Tag Archives: Islamic Extremism

The enemy within: Russia faces different Islamist threat with metro bombing

Russian president Vladimir Putin puts flowers down outside Tekhnologicheskiy Institut metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia. REUTERS/Grigory Duko

By Maria Tsvetkova and Denis Pinchuk

MOSCOW/ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – Akbarzhon Jalilov, the man suspected of blowing up a Russian metro train, represents a new wave of radical Islamists who blend into local society away from existing jihadist movements – making it harder for security forces to stop their attacks.

His pages on the Russian equivalent of Facebook show Jalilov’s interest in Wahabbism, a conservative and hardline branch of Islam. But they give no indication that he might resort to violence, presenting a picture of a typical young man leading a largely secular life.

Fourteen people were killed and 50 wounded in the suicide bomb attack on Monday on the metro carriage in St Petersburg. Russian state investigators said the suspected bomber was Jalilov, a 23-year-old born in the mainly Muslim ex-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

If radical Islamism was indeed his motive, he will be distinct from two previous waves of attackers – those from Russia’s restive North Caucasus region who fought successive rebellions against Moscow; and a later group who went to Iraq and Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State group.

The new generation may take inspiration or instruction from people involved in those previous fights, and are drawn from the same Muslim communities.

However, they are not directly linked to those militant organizations and have not created the trail of arrest warrants, tapped phone calls, travel documents and monitored border crossings on which security forces usually rely to keep tabs on violent Islamist radicals.

“It’s a completely different kind, a different level of terrorist threat from the one that Russian security services are used to dealing with,” said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian expert on the intelligence services.

Security services typically look for an organization and financing network behind a terror attack, he said, but those may not exist in cases such as the metro bombing. “It’s very difficult to counter things like this,” Soldatov said.

British police have run into similar problems investigating the case of Khalid Masood, who sped across Westminster Bridge in a car last month, killing three pedestrians and injuring dozens more, before stabbing a policeman to death. Shot dead by police, Masood also had no known links to jihadist groups.

THE ENEMY WITHIN

Jalilov is typical of millions of young Muslim men living in Russia. There was nothing apparent from his background and lifestyle that made him stand out for the authorities.

An ethnic Uzbek from the southern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh, he moved with his father to St Petersburg for work several years ago, according to neighbors in Osh.

In Russia, he worked with his father as a panel beater in a car repair shop, they said. An acquaintance from St Petersburg said Jalilov had worked for about a year in a chain of sushi restaurants. A second acquaintance said he was a fan of sambo, a form of martial arts popular in Russia.

He owned a Daewoo car, according to a source in the Russian authorities, and was registered at an apartment in a quiet, upscale neighborhood of suburban St Petersburg.

A person who said he was a representative of the apartment’s owner said Jalilov had never lived there, but that he had granted him with a temporary registration at the flat as a favor to some mutual acquaintances.

Jalilov’s page on VKontake, a Russian social media website, has photographs showing him wearing stylish Western dress, in a restaurant with friends and smoking a hookah pipe. His listed interests included a pop music radio station and mixed-martial arts. His page had a link to the home page of boxer Mike Tyson.

But he also had an interest in religion: the page had links to a website in Russian called “I love Islam” which features quotations from the Koran, and another called IslamHouse.com, which said it aimed to help people get to know Islam.

Another VKontakte page which belonged to Jalilov included links to a site featuring the sayings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th century preacher on whose teaching Wahabbism is based.

AVENGING SYRIA

Security officials and people involved in radical Islam say the earlier generations of violent Islamists are now largely out of the picture.

Militant in the North Caucasus are hounded by security forces, pushed into forest hideouts, and too pre-occupied with staying alive to be able to launch attacks on Russian cities.

Meanwhile, the thousands of people from Russia and ex-Soviet republics who fought alongside Islamic State in Syria and Iraq are on the radar of Russian intelligence. Tipped off by Turkish intelligence which tracks jihadists’ movements into and out of Syria, Russia arrests them when they return home or prevents them from entering the country.

An attack near Moscow last year may have marked the emergence of the new generation of radicals.

Usman Murdalov, 21, and his friend Sulim Israilov, 18 traveled from their home in Chechnya, in the north Caucasus, to a Moscow suburb, armed themselves with axes, and attacked a traffic police post. They were shot dead.

