My latest over at FreeRad!cals, this one looking at a couple of convert stories which caught my eye. Khalid Kelly is the most fascinating, as I really wonder whether he is what he says he is, or whether this is bluster.

Crazy Convert Capers

Filed under: Europe, Radicalisation

Two stories surfaced over last weekend which I have only now gotten around to processing properly – first is the case of Jan Schneider, the latest convert linked to the infamous Sauerland group that has the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) on high alert, and second is the case of Khalid Kelly, former head of Al Muhajiroun in Ireland (or at least one of its more prominent activists) who has now surfaced in the Swat valley.

Both stories are amusing in their own way thanks to their predictability. Jan Schneider is merely the latest in a list of sons of Germany linked to the Sauerland group who have gotten Germany’s security services into a high state of tension. An earlier scare with Eric Brenniger turned embarrassing when he released a video of himself running around an Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) training camp, ridiculing BKA concerns. And just before the elections, Bekkay Harrach, a young German-Moroccan, released a series of threatening videos which seemed to suggest that AQ or the IJU had a terror attack planned in the weeks after the recent elections. Nothing, however, surfaced which might mean nothing, or might mean everything (there was an earlier discussion about this on Free Rad!cals). This time concerns are focused that Schneider may do something in Afghanistan, maybe follow in the footsteps of Cuneyt Ciftici, another member of the broader Sauerland group network nicknamed the ‘Bavarian Taliban’ who has the dubious honour of being Germany’s first known suicide bomber.

The Khalid Kelly case is instead amusing for the bluntness of his “coming out” interview in the Sunday Times. In it he states “I’m already on the path to jihad….next week, inshallah, I could be in Afghanistan fighting a British soldier,” and if he is unable to locate a British one, he will “settle” for an American. Charming as they may be, such comments are not entirely new for a chap who once said “Osama bin Laden is a good man,” and who wishes that he had “been on those tube trains” on July 7, 2005. One imagines not in a passenger role.

Kelly is a known quantity and has been active in Al Muhajiroun circles since he came back from Saudi Arabia a changed man in 2002. Initially migrating to Saudi as a nurse, he was incarcerated for bootlegging and while inside converted to Islam. Upon returning to the UK, he started attending Omar Bakri Mohammed’s lectures and became an activist with his group. Schneider appears to be a brighter sort of chap: German authorities claim he is one of the intellectual figures on the Islamist scene with others seeking him out for advice, making him a possible leader. A German born in Kazakhstan (during the war Stalin brutally relocated Germans living in the Soviet Union to Kazakhstan as a pre-emptive measure), he uses the name “Hamza” (powerful), has a young family and apparently studied in Saudi Arabia for a while.

Tactically both cases are interesting in that they suggest two known European support networks feeding fighters to Afghanistan remain active. The converts angle is also interesting, however, as it highlights the high proportion of converts who appear in radical groups. Most major plots in the UK have counted a convert amongst their ranks – something that was explained to me as the product of the fact that often a convert can have a catalytic radicalizing effect on a group. Any individual who chooses to convert is clearly already very zealous – and if they are attracted towards an extreme path, it stands to reason that this zeal will follow them down this road. This in turn might drive those around them to greater lengths to prove their piousness.

It is unclear how useful Kelly will prove to be in Swat – by his own admission he is out of shape, 42 years old and seems a little under-prepared with only five hours training on an M-16. Schneider may seem scarier, but at the same time, the German government’s regular shouting of wolf about individuals in this network appears not to have been answered with any attacks, something one suspects is probably beginning to dull public belief in them.

My latest on FreeRadicals, while I can now access this where I am, it still appears temperamental, so you may have to go to the actual post for the hyperlinked version: http://icsr.info/blog/Prevent-Problems. As ever, thoughts, comments and criticisms warmly welcomed.

Prevent Problems

Filed under: Radicalisation, UK

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the other major theme that appears to be on everyone’s minds in Britain’s Muslim communities is focused around the belief that the UK’s “Prevent” counter-terrorism strategy is in fact a vehicle for spying on Britain’s Muslim communities. This is not an entirely new concern – one can see earlier expressions of it amongst the almost complete lack of trust in the British government that can be found, in particular when considering the counter-terrorism strategy, amongst communities in the UK.

The recent spate of worries have been set off by a report released by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR), which looked in detail at the Prevent program (Prevent being the forward looking aspect of the 4 P’s of Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy which seeks to prevent people from choosing a path to terrorism). In particular, press attention was grabbed by the salacious details of how the government was using programs funded under Prevent to gather intelligence on communities. The scandal around this was spurred on when Ed Husain made some comments that proved a gift for the Guardian’s Vikram Dodd, giving him the eye-catching headline: “Spying morally right, says thinktank.”

Reports have long been bouncing about of the intelligence community pushing community workers in a variety of ways (one report from the Independent showed how Somali youth workers were being harassed into helping the Security Service), and I have heard first hand reports of tales of community workers being asked for intelligence information. Similarly, an official report by the Audit Commission & Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary (HMIC), entitled Preventing Violent Extremism: Learning and Development Exercise, done for the Home Office and Department for Communities and Local Government in October 2008, highlighted that “partnerships need to collect and process information from staff so that vulnerable individuals and communities can be identified.”

