In an attempt to persuade Islamist militants to abandon violence, the Saudi government opens an unusual prison for militants designed to rehabilitate them. The small compound near Riyadh is called a “care center” and its inmates “beneficiaries.” It is run by the Interior Ministry’s newly-created Ideological Security Unit (ISU). The compound offers recreational facilities, including swimming pools, video games, and table tennis, even art therapy classes. Inmates are required to follow religious classes designed to modify their views. Since its opening, the center has processed former militants from Iraq as well as former Guantanamo prisoners. In a July 2008 report, the BBC interviews one of the inmates, Ahmed Shayea, who drove a truck bomb into the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in August 2003, killing nine. He says he was tricked by Iraqi recruiters and the authorities have chosen to believe him. “I am now an enemy of al-Qaeda,” declares the former militant. According to the BBC, some former inmates have also received financial support after their release. [Terrorism Monitor, 8/15/2007; Christian Science Monitor, 10/9/2007; Strategic Comments, 5/2008; Sunday Times (London), 7/6/2008; BBC, 7/9/2008] Juma al-Dosari, who recruited people to join al-Qaeda in the US, is a beneficiary of this program after being mysteriously released from the Guantanamo prison in 2007 (see July 16, 2007).
January 2007: CIA Prevents Justice Department Investigators from Talking to Abu Zubaida
A 2008 Justice Department report reveals that in January 2007, the CIA prevents Justice Department investigators from questioning al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida, who is being held at the Guantanamo prison. The Justice Department will say the CIA’s obstruction was “unwarranted” and “hampered” an investigation by the department’s Office of Inspector General into the FBI’s knowledge of abuse by CIA and Defense Department interrogators. The CIA’s acting general counsel John Rizzo refused to grant access to Zubaida, claiming that he “could make false allegations against CIA employees.” By contrast, Defense Department officials grant the same investigators access to other Guantanamo detainees also allegedly subjected to torture. After Zubaida was captured in early 2002, the CIA subjected him to harsh torture techniques, including waterboarding (see Mid-May 2002 and After). [Newsweek, 5/20/2008]
January-February 2007: Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Considered for Baghdad Station, but Is Rejected
CIA officer Richard Blee, who headed Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, at the time of the 9/11 attacks (see August 22-September 10, 2001), is considered for the position of chief of station in Baghdad, one of the CIA’s largest stations. [Harper’s, 1/28/2007] However, he does not get the position. [Harper’s, 2/9/2007] The reasons for him not getting the job are apparently that he is seen as a “bad fit,” and is closely associated with detainee abuse and renditions, in particular that of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (see Shortly After December 19, 2001). In addition, he is said to have a poor relationship with the military, in particular the Special Operations community. An unnamed former official calls Blee a “smart guy,” but says, “He’s the last guy you want running a tense place like the station in Baghdad, because he creates a lot of tension himself.” [Harper’s, 1/28/2007] Shortly before mid-May 2003, Blee had been loaned to the FBI, where he had a senior position, but his career history after that is unknown. [New York Times, 5/15/2003]
January 5, 2007: Al-Zawahiri Releases Audio Message Calling for Jihad in Somalia
Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri releases a new audio message, entitled “Set Out and Support Your Brothers in Somalia.” The audio comes with a video still of al-Zawahiri from one of his previous videos, lasts for five and a half minutes, and was produced by al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab. “You have to use ambushes and mines, and raids and suicidal attacks until you rend and eat your prey as the lion does with his prey,” says al-Zawahiri, who calls on Muslims everywhere—but specifically those in Yemen, the Arab Peninsula, Egypt, North Africa, and Sudan—to participate in a holy war against secular government and Ethiopian forces in Somalia. According to al-Zawahiri, Somalia needs men, experience, money, and advice to defeat the Ethiopian forces, which he calls the “slaves of America.” Addressing Somali Muslims directly, al-Zawahiri reminds them of US intervention in Somalia between 1992 and 1994, saying that America has been defeated before (see October 3-4, 1993), and due to terrorist strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American Army is relatively weaker. Al-Zawahiri also directly calls upon the youth of the radical Egyptian Islamic group Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya to participate in the jihad. He states that these members joined the group to obey Allah, and if they are prevented from that duty, “they must crush the sarcophagus where they were embalmed alive.” [Fox News, 1/5/2007]
January 7, 2007: Academic: Terrorism and Continual Crisis Helps Pakistani President Musharraf to Stay in Power
