NationStates Jolt Archive

Stewart Bell of National Post, Canada has done a really good job in the story of the Canadian terror plot. Below is a series of 4 articles that he did on this. Lots of details. Confirms what I have been saying all along...about LeT and the danger its camps pose not just to Indians but to everyone else too.

Part I

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=92a9a7e7-d47e-4603-9627-82eea5037589&k=73741
hree months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. Today, in the first of four parts, the role of a Pakistani training camp is revealed.

- - -

BALAKOT, Pakistan - A worn footpath climbs from the Kaghan Valley highway into the lush mountains above the River Kunar, on Kashmir's western frontier.

The locals all know where it leads.

An hour's walk up the steep trail there is a training camp built by Islamic militants called Madrassa Syed Ahmed Shaheed -- a long barracks building and a few guard posts to keep outsiders away.

Young Muslim volunteers from Pakistan and beyond have long trekked here to Balakot to train for jihad, and one of them was allegedly a Canadian named Jahmaal James.

A National Post reporter was able to locate the Balakot training camp and hike to its periphery, where an outbuilding could be seen, possibly a guard post.

Locals cautioned against visiting the "mujahedeen" camp, saying it was guarded by armed men who detained intruders as spies.

"Those people are mental," one man said.

An accused member of the Toronto extremist group that the RCMP says plotted al-Qaeda-inspired terror attacks in southern Ontario, Mr. James allegedly visited Balakot for training during a recent four-month trip to Pakistan.

What the 23-year-old did during his stay in the land of jihad is the subject of an ongoing counterterrorism probe involving police and intelligence services in several countries.

The charges against Mr. James remain unproven in court, and his family denies the allegation that he went to Pakistan for training.

"According to my information, it is false," said his uncle, Mohammed Al-Attique. "If [the] Crown has evidence, he should prove it in the court."

Authorities believe Mr. James is part of a web of links that tie Pakistan to the alleged plan by Muslim extremists to storm Parliament Hill and set off truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

At least four suspects associated with the Toronto group are believed to have attended, or attempted to attend, training camps in Pakistan. Another was a member of a hardline Pakistani religious sect that advocates global Islamic rule, and several others are of Pakistani origin.

While the Toronto plot has been widely described as the work of "homegrown" Canadian terrorists, the Pakistan connection has investigators probing the extent to which the group was influenced by the South Asian nation's rampant radicalism.

Indeed, counterterrorism authorities in several Western countries have been finding links between domestic terror plots and Pakistan, particularly to an emerging player in the global jihad called Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Unemployed and a follower of Imam Ali Hindy's firebrand preachings at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, Mr. James left Toronto on Nov. 5, 2005.

After stopovers in London and Abu Dhabi, he landed in Pakistan. Within days he had consecrated an arranged marriage to the niece of Mr. Attique, a Toronto Islamic bookstore owner, but he also allegedly met up with a British-Pakistani known as Abu Umar.

Abu Umar was a regular contributor to a notorious jihadist Internet forum called Al-Tibbyan. Through the forum, he had befriended some of the suspects in the Toronto terror case and even visited Toronto last year.

To jihadis, Abu Umar was considered a "go-to guy" who could help Western recruits gain access to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba's network of paramilitary training camps in Pakistan. The destruction of al-Qaeda's training bases in Afghanistan since 9/11 had made Pakistan's assorted militant groups the best hope for Western Muslims yearning for training.

Among those Abu Umar is alleged to have assisted was an Atlanta university student named Syed Haris Ahmed, an acquaintance of Mr. James. Mr. Ahmed travelled to Pakistan last summer to train with Lashkar, according to the FBI. He was arrested upon his return to Atlanta.

Abu Umar is also believed to have assisted Mr. James. But the young Canadian fell ill and had trouble making the connections he needed to fully enter the training camp world. Ultimately, however, authorities told the Post in Pakistan that he attended a camp in Balakot.

As a site for a terrorist training centre, Balakot is ideal. Surrounded by high mountains, it is cut off from the outside world by a sometimes impassable road. People here are also largely sympathetic to the Muslim "freedom fighters" who cross the nearby border into Indian-controlled Kashmir to stage guerrilla and terror attacks.

Getting to Balakot is a challenge in itself. From the capital, Islamabad, travellers take the chaotic Grand Trunk Road, then head north on the Korakoram Highway, the main route into the Himalayas.

Buses, motorcycles and elaborately painted trucks filled with bricks, pop bottles and burros play chicken with oncoming traffic, competing for the road's single lane with three-wheeled taxis, donkey carts and tractors.

At Mansehra, the road climbs east through a pass clogged with rock slides before descending into the Kaghan Valley and following the chocolate-coloured River Kunar upstream.

The Lonely Planet travel guide is not kind to Balakot, describing it as a town that "looks much better from a distance than up close." The earthquake of 2005 has only made things worse.

The quake trapped hundreds of Balakot children beneath the rubble of their school, which was crushed by boulders that came tumbling off the mountain slopes. Homes were flattened, bridges fell, and rocks the size of cars blocked the road. More than 4,000 were killed in Balakot alone, nearly a tenth of the population. Angelina Jolie even visited the town last November during a sympathy tour of Kashmir with Brad Pitt.

Almost a year later, the town has been partly rebuilt, with a new hospital and two new bridges, but it remains strewn with boulders and condemned houses. The summer monsoon has only added to the misery, washing away dozens of shelters that had been built to house survivors of the quake.

The bazaar at the centre of town is a collection of dirty roadside stalls that sell everything from grapes and bananas to sandals and shawls. Posters tacked to shop doors display the faces of those missing since the earthquake.

