Monday Winds of War Briefing
Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Monday's Winds of War briefings are given by Security Watchtower and Peace Like a River.
Top Topics
* Iran will no longer consider a proposal to move its uranium enrichment program to Russian territory and is instead considering large-scale uranium enrichment at home, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters Sunday. The declaration by Asefi effectively means the Russian proposal is dead after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran to the U.N. Security Council last week.
* Four Palestinians and four Lebanese nationals with suspected links to Al Qaida, who are believed to have been involved in rocket attacks on northern Israel in December, were recently arrested by Lebanese security officials. Lebanese media reports over the weekend revealed that the suspects were arrested by Lebanese Army Intelligence officials in various areas extending from Beirut to the Beka'a Valley and the south. Haaretz reports that the group had a post near the Lebanese border.
* The British Sunday Times newspaper reported on Monday morning that the United States will present to the United Nations Security Council schematics for a nuclear bomb which it claims to have taken off a computer stolen from an Iranian nuclear scientist two years ago. The schematic will reportedly be a central piece of evidence the United States will provide in the upcoming debate in the UNSC over possible sanctions against Iran for failing to comply with international monitors of its nuclear program.
Other topics today include: Iran's oil reserves; EU on Iran; Hamas in Saudi Arabia; Egypt extradites terror suspect; US Sanctions Syrian bank; Iranian support of Islamic Jihad; IDF arrests bombers; Olmert & the West Bank; Underground commander center in Tehran; Jordan hangs terrorists; PA declaration of war; Jordanian terrorists sentenced; More on DPW deal; Lodi trial update; Legislation to crack down on terror funding; Nationwide gang arrests; Wahhabism in Russia; Police chief killed in Russia; Chechen militants and amnesty; Shooting in Georgia; Taliban growing along border; More fighting in Waziristan; Canadian troops battling in Afghanistan; Beheadings in Helmand province; Investigations in India into bombings continue; Bombing in Thailand & Indonesia; terrorists in the Philippines; North Korean missile test; Madrid local attack; Terrorists sentenced in Netherlands; Milosovic dies; Counterterrorism in east Africa; and more.
Iran & the Middle East
* So vast are Iran's oil reserves, its claims to need a nuclear power program for domestic energy are patent falsehoods, a new bipartisan congressional report concludes. The stark findings by the Joint Economic Committee, one of only four permanent congressional panels with members from the House and the Senate, added more fuel to the heated international debate over Iran's apparent bid to build nuclear weapons.
* Iraqi radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia, the Mahdi Army, has been accused by Sunni Muslims of, among other things, involvement in much of the sectarian violence after the Shi'ite shrine bombing February 22 in Samarra, said in a television interview Friday night that the United States, Britain and Israel were a "triad of evil," an obvious play on words Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union address to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." He also said the Samarra bombers worked in "collusion with" the United States and Israel.
* European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana mooted sanctions against Iran over its nuclear project for the first time yesterday but other EU officials stressed the need to maintain big-power consensus. In an interview with the Austrian daily Der Standard, published as EU foreign ministers began meeting in Salzburg, Solana said he did not rule out eventual sanctions if Tehran fails to allay fears it plans to build nuclear weapons.
* A delegation of Hamas leaders has arrived in Riyadh in a bid to win Saudi financial and political support for the Palestinian government it is forming. It is Hamas's first official visit since 1998 and the five-strong delegation is led by Khaled Meshaal, one of the group's exiled leaders. Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest financial backers of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas emerged from the meetings declaring that Saudi Arabia had promised "excellent" support.
* Qatar has extradited to Egypt an Egyptian suspected of financing attacks on tourists in Cairo last year, an Interior Ministry official said overnight. The man was handed over to Egyptian authorities on Friday, the official said. He was one of 14 people referred for trial by the public prosecutor this week for involvement in the two bombings and a shooting in April last year.
* The US has imposed sanctions on the Commercial Bank of Syria, forcing all US banks to sever ties with the group. The US Treasury Department said it had made the decision as the bank had been used to move terrorist cash and launder money from "illicit" Iraqi oil sales.
* Former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said Friday that he had not disclosed any military secrets by stating that Western nations and Israel have the ability to launch a military strike that will set back Iran's nuclear program for many years. Ya'alon, who retired last June after a 37-year military career, told an audience in Washington on Thursday that Israel had the capacity to carry out a military strike against Iran by itself.
* Lawyers for a cleric have urged a judge in Yemen to condemn to death a local editor who published the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, the newspaper's Web site said Thursday. The editor of the Yemen Observer, Mohammed Al-Asadi, told The Associated Press he is being prosecuted by both the state and a prominent Islamic cleric, Sheik Abdulmajid al-Zindani, whom the United States has accused of supporting terrorism.
* Iran continues to urge Islamic Jihad to carry out terror attacks against Israel ahead of the Knesset elections, Israeli intelligence sources say. According to the sources, the Iranian pressure on Islamic Jihad comes despite Tehran's declared support for Hamas and the fact that senior Hamas officials were invited to Tehran to celebrate the organization's victory in the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
* A group belonging to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades declared on Friday it intended to barrage Israel with mortar shells in reaction to what it termed "the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by the occupation forces." In a written statement, the group said it would fire 200 "Shihab" mortar shells carrying the names of 200 Palestinians killed since the start of the 2000 uprising.
* Israel Defense Forces soldiers arrested two Palestinians at the Beit Iba checkpoint north of Nablus on Sunday after discovering in their possession a 15-kilogram explosive device. The Palestinians were immediately transferred into the custody of the Shin Bet security service for questioning. IDF sappers safely neutralized the device.
* Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert intends to keep the West Bank under IDF control even after all the settlements beyond the security fence are evacuated, Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
* Iran has completed in secrecy an underground command center in north central Tehran, not far from Iranian governmental buildings nor, ironically, far from many foreign embassies. The underground bunker complex was revealed by the same group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), that originally exposed Iran’s secret nuclear facilities in 2002.
* Two terrorists convicted of killing a US diplomat in the Jordanian capital in 2002 have been hanged, officials say. Libyan Salem bin Suweid and Jordanian Yasser Freihat were among 10 Islamic terrorists found guilty in 2004 over the killing of Laurence Foley.
* In a document released to the press outlining the incoming Hamas government’s guiding principles, the organization made clear that it has not budged one inch from its determination to continue killing innocent Jews. “Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people in its path to put an end to the occupation and the reinstatement of its national rights,” states the document, which also insists that the so-called Palestinian “right of return” is something that “can’t be given up”. In other words, Hamas plans to use the levers of government that will be at its disposal in order to continue carrying out terrorist attacks against the Jewish state. The Palestinian Authority, and all its “security” branches, will now be guided by the explicit policy of “resistance in all its forms”, which is Hamas-talk for suicide bombings, shootings and other types of attacks. If this does not constitute a formal declaration of war by the Palestinian Authority against Israel, it is hard to imagine what would.