And more generally, have we all forgotten about the infamous “Operation Rich Picture” by which the security services sought to map out Britain’s Muslim communities and thereby understand them better? The point here is that I am surprised by how much of a splash this has made, though admittedly some of the more egregious cases should be highlighted and frowned upon. None of this is of course to excuse it, but I think the furor is masking a bigger picture issue.

As Prevent has expanded out to becoming Preventing Violent Extremism and from being one of four strands to being the central focus of counter-terrorism, it has started to grow beyond what one might usefully describe as its practical parameters. One of the deleterious side-effects of this is that it has slowly turned everyone into counter-terrorists, as it evolved from being program to counter terrorism to being something which was seeking to remodel a substantial portion of our society. Not only does this mean that a wide community of individuals beyond traditional security services need get involved, but also that an ever expanding pool of money was guided towards a specific community in an ever-broader fashion (a recent Newsnight report put it at £140 million).

On the one hand, a case can be made that years of underinvestment needed to be redressed, but at the same time, this focus appears to have also had the impact of exacerbating the community cohesion problems that the money was in part meant to fix. But within this also lies at the core of the problem: work which should be defined as social work is being re-defined as counter-terrorism.

The problem with Prevent is that it would appear as though we have long lost our way in understanding exactly what Preventing terrorism is about any more. In the quest to understand and fix this, the solution has been to push the program out to an ever expanding circle of individuals as we move further and further back up the radicalization chain (though I hate linear descriptions of radicalization). This has had the added problem of confusing what everyone’s roles within this are.

Police need community intelligence to be able to do their jobs; but this should be obtained through confidence building, rather than bluntly milked from community workers. It is unlikely to be helpful to the cause of countering terrorism, or policing more generally if the current trend continues. Programs seeking to redirect youngsters from a radical path should stay firmly within a local community and civilian remit – putting them in a police direction has implications which will naturally make community workers less comfortable with using them.

More generally, however, Prevent needs to be re-focused. A tighter remit needs to be drawn up which separates out the social work being done under a Prevent banner – to work that should once again be done under its proper heading. Instead, Prevent work should remain firmly focused on countering-terrorism, as in de-radicalizing prisoners, stopping young men making contact with extremists, and lessening the appeal of jihad. Making people more integrated into British society, helping them get jobs or training, giving them a more positive outlook, and making sure they are accepting of other religions are all important things, but not things that should be tagged as counter-terrorism work.

Another new piece for Free Rad!cals, this time adding my two cents to the Hasan Malik story. More on this later when I finally get around to completing my larger piece on Lone Wolves.

Lone Wolf Malik

Filed under: North America, Radicalisation

While I recognize that I still owe a piece on Prevent in the UK, the events in Fort Hood have sparked off a different line of thought which I thought I would quickly scribble down – this is the aspect of Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a Lone Wolf.

Let me quickly emphasize two things, one I do not have some sort of morbid fascination with the concept of Lone Wolves, and two, I am not by any means prejudging what might later come out about Hasan Malik.

The reason that this aspect has struck me, is the parallel story in the America that we are coming up to execution day for John Allen Mohammed, the infamous DC sniper who in October 2002, with the assistance of brainwashed teenager Lee Boyd Malvo, brought fear and terror to Washigton’s streets. For as-of-yet not completely explained reasons, Mohammed (a Muslim convert who served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War) decided to cruise around Washington, Virginia and Maryland and take pot shots from the back of their car at people going about their daily business.

Ten people were killed and three injured at random (Malvo further claimed they had killed another four people, though nothing more is known of this), and the city was practically brought to a stand-still. Having gotten to Washington myself about six months later, I can testify that people were still shaken by the experience then.

The men’s plan was apparently to extort some $10 million from the government which they were going to use to train an army of homeless children in Canada to carry out similar acts across the country, the Washington shootings were merely the first phase. This plan is nothing like what we have currently understood Malik’s to be (which are at best unclear at the moment, though speculation appears to focus around the fact he apparently did not want to be deployed in Afghanistan), but the terror and impact that has been caused is on a par.

While I may be proved wrong, it would be surprising if Hasan Malik’s attack turns out to be some plot orchestrated by Osama and friends in a cave in Afghanistan/Pakistan. More likely he will be listed under the category of Lone Wolf, or individual who for his own reasons chooses to launch a random terror attack. Whether this is classified as Islamist terrorism, thanks to the links to Al Awlaki, the fact he was shouting “Allahu Ackbar,” or details that are yet to emerge we shall see, but what remains clear is that a single man armed with weapons has essentially taken over global headlines. Back in 2002, John Allen Mohammed (admittedly more of a Lone Wolf Pack, by which I mean a group of individuals operating without any tangible connections, and it seems clear that it was Mohammed who was driving the agenda), brought America’s capital to a standstill for a few weeks.

The point here is that Lone Wolves (or Lone Wolf Packs) are surprisingly effective terror tools when they are actually able to carry out their action. Think what would have happened had young Isa Ibrahim managed his plot to attack a mall in Bristol or if Nicky Reilly’s manipulation pushed him to successfully blow up a restaurant rather than just himself (a friend also told me of a case in 2005 in the US of a chap who blew himself up, however, I cannot find more information – if anyone else knows please let me know…).

