Four Pakistani crewmen who jumped ship in a Virginia port are not believed to be dangerous, but reports that an immigration official improperly allowed them to come ashore are prompting demands for stricter security. An Immigration and Naturalization Service inspector in Norfolk failed to get authorization before granting a special waiver allowing the men off the ship. Demands for his head on a platter would be appropriate. FoxNews said last night that one of them may have been on a watch list. Whether he was or not, he could have been.
The incident prompted INS Commissioner James Ziglar to issue a memo Friday to INS regional and district directors warning that, effective immediately, he is "implementing a zero tolerance policy with regard to INS employees who fail to abide by headquarters-issued policy and field instructions... The days of looking the other way are over." The days of looking the other way should have ended sometime around 9 a.m. on September 11th. My advice would be to fire Mr. Ziglar, break up INS, throw away the pieces that don't work and build new ones from scratch, and assign the remainder to federal agencies that do work, if they can find any.
Border control should be a specialized military or paramilitary function -- the Russers could probably give us advice, or the Germans, or the Indos. Immigration should be a function of the State Department. Monitoring resident aliens (legal and illegal) should be the responsibility of a Domestic Security Service, which should be prohibited by law from monitoring the activities of citizens. Track them from the time they come into the country, and if they try to drop out of sight, track them down and deport them.
Pre 9-11 these were the guys who asked you if you were a US citizen at the border drive throughs. When you responded, "yes and all my kids too..." as you pointed to the rear of your tinted window minivan, they said "hunh-hunh" and waved you through. Perhaps our superhero of yesterday was just remniscent about the good ole days.
By the way, the prescription for resident aliens to report into the police/INS weekly or monthly isn't a bad idea. At least they could get their applications renewed or updated accurately that way. Posted by Tom Roberts 3/23/2002 1:16:27 PM
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03/23/2002 ||
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Raids on Islamic organizations in the greater Washington area that began on Wednesday continued on Thursday, with two more sites searched by federal agents. Oh? This is news... Looks like it may be major.
The raids are being carried out by a treasury department task force created after the Sept 11 attacks to check and stop the flow of money to Al Qaeda and other organizations deemed by the US to be terrorist. Muslim groups have protested against the raids and denied any links of the organizations searched to terrorist funding. Oh, well in that case we won't bother looking. It's not like anybody'd lie about being associated with an international terrorist organization or two.
At a news conference held at the offices of the Council of American Islamic Relations, the groups said an Islamic think tank in Herndon, Virginia, was searched for 12 hours on Wednesday and its staff questioned. In a raid on a house, agents reportedly broke in at gunpoint and held a woman and her daughter in handcuffs. Council of American Islamic Relations? Oh, yeah. CAIR. Spokesman is Ibrahim Hooper, the guy who wears a brassiere cup on his head. Wonder if we ever did anything about their demand we stop bombing Afghanistan? The fact that they're involved doesn't mean anything went on, only that there was a television camera there.
Search warrants are said to pertain to financial records linked to Al Qaeda and other groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and concentrate on discovering evidence of international money transfers. Yes, that's something we'd want to target as a matter of national self-preservation. Presumably the search warrants were properly drawn and executed. A WaPo article on the same event sez that, "Affidavits giving the reasons for the searches were sealed and were not provided to those who were searched." This would tell me the tipoff came from intel sources and not because somebody at FBI didn't like people named Ibrahim.
Raids on Thursday targetted two houses of directors of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a spokesman for the American Muslim Council told Dawn on Friday. He said the houses of almost all the institute's directors had been searched. One of the directors said mailing lists, directories, staff lists and financial documents had been seized. The institute, according to press reports, was listed as a major donor to the now defunct World and Islamic Studies Enterprise, based in Tampa, Florida, which was investigated in 1995 and allegedly raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Oh, now we're getting back to Dr. Sami al-Arian and his associates, one of whom is his brother-in-law, Ramadan Abdallah, the head of Islamic Jihad. Prior to assuming his present executive position, Abdallah was head of WISE. WaPo sez "Until the mid-1990s, the World Islamic Studies Enterprise was an academic institute affiliated with the University of South Florida. Federal agents searched its office in 1995 and eventually froze its assets."