* Five terrorists were convicted Sunday of plotting terrorist attacks on Jordanian intelligence agents, foreign tourists and upscale hotels and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life. The plot's mastermind, fugitive Mohammad Rateb Qteishat, received a life sentence in absentia. He is believed to be in neighboring Iraq. The four defendants in custody shouted insults at the military judges who sentenced them to 10 years of hard labor.
* Minerva has the latest updates on Yemen, including another attempted prison break and the continued fight against al Qaeda.
America Domestic Security & the Americas
* Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced Thursday afternoon from the floor of the Senate that Dubai Ports World (DPW) would transfer the US operations of the British company it was purchasing - P & O North America - to "a United States entity." Some critics of the deal were skeptical that DPW might still have ultimate control over the ports in question, including New York, Miami, and New Orleans.
* FBI agents testified Friday that a Lodi father on trial for terrorism-related charges was not their original target and was interrogated only as an afterthought because he refused to leave while agents questioned his son.
* A federal judge refused to dismiss charges against two Muslims arrested in an FBI anti-terrorism sting, rejecting claims that evidence was tainted by use of illegal warrantless wiretaps. U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy's "classified" order leaves secret his reasons for also turning down defense requests to suppress any evidence acquired from warrantless wiretaps or force authorities to disclose whether they were used in the Albany case.
* The House has approved Rep. Sue Kelly's proposal to help the government crack down on foreign countries that fail to stop terrorist financing networks. The Katonah Republican's legislation, passed as part of a larger financial services regulatory bill, would require the Treasury Department to report annually on which countries are not enforcing laws against terrorist financing and money laundering.
* In Columbia, after years of witnessing massacres, voter intimidation, and murder, few townspeople were willing to risk showing support for candidates not endorsed by the local warlords. That fear is the legacy of heavyhanded political persuasion by paramilitary groups, and is one reason why President Álvaro Uribe began a demobilization plan that has seen more than 23,000 paramilitaries and some 6,000 leftist rebels turn in their weapons since 2004.
* Writing at the Jamestown Foundation, Chris Zambelis looks at radical Islam in Trinidad. Specifically, he takes a comprehensive look at Yasin Abu Bakr and Jamaat al-Muslimeen, citing many things included in these Briefings over the past few months.
* Some 375 gang members have been arrested in 24 states and the District of Columbia over the past two weeks as part of a yearlong operation targeting gangs with criminal immigrant members, the Homeland Security Department said Friday. The arrests bring to 2,388 the number of gang members apprehended through Operation Community Shield, which combines local law enforcement with federal immigration forces. Of those arrested, 922 were members of Mara Salvatrucha gangs, which have ties to Central America.
* President Bush reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to ensuring that the U.N. investigation into the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri moves forward. Bush told a reporter for Lebanon’s Future Television March 9 that the United States has no intention of cutting a deal with the Syrian government and turning a blind eye to its lack of cooperation with the U.N. investigation in exchange for concessions on Syrian support for terrorism in Israel, Lebanon and Iraq.
Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia
* Local police in the Russian Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria have been alarmed by the spreading of radical Islamic trends among the schoolboys, RIA Novosti reported on Friday. “We have analyzed Nalchick (the republic’s capital) schools and found out that in some of them senior pupils impose ideas of Wahhabism on their younger fellows,” Arsen Tishkov, the head of the local police directorate for fighting religious extremism, told the agency.
* A car bomb exploded outside a government office in the southern Russian city of Makhachkala on Friday, killing Colonel Magomed Magomedov, deputy head of the criminal investigation department of the Daghestani Interior Ministry.
* Over 7,000 militants voluntarily surrendered weapons and returned to a peaceful life in the past few years, the Chechen prime minister said in an interview Saturday. "Since the second Chechen campaign started [in 1999], more than 7,000 militants have given up arms," Ramzan Kadyrov said. "All of them were amnestied in line with Russian laws. Most of them now form units fighting crime, banditry and terrorism in the Chechen Republic."
* Memorial, a Russian human rights organization, says it has evidence that Russian forces and Chechen security forces allied to Russia have been involved in 3,000 kidnappings since 1999. It's ironic, they say, because one of the stated Russian goals of launching the second Chechen War in 1999 was to stop the rampant kidnapping of foreign journalists, aid workers and politicians. Memorial has begun building a database of those they believe have disappeared at the hands of security forces, including details of the abduction and background information on the individuals. So far they've compiled information on more than 1,700 cases.
* Four people, including a seven-year-old girl, have been shot dead in the Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, the unrecognized republic’s Interior minister, Otar Khetsia, has told Interfax. The minister stressed that all those killed were civilians, and described the incident as a terrorist act.
* Academician Viktor Mikhailov, director of the Strategic Stability Institute of Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, academic supervisor of Russia's Federal Nuclear Center (Research Institute of Experimental Physics), holder of the Lenin and State prizes, and minister of nuclear energy from 1992 to 1998, gives an interesting interview on Iran's nuclear program.
Afghanistan & Southern Asia
* A Pakistan-based movement inspired by the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan is growing along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, challenging U.S.-led efforts to stamp out insurgents in Afghanistan and hunt down Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders. Reports from the South Waziristan region, which is closed to foreign journalists, indicate that local leaders who also call themselves Taliban are setting up offices, recruiting followers and, in some places, acting as local judges.
* Canada's top general was evacuated by a US Blackhawk helicopter from a meeting with village elders in Afghanistan after a nearby roadside bomb attack, officials told AFP. The bomb was detonated by remote control at about 10:00 am local time Friday, blowing a wheel off a Bison armoured vehicle some 70 kilometres (45 miles) north of Kandahar, military spokeswoman Captain Stephanie Godin said.
* Heavy fighting took place between militants and security forces in a remote village in North Waziristan Tribal Agency. Federal Troops pounded the remote Norak village, five kilometres west of Mirali with artillery after militants fired rockets at security forces, escalating clashes along the volatile Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
* U.S. forces in Afghanistan expect violent clashes with al Qaeda-linked insurgents in coming months before security improves later in the year, a senior military officer said on Thursday. Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moeller, U.S. Central Command director for plans and policy, told a congressional hearing an upsurge in violence could stem from U.S. and NATO forces extending their reach into parts of Afghanistan where the insurgent presence is greater.
* A Canadian battle group has embarked on its largest and most ambitious military operation to date in Afghanistan, in the hopes of disrupting a recent influx of Taliban fighters in the wild and volatile mountain region north of Kandahar. The first wave of Canadians -- among a force of several hundred soldiers including infantry, artillery and engineering troops -- drove north out of the base at Kandahar in the chilly, pre-dawn hours of Thursday morning, riding all-wheel drive G-wagons and light armoured fighting vehicles.
