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2007-09-08 Europe

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Posted by Steve White 2007-09-08 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ] Top

#1 Helloooo! This is probably thanks to the Patriot Act . . . . Any Dhimmis out there paying attention and want to give this one back to the terrorists? How 'bout in the future then?

Posted by gorb 2007-09-08 05:04|| 2007-09-08 05:04|| Front Page Top

#2 Either I did something wrong, or Besoeker's link is for military people only. Fair enough, there are plenty of things I don't actually need to know, despite being afflicted with 'satiable curiosity, like the Elephant Child.

Still, I'm awfully glad we were able to help.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-09-08 05:06|| 2007-09-08 05:06|| Front Page Top

#3 Besoeker's link was to a DOD-only site. But the info behind the site is from a public source (LA Times) so I'll post some of it here.

The communications detected last year referred to apparent terrorist activity, the German and U.S. officials said in interviews. The German officials characterized the communications as specific and alarming.

American authorities passed the lead to German police, who conducted a painstaking investigation that led to the arrests of the three suspects. Police here suspected that militants were communicating with Pakistan from an Internet cafe, a frequent strategy to avoid detection, but they did not know which one. So they deployed surveillance teams at several dozen Internet cafes around the city, officials said.

The stakeouts paid off when police spotted a 28-year-old convert who was already known as an associate of Islamic militants and has been identified as Fritz Gelowicz.

Arrested this week with the two other suspects, Gelowicz was described Thursday by anti-terrorism officials as the lead figure in a group that learned bomb-making at an Al Qaeda-linked training camp in Pakistan last year. The third man jailed is a Turk who has been living in Germany.

On Thursday, police pressed their investigation of at least seven other suspects, including several who are believed to have left the country.

About 300 investigators worked round-the-clock for nine months to monitor the alleged plotters. Using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment of their own, the Germans watched and listened as the suspected cell coalesced and amassed a stash of bomb-making materials.

German authorities said they had focused on Gelowicz after he was briefly detained in January on suspicion of scouting a U.S. military barracks. But in reality, Gelowicz and his associates already had been identified as an urgent threat, thanks to the American intercepts last year, according to officials in Germany and the U.S.

"The U.S. counter-terrorism community supported efforts to draw links, to do intercepts and to monitor communications between Pakistan and Germany," a U.S. counter-terrorism official said.

The counter-terrorism official described the initial intercepts as "a key factor" that "helped build the case."

"It led to a very long period of surveillance, and the arrests." The official said the intercepts continued throughout the investigation.

This year, U.S. intelligence agents intercepted a key communication in which militant handlers in Pakistan asked for an update on the plot and pushed the suspects to move faster, German officials said.

At the start of the investigation, American intelligence also helped German police focus on the second convert, Daniel Schneider, a German official said.

U.S. intercepts detected the 22-year-old convert's e-mail communications with Pakistan and guided German police to him through a wireless signal he was pirating, officials said.

The suspects were simultaneously stealthy, brazen and reckless, officials said. The three evidently became aware of the constant surveillance and tried to thwart it, changing trains and dodging tails.

But when police this year confronted Schneider, and warned him that they knew what he was up to, he brushed them off, a German anti-terrorism official said. The trio plunged zealously ahead, the official said, apparently eager to die.

The three were unemployed; the two German natives collected welfare. Authorities said the trio claimed allegiance to the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbek group that in 2002 broke off from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an Al Qaeda ally. The IJU ran the Pakistani camp where they trained and oversaw their alleged mission, officials said.

Unlike cases such as the London transportation bombings of 2005, in which the bombers communicated frequently with masterminds in Pakistan during the final weeks, the cell here was largely "self-contained and self-directed," the law enforcement official said. "They seemed to be running their own show."

(other) suspects include a Lebanese man who arrived in Germany on Monday after being deported from Pakistan, where he allegedly was en route to a terrorist training camp, officials said. The suspect was released after questioning this week but remained under investigation. Another man at large is Zafer S. a Turk believed to be in Turkey or Iraq.