The troublesome thing is, however, that these individuals are equally hard to legislate or police against – all sorts of warning signs can be seen posthumously, but it is with the 20/20 given by hindsight. It is understandably hard to figure out how you are going to legislate against the insane or those who are simply driven to insanity by the hothouse of modern life.

But none of this detracts from the fact that they can be grimly effective, and that in many ways one can see an attempt to harness their potential in the writings of someone like Abu Musab al-Suri whose ideal of “a global insurgency” is constructed around individuals independently choosing the same path, with no tangible and thus compromisable connections, but driven by a similar ideology and towards a similar goal.

In a way, this is maybe the real face of the “leaderless jihad” that Sageman has spoken about. Fortunately, it remains clear that as appealing as the Al Qaeda narrative may have appeared at times, it has not managed to make this leap yet.

This is a bit of an unfair one for those of you not either members of RUSI or able to access their journal online or in hardcopy, but I have a new article out in the latest RUSI Journal looking at the issue of Predator strikes in Pakistan. While the focus of the piece was meant to be the impact this was having in the UK, and looking in great detail at the Pakistan-UK connection, the final draft was too long and the editors were rather ruthless in shortening it. Still, I guess this means it leaves me with plenty of fodder to write something else somewhere.

Deep Impact: The Effect of Drone Attacks on British Counter-Terrorism

Oct 2009, Vol. 154, No. 5
By Raffaello Pantucci

The use of drones against targets along the Pakistani border has been a controversial tactic in the prolonged war in Afghanistan, though one that looks set to be a key part of Obama’s future strategy. But drone strikes are part of a complex chain of events, providing fuel for the jihad fire; for the UK in particular, the strikes have a significant domestic impact upon its large Pakistani minority that should not be ignored.

http://www.rusi.org/publications/journal/ref:A4AEB04E7DECEF/

My latest for FreeRad!cals, back where I cannot post very well, so follow the link to see where the links are I’m afraid. The article appears to have stirred up a bit of a debate, look forward to maybe hearing others thoughts on this.

Why is the Right doing so well in the UK?
by Raff Pantucci
Filed under: Leadership, Radicalisation, UK

I have been traveling around the UK the last few weeks. Two things appear to be atop everyone’s concerns, the “rise of the right” and the fact that the British government may be using the “Prevent” counter-radicalization and counter-terrorism program to spy on Muslim communities. I plan on dealing with each in separate posts, but first on the “rise of the right”.

For those who have missed it, the United Kingdom is finding it has an increasingly belligerent and noisy right-wing which is not only managing to make unpleasant speeches and protests, but are also able to win votes in elections. The far right British National Party has won a growing number of seats in first local elections, and most stunningly in the 2009 European Parliament elections it was able to secure two seats and a total of just under 1 million votes nationally.

This seeming acceptance of an openly xenophobic party into the mainstream of British politics received its crowning moment recently when BNP leader (and holocaust denier) Nick Griffin made an appearance on the BBC’s flagship politics program Question Time.

In parallel to this seeming legitimization of racists by the ballot box, the UK has also recently seen the emergence of the English Defence League (EDL), a group claiming to be “demonstrating against the spread of radical Islam” for whom the infamous Luton protests against returning British soldiers in March of this year were the “final straw”.

Their response was to stage a series parades up and down England in which overwhelmingly caucasian crowds of well-lubricated shaven-headed chaps protest against extreme Islamists (a full list of their demos shows a fixation with the latest incarnation of Omar Bakri Mohammed’s extremist group Al Muhajiroun). At core a blend of skin-heads and football hooligans (something most clearly borne out during the violence in Birmingham), the group is nevertheless able to rally a few hundred protesters at a go under the banner of “taking back England” from “jihadists”.

Disturbingly, there has also been an increase in armed far-right terrorists, including one group who apparently had some 300 weapons, 80 bombs and links around the world, the two right-wing extremists who were convicted for “inciting racial hatred”, and separate “lone wolves” Martyn Gilleard and Neil Lewington (who was picked up with incendiary devices in his bag after he got pissed on a train and took a leak in public while on his way to a date. Lucky girl).

Responding to this growing threat, one police commander said, “I fear that they will have a spectacular”, suggesting that extremists might attempt some major action in order to stir up inter-ethnic hatred.

This last group can be addressed as a clear counter-terrorism issue, but what of the others and their impact which might be said to provide the ideological backdrop for the violent extremists?

The BNP may have managed to secure the veneer of respectability, but they have not found many friends in the European Parliament (something no doubt helped by Mr. Griffin’s charming comments about sinking boat-loads of migrants) – this is significant as it dilutes their power.

Furthermore, while they may have mustered just under a million votes, this should be seen against a backdrop of falling support nationally for the main parties, who cannot shake pay scandals and a bad economy. The BNP specialize in going into economically depressed parts of the country, where they capitalize on local grievances and a sense of abandonment from Westminster with a localized narrative which dresses up anger in anti-immigrant and “national identity” language.

This is enough to rally a core group of voters who actually show up on Election Day and give the BNP its success (it is worth highlighting that it was with a less-than-impressive 9.8% and 8% of the vote that they won in each EP seat).

Similarly, while the EDL appear able to get crowds after football matches, they are almost always matched by a larger counter-protest uniting a wide array of factions. BBC’s Newsnight (part 1, part 2) called them a “drinking club with a website,” estimating their numbers at some 300-500 members nationally.

One concern they have voiced, about the focus of current counter-extremism funding towards Muslim communities appears to also have some parallels amongst other communities, but they do not seem to have much of a plan of action beyond running around the streets and ejecting people like Anjem Choudhary from the country. This may win them some more drinking buddies, but is hardly the basis of an election manifesto.

For Muslims in the UK, it is the terrorist group that is most bothersome – if there is this growing menace of potential right-wing terrorism, then why isn’t there the same fixation on them that one sees with terrorists who instead choose an Islamist garb?

The answer is relatively simple (the right-wingers tend to be local nutters bereft of serious external connections, and their inability to carry out effective attacks reduces their news value) – but the bigger problem does exist of how these far-right groups (violent and non-) might be impacting cohesion between communities in the UK.

More radicalization amongst Britain’s right means more protests on the streets, and likely more violence. Maybe even to the level of the famous 2001 Northern City riots, in which localized social problems provided kindling which was set alight by a growing far-right presence. None of this is to exaggerate the threat (the numbers are still quite small in contrast to continental Europe which appears to have institutionalized racist parties long ago), but it would be dangerous to simply ignore the groups all together.

What does seem clear, however, is that there is a growing well-spring of disaffection amongst Britain’s communities which is finding solace in extreme rhetoric – what is positive is that we are seeing a substantial grass-roots reaction against it, and the main political parties appear willing to stand up against it.

More for Jamestown Foundation on the case of Adelene Hicheur, the French-Algerian chap who worked on the infamous Large Hadyron Collider and was apparently in contact with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. A strange case in which all the details are not clear, and will unlikely be clear any time soon, though it remains unclear that this was really part of some kind of nuclear powered Al Qaeda plot.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35673

Al Qaeda’s Nuclear Scientist? The Case of Adlene Hicheur

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 32

October 30, 2009 09:02 AM Age: 1 days

Category: Terrorism Monitor, Global Terrorism Analysis, Home Page, Terrorism, Europe, Featured

By: Raffaello Pantucci

Amidst much furor, French anti-terrorism judge Christophe Tessier announced that year-old Algerian-French scientist Dr. Adlene Hicheur had been brought up on charges of “association with terrorists” on October 12. Allegedly in contact with al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Dr. Hicheur was arrested with his 25-year old brother (later released) in Vienne, France on October 8 after an 18-month investigation headed by France’s internal security service, the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence – DCRI) (Le Monde, October 14).

A scientist involved in the Large Hadron Collider project (also known as the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN), Dr. Hicheur’s arrest was met with a wave of speculation in the press that he might be at the center of a nuclear-focused al-Qaeda plot. [1] In an attempt to dampen such speculation, CERN published a press release which admitted that Dr. Hicheur was an employee, but categorically stated: “CERN does not carry out research in the fields of nuclear power or nuclear weaponry.” [2]

The investigation into Dr. Hicheur was apparently initiated as a result of an American tip which had turned up on the periphery of a separate investigation into Afghan support networks in France (Le Monde, October 14). Having been alerted, the DCRI launched an extensive bugging operation tracking Hicheur’s online activity to a degree described by the former Interior Minister as being on a par with “reading over someone’s shoulder” (Independent, October 11). In his email traffic, watchers noticed messages apparently passing from Dr. Hicheur to known high-level contacts in AQIM in which he offered to assist them in plotting in France, though it was unclear whether these offers had anything to do with his work at CERN (Le Figaro, October 11).

Born in Seif, Algeria in 1976, Dr. Hicheur’s family moved to France when he was two. A bright pupil, he obtained a Ph.D. in particle physics in 2003 from the University of Savoie in Annecy, France, which involved research in 2002 at Stanford University in the United States (Le Monde, October 14). British intelligence agencies investigated his possible links in the UK after a period of employment in 2005 at the sensitive Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Oxfordshire and trips to universities in London, Manchester, Durham, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews (Times, October 13). Investigations into the case continue, though there has been some level of tension within the French security establishment that the arrest may have been premature, potentially driving Dr. Hicheur’s contacts in AQIM underground before they can be intercepted.

As speculation around his “nuclear” connections died down, focus instead turned to the fact that a seemingly well integrated member of French society could be attracted to AQIM’s violently anti-Western rhetoric. Unlike many of the other individuals incarcerated or otherwise detained in France on terrorism charges, Dr. Hicheur was a prominent and active member of the European scientific community, respected by his colleagues and part of a large, religious and well integrated family. In his home of Vienne, France, he was apparently held up as something of a local celebrity thanks to his impressive academic achievements.

While the man described by colleagues as a “shy but brilliant young physicist” has reportedly confessed to some level of activity to French investigators, his family continues to protest his innocence, including his older brother Hashim who gave an interview to the academic journal Nature in which he stated that the high volume of email traffic back and forth with Algeria is normal for a family which retains deep connections to their homeland. He also stated that a recent large money transfer was intended for the purchase of land in Algeria, but was the likely cause of police interest in his brother (Nature, October 14). While the outcome of the case remains uncertain, the evidence of AQIM activity and the charge that a seemingly well-integrated member of French society could be so deeply involved in terrorist activity suggests that France remains at risk to al-Qaeda affiliated networks.

Notes:

1. As established in 1954, the original name of the organization was Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN). Though this was soon changed to Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire, it was decided to retain the original acronym, CERN.
2. CERN Press Release, press.web.cern.ch/press/, October 12, 2009

Well, for those of you who are avid followers, good news! I will now be producing more regularly over at the FreeRad!cals website run by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (tidily abbreviated to ICSR) – in fact, I have now already gotten started, here is a brief bio/introductory piece and below is my first article. I am hoping to regularly cross post between the two, and welcome any thoughts on either site.

(One final comment, I am hoping that Lone Wolf Pack will become part of the canon of radicalization-speak – anyone see it anywhere else, please give me a heads-up!)

http://icsr.info/blog/Lone-Wolves-Pack-stalks-Milan

Lone Wolves Pack stalks Milan

View more articles by Raff Pantucci

Filed under: Europe, Radicalisation

A couple of weeks have passed since 35-year old Libyan Mohamed Game attempted, in an alleged  revenge for Italian involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, to carry out a suicide attack on the Santa Barbara army barracks in Milan, where forces going to Afghanistan are based.

Using a fertilizer-based explosive concealed in a tool box, Game detonated his bomb in the morning of October 12, apparently as a reference to 12 November 2003 when a suicide bomber blew up an Italian military police base in Iraq killing 19 Italians. The bomb failed to completely explode, mutilating Game (his hand was amputated, he was blinded by shrapnel and remains on life support), while only injuring one guard at the base.

The attack raised speculation about possible connections with other extremists in Italy. Game had apparently been a congregant at the infamous Viale Jenner Mosque in Milan and the barracks he targeted where on the list of possible targets of a cell arrested in Milan last December. However, the President of the Milan Islamic Institute in Viale Jenner, Abdel Hamid Shaari (also of Libyan extraction), said he had only seen Game a couple of times at the Mosque and police rapidly dismissed these connections saying Game had not been on their radar before.

The next day, however the police arrested two men in connection with the attack: 52 year-old Egyptian engineer Abdel Haziz Mahmoud Kol and 33-year old Libyan electrician, Mohammed Imbaeya Israfel. The day before his arrest Israfel had been interviewed about Game, and had said that Game had been “talking about jihad generally in the last month,” that “it was likely suicide” was his intention, and “he probably wanted to end his life and go to paradise” (rough translation of mine).

None of the men had appeared in any serious way on police radars before ( even though Israfel’s home had been searched in July) and Italian security services continue to call the group an independent cell with no connections to a wider terror network or to Italian radical milieu’s.

And this is most alarming: all three men are apparently below any radar. All three had their papers in order, two were employed (Game had lost his business a couple of years ago), and Kol and Game were both married with children. According to the security services, the three men self-radicalized and formed a cell, they set up a bomb factory (in a flat rented by Kol, went to nearby Corvetta to buy 120kgs of fertilizer and other reagents then used a recipe taken off the internet to mix the explosive. Kol apparently drove Game to the scene of the attack.

It seems to me that other details should be investigated: in the flat, 40 more kilos of fertilizer were found; there was a fridge full of food which could indicate that more than just three men were present and a mysterious “list of important people’s families” was found. It also seems unclear where their money came from given all three were living in rather tough circumstances (some reports suggest that Kol and Game were squatters). Game and his wife were even interviewed in August by a local news show to show the plight of poor families in Milan.

It is perfectly likely that this group will turn out to be a cell of lone wolves who, aggrieved at their downtrodden situation in Italy and stirred up by the nation’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, concluded that a path of violence was their only option left.

This is not the first time such incidents have occurred in Italy – on September 11th, 2003, Jordanian Mohammed Al Khatib tried to blow himself up outside a synagogue in Modena, while on March 29th, 2004, Moroccan Moustafà Chaouki attempted a similar action outside a McDonald’s in Brescia. In both instances, the wannabe-suicide bombers and their cars were the only victims, though they both left letters behind explaining what they were doing, something Game has not done. The only hint of a rationale behind his action is the disputed allegation that he shouted something about Italian involvement in Afghanistan before blowing himself up.

All of which suggests that the combination of dissatisfaction and Al Qaeda’s single narrative is one that appeals to a growing constituency in Italy. It is still too early to dismiss possible connections between the cell and others but the seeming surprise with which the police were caught and the relatively amateurish nature of the attempt all suggest that none may be uncovered.

Italian investigators should be alarmed as this could suggest that the problem of radicalization in Italy has moved beyond the traditional networks of North Africans providing support for fighters going to Afghanistan or Iraq (which in some cases stems from previous networks sending support to Bosnia), to a domestic problem which is refusing to go away and is a source of violent anger amongst the community of Muslims in Italy.

