More Jihadi Networks?

On April 20, 2006, the USAttorney's office in Atlanta, Georgia, filed an indictment (charge-sheet) in anAtlanta court against a US national of Pakistani origin and another ofBangladeshi origin. They were charged with holding discussions regardingpossible targets for terrorist strikes in US territory.  Amongst thetargets reportedly discussed by them were military bases and oil refineries.

The two charged suspects were identified as Syed Haris Ahmed, aged 21, ofPakistani origin, a student of mechanical engineering,  and Ehsanul IslamSadequee, aged 19, of Bangladeshi origin. Syed Ahmed was arrested  atAtlanta on March 23, 2006, and Sadequee was arrested on April  17,2006,bythe Bangladesh authorities at Dhaka  at the request of the US' FederalBureau of Investigation (FBI) and deported to the US.  While Syed Ahmed wascharged with the offence of providing material support to terrorism, Sadequee was charged with knowingly making a false statement to the FBI  during theinvestigation.

An affidavit filed before the court by Mr.Michael Scherck, an investigatingofficer of the FBI, stated as follows:

• The two had traveled in March 2005 from Atlanta to Canada, where they met  three men who are the subject of an FBI international terrorism investigation. 
  
  
• During some of these meetings, Ahmed, Sadequee and the others discussed strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike such as oil refineries and military bases.
  
  
• "They also plotted how to disable the global positioning system in an effort to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic."
  
  
• The "assembled group developed a plan to receive military training at one of the several terrorist-sponsored training camps."  Ahmed traveled to Pakistan in an attempt to get such training.

According to the investigatingauthorities, while Ahmed admitted the visit to Canada and the discussions,Sadequee denied it when he was questioned at a New York airport in August lastyear as he was leaving for Bangladesh to get married.  The police searchedhis baggage before he was allowed to leave for Bangladesh.  They found twoCD-ROMs.--one containing a pornographic film and the other some encryptedmaterial. The police was not able to break the code.  They also found somemaps of the Washington area. The FBI told the court that no imminent threat of aterrorist strike existed at any point during the investigation.

Ahmed's family migrated to US from Pakistan in  1997 and are now U.S.citizens living in Dawsonville. His father, Syed Riaz Ahmed, is reportedly acomputer science professor at North Georgia College in Dahlonega.  Thelocal media of Atlanta quoted members of his family as saying that  Ahmedhad told them that the FBI had traced to him  a video of a building whichthey found on the Internet and suspected him of having made it and exhibited iton the Internet. The local WAGA TV channel reported  that the FBI believedthat Ahmed had traveled to Pakistan last year to attend a terrorist trainingcamp. According to the channel, his family admitted his travel to Pakistan, butinsisted that he had gone there to attend a religious school.

Sadequee's family had migrated to the US from Bangladesh in the early 1980s.They have  been living  in Atlanta since 1988. Ehsanul Sadequee wasborn in Fairfax, Va., where they were living before shifting to Atlanta. Hisparents had sent him to Bangladesh to study in a local British school from 2001to 2004. Ahmed and Sadequee used to frequent Atlanta's Al Farooq Masjid (mosque)where they had met and become friends.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of April 28,2006, had quoted the FBIofficials as having told the court as follows: 

• Sadequee and Ahmed traveled to Washington in April 2005 and made videos of the U.S. Capitol, a Masonic Temple, the World Bank, and a fuel tank farm. 
  
  
• Ahmed then gave Sadequee the film to ship overseas.
  
  
• Sadequee gave Ahmed information on how to receive military-style training in Pakistan. Ahmed later traveled to Pakistan in an attempt to receive such training,.
  
  
• They were also planning to travel to "the mountains of Georgia to conduct military style training exercises."

