"Terrorism can never be justified as an act of faith. It is an act of evil in all circumstances."  
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, 1 July 2007.  To read Tony Blair's "dossiers" terror, click here.  How about piracy on the high seas?  Most recent vessel under USA flag.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
"Footprint" of any other terror plots?  More on footware, terrorist's technique - now the "crotch" bomb...
How about the latest coordinated attacks -
Mumbai 9/11 -against the police? 
Link to NYTIMES map. 
What about the old "assassination covered up by something else" trick?



Dutch to use full body scanners for US flights
YAHOO
By MIKE CORDER and ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press
Dec. 30, 2009

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The Netherlands announced Wednesday it will immediately begin using full body scanners for flights heading to the United States, issuing a report that called the failed Christmas Day airline bombing a "professional" al-Qaida terror attack.

A top Dutch official said a scanner of that type may have stopped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Friday carrying undetected explosives. Law enforcement officials say the 23-year-old Nigerian tried but failed to detonate the explosives on a plane carrying over 300 people.

"It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster," Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst told a news conference, referring to it as "another al-Qaida attack."

The Dutch minister said U.S. had not wanted these scanners to be used previously because of privacy concerns but said there was now agreement with Washington authorities that "all possible measures will be used on flights to the U.S." 

A key European legislator urged the European Union to begin rapidly installing the new equipment across the 27-nation bloc, but no other European nations immediately followed the Dutch move.

Body scanners that peer underneath clothing have been available for years, but privacy advocates say they are a "virtual strip search" because they display an image of the body onto a computer screen.

Ian Dowty, a lawyer with Action on Rights of the Child, said allowing minors to pass through the scanners violates child pornography laws.

"It shows genitalia," he told The Associated Press. "As far as English law is concerned ... it's unlawful if it's indecent."

For that reason, British authorities have exempted under-18s from body scan trials at places including Paddington Station in London as well as Heathrow and Manchester airports.

New software, however, eliminates that problem by projecting a stylized image rather than an actual picture onto a computer screen, highlighting the area of the body where objects are concealed in pockets or under the clothing.

Ter Horst, the Dutch minister, the scanners likely would have alerted security guards to the materials concealed in Abdulmutallab's underwear and prevented him from boarding the Northwest flight.

"Our view now is that the use of millimeter wave scanners would certainly have helped detect that he had something on his body, but you can never give 100 percent guarantees," Ter Horst said.

In its preliminary report, the Dutch government called the plan to blow up the Detroit-bound aircraft "professional" but said its execution was "amateurish."

Ter Horst said Abdulmutallab apparently assembled the explosive device, including 80 grams of Pentrite, or PETN, in the aircraft toilet, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals. She said the explosives appeared to have been professionally prepared and had been given to Abdulmutallab, but did not elaborate.

"The approach in this case shows — despite the failure of the attack — a fairly professional approach," the investigation summary stated. "Pentrite is a very powerful conventional explosive, which is not easy to produce yourself."

"If you want to detonate it, you have to do that another way than he did. That is why we talk about amateurism," Ter Horst said.

Abdulmutallab arrived in Amsterdam on Friday from Lagos, Nigeria on a KLM flight. After a layover of less than three hours in the international departure hall, he passed through a security check at the gate in Amsterdam, including a hand baggage scan and a metal detector, and headed to the Northwest flight. He did not pass through a full-body scanner.

Abdulmutallab was carrying a valid Nigerian passport and had a valid U.S. visa, the Dutch said. His name also did not appear on any Dutch list of terror suspects.

"No suspicious matters which would give reason to classify the person involved as a high-risk passenger were identified during the security check," Ter Horst said.

Erik Ackerboom, head of the Dutch counterterrorism bureau, dismissed suggestions that Abdulmutallab should have aroused suspicion when he paid for a round-trip ticket from Lagos to Detroit in cash and had no check-in luggage.

Paying cash in Africa is not unusual, he said, and the lack of suitcases "wasn't a reason for alarm."

Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.

Amsterdam's Schiphol has 15 body scanners, each costing more than $200,000. But until now neither the European Union nor the U.S. have approved the routine use of the scanners at European airports.

At least two scanners in Amsterdam have been experimentally using the less-invasive software since late November and the Dutch said those will be put into use immediately. All other scanners will be upgraded within three weeks.

In the U.S., 40 of the machines are being operated in at least 19 U.S. airports.

Six machines are being used for primary screenings at six U.S. airports: Albuquerque, N.M.; Las Vegas; Miami; San Francisco; Salt Lake City; and Tulsa, Okla. Passengers go through the scans instead of a metal detector, although they can elect to receive a pat-down search from a security officer instead.

The remainder of the machines are being used at 13 U.S. airports for secondary screening of passengers who set off a metal detector. But those travelers can also opt for a pat-down instead.

Last year the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted against using the scanners and called for further study, allowing Schiphol to conduct a pilot test of the scanners on European flights.

But opposition faded Wednesday when a key assembly member said the newest types "pose no privacy risk." Peter van Dalen, vice-chairman of the assembly's transport committee said, a recent demonstration at Schiphol lifted any doubts that the equipment violates the privacy of air passengers.

A Dutch digital rights group, Bits of Freedom, said the decision to introduce the scanners on short notice was a fear-driven overreaction.

"The chance of someone being a victim of a terrorist attack in the air is a lot smaller than the chance of being struck by lightning," the group wrote in an open letter to the Dutch Justice Ministry.

Meanwhile, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday that a man tried to board a commercial airliner in the Somali capital of Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe in a case bearing chilling similarities to the Detroit airliner plot.

The Somali man — whose name has not yet been released — was arrested by African Union peacekeeping troops before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect is in Somali custody.

"We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said Barise.

President Barack Obama has demanded a preliminary report by Thursday from U.S. security authorities on what went wrong in the Detroit airliner case. Obama said the intelligence community should have been able to piece together information that would have raised "red flags" and possibly prevented Abdulmutallab from boarding the airliner.

"There was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security," Obama told reporters in Hawaii, calling the intelligence shortcomings "totally unacceptable."

Abdulmutallab had been placed in one expansive database, but he never made it onto more restrictive lists that would have caught the attention of U.S. counterterrorist screeners, despite his father's warnings to U.S. Embassy officials in Nigeria last month. Those warnings also did not result in Abdulmutallab's U.S. visa being revoked.

U.S. investigators said Abdulmutallab told them he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen — which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia.

Somali arrested at airport with chemicals, syringe
YAHOO
By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, KATHARINE HOURELD and JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writers
December 30, 2009

MOGADISHU, Somalia – A man tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an explosion in a case bearing chilling similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The Somali man — whose name has not yet been released — was arrested by African Union peacekeeping troops before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect is in Somali custody.

"We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said Barise.

A Nairobi-based diplomat said the incident in Somalia is similar to the attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid — tools similar to those used in the Detroit attack. The diplomat spoke on condition he not be identified because he isn't authorized to release the information.

Barigye Bahoku, the spokesman for the African Union military force in Mogadishu, said the chemicals from the Somali suspect could have caused an explosion that would have caused air decompression inside the plane. However, Bahoku said he doesn't believe an explosion would have brought the plane down.

A second international official familiar with the incident, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn't authorized to discuss the case, confirmed that the substances carried by the Somali passenger could have been used as an explosive device.

In the Detroit case, alleged attacker Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hid explosive PETN in a condom or condom-like bag just below his torso when he traveled from Amsterdam to Detroit. Like the captured Somali, Abdulmutallab also had a syringe filled with liquid. The substances seized from the Somali passenger are being tested.

The November incident garnered little attention before the Dec. 25 attack aboard a flight on final approach to Detroit. U.S. officials have now learned of the Somali case and are hastening to investigate any possible links between it and the Detroit attack, though no officials would speak on the record about the probe.

U.S. investigators said Abdulmutallab told them he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen — which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia. Similarly, large swaths of Somalia are controlled by an insurgent group, al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaida.

Western officials say many of the hundreds of foreign jihadi fighters in Somalia come in small boats across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. The officials also say that examination of equipment used in some Somali suicide attacks leads them to believe it was originally assembled in Yemen.

Law enforcement officials believe the suspect in the Detroit incident tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation. Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, is charged with trying to destroy an aircraft.

A Somali security official involved in the capture of the suspect in Mogadishu said he had a 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) package of chemical powder and a container of liquid chemicals. The security official said the suspect was the last passenger to try to board.

Once security officials detected the powder chemicals and syringe, the suspect tried to bribe the security team that detained him, the Somali security official said. The security official said the suspect had a white shampoo bottle with a black acid-like substance in it. He also had a clear plastic bag with a light green chalky substance and a syringe containing a green liquid. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

The powdered material had the strong scent of ammonia, Bahoku said, and samples have been sent to London for testing.

The Somali security officials said the Daallo Airlines flight was scheduled to go from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, to Djibouti and then to Dubai.

A spokeswoman for Daallo Airlines said that company officials weren't aware of the incident and would have to seek more information before commenting. Daallo Airlines is based in Dubai and has offices in Djibouti and France.


Missile test in Iran weekend before Yom Kippur

'Have you no shame?'
NYPOST
By BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
Last Updated: 8:41 AM, September 25, 2009
Posted: 11:22 PM, September 24, 2009

Excerpts from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu's address yester day to the United Nations General Assembly:

NEARLY 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland. I stand here today as the prime minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.

Yesterday, the president of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

LAST month, I went to a villa in a sub urb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on Jan. 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments.

Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler, himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie?

One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

YESTERDAY, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this po dium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity, and you brought honor to your countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of 6 million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!

Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

THIS Iranian regime is fueled by an ex treme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past 30 years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus and many others.

Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times. Wherever they can, they impose a backward, regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.

The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization. It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.

The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope.

BUT if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And, like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after a horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind.

That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the jury is still out on the United Nations.

WE want peace. I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over 70 years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them. He bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong."

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachability of mankind" is for once proven wrong. I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.

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U.S. commander: more troops or Afghan war lost
YAHOO
By Peter Graff and Golnar Motevalli Peter Graff And Golnar Motevalli

KABUL (Reuters) – The Afghan war will be lost unless more troops are sent to pursue a radically revised strategy, the top U.S. and NATO commander said in a confidential assessment that lays out stark choices for President Barack Obama.

In the assessment, sent to Washington last month and leaked on Monday, Army General Stanley McChrystal said failure to reverse "insurgent momentum" in the near term risked an outcome where "defeating the insurgency is no longer possible".

A copy of the 66-page document was obtained by the Washington Post and published on its website with some parts removed at the request of the government for security reasons.

"Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," McChrystal wrote.

"Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."

McChrystal, who commands more than 100,000 Western troops, two thirds of them American, has drafted a separate request spelling out how many more he needs but has not sent it to the Pentagon, which says it is considering how he should submit it.  Opinion polls show Americans and their European NATO allies turning against the nearly eight-year-old war.

A request for more troops faces resistance from within Obama's Democratic Party, which controls Congress, but refusing to give McChrystal what he wants would open Obama to criticism from Republicans who say he should act quickly.  In a series of interviews on Sunday Obama said he would not rush to a decision and wanted to first review his strategy for the region before considering whether to send more troops.

"I just want to make sure that everybody understands that you don't make decisions about resources before you have the strategy ready," he told ABC.

McChrystal's spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, said that while McChrystal does not believe he can defeat Afghanistan's insurgency without more troops, he could carry out a mission with different goals if Obama ordered it.

"The assessment is based on his understand of the mission as it was presented to him. If there's a change in strategy, then the resources piece changes," he said. He said McChrystal had no intention of resigning if Obama denies his request.

GRIM PICTURE

In his assessment, McChrystal painted a grim picture of the war so far, saying "the overall situation is deteriorating".

He called for a "revolutionary" shift putting more emphasis on protecting Afghans than on killing insurgents.

"Our objective must be the population," he wrote. "The objective is the will of the people, our conventional warfare culture is part of the problem, the Afghans must ultimately defeat the insurgency."

In a methodical critique of the war's conduct over the past eight years, he said NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops often lacked basic understanding of Afghan society. He also strongly criticized the Afghan government as having lost the faith of the country's people.

"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," McChrystal said.

Among the failures: Afghan prisons had been allowed to become sanctuaries where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters recruit more followers and plan attacks.  Even the West's multi-billion dollar development aid programs came in for blunt criticism: "Too often these projects enrich power brokers, corrupt officials or international contractors and serve only limited segments of the population."

In the weeks since the assessment was written, Afghanistan has held a disputed election, which makes it more difficult to persuade Western countries to send additional troops.  European allies, whose governments support the war often over public opposition at home, have begun openly wavering.  Britain has suffered its worst combat casualties in a generation, German troops called in an air strike that killed scores of people, and last week six Italian soldiers were killed by a bomb, all events that sapped European support for the war.

Thousands of Italians packed the streets of Rome on Monday for a state funeral for the soldiers, amid mounting calls for Italy to pull its troops out.  Tim Ripley, a British analyst for Jane's Defense Weekly, told Reuters fixing the war effort would be a problem far more complicated than even that faced by U.S. commanders in Iraq.

"Think of all the parts. You've got America, the president, Congress, the Pentagon. You've got the Afghan government and security forces. NATO: all the different countries. Pakistan. And that's just the people who are supposed to be on our side."

"It's one thing coming up with a smart plan. It's another thing having the ability to put it into practice. Is it beyond the reach of one individual to pull it all together?"

I-BBC
Page last updated at 14:47 GMT, Wednesday, 19 August 2009 15:47 UK
The Arctic Sea, file imageArctic Sea
An international investigation is under way over what happened to the ship.  "About Town" notes: See below to chart the happenings...

'Ransom threat hit hijack ship'
A group that hijacked the Arctic Sea threatened to blow up the cargo ship if its demand for a ransom was not met, Russian defence ministry officials say.

The vessel's eight alleged hijackers and its 15-man crew were questioned aboard a Russian naval ship off the coast of West Africa. The Arctic Sea was said to have gone missing on 30 July as it rounded the north-western corner of France. But Maltese maritime authorities have said it "never disappeared".

Speculation about what happened to the ship has included suggestions of piracy, a mafia dispute, a commercial row, smuggling or trafficking.  Correspondents say that despite the details given by Russian officials, the case is still laden with mysteries.

Carrying timber reportedly worth $1.8m (£1.1m), the 4,000-tonne Arctic Sea sailed from Finland and had been scheduled to dock in the Algerian port of Bejaia on 4 August.

'Continuously tracked'

Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov says the hijackers attacked on 24 July. Once on board, they threatened the crew with guns and forced them to turn off navigational and tracking equipment and sail south, the defence minister said.

"Crewmembers confirm that the hijackers demanded a ransom and threatened to blow the ship up if their orders were not obeyed," an unnamed Russian defence ministry official was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. Earlier reports said assailants had left the ship after 12 hours.

Four of the suspects are Estonian, two are Latvians and two Russians.

Moscow deployed vessels from its Atlantic fleet to find the Arctic Sea last week. Russia said it reached the Maltese-flagged ship on Monday, 300 miles (480 km) off Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean. The hijackers were armed but abandoned their weapons when stopped, Russian officials say.

But the Malta Maritime Authority said the Arctic Sea had been "continuously tracked" from the moment it was reported to have been hijacked until the Russian navy said it had taken the ship on Monday.

Maritime officials in Malta, Finland and Sweden had not wanted "to jeopardise the life and safety of the persons on board and the integrity of the ship", it said.

Last weekend, a multinational investigation was launched after police in Finland said a ransom demand had been made, while emphasising that they could not confirm its authenticity.

Map

 

S O M A L I    P I R A T E S  -  O T H E R    P A R T S    O F    T H E    W O R L D
President Obama says he wants to make it very clear that we will work to "halt the rise of privacy." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7996659.stm



New deployment techniques for pirate speed boats aiming bigger?
How is this form of "terror" related to any of the others?  DIE HARD 3, the movie, come to life?  Where is Bruce Willis when you need him?  Ahah!  Die Hard 4 is now showing - embellished take-over of computer systems motif started in Die Hard 2 and REALLY expands it, 21st century style!  Above, poster for "Wind and the Lion" (co-starring, perhaps, the earlier version of the U.S.S. Bainbridge) tests President Teddy Roosevelt...



LITERACY QUESTION
If the Somali pirates had a better education in foreign languages, would they have taken a second shot at this ship?

Crew packing heat when pirates attack

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 9:08 AM, November 18, 2009
Posted: 6:59 AM, November 18, 2009

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama for the second time in seven months this morning, but guards on board the U.S.-flagged cargo ship repelled the takeover attempt, the EU's naval force said.

Pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama last April and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a daring nighttime attack.

Somali pirates attacked the ship with automatic weapons early Wednesday about 350 nautical miles east of the Somali coast, but guards on board the craft fired back and thwarted the attempted hijacking.

Cmdr. John Harbour, a spokesman for the EU Naval Force, called it "pure chance" that the Maersk Alabama had been targeted a second time.

"It's not the first vessel to have been attacked twice, and it's a chance that every single ship takes as it passes through the area," Harbour said. "At least this time they had a vessel protection detachment on board who were able to repel the attack."

An EU patrol aircraft from the Horn of Africa nation Djibouti was called in to investigate, and the closest EU Naval Force vessel was tasked with searching for the pirate attack group, the EU Naval Force said in a statement.

Phillips' ordeal last spring galvanized the attention of the U.S. public to the dangers of operating merchant ships in the Horn of Africa, one of the busiest and most precarious sea lanes in the world.

Pirates have greatly increased their attacks in recent weeks after seasonal rains subsided. On Monday, a self-proclaimed pirate said that Somali hijackers had been paid $3.3 million for the release of 36 crew members from a Spanish vessel held for more than six weeks — a clear demonstration of how lucrative the trade can be for impoverished Somalis.

Phillips told The Associated Press last month from his farmhouse in Vermont that he was contemplating retiring from sea life after his ordeal. He's been given a book deal and a movie could be in the works.

Phillips was hailed as a hero for helping his crew thwart April's hijacking before he was taken hostage, but he says he never volunteered, as crew members and his family reported at the time.

JONAH AND THE WHALE MEETS HEIMLICH MANEUVER? U.S. NAVY ENDS STANDOFF;  A.C.L.U. TO THE...RESCUE?
A true gift for Easter!  No "Black Hawk Down" tragedy here!!!  Quick sharpshooter action and just the right timing wins the day!  TR would have liked this!  Now our American justice system will show the world why "The Mouse That Roared" (1959), the movie, was such a sharp comment on the American sense of justice, fair play and global responsibility.

Ship captain: Just arming crews won't stop piracy 
DAY
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer    
Posted on Apr 30, 2:25 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Commercial ships working pirate-infested waters should be protected by an armed corps of senior officers backed by the government, Maersk Alabama Capt. Richard Phillips told Congress Thursday, emphasizing all must operate under a clear chain of command.

"I am not comfortable giving up command authority to others, including the commander of a protection force," Phillips said in remarks prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and obtained by The Associated Press. "In the heat of an attack, there can be only one final decision-maker."

Phillips, who was held by pirates for five days this month and rescued by Navy SEALs, was the star witness during a series of hearings as Congress considers ways to combat a spike in piracy against ships carrying billions of dollars in cargo and humanitarian aid.

Modern-day piracy, the experts were to testify, is the product of lawlessness in places like Somalia and is motivated by money more than ideology. It's a dangerous business nonetheless, with pirates carrying small arms and rocket launchers.

The International Maritime Bureau recorded 111 attacks in the waters off the Horn of Africa in 2008, almost double the number of the year before. The bureau has recorded at least 84 attacks in the first quarter of 2009.

About 300 non-U.S. crew members remain in Somali captivity aboard 18 hijacked vessels, according to the Senate panel.

The problem requires a complex regional response between the United States and other powers such as China, India and Russia, Ambassador Stephen Mull told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He said U.S. officials are working with other countries to deny pirates whatever they might gain from taking ships and crews.

"We will continue to press the importance of a 'no concessions' policy when dealing with pirates," Mull said.

Phillips' firsthand experience aside, there's little consensus among policymakers and maritime experts on the wisdom of arming merchant seamen.

The chairman of Phillips' own company told the Senate panel that doing so could make the seas even more dangerous.

"Arming merchant sailors may result in the acquisition of ever more lethal weapons and tactics by the pirates, a race that merchant sailors cannot win," Maersk Inc. Chairman John P. Clancey said in his prepared remarks.

Witnesses said the solution will require a combination of diplomacy and cooperation between governments, shippers and seamen's unions.

Government protection for ships in vast international waters was already in progress.

Belgium said Thursday that its military will provide onboard protection to commercial ships off the Horn of Africa, beginning this weekend. Teams of eight soldiers will be available to Belgian ships upon request if an EU anti-piracy flotilla in the region can't guarantee protection. The costs will be assumed by ship owners.

Phillips, 53, was taken hostage April 8 after four Somali pirates assaulted his ship, the Maersk Alabama. He was rescued April 12. He has described the siege in interviews, but told the Senate panel he would not talk about the details because of an ongoing investigation and legal proceedings against one of the pirates who held him hostage.

Israeli security fights off pirates attacking ship
New Haven Register
Monday, April 27, 2009

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The small white skiff approached the Italian cruise ship Melody after dinnertime as it sailed north of the Seychelles, the pirates firing wildly toward the 1,500 passengers and crew on board.

What the pirates didn’t expect was that, in the darkness, the crew would fire back.  Private Israeli security forces aboard the liner fired on the pirates Saturday with pistols and water hoses, preventing them from getting aboard.  Passengers were ordered to return to their cabins and the lights on deck were switched off. The massive vessel then sailed on in darkness, eventually escorted by a Spanish warship to make sure it made it to its next port.

“It felt like we were in war,” the ship’s Italian Commander, Ciro Pinto, told Italian state radio.

None of the roughly 1,000 passengers were hurt and by Sunday afternoon they were back out on deck sunning themselves, Pellegrino said.  But analysts say the unprecedented use of weapons by the ship’s security force could make things worse in the pirate-infested waters off the Horn of Africa, where over 100 ships were attacked last year by Somalia-based pirates. In nearly all the hijackings, the crews were unharmed and were let go after a ransom was paid.

“There is a consensus in the shipping industry that, in the vast majority of cases, having an armed guard is not a good idea. The No. 1 reason is that it could cause an escalation of violence and pirates that have so far been trying to scare ships could now start to kill people,” said Roger Middleton, an expert on Somali piracy at London-based think tank Chatham House.

Other experts disagree, saying piracy off the coast of modern-day Somalia is unique in that the pirates are most interested in human cargo.

“Their business model, if you will, has been to not cross a line which would bring the whole weight of the world upon them. They want to seize hostages and ransom those hostages. So the likelihood that they would escalate violence is unlikely,” said Africa expert Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University.

He argued that arming ships is not a sustainable solution, given that an estimated 20,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden each year.

“For the Melody, you’re talking about 1,000 passengers and 500 crew members, so maybe for 1,500 people paying to have security on board makes both economical and tactical sense — but when you’re dealing with ordinary cargo ships it’s very different,” he said.

Pellegrino said MSC Cruises had Israeli private security forces on all their ships because they were the best. He said the pistols on board were at the discretion of the commander and the security forces.  The attack occurred near the Seychelles and about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of Somalia, according to the anti-piracy flotilla headquarters of the Maritime Security Center Horn of Africa. The Melody was traveling up Africa’s east coast, from Durban, South Africa to Genoa, Italy.

Pinto said the pirates fired “like crazy” with automatic weapons, slightly damaging the liner, when they approached in a small, white Zodiac-like boat.

“After about four or five minutes, they tried to put a ladder up,” Pinto told Sky TG24. “They were starting to climb up but we reacted, we started to fire ourselves. When they saw our fire, and also the water from the water hoses that we started to spray toward the Zodiac, they left and went away ... They followed us for a bit, about 20 minutes,” he said.

Somali Pirate Suspect Arrives in U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:46 a.m. ET
April 21, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) -- A Somali teenager arrived to face what are believed to be the first piracy charges in the United States in more than a century, smiling but saying nothing as he was led into a federal building under heavy guard.

Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the sole surviving Somali pirate from the hostage-taking of an American ship captain, was to appear in a courtroom Tuesday on what were expected to be piracy and hostage-taking charges.

Handcuffed with a chain wrapped around his waist and about a dozen federal agents surrounding him, the slight teen seemed poised as he passed through the glare of dozens of news cameras in a drenching rainstorm. His left hand was heavily bandaged from the wound he suffered during the skirmish on the cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama.  A law enforcement official familiar with the case said Muse (moo-SAY') was being charged under two obscure federal laws that deal with piracy and hostage-taking. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been announced.

The teenager was flown from Africa to a New York airport on the same day that his mother appealed to President Barack Obama for his release. She said her son was coaxed into piracy by ''gangsters with money.''

''I appeal to President Obama to pardon my teenager; I request him to release my son or at least allow me to see him and be with him during the trial,'' Adar Abdirahman Hassan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Galkayo town in Somalia.

The boy's father, Abdiqadir Muse, said the pirates lied to his son, telling him they were going to get money. The family is penniless, he said.

''He just went with them without knowing what he was getting into,'' Muse said in a separate telephone interview with the AP through an interpreter.

He also said it was his son's first outing with the pirates after having been taken from his home about a week and a half before he surrendered at sea to U.S. officials.  The young pirate's age and real name remained unclear. His parents said he is only 16; law enforcement said he is at least 18, meaning prosecutors will not have to take extra legal steps to try him in a U.S. court.  His worried family asked the Minneapolis-based Somali Justice Advocacy Center to help get him a lawyer, said the organization's executive director, Omar Jamal.

''What we have is a confused teenager, overnight thrown into the highest level of the criminal justice system in the United States out of a country where there's no law at all,'' Jamal said. Muse speaks no English, he said.

The suspect was taken aboard a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Bainbridge, shortly before Navy SEAL snipers killed three of his colleagues who had held Maersk Alabama Capt. Richard Phillips hostage.  The U.S. officials said the teenager was brought to New York to face trial in part because the FBI office here has a history of handling cases in Africa involving major crimes against Americans, such as the al-Qaida bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

Court documents list the suspect's name as Abduhl Wali-i-Musi, which the boy's parents have said is incorrect.  Ron Kuby, a New York-based civil rights lawyer, said he has been in discussions about forming a legal team to represent the Somali suspect.

''I think in this particular case, there's a grave question as to whether America was in violation of principles of truce in warfare on the high seas,'' said Kuby. ''This man seemed to come onto the Bainbridge under a flag of truce to negotiate. He was then captured. There is a question whether he is lawfully in American custody and serious questions as to whether he can be prosecuted because of his age.''
17 April 2009
USS Bainbridge in Mombasa, Kenya - 16/4/2009
The suspected pirate was arrested by US sailors while rescuing a US hostage

Somali 'pirate' to be tried in US
A Somali teenager captured by the US navy during a confrontation with pirates is to be taken to the US to face trail, US officials have said.

The man, named as Abdul Wali Muse, was allegedly involved in the attempt to seize the Maersk Alabama merchant ship off Somalia last week.

His three companions were killed by US navy snipers in the operation to rescue the Alabama's kidnapped US captain.

Capt Richard Phillips is now returning to the US from Kenya after his ordeal.

US officials say Mr Muse will be tried in a federal court in New York, American media have reported.

There is some confusion about his age, however, and whether he can be tried as an adult in the US.

No charges have been filed, but acts of piracy can carry a sentence of life in prison, says the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington.

Hero's welcome

It is not clear when Mr Muse will be taken to the US.

US officials had considered handing him over to authorities in Kenya, which has prosecuted pirates in the past under an international agreement.

On Thursday, French officials said they would send 11 suspected pirates to Kenya for trial.

There has been pressure to prosecute him in an American court as the Maersk Alabama is a US-flagged ship and Capt Phillips is an American citizen, says our correspondent.

Capt Phillips in Mombasa airport, Kenya, about to fly home to US - 17/4/2009
Capt Phillips was freed in a dramatic high seas rescue

He was held hostage for five days after the Alabama was attacked on 8 April.

The crew disabled the ship's power and hid from the pirates while Capt Phillips offered himself as a hostage, the ship's crew said.

The crew sailed the ship to Kenya after the pirates left on a lifeboat with the captain.

The other 19 members of the crew returned to the US on Thursday to be greeted by cheers and hugs from family and friends.

After his rescue, Capt Phillips was taken on board the destroyer USS Bainbridge, which has been in the waters off Somalia conducting anti-piracy patrols.

He was taken to the Kenyan port of Mombasa on Thursday and is now on his way back to the US where he is expected to receive a hero's welcome.

Anti-piracy measures

Pirates operating off the coast of Somalia have intensified attacks on shipping in recent weeks in one of the world's busiest sea lanes, despite patrols by the US and other navies.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a plan on Wednesday to tackle piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean off Somalia.

She said an expanded international effort was needed, as well as freezing pirates' assets, and plugging gaps in the shipping industry's own defences.

Improving the situation in Somalia itself was also key, she said.






Captain of Ship Seized by Pirates Reaches Dry Land
NYTIMES
By MARK McDONALD AND MATTHEW SALTMARSH
April 17, 2009

Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama who was freed by U.S. Navy commandos in a dramatic operation at sea, arrived Thursday in Mombasa, Kenya, on board the U.S.S. Bainbridge.

Captain Phillips was expected to leave Mombasa to return to the United States later Thursday.  The U.S. destroyer that rescued him docked to the strains of “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd hours after his crew reunited with their families back home, The Associated Press reported from Mombasa.  A charter plane was on standby to whisk Phillips home, the report added, citing an unnamed security official at Mombasa airport.  The arrival of the Bainbridge at port in Kenya had been delayed after it responded to a distress call on Tuesday from another American merchant ship, the Liberty Sun.

The crew of the Maersk Alabama, an American cargo ship which was briefly seized last week by Somali pirates, arrived back in the United States early Thursday morning.

The 19-man crew from the Alabama arrived at 1 a.m. on a chartered flight at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Family members and representatives from the shipping company Maersk greeted the plane, standing on the tarmac, cheering and waving American flags.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday announced new diplomatic efforts to deal with the increasing piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the East African coast. She endorsed freezing pirates’ assets and perhaps moving against pirate sanctuaries on land. The United States successfully pressed for the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution last December that authorized such “hot pursuits” by international navies.

Also Wednesday, French naval forces detained 11 people suspected of being pirates during an assault on what they described as a pirate “mother ship” in the Indian Ocean off Somalia. The Liberty Sun was attacked in the same area, but the ship’s evasive maneuvers foiled the hijack attempt. The Liberty Sun, with its cargo of humanitarian food aid, arrived in Mombasa on Wednesday evening.  French forces had freed a yacht, the Tanit, in an operation last week in which two pirates and a hostage were killed; three pirates taken prisoner in that episode have been sent to France.

The French tactics — and the earlier rescue operation by the Bainbridge, which included U.S. Navy snipers killing three pirates using night-vision scopes — indicated a more muscular approach by governments in battling piracy. It was a change of course broadly outlined in Mrs. Clinton’s remarks.

“The modus operandi,” she said, “for a lot of countries and shipping companies up until now has been, “OK, they hijacked the ship. They get it into port. Nobody’s harmed. We pay a ransom. We’ve done a business calculation, so that’s the way it is.’ “

But then she added: “The United States does not make concessions or ransom payments to pirates.”

The 11 suspects detained Wednesday by the French were being held on board a French frigate, the Nivôse, part of a European Union antipiracy task force patrolling the area, the French Defense Ministry said in a statement.
15 April 2009, I-BBC
French navy personnel intercept pirates, 14 April, 2009
The French navy captured 11 pirates after intercepting a "mother ship"

US unveils plan to tackle piracy
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has unveiled a four-point plan to tackle piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

She said an expanded international effort was needed, as well as freezing pirates' assets, and plugging gaps in the shipping industry's own defences.