At the Muslim organizations' press conference, victims of the raids spoke of being humiliated, and termed the treatment meted out to them as inhumane and un-American. They said the law enforcement raiding teams included agents from Customs, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It was claimed the agents confiscated personal items from the homes and took away even family photographs, passports, driver licences, computers, and, in one case, the wedding card of a Muslim girl who got married last week. My sympathy meter reading is still at zero. CAIR specializes in the Parade of Pathetic Victims. "Inhumane and un-American" would involve making the women wear burquas and the men grow their beards to the span of a fist and beating them if they don't. Searching the premises and confiscating what could be evidence isn't. It's just not pleasant. Last I checked there was a difference.
Some participants also accused the justice department of using tactics reminiscent of the anti-communist McCarthy era witch-hunt. How predictable. The new first refuge of the scoundrel.
The organizations urged the attorney-general to conduct an investigation into the raids. American Muslim organizations feel particularly upset because most of them had backed and openly campaigned for the Republican ticket during the 2000 presidential election and were effusive in President George Bush's praise till Sept 11 brought Muslims into the political and law-enforcement focus and led to numerous instances of racial profiling. Backing a political party or a politician isn't supposed to buy a blind eye to illegal activities. And the profiling isn't racial or even religious, it's cultural. There's this vicious, bloodthirsty, back-stabbing culture that's inimical to everything this country stands for, and Bush wants to stop it from destroying us.
Bill O'Reilly interviewed one of the busted groups' spokesmen last night and it was a classic case of O'Reilly giving the man enough rope to hang himself. After listening to all the complaints about Treasury thuggery, O'Reilly asked if the group had ever given money to al-Arian. No real answer came out. Then O'Reilly asked if the group voluntarily cooperated with the Treasury in handing over the records. No? If you don't have anything to hide, then why not? The usual "rights" argument was profferred, but O'Reilly brushed it asides and said that "we've got a war going on and your own advertising said you were giving funds to terrorist groups. I'm glad the US is investigating you right now, but thanks for being honest about your opinions..." Posted by Tom Roberts 3/23/2002 1:26:15 PM
I heard that one, too. It was classic O'Reilly, and I was saying, "Damn straight! You tell 'em, Bill." Posted by Fred 3/23/2002 1:48:07 PM
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One of the 9-11 hijackers, Ahmed Alhaznawi, who later died in the attack on the Pentagon, consulted an emergency room doctor in June about an ugly wound on his leg. He told Florida doctor Christos Tsonas he had bumped into a suitcase two months earlier. The dark, scab-covered ulcer was odd enough to incite the curiosity of Tsonas, who cleaned it and prescribed an antibiotic for infection. The antibiotic was found among the belongings of Alhaznawi following the September 11 terrorist attacks, leading FBI investigators back to the doctor. In reviewing the case, Tsonas told the newspaper, he believed the lesion "was consistent with cutaneous anthrax."
The first of a string of anthrax cases which claimed five lives broke out in October. The September 11 attacks which killed more than 3,000 people, and the subsequent anthrax outbreak, triggered the biggest probe in US history. Investigators appeared to be leaning toward the theory of a domestic source of the anthrax scare in the absence of clear links to the 19 terrorists who turned four hijacked planes into guided missiles on September 11. I've doubted the anthrax attack was domestic ever since Daily Jang got a letter. Never heard what came of the guy they arrested, but then it showed up at the consulate in Lahore, and on the same day at the consulate in Ekaterinburg. Two days later (the mail is so unreliable) it showed up at a joint venture company in Vietnam and around the same time a doctor in Chile was hit. And after that, basically nothin'. Even with so many overseas hits, the source could still have been domestic, but the Daily Jang hit and the Lahore consulate hit make me think it was Pak-associated.