Locals said the training camp just south of town was a base for the mujahedeen "holy warriors" fighting what they consider India's occupation of disputed Kashmir.

"In fact, it was a camp," said Khalid Hawan, a Balakot resident who works for the French humanitarian group ACTED and claims to have seen the camp.

He took a reporter to a spot where he said one of the camp buildings could be seen high on a ridge. "The free fighters were there and they received training," he said.

Mr. Hawan said the Pakistani government closed the camp four or five months ago, although some locals believe it still operates and cautioned against getting too close.

A reporter was unable to find anyone in Balakot who recalled Mr. James, but many locals were aware of the camp, which they said had been built by the outlawed militant group Jaishe Mohamed.

It consists of several large buildings made from lumber pilfered from the surrounding pine forests. The militants occupy an area about three kilometres by one kilometre and have sentries posted to keep outsiders away, locals said.

"From there to there," said a government forestry worker, pointing to two pine-covered mountain peaks. "That is totally their area."

Asked if it was possible to visit the camp, two locals held up their hands and gestured as if they were shooting a rifle. "If you want to see another place, go. But don't go there," one man said.

An employee of the Kaghan Forest Division was recently in the mountains inspecting trees when he wandered into an armed sentry, a co-worker said.

He was taken to the camp and accused of being a spy until villagers intervened and he was freed with a promise to never return, he said.

Balakot residents described seeing inhabitants of the training camp walking along the side of the highway, their long, full beards making them stand out as fundamentalist Muslims. Some were Kashmiris and Pakistanis, while others were foreigners, locals said.

The camp can also be reached by 4X4 jeep, on a narrow road that swings into the mountains behind an abandoned restaurant with a rusted children's roundabout out front.

"That's the way to the mujahedeen camp," a young boy bathing naked in a monsoon-flooded stream told a reporter, unprompted. The mud flap of a Toyota truck lay in a nearby rut.

The description of the camp provided by locals is consistent with that made by the FBI during a recent terrorism case in Lodi, Calif. India also claims to have captured two men it says have confessed to training in Balakot. They were allegedly planning suicide bombings in Mumbai.

According to the book A to Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan by Muhammad Amir Rana, the camp is controlled by Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaishe Mohammed.

Training camps are a sensitive matter in Pakistan. While the Pakistani government once openly supported militant groups fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir, since 9/11 President Pervez Musharraf has been under pressure to restrain the jihadis.

Pakistan has since outlawed several militant groups, including Jaishe Mohammed, and Azhar's brother-in-law Rashid Rauf was arrested on Aug. 9 for his suspected involvement in the British plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners over the Atlantic.

Jaishe Mohammed was also banned by the Canadian government, which accuses it of calling for "the destruction of America, India, and all infidels worldwide."

But Jaishe Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba remain active and are among the largest armed factions fighting to make Indian-controlled Kashmir part of Pakistan. Meanwhile, there are indications that Lashkar has been transforming itself from a regional group focused on Kashmir into a global terror network.

Over the past two years, Lashkar has begun to open its doors to foreign Muslims, taking on the role that had previously been played by Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Arrests in Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada have all been linked back to Lashkar.

The Lashkar training regimen consists of a three-week course called Daura Aam, and an advanced guerrilla warfare and commando course called Daura Khas, according to Syed Adnan Ali Shah, a research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies in Islamabad.

Recruits begin by discarding their name and adopting a kuniat, or Arabic nickname. Shaving and haircuts are forbidden. Lashkar members distinguish themselves by wearing their shalwar khamiz outfits above the ankles.

Despite the ban on its activities, Lashkar continues to operate a training camp in Pakistan, he said, adding it was possible the group was training in Balakot.

"It might be a very small compound, it might be a very small home, it might be to see videos and discuss with each other," he said. "It might be the home of an activist who had gone underground."

Since the earthquake hit Balakot, aid groups have set up compounds near the riverbanks to care for residents while their homes are repaired. The most visible by far is Jamaat ud Dawa.

Widely considered a front for Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Jamaat is a preaching network of radical mosques and madrassas. It was founded by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who also founded Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Many believe they are one and the same. At the very least, they share a common ideology.

Behind a corrugated metal fence decorated with black-and-white flags bearing the Jamaat logo -- a curved sword and Urdu script -- the group operates a health clinic, pharmacy, school, mosque and warehouse.

"When the earthquake happened, they are the people that were here first," said an elderly man at the Jamaat compound who called himself Jamil but declined to give his full name because he said he feared repercussions from the Pakistani authorities.

"They've been digging out the dead bodies and they have been taking the injured to the hospital before all the NGOs [non-governmental organizations]."

He denied Jamaat was involved in terrorism. "The West says they are terrorists. They are not terrorists. These are the most noble, the most humble, the most sincere people," he said.

Not everybody agrees. Jamaat is a banned terrorist organization in the United States, which calls it a front for Lashkar. Its founder, Mr. Saeed, is being detained by Pakistan for inciting unrest.

When the Pakistani government outlawed Lashkar, Mr. Saeed immediately launched Jamaat ud Dawa. But the United States and some experts on Pakistani militant groups contend that was simply a shell game.

Jamil calls that "Western propaganda."

"The people from Pakistan and especially the Muslim countries, they are funding this organization," he said. "They are giving money to these people and they are honestly distributing it to the people."

Despite its claim to be helping Balakot's earthquake victims, the Jamaat compound was eerily quiet during a recent visit. Aside from a few Jamaat volunteers reclining on carpets in the mosque, the compound was empty. Not a single patient was seeking help at the clinic.