* Taliban insurgents have beheaded two former Afghan government officials in the southern province of Helmand, officials said on Saturday. Local officials said the bodies were dumped on Saturday morning beside a road in Lashkargah, the provincial capital of Helmand where British troops have started deploying as part of NATO's expansion plan.
* Four US marines have been killed by a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan's Kunar Province. The soldiers died after an improvised explosive device ripped through their convoy while on patrol, the US military said in a statement. It was the deadliest attack on US forces in a month. The frequency of such attacks has been growing.
* Suicide bombers have tried to kill Afghanistan's Senate leader, in an attack in which four people died. Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, who also leads a government commission seeking reconciliation with the Taleban, escaped unhurt in the blast.
* Here is the CDI's Afghan update for the month of February. It is a roundup of events in Afghanistan from February 7 to March 2.
* At least 26 people, including some foreigners, were killed late Friday in an assault by the Pakistani army on a tribal region near the Afghan border where it was believed terrorists were gathered, the military said Saturday. In Saturday's strike, the target is reported to have been the compound of cleric Maulvi Sadiq Noor, located in Khatta Killi village.
* A Pakistani man accused of aiding al-Qaeda and the Taleban has been held in a joint US-Afghan operation, security sources have told the BBC. The governor of Kunar Province in Afghanistan said that Haji Nadir was a "trusted al-Qaeda operative" and was in Afghanistan to carry out attacks. Security sources said Mr Nadir was suspected of training fighters and making bombs for use in Afghanistan.
* In India, Wednesday's bomb blasts in Varanasi are yet another telling link in the growing chain of circumstances indicating the rise of a new terrorist network in India. If viewed together, the blasts in Varanasi and Delhi, the terrorist attacks in Bangalore and Ayodhya, the Mumbai car bombs of August 2003 and the Akshardham attack of September 2002 -- besides numerous arrests of terrorists, their supporters and seizure of weapons and explosives -- point out to a grand merger of various extremist and terrorist groups and organisations within India, and an extensive support base rapidly expanding.
* Police questioned eight men Saturday in the bombings that killed 20 people at a temple and train station in Hinduism's holiest city, a police official said. Two of the men resembled police sketches of suspects, said Yashpal Singh, director-general of Uttar Pradesh state police. The other six were their acquaintances, he said. All eight were detained Friday night in Uttar Pradesh.
* Police in India have freed two men wrongly detained over recent bomb attacks on the holy city of Varanasi. Police detained the men saying that they fitted the description of two people suspected of planting a bomb in a shop which was later defused.
* Police recovered several powerful explosives from a crowded railway station in India’s financial capital on Saturday, days after twin blasts in one of Hinduism’s holiest cities killed 15 people.
* In India, interrogation of a terrorist arrested in Goa has revealed that a Pakistan-based militant outfit was planning to strike at busy tourist places in the State, police sources on Saturday said.
* Seven people, including a civilian caught in crossfire, were killed in gunbattles between People's Liberation Army rebels and Indian troops in the troubled northeastern state of Manipur on Saturday, police said. Soldiers attacked a well fortified rebel camp 95 km (60 miles) east of the state capital, Imphal, early Saturday, killing four separatist guerrillas in a more than two hour gunbattle.
* Ten people were killed and three others injured in a helicopter gunship attack on a seminary in the embattled North Waziristan Agency on Friday night, officials and residents said. Cobra helicopters carried out the attack in Khatty Kalli, some five kilometres west of the agency headquarters.
* Claiming that it does not command the militant groups active in Kashmir, Pakistan has said that it has 'influence' over them which it would like to use to bring down violence. "Pakistan does have influence (over the militant groups) but we do not command them. Pakistan has influence because it has been advocating and highlighting the Kashmir issue," Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri said on Friday night at a dinner he hosted in the honour of the delegates attending the Kashmir Conference.
* The government of India said there would be no compromise with national security while allowing private telecom companies to establish direct links between India and Pakistan by laying optical fiber cables. But in the absence of signal intelligence, the links could become a technology facilitated command control system of terror networks from Pakistan.
* Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
* A top Islamic militant leader who surrendered to authorities last week has confessed to ordering a string of bombings across Bangladesh that killed 26 people and wounded dozens, a government investigator said Friday. Shaikh Abdur Rahman, the leader of the banned Islamic militant group Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, surrendered last week to security forces who surrounded his hideout.
* In Bangladesh, detectives arrested Chan Mian, who sheltered Bangla Bhai, at his in-laws' house in Bhaluk Chhatar village in Muktagachha upazila in Mymensigh. Denying his involvement with Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Chan Mian claimed to have asked the militant kingpin to leave his house. But he [Bangla Bhai] refused, saying, "Nothing would happen."
Far East & Southeast Asia
* A small bomb exploded Friday outside a Hindu temple on an Indonesian island that has been plagued by religious violence, wounding a man who was guarding the compound, police said. The blast in the town of Poso in central Sulawesi island collapsed the roof and walls of the temple's guard house, said Poso deputy police chief, Maj. Andreas Wayan.
* The Indonesian government may ask for direct access to Hambali, a militant held by the United States since 2003, when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Jakarta next week, an official said on Friday. Indonesia has long sought custody of Hambali -- an Indonesian national believed to have played a key role in bombings of nightclubs in Bali in 2002 which killed 202 people -- to aid in several prosecutions of terrorism suspects. The Islamic preacher was caught in a U.S.-led raid in Thailand in mid-2003, and since then Indonesian investigators have only received filtered information from him as Washington has so far barred direct contact.
* From Manado on the northern tip of this sprawling Indonesian archipelago to Banda Aceh on its western edge, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific and Asia has been out inspecting a front line in the war on terror. "I wanted to see for myself," Adm. William J. Fallon said after a long flight from this capital to the far end of the island of Sulawesi next to the Celebes Sea. The islands surrounding that sea have become highways, or what some Americans call "rat lines," for terrorists moving men and materiel to and from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
* U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice will travel to Indonesia this week to discuss the Middle East peace initiative and U.S. aid for counterterrorism efforts. The trip was originally scheduled for January, but was cancelled due to the stroke suffered by Israeli leader Ariel Sharon.
* The government vowed Friday to find those responsible for a small bomb that exploded in the capital amid a campaign to force Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power. No one claimed responsibility for Thursday's blast outside the Bangkok home of former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda, now the chief adviser to the Thai king. The government has blamed its critics.
