IRNA
A 14-member delegation of Pakistani officials and ulema will proceed to Afghanistan on Friday for talks with Taliban leaders to urge them to address to the world community's concern about terrorism, officials said. Afghan sources have also confirmed that a delegation will be leaving for Kandahar to meet Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. The sources did not offer any comment about the composition of the delegation. Taliban envoy to Pakistan Mulla Abdul Salam Zaeef will accompany the team. Amir Jamaat-e-IslamiQazi Hussain Ahmed, Chiefs of both factions of JUI, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maulana Samiul Haq and Chief of Jamiat ulema-e-PakistanShah Ahmed Noorani met with senior Pakistani officials in Islamabad and discussed with them the current situation, official and parties' sources said.
This article starring:
MAULANA FAZLUR REHMAN
JUI
MAULANA SAMIUL HAQ
JUI
MULLA ABDUL SALAM ZAIF
Taliban
QAZI HUSEIN AHMED
Jamaat-e-Islami
SHAH AHMED NURANI
Jamiat ulema-e-Pakistan
Jamaat-e-Islami
Jamiat ulema-e-Pakistan
JUI
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:28 pm ||
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Michael Dobbs Washington Post
The ideologist. Born to a wealthy Egyptian family in 1951, Ayman Zawahiri is four years older than bin Laden. The two men appear to have met for the first time in the late 1980s in Peshawar, the Pakistani city that served as one of the bases for mujaheddin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Like bin Laden, Zawahiri was a disciple of a Palestinian scholar-guerrilla organizer, Abdullah Azzam, who recruited thousands of Arab volunteers to fight in Afghanistan. Zawahiri worked as a doctor in the rest house and hospital that Azzam set up in Peshawar for Afghan mujaheddin. (Azzam was killed in a 1989 car bombing in Peshawar that continues to be shrouded in mystery.)
While the bespectacled Zawahiri has little of bin Laden's charisma, and prefers to avoid the limelight, many former associates see him as the brains behind al Qaeda. "He has been in the struggle longer than bin Laden, and he is more familiar with the techniques of urban warfare, which is his speciality," said Muhammad Massari, a Saudi dissident in London. "His knowledge of Islamic law is also greater than bin Laden's."
Zawahiri's influence over bin Laden can be seen in the 1998 declaration of jihad on "Jews and crusaders," which the two men signed jointly. Before 1998, bin Laden focused primarily on expelling U.S. forces from his native Saudi Arabia, the site of Islam's holiest places. After 1998, he broadened his agenda to include denunciations of the U.S. alliance with Israel and its "aggression" against Iraq.
This article starring:
AIMAN ZAWAHIRI
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:40 pm ||
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Michael Dobbs Washington Post
The operations chief. Born in Saudi Arabia in 1973, Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn) represents the new generation of terrorism organizers around bin Laden. Some time after the East African embassy bombings, he appears to have replaced Atef as the primary contact for recruits and as the organizer of overseas operations. A detailed description of Abu Zubaydah's role was provided by Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian convicted of attempting to carry out a terrorist attack in Los Angeles to coincide with the millennium celebrations in December 1999. In court testimony in a case related to the millennium plot in July, Ressam described Abu Zubaydah as "the person in charge" of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. "He receives young men from all countries. He accepts you or rejects you," he said.
After Ressam graduated from the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan at the end of 1998, he checked in again with Abu Zubaydah en route to Canada. Ressam testified that Abu Zubaydah asked him to acquire Canadian passports for other terrorists to enable them "to carry out operations in the U.S."
A Jordanian military court last year sentenced Abu Zubaydah in absentia to death for allegedly coordinating a plot to attack tourist sites in Jordan around the time of the millennium celebrations. According to U.S. and Jordanian officials, his contacts in Jordan included Khalil Deek, a naturalized U.S. citizen who allegedly was one of the organizers of the millennium plot.
This article starring:
ABU ZUBAIDAH
al-Qaeda
AHMED RESAM
al-Qaeda
KHALIL DIK
al-Qaeda
ZAIN AL ABIDIN MUHAMAD HUSEIN
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:41 pm ||
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Michael Dobbs Washington Post
The military commander. Born in Egypt about 1944, Mohammad Atef is a former Zawahiri aide who has worked closely with bin Laden for more than a decade. According to U.S. prosecutors investigating the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Atef sits on al Qaeda's military committee and had "primary responsibility" for supervising the training of new al Qaeda members at camps in Afghanistan. The United States has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.
The indictment in the embassy bombings charged that Atef encouraged attacks on U.S. troops in Somalia in October 1993, as a result of which 18 U.S. Rangers were killed while hunting for Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed and trying to apprehend some of his aides. At the time, both Atef and bin Laden were based in neighboring Sudan. According to the indictment, Atef traveled to Somalia several times in 1992 and 1993 to provide "military training and assistance to Somali tribes opposed to the United Nations intervention in Somalia."
Evidence presented during the embassy bombings trial also showed that Atef kept in touch by satellite phone with the conspirators preparing to strike the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. He was in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and held meetings with the conspirators in Peshawar, serving as an intermediary between them and bin Laden, according to the indictment.
In addition to acting as al Qaeda's military commander, Atef was bin Laden's media adviser, according to Western journalists who have had dealings with him. Peter Bergen, a producer for CNN who met with bin Laden in Afghanistan, said he exchanged faxes and phone calls with Atef after the United States fired cruise missiles at a suspected al Qaeda training camp in August 1998 in retaliation for the embassy bombings.