Improving the situation in Somalia itself was also key, she said.

Pirate attacks have increased in the past few days, including on US vessels, despite anti-piracy patrols by the US and other navies.

Mrs Clinton said: "We may be dealing with a 17th-Century crime, but we need to bring 21st-Century assets to bear."

The US Navy shot dead three pirates a few days ago in the rescue of a US cargo ship captain who had been taken hostage from his own ship.


It is time to eliminate the financial payoff of piracy

Hillary Clinton
US Secretary of State

The captain was unhurt and a fourth pirate was captured.

His crew had managed to fight off the armed pirates from the Maersk Alabama, but the captain was taken away in a lifeboat.

Among recent developments:

  • Another US ship, the Liberty Sun, was attacked by armed pirates, but escaped them with slight damage to the vessel.
  • The crew of the Maersk Alabama flew home to the US from the Kenyan city of Mombasa, but their captain's own return was delayed as he was still on the USS Bainbridge, the warship which had diverted to assist Liberty Sun.
  • One pirate said the attack on the Liberty Sun was revenge for the recent deaths of pirates.
  • The French navy captured 11 pirates after intercepting a command vessel about 550 miles (900km) off the coast of Kenya.
  • The Greek maritime ministry announced that a Greek cargo ship and its 24 crew, held by pirates since mid-March, had been released.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on plans to tackle piracy in the Gulf of Aden

The US four-point plan includes sending an envoy to the Somali donors' conference in Brussels on 23 April to work on plans to improve the situation in Somalia.

Mrs Clinton said the US would work with the Contact Group on Piracy Off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) to expand the multinational response to piracy.

She called for states to take responsibility for prosecuting and imprisoning captured pirates.

"These pirates are criminals, they are armed gangs on the sea, and those plotting attacks must be stopped."

Mrs Clinton called for continued work on releasing captured vessels, as several ships and their crews remain in the hands of pirates.

She also said the international group had to consider ways to track and freeze pirate assets.

"It is time to eliminate the financial payoff of piracy," she told reporters.

"We will also reiterate to all concerned the US policy of making no concessions or ransom payments to hostage takers."

The state department will set up meetings with members of the Somali Transitional Federal Government and regional leaders.

"We must press authorities within Somalia to take action against pirates operating from bases within their territory," Mrs Clinton said.

Making clear the threat was not just an issue for governments to resolve, she said the shipping industry had a joint responsibility.

"I have directed the [State] Department to work with shippers and the insurance industry to address gaps in their self-defence measures."





Somali pirates hijack 4 ships 
DAY
Published on 4/15/2009
 
Mombasa, Kenya - Somali pirates were back to business as usual Tuesday, defiantly seizing four more ships with 60 hostages after U.S. sharpshooters rescued an American freighter captain. “No one can deter us,” one bandit boasted.

The freed skipper, Richard Phillips, will return home to the United States today after reuniting with his 19-man crew in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, according to the shipping company Maersk Line Ltd.

The brigands grabbed more ships and hostages to show they would not be intimidated by President Barack Obama's pledge to confront the high-seas bandits, according to a pirate based in the Somali coastal town of Harardhere.

”Our latest hijackings are meant to show that no one can deter us from protecting our waters from the enemy because we believe in dying for our land,” Omar Dahir Idle told The Associated Press by telephone. “Our guns do not fire water. I am sure we will avenge.”

On Monday, Obama vowed to “halt the rise of piracy” without saying exactly how the U.S. and allies would do it.

The pirates have vowed vengeance for five colleagues slain by U.S. and French forces in two hostage rescues since Friday.

”The recent American operation, French navy attack on our colleagues or any other operation mean nothing to us,” said Idle, 26, whose gang holds a German freighter with 24 hostages.

The pirates say they are fighting illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste in Somali waters but have come to operate hundreds of miles from there in a sprawling 1.1 million square-mile danger zone. 
15 April 2009, I-BBC
French navy warship Nivose
The French warship is part of the EU's operation in the Gulf of Aden

French warship captures pirates
A French warship has captured 11 pirates off the coast of Kenya, amid calls for the international community to deal with the problem of piracy.

The pirates were captured by a warship from an EU piracy patrol, hours after a failed attack on a US ship.

News of the incidents came as the UN special envoy for Somalia said the attacks threatened international peace.

He urged financial backers of the "bandits", as he called them, to be identified and held accountable.

The latest attack involved pirates firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at a US-flagged cargo ship, the Liberty Sun, which was carrying food aid for Africa.

'Mother ship'

The French Defence Ministry said the warship Nivose captured the pirates about 550 miles (900km) east of the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

It had detected a "mother ship", or command vessel, on Tuesday, and observed it overnight before launching an assault early on Wednesday, the ministry said.

An attack on a Liberian-registered vessel was also thwarted, the ministry added.

The Nivose is part of the European Union's operation to protect shipping in the Gulf of Aden.

Despite several anti-piracy patrols, there has been an increase in attacks in the past few days, with four ships seized and others attacked.

The United Nations special envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said the attacks were threatening international peace.

In a BBC interview, he also called for help for poor Somalis themselves, many of whom were being exploited by the pirates.

Crew Honors Captain After Rescue
NYTIMES
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN and SCOTT SHANE
April 14, 2009

Jubilation from his crew, relief from his family and vows of bitter revenge from Somali pirates have followed the rescue of an American cargo-ship captain by Navy sharpshooters.

The five-day standoff in the Indian Ocean ended at dusk on Sunday when Navy Seal snipers on the fantail of the destroyer U.S.S. Bainbridge killed three of the pirates holding Capt. Richard Phillips in an orange covered lifeboat in the Indian Ocean while the fourth pirate was in American hands. The pirates had first tried to seize an American-crewed container vessel, the Maersk Alabama, last Wednesday, and then retreated to the lifeboat with the captain as a hostage when the American crew retook control of the ship a few hours later. The Bainbridge, on patrol in the region, arrived to deal with the pirates while the container ship went on to port in Mombasa, Kenya.

Saying they felt lucky to be alive, the crew paid tribute on Monday to the courage of their captain, thanked the Navy for helping them and called on President Obama to do more to stamp out piracy near the Horn of Africa, where a dozen other ships with more than 200 crew members are being held for ransom now, according to the Malaysia-based International Maritime Bureau.

“We would like to implore President Obama to use all of his resources and increase the commitment to ending this Somali pirate scourge,” said Capt. Shane Murphy, the second-in-command of the Maersk Alabama, at a news conference in Mombasa. “It’s time for us to step in and put an end to this crisis.”

While the outcome of the standoff over Captain Phillips on the lifeboat was a triumph for America, officials in many countries plagued by pirates said that it was not likely to discourage them. In Somalia itself, other pirates reacted angrily to news of the rescue, and some said they would avenge the deaths of their colleagues by killing Americans in sea hijackings to come.

“Every country will be treated the way it treats us,” Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a Greek ship anchored in the pirate den of Gaan, a central Somali town, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying in a telephone interview. “In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying.”

Pirates have also vowed violent revenge against French ships and sailors after French commandos stormed a private yacht seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden on Friday, an action inn which two pirates and one hostage died while four hostages were freed and three pirates captured. "The French and the Americans will regret starting this killing,” a pirate identified only as Hussein told Reuters by satellite telephone on Monday. “We do not kill, but take only ransom. We shall do something to anyone we see as French or American from now."

...Aboard the Maersk Alabama, a 17,000-ton cargo ship, Captain Phillips’s crew erupted in cheers, waved American flags and fired off flares when they got word of the rescue. When four pirates attacked the ship on Wednesday, the crew escaped harm after the captain offered himself as a hostage. He told his crewmen to lock themselves in cabins, and then allowed himself to be taken at gunpoint into the lifeboat in which the pirates fled.

Over the ensuing days, according to official accounts of the episode, the pirates demanded $2 million in ransom for the captain’s life and made repeated threats to kill him as their motorized lifeboat moved about 30 miles off the Somali coast. It was closely watched by United States warships and helicopters in an increasingly tense standoff.

Talks to free the captain began Thursday, with the commander of the Bainbridge communicating with the pirates under instructions from F.B.I. hostage negotiators flown to the scene. The pirates threatened to kill Captain Phillips if attacked, and the result was tragicomic: the world’s most powerful navy vs. a lifeboat.

Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, commander of the United States naval forces in the region, said in a briefing in Bahrain that despite ransom demands from the pirates, the United States had not discussed any ransom and had talked to the pirates only about the release of Captain Phillips and the pirates’ surrender.

The Defense Department twice sought Mr. Obama’s permission to use force to rescue Captain Phillips, most recently on Friday night, senior defense officials said. On Saturday morning, the president agreed, they said, if it appeared that the captain’s life was in imminent danger...

Piracy was one of the issues that Rep. Donald Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, discussed with Somali officials on Monday during a rare visit by an American official to Mogadishu, the chaotic Somali capital. Mr. Payne remained in the city only a few hours, meeting with Somalia’s interim president and prime minister and holding a news conference. Insurgents fired a mortar shell at Mr. Payne’s plane before it departed, news reports said — not an uncommon occurrence at one of the world’s most dangerous airports.

At the press conference in Mogadishu, Mr. Payne, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, called for broader efforts against piracy along Somalia’s lawless coast, and he defended the Navy action on Sunday that ended the five-day hostage standoff. "Illegal activities must be dealt with,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. “If you don’t deal with criminal behavior, then they will continue."
Some new news here...
In Rescue of Captain, Navy Kills 3 Pirates
NYTIMES
By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN and SCOTT SHANE
April 13, 2009

Navy Seals rescued an American ship captain unharmed and killed three Somali pirates in a daring operation in the Indian Ocean on Sunday, ending a five-day hostage standoff between United States naval forces and a small band of brigands in a covered orange lifeboat off the Horn of Africa.

Acting with President Obama’s authorization and in the belief that the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips, was in imminent danger of being killed by captors armed with pistols and AK-47s, snipers on the fantail of the destroyer Bainbridge, which was towing the lifeboat on a 100-foot line, opened fire and picked off the three captors.

Two of the captors had poked their heads out of a rear hatch of the lifeboat, exposing themselves to clear shots, and the third could be seen through a window in the bow, pointing an automatic rifle at the captain, who was tied up inside the 18-foot lifeboat, senior Navy officials said.

It took only three remarkable shots — one each by snipers firing from a distance at dusk, using night-vision scopes, the officials said. Within minutes, Seals in a small craft rowed up to the lifeboat, climbed aboard, found the three pirates dead and untied Captain Phillips, ending the contretemps at sea that had riveted much of the world’s attention. A fourth pirate had surrendered earlier...

“I share the country’s admiration for the bravery of Captain Phillips and his selfless concern for his crew,” Mr. Obama said in a White House statement. “His courage is a model for all Americans.”

The Defense Department twice asked Mr. Obama for permission to use military force to rescue Captain Phillips, most recently late on Friday night, senior defense officials said. On Saturday morning, the president agreed to permit action, they said, but only if it appeared that the captain’s life was in imminent danger.

By Friday, with several warships within easy reach of the lifeboat, the negotiations had gone nowhere. Captain Phillips jumped into the sea, but was quickly recaptured. On Saturday, the pirates fired several shots at a small boat that had approached from the Bainbridge.

By the weekend, however, the pirates had begun to run out of food, water and fuel. That apparently provided the opening officials were hoping for. In briefings, senior officers who spoke anonymously because they had not been authorized to disclose information said that the pirates agreed Sunday to accept supplies of food and water. A small craft was used to deliver them and it apparently made several trips between the Bainbridge and the lifeboat.

On one trip, one of the four pirates — a man whose hand had been gashed during the capture of Captain Phillips — asked for medical treatment and, in effect surrendering, was taken in the small boat to the Bainbridge. Justice Department officials were studying options for his case, including criminal charges in the United States or turning him over to Kenya, where dozens of pirates have faced prosecution. Three pirates were left on board with Captain Phillips.

Meanwhile, Navy Seals were flown in by fixed-wing aircraft. They parachuted into the sea with inflatable boats and were picked up by the Bainbridge. On Sunday, the pirates, their fuel exhausted, were drifting toward the Somali coast. They agreed to accept a tow from the Bainbridge, the senior officials said. At first, the towline was 200 feet long, but as darkness gathered late on Sunday and seas became rough, the tow line was shortened to 100 feet, the officials said. It was unclear if this was done with the pirates’ knowledge.

At dusk, a single tracer bullet was seen fired from the lifeboat. The intent was unclear, but it ratcheted up the tension and Seal snipers at the stern rail of the Bainbridge fixed night-vision scopes to their high-powered rifles, getting ready for action.

What they saw was the head and shoulders of two of the pirates emerging from the rear hatch of the lifeboat. In addition, through the window of the front hatch, they saw the third pirate, pointing his AK-47 at the back of Captain Phillips, who was seen to be tied up.

That was it: the provocation that fulfilled the president’s order to act only if the captain’s life was in imminent danger, and the opportunity of having clear shots at each of the captors. The order was given. Senior defense officials, themselves marveling at the skill of the snipers, said each took a target and fired one shot.

Even as the gunfire cracked across the water, Special Forces personnel were sliding down ropes from the Bainbridge. Within minutes, they were boarding the lifeboat to confirm the kills and free the captain from his bonds.

“This was an incredible team effort,” Admiral Gortney said when it was over. “And I am extremely proud of the tireless efforts of all the men and women who made this rescue possible.”
US sea captain held hostage by Somali pirates freed safely in swift firefight; 3 pirates slain
Hartford Courant
ELIZABETH A. KENNEDYLARA JAKES, Associated Press Writers Associated Press Writers
1:57 PM EDT, April 12, 2009

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — An American ship captain was freed unharmed Sunday in a swift firefight that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, the ship's owner said.

A senior U.S. intelligence official said a pirate who had been involved in negotiations to free Capt. Richard Phillips but who was not on the lifeboat was in custody. The Justice Department said it was reviewing evidence and considering criminal charges against the captured pirate.

Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, was safely transported to a Navy warship nearby.

Maersk Line Limited President and CEO John Reinhart said in a news release that the U.S. government informed the company around 1:30 p.m. EDT Sunday that Phillips had been rescued. Reinhart said the company called Phillips' wife, Andrea, to tell her the news.

The U.S. official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment.

When Phillips' crew heard the news aboard their ship in the port of Mombasa, they placed an American flag over the rail of the top of the Maersk Alabama and whistled and pumped their fists in the air. Crew fired a bright red flare into the sky from the ship.

"We made it!" said crewman ATM Reza, pumping his fist in the air.

"He managed to be in a 120-degree oven for days, it's amazing," said another of about a dozen crew members who came out to talk to reporters. He said the crew found out the captain was released because one of the sailors had been talking to his wife on the phone.

Capt. Joseph Murphy, the father of second-in-command Shane Murphy, thanked Phillips for his bravery.

"Our prayers have been answered on this Easter Sunday. I have made it clear throughout this terrible ordeal that my son and our family will forever be indebted to Capt. Phillips for his bravery," Murphy said. "If not for his incredible personal sacrifice, this kidnapping and act of terror could have turned out much worse."

In the written statement, Murphy said both his family and Phillips' "can now celebrate a joyous Easter together."

Terry Aiken, 66, who lives across the street from the Phillips house, fought back tears as he reacted to the news.

"I'm very, very happy," Aiken said. "I can't be happier for him and his family."

A government official and others in Somalia with knowledge of the situation had reported hours earlier that negotiations for Phillips' release had broken down.

Talks to free him began Thursday with the captain of the USS Bainbridge talking to the pirates under instruction from FBI hostage negotiators on board the U.S. destroyer. The pirates had threatened to kill Phillips if attacked.

Three U.S. warships were within easy reach of the lifeboat on Saturday. The U.S. Navy had assumed the pirates would try to get their hostage to shore, where they can hide him on Somalia's lawless soil and be in a stronger position to negotiate a ransom.

Maersk Line said before news of the rescue broke that "the U.S. Navy had sight contact" of Phillips — apparently when the pirates opened the hatches.

Before Phillips was freed, a pirate who said he was associated with the gang that held Phillips, Ahmed Mohamed Nur, told The Associated Press that the pirates had reported that "helicopters continue to fly over their heads in the daylight and in the night they are under the focus of a spotlight from a warship."

He spoke by satellite phone from Harardhere, a port and pirate stronghold where a fisherman said helicopters flew over the town Sunday morning and a warship was looming on the horizon. The fisherman, Abdi Sheikh Muse, said that could be an indication the lifeboat may be near to shore.

The district commissioner of the central Mudug region said talks went on all day Saturday, with clan elders from his area talking by satellite telephone and through a translator with Americans, but collapsed late Saturday night.

"The negotiations between the elders and American officials have broken down. The reason is American officials wanted to arrest the pirates in Puntland and elders refused the arrest of the pirates," said the commissioner, Abdi Aziz Aw Yusuf. He said he organized initial contacts between the elders and the Americans.

Two other Somalis, one involved in the negotiations and another in contact with the pirates, also said the talks collapsed because of the U.S. insistence that the pirates be arrested and brought to justice.

Phillips' crew of 19 American sailors reached safe harbor in Kenya's northeast port of Mombasa on Saturday night under guard of U.S. Navy Seals, exhilarated by their freedom but mourning the absence of Phillips.

Crew members said their ordeal had begun with the Somali pirates hauling themselves up from a small boat bobbing on the surface of the Indian Ocean far below.

As the pirates shot in the air, Phillips told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself to safeguard his men, crew members said.

Phillips was then held hostage in an enclosed lifeboat that was closely watched by U.S. warships and a helicopter in an increasingly tense standoff. On Friday, the French navy freed a sailboat seized off Somalia last week by other pirates, but one of the five hostages was killed.

Phillips jumped out of the lifeboat Friday and tried to swim for his freedom but was recaptured when a pirate fired an automatic weapon at or near him, according to U.S. Defense Department officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the unfolding operations.

Early Saturday, the pirates holding Phillips in the lifeboat fired a few shots at a small U.S. Navy vessel that had approached, a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The official said the U.S. sailors did not return fire, the Navy vessel turned away and no one was hurt. He said the vessel had not been attempting a rescue. The pirates are believed armed with pistols and AK-47 assault rifles.

"When I spoke to the crew, they won't consider it done when they board a plane and come home," Maersk President John Reinhart said from Norfolk, Virginia before news of Phillips' rescue. "They won't consider it done until the captain is back, nor will we."

In Phillips' hometown, the Rev. Charles Danielson of the St. Thomas Church said before the news broke that the congregation would continue to pray for Phillips and his family, who are members, and he would encourage "people to find hope in the triumph of good over evil."

Reinhart said he spoke with Phillips' wife, who is surrounded by family and two company employees who were sent to support her.

"She's a brave woman," Reinhart said. "And she has one favor to ask: 'Do what you have to do to bring Richard home safely.' That means don't make a mistake, folks. We have to be perfect in our execution."

US ship, choppers, shadow hostage captain, pirates 
DAY
By Associated Press Writers 
Posted on Apr 12, 10:25 AM EDT

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) -- U.S. warships and helicopters stalked a lifeboat holding an American sea captain and his four Somali captors Sunday as Somalis reported negotiations for his release have collapsed and his crew briefed FBI agents about how they fought off the pirates who boarded their ship.

A Somali man involved in the negotiations and another in telephone contact with the pirates said clan elders have been trying to negotiate a free passage for the pirates in exchange for the release of Capt. Richard Phillips, but the talks broke down Saturday night over the U.S. insistence that the pirates must be arrested and brought to justice.  Nineteen American sailors guarded by U.S. Navy Seals reached safe harbor in Kenya's northeast port of Mombasa on Saturday night, exhilarated by freedom but mourning the absence of Capt. Richard Phillips, who sacrificed himself as a hostage to save them.

"He saved our lives!" second mate Ken Quinn, of Bradenton, Florida, declared from the ship deck. "He's a hero."

ATM Reza, a crew member from Hartford, Conn., who said he was first to see the pirates board the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama on Wednesday, described how the bandits "came on with hooks and ropes and were firing in the air."

He was responding to a throng of reporters shouting questions from shore about the ordeal that began with Somali pirates hauling themselves up from a small boat bobbing on the surface of the Indian Ocean far below.  As the pirates shot in the air, Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself to safeguard his men, crew members said...full story here.

Phillips, a Winchester, Mass., native, was still held hostage in an enclosed lifeboat Sunday by four pirates being closely watched by U.S. warships and a helicopter in an increasingly tense standoff. The lifeboat is out of fuel and drifting.

The Alabama's second-in-command, Capt. Shane Murphy of Seekonk, Mass., was among the sailors to reach safety. His father, Capt. Joseph Murphy, is an instructor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on Cape Cod.  A Pentagon spokesman said Saturday night that negotiations to free Phillips were continuing.

But Abdiwali Ali Tar said they were deadlocked. "Some local elders as well as our company have been involved in the negotiations but things seem to be deadlocked because the pirates want to make sure to be in a safe location first with the captain - either on one of the ships their colleagues hold or Somali coastal villages - but the Americans will not allow that," said Tar, the head of a private security firm acting as the coast guard in northeast Puntland region, a haven for pirates.

A second man who closely monitors piracy said his pirate sources reported the negotiations collapsed because clan elders want the pirates to go free if they release Phillips but the U.S. Navy is demanding the elders surrender them to Puntland authorities. The man spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.  Talks had begun Thursday with the captain of the USS Bainbridge talking to the pirates under instruction from FBI hostage negotiators on board the U.S. destroyer.

It was not clear where the lifeboat was on Sunday. A pirate who says he is associated with the gang holding Phillips, Ahmed Mohamed Nur, told The Associated Press that the pirates say "helicopters continue to fly over their heads in the daylight and in the night they are under the focus of a spotlight from a warship."

But Nur said satellite phone calls with the pirates had not established the position of the boat: "We do not know where exactly the boat is."

He spoke by satellite phone from Harardhere, a port and pirate stronghold where a fisherman said helicopters flew over the town Sunday morning and a warship was looming on the horizon. The fisherman, Abdi Sheikh Muse, said that could be an indication the lifeboat may be near to shore.  The U.S. Navy has assumed the pirates would try to get their hostage to shore, where they can hide him on Somalia's lawless soil and be in a stronger position to negotiate a ransom.

Three U.S. warships were within easy reach of the lifeboat on Saturday, but fears of endangering Phillips' life limit their ability to use their overwhelming firepower.

On Friday, the French navy freed a sailboat seized off Somalia last week by other pirates, but one of the five hostages was killed.

Early Saturday, the pirates holding Phillips in the lifeboat fired a few shots at a small U.S. Navy vessel that had approached, a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.  The official said the U.S. sailors did not return fire, the Navy vessel turned away and no one was hurt. He said the vessel had not been attempting a rescue. The pirates are believed armed with pistols and AK-47 assault rifles.

Phillips jumped out of the lifeboat Friday and tried to swim for his freedom but was recaptured when a pirate fired an automatic weapon at or near him, according to U.S. Defense Department officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the unfolding operations.

In Mombasa, the Alabama crew described how they overpowered the pirates.

Reza, a father of one, said that after the pirates boarded, he had led one to the engine room where he stabbed him in the hand with an ice pick and tied him up. Other sailors corroborated that story.  The crew have told family members by phone that they took one pirate hostage before giving him up in the hope their captain would be released. Instead, the Somalis fled with Phillips to the lifeboat.

Some of the Alabama's crew cheered and cracked jokes as they arrived in Mombasa, others peered warily over the edge of their 17,000-ton cargo ship that had been transporting food aid.  With Navy SEALs standing guard, one sailor told off the mass of journalists, saying: "Don't disrespect these men like that. They've got a man out on a lifeboat dying so we can live."

Crewman William Rios, 41, of New York City, described the whole experience as a "nightmare" and said the first thing he will do back home is go to church.  Maersk President John Reinhart said from Norfolk, Virginia, that the ship was still a crime scene and the crewmen could not leave until the FBI investigates the attack. He said crew members have been provided phones so they can stay in touch with family members.

"When I spoke to the crew, they won't consider it done when they board a plane and come home," Reinhart said. "They won't consider it done until the captain is back, nor will we."

Other bandits, among hundreds who have made the Gulf of Aden the world's most dangerous waterway, seized an Italian tugboat off Somalia's north coast Saturday as it was pulling barges, said Shona Lowe, a spokeswoman at NATO's Northwood maritime command center outside London.  The Foreign Ministry in Rome confirmed 10 of the 16 crew members are Italian. The others are five Romanians and a Croatian, according to Micoperi, the Italian company that owns the ship.

A piracy expert said the two hijackings did not appear related.

"This is just the Somali pirate machine in full flow," said Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, founder of Dryad Maritime Intelligence Ltd.

In Phillips' hometown, the Rev. Charles Danielson of the St. Thomas Church said the congregation would continue to pray for Phillips and his family, who are members, and he would encourage "people to find hope in the triumph of good over evil."

Reinhart said he spoke with Phillips' wife, Andrea, who is surrounded by family and two company employees who were sent to support her.

"She's a brave woman," Reinhart said. "And she has one favor to ask: 'Do what you have to do to bring Richard home safely.' That means don't make a mistake, folks. We have to be perfect in our execution."
Pirates Seize U.S. - Owned, Italy - Flagged Tugboat
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:42 a.m. ET
 April 11, 2009

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Pirates seized a U.S.-owned and Italian-flagged tugboat with 16 crew on Saturday in the latest hijacking in the busy Gulf of Aden waterway, a regional maritime group said.  Andrew Mwangura, of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, said the crew were believed to be unharmed on the tugboat, which he added was operated from the United Arab Emirates.  He said the tugboat was towing two barges at the time of capture but there were no details on their cargo.

"This incident shows the pirates are becoming more daring and violent," Mwangura told Reuters by phone.

NATO alliance officials on board the Portuguese warship NRB Corte-Real, which is patrolling the Gulf of Aden, said a distress call came from the MV Buccaneer tugboat but communications were lost six minutes later.  They said 10 of the tugboat's crew were Italian citizens.  Somali pirates have stepped up attacks in March after a lull at the start of 2009.

International interest has focused this week on the plight of an American hostage, Richard Phillips, held by four pirates on a lifeboat flanked by U.S. naval warships in a high seas standoff since Wednesday.
Secretary of State Clinton must remember this...
Somali Pirates In German Ship Fail to Find Comrades
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Filed at 8:35 a.m. ET
April 11, 2009

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Pirates on a German ship with 24 foreign hostages said on Saturday they had returned to the Somali coast after failing to locate the scene of a standoff involving an American captive on a drifting lifeboat. The pirates had hoped to use the hijacked 20,000-tonne container vessel, Hansa Stavanger, as a "shield" to reach fellow pirates holding American ship captain Richard Phillips far out in the Indian Ocean. U.S. naval ships are close to the lifeboat.

"We have come back to Haradheere coast. We could not locate the lifeboat," one pirate on the German ship, who identified himself as Suleiman, told Reuters.

The German ship was seized off south Somalia between Kenya and the Seychelles and has a crew of 24.  Somali elders and relatives of pirates holding Phillips are planning a mediation mission, a regional maritime group said.

"They are just looking to arrange safe passage for the pirates, no ransom," the group's coordinator Andrew Mwangura told Reuters.

Separately, French special forces stormed a yacht held by pirates elsewhere in the lawless stretch of the Indian Ocean in an assault that killed one hostage, but freed four.  Two pirates were killed and three captured.

On Saturday, NATO staff said pirates had attacked a Panama-flagged bulk carrier in the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen.  An unexploded rocket-propelled grenade had landed in the commanding officer's cabin and bullets were fired at the ship before it repelled the attack with water-hoses, said the officials, aboard a Portuguese warship in the area.  More U.S. warships have been sent toward the lifeboat drifting in international waters off Somalia, where pirates have been holding Phillips since trying to hijack his ship, the 17,000-tonne, Danish-owned Maersk Alabama, on Wednesday.

The American captain's relatives have said he volunteered to get in the lifeboat with the pirates in exchange for the safety of his crew, who regained control of the Maersk Alabama. The ship, carrying food relief to Kenya, was due into Kenya's Mombasa port at around 5 p.m. (10:00 a.m. EDT) on Saturday. U.S. officials said there was unlikely to be access to the crew.

At one point, Phillips tried to escape the lifeboat by jumping overboard, but was quickly recaptured.  Close by, the destroyer USS Bainbridge launched monitoring drones and kept radio contact with the pirates. A U.S. official said it was seeking a peaceful outcome and FBI experts were helping.

OTHER HOSTAGES

Phillips is one of about 250 hostages being held by Somali pirates preying on the busy sea lanes of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.  There are more Filipinos than any other nationality and the pirates are keeping about 16 captured vessels at or near lairs like Eyl, Hobyo and Haradheere on Somalia's eastern coast -- five of them taken in the last week alone.  The fact Phillips is the first U.S. citizen seized has galvanized intense world attention.

"Once again, it has taken American involvement to get world powers really interested," said a diplomat who tracks Somalia from Nairobi. "I hope they don't forget the Filipinos and all the others, once this guy is released."

The standoff has also forced U.S. President Barack Obama to focus on a place most Americans would rather forget. Perched on the Horn of Africa, Somalia has suffered 18 years of conflict since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. 

Americans remember with a shudder the disastrous U.S.-U.N. intervention there soon after, including the infamous "Black Hawk Down" battle in 1993 when 18 U.S. troops were killed in a 17-hour firefight that was later made into a hit movie.

DEFIANT

The pirate gang holding Phillips remained defiant despite the arrival of U.S. and other naval ships in the area.

"We will defend ourselves if attacked," one told Reuters by satellite phone.

The pirates are demanding $2 million for his release and a guarantee of their own safety, a pirate source said.  Somalia's Islamist insurgent movement al Shabaab, which is on Washington's list of terrorist organizations, lambasted the international naval patrols and said no money should be paid.

"You are the ones who are the pirates. Leave our waters. You will be defeated, whatever you can do. And you will regret anything you pay as a ransom," al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Muktar Robow Mansoor told reporters.  Al Shabaab has denied any links with the pirates.

Officials in Washington confirmed reinforcements were nearby, listing the frigate USS Halyburton, equipped with guided missiles and helicopters, and a German frigate.  The USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, was also on its way, mainly in case its medical facilities were required.  In France, the government stood by its raid to free the yacht, which was hijacked en route to Zanzibar last weekend with two couples and a 3-year-old child aboard.

"During the operation, a hostage sadly died," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office. But it said the president "confirms France's determination not to give in to blackmail and to defeat the pirates.

Last year there were 42 ship hijackings off Somalia, which disrupted shipping, delayed food aid to East Africa and raised insurance costs. Some cargo ships have been diverted to travel around South Africa instead of through the Suez Canal.

(Additional reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Mohamed Ahmed in Mogadishu, Abdiqani Hassan in Bosasso, Daniel Wallis in Mombasa, Alison Bevege on board the NRB Corte-Real, Andrew Gray and Anthony Boadle in Washington, William Maclean in London and Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi; writing by Andrew Cawthorne; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

US ships block help for pirates holding US captain 
DAY
By MICHELLE FAUL and TOM MALITI, Associated Press Writers 
Posted on Apr 11, 7:01 AM EDT

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- U.S. warships are trying to stop Somali pirates from sending reinforcements to a lifeboat where an American captain is being held hostage as the high-seas standoff off Africa's eastern coast entered a fourth day Saturday.  Underscoring the high stakes involved, France's navy on Friday freed a sailboat seized off Somalia last week by other pirates, but one of the hostages was killed.

A Nairobi-based diplomat, who spoke on condition on anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to reporters, said the pirates have summoned assistance but at least two American ships and U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft are deterring pirate ships and skiffs from contact with the lifeboat.

