Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’
 
February 21, 2013 3

Iranian Terror Plots Continue To Spread Around the Globe

Even as Iran seeks to mend ties with Argentina over the 1994 ter­ror­ist attack on the AMIA Jew­ish Com­mu­nity Cen­ter in Buenos Aires, Iran con­tin­ues to be impli­cated in ter­ror plots on West­ern, Israeli and Jew­ish tar­gets around the world.

Yes­ter­day, Niger­ian secu­rity ser­vices announced the arrest of three men accused of sur­veilling tar­gets for a pos­si­ble Iranian-backed attack in the city of Lagos. The three men, all Nige­ri­ans, were tasked with gath­er­ing “intel­li­gence on pub­lic places and promi­nent hotels fre­quented by Amer­i­can and Israelis” accord­ing to a State Secu­rity Ser­vice spokes­woman.  She also claimed that the leader of the cell sent pic­tures of the local Israeli cul­ture cen­ter to his Iran­ian han­dlers.  The leader has con­fessed to spy­ing on behalf of Iran.

Also yes­ter­day, a man on trial in Cyprus for scout­ing tar­gets where Israelis were likely to be present admit­ted to being a mem­ber of the Iranian-backed ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion Hezbol­lah.  He was arrested less than two weeks before a bomb­ing in Bur­gas, Bul­garia, killed five Israelis in July of last year.  Bul­garia offi­cially impli­cated two mem­bers of Hezbol­lah in the attack ear­lier this month.

Since the begin­ning of 2012, Iran and its prox­ies have been impli­cated in a series of plots and attacks on Jew­ish and Israeli tar­gets, including:

  • Jan­u­ary 2012: A failed bomb plot tar­get­ing Israelis in Thai­land was linked to Iran-backed Hezbollah.
  • Jan­u­ary 2012: Azer­bai­jani author­i­ties arrested two men linked to Iran­ian intel­li­gence over a plot to attack the Israeli Ambas­sador and a local rabbi.
  • Feb­ru­ary 2012: Iran­ian intel­li­gence was linked to the bomb­ing of an Israeli embassy vehi­cle in India which injured the wife of the Israeli Defense Attaché and three others.
  • Feb­ru­ary 2012: Israel blamed Iran after a bomb was dis­cov­ered tar­get­ing an embassy car in Geor­gia; it was defused before it exploded.
  • Feb­ru­ary 2012: Azer­bai­jan arrested mem­bers of a cell work­ing linked to Iran and Hezbol­lah in a plot to tar­get the Israeli Embassy and a Jew­ish cul­tural center.
  • Feb­ru­ary 2012: An explo­sion in Bangkok led to the arrest of three Iranians.
  • March 2012: Azer­bai­jan arrested mem­bers of a cell tar­get­ing the Israeli and Amer­i­can embassies on behalf of Iran.
  • April 2012: Intel­li­gence ser­vices report­edly searched for Iran­ian agent in Turkey sus­pected of plot­ting attacks on West­ern, Israeli and Jew­ish targets.
  • April 2012: India expelled an Iran­ian national listed by the Iran­ian con­sulate as a gov­ern­ment employee after he was found cas­ing Israeli and Jew­ish sites in the city of Pune.
  • June 2012: Two Ira­ni­ans were arrested in Kenya in pos­ses­sion of chem­i­cals that author­i­ties claimed would be used for bombs. They report­edly were plot­ting to attack Israeli, Amer­i­can, British or Saudi targets.
  • July 2012: Cypriot author­i­ties arrested a dual Swedish-Lebanese cit­i­zen accused of sur­veilling Israeli tar­gets for a pos­si­ble attack for Iran-backed Hezbollah. 
  • July 2012: At least two mem­bers of Iran-backed Hezbol­lah killed 5 Israelis and their Bul­gar­ian bus dri­ver in the bomb­ing of a tour bus in Bur­gas, Bulgaria.

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February 7, 2013 0

Hezbollah Military Branch Offers Free Podcasts On iTunes

The mil­i­tary branch of Hezbol­lah, The Islamic Resis­tance (“Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya”), offers a col­lec­tion of free Farsi and Ara­bic lan­guage pod­casts on iTunes that pro­mote both the ter­ror­ist group’s and the Iran­ian regime’s mil­i­tant propaganda.