Like his chief, Atef is publicly contemptuous of U.S. leaders and American military power. "They are only human beings whose power has been exaggerated because of their huge media and the control they exert over the world's media," he told an Arab journalist in 1999.
This article starring:
MOHAMAD ATEF
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:39 pm ||
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Michael Dobbs Washington Post
The FBI is looking at the role played by another bin Laden lieutenant, Shaykh Saiid, one of 13 alleged al Qaeda sympathizers whose assets were frozen by the U.S. government this week. According to an informed source, the FBI believes that Saiid may have been the paymaster of the operation, funneling money and passports to the hijackers.
This article starring:
SHEIKH SAIID
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:43 pm ||
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Associated Press
Afghan authorities have delivered a message to Osama bin Laden advising him of a decision by the country's clerics recommending that he leave Afghanistan voluntarily, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said Thursday. The recommendation was made Sept. 20 by a council of clerics, or the Ulema, during a meeting in the Afghan capital Kabul. Later, however, the ruling Taliban said they could not find bin Laden to inform him of the decision. "Osama has now received the Ulema council's recommendations and their endorsement" by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef said. "We have not lost Osama, but he is out of sight of the people." Zaeef did not say how the message was conveyed nor where bin Laden was hiding. He also did not indicate bin Laden's reaction to the message.
This article starring:
ABDUL SALAM ZAIF
Taliban
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:44 pm ||
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TNR Idiocy Watch
"We've been treated to some astonishingly vile images over the last two weeks: Office workers hurling themselves into a 100-floor-high abyss. A gaping, smoldering hole in the financial center of our greatest city. George W. Bush passing himself off as a patriot, even as he disassembles the Constitution with the voracious glee of piranha skeletonizing a cow. ... It may have seemed meaningless at the time, but now we know why 7,000 people sacrificed their lives: So that we'd all forget how Bush stole a presidential election."--Cartoonist Ted Rall, Philadelphia City Paper, September 27
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:29 pm ||
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TNR Idiocy Watch
"Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here?"--Barbara Kingsolver, novelist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 27.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:29 pm ||
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John Strausbaugh NY Press
Like all great historical eventsthe crossing of the Delaware, the first men on the moon, the death of Elvis the destruction of the World Trade Center instantly began to spawn urban legends, the spread of which is now, of course, eased by the Internet. And on the Internet theres already a site devoted to collecting and disseminating these legends: NYCstories.com. The site is compiling WTC folklore and apocrypha thats being disseminated by e-mail, word of mouth or other means. Its small now, but its got the potential to grow into a great bin of all the preposterous tales people tend to spread at times like these.
Here youll find the story of the office worker who surfed the roof of one collapsing tower all the way to the ground, suffering only broken legs. The fireman whose dead dad, a former WTC worker, appeared to him and helped him lead 30 people to safety. The one about how New Jersey (alternately Brooklyn) public schools had to close because all the Muslim students were out in the streets celebrating. The inevitable photo, captured from CNN footage, of a devil face in the smoke pouring out of one of the towers. And various other Photoshopped jokes that have begun making the rounds, from the bin Laden-with-giant-spliff Because I Got High one to the grimly hilarious one of the doofus having his picture taken on the WTC roof deck as an airliner homes in on the building a few stories below him.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:30 pm ||
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Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D. Minaret of Freedom Institute Islam On-Line
Even if bin Laden was not behind the September carnage, a declaration of war against him is logical. After all, he declared war on the United States in February of 1998. His signature appears on a fax sent to the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi of a directive that specified "crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims" and on the basis that struggle "is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries" that therefore "to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim" (Bin Laden, et al. 1998). If someone knows that bin Laden has repudiated this fax, they should produce the evidence now, otherwise it is a top priority for American Muslims to denounce it, and him.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:30 pm ||
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By KATHERINE ROTH, Associated Press Writer
Hundreds of people, some sobbing, filtered into a building on a Hudson River pier Wednesday, many to begin the heartbreaking process of applying for death certificates for loved ones still missing in the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center. "I'm still hopeful that somehow my wonderful wife will be found alive, but for the sake of our children I have to somehow sort through this,'' said George Santiago, 37, of Brooklyn, his eyes brimming with tears.
More than 6,300 people are missing in the crumbled towers. Only about 300 people have been confirmed dead, and officials have said that it could take months to remove and identify the victims of the fiery disaster, and that some may never be found at all. Typically, it can take three years to get a death certificate without a body, a waiting period used to prevent fraud. But the city is streamlining the process - and reducing the wait to a few days in most cases - so that victims' families can get death benefits and access to bank accounts.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:48 pm ||
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FoxNews.com
The Bush bandwagon is getting crowded with celebrities who don't usually want a ride. Democrat-dense Hollywood doesn't typically offer praise to Republicans of any stripe, but Bush's speech before Congress and his leadership since the events of Sept. 11 have some stars reconsidering the president. Barbra Streisand, who is an outspoken critic of the nation's leader and often posts her political views online, has removed anti-Bush sentiments from her Web site.
It's a dramatic step for a celebrity who earlier this year fired off a letter to Democrats which throttled Bush, saying he "stole the election through family ties, arrogance and intimidation," and called him a "destructive man."
"In light of recent events, I strongly believe we must support our government despite our disagreements on certain policies, such as those relating to environmental, educational, social and other specific issues," Streisand wrote on her site.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/27/2001 06:49 pm ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