The pirates have threatened to kill their American hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips, if the U.S. attacks them, according to a Somali who has been in contact with the pirates.

The Somali said the pirates had called in four commandeered ships with hostages from a variety of nations including the Philippines, Russia and Germany.

The vice president of the Philippines, the nation with the largest number of sailors held captive by Somali pirates, appealed Saturday for the safety of hostages to be ensured in the standoff.

"We hope that before launching any tactical action against the pirates, the welfare of every hostage is guaranteed and ensured," said Vice President Noli de Castro. "Moreover, any military action is best done in consultation with the United Nations to gain the support and cooperation of other countries."

U.S. rules of engagement prevent the Americans using their vastly superior fighting power to engage the pirates if there is any danger to civilians.

The situation is new for the pirates. Normally, they seize a ship with many hostages and get it anchored near shore, where they can quickly escape to land, and then begin negotiations for multimillion-dollar ransoms. Left with only Phillips and a lifeboat that is out of fuel, they are in a vulnerable position.  On Friday, Phillips jumped out of the lifeboat and tried to swim for his freedom but was recaptured when a pirate fired an automatic weapon at or near him, according to U.S. Defense Department officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the sensitive, unfolding operations.

Phillips, of Underhill, Vermont, was seized Wednesday after he thwarted the pirates' bid to hijack the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama freighter, which was carrying food aid for hungry people in Somalia, Rwanda and Uganda.

The Alabama headed toward the Kenyan port of Mombasa - its original destination - with 20 American crew members aboard. It was expected to arrive Saturday night, said Joseph Murphy, whose son is second-in-command of the vessel.

Piracy along the anarchic and impoverished Somali coast, the longest in Africa, has risen in recent years. Somali pirates hold about a dozen ships with more than 200 crew members, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a piracy watchdog group based in Malaysia. The bureau lists 66 attacks since January, not including the Alabama.

The pirates' strategy is to link up with colleagues on other seized ships, who are holding Russian, German, Filipino and other hostages, and get Phillips to lawless Somalia, where they could hide the hostage and make it difficult to stage a rescue, the Somali speaking to the pirates said. That would give the pirates more leverage and a stronger negotiating position to discuss a ransom. Anchoring near shore also means they could get to land quickly if attacked.

The Somali, who helped negotiate a ransom last year to pirates who seized a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He said he has talked with a pirate leader in Somalia who helped coordinate the failed effort to seize the Alabama.  Sailors on the USS Bainbridge, which has rescue helicopters and lifeboats, were able to see Phillips but at several hundred yards away were too far to help him. The U.S. destroyer is keeping its distance, in part to stay out of the pirates' range of fire.

Its sailors saw Phillips moving around and talking after his return to the lifeboat, and the Defense Department officials think he is unharmed.

The Bainbridge was joined Friday by the USS Hallyburton, which has helicopters, and the huge, amphibious USS Boxer is expected on the scene soon, the defense officials said. The Boxer is the flag ship of a multination anti-piracy task force that resembles a small aircraft carrier. It has a crew of more than 1,000, a mobile hospital, missile launchers and about two dozen helicopters and attack planes.  Negotiations had been taking place between the pirates and the captain of the Bainbridge, who was getting direction from FBI hostage negotiators, the officials said.

Phillips, 53, thwarted the takeover of the 17,000-ton Alabama by telling his crew of about 20 to lock themselves in a cabin, the crew told stateside relatives. The crew later overpowered some of the pirates but Phillips surrendered himself to safeguard his men, and the Somalis fled with him to an enclosed lifeboat, the relatives said.

Meanwhile, France's defense minister promised an autopsy and investigation into the death of a hostage killed Friday during a French navy commando operation that freed four other captives held by Somali pirates.

Pirates had seized a sailboat carrying Florent Lemacon, his wife, 3-year-old son and two friends off the Somali coast a week ago. On Friday, French navy commandos stormed the boat in an assault triggered by threats the passengers would be executed.  Two pirates were killed, and Lemacon died in an exchange of fire as he tried to duck down the hatch. Three pirates were taken prisoner in the operation, and are to be brought to France for criminal proceedings.
Both U.S. and Pirates Sending More Ships to Standoff
NYTIMES
By MOHAMMED IBRAHIM and SHARON OTTERMAN
April 11, 2009

MOGADISHU, Somalia — American Naval reinforcements moved towards the scene of a pirate hostage standoff in the Indian Ocean on Friday amid reports that the Somali pirates, desperate to get back to shore with their American captive, had themselves called in additional ships and men.

Residents reached by telephone in the town of Xarardheere, a pirate haven in central Somalia, said that the pirates were sending small boats with additional supplies, pirates, and weapons to the hostage scene. The Associated Press reported that the pirates were sending larger ships—including previously hijacked ships with hostages still aboard—to serve as shields for the small, enclosed lifeboat that now holds four Somali pirates and their American captive, Capt. Richard Phillips.

Captain Phillips was taken Wednesday after an hours-long battle that began when the Somali pirates attempted to commandeer the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama, a 17,000 ton container ship that was carrying food and relief aid to Mombasa, Kenya. The pirates gained control of the ship for a number of hours, but the unarmed American crew of 20 then managed to overpower the pirates and retake command.

The pirates retreated into a large enclosed lifeboat, taking the ship’s captain as a hostage, apparently seeking a cash ransom. Alerted by a distress call, the U.S.S. Bainbridge, an $800 million American Navy destroyer, arrived Thursday to take the lead in negotiating for the release of Captain Phillips.

Hostage negotiators with The Federal Bureau of Investigation have also been asked for their assistance, and General David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said Thursday that other warships were headed to the scene.

An unnamed Pentagon official was quoted by CNN on Friday as saying that Capt. Phillips had attempted to escape from the lifeboat at about midnight local time and swim to the nearby U.S.S. Bainbridge by jumping overboard, but that the pirates had jumped into the sea after him and recaptured him. It was not immediately possible to confirm this report.

The Norfolk, Va. based company to which the ship is registered, Maersk Line, Ltd, a subsidiary of A.P. Moller - Maersk, the Danish shipping giant, said Thursday that the Maersk Alabama had left the hostage scene at the Navy’s request to return to shore. The father of the ship’s second in command, Capt. Shane Murphy, told news organizations that the ship was headed to its original destination, Mombasa, with an armed guard of 18 men, and that it was due to arrive Saturday.

It was not immediately possible to confirm Associated Press reports that additional large ships, including a German cargo ship seized by pirates earlier this month, were headed to the hostage scene to serve as reinforcements for the beleaguered pirates.

A Somali resident of the pirate stronghold Eyl in Somalia’s Northern Puntland region was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that two pirate ships had left Eyl on Wednesday afternoon. He said a third — the German cargo ship Hansa Stavanger — had sailed from Xarardheere, some 230 miles south along the Somali coastline, and a fourth — a Taiwanese fishing vessel seized Monday that was only 30 miles from the lifeboat — was also on its way. The man said there were a total of 52 hostages aboard the ships floating toward the scene.

Residents of Xarardheere reached by The Times, however, said the pirates had only sent small speedboats with pirates aboard as reinforcements.

The Associated Press also quoted another pirate in Xarardheere as saying that the pirates holding Captain Phillips were very worried about getting killed in their standoff with the American warship, and that they had decided to defer talks about a ransom for Captain Phillips until they made it back to shore.

“They had asked us for reinforcement and we have already sent a good number of well-equipped colleagues, who were holding a German cargo ship,” the pirate, identified only by his first name, Badow, was quoted by The A.P. as saying.

“We are not intending to harm the captain, so that we hope our colleagues would not be harmed as long as they hold him,” Badow told them. “All we need, first, is a safe route to escape with the captain, and then (negotiate) ransom later,” he added.
FBI joins effort in hostage standoff with pirates 
DAY
By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer 
Posted on Apr 9, 11:11 AM EDT

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- FBI hostage negotiators joined U.S. Navy efforts Thursday to free an American cargo ship captain held captive on a lifeboat by Somali pirates. A U.S. destroyer and a spy plane kept close watch in the high-seas standoff near the Horn of Africa.

The pirates took Capt. Richard Phillips hostage Wednesday after they hijacked the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama, but the cargo ship's crew overpowered them and at least four then fled to a covered lifeboat. It was the first such attack on American sailors in about 200 years.  Kevin Speers, a spokesman for the Maersk shipping company, said the pirates have made no demands yet to the company. He said the safe return of the captain is now its top priority.

The Maersk Alabama is again under way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa - its original destination - with 18 armed guards, according to Joseph Murphy, whose son, Shane Murphy, is second in command. A person reached by The Associated Press by phone on the bridge of the vessel confirmed that "We're moving."

Murphy said he was told about the development by company officials who are briefing families and estimates it will arrive in Kenya in about two days. The Maersk Alabama, loaded with relief aid, had been en route to the Kenyan port of Mobassa when it was attacked about 380 miles east of the Somali capital of Mogadishu.  Earlier Thursday, the USS Bainbridge had arrived near the Maersk Alabama and the lifeboat with the pirates, Speers said, adding that the lifeboat holding the pirates and the captain was out of fuel.

"The boat is dead in the water," he told AP Radio. "It's floating near the Alabama. It's my understanding that it's floating freely."

The U.S. Navy has sent up P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and has video of the scene.  FBI spokesman Richard Kolko described the bureau's hostage negotiating team as "fully engaged" with the military in strategizing ways to retrieve the ship's captain and secure the Maersk Alabama and its roughly 20-member U.S. crew.

One senior Pentagon official, speaking on grounds of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, described the incident now as a "somewhat of a standoff."

Though officials declined to say how close the Bainbridge is to the site, one official said of the pirates: "They can see it with their eyes." He spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of talking about a military operation in progress.  The Bainbridge was among several U.S. ships that had been patrolling in the region when the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama was captured by the pirates about 380 miles east of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. It was the sixth vessel seized in a week.

Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Omaar said the pirates "cannot win" against American forces.

"The pirates are playing with fire and have got themselves into a situation where they have to extricate themselves because there is no way they can win," he told The Associated Press.

Phillips' family was at his Vermont farmhouse, anxiously watching news reports and taking telephone calls from the State Department.

"We are on pins and needles," said Gina Coggio, 29, half sister of Phillips' wife, Andrea, as she stood on the porch of his one-story house Wednesday in a light snow. "I know the crew has been in touch with their own family members, and we're hoping we'll hear from Richard soon."

Phillips surrendered himself to the pirates to secure the safety of the crew, Coggio said.

"What I understand is that he offered himself as the hostage," she said. "That is what he would do. It's just who he is and his response as a captain."

Coggio said she believed there were negotiations under way, although she didn't specify between whom.  With one warship nearby and more on the way, piracy expert Roger Middleton from London-based think tank Chatham House said the pirates were facing difficult choices.

"The pirates are in a very, very tight corner," Middleton said. "They've got only one guy, they've got nowhere to hide him, they've got no way to defend themselves effectively against the military who are on the way and they are hundreds of miles from Somalia."

The pirates would probably try to get to a mothership, he said, one of the larger vessels that tow the pirates' speedboats out to sea and resupply them as they lie in wait for prey. But they also would be aware that if they try to take Phillips to Somalia, they might be intercepted. And if they hand him over, they would almost certainly be arrested.  Other analysts say the U.S. will be reluctant to use force as long as one of its citizens remains hostage. French commandos, for example, have mounted two military operations against pirates once the ransom had been paid and its citizens were safe.

Many of the pirates have shifted their operations down the Somali coastline from the Gulf of Aden to escape naval warship patrols, which had some success in preventing attacks last year.  International attention focused on Somali pirates last year after the audacious hijackings of an arms shipment and a Saudi oil supertanker. Warships from more than a dozen nations are patrolling off the Somali coast but analysts say the multimillion-dollar ransoms paid out by companies ensure piracy in war-ravaged, impoverished Somalia will not disappear.

The attacks often beg the question of why ship owners do not arm their crew to fend off attacks. Much of the problem lies with the cargo. The Saudi supertanker, for example, was loaded with 2 million barrels of oil. The vapor from that cargo was highly flammable; a spark from the firing of a gun could cause an explosion.

There is also the problem of keeping the pirates off the ships - once they're on board, they will very likely fight back and people will die.  Pirates travel in open skiffs with outboard engines, working with larger ships that tow them far out to sea. They use satellite navigational and communications equipment, and have an intimate knowledge of local waters, clambering aboard commercial vessels with ladders and grappling hooks.

Any blip on an unwary ship's radar screens, alerting the crew to nearby vessels, is likely to be mistaken for fishing trawlers or any number of smaller, non-threatening ships that take to the seas every day.  It helps that the pirates' prey are usually massive, slow-moving ships. By the time anyone notices, pirates will have grappled their way onto the ship, brandishing AK-47s.
U.S. Crew in Standoff With Pirates Off Somalia Coast
NYTIMES
By SHARON OTTERMAN and MARK MAZZETTI
April 9, 2009

Hours after pirates commandeered a United States-flagged container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday, the pirates and crew appeared to be in a standoff, with the ship under control of its crew once again but the skipper a captive of the pirates. 

There were conflicting reports about the drama unfolding on the container ship, the Maersk Alabama — the first ship with an American crew to be seized by pirates in the Horn of Africa, one of the most notoriously lawless zones on the high seas. By late afternoon Washington time, when it was night off Somalia, the situation was unresolved, although there had apparently been no bloodshed.

Several American warships were headed for the area. The vessels reportedly included a destroyer, the U.S.S. Bainbridge, which can steam at more than 30 knots and can launch helicopters. Based on early reports that the closest ships were some 345 miles from the scene at the time of the hijacking, they could be expected to arrive in the area by late Wednesday night, Eastern time, or daylight Thursday off Somali.

At about noon Eastern time, some 12 hours after the hijacking, a Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity said that “it is our understanding that the crew has taken back control of the vessel.” But as the hours went by, it became clear that the situation was far from resolved, as a senior American military official said the skipper had been taken off his ship while the captors tried to negotiate a ransom.  There were reports that the crew had been able to disable the ship around the time that the pirates came aboard, preventing them from going anywhere with their prize. Later, there were reports that while the crew had been able to capture one pirate and regain control of the ship, at least three pirates were holding the captain hostage in a small boat near the vessel.

Complicating the situation was that the pirates apparently broke their word, refusing to release the captain after the ship’s crew had released the captive pirate in what was supposed to be a trade.

“We had a pirate, we took him for 12 hours,” Second Mate Ken Quinn told C.N.N. in a live interview Wednesday. “We returned him, but they didn’t return the captain.”

C.N.N. reported that the captain had been in touch with his crew by radio and had said he was not hurt.  The Maersk Alabama was taken by pirates at about 7:30 a.m. local time, roughly 280 miles southeast of the Somali city of Eyl, a known haven for pirates, a spokesman for the United States Navy said. The ship is owned and operated by Maersk Line Limited, a United States subsidiary of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, the Danish shipping giant.

John F. Reinhart, the president and chief executive officer of Maersk Line Limited, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the company had received a call that morning from the crew saying that they were unharmed. Later, the company issued a statement saying that the crew was in control.

President Obama, who returned to Washington early Wednesday from an overseas trip, was briefed on the situation. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the administration was “assessing a course of action to resolve this situation.”

The Maersk Alabama was at least the sixth ship commandeered by pirates in the last week off the Horn. Pirates have been operating in the region with near impunity despite efforts by many nations, including the United States, to intimidate them with naval warship patrols.

The Cape Cod Times reported on its Web site Wednesday that both the chief officer — Capt. Shane Murphy, 34 — and the captain of the vessel — Capt. Richard Phillips of Underhill, Vermont — were graduates of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Mr. Murphy’s father said the Department of Defense had told him that the crew had regained control of the vessel, The A.P. reported.

While Maersk Line Limited, based in Norfolk, Virginia, is one of the Department of Defense’s primary shipping contractors, it was not under contract with the Defense Department at the time of its hijacking, said Lt. Stephanie Murdock, a spokeswoman with the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.  The 508-foot long ship was en route to the Kenyan port of Mombasa and was carrying food and other agricultural materials for the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, among other clients, including the United States Agency for International Development.

It was on a regular rotation through the Indian Ocean from Salalah, a city in southwestern Oman, to Djibouti, and then on to Mombasa, according to the company’s headquarters in Denmark.

The ship, built in Taiwan in 1998, was less than half full, carrying some 400 20-foot containers of cargo such as vegetable oil and bulgur wheat. It can carry over 1,000 such containers, and was deployed in Maersk Line’s East Africa service network, the company said.

There have been more than 60 pirate attacks this year off of the Somali coast, with the bulk of the attacks occurring in the Gulf of Aden, which separates the Arabian peninsula from the Horn of Africa. Sixteen ships with more than 200 crew remain in pirate custody, most of them docked a few miles off the Somali coast while ransom negotiations with the ship owners take place, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman with the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

Most of the pirate attacks have ended peacefully, with the payment of ransom. But there have been exceptions. A year ago, for instance, French commandos seized six pirates during a helicopter raid after the attackers had freed the 30-member crew of a hijacked luxury yacht.

About 15 international naval vessels, including three American Navy ships, now patrol the waters, many under an American-led task force created to combat piracy.

At the time of the attack on the Maersk Alabama, the closest patrol vessel was some 300 nautical miles away, the Navy said. Most of the patrol vessels are concentrated in the Gulf of Aden, and as a result, the pirates have expanded their reach into the open seas. The Navy would not comment on whether its patrol boats were now following the hijacked vessel.

“It’s that old saying: Where the cops aren’t, the criminals are going to go,” Lieutenant Christensen said. “We patrol an area of more than one million square miles. The simple fact of the matter is that we can’t be everywhere at one time.”

Piracy has become a multi-million dollar business in Somalia, a nation that has limped along since 1991 without a functioning central government. A captured Ukrainian arms freighter hijacked off Somalia’s coast in 2008, for example, was released in February when its owners paid $3.2 million in cash, dropped by parachute.

Armed with automatic weapons, the pirates often attack the large merchant ships from small speed boats, then scale the towering ship hulls with hooks and ropes and overtake the merchant crews, which are generally unarmed.

To extend their reach from shore, the pirates have begun operating from floating outposts known as “mother ships” — often captured fishing trawlers that can serve as bases for the smaller speedboats as they lie in wait. The crews are generally not harmed by the pirates.

Lieutenant Christensen said he “could not recall” another episode involving the capture of an American ship by Somali pirates. Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center at the International Maritime Bureau, in Kuala Lumpur, said that no such occurrences had been reported “for the past three or four years — at least.”

“There are no reports that any of the crew is injured,” Mr. Choong said. “Normally, the pirates would treat the crew well.”

“The Somali pirates are now actually venturing very far out from the coast,” Mr. Choong said, “up to 500 nautical miles.”

The ship has carried a United States flag — meaning it is registered in the United States — since 2004, when it came under contract with the United States Maritime Security Program, which is run by the Maritime Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Transportation, according to a press release issued by Maersk Line Limited. The designation allows the ship to contract with American government agencies and carry sensitive American cargo.

The 17,000-ton ship has sailed out of Dubai since November 2004, the press release said.
Note:  "mother ship" arrangement reminds me of "Waterworld"
U.S. Crew Said to Retake Ship From Pirates Off Somalia
NYTIMES
By SHARON OTTERMAN
April 9, 2009

Pirates commandeered a United States-flagged container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the first time a ship with an American crew had been seized by pirates in the area. There were conflicting reports about who was in control of the ship hours after it was seized.

At about noon Eastern time, some twelve hours after the hijacking, a Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity said that “it is our understanding that the crew has taken back control of the vessel.”

A second military official, also speaking anonymously because of the delicacy of the situation, said that initial reports remained murky. The official said that crew members may be holding one of the pirates, but that several of the pirates may be holding the ship’s captain.

A crew member told the Associated Press that the pirates were holding the ship’s captain’s hostage and that negotiations were under way.

The container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was taken by pirates at about 7:30 a.m. local time, 280 miles southeast of the Somali city of Eyl, a known haven for pirates, a spokesman for the United States Navy said. The ship is owned and operated by Maersk Line Limited, a United States subsidiary of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, the Danish shipping giant.

John F. Reinhart, the president and chief executive officer of Maersk Line Limited, said at a news conference at noon EDT that the company had received a call Wednesday morning from the crew confirming that they were unharmed. He could not, however, confirm reports that the ship had been retaken by its crew.

President Obama, who returned to Washington at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday after his overseas trip, was briefed on the situation. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the administration was “assessing a course of action to resolve this situation.”

The Maersk Alabama was at least the sixth ship commandeered by pirates in the last week off the Horn of Africa, one of the most notoriously lawless zones on the high seas. Pirates have been operating in the region with near impunity despite efforts by many nations, including the United States, to intimidate them with naval warship patrols.

The Cape Cod Times reported on its Web site Wednesday that both the chief officer — Capt. Shane Murphy, 34 — and the captain of the vessel — Capt. Richard Phillips of Underhill, Vermont — were graduates of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Later, Mr. Murphy’s father said the Department of Defense had told him that the crew had regained control of the vessel, The A.P. reported.

While Maersk Line Limited, based in Norfolk, Virginia, is one of the Department of Defense’s primary shipping contractors, it was not under contract with the Defense Department at the time of its hijacking, said Lt. Stephanie Murdock, a spokeswoman with the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.

The 508-foot long ship was en route to the Kenyan port of Mombasa and was carrying food and other agricultural materials for the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, among other clients, including the United States Agency for International Development.

It was on a regular rotation through the Indian Ocean from Salalah, a city in southwestern Oman, to Djibouti, and then on to Mombasa, according to the company’s headquarters in Denmark.

The ship, built in Taiwan in 1998, was less than half full, carrying some 400 20-foot containers of cargo such as vegetable oil and bulgur wheat. It can carry over 1,000 such containers, and was deployed in Maersk Line’s East Africa service network, the company said.

There have been more than 50 pirate attacks this year off of the Somali coast, with the bulk of the attacks occurring in the Gulf of Aden, which separates the Arabian peninsula from the Horn of Africa. Sixteen ships with more than 200 crew remain in pirate custody, most of them docked a few miles off the Somali coast while ransom negotiations with the ship owners take place, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman with the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

About 15 international naval vessels, including three American Navy ships, now patrol the pirate-infested waters, many under an American-led task force created to combat piracy.

At the time of the attack on the Maersk Alabama, the closest patrol vessel was some 300 nautical miles away, the Navy said. Most of the patrol vessels are concentrated in the Gulf of Aden, and as a result, the pirates have expanded their reach into the open seas. The Navy would not comment on whether its patrol boats were now following the hijacked vessel.

“It’s that old saying: Where the cops aren’t, the criminals are going to go,” Lieutenant Christensen said. “We patrol an area of more than one million square miles. The simple fact of the matter is that we can’t be everywhere at one time.”

Piracy has become a multi-million dollar business in Somalia, a nation that has limped along since 1991 without a functioning central government. A captured Ukrainian arms freighter hijacked off Somalia’s coast in 2008, for example, was released in February when its owners paid $3.2 million in cash, dropped by parachute.

Armed with automatic weapons, the pirates often attack the large merchant ships from small speed boats, then scale the towering ship hulls with hooks and ropes and overtake the merchant crews, which are generally unarmed.

To extend their reach from shore, the pirates have begun operating from floating outposts known as “mother ships” — often captured fishing trawlers that can serve as bases for the smaller speedboats as they lie in wait. The crews are generally not harmed by the pirates.

Lieutenant Christensen said he “could not recall” another episode involving the capture of an American ship by Somali pirates. Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center at the International Maritime Bureau, in Kuala Lumpur, said that no such occurrences had been reported “for the past three or four years — at least.”

“There are no reports that any of the crew is injured,” Mr. Choong said. “Normally, the pirates would treat the crew well.”

“The Somali pirates are now actually venturing very far out from the coast,” Mr. Choong said, “up to 500 nautical miles.”

The ship has carried a United States flag — meaning it is registered in the United States — since 2004, when it came under contract with the United States Maritime Security Program, which is run by the Maritime Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Transportation, according to a press release issued by Maersk Line Limited. The designation allows the ship to contract with American government agencies and carry sensitive American cargo.

The 17,000-ton ship has sailed out of Dubai since November 2004, the press release said.
Somali Pirates Seize Ship; 21 Americans Aboard
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:45 a.m. ET
April 8, 2009

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Somali pirates on Wednesday hijacked a U.S.-flagged cargo ship with 21 crew members aboard, a diplomat and a U.S. Navy spokesman said.

The Kenya-based diplomat identified the vessel as the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama and said all the crew members are American. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.  The U.S. Navy confirmed that a U.S. flagged ship with 21 members of crew was hijacked early Wednesday off the eastern coast of Somalia.

Spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said the attacked happened in the early hours of the morning hours, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) northeast of Eyl, a town in the northern Puntland region of Somalia.

Christensen said there were U.S. citizens aboard the ship, but he did not say how many. He declined to release the name of the ship until the family members of the crew are notified.  He said the ship was operated by the Danish company Maersk, which deals with the U.S. Department of Defense. Christensen said the vessel was not working under a Pentagon contract when hijacked.

Maersk Kenya Managing Director Rolf Nielsen said the company was still verifying reports of the hijacking. An U.S. embassy spokeswoman was not immediately able to confirm the incident.  Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Program said the ship was taken about 400 miles (640 kilometers) from the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

The vessel is the sixth to be seized within a week and the first with an all-American crew.

Somali Pirates Seize German Ship
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:11 a.m. ET
April 5, 2009

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Somali pirates have seized a 20,000-ton German container vessel in their latest attack on the Indian Ocean's busy commercial shipping lanes, a regional maritime group said Sunday.

Heavily armed gangs from the lawless Horn of Africa nation hijacked dozens of vessels there and in the strategic Gulf of Aden last year, taking hundreds of sailors hostage and making off with millions of dollars in ransoms.  Foreign navies rushed warships to the area in response, reducing the number of successful attacks in recent months. But there are still near-daily attempts.

Andrew Mwangura of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Program said the latest hijacking happened on Saturday 400 nautical miles off the southern Somali port of Kismayu, between the Seychelles and Kenya.

"We believe the German ship has 24 crew on board. We're trying to establish their identities and the name of the vessel," Mwangura told Reuters.

The German Foreign Ministry said it was seeking "concrete evidence" that a German-flagged vessel had been captured.

"The Federal Government is dealing with the case, and all the appropriate public authorities are participating intensively," a spokeswoman said.

SPEED BOATS

Somali pirates seized two European-owned tankers late last month. Last week, the Seychelles military deployed security forces on its outer islands after the pirates hijacked a second vessel flying the Indian Ocean nation's flag.  The pirates typically use speed boats launched from "mother ships." They then take captured vessels to remote coastal village bases in Somalia, where they have usually treat their hostages well in anticipation of a sizeable ransom payment.

In January, Somali gunmen freed the Sirius Star -- a Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil -- and its 25 crew after $3 million was parachuted onto its deck.  Last September, they also grabbed world headlines by seizing a Ukrainian cargo ship carrying 33 Soviet-era T-72 tanks. It was released in February, reportedly for a $3.2 million ransom.

The pirates say the arrival of high-tech foreign warships in the waters off their country has made their work more dangerous.  One gang member, who asked not to be named, told Reuters in the northern port of Bosasso that he had been part of an aborted attack on another large commercial vessel late Saturday.

"We opened fire on a ship near the Gulf of Aden, but our ladder was too short to climb up," he said. "It escaped at high speed. We were nine pirates in two speed boats and immediately we came back. We feared attacks by the warships."
Somali Pirates Hijack German Gas Tanker, 13 Crew
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:19 p.m. ET
January 29, 2009

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Somali pirates hijacked a German tanker loaded with liquefied petroleum gas Thursday off the Horn of Africa. The ship's 13-man crew was reported safe, even though gunshots were heard over the ship's radio.  The MV Longchamp is the third ship captured by pirates this month in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Piracy has taken an increasing toll on international shipping in the key water link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Pirates made an estimated $30 million hijacking ships for ransom last year, seizing more than 40 vessels off Somalia's coastline.

More than a dozen warships from countries including Britain, France, Germany, Iran, China and the United States now patrol Somali waters to protect vessels. But the warships were not near the Longchamp when it was taken, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Bahrain-based spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet.  Seven pirates boarded the Bahamas-registered Longchamp early Thursday, the tanker's manager, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, said in a statement.

Spokesman Andre Delau said the ship's master had been briefly allowed to communicate with the firm and had said the crew of 12 Filipinos and one Indonesian were safe.

''We think that everything is in order, nobody is injured,'' he told The Associated Press.

No ransom demands have been made yet, the company said.  Robin Phillips, deputy director of the Bahamas maritime authority in London, said the Longchamp had been traveling in a corridor secured by EU military forces when it sent a distress signal before dawn.

''Ships and helicopters were dispatched, but they arrived too late,'' said Phillips, adding that gunshots could be heard over the radio.

He said the ship later set a course for Somalia, to the south.  Christensen said the ship was seized off the southern coast of Yemen, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) from the town of al-Mukalla, the capital of the Hadramaut region.  He also said 21 ships since Dec. 1 have taken ''aggressive, evasive maneuvers'' and successfully evaded pirate attacks.

Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center, said Thursday's hijacking was the first attack since Jan. 14. For the past two weeks, strong winds have made it difficult for pirates to launch their small boats, but the weather has now improved, Choong said.  There have been 15 attacks so far this year, and three ships seized, he said.

Cyrus Mody of the International Maritime Bureau said 166 crew on nine ships were still being held off the coast of Somalia, not including the Longchamp. Six other hijacked ships have been released this month, including an oil tanker freed for a reported $3 million ransom.  Somalia, a nation of about 8 million people, has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 and then turned on each other. Pirates see its lawless coastline as a haven.

Also Thursday, an official said the breakaway Somali region of Puntland had agreed to a French request that it take custody of nine suspected pirates arrested Tuesday by France.

''We consider them to be a real threat for the regional security and the world, as well,'' said Abdullahi Said Samatar, the Puntland security minister.

The German military reported two more suspected attempts by pirates to attack ships in the Gulf of Aden early Thursday.  A German navy frigate received an emergency call from a cargo ship, the European Champion, which reported that it was being followed by a skiff. A military statement said the skiff backed off after the German ship sent its on-board helicopter to the scene.  A second cargo ship, the Eleni G., radioed that it was being pestered by several skiffs. A German frigate sailed toward the ship, which shook off the suspected pirates.

Germans Save Egyptian Ship From Somali Pirates
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:20 a.m. ET
December 25, 2008

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A German military helicopter chased away pirates on Thursday who were trying to board an Egyptian ship off the coast of Somalia. One of the ship's crew was shot in the attack.

The bulk carrier with 31 crew was passing through the Gulf of Aden on its way to Asia when gun-toting pirates in a speedboat began pursuing it, said Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center.  A passing ship alerted the Kuala Lumpur-based bureau, which asked a multinational naval coalition force in the area to help, said Choong.

In response, the German navy frigate Karlsruhe dispatched a helicopter, a military spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing policy.  The pirates fled as the chopper reached the vessel, according to a statement from the German military, but not before shooting and injuring one the ship's crew.  A second helicopter, carrying a medical team, retrieved the injured crew, who is now receiving treatment on the Karlsruhe, the statement said.

Piracy has taken an increasing toll on international shipping this year, especially in the Gulf of Aden -- one of the world's busiest sea lanes. Spurred by widespread poverty in their homeland, Somali pirates have made an estimated $30 million hijacking ships for ransom this year.  More than a dozen warships are now patrolling the vast gulf. Countries as diverse as Britain, India, Iran, America, France and Germany have naval forces in the waters or on their way there.

''Despite increased naval patrols, pirates are continuing to attack ships because the warships cannot be everywhere at the same time. But we are pleased with the quick assistance by the coalition force,'' Choong said.

