Top Al Qaeda targets dead after U.S. strike.
Posted by Carlos C. on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Fahid Mohammed Ali Msalam, left, and Sheikh Ahmed Salem Swedan, right, both on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list, were reportedly killed in a drone attack in Pakistan on New Year’s day. They were wanted and indicted for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa. ABC News has confirmed this report according to U.S. officials and counter-terrorism sources.
ABC News
Two top al Qaeda officials are believed dead following a New Year’s Day drone attack in northern Pakistan, ABC News has confirmed. U.S. officials said Fahid Mohammed Ali Msalam and Sheikh Ahmed Salem Swedan, both on the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list, were killed in the CIA strike.
Msalam, who also went by the alias Usama al-Kini, and Swedan were both from Kenya and were indicted in the Aug. 7, 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and for conspiring to kill U.S. citizens.
“It’s amazing that it took 10 years to get these guys when they were on the FBI most wanted list all of this time,” said former national security advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke.
U.S. counter-terrorism officials said that they believed the al Qaeda leaders were running operations for the terrorist group in Pakistan.
“Hopefully this provides some sense of justice for the 1998 bombings,” one official told ABC News.
The U.S. Department of State had offered rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture or conviction of each of them.
John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and ABC News consultant, described Msalam as “probably the single most prominent African member of al Qaeda” and a leader who known as a “logistics whiz.”
“He was very important in al Qaeda’s ability to coordinate and plan very complicated terrorist operations,” said Kiriakou, adding that the U.S. government had been looking for him “for a very long time.”
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said in statement late Thursday that Msalam was believed to be the operations chief for al Qaeda in Pakistan. While he could not confirm Msalam’s alleged involvement in the September 2008 attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, he said U.S. offficials reported Msalam was involved in attacks in Pakistan over the last year.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the matter.
Those are some ugly mofos.
Great job, CIA.
The FBI will send you a $10 million check tomorrow.
Hat Tip: InstaPundit
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UK’s most wanted terrorist, Rashid Rauf, killed!
Posted by Carlos C. on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Rashid Rauf was initially wanted for questioning by police in England over the murder of his uncle in Birmingham. Rauf fled to Pakistan but was arrested in August 2006 by the Pakistani police for his alleged involvement in the plot to detonate liquid bombs in airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean. Rauf escaped Pakistani custody in 2007 but was killed by a U.S. missile on Saturday.
However, I am more interested in the cooperation between America and Pakistan and how they planned to kill Rauf.
A secret meeting on board an American aircraft carrier between the US General David Petraeus and the head of the Pakistani military laid the foundation for the killing of Britain’s most wanted terrorist.
The Independent learned that talks held on board the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf three months ago led to General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani pledging to provide information on “high-value” targets such as Rashid Rauf, who died in a missile strike inside Pakistan on Saturday.
Senior UK security sources insisted that the lethal attack in North Waziristan on the 27-year-old Birmingham-born Rauf – accused of being involved in the plot to plant liquid bombs aboard transatlantic airliners – was “a unilateral American action” without any British involvement.
American officials stated that the intelligence on the whereabouts of Rauf and a Saudi Islamist, Abu Zubair al-Masri, was provided by Pakistani authorities. The agreement on sharing intelligence came during the meeting on the aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea in the last week of August, US sources said.
General Kayani, who had taken over from General Pervez Musharraf as the head of the Pakistani military, was brought to the ship by American helicopters. He was told about grave American disquiet over the help being given to the Taliban by elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence service, the ISI. According to US officials an agreement was reached at the conclusion of the “heated” meeting with General Kayani, in which the Pakistanis promised to supply high-quality intelligence.
I wonder if the Pakistani ISI knew all along where Rauf and al-Masri were hiding. Also, I wonder what General Petraues, on behalf of the American government, offered in return for intelligence on Rauf’s whereabouts. Money? Weapons? I believe that Pakistan received more than “shared intelligence”.
Also, I hope General Kayani arrests the Pakistani military and ISI members guilty of aiding the Taliban in North Warziristan.
Hat Tip: Hot Air Headlines
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Secret government order allows U.S. military to strike Al Qaeda worldwide.
Posted by Carlos C. on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 1:51 amUS special forces have conducted about a dozen secret operations against Al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants in Pakistan, Syria and other countries under broad war-waging authority given them by the administration of President George W. Bush, The New York Times reported on its website.
Citing unnamed senior US officials, the newspaper said the authority was contained in a classified order signed by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in early 2004 with the approval of President Bush.
The order gave the military permission to attack Al-Qaeda and other hostile targets anywhere in the world, even in countries not at war with the United States, without any additional approval, the report said.
Under this authority, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected Islamic militant compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan in 2006, The Times said, citing a former top CIA official.
What’s more, military planners were able to watch the entire attack “live” at CIA headquarters in Virginia through a video camera installed on a Predator aircraft that was sent to the area, the paper said.
Another raid was conducted by US special forces in Syria last October 26 in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency, the report said.
There is no information about the remaining secret military strikes, but officials made clear the list of targets did not include Iran, The Times pointed out.
The paper said, however, that US forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.
About a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years because they were deemed too risky, too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence, the paper said.
Before the 2004 order, the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days, the paper recalled.
But Rumsfeld was not satisfied with the status-quo and pressed hard for permission to use military power automatically outside the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to The Times.
The paper says the 2004 order identifies 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states, where Al-Qaeda was believed to be operating or had sought sanctuary.
According to the New York Times, the name of the secret order is called the “Al Qaeda Network Exord”.
According to a senior administration official, the new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones. Where in the past the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the new order specified a way for Pentagon planners to get the green light for a mission far more quickly, the official said.
Hopefully, the secret raids were successful in killing and capturing Al Qaeda militants.
Countries on the list where secret raids took place include: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, plus other Gulf states. Secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran were also ordered and executed.
There were missions canceled as well, and some of these canceled missions were reported in the New York Times this past June. This was at the time when the New York Times was (rightfully) accused by the American public for revealing U.S. military and CIA missions in other countries. One of the canceled missions, reported by the New York Times, included the U.S. Navy SEALS and Army Rangers receiving secret orders to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama Bin Laden’s top deputy, inside Pakistan.
Read the entire 3-page article - International Herald Tribune
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Al Qaeda commanders escape missile strike
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan- A US missile strike targeting a high-level meeting of Al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in a Pakistani tribal area missed most of them by just minutes, security officials said Friday.
Two missiles hit the house of Pakistani Taliban leader Hafiz Sahar Gul in the North Waziristan district bordering Afghanistan on Thursday night, killing nine people including six Arab militants, the officials said.
“There was a meeting of around 30 foreign Al-Qaeda and local Taliban commanders in the house of Hafiz Sahar Gul but the majority of them left the building ten minutes before the missile struck,” a security official told AFP.
“The six Arabs who were killed are all believed to be lower level operatives,” the official added on condition of anonymity.
Officials did not immediately give the identities of the targeted militants. But they said that they were not Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Damn. Ten fucking minutes too late. But the good news is that our military personnel are getting amazing intelligence information for such a quick strike.
I wonder how high-level these Al Qaeda commanders really are? Remember, at this point of the War On Terror, it is better to kill the Al Qaeda commanders that handle the day-to-day operations of the terrorist group than kill Osama Bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri.
However, make no mistake, I want bin Laden and al-Zawahiri dead with as many Predator missiles as can fit up their collective asses!
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