According to The New York Times, an anonymous law enforcement officersaid the case against Ahmed and Sadequee was related to the November, 2005.arrests of three men in Britain , who were found to be having copies of the video made by  Sadequee andAhmed in Washington, D.C.  The arrests of these two young Muslims caused some sensationlocally due to the following reasons. Firstly, it was the firstterrorism-related case in Atlanta . Secondly, Sadequee was known in the local community of South Asian origin asa well-behaved and helpful person, who played an active role in the activitiesof  Raksha, a local non-Governmental organisation, which does humanitarianwork among members of the local community of South Asian origin. Thirdly, the AlFarooq Masjid was known as a centre of moderate Islam. Its office-bearers triedto promote inter-faith harmony. After the arrests of these two persons, it cameout that pro-Al Qaeda propaganda material, including recorded cassettescontaining the messages of Osama bin Laden, were being distributed by somepersons regularly after the prayers were over, without any action being taken bythe office-bearers to prevent the misuse of the mosque for pro-Al Qaedapropaganda.

On June 3, 2006, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced the arrestof 17 Muslims of different background--only two of them above 25 years of age,10 of them between 19 and 25 years and the remaining five minors--on a charge ofplanning to carry out a major terrorist strike or strikes in the Ontarioprovince. The RCMP gave the names of the 12 suspects, who are above 18 years ofage, as follows. They did not  release the names of the  five minors.

(i).  Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto ;
(ii).  Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga , Ont.;
(iii). Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga ;
(iv). Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga ;
(v)  Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga ;
(vi). Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston , Ont.;
(vii).Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston ;
(viii).Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto ;
(ix). Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto ;
(x).  Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Toronto ;
(xi). Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga ;
(xii). Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue , Mississauga .

The RCMP did not indicate how many of them are Canadian citizens and how manyare Canadian residents and wherefrom all of them migrated to Canada . The local media has identified Ahmad Ghany as a  health sciencesgraduate from McMaster University in Hamilton . He was born in Canada , the son of a medical doctor who migrated from Trinidad and Tobago in 1955. Shareef Abdelhaleen is a 30-year-old unmarried computer programmer ofEgyptian descent. He migrated from Egypt at the age of 10 with his father who is reportedly now an engineer on contractwith Atomic Energy of Canada.

The National Post of Toronto that some of the arrested suspects were of Somali, Egyptian,Jamaican, and Trinidadian origin. One of them with the name Steven Vikas Chandalias Abdul Shakur could be a convert to Islam from Christianity originatingfrom either South Asia or the Caribbean . Jahmaal James also  could be a convert to Islam from Christianity. It isnot yet known how many of those arrested are of  South Asian origin.

During the arrests, which were made on  June 2, 2006, the local Policeseized a lot of incriminating material, including three tones of ammoniumnitrate, a handgun and ammunition clip, computer hard drive, and a cellphone-activated electronic detonator hidden inside a small black fishing tacklebox and  bags of camouflage clothing. The Police also displayed bootsapparently seized from a camp north of Toronto that some of the members of the group had allegedly used for combat training.

The Police declined to identify the intended targets because the investigationis ongoing, but said they were all in southern Ontario and did not include theToronto transit system.  The " National Post " of Toronto hasclaimed in its issue of June 3, 2006, that the  Toronto arrests came in thewake of arrests of 18 other suspects in the United States, Britain, Bosnia,Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh. According to the Canadian authorities, thearrested suspects seemed to have been Al Qaeda-inspired, but were not associated with it.

It is not known whether the persons whom the two suspects from Atlanta, Georgia,had met during their visit to Canada last year are among those arrested by theRCMP on June 2, 2006. The local media in Toronto has quoted an FBI official assaying that some suspects "may have had limited contact with the two peoplerecently arrested from Georgia."

The indications till now are that those arrested in Georgia, USA,. and in Canadawere probably self-radicalised. There is as yet no evidence of their belongingto Al Qaeda or any of the other member-organisations of bin Laden'sInternational Islamic Front (IIF). If at all they were acting on behalf of anyorganisation, a strong suspect would be the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF) of Pakistan,which has  members from the Afro-American community in the US, theCaribbean and the community of Caribbean origin in the UK. It may be recalledthat one of the reasons for the visit to Karachi in January, 2002, by DanielPearl, the American journalist, was to enquire into suspicions that RichardReid, the so-called shoe bomber, belonged to the JUF.  It was during hisattempts to interview Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani, the Amir of the JUF, that hewas kidnapped and ultimately killed. The JUF has had  a presence in the US,Canada and  the Caribbean since the late 1980s and in the UK after 9/11.

B. Raman  is Additional Secretary (retd.), Cabinet Secretariat,Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai.