.
Just wondering how such a kind and lovely boy of a wealthy Nigerian banker’s family would choose to take down an airliner with 300 passengers on board.
(BBC News) Aug. 1, 2000 – The expansion of Sharia has been broadly welcomed by the Muslim majority in the north of Nigeria but opposed by the Christian minority.
Its introduction has led to major unrest in other states, and more than 1,000 people have died in clashes over the issue.
Some northern Nigerian politicians, dissatisfied with the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is a Christian southerner, have used Sharia as a political tool. But there is also a genuine popular enthusiasm for it, and some politicians have been swept along by this tide.
(Afrik.com) Aug. 17, 2009 – The presence of an al-Qaeda branch operating across the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, Morocco, Mali and Niger and Nigeria’s porous borders have sharpened such fears.
Following the attacks by Boko Haram across northern Nigeria last month, which left seven-hundred people dead, observers believe that increasing anti-western sentiments amongst similar groups could lead to attacks on the country’s oil infrastructure, which is increasingly important to the west.
Despite these fears, there is no evidence linking Nigerian radical Muslims to the global jihadists, or Osama Bin Laden’s group, despite several arrests by the government and two warnings from the United States about potential attacks on its interests in the country.
Mannir Dan Ali, a journalist with Abuja-based Trust newspapers, says there was a minor incident in early June which appeared to spark a series of statements from the group threatening reprisals.
“The whole situation seems to be a failure of intelligence, a failure of the security forces to act before matters reached the point that they have now reached.”
There has been widespread criticism of the security forces for their perceived laxness in monitoring the group. Boko Haram’s members are largely drawn from disaffected youth – university students and jobless graduates among them.
Aminu Abubakar, a journalist covering the area for the AFP news agency, says it is widely believed that the authorities have been reluctant to deal with the militants because some of them come from rich families with connections to the government.
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In October, al-Qaida’s network in Yemen released the 11th edition of its official magazine. In it, top commander Abu Basir al-Wahishi advised supporters to use all available weapons at their disposal to kill Westerners who were “apostates,” or unbelievers. Two suggested venues: “In airports in the western crusade countries that participated in the war against Muslims; or on their planes.”
Law enforcement officials said Abdulmutallab had offered several details about his links to al-Qa’ida and his plan to take down the flight from Amsterdam.
Abdulmutallab told investigators that a radical Yemeni cleric he contacted via the internet put him in touch with an al-Qa’ida leader living in Yemen.
He described spending a month at an al-Qa’ida compound north of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and said he was denied permission to leave the site until he completed his training alongside a Saudi al-Qa’ida bomb maker.
Abdulmutallab avoided screening at Lagos, Nigeria airport.
He bought his KLM ticket on Internet from Accra, Ghana. He avoided security screening in Nigeria because he was a son of a highly placed person. According to the Guardian Nigerian newspaper, because of corruption a simple bribe would have done the trick to get any material on the plane. Most of the screening equipment at Nigerian airports have a malfunction.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
We’ve given up so many rights, multiple data-bases with personal information, billions of dollars given to contractors. pressured our European allies to dump their citizen’s records in our files … with what result?
A young man from Northern Nigeria with a multiple entry visa for the U.S., refused a student visa to the United Kingdom, traveled to Yemen via Dubai, sneaked back into Nigeria for one day, his wealthy father had warned the U.S. consulate about his radicalization, booked a round-trip flight to Detroit via Amsterdam, had only carry-on luggage (backpack), must have listed a forwarding address where he would be staying in the states, had to divulge what sort of meals he would eat, how long he planned to stay, etc. I just wonder when a RED FLAG would be raised!!!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Islamabad, Oct. 5 (ANI): Al-Qaeda has reportedly developed a deadly explosive device that can be hidden in suicide bomber’s intestine and go undetected at airport security checkpoints.
Recently, an Al-Qaeda militant, Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri, passed through several airline security checks with such a bomb hidden in his intestine and made a failed attempt to assassinate a prominent Saudi Prince.
Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef is the head of Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism operations
According to security experts, the explosive and an electronic detonator were probably contained in a long thin animal gut casing to protect it from stomach acid.