* Australia will maintain its ban on uranium exports to India and other countries, which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Sunday. His comments dashed hopes in New Delhi that the stance could be softened to help India meet soaring energy demand. Downer said he would not change Australia’s 30-year-old policy of not exporting uranium to treaty non-signatories. “There’s no basis at this stage for us changing that policy now,” he told ABC Television.
* The army and police continue to pick up clues that Islamic terrorists are still operating in the southern Philippines, but are unable to nail them down. Some of the suspected terrorists are foreigners from Indonesia, Malaysia and, occasionally, the Middle East.
* A top US FBI official has offered assistance and training to the Philippines' anti-crime and anti-terror campaigns, police said. FBI Deputy Director John S. Pistole held a closed-door meeting yesterday with national police chief Arturo Lomibao and other senior Philippine police officials in which he was briefed on the government's efforts to combat Al Qaida-linked terror groups, insurgency and an alleged emerging alliance between communist and military rebels.
* Voters in a Japanese city overwhelmingly rejected a plan yesterday to bring more planes and troops to a nearby US Marine base. With all votes counted, more than 43,000 rejected the plan and just over 5,000 were in favour, an official in the southwest city of Iwakuni said. The result of the referendum is not binding, but a "No" vote is a headache for both Tokyo and Washington.
* Missiles test-fired by North Korea last week are "a quantum leap forward" from its previous weapons with greater reliability and precision, the commander of the U.S. military in South Korea said. Speaking before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on March 9 in Washington, General B.B. Bell said North Korea was also moving ahead with the development of longer-range ballistic missiles that could hit Alaska and targets in the continental United States.
Europe
* The judge leading the investigation into the Madrid bombings has said the attacks were carried out by a local cell linked to an international terrorist network. Judge Juan del Olmo said the cell of Islamic fanatics which planted the bombs had links stretching through France, Belgium, Italy, Morocco and to Iraq.
* Two teenage students charged with terrorist offences have been remanded in custody after a brief appearance at Bow Street Magistrates' Court. Aitzaz Zafar, 18 and Usman Malik, 19, both from Bradford, were charged under the Terrorism Act, Scotland Yard said. The two men are accused of possessing a record of information likely to be useful to a terrorist.
* Nine of the 14 men accused of membership of a home-grown Muslim terrorist organisation in the Netherlands received sentences of up to 15 years on Friday afternoon. The panel of three judges found them guilty and declared Mohammed Bouyeri was the leader and initiator of the Hofstad terrorist group. The group's goal was not to plot terror attacks but to incite hatred and threaten people, the court found.
* The European Court of Human Rights said Thursday that it had received a request by a French Muslim body to condemn the publication of cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in French newspapers. The Regional Council for the Muslim Religion (CRCM) in the Champagne Ardenne region said in a statement that the publication of the controversial cartoons in French newspapers constituted a discrimination between Muslims and non-Muslims contrary to the European Convention of Human Rights.
* Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's death while imprisoned on war crimes charges drew mixed feelings Saturday in the region that he pushed into war more than a decade ago. In Milosevic's homeland, Serbia, the former president's supporters declared his death a "huge loss" for the Balkan country and its people, and blamed it on the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where he was being tried for genocide. However, in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, which were ravaged by the conflicts masterminded and fueled by Milosevic, officials and ordinary citizens alike said his death brought some justice to the victims.
* Almost two years to the day since al-Qaeda linked bombers killed 191 passengers and injured almost 1,000 in devastating train bombings the Spanish capital on 11 March, 2004, it has emerged that the bombers had planned to carry out further attacks in Spain, according to disclosures published on Friday in the Spanish daily, ABC. A silent ceremony marked the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed 191 people and wounded 1,741 others.
Africa
* Nigeria's military exchanged fire with armed men in this West African nation's oil-rich delta region, the military said Thursday, in an attack apparently against a militant group holding two American hostages and a Briton. A militant group holding three foreign oil workers hostage said in an e-mailed statement that one of their vessels was attacked Wednesday on the Escravos River by four Nigerian navy patrol boats, sparking a 45-minute gunbattle they claimed left seven government soldiers dead.
* Welcoming the decision of the African Union (AU) to extend its peacekeeping force in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged all States to support the operation while planning for a handover of responsibilities to the United Nations. He said that full details were not yet available, but it appeared that the AU and the Government have at least agreed to a six months extension of the force, and to work with the UN on transition.
* The presence of U.S. counter-terrorism forces north of Somalia (in Djibouti) apparently played a role in getting al Qaeda to abandon a base in Somalia. Tribal leaders in the "Trans-Juba" region of Somalia (along the Kenyan frontier), appear to have won a battle of wills with al Qaeda.
* Roaming militias kidnap foreign oil workers, set fire to offshore oil installations, and bomb pipelines in the Niger Delta. Christian mobs burn down mosques in retaliation for Muslim attacks set off by Danish cartoons ridiculing Mohammed. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country—home to 130 million people – the situation looks ready to go from bad to worse.
* Abdelkrim Kaduri, military adviser to GSPC leader Hassan Hattab before turning himself in, was gunned down in Al Ued by a GSPC armed squad on Friday. Before Kaduri, the GSPC had killed in 2002 imam Abu Hafs for the same reasons. This latest assassination is clearly a warning to any dissidents who would think of helping Algerian security services.
The Global War
* A worldwide C4I market correction and gradual decline can be expected to occur in a few years as many of the programs that were accelerated to combat terrorism and operations in Afghanistan and Iraq draw to an end. According to Forecast International's 2006 C4I Market Overview, the market will continue to show strong growth through 2008, but will then begin to shift back to its pre-9/11 levels in 2009.
* Discoveries have provided Pakistani and American counter-terrorism officials with a unique insight into al Qaeda's operations after 9/11, it only confirmed what they already knew about the organization's heavy reliance on modern information technology and, more specifically, the Internet. After relying heavily on fixed — and thus vulnerable — Web sites until early 2002, al Qaeda quickly switched to hiding its online operations within more legitimate bulletin boards and Internet sites offering free upload services or connecting through such popular social network sites as Orkut and MySpace.
* The European Union has warned it will cut funding to a Palestinian government led by Hamas if the group fails to renounce violence against Israel. The EU gave no date for such a move. It has continued aid to Palestinians since Hamas won elections in January. However, both the EU and the US regard it as a terrorist organisation. The warning came at a meeting of EU foreign ministers, where delegates are also discussing the Iran nuclear row and Balkan efforts to join the bloc.
* Russia’s determination to undermine the U.S. policy in the Middle East may well weaken U.S. power. But opposing punitive sanctions for Iran at the U.N. and endorsing Hamas is likely to cost Russia dearly. The Hamas-Russia Connection.
* Gangs & Terror: Why Homeland Security is worried.
* Crossroads Arabia highlights an article from the Arab News about how young men in Saudi Arabia are being influenced toward extremism.
