Al-Qaida video reflects group's troubles

A new video by al-Qaida’s deputy leader Thursday left no doubt about what the terror network claims is at stake in Iraq describing it as a centerpiece of its anti-American fight and insisting the Iraqi insurgency is under its direct leadership.

But the proclamations by Ayman al-Zawahri carried another unintended message: reflecting the current troubles confronting the Sunni extremists in Iraq, experts said. The Islamic State of Iraq, the insurgent umbrella group that is claimed by al-Qaida, has faced ideological criticism from some militants, and rival armed groups have even joined U.S. battles against it.

A U.S.-led offensive northwest of Baghdad in one of the Islamic State’s strongholds may have temporarily disrupted and scattered insurgent forces. “Some of the developments suggest that it (the Islamic State) is more fragile than it was before,” said Bruce Hoffman, a Washington-based terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank. Al-Zawahri “is trying to replenish the Islamic State brand,” he said. “It’s time to reassert its viability, but how connected to reality that is, is another issue.”

In the unusually long video at just over an hour and a half al-Zawahri depicted the Islamic State of Iraq as a vanguard for fighting off the U.S. military and eventually establishing a “caliphate” of Islamic rule across the region. “The Islamic State of Iraq is set up in Iraq, the mujahedeen (holy warriors) celebrate it in the streets of Iraq, the people demonstrate in support of it,” al-Zawahri said, “pledges of allegiance to it are declared in the mosques of Baghdad.”

He called on Muslims around the world to “support this blessed fledgling mujahid garrison state with funds, manpower, opinion, information and expertise.”

But al-Qaida in Iraq the group that claims allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s goals has been put on the defensive. Some Sunni insurgent groups have publicly split with it, distancing themselves from its bomb attacks on Iraqi civilians and accusing al-Qaida of trying to strong-arm their members into joining.

Al-Qaida video reflects group’s troubles – Yahoo! News

Well, when I posted on the Spanish blog this morning about this, there was a comment on the newspaper I linked to that I want to translate here:

Instead of spying on students and union representatives, why the US Intelligence Services do not kill these clerics who are the ones who create terrorism?

So:

1.- who has said that in US the students and union representatives are spied on regularly by US Intelligence Services?

2.- what happens with European and other Western countries’ Intelligence services? Are they blind? Can’t they kill them?

3.- aren’t we saying that the best way to stop terrorism is negotiating with terrorists?

No, the important thing is to blame US and then to accuse CIA of killing innocents…

[Note: I am not saying that every operation the CIA does is marvellous. I am saying that why on earth these parrots don't blame the rest of the Western countries for the rising of Islamism and specially of these radical clerics].

Russia to move missile forces to Kaliningrado

BBC:

Russia has raised the idea of moving new missile forces to Kaliningrad, close to Poland and Lithuania.

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov linked the possible move to US plans for a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia has already threatened to hit back by targeting missiles at Europe.

Mr Ivanov said there would be no need to move extra forces to Kaliningrad if the US agreed to use Russian facilities instead of the Polish and Czech bases.

Russia says the US plans for a limited missile defence shield, including bases close to Russia’s borders, represent a threat to its security.

If our proposals are not accepted… an asymmetrical and effective response has been found

Sergei Ivanov
First deputy prime minister

It has proposed that the US should use a radar facility in Azerbaijan, and another installation currently being built in southern Russia.

US President George W Bush has described the idea as “innovative” but indicated that the US will press ahead with the plans for a radar station in the Czech Republic, and a missile base in Poland.

The US says its missile shield is not directed at Russia, but at what it considers “rogue states” such as Iran.

Also Russia has won the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Russia has refused to extradite Litvinenko suspect. Whatever MSM say, it’s true there is a principle of International Law which forbids an State to give away nationals, whatever the crime they have committed.

The massacre MSM do not speak about

I have been reading for days about something in blogs that NO MSM has even dare to publish. It is the massacre the inhabitants of an entire Iraqi village by Al Qaeda.

You can see it in Michael Yon page. Also friends Mike and Chaim have blogged about it. Go and read it. It is a complete shame that this is not even considered as little news.

Beheaded children, killed livestock -they even killed the donkeys-, smashed windows, rotten bodies…

Why this dead people is not interesting for the press?

Unhappily, it is because Al-Qaeda did it. It was not American, British, German,… that is, Western soldiers. But specially American soldiers did not do it.

Report: UK house used as bomb factory – Yahoo! News

 

A Scottish house had been used as a makeshift bomb factory to carry out the terror attacks in London and Scotland, British media reported Thursday.

Meanwhile, a subway derailed in the capital during rush-hour, raising jitters in the wake of the foiled terror plots and Saturday’s anniversary of the deadly 2005 suicide bombings.

Police said the train derailment on London’s Central line was unrelated to the terror plots. Thirty-seven people suffered minor injuries in the accident, which may have been caused by an obstruction on the tracks, according to Transport for London, which operates the system. Britain’s terrorism threat level has been lowered following the capture of eight people connected with the three failed car bombings but authorities were still investigating the possibility of a sleeper cell operating in the country.