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03/23/2002 ||
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The United States on Friday night ordered all non-essential diplomats and their families in Pakistan to return. The decision came after a careful review of the security scenario in Pakistan. The US embassy in Islamabad and the American consulate in Karachi will remain open. They read the papers, too. The church bombing on Sunday, Qazi's meeting with the Lashkar-e-Taiba thugs in preparation for the election campaigns, Daniel Pearl's murder and the subsequent refusal to hand over Omar Sheikh, and the loss of control (even if they want to control them) of the gunnies and boomers by the fundo parties. It could be a temporary measure in response to the obvious dangers.
More likely it's a strong signal we've noticed that Pakland is the world's premier producer and exporter of terrorists and terrorism.
You thought it was Palestine, didn't you? Admit it. Well, do the korpse kounts and then do the thing with maps and pinheads. And even when Afghanistan was in the business, who was running the camps and where were the reception centers? Whose madrassahs did the recruits come from?
Musharraf's said he's cracking down on terrorism 11,214 times, by my count, and that's involved house arrest for the Bigs and no charges filed against the rank-and-filers, who are the controllers and runners for the system. That way they can be sprung and everybody can look virtuous.
"If they harbor terrorists, the president's message is clear: We will defeat you," Ari Fleischer said back in September, reiterating Bush's comments. Pakland not only harbors them, it produces them on an assembly line. I think the message here is that if Perv won't defeat them, we will.
Guess that's why we have "no immediate plans" to take Iraq apart.
If there is a quagmire to be stuck in its trying to economically and diplomatically prop up any Pakistani regime of any stripe. Before 11 Sept the reasonable editors of the Dawn were pointing out that progress was being held up by internal politics. Now we are the convenient scapegoat for these radically idiotic medievalists. The one thing that irks me is that the Indians have seemingly failed to see the point that the Moslems they need to worry about are the ones who aren't in India, but the ones who aren't. If the Indian government and opposition were to get serious about becoming modern themselves, the Pakistani urge to slum in the 16th century would rapidly lessen. Now we only have a stasis on the subcontinent based on the weakest elements of both countries. Posted by Tom Roberts 3/23/2002 11:22:33 AM
Let's try again...
"worry about are the ones who aren't in India, not the ones who are. Posted by Tom Roberts 3/23/2002 11:26:23 AM
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A team of senior Pakistani lawyers will defend Sheikh Omar in his upcoming trial for the kidnapping and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Omar, the self-proclaimed mastermind of Pearl's abduction, and 10 accomplices were charged Friday with murder, kidnap for ransom and terrorism, and ordered to stand trial from March 29. Wonder who's paying them? That's a money trail to follow, too. Would it end at Qazi, Fazlur Rehman, or Samiul Haq?
The charges carry the maximum penalty of death. But the only way he'll get that is if it looks like he might sing or be snatched by the Merkins. Three weeks house arrest and NO TEEVEE, YOUNG MAN, are much more likely.
Omar's lawyer Saiful Malook said a team of senior lawyers, including relatives of the 29-year old militant, had been formed and were already examining the case. "Omar will be defended by a strong team of lawyers," Malook said. If Justice has a chance, it lies with the habit of relying on Uncle Mahmud, who went to Ahmed's Law School and Institute of Animal Husbandry in Muzafarrabad thirty years ago and has been selling real estate ever since, rather than calling in Johnny Cochrane.
The 10 co-charged include three men who allegedly sent e-mails to Pearl's employers at the Wall Street Journal containing death threats and photos of him in captivity. Seven others remain at large. They're likely to remain at large, too, since they're probably the ones who actually know something. Any of them that look like they're gonna sing will get to sleep widda fishes.
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Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani accused Pakistan of inciting the recent communal violence in Gujarat and elsewhere in India after Islamabad had been 'internationally isolated'. The home minister lashed at Pakistan for fomenting communal tensions in India after unsuccessfully waging a decade-long 'proxy war'. "I would urge every citizen of this country to be cautious and defeat the nefarious designs of our neighbour," the minister said. Pakistan was trying to 'disturb communal harmony in the country that has been safeguarded by the Vajpayee government' for the past five years, Advani said. Indjah has its own set of domestic loons in the form of RSS and VHP, and it looks to us outside observers as though they're capable of destroying the nation's domestic tranquility on their own. If the Indos don't dismantle them, they can forget that "secular state" stuff, and they can forget about economic progress.