The call by Interior Minister (and Lega Nord member) Roberto Maroni who called for a profiling of Muslim communities based on the radicalization model of Game to identify possible threats in the future and the hawkish statements aimed at the Viale Jenner mosque by Defence Minister Ignazio la Russa suggest that the social aspect of the problem will most likely not be addressed.

What is worrying is how many more cells alike may be operating beneath the radar and how long it will be before one of them gets their explosive blend right.

UPDATE:

Since publishing this, a friend has pointed out to me that the Viale Jenner link may be stronger than Shaari indicated in his telling. Stories in the respected Corriere della Sera and more right-leaning Il Giornale, show photographic evidence that he was involved in a Ramadan event being held near (and organized by) the Mosque in September of this year. The Giornale report goes so far as to say he served as security at the event, suggesting a possible closer link.

A short policy paper for an Australian think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute which explores the Western al-Shabaab networks – in other words tries to understand the actual meaning of all these increasing links people see between the Somali group and others abroad. My own sense is that the immediate external threat is unclear and we run the risk of overblowing it, but I understand that this might evolve over time. One group I have written about before that might merit a mention are omitted for sub judice concerns. Any thoughts or contradictions would be most appreciated – in particular any hints about other networks that might emerge over time.

Understanding the al-Shabaab networks

by Raffaello Pantucci

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

The Australian Government on 21 August 2009 officially listed the al-Shabaab group as a terrorist organisation. This paper examines the danger posed by the Somali-based group, and concludes that we are likely to see an increase in Westernised Muslims appearing on the battlefield in Somalia. Eventually we will see some of these men come home. It would not be surprising if there was an increase in localised targeting by these people of Western interests.

http://www.aspi.org.au/publications/publication_details.aspx?ContentID=226&pubtype=-1

My latest for Jamestown, this time looking once again at the German Jihad and particularly its new rising star Bekkay Harrach. While the elections seem to have passed without a hitch, his threat still holds and we shall see if he has something to push through.

Still having to access this through awkward means, so apologies for the fact that this one and the last are both printed as one long text. Hoping to be able to fix this in the next week or so.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35563

Bekkay Harrach: The Face of German Terror
Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 30
October 1, 2009
By: Raffaello Pantucci

Germany’s federal elections passed without incident on September 27, though they took place against a backdrop of intense concern in the German security services about a growing number of increasingly pointed al-Qaeda videos threatening Germany over its military deployment in Afghanistan. These messages included a videotape from Osama bin Laden on September 25, entitled “To the Peoples of Europe.” The video had English and German subtitles along with footage of German cities and monuments (Al-Fajr Media Center, September 25). The message appeared only two days before the German elections. Germany has 4,200 troops in northern Afghanistan, where they have come under more frequent attack in the last year as the Taliban insurgency spreads.

While the message from bin Laden is alarming, it appeared to only incidentally target Germany, without the terrorist leader naming it specifically. A more direct threat came from a series of videos released by Bekkay Harrach (a.k.a. Abu Talha al-Alamani), a Moroccan-born German citizen who has joined al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier region.

Harrach specifically threatened Germany, telling Muslims to avoid places that are not “essential to daily life” in the post-election period, though he stated that the city of Kiel would remain safe (Der Spiegel, September 18). In the first video of this series, entitled “Security – A Shared Destiny,” Harrach appears clean shaven in front of a red curtain wearing a suit and blue tie – a marked contrast to previous videos in which he appeared as a veiled and turbaned fighter. Two days after this threat, a second video surfaced online, entitled “O Allah, I Love You (1),” this time showing Harrach turbaned once again. Instead of threatening Germany in this second message, Harrach extols the joys of jihad to his fellow countrymen while engaging in highly personal reflections on his relationship to Allah and jihad:

“I also want to take part in the jihad, be like a mujahid, live like a mujahid, love like a mujahid, and feel like a mujahid. However, my problem is that I am committing too many sins. Can I take part in the jihad despite all these sins, even if I do not manage to stay away from sins? Or do I have to first be free of sin?” (As-Sahab, September 20).

This was followed days later by a third German-language video, this time entitled “O Allah, I Love You (2),” which more pointedly threatened Germany once again (al-Fajr Media Center, September 24).

Bekkay Harrach’s star has ascended rapidly in jihadist circles. A figure who was once relatively unknown outside security circles, he has rapidly moved to become the face of what might be called the German jihad – a catch-all term that best describes the active phenomenon of young German Muslims who choose to go to the Afghanistan/Pakistan region to train alongside either al-Qaeda or affiliated groups like the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) or the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The depth of the problem was reinforced by the tale of a group from Bonn (including six German citizens) who left Germany with their families to join the jihad in Waziristan. They were arrested on the border and allegedly beaten by Pakistani police (Der Spiegel, September 21). Reports indicate that they remain in detention there.

