2004-06-23
Pakistan denies al-Qaida link in Sept. 11 commission comments
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1) America's Sept. 11 commission made "biased" observations that Pakistan had contacts with al-Qaida, a Pakistani official said Wednesday, denying links with the terror network blamed for the attacks in the United States.
2) "We have had no truck (contact) with al-Qaida and its associates," said Masood Khan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.
3) "We think that this view by the 9/11 commission is biased, partial and completely unscientific," Khan said at a news conference in the capital, Islamabad.
4) Khan was reacting to comments by the chairman of the commission, Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, who said Monday that al-Qaida had "a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq."
5) Pakistan was one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which harbored Osama bin Laden and a network of al-Qaida training camps.
6) But it became a key ally in the U.S. campaign against terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which saw the Taliban regime ousted in late 2001.
7) Pakistan has since handed over more than 500 al-Qaida suspects to the United States, including al-Qaida's alleged No. 3 leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was caught in March 2003 near Islamabad.
8) Still, hundreds of al-Qaida fugitives, including possibly bin Laden and his top aide, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding along Pakistan's rugged border with Afghanistan.
9) Khan, the ministry spokesman, said Pakistan cannot be blamed for al-Qaida's presence in the region.
10) "Remember, there were 19 hijackers who were found on American soil and they attacked the twin towers and committed a horrendous terrorist act," he said. "On that count shall we hold the U.S. government responsible?"
11) The Sept. 11 commission is probing the circumstances surrounding the attacks and ways to safeguard against such attacks in the future. It has a July 26 deadline to complete its final report.



2004-08-06
Professor and father of suspected al-Qaida computer expert describe a serious and moderate young man
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1) Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, the computer expert suspected of sending coded messages to a vast network of al-Qaida operatives, was a quiet and gifted student who was religious but never showed signs of Islamic militancy to those around him until after he graduated and left home in 2001, his father and a former professor told The Associated Press.
2) Together, they paint a picture of a good-natured young man from a middle-class Karachi neighborhood with a passion for computers who always stayed out of trouble.
3) Not anymore.
4) Khan, who is about 25 years old, was arrested in Lahore on July 13 on suspicion of being a point man who sent e-mails to al-Qaida operatives possibly planning attacks in the United States, Britain, even South Africa.
5) His arrest led authorities to another major al-Qaida figure, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian with a US$25 million bounty on his head for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, which killed over 200 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani was arrested in the eastern Pakistani city of Gujrat on July 25.
6) Khan graduated in 2001 from the prestigious Nadir Eduljee Dinshaw Engineering University in the southern port city of Karachi. He got high marks, and shied away from troublesome students.
7) Zafar Qasim, a teacher at the university's computer science department, remembered Khan as a "genius student" who graduated around the top of his class.
8) Khan began his studies at the university in 1997 and graduated four years later, in 2001. There are reports he spent time at an al-Qaida training camp in Khost, Afghanistan, though neither his father nor Qasim said they were aware of such a trip. Qasim said Khan never appeared interested in any militant activity, and never missed a class.
9) A senior intelligence official told AP that Khan married a woman who is the sister of a "top ranking" Taliban leader and that he frequently visited her at their home in Wana, the capital of tribal South Waziristan. It was not clear if they were married after he left home.
10) The official also said that Khan had been to Britain four times, always on reduced price tickets he got through his father, a flight attendant with Pakistan International Airlines.
11) That casts doubt on his father's claim to have severed all ties to his son.
12) The elder Khan told AP earlier this week that he has not had any contact with his son for several years, and indicated there had been a falling out.
13) "Whatever I know about my son is through newspaper reports. He has not been with me for the last two or three years," said the father, Noor Khan, from the doorway of his home in a middle-class Karachi neighborhood. "I am trying to get the facts but I am not too bothered."
14) He said his son had not been a part of any militant group until after he left home, and then quickly closed the door.
15) The New York Times reported Friday that Khan was arrested at Lahore airport while picking up a package sent to him by his father.
16) Khan is about 6 feet (1.83 meters) tall and fair skinned, Qasim said, and dressed in the traditional shalwar khameez that is customary in Pakistan, rather than the Western clothes preferred by many of the nation's university-age people.
17) "While here he was a quiet and humble student. I remember him around. There were a few mischievous students but he always remained quiet and concentrated on his study," Qasim said.
18) He said Khan had a particular interest in a database program designed by Oracle Corp.
19) Intelligence officials have said that a computer seized from Khan contained photographs of Heathrow airport, as well as pictures of underpasses that run beneath several buildings in London, believed to be possible targets for attacks he was involved in planning against them. He is also accused of sending coded e-mails to al-Qaida operatives.
20) Khan is said to have been in contact with Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi, believed to be a senior al-Qaida figure in Britain, who was allegedly plotting to attack London's Heathrow airport. Al-Hindi also used the code name of Bilal, according to reports published in Britain.
21) Khan also led Pakistani security forces to Ghailani and two South African men arrested with him. The South Africans had maps of several cities in their home country and are believed to have been planning attacks there, intelligence and police officials say.
22) Qasim, the professor, said he was shocked to learn of Khan's arrest.
23) "I did not find him to be leaning in any peculiar direction," Qasim said. "He was a little religious and had a short beard ... but I never saw him engage in the activity of any (militant) student organization."



2004-08-09
Democratic senator wants details about leaked terror suspect's name
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1) A Democratic senator asked the White House on Monday to explain why the name of an imprisoned al-Qaida terror suspect was disclosed to reporters even as the suspect was cooperating secretly by sending e-mails to terrorists so authorities could trace their locations.
2) Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York asked the White House homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, to identify who provided to reporters last week the name of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan and why Khan's name was disclosed. Schumer also asked whether Townsend believed the disclosure had compromised national security.
3) "I believe that openness in government is generally the best policy, but the important exception should be anything that compromises national security," Schumer wrote in his letter to Townsend. He cited press statements by authorities in Pakistan and England that the disclosure was harmful to their investigations.
4) National security adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday in a televised interview that Khan's name had been disclosed to reporters in Washington "on background," meaning that it could be published, but the information could not be attributed by name to the official who had revealed it.
5) "The problem is that when you're trying to strike a balance between giving enough information to the public so that they know that you're dealing with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you've dealt with in the past _ you're always weighing that against kind of operational considerations," Rice said on CNN television's "Late Edition."
6) "We've tried to strike a balance," Rice added. "We think for the most part, we've struck a balance, but it's indeed a very difficult balance to strike."
7) The U.S. government's disclosure on Aug. 1 of Khan's arrest and some of the information tied to Khan came amid a furious defense by the Bush administration explaining its decision to warn one day earlier about possible attacks against U.S. financial buildings in New York, Washington and northern New Jersey.
8) White House spokesman Scott McClellan cautioned Monday that information may be more limited about future raids against al-Qaida suspects.
9) "It is important that we recognize that sometimes there are ongoing operations under way," he said. "And as we move forward on capturing or bringing to justice al-Qaida members, we need to keep that in mind. And sometimes we aren't able to go into as much detail we would like to because of those ongoing operations."
10) Khan, arrested July 13 in Pakistan, was described by authorities as a communications technician working for al-Qaida who helped send electronic messages on behalf of the group's members.
11) U.S. and Pakistani officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have confirmed that Khan agreed after his arrest to send e-mails to al-Qaida members, and Khan received replies from at least some of them. Days after Khan's arrest, British authorities arrested 12 terror suspects in raids, including one person described as a senior al-Qaida operative, Abu Eisa al-Hindi, and Khan's cousin, Babar Ahmad.
12) U.S. officials and government interviews with other captured terror suspects indicated al-Hindi was sent to the United States in early 2001 by the principal architect of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings to perform surveillance on economic and "Jewish" targets in New York.
13) Ahmad has been indicted in the United States on charges he tried to raise money for terrorism from 1998 through 2003. Authorities said he had battle group plans for Navy vessels in the Gulf.