Their families said they had no idea they were involved in radical Islamism. But in a video posted online a day later, they professed loyalty to Islamic State, and made reference to the Russian military intervention in Syria.

“We are calling this a revenge operation, revenge because you are killing our brothers, because you are killing our brothers and sisters every day in Iraq and Syria,” one of the two attackers said in the video.

Islamic State, its grip on territory in Syria and Iraq weakening, has switched its focus to inspiring sympathizers elsewhere. Avenging Russia for its role in the Syria conflict has been a prominent theme on the group’s social media sites.

Shortly after Russia launched its military operation in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015, the group released a video where it threatened to attack Russia very soon, described Russians as kafirs, or unbelievers, and said that “the blood will spill like an ocean”.

RECRUITING GROUND

That propaganda finds fertile ground inside Russia among the millions of Muslims from Russia’s North Caucasus and Muslim migrants from ex-Soviet central Asia. Many do menial, low-paid jobs; they are regularly stopped by police for document checks, and they often face racial discrimination.

Two men from central Asia who fought alongside Islamist radicals in Syria described how they had been radicalized while they were working in Russia.

One, who gave his name as Boburjan, spoke to Reuters in a jail in Osh in 2015 where he was serving a sentence for his activities in Syria. He said he had come to Moscow to work on a construction site. At a Moscow mosque, he was approached by a man who showed him videos of Middle Eastern conflicts.

“That man said: ‘Look, infidels are killing us, they rape our women and children, and we must defend our fellow Muslims’,” he said.

The second man said he was working as a cook in an Uzbek restaurant in central Moscow. “Some of the guys I knew said: ‘We must go and wage jihad’,” said the 22-year-old man, who gave his name as Khalijan.

(additional reporting by Svetlana Reiter, Polina Nikolskaya, Olzhas Auyezov, Hulkar Isamova and Olga Dzyubenko; writing by Christian Lowe; editing by David Stamp)

American al Qaeda suspect faces new U.S. terrorism charges

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in New York unveiled new criminal charges on Wednesday against a U.S. citizen believed to have once been an al Qaeda operative, accusing him of involvement in a 2009 car bomb attack on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

According to a nine-count indictment, Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, 30, helped prepare one of two explosive devices for use in the Jan. 19, 2009 attack.

Prosecutors said an accomplice detonated one device, while Al Farekh’s fingerprints were found on packing tape for the second device, which a second accomplice carried and did not detonate. The military base was not identified.

Sean Maher, a court-appointed lawyer for Al Farekh, did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The Texas-born Al Farekh was charged with providing material support to al Qaeda, providing material support to terrorists and using explosives. He also faces six conspiracy counts including to murder Americans, use a weapon of mass destruction, bomb a government facility and aid al Qaeda.

Al Farekh faces up to life in prison if convicted. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday before U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, New York.

Also known as Abdullah al-Shami, Al Farekh had been detained in Pakistan prior to being flown to Brooklyn, where he first appeared last April 2.

He pleaded not guilty on June 4 to three criminal counts in an indictment made public a week earlier.

Prosecutors accused Al Farekh of providing material support to al Qaeda from Dec. 2006 to Sept. 2009, in a plot that involved two fellow students from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.

Al Farekh was purportedly inspired by Anwar Al-Awlaki, a radical cleric whose teachings are believed by prosecutors to have inspired terrorism plots including the 2005 London subway bombings and a failed 2010 bombing in New York’s Times Square.

Al-Awlaki was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone attack in Yemen.

The case is U.S. v. Al Farekh, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00268.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

Israel Retaliates After Hezbollah Bombs Army Vehicles

Israel launched a military response after Islamic militants bombed one of its army convoys on Monday, reports indicate.

According to the BBC, Israel’s artillery attack against the Lebanese village of Wazzani was a retaliatory measure after the Islamic militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for attacking Israeli vehicles that were patrolling contested territory near the Lebanon border.

Hezbollah’s bombing came in the wake of the death of one of its key members, the BBC reported, and the Lebanon-based group had previously said it would seek to avenge Samir Kuntar’s death by attacking Israel.

