US Forces Catch Al Qaeda Chief in Libya

After the 21.640th terror attack since 9/11 it's about time to demand from our media and Muslim compatriots  to publicly condemn the onslaughts like we saw in Westgate, Nairobi

After Westgate even Bob Beckel has had enough. This is Beckel in another life.

UPDATE: Today more has become clear what went on in the early hours of Saturday morning:

US forces have struck two militant targets in Africa snatching a top al-Qaeda suspect from the streets of Tripoli and launching a predawn raid against an al Shabaab leader's home in Somalia. In Libya, US forces seized a militant known as Abu Anas al-Libi, a long-sought al-Qaeda operative indicted in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (Background)

A separate raid in the southern Somali port of Barawe failed to capture the senior militant and it was unclear whether he had been killed, but a US official said several al-Qaeda-linked al Shabaab members had been killed. It was reportedly "prompted" by the deadly militant siege on a Nairobi shopping mall last month. The operation in Libya however appeared to be a success. (Source)

Oct. 5, 2013

US Navy SEALS Raid Somali Terror Village

Early Saturday, US Navy SEALS carried out a pre-dawn strike against fighters in the same southern Somali village. The strike in Barawe took place in the hours before morning prayers against what one official said were “high-profile” targets. (Source)

Kenya: "Westgate Was Attacked by Only 4 Terrorists"

A military spokesman on Saturday confirmed the names of the four fighters terrorists implicated in the attack on the upscale Westgate Mall in Kenya’s capital last month, an assault that turned into a four-day-long siege, killing at least 67 people (...) the attackers were Abu Baara al-Sudani, Omar Nabhan, Khattab al-Kene and Umayr, names that were first broadcast by a local Kenyan television station. (...) The identities of the men come as a private television station in Nairobi obtained and broadcast the CCTV footage from the Nairobi mall. The footage shows no more than four attackers. They are seen calmly walking through a storeroom inside the complex, holding machine guns. One of the men’s pant legs appears to be stained with blood, though he is not limping, and it is unclear if the blood is his, or that of his victims’. The footage contradicts earlier government statements which indicated that between 10 to 15 attackers were involved in the Sept. 21 attack.

Matt Bryden, the former head of the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, said via email that al-Kene and Umayr are known members of al-Hijra, the Kenyan arm of al-Shabab. He added that Nabhan may be a relative of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, one of the most-wanted al-Qaeda operatives in the region and an alleged plotter in the 1998 bombings at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 250 people. He was killed in 2009 when Navy SEALS led a strike in the town of Barawe in Somalia where he was hiding. (Source)

Oct. 2, 2013

Al Shabaab Vow Terror Campaign Against Kenya

Somalia’s Islamist group al-Shabaab threatened on Wednesday to increase militant action in Kenya, after the country refused to withdraw its troops from Somalia, reported Agence France-Presse. The al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for last week’s attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, in which at least 67 people died, with 39 more listed as missing by the Red Cross. “We will strike Kenyans where it hurts the most, turn their cities into graveyards and rivers of blood will flow in Nairobi,” al-Shabaab said in a recent statement. (Source)

Sept. 27, 2013

GRAPHIC! WESTGATE, THE MALL OF HORROR

Truly horrific news is emerging from the Westgate mall how some of the hostages found their deaths. Eyes, ears, and noses gouged out. Bodies hanging from hooks. Fingers torn out with pliers. Children found dead in freezers with knives sticking out of them. Men were castrated, then blinded and hanged. Hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies. (Source)

Sept. 26, 2013

Somalia's Al Shabaab Posting New Threats

AL-SHABAAB TERRORIST LEADER Abu Zubeyr has released an audio tape in which he issued new threats against Kenya (Transcript of audio)

Sept. 25, 2013

Media and Muslims must denounce terrorism

The Western media and our Muslim compatriots must stop blaming others and acknowledge and condemn the evil in the terrorists they keep apologizing and facilitating. These continuous bloodbaths are the direct result of the West's appaisement of the terror masters in Riyadh and Tehran. How many innocent people must die before the guilty are held to account? 