That being said, I have somewhere between little and no doubt that the Paks had agents on the sidelines whupping up the violence once it got started, chortling and rubbing their hands as mobs of ignorant Hindus set fire to their Muslim brethren. I wouldn't be in the least surprised to find an ISI involvement in the train attack that set the whole thing off.
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Police detained 55 Shia mourners who were taking out processions in violation of prohibitory orders in Srinagar. Moharram processions have been banned in the city ever since the start of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir. Small groups of Shia mourners appeared at the Pratap Park, Exchange Road and Polo Ground and tried to proceed towards Dalgate. However, the police tried to stop them. The Shia youths turned violent and clashed with the police, forcing them to use batons and fire teargas shells. Fifteen people were arrested, while those who escaped arrest reached Dalgate and threw stones at the cops. As the clashes were going on, more Shia youths reached Dalgate and tried to take out a procession, following which the police resorted to teargas. These guys' turbans are on too tight. It would seem, as a matter of self-preservation, that Kashmir Shi'ites would favor seeing the region remain part of India, as they seem to be fair game in Pakland. Instead, they sit around saying things like, "Hey, Ahmed! Let's have an intifadah if we can't have our way!"
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The United States is following political developments in Pakistan, but so far has no particular comment to offer on news reports that General Pervez Musharraf intends to offer himself for election. Could be we don't care. I don't care. Do you care? Didn't think so. It's hard to get fired up over The Great Ineffectual Hope.
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Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee assured his political allies that his Hindu nationalist BJP would not stray from the pledged secular agenda of India's coalition government. The allies of his National Democratic Alliance (NDA) expressed their faith in Vajpayee, ending a looming political crisis facing the premier's multi-party administration in New Delhi. "The NDA reaffirmed its faith in the common agenda to be implemented with greater vigour under the leadership of Vajpayee," Defence Minister George Fernandes said following a meeting on Friday of the coalition partners. "The meeting reasserted that this common agenda is the bulwark of democracy, secularism and political stability in the country," said Fernandes, NDA's convener.
Vajpayee cobbled together the NDA government on the basis of the secular common agenda in 1999, which vowed not to pursue hardline Hindu policies of some of the partners of the BJP party. A section of the coalition, however, in recent days said the BJP was drifting towards some of the communally-explosive projects of its ideological Hindu mentors. NDA seems to have the point in this case. Whether it'll give them a little more influence as Vajpayee stumbles around with his foot in the VHP bucket remains to be seen. India was on a roll, until VHP decided to go nuts.
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Yasser Arafat says that he is definitely planning on being in Beirut in March 27 for the Arab League summit. "I am the president of the Independent State of Palestine," Mr Arafat told the French daily Le Figaro in an exclusive interview, "and we are a member of the Arab League. Also, I have the habit of assisting at all Arab summits. I used to attend them even before Palestine became a full-fledged member of the Arab League when I headed the PLO." The Independent State of Palestine isn't quite here yet. But Yasser's assistance is what makes Arab summits the joy they always are.
Asked whether once in Beirut he was afraid of not being allowed to return to Palestine, as Prime Minister Sharon has intimated in recent days, Mr Arafat let it be known that "it's not the first time that I have to face such threats." Yes there have been threats and plots all around Yasser since shortly after he was born. He's overcome them all, by Gawd. That's how he's gotten where he is today. Want to see his gun?
"We are discussing the details (of such threats by Mr Sharon)," says Mr Arafat, "but I also have my methods that I've already applied on numerous occasions. When I was banned previously from moving about, I managed - through the use of disguises and false names - to make my way to Al Quds, Nablus, Gaza, indeed here at Ramallah where we are talking. And the Israelis are perfectly aware of what I'm capable of doing." I have this vision of Yasser, cut off from The Bosom of His People, grabbing a false passport that gives his name as "Herb," ditching his headscarf and shaving, donning a false nose and moustache, swimming raging rivers in the dead of night, his gun hanging from a frayed cord held between what's left of his teeth...