2004-08-11
Pakistan leader hails al-Qaida arrests but officials rue intelligence leak they say helped some suspects flee
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1) President Gen. Pervez Musharraf says Pakistan has been "90 percent" successful in arresting suspects behind a series of high-profile terror attacks, including against key government leaders.
2) Yet senior officials said that some al-Qaida fugitives escaped after news reports revealed the arrest of a computer expert for Osama bin Laden's network who was cooperating with investigators.
3) Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old Pakistani, was nabbed in a July 13 raid in the eastern city of Lahore. His capture was a signal victory for Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism. He led authorities to a key al-Qaida figure and sent e-mails to terrorists so investigators could trace their locations.
4) In an interview published in a Pakistani newspaper Tuesday, Musharraf hailed the efforts of the country's intelligence agencies.
5) "We have achieved an unprecedented 90 percent success to unearth elements involved in terrorist attacks against myself, prime minister-in-waiting Shaukat Aziz and in other high-profile cases," Musharraf was quoted as saying by The News.
6) Pakistan has seen a string of bombings and suicide attacks over the past year, including two suicide bombings by Islamic militants that the president narrowly escaped in December, and another last month targeting Aziz, the current finance minister and prime minister designate. Seven people were killed in the attack, though Aziz was unhurt.
7) The attacks appear to have reinforced Musharraf's resolve to crack down on al-Qaida, whose elusive leader has long been believed to be hiding out someplace along Pakistan's forbidding border with Afghanistan. Pakistan has arrested about 30 terror suspects in less than a month.
8) But on Tuesday, two senior officials expressed dismay that the arrest of Khan made it into the media too soon _ reported first in American newspapers on Aug. 2 after it was disclosed to journalists by U.S. officials in Washington.
9) "Let me say that this intelligence leak jeopardized our plan and some al-Qaida suspects ran away," one of the Pakistani officials said on condition of anonymity.
10) National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday that Khan's name had been disclosed to reporters in Washington "on background," meaning that it could be published, but the information could not be attributed by name to the official who had revealed it.
11) The Pakistani officials said that after Khan's arrest, other al-Qaida suspects abruptly changed their hide-outs and moved to unknown places. On Monday, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York asked the White House to explain why Khan's name was revealed.
12) The disclosure on Aug. 1 came as the U.S. government was defending its decision to warn about possible attacks against financial buildings in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey.
13) White House spokesman Scott McClellan cautioned Monday that information may be more limited about future raids against al-Qaida suspects.
14) Khan led authorities to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani _ a Tanzanian with a US$25 million American bounty on his head for his suspected involvement in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa _ and the capture of about 20 other al-Qaida suspects. The arrests also prompted a series of raids in Britain and uncovered past al-Qaida surveillance in the United States.
15) Pakistani officials over the weekend have said they are searching for two North Africans: Abu Farj, a Libyan, and Hamza, an Egyptian, who are believed to have spent some time in Pakistan with Ghailani.
16) A Pakistani security official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that despite failing to capture some al-Qaida suspects after Khan's arrest, the country's security agencies were chasing them and would eventually get them.
17) The official would not reveal the names or nationalities of the fugitives who evaded arrest.
18) Ghailani and Khan are still in the custody of Pakistan.
19) Officials say Ghailani and Khan's computer contained photographs of potential targets in the United States and Britain, including London's Heathrow Airport and underpasses beneath London buildings.



2005-09-01
Police to examine al-Qaida tape as part of London bombings investigation
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1) British police investigating the fatal July bombings in London said Thursday they would consider a video tape in which Al-Qaida reportedly claims responsibility for the attack.
2) The Al-Jazeera pan-Arab television network broadcast late Thursday a new tape by Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the last testament of one of the suicide bombers of the July 7 attacks in London _ Mohammad Sidique Khan.
3) Khan appeared with a scarf around his head, but looked similar to images of him that were published after four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters on London trains and a bus on July 7.
4) A spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police said: "We are aware of the tape, we will consider it as part of our ongoing investigation." She declined to comment further.
5) British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office refused to comment on the video.
6) British television news channels broadcast snippets of the Al-Jazeera video which showed Khan speaking calmly as he faced the camera.
7) In a heavy Yorkshire accent, Khan who died in the subway blast at Edgware Road station, accused Western civilians of being directly responsible for the terror attacks that befall them.
8) "Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate injustice against my people all over the world, and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters," said Khan, a father of one and a former teacher's assistant.
9) It is not the first time that a group has claimed responsibility for the July 7 attacks. On the day of the blasts a group calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe" posted a claim of responsibility on a Web site popular with Islamic militants. The group reportedly said the London bombs were in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
10) Another al-Qaida-linked group, Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade also claimed responsibility in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site.


Excerpts from video tape of Ayman al-Zawahri and London suicide bomber
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1) Here are excerpts from the video recordings by Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's deputy leader, and Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the London bombers of July 7, as broadcast on Al-Jazeera television on Aug. 1.
2) Khan spoke in English. Al-Zawahri spoke in Arabic and his words were translated by The Associated Press.
3) Mohammad Sidique Khan: >"I, and thousands like me, are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our driving motivation doesn't come from the tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true god Allah and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad, God's blessing be upon him. This is how our ethical stances are dictated. >"Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security, you will be our targets. Until you will stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war, and I am a soldier and now you too will taste the reality of this situation." >Khan appeals to God, "to raise me among those whom I love like the prophets, the messengers, the martyrs and today's heroes like our beloved Sheik Osama bin Laden, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and all the other brothers and sisters that are fighting in al-Qaida's cause. With this, I leave you to make up your own mind. And I ask ... Allah, the almighty, to accept this work from me and my brothers and enter us into the gardens of paradise."



2005-09-02
Al Qaida No. 2 claims group carried out London bombing, attacker threatens more
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1) Al-Qaida's No. 2 claimed responsibility for the July bombings in London in a dramatic videotape aired Thurday that included a farewell message from one of the young Pakistani-British bombers, warning that violence will sweep the West until it stops "the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture" of Muslims.
2) Speaking English with a heavy Yorkshire accent, the young man, identified as bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan, said he had forsaken "everything for what we believe" and went on to accuse Western civilians of being directly responsible for the terror attacks against them.
3) "Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate injustice against my people all over the world, and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters," Khan said.
4) Khan said Westerners had failed to heed previous warnings, "therefore we will talk to you in a language that you understand. Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood."
5) In his portion of the tape, al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri threatened the West with "more catastrophes" in retaliation for the policies of U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
6) He did not say outright that his terror group carried out the bombings on the London transport system that killed 56 people. But he said the attacks were a direct response to Britain's foreign policies and its rejection of a truce that al-Qaida offered Europe in April 2004.
7) "I talk to you today about the blessed London battle, which came as a slap to the face of the tyrannical, Crusader British arrogance," al-Zawahri said. "It's a sip from the glass that the Muslims have been drinking from."
8) In a warning to all Israelis and countries that joined the international forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Zawahri said: "Everyone who took part in the aggression on Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, we will answer in the same way. As they made rivers of blood, we will explode volcanos in their countries, and their interests are our targets. So everyone who wants to be safe should stay far away from these targets."
9) Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the message's sensitive nature, cautioned that any claim of responsibility did not necessarily indicate that al-Qaida had planned or directed the attack.
10) The officials said al-Qaida would regard the London bombings as a victory whether they were directly involved in them or not.
11) Khan and al-Zawahri did not appear together in the tape _ instead, shots of each were edited together _ and al-Zawahri did not menion Khan. A newscaser on al-Jazeera, which aired the tape, said Khan's last "will" came as part of a long tape that consisted mostly of al-Zawahri talking.
12) While their appearance together in an edited tape appeared to show some level of coordination, it would have been more significant had they appeared together in one portion _ indicating that al-Zawahri was a hands-on commander who met directly with attackers.
13) Khan, 30, was a Leeds resident who died in the bombing of the London Underground train near Edgware Road. In the week after the attacks, his family issued a statement saying Khan must have been "brainwashed," and expressing their "deepest and heartfelt sympathies" for the victims.
14) In the tape, he said he was inspired by al-Zawahri, and also by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden; and by the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.
15) "Until we feel security, you will be our targets," he said in the tape, addressing himself to westerners. "Until you will stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight."
16) In apparent foreshadowing of his plan to die, he said in the tape: "I'm sure by now the media has painted a suitable picture of me. Its predictable propaganda machine naturally will tack a spin on things to suit the government and scare the masses to conform to their power- and wealth-obsessed agenda."
17) In London, police said they were aware of the tape. "We will consider it as part of our ongoing investigation," a spokeswoman for London police said. Blair's office refused to comment.
18) The deputy chief editor of al-Jazeera, Ayman Gaballah, said the channel received the tape today by means it would not disclose. The tape was 15 minutes long and contained several clips of fighting in Iraq and the Palestinian territories. The channel kept most of the talk and edited out much of the illustrative material, Gaballah told The Associated Press in a call from Doha.
19) Khan was wearing a red-and-white checked keffiyeh and a dark jacket. He had a trimmed beard and appeared to be sitting against a wall lined with an ornate carpet. His image resembled photos of him published after the deadly attacks.
20) Al-Zawahri appeared in black turban and white robes with an automatic weapon leaning against the wall beside him, as he did in a previous tape aired Aug. 4.
21) After the Madrid bombings in March 2004, bin Laden was reported to have offered European countries a three-month cease-fire in which he invited them to consider his demands.
22) In the weeks immediately after the July 7 London attacks, there were at least two purported claims of responsibility on Islamic Web sites. But both were from groups who had made dubious claims in the past.
23) In a tape aired Aug. 4, al-Zawahri did not say al-Qaida carried out the July 7 bombings or the failed July 21 attacks that followed. But he praised the July 7 attacks and said al-Qaida could still deliver strikes around the world despite arrests in Europe and blows against its leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
24) The July 7 bombings killed 52 people, in addition to the four bombers.


