police have not ruled out further arrests. Meantime the Home Secretary and the Attorney General issued a joint warning to the media last night to avoid coverage of the current terror investigations that might prejudice future trials. The statement by John Reid and Lord Goldsmith, which threatened possible contempt proceedings against publications that failed to show appropriate 'restraint', came as both men quashed media speculation they had clashed over Reid's own initial statements on the alleged plot to bomb a number of airplanes. Reid, had taken the unusual step of seeking the Attorney General's legal advice before publicizing details of the alleged plot. Because of the 'exceptional' nature of the allegations, it was agreed he could reveal a significant amount of information surrounding the arrests of the 24 suspects. Goldsmith, the government's senior legal adviser, said he was satisfied that Reid had struck the correct balance, providing the public with sufficient information to help cope with the chaotic aftermath of the arrests while avoiding compromising any potential legal charges. 'It was important that we secured the co-operation of the public following the arrests and needed to supply a level of information for that,' said a spokesman for the Attorney General. Some legal experts were perturbed by the Treasury's decision to name the majority of suspects. The names of 19 suspects whose assets had been frozen were released on the Bank of England website. Yet it has emerged the Treasury had no option. 'There are millions and millions of financial institutions, and to stop money flowing between them you have to make the details of the suspects available to everyone,' said the Attorney General's office. The Metropolitan Police has consistently warned the media against identifying any of the suspects in the case, although it granted consent for the Treasury's naming of the suspects on the website. Senior officers at Scotland Yard, though, were deeply frustrated that several newspaper editors deliberately chose to ignore its directive reminding them of the risk of prejudicing proceedings. The statement by Reid and Goldsmith asked for 'considerable restraint in the reporting of information relating to the ongoing investigations', and specifically cautioned against 'speculation or information relating to suspects' connections or other activities, including photographs or details of their background'. Representatives of Muslim communities in Britain reiterated their concerns last night that the 19 had effectively been tried and found guilty by the media, making a fair trial impossible. On the other hand the British Government has rejected an appeal from Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary to change its heightened airport security measures. It comes as the restrictions on hand luggage and increased body searches of passengers in the wake of the recent terror alert continued to lead to severe delays at British airports and the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights. Mr O'Leary said the ban on items as such as water bottles and toothpaste was insane as airlines struggled to get services back to normal. He said: "We are not in danger of dying at the hands of toiletries. "We're still faced with Keystone Cop-like security measures which are just serving to block up airports and delay flights." Mr O'Leary told a press conference in London that the only way to defeat terrorists and extremists was to allow ordinary people to continue to live their lives as normal. And he called on the British Government to restore security at airports in London to normal levels and to remove some of the "nonsensical" and totally ineffective restrictions. He said: "If they don't and if they allow these restrictions to stay in place then the Government will have handed the extremists an enormous PR victory." Ryanair has also threatened to sue the British Government for up to £2million in compensation under the Transport 2000 Act unless it reintroduces the normal hand-luggage allowance and cuts the number of passenger security checks. But the British Government's Department for Transport rejected the ultimatum saying it had no intention of compromising security. A spokesman said: "The security regime in place at British airports is necessary because of the level of security threat and is kept under constant review." A spokesman said the department did not anticipate changing the new security measures within the next seven days. As part of its ultimatum Ryanair has also asked for an assurance that the next time the British Government quadruples the number of body searches it sends in police and army reserve personnel to help out. The airline said doing this would avoid the disruptions, delays and cancellations experienced during the recent airport chaos. In a phone call to Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao yesterday evening, his British counterpart Dr John Reid once again personally expressed his thanks to the Pakistani authorities for their continuing assistance in the on-going counter terror operation, says a statement issued by the UK High Commission here. The Ministers agreed on the importance of this co-operation, the statement said. On the other hand a woman on a trans-Atlantic flight diverted to Boston for security concerns passed several notes to crewmembers, and made comments the crew believed were references to al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an affidavit filed last Thursday. Catherine C. Mayo, 59, of Braintree, Vt., appeared in federal court Thursday on a charge of interfering with a flight crew on United 923 as it flew from London to Washington, D.C. FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz confirmed that authorities found a screwdriver and an unspecified number of cigarette lighters and matches in her bag. Lighters and screwdrivers over 7 inches long are banned as carry-on items under new security regulations. Up to four books of safety matches are allowed. She also had a bottle of water, which did not appear to be supplied by the flight crew. No beverages are allowed to be carried on by passengers. It wasn't clear how the items made it through airport security, which has been significantly tightened since the terror plot arrests. In Iraq U.S. soldiers raided a funeral and detained 60 men suspected of ties to al-Qaeda car bombings, the U.S. command said in announcing the first major roundup of suspected insurgents since troop reinforcements began arriving for a new crackdown in Baghdad. On the other hand the last two of the 11 Egyptian exchange students who failed to show up at their college program were apprehended in Richmond, Va., customs officials said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Mohamed Saleh Ahmed Maray, 20, and Mohamed Ibrahim Fouaad El Shenawy, 17, at an apartment building in Richmond on Sunday night. Virginia State Police and the Richmond Police helped locate the students. One of the Egyptian students was arrested in Minneapolis and two were detained in Manville, N.J. On Thursday, two were arrested in Dundalk, Md., and one was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Three more were arrested Friday in Des Moines, Iowa. The students were to attend a month long program at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont. A group of 17 students arrived in New York on July 29. Six reported to Bozeman on time. After Montana State repeatedly tried to contact the missing students, it notified Homeland Security Department officials and registered the Egyptians as no-shows in a system to track foreign students developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of the students is considered a terrorism risk. In Egypt Security Authorities re-arrested the Muslim caller Abdullah Badr.