Muslims Shield Christians During Terrorist Attack in Kenya

Muslim passengers helped shield non-Muslim passengers, some of them Christians, during a terrorist attack on a bus in Northern Kenya on Monday, according to multiple published reports.

Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, reported a bus traveling from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi to Mandera was attacked at about 7 a.m. local time by gunmen believed to be tied to Al-Shabaab.

The Associated Press reported 60 passengers were on the bus when the gunmen stopped it in Papa City, and that some of the Muslim passengers helped some of the non-Muslim passengers put on Islamic apparel, such as head scarves, to help mask their identities from the terrorists.

The bus passengers might have been recalling a similar attack that took place last November.

Al-Jazeera reported that Al-Shabaab militants stopped a bus near Mandera, singled out 28 non-Muslims aboard, and killed them. The BBC also reported that Al-Shabaab militants singled out Christians when they shot and killed about 150 people at Kenya’s Garissa University in April.

The quick-thinking passengers ensured that a similar scene wouldn’t take place this time.

A local government official told Daily Nation that the militants reportedly asked the passengers to exit the bus and separate themselves into two groups: Muslims and non-Muslims. The official told the newspaper the gunmen “were trying to identify who were Christians and who were not.”

But the passengers refused to divide themselves. Mandera Governor Ali Roba told Daily Nation that the passengers insisted the gunmen “should kill them together or leave them alone.”

According to the Associated Press, the gunmen ordered everyone back on the bus after a Muslim passenger told them that the bus had a police escort that was due to arrive on the scene shortly.

Two people were killed and three were injured in the attacks, Roba wrote on his Twitter page. The governor said the militants also attacked a truck.

Tony Blair: Islamic Extremism a “Poison”

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says that Islamic extremism is a “poison” that “must be eradicated.”

Blair said the world does not understand the depth of the problem and that it might be too late by the time the world sees the true goal of the terrorists.  Blair also referenced the slaughter of Christians at the hands of the terrorists that has gone largely unanswered by the West.

“If we allow these things to continue, then in the end, the extremists will carry on believing they can get away with this,” Blair told John Catsimatidis’ “Cats Roundtable” radio show.  “We need to mobilize a huge amount of support wherever this type of terrorism and extremism is happening, to go make sure it’s defeated.”

Blair said that he doesn’t believe the extremists represent the whole of Islam but that it was created from within the religion.

“We need to make sure that young people in many of these countries who have been educated to a close-minded view of the world instead get an education toward tolerance and respect for people of different faiths,” Blair said.

Blair had warned in September 2014 that it would be unlikely that ISIS could be defeated in Syria and Iraq without deployment of ground troops.

“Unless you’re prepared to fight these people on the ground, you may contain them but you won’t defeat them,” Blair had said.

American Blogger Killed In Bangladesh For Criticizing Islam

An American blogger who was critical of Islam was killed by Muslims who attacked in a “knife-wielding mob.”

Avijit Roy, who was an atheist, was attacked for promoting secularism and pointing out the violence and brutality of Islamic extremism.

“Avijit Roy has been killed the way other free thinker writers were killed in Bangladesh. No freethinker is safe in Bangladesh,” blogger Taslima Nasreen, who left Bangladesh in the mid-1990s after receiving death threats from extremists, told the Christian Post about the killing.

“Islamic terrorists can do whatever they like. They can kill people with no qualms whatsoever.”

BBC News reported that Bangladeshi officials for their role in the murder are now investigating a local Islamist group.

This is not the first time Islamists have attacked bloggers for being critical of Islam.  In 2013, one atheist blogger was brutally killed and a second survived a severe beating at the hands of Muslim mob.

Yemen’s Fall Took U.S. Intelligence By Surprise

The top counterterrorism official for the White House admitted Thursday that the overthrow of the Yemeni government by Islamic extremists had taken U.S. intelligence services by surprise.

National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen told the Senate Intelligence Committee the Yemeni army’s response to the advancing rebels was similar to Iraqi forces who simply laid down arms before ISIS last summer.

“As the Houthi advances toward Sanaa [Yemen’s capital] took place,” Rasmussen said, “they weren’t opposed in many places. … The situation deteriorated far more rapidly than we expected.”

The terrorists overran the government last September, deposing the U.S. backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The terrorists are providing a safe haven in Yemen for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who carried out the terrorist attacks in Paris on magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher market.