As far as officially returning one day to Al Quds [Jerusalem], Mr Arafat responded that not only did he plan to return to Al Quds, but that he would be doing so "very soon." Also, he notes, he has never been in fear of Prime Minister Sharon, "whose methods I've been familiar with a very long time. Also, I know Sharon too well for him to be able to fool me. Our relation goes back a long time, when I was in the Egyptian army." Ahhhh, Yasser. You're such a sly old fox. We're gonna miss you when you're gone. Wanna see?
"Today I am an old general," continued Mr Arafat, "and Mr Sharon has never managed to stop me from doing what I want. Back in 1982, when he invaded Lebanon, Sharon had told his Prime Minister Menaghen Begin that he would finish up the work in three days and that he'd take me back as a prisoner. Not only did he not take me back as a prisoner, the result was instead the longest war that Israel has had to fight with the Arabs." Yasser's a self-appointed general. He and Saddam Hussein graduated from the same military academy. His "strategy" resulted in Lebanon being mostly destroyed. And there was something having to do with Tripoli associated with that campaign. Now what was it? I just can't recall.
With regard to a rumoured meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney in Cairo, Mr Arafat said he was still awaiting an "official" invitation, but that in any case Cairo would be the first of several trilateral meetings that would be necessary before peace could be seriously envisioned. I thought the trip to Cairo came after a cease-fire. Who's ceased firing?
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03/23/2002 ||
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Four suspected hard boys belonging to Lashkar-e-Toiba were arrested near the Delhi. The four were picked up from Hapur city, 60 kilometres (37 miles) from New Delhi, late Friday following an intelligence tip off. Police said the four were on their way to the capital to carry out some kind of operation. "We have definite proof that they were in constant touch with Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders based in Pakistan," senior police official Prashant Kumar said. Coppers also jugged four people at Harpur for harboring the bad boys. Qazi holds his meeting Thursday and the Lashkar thugs start converging on Delhi -- not, notice, Srinagar -- on Saturday. I love it when all the little pieces fit together like that. The Indos hate it, because it's their people who get shot or blown up.
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Police said terrorist threw a grenade into a crowded marketplace in Srinagar, killing two and wounding 11. More than 70 people, mostly civilians, have been injured in four grenade attacks in last three days. No terrorist group has claimed responsibility. This looks like Operation Something-or-Other -- meaning it's not coincidental that the attacks are the same method within a short time. It also shows the Paks are smarter than the Palestinians, because they're blowing other people up without turning themselves into nothing but a lingering odor.
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Five Abu Sayyaf thugs were iced and several others wounded as Philippine troops closed in on the kidnap-for-ransom group. The clash in Basilan took place as the military stepped up their pursuit for American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham and Filipina nurse Ediborah Yap who have been held by the gunmen since May. Elite scout rangers slipped into Abu Sayyaf territory in Lantawan town, sparking the battle which left five guerrillas dead and several wounded. None of the 660 US Special Force soldiers advising Philippine troops on anti-terrorist strategy were involved in the clash.
A woman, possibly a hostage, was spotted among the Abu Sayyaf as they fled. The sighting of the woman and the discovery on Friday of a woman's personal effects left behind by a fleeing band of Abu Sayyaf, has raised hopes that the military may be close to cornering the group holding the three captives. This is as it should be. The PI troops are perfectly capable of controlling the Bad Guys, given a bit more modern equipment than what they've been using and commanders who aren't somebody's cousin who needed a job. They can probably teach our SF guys some lessons in actual tactics -- they've got a lot of first-hand experience.
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A review board of the Lahore High Court accepted the provincial government plea for continued detention of Jaish-i-Muhammad leader Maulana Masood Azhar but ordered that he be lodged in his house at Bahawalpur, which should be declared a sub-jail. The government, in the meanwhile, would pay the detenu's dependents Rs10,000 per month for their subsistence. A similar order was passed in favour of Sipah-i-Sahaba chief Maulana Azam Tariq's family. Looks like a clean break with Pakland.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