British lawmaker says videotape proves who was responsible for London bombings
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1) A videotaped statement by a suspected suicide bomber proves who was responsible for the July 7 attacks on London's transport system and shoots down conspiracy theories circulating in the Muslim community, a British legislator said Friday.
2) The tape by Mohammed Sidique Khan, identified by police as one of the four bombers who killed 52 people, "does for the first time give us an insight into the mind of the enemy within," said Labour Party lawmaker Shahid Malik.
3) Khan's statement, which said "democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people," added fuel to the debate over whether Britain's involvement in the Iraq war made it more vulnerable to terrorism.
4) Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dismissed Khan's claims, saying there was no excuse or justification for the bombings.
5) "We are waiting for a police assessment of the video, which of course I have seen," he said as he arrived in Newport, Wales, for a meeting of European Union foreign ministers. "But I also say this: There is no excuse, no justification for terrorism of any kind, and it happens that those who, entirely wrongly, claim to to speak in the name of Islam are mainly killing their fellow Muslims."
6) The Al-Jazeera pan-Arab television network broadcast the tape by Khan, and another by al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, on Thursday.
7) In an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio, Malik said, "I ... believe there is a hardcore rump within the British Muslim community that didn't actually believe somehow that Sidique and his cohort were responsible. Rampant conspiracy theories mushroomed out of control."
8) Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain said the tape, if genuine, confirmed a link between anger over Iraq and the transport bombings.
9) "The involvement of Britain in the war in Iraq has provided Osama bin Laden with extra ammunition to recruit these young Britons and brainwash them," Tamimi said.
10) Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said there was "no justification for threats to and murder of the innocent" but said Prime Minister Tony Blair's government was "in denial about the effect of their illegal and immoral policies."
11) "I don't know what I am more angry at _ a young man being misguided like this to believe that in Islam the end justifies the means _ or a government in denial that uses spin to blame everyone and everything except its own policies for our increasing insecurity," Shadjareh said.
12) Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, decried Khan's claims of seeking justice.
13) "It is quite absurd to suggest _ as Mr. Khan does in the video _ that he is seeking justice for the people of Iraq and Palestine by committing an act of injustice against the people of London," he said, adding it was wrong to hold Britons accountable for the government's involvement in Iraq.
14) Gous Ali, 33, a Muslim whose girlfriend Neetu Jain was killed in the bus explosion, said Khan's beliefs did not reflect Islamic values.
15) "I was born and brought up here (in Britain) and I would never in a million years align myself to these views," he said. "There is no war here, no Western government has come out and made a statement that we are at holy war with Islam."
16) "I will stand up to (extremists)," he said. "I will spend the rest of my life confronting these people."
17) British television news channels broadcast short segments of the Al-Jazeera video, which showed Khan speaking calmly, accusing Western civilians of being directly responsible for the terror attacks that befall them.
18) On the day of the July 7 explosions a group calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe" posted a claim of responsibility on a Web site popular with Islamic militants. The group reportedly said the London bombs were in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
19) Another al-Qaida-linked group, Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade, also claimed responsibility in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site.



2005-09-03
British Muslims shocked, dismayed by video closing case on London bomber
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1) A video in which the purported ringleader of the July 7 London bombers seeks to justify the carnage caused profound shock for British Muslims _ erasing any doubt that a homegrown cell carried out the attack and that its members were inspired by al-Qaida.
2) For one of his friends, the sight of Mohammed Sidique Khan _ speaking in a Yorkshire accent and wearing a red-and-white keffiyeh in the farewell message broadcast on al-Jazeera _ verged on the surreal.
3) "We were all shocked and horrified when we saw the video itself," said Irshad Hussain in the gritty northern city where Khan grew up. "We are just devastated for what we had just heard and what we had seen on TV. ... I couldn't believe it was actually him talking on the screen."
4) Khan, one of the four July 7 bombers who killed 52 people, had his farewell message broadcast alongside a video message from al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, on the Arab television network late Thursday.
5) In an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio, Labour Party lawmaker Shahid Malik _ a Muslim who represents the neighborhood outside Leeds where Khan lived before the attacks _ said the tape would put to rest rumors that Khan and the other bombers were somehow set up.
6) "There is a hardcore rump within the British Muslim community that didn't actually believe somehow that Sidique and his cohort were responsible," said Malik. "Rampant conspiracy theories mushroomed out of control."
7) In Leeds' multiethnic Beeston neighborhood dotted with Halal butcher shops, Caribbean grocers and fish-and-chip takeaways where Khan and one of the other July 7 bombers were raised, longtime resident Harir Fhad Hussain said he feared the video would reopen community wounds.
8) "This is their nastiness, their way of opening up the wound again," he said.
9) Although Khan and al-Zawahri did not appear together on the recording, analysts said it provided the strongest link yet between the London bombers and the terrorist network.
10) "It does confirm that al-Qaida managed to penetrate some support of Muslim extremists in this country. They managed to recruit them and actually use them in this kind of atrocity," said Abdel Bari-Atwan, editor of London-based Arabic daily newspaper Al Quds.
11) Chris Shoemaker, a former Scotland Yard counterterrorism expert, said the video was evidence that the July 7 bombings were designed to be a suicide operation and it was inspired by al-Qaida.
12) "It also confirmed that Khan was the leader of this group and took a key role in the recruitment and training," he said.
13) Up to now, the predominant image of Khan portrayed in the media had centered on a photograph of a soft-eyed teaching assistant _ as seen in a photograph taken for a newspaper's educational supplement before the bombings and widely reprinted after the attacks.
14) Now, the public will likely remember a bearded Khan in his keffiyeh and dark suit pledging allegiance to al-Qaida.
15) "Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate injustice against my people all over the world, and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters," said Khan, who was 30.
16) Khan was born in Pakistan and has an 8-month-old daughter. He grew up in Leeds but moved five months ago to Dewsbury in West Yorkshire.
17) Neighbors recall him spending more time at the gym than at the mosque. He worked with disabled children while his wife, Hasina, was involved in education.
18) British media have reported that Khan was scrutinized last year by the MI5, Britain's domestic secret service, but was not regarded as a threat to national security or put under surveillance. The scrutiny reportedly came during an inquiry into an alleged plot to explode a truck bomb outside a target in London.
19) Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dismissed Khan's claims in the tape, saying there was no excuse or justification for the bombings.


Two months after the London bombings, uncertainty amid some success
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1) In the two months since London was wracked by a series of bombings that killed 52 people, investigators have moved swiftly to identify and arrest those who carried out the attacks, but uncovering the networks that may have supported them has proven harder.
2) Officially, Scotland Yard will not comment on the investigations, saying only that detectives are exploring all possibilities.
3) But privately, investigators have told analysts that the search for culprits linked to the July 7 bombings of three subways and a bus is moving slowly because of its international scope and the fact that all four bombers died in the attacks.
4) "In both cases, those who planned, organized and recruited for the attacks are still at large," said Charles Shoebridge, a security consultant and former counterterrorism officer with Scotland Yard.
5) No one has been charged in the July 7 attacks and investigators have been reluctant to link them directly to al-Qaida. Yet the possibility of an al-Qaida connection was strengthened Thursday when al-Jazeera television aired a tape purporting to be the last testament of Mohammed Sidique Khan, the reputed ringleader of the bombings. The footage also contained a message from al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, although the two did not appear together.
6) In a thick Yorkshire accent, Khan said he was inspired by bin Laden, al-Zawahri and the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi. He said the bombings were a message to Britain that violence against Muslims worldwide must cease.
7) "Until you will stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight," said Khan, wearing a red-and-white checked keffiyeh and a dark jacket. "We are at war, and I am a soldier and now you too will taste the reality of this situation."
8) At least two other groups had claimed responsibility for the attacks, but both had made dubious claims in the past.
9) Investigators are working in Britain and searching for links as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan in hopes of determining how the bombings were carried out.
10) The four attackers _ three Pakistani Britons and a Jamaican-born Briton _ killed 52 people and themselves and wounded hundreds in the first known suicide bombing in Western Europe.
11) Two weeks later, a similar effort failed when explosives carried by another group of attackers didn't go off. No one was killed or hurt. The alleged attackers, now in custody, were mainly Muslim immigrants from east Africa. Both sets of bombers toted powerful homemade explosives in rucksacks and satchels.
12) David Winnick, a British lawmaker from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party, said the recording was the clearest sign yet that Khan and his accomplices _ Shahzad Tanweer, Hasib Mir Hussain and Lindsey Germaine _ had help in organizing the bombings.
13) "It would be somewhat difficult to believe that the people involved ... organized it without the support of international terrorist connections," said Winnick, who is on the House of Commons home affairs select committee.
14) But if such co-conspirators exist, authorities have yet to find them. Metropolitan Police said Friday only that they were aware of the tape and were investigating it. They declined to comment on whether it meant there was a firm al-Qaida link.
15) Investigators have had more success in tracking down those involved in the failed July 21 attacks _ four men were charged with planning the attacks or three were charged with aiding them evade arrest. Another suspect was arrested in Italy and faces extradition to Britain.