Even if the missing suspects are arrested, prosecuting them might be difficult. It is not a crime in Germany to attend a foreign terrorist training camp.

Also troubling to officials was the presence of several suspects from Germany's vast Turkish community. In the past, Germans of Turkish origin have been far less likely to turn up in Islamic extremist networks than Pakistani Britons or young North Africans in France and its neighbors to the south.

Posted by lotp 2007-09-08 06:37|| 2007-09-08 06:37|| Front Page Top

#4 My apologies, it was early. But then again, it was late somewhere..... Anyway, my bad.

Posted by Besoeker 2007-09-08 07:37|| 2007-09-08 07:37|| Front Page Top

#5 Even if the missing suspects are arrested, prosecuting them might be difficult. It is not a crime in Germany to attend a foreign terrorist training camp.

For whatever reason, I trust the Germans to come up with something to hammer these fools. Even if they have to make up on the spot.

Posted by Free Radical">Free Radical 2007-09-08 09:08|| 2007-09-08 09:08|| Front Page Top

#6 Inshallah.

Posted by lotp 2007-09-08 09:08|| 2007-09-08 09:08|| Front Page Top

#7 Big hat tip and thanks to the men and women of the BKA and the "Border Guards" of GSG-9. A nine-month 24/7 surveillance is a huge op. I'm sure the GSG-9 were on a constant stand-by in case things went noisy. With close coordination, patience, and discipline we will beat these a$*holes.

Posted by Bangkok Billy 2007-09-08 09:32|| 2007-09-08 09:32|| Front Page Top

#8 I hope that my kraut relatives can stomp these vermin.

If it wasn't for the results I wish that an attack like this could take place so all of this "alleged" sh** could be done away with.

Maybe the solution would be to have the plot go completely through but the bombs go off like a wet fire-cracker.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2007-09-08 10:45|| 2007-09-08 10:45|| Front Page Top

#9 Besoeker, no apology needed. There are many things y'all need to know that we don't... and loose lips still sink ships. I'm comforted beyond words to know there is a deep, dark ocean of information in which the sea-sheepdogs swim while I float happily above in my little barquw, confident that the sharks are being kept at bay, and the giant squid at the bottom are being hunted by the killer whales.

/end seriously overstrained but heartfelt metaphor.

Thank you, lotp. Seriously good investigative work by all involved.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-09-08 11:32|| 2007-09-08 11:32|| Front Page Top

#10 Hooray for strong international cooperation. I could only wish that there was a similar concensus about taking the fight to Islam's home turf.

About 300 investigators worked round-the-clock for nine months to monitor the alleged plotters.

A simple question: Some 300 investigators works out to 100 security personnel per arresttee. How many million dollars were spent nailing this one cell? In case anyone didn't notice, this is not very cost-effective. Curriously enough, this number is also reflected around the world in how there are several hundred international security personnel for each terrorist. Again, not very cost efficient.

The several million dollars spent on this one operation would also have financed manyif not allof the critical two dozen hits against Islam's clerical, scholastic and financial aristocracy. Terrorism cannot be fought with a one-investigation-at-a-time method or a one-bullet-at-a-time strategy. We are in an ideological war and it is the programmers that must be brought down.

Wretchard's observations about Palestinian terrorists applies to Islam as a whole:

The Israeli strike against the terrorist top tier exploits the weakness inherent in terrorist organizations which are unstable alliances based on a delicate balance of internal intimidation. None of them, the Palestinian Authority included, are either transparent or accountable. They are exceptionally vulnerable to changes in their leadership. They can stand the loss of any number of teenage fighters or youthful suicide bombers without much damage but are rocked -- as Yassin's death illustrates -- by death at the top.

We are wasting time and squandering precious breathing room by not going after Islam's elite. They have an unlimited supply of easily programmed mass murdering cannon-fodder to point at us. In our daintiness, we have sent Emily Post to negotiate instead of Korbin Dallas.