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Top Topics
* Iran will no longer consider a proposal to move its uranium enrichment program to Russian territory and is instead considering large-scale uranium enrichment at home, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters Sunday. The declaration by Asefi effectively means the Russian proposal is dead after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran to the U.N. Security Council last week.
* Four Palestinians and four Lebanese nationals with suspected links to Al Qaida, who are believed to have been involved in rocket attacks on northern Israel in December, were recently arrested by Lebanese security officials. Lebanese media reports over the weekend revealed that the suspects were arrested by Lebanese Army Intelligence officials in various areas extending from Beirut to the Beka'a Valley and the south. Haaretz reports that the group had a post near the Lebanese border.
* The British Sunday Times newspaper reported on Monday morning that the United States will present to the United Nations Security Council schematics for a nuclear bomb which it claims to have taken off a computer stolen from an Iranian nuclear scientist two years ago. The schematic will reportedly be a central piece of evidence the United States will provide in the upcoming debate in the UNSC over possible sanctions against Iran for failing to comply with international monitors of its nuclear program.
Other topics today include: Iran's oil reserves; EU on Iran; Hamas in Saudi Arabia; Egypt extradites terror suspect; US Sanctions Syrian bank; Iranian support of Islamic Jihad; IDF arrests bombers; Olmert & the West Bank; Underground commander center in Tehran; Jordan hangs terrorists; PA declaration of war; Jordanian terrorists sentenced; More on DPW deal; Lodi trial update; Legislation to crack down on terror funding; Nationwide gang arrests; Wahhabism in Russia; Police chief killed in Russia; Chechen militants and amnesty; Shooting in Georgia; Taliban growing along border; More fighting in Waziristan; Canadian troops battling in Afghanistan; Beheadings in Helmand province; Investigations in India into bombings continue; Bombing in Thailand & Indonesia; terrorists in the Philippines; North Korean missile test; Madrid local attack; Terrorists sentenced in Netherlands; Milosovic dies; Counterterrorism in east Africa; and more.
Iran & the Middle East
* So vast are Iran's oil reserves, its claims to need a nuclear power program for domestic energy are patent falsehoods, a new bipartisan congressional report concludes. The stark findings by the Joint Economic Committee, one of only four permanent congressional panels with members from the House and the Senate, added more fuel to the heated international debate over Iran's apparent bid to build nuclear weapons.
* Iraqi radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia, the Mahdi Army, has been accused by Sunni Muslims of, among other things, involvement in much of the sectarian violence after the Shi'ite shrine bombing February 22 in Samarra, said in a television interview Friday night that the United States, Britain and Israel were a "triad of evil," an obvious play on words Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union address to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." He also said the Samarra bombers worked in "collusion with" the United States and Israel.
* European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana mooted sanctions against Iran over its nuclear project for the first time yesterday but other EU officials stressed the need to maintain big-power consensus. In an interview with the Austrian daily Der Standard, published as EU foreign ministers began meeting in Salzburg, Solana said he did not rule out eventual sanctions if Tehran fails to allay fears it plans to build nuclear weapons.
* A delegation of Hamas leaders has arrived in Riyadh in a bid to win Saudi financial and political support for the Palestinian government it is forming. It is Hamas's first official visit since 1998 and the five-strong delegation is led by Khaled Meshaal, one of the group's exiled leaders. Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest financial backers of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas emerged from the meetings declaring that Saudi Arabia had promised "excellent" support.
* Qatar has extradited to Egypt an Egyptian suspected of financing attacks on tourists in Cairo last year, an Interior Ministry official said overnight. The man was handed over to Egyptian authorities on Friday, the official said. He was one of 14 people referred for trial by the public prosecutor this week for involvement in the two bombings and a shooting in April last year.
* The US has imposed sanctions on the Commercial Bank of Syria, forcing all US banks to sever ties with the group. The US Treasury Department said it had made the decision as the bank had been used to move terrorist cash and launder money from "illicit" Iraqi oil sales.
* Former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said Friday that he had not disclosed any military secrets by stating that Western nations and Israel have the ability to launch a military strike that will set back Iran's nuclear program for many years. Ya'alon, who retired last June after a 37-year military career, told an audience in Washington on Thursday that Israel had the capacity to carry out a military strike against Iran by itself.
* Lawyers for a cleric have urged a judge in Yemen to condemn to death a local editor who published the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, the newspaper's Web site said Thursday. The editor of the Yemen Observer, Mohammed Al-Asadi, told The Associated Press he is being prosecuted by both the state and a prominent Islamic cleric, Sheik Abdulmajid al-Zindani, whom the United States has accused of supporting terrorism.
* Iran continues to urge Islamic Jihad to carry out terror attacks against Israel ahead of the Knesset elections, Israeli intelligence sources say. According to the sources, the Iranian pressure on Islamic Jihad comes despite Tehran's declared support for Hamas and the fact that senior Hamas officials were invited to Tehran to celebrate the organization's victory in the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
* A group belonging to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades declared on Friday it intended to barrage Israel with mortar shells in reaction to what it termed "the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by the occupation forces." In a written statement, the group said it would fire 200 "Shihab" mortar shells carrying the names of 200 Palestinians killed since the start of the 2000 uprising.
* Israel Defense Forces soldiers arrested two Palestinians at the Beit Iba checkpoint north of Nablus on Sunday after discovering in their possession a 15-kilogram explosive device. The Palestinians were immediately transferred into the custody of the Shin Bet security service for questioning. IDF sappers safely neutralized the device.
* Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert intends to keep the West Bank under IDF control even after all the settlements beyond the security fence are evacuated, Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
* Iran has completed in secrecy an underground command center in north central Tehran, not far from Iranian governmental buildings nor, ironically, far from many foreign embassies. The underground bunker complex was revealed by the same group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), that originally exposed Iran’s secret nuclear facilities in 2002.
* Two terrorists convicted of killing a US diplomat in the Jordanian capital in 2002 have been hanged, officials say. Libyan Salem bin Suweid and Jordanian Yasser Freihat were among 10 Islamic terrorists found guilty in 2004 over the killing of Laurence Foley.
* In a document released to the press outlining the incoming Hamas government’s guiding principles, the organization made clear that it has not budged one inch from its determination to continue killing innocent Jews. “Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people in its path to put an end to the occupation and the reinstatement of its national rights,” states the document, which also insists that the so-called Palestinian “right of return” is something that “can’t be given up”. In other words, Hamas plans to use the levers of government that will be at its disposal in order to continue carrying out terrorist attacks against the Jewish state. The Palestinian Authority, and all its “security” branches, will now be guided by the explicit policy of “resistance in all its forms”, which is Hamas-talk for suicide bombings, shootings and other types of attacks. If this does not constitute a formal declaration of war by the Palestinian Authority against Israel, it is hard to imagine what would.