2005-09-12
Parliamentary panel to probe how Britain fell victim to terrorism
(APW_ENG_20050912.0644)
1) Britain's Parliament holds it first public hearing Tuesday about the July terrorist attacks in London, and top officials are expected to discuss how the country fell victim to a homegrown cell of suicide bombers inspired by al-Qaida.
2) On Sept. 1, the British public was shocked to see a farewell video from the alleged ringleader of the July 7 attacks on London's transport system, which killed 52 people plus the four suicide bombers, and wounded 750.
3) The Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons underlined the urgency of the investigations into the July 7 bombings and the July 21 attempted attacks by scheduling its one-day hearing on Tuesday, weeks before Parliament returns from its summer vacation on Oct. 10.
4) "One of the main unanswered questions is why the system didn't know this would happen," said Paul Beaver, a British defense and security expert.
5) He said the video made by bombing suspect Mohammed Sidique Khan, and given to al-Jazeera television on Sept. 1, was "chilling."
6) "It showed that even British-born Muslims believe they have a grievance. The government and police systems didn't know this would happen. How do we get warnings in our own communities?" said Beaver, a former editor of Jane's Defense Weekly who now runs his own private company.
7) Officials to be questioned by the committee included Home Secretary Charles Clarke, London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.
8) "The main goal of the hearing will be to take stock of where were are after the bombings, what conclusion we can draw about the terrorist threat, and what the government and other services are doing about it," said John Denham, the committee's chairman.
9) Top government officials have spoken to the House of Commons about the terrorist attacks, but Tuesday will be the first public hearing about them.
10) The committee meets as Prime Minister Tony Blair's government considers introducing legislation that would create three new offenses in Britain: acts preparatory to terrorism, indirect incitement of terrorism, and giving or receiving terrorist training.
11) No one has been arrested and charged in the Met's investigation of the July 7 attack, which was carried out by the homegrown cell of four suicide bombers purportedly led by Mohammed Sidique Khan of Leeds, who justified the attack in the al-Jazeera video. His statement was broadcast alongside a video of al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, warning of more attacks.
12) Fourteen people have been charged in Britain regarding the July 21 attempted attack on London transport, which failed when the explosives carried by attackers did not detonate. Britain is trying to extradite another suspect, Hamdi Issac, who is being held in Italy.
13) Beaver said one issue that should be discussed Tuesday is the different communication systems used by the British army, police, fire and ambulance crews, and guards on London's subway system. He said the July attacks showed that the subway transport crews had a system that didn't work above ground and police had one that didn't work below ground.
14) "By holding this hearing during their holidays, the legislators are showing how seriously they view our terrorism concerns. We should welcome that. Their job is to ask the government why it didn't do what it should have done, and what it can now do in the future," Beaver said.



2005-12-15
In fourth year of `war on terror': successes, failures, blowback from Iraq
(APW_ENG_20051215.0062)
1) In 2005 the instant terror of exploding bombs and broken bodies gripped central London and teeming New Delhi, Egypt's holiday beaches and Jordan's hilltop hotels. But for the fourth year since the black morning of Sept. 11, the U.S. homeland again was spared a major terror attack.
2) In the counterterrorist front lines, they're on edge.
3) "I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing," FBI Director Robert Mueller said early in the year, speaking of possible covert cells in America. Later, as the year waned, FBI analyst Donald Van Duyn told The Associated Press, "I think there's increasing pressure on al-Qaida to do something."
4) The counterterror campaign scored successes in 2005, killing or capturing key figures around the globe, including a supposed top al-Qaida operative, and sending scores to prison. In midyear, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf even ventured that "we have broken their back."
5) But al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahri remained at large, presumably in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. And not long after Musharraf spoke, al-Zawahri spoke, too, declaring in a videotape that America's losses from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when almost 3,000 people died, "are merely the losses from the initial clashes."
6) In Iraq in particular, terrorism's back was far from broken in 2005.
7) Hundreds of Iraqis continued to die in a seemingly endless string of suicide and other bombings, from a February car-bomb attack in Hillah that killed 125, mostly police and national guard recruits, to two days of bombings in mid-November that killed a like number of civilians at mosques and a funeral procession north and east of Baghdad.
8) Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror," U.S. President George W. Bush asserted in a speech Nov. 30 at the U.S. Naval Academy. If so, it became such when the U.S. invasion in 2003 stirred up an insurgent resistance and drew hundreds of Islamic militants from the Arab world to expel the invaders.
9) Now the Iraq war is producing a new cadre of "professionalized" terrorists who will spread around the globe, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warns.
10) That blowback seems to have begun.
11) On Nov. 11 in Morocco, for example, authorities arrested 17 men who allegedly plotted to bomb tourist hotels, led by two European-Arab veterans of the Iraq conflict. The deadliest repercussion from Iraq had come two nights earlier, however, in Jordan's capital, Amman, when three bombers struck three international hotels simultaneously, killing themselves and 59 other people.
12) The carnage was worst at a wedding party, where the newlyweds' fathers and the bride's mother were among the dead. The three killers were Iraqis, and al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility, denouncing Jordan's ties to Washington. One bomber's wife, who herself failed to detonate an explosives belt that night, had three brothers who were killed by U.S. forces in Iraq, friends said.
13) Along with newly trained terrorists exported from Iraq, the al-Qaida movement in 2005 seemed to rely more on local "jihadists" who gain video inspiration from the movement, but little else.
14) Four suicide bombers who struck in London on July 7, killing 52 rush-hour commuters on underground trains and a bus, were British Muslims. In a video that surfaced later, one spoke of being inspired by bin Laden, al-Zawahri and Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
15) "We are at war, and I am a soldier," said one of the bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, who had traveled to Pakistan in 2004.
16) In Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, too, the suicide bombers were believed homegrown.
17) On July 23, in Sinai's Sharm el-Sheik seaside resort, car bombs and a knapsack bomb tore through a luxury hotel, a market street and the entrance to a beach promenade, killing at least 64 Egyptians and foreign tourists. By October, Egyptian authorities were claiming they had killed the organizer and bombmaker, and had captured others connected with the plot.
18) A fourth major attack terrorized the people of New Delhi on Oct. 29, eve of a Hindu holiday in the Indian capital, when three bombs went off in markets packed with shoppers and on a bus, killing 60 people. Indian authorities, who quickly made arrests, blamed Muslim militants fighting for Kashmiri secession.
19) The tactics of terror _ of killing innocents, of striking "soft" targets _ besieged dozens of countries in 2005. Some like Spain and Sri Lanka have long been bloodied by nationalist insurgencies. In Bangladesh, rocked by a rash of bombings, the terror was relatively new. In Israel, the number of Palestinian suicide bombings fell, as a spotty cease-fire took hold and a 26-foot-high security barrier reached farther along the West Bank border.
20) Most of the bombings and assassinations occurred in the Islamic world, both on the periphery of Muslim militancy, from southern Russia to Indonesia's island of Bali, and in the Islamic heartland.
21) In Saudi Arabia, after a series of devastating attacks in 2003-04, authorities aggressively hunted down terror suspects in 2005, killing two identified as leaders of al-Qaida's Saudi branch. Al-Qaida's al-Zawahri, in a tape that surfaced Dec. 11, acknowledged this "defeat."
22) In Indonesia, in a raid on his hideout on Nov. 9, anti-terrorist forces killed Azahari bin Husin, said to be a key bombmaker for the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group.
23) In Pakistan's rugged tribal borderlands, U.S.-Pakistani teamwork led to a missile strike on a mud-walled house Dec. 1 that killed Hamza Rabia, described as a close aide to al-Qaida's al-Zawahri. Six months earlier, U.S. intelligence led Pakistani forces to the capture of Abu Farraj al-Libbi, reputed al-Qaida No. 3. By year's end, however, with al-Libbi in U.S. interrogators' hands, al-Qaida's elusive top two still appeared no closer to capture.
24) As they have since 2001, governments sought to toughen anti-terrorism laws _ in Britain, for example, by allowing police to detain terror suspects for up to three months without charge. Since July's London bombings, the British also have sought to deport 10 Muslim militants, not for any crime, but because they allegedly helped create the "climate" for attacks.
25) In Spain, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere in 2005, scores of terrorists were convicted and sent away to years in prison. In a U.S. federal court, Zacarias Moussaoui, the only suspect to face U.S. charges in the Sept. 11 attacks, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to commit terrorism and kill Americans, among other counts, and will be sentenced next year to death or life imprisonment.
26) But terror prosecutions sometimes faltered.
27) In the biggest Spanish case, with 17 defendants, suspects allegedly tied to the Sept. 11 attacks were convicted only on lesser charges. The same held true for Indonesia's Abu Bakar Bashir, reputed spiritual leader of the deadly Jemaah Islamiyah, who was sent to prison for only 2 1/2 years.
28) Later, from his cell, Bashir described the latest Bali bombings, killing 23 people in three tourist restaurants Oct. 1, as a warning from God.