The col­lec­tion of 20 pod­casts, appar­ently uploaded between Octo­ber 2010 and Decem­ber 2012, includes speeches by Hezbollah‘s leader Has­san Nas­ral­lah, speeches of Iran­ian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and mil­i­tant songs and other record­ings prais­ing the Lebanese-based U.S.-designated ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion and its ter­ror­ist operations. 

The Farsi descrip­tion of the pod­cast states that the audio has been uploaded from the Iran­ian sec­tion of The Islamic Resis­tance website.

In one of the avail­able pod­casts, titled “Sanc­tion­ing Israel,” Khamenei deliv­ers a Farsi ser­mon hail­ing efforts to attack Israel in the Arab world, describes Israel as the “Can­cer­ous Gland,” and pre­dicts the destruc­tion of Israel.

Another pod­cast, titled “The Resis­tance Essay,” mixes Jihadist songs, mil­i­tary chants and ser­mons by Iran­ian and Hezbol­lah lead­ers. In one part, Khamenei says, “After the great and tremen­dous vic­tory of Hezbol­lah in Lebanon [against Israel], America’s strat­egy in the Mid­dle East faced a destruc­tive earth­quake. The dev­ils of arro­gance rushed to treat their drub­bing and repair their defeat.”

Last year, Hezbol­lah used iTunes to deliver mobile access to con­tent from its satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion, al-Manar.

Hezbol­lah has been impli­cated in numer­ous ter­ror­ist attacks against Israeli and West­ern tar­gets since 1982. Most recently, Hezbol­lah mem­bers were impli­cated by Bul­garia in the July 2012 bomb­ing of a bus of Israeli tourists in the resort city of Burgas. Hezbollah and its main inter­na­tional spon­sor, Iran, have also been linked to a spate of attacks and attempted attacks on Israeli diplo­mats and other tar­gets abroad in 2012.

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January 25, 2013 1

American Sentenced For Planning Deadly 2008 Mumbai Attacks

David Cole­man Headley

A Chicago judge yes­ter­day sen­tenced David Cole­man Headley, a Chicago res­i­dent who helped orches­trate the 2008 ter­ror­ist attacks in Mum­bai, India, in which over 170 peo­ple were killed, includ­ing six Amer­i­cans, to 35 years in prison.

Headley pleaded guilty in March 2010 to con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance on a num­ber of tar­gets in Mum­bai between 2006 and 2008 on behalf of the Pakistan-based ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s (LeT). The tar­gets included the Chha­tra­p­ati Shiv­aji rail­way sta­tion, the Taj Mahal and Oberoi-Trident hotels, the Leopold Café, and the Nari­man House, the Mum­bai head­quar­ters of the Chabad Lubav­itch movement.

Indian news sources reported that Headley posed as a Jew dur­ing a July 2008 visit to the Nari­man House, where sus­pected mem­bers of LeT tor­tured and killed six peo­ple dur­ing the ter­ror­ist attacks four months later. LeT report­edly also tasked Headley with gath­er­ing details of Jew­ish cen­ters across India. In March 2009, four months after the Mum­bai attacks, Headley allegedly con­ducted addi­tional recon­nais­sance of Chabad Houses in sev­eral cities in India, which included other Jew­ish cen­ters in Delhi, Mum­bai, Goa, Pune and Pushkar.

Headley was also charged with plan­ning attacks with LeT tar­get­ing the Dan­ish news­pa­per that had printed car­toons depict­ing Muhammad.Since 2000 sev­eral other Amer­i­can cit­i­zens have been linked to LeT, which embraces an anti-Western ide­ol­ogy that demo­nizes the United States, Israel and India.

Although Headley faced life in prison, the judge lis­tened to pros­e­cu­tors’ rec­om­men­da­tions that he receive a lighter sen­tence due to his exten­sive coop­er­a­tion in other ter­ror­ism tri­als.  His coop­er­a­tion was most vis­i­bly demon­strated in the trial of his for­mer friend, Tahawwur Rana, who was con­victed in June 2011 of assist­ing Headley in plan­ning the attack in Den­mark and for pro­vid­ing mate­r­ial sup­port to LeT. Rana was sen­tenced to 14 years in prison on Jan­u­ary 17.

India has expressed dis­ap­point­ment in the lenient sen­tenc­ing, say­ing that “all those involved… should receive death,” and pledg­ing to con­tinue to seek Headley’s extradition.

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