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2005 NewsApril 13, 2005Suspect in Filmmaker Death in Dutch CourtBy TOBY STERLING
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WASHINGTON (April 12) - Three men with suspected al-Qaida ties, already in British custody, were charged Tuesday with a years-long plot to attack the New York Stock Exchange and other East Coast financial institutions.
Discovery of the alleged terrorist plan last summer prompted the Homeland Security Department to raise the terror alert for the targeted buildings, located in New York, Washington and Newark, N.J. Security in those cities also was tightened.
A four-count indictment returned by a New York City grand jury alleges the men, all British citizens, visited and conducted surveillance of the buildings and surrounding neighborhoods between August 2000 and April 2001.
The plot was foiled when Pakistani investigators seized a computer with information from the surveillance. British authorities were alerted and arrested eight men, including the three suspects, on terrorism-related charges last August, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said.
The indictment "sends a message about our resolve to terrorists,'' Comey said at a Justice Department news conference.
The grand jury returned the indictment on March 23 but it was unsealed only Tuesday. Named in it are Dhiran Barot, 33, Nadeem Tarmohammed, 26, and Qaisar Shaffi, 26. They could receive life sentences if convicted of the most serious charge, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in the United States. The indictment lists those weapons as improvised explosive devices and bombs.
U.S. officials claim Barot is a senior al-Qaida figure, known variously as Abu Eisa al-Hindi, Abu Musa al-Hindi and Issa al-Britani.
Prosecutors say the men conducted surveillance on the stock exchange and Citicorp building in New York, the Prudential building in Newark and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, including video surveillance in Manhattan around April 2001.
U.S. officials have previously described detailed surveillance photos and documents, which they believe came from Barot, that were found on the computer in Pakistan. Comey declined to provide any specifics.
Although they allegedly were doing their surveillance at the same time the Sept. 11 hijackers were making their final preparations, nothing in the indictment links this group to the hijackers.
The indictment does not allege any specific actions by the men in the United States or elsewhere after April 2001, though Comey said their plotting continued. "This conspiracy was alive and kicking until August 2004,'' he said.
Bush administration authorities said the decision to raise the risk of a terrorist attack to "high'' for those specific financial institutions was based on an abundance of caution and because of al-Qaida's history of lengthy planning and plotting.
The move, coming in the midst of a tight presidential election, drew criticism from Democrats, who claimed it was aimed at boosting President Bush's re-election effort.
"Politics had nothing to do with it. You have my word on it,'' Comey said Tuesday.
The threat level was lowered to yellow for the buildings after the November election.
Barot is charged in England with possessing reconnaissance plans for the U.S. financial institutions and notebooks containing information on explosives, poisons, chemicals and related matters "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.''
Tarmohammed was charged there, along with Barot, with possessing plans of the Prudential building. Shaffi also was charged in Britain with possessing an extract from the "Terrorist's Handbook'' on the preparation of chemicals, explosive recipes and other information.
British proceedings and any sentences would have to be completed before U.S. agents could question the men or seek their extradition, the Crown Prosecution Service said. The trial in Britain is scheduled to begin in January, it said.
"They are indicted here and whether or not they actually ever are extradited here I guess is a matter of discussion,'' said New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "But I think it's important, both substantively and symbolically important, that you come here, you do this type of surveillance, we're not going to forget.''
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Bush returned to Washington from his ranch in Texas, called the indictments "another significant step in the global war on terrorism.''
"We're going to continue to go after and pursue those who seek to do us harm and those who seek to do harm to the civilized world,'' McClellan said.
04/12/05 23:10 EDT
VATICAN CITY (AP) - They represent John Paul II's last major stamp on his vision for the future of the church: 26 cardinals from six continents who were added to the list of papal electors 18 months ago.
These latest cardinals, who account for nearly a quarter of the expected 115-member conclave beginning April 18, include some of the Vatican's leading voices protesting the U.S.-led war in Iraq and defending the church's moral teachings. One issue that vividly stands out: the need to strengthen bonds with Muslims or risk a more polarized and dangerous world.
Some of the most dynamic prelates in the group have been active on the front lines of Christian-Muslim conflicts in Africa or involved in interfaith outreach. Their backgrounds reinforce the perception that questions about Islam could exert a strong influence on the conclave in the way Cold War politics entered into the election of John Paul in 1978.
"John Paul II made the Vatican into a geopolitical force,'' said Jo Renee Formicola, a professor of religious and political studies at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. "There is no bigger question now in the West than building better contacts with the Islamic world. The Vatican recognizes this.''
The late pope took historic steps to open channels between Islam and the Vatican, including a 2001 trip to Syria when he became the first pontiff to enter a mosque. But the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the growing strength of radical Islam have raised calls in the Vatican for more comprehensive contacts with mainstream Islamic leaders.
A possible papal candidate who could benefit from that new focus is Vatican-based Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, of Nigeria, who has been involved in inter-religious dialogue since the 1980s and whose nation is a fault line between Christianity and Islam. Also, Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, 71, is seen to possess diplomatic finesse for a papacy that may require extensive contacts with Islamic leaders.
Fourteen of the new cardinals come from Europe, including six from Italy. The others are spread across the globe: three each from Latin America, Africa and Asia; two from North America and one from Australia. This, too, reflects the diversity of the coming conclave. Cardinals from 52 nations will decide on the new pontiff.
Interest in advancing contacts with Islam links many of the new cardinals, elevated during ceremonies to mark the 25th year of John Paul's papacy.
Among them is French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who served as a top Vatican diplomat from 1990 to 2003 and was the pope's main envoy for the Middle East. He has called interfaith relations an "enormous task'' for the next papacy and urged Muslim nations to stand against "second-class'' status for Christians.
Fellow cardinals from France - Marseilles Archbishop Bernard Panafieu and Lyons Archbishop Philippe Barbarin - have taken strong stands in support of better contacts with mainstream Muslims.
For Panafieu, the issue is at his doorstep. Nearly 17 percent of the French port is now Muslim. Panafieu has objected to a French law last year outlawing Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols in public schools and has urged the government to "act through persuasion rather than by compulsion'' to help Muslim immigrants adjust to the West.
Barbarin has gained a reputation as a champion for immigrant rights in a country with the largest Muslim community in Western Europe. The next pope "must be a man who knows and understands today's world and its culture,'' Barbarin said last week.
Spanish Cardinal Carlos Amigo Vallejo, the archbishop of Seville, was formerly head of the archdiocese in Tangiers, Morocco, which has only a few thousand Catholics. He has warned that "ignorance and neglect'' between the faiths needs urgent attention.
Croatian Cardinal Josip Bozanic is vice president of the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe, which has held a series of conferences on interfaith issues. Bozanic also has joined other religious leaders trying to rebuild trust in the Balkans following the bloody collapse of the former Yugoslavia.
But the strongest messages come from two new African cardinals.
In Sudan, the nation's first cardinal, Gabriel Zubeir Wako, has been caught up in more than two decades of clashes that claimed more than 2 million lives, mainly through famine and disease. A peace pact in January was reached between the Muslim-led government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, which has battled since 1983 for greater rights and a share of wealth for southern Sudanese of Christian and animist faiths.
But Wako fears the deal could unravel without better contact between Sudan's Christians and the majority Muslims, whom he has accused of trying to "colonize'' the entire country. One of Wako's first meetings after becoming cardinal was with Hassan Turabi, a populist Islamic leader who was placed under house arrest for challenging the government.
"The reason for which the war began will arise again'' unless efforts are made to bridge the religious rifts, he told the Italian magazine 30 Days in August 2004.
Another new cardinal, Anthony Olubunmi Okogie of Nigeria, begged in 1991 for calm after a round of Muslim-Christian clashes. "We cannot take any more of this,'' he said at the time.
