Category Archives: Terrorism

Who cannot be thankful and relieved when they hear this kind of news?

The Guardian identifies the terrorists:

The lynchpin of the group was Mohammed Chowdhury, a 21-year-old from east London, who pleaded guilty at Woolwich crown court on Wednesday to preparing to commit an act of terrorism.

He and eight other young men from London, Cardiff and Stoke on Trent were due to face trial this week, but in a last-minute change of plea they admitted the terror plot, but denied the intention was to cause death or injury.

Undercover detectives had followed Chowdhury and his right-hand man, Shah Rahman, observing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament on 28 November 2010, during a massive surveillance operation which eventually led to the arrest of the terror gang.

There should be no ambiguity about their intentions and how they have been radicalised. Anwar al-Awlaki and Inspire magazine are all namechecked:

Uncovered in the Wall Street Journal. Moazzam Begg was a Department of Defence source and grassed his mate Shaker Aamer:

In a U.S. Department of Defense memorandum released by WikiLeaks, I have uncovered another, especially devastating source who spoke out against Mr. Aamer in Guantanamo. “UK558″ described Mr. Aamer as a “recruiter” for al Qaeda. He outlined how Mr. Aamer and he traveled to meet members of a European al Qaeda cell in 2000, and how Mr. Aamer fought in Bosnia under the leadership of Abu Zubayr al-Haili, a senior al-Qaeda figure. “UK558″ talked of the training in AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades Mr. Aamer received.

Babar Ahmed should not be extradited to the USA. He should be tried here in the UK. Hannah Stuart reads him the Terrorism Act:

Regular readers of HJS will know it’s not often I find myself in agreement with either the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), the umbrella group for Islamic societies that in the words of the Prevent strategy, “has not always fully challenged terrorist and extremist ideology within the higher and further education sectors”; or even CagePrisoners, former Guantanamo inmate Moazzam Begg’s advocacy group with a history of supporting radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki killed in a US-drone strike in September.

But this morning I found myself becoming the 120,748th person to sign an e-petition calling for Babar Ahmad, currently fighting extradition to the US on terrorism offences, to be tried in the UK, a campaign which both groups strenuously support. Ahmad, who’s been held in maximum security prisons for seven years without trial, is waiting for a final ruling on his case from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

A number of commentators have come out decrying USA’s killing of Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial.

Glenn Greenwald:

What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.

Greg Scoblete:

Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen. Reports have now been corroborated by the BBC.

When he was imam of a San Diego mosque in the 1990s, his sermons were attended by two future 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

In a video posted in November last year he called for the killing of Americans, saying they were from the “party of devils”.

Kool and the Gang are overjoyed:

Ordinary people (and potential victims of al-Qaeda terrorism) express their relief all over the world:

“The victory belongs to those peasants. Not to us.”