In a review of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography In the Line of Fire, Fouad Ajami, director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, writes in the New York Times, “It is essential for Musharraf that Pakistan be a ‘dangerous place’: he and his country… feed off the menace.” Pakistani journalist and regional expert Ahmed Rashid agrees. He will later write: “As long as Pakistan remained the center for Talibanization, terrorism, or nuclear proliferation, the world could not ignore the military regime or dispense with Musharraf.… The West continued to view Musharraf as the only person capable of holding Pakistan together, even though some diplomats acknowledged that ‘Pakistan now negotiates with its allies and friends by pointing a gun to its own head.’” [Rashid, 2008, pp. 291, 444]
January 7, 2007: CIA Real Source of Counterfeit Super-Dollars, Says German Newspaper
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a German daily newspaper, accuses the CIA of being the source of sophisticated, almost perfect, counterfeit US bills called “super-notes” or “super-dollars.” FAZ claims that the CIA prints the bills in a secret facility close to Washington, DC. The US government has long accused North Korea of being the source of the “super-notes,” but this claim remains unproven and disputed by some. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), 1/7/2007] In early 2008, McClatchy Newspapers will publish a similar article. It will note that the Secret Service has presented no actual evidence that the North Koreans are behind the notes, and witnesses making that claim have been discredited. The State Department has stopped accusing North Korea of making the notes. In May 2007, the Swiss federal police conclude an investigation and decide it is unlikely the North Koreans are behind the notes, though they do not know just who is. Remarkably, the super-notes have gone through at least 19 different versions, each corresponding to a tiny change in US engraving plates. Thomas Ferguson, former director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, says the super-notes appear to have been made by someone with access to some government’s printing equipment. Klaus Bender, the author of a book on the subject, “claims that the super-notes are of such high quality and are updated so frequently that they could be produced only by a US government agency such as the CIA.” The article will note that the CIA counterfeited the Soviet Union’s currency during the Cold War, and “Making limited quantities of sophisticated counterfeit notes also could help intelligence and law enforcement agencies follow payments or illicit activities or track the movement of funds among unsavory regimes, terrorist groups, and others.” [McClatchy Newspapers, 1/10/2008]
January 8, 2007: Hijacker Associate El Motassadeq Sentenced to 15 Years in Germany for Role in 9/11 Plot
Mounir El Motassadeq, a former associate of three of the 9/11 hijackers, is sentenced to 15 years in prison in Germany. El Motassadeq was convicted of assisting the 9/11 attacks in November (see November 2006) and is currently serving a seven-year sentence for being a member of a terrorist organization (see August 19, 2005). The 15-year sentence is the maximum possible, as the conviction was only as an accessory to the deaths of the 246 people who died on the airliners. As El Motassadeq has already served three years, this period will be deducted from the sentence. Defense lawyers say they will appeal the conviction, and that the case may go all the way to the European Court of Justice. [New York Times, 1/9/2007; Associated Press, 1/9/2007]
January 11, 2007: DNI Negroponte Says Al-Qaeda Is Regrouping from Its ‘Secure Hide-out’ in Pakistan
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte says that al-Qaeda’s central leadership is based in Pakistan and is regrouping there. Speaking before a Senate committee, he says that al-Qaeda operatives “are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hide-out in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.” This is the first time a high-ranking US official has described Pakistan as a “secure hide-out” for al-Qaeda or used similar language. He adds, “Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror and has captured several al-Qaeda leaders. However, it is also a major source of Islamic extremism. Eliminating the safe haven that the Taliban and other extremists have found in Pakistan’s tribal areas is not sufficient to end the insurgency in Afghanistan but it is necessary.” [Reuters, 1/12/2007]
January 17, 2007: Mullah Omar Allegedly in Pakistan Under ISI Protection
A captured Taliban spokesman claims that Taliban leader Mullah Omar is living in Pakistan under the protection of the ISI. Muhammad Hanif, a.k.a. Abdul Haq Haji Gulroz, one of two Taliban spokesmen, was recently captured by the Afghan government. He is seen on video saying to his captors, “[Omar] lives in Quetta [a Pakistan border town]. He is protected by the ISI.” He further claims that the ISI funds and equips Taliban suicide bombings and former ISI Director Hamid Gul supports and funds the insurgency. The Pakistani government denies the allegations and claims Omar has not been seen in Pakistan. [BBC, 1/17/2007; Daily Telegraph, 1/19/2007]
January 23, 2007: Al-Zawahiri Apparently Goads Bush over Iraq ‘Surge’ in New Video
A man thought to be al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri releases a new video, which is mostly focused on the situation in Iraq. In the 14-minute video the man said to be al-Zawahiri predicts a fate “worse than anything you have ever seen” for the US and wonders why only 20,000 additional troops are being sent to Iraq. “Why not send 50,000 or 100,000?” he asks. The man also says that the US “must honestly try to reach a mutual understanding with the Muslims,” adding: “If we are secure, you might be secure, and if we are safe, you might be safe. And if we are struck and killed, you will definitely—with Allah’s permission—be struck and killed.” [CNN, 1/23/2007]