But it got worse. Thousands have been killed in Muslim-Christian clashes since the late 1990s. In 2000, 12 states in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north adopted Islamic civil law, which Okogie called a "path to destruction'' by dividing the nation.
In an interview shortly after becoming cardinal, Okogie declined to speculate on Arinze's chances for the papacy. But he added: "In this election, Nigeria will have a place of prominence.''
Two others among the new group, both Italians, also have been mentioned as possible outside papal prospects: Cardinal Angelo Scola, 63, the patriarch of Venice, and Cardinal Tarcisco Bertone, 70, the archbishop of Genoa.
The group also includes cardinals whose bold style could help sway the conclave.
Italian Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, the archbishop of Florence, asked all the city's churches to toll their bells in mourning on the first night of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq in 2003.
Cardinal Renato Martino, a longtime Vatican official who served as observer at the United Nations, denounced the decision last month in Florida to remove the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged woman who died 13 days later. Martino called it a "human tragedy, but also an ethical, juridical and cultural tragedy.''
NEW YORK (AP) - Two 16-year-old girls living in New York have been detained since last month on immigration violations amid concerns they were potential recruits for a suicide bomb plot that never materialized, officials said Thursday.
The girls - one from Bangladesh, one from Guinea - were picked up by authorities on March 24 and put in a detention center, the officials said.
Details about the case, first reported Thursday by The New York Times, were sketchy, and a supporter of one of the girls claimed the accusations were false.
The Times cited a government document that said the FBI believed the girls posed "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers.''
Two law enforcement officials, both speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the case is pending, confirmed the content of the document, but suggested that it may have exaggerated the threat.
Investigators were concerned that girls might be recruited sometime in the future for a suicide mission by a suspect in an ongoing terrorism investigation, one of the officials said. They decided to detain the pair before they could become involved, the official added.
The law enforcement officials declined to discuss the terrorism investigation. Calls to the FBI's New York office were not immediately returned.
Marc A. Raimondi, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, would confirm only that two juveniles had been arrested on "administrative immigration violations'' and remain in federal custody.
Adem Carroll, a community activist with the Islamic Circle of North America, told the Times one of the girls had been arrested after she stopped attending public high school in September. Federal immigration agents investigated her home and discovered an essay about suicide and Islam on her computer, Carroll said.
The case seemed to be "an investigation that's gotten out of hand, like a lot of other so-called terror investigations,'' Carroll told the paper.
Carroll did not immediately return calls for comment on Thursday.
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A bomb has exploded in a Cairo's tourist bazaar, killing one French woman tourist and another unidentified person and wounding 17 others, according to an Egyptian Interior Ministry statement.
The wounded - four French, three Americans, an Italian, a Turk and nine Egyptians - were taken to hospital where the French woman died, the statement added.
Police sources said a man on a motorbike threw the bomb into the busy tourist area in the centre of the Egyptian capital but the subsequent ministry statement made no mention of what caused the blast.
Earlier, police officials said some tourists were apparently among the wounded from the blast which occurred near the famed al-Azhar mosque.
One witness said it appeared a man on a motorcycle set off a bomb in the middle of a group of foreigners.
'Horrible sound'
Rabab Rifaat, an Egyptian woman who was shopping in a store several metres from the blast, said the explosion appeared to have been caused by a man who was either carrying a bomb or had it on his motorcycle.
She said she heard "a boom, a horrible sound, very loud. Everyone started running", and that she then saw a decapitated head flying through the air.
An anti-government insurgency
was stamped out in the 1990s
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She said she saw six or seven bodies on the ground, some of them foreign-looking, but it was unclear if they were dead or wounded.
A number of tourist bazaars surround al-Azhar, one of the most prestigious Islamic institutions in the Sunni Muslim world, in Cairo's old city.
Egypt has largely seen calm since it suppressed a fierce campaign of violence by armed Muslim groups seeking to overthrow the government in the 1990s.
Previous attacks
The last major anti-government attacks came in late 1997. In September of that year, two armed men fired automatic rifles at a tour bus parked outside the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo, killing 10 people - mostly German tourists.
A month later, assailants killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians in an attack at a pharaonic temple in Luxor, southern Egypt, the worst such attack ever.
And last October, violence against foreigners returned after explosions hit several hotels in the Sinai peninsula, including one in the resort of Taba, popular with neighbouring Israelis on short visits.
The blast killed 34 people and Egyptian authorities linked the attack to Israeli-Palestinian troubles.
RASS, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Security forces stormed a walled compound Tuesday where Islamic militants had been barricaded for days, ending the kingdom's largest gunbattle yet and killing 14 armed extremists, including top leaders in the Saudi branch of al-Qaida.
At least six others were captured during three days of heavy firefights in the desert town of Rass, state-run television said, reporting the death toll and citing security officials after the battle was over. Fourteen members of the security forces were wounded.
"There was no chance for anyone to escape. We got them all,'' Interior Minister spokesman Brig. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said.
The standoff ended when security forces stormed the partially built walled villa compound Tuesday night, but he would not confirm the number of people killed and captured.
The size and ferocity of the battle in Rass, 220 miles northwest of Riyadh, suggested the security forces had uncovered a major cell of the al-Qaida-linked militant networks that the kingdom has battled in a crackdown launched in 2003 following a string of deadly suicide bombings.
For nearly 48 hours, up to 10 gunmen who survived initial fighting Sunday were holed up in the villa compound with a large arsenal of weapons. Surrounded by hundreds of Saudi special forces, they fired heavy volleys of automatic weapons fire and grenades.
Residents said they heard a furious 30-minute long exchange of gunfire as troops stormed the villa and police cars streamed into the area.
"We could hear all the action but we couldn't see anything. It sounded like fireworks at a wedding,'' said Mahboob Alam, 21, a Bangladeshi worker in an ice cream parlor.
After the fighting was over, security forces closed off parts of Rass, a conservative town with mosques on nearly every corner in a region of the kingdom known for its hardcore fundamentalists. An Associated Press reporter in the town saw half a dozen ambulances leaving the village, their sirens blaring.
It was the longest single gunbattle against the largest band of militants that Saudi forces have faced in the two-year crackdown - and the highest number of militant casualties in a single fight. Previously, the highest was six militants killed in July 2003 when police raided a farm in Qassim, near Rass.
The dead from the Rass fighting included Nos. 4 and 7 on Saudi Arabia's list of 26 most-wanted terrorists - Moroccan Kareem Altohami al-Mojati and Saudi Saud Homood Obaid al-Otaibi, a leading figure in al-Qaida's branch in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region - a senior military official in Rass said on condition of anonymity.
Al-Mojati, a veteran "mujahed'' who had been in Afghanistan, was sent to Saudi Arabia by bin Laden sometime after 2001 to help build al-Qaida's network there, former militants told AP. The kingdom's branch of al-Qaida was led by Saudi Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, until he was killed by Saudi police in June, and he was replaced by another Saudi, Saleh al-Aoofi.
Al-Mojati was also suspected of helping plan the May 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed 33 bystanders and 12 suicide bombers, Saudi newspapers reported.
The shootout began Sunday when security forces, acting on a tip, moved on a building in the Jawazat district of Rass. Militants opened fire on the police with automatic rifles and grenades, sparking a clash with police that killed three suspected terrorists.
The remainder fled to the villa. Seven more militants were killed in firefights Monday and early Tuesday.