Choong said there have been 110 pirate attacks this year in the Gulf of Aden, including 42 hijackings. Most were released after a ransom was paid, though 14 -- with more than 240 crew -- are still being held.  A second German frigate responded to another emergency call Thursday from a different ship in the gulf, the military said. The statement gave no other details on that incident.

Japan said Wednesday it is considering sending military ships to join the coalition. China is scheduled to send warships on Friday.  Somalia, a nation of about 8 million people, has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 and then turned on each other.

3 Chinese Ships to Leave Friday for Somalia
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:40 a.m. ET
December 23, 2008

BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese warships on a mission to protect their country's vessels and crews from pirate attacks off Somalia will depart Friday, armed with special forces, helicopters and plans to share information with other countries working in the area.

The operation, China's first major naval mission abroad, will include destroyers Haikou and Wuhan as well as a large supply ship, said Rear Adm. Xiao Xinnian, Deputy Chief of Staff of the People's Liberation Army Navy. On board will be two helicopters and traditional weapons such as missiles and cannons...

Though the purpose of the mission was to protect Chinese ships and crews, Beijing has called for stepped up cooperation in anti-piracy efforts. China announced it was sending warships to the area after the U.N. Security Council authorized nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases...

A Communist Party newspaper has said the mission would initially last three months, but Huang did not give an exact length, saying the duration would depend on the U.N. mandate and conditions in the area. The ships will depart Friday from the island province of Hainan in southern China.

A German Navy frigate, meanwhile, sailed out of Djibouti's harbor Tuesday to protect civilian ships in the region from Somali-based pirates.  The Karlsruhe, with some 240 sailors on board as well as speedboats and a helicopter, set off after lawmakers in Berlin last week approved Germany's participation in a one-year, European Union-led anti-piracy mission...full story here.

Indian Navy Captures 23 Pirates in Gulf of Aden
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:49 p.m. ET
December 13, 2008

NEW DELHI (AP) -- The Indian navy captured 23 pirates who threatened a merchant vessel Saturday in the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden, where dozens of ships have come under attack by gunmen in recent months.

An Indian navy ship, the INS Mysore, was escorting merchant ships in gulf off Somalia when it received a distress call from seamen on board the MV Gibe, who said they were being attacked by two boats.  The message said the pirates were firing as their boats closed in on the Gibe, according to a statement from the Indian government. The pirate boats attempted to escape when they saw the Mysore and its helicopter, but were boarded by Indian marine commandoes, the statement said.

The pirates had ''a substantial cache of arms and equipment,'' including seven AK-47 assault rifles, three machine guns, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and other weapons, the statement said. They also found a GPS receiver and other equipment.  The pirates were from Somalia and Yemen, two countries on the coast of the Gulf of Aden.

The Gibe was flying an Ethiopian flag, the statement said, but there was no further information about the ship.

Last month, India's navy drew criticism after sinking a Thai fishing trawler that had been commandeered hours earlier by pirates. At least one Thai crew member was killed in the attack, which the Indian navy had originally announced by saying it had sunk a pirate ''mother ship.'' The Indian navy defended its actions, saying it had fired in self-defense.

Somali pirates have become increasingly brazen, and recently seized a Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million of crude oil. Many of the vessels are taken to pirate-controlled regions in Somalia, where they are held for ransom.  It was not immediately clear what would happen to the pirates captured by the Indians, or where they would be taken. The statement said only that the prisoners and their weapons would be ''handed over to appropriate authorities ashore.''

Most foreign navies patrolling the Somali coast have been reluctant to detain suspects because of uncertainties over where they would face trial, since Somalia has no effective central government or legal system.

An estimated 1,500 pirates are based in Somalia's semiautonomous Puntland region, raking in millions of dollars.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will present a draft Security Council resolution next week asking the United Nations to authorize ''all necessary measures'' against piracy from Somalia.  But on Friday, the commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet expressed doubt about the wisdom of launching attacks against Somali pirates on land, as the draft proposes.

U.S. Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters that it is difficult to identify pirates, and the potential for killing innocent civilians ''cannot be overestimated.''
Somali Pirates Threat Force Cruise Ship Evacuation
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:18 a.m. ET
December 9, 2008

BERLIN (AP) -- A cruise ship will evacuate passengers before sailing through waters off the Somali coast and fly them to the next port of call to protect them from possible pirate attacks, German cruise operator Hapag-Lloyd said Tuesday.  An official with the European Union's anti-piracy mission said separately that the force would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The MS Columbus cruise ship will drop off its 246 passengers before the ship and some of its crew sail through the Gulf on Wednesday, the Hamburg-based company said in a statement, without saying exactly where they would disembark. It said the passengers would take a charter flight Wednesday to Dubai and spend three days at a five-star hotel waiting to rejoin the 150-meter (490-foot) vessel in the southern Oman port of Salalah for the remainder of a round-the-world tour that began in Italy.

The company said it was sending its passengers on the detour as a ''precautionary measure,'' given rampant piracy off the coast of lawless Somalia that recently has targeted cruise ships as well as commercial vessels, including a Saudi oil tanker and a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and other weapons.

Last week, pirates fired upon the M/S Nautica, a cruise liner carrying 650 passengers and 400 crew members, but the massive ship quickly outran its assailants. Other ships have not been so lucky. Pirates have attacked 32 vessels and hijacked 12 of them since NATO deployed a four-vessel flotilla on Oct. 24 to escort cargo ships and conduct anti-piracy patrols.  An EU anti-piracy mission -- which takes over for the NATO ships on Monday -- may also involve stationing armed guards on the most vulnerable cargo ships in high-risk areas, the British naval commander in charge of the EU mission said Tuesday.

British Vice-Admiral Philip Jones said the guards could be placed on some ships transporting food aid to Somalia. The EU mission will also includes four ships and two maritime reconnaissance aircraft.  In addition to the EU vessels, about a dozen other warships from the U.S. 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, as well as from India, Russia and Malaysia and other nations are patrolling in the area.

The Russian navy will soon replace its warship in the region with another from a different fleet, navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said Tuesday in Moscow.  The missile frigate Neustrashimy, or Intrepid -- deployed from Russia's Northern Fleet after pirates seized the Ukrainian ship carrying tanks in September -- has escorted freighters through the Gulf and helped thwart at least two pirate attacks, the navy said.

The Intrepid will remain in the region through December and be replaced by a ship from Russia's Pacific Fleet.
Piracy Is Terrorism
NYTIMES
By DOUGLAS R. BURGESS Jr.
December 5, 2008

THE golden age of piracy has returned. Just as Henry Every and William Kidd once made their fortunes in the Red Sea, a new generation has emerged, armed with grenade launchers and assault rifles, to threaten trade and distract the world’s navies. With the recent capture of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star, a crime that once seemed remote and archaic has again claimed center stage.

And yet the world’s legal apparatus is woefully confused as to how to respond to piracy. Are the Somali pirates ordinary criminals, or a quasi-military force?

The question is not insignificant. It has virtually paralyzed the navies called to police the Gulf of Aden. The German Navy frigate Emden, on patrol this spring to intercept Qaeda vessels off the Somali coast, encountered pirate vessels attacking a Japanese tanker. But since it was allowed to intervene only if the pirates were defined as “terrorists,” the Emden had no choice but to let the pirates go. Currently, 13 vessels are held by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, while the navies of a dozen nations circle almost helplessly.

The legal confusion extends to what happens once pirates have been caught. In theory, any nation can shoulder the burden of prosecution. In fact, few are eager to do so.

Prosecuting pirates puts enormous strain on a country’s legal system. A state whose ship was not attacked, and whose only involvement with the incident was as rescuer, might balk at being asked to foot the bill for lengthy and costly proceedings. Yet it might find itself forced to do so, if neither the victim’s nor the pirates’ state is willing. As Somalia has not had a recognized government since the early 1990s, the situation is all the more precarious for would-be capturers. The result is that ship owners, knowing that no rescue is imminent, pay the ransom. This emboldens the pirates further, and the problem worsens.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this legal morass. Indeed, the law is very clear — we just seem to have forgotten about it.

The solution to piracy lies in the very nature of piracy itself. The Roman lawmaker Cicero defined piracy as a crime against civilization itself, which English jurist Edward Coke famously rephrased as “hostis humani generis” — enemies of the human race. As such, they were enemies not of one state but of all states, and correspondingly all states shared in the burden of capturing them.

From this precept came the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, meaning that pirates — unlike any other criminals — could be captured wherever they were found, by anyone who found them. This recognition of piracy’s unique threat was the cornerstone of international law for more than 2,000 years.

Though you wouldn’t guess it from the current situation, the law is surprisingly clear. The definition of pirates as enemies of the human race is reaffirmed in British and American trial law and in numerous treaties.

As a customary international law (albeit one that has fallen out of use since the decline of traditional piracy) it cuts through the Gordian knot of individual states’ engagement rules. Pirates are not ordinary criminals. They are not enemy combatants. They are a hybrid, recognized as such for thousands of years, and can be seized at will by anyone, at any time, anywhere they are found.

And what of the Emden’s problem? Are pirates a species of terrorist? In short, yes. The same definition of pirates as hostis humani generis could also be applied to international organized terrorism. Both crimes involve bands of brigands that divorce themselves from their nation-states and form extraterritorial enclaves; both aim at civilians; both involve acts of homicide and destruction, as the United Nations Convention on the High Seas stipulates, “for private ends.”

For this reason, it seems sensible that the United States and the international community adopt a new, shared legal definition that would recognize the link between piracy and terrorism. This could take the form of an act of Congress or, more broadly, a new jurisdiction for piracy and terrorism cases at the International Criminal Court.

There is ample precedent. In the 1970s, the hijacking of airliners was defined by the United Nations as “aerial piracy.” In 1985, when Palestinian terrorists seized the cruise ship Achille Lauro and held its passengers hostage, President Ronald Reagan called the hijackers “pirates.” Recent evidence also indicates that the Somali pirates hand over a part of their millions in ransom money to Al Shabaab, the Somali rebel group that has been linked to Al Qaeda.

The similarities and overlaps between the two crimes have prompted some jurists to advocate abandoning the term piracy altogether in favor of “maritime terrorism.” By reasserting the traditional definition of pirates as hostis humani generis, and linking it to terrorism, the United States and other nations will not only gain a powerful tool in fighting the Somali pirates, but other incidents of terrorism around the world as well.

Recognizing piracy as an international crime will do something else: It will give individual states that don’t want to prosecute pirates an alternative — the international court. If pirates are recognized under their traditional international legal status — as neither ordinary criminals nor combatants, but enemies of the human race — states will have a much freer hand in capturing them. If piracy falls within the jurisdiction of the international court, states will not need to shoulder the burden of prosecution alone.

Today the world’s navies are hamstrung by conflicting laws and the absence of an international code. A comprehensive legal framework is the only way to break the stalemate off Somalia. In a trial before the Old Bailey in 1696, Dr. Henry Newton, the Admiralty advocate, declared, “Suffer pirates and the commerce of the world must cease.”

More than 300 years later, the world is suffering again. Fortunately, this time we have the answer.

Douglas R. Burgess Jr. is the author of “The Pirates’ Pact: The Secret Alliances Between History’s Most Notorious Buccaneers and Colonial America.”
So, this is the country that got the Muslim world angry about the cartoons?
Danish Navy Rescues Suspected Pirates
NYTIMES
By ALAN COWELL
December 6, 2008

LONDON -- A Danish warship on patrol to thwart piracy in the Gulf of Aden ended up rescuing seven of its presumed prey when its crew found suspected Somali pirates adrift this week with a broken motor on their speedboat, the Danish Navy said on Friday.

Danish sailors brought the hungry, thirsty Somalis on board their own ship, a naval official said. Then they sank the speedboat.

The incident highlighted the challenges facing a small international flotilla patrolling vast expanses of ocean where pirates have struck with increasing audacity, hijacking vessels including a Ukrainian freighter laden with armaments and a supertanker carrying an estimated $100 million of crude oil.

Earlier this week, pirates chased and shot at an American cruise ship with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by the international warships, officials told The Associated Press.

The Danish warship, a combat support vessel called the HDMS Absalon, picked up the seven men about 90 miles off the coast of Yemen on Wednesday after a maritime patrol aircraft spotted them signaling in distress, said Lt. Cmdr. Jesper Lynge, a Danish Navy spokesman, in a telephone interview from Copenhagen.

But when Danish special forces from the Absalon went alongside the stricken speed-boat, they found rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles -- familiar pirate weapons -- which they confiscated.

“Their ship had been without propulsion for several days,” he said. “They were hungry and thirsty. We had them checked out by our doctor. We gave them blankets, food and water.”

But they did not arrest them.

“We had a situation where these guys were shipwrecked persons,” Lieutenant Commander Lynge said. “But we haven’t caught them in an act of piracy, and what their main purpose was -- your guess is as good as mine.”

The Danish crew handed them over early Friday to the Yemen coast guard, he said.

The Absalon, with a crew of 100, was deployed in the Gulf of Aden last September as part of an international effort to curb piracy.

The Danish actions followed another incident last month in which an Indian Navy warship sank what officials called a pirate “mother ship,” but later described by its owner as a hijacked Thai fishing trawler.

Negotiations are under way to free the Ukrainian freighter, the Faina, captured more than two months ago.

Last Sunday, Andrew Mwangura, who as head of a Kenyan maritime association has helped mediate the situation, said the Somali pirates who seized the Ukrainian vessel had agreed on a ransom with the ship’s owners. He would not reveal the figure, but he said that the only thing left was to figure out how to get the money to the pirates and hand over the ship.

The hijacked supertanker, the Sirius Star, is anchored a few miles off the coast of Somalia, near the town of Xarardheere. Its cargo of 2 million barrels of Saudi crude is worth about $100 million; the ship itself is worth more than $100 million. There are 25 crew members aboard. The pirates who seized it have been reported by news agencies to have demanded between $15 million and $25 million for its release.

Somali Pirates Fail to Hijack U.S. Cruise Liner
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:02 p.m. ET
December 2, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- The luxury American cruise ship steaming across the Gulf of Aden with hundreds of well-heeled tourists just might have been too much for Somali pirates to resist.

But the bandits, riding in two skiffs and firing rifle shots at the gleaming ship, were outrun in minutes when the captain of M/S Nautica gunned the engine and sped away, a spokesman for the company said Tuesday.

Still, the implications had the pirates hijacked the ship added a new dimension to the piracy scourge, as NATO foreign ministers groped for solutions at a meeting in Brussels and the United Nations extended an international piracy-fighting mandate for another year.

The potential for massive ransom payments from the families of hundreds of rich tourists may encourage similar attempts, especially following the successful capture of a Ukrainian cargo ship laden with tanks and a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million in crude.

And the brazen attack also raises questions: What was a cruise ship doing in the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden? How many such targets are sailing these seas, and how can they be protected?

Even the pirates' motives were in question: they could simply have been testing the defenses of the massive ship, rather than making a real effort to hijack it.

Sunday's attack on the M/S Nautica, which was reported Tuesday, comes several weeks after a NATO mission served mainly to underscore the impotence of the world community. A handful of Western ships can do little to prevent attacks in a vast sea, and without the right to board hijacked vessels, they can only watch as the booty is towed to port.

''It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape,'' said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia, urging all ships to remain vigilant.

Some of the world's leading cruise companies said Tuesday they are considering changing their itineraries to avoid going near the coast of Somalia following news of the weekend attack.

Cunard's public relations manager Eric Flounders said the company has two liners, the Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria, scheduled to go through the Gulf of Aden in March but added the company ''will obviously consider changing the itinerary'' should the situation not improve.

Spokeswoman Michele Andjel said P&O Cruises is considering whether to reroute the Arcadia, which is due around the Gulf of Aden in January.

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Bahrain-based spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, said 21,000 ships cross the Gulf of Aden every year, but he did not know how many cruise liners are included in that figure. The gulf links the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

''We are not advising ships to go a different way, but we do advise to go through the international corridor within the Gulf of Aden,'' Christensen said, referring to a security corridor patrolled by the international coalition.

Pirates have attacked about 100 ships off the Somali coast this year and hijacked 40 vessels. They still hold 14 ships along with more than 250 crew members, according to maritime officials.

NATO said an Italian destroyer prevented five cargo ships from being hijacked Tuesday in the Gulf of Aden by blocking the small pirate boats from the ships and using a helicopter to disperse them.

The Nautica is not the first pleasure boat to be attacked.

The luxury yacht Le Ponant was attacked earlier this year, and pirates opened fire in 2005 on the Seabourn Spirit off the Somali coast. The cruise ship evaded capture by using its speed and a long-range acoustic device that blasted a painful wave of sound at the pirates.

The Nautica also escaped by speeding up as two small pirate skiffs tried to close in, said Tim Rubacky, a spokesman for Oceania Cruises, Inc., which owns the Nautica. He said one skiff made it within 300 yards (275 meters) of the cruise ship and fired eight rifle shots at the vessel before trailing off.

''When the pirates were sighted, the captain went on the public address system and asked passengers to remain in the interior spaces of the ship and wait until he gave further instructions,'' Rubacky said. ''Within five minutes, it was over.''

He said the ship still plans to return through the Gulf of Aden.

''We believe this was an isolated incident,'' he said. ''M/S Nautica is well-equipped to deal with these situations and the crew is well-trained.''

However, Rubacky would not comment on the crew's training or whether the ship had weapons or other devices to help fight off a hijacking.

The Nautica was on a 32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore, with stops at ports in Italy, Egypt, Oman, Dubai, India, Malaysia and Thailand, according to Oceania's Web site. Choong said the ship was carrying 656 passengers and 399 crew members.

The liner arrived in the southern Oman port of Salalah on Monday morning, and passengers toured the city before leaving for the capital, Muscat, that evening, an Oman tourism official said.

In New York on Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council extended for another year its authorization for countries to enter Somalia's territorial waters, with advance notice, and use ''all necessary means'' to stop piracy and armed robbery at sea.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to address the Security Council on the subject of piracy at a followup session Dec. 16.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, and pirates have taken advantage of the country's lawlessness to launch attacks on foreign shipping from the Somali coast.

In two of the most daring attacks, pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter loaded with 33 battle tanks and other heavy weapons in September and captured the Saudi oil tanker on Nov. 15.

On Tuesday, a Somali pirate spokesman said his group will release the Ukrainian ship and crew within the next two days after a ransom is paid.

Sugule Ali told The Associated Press by satellite phone on Tuesday that a ransom agreement had been reached, but would not say how much. The pirates had originally asked for $20 million when they hijacked the MV Faina.

''Once we receive this payment, we will also make sure that all our colleagues on ship reach land safely, then the release will take place,'' Ali said.

------

Associated Press writers Katharine Houreld in Nairobi, Kenya, Pan Pylas in London, Carley Petesch in New York, John Heilprin at the United Nations, Barbara Surk in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Saeed al-Nahdy in Muscat, Oman, contributed to this report.
Legal Hurdles in West Slow Pursuit of Pirates
NYTIMES
By NICHOLAS KULISH
November 29, 2008

BERLIN — Somali pirates firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades hijacked yet another ship in the Gulf of Aden on Friday, this time seizing a chemical tanker. A German military helicopter from a nearby warship arrived in time to pull three security guards out of the water, but not soon enough to prevent the hijacking of the ship and the rest of the crew.

The latest attack, in which even trained security personnel aboard could not deter the pirates, demonstrated the urgent need for coordinated action by governments from Cairo to Berlin. But the bureaucratic and legal hurdles facing international institutions and national governments have so far defeated most efforts to deal with the nimble crews of pirates in speedboats, whose tactics have grown bolder as their profits have paid for better weapons and equipment.

While the pirates have been buying GPS devices, satellite phones and more-powerful outboard motors, officials in Europe have been discussing jurisdictional issues surrounding the arrest of pirates on the high seas and even the possibility that the pirates might demand asylum if brought onto European Union shores.

Germany, perhaps more than any other country, epitomizes both the importance of safe passage for ships and the difficulty of reacting swiftly. It is the world’s leading exporter of goods, and according to the German Shipowners’ Association it has the world’s largest container-ship fleet, with some 36 percent of total container capacity.

That would seem to argue for swift action to stop the pirates, and Germany did indeed draw international attention earlier this week when it announced that up to 1,400 military personnel members might take part in the mission to combat piracy. But the figure significantly overstated the likely deployment as part of a European Union mission in the region, and Parliament has yet to approve it. It also remains to be seen whether the rules of engagement give German sailors a free enough hand to fight the pirates.

German law requires parliamentary approval for all troop deployments, an outgrowth of the country’s uneasiness with the use of military force after the aggression and crimes of the Nazi regime.

On Wednesday, government ministry officials, members of Parliament and representatives of the shipping industry and the workers’ unions gathered on a dark, rainy night in the imposing stone Reichstag building to debate the problem and the best course of action. In addition to the question of asylum, questions of extradition to other countries and how to proceed with potential prosecutions were high on the agenda.

“It is not only the case for Germany that these legal questions have to be clarified, but that also goes for the other countries,” said Vice Adm. Hans-Joachim Stricker, commander of the German fleet, in an interview shortly before the proceedings began. “That is being worked on under high pressure, and once these legal questions are clarified, then the operations can be ordered.”

But some legal experts in Germany said that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and an existing United Nations mandate to combat Somali piracy already provided all the legal cover necessary for muscular action against the pirates.

“The legal regime is in existence, sustainable, and there’s no problem with that,” said Rüdiger Wolfrum, professor and director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and a leading jurist here. “There is a certain political hesitation to forcefully engage in anti-pirate acts.”

If it gets approval, the German military is planning to send a frigate, the Karlsruhe, with some 220 seamen on board, to join in the European Union’s first naval mission, Operation Atalanta, named after the swift huntress of Greek legend. “At this point we are finalizing the operational plan,” said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

Ms. Gallach said that half a dozen nations or more were expected to contribute to the mission and that its first tasks would probably begin Dec. 9, after the expected approval by the countries’ foreign ministers the day before. The presence is expected to include up to six frigates, three to five airplanes for maritime patrols and some 1,200 people in all, and the European Union hopes to coordinate actions with other navies operating in the region, including those from India, Russia and the United States.

But the Germans may not obtain the necessary approvals for their part of the plan in time to join the mission right away. Though the plan is expected to be approved before Christmas, the slowness of the process has frustrated some members of Parliament.

“I cannot believe that we could have this kind of problem, where pirates fool around with the international community,” said Bernd Siebert, a member of Parliament and a defense expert with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. “The bureaucratic obstacles and legal problems must be overcome. We have discussed this for too long.”

The capture of yet another ship on Friday, the chemical tanker Biscaglia, flying under the Liberian flag, underscored the point. The company that provided the security personnel for the ship, Anti Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, based in Poole, England, said in a statement after communicating with its team leader that “the ship came under sustained and heavy attack from automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.”

The security team had been using nonlethal means, including water cannons, to defend the ship. After getting the crew to a safe place, the men were unable to prevent the pirates from boarding and jumped overboard under fire, the statement said. The three men, two Britons and one Irishman, were rescued unharmed by a German military helicopter. Roughly 30 crew members were still on board the ship at the time of the hijacking, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which runs the Piracy Reporting Center.

A spokesman for the operations command of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, confirmed that the Mecklenburg Vorpommern, a frigate operating in the region as part of the American-led antiterrorism mission, sent its helicopter to investigate after receiving an emergency call from the tanker. By the time the helicopter, a Sea Lynx Mk 88, arrived, the pirates had already boarded the tanker, the spokesman said, thereby precluding aggressive countermeasures for fear of the crew’s safety.

“From the time a crew on board spots the pirates to the time they actually board is usually only 15 minutes,” said Peter Lehr, an expert on piracy and maritime terrorism at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Mr. Lehr said that even the addition of the European Union naval mission would not be enough to secure the vast area. “A naval escort has to be nearby. As soon as they’re on board it’s too late to do anything.”

Forty ships have been confirmed as hijacked this year out of a total of close to 100 that have been attacked, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The most spectacular hijacking occurred two weeks ago, when pirates captured a Saudi-owned supertanker, the Sirius Star, worth $100 million and loaded with two million barrels of oil, worth another $100 million.

Pirates have already collected at least $25 million in ransom this year, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said last week. The Associated Press reported Friday that a Greek-owned cargo ship taken more than two months ago was released Thursday.
Oops!  Not a pirate ship after all?  Any connection to latest terror event in Mumbai?
Indian Navy Sinks Pirate Ship
NYTIMES
By HARI KUMAR and ALAN COWELL
November 20, 2008

NEW DELHI — As negotiations started for the release of a Saudi-owned supertanker seized by pirates off Somalia, the Indian Navy said on Wednesday that one of its warships fought a battle at sea with would-be hijackers in the Gulf of Aden, sinking one suspect vessel and forcing the pirates to abandon a second as they fled..

The drama on the night-time waters of the Indian Ocean late Tuesday underscored the growing international concern at the audacity with which armed pirates, mostly based in Somalia, range across vast areas of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, attacking at will.

The enormous Saudi-owned supertanker, Sirius Star, remained at anchor off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday, but there was no immediate word on the status of negotiations for its release.

In Rome, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, confirmed that the owners of the Star “are negotiating on the issue” and were “the final arbiter of the issue”, despite the Saudi government’s official opposition to such discussions with “pirates, terrorists or hijackers,” according to news reports. But he did not elaborate.

The ship is owned by Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco. At 1,080 feet, it is the largest ship known to have been seized by pirates. Its 25-member crew is made up of personnel from Britain, Poland, Croatia, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia. The supertanker, about the same length as an American Nimitz class aircraft carrier, is fully loaded with two million barrels of oil valued at around $100 million. In a statement on Wednesday, Cmdr. Nirad Kumar Sinha, a spokesman for the Indian Navy, said an Indian warship, the INS Tabar, encountered a flotilla of three pirate vessels some 320 miles south west of the Omani coast in the Gulf of Aden in a separate incident on Tuesday evening. One ship was apparently a “mother ship” used by pirates to extend their range, with two speedboats in tow. The suspect vessel matched the description of a pirate vessel issued by international anti-piracy authorities, Commander Sinha said.

He said the ‘“whole operation lasted four to five hours” and was “the first such incident in which the Indian Navy sank the pirates’ mother ship.”

When the Indian vessel tried to halt the ship, he said, “the vessel’s threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship” if it came closer.

“Pirates were seen roaming on the upper deck of this vessel with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers,” Commander Sinha said. “The vessel continued its threatening calls and subsequently fired upon INS Tabar. On being fired upon, INS Tabar retaliated in self-defense and opened fire on the mother vessel.”

“As a result of the firing by INS Tabar, fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored on the vessel. Almost simultaneously, two speedboats were observed breaking off to escape. The ship chased the first boat which was later found abandoned. The other boat made good its escape into darkness,” he said. There was no immediate word on casualties among the pirates.

The Indian account suggested that pirates had attacked the Tabar, deployed to repulse pirates — equaling the brazenness of the hijacking on Sunday of the Sirius Star.

At least eight ships have been hijacked in a vast expanse of ocean off the east African coastline in the past two weeks.

On the same day the Indian Navy engaged the pirates, a cargo ship registered in Hong Kong and loaded with 36,000 tons of wheat was seized in the Gulf of Aden, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. The vessel, with 25 crew aboard, was headed for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

That hijacking was followed by a report Wednesday, still to be confirmed by Greek authorities, that a Greek bulk carrier had also been seized in the Gulf of Aden. A regional maritime group based in Mombasa, Kenya, told Reuters 23 to 25 crew were aboard that ship. The Associated Press also reported that a Thai fishing boat with 16 crew members had been seized off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday.

International anti-piracy patrols, deployed since August, have had occasional success.

Last week, a British frigate, the Cumberland, launched speedboats to intercept a hijacked dhow, exchanging fire with pirates before British naval personnel boarded it, the British Ministry of Defense said Tuesday. Eight alleged hijackers were captured and handed over to Kenyan authorities on Tuesday. Two people believed to be Somali nationals were killed in the operation, the ministry said.

The more aggressive actions by naval patrols were welcomed by international shipping organizations on Wednesday.

Cyrus Mody, of the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors global piracy, said in a telephone interview from London that the shipping industry had been urging stronger naval measures against the pirates’ “mother ships” for some time and would approve of the Indian Navy’s action. “This is the sort of action which should be taken to try to deal with the situation,” he said.

Peter Hinchliffe, the marine director of the International Chamber of Shipping in London, said in a separate telephone interview that the Indian Navy’s action “is going to start to bring the message home” to pirates “that the international community really is ranged against them.” However, he said, “we would prefer that the pirates are arrested and put through legal channels.”

This year, at least 92 ships have been attacked in and around the Gulf of Aden, more than triple the number in 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau At least 14 of those ships, carrying more than 250 crew members, are still in the control of hijackers. They include a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition, which has been held hostage since late September.

An estimated $25 million to $30 million has been paid in ransom to Somali pirates this year, according to a report released Tuesday by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general. But the cost is likely to spread to consumers as shipping companies face higher insurance bills inspired by the wave of piracy.

Brendan Flood, a marine underwriter for a specialist insurer Hiscox in London, said in a posting on the Lloyds’ insurance website: “With the general situation having deteriorated so quickly, insurance premiums for the hull, cargo and crew for vessels taking this increasingly dangerous route will be under pressure and will need to be reassessed.”
Maritime Hijackings Decrease in Asia
NYTIMES
By MARK McDONALD
November 19, 2008

HONG KONG — The hijacking of a Saudi supertanker has not led to alerts and alarms in Asia, which has weathered its own previous storms of piracy.

“It will be very difficult to copycat the Somalia situation in Asia,” said Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center at the International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “The governments here are more committed and have more resources. In fact, the attacks here are coming down.”

A regional piracy-monitoring agency in Singapore said maritime attacks in Asia in the first nine months of the year dropped 11 percent compared to 2007 and 32 percent from 2006.

Meanwhile, the hijacking of the Saudi tanker is just another red push-pin on the 2008 master piracy map maintained by the maritime bureau, a private group in the Malaysian capital.

The hundreds of pins denoting attacks and hijackings are heavily clustered in three regions — the Gulf of Aden and the eastern coast of Somalia; the coast of West Africa, particularly off Nigeria; and the Indonesian archipelago. But the vast majority of the incidents off Indonesia, and throughout Southeast Asia, are low-level attacks against small vessels, the petty theft of cargo or the robbery of crew members.

Maritime experts in Southeast Asia cite naval patrols by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore — known in the anti-piracy business as “the littoral states” — for the significant reduction in attacks, and particularly a decrease in hijackings. Satellite monitoring also is used.

Stepped-up sea patrols began three years ago when pirates began to increase their attacks in the Strait of Malacca — the long, narrow funnel between peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Even large cargo vessels and tankers became vulnerable as pirates began to arm themselves with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

In 2005, the insurer Lloyds of London listed the strait as the world’s No. 1 hot spot for seagoing piracy — in effect declaring it a war zone — and placed an insurance premium on any ships using the passageway.

The losses from the attacks, the new vulnerability of tankers and the extra costs for insurance led to tremendous anxiety among ship captains, owners, insurers and governments. An estimated 40 percent of the world’s seaborne commerce moves through the strait, including shipments of oil from the Middle East to East Asia.

“If oil would get disrupted in the Malacca Straits, Japan would get very concerned because that’s their oil lifeline,” said Mr. Choong. The last major act of piracy in the Asia-Pacific region was in December 2005, Mr. Choong said, when a large chemical tanker was hijacked en route from Indonesia to Singapore. The ship had a “tracker” on board, the equivalent of an airplane transponder, and was quickly found in the South China Sea.

“With the tracker, she had nowhere to run,” Mr. Choong said. “The recovery of ships is very high in Asia.”

Piracy in the region still happens, of course. The more serious incidents involve the seagoing theft of oil or gas from small tankers. Typically, the ship is seized at night by lightly armed pirates in speedboats. The crew is then set adrift in lifeboats and the cargo is pumped into an accompanying pirate tanker. The stolen oil and gas is then sold in small amounts in regional villages and ports.

In a transcript from the maritime bureau, this minor incident in Kalimantan, Indonesia, was the only one reported from Asia in the last week: “Four robbers armed with catapults, knives and hacksaws boarded a bulk carrier at anchor. They threatened the duty crew with catapults and stole ship’s stores from forward locker. Alarm raised and ship’s whistle sounded. Robbers jumped overboard and escaped in a wooden fast boat. Incident reported to coastal authorities.”

“The severity is much greater in Somalia, where the pirates are very heavily armed, as compared to Southeast Asia, where the robbers usually just have knives,” said Lee Yin Mui, assistant director of research at the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships at Sea. The 16-nation network, known as ReCAAP, is based in Singapore.

In the first quarter of this year, the maritime bureau recorded 83 ships being hijacked or fired upon worldwide. The Gulf of Aden had more than half those attacks, 47 in all, while only two incidents occurred in the Straits of Malacca.

“Hijacking incidents here involve much smaller ships, usually tugboats which are slow-moving and easy to board,” Miss Lee said. “The pirates escape in their own boats. The crews are often abandoned on a remote beach. We see this as quite compassionate.”

In the most recent hijacking, Miss Lee said 15 pirates seized a Singaporean tugboat, the Whale 7, as it was towing a barge to Thailand.

ReCAAP and the maritime bureau in Malaysia issued alerts to ship captains and harbor masters in the region, and the boat was found three weeks later in Thailand. The tug had been renamed the Saga 01 and repainted — from a deep-water blue to traffic-cone orange. The Thai police arrested the pirates, who said they had been paid $35,000 to seize the tug.

5 Somali Pirates Drown With Ransom
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:49 p.m. ET
January 10, 2009

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Five of the pirates who hijacked a Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of a $3 million ransom, a relative said Saturday, the day after the bundle of cash was apparently dropped by parachute onto the deck of the ship.

The Sirius Star and its 25 crew sailed safely away Friday at the end of a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden, where pirates attacked over 100 ships last year. Hundreds more kidnapped sailors remain in the hands of pirates.

The drowned pirates' boat overturned in rough seas, and family members were still looking for four missing bodies, said Daud Nure, another pirate who knew the men involved.

Piracy is one of the few ways to make money in Somalia. Half the population is dependent on aid and a whole generation has grown up knowing nothing but war. A recent report by London's Chatham House think-tank said pirates raked in more than $30 million in ransoms last year.

Somalia's lawless coastline borders one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, which links the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. Attacks have continued despite the patrols by warships from France, Germany, Britain, America, India and China.

The naval coalition has been closely monitoring both the Sirius Star and the Faina, a Ukrainian ship loaded with military tanks that has been held since September. The seizure of the Sirius Star on Nov. 15 prompted fears that the pirates might release some of the cargo of crude oil into the ocean, causing an environmental disaster as a way of pressuring negotiators. At the time, the oil was valued at $100 million.

Abukar Haji, uncle of one of the dead pirates, blamed the naval surveillance for the accident that killed his pirate nephew Saturday.

''The boat the pirates were traveling in capsized because it was running at high speed because the pirates were afraid of an attack from the warships patrolling around,'' he said.

''There has been human and monetary loss but what makes us feel sad is that we don't still have the dead bodies of our relatives. Four are still missing and one washed up on the shore.''

Pirate Daud Nure said three of the eight passengers had managed to swim to shore after the boat overturned in rough seas. He was not part of the pirate operation but knew those involved.

''Here in Haradhere the news is grim, relatives are looking for their dead,'' he said.

The tanker had left Somali territorial waters and was on its way home Saturday, said Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Naimi. A Saudi Oil Ministry official said the ship was headed for Dammam, on the country's Gulf coast, but gave no estimated time of arrival. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The U.S. Navy, which announced this week it will head a new anti-piracy task force, released photos Friday showing a parachute, carrying what was described as ''an apparent payment,'' floating down toward the tanker.

The Liberian-flagged ship is owned by Vela International Marine Ltd., a subsidiary of Saudi oil company Aramco. Neither commented on the reported ransom drop.

''All the crew members are safe and I am glad to say that they are all in good health and high spirits,'' said a statement by Saleh K'aki, president and CEO of Vela. ''Throughout this ordeal, our sole objective was the safe and timely release of the crew. That has been achieved today.''

But over a dozen ships and around 300 crew members are still being held. The capture of the Sirius Star has already demonstrated the pirates' ability to strike high value targets hundreds of miles offshore.

On the same day the Saudi ship was freed, pirates released a captured Iranian-chartered cargo ship, Iran's state television reported Saturday. The ship Delight was carrying 36 tons of wheat when it was attacked in the Gulf of Aden Nov. 18 and seized by pirates. All 25 crew are in good health and the vessel is sailing toward Iran, the TV report said. It did not say if a ransom was paid.
Pirates Release Hijacked Tanker Article
Wall Street Journal
By CHIP CUMMINS
JANUARY 10, 2009, 6:44 A.M. ET

DUBAI -- The operator of a Saudi Arabian oil tanker, hijacked by pirates in November, said the ship had been released, a day after the U.S. Navy reported that a package, believed to be a ransom, was parachuted from a plane onto the deck of the vessel.

The release ends one of the most dramatic of several recent pirate attacks in the waters off East Africa.

The Navy said Somali pirates aboard the vessel appeared to have received a ransom, and released photos Friday showing a package attached to a parachute being dropped to the Sirius Star. The supertanker, which has a crew of 25, was fully laden with a cargo of crude oil -- valued at more than $100 million -- when pirates seized the vessel in mid-November.

The Sirius Star is operated by Vela International, an affiliate of Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Aramco. Dubai-based Vela confirmed Saturday in a statement on its website that the vessel had been released, and that the ship's crew was healthy and "in high spirits." Representatives of Vela, Aramco and the Saudi government weren't immediately available to comment further on the U.S. Navy report of the suspected ransom delivery.

The Sirius Star was seized more than 450 miles off Africa's east coast, further south than most recent pirate attacks in and around the Gulf of Aden, a busy thoroughfare for oil tankers and other vessels.
Hijacked Supertanker Drops Anchor
NYTIMES
By ROBERT F. WORTH and MARK McDONALD
November 19, 2008

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — A hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker carrying more than $100 million worth of crude oil is believed to have anchored off Somalia and its owners are working toward “the safe and speedy return” of the 25 crew, the owners said Tuesday.

A statement from Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco, said the company was “awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel” who seized it some 480 miles off the coast of Somalia. Earlier reports said the 1,080-foot Sirius Star had been hijacked off the Kenyan coast.

The statement did not say specifically that negotiations with the hijackers had started. The supertanker, about the same length as an American Nimitz class aircraft carrier, is the largest ship known to have been seized by pirates.

The statement from Vela International, issued in Dubai, quoted the company’s president and chief executive, Salah B. Ka’aki, as saying the company’s “first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew. We are in communication with their families and are working toward their safe and speedy return." The crew is composed of 2 British, 2 Polish, 1 Croatian, 1 Saudi and 19 Philippines nationals.

“Vela continues to monitor the situation and coordinate with the relevant embassies. At this time, Vela is awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel,” the statement said.

Earlier, Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain said that if the hijacking follows the pattern of previous attacks, the ship would anchor and “negotiations will begin between the pirates and the owners of ship.”

Although the supertanker’s exact location near the Somali coast was not clear, in the past most pirates have brought hijacked vessels to a stretch of coastline between Eyl in the north to the Harradera region to the south, Commander Campbell said in a telephone interview.

The hijacking follows a string of increasingly brazen attacks by Somali pirates in recent months, but this appeared to be the first time that pirates have seized a loaded oil tanker.

Asked about a possible naval intervention, Commander Campbell said: “Once the attack takes place, this is a hostage situation, and there are 25 crew members on board that ship. As with any hostage situation, there has to be concern for those individuals.”

Negotiations with pirates have often taken weeks or even months. A Ukrainian vessel hijacked in September, loaded with tanks and other heavy weapons, is still being held at Hobyo on the Somali coast, where the ship’s crew remain captives, Commander Campbell said.

According to the International Maritime Bureau, a global clearinghouse for piracy reporting based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, , 88 ships have been attacked in the Gulf of Aden alone this year. And 14 hijacked ships remain in the gulf — the heavily armed hijackers still on board, with the crews, cargo and the vessels themselves being held for ransom.

“They’re still at sea and still negotiating,” said Noel Choong, the head of the bureau’s piracy reporting center. As ransom payoffs have risen, he said, pirates have increased their demands. “They know the going rate.”

Only a few years ago, the average ransom was in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now payments can range from $500,000 to $2 million.

The pirates’ profits are set to reach a record $50 million in 2008, Somali officials say. Shipping firms are usually prepared to pay, because the sums are low compared with the value of the ships.

The attack on the Sirius Star took place despite an increased multinational naval presence off the Somali coast, where most of the recent hijackings have taken place. The pirates, often armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, travel in speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment.

The location of the latest attack, far out to sea, suggested that the pirates may be expanding their range in an effort to avoid the multinational naval patrols now plying the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

“I’m stunned by the range of it,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference in Washington. The ship’s distance from the coast was “the longest distance I’ve seen for any of these incidents,” he said.

The vessel was headed for the United States when it was seized, Reuters reported.

Maritime experts recently have noticed a new development in the gulf — the pirates’ use of “mother ships,” large oceangoing trawlers carrying fleets of speedboats which are then deployed when a new prize is encountered.

“They launch these boats and they’re like wild dogs,” said Mr. Choong in Kuala Lumpur. “They attack the ship from the port, from starboard, from all points, shooting, scaring the captain, firing RPGs and forcing the ship to stop.”

There are some countermeasures the merchant ships can use when approaching pirates are spotted. Fire-retardant foam or huge blasts of water can be sprayed from the ship to douse the would-be hijackers.

Once pirates get aboard, however, the ship is theirs, because crews on commercial vessels are rarely armed, according to Mr. Choong and other maritime experts. “They are not mentally or physically fit enough to handle weapons,” he said.

Nor do many ship owners use armed contractors — seagoing mercenaries — to fight or ward off approaching pirates. Experts said crew safety and insurance liability were overriding concerns of captains and owners.

“We do not advocate this, having armed escorts on board,” said Lee Yin Mui, assistant director of research at the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships at Sea. Known as ReCAAP, the 16-nation network is based in Singapore.

“Armed escorts could only escalate the situation,” she said, “and perhaps trigger off heavy crossfire.”

OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD
Page last updated at 15:44 GMT, Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Map

Pirates kill sailor in attack on oil tanker off Benin

Pirates have attacked an oil tanker off the coast of west Africa, killing a Ukrainian seaman, the commander of Benin's naval forces says.

Cdr Fernand Maxime Ahoyo says the Cancale Star's chief engineer was killed and one other crewman wounded.

The pirates attacked the vessel some 18 nautical miles (33km) off the coast of Benin, in what correspondents say is the country's first such attack.

One pirate was overpowered by the crew, but the others managed to escape.

Benin-based journalist Esther Tola told the BBC that the pirates were thought to be from Nigeria.

The commander said naval forces had rescued the crew from the tanker and brought them into port.

There were 24 seamen of different nationalities on board the Monrovia-flagged vessel, including Filipinos, Lithuanians and Ukranians, Cdr Ahoyo told AFP news agency.

Western front

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) says piracy in the waters of west Africa is on the rise, with 100 such incidents recorded last year.

The IMB has previously warned of heightened piracy risks along shipping routes in Nigeria and Ghana, to the east and west of Benin.

It said attacks usually took place while ships were at anchor or close to coastal areas, unlike in eastern Africa, where Somali pirates strike ships hundreds of miles out to sea.

More than 10 ships and 200 hostages are currently being held by pirates operating in waters off Somalia.

An international force of about 40 warships has been stationed around the Gulf of Aden, in an effort to clamp down on piracy in some the world's busiest shipping lanes.


INDIA
Page last updated at 17:23 GMT, Monday, 7 December 2009

Chicago man accused of involvement in Mumbai attacks
Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, on fire
The attacks in Mumbai were the result of extensive planning

US prosecutors have charged a Chicago man with involvement in the deadly Mumbai (Bombay) attacks of a year ago.

David Headley is said to have helped identify targets for the assaults which left 174 people dead, including nine gunmen.

He had already been accused with another man of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper over cartoons that caused outrage in the Muslim world.

Federal prosecutors said Mr Headley was co-operating with both investigations.

Mr Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana are charged with planning attacks on the Danish offices of the Jyllands-Posten, which in 2005 printed controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

US prosecutors said they had also unsealed charges against a retired Pakistani military major, Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, for participating in the conspiracy to attack the Danish newspaper and its employees.


View of the pool at the Taj Mahal Hotel.  Photo from several years ago, prior to terror assault, by WestportNow photographer.

Mumbai Defendant Says He Would Accept Hanging
NYTIMES
By VIKAS BAJAJ
July 23, 2009

MUMBAI, India — The legal maneuvering over the confession of the sole surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks last November continued Wednesday, with the defendant, Ajmal Kasab, denying that he admitted his guilt in a bid to win leniency and avoid the death penalty.

“If anybody is worried that I am trying to escape death by hanging, I’m not,” he declared in court. “If that’s the punishment I am given, so be it.”

It was the third straight day of dramatic testimony in the Mumbai courtroom, where Mr. Kasab stunned Indians on Monday by delivering a lengthy admission of his role in the assault on hotels and other public sites in a brazen attack by militants based in Pakistan that killed more than 160 people.

The court is grappling over whether to accept Mr. Kasab’s confession. The judge overseeing the case, M. L. Tahilyani, said he would rule tomorrow. His decision could impact other cases pending in India and Pakistan.

Lawyers are also arguing about the way in which Mr. Kasab, who is supposed to have no access to newspapers or television, heard about the Pakistani government’s admission that Pakistani citizens were involved in the attack. Mr. Kasab said on Tuesday that guards outside his cell told him about the development, which prompted him to confess.

The prosecution asked the court to accept into the record a portion of Mr. Kasab’s admission of guilt on Monday related to the killings at a busy Mumbai train station, where Mr. Kasab and an accomplice mowed down dozens of people, but requested that it not admit other aspects of the confession that, it asserts, were filled with “lies and contradiction.”

The prosecutor, Ujjwal Nikam, alleged that Mr. Kasab had deliberately played down his role in the attacks to avoid the death penalty and help his Pakistani counterparts who will be tried across the border. He said any evidence presented in court here could make its way to court there, an argument that Judge Tahilyani discounted.

But Mr. Kasab’s lawyer, S. G. Abbas Kazmi, said that his client had been “mentally tortured” by his guards, who told him that the case was now a lost cause for him since Pakistan had given him up and since the police, court and even defense lawyers were Indian. When the judge asked Mr. Kasab if this was true, he said that this happened some time ago when he was in police custody, not recently.

Mr. Kazmi said the court should pursue one of two options: The judge can accept Mr. Kasab’s plea and issue a judgment and sentence, or he can reject the admission of guilt and prohibit the incriminating statement Mr. Kasab made on Monday from being used during the rest of the trial.

Mr. Nikam complained that the defense lawyer was trying to mislead the court. Mr. Kasab’s admission has been the latest in a series of surprising incidents in the trial that have included the dismissal of a defense lawyer who had improper contact with a witness.

The Indian press has extensively covered the trial’s every turn. Mr. Nikam and Mr. Kazmi have become familiar faces on television. They are mobbed by reporters every time they step out of the courtroom.

The judge declared part of Mr. Kasab’s testimony on Tuesday, about his indoctrination as a militant, so explosive that he put it under seal.

Mr. Kasab seemed to almost invite a death sentence on Wednesday. “Whatever I have done, I have done in this world,” he said. “It would be better if I am punished in this world. It would be better than God’s punishment.”

Page last updated at 12:13 GMT, Monday, 20 July 2009 13:13 UK
 Main Mumbai suspect pleads guilty

The leading suspect in last November's deadly attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) pleaded guilty.

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab stood up before the court to say he admitted his role in the killings. Mr Qasab, who is a Pakistani, faces 86 charges, including waging war on India, murder and possessing explosives.
It is not clear why he has changed his plea. In May, he pleaded not guilty to all charges. More than 170 people died in the attacks, nine of them gunmen. Prosecutors say Mr Qasab is the sole surviving attacker.

'Shocked'

The BBC's Prachi Pinglay, who was in the courtroom in Mumbai, said Mr Qasab appeared calm. He said there had been no pressure on him to confess and it had been his decision to do so.

"I request the court to accept my plea and pronounce the sentence," he told the judge, smiling.

Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said: "We were not expecting this. We were all shocked when he made a plea of guilt.

"It is for the court to decide whether to accept his plea or not. It was all of a sudden. The court is now recording his plea."

Shortly afterwards Mr Nikam told the BBC the confession was "a victory for the prosecution".

During his testimony, the suspect gave details of his journey from Pakistan, the attacks at a historic railway station in Mumbai and the city's Cama hospital. Mr Qasab's lawyer said he had nothing to do with the confession. It is not fully clear what prompted Mr Qasab to change his plea. He said he had done so because Pakistan had finally admitted he was a Pakistani citizen, but that was some time ago.

Police say Mr Qasab confessed before a magistrate to the attacks after his arrest, but he retracted that confession at an early hearing. His lawyers said then that it had been coerced.

Wept in court

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, 21, was arrested on the first day of the attacks and has been in Indian custody ever since. In his initial appearances before the court, Mr Qasab appeared relaxed and smiled and grinned. But more recently, he broke down and wept in court as a witness recounted the violent events which took place over three days in late November.

The attacks led to a worsening of relationship between India and Pakistan.

India accused Pakistan-based fighters from the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of carrying out the attacks. In the immediate aftermath of the killings, Pakistan denied any responsibility, but later admitted the attacks had been partly planned on its soil.

Islamabad also eventually admitted that Mr Qasab was a Pakistani citizen.

Pakistan Says Mumbai Attack Partly Planned on Its Soil
NYTIMES
By SALMAN MASOOD
February 13, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan acknowledged for the first time in public on Thursday that parts of the murderous Mumbai terror attacks were planned on its soil and said six new suspects were being held, including “the main operator.”

Rehman Malik, the senior security official in the Interior Ministry, said the attackers had set sail from southern Pakistan to Mumbai, where they used inflatable boats whose engines had been purchased in the southern Pakistani port of Karachi.

“Part of the conspiracy was done in Pakistan,” Mr. Malik said in a televised news briefing Thursday. He said a formal police inquiry had been launched “and I want to assure our nation, I want to assure the international community, that we mean business.”

His remarks offered the fullest public accounting so far of Pakistan’s investigation into the Mumbai attacks last November, when 10 attackers went on a murderous spree through luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other targets, leaving 163 people dead.

Only one of the attackers, Ajmal Kasab, survived and Islamabad has already acknowledged he was of Pakistani origin. But the disclosures on Thursday seemed, initially at least, to vindicate some of India’s earlier claims of greater Pakistani involvement, although they were not confirmation of India’s claims that elements of the Pakistani security apparatus may have been involved.

Mr. Malik went much further on Thursday in acknowledging the extent to which Pakistan had been the rear-base for the onslaught, seeking to assure India that Pakistan was investigating the killings vigorously. India has previously accused Pakistan of procrastinating in the inquiry, and has accused Pakistani “official agencies” of involvement, sharpening tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors who have gone to war in the past.

It was not immediately clear why Pakistan had chosen this moment to publicize its findings. Mr. Malik’s disclosures came on the final day of a visit to Pakistan by Richard C. Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, who was scheduled to fly later to Kabul, the Afghan capital. The timing may, thus, have been intended to display Pakistani goodwill.

Mr. Malik said investigators had identified three boats used in the attack. “The boats that were used by the terrorists to reach Mumbai are under our possession,” he said. “We have also identified the crew,” he said. “We have located the hide-outs.”

He identified by name some of those arrested as a result of the inquiry and said one of them had been lured back to Pakistan from Spain.

“Muhammad Ishfaq is under our custody,” Mr. Malik said, referring to one of the detained suspects. “Javed Iqbal, located in Spain — he is under our custody,” he said, without elaborating on their roles.

Sketching the international profile of the attackers’ communications, he said cellphone SIM cards were bought in Austria while calls over the Internet, using a server in Texas, were paid for in Barcelona, Spain.

“One person named Javed Iqbal was living in Barcelona,” he said. “Don’t ask how I brought him to Pakistan. He was lured to come here.”

Mr. Malik identified another of the conspirators held in Pakistan as Hamman Amin Sadiq, who, he said, had been traced through telephone records and bank transfers.

“He was basically the main operator,” Mr. Malik said.

India, along with many western intelligence agencies, has accused the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of responsibility for the attacks. Mr. Malik said that Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the operational commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the alleged overall mastermind of the attacks, was “under investigation.”

Lashkar-e-Taiba is an outlawed militant group that wants to expel India from Kashmir.

Mr. Malik said e-mails that claimed the responsibility for the attacks were allegedly created by Zarar Shah, the communications coordinator of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Mr. Malik said on Thursday that Pakistani authorities have not yet ascertained the identities of the other nine attackers because information provided by India was vague. “We have requested more information from India,” he said.

He said was pressing India to provide DNA profiles of all 10 attackers. Pakistan had given Indian officials a list of 30 questions to which investigators were seeking answers, including some relating to the records of conversations between the attackers and their handlers.

Vishnu Prakash, the spokesman for the Indian Foreign Ministry, said that India would respond officially to Mr. Malik’s disclosures after the Indian ambassador in Islamabad received official word about them from the Pakistani government later in the day.

Mr. Malik said that Pakistan had “gone the extra mile” to satisfy Indian concerns. Pakistan’s message to India was: “We are with you and we have proved we are with you,” he said.

Speaking before the Pakistani announcements on Thursday, India’s junior foreign minister, Anand Sharma, said, “What is required of Pakistan is that it should not delay, deflect or confuse, but act.”

Also speaking hours before the Pakistani news briefing on Thursday, Indian President Pratibha Patil called for “decisive and credible action” by Pakistan against terrorist groups.

“Despite solemn commitments given by Pakistan at the highest level that it would not allow territory under its control to be used for terrorism in any manner against India, terrorists from Pakistan have continued to attack India,” she said in a speech in Parliament.

“We expect Pakistan to honor the commitments made to us, and to take decisive and credible action against all terrorist groups that are based in and operate from its territory.”

Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New Delhi and Alan Cowell from Paris.
Pakistan Says Surviving Mumbai Gunman Is Pakistani
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:23 a.m. ET
January 7, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's information minister says an investigation has revealed that the lone surviving Mumbai gunman is a Pakistani citizen, as India has alleged.

Up until now Pakistan had refused to confirm Ajmal Kasab's nationality, saying he was not registered in the country's identification databases.  Information Minister Sherry Rehman confirmed Kasab was a Pakistani in a text message but gave no other details.  The confirmation Wednesday comes a day after New Delhi handed over a dossier of what it said was evidence linking the Mumbai attackers to Pakistan.
The attacks in November killed 164 people and left nine of 10 gunmen dead. Pakistan has made some moves against groups alleged linked to the attacks.
Indian Police Disclose More Suicide Attackers
NYTIMES
By JEREMY KAHN and ROBERT F. WORTH
December 10, 2008

MUMBAI, India — The Mumbai police said Tuesday that the 10 men who carried out the terrorist attacks here belonged to a group of 30 recruits of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Pakistani militant organization who had been selected for suicide missions, and that the whereabouts of the other 20 were unknown.

It was the first time that the Indian police had disclosed the larger number of suicide recruits, and while they said there was no reason to believe that the other 20 were in India, they expressed concern about such a possibility.

"Another 20 were ready to die," said Deven Bharti, a Mumbai Police deputy commissioner, in an interview. “This is the very disturbing part of it.”

The Indian police have consistently maintained that only 10 gunmen participated in the Nov. 26-29 attacks in Mumbai that left 171 people dead and raised tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan to the the highest in years.

Mr. Bharti said the information about the other recruits came from the sole surviving attacker, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, who was arrested during the attacks and has been in police custody ever since.

The deputy commissioner also said that based on the questioning of Mr. Kasab, the 30 recruits were provided with highly specialized training, including learning marine combat skills.

Once Mr. Kasab and his nine fellow attackers were selected by Lashkar leaders, they were kept sequestered in a house for three months, the deputy commissioner said. Here they were further divided into two-man teams, each team assigned a different target within Mumbai to attack, information that they were forbidden from sharing with one another. They never saw the other 20 trainees again, the deputy commissioner said, according to the information provided by Mr. Kasab.

The Indian police also on Tuesday provided further names and photographs of the Mumbai attackers, and supplied new details of the weaponry and communications and navigation equipment that they used during their assault.

The authorities had already identified two of the Mumbai gunmen, including Mr. Kasab, the lone survivor from the attacks, from the village of Faridkot, and Ismail Khan, from Deira Ismail Khan.

Each of the men had aliases, and they knew each other only by those aliases during their training, the police said. Only in the final few days before the attack, while they traveled by boat from the port of Karachi in Pakistan across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai, did they learn each others’ true names, said Rakesh Maria, Mumbai’s joint police commissioner.

At a news conference in Mumbai, Mr. Maria said the attackers carried a dozen grenades, a 9 mm handgun with two 18 round clips and an AK-47, along with seven to nine 30 round magazines, in addition to more than 100 rounds of loose ammunition. Mr. Maria had said previously that each terrorist also carried an 8 kilogram bomb. Three of these bombs were recovered and diffused, while the others exploded at various locations around the city, according to the police.

As the Indian police gave more information about the attackers, the Pakistani government publicly confirmed for the first time on Tuesday that its forces had seized two militant leaders, including the operational commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The confirmation of the arrest of the Lashkar leader, Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, was made by Pakistani Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar in an interview on Indian television. It was the furthest the authorities in Pakistan have yet gone in publicly acknowledging the possible complicity of Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Mumbai attacks.

Mr. Mukhtar identified the second militant leader arrested as Masood Azhar, head of Jaish-e-Muhammad, another banned militant group based in Pakistan.

Mr. Azhar, who was freed in 1999 in exchange for hostages on a hijacked Indian Airlines plane in Kandahar, Afghanistan, was on a list presented to Pakistan by the Indian government days after the attacks in Mumbai. The list contained the names of 20 suspects wanted in connection with other terrorist attacks and pending criminal cases.

Mr. Lakhvi “has been picked up,” Mr. Mukhtar said, according to the television channel, CNN-IBN. “About Masood Azhar, I don’t think we had decided yesterday to pick him up but our president is determined that we remove all irritants and as a small irritant he has been picked up.” He said that President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan was “determined that we must cooperate with India.”

Mr. Zardari himself, in an op-ed article published in the Tuesday edition of The New York Times, said Pakistan feels India’s pain and that Pakistan “is committed to the pursuit, arrest, trial and punishment of anyone involved in these heinous attacks.” But Mr. Zardari also cautioned India against what he called “hasty judgments and inflammatory statements.”

After mounting pressure from the United States and India, Pakistani authorities on Sunday raided a camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group, in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, Pakistani and American officials said.

That operation appeared to be Pakistan’s first concrete response to the demands from India and the United States to take action against the militants suspected in the attacks.

Since then, the authorities have carried out raids on at least five more offices of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Associated Press reported Tuesday, citing an unidentified senior Pakistani security official. The official said that 20 more people had been arrested.

It was unclear from the defense minister’s remarks whether Mr. Lakhvi was detained in the first raid on Sunday. Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded 20 years ago with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies as a proxy force to challenge Indian control of part of Muslim-dominated Kashmir.

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials told The New York Times that Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, continued nurturing the group, even after 9/11, when the Pakistani government pledged to sever its ties with militant groups.

While investigators and intelligence officials say there is no hard evidence linking Pakistan’s spy agency to the Mumbai attacks, they have pointed to Lashkar as the likely culprit.

Jeremy Kahn and Robert F. Worth reported from Mumbai, India. Reporting was contributed by Jane Perlez in Islamabad, Pakistan; Graham Bowley in New York; Eric Schmitt in Washington; Yusuf Jameel in Srinagar, Kashmir; and Salman Masood in Islamabad, Pakistan.
India Acknowledges Errors in Security Response to Attacks
NYTIMES
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and JANE PERLEZ
December 6, 2008

MUMBAI, India — India conceded Friday that the devastating terrorist attacks on Mumbai last week revealed “lapses” in its security arrangements, while the country’s prime minister articulated the scale of anger and grievance stirred by the attacks in the Indian public.

“The people of India feel a sense of hurt and anger as never before,” said the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, at a news conference in New Delhi.

That anger has been directed in part at India’s neighbor, Pakistan, where Indian and American officials believe the attackers received training, and Mr. Manmohan said on Friday that other countries around the world should now confront Pakistan over the alleged presence of terrorists on its soil.

“We expect the world community to come to the same conclusion, that the territory of a neighboring country has been used for this crime,” he said, referring to Pakistan.

But the anger is also focused domestically too, as Indians rage at their government for not having done more to protect them.  In the most public outrage so far, tens of thousands in Mumbai marched near the attacked sites on Wednesday, while similar rallies were held in New Delhi and in the southern technology hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad.  Speaking in Mumbai on Friday, India’s new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, admitted that there had been “lapses” in the way India handled the crisis and said his government was trying to “improve the effectiveness of the security systems.”

“There have been lapses,” he told reporters. “I would be less than truthful if I said there had been no lapses.”

Questions raised include why Indian intelligence had no forewarning of the plot, why security was so loose at the sites attacked in Mumbai, and why Indian security forces were so poorly armed — and in some cases so slow to respond.  Meanwhile, evidence linking the attackers to Pakistan builds. Fresh evidence unearthed by investigators in India has indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.  The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.

While Mr. Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai.  It now appears that both men were in contact with their charges as they sailed to Mumbai from Karachi, and then continued guiding the attacks even as they unfolded, directing the assaults and possibly providing information about the police and military response in India.

Some of the calls appeared to be conversations about who would live and who would die among the gunmen’s hostages, according to an official who interviewed survivors and a report by security consultants with contacts among the investigators.  While Indian officials have pointed a finger directly at Pakistani elements, terrorism experts and some Western officials warned that the emerging sketch of the plotters was still preliminary and could broaden even to include militants within India. India, too, has a long history of antagonism with Pakistan.

In Mumbai, meanwhile, Mr. Chidambaram issued a lower tally on Friday for casualties in the attacks, saying 163 people — including 18 members of the security forces — died along with nine suspected terrorists. The number of injured was 293, he said. Previous accounts put the death count among the attackers’ victims at more than 170.  On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers’ commanders and bring them to justice.

“What I heard was a commitment that this is the course that will be taken,” Ms. Rice told reporters at Chaklala Air Base in Pakistan after meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

But while Pakistan’s leaders offered polite assurances, they made no public announcement of concrete measures to be taken against Lashkar. They have also continued to express skepticism of Pakistani involvement and have resisted handing over 20 suspects demanded by India.  Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose name means “army of the pure,” was founded with the help of Pakistani intelligence officers more than 20 years ago as a proxy force to challenge Indian control of Muslim-dominated Kashmir.

Since then, the group has broadened its ambitions, its reach and its contacts with an international network of jihadi groups. Its fighters have turned up in Afghanistan and Iraq and have been blamed for several other high-profile attacks in India before.

Today it is technically banned in Pakistan but operates openly through affiliates. Its links to Al Qaeda remain murky, as does the extent of its current ties to Pakistan’s main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

In an interview this week, Muhammad Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a parent organization of Lashkar, denied that Lashkar or its leader, Haffiz Muhammad Saeed, had any connection to the attack. The surviving gunman in Mumbai claimed to have met Mr. Saeed at a training camp in Pakistan.  American counterterrorism officials said there was no clear evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service played a role in the Mumbai attacks, or that Pakistani operatives were linked to the attackers.