* Five terrorists were convicted Sunday of plotting terrorist attacks on Jordanian intelligence agents, foreign tourists and upscale hotels and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life. The plot's mastermind, fugitive Mohammad Rateb Qteishat, received a life sentence in absentia. He is believed to be in neighboring Iraq. The four defendants in custody shouted insults at the military judges who sentenced them to 10 years of hard labor.
* Minerva has the latest updates on Yemen, including another attempted prison break and the continued fight against al Qaeda.
America Domestic Security & the Americas
* Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced Thursday afternoon from the floor of the Senate that Dubai Ports World (DPW) would transfer the US operations of the British company it was purchasing - P & O North America - to "a United States entity." Some critics of the deal were skeptical that DPW might still have ultimate control over the ports in question, including New York, Miami, and New Orleans.
* FBI agents testified Friday that a Lodi father on trial for terrorism-related charges was not their original target and was interrogated only as an afterthought because he refused to leave while agents questioned his son.
* A federal judge refused to dismiss charges against two Muslims arrested in an FBI anti-terrorism sting, rejecting claims that evidence was tainted by use of illegal warrantless wiretaps. U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy's "classified" order leaves secret his reasons for also turning down defense requests to suppress any evidence acquired from warrantless wiretaps or force authorities to disclose whether they were used in the Albany case.
* The House has approved Rep. Sue Kelly's proposal to help the government crack down on foreign countries that fail to stop terrorist financing networks. The Katonah Republican's legislation, passed as part of a larger financial services regulatory bill, would require the Treasury Department to report annually on which countries are not enforcing laws against terrorist financing and money laundering.
* In Columbia, after years of witnessing massacres, voter intimidation, and murder, few townspeople were willing to risk showing support for candidates not endorsed by the local warlords. That fear is the legacy of heavyhanded political persuasion by paramilitary groups, and is one reason why President Álvaro Uribe began a demobilization plan that has seen more than 23,000 paramilitaries and some 6,000 leftist rebels turn in their weapons since 2004.
* Writing at the Jamestown Foundation, Chris Zambelis looks at radical Islam in Trinidad. Specifically, he takes a comprehensive look at Yasin Abu Bakr and Jamaat al-Muslimeen, citing many things included in these Briefings over the past few months.
* Some 375 gang members have been arrested in 24 states and the District of Columbia over the past two weeks as part of a yearlong operation targeting gangs with criminal immigrant members, the Homeland Security Department said Friday. The arrests bring to 2,388 the number of gang members apprehended through Operation Community Shield, which combines local law enforcement with federal immigration forces. Of those arrested, 922 were members of Mara Salvatrucha gangs, which have ties to Central America.
* President Bush reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to ensuring that the U.N. investigation into the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri moves forward. Bush told a reporter for Lebanon’s Future Television March 9 that the United States has no intention of cutting a deal with the Syrian government and turning a blind eye to its lack of cooperation with the U.N. investigation in exchange for concessions on Syrian support for terrorism in Israel, Lebanon and Iraq.
Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia
* Local police in the Russian Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria have been alarmed by the spreading of radical Islamic trends among the schoolboys, RIA Novosti reported on Friday. “We have analyzed Nalchick (the republic’s capital) schools and found out that in some of them senior pupils impose ideas of Wahhabism on their younger fellows,” Arsen Tishkov, the head of the local police directorate for fighting religious extremism, told the agency.
* A car bomb exploded outside a government office in the southern Russian city of Makhachkala on Friday, killing Colonel Magomed Magomedov, deputy head of the criminal investigation department of the Daghestani Interior Ministry.
* Over 7,000 militants voluntarily surrendered weapons and returned to a peaceful life in the past few years, the Chechen prime minister said in an interview Saturday. "Since the second Chechen campaign started [in 1999], more than 7,000 militants have given up arms," Ramzan Kadyrov said. "All of them were amnestied in line with Russian laws. Most of them now form units fighting crime, banditry and terrorism in the Chechen Republic."
* Memorial, a Russian human rights organization, says it has evidence that Russian forces and Chechen security forces allied to Russia have been involved in 3,000 kidnappings since 1999. It's ironic, they say, because one of the stated Russian goals of launching the second Chechen War in 1999 was to stop the rampant kidnapping of foreign journalists, aid workers and politicians. Memorial has begun building a database of those they believe have disappeared at the hands of security forces, including details of the abduction and background information on the individuals. So far they've compiled information on more than 1,700 cases.
* Four people, including a seven-year-old girl, have been shot dead in the Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, the unrecognized republic’s Interior minister, Otar Khetsia, has told Interfax. The minister stressed that all those killed were civilians, and described the incident as a terrorist act.
* Academician Viktor Mikhailov, director of the Strategic Stability Institute of Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, academic supervisor of Russia's Federal Nuclear Center (Research Institute of Experimental Physics), holder of the Lenin and State prizes, and minister of nuclear energy from 1992 to 1998, gives an interesting interview on Iran's nuclear program.
Afghanistan & Southern Asia
* A Pakistan-based movement inspired by the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan is growing along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, challenging U.S.-led efforts to stamp out insurgents in Afghanistan and hunt down Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders. Reports from the South Waziristan region, which is closed to foreign journalists, indicate that local leaders who also call themselves Taliban are setting up offices, recruiting followers and, in some places, acting as local judges.
* Canada's top general was evacuated by a US Blackhawk helicopter from a meeting with village elders in Afghanistan after a nearby roadside bomb attack, officials told AFP. The bomb was detonated by remote control at about 10:00 am local time Friday, blowing a wheel off a Bison armoured vehicle some 70 kilometres (45 miles) north of Kandahar, military spokeswoman Captain Stephanie Godin said.
* Heavy fighting took place between militants and security forces in a remote village in North Waziristan Tribal Agency. Federal Troops pounded the remote Norak village, five kilometres west of Mirali with artillery after militants fired rockets at security forces, escalating clashes along the volatile Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
* U.S. forces in Afghanistan expect violent clashes with al Qaeda-linked insurgents in coming months before security improves later in the year, a senior military officer said on Thursday. Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moeller, U.S. Central Command director for plans and policy, told a congressional hearing an upsurge in violence could stem from U.S. and NATO forces extending their reach into parts of Afghanistan where the insurgent presence is greater.
* A Canadian battle group has embarked on its largest and most ambitious military operation to date in Afghanistan, in the hopes of disrupting a recent influx of Taliban fighters in the wild and volatile mountain region north of Kandahar. The first wave of Canadians -- among a force of several hundred soldiers including infantry, artillery and engineering troops -- drove north out of the base at Kandahar in the chilly, pre-dawn hours of Thursday morning, riding all-wheel drive G-wagons and light armoured fighting vehicles.