For hours Monday and Tuesday, police called out with loudspeakers demanding the gunmen surrender, but the only responses were bursts of gunfire and grenades. Police said they saw the bodies of gunmen inside the compound, apparently killed in the shootout.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of bin Laden and 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 suicide hijackers, launched its own "war on terror'' after a string of suicide bombings, kidnappings and gunbattles that began in May 2003. The attacks, which have tended to target foreign workers, have been blamed on al-Qaida and allied militants.
Since it launched its crackdown, the police have killed or captured 23 of the figures on Saudi Arabia's initial list of 26 wanted militants - including al-Mojati and al-Otaibi - though other leaders, like al-Aoofi, are believed to have risen to fill militant leadership ranks in the past two years.
Associated Press reporter Salah Nasrawi in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.
DETROIT (AP) - A former public schools official, accused of conspiring with a Florida man in the 1990s to raise money and recruit Muslim extremists to fight in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Somalia, was ordered held Wednesday to face federal terrorism charges.
A criminal complaint issued in December and unsealed Monday in Miami charges Kifah Wael Jayyousi, 43, formerly of Detroit, and Kassem Daher, of Broward County, Fla., with conspiring to provide material support and resources for terrorism, and with conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people or damage property in a foreign country.
Jayyousi appealed the order that he be held, and a hearing was set for Thursday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office said.
A message seeking comment was left Wednesday night with a lawyer for Jayyousi.
Authorities said Jayyousi, a former Detroit Public Schools assistant superintendent, was arrested Sunday at Detroit Metro Airport after arriving from Amsterdam. U.S. Customs agents detained him after a routine computer check showed he was wanted on a federal warrant out of Miami.
Prosecutors have requested that he be sent to Miami.
Conspiring to provide material support and resources for terrorism carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The other charge carries a maximum penalty of 35 years to life in prison.
Daher is a fugitive living in Lebanon, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Jayyousi left Detroit Public Schools in 1999. A court affidavit signed by an FBI agent said he moved to Egypt in 2003.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia Commonwealth University has heightened campus security in the week after a female professor led a mixed-gender prayer service that was criticized by some Muslim clerics, a school spokeswoman said Saturday.
Islamic studies professor Amina Wadud led between 80 to 100 men and women in Muslim prayer March 18 at a church in New York. Muslim clerics denounced her actions, saying Islam permits women to lead other women in prayer but not alongside men.
No specific threats have been made, but security is at a "heightened state,'' VCU spokeswoman Pamela Lepley said. The school has consulted state and federal agencies and will "err on the side of caution.''
The school has also increased security at its design college in Qatar, a few miles from where a suicide car bombing happened last week outside a theater, killing one person and injuring 12. Lepley said no link has been found between the bombing and Wadud's prayer service.
"There are statements by certain people that raise concerns,'' Lepley said, referring to comments made on Internet forums about Wadud's views.
Wadud's prayer service has also come under fire after a call was made for "An Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Mosque,'' and Wadud periodically substituted the Arabic word for God, Allah, with pronouns he, she and it, arguing that God's omnipresence defied gender definition.
Wadud, an associate professor who has worked at VCU since 1992, has argued for the reform of Sharia, or Islamic law, and is an outspoken scholar of the role of women in Islam. She has declined interviews.
KUWAIT CITY (AP) - A liberal university professor - tired of legal and verbal assaults from fundamentalists who say he mocks Islam - has given up his fight for freedom of speech in a country he says has become infested with the "germs and viruses of hatred and tyranny.''
Ahmed al-Baghdadi - sentenced last week to a suspended one-year prison term for mocking Islam - said he has written his last newspaper column. Earlier, he said he would seek asylum in a Western country to protect his life, his family and his freedom of expression.
On Saturday, the Kuwait University political science professor told The Associated Press he also was considering less drastic options, such as retirement or spending a year abroad, which would be easier on him and his family.
"Writing and living in the shadow of fear is impossible, and dignity is above all,'' al-Baghdadi wrote in his final column Saturday.
He said legal battles have broken his only weapon - his pen - and there was nothing left for him but to surrender.
Al-Baghdadi's decision came a week after the Appeals Court convicted him of mocking Islam and handed down a suspended one-year prison sentence, overturning an acquittal by a lower court. It also ordered him to pay a $6,825 deposit, which would be forfeited if he commits the same offense within the next three years.
Al-Baghdadi, an archrival of religious extremists who also took him to court in 1999, has appealed the verdict to the higher Cassation Court, but he said Saturday in his final column for the Al-Siyassah daily newspaper that he would not return to writing even if he won the case.
"It is not a matter of a court ruling here or a court ruling there,'' he wrote. "It is the sick climate that is filled with germs and viruses of hatred and tyranny.''
The legal battle stemmed from a June 5, 2004, column in which al-Baghdadi wrote that he sent his son to an expensive foreign school rather than a state school because he did not want "ignorant'' teachers to teach him "how to disrespect women and non-Muslims.'' Wrong teachings could lead his son to terrorism, he said.
"In short, I want to have a son with an education and a mind I can be proud of, not (a son) with backward thinking,'' he wrote.
Two Muslim fundamentalists complained to judicial authorities about the column and al-Baghdadi was tried and acquitted by a misdemeanor court.
The Appeals Court, however, ruled the professor had made "derogatory'' comments about Islam by linking terrorism and "backward thinking'' to religious classes at state schools.
For more than a decade, this small, oil-rich ally of Washington has been pulled between politically strong fundamentalists, who want to fully implement Sharia, or Islamic law, and the less powerful Westernized liberals, who call for more democracy and freedom of expression.
The 1962 constitution guarantees freedom of expression but laws penalize those who insult the country's religion.
In his farewell column, al-Baghdadi said he could not play "the Kuwaiti roulette'' by continuing to write without knowing when the next court case would come.
The U.S.-educated al-Baghdadi, who specializes in political Islam, has been campaigning for years against fundamentalists who he said "terrorize'' writers and journalists.
"If terrorism spreads, nobody will be spared. Everyone could be gripped by the neck for a word or a joke unsuspiciously uttered, and accused of being against religion,'' he wrote in a December 1999 column.
That year, al-Baghdadi was convicted of blaspheming Islam when he wrote that the Prophet Mohammed initially failed to convert nonbelievers in the holy city of Mecca. Kuwait's emir, Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, pardoned the professor and he was released from prison after serving about half of his one-month sentence.
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Two teachers at the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa were suspended yesterday pending an investigation into the encouragement or incitement of hatred against Jews expressed in a young student's violence-laden writing project.
Principal Aisha Sherazi said the seven-member school board and administration were "shocked" by teacher involvement in the project that was brought to her attention by the Citizen yesterday morning, and decided at an emergency meeting to suspend the instructors.
One teacher was apparently involved in the artistic production of the eight-page story of killing and martyrdom. Handwritten in Arabic and titled The Long Road, the cover page was illustrated by a drawing of a burning Star of David beside a machine-gun and Palestinian flag atop the Dome of the Rock, an ancient Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.
The other teacher had written comments on the student's paper, praising the boy's story of revenge for the assassination by Israeli forces a year ago of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a co-founder of Hamas, in retaliation for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.
"God bless you, your efforts are good," the teacher wrote on the title page. "The story of the hero Ahmed and the hero Salah is still alive. The end will be soon when God unites us all in Jerusalem to pray there."
On the margins inside the story, the teacher had written a note endorsing the boy's fantasy of a young Ahmed Yassin and his friend, Salah El-Dine, ambushing Israeli soldiers.
"Without thinking, Ahmed took his M16 machine-gun and threw the bombs, and he showered the Jews; this resulted in the killing of the soldiers," the boy's text reads. "Salah said: 'You killed them all.' Ahmed answered: 'Praise be to God.'"
The fantasy heroes are quoted at the end of the story saying: "We promise God and the heroes of Al-Aksa that we will continue the path, we will continue in spite of the difficulties and the hardships until the victory or the martyrdom, we will not surrender; we will fight for the sake of God until the end."
Mrs. Sherazi declined to name the student, for privacy reasons, or the teachers until the investigation is complete. "Then we'll see what action we decide we want to take," she said.
Mrs. Sherazi, a 32-year-old teacher who took over as principal in recent months, does not speak or read Arabic. She expressed surprise about the drawing and the story, even though it had reportedly been displayed in a glass case at the school.
The Citizen obtained two translations of the story before asking the principal about it. She said such a subject was not on the curriculum, but it may have been a submission in a creative writing contest for the Arabic studies class, where students could choose their own topics.
"Upon the issue being brought to the attention of the school principal, an emergency meeting was held today by the board and administration," Mrs. Sherazi said in a prepared statement.
"The individuals involved were immediately suspended pending an internal investigation. Encouraging or inciting hatred is strictly prohibited at our school. We will take all measures to investigate this matter and ensure that it does not reoccur."
NEW YORK (AP) - Even as Amina Wadud was preparing to lead an Islamic prayer service, her plans drew sharp criticism from Muslim religious leaders in the Middle East.
Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, was scheduled to lead a two-hour service Friday at Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.
The event was meant to draw attention to the "second-class status'' of women in Muslim spiritual life and Muslim life in general, said Asra Q. Nomani, an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter who is lead organizer of the prayer.
"We are taking actions that no one else would have dared to think about before,'' she told The New York Times for Friday editions. "Nobody cared that we didn't have a place in the faith.''
Muslim leaders denounced the plans.
The sheik of Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque, one of the top world's Islamic institutions, said Islam permits women to lead other women in prayer but not a congregation with men in it.
"A woman's body is private,'' Sheik Sayed Tantawi wrote in a column in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram in which he was asked about Wadud's planned prayer. "When she leads men in prayer, in this case, it's not proper for them to look at the woman whose body is in front of them. Even if they see it in their daily life, it shouldn't be in situations of worship, where the main point is humility and modesty.''
Muslim leaders in New York were also wary of the plan.
"My concern is a backlash,'' Aisha al-Adawiya, head of New York-based Women in Islam, told the Times. "This kind of change has to come from within the community. It's being driven from outside.''
Some critics have accused Nomani of using the event to publicize a book she has written about women and Islam.
Three New York mosques refused to host the service, Nomani said. It was moved to Synod House after a site that had earlier been selected for the service, an art gallery in SoHo, received a bomb threat.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Two of Southeast Asia's deadliest Islamic militant groups are collaborating in the southern Philippines to train extremists in explosives, weapons and combat tactics, graduating 23 Indonesian recruits just over a week ago, a jailed terror suspect said Wednesday.
The jungles in the south also are providing refuge to terrorists involved in major attacks elsewhere in the region, including the 2002 bombings in a nightclub district on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, the prisoner told The Associated Press in an interview.
U.S. officials have long worried that unrest in the Philippines' impoverished Muslim homeland could be exploited by terror groups.
The suspect, Rohmat, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, provided a glimpse into the workings of the already known liaison between the Southeast Asian group Jemaah Islamiyah and the Philippines' Abu Sayyaf movement, which authorities say also has links to al-Qaida.
Rohmat, a 26-year-old Jemaah Islamiyah member who was captured March 16, said he roamed with Abu Sayyaf guerrillas for about two years, providing combat training, dodging military assaults together and overhearing their terror plots.
He spoke in Tagalog, a sign of the depth of his immersion in the Philippines. He said recruits at the Jabal Qubah training camp run by Jemaah Islamiyah on Mindanao island finished their studies just days before he was caught at a military checkpoint.
"There were 23 men who have just finished the courses. I heard they would be sent back home and others would stay behind to train a new batch,'' a handcuffed Rohmat said during a 30-minute interview held at a military safe house in the presence of officials.
He said a separate group of 10 Indonesians from Jemaah Islamiyah - including two suspects in the Bali bombings that killed 202 people - were with Abu Sayyaf guerrillas near the camp, but he said he didn't know why. He identified one as Dulmatin but declined to name the other.
Rohmat, whose homeland is the world's most populous Muslim nation, said he traveled to the southern Philippines as a trainee with other Indonesians in January 2000.
Two years later, he said, he became an instructor in Islam and martial arts, teaching Indonesians and local Abu Sayyaf recruits in Mindanao's Maguindanao province and on nearby Jolo island. But he denied allegations by intelligence officials that he taught Abu Sayyaf members how to build bombs, particularly the use of mobile phones to trigger homemade explosives.
Around 2002, Rohmat said, he was designated by Zulkifli, then the Indonesian head of Jemaah Islamiyah operations in the Philippines, to be the contact man for dealings with Abu Sayyaf, including training its recruits and staying close to its leaders, Khaddafy Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman.
Abu Sayyaf planned attacks on its own, independent of Jemaah Islamiyah, which only provided training, he said.
Rohmat bore a fresh scar on his right cheek that he said was suffered during a military air strike in November in which Janjalani and Sulaiman scampered out of a targeted house just in time.
He said he was at a meeting where Janjalani and Sulaiman plotted Feb. 14 bombings that killed eight people and injured more than 100 others in Manila and two cities in the south. The two leaders also have ordered new bombings during the Easter holiday in Manila and one of two southern cities, probably Davao, he said.
Officials said Monday that three Jemaah Islamiyah operatives were suspected of plotting with Abu Sayyaf to stage bombings this week.
Soldiers and police have beefed up security in shopping malls, churches and other crowded places to guard against bombings threatened by Abu Sayyaf as revenge for the deaths of 23 inmates killed by police in a botched jailbreak last week. Among them were three prominent guerrilla commanders.
Citing the worries about planned attacks, Britain's government warned its citizens Wednesday against traveling to the Philippines.
"There continue to be threats against Western interests and there is a danger of collateral damage from terrorist attacks targeted at others,'' the Foreign Office said.
DOHA, Qatar (AP) - Qataris in traditional flowing robes and foreigners in jeans and business suits rallied Monday in a state-organized show of indignation and unity against terrorism near the site of a suicide bombing that killed a British teacher and wounded 12 other people.
A previously unknown militant group, Jund al-Sham, posted a statement on an Islamic Web site claiming it carried out the attack to start a campaign against those who "desecrate the soil of the land of Islam.''
Many demonstrators said they wanted everyone to know foreigners are welcome in the Persian Gulf state and terrorists are not. Banners at the demonstration read: "Western Expatriates We Love You. Your Security is Our Concern.''
"We love all Westerners and we don't want this to happen again in our country,'' said Khalifa al-Tamimi, an employee of state-owned Qatar Petroleum. "Whoever did this is illiterate and uncivilized. Surely this is not the work of Qatari people.''
The explosion occurred outside the Doha Players Theater production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night.'' It killed Jonathan Adams, a British teacher who directed the show and was watching it with his family.
Adams had heard a revving car and went outside to check when the explosion occurred, so he caught the full force of the blast, according to an Australian protester, Pauline Furlong, who said she knew Adams.
Authorities have blamed the attack on Omar Ahmed Abdullah Ali, an Egyptian computer programmer who worked in Qatar for five years.
In Cairo, relatives dressed in black arrived at the home of his family to offer condolences.
"I do not believe he did it,'' Ali's mother, Kawthar el-Sayyed, said. "Whoever did the attack might have stolen his car or stolen his name.''
She said her son never spoke about holy war or suicide and she could not believe he would abandon his children. "He prays and fasts just like any regular Muslim,'' she said with tears in her eyes.
El-Sayyed said she hoped her son's name had come up by mistake. She said four Egyptian police officers searched her apartment Sunday but did not take anything.
The Internet claim of responsibility, which could not be verified, called the attack a "historic'' operation and criticized Arab leaders for allowing Western military bases and churches on their territories.
The claim made no mention of the al-Qaida terror network, but denied any links with militants in the Palestinian territories or Lebanon. A small Islamic group of the same name emerged in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon last year.
In Qatar, some of the 50 Westerners who participated in the protest said they feared for the country's future.
"I was not worried when I got here. But now I'm really worried about staying,'' Furlong said.
The anti-terrorism rally, which drew about 2,000 demonstrators, was similar to tactics used by the governments of other Gulf nations to mobilize public opinion against militants.
In Saudi Arabia, the state-guided media has featured stories of families of suicide attackers condemning their sons and TV documentaries have portrayed the agony of the families of the victims. Prominence also has been given to clerics describing terrorist attacks as un-Islamic.
Qatari papers carried full-page newspaper ads Monday condemning the blast and offering condolences to Adams' widow and children.
At the Egyptian Embassy, charge d'affaires Yasser Elshawaf said it was not known if Ali was "a madman or linked to terrorist groups like al-Qaida.''
Elshawaf said he expected no backlash against the 60,000 Egyptians in Qatar, many of whom work as engineers, doctors or professors.
PAKDASHT, Iran (AP) - A young man convicted of raping and murdering 16 boys was lashed 100 times, and then hanged Wednesday in front of a large, angry crowd who pelted him with stones and scuffled with police.
Mohammed Bijeh, 23, confessed in court to raping and murdering the children, between March and September 2004. Iranian media have said Bijeh burned the bodies of his victims, all boys between 8 and 15.
Bijeh was sentenced to one death sentence for each murder he confessed and 100 lashes of the whip for the rapes.
An accomplice, Ali Gholampour, was acquitted of involvement in the murders but was convicted of taking part in some of the kidnappings, to which he confessed. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 100 lashes.
Bijeh's verdict was carried out in Pakdasht, a small, impoverished town about 19 miles southeast of Tehran, after being upheld by the Supreme Court. It was the same town where the murders took place.
Approximately 5,000 spectators - including women and children - gathered to watch the flogging and hanging. Riot police circled the area.
Some in the crowd threw stones at Bijeh as he was flogged, shirtless and hands tied to an iron pole. He fell to his knees three times as he received the lashes.
A relative of one of the victims broke police security and attacked Bijeh with a knife, wounding his back before police dragged him away.
After the flogging, a rope was put around Bijeh's neck and attached to a hook on a crane. The crane's arm jerked upward and Bijeh's body dangled, drawing applause from the crowd.
Some people burst into tears, crying out the names of their injured children. Some shouted, "Shame on you, Bijeh!''
After about 20 minutes, the body was lowered and a doctor confirmed Bijeh was dead.
Many in the crowd, some of them other family members of the victims, repeatedly tried to approach Bijeh's body but were prevented by riot police. Scuffles continued for at least half an hour.
The case provoked national outrage in Iran. Sixteen police officers were reprimanded for dereliction of duty and the Interior Ministry criticized the police for failing to catch the suspects after the first crime.
Many of the people in Pakdasht supported the hanging.
"Public executions reduce the occurrence of offenses. Bijeh destroyed many families. He deserved more than death,'' said resident Zahra Khaleghi.
But Dariush Mehraban said public hangings only promote violence.
"Many criminals have been hanged, but offenses have never reduced. It's an ugly scene that a human being is hanged even if he has committed many crimes. Revenge is not the solution,'' said Merhraban, who watched the hanging.
Convicts are hanged in public in Iran only if a court deems that their offenses deeply affected public sentiment.
Iranian courts are controlled by hard-liners. Iranian reformists say public executions hurt the country's international image and reflect badly on Islam.
Muslim clerics in Spain yesterday issued what they called the world's first
fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden. The fatwa, on the first anniversary
of the Madrid train bombings, called the terror lord an apostate and urged others
of their faith to denounce the al Qaeda leader. The ruling was issued by the Islamic
Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country's 1 million-member
Muslim community. The commission represents 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or
about 70 percent of all mosques in Spain.
Islamic law has no place in Quebec or the rest of Canada, a provincial cabinet minister and several MNAs said yesterday.
With the Ontario government expected to decide shortly on whether to allow the Islamic legal code, known as sharia, to be applied to settle family disputes among Muslims, Liberal and Parti Quebecois MNAs warned yesterday that using sharia would lead to blatant violations of women's rights.
"I think all political parties in Quebec must say loud and clear that not only do we not want it in Quebec, we don't want it in Ontario and we don't want it in Canada," International Relations Minister Monique Gagnon-Tremblay said at a conference.
The former immigration minister said Quebec should refuse immigrants who believe the Islamic system should be applied.
"We must rework the social contract (for immigrants) so that the people - Muslims who want to come to Quebec and who do not respect women's rights or who do not respect whatever rights may be in our Civil Code - stay in their country and not come to Quebec, because that's unacceptable."
"On the other hand, if people want to come to Quebec and accept our way of doing things and our rights, in that instance they will be welcome and we will help them integrate."
Sharia is canonical law based on the teachings of the Koran.
Ontario's attorney-general is studying a report, made public in December, that recommends sharia be allowed to settle family disputes.
But in an hour-long presentation, Liberal MNA Fatima Houda-Pepin argued Islamic law would infringe on women's rights and open the door to polygamy.
"We've seen sharia at work in Iran. We've seen it at work in Afghanistan, with the odious Taliban regime. We've seen it in Sudan, where the hands of hundreds of innocent people were cut off. We've seen it in Nigeria with attempts at stoning," she said.
Salam Elmenyawi, chairperson of the Muslim Council of Montreal, was outraged when told about the comments made at the conference.
"When you talk like that, you are attacking me and my faith," he said in a phone interview. "This is total ignorance. Bigotry and ignorance have no limits."
But Houda-Pepin, who was raised a Muslim, also warned that the public should make an effort to get to know those in the community who are lobbying for application of sharia.
"One of the strengths of Islamists is that they know you very well. They know our history, they know our culture, they know our justice system, the Charter of Rights," she said.
She said those lobbyists are trying to impose a political agenda, not necessarily a religious one.
"Their objective is not to integrate into Canada, it is to integrate Canada to their values," she said, acknowledging sharia is interpreted in a more liberal fashion in such countries as Morocco as opposed to Saudi Arabia, for example.
Elmenyawi suggested Houda-Pepin was posing as a representative of the Muslim community when she does not speak for it.
He said the Islamic community in Montreal is looking at creating family tribunals, independent of the courts, to settle religious issues and to protect the rights of both women and men. It is an internal debate that has nothing to do with Quebec's Civil Code, he said.
Parti Quebecois MNAs who attended the conference showed support for Houda-Pepin and suggested a joint motion in the National Assembly urging Ontario and other jurisdictions in North America not to apply sharia.
But provincial Justice Minister Yvon Marcoux said any decision made by Ontario to allow sharia would have no impact on what the Quebec government already has decided to do.
"Certainly not in Quebec. The door is closed, and it will remain closed," he said in an interview.
The Action democratique du Quebec, which was unable to send a representative to the conference, did not want to commit to supporting any motion.
"We certainly are against application of sharia in Quebec, but we can't necessarily start telling other provinces what to do," ADQ spokesperson Jean-Nicolas Gagne said.
mdesouza@thegazette.canwest.com
Online Extra: Learn more about Islamic law at our Web site: www.montrealgazette.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005
MADRID, Spain (AP) - In the year since 10 dynamite-filled backpacks exploded on Madrid commuter trains, Spaniards have shifted some blame away from the Iraq war and onto themselves.