Deven Bharti, a deputy commissioner on the Mumbai police force, would not comment on Indian media reports claiming direct links between the ISI and the Mumbai attacks.

But, he said, “we have certain evidence of government complicity that we are trying to verify.”

The weapons used in the attacks, he said, came from a factory based in Punjab Province in Pakistan that is under contract to the Pakistani military, he said.  The factory was also the source of grenades and explosives used in several earlier terrorist attacks in India, Mr. Bharti said. Those included bombings in Mumbai in 1993; a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July, he said.  Investigators discovered the link to the Pakistan factory, Mr. Bharti said, after recovering a grenade left by the attackers that had EN ARGES printed on it.

That corresponds to a brand name belonging to a German company that granted a license to the factory to make weapons for the Pakistani military.

One possible collaborator in the plot, the authorities say, was an Indian named Faheem Ahmed Ansari, who was arrested in February in a northern Indian state, Uttar Pradesh, along with two other suspected Lashkar members.  Mr. Ansari told the police interrogators that from fall 2007 to February 2008 he surveyed possible targets for Lashkar in Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the old Victoria rail station.

The Uttar Pradesh police said he was arrested in connection with a gun and grenade attack on New Year’s Eve on a police camp in Rampur when he returned to pick up weapons left behind. His intention was to take the weapons to Mumbai for use in a later operation, they said.  Other evidence emerged Thursday highlighting the sophistication and cruelty of the attacks.

Some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in the city had been treated particularly savagely, the police said, with bodies bearing what appeared to be strangulation marks and other wounds that did not come from gunshots or grenades.

Even before the attackers landed on Mumbai’s shores, Mr. Lakhvi, the Lashkar commander, who is normally based in Kashmir, helped organize the plot from Karachi for the last three months, said a Pakistani official in contact with Lashkar.   The gunmen also kept in contact with their handlers in Pakistan with cellphones as they rounded up guests at the two hotels, officials say.  The attackers left a trail of evidence in a satellite phone they left behind on the fishing trawler they hijacked near Karachi at the start of their 500-mile journey to Mumbai.

The phone contained the telephone numbers of Mr. Muzammil, Mr. Lakhvi and a number of other Lashkar operatives, according to a report on the Mumbai siege released Thursday by M. J. Gohel and Sajjan M. Gohel, two security analysts who direct the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London.  The numbers dialed on the phone found on the trawler used to call Mr. Muzammil matched the numbers on the cellphones recovered from the Taj and Oberoi hotels, the report said.

Based on evidence found on the trawler, it was possible that five other men were involved in the plot and were still at large, the report said.  In one of the hotels, a gunman asked several Indian guests what caste they belonged to and what state they came from, said an official who interviewed the guests.

Once the attacker found out these details, he then called someone believed to be Mr. Muzammil, who was also identified by the surviving gunman and who was in Lahore, according to phone records recovered by investigators.  The surviving guests said the attacker told the person on the other end of the phone the guests’ details and asked whether they should be killed or not.

At one point, a guest said one of the calls seemed to be a conference call with two people on the other end.

Once the calls were finished, the attacker moved the small group of guests, who did not know what their fate would be, into a room. When the attackers became distracted by tear gas fired by the police, the hostages managed to escape.  In another instance, the gunmen forced a Singaporean hostage at the Oberoi hotel, Lo Hwei Yen, to call her husband in Singapore. She told him that the hostages were demanding that Singaporean officials tell India not to try a rescue operation. The next day, Ms. Lo was killed, the foundation’s report said.

Investigators found that after the gunmen killed her, they used the phone she had called her husband with, the report said.

“The worrying scenario is that Muzammil may have ordered her execution along with two other hostages that were found murdered in the same room,” the report said.

Somini Sengupta reported from Mumbai, India, and Jane Perlez from Islamabad. Reporting was contributed by Robert F. Worth and Jeremy Kahn from Mumbai; Hari Kumar from New Delhi; Salman Masood from Islamabad; Eric Schmitt from Washington; and Graham Bowley from New York.
More Mumbai Links to Pakistan and Signs of Hostage Abuse
NYTIMES
By JEREMY KAHN and SALMAN MASOOD
December 5, 2008

MUMBAI, India — The Mumbai police on Thursday identified a second Pakistani terrorist as an engineer of the bloody assaults on the city last week and confirmed that they were investigating whether a Mumbai man arrested on terrorism charges had scoped out some of the high-profile targets the attackers struck, leaving more than 170 dead.

Gruesome new evidence also emerged Thursday suggesting that some of the six people killed at the Jewish center in Mumbai had been treated savagely. Some of the bodies appeared to have strangulation marks and wounds on their bodies did not come from gunshots or grenades, the police said.

The new links to Pakistan added fresh complications to American diplomatic efforts to secure cooperation between India and Pakistan, which has questioned some of the evidence that Pakistanis were involved. On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers and bring them to justice.

“What I heard was a commitment that this is the course that will be taken,” Ms. Rice told reporters at Chaklala Air Base after meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

Ms. Rice’s brief visit to Pakistan completed a delicate diplomatic minuet with visits to the region by the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, who was in Pakistan on Wednesday and flew to India on Thursday for meetings.

In Mumbai, Rakesh Maria, India’s joint commissioner of police, said that the second Lashkar-e-Taiba military commander who helped engineer the attacks was Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. Mr. Maria said that the surviving attacker, 21-year-old Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, identified Mr. Lakhvi and said he helped indoctrinate all the attackers.  Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani guerrilla group that long focused on the disputed territory of Kashmir, is officially banned in Pakistan but, with a history of links to Pakistan’s intelligence, has been hiding in plain sight for years. On Thursday, a spokesman for the group’s leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, denied involvement in the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani news media reported.

Mr. Maria also said that it was believed that the attackers were in contact with Mr. Lakhvi on their journey from Karachi to Mumbai by sea and may have been during the attacks as well. Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified another Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks, and said he was in contact by satellite phone with the attackers during their journey.

Another police official, Deven Bharti, said the interrogation of Mr. Kasab, the captured gunman, was focusing on three lines of inquiry: the identities of the other nine; their training and planning; and whether they had local accomplices.  The suspected collaborator, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, was arrested on Feb. 10 in Rampur in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh a in connection with gun and grenade attack on New Year’s Eve on a police camp. He was arrested with two others; all three are suspected members of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Mr. Ansari told police interrogators in Uttar Pradesh that from fall 2007 to February 2008, he had been in Mumbai scoping out possible targets for the guerrilla group, including the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the old Victoria rail station.

The Uttar Pradesh police said that Mr. Ansari was arrested after he returned to Rampur to pick up weapons left behind from the New Year’s Eve attack and take them to Mumbai for use in a later operation.

Ms Rice, during talks with Pakistani leaders, stressed that Pakistan should be seen as acting sincerely and quickly.

“Pakistan should also take the necessary steps to prevent any non-state actors from indulging in such activities against any country from its soil,” Ms. Rice said, according to a statement from the Pakistani prime minister’s office.

At the news conference in Chaklala, Ms. Rice said that the Indian government is concerned and determined “to find the perpetrators, bring them to justice, determined to prevent the next attack.”

“I found the Pakistani leadership understanding the importance of doing so. Particularly in rooting out terrorists and rounding up whoever perpetrated this attack, from wherever it was perpetrated, whatever its sources, whatever the leads, because everybody wants to prevent further attacks,” she said.

For his part, Mr. Zardari told Ms. Rice that he will take “strong action against any Pakistani elements found involved in the Mumbai attacks,” according to a spokesperson for the Pakistani president.

Ms. Rice said Pakistan should be seen as acting sincerely and quickly.

Within India, sharp questions have been raised about the stunning inadequacy of Indian security forces and intelligence services. On Thursday, the Indian Air Force chief, Fali Homar Major told reporters that new intelligence reports had persuaded the authorities to declare an alert at airports. “This is based on a little warning that has been received,” he said. “We are prepared as usual.”

He offered no further details, but an Indian television network, NDTV, said the warning related to what it called a “9/11” plot timed to coincide with the anniversary on Dec. 6 of the destruction by Hindu militants of the Babri mosque in northern India in 1992.

News reports on Thursday said six airports, including those at New Delhi and Mumbai, were on alert, with heightened security searches for passengers and warplanes ready to take to the skies.

Jeremy Kahn reported from Mumbai, India, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. Reporting was contributed by Somini Sengupta and Robert F. Worth from Mumbai, India; Jane Perlez from Lahore, Pakistan; Hari Kumar from New Delhi; Eric Schmitt from Washington and Alan Cowell from London.
VIDEO REPORT FROM SKY NEWS HERE
More on the Captured Gunman
NYTIMES
By Sharon Otterman
December 2, 2008, 10:57 am

Indian police and government officials are beginning to speak on the record about the information they have gleaned from Ajmal Amir Qasab, the only gunman to be captured in the Mumbai terrorist attacks last week, as well as other aspects of the ongoing investigation.

Hassan Gafoor, the Mumbai police commissioner, told a news conference on Tuesday: “There were 10 terrorists in five groups of two members each, who had come from Karachi in boats. They later hired five taxis to get to their destination.”

He said the terrorists came from Pakistan and that they were trained for over a year by ex-Army personnel, according to a Sky News account of the press conference. The information tracks closely with what unnamed officials have been telling reporters about Mr. Qasab’s interrogation.

“They were carrying five time bombs,” Mr. Gafoor said. “Two exploded in taxis in Vile Parle and Dockyard Road. One bomb was placed inside Oberoi hotel, one near Taj hotel.”


Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner of the Mumbai police, held a news conference on Monday, confirming that Mr. Qasab said he was a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based Islamist militant group, and that he believed all of the attackers were from Pakistan.

More images of the gunman and his capture have also emerged.

Grainy closed circuit television footage released Tuesday shows Mr. Qasab and an accomplice — named by reports in the Indian media as Abu Ismail Dera Ismail Khan, 25 — opening fire at Mumbai’s main train station, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Another segment shows the gunmen firing at Indian police.

Sky News also has video images released Monday of the capture of Mr. Qasab by police, shot on a mobile-phone camera.

And Gulf News has an interview with Sebastian D’Souza, the Mumbai Mirror photographer who took the chilling photographs of Mr. Qasab in the train station. Mr. D’Souza jumped from train to train on the platform, evading gunfire, in order to get the photographs, which show Mr. Qasab advancing, wearing cargo pants, a Versace T-shirt and black sneakers, with an assault rifle in hand.
US Official: India Knew of Plot on Mumbai's Coast
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:19 p.m. ET
December 2, 2008

MUMBAI, India (AP) -- India received a warning from the United States before last week's attacks in Mumbai that militants were plotting a waterborne assault on the city, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday as domestic intelligence officials said they were aware of a Pakistan-based plot.

Another U.S. official added that there is reason to suspect the assailants were part of a group at least partly based across the border in Pakistan.

As the evidence of the militants' links to Pakistan mounts, a list of about 20 people -- including India's most-wanted man -- was submitted to Pakistan's high commissioner to New Delhi on Monday night, said India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

The revelations come as the Indian government faces widespread accusations of security and intelligence failures after suspected Muslim militants carried out a three-day attack across India's financial capital, killing at least 172 people -- including six Americans -- and wounding 239.

India has already demanded Pakistan take ''strong action'' against those responsible for the attacks, and the U.S. has pressured Islamabad to cooperate in the investigation. America's chief diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will visit India on Wednesday.  A Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of intelligence information, said Tuesday that the U.S. passed on information to India about a potential attack on Mumbai from its long waterfront. But the official would not elaborate on the timing or details of the U.S. warning to Indian counterparts.

Another American official said the assailants could have been at least partly based in Pakistan -- the closest the U.S. has come to laying blame for the attacks. The State Department official, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, was careful to say not all the evidence is in.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, Israelis began burying the six Jews killed in one of those attacks, the assault on a Jewish center run by the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement.

Several thousand ultra-Orthodox mourners gathered for the first funeral, that of Leibish Teitelbaum, an American who lived in Jerusalem.  Four Israelis and a Mexican Jewish woman were also killed. A memorial ceremony was scheduled for later Wednesday for the 29-year-old rabbi who ran the Jewish center, Gavriel Holtzberg, and his 28-year-old wife, Rivkah.

Indian officials continued to interrogate the only surviving attacker, who reportedly told police that he and the other nine gunmen had trained for months in camps in Pakistan operated by the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India's foreign intelligence agency received information as recently as September that Pakistan-based terrorists were plotting attacks against Mumbai targets, according to a government intelligence official familiar with the matter. He said the information, which he attributed to Indian sources and not the Americans, included indications that hotels would be targeted but did not specify which ones.  The information was then relayed to domestic security authorities, said the official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the details and spoke on condition of anonymity. But it's unclear whether the government acted on the intelligence.

The famous Taj Mahal hotel, scene of much of the bloodshed, had tightened security with metal detectors and other measures in the weeks before the attacks, after being warned of a possible threat.

But the precautions ''could not have stopped what took place,'' Ratan Tata, chairman of the company that owns the hotel, told CNN. ''They (the gunmen) didn't come through that entrance. They came from somewhere in the back.''

A day after soldiers finishing removed the last bodies from the hotel, where the standoff finally ended Saturday morning, wood boards covered its marble latticework and seafront entrance as plainclothes police searched for evidence.  The building was the last to be cleared, following the five-star Oberoi hotel, the Jewish center, and other sites struck in this city of 18 million.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has promised to strengthen maritime and air security and look into creating a new federal investigative agency, met Tuesday with top security aides to review any government lapses.  Among those sought by India is fugitive Dawood Ibrahim -- a powerful gangster, the alleged mastermind of 1993 Mumbai bombings, and India's most-wanted man.  Also included is Masood Azhar, a terror suspect freed from an Indian prison in exchange for the release of hostages aboard an Indian Airlines aircraft hijacked on Christmas Day 1999.

In the past, Pakistan has denied harboring the men. However, Pakistan said it would consider India's request and respond after receiving the list.

''We must try to dampen down the discourse of conflict and work toward regional peace,'' said Pakistani Information Minister Sherry Rehman.

While the cross-border rhetoric between Pakistan and India has increased since the attacks, both countries -- by their often-bellicose standards -- carefully refrained from making statements that could quickly lead to a buildup of troops along their already militarized frontier.  Mukherjee appeared to tone things down further Tuesday, telling reporters that ''nobody is talking about military action,'' according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Mukherjee, responding to questions on what actions India would take, said only ''time will show.''

In Pakistan, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi pledged full cooperation.

Qureshi said Pakistan has offered a ''joint investigative mechanism and joint commission.'' He didn't say when the offer was made or if India had responded.  With the investigation still under way, and FBI and Scotland Yard teams assisting, more details emerged about the suspects and the attacks.

The sole surviving attacker, Ajmal Qasab, told police his group trained over about six months in camps operated by Lashkar in Pakistan, learning close-combat techniques, hostage-taking, handling of explosives, satellite navigation, and high-seas survival skills, according to two Indian security officials familiar with the investigation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the details.

Lashkar was outlawed in Pakistan under pressure from the U.S. in 2002, a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group.  Qasab told investigators the militants hijacked an Indian vessel and killed three crew members, keeping the captain alive long enough to guide them into Mumbai, the two security officials said.  The men, ages 18-28, then came ashore in a dinghy at two different Mumbai areas before slipping into the city in two teams, officials said.

The gunmen hired two separate taxis after reaching Mumbai, planting bombs that later exploded in each vehicle, officials said. Two more unexploded bombs were found outside the Taj Mahal hotel.  The gunmen struck at several sites, including a train station, where they mowed down police and passers-by; the Jewish center; and the two luxury hotels, representing the city's wealth and tourism, reportedly seeking out Westerners.

The 19 foreigners killed were Americans, Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Mexico, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia, Singapore and Mexico.

------

Associated Press writers Ravi Nessman in Mumbai, Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Pakistan, Anne Gearan in Brussels, Belgium, and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.

Obama Says S.Asia Is Chief Threat to U.S.
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:40 p.m. ET
December 1, 2008

CHICAGO (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said on Monday militants based in South Asia represented the biggest threat to the United States and he was "absolutely committed" to eliminating the threat of terrorism.

"We cannot tolerate a world where innocents are killed by extremists based on twisted ideologies," Obama, who takes office on January 20, told reporters after naming his national security team.

"We're going to have to bring the full force of our power -- not only military but also diplomatic, economic and political -- to deal with those threats. Not only to keep America safe but also to ensure that peace and prosperity continue around the world."

With the world shocked by the deadly Islamic militant attack on India's financial center of Mumbai that killed 183 people, Obama pointed to South Asia as the area of greatest concern.

"The situation in Afghanistan has been worsening. The situation in South Asia as a whole and the safe havens for terrorists that have been established there, represent the single most important threat against the American people," he said.

"We're going to have to mobilize our resources and focus our attention on defeating al Qaeda, (Osama) bin Laden, and any other extremists groups that intend to target American citizens."

Obama offered American support when he spoke to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the Mumbai attacks.  India has blamed the attacks on militants from Pakistan. Obama said that while sovereign nations "obviously have the right to defend themselves", he did not want to comment on the specifics surrounding the Mumbai attack.

"I am confident that India's great democracy is more resilient than killers who would tear it down," Obama said.

"I can tell you that my administration will remain steadfast in support of India's efforts to catch the perpetrators of this terrible act and bring them to justice. And I expect that the world community will feel the same way."
Analysts Say It Will Be Difficult to Shield Luxury Hotels From Terrorist Attacks
NYTIMES
By KEITH BRADSHER
December 1, 2008

MUMBAI, India — For decades, luxury hotels have been oases for travelers in developing countries, places to mingle with the local elite, enjoy a lavish meal or a dip in the pool and sleep in a clean, safe room.

But last week’s lethal attacks on two of India’s most famous hotels — coming just two months after a huge truck bomb devastated the Marriott in Islamabad, Pakistan — have underlined the extent to which these hotels are becoming magnets for terrorists. Worse, hotel executives and security experts say that little can be done to stop extensively trained gunmen with military assault rifles and grenades who launch attacks like the ones that left this city’s Oberoi and Taj Mahal Palace & Tower strewn with bodies.

P.R.S. Oberoi, the chairman of the Oberoi Group, said at a news conference over the weekend that he had directed his company’s hotels to step up security after the Islamabad bombing. The Oberoi banned anyone from parking in front of its hotel here for fear that a car bomb could destroy the glass wall at the front of the lobby, a risk at many hotels.

But those protections did not deter the attackers, who entered the Oberoi on foot.

Mr. Oberoi questioned whether any hotel could defend against such an assault.

“The authorities have to help us,” he said, by preventing attacks from occurring at all.

The Taj, it turns out, had warning, according to both an Indian government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and Ratan Tata, the chairman of the company that owns the hotel. In an interview on CNN, Mr. Tata said the hotel had temporarily increased security after being warned of a possible terrorist attack. But he said those measures were eased shortly before last week’s attacks and could not have prevented gunmen from entering the hotel.

American hotel chains have policies against discussing security precautions, but watched the Mumbai hotel sieges closely.

“We never talk about security measures in our hotels because to talk about what we do would compromise them, but I think it’s fair to say what happened in Mumbai is going to re-energize them,” said Vivian Deuschl, the spokeswoman for the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, a Marriott subsidiary.

Some hotels in Asia already take elaborate precautions, particularly in countries with histories of attacks on Western luxury hotels.

At the Grand Hyatt in Jakarta, Indonesia, for example, guards check the trunks of all vehicles and even use mirrors to check cars’ underbodies for explosives before letting them drive to the entrance. Guests’ baggage is opened and checked by hand for suspicious objects, and everyone must go through a metal detector before entering the building.

In Pakistan’s major cities, where hotels have been targets before, already-tight security at some hotels has become even more intrusive since the Marriott bombing. Guests have to pass through at least one, and often, several security checkpoints on their way into the hotels; some are staffed by paramilitaries. At the luxury Serena Hotel in Islamabad, those who wish to enter are grilled about where they are going and whom they are meeting.

But security experts say such measures — and even some lesser ones — will be difficult to implement outside of war zones or countries where hotels have already been made targets, even after the attacks in Mumbai.

“It is incredibly difficult to have a quick-fix solution to what we saw,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert with the Swedish National Defense College. “You are stuck with the dilemma of having a complete lockdown. Tourists don’t want that. They want to participate in the culture, they want to experience it.”

Hotels have some built-in design problems for those seeking to protect them from terrorists. Long hallways can turn into dangerous mazes during the type of attacks that occurred in Mumbai. And the Oberoi and the old wing of the Taj hotel, where most of the fighting took place, both have high, central atriums, as many hotels do. This proved to be a vulnerability.

After throwing grenades and directing automatic weapons fire at staff and diners in ground-floor lobbies and restaurants, the attackers at each hotel ascended the atriums. This allowed them to hunt down guests while dropping grenades and shooting at commandos below.

The Oberoi Group employs many plainclothes security officers in its hotels, but they are unarmed, Mr. Oberoi said.

J. K. Dutt, the director general of India’s National Security Guards, the commando force that took the lead in the fighting, said Sunday in a televised news conference that the most difficult gunman to attack in the Taj hotel was one who ascended a spiral staircase and took up a position behind an extremely thick pillar that was part of the 105-year-old building’s original structure.

Particularly at the Taj, the attackers seemed to have detailed knowledge of the building’s layout, Mr. Dutt said. They kept moving among large halls with multiple entrances, not allowing themselves to be cornered in small rooms without other exits. By contrast, the commandos and the police had old blueprints of the massive, labyrinthine hotel that did not clearly show which passageways were connected and which were blocked by walls, and did not show recent construction, Mr. Dutt said.

The police and first-response agencies should be working with the hotel industry to devise crisis action plans that would include computer programs detailing all internal and external aspects of hotel building structure, said Michael Coldrick, a London-based security professional and a former explosives specialist with Scotland Yard. For example, a prerecorded DVD walk-through of a hotel could be used to brief special forces assault teams to make sure that they know what to expect.

Hotels may also ask staff to keep a closer eye on customers. At some point, Mr. Coldrick said, “We might see cleaning ladies with explosives detectors.”

In the end, several security experts say, no system is foolproof.

The Marriott in Islamabad, which had been struck in the past, had layers of security in place on the night the truck bomber approached. The truck was stopped by security guards who check vehicles before allowing them through a hydraulic barrier.

Those precautions are credited with saving lives; the truck never made it past the barrier and closer to the hotel, where the blast would have been more devastating. Still, more than 50 people died and more than 250 were wounded.


FROM I-BBC:
Video report:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7752824.stm
 Pictures:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7751360.stm

Timeline Emerges Amid Security Changes in India
NYTIMES
By Sharon Otterman
November 30, 2008, 12:20 pm

Facing criticism over the government’s handling of the Mumbai attacks, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Sunday that the country would strengthen and streamline its anti-terrorist forces.

One key change will be to double the size of the 7,400-member National Security Guard — the elite, black-suited army commandos who launched themselves from helicopters onto rooftops during the attacks and went floor by floor in the Trident-Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels to flush out the terrorists. The new commandos will be based in four cities around the country, not just in Delhi, which is now their sole base.

The Times’s Heather Timmons and Hari Kumar have reported on Sunday that it took the commandos about 10 hours to begin their Mumbai operation. If the response had been quicker, said J. N. Rai, former intelligence officer and adviser to the home ministry, they could have “saved many more lives.”

Why did it take so long? A slow plane, sleeping commandos and lags in communication between top ministers, the Times of India reports.

According to the newspaper’s account, this is how the response played out in real time:

9:30 p.m. Wednesday: The terrorists strike Mumbai. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh is in Kerala. He is briefed about the attack. By the time he grasps the enormity of the situation, 90 minutes have gone by.

11 p.m.: Mr. Deshmukh calls Home Minister Shivraj Patil - who has now resigned from his post - and asks for NSG commandos. “How many men?” Patil asks. “200,” Mr. Deshmukh says. Mr. Patil calls NSG chief J.K. Dutt and tells him to send 200 battle-ready commandos to Mumbai.

11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday: Most of the NSG men have to be roused from sleep. They don their uniforms, strap on safety gear and collect ammo and firearms. It is discovered that the plane that can take 200 men, the IL 76, is not in Delhi but Chandigarh. Someone wakes up the IL 76 pilot, the plane refueled. It finally arrives in Delhi.

5 a.m. The commandos land at Mumbai airport. By the time they board the waiting buses, it is 5:25 a.m.

6 a.m. The buses reach the designated place in south Mumbai where the commandos are briefed, divided into different groups and sent out on their mission.

7 a.m. They start their operation about nine-and-a-half hours after the terror strike.

“When Indian cities are vulnerable to terror attacks,” the article concluded by asking, “why is there no commando force like the NSG, or its units, in every city?”
Bush Sends Rice to India in Aftermath of Attacks
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:23 p.m. ET
November 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President George W. Bush on Sunday dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi in support of India following the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 200 people, including six Americans.

Rice and Bush wanted an opportunity ''to express the condolences of the American government directly to the Indian government and the Indian people,'' Rice spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Rice was scheduled to leave Sunday night for a meeting in London and then travel to Brussels for a NATO gathering. On Wednesday, following the NATO meeting, she will travel to New Delhi, according to her new itinerary.

''Secretary Rice's visit to India is a further demonstration of the United States' commitment to stand in solidarity with the people of India as we all work together to hold these extremists accountable,'' White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

Rice had planned to attend the meeting of NATO foreign ministers Tuesday and Wednesday, with talks focusing on a broad international agenda, including Afghanistan, Georgia and the Ukraine. From there she was to visit Rome, Helsinki and Copenhagen, but it was unclear whether the trip to India would cancel or only postpone those visits.

Rice spoke with President-elect Barack Obama about India earlier on Sunday, McCormack said. It was the third phone conversation between the two since the attacks. Rice has also been in daily phone contact with Indian and Pakistani officials.

The announcement of Rice's trip came hours after Bush assured India's leader that the U.S. government will put its full weight behind the investigation into the attacks in Mumbai.

Earlier Sunday, a Republican senator endorsed a campaign suggestion from President-elect Barack Obama -- appointment of a special envoy, perhaps former President Bill Clinton, to the disputed region of Kashmir -- as the U.S. seeks to ease tensions between India and its nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan.

The lone gunman captured by police after the attacks told authorities he belonged to a Pakistani militant group with links to Kashmir, a senior Indian police officer said. India has blamed ''elements'' from Pakistan for the 60-hour siege during which suspected Muslim militants hit 10 sites across India's financial capital, leaving at least 174 dead.

Bush told India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in a telephone call that ''out of this tragedy can come an opportunity to hold these extremists accountable and demonstrate the world's shared commitment to combat terrorism,'' White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.

In addition to the Americans killed in the coordinated shooting rampage in India's financial capital, the foreigners among the dead included Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.

Bush told the prime minister that ''he has directed the state and defense departments along with other federal agencies to devote the necessary resources and personnel to this situation,'' Johndroe said.

Despite India's claim, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said: ''I don't think that this is the time for India or anybody in India to accuse Pakistan. It's time to work with Pakistan. Pakistan is now a democracy. India is a democracy. And as two democracies, we need to strengthen each other, rather than fall into the trap of the terrorists, who want us to fight with each other so that they can get greater strength.''

India repeatedly has accused Pakistan of complicity in terrorist attacks on its soil, many of which it traces to militant groups fighting Indian rule in the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir. The U.S. has tried to persuade Pakistan to shift its security focus from India, with which it has fought three wars, to Islamic militants along the Afghan border.

Obama told Time magazine in an interview in October that ''Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation ... that is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically.'' He spoke of devoting ''serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there to figure out a plausible approach.'' When asked if that sounded like a job for Clinton, Obama replied, ''Might not be bad'' and that they had spoken about the issue when they had lunch in September in Clinton's New York office.

The suggestion of sending an envoy won support from a leading Republican senator.

''I would think that might be a good idea because, it appears to me, that we have an interlocking situation of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India,'' said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Asked specifically about Clinton as a possible mediator, Lugar said: ''I think he could do a great job there.''

Lugar and Haqqani appeared on ABC's ''This Week.''






A worker, left, is seen through a broken window as another looks out at Leopold Cafe
Investigators are piecing together how the attacks unfolded

i-BBC 30 November 2008
How Mumbai attacks unfolded

New details have been slowly emerging about the early stages of the Mumbai terror attacks. Much of the information has been gleaned after the capture of one of the militants involved, as the BBC's Prachi Pinglay reports from Mumbai.

The story of the Mumbai terror attacks likely began when a private fishing trawler with five crew members set sail from the Arabian sea off the coast of Porbandar in India's western Gujarat state on 13 November.

Sometime during the next 12 days, the trawler was taken over at sea by at least 10 young men, aged between 20 and 23 years, carrying backpacks and bags, according to sources in the Mumbai police, coastguard, and commandos.

Investigators still do not know what the men were sailing on and where they were coming from when they took over the trawler - though suspicion has fallen on the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

What they do know is that the men tied up one of the crew in the trawler's engine room, and slit his throat. The abandoned trawler was found by Indian coastguard ships more than three nautical miles off Mumbai.

GPS co-ordinates

When coastguards boarded the vessel, they found the dead crew member, plus a satellite phone and GPS tracker that possibly belonged to the trawler's crew.

Investigators say that Kasar has told them that their work was to 'take hostages for safe passage'

Investigators told the BBC that the tracker showed "a return mapping for Karachi", leading to speculation that the men who attacked Mumbai had planned to return in the same trawler.

A ferry doing about 20 knots can cover the 506-nautical mile distance between Karachi and Mumbai in a little over 24 hours.

After abandoning the trawler, the men opened the inflatable dinghies they were carrying and sailed into Mumbai waters early on 26 November, a little more than 10 hours before the attack, investigators say.

An abandoned dinghy has been recovered in the sea off one of the many fishing colonies which dot the city's coast.

One of the top investigating officers told the BBC that the gunmen - nine were eventually killed and one arrested - split up into four groups and took the city's rickety black-and-yellow Fiat taxis from the fishing colony at Cuffe Parade to some of the locations they planned to attack.

They say the men left grenades or bombs inside the taxis before they got out. The taxis exploded soon after, killing two drivers and one bystander.

Locals look at a fire as it burns at Taj Mahal Palace
Militants split into groups, attacking a number of locations

The first round of attacks took place around the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or the Victoria Terminus railway station, when gunmen entered the platforms and fired on people indiscriminately.

They walked out of the station after the carnage, and shot three policemen and fired at journalists gathered near a cinema to record the event. Then they took a police van and drove off.

A flat tyre forced the gunmen to abandon the police van. The men then stole a Skoda car and drove towards the seafront Marine Drive, just as the other groups of gunmen were attacking a cafe, two luxury hotels and a Jewish cultural centre.

As the Skoda took a zig-zag route through the streets of Mumbai, the men inside opened fire in several locations - including at the Cama and Albless hospital for women and children.

Police say they intercepted the Skoda on the seafront and shot at it, killing one of the gunmen and arresting the other.

Twenty-one-year-old Mohammed Ajmal Mohammed Amir Kasar, who police says hails from Pakistan's Punjab province, is now the investigators' key to unravelling the planning that went into the attacks.

'Senseless violence'

Commandos who fought early pitched battles with the gunmen in the two luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident, say that the lithe attackers moved quickly from room to room and climbed up and down floors to throw them off tracks.

The gunmen set fire to curtains and threw grenades to distract the commandos, according to federal commando chief JK Dutt.

"We found a lot of unexploded grenades inside the hotel. They damaged a lot of property. It was senseless violence," he said.

They also found lots of dry fruits, Indian and American currency, ammunition and fake Mumbai college student identity cards in the bags the gunmen had left behind during the attacks.

"We are checking whether the gunmen had any local support. But what we are sure is that they were not from India, and had trained in and were carrying stuff - AK-56, AK-47 and 9mm revolvers and hand grenades possibly of Chinese make," said an investigator.

The investigators say that Kasar has told them that their work was to "take hostages for safe passage". He also told them their aim was to "create an international incident, and anything big in Mumbai would be noticed all over the world".



Bush Discusses India With Diplomats, Security Team
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:15 p.m. ET
November 29, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President George W. Bush held an hourlong video-teleconference Saturday with U.S. diplomats in India following the terror rampage left six Americans dead and raised tensions with neighboring Pakistan.

Bush held the secured video meeting from the Camp David presidential retreat where he spent Thanksgiving. He planned a brief statement about the attacks upon his return to the White House later Saturday.

Those participating in the session included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; David Mulford, the U.S. ambassador to India; Paul Folmsbee, consul general at the U.S. consulate in Mumbai; and members of Bush's national security team.

''President Bush thanked our ambassador and our consul general for all the work they've done to help Americans affected by the terrorists,'' White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

President-elect Barack Obama called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday night to offer condolences and was monitoring the situation. The siege, which killed at least 195 people, including 18 foreigners, in India's financial capital, ended Saturday when commandos killed the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel.

A previously unknown Muslim group with a name suggesting origins inside India claimed responsibility, but Indian officials said the sole surviving gunman was from Pakistan and they pointed a finger of blame at their neighbor and rival.

The U.S. is concerned about a potential flare-up between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed countries. To ease tensions, intelligence officials are searching for clues that might identify the attackers even as Indian officials claim ''elements in Pakistan'' were involved.

FBI agents were en route to India on Saturday. A second group of investigators was on alert to join the first team if necessary. The State Department warned U.S. citizens still in the city that their lives remain at risk.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said some ''signatures of the attack'' were consistent with the work of Pakistani militant groups known as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed that have fought Indian troops in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and are reported to be linked to al-Qaida. But the official emphasized it was premature to pinpoint who was responsible for the attacks. A second official, specializing in counterintelligence, also cautioned against rushing to judgment on the origins of the gunmen. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

''There were very worrying tensions in the region,'' said Gordon Duguid, a State Department spokesman.

As U.S. officials worked to ease hard feelings between India and Pakistan, a tentative rapprochement between the two nuclear-armed rivals could hang in the balance.

Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, said in a statement that his country is ''confronting the menace of terrorism with great vigor.'' Haqqani insisted ''it is unfair to blame Pakistan or Pakistanis for these acts of terrorism even before an investigation is undertaken.''

The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, said six Americans were killed. Among them were:

--Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivkah, 28. They were killed in an attack on the ultra-Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement's center in Mumbai, Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin said in New York. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Rivkah Holtzberg only had Israeli citizenship.

--Bentzion Chroman, an Israeli with dual U.S. citizenship who was visiting the center.

--Rabbi Leibish Teitlebaum of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was visiting the center.

--Alan Scherr, 58, and daughter Naomi, 13, of Virginia, who died in a cafe Wednesday night. They lived at the Synchronicity Foundation sanctuary about 15 miles southwest of Charlottesville, Va., and were among 25 foundation participants in a spiritual program in Mumbai, according to a spokeswoman for the foundation.
A Day of Reckoning as India Toll Tops 170
NYTIMES
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and KEITH BRADSHER
November 30, 2008

MUMBAI, India — Death hung over Mumbai on Saturday.

Bodies were extracted from the ruins of the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel in the hours after the standoff with militants there ended on Saturday in a gunfight and fire. At the main city hospital morgue, relatives came, clutching one another in grief, to identify their dead. By midafternoon, the morgue was running out of body bags, and by evening the death toll had risen to at least 172. Funerals, among them ceremonies for two policemen and a lawyer, went on throughout the day.

As the reckoning began after the three-day siege here, troubling questions arose about the apparent failure of the Indian authorities to anticipate the attack or respond to it more swiftly.

And tensions were high, as well, between India and Pakistan, where officials insisted that their government had nothing to do with assisting the attackers and promised that they would act swiftly if any connection was found within their country.

Perhaps the most troubling question to emerge Saturday for the Indian authorities was how, if official estimates are accurate, just 10 gunmen could have caused so much carnage and repelled Indian police officers, paramilitary forces and soldiers for more than three days in three different buildings.

As the investigation continued, it was unclear whether the attackers had collaborators already in the city, or whether others in their group had escaped. All told, the gunmen struck 10 sites in bustling south Mumbai.

Amid the cleanup effort in this stricken city, the brutality of the gunmen became plain to see, as accounts from investigators and survivors portrayed a wide trail of destruction and indiscriminate killing wherever the terrorists went.

At a gas station near the Taj hotel, attackers opened fire on two waiting cars on Wednesday, critically injuring two occupants. When a married couple in their 70s went to their third-floor window to see what was happening, the terrorists blazed away with assault rifles, killing both and leaving shards of glass that still hung in the window on Saturday.

Down the road, when the gunmen seized Nariman House, the headquarters here of a Jewish religious organization, neighbors mistook the initial shots on Wednesday night for firecrackers to celebrate India’s cricket victory over England.

But when drunken revelers in a nearby alley began throwing bottles and stones, two attackers stepped onto a balcony of Nariman House and opened fire on passers-by, killing a 22-year-old call center worker who was the sole support of his widowed mother; five others were injured. A teenage boy who stepped out onto his balcony and came within firing range was swiftly shot and killed, a witness said.

“We still don’t know why they did this,” said Rony Dass, a cable television installer who lives across the street from the gas station. He lost a lifelong friend, a tailor who was locking up his store for the night on Wednesday, only to be killed by a gunman.

At the Oberoi hotel, the second luxury hotel to be assaulted, the gunmen called guests on hotel phones; some of those who picked up were then attacked, their doors smashed open and the guests shot. At the Taj, terrorists broke in room by room and shot occupants at point blank range. Some were shot in the back.

“I think their intention was to kill as many people as possible and do as much physical damage as possible,” said P.R.S. Oberoi, the chairman of the Oberoi Group, which manages the adjacent Oberoi and Trident Hotels, both of which were attacked.

Evidence unfolded that the gunmen killed their victims early on in the siege and left the bodies, apparently fooling Indian security forces into thinking that they were still holding hostages. At the Sir J.J. Hospital morgue, an official in charge of the post-mortems, not authorized to speak to the press, said that of the 87 bodies he had examined, all but a handful had been killed Wednesday night and early Thursday. By Saturday night, 239 people had been reported injured.

Contrary to earlier reports, it appeared that Westerners were not the gunmen’s main targets: they killed whoever they could. By Saturday evening, 18 of the dead were confirmed as foreigners; an additional 22 foreigners were injured, said Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra State, where Mumbai is located.

The State Department has said at least five Americans died in the attacks. Consular officials from Britain, the Netherlands and Israel went to morgues on Saturday to see if their missing citizens had turned up there.

There were reports on the first night of the attacks that gunmen had rounded up holders of American and British passports at the Oberoi and herded them upstairs. But Rattan Keswani, the president of Trident Hotels, said he had found no basis for such reports.

“Nothing seems to suggest that,” he said, noting that a range of nationalities was represented among the 22 hotel guests who died, in addition to the 10 staff members, all Indian.

The city’s police chief, Hasan Gafoor, said nine gunmen were killed, the last of whom fell out of the terrace of the Taj hotel on Saturday morning as the siege ended. His body was charred beyond recognition when it was taken to the hospital. A 10th suspected terrorist was arrested; the police say he is a 21-year-old Pakistani, Ajmal Amir Kasab.

A senior Mumbai police inspector, Nagappa R. Mali, said the suspect and one of his collaborators, who was slain by the police, had killed three top police officials, including the head of the antiterrorist squad, Hemant Karkare.

Mr. Karkare was cremated Saturday morning in a crowded and emotional farewell.

The bodies of four other suspected terrorists were at the morgue at the Sir J.J. Hospital in Mumbai. Officials there put their ages between 20 and 25. All four were men.

Around dawn on Saturday, gunfire began to rattle inside the Taj Mahal hotel, one of about a dozen sites that the militants attacked beginning Wednesday night. They never issued any manifestoes or made any demands, and it seemed clear from their stubborn resistance at the Taj that they intended to fight to the last.

It was not long before flames were roaring through a ground-floor ballroom and the first floor of the Taj, a majestic 105-year-old hotel in the heart of southern Mumbai.

But by midmorning, after commandos had finished working their way through the 565-room hotel, the head of the elite National Security Guards, J. K. Dutt, said the siege at the Taj was over. Three terrorists, he said, had been killed inside.

By afternoon, busloads of elite commandos, fresh from the siege of the hotel, sat outside the nearby Gateway of India and shook hands with elated spectators.

“There were so many people and we wanted to avoid any civilian casualties,” one of the commandos told a private television station, CNN-IBN. He said they were firing from various parts of the hotel. By the end of the siege, he said, the gunmen had holed up in one room and barricaded the door with explosives.

The siege may have been over, but new tensions within the region were on the rise, particularly after India’s foreign minister on Friday blamed “elements” within Pakistan for the attack.

In an attempt to defuse the situation on Saturday, the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, told an Indian television channel in a live telephone interview that he supported a thorough investigation “no matter where it may lead.”

“My heard bleeds for India,” Mr. Zardari said. “As president of Pakistan, if any evidence points to anyone in my country,” Pakistan will take action, he said.

Mr. Zardari said he did not rule out the possibility of the top official of the Pakistani intelligence agency working with Indian officials on the case. But it was too early in the investigation for the top official to meet with his Indian counterpart to share information, Mr. Zardari said.

Soon after Mr. Zardari’s interview on Indian television, the Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said the Pakistani government was not involved in the attack.

“Our hands are clean,” Mr. Qureshi told a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, after a lengthy cabinet meeting called to discuss the rising tensions between the two rival countries. “We have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Mr. Qureshi also stressed that the Indian government had not blamed the Pakistani government for the attacks.

“They are suspecting, perhaps suspecting, groups or organizations that could have a presence here,” he said. “We have said if they have evidence they should share it with us.”

Reporting was contributed by Jeremy Kahn and Ruth Fremson from Mumbai; Hari Kumar and Heather Timmons from New Delhi; Jane Perlez from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Mark McDonald from Hong Kong.

Attackers Killed at Last Site of Resistance
NYTIMES
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and KEITH BRADSHER
November 29, 2008

MUMBAI, India – After nearly 60 hours of violence, police officials early Saturday said that the last remaining terrorists who conducted a series of attacks in the commercial heart of Mumbai had been killed, according to Indian television.

Briefing reporters a short while ago outside the Taj hotel, where the last terrorists had been holed up, J.K. Dutt, director general of the National Security Guard, said that three of the attackers had been killed.  According to a report on the Web site of the news network, IBN, Mr. Dutt said that one of the terrorists was shot and killed as he attempted to lob a grenade.

"We found the dead bodies of two terrorists inside the hotel lobby,'' Mr. Dutt was quoted as saying. "They had AK 47 guns on them."

Although some news reports suggested that the killing of the attackers Saturday morning indicated that the siege was over, Mr. Dutt said he could not confirm that the Taj had been cleared of all terrorists.

"I can't say that our operation is over," he said, according to the IDN report. "To make sure that there is no other threat, we are still searching each and every room of the hotel."

The killings at the Taj came on the third day of a siege that has shaken India, raised tensions with neighboring Pakistan and prompted searing questions about the failure of the authorities to anticipate the tragedy or to react swiftly enough as it unfolded.

On Friday, commandos had cleared attackers from one hotel and a Jewish center after more than 150 people had died in the terrorists' coordinated assaults. Most of the dead were apparently Indian citizens, but at least 22 foreigners were killed. As myriad accounts emerged of the carnage, a transcontinental vigil over the fate of a rabbi from Brooklyn and his wife, who ran the Jewish center, ended in a dramatic commando raid and, finally, with the news of the couple's deaths.

The main success of the day for the authorities came at the Oberoi hotel. The authorities said that two gunmen had been killed and 93 foreigners — some of them wearing Air France and Lufthansa uniforms — had been rescued, though 30 bodies were found. Exhausted survivors offered harrowing accounts of their ordeal, trapped on the upper floors of the high-rise hotel while gunmen prowled below. The National Security Guard said it recovered two AK-47s, a 9-millimeter pistol and some grenades.

For the first time, after several veiled accusations that Pakistan was involved, Indian officials specifically linked the attacks to their neighbor and longtime nemesis. India’s foreign minister blamed “elements in Pakistan” for the attacks , spreading the repercussions of the attacks beyond India’s borders. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday that there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group — Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has long been involved in the conflict with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir — was responsible.

The Indian authorities were beginning to face sharp questions about why operations to flush out a handful of assailants at the Jewish center and a second hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, had not moved more rapidly. And many other basic questions remained for a crisis that unfolded so publicly, on televisions, Web sites and Twitter feeds across the world. Who were the attackers? The police tally was at least eight killed and one captured alive, but could so few militants have caused such mayhem? How had they managed to plan and coordinate such an operation and then fight off highly trained commandos for so long?

The army’s operation at the Taj was entering its “final phase” late on Friday, the Indian military said. Commandos were battling at least one terrorist who was moving between two floors of the hotel. The army said two other gunmen had been killed there overnight on Thursday.

Indian commandos said the attackers at the hotels were well trained, with one carrying a backpack packed with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and they seemed to know the buildings’ layout better than the security forces, indicating a high degree of preparation and sophistication. Some were seen arriving by boat; others may have been guests at the hotels for days.

The leader of a commando unit involved in a gun battle on Thursday morning inside the Taj said during a news conference on Friday that he had seen a dozen dead bodies in one of the rooms.

His team found a gunman’s backpack, which contained dried fruit, 400 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, four grenades, Indian and American money, and seven credit cards from some of the world’s leading banks, he said. The pack also had a national identity card from the island of Mauritius, off Africa’s southeastern coast.

The attackers were “very, very familiar with the layout of the hotel,” said the commander, who disguised his face with a scarf and tinted glasses to hide his identity. He said the militants, who appeared to be under 30 years old, were “determined” and “remorseless.”

As the State Department reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called President-elect Barack Obama twice to brief him on the attacks, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday there was mounting evidence pointing to the involvement of Lashkar, or possibly another Pakistani group focused on Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad.

The American officials cautioned that they had reached no conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks, or how they were planned and carried out. An F.B.I. team was being sent to Mumbai to assist with the forensic investigation. In a statement, President Bush said he was saddened by the deaths.

At the Jewish center, Nariman House, commandos slid down ropes from a hovering Army helicopter, landed on the roof and stormed the building, home to the Hasidic Jewish group Chabad-Lubavitch.

The bodies of at least five people were found inside, including the slain rabbi, Gavriel Holtzberg, who held dual American and Israeli citizenship, and his wife, Rivka, an Israeli citizen. Another was that of Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, a Brooklyn native who moved to Jerusalem several years ago, according to a statement by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Israeli radio reported that a sixth body had been found at the center as well.

The dead at the Oberoi included a 58-year-old man and his 13-year-old daughter, members of a spiritual community visiting from Virginia, who were shot in the lobby. Two more Americans and two Canadians, traveling as part of the same group, were wounded.

As the day progressed, the Indian authorities kept up a steady stream of accusations aimed at Pakistan, raising fears of heightening tensions between the countries, nuclear-armed powers that have fought wars in the past.

R.R. Patil, the home affairs minister of Maharashtra State, where Mumbai is situated, said the assailant who had been captured alive was a Pakistani citizen. The Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said early evidence explicitly pointed to Pakistan’s involvement. “Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved,” he told reporters in New Delhi.

In London, officials said they were unable to confirm reports in a British newspaper that some of the attackers had British passports. Holding British passports is relatively common among people with ties to former colonies.

Pakistan seemed anxious to defuse the mounting crisis in relations. Discussions about sending a representative of the country’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Agency to India were under way. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said India and Pakistan should join hands to defeat a common enemy, and urged New Delhi not to play politics over the attacks in Mumbai, Reuters reported.

“Do not bring politics into this issue,” he told reporters in the Indian town of Ajmer during a four-day visit to India. “This is a collective issue. We are facing a common enemy and we should join hands to defeat the enemy.”

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan called Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India to say he was “appalled and shocked” by the attacks, Reuters reported. “Nonstate actors wanted to force upon the governments their own agenda, but they must not be allowed to succeed,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Jeremy Kahn from Mumbai; Mark McDonald from Hong Kong; Heather Timmons and Hari Kumar from New Delhi; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Alan Cowell from Paris; and Graham Bowley from New York.

Op-Ed Contributor
What They Hate About Mumbai
NYTIMES
By SUKETU MEHTA
November 29, 2008

MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.

Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. “Mumbai is a golden songbird,” he said. It flies quick and sly, and you’ll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird.

Just as cinema is a mass dream of the audience, Mumbai is a mass dream of the peoples of South Asia. Bollywood movies are the most popular form of entertainment across the subcontinent. Through them, every Pakistani and Bangladeshi is familiar with the wedding-cake architecture of the Taj and the arc of the Gateway of India, symbols of the city that gives the industry its name. It is no wonder that one of the first things the Taliban did upon entering Kabul was to shut down the Bollywood video rental stores. The Taliban also banned, wouldn’t you know it, the keeping of songbirds.

Bollywood dream-makers are shaken. “I am ashamed to say this,” Amitabh Bachchan, superstar of a hundred action movies, wrote on his blog. “As the events of the terror attack unfolded in front of me, I did something for the first time and one that I had hoped never ever to be in a situation to do. Before retiring for the night, I pulled out my licensed .32 revolver, loaded it and put it under my pillow.”

Mumbai is a “soft target,” the terrorism analysts say. Anybody can walk into the hotels, the hospitals, the train stations, and start spraying with a machine gun. Where are the metal detectors, the random bag checks? In Mumbai, it’s impossible to control the crowd. In other cities, if there’s an explosion, people run away from it. In Mumbai, people run toward it — to help. Greater Mumbai takes in a million new residents a year. This is the problem, say the nativists. The city is just too hospitable. You let them in, and they break your heart.

In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.

And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. Being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against. It is, as a monk of the pacifist Jain religion explained to me, “paap-ni-bhoomi”: the sinful land.

In 1993, Hindu mobs burned people alive in the streets — for the crime of being Muslim in Mumbai. Now these young Muslim men murdered people in front of their families — for the crime of visiting Mumbai. They attacked the luxury businessmen’s hotels. They attacked the open-air Cafe Leopold, where backpackers of the world refresh themselves with cheap beer out of three-foot-high towers before heading out into India. Their drunken revelry, their shameless flirting, must have offended the righteous believers in the jihad. They attacked the train station everyone calls V.T., the terminus for runaways and dreamers from all across India. And in the attack on the Chabad house, for the first time ever, it became dangerous to be Jewish in India.

The terrorists’ message was clear: Stay away from Mumbai or you will get killed. Cricket matches with visiting English and Australian teams have been shelved. Japanese and Western companies have closed their Mumbai offices and prohibited their employees from visiting the city. Tour groups are canceling long-planned trips.

But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.

If the rest of the world wants to help, it should run toward the explosion. It should fly to Mumbai, and spend money. Where else are you going to be safe? New York? London? Madrid?

So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. Stimulus doesn’t have to be just economic.

Suketu Mehta, a professor of journalism at New York University, is the author of “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.”
Mumbai Fighting Narrows to One Hotel
NYTIMES
By KEITH BRADSHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA
November 29, 2008

MUMBAI, India — The conflict in the stricken Indian city of Mumbai narrowed to a final running battle between commandos and at least one attacker who was still roaming the charred corridors of a luxury hotel, the Taj, but the murderous assault on the country’s financial capital continued to shake the nation and raised perilous tensions with neighboring Pakistan.

A measure of the possible disturbing implications of the attacks for regional relations, the chief of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence organization, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was due to make an extraordinary visit to India to assist in the investigations and calm tensions between the two countries, as the Indian government explicitly blamed “elements with links to Pakistan” and the full scale and death toll from the attacks became clearer.

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for the deadly attacks on Mumbai.

Indian security forces routed attackers from one luxury hotel in the city, the Oberoi, freeing hostages held inside, and from a Jewish community center, ending the conflicts there. More than 150 people, including at least 22 foreigners, were confirmed killed in total in the attacks across the city, which began on Wednesday night, as more bodies were carried out from the two hotels and the community center.

A rabbi from Brooklyn, New York, Gavriel Holtzberg, and his wife, Rivka, were among five hostages who were killed by attackers at the Jewish community center, Nariman House.

Also among the dead were two Americans, a 58-year-old man and his 13-year-old daughter, members of a spiritual community visiting from Virginia, who died in the Oberoi hotel. Two more Americans and two Canadians, traveling as part of the same retreat, were injured.

At Nariman House, the militants had executed the hostages in the center — most of whom were believed to be Israeli citizens — as Indian commando units stormed the attackers inside the building, the Indian military said, adding that two attackers had also been killed. Two French nationals, the founder of a French lingerie line and her husband, were also among those killed in the violence in the city, according to Agence France-Presse.

Shortly before night settled over Mumbai, the police said 24 bodies were discovered in the Oberoi hotel, where the police had finally taken control and many guests were set free earlier on Friday.

But the army’s operation at the second luxury hotel, the Taj, was only entering its “final phase,” according to the Indian military, with commandos battling at least one terrorist left inside who the army said was moving between two floors of the hotel, including an area that had been a dance floor for weddings and other parties. The army said two other militants had been killed overnight in the Taj. Later, commandos were seen rushing through the front door of the hotel, in what appeared to be another major assault to dislodge the militants.

Indian commandos involved in the fighting in the hotels said the attackers were well-trained and “remorseless,” with one attacker carrying a backpack packed with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and they seemed to know the hotel layout better than the security forces, indicating a high degree of preparation and sophistication.

With the situation seeming to come gradually under the authorities’ control, attention was shifting to the identities of the attackers, several of whom were reported to be seized during the onslaught.

The Indian media focused on the possible involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani guerrilla group run by Pakistani intelligence in the conflict with India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

As the State Department reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called President-elect Obama twice to brief him on the attacks, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday there was mounting evidence pointing to the involvement of Lashkar- e-Taiba, or possibly another Pakistani group based in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad.

The American officials cautioned that they had reached no hard conclusions about who was responsible for the operation, as well as how it was planned and carried out. An F.B.I. team had also been dispatched to Mumbai to assist with the forensic investigation of the attacks.

In a statement, President Bush said he was saddened by the two American deaths.

Amid an atmosphere of recrimination between political parties within India, a senior Hindu nationalist leader, L.K. Advani, said the Indian security services had become “preoccupied” with Hindu terrorists and missed threats from Islamists. The Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said early evidence explicitly pointed to Pakistan’s involvement. "Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," Mr. Mukherjee told reporters in New Delhi.

An Indian official said one assailant had been captured alive and was a Pakistani citizen. The assertion, by R.R. Patil, the home affairs minister of Maharashtra State, where Mumbai is located, could further increase tension between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed states which have fought wars in the past.

In London, officials said they were unable to confirm reports in a British newspaper that some of the attackers held British passports, which are relatively common among people with ties to former British colonies, but other officials said such a link was unlikely.

While the situation was gradually being brought under control by the Indian army and police, there were still pockets of resistance. In the Oberoi, some guests were still barricaded in their rooms as security forces reasserted control of the hotel, and they were watching events outside on television news channels. But police and military officers did not explain why the operation to flush out a handful of assailants in the Taj hotel and the Jewish community center had taken so long.

At the Jewish center, commandos slid down ropes from a hovering Army helicopter on Friday morning as they stormed the building. The blue-uniformed troopers landed on the roof and soon made their way inside the center, home to the Hasidic Jewish group Chabad-Lubavitch.

Throughout Friday, a gun battle raged inside the Jewish center, which echoed to the thump of explosions and the rattle of automatic fire. Later, Reuters reported that the commandos had blown up the outer wall of the center, and that the bodies of five hostages were discovered, quoting an Israeli diplomat speaking on Israeli television.

Late in the day, commandos in black uniform wearing heavy body armor moved into buildings around Nariman House, relieving commandos in blue or black uniforms who had been in action all day. For the first time, a van with six medics in surgical gowns and masks parked close to Nariman House, apparently in anticipation of casualties.

The main success of the day for the authorities came at the Oberoi hotel where police said that 93 foreigners — some of them wearing Air France and Lufthansa uniforms — had been rescued on Friday. Exhausted survivors offered harrowing accounts of their ordeal, trapped on the upper floors of the high-rise hotel occupied on lower floors by gunmen.

At the Taj hotel , several trucks carrying Indian commandos arrived at 1:15 p.m. on Friday. The troopers appeared to be starting an assault on the hotel, where an army official said at least one militant was still holding hostages. Throughout Friday, explosions and small arms fire were heard from the hotel as security forces sought to free hostages. But progress seemed cautious and slow. Outside the hotel, an Indian army sniper took up position in a cherrypicker. By late afternoon, smoke had again begun to billow from the roof of the hotel, parts of which were gutted by a huge blaze after the gunmen first moved into the hotel on Wednesday. And by nightfall, explosions and gunfire continued to shake the building.

The leader of a commando unit involved in a gun battle Thursday morning inside the Taj said during a news conference on Friday that he had seen a dozen dead bodies in one of the rooms.

His team also discovered a gunman’s backpack, which contained dried fruit, 400 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, four grenades, Indian and American money, and seven credit cards from some of the world’s leading banks. They pack also had a national identity card from the island of Mauritius, off Africa’s southeastern coast.

The attackers were “very, very familiar with the layout of the hotel,” said the commander, who disguised his face with a scarf and tinted glasses. He said the militants, who appeared to be under 30 years old, were “determined” and “remorseless.”

On Thursday, the police said 14 police officers had been killed in the city, along with nine gunmen. Nine suspects were taken into custody, they said.

In a televised speech Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed forces “based outside this country” in a thinly veiled accusation that Pakistan was involved. A day later, India’s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying that, according to preliminary reports, “some elements in Pakistan are responsible.”

But Pakistan seemed anxious to defuse the mounting crisis in relations with its neighbor. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said India and Pakistan should join hands to defeat a common enemy, and urged New Delhi not to play politics over the attacks in Mumbai, Reuters reported.

“Do not bring politics into this issue,” the Pakistani foreign minister told reporters in the Indian town of Ajmer during a four-day visit to India. “This is a collective issue. We are facing a common enemy and we should join hands to defeat the enemy.”

President Asif Ali Zardari called Mr. Singh, Reuters reported, to say he was “appalled and shocked” by the terrorist attacks. “Non-state actors wanted to force upon the governments their own agenda, but they must not be allowed to succeed,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Jeremy Kahn from Mumbai; Mark McDonald from Hong Kong; Heather Timmons and Hari Kumar from New Delhi; Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan; Alan Cowell from Paris; and Graham Bowley and Liz Robbins from New York.

Indian Forces Battle Pockets of Militants
NYTIMES
By KEITH BRADSHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA
November 29, 2008

MUMBAI, India — As the crisis in Mumbai neared its 48th hour, Indian commandos were battling to overcome stubborn resistance by militants on Friday, seeking to end the bloody assault on India’s financial and entertainment capital that has shaken the nation and raised perilous regional tensions with Pakistan.

Shortly before night settled over the stricken city, the police said the death toll had reached 143 with the discovery of 24 bodies in the luxury Oberoi hotel, where guests were set free on Friday after being holed up in their rooms as security forces re-asserted control of the building. But officers did not explain why the operation to flush out a handful of assailants in other places had taken so long.

Commandos slid down ropes from a hovering Army helicopter on Friday morning as they stormed a Jewish center that had been seized. The blue-uniformed troopers landed on the roof and soon made their way inside Nariman House, home to the Hasidic Jewish group Chabad-Lubavitch. The caution and pace of their maneuvers suggested the authorities were keen to avoid civilian casualties.

Throughout Friday, a gun battle raged inside the Jewish center, , which echoed to the thump of explosions and the rattle of automatic fire. There was no immediate word on the fate of hostages assumed to be held there.

Late in the day, commandos in black uniform wearing heavy body armor moved into buildings around Nariman House, relieving commandos in blue or black uniforms who had been in action all day. For the first time, a van with six medics in surgical gowns and masks parked close to Nariman House, apparently in anticipation of casualties.

Indian security forces claimed some success in rescuing hostages from the five-star Oberoi hotel but still appeared to be encountering resistance inside the ornate, turreted Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel. The hotels were two of several of the city’s landmarks hit by the attackers late on Wednesday.

Indian Army and paramilitary commandos made their way through both hotels, searching for bodies and survivors. In addition to the Jewish center and the hotels, the attackers, armed with grenades and automatic weapons, struck at least four other sites on Mumbai’s southern tip — the main train station, a hospital, a cinema and a historic cafe.

While there was still no definitive word on the identity or affiliation of the attackers, an Indian official said one assailant had been captured alive and was a Pakistani citizen. The assertion, by R.R. Patil, the home affairs minister of Maharashtra State, where Mumbai is located, could further increase tension between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed states which have fought wars in the past.

In a significant development, Pakistan said on Friday it was prepared to send its intelligence chief, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to India to share information in the investigation into the attacks.

News agencies cited police reports that 93 foreigners — some of them wearing Air France and Lufthansa uniforms — had been rescued on Friday from the Oberoi. Exhausted survivors offered harrowing accounts of their ordeal, trapped on the upper floors of the high-rise hotel occupied on lower floors by gunmen.

The Mumbai police chief, Hassan Ghafoor, said that 24 bodies had been found at the hotel and that the security forces had completed their operation there.

At the Taj hotel , several trucks carrying Indian commandos arrived at 1:15 p.m. on Friday. The troopers appeared to be starting an assault on the hotel, where an army official said at least one militant was still holding hostages. Throughout Friday, explosions and small arms fire were heard from the hotel as security forces sought to free hostages. But progress seemed cautious and slow. Outside the hotel, an Indian army sniper took up position in a cherrypicker. By late afternoon, smoke had again begun to billow from the roof of the hotel, parts of which were gutted by a huge blaze after the gunmen first moved into the hotel on Wednesday. The leader of a commando unit involved in a gun battle Thursday morning inside the Taj said during a news conference on Friday that he had seen a dozen dead bodies in one of the rooms.

His team also discovered a gunman’s backpack, which contained dried fruit, 400 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, four grenades, Indian and American money, and seven credit cards from some of the world’s leading banks. They pack also had a national identity card from the island of Mauritius, off Africa’s southeastern coast.

The attackers were “very, very familiar with the layout of the hotel,” said the commander, who disguised his face with a scarf and tinted glasses. He said the militants, who appeared to be under 30 years old, were “determined” and “remorseless.”

On Thursday, the police said 14 police officers had been killed in the city, along with nine gunmen. Nine suspects were taken into custody, they said.

On Friday, an Army general, N. Thamburaj, was quoted as saying he expected all anti-terrorist operations in Mumbai to be wrapped up by mid-afternoon.

There remained much mystery around the group behind the attack, which terrorism experts said was unusual in its scale, planning and boldness.

In a televised speech Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed forces “based outside this country” in a thinly veiled accusation that Pakistan was involved. A day later, India’s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying that, according to preliminary reports, “some elements in Pakistan are responsible.”

On Friday, Pakistan seemed anxious to defuse the mounting crisis in relations with its neighbor. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said India and Pakistan should join hands to defeat a common enemy, and urged New Delhi not to play politics over the attacks in Mumbai, Reuters reported.

“Do not bring politics into this issue,” the foreign minister told reporters in the Indian town of Ajmer during a four-day visit to India. “This is a collective issue. We are facing a common enemy and we should join hands to defeat the enemy.”