Terrorist or not, Jamaat subscribes to a harsh anti-Western ideology that promotes the same Wahabist religious interpretation that al-Qaeda uses to justify its terrorist attacks.

Sitting on floor mats in a fly-infested room with an ancient computer humming in one corner, one of the Jamaat managers hands over a copy of the group's in-house magazine, "Voice of Islam."

Jamil said the publication is banned in the West. A glance at the headlines shows why. Its articles waver from wildly conspiratorial (one describes Valentine's Day as a Western plot to spread "debauchery, immorality and killings" in the Muslim world) to dangerous, citing Islamic scripture to justify killing non-Muslims.

"Let there be curse upon the Jews and the Christians," reads the magazine's "fatwah section." Elsewhere, it says not to befriend "disbelievers" until they convert to Islam. If they reject Islam, it says, "then take them and kill them."

Two pages of the magazine are devoted to the "activities of freedom fighters in occupied Kashmir." One item, headlined "29 Indian dispatched to hell," describes an attack on an income tax office in Srinigar, India.

The magazine includes an editorial by Mr. Saeed that condemns the Pakistani government for reforms he complains are turning the country into "a modern Western state."

"Egyptians have made their country modern," he writes. "Now there [sic] country is working as the base for the advancement of Jewish interests. Its streets give a Western look and these territories are under undeclared occupation of Christian world."

Pakistan welcomed Jamaat's help following the earthquake, but there are concerns the group may be exploiting the grief in villages such as Balakot to spread its Saudi brand of extremist ideology.

"This is wrong. Jamaat ud Dawa is a peaceful party, or you could say foundation," said Abdul Hatif, a Balakot teacher who survived the earthquake but lost 16 of his students.

The scene in Balakot is reminiscent of Bosnia in the early 1990s -- several Islamic aid organizations, some of them linked to terrorism, which may be doing humanitarian work but which could also provide cover for terrorists.

Mr. James did not stay long in Balakot. Sickly and unhappy, he left his bride and returned to Canada in March, 2006, allegedly having failed to obtain anything more than a one-week small arms training course from Lashkar.

"He was in Lahore," countered Mr. Attique, who knows not only Mr. James but also another of the Toronto terror suspects, Steven Chand, who lived in Mr. Attique's basement. "He never went to [the] border or Kashmir or Afghanistan, never."

Just over two months after his return to Canada, Mr. James was arrested by the RCMP on June 2 and charged along with 17 others for his alleged role in a Toronto-based group led by Fahim Ahmad and Zacharia Amara that is accused of training for terror and plotting attacks.

He is facing two charges under the Anti-terrorism Act: participating in a terror group and receiving terrorist training. He is scheduled to appear in court in Brampton this month for a bail hearing.

Part II

Story of the suspects family and his wife.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=32389183-1f7e-4f57-a55e-97c4b7b12d1d&k=33220
Terror suspect's bride
'I'm shocked'

Stewart Bell
National Post

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Three months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. Today, in the second of four parts, an exclusive interview with the Pakistani bride of Toronto terror suspect Jahmaal James.

- - -

LAHORE, Pakistan - There are plastic flowers on the walls, a small computer on the table beneath the window and a curtain for a door. For four months and 10 days, accused Canadian terrorist Jahmaal James lived in this dingy bedroom in Pakistan's cultural capital.

His copy of a Toronto-published book called How to Pray, an illustrated guide to performing Muslim rituals, still sits in the room.

That is not all he left behind.

Sima James, the woman he married in a colourful ceremony in Lahore 10 months ago, is a 25-year-old with big brown eyes and the head-to-toe black dress of a conservative Muslim woman.

"He was a good person -- simple, nice," she told the National Post in her first interview, one of the rare times a wife of any of the 18 suspects arrested in alleged Canadian terror plots has spoken to the media.

A follower of Imam Ali Hindy's preachings at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, where several known and suspected terrorists have worshipped, Mr. James flew to Lahore last November.

By his family's account, he went to Pakistan to consecrate an arranged marriage. But Crown prosecutors allege Mr. James had something else in mind: training for terror.

During his stay, he allegedly travelled north to the village of Balakot to attend a training camp run by Islamist militants. The Post has learned Mr. James allegedly received a week of small-arms training.

He was also seen in the company of senior members of the al-Qaeda-linked militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and at one point was questioned by Pakistani authorities.

"Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies are co-operating with the Canadian government," said Brigadier General Javed Cheema, a Pakistani counterterrorism official.

The travels of Mr. James are part of a web of links that tie Pakistan to the alleged plot by Toronto-based Islamic extremists to storm Parliament Hill and set off truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

While the Toronto plot has been widely described as the work of "homegrown" Canadian terrorists, the Pakistani connection has investigators probing the extent to which the group was influenced by the South Asian nation's rampant radicalism.

Counterterrorism authorities in Britain, the United States and Australia have been turning up similar links between domestic terror plots and Pakistan, particularly to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, an emerging player in the global jihad.

Sitting on a sofa opposite her husband's neatly made bed, Mrs. James said she had no idea the man she married had been accused of taking part in a Toronto-based terrorist group.

"I'm shocked," said Mrs. James, whose family runs a Lahore poultry business. "I don't know what happened, really I don't, and I don't believe this. My husband don't do this. I know."

Mrs. James denies her husband had any contact with groups such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba or its Lahore-based affiliate, Jamaat ud Dawa, during the time she spent with him.

In fact, she says, he hardly ever left his room.

They met through Mrs. James' uncle, Mohammad Al Attique.

A Canadian who owns an Islamic publishing house that sells Korans and prayer guides, Mr. Attique occasionally travels home to Lahore, where he has a bookshop in addition to outlets in Scarborough and Saudi Arabia.

On a visit to Lahore last year, "Uncle Attique" and Mrs. James' father decided it was time for her to wed. Mr. Attique promised to search for a suitor.

Upon his return to Toronto, Mr. Attique spoke to Mr. James about it. Both men worshipped at the Salaheddin mosque and Mr. James had expressed an interest in finding a Muslim bride.

Photos of Mr. James soon landed in Sima's e-mail inbox, and she looked at them on the computer in her grandmother's bedroom. Mrs. James' family gave their consent. "They said, 'OK, we trust you.' They said, 'Go ahead, trust in God and go ahead,' " said Mr. Attique.

Before leaving for Pakistan, Mr. James consulted with his imam. "He's a very nice guy, you know. He came to me to ask about getting married," Mr. Hindy told the Post in June, adding Pakistani authorities briefly detained Mr. James at the airport during the trip and that he knew RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service investigators were watching him.

In an interview, Mr. Attique said he encouraged Mr. James to enroll at an Islamic institute in Lahore. "I asked him to go to Lahore, any institute, to learn something."

But Mr. James was scared, he said. Following revelations that several terror suspects arrested in the West had studied at Pakistan's hardline religious schools, President Pervez Musharraf was expelling foreigners from such schools.

"He said, 'No, if I go Musharraf will catch me because he is against the foreigners. He is catching nowadays the foreigners and he put in the jail.'

"So he never went, although I ask him because there was in my mind he should not waste his time, he should study."

Dozens of schools in Lahore are controlled by Jamaat ud Dawa, widely considered a front for the outlawed Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. But Mr. Attique said he did not direct Mr. James to any particular school.

"Any institute, there are so many institutes in Lahore, he can join any institute but he basically refused, he never asked me 'which institute I should go,' he said, 'No, the situation is not good, so I came here and I married and I enjoyed my day and go back.'"

The couple met for the first time on Nov. 9, 2005. The wedding was the next day. Mrs. James wore heavy makeup and a traditional dress. Mr. James wore a white robe, checkered kaffiyah and gold and silver tinsel garlands.

It was a big family affair, with Mrs. James' six siblings (three sisters, three brothers), her parents and "aunties." She said there was nobody at the wedding dinner from Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Mr. Attique said his family in Pakistan is not involved with Lashkar. "My large family are not religious and they have no relation with Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, or any other. I know this personally."

According to Mrs. James, the day after the wedding, Mr. James retired to the matrimonial bedroom at the family's home in Lahore's Sanda neighbourhood and hardly left for the next four months.

"He just stay in his room," she said, speaking in the English she has learned in the past year. "He just sit and lie down.

"He no go anywhere."

He complained of stomach pains, which she thought were caused by the food, and refused to go outside because the foul Lahore air would make him cough, she said.

"He don't like the lights. I close the door and he just sit and we talk."

The family would sometimes summon Mr. James to sit with them on the second-floor patio of their rented home, but he would decline, saying it would only set off his coughing.

The newlyweds spent their days in the bedroom. He would teach her English; she would teach him Islam.

"He was in the initial stages of learning the holy Koran," she said, adding Mr. James knew only "a little" about the Muslim faith.

Their chats improved as she learned English with the help of a local language academy. But she said he hardly talked about his life in Toronto.

"He just say he do work and he stay with his father and maybe he arrange for me to come to Canada, maybe," she said.

They only left the house three times, she said; twice to see a doctor and once to extend his three-month Pakistani visa to six months. He never went anywhere else and never saw any friends, she said.

"He just call his father and his mother and his grandmother," she said.

But others say Mr. James did much more than hibernate in his bedroom. He is alleged to have met up with a British Lashkar-e-Tayyiba operative named Abu Umar and trained at a camp 500 kilometres north of Lahore.

Mr. Attique said Mr. James was visited by Pakistani intelligence officers, who dropped by the house in Lahore to ask him questions.

"He told me, 'Some people came and he asked me question and he asked their father-in-law and some other peoples," said Mr. Attique.

Asked whether the officers were from the Pakistan military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, he said, "Maybe. I have no idea who went there but some people went there, from which side I don't know."

He said he did not know what the intelligence officers told Mr. James. "This I never asked, really."

Mr. James was never able to receive extensive weapons training and he became extremely ill. His wife said he did not like Pakistan. He was reluctant to leave Mrs. James, but she insisted. "He want to stay with me but I say 'You're sick, you no stay with me.' "

He left on March 20, 2006.

After that, they talked on the phone every day, but then she stopped hearing from him. That's because on June 2, he was arrested by the RCMP at his parents' home in Toronto.

The next morning, police announced that Mr. James was one of 17 men who had been charged with taking part in an extremist group that had planned truck bombings and other attacks in Ontario.

Mr. James' father wept that day as he contemplated what would happen to him and his family. "I had no idea he was involved in anything like this," he said at the time.

When she did not hear from Mr. James, Mrs. James called her Uncle Attique, who broke the news that her husband had been arrested. "I said, 'Why he arrested and he no told me.' "

Since the arrest the newlyweds have spoken two or three times, but she said Mr. James has never said what happened or told her the details of the allegations.

Shown the RCMP and CSIS press statements on the arrests, which describe Mr. James as having participated in a terrorist group inspired by the ideology of al-Qaeda, she said that could not be.

He never spoke of al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, she said, and he only wanted to help poor people. "No this is not true," she said.