The Saudis believe the bomb weighed 100gm and was made with PETN plastic explosive, to avoid detection by airport and other metal detectors.
“While not wanting to be alarmist, I admit this is alarming,” Richard Barrett, head of the United Nations al-Qaeda and Taliban monitoring group was quoted as saying.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
LONDON (The Independent) – Mohammed Mutallab, a cousin of the arrested man, has claimed that the 23-year-old came under the influence of extremist groups while in the U.K., and associates claim he visited the East London Mosque, which has attracted criticism for hosting Muslim hardline preachers, three times.
After leaving the UK the student is believed to have visited Dubai, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and Yemen, where his mother’s family comes from.
Abdulmutallab was denied a British visa in May this year by the UK Border Agency – he claimed he planned to attend a six-month course, but the educational establishment turned out to be bogus.
AL-QAEDA WARNING OF IMMINENT ATTACK
The failed attack will inevitably heighten concern in Washington that Yemen is emerging as a new haven for anti-US terror conspirators. The US gave the government some $70 million in military aid this year and its agencies are known to have been directly involved in executing two deadly airstrikes last week on suspected al-Qa’ida targets inside the country.
The video now under scrutiny was posted on 21 December and was seemingly intended first to eulogise those al-Qa’ida operatives who killed in those strikes. But the speaker on the video also threatened the US saying “we are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God“.
Anwar al-Awlaki has support in BritainPre-recorded lecture on “Judgement Day and the Afterlife” by Anwar Al-Awlaki
≈ Cross-posted from my new diary — Delta Flight and Intelligence Watch List ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
LAGOS, Nigeria (The Guardian) – A US-based Nigerian pro-democratic group, Citizens For Nigeria (CFN), said it is “outraged by the unfortunate set of events through the years in the Nigerian nation that have culminated into this act of terrorism in the US, supposedly by a Nigerian national.”
The CFN was founded by a Nigerian journalist, Tunde Odediran, few years ago in New Jersey, and has now grown to include other active American-Nigerians clamouring for change in Nigeria and holding the Federal Government responsible for the fate of the country.
In a statement issued over the weekend in the US by one of CFN’s officials, Ayo Abimbola, a US military veteran, the group noted that the event involving the Nigerian suspect in Detroit, US, is “a disaster that has been long in coming was averted.
“This happened because a group of selfish Nigerian leaders with Islamic affiliation have, instead of taking the necessary action, quietly aided Islamic fundamentalism for almost 30 years. The Citizens for Nigeria can predict that when Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s identity is revealed, he will be known to come from the northern part of Nigeria that has always received State protection and patronage for religious persecution.”
CFN recalled that in July, 2009, “when the security forces in northern Nigerian battled the remnants of an Islamic sect loosely modeled after Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, the world did not pay attention.
“In that particular incident, more than 180 people died; and it was a local Nigerian news. Now that a Nigerian, likely affiliated with Al Qaeda, attacked an American airline, the world’s attention will be fixed on Nigeria. To a majority of Nigerians, religious terrorism has a long history.”
Indeed, earlier this year in May, The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) added six new countries to its list of nations responsible for committing violations of religious freedom. Nigeria featured in that list, alongside, Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Korea, China, Iran and Iraq.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
We do know a couple of things. Dad, back in Nigeria, ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad. He was in daily contact with them. They run everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism. Though Islamic, Muttalab was a close associate of Israel. He has been misrepresented. His “banking” is a cover. Next, what do we know about the two Al Qaeda leaders Bush had released, the ones who planned this?
According to ABC news, the Al Qaeda leaders running the insurgency in Yemen were released from Guantanamo, although two of the highest ranking known terrorist there, without trial.
Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody.
Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary.
With all the hoopla about trials in New York, not a word is said when top level terrorists are released to Saudi friends of the Bush family who let them go. We are now fighting these two Bush friends in Yemen. They are running a major insurgency there. We have been using Cruise missiles and our jets to attack their bases in the last weeks.
En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. — Gil de Biedma
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Dec 30th, 2009 at 03:52:02 PM PDT
h/t to Migeru @Eurotrib
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."