Allah at Hot Air links to a Brian Ross piece at ABC's The Blotter with a most likely name for the high ranking al Qaeda terrorist ring-leader picked up in Pakistan.
There were several arrests also made in Pakistan today in connection with the case, but the suspected ringleader remains at large. Pakistani officials say this 29-year old al Qaeda commander, Matiur Rehman, was known to be planning a terror spectacular to mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/ll attacks. The London plot may well have been it.
I did a little research on this because it intersects with the IIS agents notebook Sammi translated for our Fox News column, The Saddam Dossier.
The South Asia Terrorism Portal mentions Matiur Rehman in connection with Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI):
was established in 1992, reportedly with assistance from Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front. On April 30, 1992, several of the HuJI leaders addressed a press conference at the Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka and demanded that Bangladesh be converted into an Islamic State.
The HuJI’s Pakistani link was further established with the recovery of a diary from Hannan’s brother Matiur Rehman, who was also arrested in connection with the assassination plot. Entries in the diary revealed that he was in touch with Pakistan’s diplomatic mission in Bangladesh.
HujI is a well known paki militant/terrorist group.
Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI) - Torrorism Knowledge Base
Founding Philosophy: Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI) is an Islamic extremist group, which follows the Sunni school of Deobandi. Founded in 1980, the group has shifted the focus of its attacks over the past twenty years. Initially formed in 1980 in Afghanistan, HUJI and fellow mujahidin battled Soviet forces during the Soviet-Afghan war. The Soviet Union eventually withdrew its forces in 1989. While HUJI remains dedicated to Islamic goals, it has shifted its focus from Afghanistan to the region of Jammu and Kashmir.
HUJI is dedicated to the separation of the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir from India. The Jammu and Kashmir region, in its entirety, would then be annexed by Pakistan. If this were to happen, Jammu and Kashmir would be governed by an Islamic state, namely Pakistan.
Current Goals: Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami primarily targets Indian military forces located in Jammu and Kashmir. The group ceased it training operations in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s fall in 2001. HUJI is comprised of Pakistanis and foreign Islamists.
Noted terrorism journalist B. Rahman ( I have forgotten his first name) has a brief history of HUJI.
ARREST OF HUJI LEADER
by B.Raman
The Pakistani media has reported that Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Amir of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), was picked up by the Dubai authorities on August 6, 2004, and handed over to the Pakistani authorities, who had him flown to Pakistan the next day. He is presently under interrogation by the Pakistani authorities.
2. The HUJI and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) came into existence during the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet troops. They subsequently merged to form the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). After the kidnapping of a group of American and other Western tourists in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) by the HUA under the name Al Faran in 1995, the US State Department designated the HUA as a foreign terrorist organisation in October,1997.
3. Following this, the HUA split and the HUM and the HUJI started functioning once again as independent organisations under their pre-merger names. The HUM became a founding-member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People in February,1998. The HUJI joined it subsequently. The two are also members of the so-called 313 Brigade of the IIF, which has come into existence recently. The other members of the Brigade are the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the HUM (Al-Alami), the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JUM), the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the Jundullah (the Army of Allah), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and an unidentified group from the Xinjiang province of China.
4. The HUJI has an active branch in Bangladesh, which is identified by the US State Department as HUJI (B). Previously, jihadi recruits from South-East Asia used to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan for training in the training camps located there. Since last year, there have been reports that the HUJI (B) has been entrusted by the IIF with the responsibility for the training of the jihadi recruits from S.E.Asia in training camps in Bangladesh territory. The HUJI of Pakistan also helped the surviving dregs from about 200 jihadis from S.E.Asia, who were helping the Taliban in its fight against the Northern Alliance pre 9/11, to escape to Bangladesh by ship after the US started its military operations in Afghanistan in October,2001.
5. The HUJI had played an active role in the training of jihadi terrorist elements of the Caucasus region of Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in cladestine camps set up in their respective territory. Its volunteers have also gone to Iraq to participate in the jihad against the US troops there.
6. Of all the jihadi terrorist organisations of Pakistan, the HUJI and the Hizbut Tehrir have considerable following in the lower and middle ranks of the Armed Forces. In 1995, Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), had discovered a plot hatched by a small group of Army officers led by Maj-Gen.Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi, who was the head of the station of the Inter-Services Intelligence in the Pakistani High Commision in New Delhi in the late 1980s, to stage an uprising, have Gen.Abdul Waheed and Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, assassinated, seize power and proclaim the formation of an Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan.
7. The HUJI was also found to have been involved in the plot. The implicated officers were all members of the HUJI. The officers and Qari Saifullah Akhtar were arrested. Strangely, while the officers were court-martialled and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the Qari was released from detention and not proceeded against.