The U.S., Britain and France have closed their embassies in the country and Britain & France have told their citizens to immediately leave Yemen.

ISIS Says Torture and Slavery Part of Islam

A German journalist has emerged from an investigative mission inside ISIS and has brought out a surprising story about life under the terrorist regime.

Juergen Todenhoefer visited a mosque in Mosul where the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public speech.  He wanted to capture the daily activities of ISIS and said that despite the cruelty of ISIS, there is a “sense of normalcy” in Mosul.

“130,000 Christians have been evicted from the city, the Shia have fled, many people have been murdered and yet the city is functioning and people actually like the stability that the Islamic State has brought them,” Todenhoefer wrote.

The author says despite the feeling of normalcy, there is a layer of fear.

“Of course many of the them are quite scared, because the punishment for breaking the Islamic State’s strict rules is very severe.”

Todenhoefer said that ISIS fighters told him their goal is to take over the world.

“We will conquer Europe one day,” one terrorist said. “It is not a question of if we will conquer Europe, just a matter of when that will happen. But it is certain … For us, there is no such thing as borders. There are only front lines.

“Our expansion will be perpetual … And the Europeans need to know that when we come, it will not be in a nice way. It will be with our weapons. And those who do not convert to Islam or pay the Islamic tax will be killed.”

When asked about Shia Muslims around the world who do not believe in the ISIS version of the faith, the response was short and brutal.

“150 million, 200 million or 500 million, it does not matter to us,” the fighter answered. “We will kill them all.”

Part of the interview quoted by CNN showed ISIS endorses slavery:

“So do you seriously think that beheadings and enslavement actually signal progress for humanity?” Todenhoefer asked.

“Slavery absolutely signals progress,” the man said. “Only ignorant people believe that there is no slavery among the Christians and the Jews. Of course there are woman who are forced into prostitution under the worst circumstances.

“I would say that slavery is a great help to us and we will continue to have slavery and beheadings, it is part of our religion … many slaves have converted to Islam and have then been freed.”

Muslim Terrorists Attack Jerusalem Synagogue

Two Palestinian terrorists attacked a synagogue during morning prayers and left death and destruction in their wake.

Four people are confirmed dead and at eight others injured when the Muslim terrorists charged into the synagogue with meat cleavers and at least one gun Tuesday morning.  The terrorists then died in a gun battle with police after their attack on innocent civilians.

The Muslim terrorists were identified as cousins Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal.

Three of the dead held joint U.S.-Israeli citizenship.  The fourth held dual British-Israeli citizenship.

“The gentleman I tended to first still had his tefillin on. There were also women there who didn’t know where their husbands were, and others who didn’t know where their father was. Those were most likely the ones killed. It was very hard to deal with, very upsetting,” a first responder told Haaretz newspaper.

“I looked up and saw someone shooting people at point-blank range. Then someone came in with what looked like a butcher’s knife and he went wild,” Yosef Posternak, who was in the synagogue praying when the attack started, told Israel Radio. “I saw people lying on the floor, blood everywhere. People were trying to fight with [the attackers] but they didn’t have much of a chance.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry quickly condemned the attack.

“Innocent people who had come to worship died in the sanctuary of a synagogue,” a visibly upset Kerry told reporters.  “They were hatcheted, hacked and murdered in that holy place in an act of pure terror and senseless brutality and murder. I call on Palestinians at every single level of leadership to condemn this in the most powerful terms. This violence has no place anywhere, particularly after the discussion that we just had the other day in Amman.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Israel would “respond harshly” to the attack.

Canadian Gunman Identified

The man who shot and killed a Canadian soldier in the capital yesterday before being shot and killed by RCMP and security personnel has been identified as 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau.

The attack was the second terrorist attack by ISIS sympathetic Islamic extremists this week.

“We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said following the shooting.

“In the days to come we will learn about the terrorist and any accomplices he may have had,” Harper vowed. “[This will] lead us to strengthen our resolve and redouble our efforts” in the fight against terror.

Officials say that Zehaf-Bibeau’s father was a businessman from Quebec who went to fight in Libya in 2011 and that the gunman also spent time in Libya.

After initial searches for more gunmen, the Canadian government now says they believe that Zahef-Bibeau acted alone.