At least two of the suspects mostly doctors allegedly rented a house just a few miles from the Glasgow airport where two men crashed a gas-laden Jeep Cherokee into the barriers outside the main terminal. The two men slept upstairs and used the downstairs as a makeshift bomb factory, several British news outlets reported citing unidentified sources.

Brian Harvey, a 60-year-old construction worker who lives on the street where the house is located, said he had seen a green sports utility vehicle outside the property being searched. He said the car was nicer than most found in the neighborhood. Police were still outside of the house on Thursday morning.

Two other suspects allegedly stayed at medical staff accommodation at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, British newspapers reported. Scotland Yard refused to confirm any of the reports. A British investigator, meanwhile, was questioning an Indian doctor arrested in Australia. Australian police acting on information forwarded from British counterparts arrested Muhammad Haneef, 27, on Monday in the eastern city of Brisbane as he tried to board a flight with a one-way ticket, believed to be to India via Malaysia.

Report: UK house used as bomb factory – Yahoo! News

Related posts:

1. The British terrorist plot.
2. 7 Doctors Tied to British Plots – ex-Jihadi confess Jihadis laugh at Western blaming on foreign policy

Pakistani forces topple walls of radical mosque. Chief cleric foresees end of siege (UPDATED)

 

Pakistani forces early Thursday demolished the front walls of a radical mosque, where battles between security forces and students have raged for two days, intelligence and military sources told CNN.

By loudspeaker, the forces warned students inside the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, that they had one last chance to surrender before a full attack took place.

More than 1,200 of the students have already surrendered, but hundreds more remain inside. Heavy gunfire from both sides, punctuated by loud explosions and the firing of tear gas, erupted shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday (7 p.m. Wednesday ET). The attack came hours after the mosque’s top cleric was arrested while trying to slip away wearing a traditional woman’s burqa. At least 24 people, including two members of the security forces and one journalist, have been killed in the two days of battles.

Pakistani forces topple walls of radical mosque – CNN.com

(Photo: A Pakistani radical opens fire on paramilitary gunmen during an assault on the Red Mosque).

From Yahoo! News:

A radical cleric captured by security forces while fleeing in a woman’s burqa (left) said Thursday that the nearly 1,000 followers still inside his government-besieged mosque in Pakistan’s capital should escape or surrender.

The comments by head cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz of the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid — who also said the people still inside would not be able to hold out for long — indicated that the tense standoff in the heart of Islamabad might soon end without further bloodshed.

Sugiero has a video of the transvestite cleric. It is of poor quality but worth seen.

“After all the things he has said and all the oaths he took from his students that they should embrace martyrdom with him, look at this man, he had to eventually try to run like a woman,” Azeem (Deputy Information Minister) told AFP.

More from BBC:

The government said more than 1,200 students had surrendered so far, and that their details were being recorded at a camp set up near the mosque.

In pictures: After violence

Profile: Red mosque

Anguish of mosque parents

Following the expiry of an 0900 local time (0500 GMT) deadline on Thursday, at least four more female students and one male student were seen giving themselves up.

Maryam Qayyeum, 15, one of those who surrendered, told the Associated Press news agency that those who were staying back in the mosque “only wanted martyrdom”.

Pakistani troops patrol near Lal Masjid or Red Mosque during a curfew in Islamabad July 5, 2007. Loud explosions were heard on Thursday from the vicinity of a radical Pakistani mosque being besieged by security forces but the cause was not immediately clear, witnesses said. REUTERS/Mian Khursheed

From Reuters:

Small groups of radical students trickled out from Islamabad’s besieged Red Mosque on Thursday, despite warning blasts overnight, raising fears that hardcore militants were keeping some children as human shields.

Related: Pakistan: the siege of the Red Mosque (UPDATED: leading cleric captured under burqa)

UPDATE: More in Der Spiegel:

However, Colonel Masha Allah of the paramilitary forces at the scene said that some of the children who had already left had said they had been locked in a room.

A 12-year-old girl, who left the mosque on Thursday, said there were between 35 and 40 students of her age still inside. And a young woman who also left Thursday told Reuters she had seen four bodies in the mosque, two of which were girls.

[...] Abdul Aziz said that 14 men in the mosque had Kalashnikovs, but he asked those still there to give up peacefully. He said “if they can get out quietly they should go, or they can surrender if they want to.” Aziz was arrested Wednesday trying to flee the mosque in a woman’s burqa. He was spotted by a female police officer because of his height and large stomach. [=he was spotted because he was fat ].

Aziz, who was still dressed in the burqa he had used as a disguise during his interview, denied that his movement had links with al-Qaida, though he said his mosque had a “relationship of love and affection with all jihadist organizations.”  [yeah, but thank God, you weren't brave enough to fight till the end eh?]

His brother, the mosque’s deputy head cleric, Abdul Rashid Gazi, is still inside the building. Speaking to Reuters by telephone on Thursday he said “We are not criminals. We are not terrorists that we should surrender. … We have said that we are ready for dialogue.”

“We are ready for dialoge”. Yeah, after a woman’s officer spotted you on a burqa… Don’t make me laugh.

This man, ehh, does he want a sex change operation? “relationship of love and affection with Jihadist organizations” and then he dressed himself as a woman…

Zapatero is going to be very happy at these news. Hmm, how progressive are those jihadis. They are going to love my Alliance of Civilizations…