2006-04-02
London's July 7 terrorist attackers were motivated by anger over Iraq war, report says
(APW_ENG_20060402.0415)
1) A government inquiry into the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil will conclude that the four suicide bombers involved were motivated by anger over British foreign policy, including the Iraq war, a newspaper reported Sunday.
2) Britain's Home Office has not released the findings of its inquiry into the July 7 bombings of London's subway and bus system, which killed 56 people, including the four Muslim attackers.
3) But The Observer newspaper said in a front-page story Sunday that initial drafts of the government's findings, which it has obtained, say the U.S.-led Iraq war was a key "motivating factor" for the attackers and that it helped to radicalize them. Other factors included economic deprivation, social exclusion and a disaffection with society in general, including community elders, the paper said.
4) The inquiry confirms that two of the four British attackers, Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, had traveled to Pakistan before the attacks and met with al-Qaida operatives, The Observer said.
5) In another story about Britain's terrorism risks, The Sunday Times reported that it has obtained a top-secret memo from the country's Joint Intelligence Committee warning Prime Minister Tony Blair that the Iraq war has made Britain the target of a terror campaign by al-Qaida that would last "for many years to come."
6) The four-page memo says the war had "exacerbated" the threat by radicalizing British Muslims and attracting new recruits to anti-Western terror attacks, according to the paper.
7) The conflict "has reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West and motivated others who were not," the Sunday Times quoted the memo as saying. "Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor ... in the radicalization of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the U.K. as legitimate."
8) The Sunday Times said the memo was written in April 2005 and approved by the heads of Britain's MI5 and MI6 spy agencies _ Eliza Manningham-Buller and John Scarlett _ and by David Pepper, leader of the country's eavesdropping center.
9) The report about the Home Office inquiry would corroborate suspicions about Khan, the ringleader of the bombings, that were raised by a farewell videotape he made and which was shown on Al-Jazeera television after the July 7 violence.
10) It was broadcast alongside a video of al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, warning of more attacks.
11) In Khan's video, he urged fellow British Muslims to take part in a jihad, or holy war, against their enemies.
12) "Our so-called scholars today are content with their Toyotas and their semidetached houses," said Khan, 30, who was born in Pakistan but raised in the British city of Leeds. "If they fear the British government more than they fear Allah, then they must desist in giving talks, lectures and passing fatwas, and they need to stay at home _ they're useless."
13) He also said, "your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate injustice against my people all over the world, and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters."
14) Khan said Blair "not only disregards the millions of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he does not care about you as he sends you to the inferno in Iraq and exposes you to death in your land because of his crusader war against Islam."
15) Asked about The Observer's report, the Home Office issued a statement Sunday saying the results of its inquiry would be published soon, but that it would not discuss them beforehand.



2006-05-11
Report says London bombers betrayed little of terrorist acts to come
(APW_ENG_20060511.0991)
1) Increasing Islamic devotion, bodybuilding, an apparently mysterious trip to Pakistan _ the warning signals sent by the London bombers and listed in a new government report proved too fuzzy for either relatives or police to get wind of Britain's worst terrorist attack.
2) The report, released Thursday by the Home Office, details how four apparently unremarkable British Muslims carried out the July 7 attacks with backpacks of homemade explosives, but also says authorities know little about what turned them into al-Qaida-inspired suicide bombers.
3) The government insists little in the backgrounds of Mohammed Sidique Khan, the group's leader, and Shazad Tanweer and Hasib Hussein, who all lived in the Leeds area, suggested they were vulnerable to radicalization.
4) The report said it was clear by 2001, when Khan was working as a much-praised mentor to children at a Leeds school, that he was "serious" about religion.
5) But Khan, who was 30 at the time of the attack, "generally appeared to others as a role model to young people," it said. "We do not know how Khan developed his extreme views."
6) Tanweer, 22 when he died, had sported fashionable hairstyles and clothes before turning to religion in his teens. He drove a red Mercedes paid for by his father. He dropped out of university in 2002, when religion became "the major focus" of his life. He then spent much time studying at a religious school in Dewsbury but showed no sign of extremism, the report said.
7) Hussain, who was 18, began wearing white on Fridays after a 2002 pilgrimage to Mecca with his family and was more openly radical: he once wrote "Al Qaida no limits" on a book and praised the Sept. 11 hijackers as martyrs at school.
8) "Extremist doodling on his schoolbook was picked up but it is a long jump from this to identifying a potential suicide bomber," the report said.
9) In 2003, Hussain began working regularly, watching his diet, and lost 5 stone (70 pounds or 32 kilos) in weight, it said.
10) The three came together in local mosques, a gym and a shop that sold Islamic books. But details are sketchy and conflicting, the report said.
11) The report said it "seemed likely that Khan used the opportunities these places afforded at least to identify candidates for indoctrination, even if the indoctrination itself took place more privately to avoid detection."
12) The fourth bomber, 19-year-old Jermaine Lindsay, had a more turbulent upbringing. With his own father absent, he had two stepfathers and followed his mother's example in converting to Islam in 2000.
13) Lindsay impressed at the local mosque by quickly learning Arabic and long passages from the Quran. He was also disciplined at school for handing out pro al-Qaida leaflets, it said.
14) Lindsay was "strongly influenced" by Abdullah el-Faisal, a Jamaican-born Muslim cleric who was jailed in Britain in 2003, the report said. Lindsay once attended a lecture by El-Faisal, who was convicted for urging followers to kills Hindus, Jews and Americans, and listened to recordings of his speeches, the report said.
15) It is still unclear when he met Khan, it added.
16) The four spent much time together in the months before the bombing, but still drew little attention. Hussain and Lindsay adopted Western clothing. Hussain's unsuspecting mother offered to make sandwiches for his fateful trip to London, while Tanweer had played cricket the day before the attacks.
17) The report also said it was not known whether the group was directed from abroad, despite a three-month trip by Khan and Tanweer to Pakistan in November 2004.
18) While Tanweer told those around him that Khan was helping him look for a suitable Islamic school, "who they may have met in Pakistan has not yet been established, but it seems likely they had contact with Al Qaida figures," the report said.
19) Khan may also have made a video that was broadcast after the attacks in which he identifies Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as "our beloved heroes."
20) Between April and July 2005, the group was also in contact with "an individual or individuals in Pakistan" whose identity remains unknown, the report said.
21) "There is still much to be discovered about how the group were radicalized, how the bombings were planned and executed and whether others were involved," the report concludes. "This is still very much a live investigation."