As Kenyan security forces made their final search yesterday for survivors of the Nairobi terror attack, it was not the devastation of the Westgate shopping mall that will have been causing them most concern. With at least 65 dead – including six Britons – and more than 100 injured, last weekend’s assault by al-Shabaab terrorists on the shopping complex represents the most deadly terrorist attack Kenya has suffered since the bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, which killed more than 200 people.

On that occasion it did not take counter-terrorism experts long to work out who was responsible. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network had made numerous threats to target American facilities, and President Clinton responded by launching cruise missile attacks against al-Qaeda’s bases in Sudan and Afghanistan. But if the initial reports of the investigation into the latest atrocity are anything to go by, taking retaliatory action against the culprits will not be as straightforward as it was back in the Nineties.

Al-Qaeda has come a long way since its early days, when groups of fanatical jihadi fighters hatched desperate plots to attack the West from remote caves hidden away in the Hindu Kush (Hindu slaughter). These days, as the Kenyan authorities are discovering, al-Qaeda has developed into a truly global brand, a multinational terror force that is just as capable of drawing recruits from the prosperous mid-West of the United States as the slums of downtown Mogadishu.

While al-Shabaab (“the youth”), the Somali-based al-Qaeda affiliate, has claimed responsibility for the shopping mall atrocity, Kenyan investigators have been alarmed to discover the cosmopolitan character of those involved in the killings. Apart from the Somalis who took part, the 15 terrorists who stormed the mall at noon last Saturday are said to have included extremists from the US, Britain, Canada, Sweden, Syria, Finland, Russia, Dagestan and Kenya.

Not since the mujahideen were fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the Eighties has the Islamist cause acquired such a trans-national hue. Back then it was simply a question of thousands of jihadis – the majority drawn from the Arab world – making their way to the CIA-run training camps on the Pakistani border to volunteer to fight against the infidel Russians.

These days, though, new adherents to the extremist movement are more likely to have been recruited and radicalised over the internet rather than by having to make their way to some remote and inhospitable location. As part of al-Qaeda’s quest for global reach, a new generation of Islamist radicals has enthusiastically embraced modern communications technology, skilfully exploiting the internet and social media to disseminate a nihilistic ideology to all corners of the world.

The ability of the terrorists to adapt new technology for their own perverse ends was graphically demonstrated during the Nairobi attacks when those claiming to represent the al-Shabaab leadership in Somalia used Twitter to post images of the gunmen terrorising innocent shoppers, as well as publishing a list purporting to name those taking part. It is entirely feasible, of course, that the Twitter accounts were not genuine, and that al-Shabaab was trying to give investigators false leads, thereby using up valuable resources while some of the perpetrators made good their escape. That is certainly one of the lines of inquiry being pursued by intelligence officials as they try to establish the identities of those involved.

Another ruse may have been al‑Shabaab’s claim that some of the terrorists were women, which has led to speculation that Samantha Lewthwaite, the “white widow”, took part. Lewthwaite has been on the run since her husband took part in the July 7 terror attacks in London in 2005, and is known to have travelled to Somalia on several occasions. It is, however, possible that some of the male terrorists simply dressed as women to make it easier for the terror cell to avoid detection as it made its way to the mall.

Al-Shabaab’s clever use of modern communication tools certainly lends credence to the Kenyan authorities’ claim that a number of American and British jihadis were involved in the operation’s planning and execution. In the US, investigators are concentrating their efforts on the “Minnesota martyrs”, a group of jihadis who are said to have been recruited from an area of Minneapolis with a sizeable community of Somali immigrants. FBI officials in the area have expressed concern about high-quality videos that are being used to glorify al-Shabaab’s involvement in Somalia’s long-running civil war, which may have been used to persuade impressionable men to sign up to jihad.

In Britain, meanwhile, MI5 officers are revisiting the familiar jihadist trail, checking the mosques and university campuses that have in the past been used to distribute videos made by popular al‑Qaeda propagandists, such as Anwar al‑Awlaki, the US-born cleric killed by a drone strike in 2011. Awlaki was the first of the modern breed of Islamist to grasp the importance of the internet in radicalising young Muslims, and his ground-breaking videos have helped to create the new multinational generation of terrorists, with all the implications this is likely to have for our future wellbeing.

(Source)