The family also notes that Mr. James was in Pakistan on the dates he is accused of undergoing terrorist training in Ontario.

"He no do this crime," she said.

How could he be involved in political groups when he was only just learning about Islam, she added.

"He just said, 'I become Muslim and I just pray.' He said, 'I just want my life.' I know he not do wrong. I know Jahmaal no do this."

Alone at home while her husband is behind bars half a world away, Mrs. James is in a difficult bind for a young woman from a conservative family.

"Yes, this is difficult," she allows, "but I just thinking good things. I no thinking bad things."

But her family says Mrs. James is torn up.

"She is so worried, sad and sometimes she is weeping," said her cousin Muhammad Yahya, a teacher who runs the Lahore outlet of Al-Attique Books.

The bookstore is in a tiny second-floor room in the Urdu Bazaar, where more than 1,000 booksellers manufacture Korans, textbooks and other works and sell them in small shops and stalls.

A nephew of Mr. Attique, Mr. Yahya recalls meeting Mr. James in Lahore. "There were some other people who introduced me, 'This is Jahmaal, he is from Canada.'

"What he do, I don't know," he said, adding, "He is a very simple person."

Mr. James is not the only connection to Mr. Attique. Another of the accused, Steven Vikash Chand, was living in Mr. Attique's basement suite when he was arrested on June 2.

"I could not understand," Mr. Attique said of Mr. James' arrest. "He stayed approximately five months in Pakistan and he came back and he has been operated [on] and he was in hospital.

He said Mr. James knows nothing about the case.

"I ask[ed] him, he said, 'I have no relation with anybody there in Pakistan.' I ask him, 'Do you know somebody, did you meet someone?'

His answer: "Never."

"But you see that investigator has more information than us. That is their duty and we only have a little bit information.... This is not our duty to collect information and do something, this is not our job, this is their job.

"We left [the] Third World, came [to the] First World not in anything else other than peace. We love peace we want to live in peace.... Anybody's son or father do something bad, it is our duty to condemn them."

is it just me, or does pakistan seem to be becoming the new afghanistan?

1. They were always "such nice neighbors" whether terrorists or serial killers.
2. "We never suspected a thing."
3. They always take long trips to Pakistan.

Part III.

Bell visits Pakistan and meets jihadi types in Muridke, the HQ of LeT. Not something I would do. The last western reporter who tried this (Pearl) ended up having his head removed from his body.:eek:

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=42a1b91f-7970-44b4-bd35-657cb3de867f&k=78839
Holy warriors or just holy?

Stewart Bell
National Post

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Three months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. In the third of four parts, Stewart Bell meets alleged jihadi leaders.

- - -

MERIDKE, Pakistan - A barricade and a Kalashnikov-toting sentry in a white shalwar khamiz block the dirt road that leads north from the squalid village of Nandal Saadhan.

Behind the guard post, an 80-hectare mini-state sprawls over the arid Punjab plain -- the headquarters of what has been called the largest jihadi organization in Pakistan.

"You must visit Meridke," a member of the group, Jamaat ud Dawa, said in Lahore. "India says it is the centre of terror." But when a reporter arrived, he was chased away by an armed guard.

What goes on inside the Meridke compound and others like it is a growing concern to Western governments.

Outlawed by the United States, its leader detained by Pakistan, Jamaat denies it is involved in international terrorism.

But while it says it is nothing more than a band of preachers, counterterrorism investigators believe it controls an armed militant faction called Lashkar-e-Tayyiba that has been training Western Muslims for terror.

According to intelligence officials and experts, recruits undergo initial indoctrination at Meridke before being sent for weapons training at one of Lashkar's paramilitary training camps.

"The Meridke camp is the first step for recruits who are vetted for their suitability for jihad before being moved to the next phase where they are provided two types of military training," Pakistani journalist Amir Mir writes in his 2004 book The True Face of Jehadis.

From the training grounds, the recruits are "launched" across the border to fight what they consider India's occupation of the disputed Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir.

Over the past two years, however, some of those recruits have been Westerners, and instead of fighting in Kashmir, they are returning to their home countries where they have been implicated in domestic terror plots.

In Britain, the United States, Australia and Canada, counterterrorism investigators have been increasingly turning up links between local extremist cells and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

The Canadian Lashkar network engages in recruitment, terror financing, the acquisition of materiel and worse. Lashkar has been tied by authorities to the alleged plot by "homegrown" Canadian extremists to storm Parliament Hill and set off truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

At least five suspects associated with the alleged Toronto cell broken up by the RCMP on June 2 are believed to have links to Lashkar. They include Jahmaal James, who allegedly travelled to Pakistan last November to attend a Lashkar training camp.

While the suspected Toronto cell is said to have developed within Canada, investigators are probing what appear to be training, financial and other links to Pakistan.

Five years after 9/11, the alleged Lashkar connection suggests that while terrorism has changed dramatically since the war on terror was declared, Pakistan's central role in terror remains unchanged.

In a courtyard outside the Lahore High Court, Abdur Rahman Makki, one of the senior leaders of Jamaat ud Dawa, sits on a plastic lawn chair surrounded by dozens of his followers.

Moments earlier, the court had convened to hear the case of his detained brother-in-law, Mohammed Hafez Saeed, the suspected leader of both Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jamaat ud Dawa.

Between sips of sweet tea, Mr. Makki says there is no truth to claims that Jamaat is engaged in terrorism. "It is only Indian propaganda," he says. "The people standing around you are not terrorists."

Jamaat ud Dawa used to be called Markaz Dawa Wal Irshad, which the Canadian government described as "a fundamentalist centre for religious learning and social welfare established in the late 1980s."

The brainchild of Mr. Saeed, an Islamic scholar, and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam, its purpose was to promote "the purification of the society, and to build a society on the basis of [the] Koran and Sunnah," said Abdullah Muntazer, a Jamaat spokesman.

Heavily influenced by Saudi doctrine and money, the group distinguished itself for its loathing of the West. "We think that democracy is basically a Western system of politics that doesn't suit Islam and Muslims," Mr. Muntazer said.

Toward the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the group set up an armed wing called Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), or "Army of the Pure." Lashkar recruits trained at camps in Afghanistan, but when the war ended, it shifted its armed campaign to Kashmir.

The LeT was soon infamous for its slaughter of non-Muslim civilians and Indian security forces in Kashmir, which Lashkar believes should rightly be part of Pakistan.

A profile by Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada says Lashkar has "close links" to al-Qaeda and notes that, "Osama bin Laden is reportedly one of the LeT's leading financiers."

Before the 9/11 attacks, Lashkar enjoyed wide popular support in Pakistan. It was also covertly backed by the Pakistani government, which used it as a proxy force against India in Kashmir.

"At that time we were close to the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and you could say that Lashkar and Jamaat ud Dawa were the same," Mr. Muntazer said.

But in the crackdown that followed 9/11, the U.S. banned Lashkar and Pakistan followed suit in 2002. To evade the consequences of being banned, some experts say Mr. Saeed simply changed the name of his organization from Lashkar to Jamaat ud Dawa.

Not so, says Mr. Muntazer, who maintains the organizations are distinct. "Some people say we have changed the name from Lashkar-e-Tayyiba to Jamaat ud Dawa. This is totally untrue."

Today, Jamaat is a powerful force in Pakistan, with hundreds of thousands of followers, particularly in the Punjab. In Lahore alone, Jamaat controls 100 mosques. It operates 140 schools, 30 madrassas (Islamic religious schools) and a science college.

According to the book A to Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan, Jamaat has adapted its curriculum to fit its ideology. "Instead of the concept of 'c' for cat and 'g' for goat, we introduced the concept of 'c' for canon and 'g' for gun," it quotes Zafar Iqbal, head of the Jamaat education department, as saying.

The book adds that all Jamaat school teachers are required "to go to jihad once, or at the very least take jihadi training."

The Jamaat ud Dawa office in Lahore is behind a walled compound that encloses a large mosque where Mr. Saeed delivers Friday sermons. Tall metal gates block the entrance and exit.

Western counter-terrorism investigators believe that Mr. Saeed still controls Lashkar, and uses Jamaat's preaching network to indoctrinate Muslims youths and scout for potential jihadis.

Most troublesome, however, are the indications that Lashkar is evolving into a global exporter of terror. Once focused narrowly on the conflict in Kashmir, in the past two years it has opened its training camps to foreigners.

Afghanistan may be off-limits to Western Muslims yearning for jihad, but camps still operate in Pakistan, and their graduates are proving troublesome for the West.

From the 7/7 bombings in London to the Virginia Jihad Network in the United States and an Australian cell broken up by police last year, a common denominator has been Lashkar.

One of the suspected links between Lashkar and Western terror conspiracies is alleged to be a British man known as Abu Umar, who visited Canada last year and knows some of the Toronto suspects.

He allegedly played a role in facilitating training at Lashkar camps. Among those he is believed to have helped are Mr. James. Abu Umar was arrested at Manchester Airport in June after returning to Britain from Pakistan and has since been charged with terrorism offences including conspiracy to murder.

The Jamaat ud Dawa compound at Meridke, about 35-kilometres north of Lahore, has been called a symbol of Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's "unfinished business."

After 9/11, Gen. Musharraf vowed to crack down on the jihadis who were using Pakistan as a launch pad for terror. Since then, Pakistan has arrested hundreds of al-Qaeda members, including many top leadership figures such as Khalid Sheik Mohammad.

But while Pakistan outlawed Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, it has not done the same for Jamaat. That is likely because of Gen. Musharraf's precarious position in the war on terror.

Caught between international demands for anti-terror co-operation on the one hand and Pakistan's widespread anti-Western sentiment and sympathy for Islamic fighters on the other, the President is aware he must proceed with caution.

If he pushes too forcefully against Muslim extremist groups, thousands of Pakistanis flood the streets in protest, accusing him of being a U.S. puppet and threatening his tenuous hold on power.

Kashif Mumtaz, a research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies in Islamabad, sees nothing untoward about the Western Muslims who study at the Meridke compound.

Pakistanis who migrate to the West often want to maintain their ties to the homeland, he said.

One way of doing that is to send their children to attend religious schools.

The problem is not Meridke, he said, it is foreign policies that Muslims find offensive, such as Britain's intervention in Iraq and India's hold on Kashmir.

"There is a fertile ground, so there are people who are sympathetic to these causes. Unless you give independence to the Kashmiris, the situation will remain the same."
:rolleyes:
While Jamaat has enjoyed near immunity in Pakistan, that may be changing as Western intelligence agencies increasingly link its affiliate Lashkar-e-Tayyiba to terrorist plots.

On Aug. 9, Pakistani authorities placed Mr. Saeed under house arrest in Lahore.

A copy of the arrest order, obtained by the National Post, accuses him of making "inflammatory speeches" and indulging in "activities prejudicial to public order."

"He has become a potential danger to the public peace," it says.

Two weeks later, in a courtroom in Lahore, beneath five ceiling fans and a framed portrait of Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a lawyer representing Jamaat ud Dawa stood before a judge arguing for Mr. Saeed's release.