Harrach was born in Morocco to a family that moved to Germany in 1981 when he was 3 or 4 years old. Once in the country, he spent most of his time in Bonn, where he was apparently active in social circles around the King Fahd Academy, an alleged local hotbed of extremism (Der Spiegel, January 27). He attended a night-school in his 20s in Bonn, where he was studying to be an engineer. He ultimately elected to attend a university at the nearby Koblenz Institute for Technology, where he studied laser technology and business mathematics (Bild, April 22, 2009). However, his studies were regularly interrupted by trips abroad to seek glory in the fields of jihad, including a trip to the West Bank in 2003. Upon his return, blood was found on his belongings and it is believed he was injured in a skirmish with Israeli troops. He is also believed to have traveled twice to post-Saddam Iraq and may even have spent time in a Syrian jail (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, September 22). While on return from one of these trips to Iraq (where he claimed he was on a “humanitarian mission”) he was stopped by Germany’s security services, who attempted to recruit him (Der Spiegel, January 27).

In 2004, he gave up on his studies and took on a role at the local Muhadshirin Mosque in Bonn where he preached in a lively and extreme fashion. Towards the end of 2006, Harrach was introduced to Aleem Nasir, a German-Pakistani “gemstone dealer” who was recently incarcerated for being an al-Qaeda facilitator. It is believed that the man who introduced them was Omer Ozdemir, a German of Turkish heritage who is currently on trial with another man on charges of belonging to al-Qaeda and helping procure funds and equipment for the group (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, September 14).

Nasir gave Harrach a formal letter providing him with an introduction to an al-Qaeda training camp before Harrach headed off to Waziristan through Iran in early 2007, leaving behind a pregnant wife. Once in Pakistan, he rapidly established himself as a bright light amongst the ranks of foreign fighters there, apparently being trained by master al-Qaeda bomb-maker Abu Ubaidah al-Masri and operating under the protection of the Haqqani network (Der Spiegel, January 27).

A clue to Harrach’s potentially important role can be found in a statement given to Der Spiegel by a Pashtun commander in the Haqqani Network, who claimed; “If we want to do something, we always ask the German for his opinion” (Der Spiegel, January 27). Harrach’s background as an engineer has apparently made him something of an expert in bomb-making.

However, it is likely Harrach’s role as a connection to the German-speaking world that has made him so important within the networks based in Pakistan. German is increasingly used in al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-affiliate video releases – in particular those from the IMU and the IJU. The latter group was apparently behind the “Sauerland Cell” plot to attack American targets in Germany (see Terrorism Focus, January 28, 2009; November 8, 2007). Descriptions from those who knew him portrayed Harrach as a personable chap, recalled by acquaintances who knew him in Bonn as not bearing the outward appearance of an extremist yet capable of persuading his wife, a German convert to Islam, to leave the comfort of Bonn to join him with their young child in the less accommodating badlands of Waziristan (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, September 22; Spiegel, January 27).

Whatever his actual role in al-Qaeda, his messages to his adopted land have put German authorities on the highest alert. Armed police patrol major airports and rail stations and security forces detained two men “of Arabic origin” in Munich after a judge approved their preventive detention until the Bavarian city’s Oktoberfest beer festival is over. Increased security at the event led one German news source to say “Oktoberfest has been transformed from a beer festival into a beer fortress” (Spiegel, September 29). One of the men detained was in contact with Harrach, while the other apparently knew him through a relative (Spiegel, September 28). Police previously arrested a young Turkish man in Stuttgart for allegedly posting one of Harrach’s videos online (Hurriyet, September 25).

It is the specificity of the threat that has alarmed watchers. While earlier official alerts have been sent out to German companies operating abroad (especially in North Africa), the focus on Germany and the specific timeline hinted in this new set of videos has officials particularly alarmed. The numbers being leaked to the press are equally disturbing – German officials say they are concerned about some 180 individuals who “have received or intend to receive paramilitary training.” About 80 of these individuals have returned to Germany but only 15 are in custody (Spiegel, September 28). Whether Harrach is able to draw from this pool to live up to his threat of giving Germany a “rude awakening” seems unclear, but it is certain that he was able to force the issue of Germany’s military role in Afghanistan onto the political agenda.

My latest for HSToday, this one looking specifically at the transatlantic tensions between the UK and U.S. as a result of the conclusion of the recent trial against the group who were plotting to bring down a series of planes flying from the UK to North America. This is not to overplay the tensions, but this was the specific angle being explored here, and there has been a great deal of coverage about the trial more generally.

http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/10333/152/

The Plot ‘Bigger Than 9/11’ Causes Transatlantic Tensions

by Raffaello Pantucci
Tuesday, 22 September 2009

IEDs would have been enough to blow hole in hulls of pressurized passenger jets
Coinciding with the commemoration of the 8th anniversary of Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, a jury at Woolwich Crown Court in London found three British Muslims guilty of plotting to simultaneously bring down seven passenger planes on transatlantic routes.
However, while the British government has been keen to highlight success of the trial as a victory in the fight against international terrorism, tensions have been exposed in the transatlantic partnership against Al Qaeda.

