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Terror Networks
Alphabet scoops...
2003-12-10
Robert Stevens at Alphabet City has a FBIS transcript originally published by Il Nuovo of wiretaps conducted by Italian authorities as part of an investigation into the Ansar al-Islam network's Milan activities. FBIS is the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which I would read every day if I could get ahold of it. The conversation took place on June 15th of this year, between Nasser Osama Mustafa, alias Abu Omar, the Egyptian imam of the Via Quaranta mosque in Milan, and an unknown operative in Germany. The guy in Germany seems to be a recruiter/prosyletizer. You'll have to read the whole transcript to get the full flavor of it, along with Robert's analysis and Dan Darling's comments.

High points:
  • On May 16th there was a meeting with sheikhs in Poland, where it was decided to reorganized Hezb ut-Tehrir and build a new organization.
    Up until now there hasn't been a link between Hezb ut-Tehrir and al-Qaeda. It's pretended to be "non-violent," just a funnel organization not getting its hands dirty with the actual bombing and killing end of the business. Apparently that's what it does, only it does it under Qaeda auspices, rather than being an independent organization.
  • Sheikh Adel and Sheikh Abd al-Wahab are busy setting up groups made up of people who've come back from Chechnya.
    Dan thinks Adel might be a reference to Saif al-Adel. My guess is that Sheikh Adel and al-Wahab are both local bigshots in Central Europe — regional-level controllers...
  • Abu Serrah is planning to set up a "battalion" of 25 to 26 units, but the Bad Guys are worried about it being infiltrated. Things are run from Saudi Arabia, with this end of things being run by "Abu Salman" (or Suleiman), "who is of the same blood as Emir Abdullah."
    "Emir Abdullah," of course, is Binny, so Abu Salman would be one of his brothers or a son, most likely a brother, since he's in Saudi Arabia. An RFE report from October, 2001 reports on
    "a report from Irbil saying that "a secret bin Laden delegation recently infiltrated Iraqi Kurdistan and that neither its objective nor destination have been established." It apparently penetrated the territory from Iran, either with or without Tehran's knowledge. It is known that the delegation consists of four men, but only their aliases are known (Abu-Sayf, Abu-Hazim, Abu-Majid, and Abu-Salman).
    This was about the time Ansar al-Islam was getting off the ground. Same guy? Who can tell? And for that matter, is Abu Majid another version of Abdel Azeem al-Muhajir? The level seems right...
  • The Bad Guys are cooling things on mosque operations, because they're too high profile, and instead going to ground. They've recently bought a 4-story building, and they're forming "Force 9". The nerve center is in London, and there is a group of 10 running things, with the speaker in Germany interested in Belgium, Spain, The Netherlands, Turkey and Egypt, Italy and France. Sheikh Adlen, who moved before the speaker got there, is one of the big financiers.
    Googling "Sheikh Adlen" returns only Sheikh Adlen Khaled Bentounes, director of Tariqa Alawiyya, of Algeria, honorary president of the International Friends of Islam Association and spiritual guide of Terres de Europa in France. He's also a bigwig in UNESCO. However, I doubt if he's the guy, as Tariqa Alawiyya is a Sufi organization. The smell's wrong — unless there's another hit in his vicinity...
  • Both speakers are under Hizb al-Tawhid, which is the decision-making level, with the money — which is no object — flowing from Saudi Arabia. They're awaiting "the sheikh from Iraq," which FBIS guesses could be Mullah Krekar. The training and communications organizations are separate, with the hard boys being training in Chechnya and another group takes care of information dissemination. Each city has its qaid, who's the local big cheese. Organizationally, Italy is run from Austria, Germany is run from The Netherlands, and The Netherlands is run from London. "Ismail" is the head cheese in The Netherlands; he's been there since 1979 and no one knows who he is.
    We knew Tawhid was the controlling organization for Europe, and this ties Tawhid with another thread to al-Qaeda. London remains the hub, even though Abu Qatada is in jug. Qatada, recall, was Zarqawi's buddy back in Jordan in their younger days. Dan guesses that the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia is the actual control organization, and I'd say he's right. I think the Soddies have caught on, too. The parallel structures, each insulated from the other, fits the cell structure we've seen before. I'm not too sure about the identification of the "sheikh from Iraq." He's too public a figure, and Norway's still sitting on him. I'd suspect one of Zarqawi's lieutenants, maybe Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi, maybe even Zarqawi himself if it's a big job they're planning.
  • The big guys, to include both speakers, know they're under surveillance. Abu Khalil, Abu Qatada, and Sheikh Aden the Syrian are all under surveillance, and other people are actually running things. The speaker's groups are spread from Algeria throughout the world. Sheikh Abd al-Aziz runs the Katilea group from Poland. Poland, Bulgaria, probably all of Eastern Europe, are judged easier to operate in than Western Europe because of the wonders dollars work with the authorities. Austria's the hub of the "underground railroad" operation, moving people. Abu Othman was active in Austria for a long time, then transferred to Saudi Arabia. He's written communiques in support of bin Laden.
    All those "Abu" aliases are too fuzzy for real substance, as they're intended to be. Abu Qatada is the only one that rings a bell. Nor have we heard of the Katilea group yet. The Eastern Europe connection's obvious, though Austria as the hub wasn't.

