| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Al Qaeda recruits back in Europe, but why? |
| 2009-05-24 |
| Posted by:ed |
| #4 Probably "fraternal love"... |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles the pedantic 2009-05-24 19:07 |
| #3 did they actuallu train or just sit around bitching with each other? Either way ask for coodinates too said camps and shoot in the head |
| Posted by: funky skunk 2009-05-24 17:25 |
| #2 Fawlty Towers Al Qaeda style |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2009-05-24 15:49 |
| #1 Via JihadWatch Al Qaeda recruits back in Europe, but why? Four men say their training experience in Pakistan wasn't what they hoped for. Anti-terrorism officials wonder if they're just biding their time, ready to strike in Europe. Determined to die as martyrs, the French and Belgian militants bought hiking boots and thermal underwear and journeyed to the wilds of Waziristan. After getting ripped off in Turkey and staggering through waist-deep snow in Iran, the little band arrived in Al Qaeda's lair in Pakistan last year, ready for a triumphant reception. "We were expecting at least a welcome for 'our brothers from Europe' and a warm atmosphere of hospitality," Walid Othmani, a 25-year-old Frenchman from Lyon, recalled during an overnight interrogation in January. Instead, the Europeans -- and at least one American -- learned that life in the shadow of the Predator is nasty, brutish and short. Wary of spies, suspicious Al Qaeda chiefs grilled the half-dozen Belgians and French. They charged them $1,200 each for AK-47 rifles, ammunition and grenades. They made them fill out forms listing next of kin and their preference: guerrilla fighting, or suicide attacks? Then the trainees dodged missile strikes for months. They endured disease, quarrels and boredom, huddling in cramped compounds that defied heroic images of camps full of fraternal warriors. "What you see in videos on the Net, we realized that was a lie," Othmani told police. "[Our chief] told us the videos . . . served to impress the enemy and incite people to come fight, and he knew this was a scam and propaganda." Disenchantment aside, the accounts of four of the returning militants arrested in Europe combine with intercepts to paint a detailed picture of Al Qaeda's secret compounds. They also reinforce intelligence that a campaign of U.S. Predator drone airstrikes has sown suspicion and disarray and stoked tension with tribes in northwestern Pakistan, anti-terrorism officials say. At the same time, the case shows that wily militant leaders still wage war in South Asia and train a flow of foreign recruits. The few trainees from the West remain an urgent concern. Anti-terrorism forces have detected at least one American, a convert to Islam, who trained with Al Qaeda in Pakistan during the last year, Western officials say. Rest at link |
| Posted by: ed 2009-05-24 14:43 |