"They are law-abiding citizens," pleaded the lawyer, Nazeer Ahmad Ghazi. "Professor Saeed is not some illiterate." Rather, he is "a defender of Pakistan."

In an interview, the lawyer blamed the "Jew lobby" and Indian propaganda for creating the perception that Jamaat is a militant group.

"They say that once upon a time Hafez Saeed is a sympathizer of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. It has nothing to do with Jamaat ud Dawa.... As far as Jamaat ud Dawa is concerned, there's no training camps."

The man who led Pakistan's military intelligence agency during the Afghanistan war said Lashkar has become only a Muslim preaching movement since it was outlawed by the Pakistanis in 2002.

Hamid Gul said the group is involved in neither terrorism nor training. "As far as I know there are no camps," said the former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence, better known as the ISI.

"No, it's no true," he said of allegations that Lashkar has been training foreign terrorists.

"I know Lashkar very well and they are now involved in humanitarian work ever since the ban was slapped on them. They are now primarily a proselytizing network."

Following last October's devastating earthquake in Kashmir, Jamaat sent armies of volunteers to dig out bodies and provide for those displaced by the destruction.

In the village of Balakot, Jamaat operates a large walled compound, complete with its own school, mosque and clinic. It also distributes Jamaat's harshly anti-Western publications, which denounce Jews and glorify the "holy warriors" fighting in Kashmir.

"They are for jihad, yes, for liberation and that is restricted to Kashmir because they do not click with al-Qaeda," Mr. Gul said.

"Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is not at all, repeat, not at all linked to al-Qaeda type of things. They are not a terrorist organization but because they are committed to [the] Koran and prepared to make sacrifices..."

Western Muslims may have come to Meridke, but that does not mean they took arms training, he said. The problem, he added, is not Pakistan but the Western policies that make them angry.

"You have to look homewards and see where the difficulties lie," he said.

Some analysts say that while Mr. Saeed refrained for a time from openly preaching jihad, he has become increasingly strident, possibly in response to an internal power struggle.

Angered by his decision to publicly separate Jamaat from Lashkar, hardliners have formed a breakaway faction. To counter the revolt, Mr. Saeed has allegedly been moving back toward militancy.

"Hafez Saeed's top most priority now," writes Mr. Mir, the Pakistani journalist, "is to form a new cadre of highly trained militants, not only to wage jihad in Jammu and Kashmir, but also to counter the might of his former comrades from the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba."

Part IV

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=a346ff83-b932-448a-9960-432c3fb0af6e&k=69825
Part 4: A terror suspect's mentor

Stewart Bell
National Post

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Three months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. Today, in the last of four parts, a Toronto terror suspect's ties to a hardline Pakistani Muslim group.

- - -

LAHORE, Pakistan - An elderly man with a snowy beard, a black Jinnah cap and a well-honed gift for oratory, Dr. Israr Ahmad is one of Pakistan's best-known Islamic revivalists.

With the help of a weekly television show, a Web site and a seminary in Lahore's Model Town neighbourhood, the 74-year-old exhorts Muslims to strive for the "global domination of Islam."

In his books and recorded lectures, sold online and at his small shop in Lahore, he spells out his views about "conspiring" Jews and the need to treat non-Muslims as second-class citizens.

"Under the existing state of affairs, which is both distressing and disheartening, we must keep reminding ourselves that the ascendancy of Islam over the entire globe is bound to come," he writes.

Dr. Ahmad does not advocate violence; his message is that change will only come once Muslims individually adhere to the principles of their faith. But one of his disciples may have gone too far.

Qayyum Abdul Jamal, the eldest of the 18 terror suspects arrested in the Toronto area this summer, was a student of Dr. Ahmad's and a member of the "revolutionary" organization he founded, Tanzeem-e-Islami.

In an indication of his reverence for Dr. Ahmad, days after he was arrested by the RCMP on June 2, Mr. Jamal sent a message to his wife, Cheryfa, asking her to get in contact with his "old mentor and teacher."

"All my husband had wanted from me was to get this simple message to his old friend: 'I need your [prayers],' " Mrs. Jamal says on her Internet blog, adding, "Dr. Ahmad asked me to fax my request as it was difficult for him to hear me on the phone."

According to Tanzeem officials, the mosque where Mr. Jamal preached, the Ar-Rahman Islamic Centre in Mississauga, Ont., was once affiliated with the Pakistan-based organization but was expelled three years ago.

In 2003, the Tanzeem-e-Islami branch in North America broke away from its parent organization in Pakistan, partly due to ideological differences with Dr. Ahmad. Mosques in Canada and the U.S. were required to pledge their loyalty to a new North American leader, rather than to Dr. Ahmad. The Ar-Rahman centre did not do so and its membership was therefore revoked.

"He is not considered a member and thus his membership is nullified and he is no longer a member of our organization," said Steve Elturk, president of the U.S. Tanzeem affiliate, now called the Islamic Organization of North America.

He added that Dr. Ahmad "never advocated terrorism, never advocated any violence, as a matter of fact his movement is a peaceful, non-violent movement."

The terrorist plot that Mr. Jamal stands accused helping foment in Ontario has been widely described as a "homegrown" Canadian conspiracy, but there are also a web of ties to Pakistan, and Mr. Jamal is among them.

Some of those associated with the Toronto cell allegedly traveled to Pakistan for terrorist training; some are accused of links to a Pakistani militant group called Lashkar-e-Tayyiba; and some are of Pakistani heritage.

Five years after 9/11, the suspected connections between Pakistan and what could have been Canada's worst act of domestic terror is seen by some as an indication that while terrorism has changed dramatically since 2001, Pakistan's role as a hub of global terror remains unresolved.

At the Society of the Servants of the Koran, Dr. Ahmad's seminary near Punjab University, a sticker on the window reads: "Destiny of Pakistan: Caliphate," the term for the Islamic nation imagined by some Muslims.

"Yes, I heard about him," one of Mr. Ahmad's friendly aides, Sardar Awan, said of Mr. Jamal in an interview with the National Post. "Our party is Tanzeem-e-Islami. He was in that," he said.

"Recently when he was arrested one of our previous members of Tanzeem-e-Islami informed us. And his wife ... she is alone there so we contacted the emir [the Tanzeem leader] in America to help."

Dr. Ahmad could be called Mr. Jamal's teacher "in the sense that Dr. Israr taught [the] Koran to people and gave [the] message of [the] Koran to [the] people of Pakistan, in the sense that he learned Islam and Koran from Dr. Israr," he said.

He said he read about the Toronto terror plot in the newspaper, but added he has his own views about who is and is not a terrorist. "As far as I understand, I don't think any organizations are terrorist organizations, are really terrorist, even in Afghanistan or in Iraq.

"They are poor people. I don't think they are terrorists."

But he said his organization would not condone bombings in Canada. "We don't encourage that. We try to make our country according to the system of Islam." [Sharia in Canada...Yay!]

Asked if he was concerned that one of the Tanzeem's followers might have taken things too far, he said: "Yes, we will try to clarify our position more frequently and we will tell people that this is not what we are aiming [for].

"This is not at all our mission, our struggle."

The "message of [the] Koran and Sunna and our organization is not that complicated. Maybe he misapplied that message or he could not judge that this message is not applicable to where he is staying."

In an e-mail sent to the Post, Dr. Ahmad said he was out of touch with the Tanzeem, having relinquished his leadership of the party in 2002 due to health problems.

"Since I am not in touch with the Tanzeem members for last many years, it would be difficult for me to offer any thoughtful comment about the arrest of a former Tanzeem member, Qayyum Jamal, in Canada whom I do not remember at the moment," he said.

"We do believe in a struggle as a Tanzeem for the establishment of a system of social justice of Islam in a country of our origin, rather than in a host country and that too collectively under the leadership of Tanzeem in an organized manner.

"If the man has indeed engaged in the terrorist activities in Canada as the police have alleged, there must be some misunderstanding."

How Mr. Jamal came to embrace what Canadian authorities have described as the ideology of al-Qaeda is an open question that may not be answered even at his trial. But his involvement in Tanzeem-e-Islami and study of Dr. Ahmad's teachings may provide a glimpse of his worldview.

In Pakistan, Dr. Ahmad's conservative brand of religion and his opinions about Jews and the West are everyday fare. But his ideas would likely be troubling to many Canadians.

He writes that it is the duty of all Muslims to strive for "the ascendancy of Islam over all other systems of life," and that the dominance of Islam will come in three stages: passive resistance, active resistance and armed conflict.

Islam's renaissance will begin in Pakistan, he writes, because the Arab world is living under subjugation. Only the Pakistan region "has the potential for standing up against the nefarious designs of the global power-brokers and to resist the rising tides of the Jewish/Zionist hegemony," he writes.

The Tanzeem-e-Islami, which he formed in 1975, is an "Islamic revolutionary party whose goal is to establish the system of social justice of the Caliphate [Islamic state] firstly in Pakistan and then in the whole world."

In his booklet Khalifah in Pakistan: What, Why and How?, he outlined the three principles of his ideal state: "(1) Sovereignty belongs to Almighty Allah alone; (2) No legislation can be done at any level that is totally or partially repugnant to Koran and Sunnah, and; (3) Full citizenship of the state is for the Muslims only."

Another of his books repeats the Jewish conspiracy theories popular among neo-Nazis, claiming that Jews have "a deeply ingrained tendency to conspire and to maneuver things surreptitiously for their own gain."

The Jews exert a "wicked web of control and exploitation" through their ownership of banks, insurance companies and stock exchanges, he claims.

He compares Jews to parasites, calls the Holocaust "Divine punishment" and foresees the "total extermination" of Jews at the hands of Muslims.

"Let us say some young, impressionable extremists in Canada were to read that," said Bernie Farber, executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress and a court-recognized expert on hate literature.

"Who am I or you to say that they're not going to take the actions suggested in these writings? It's pernicious and it's potentially very dangerous."

Read passages of Dr. Ahmad's writings, Mr. Farber called it "anti-Semitic garbage" that he said "adds to the concerns that we've been expressing for years, that anti-Semitism that is injected into the minds of young people here in Canada can potentially have very dangerous effects."

A 43-year-old school bus driver known for his fiery sermons, Mr. Jamal had been under scrutiny by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for the past two years, his wife said in a posting on her blog.

"We knew they were asking our friends and their parents about us, even telling them that Abdul Qayyum was recruiting teens for jihad, but everyone knew this was untrue," she said.

"We knew they were tapping our phones and watching our every move."

Liberal MP Wajid Khan has said he once heard Mr. Jamal claim that Canadian troops were only in Afghanistan "to rape Muslim women."

Mr. Jamal's exact role in the group accused of plotting to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto and behead hostages on Parliament Hill until Canada withdrew from Afghanistan and released Muslim prisoners has not yet been disclosed.

But he has been charged with three counts under the Anti-terrorism Act: participating in a terrorist group, training for terrorism and intent to cause an explosion.

His bail hearing is scheduled to resume this month.