    As Dan notes, there's a lot that's new here, but there's also a lot that we knew or guessed. We knew that Tawhid's the Euromob, and Zarqawi's the big dog, for one thing. Note that these birds don't refer to Ansar al-Islam, but to Tawhid. Within the organization, the parallel structures are supposed to be hermetically sealed from each other, just like Boskone. Dan sees more actual control from Chechnya than I do — I see it as a training and indoctrination organization, being run as much to blood jihadis as to establish a Greater Ichkeria. It takes the place of Afghanistan, with Maskhadov in about the same position as Mullah Omar. If the Russians were to actually get serious about wiping them out there would be another operation someplace else — I think Ansar was just another arrow in that quiver. Hezb ut-Tehrir moves up the scale of importance based on this, since it's nailed as a Qaeda front. We knew all about the Soddy involvement, and suspected the bin Laden family, so now they're nailed, too — the question is who Abu Salman might be. And the Brits have some serious work to do on the London mob.

    Since this is raw intel, you can read the transcript for yourself and see where Dan and I have come up with our differing interpretations. The really nice thing is that there are analysts sitting in poorly ventilated offices, leafing through stacks of similar transcripts. A little nugget here, a little nugget there... Nice catch, Robert and Dan!
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#6  I'd be willing to bet that "Ismail" in the Netherlands is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. If he's been there since '79, he didn't see combat in Afghanistan, so he's Old Skool.
Posted by: Pete Stanley   2003-12-10 4:37:13 PM  

#5  Mojo hit it dead on. I think we have found our four infiltrators into Kurdistan. The thing that makes me think it is Saad Bin Laden is this line right here.

"who is of the same blood as Emir Abdullah."

Emir Abdullah is OBL, right? So to be of the same blood Abu Salman would have to be his kid. Remember, OBL brother's don't have his blood, just his fathers. If Abu Salman had been a Brother of OBL they would have said " And is of the same father as Emir Abdullah ".

Nice catch on the connection Mojo.
Posted by: Charles   2003-12-10 1:51:38 AM  

#4  Hmmmmm...

12/8/03
Jordanian king trying to broker deal between US and Iran
(snip)
Among those suspected of being in Iran are Saad bin Laden, the son of the al Qaeda founder; military organizer Saif Adel; al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, and Abu Mohammed Masri, who was tied to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.asp?D=12/8/03&ID=22375
Posted by: mojo   2003-12-10 1:41:21 AM  

#3   One thing that I would take note of is that "sheikh" doesn't necessarily refer to a cleric and while I suspect that the holy men do a great deal as far as running the show goes, the term is also a honorific way of saying "elder" (learned or otherwise).

As far as Chechnya goes, my main reason for seeing at least some kind of control for al-Tawhid minimobs routing through there is that we've had Saif al-Islam al-Masri, Zarqawi, and Abu Khabab all in general vicinity of the area over the course of the last two years, and in the case of Zarqawi and Khabab it was within months of one another. I don't have a clue what al-Qaeda's mad scientist was doing up in the Caucasus, but we can probably wager that he was Up To No Good.

The way I figure it, there's a whole network of underground railroads and little enclaves (like the one Ansar/Komala were running before the war) that exist up and down the Caucasus, all the way back to the top brass in Iran. I see the Bingol krazed killers as being part of that, as well as likely the Azerbaijani Jamaat. Above all, I can't help but remember all the communications between Barayev's men in the Moscow theater and their bosses in the Gulf (and Central Asia?) - I think that was one of the clearest glimpses as to just how wide-ranging and entrenched the terror network is.

The other thing is that Basayev himself is an alumni of the Afghan training camps, as is most of the Chechen brass. The Chechen jamaat fighters are al-Qaeda by any other name, one of the reasons why nuancing between the two is so asinine. One of the things I'm real interested to see is how the new Georgian government handles the situation in the Pankisi Gorge in regards to all of the foreign jihadis - that and whether or not Gelayev still has his house.
Posted by: Dan Darling   2003-12-10 1:06:07 AM  

#2  Lots of real interesting stuff here.
It sounds like they have been setting up new C&C structures, particularly with the help of the heads of Hizb ut Tahrir, probably in response to the weakening of Al Qaedas central control.
London is supposed to be the major headquaters of Hezb ut Tahrir in Europe, and it's my guess that they and their backers are more likely to be pulling the stings that the MIRA, but that's mostly because MIRA seems to be a pretty small anti-Saud group which is likely to be under close supervision by Mi5.
I remember reading earlier that European converts to Islam are joining Jihadi outfits in large outfits, I wonder how many of the East Europeans are converts?
Anyways, it sounds like Al Tawhid will turn out to be as sophisticated as Jamaah Islamiyah in South East Asia, which noone had even heard of a couple years ago.
Posted by: Paul Moloney   2003-12-10 1:05:27 AM  

#1  This comment points to the relevant LGF thread and comments, in case anyone there posts something of note.
Posted by: Seafarious   2003-12-10 12:51:48 AM  

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