* Taliban insurgents have beheaded two former Afghan government officials in the southern province of Helmand, officials said on Saturday. Local officials said the bodies were dumped on Saturday morning beside a road in Lashkargah, the provincial capital of Helmand where British troops have started deploying as part of NATO's expansion plan.
* Four US marines have been killed by a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan's Kunar Province. The soldiers died after an improvised explosive device ripped through their convoy while on patrol, the US military said in a statement. It was the deadliest attack on US forces in a month. The frequency of such attacks has been growing.
* Suicide bombers have tried to kill Afghanistan's Senate leader, in an attack in which four people died. Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, who also leads a government commission seeking reconciliation with the Taleban, escaped unhurt in the blast.
* Here is the CDI's Afghan update for the month of February. It is a roundup of events in Afghanistan from February 7 to March 2.
* At least 26 people, including some foreigners, were killed late Friday in an assault by the Pakistani army on a tribal region near the Afghan border where it was believed terrorists were gathered, the military said Saturday. In Saturday's strike, the target is reported to have been the compound of cleric Maulvi Sadiq Noor, located in Khatta Killi village.
* A Pakistani man accused of aiding al-Qaeda and the Taleban has been held in a joint US-Afghan operation, security sources have told the BBC. The governor of Kunar Province in Afghanistan said that Haji Nadir was a "trusted al-Qaeda operative" and was in Afghanistan to carry out attacks. Security sources said Mr Nadir was suspected of training fighters and making bombs for use in Afghanistan.
* In India, Wednesday's bomb blasts in Varanasi are yet another telling link in the growing chain of circumstances indicating the rise of a new terrorist network in India. If viewed together, the blasts in Varanasi and Delhi, the terrorist attacks in Bangalore and Ayodhya, the Mumbai car bombs of August 2003 and the Akshardham attack of September 2002 -- besides numerous arrests of terrorists, their supporters and seizure of weapons and explosives -- point out to a grand merger of various extremist and terrorist groups and organisations within India, and an extensive support base rapidly expanding.
* Police questioned eight men Saturday in the bombings that killed 20 people at a temple and train station in Hinduism's holiest city, a police official said. Two of the men resembled police sketches of suspects, said Yashpal Singh, director-general of Uttar Pradesh state police. The other six were their acquaintances, he said. All eight were detained Friday night in Uttar Pradesh.
* Police in India have freed two men wrongly detained over recent bomb attacks on the holy city of Varanasi. Police detained the men saying that they fitted the description of two people suspected of planting a bomb in a shop which was later defused.
* Police recovered several powerful explosives from a crowded railway station in India’s financial capital on Saturday, days after twin blasts in one of Hinduism’s holiest cities killed 15 people.
* In India, interrogation of a terrorist arrested in Goa has revealed that a Pakistan-based militant outfit was planning to strike at busy tourist places in the State, police sources on Saturday said.
* Seven people, including a civilian caught in crossfire, were killed in gunbattles between People's Liberation Army rebels and Indian troops in the troubled northeastern state of Manipur on Saturday, police said. Soldiers attacked a well fortified rebel camp 95 km (60 miles) east of the state capital, Imphal, early Saturday, killing four separatist guerrillas in a more than two hour gunbattle.
* Ten people were killed and three others injured in a helicopter gunship attack on a seminary in the embattled North Waziristan Agency on Friday night, officials and residents said. Cobra helicopters carried out the attack in Khatty Kalli, some five kilometres west of the agency headquarters.
* Claiming that it does not command the militant groups active in Kashmir, Pakistan has said that it has 'influence' over them which it would like to use to bring down violence. "Pakistan does have influence (over the militant groups) but we do not command them. Pakistan has influence because it has been advocating and highlighting the Kashmir issue," Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri said on Friday night at a dinner he hosted in the honour of the delegates attending the Kashmir Conference.
* The government of India said there would be no compromise with national security while allowing private telecom companies to establish direct links between India and Pakistan by laying optical fiber cables. But in the absence of signal intelligence, the links could become a technology facilitated command control system of terror networks from Pakistan.
* Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
* A top Islamic militant leader who surrendered to authorities last week has confessed to ordering a string of bombings across Bangladesh that killed 26 people and wounded dozens, a government investigator said Friday. Shaikh Abdur Rahman, the leader of the banned Islamic militant group Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, surrendered last week to security forces who surrounded his hideout.
* In Bangladesh, detectives arrested Chan Mian, who sheltered Bangla Bhai, at his in-laws' house in Bhaluk Chhatar village in Muktagachha upazila in Mymensigh. Denying his involvement with Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Chan Mian claimed to have asked the militant kingpin to leave his house. But he [Bangla Bhai] refused, saying, "Nothing would happen."
Far East & Southeast Asia
* A small bomb exploded Friday outside a Hindu temple on an Indonesian island that has been plagued by religious violence, wounding a man who was guarding the compound, police said. The blast in the town of Poso in central Sulawesi island collapsed the roof and walls of the temple's guard house, said Poso deputy police chief, Maj. Andreas Wayan.
* The Indonesian government may ask for direct access to Hambali, a militant held by the United States since 2003, when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Jakarta next week, an official said on Friday. Indonesia has long sought custody of Hambali -- an Indonesian national believed to have played a key role in bombings of nightclubs in Bali in 2002 which killed 202 people -- to aid in several prosecutions of terrorism suspects. The Islamic preacher was caught in a U.S.-led raid in Thailand in mid-2003, and since then Indonesian investigators have only received filtered information from him as Washington has so far barred direct contact.
* From Manado on the northern tip of this sprawling Indonesian archipelago to Banda Aceh on its western edge, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific and Asia has been out inspecting a front line in the war on terror. "I wanted to see for myself," Adm. William J. Fallon said after a long flight from this capital to the far end of the island of Sulawesi next to the Celebes Sea. The islands surrounding that sea have become highways, or what some Americans call "rat lines," for terrorists moving men and materiel to and from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
* U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice will travel to Indonesia this week to discuss the Middle East peace initiative and U.S. aid for counterterrorism efforts. The trip was originally scheduled for January, but was cancelled due to the stroke suffered by Israeli leader Ariel Sharon.
* The government vowed Friday to find those responsible for a small bomb that exploded in the capital amid a campaign to force Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power. No one claimed responsibility for Thursday's blast outside the Bangkok home of former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda, now the chief adviser to the Thai king. The government has blamed its critics.
* Australia will maintain its ban on uranium exports to India and other countries, which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Sunday. His comments dashed hopes in New Delhi that the stance could be softened to help India meet soaring energy demand. Downer said he would not change Australia’s 30-year-old policy of not exporting uranium to treaty non-signatories. “There’s no basis at this stage for us changing that policy now,” he told ABC Television.