Immediately after the March 11 massacre, most Spaniards saw the attack as al-Qaida's revenge for sending Spanish troops to Iraq. Today there's a realization al-Qaida's footprint in Spain is much older and deeper: the country had long been a haven or transit point for Islamic militants.
The government's counterterrorism chief, Fernando Reinares, said he believes a few hundred Muslims indoctrinated in radical Islam remain in Spain and at risk of being recruited for terrorism. Madrid bombers had plotted to follow up the massacre with suicide bombings, suggesting their goal went beyond punishing the pro-U.S. government then in power, he said.
Since the train attack, authorities have uncovered other plots in Spain, including one to destroy a courthouse that's the hub of investigations into Islamic terrorism cases.
"Spain is safer now, but the threat level has not gone down for Spain or the European Union in general,'' Reinares told The Associated Press.
Officials now believe the main motive for the train bombings that killed 191 people was not so much Iraq as Spain's arrest of dozens of al-Qaida suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, including three charged with helping prepare them, Reinares said.
Twenty-four suspects arrested in those raids face trial in Madrid, probably next month. The crackdown marked the beginning of the end of Spain's traditional status as a militant haven.
Until the arrests began two months after Sept. 11, "Spain was a place where individuals linked to al-Qaida operated with ease,'' Reinares said.
The idea that Spain's vulnerability goes back beyond the Madrid train bombing - and persists still - is shared by Jesus Nunez Villaverde, an international security analyst and president of a Madrid think-tank, the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action.
"What March 11 shows, and especially what came afterward, is that Spain was, is and will stay on the target list for Islamic terrorists,'' Villaverde said.
Investigations elsewhere in Europe have also intersected here, bolstering the chilling conclusion that Spain was not just a one-time target for joining President Bush's coalition to oust Saddam Hussein - but instead a "crossroads'' for Muslim extremists, says Jean-Charles Brisard, a French private investigator.
Spain's porous southern edge is a short ferry ride from Morocco, home to most of the suspects jailed in the Madrid attack, and from Morocco's neighbor, Algeria, native country of a ringleader in the train bombings.
Anger at Spain's Conservative government for sending troops to Iraq tipped the balance in the election three days after March 11 and brought a Socialist administration to power.
The new government inherited a counterterrorism system and police woefully unequipped to tackle al-Qaida cells, Reinares said.
For instance, officials say, some Arabic transcripts of wiretapped phone conversations among suspects were thrown away for lack of translators.
The pioneer in tackling Muslim extremists in Spain was Judge Baltasar Garzon, who began a probe in 1996 and eventually broke up a cell accused of using this country as a staging ground for Sept. 11. But even afterward, Spain remained unaccustomed to the new menace.
As part of its security overhaul, the government has moved to boost its intelligence gathering and sharing capability. It has tightened controls on explosives like the high-grade dynamite used on March 11, which had been stolen from a mine in northern Spain. The staff at the police unit probing Muslim extremists also has been quadrupled - from 100 to 400 personnel - and Muslim suspects have been dispersed to various jails to disrupt their planning from behind bars, Reinares said.
Last year alone, Spain arrested 131 suspected extremists, and only about half were connected to the Madrid bombings. More than 40 were linked to a plot detected in October to blow up the National Court and assassinate judges such as Garzon.
Twenty-two remain in jail over the train attack, and 52 others were released but are still considered suspects. As many as eight are international fugitives. No formal indictments have been issued and a trial is probably months away.
Seven suspected ringleaders blew themselves up April 3 in an apartment outside Madrid as special forces moved in. These were the ones likely to have plotted suicide attacks in the months after the massacre, Reinares said.
As for a mastermind, Reinares said officials have "three or four'' names in mind. He did not identify them. But they are believed to include Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a Syrian fugitive who played a key role in setting up an al-Qaida structure in Spain and was indicted by Garzon over the Sept. 11 attack. Last year, the United States offered $5 million for information leading to his arrest.
Another is fugitive Moroccan Amer Azizi, believed to be Setmariam Nasar's lieutenant.
Allekema Lamari, an Algerian who was also considered a ringleader, was among the men who blew themselves up in the apartment.
Setmariam Nasar is now believed to be in Iraq fighting alongside Jordan-born terrorist chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said Brisard, the French investigator, who works for lawyers representing Sept. 11 victims in the United States.
Despite the presence of suspected Muslim militants in Spain, Reinares said his country is no more a hotbed for extremists than Britain, France or Italy.
However, Brisard said that even after the arrests prompted by March 11 attack, the al-Qaida structure in Spain proved itself to be more important than any other in Europe in terms of collaboration with other cells.
"We've seen that in every case, all over Europe. People were always in contact with Spanish al-Qaida members,'' said Brisard, who works with police across Europe and has access to Garzon's huge file on the Spanish branch of the Sept. 11 plot. "It is not the case with other cells.''
A law banning Incitement to Religious Hatred was passed by the House of Commons on 7 February as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill (SOCP). The Liberal Democrats attempted to block the law by putting forward a front bench amendment with cross-party support. Instead of introducing a new law banning Incitement to Religious Hatred this would have amended the existing law on race hate so that in certain circumstances people could be convicted of race hate even though the language they used was directed against a religious group if it can be proved that there motives were racist. At the vote 191 supported the amendment including the Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties and a significant number of Labour backbenchers. However, 291 voted against it and so the law was passed unchanged.
The Lords
The SOCP Bill has now entered the House of Lords and will receive its Second Reading and first debate on Monday 14 March. After this however it will almost certainly not follow the normal procedure. Parliament breaks for Easter on Thursday 24 March. If Parliament returns after Easter it will only be for a few days before breaking again for the expected election in May. Any bills not passed by this time will be lost and have to start all over again after an election. Therefore custom is for any contentious part of any bill to be dropped so that the rest of the bill can be passed. Also during the few days immediately before and after Easter senior leaders of the main parties will negotiate and do deals on which parts of which bills they will or will not let pass.
Strategically this means that when the SOCP Bill receives its Second Reading on 14 March if a large number of Lords speak raising major objections to Incitement to Religious Hatred the government may realise they will not be able to push this part of the Bill through the Lords in time and may withdraw it.
Barnabas Fund is therefore calling on our supporters to write to the Lords urgently expressing your concerns and asking peers to speak out against Incitement to Religious Hatred in the debate on 14 March.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Feb. 22) - A former Virginia high school valedictorian who had been detained in Saudi Arabia as a suspected terrorist was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and with supporting the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, a U.S. citizen, made an initial appearance Tuesday in U.S. District Court but did not enter a plea. He claimed that he was tortured while detained in Saudi Arabia since June of 2003 and offered through his lawyer to show the judge his scars.
The federal indictment said that in 2002 and 2003 Abu Ali and an unidentified co-conspirator discussed plans for Abu Ali to assassinate Bush. They discussed two scenarios, the indictment said, one in which Abu Ali "would get close enough to the president to shoot him on the street" and, alternatively, "an operation in which Abu Ali would detonate a car bomb."
According to the indictment, Abu Ali obtained a religious blessing from another unidentified co-conspirator to assassinate the president.
More than 100 supporters of Abu Ali crowded the courtroom and laughed when the charge was read aloud alleging that he conspired to assassinate Bush.
When Abu Ali asked to speak, U.S. Magistrate Liam O'Grady suggested he consult with his attorney, Ashraf Nubani.
"He was tortured," Nubani told the court. "He has the evidence on his back. He was whipped. He was handcuffed for days at a time."
When Nubani offered to show the judge his back, O'Grady said that Abu Ali might be able to enter that as evidence on Thursday at a detention hearing.