8. After seizing power on October 12,1999, Musharraf had Abbasi, a close friend of his, released. Since then, Abbasi had been quite active in various Islamist causes.
9. Next to the late Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of the Binori Madrasa and Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI), Qari Saifullah Akhtar was considered the closest to Mullah Muhammed Omar, the Amir of the Taliban. According to sections of the Pakistani media, he was equally close to bin Laden.
10. When the US started its military action in Afghanistan in October, 2001, the jihadi terrorists of the HUM and the HUJI suffered the largest number of fatal casualties. The surviving dregs including the Qari and Fazlur Rahman Khalil of the HUM, one of the signatories of bin Laden's first fatwa against the USA and Israel, escaped into Pakistan. The Qari escaped from there to Saudi Arabia. After some time, he shifted to Dubai. The Pakistani media has reported that the Pakistani authorities have also arrested Fazlur Rahman Khalil at Islamabad.
11. It is learnt that the Pakistani authorities came to know of his presence in Dubai during the interrogation of some members of the Jundullah, who have been taken into custody following the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Corps Commander of Karachi in June,2004. Acting on the information received from the Pakistani authorities, the Dubai authorities located him and picked him up.
12. Surprisingly, Musharraf never banned the HUJI and never acted against its office-bearers and cadres. After the two attempts to kill him in December last, the Pakistani authorities suspected that the conspiracy to kill Musharraf had been hatched by the Jaish-e-Muhammed (JUM) with the complicity of some junior officers of the Army and the Air Force. The investigations reportedly did not prove the involvement of the JEM. Instead, it reportedly pointed the needle of suspicion at the HUJI and the Qari.
13. Maulana Abdul Jabbar, chief of the banned militant organisation Khudam-ul-Furqan, a splinter group of the JEM, who was arrested during the investigation, is reported to have been released last week and placed under house arrest.Intriguingly, even while moving for the arrest of the Qari, the Pakistani authorities are reported to have released Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, chief of the HUJI branch in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, whom they had taken into custody sometime ago.
14. The arrest of the Qari is quite significant. If the Pakistani authorities interrogate him properly, he could throw much light on the post-9/11 activities of Al Qaeda and the Amir of the Taliban. It is quite likely that he will know about the present location of the Taliban Amir.Since the Qari had been living in Dubai, it is likely that Mullah Omar may also be living there.
And Global Security has a very brief passage about HUJI
HUJI, a Sunni extremist group that follows the Deobandi tradition of Islam, was founded in 1980 in Afghanistan to fight in the jihad against the Soviets. It is also affiliated with the Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam Fazlur Rehman faction (JUI-F) and the Deobandi school of Sunni Islam. The group, led by chief commander Amin Rabbani, is made up primarily of Pakistanis and foreign Islamists who are fighting for the liberation of Kashmir and its accession to Pakistan.
Harakat ul-Jihad-I-Islami has conducted a number of operations against Indian military targets in Kashmir. Linked to the Kashmiri militant group al-Faran that kidnapped five Western tourists in Kashmir in July 1995; one was killed in August 1995 and the other four reportedly were killed in December of the same year.
Exact numbers are unknown, but there may be several hundred members in Kashmir.
Pakistan and Kashmir are the areas of operation. Trained members in Afghanistan until fall of 2001.
What ties this all together is this piece from http://www.freeindiamedia.com/. Now it is a given that there is a paradox with india media about pakistan. There is a danger of propaganda, yet they also have the best sources into Pakistan. Reading this article looks to me like a scholarly work and matches with what else I know about the subject.
6. The MMA consists of the Jammat-e-Islami (JEI) of Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the Jamiat Ulema Islam of Maulana Samiul Haq, the Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP) of Shah Ahmed Noorani, the Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadith of Sajid Mir and the Tehrik Islami of Sajid Naqvi. Of these, the JEI, the JUI (F) and the JUI (S) are the most important from the point of view of the rest of the world.
10. The JUI (F) is the orchestrator of the activities of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jehad Al Islami (HUJI) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). Of these, the HUM and the HUJI are active in Chechnya in Russia, J&K in India, in Bangladesh, the Arakan area of Myanmar and the southern Phillipines. They have been training in the madrasas under their control in Pakistan recruits from not only Myanmar and the Philippines, but also from Southern Thailand. The JEM is presently active only in J&K.
So let's put the pieces together. The MMA is a political party of which the Maulana Fazlur Rahman is a high official. He brings to the MMA the political/militant group JUI. The JUI has two factions, which are strongly connected. The JUI commands the HUM and the HUJI which carries out terrorist attacks. In other words, it is the military wing of the militant organization, or in effect, the army.