2006-06-18
Hundreds protest slaying of Pakistani journalist, demand safety for reporters
(APW_ENG_20060618.0288)
1) About 500 people protested Sunday in the northwestern Pakistan, demanding the government account for the abduction and slaying of a journalist. His family believes he was taken by state intelligence agents.
2) Hayatullah Khan's body was found on Friday, handcuffed and shot in the back, near Mir Ali in the North Waziristan tribal region where he was abducted on Dec. 5.
3) About 20 journalists and hundreds of their supporters rallied in Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal region, chanting "Oppressors! Give an answer for (Khan's) blood," and "Protect journalists in the tribal region."
4) They also demanded that the government track down Khan's killers.
5) No one has claimed responsibility for abducting or killing Khan, but his relatives claim he was taken by the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, Pakistan's prime military-run spy agency. In January, a Pakistani government official said Khan may have been abducted by Islamic militants.
6) Arab, Central Asian and Afghan militants _ suspected of links with al-Qaida and local tribal supporters of the Taliban militia _ are believed to operate in North Waziristan.
7) Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao on Saturday denied the government was involved, calling Khan's killing a "dastardly act" and promising to take stern action against those responsible for it.
8) "The government has failed to find the real culprits in Khan's abduction and killing," said Maulana Mohammed Sadiq, an opposition lawmaker from Bajur who attended Sunday's rally.
9) "We will continue to raise this issue in Parliament until Khan's killers are arrested," he said.
10) About 100 journalists and opposition lawmakers demonstrated Saturday in the capital, Islamabad, chanting "killer, killer, government killer."
11) Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz meanwhile said the government decided Saturday to hold a judicial inquiry into Khan's death, state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported. The report did not say when the inquiry will begin.
12) Aziz also said Khan's family will receive 500,000 rupees (US$8,000; euro6,500) in compensation, and promised that the government will pay for his children's school and college education, the agency said.
13) One of Khan's brothers, Hasneen Ullah, said he was on his way to college with his brother when five armed men intercepted their vehicle and abducted Khan. He said he didn't know who the kidnappers were or what their motive was.
14) Khan, who worked for Pakistan's Urdu-language daily Ausaf and the European Pressphoto Agency, was abducted just days after photographing shrapnel from a Hellfire missile allegedly fired by an unmanned American warplane targeting a wanted al-Qaida figure, Hamza Rabia in Mir Ali.
15) His widely published photograph contradicted a claim by Pakistan's government that Rabia had died while making bombs in his hide-out in Mir Ali.
16) Another brother, Ahsan Ullah, has blamed the ISI for Khan's killing, but has not offered any evidence.
17) "I was informed by an ISI officer about the death of my brother, and I told him that you have done it," he told reporters after Khan's funeral on Saturday in Mir Ali, which was attended by nearly 5,000 people.
18) Hasneen Ullah told The Associated Press that Khan "sacrificed his life for exposing the truth. He was a bold journalist."



2006-06-19
U.S. warned Britain about leader of July 7 bombings, book claims
(APW_ENG_20060619.0455)
1) U.S. intelligence officials warned Britain that the alleged leader of the July 7 suicide bombings in London had been in touch with extremists who were plotting to blow up synagogues in the United States, a new book claims.
2) "The One Percent Doctrine" by Ron Suskind says that Mohammad Sidique Khan, of the four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London, was banned from flying to the United States in 2003, according to excerpts of the book published Monday in The Times newspaper.
3) The book says that Dan Coleman, who led the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe of al-Qaida, had seen files reporting Khan's telephone and e-mail contacts with U.S.-based militants beginning in 2002.
4) A report released last month by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee said there had been a missed opportunity to investigate Khan in two British intelligence operations in 2003 and 2004.
5) The report said Khan, 30, and a second London bomber, Shezad Tanweer, were "on the peripheries" of an "important and substantial" inquiry into another plot in 2004. But authorities believed they were trying to raise money for radicals _ rather than training for an attack.
6) "As there were more pressing priorities at the time, including the need to disrupt known plans to attack the U.K., it was decided not to investigate them further or seek to identify them," the report said.
7) Suskind's book claims that Khan made at least two trips to the United States in connection with a plot to attack synagogues, and that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency shared its information with British intelligence.
8) E-mails intercepted by the U.S. National Security Agency showed that Khan was in contact with Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in the United States in March after being convicted of plotting to assassinate U.S. President George W. Bush, conspiring to hijack aircraft and providing support to al-Qaida.



2006-07-07
Al-Qaida's No. 2 says two of the London bombers trained in an al-Qaida camp
(APW_ENG_20060707.1271)
1) Two of the four suicide bombers who attacked London a year ago had spent time at an al-Qaida camp to prepare themselves for a suicide attack, the deputy leader of al-Qaida said in an Internet video Friday.
2) Ayman al-Zawahri said on the video that Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan had come to a base of al-Qaida.
3) It was known that the two British Muslims from north England had visited Pakistan, but al-Zawahri's comment was the first confirmation that they had been to an al-Qaida camp.
4) "Both of them were seeking martyrdom and wished that they could carry out a martyrdom operation," al-Zawahri said, using the Islamic euphemism for a suicide attack.
5) He said that while they were at the camp, Tanweer and Khan paid no heed to militants who discussed other things, "because the goal for which they came to al-Qaida's jihad base was to carry out a martyrdom operation."
6) Al-Zawahri did not say where the al-Qaida camp was, but he said the two young men "returned to Britain where they passed on what they had learned to their brothers (fellow militants) and planned, with the guidance of God, their successful strike, which sent Britain into a spin."
7) The tape was released to coincide with the first anniversary of the July 7, 2005 bombings, when Tanweer, Khan and two other British terrorists killed 52 people on London's underground train and bus system.
8) The 31-minute video appeared on an Islamic Web site known for carrying militant messages. A heavily edited version was broadcast by the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera on Thursday.
9) It was not possible to independently verify al-Zawahri's claim that al-Qaida trained Tanweer and Khan _ presumably at its camps on the Pakistani-Afghan border.
10) An analyst at the London think-tank Chatham House, Bob Ayers, said the claim contradicted the British police's finding that there was no evidence that the four July 7 bombers were linked to al-Qaida.
11) "It makes the police look pretty bad," Ayers said. "It means the investigation was either wrong, or they had identified links, but were reluctant to reveal them."
12) "The coordinated timing of the tape shows these guys did not act independently and were at a minimum supported by al-Qaida if not recruited, trained and supported by them," Ayers added.
13) Part of the video was recorded recently as it bore a long statement from an al-Qaida ideologue who, speaking English with a North American accent, referred to the incident in Mahmoudiya, where U.S. troops are alleged to have raped and murdered an Iraqi teenager. The incident came to light late last month.
14) The ideologue, whom a subtitle identifies as "Azzam the American," delivered a harangue against the British and U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Asia, saying no Muslim should "shed tears" for Westerners killed in al-Qaida's attacks. Britain and the United States had only themselves to blame "because they are the ones who started this dirty war," he said, wearing a black turban and white robe, and sitting next to a computer.
15) Evan Kohlmann, a New York-based terror consultant, said the ideologue was Adam Gadahn, a Californian who converted to Islam in the mid-1990s while in contact with Muslims in Garden Grove, near Los Angeles.
16) "He's the only known individual of British or American background in senior levels of al-Qaida," said Kohlmann, whose globalterroralert.com tracks al-Qaida. He uses the Arabic nom de guerre, "Azzam al-Amriki," or Azzam the American.
17) Kohlmann said Gadahn, who has made numerous appearances on al-Qaida multimedia, has been identified by former associates from southern California and by a "spot-on match" with an FBI photograph.
18) The tape also contained a long testimonial from Tanweer in which he gave his motives for taking part in the London bombings.
19) "For the non-Muslims in Britain, you may wonder what you have done to deserve this," Tanweer told Britons on the tape.
20) Britons continue to oppress "our mothers and children, brothers and sisters from the east to the west in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya," he said, speaking with a thick north English accent.
21) "Your government has openly support for the genocide of more than 150,000 innocent Muslims in Fallujah," he said, referring to the west Iraqi town where U.S. forces fought Islamic militants for several weeks.
22) "You have openly declared war on Islam," he added.
23) Glancing down at his text, which was off-camera, Tanweer said: "I tell every British citizen to stop your support to your lying British government and to the so-called war on terror. And ask yourselves: why would thousands of men be ready to give their lives for the cause of Muslims?."
24) At the Tanweer family home in Beeston, West Yorkshire, 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of London, a front window bore a sign Friday telling journalists to stay away.
25) After an excerpt of the tape appeared on Al-Jazeera on Thursday, a friend of the family, Irshad Hussain, said Tanweer's relatives would be "devastated" to see the video.
26) "What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a series of attacks that will continue and increase in strength until you withdraw your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq," Tanweer said in the excerpt broadcast Thursday.



2006-12-20
Pakistani court orders authorities to explain detention of man held by US
(APW_ENG_20061220.0491)
1) A Pakistani court ordered the government on Wednesday to explain why a Pakistani national was handed over to the United States and incarcerated at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
2) Majid Khan was accused by U.S. authorities of having ties to al-Qaida's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the alleged masterminds of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Khan was captured in March 2003 in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi.
3) Khan's wife petitioned the Pakistani court in November seeking her husband's return to Pakistan, her lawyer, Nisar A. Mujahid, told The Associated Press.
4) A two-member panel of High Court judges ordered government officials to explain why Khan was handed over to foreign authorities, and what measures were being taken to bring him back for trial, Mujahid said.
5) The court gave the government until Jan. 11 to respond, he said.
6) Khan is one of 14 "high-value" terrorism suspects detained by the United States at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, among hundreds of others deemed "enemy combatants."
7) Mujahid said he does not know what charges Khan faces. The last time Khan's wife heard from him was in November when he sent a card for Eid-al-Fitr, an Islamic festival.
8) Khan lived in the Baltimore, Maryland, area and graduated from Owings Mills High School in 1999, after he moved there with his family in 1996.
9) In an interview with The Washington Post in November, Khan's father, Ali Khan, denied that his son was a terrorist.