The three men found guilty of the plot, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28 (the apparent ringleader); Assad Sarwar, 29 (described as the quartermaster for the plot); and Tanvir Hussain, 28 (Ali’s number 2), had all been found guilty during the first trial which ended in September 2008 with the lesser clear charge of “plotting to kill persons unknown.”
After the unsatisfactory conclusion of that trial, the British Crown Prosecution Service decided to pursue a second trial in which they proved to a jury that the men were in fact plotting to carry out a terrorist attack that was described by former US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte during congressional testimony in 2007 as having been “on par [with], or something similar to 9/11.”
In addition to the three men who were convicted, a Muslim convert, Umar Islam, 31, was also found guilty of the charge of “conspiracy to murder.” It’s been asserted that he may have been trying to attempt a test run of the explosive devices to be used in the larger plot. The jury was unable to come to a decision on the culpability or innocence of three other men. Another man, a white convert, was cleared of all charges.
The plotters planned to fashion small explosive devices out of concentrated hydrogen peroxide with small amounts of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) planted in hollowed out batteries, with a detonator fashioned from a disposable camera.
The IEDs, while small, would have been enough to blow a hole in the hulls of the pressurized passenger jets, thereby causing a potentially catastrophic event that could have caused the planes to crash, killing thousands of transatlantic travelers.
All of the materials involved in constructing the liquid explosives would have been undetectable to airport security screening and are the reason for the current restrictions on carrying liquids onboard commercial jetliners.
According to the prosecution – and elaborated through off-the-record conversations with the press – these ingenious devices were the brainchild of Abu Ubaidah al-Masri, Al Qaeda’s master bomb maker, who allegedly died in early 2008 of natural causes.
Rashid Rauf, a young Pakistani-Brit, has attracted the most attention in the case as the alleged coordinator between the British cell and their handlers in Pakistan. Various press reports and official information appears to show that Rauf and his co-conspirators were behind a network of jihadists targeting the United Kingdom, which included the July 7, 2005 bombings.
Rauf has become a terrorist figurehead in the public imagination on a par with Osama bin Laden. A baker’s son from Birmingham, Rauf fled to Pakistan in 2002 after allegedly being involved in an uncle’s murder. Once in Pakistan, he married into the family of Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Kashmiri insurgent group that in 2001 attacked the Indian parliament and nearly instigated a war between India and Pakistan.
Rauf was abruptly incarcerated by Pakistani forces in August 2006, apparently at the behest of Washington. The arrest precipitated action by Britain’s security services, which promptly moved to seize 24 other suspected terrorists.
Former Assistant Commissioner of Special Operations Andy Hayman told the Times of London that “we believed the Americans had demanded the arrest and we were angry we had not been informed. We were being forced to take action, to arrest a number of suspects, which normally would have required days of planning and briefing.”
While this may have been too early for Britain to move against the suspected terrorist cell, according to American sources it was feared that Rauf was about to go into an inaccessible part of Pakistan. Additionally, tensions worsened in the weeks before the arrests following a transatlantic flight having had to be turned back when a passenger’s name was found to be on the No-Fly list. While the fear turned out to be unwarranted, the fears that a plot “larger than 9/11” might be underway was enough to scare security officials on both sides of the Atlantic.
Whatever the case, Rauf’s arrest become the focal point of a rather one-sided transatlantic spat about counterterrorism strategy. Led most vocally by Andy Hayman, the former most senior policeman in charge of the UK’s counter terrorism policy and operations, and American political color by author and journalist Ron Suskind, the narrative is that American forces “bottled it” (got scared) and pushed the Pakistani’s too early.
Suskind wrote that the root of the issue was a desire by former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to ensure that terrorism became a large issue on the agenda of the 2006 mid-term elections. From a British perspective, the suspicion is that these early arrests may have been part of the reason that two expensive trials were required – at a total cost to British taxpayers of about £35 million for two trials that have still not concluded on the innocence or guilt of three men.
These tensions have been further exacerbated by Rauf’s mysterious escape from Pakistani custody (he wandered off after Pakistani forces transferring between court and prison allowed him to stop and pray in a mosque) – an escape that his family and lawyers claimed was highly improbable, a not unrealistic supposition given the alleged importance that’s been attributed to him. At the time, his lawyer in Pakistan stated that it was highly likely he would be declared dead in the not too distant future – something that appeared to come to pass when he was alleged to have been killed by a US Predator strike in Waziristan in late 2008. The picture since then has become even murkier, with a new set of leaks from the Intelligence Community apparently pointing to the fact that he may still be alive.
The salience towards transatlantic tensions in all this comes from the fact that it has now emerged that Rauf’s escape was in fact a very convenient conclusion to the situation. In a forthcoming Human Rights Watch report, intelligence officials claim Rauf was tortured so badly in Pakistani custody that his extradition to the UK to stand charges would have been impossible. The unspoken sense is that this was all part of the former administration’s approach to countering terrorism – in which torture was acceptable – and which dragged the United Kingdom into wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
As British police launch enquiries into MI6’s complicity in torture and British actions in what is seen as an increasingly intractable situation in Afghanistan are brought under ever closer scrutiny (against the backdrop of a weakened Labour government on a whole host of other domestic issues), the fundamental problem becomes how long is the British government going to be able to maintain its level of support for American actions around the world in Afghanistan or countering terrorism overall.
In its annual temperature taking of the transatlantic relationship, the German Marshall Fund bluntly stated that, “overall, the Obama presidency has not yet lived up to expectations for a post-Bush America.”
For Britons, this is seen most clearly in the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, with this trial merely reminding everyone of the US’s central role in the war against Al Qaeda and her affiliates internationally.