* The army and police continue to pick up clues that Islamic terrorists are still operating in the southern Philippines, but are unable to nail them down. Some of the suspected terrorists are foreigners from Indonesia, Malaysia and, occasionally, the Middle East.
* A top US FBI official has offered assistance and training to the Philippines' anti-crime and anti-terror campaigns, police said. FBI Deputy Director John S. Pistole held a closed-door meeting yesterday with national police chief Arturo Lomibao and other senior Philippine police officials in which he was briefed on the government's efforts to combat Al Qaida-linked terror groups, insurgency and an alleged emerging alliance between communist and military rebels.
* Voters in a Japanese city overwhelmingly rejected a plan yesterday to bring more planes and troops to a nearby US Marine base. With all votes counted, more than 43,000 rejected the plan and just over 5,000 were in favour, an official in the southwest city of Iwakuni said. The result of the referendum is not binding, but a "No" vote is a headache for both Tokyo and Washington.
* Missiles test-fired by North Korea last week are "a quantum leap forward" from its previous weapons with greater reliability and precision, the commander of the U.S. military in South Korea said. Speaking before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on March 9 in Washington, General B.B. Bell said North Korea was also moving ahead with the development of longer-range ballistic missiles that could hit Alaska and targets in the continental United States.
Europe
* The judge leading the investigation into the Madrid bombings has said the attacks were carried out by a local cell linked to an international terrorist network. Judge Juan del Olmo said the cell of Islamic fanatics which planted the bombs had links stretching through France, Belgium, Italy, Morocco and to Iraq.
* Two teenage students charged with terrorist offences have been remanded in custody after a brief appearance at Bow Street Magistrates' Court. Aitzaz Zafar, 18 and Usman Malik, 19, both from Bradford, were charged under the Terrorism Act, Scotland Yard said. The two men are accused of possessing a record of information likely to be useful to a terrorist.
* Nine of the 14 men accused of membership of a home-grown Muslim terrorist organisation in the Netherlands received sentences of up to 15 years on Friday afternoon. The panel of three judges found them guilty and declared Mohammed Bouyeri was the leader and initiator of the Hofstad terrorist group. The group's goal was not to plot terror attacks but to incite hatred and threaten people, the court found.
* The European Court of Human Rights said Thursday that it had received a request by a French Muslim body to condemn the publication of cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in French newspapers. The Regional Council for the Muslim Religion (CRCM) in the Champagne Ardenne region said in a statement that the publication of the controversial cartoons in French newspapers constituted a discrimination between Muslims and non-Muslims contrary to the European Convention of Human Rights.
* Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's death while imprisoned on war crimes charges drew mixed feelings Saturday in the region that he pushed into war more than a decade ago. In Milosevic's homeland, Serbia, the former president's supporters declared his death a "huge loss" for the Balkan country and its people, and blamed it on the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where he was being tried for genocide. However, in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, which were ravaged by the conflicts masterminded and fueled by Milosevic, officials and ordinary citizens alike said his death brought some justice to the victims.
* Almost two years to the day since al-Qaeda linked bombers killed 191 passengers and injured almost 1,000 in devastating train bombings the Spanish capital on 11 March, 2004, it has emerged that the bombers had planned to carry out further attacks in Spain, according to disclosures published on Friday in the Spanish daily, ABC. A silent ceremony marked the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed 191 people and wounded 1,741 others.
Africa
* Nigeria's military exchanged fire with armed men in this West African nation's oil-rich delta region, the military said Thursday, in an attack apparently against a militant group holding two American hostages and a Briton. A militant group holding three foreign oil workers hostage said in an e-mailed statement that one of their vessels was attacked Wednesday on the Escravos River by four Nigerian navy patrol boats, sparking a 45-minute gunbattle they claimed left seven government soldiers dead.
* Welcoming the decision of the African Union (AU) to extend its peacekeeping force in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged all States to support the operation while planning for a handover of responsibilities to the United Nations. He said that full details were not yet available, but it appeared that the AU and the Government have at least agreed to a six months extension of the force, and to work with the UN on transition.
* The presence of U.S. counter-terrorism forces north of Somalia (in Djibouti) apparently played a role in getting al Qaeda to abandon a base in Somalia. Tribal leaders in the "Trans-Juba" region of Somalia (along the Kenyan frontier), appear to have won a battle of wills with al Qaeda.
* Roaming militias kidnap foreign oil workers, set fire to offshore oil installations, and bomb pipelines in the Niger Delta. Christian mobs burn down mosques in retaliation for Muslim attacks set off by Danish cartoons ridiculing Mohammed. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country—home to 130 million people – the situation looks ready to go from bad to worse.
* Abdelkrim Kaduri, military adviser to GSPC leader Hassan Hattab before turning himself in, was gunned down in Al Ued by a GSPC armed squad on Friday. Before Kaduri, the GSPC had killed in 2002 imam Abu Hafs for the same reasons. This latest assassination is clearly a warning to any dissidents who would think of helping Algerian security services.
The Global War
* A worldwide C4I market correction and gradual decline can be expected to occur in a few years as many of the programs that were accelerated to combat terrorism and operations in Afghanistan and Iraq draw to an end. According to Forecast International's 2006 C4I Market Overview, the market will continue to show strong growth through 2008, but will then begin to shift back to its pre-9/11 levels in 2009.
* Discoveries have provided Pakistani and American counter-terrorism officials with a unique insight into al Qaeda's operations after 9/11, it only confirmed what they already knew about the organization's heavy reliance on modern information technology and, more specifically, the Internet. After relying heavily on fixed — and thus vulnerable — Web sites until early 2002, al Qaeda quickly switched to hiding its online operations within more legitimate bulletin boards and Internet sites offering free upload services or connecting through such popular social network sites as Orkut and MySpace.
* The European Union has warned it will cut funding to a Palestinian government led by Hamas if the group fails to renounce violence against Israel. The EU gave no date for such a move. It has continued aid to Palestinians since Hamas won elections in January. However, both the EU and the US regard it as a terrorist organisation. The warning came at a meeting of EU foreign ministers, where delegates are also discussing the Iran nuclear row and Balkan efforts to join the bloc.
* Russia’s determination to undermine the U.S. policy in the Middle East may well weaken U.S. power. But opposing punitive sanctions for Iran at the U.N. and endorsing Hamas is likely to cost Russia dearly. The Hamas-Russia Connection.
* Gangs & Terror: Why Homeland Security is worried.
* Crossroads Arabia highlights an article from the Arab News about how young men in Saudi Arabia are being influenced toward extremism.
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