2007-03-22
British police arrest 3 suspects over July 7, 2005, London transit bombings
(APW_ENG_20070322.1595)
1) Police arrested three British men Thursday on suspicion of playing a role in the worst-ever terrorist attack in London, the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings that killed 52 commuters.
2) It was the first major development in the investigation in months.
3) Unarmed counter-terrorist police took two of the men into custody as they prepared to board a flight for Pakistan. The third was arrested in Leeds, the northern city where three of the four suicide attackers lived.
4) Police in Leeds raided five properties -- including at least one on the same street that was home to one of the four suicide attackers. Authorities described the searches as low-key, and said that they were not looking for bombs or bomb-making equipment.
5) Officers also searched an apartment and a business in east London, though the investigation remained centered in Leeds.
6) "Anybody who imagined that this had simply been treated as four lone wolves, or a lone pack of wolves on July 7, 2005, is very wrong," Lord Carlile, the government's independent reviewer of terrorism laws, told the British Broadcasting Corp. "There is a lot of work going on."
7) The arrests came after criticism of the Metropolitan Police, whose investigation had consumed enormous resources and spanned the globe with little outward sign of progress. An official account of the attacks last year concluded the terrorist plotters who inspired and prepared the July 7 bombers were still at large.
8) All three men were arrested on suspicion of committing, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism. The force said the suspects were being taken to a high-security central London police station for questioning by officers from the Met's Counter Terrorism Command.
9) "We need to know who else, apart from the bombers, knew what they were planning. Did anyone encourage them? Did anyone help them with money, or accommodation?" a police statement said.
10) None of the men were identified. The two arrested at Manchester Airport were 23 and 30; the third arrested in Leeds was 26.
11) Under British law, police will have 28 days to question the three suspects before they must be charged or released.
12) No one has ever been charged in the terrorist attack. Only two other men have been arrested in the case, in 2005 -- one of them was released without charge and the other was charged with wasting the time of police.
13) Magdy el-Nashar, 33, an Egyptian chemist who had lived in Leeds, was detained in Cairo after the bombings and freed weeks later after Egyptian authorities said he was not linked to the attack.
14) The July 7 attacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus killed 52 people and wounded more than 700. They were the first suicide bombings on European soil.
15) In a video recorded before his death, one of the suicide bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, pledged allegiance to al-Qaida and said he was "protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters."
16) Three of the bombers -- Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18 -- were British-born men of Pakistani descent who grew up in the ethnically mixed Leeds, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of London. The fourth, Germaine Lindsay, 19, was born in Jamaica and raised in Britain.
17) The fact that seemingly unremarkable British youths could become suicide bombers caused soul-searching across Britain and raised fears of a threat from homegrown terrorists.
18) A government investigation of the attack found that Khan and Tanweer had both visited Pakistan from Nov. 19, 2004, to Feb. 8, 2005, and may have met with al-Qaida figures there. It said Khan also may have made his "martyrdom video" there.
19) Since then, the police investigation seemed to have stalled, and an official account of the attacks published last year concluded that the plotters who inspired and prepared the bombers were likely still at large.
20) Six men are currently on trial for allegedly attempting to bomb three London subway trains and a bus two weeks later -- on July 21, 2005. The bombs failed to explode, and the men have been accused of trying to carry out a copycat of the July 7 attack.



2007-03-23

2007-04-16

2007-04-30
5 British men sentenced to life for plotting strikes on power plants, nightclub, shopping mall
(APW_ENG_20070430.0635)
1) A judge sentenced five men to life in prison Monday for plotting to bomb several targets in London -- including a popular nightclub, power plants and shopping mall -- in a trial that exposed links between the men and at least two of the suicide bombers who attacked the capital two years ago.
2) Details that were kept secret to ensure a fair trial emerged after the verdict, showing ties between the five men and the bombers who attacked London's transit system on July 7, 2005, killing 52 commuters. But counterterrorism agents failed to piece the information together in time to prevent those bombings.
3) Omar Khyam was found guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions made from a chemical fertilizer that could endanger life. Also found guilty were Anthony Garcia, Jawad Akbar, Waheed Mahmood and Alahuddin Amin.
4) "All of you may never be released. It's not a foregone conclusion," Judge Michael Astill told them.
5) Though sentenced to life, Khyam, Garcia and Waheed Mahmood could be considered for parole after 20 years; Amin and Akbar after 17 1/2 years.
6) Two others, Nabeel Hussain and Shujah Mahmood, were cleared of conspiracy to cause explosions.
7) All were arrested on March 30, 2004.
8) The jury deliberated for nearly a month in the trial, which lasted a year. All of the men are British citizens and were accused of plotting a series of attacks using more than 1,300 pounds (590 kilograms) of fertilizer they placed in a storage unit.
9) Court-imposed restrictions to ensure the men had a fair trial prohibited reporters from revealing their link to at least two of the four July 7, 2005, suicide bombers and al-Qaida cells until the case ended.
10) Intelligence that could have raised the alarm before the July 7 attacks was never thoroughly investigated, counterterrorism officials have acknowledged, explaining they were overwhelmed by seemingly more urgent threats.
11) Agents monitoring the fertilizer plot heard during an intercepted conversation one of the people who would go on to become a suicide bomber in the July 7 attacks, Mohammed Siddique Khan, warn that he planned to kill non-Muslims, said a government security official, demanding anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the cases.
12) A tracking device was placed in Khan's car a year before the 2005 suicide bombings and details of his phone calls and meetings with radicals were reported to Britain's domestic spy agency, MI5, on at least four occasions, he said.
13) Khan also took militia training in Pakistan with fertilizer gang members and others, a witness in the case and officials said.
14) When the fertilizer gang was arrested in March 2004, police and MI5 uncovered 15 "essential" targets amid their associates -- those thought to be preparing imminent attacks on Britain.
15) Another 40 -- including Khan and Tanweer -- were ranked "desirable," to be trailed when resources allowed.
16) But lacking resources in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, MI5 never pieced together the shreds of intelligence, the official acknowledged.
17) "There needs to be that killer fact and it just wasn't there," the security official said, noting that Khan had used several aliases.
18) The revelations sit at odds with statements by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government in 2005.
19) Senior ministers, who a month earlier had lowered the country's alert status, said the attack was unexpected and the perpetrators unknown.
20) Mohammed Junaid Babar, an FBI al-Qaida informant, had reported that a Briton using an alias -- later identified as Khan -- attended a Pakistan militia camp with al-Qaida linked radicals from Britain and the United States in 2003.
21) With accomplice Shehzad Tanweer, Khan visited Pakistan again in 2004.
22) A surveillance team recorded Khan and Tanweer during a 2004 operation to monitor the fertilizer plot -- bugging 100 phone lines, a vehicle and two houses. Agents also took pictures of Khan in the company of suspected terrorists.
23) As agents eavesdropped, Khan -- who called himself Milly -- warned he would join the "Arab mujahedeen to fight abroad." But his threat was not uncommon or enough to prompt his arrest, the security official said.
24) In 2004, Babar told U.S. officials that Khan -- whom he recognized from a blurred surveillance photograph -- had sought meetings with al-Qaida leaders. But a tip to London authorities was too vague to prompt action, the official said.
25) Fellow bomber Germaine Lindsay's phone number was later discovered among records in a separate plot officials still won't discuss, he said. Only bomber Hasib Hussain was totally unknown.
26) "The government said there was no way of preventing what happened," said Graham Foulkes, whose son David, 22, was killed by Khan's bomb. "That was a lie." A parliamentary panel agreed different decisions may have helped halt the attacks.
27) Intelligence on Khan and his cell was pieced together only months after the attack, the official said -- when their identities and aliases were established. Charges against three alleged accomplices were leveled last month.
28) Muktar Said Ibrahim, the alleged head of a series of failed bombings two weeks after the July 7, 2005, attacks, likely learned bomb making skills with Khan and fertilizer plotter Omar Khyam in Pakistan, lawyer Stephen Kamlish told Ibrahim's ongoing trial. Ibrahim denies the claim.
29) Links between plots appear to strengthen claims the July 7 attacks were directed by al-Qaida, a senior police official conceded, demanding anonymity to discuss the case.
30) Officials say since July 2005, six other planned terrorist strikes have been halted -- but that brings no comfort for Foulkes. "The fact is," he said. "A known terrorist was allowed to kill my son and 51 others."