How many more atrocities will it take before Islam, not "Islamism", "Islamofascism", not "radical Islam" or "fundamentalist Islam", but ISLAM is finally recognized as the problem? Disregarding the precious human lives being lost to Islam every single day, how much more treasure are we going to fritter away in our futile attempt to delicately separate the hopelessly conjoined twins of Islam and terrorism? There is nothing worth preserving about Islam. It is a drag upon this world and the source of more human suffering than all other creeds combinedeven exceeding that of communismwhich is no easy feat.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-09-08 11:45|| 2007-09-08 11:45|| Front Page Top

#11 It was a pretty good investment, Zenster. As a result, more Germans realize that they, too, are at war -- things are being said publicly that would have been unthinkable a few days before the story broke -- and we've got a hook into the Pakistani end, phone and email. You know far better than I what fun the merry pranksters at the alphabet agencies can have with that! It's visible movement on one of the three critical fronts, one whose apparent neglect Rantburg had been very concerned about. This strikes me as possibly a pretty big pebble tossed in the pond of the ISI/Pakistan's ambitions, and by implication the jihadi war effort overall.

Or I could have read too many spy novels. Y'all feel free to bring me back to reality.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-09-08 20:34|| 2007-09-08 20:34|| Front Page Top

#12 It was a pretty good investment, Zenster.

I'll not argue the results, tw. Your other points remain salient, as well. It's just that intercepting this plot does not carry us forward with sufficient impetus. Yes, we have developed better leads in Pakistan butso long as the madrassas continue to churn out jihadisthe central problem still remains.

Pacifying Islam requires a top-down approach. As noted by Wretchard and myself, the virtually limitless supply of cannon-fodder insulates Islam's aristocracy from the consequences of its acts. This must change.

Afghanistan and Iraq are sterling examples of what to expect from a bottom-up approach. Endless lives and treasure expended with little to show for it. Do not think I am ungrateful for what has been accomplished. Yet, little has been done to give Islam sincere pause in its headlong assault against the West.

The high context nature of Muslim cultures literally demands that we summarily execute Islam's clerical, academic and financial elite. We do not break the mafia and la cosa nostra by bagging runners and hit men. You do it by taking down the dons and cappos.

We have yet to do much in the way of this against Islam up until now. Hambali, Zarqawi and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed represent some of our biggest coups even while bin Laden and mullah Omar remain alive. It was galling in the extreme to place Osama's name back atop my hit-list of top terrorist operatives.

A top-down approach is the only hope for avoiding a Muslim holocaust. All else is folly.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-09-08 21:05|| 2007-09-08 21:05|| Front Page Top

#13 I'm not sure we disagree, Zenster. But in a high context society, it sure helps to start tracing those connections. We know where President General Dr. Musharref is, but he's dancing on the edge of the volcano, not controlling it. In Pakistan we need to get to the ISI bosses, which has always directed and supplied the end product of the madrassas. Without the ISI, which are effectively Pakistan's military, and thus effectively the true rulers of Pakistan, the clerics can only scream into unplugged microphones, it seems to me.

Separately, Hot Air has a link to the Osama bin Laden video. Mr. bin Laden does not appear to be doing well. Enjoy! link

Posted by trailing wife 2007-09-08 21:40|| 2007-09-08 21:40|| Front Page Top

#14 I'm not sure we disagree, Zenster.

Thank goodness, neither am I, trailing wife. Warmest personal regards upon your birthday.

PS: If any dare ask which birthday it is, merely reply, "The present one."

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-09-08 21:47|| 2007-09-08 21:47|| Front Page Top

#15 Thank you, Zenster. You are ever gallant. The present one is my 46th, if I didn't switch signs somewhere in the equation. Thus far all have been filled with fascinating people and places and things to learn. I'm looking forward to discover what the next sixty or seventy birthdays bring to me, fully expecting that you and the rest of the wonderful, clever people at Rantburg will continue to have a disproportionate share. Thank you all so much!

Posted by trailing wife 2007-09-08 22:02|| 2007-09-08 22:02|| Front Page Top

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