If you read the IIS agent notebook, you know Saddam was playing footsies with the Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a known al Qaeda terrorist. In other words, he was supporting the JUI which provided support to HUJI and would have lead to support for this most recent terrorist attempt if Saddam was still in power. So this is a premier example of why the Saddam regime was part of the war on terror. If they still had Saddam's support, and there is probably a case to be made that the explosive making expertise originally came from Iraq (apparently it was RDX which is mentioned in Iraqi commando training memos) it might have been a little easier for them to pull it off.
Also of note, ABC did a piece in early March about Matiur rising to power as a new threat. It is possible he did this by "overthrowing" Fazlur Rahman Khalil who was beaten into a coma in late March in what observers consider an inside job. It appears Matiur may have executed a hostile take-over of the JUI by removing the HUM leader Fazlur Rahman Khalil who woud be the titular head since the Maulana was running things for the MMA.
Update: essential reading about HUJI activities
Three years and nine months later, on October 12, 2005, a suicide bomber walked into the Special Task Force (STF) office of the Hyderabad Police and detonated a pressure-activated bomb carried in a backpack. It was the eve of the Hindu Dussehra festival, and the office was almost empty. Consequently, just one home guard on duty was killed along with the suicide bomber and a second policeman was seriously injured. It was the first time that a suicide bomb attack had been carried out in the City. Investigations pointed to a joint operation by cadres of the JeM, HuJI and LeT.
The liquid explosive used in the Hyderabad suicide attack had been smuggled in by HuJI-B militants from Dhaka, while other parts, such as insulation wires, a voltmeter, a 9-volt battery and other articles, which were required to assemble the bomb, were bought from local markets in Hyderabad. The entire operation had, in fact, been finalised in the Dhaka head office of the outfit, where militants from Hyderabad were involved in providing logistical support to the core strike team, which included a Pakistan-trained Bangladeshi fidayeen (suicide cadre) Mohtasin Billa. Subsequently, Nafiq-ul-Bishwas (who was arrested, thereafter, in November 2005 in Malda), Sharif, Mohtasin Billa and Abdul Kalim aka Arshad Khan, carrying a five-litre jerry can containing explosives, crossed over to India through the West Bengal border and reached Howrah. They boarded the Hyderabad-bound East Coast Express, but the journey was discontinued at Kakiwada as the jerry can started leaking, giving off a pungent smell. The terrorists then undertook a bus journey from Kakiwada to Vijayawada and a separate bus trip to Hyderabad. They stayed at the house of Aslam, Abdul Kalim's brother. The explosive was assembled by improvised explosive device expert, Mohtasin, who later executed the suicide attack. Arshad and Sharif escaped to Bangladesh.
Two and half month's later, on December 27, 2005, three HuJI-B militants involved in the Hyderabad attack were arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi police. Interrogations confirmed all that Ibrahim had narrated four months earlier. All of them had been trained in an ISI-run camp in Balochistan.
HUJI members with liquid explosives, starting to sound like an MO? Trainied by the ISI. Balochistan is an ethnic region that spans Pakistan and Iran. The ISI is Pakistan's schizophrenic intelligence agency.
The masterminds of both the 93 WTC and 9/11 attacks where a "family" of Balochs from this region. Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed were both from Balochistan blood.
A Washington Post report on the 9/11 commission reads:
Mohammed's radicalism began early, when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age 16. Like his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who would go on to orchestrate the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Mohammed grew up in Kuwait but traces his lineage to Baluchistan, an area straddling the Iran-Pakistan border. As a teenager, he became "enamored of violent jihad at youth camps in the desert," the commission report says.
Now let's put this together, 1993 WTC bombing, 9/11, the new Sky Bombing plot, many other plots all connected to Islamic militant groups in Balochistan some of who were trainded by the Paki intel.
That is your true enemy folks. That is why Bush finally came out and said "Islamic Fascists". I believe there is more that will come out to expose these people as the true enemy.
Osama Bin Laden is the junior partner in this conspiracy. Which is exactly why President Bush said he didn't care about Bin Laden (still an ill advised statement). Because he understand the truth that the media will not expose because it is at odds with the Clintoneque picture of al Qaeda. They are nothing more than muscle for Paki intel which was in turn heavily connected to Iraqi intel.
The real enemy in the fight against Islamofascists is the Paki Islamic militants and their supporters in Paki intel now that the Iraqi Intelligence Service is history.
hot air has many trackbacks for this story
Nitin Pai in this post http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/?p=2054 on "The Indian National Interest" touches on the role played by pakistan as a training ground for terrorist organisations. The future threat will come from Bangladesh, as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency also known as ISI, has expanded into Bangladesh and increased the supply of material to terrorists from there. ISI is the main supplier of funds and arms to the terrorist groups.
Posted by: ken | Friday, August 11, 2006 at 08:31 PM