2007-05-15
Guantanamo detainee denies al-Qaida link, claims torture by Americans
(APW_ENG_20070515.1221)
1) A Pakistani terrorism suspect denied any connection to al-Qaida and said he was tortured and his family was hounded by U.S. authorities, according to a transcript released Tuesday by the Pentagon.
2) Majid Khan, in a lengthy written statement, said the CIA and the Defense Department tortured him after his capture in Pakistan as well as when he was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
3) "I swear to God this place in some sense worst than CIA jails. I am being mentally torture here," said Khan in a statement read by his personal representative about his time in Guantanamo. "There is extensive torture even for the smallest of infractions."
4) Khan, who is the only U.S. resident among 15 detainees the government considers most dangerous, also described suicide attempts where he "chewed my artery which goes through my elbow."
5) The Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon have said their interrogations practices are legal and that they do not use torture.
6) Khan's father, however, provided the most graphic descriptions of his son's treatment at the hands U.S. authorities, in a written statement that was also included in the hearing record.
7) Ali Shoukat Khan said his son was kidnapped in Pakistan and that there, Americans tortured his son "for eight hours at a time, tying him tightly in stressful positions in a small chair until his hands, feet and mind went numb ... He was often hooded and had difficulty breathing. They also beat him repeatedly, slapping him in the face, and deprived him of sleep."
8) The elder Khan, a retired gas station owner, said his son is not a terrorist and demanded that the government present its evidence, "charge him with a crime and give him a fair trial in a real court." He also said he and his family were pressured by the FBI to speculate about his son's activities.
9) The FBI, he said, "followed us everywhere we went for a long time, requiring us to tell them in advance where we were going and what we were going to do there."
10) During the hearing, the government said Majid Khan told others that he wanted to "martyr himself" in a plot to assassinate Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. They quoted his father and brother saying that Khan was involved with "a group he believed to be al-Qaida" and was involved in transporting people across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
11) U.S. intelligence also says Khan's cousin and uncle, who were both members of al-Qaida, introduced Khan to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who in a similar hearing at Guantanamo Bay depicted himself as al-Qaida's most prolific planner.
12) Together, the government says, Kahn and Mohammed plotted to blow up American gas stations, poison U.S. reservoirs and kill the president of Pakistan.
13) Khan also is said to have helped pick possible operatives, including Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who is now serving 20 years in prison for supporting terrorism. Faris was studying how to destroy New York City suspension bridges.
14) Faris submitted a statement for the hearing, and said he was coerced and tricked by the FBI into make statements about Khan. "If I don't tell them what they wanted to hear, they were gong to take me to Gitmo (Guantanamo)."



2007-05-16

2007-08-20
Pakistan frees alleged al-Qaida computer expert after three years in custody
(APW_ENG_20070820.0892)
1) A Pakistani accused of using his computer skills to help al-Qaida has been released after three years in custody, a government official and the man's lawyer said Monday.
2) Pakistani officials have said that information from freed suspect Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan quickly led them to a Tanzanian wanted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, which killed more than 200 people.
3) Khan, who was captured in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore in July 2004, has also been linked with terror plots in the U.S. and Britain, and to the arrests of suspects in Britain.
4) Deputy Attorney General Naheeda Mehboob Ilahi said in the Supreme Court on Monday that Khan, believed to be in his late 20s, had been released and had returned to his home in the southern city of Karachi.
5) Ilahi provided no details.
6) The court has been pressing the government for information on dozens of people whose relatives say they were picked up and held incognito by Pakistani intelligence agents for alleged links to militants.
7) Khan's lawyer, Babar Awan, confirmed that his client had returned to his family but said he had not been able to speak to his client to ask where he had been held, and by whom.
8) Awan said Khan had never been charged with any crime or brought before any court.
9) Khan, an engineering graduate, was suspected of being a point man who sent coded e-mails to al-Qaida operatives possibly planning attacks in the United States, Britain and South Africa.
10) Twelve days after his arrest, Pakistani authorities pounced in the city of Gujrat on Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who had a US$25 million (euro18.55 million) bounty on him for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
11) Information from those captured, including maps and photos found on their computers, helped prompt the U.S. government to issue a warning about a possible al-Qaida attack on financial institutions in New York and Washington.
12) Clues gained after Khan's arrest helped British investigators nab Dhiren Barot, a confessed al-Qaida terrorist sentenced last year to life imprisonment for plots to bomb U.S. financial targets such as the New York Stock Exchange and London hotels and train stations.



2009-02-06
Disgraced Pakistan A-bomb scientist declared free
(APW_ENG_20090206.1470)
1) The man who made Pakistan into a nuclear power and later took responsibility for leaking atomic secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya walked out of his home Friday after reaching a secret deal with the government that ended years of de facto house arrest.
2) The decision to grant freedom of movement to Abdul Qadeer Khan stirred alarm in Washington, which worries that Iran has continued to pursue nuclear arms and that Pakistan may not be able to safeguard its own arsenal in the face of rising Islamic militancy.
3) The White House said U.S. President Barack Obama wants assurances from Pakistan that Khan isn't involved in the activity that led to his arrest. U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said Khan remained a "serious proliferation risk."
4) Asked Friday what the international community would think of his release, Khan was typically defiant.
5) "Are they happy with our God? Are they happy with our prophet? Are they happy with our leader? Never," he said. "I don't care about rest of the world. I care about my country. Obama cares about America, not about Pakistan or India or Afghanistan."
6) Khan said he had no plans to return to the nuclear field.
7) Khan's wife told The Associated Press that her husband would remain under some restrictions, including a gag order.
8) While the 72-year-old scientist is a pariah in the West, he is a national hero for his pivotal role in developing the nuclear bomb for Pakistan and was lionized by Islamists for making it the world's only Muslim nuclear power.
9) He was detained in December 2003, however, and admitted on television in early 2004 that he operated a network that spread nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
10) Khan was immediately pardoned by former President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and placed under de facto house arrest.
11) Unanswered questions remain about the technology that Khan allegedly shared and with whom he shared it, and whether Pakistani authorities knew what he was doing or profited from sales.
12) Khan began agitating for an end to the restrictions on him after Musharraf was ousted last year. In recent months, he has been allowed to occasionally meet friends outside his house and has spoken to reporters over the phone. The Islamabad High Court announced Friday he was a "free citizen," subject to a confidential accord struck with the government.
13) Hours later, Khan emerged from his house in the Pakistani capital and addressed reporters face-to-face for the first time since 2004.
14) He indicated he would not be discussing Pakistan's secretive atomic bomb program or about who else might have been involved in leaking its technology around the world -- questions that still puzzle investigators trying to establish the extent of his network's activities and whether it is still in business.
15) "We don't want to talk about the past things," Khan said as the guards who enforced his long isolation stood aside for a throng of TV crews and journalists.
16) Government prosecutor Amjad Iqbal Qureshi said the decision to loosen restrictions on Khan was the result of a compromise with Pakistani authorities and that "security measures" for Khan would remain. The government has denied that Khan was under arrest, maintaining the restrictions were to protect him and Pakistan's state secrets.
17) Khan hailed the order as a "good judgment."
18) "At least I have got my freedom. I can move around," he said.
19) His wife, Hendrina Khan, said the freedom was limited to the capital and that "more strings have been attached" regarding what he could say.
20) She said the restrictions went beyond an order issued by the same court last year barring Khan from discussing the subject of nuclear proliferation even with his relatives.
21) "We know it is not possible to give our version," she told the AP by telephone.
22) Pakistan insists its weapons are secure. However, Khan's anti-Western rhetoric feeds concern that al-Qaida and other extremist groups could seek to acquire nuclear materials from sympathizers in the country's security establishment, especially if Pakistan frays under sustained militant attack.
23) In telephone interviews last year, Khan backed away from his confession, complaining he had been made a scapegoat and had done nothing illegal or unauthorized.
24) David Albright, a proliferation expert at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said Khan's attitude indicated he was still a danger.
25) "The only constraint I see on Khan's capability to proliferate is his age and his health," Albright said. "He may bring in others to front for him."
26) The failure of Pakistan and the West to prosecute him "gives a message that the big fish get away and this is not going to deter others from the path of nuclear smuggling," Albright said.
27) Other analysts said the move looked more like a gesture by the current pro-U.S. government to boost its flagging popularity.
28) "Of course, it will raise alarm bells overseas that this man is now running around," said Kamran Bokhari of Stratfor, a security think tank based in Austin, Texas.
29) "But he is not allowed to travel abroad, and he can only travel around country with a security detail, ostensibly for his own protection," Bokhari said.
30) "In reality, that security detail is there to let the West know that he is still under observation, and that there will be no return to the good old days when he was free to travel around the world (dispensing) nuclear technology," he said.
31) Britain's Foreign Office urged Pakistan to grant the U.N. atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, direct access to Khan "in order to seek information about his nuclear proliferation activity, in particular the smuggling of secrets to Iran and North Korea."
32) Pakistan says it has relayed all relevant questions to Khan and provided the IAEA with his answers.
33) Pakistan has taken "all necessary measures to promote the goals of nonproliferation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said. "The so called A.Q. Khan affair is a closed chapter."



2009-02-07