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January 21, 2008

"Terrorist 007" And His Islamist Internet Adventures (1 of 3)

This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

Part One of Three

Planning Terror From a Messy Bedroom

On July 5, 2007 three terrorists with Al Qaeda links were jailed. The leader of the group was Younes Tsouli, a Moroccan-born 23-year old living in Shepherds Bush, West London. The son of a diplomat, Tsouli was given a jail term of 10 years. Judge Peter Openshaw at Woolwich Crown Court sentenced two of Tsouli's accomplices. 24-year old Waseem Mughal of Chatham in Kent was given seven and a half years' jail.

British-born Mughal and Tsouli had been convicted of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion. 21-year old Tariq al-Daour, who was born in the United Arab Emirates who lived in Bayswater, West London, was jailed for six and a half years. He was convicted of fundraising offenses under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000.

At the start of the two-month trial, all the three men had denied guilt of the charges against them, but on Monday July 2, 2007, Tsouli and Mughal had changed their pleas to guilty. On July 4, al-Daour also changed his plea to guilty.

Tsouli, mainly operating from his bedroom in Shepherd's Bush, had set up various websites. One jihadist website he was working on at the time of his arrest on October 21, 2005, had the title: "Youbombit.com." The main focus of his internet jihad activity was an Islamist web forum entitled Al-Ansar, which had 4,500 members. In August 2005, he became the administrator of this web forum. His online identity was "IRH007" or "Irihabi007" - meaning (in Arabic) "Terrorist 007".

Another website which Tsouli operated was At-Tibyan. This website was a resource for disseminating online manuals in support of terrorism and jihad. A recent example of the sort of material provided by At-Tibyan can be downloaded in pdf format here. Until closed down, At-Tibyan also had a web forum which was set up in November 2004.

The Al-Ansar website was used as a vehicle for Al Qaeda's Iraqi representative, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, to present information and propaganda. Tsouli hacked into American websites. This allowed him to insert data into existing sites, including one site run by the state of Arkansas and another run by George Washington University.

In August 2004 a member of the Al-Ansar forum posted the following message: "To Our Brother Irhabi 007. Our brother Irhabi 007, you have shown very good efforts in serving this message board, as I can see, and in serving jihad for the sake of God. By God, we do not like to hear what hurts you, so we ask God to keep you in his care.

You are one of the top people who care about serving your brothers. May God add all of that on the side of your good work, and may you go careful and successful. We say carry on with God's blessing. Carry on, may God protect you. Carry on serving jihad and its supporters."

At the time of his arrest, as officers broke into his top-floor apartment, Tsouli had put up a struggle, in which a mirror was broken, injuring an officer. This mirror glass may have caused the lesions which appeared on Tsouli's face in his official police "mug shot".

Younes Tsouli featured in news reports again last week, as he became the "poster boy" for a campaign by anti-terrorism chiefs to highlight the use of the internet to promote terrorism.

Robert Mueller, the FBI's director, has said of the Tsouli case: "We are seeking terrorist leaders in foreign bases, lone actors in suburban basements, and also small but sophisticated groups who want to carry out terrorist attacks. The threat exists not only in the mountains of Pakistan, but also in the shadows of the internet."

The Terrorism That Dare Not Speak Its Name

For Britain's official counter-terror strategists, Tsouli's case was highlighted as a prelude to a speech on terrorism and the internet given by Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. Later in the week, Smith made her speech in which she claimed that there would be more pressure to stamp out websites which encouraged "extremism".

This was her first official speech on the processes of radicalization since she became Home Secretary in June last year. The speech was made at King's College in London on January 17. This speech was presented before the newly-formed International Center for Study of Radicalization and Political Violence.

The Home Secretary said: "Inspiration from a distance is important and there is evidence that the rise of the internet, with its ability to connect people, to pass ideas between them, and then pass those ideas on to others has had a significant impact on the accessibility and flow of radical ideas.

Smith stressed that the British government would crack down on militants and websites that attempted to persuade people to commit terror. She said that internet companies would be asked to remove material supporting terrorism. Smith said: "Stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists is the major long-term challenge we face. Where there is illegal material on the net, I want it removed."

This plan should have been enacted years ago. That it should now be rolled out as a "new" policy is disturbing. Smith announced that sports centers would be given guidance to prevent them becoming used by potential terrorists. Universities would receive guidance on dealing with extremism. Extremist material will be removed from libraries and galleries. A forum for school principals would be set up to address tackling extremism in schools.