"I can assure you you will not suffer any torture or humiliation while in the (U.S.) marshals' custody," O'Grady said.
STUTTGART, Germany (AP) - An Egyptian imam accused of preaching violent Islamic extremism has been deported to his homeland, authorities said Tuesday.
The 37-year-old imam, identified only as El Beih, had preached sermons in which he called the United States the "true terrorists'' and a "Satan'' that threatened the Islamic world, state Interior Minister Heribert Rech said.
The imam also called for people to be willing to fight and die for Islam, Rech said.
"There is no place in our country for people like this, and they must leave Germany as quickly as possible,'' Rech said.
The imam immigrated to Germany in 2001 and gave the sermons in question in 2003 and 2004 at the Multicultural House in the southern city of Neu-Ulm, Rech said.
The Multicultural House has been under observation for years by authorities, who say it is a magnet for Islamic extremists across Germany. Those associated with it have had contacts with top terror suspects in Germany, including Osama bin Laden's suspected finance chief Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, arrested on a U.S. warrant in the area in 1998.
Salim, 46, was deported and is in custody in New York awaiting trial on conspiracy charges in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, which killed 224 people. He was sentenced to 32 years in prison last year for stabbing a prison guard in the eye with a sharpened comb.
El Beih was supposed to have been deported in early December, but the process was delayed after he filed a plea for asylum.
After a court rejected the application, he was taken into custody Friday and flown from Frankfurt to Cairo on Monday, Rech said.
MADRID, Spain (AP) - A prosecutor said Monday he will seek prison terms of more than 74,000 years for each of three suspected al-Qaida members charged with using Spain as a staging ground for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
A trial is expected to start in mid-March, the National Court said. Spain will be only the second country worldwide to put Sept. 11 suspects on trial, after Germany.
Prosecutor Pedro Rubira said that for each suspect, he will seek 25 years in prison for each of the 2,973 people killed in the suicide airliner attacks, for a possible sentence of more than 74,000 years. Under Spanish law, however, the maximum prison term someone can actually serve in a terrorism case is 40 years; the country has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
Rubira also said he wants the defendants to pay a total of $1.16 billion in damages to victims' families.
Imad Yarkas is accused of leading a Spain-based al-Qaida cell; accused as accomplices are Driss Chebli and Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun. Chebli is Moroccan while the other two are of Syrian origin.
Another 21 suspected al-Qaida members in Spain accused of belonging to a terrorist organization and other offenses - not with helping plan the attacks - are expected to stand trial along with the three facing more serious charges.
The other defendants include Al-Jazeera journalist Tayssir Alouny, for whom the prosecutor is seeking nine years in prison, and Yusuf Galan, a Spanish convert to Islam who faces a sentence of 18 years.
The case stems from an indictment issued in September 2003 by Spain's leading anti-terrorism judge, Baltasar Garzon, against 35 people, later broadened to 40.
Garzon charged that Yarkas, a used-car salesman, provided financing and logistics for key Sept. 11 plotters. In the indictment, Garzon wrote that "it has become crystal clear'' that Yarkas "had links to some of the perpetrators of the massacre.''
In a 200-page writ, Rubira said his evidence includes more than 100 wiretapped conversations among suspected cell members. He also wants to call as a witness Jamal Zougam, a jailed Moroccan suspect the Madrid train bombings last March. Zougam, accused of placing some of the 10 backpack bombs that killed 191 people in Madrid, was a close follower of Yarkas, according to court records.
Investigators on both sides of the Atlantic say that Spain - along with Germany - was a key staging ground for Sept. 11.
In July 2001, Mohamed Atta - believed to have piloted one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center - attended a meeting in the northeastern Tarragona region of Spain that Garzon said was used to plan last-minute details such as the date of the attack.
The 24 who will stand trial are in Spanish custody. The rest of those indicted by Garzon are either fugitives, such as Osama bin Laden himself, or in custody in other countries. Such is the case of Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni suspected of being a key contact person with bin Laden's terror network for an al-Qaida cell based in Hamburg, Germany. He was arrested on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in Pakistan and is now in secret U.S. custody.
Those not in Spanish custody cannot be tried in absentia because the charge is terrorism. In Spain, such trials are held only for lesser offenses. Many of those in custody in Spain were arrested in November 2001.
Germany is retrying the first person to be convicted in a Sept. 11 case.
Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan, was convicted in 2003 of aiding the Hamburg al-Qaida cell that included Atta and two other hijackers. A federal court overturned el Motassadeq's original conviction and 15-year prison sentence, ruling that he had been unfairly denied testimony by key al-Qaida suspects in U.S. custody.
The only person charged publicly in the United States over Sept. 11 is Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen accused of conspiracy to commit terrorism. No trial date has been set.
Associated Press Writer Maria Jesus Prades contributed to this report.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A fire raged through a crowded mosque in Tehran during evening prayers Monday after a female worshipper's veil caught the flames of a kerosene heater, killing at least 59 people, and injuring more than 250, Iran's official news agency reported.
The Arg Mosque was filled with about 400 worshippers, more crowded than usual because this is the Islamic month of Muharram, a holy period for Shiite Muslims.
Panicked people raced for the doors and smashed windows to escape the blaze, leaving burned shoes and women's black chadors scattered in the mosque yard. The mosque walls were charred, carpets were burned and religious books, including the Quran, were destroyed.
Women, who pray on the second floor of the mosque, separated from the men, had to race down stairs and through a narrow doorway to exit. Many stumbled and were trampled in the frenzied stampede to escape.
Hospital records checked by The Associated Press showed that 40 of those killed and the majority of the injured were women.
Tehran Police Chief Brig. Gen. Morteza Talaie was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency as saying 59 people were confirmed killed. More than 250 people were injured in the fire, according to rescue workers.
The fire started when the veil of a female worshipper caught the flames of a kerosene heater on the upper floor of the mosque. The flames spread to a thick green cloth that covered the ceiling and walls of the mosque in commemoration of the holy month.
Earlier reports had blamed a faulty electrical outlet, but IRNA reported that theory had been discarded. It also said officials had discounted the possibility of a bomb or arson attack.
"Pieces of burning cloth fell on the head of the worshippers, who stopped praying and smashed windows to run out of the mosque in panic,'' a witness said on condition of anonymity.
The injured, some of them in critical condition, were taken to nearby hospitals. Relatives gathered outside to await news of their loved ones.
"My brother has been seriously injured. What a calamity,'' said Masoumeh Ebrahimi, wiping her tears with a corner of her chador, a head-to-toe covering.
Firefighters extinguished the fire an hour after it started, state television said.
But Reza Pourbaradaran, who lives nearby, complained that firefighters arrived too late.
"Firefighters arrived one hour after the fire broke and when serious damage had been done,'' he said.
Workers were seen late in the evening cleaning the debris and wiping away the black smoke marks from the entrance.
The tragedy came on the fourth day of the month of Muharram, a period of mourning for Shiites, when they recall the 7th century death of Hussein, grandson of Islam's prophet Muhammad.
The mosque is close to the historic Golestan Palace where Reza Khan was crowned as Reza Shah Pahlavi in the 1920s and the huge Tehran bazaar, the heart of business in the capital.
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - A top anti-terrorism official at the U.S. State Department on Thursday warned Europeans to expect more attacks such as last year's train bombings in Madrid, saying dispersed and well-disguised terrorist networks are operating in Western countries.
Speaking at a security conference, William Pope, acting anti-terrorism coordinator at the U.S. State Department, said closer cooperation between Washington and the 25-nation European Union was the only way to counter the threat.
Pope warned that Europe remained a staging ground for terrorist cells loyal to al-Qaida, despite a crackdown after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but said the greatest threat comes from decentralized extremist groups based in countries with weak anti-terrorism policies.