Other plans suggested by the Home Secretary verged on the ridiculous. She said schools of different faiths would be "twinned", at a cost of $4 million to the taxpayer. She also mentioned that more public funding would be made available to enable young people to do voluntary work overseas.

The speech was roundly criticized for Smith's attempts to reinvent the lexicon on terrorism, where she attempted to describe Islamic terrorism as "anti-Islamic activity". She used this term several times in her address, stating: "As so many Muslims in the UK and across the world have pointed out, there is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorise, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief. Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic."

Smith is no expert on Islam, if she thinks there is no case for terrorism in Islam. Most Muslims do not support terrorism, but the ideologues of terror certainly use their extensive knowledge of Islamic texts to justify acts of terror. Smith's attitude insults the intelligence of those who try to prevent Islamic terrorism, and those who promote it.

Mohammed Sidique Khan, who led the four-man team who carried out the London bombings of July 7, 2005, was well-versed in Islamic scriptures, as are most Islamists who urge war on the West. Abu Hamza al-Masri, Omar Bakri Mohammed and Abdullah el-Faisal all used their comprehensive knowledge of Islamic texts, and particularly the Hadiths, to radicalize British Muslims to terrorism. Those who heard their interpretations of such texts included the perpetrators of the 7/7 bombings that killed 52 people.

Melanie Phillips, writing in the Spectator savaged Jacqui Smith's attempts to redefine Islamic terrorism as anti-Islamic, pointing out that many of the Muslim "scholars" whom Smith expected to address radicalism were themselves Islamic radicals.

Some of the hypocrisy of the British government's inept approaches to forming a coherent strategy against terrorism is shown by the activities of the Radical Middle Way group. Though its website maintains that "The project is managed by young British Muslims themselves, in a unique partnership between FOSIS, Mahabba Unlimited, Q-News and YMOUK," it's online presence was set up in October 2006 with funding provided the government. In Parliament on December 4, 2006, Kim Howells stated: "The Radical Middle Way initiative has received funding totalling £350,000 [$684,355], of which £250,000 was provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and £100,000 by Home Office."

Last week, the Radical Middle Way initiative held two conferences at Birmingham and London entitled "Why Europe Needs Islam". The guests at these included Kemal el-Helbawy, who was a member of the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood aims to convert the world to Islam. Another guest speaker was Dr Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia. On BBC Newsnight on Thursday last week, audio footage from this cleric was replayed, where he clearly called for the world to be "controlled" by Islam.

British Jihadism And the Internet

Despite her use of misleading terminology, Jacqui Smith's concern about policing of the internet is relevant. News was released last week that showed that an internet threat had been made against the lives of Britain's unelected prime minister Gordon Brown and former premier Tony Blair. On the Arabic language website Al-Ekhlaas, which had been established by Tsouli, a message heralded the announcement of a British branch of Al-Qaeda. The Islamist website, which has had 17 million visitors, stated that young Muslims in Europe should support armed jihad with their lives and with money. The luminary behind British Al-Qaeda has a fictitious name, cobbled together from names of real terrorists.

According to Richard Watson on BBC's Newsnight video, the Al-Qaeda message appeared on Al-Ekhlaas on January 2. The announcement about a homegrown Al Qaeda group reads as follows:

"Declaration of the Creation of Al-Qaeda Organization in Britain: In the name of Allah the most compassionate the most merciful... We bring to the nation the good news of the creation of Al-Qaeda organization in Britain, under the leadership of brother Mujahid Sheikh Omar Rabia al-Khalaila.

Our goals are: Eliminate all those who stand in the face of the truthful Muhajideen and eliminate all those who aid the Crusaders against Muslims, as per the teachings of the Sheikh of Islam Mohammed ben Abdel Wahab in his book "The Ten Nullifiers of One's Islam".

According to Eli Alsech of the monitoring group MEMRI, the Al-Ekhlaas website "started to get more membership and prominence after when the big (al-Qaeda) sites stopped functioning. Then the jihadists were looking for sites to get information that they used to get, such as files, about explosives, weapons, training, and all the other confirmations they were used to getting from the big sites like Hesbah, Ummah and Muhajiroun. Once those sites were down, jihadists needed to go to smaller websites like al-Ekhlaas, and then those sites became prominent in this way."

The danger of the internet as a tool of radicalization has been obvious for years. In August last year, New York police chief Raymond Kelly said: "The Internet is the new Afghanistan. It is the de facto training ground. It's an area of concern."

Newsnight later commented that the al-Ekhlaas ("sincerity") website is hosted on four servers in different countries. The problem of sites being hosted in obscure locations and using mirror sites makes policing difficult. The "Kavkazcenter.com" website details threats and messages from Islamist militants based in Chechnya and Russia's North Caucasus. Originally it was hosted on a server in Finland, and then moved to Sweden after Finnish authorities shut it down. In May 2006, Kavkazcenter's Swedish server was officially closed after pressure from prosecutors. However, it continued to operate from a server running a mirror site from Lithuania. The website continues to operate.

Britain has been notoriously lax in its dealings with internet websites based on its soil that have encouraged and supported terrorism. One website was called Azzam.com, named after Abdullah Azzam, the mentor of Osama bin Laden. It was run by a British Muslim in Tooting, South London, called Babar Ahmad. He also ran a website called Qoqaz.com. Azzam.com recruited jihadists to fight in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and sold camouflage clothing and night vision goggles. According to counterterrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann, Babar's sites were mirrored by an American Muslim from New Brunswick named Mazen Mokhtar. This individual has not been charged with terrorism offenses, though in April 2007 he was indicted for tax evasion and fraud.

In October 2004, an indictment was made in Connecticut against Babar Ahmad. On May 17, 2005, a judge approved Babar Ahmad's extradition to the United States on charges of supporting terrorism, conspiring to kill Americans, and maintaining a website used to fund terrorists. Only after the United States agreed that Ahmad would not face the death penalty did the then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke approve his extradition in November 16, 2005. Babar Ahmad, who was arrested in Britain in August 2004, has used legal appeals to avoid his extradition, and remains in Woodhill category A prison near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

Another British Muslim was indicted from Connecticut on almost identical charges to those made against Ahmad. On July 18, 2006, 26-year old Syed Talha Ahsan was arrested from his home in Tooting. According to the US indictment, he had worked with Babar Ahmad on the maintenance of Azzam.com and other websites from around 1997. Azzam.com and other sites had been hosted in Connecticut, Nevada, Britain, Ireland, Malaysia and other locations.

Another British Islamist website is owned by Dr Muhammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who has lived legally in London since 1994. This website, which still operates, is called Tajdeed.net. He has used this site to glorify jihadist "executions" and terror attacks. It is used to post Al Qaeda videos, including one in which the Queen is called an enemy of Islam. The site still operates, and Massari has not been arrested, even though he openly supports terrorism.

In a plot reminiscent of the way Tsouli's web forums were used by activists to meet and plan attacks, three individuals were jailed in Sweden on June 14, 2006 for plotting to attack the largest church in Europe, the Livets-Ord, based in Uppsala. This church appears to have become a target as it also has links with Israel. The three plotters had met on an Islamist web forum called Terrorist Media. Two of the plotters had only once met in real life. This website and its forum continue to operate.

Numerous independent organizations and individuals monitor terror-supporting websites, such as MEMRI. In Britain, a group called VIGIL provides this service where MI5, MI6 and police appear to have their attention diverted elsewhere. The non-profit SITE Institute was based in Washington but has recently disbanded. Some of its internet monitoring activities are continued by the SITE Intelligence Group. Internet Haganah - founded by Aaron Weisburd in 2002 - similarly tracks Islamist activities on the internet, from its base in Illinois.

The At-Tibyan group with which Younes Tsouli was associated continues to disseminate its jihadist publications on the internet. These include treatises written by senior Islamist figures, such as Abdullah Azzam. Last week, I tried to report some apparently British-based websites where At-Tibyan literature encouraging armed jihad could be downloaded. After reaching dead ends, I phoned my local police department. I gave the information to a disinterested individual who seemed more concerned about my details than those of the websites I wished to report. I was told that someone would be in contact with me. At the time of writing, no police officer has made any effort to get in touch.

It is within this environment of official indifference to extremist websites that individuals such as Younes Tsouli have thrived.

At the trial of Tsouli and his associates Waseem Mughal and Tariq al-Daour. much of the key prosecution evidence about what took place on the At-Tibyan forum website was provided not by British police or intelligence, but by American counterterrorism expert Evan Kohlmann. The information that led to Tsouli being arrested had not come from British intelligence, who appeared completely ignorant of his online activities, but from overseas in Bosnia. His name and phone number had been retrieved from one of two individuals who had been arrested there two days previously.

Evan Kohlmann was paid by New Scotland Yard to gather much of the online information used by the prosecution at the Woolwich Crown Court trial.

Younes Tsouli and International Terrorism

It remains to be seen whether Britain's police will begin to take much interest in British Islamist websites. The trial of Younes Tsouli has shown that an individual who apparently never met a real terrorist in the flesh became a conduit for Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the web forum he created would assist and inspire terrorism plots involving a host of individuals in various countries - Canada, the United States, Denmark, Bosnia, Sweden and Bangladesh.

Tsouli had arrived in Britain in 2001, and studied computer information technology at a small Central London college. His online internet jihad activities began in 2003 when he began to join web forums. He would post manuals on computer hacking. In early 2004 he joined the al-Ekhlaas web forum, and also Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami. It was on the latter site that Tsouli's knowledge of uploading and distributing large files became useful to "Al Qaeda of the Two Rivers", the name of the Iraqi terrorist group headed by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

It was on May 11, 2004 that the website of Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami distributed the first publicized video of one of Zarqawi's gruesome decapitations, where the victim's head was sawn off from the throat backwards, much like halal butchering of animals. This video showed American communications engineer Nick Berg, dressed in an orange jumpsuit like those worn by Guantanamo detainees, having his head slowly amputated.

This video "presentation" was, according to Evan Kohlmann, "the 9/11 of jihad on the Internet - momentous for them and momentous for us. For years, people were saying how the Internet would be used by terrorists. And then all of a sudden somebody was beheaded on camera and it was, 'Holy smokes, we never thought about the Internet being used this way!' "

The video was uploaded around the world, and demand to see it caused several servers to be jammed. It appears that the video's appearance on the Al-Ansar forum was the first of Tsouli's internet "triumphs". He would upload videos, including several more from Zarqawi, and convert them into various "web-friendly" formats, including ones that could be downloaded by cellular phone.

Tsouli was convinced he would never get caught, to the extent that he did not always disguise his computer's IP address. Though few knew of him by his real name, his online persona of "Irhabi 007" was attracting attention. As early as 2004, Islamist monitor Aaron Weisburd of Internet Haganah was able to find out that "Irhabi 007" lived in West London, near to an internet router in Ealing. Weisburd gave this information to the authorities, who could not trace the exact location of "Irhabi 007".

Weisburd played "games" with Tsouli's internet persona. "I would give him a message like 'Your days are numbered - you're going to get caught'," Weisburd claimed. "He, on the other hand, was participating in discussions about which part of my body they wanted when I was killed, and he said he wanted one of my fingers as a souvenir."

The Nick Berg decapitation video was posted on the Al-Ansar website, which was then hosted from a server in Malaysia. This incarnation of the site disappeared soon after the video was displayed, but other incarnations of A-Ansar, with a registration address in London, continued. Users of the forum would continue to log on at alternative sites, using the same user names and passwords.

Though Tsouli was arrested on October 21, 2005, news of this was not publicly released until November 4, 2005 when he, Mughal and al-Daour were officially charged at Bow Street Magistrates. Tsouli had a video presentation on his computer showing how to make a car bomb, and also a picture presentation of various locations in Washington DC. He also had numerous fraudulent credit card identities.

The day after Tsouli's arrest, Waseem Mughal and Tariq al-Daour were apprehended. Mughal had information on his computer detailing how to make rocket propellants. He also had a DVD of jihadist "martyrdom operations".

At that time, intelligence had been disseminated on the Al-Ansar forum about the activities of a European-based terrorist who was intending to carry out an imminent terrorist attack. This individual, code-named "Maximus", was to provide a link between terror plots in Denmark and Bosnia. On the fourth anniversary of 9/11, Maximus had claimed on the Al-Ansar website that he was part of a group calling itself "Al Qaeda in Northern Europe",

"Maximus" was the code-name of Mirsad Bektasevic, a Swedish citizen of Bosnian background. He had been arrested with a co-conspirator, Cesur Abdulkadir, a Turkish man with a Danish passport. The pair had been arrested in Ilidza, a suburb of Sarajevo, on October 19, 2005, though information was not released until October 23. A third Bosnian individual was also arrested.

The seriousness of the conspiracy by "Maximus" and Abdulkadir was demonstrated by the cache of weaponry found around the time of their arrests. This included suicide vests, about 30 kilograms, or 65 pounds, of high explosive, as well as exploding bullets and a machine pistol. Chillingly, a videotape was found. This showed hooded individuals sitting in front of the weaponry, discussing their plans to carry out jihadist attacks.

Within days, there were further arrests. In Copenhagen, Denmark, four youths aged 16 to 20 were arrested on October 27, 2005. Two more young people were arrested in Copenhagen on the following day.

In Part Two I will describe how internet associations of Tsouli, aka Irhabi007, led to the arrests of several people in Canada, and two arrests in the United States.

Adrian Morgan

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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 21, 2008 6:48 AM

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