He said the groups were seeking to use chemical, biological and radioactive weapons.
"We must all face the fact that we all now find ourselves at risk,'' Pope said.
Pope said the European Union, the United States and other countries had been successful in fighting Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida, but said that terrorist network still posed a threat.
"Unfortunately reality is that al-Qaida has proven itself resilient, despite our best efforts. It remains an active and dangerous opponent,'' Pope said. "While less effective as an organization, al-Qaida seems to be becoming more powerful as an idea and inspiration.''
Pope said the conclusion to be drawn was "unpalatable and disturbing.''
He said Western countries "now face a future in which young persons, familiar with the West and raised in a tolerant and open society, may deliberately chose to brutally murder hundreds of their fellow citizens in furtherance of what they see as their duty toward a worldwide jihad,'' or holy war.
He cited the recent slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, whose last movie was critical of Islam, allegedly by a 26-year-old Muslim radical with dual Dutch-Moroccan citizenship.
Pope also cited the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500, carried out by a radical cell operating in Spain.
The European Union's anti-terror coordinator, Gijs de Vries, said the EU and the United States also faced continued threats from outside the borders, from countries such as Indonesia, Afghanistan and Iraq, where terrorist groups remain active.
"The threat of terrorism remains very real and serious and affects us all,'' he said, calling for more sharing of information both within the European Union and with Washington and other allies.
PARIS (AP) - Thamer and Cherif, two recently arrested 22-year-old French Muslims, won't be going to Iraq to fight American troops or to die as martyrs. Their fast track to the rebel insurgency dried up days before they were to leave.
The two were arrested last week by counter-intelligence agents who dismantled their Iraq connection. The network had already funneled at least seven people to Iraq - including three French men who died there, investigators have said.
Thamer Bouchnak was arrested Jan. 24 at Paris' Orly airport on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca. Cherif Kouachi was arrested in a roundup of 10 other people over two days last week. The arrests were part of an investigation of networks funneling combatants from France to Iraq. Eight people were freed.
Thamer and Cherif, both of North African origin, were to leave for Syria last week, their lawyers said Thursday. The two were to be met by a 14-year-old, buy Kalashnikov rifles then head for Iraq, according to the lawyers, Dominique Many and Vincent Ollivier.
Instead, the young men were placed under investigation for "criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise,'' along with a third man, Farid Benyettou, a 23-year-old who judicial officials claim acted as the recruiter.
Thamer and Cherif resemble war-ready Islamic extremists much less than they do their peers, their lawyers said.
"This is the story of a band of kids. Two or three act tough, each goes one better and you can't turn back,'' Ollivier said.
The accounts were the first detailed description of the men since their arrests, a profile that appeared to confirm piecemeal reports of young European volunteers little prepared for the role of combatant.
"My client was rather pleased to be arrested by police instead of seeing his project through,'' said Cherif's lawyer, Ollivier.
The prosecutor's office said Friday that Benyettou and at least one of the volunteers had "evoked the possibility of actions in France'' but did not identify eventual targets. No explosives were found when the men were detained.
Thamer, who finished high school but was jobless, and Cherif, who abandoned his sports education to become a pizza delivery boy, became acquainted with Benyettou, the suspected recruiter, in the streets of eastern Paris, the young men's lawyers said.
Benyettou is described by judicial officials as a street preacher and a Salafist, holding to a strict interpretation of Islam. His brother-in-law, Youcef Zemmouri, a member of an Algerian insurgency movement, was among those arrested in a sweep ahead of the 1998 World Cup in France.
Abdelhalim Badjoudj, from the same eastern Paris network, allegedly blew himself up Oct. 20 while driving a car filled with explosives near a U.S. patrol on Baghdad's airport road. He was not quite 19.
Another French youth, Redouane el-Hakim, 19, reportedly was found July 17 after U.S. troops bombed a suspected insurgent hide-out in Fallujah. His older brother, Boubaker, is imprisoned in Syria, stopped in August while trying to cross into Iraq, officials say.
A third French insurgent, Tarek Ouinis, in his 20s, was reportedly killed Sept. 17 after several months in Iraq's Sunni Triangle.
The government of Saudi Arabia is disseminating propaganda through American mosques that teaches hatred of Jews and Christians and instructs Muslims that they are on a mission behind enemy lines in a land of unbelievers, according to a year-long study by a Washington human-rights group.
The 89-page report by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques," concludes the Saudi government propaganda examined reflects a "totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite to violence."
The report says the fact it is "being mainstreamed within our borders through the efforts of a foreign government, namely Saudi Arabia, demands our urgent attention."
The report asserts: "Not only does the government of Saudi Arabia not have a right – under the First Amendment or any other legal document – to spread hate ideology within U.S. borders, it is committing a human-rights violation by doing so."
The Center for Religious Freedom says Saudi Arabia's "extremist Wahhabi ideology" is followed by a distinct minority of Sunni Muslims worldwide, "as is evident by the millions of Muslims who have chosen to make America their home and are upstanding, law-abiding citizens and neighbors."
Former CIA chief James Woolsey, chairman of the board of Freedom House, writes in the forward that such publications that "advocate an ideology of hatred have no place in a nation founded on religious freedom and toleration."
Various Saudi government publications gathered for the study, most of which are in Arabic, assert it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way or taking part in their festivities and celebrations;
The documents promote contempt for the United States because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. They condemn democracy as un-Islamic;
The documents stress that when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines. Either they are there to acquire new knowledge and make money to be later employed in the jihad against the infidels, or they are there to proselytize the infidels until at least some convert to Islam.
Any other reason for lingering among the unbelievers in their lands is illegitimate,
and unless a Muslim leaves as quickly as possible, he or she is not a true Muslim
and so too must be condemned. For example, a document in the collection for the
"Immigrant Muslim" bears the words "Greetings from the Cultural
Attache in Washington, D.C." of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and is published
by the government of Saudi Arabia.
In an authoritative religious voice, it gives detailed instructions on how to
"hate" the Christian and Jew: Never greet them first. Never congratulate
the infidel on his holiday. Never imitate the infidel. Do not become a naturalized
citizen of the United States. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates
the infidel;
Other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels. The opening fatwa in one Saudi embassy-distributed book, published by the Saudi Air Force, responds to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who taught that it is not right to condemn Jews and Christians as infidels. The Saudi state cleric's reply rebukes the Muslim cleric: "He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his." Since, under Saudi law, "apostates' from Islam can be sentenced to death, this is an implied death threat against the tolerant Muslim imam, as well as an incitement to vigilante violence;
Sufi and Shiite Muslims are viciously condemned;
For a Muslim who fails to uphold the Saudi Wahhabi sect's sexual mores [i.e. through homosexual activity or heterosexual activity outside of marriage], the edicts published by the Saudi government's Ministry of Islamic Affairs and found in American mosques advise "it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money";
Regarding those who convert out of Islam, the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs explicitly asserts, they "should be killed";
Saudi textbooks and other publications in the collection, propagate a Nazi-like hatred for Jews, treat the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and avow that the Muslim's duty is to eliminate the state of Israel;
Regarding women, the Saudi publications instruct that they should be veiled, segregated from men and barred from certain employment and roles;
The report states: "While the government of Saudi Arabia claims to be 'updating' or reforming its textbooks and study materials within the kingdom, its publications propagating an ideology of hatred remain plentiful in some prominent American mosques and Islamic centers, and continue to be a principal resource available to students of Islam within the United States."The Center for Religious Freedom said the research, translation and principle analysis of the materials for the report were carried out by both Muslims and non-Muslims who wish to remain anonymous for reasons of security.
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