President Asif Ali Zardari called Mr. Singh, Reuters reported, to say he was “appalled and shocked” by the terrorist attacks. “Non-state actors wanted to force upon the governments their own agenda, but they must not be allowed to succeed,” he said.

The attacks could threaten recent American efforts to reduce the overall enmity between Pakistan and India, which were meant to enable Pakistan to focus more military resources against the rising threat of the Taliban in its lawless tribal areas.

Mr. Singh had issued a warning Thursday that seemed clearly aimed at Pakistan, which India has often accused of allowing terrorist groups to plot anti-Indian attacks.

“The group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country,” he said. “We will take up strongly with our neighbors that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated, and that there would be a cost if suitable measures are not taken by them.”

The suspicions raised by the attack seemed a blow to relations between India and Pakistan, which had been recovering from a low earlier this year after India blamed the Pakistani intelligence agency for abetting the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan. India has frequently accused Pakistan-based militant groups of fueling terrorist attacks on Indian soil, though lately it has also acknowledged the presence of homegrown Muslim and Hindu militant organizations.

Reporting was contributed by Jeremy Kahn from Mumbai; Mark McDonald from Hong Kong; Heather Timmons and Hari Kumar from New Delhi; Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan; Alan Cowell from Paris; and Liz Robbins from New York.

Page last updated at 13:13 GMT, Friday, 28 November 2008

Explosions and gunfire continue to be heard from the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, one of several sites targeted in attacks that have killed at least 130.

Troops battled with the gunmen for most of the day after swooping on the building at first light.  But a siege at a Jewish centre in Mumbai, where gunmen were believed to be holding a rabbi and others hostage, has ended, Indian media say.

India's foreign minister said "elements with links to Pakistan" were involved.  However, his Pakistani counterpart has urged India not to bring politics into the issue, saying "we should join hands to defeat the enemy"...


US investigators head to India to probe attacks 
DAY
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer    
Posted on Nov 28, 4:14 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States is sending investigators to India to help unravel who was behind the terrorist attacks that targeted largely foreigners in the commercial and tourist center of Mumbai. Three Americans are confirmed among those injured.

The State Department urged Americans not to travel to the stricken city - at least through the weekend - as U.S. officials checked with Indian authorities and hospitals to learn more about the extent of casualties.

A U.S. investigative team headed to Mumbai on Friday, a State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the U.S. and Indian governments were working out final details of the cooperative effort. The official declined to identify which agency or agencies the team members came from.

Department spokesman Robert McInturff said he could not identify those injured, but The Associated Press learned the name of one victim: Andi Varagona of Nashville, Tenn. She called her mother from a hospital Thursday and said she had been shot in the arm and leg while eating dinner at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel.

She said another Tennessee woman traveling with her was also injured, according to the mother, Celeste Varagona, but the woman's identity was not immediately available.

Alan Scherr, 58, and his daughter, Naomi, 13, who as members of the Faber, Va.-based Synchronicity Foundation traveled to India to participate in a spiritual program, were missing late Thursday, said group spokeswoman Bobbie Garvey. "Our Indian contacts there have gone to all the hospitals, but they haven't located Alan or Naomi yet," Garvey said. "We're very hopeful they'll be found safe."

The group said in a statement that four members of the 25-person group - two Americans and two Canadians - who were staying at the Oberoi Hotel were wounded by gunfire, and were believed in stable condition.

McInturff, the State Department spokesman, said U.S. officials have activated a phone tree to contact American citizens who registered with the U.S. consulate in Mumbai. So far there is no information that any American has been killed in the attacks, said McInturff.

Authorities in India said Thursday at least 100 people were killed and at least 300 injured when suspected Islamic militants attacked 10 sites in Mumbai. Teams of gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular tourist attraction, hospitals and a crowded train station.

"It would be premature in view of the unfolding tragedy in Mumbai and the corresponding investigation to reach any hard-and-fast conclusions on who may be responsible for the attacks, but some of what we're seeing is reminiscent of past terrorist operations undertaken by groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed," a U.S. counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity. The two groups mentioned by the official are Pakistani militants linked to al-Qaida who have fought Indian troops in Kashmir.

President-elect Barack Obama spoke by telephone with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for an update Thursday and received several intelligence briefings.

President Bush expressed condolences to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a phone call from the Camp David, Md., presidential retreat.

"The president offered support and assistance to the government of India as it works to restore order, provide safety to its people and comfort to the victims and their families and investigate these despicable acts," press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

The State Department set up a call center for Americans concerned about family members who may be in Mumbai. The number is 1-888-407-4747.

---

AP reporters Pamela Hess in Washington, Tom Breen in Richmond, Va., and Juanita Cousins in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this story.
I-BBC 27 November 2008
Indian PM vows action on attacks
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has vowed to take "whatever measures are necessary" to track down those responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

He said the perpetrators were based "outside the country" and India would not tolerate "neighbours" who provide a haven to militants targeting it.

Gunmen targeted at least seven sites in Mumbai late on Wednesday, killing at least 101 people and injuring 300.

An Indian general said 10-12 gunmen were still holed up at three sites.

At one, the Oberoi-Trident hotel, flames were seen rising from the roof.  Elite commandos had begun an operation to free hostages at the hotel, where dozens of people are said to remain trapped or held hostage, reports said.

A home ministry official said between 20 and 30 people at the hotel might still be hostages, while the owners said some 200 people were trapped inside.

Police earlier said hostages had been freed from another luxury hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace, but explosions and gunfire were still being heard by witnesses outside.

A stand-off continues at a Jewish centre, where an Israeli rabbi and his family are believed to have been taken hostage.

One militant reportedly phoned local TV from the centre offering to negotiate over the release of hostages.

In other developments:


In a televised address, Mr Singh said the government "will take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the safety and security of our citizens".

He described the attacks as "well-planned and well-orchestrated... intended to create a sense of panic by choosing high profile targets and indiscriminately killing foreigners".

The perpetrators were "based outside the country", he said, adding that they "had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country".

India has complained in the past that attacks on its soil have been carried out by groups based in Pakistan, although relations between the two countries have improved in recent years and Pakistani leaders were swift to condemn the latest attacks.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, in New Delhi for talks, said no-one should be blamed until investigations were finished.

"Our experience in the past tells us that we should not jump to conclusions," he told Dawn television.

Amid international condemnation of the attacks, US President George W Bush telephoned Mr Singh to offer his condolences and support.

Claim of responsibility

In the attacks late on Wednesday night gunmen, using grenades and automatic weapons, targeted at least seven sites including the city's main commuter train station, a hospital and a restaurant popular with tourists.

Police say 14 police officers, 81 Indian nationals and six foreigners have been killed.

Four suspected terrorists have also been killed and nine arrested, they add.

State police chief AN Roy earlier told local television that hostages held by the gunmen at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel - one of Mumbai's most famous hotels - had been freed.

Witnesses said civilians could be seen running from the hotel, some with suitcases. Ambulances were also reported to be arriving.

But the BBC's Mark Dummett, outside the Taj Mahal, says the situation has since become very confused, with the sounds of explosions and gunfire being heard from within the hotel, suggesting the siege is not yet over.

Earlier in the day, Indian commandos had been seen entering the hotels but there was little detail on the operation.

Meanwhile, the bosses of the Oberoi-Trident hotel say some 200 guests may still trapped in their rooms.

Earlier eyewitness reports from the hotels suggested the attackers were singling out British and American passport holders.

If the reports are true, our security correspondent Frank Gardner says it implies an Islamist motive - attacks inspired or co-ordinated by al-Qaeda.

A claim of responsibility has been made by a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen. Our correspondent says it could be a hoax or assumed name for another group.
Sophisticated Attacks, but by Whom?
NYTIMES
By ALAN COWELL and SOUAD MEKHENNET
November 28, 2008

PARIS — A day after the terror attacks in Mumbai that killed over 100 people, one question remained as impenetrable as the smoke that still billowed from two of the city’s landmark hotels: who carried out the attacks?

Security officials and experts agreed that the assaults represented a marked departure in scope and ambition from other recent terrorist attacks in India, which have singled out local people rather than foreigners and hit single rather than multiple targets.

The Mumbai assault, by contrast, was “uniquely disturbing,” said Sajjan Gohel, a security expert in London, because it seemed directed at foreigners, involved hostage taking and was aimed at multiple “soft, symbolic targets.” The attacks “aimed to create maximum terror and human carnage and damage the economy,” he said in a telephone interview.

But the central riddle was the extent to which local assailants had outside support. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India said the attacks probably had “external linkages,” reflecting calculations among Indian officials that the level of planning, preparation and coordination could not have been achieved without help from experienced terrorists, particularly groups affiliated to Al Qaeda. The planning of the attack has profound political implications for both India and its neighbor, Pakistan.

But the identity of the Mumbai attackers remained a mystery.

An e-mail message to Indian media outlets taking responsibility for the attacks in Mumbai on Wednesday night said the militants were from a group called Deccan Mujahedeen. Almost universally, experts and intelligence officials said that name was unknown.

Deccan is a neighborhood of the Indian city of Hyderabad. The word also describes the middle and south of India, which is dominated by the Deccan Plateau. Mujahedeen is the commonly used Arabic word for holy fighters. But the combination of the two, said Mr. Gohel in London, is a “front name. This group is nonexistent.”

“It’s even unclear whether it’s a real group or not,” said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the author of the book “Inside Terrorism.”

An Indian security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified said the name suggested ties to a group called Indian Mujahedeen, which has been implicated in a string of bombing attacks in India killing about 200 people this year alone.

On Sept. 15, an e-mail message published in Indian newspapers and said to have been sent by representatives of Indian Mujahedeen threatened potential “deadly attacks” in Mumbai. The message warned counterterrorism officials in the city that “you are already on our hit-list and this time very, very seriously.”

Several high-ranking law enforcement officials, including the chief of the antiterrorism squad and a commissioner of police, were, indeed, reported killed in the attacks in Mumbai.

Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims and not linked to Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba, another violent South Asian terrorist group.

“There’s absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it,” she said of the attack. “Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They don’t do hostage-taking and they don’t do grenades.” By contrast, Mr. Gohel in London said “the fingerprints point to an Islamic Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group.”

Mr. Hoffman said the attacks, which he called “tactical, sophisticated and coordinated,” perhaps pointed to a broader organization behind the perpetrators.

The Indian security official said the attackers likely had ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a guerrilla group run by Pakistani intelligence in the conflict with India in the disputed territory of Kashmir. On Thursday, the group denied involved in the Mumbai attacks. India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for a suicide assault on its Parliament by gunmen in December, 2001 that led to a perilous military standoff with Pakistan.

In London, Mr. Gohel said the Mumbai assaults seemed to blend the tactics of the attack on Parliament and an event two years earlier — the 1999 hijacking of an Air India flight to Afghanistan that affected foreigners and involved hostage-taking.

The Indian official also suggested the foot-soldiers in the attack might have emerged from an outlawed militant group of Islamic students. Photographs from security cameras showed some youthful attackers carrying assault rifles and smiling as they began the operation.

“There are a lot of very, very angry Muslims in India,” Ms. Fair said. “The economic disparities are startling and India has been very slow to publicly embrace its rising Muslim problem. You cannot put lipstick on this pig. This is a major domestic political challenge for India.

“The public political face of India says, ‘Our Muslims have not been radicalized.’ But the Indian intelligence apparatus knows that’s not true. India’s Muslim communities are being sucked into the global landscape of Islamist jihad,” she said. “Indians will have a strong incentive to link this to Al Qaeda. ‘Al Qaeda’s in your toilet!’ But this is a domestic issue. This is not India’s 9/11.”

That, too, was disputed by the Indian official. “This was Mumbai’s 9/11,” he said. The consequences of the attack, the official said, may be to disrupt any overtures to Pakistan and to ignite a backlash against Indian Muslims.

Reflecting a widespread assessment in Pakistan, Moonis Ahmar, a professor of international relations at the University of Karachi, called the attacks a well-thought out conspiracy designed to destabilize relations between India and Pakistan and sabotage efforts at reconciliation.

Hindus make up about 80 percent of India’s 1.13 billion population and Muslims 13.4 percent. A European security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his organization’s rules, said it was “too soon for a proper analysis” while Indian forces were still seeking to end the crisis. Theories about outside involvement, including the potential role of Al Qaeda, were not yet proven, he said.

Alan Cowell reported from Paris, and Souad Mekhennet from Frankfurt. Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Commandos move to free hostages in Mumbai hotels; Militant attacks have killed 104
Hartford Courant
By ANITA CHANG Associated Press Writer; AP writers Ramola Talwar Badam, Erika Kinetz and Jenny Barchfield in Mumbai, Raphael G. Satter in London and Cristian Salazar in New York contributed to this report.
8:49 AM EST, November 27, 2008

MUMBAI, India (AP) Black-clad Indian commandos moved painstakingly, room-by-room, through two massive five star luxury hotels Thursday in a bid to free dozens of people trapped by suspected Muslim militants who attacked at least 10 targets in India's financial capital of Mumbai, killing 104 people.  The rescue efforts, which continued throughout the day, were punctuated by frequent gunshots and explosions and orange flames billowed from the Taj Mahal hotel. Hostages and several bodies trickled out of the buildings.

More than 300 were also wounded in the highly coordinated attacks Wednesday night by bands of gunmen who invaded two five star hotels, a popular restaurant, a crowded train station, a Jewish center and at least five other sites, armed with assault rifles, hand grenades and explosives.

After dusk Thursday, the soldiers ushered several dozen captives out of the Oberoi hotel, another Mumbai landmark.

One of the freed hostages who did not give his name told reporters he had seen many bodies inside the hotel. But he refused to give more details, saying he had promised police not to discuss the rescue while it was ongoing.  The Maharashtra state home ministry said 45 captives had been freed from the Oberoi and 35 were still trapped inside.  Police said they were going slowly to protect the captives.

"The safety of the people trapped is very important," said A. N. Roy, a senior police officer. "It will take time but it will be completed successfully," he said.

A previously unknown Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for the carnage, the latest in a series of nationwide terror attacks over the past three years that have dented India's image as an industrious nation galloping toward prosperity.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed "external forces."

"The well-planned and well-orchestrated attacks, probably with external linkages, were intended to create a sense of panic, by choosing high profile targets and indiscriminately killing foreigners," he said in address to the nation.

Among the dead were at least one Australian, a Japanese and a British national, said Pradeep Indulkar, a senior government official of Maharashtra state, whose capital is Mumbai. An Italian and a German were also killed, according to their foreign ministries.  Police said 104 people were killed and 314 injured. Officials said eight militants were also killed.

The most high-profile target was the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, a landmark of Mumbai luxury since 1903, and a favorite watering hole of the city's elite.

Police loudspeakers declared a curfew around the Taj Mahal hotel Thursday afternoon, and black-clad commandos ran into the building as fresh gunshots rang out from the area.  Soldiers outside the hotel said the operation would take a long time as forces were moving slowly, from room to room, looking for gunmen and traps.  In the afternoon, bodies and hostages slowly emerged from the building. At least three bodies, covered in white cloth, were wheeled out.

Throughout the day, explosions and gunfire were heard and toward dusk flames again blossomed from a window of the Taj.

About a dozen people, including foreigners, were also evacuated from the hotel and whisked into a waiting ambulance. Several of them carried small pieces of luggage. One older man was carried into the ambulance by police.  The attackers, dressed in black shirts and jeans, had stormed into the hotel at about 9:45 p.m. and opened fire indiscriminately.

"I was in the main lobby and there was all of a sudden a lot of firing outside," said Sajjad Karim, part of a delegation of European lawmakers visiting Mumbai before a European Union-India summit. 

Suddenly "another gunmen appeared in front of us, carrying machine gun-type weapons. And he just started firing at us ... I just turned and ran in the opposite direction," he told The Associated Press over his mobile phone.

The shooting was followed by a series of explosions that set fire to parts of the century-old edifice on Mumbai's waterfront. Screams were heard and black smoke and flames billowed, continuing to burn until dawn.  Dalbir Bains, who runs a lingerie shop in Mumbai, was about to eat her steak by the pool at the hotel when she heard the sound of gunfire. She said she ran upstairs, taking refuge in the Sea Lounge restaurant, with about 50 other people.

They huddled beneath tables in the dark, trying to remain as quiet as possible while explosions were going off.

"We were trying not to draw attention to ourselves," she said. The group managed to escape before dawn.

The gunmen also seized the Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-orthodox Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch.  Around 10:30 a.m., a woman, a child and an Indian cook were seen being led out of the building by police, said one witness.  The child was identified as Moshe Holtzberg, 2, the son of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, the main representative at Chabad house. The child was unharmed, but his clothes were soaked in blood.

Sandra Samuel,44, the cook who pulled the boy out the building, said she saw Rabbi Holzberg, his wife Rivka and two other unidentified guests lying on the floor, apparently "unconscious.

Among those foreigners still held captive in all three buildings were Americans, British, Italians, Swedes, Canadians, Yemenis, New Zealanders, Spaniards, Turks, a Singaporean and Israelis.

"We're going to catch them dead or alive," Maharashtra Home Minister R. R. Patil told reporters. "An attack on Mumbai is an attack on the rest of the country."

At least three top Indian police officers — including the chief of the anti-terror squad — were among those killed, said Roy.

The attackers appeared to have been targeting Britons and Americans.

Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen who was dining at the Oberoi, told Sky News television that a gunman ushered 30 to 40 people from the restaurant into a stairway and, speaking in Hindi or Urdu, ordered everyone to put up their hands.

"They were talking about British and Americans specifically. There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: 'Where are you from?" and he said he's from Italy and they said 'fine' and they left him alone. And I thought: 'Fine, they're going to shoot me if they ask me anything — and thank God they didn't," he said.

Chamberlain said he managed to slip away as the patrons were forced to walk up stairs, but he thought much of the group was being held hostage.  The United States and Pakistan were among the countries that condemned the attacks.  In Washington, White House press secretary Dana Perino said the U.S. "condemns this terrorist attack and we will continue to stand with the people of India in this time of tragedy."

The motive for the onslaught was not immediately clear, but Mumbai has frequently been targeted in terrorist attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, including a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.

Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist with the Swedish National Defense College, said there are "very strong suspicions" that the coordinated Mumbai attacks have a link to al-Qaida.  He said the fact that Britons and Americans were singled out is one indicator, along with the coordinated style of the attacks.

"There have been a lot of warnings about India lately and there are very strong suspicions of a link to al-Qaida."

Later Thursday the Indian navy said its forces were boarding a cargo vessel suspected of ties to the attacks.  Navy spokesman Capt. Manohar Nambiar said Thursday that the ship, the MV Alpha, had recently come to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan.

The navy has "located the ship and now we are in the process of boarding it and searching it," he said. Earlier, Indian media showed pictures of black and yellow rubber dinghies found by the shore, apparently used by the gunmen to reach the area.

Mumbai, on the western coast of India overlooking the Arabian Sea, is home to splendid Victorian architecture built during the British Raj and is one of the most populated cities in the world with some 18 million crammed into shantytowns, high rises and crumbling mansions.

An Indian media report said a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks in e-mails to several media outlets. There was no way to verify that claim.  Among the other places attacked was the 19th century Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station — a beautiful example of Victorian Gothic architecture — where gunmen sprayed bullets into the crowded terminal, leaving the floor splattered with blood.

"They just fired randomly at people and then ran away. In seconds, people fell to the ground," said Nasim Inam, a witness.

Other gunmen attacked Leopold's restaurant, a landmark popular with foreigners, and the police headquarters in southern Mumbai, the area where most of the attacks took place. Gunmen also attacked Cama and Albless Hospital and G.T. Hospital, though it was not immediately clear if anyone was killed.

India has been wracked by bomb attacks the past three years, which police blame on Muslim militants intent on destabilizing this largely Hindu country. Nearly 700 people have died.

Since May a militant group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen has taken credit for a string of blasts that killed more than 130 people. The most recent was in September, when explosions struck a park and crowded shopping areas in the capital, New Delhi, killing 21 people and wounding about 100.

Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's 1 billion population, and Muslims, who make up about 14 percent, have sporadically erupted into bouts of sectarian violence since British-ruled India was split into independent India and Pakistan in 1947.

Islamic group claims India blasts that killed 45 
DAY
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, Associated Press Writer 
Posted on Jul 27, 10:02 PM EDT

AHMADABAD, India (AP) -- An obscure Islamic militant group warning of "the terror of Death" claimed responsibility for bombings that killed at least 45 people and authorities stepped up security Sunday after India's second series of blasts in two days.

The city's police commissioner, O.P. Mathur, said that 30 people had been detained for questioning, but there was scant information about the Indian Mujahideen, the little known group that took credit for the bombings in western India.

"In the name of Allah the Indian Mujahideen strike again! Do whatever you can, within 5 minutes from now, feel the terror of Death!" said an e-mail from the group sent to several Indian television stations minutes before the blasts began.

The e-mail's subject line said "Await 5 minutes for the revenge of Gujarat," an apparent reference to 2002 riots in the western state which left 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead. The historic city of Ahmadabad was the scene of much of the 2002 violence.

Saturday's e-mail, sent from a Yahoo account and written in English, was made available to AP by CNN-IBN, one of the TV stations that received the warning.

State government spokesman Jaynarayan Vyas said 45 people were killed and 161 wounded when at least 16 bombs went off Saturday evening in several crowded neighborhoods.

The attack came a day after seven smaller blasts killed two people in the southern technology hub of Bangalore.

Investigators in Surat, a city about 160 miles south of Ahmadabad, found a car carrying detonators and a liquid that police suspect may be ammonium nitrate, a chemical often used in explosive devices, city police Chief R.M.S. Brar told reporters.

The e-mail was sent by a group calling itself Indian Mujahideen that was unknown before May, when it said it was behind a series of bombings in Jaipur, also in western India, that killed 61 people.

In its e-mail, the group did not mention the bombings in Bangalore and it was not clear if the attacks were connected. But both Ahmadabad and Bangalore are in states ruled by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as is Jaipur, raising suspicions that whoever was behind the attacks may have wanted to make a political statement.

There were reports the e-mail may have been sent from a suburb of Mumbai, India's financial capital. But the city's police chief, A.N. Roy, said, "We are inquiring into that. We haven't traced it yet."

The Saturday bombs went off in two separate spates. The first, near a busy market, left some of the dead sprawled beside stands piled high with fruit, next to twisted bicycles. The second group of blasts went off near a hospital.

The side of a bus was blown off and its windows shattered, while another vehicle was engulfed in flames. Most of the blasts took place in the narrow lanes of the older part of Ahmadabad, which is tightly packed with homes and small businesses. Bomb-sniffing dogs scoured the areas.

Distraught relatives of the victims crowded the city's hospitals. One of the wounded was a 6-year-old boy whose father was killed in the blasts. He lay in a hospital bed with his arms covered in bandages and wounds on his face.

Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state where Ahmadabad is located, said the bombings appeared to have been masterminded by a group or groups who "are using a similar modus operandi all over the country."

India has been hit repeatedly by bombings in recent years. Nearly all have been blamed on Islamic militants who allegedly want to provoke violence between India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority, although officials rarely offer hard evidence implicating a specific group.

The perpetrators also rarely claim responsibility - a fact that raised doubts about the Indian Mujahedeen when it took credit in May for attacking Jaipur.

But fears that an attack could spark religious riots are real in India, which has seen sporadic violence between Hindus and Muslims since independence from Britain in 1947.

Those fears were amplified by the recent history of the 2002 religious riots. The violence was triggered by a fire that killed 60 passengers on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims. Hindu extremists blamed the deaths on Muslims and rampaged through Muslim neighborhoods, although the cause of the blaze remains unclear.

Ahmadabad is also known for the elegant architecture of its mosques and mausoleums, a rich blend of Muslim and Hindu styles. It was founded in the 15th century and served as a sultanate, fortified in 1487 with a wall six miles in circumference.



Israel: 6 men arrested for al-Qaida links, 1 wanted to shoot down President Bush's helicopter
Hartford Courant
By MATTI FRIEDMAN | Associated Press Writer
6:57 AM EDT, July 18, 2008

JERUSALEM (AP) _ Israeli investigators have arrested six men suspected of trying to set up an al-Qaida-linked terror network, including one who wanted to shoot down President Bush's helicopter, the Shin Bet security service said Friday.

Two of the men are Arab citizens of Israel, both of them students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, according to the statement. The other four are Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem. The men range in age from 21 to 24.

The new charges follow the arrest this month of two Israeli Arabs on suspicion they gave strategic information to al-Qaida. Those arrests marked the first time Israel had accused any of its citizens of cooperating with the terror network.

Investigators found bomb-making instructions on the personal computers of several of the six new suspects, the Shin Bet said. But the statement gave no indication that their activities ever moved beyond the planning stage.

None face charges of active involvement in any attacks.

One of the Israeli Arabs, a 24-year-old chemistry student, lived in a Jerusalem college dormitory overlooking a helicopter landing pad used by Bush during a visit in January, the statement said.

Using his cell phone, the student filmed helicopters taking off and landing, and sent a message to a Web forum linked to al-Qaida asking about shooting Bush's helicopter down, according to the Shin Bet.

The men were arrested in June and July, the statement said. But the information was only approved for publication on Friday, the day the men were to be indicted in a Jerusalem court.

The two men arrested earlier this month, Bedouin Arabs from southern Israel, gave al-Qaida operatives information about strategic sites like army bases, skyscrapers and Israel's international airport that could serve as targets, Shin Bet said.

It is a fact that historically, French law is different--you are never "presumed innocent"
France’s Terrorism Strategy Faulted
NYTIMES
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: July 3, 2008

PARIS — France’s much-praised system of using sweeping arrests and aggressive interrogations and prosecutions to combat terrorism violates the rule of law and prevents suspects from receiving a fair trial, according to a human rights report released Wednesday.

France prides itself on having the most efficient counterterrorism strategy in Europe. French counterterrorism officials insist that the flexibility of French law and the French judicial system has been crucial in their ability to respond to the threat of international terrorism and has helped prevent attacks on French soil.

But an 84-page report issued by New-York-based Human Rights Watch, entitled “Preempting Justice,” argues that that French practices result in too many arrests and convictions based on scanty evidence, putting the country “on the wrong side of the law.”

Specifically, the reports states that the broad and much-used charge of “criminal association in relation to a terrorist undertaking” is so sweeping that it is in essence “guilt by association” that allows authorities to arrest and interrogate large numbers of people even when they have nothing to do with suspected terrorist activity.

The charge is used in a number of other countries in continental Europe. Spain, for example, uses the charge much more aggressively than France, particularly against the Basque separatist group ETA.

“No specific terrorist act need be planned, much less executed, to give rise to the offense,” the report says, adding that even family members, friends, neighbors and casual acquaintances can be detained.

The Justice Ministry defended the country’s counterterrorism strategy, but said there would be no official comment on the report itself.

“Our judicial anti-terrorist system is exemplary, accepted as a model around the world, notably because it lets justice intervene while respecting the rights of the individual,” said Guillaume Didier, spokesman for the Justice Ministry, in a telephone interview. “We can catch terrorists before they act.”

The report also faults the French judicial system for giving suspects only minimal access to legal counsel, particularly in the early stages of an investigation. Suspects are allowed to see a lawyer for the first time only after three days in custody, and then only for 30 minutes. The lawyer does not have access to the case file.

Suspects can be held up to six days without being placed under formal investigation or sent before a judge. They may be subjected to what the report calls “oppressive questioning, at any time of the day or night, without a lawyer present.” Unlike the United States, for example, the report notes that “police are under no obligation to inform suspects of their right to remain silent.”

The use of information gathered from foreign intelligence services that use torture to extract confessions only worsens the problem, the report says. Indeed, French investigative judges have the ability to verify material for prosecutions in those countries.

“Some defendants in France who credibly allege they were tortured in third countries have successfully had the confessions excluded as evidence,” the report said.

The report cites testimony from people held in police custody on suspicion of terrorist activity suggesting the routine use of “sleep deprivation; disorientation; constant, repetitive questioning; and psychological pressure.” It adds that there are “credible allegations” of physical abuse of terrorism suspects in police custody.

The report also says that suspects can face long periods of detention — sometime years — before trial,

French authorities have been highly critical of the United States for holding detainees at Guantánamo indefinitely, without according them the rights guaranteed by American law, and failing to bring them to trial.

In unveiling a strategic plan last month for a major overhaul of the French military, President Nicolas Sarkozy, identified terrorism as the main threat facing the country, adding that France’s armed forces needed to adapt to confront that reality. He credited France’s prevention strategy as responsible for preventing attacks on French soil in recent years.

“Thanks to the effectiveness of our security forces, France has not been attacked in recent years,” he said. “But the threat is there, it is real and we know that it could tomorrow take on a new form, even more serious, by nuclear, chemical and biological means.

In the 1980s, France was targeted by a series of attacks on trains, subways and department stores. Then in 1995, a blast by Algerian Islamic radicals in the Saint-Michel train station in the heart of the Left Bank killed eight people and injured 150.

Asked by a French newspaper last October why France, unlike Spain and Britain, had been spared terrorist attacks in recent years, Bernard Squarcini, the chief of France’s domestic and police intelligence service, credited investigative, intelligence and judicial methods implemented after the attacks in the mid-1990s.

These methods “make it possible to neutralize, before they go into action, any group or individual liable to perpetrate an attack in France,” he said. “So we adopt the principle of precaution and preventive action.”
What kind of culture does this?  They don't understand the diference between "finger prints" and "fingers?"
Severed Fingers Reportedly Sent to US
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 13, 2008
Filed at 3:14 p.m. ET

Severed fingers of five Western contractors were sent to the U.S. military in Iraq, giving the men's relatives hope that they are still alive, a brother of one of the missing men said.

The men were abducted in two separate incidents that occurred a month and a half apart more than two years ago, a U.S. government official said Thursday in Washington.  The Austrian weekly magazine News first reported the delivery of the five fingers in Wednesday's edition, citing unidentified authorities working on the case.

Patrick Reuben, a Minneapolis police officer whose twin brother, Paul Reuben, is among the missing, said late Wednesday the FBI told his family members that ''the fingers were confirmed to be those of the hostages.''

Patrick Reuben said the news of the severed fingers was ''shocking,'' but that the initial word the family got was ''much more serious than that. Later on we found that it was fingers that were recovered and that the DNA confirmed it was the hostages.''

Four of the men were guards for a convoy ambushed near the Kuwaiti border on Nov. 16, 2006. The fifth, Ronald J. Withrow, 40, of Lubbock, Texas, was a contractor working for JPI Worldwide and abducted on Jan. 5, 2007 near Basra.

In addition to Reuben, those abducted in the earlier incident were Jonathon Cote, 25, of Getzville, N.Y.; Joshua Munns, 25, of Redding, Calif.; and Bert Nussbaumer, 26, of Vienna, Austria, said the U.S. government official in Washington. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.  A fifth hostage taken in the Nov. 16, 2006, ambush was John Young, 45, of Lee's Summit, Mo. None of his fingers was sent to the U.S. military.  In a statement, the FBI declined to confirm the men had been identified by fingers.

''The FBI has received DNA evidence and is conducting an examination,'' spokesman Richard Kolko said. ''We understand this is a very difficult time for the families and discussing this matter further in the media is not appropriate.''

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Thursday declined to comment on the matter except to say: ''We continue to demand these hostages' immediate release so that they can be returned safely to their families.''

The four men kidnapped in the Nov. 16, 2006, incident were working for Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based private security company. Men in Iraqi police uniforms ambushed a convoy near the southern city of Safwan.

Patrick Reuben said his family is ''certainly hopeful, but there's nothing definite right now.''

The father of Cote said he and other families were visited by the FBI two to three weeks ago, when they were told DNA samples had been identified as those of the hostages. The agents would not say how they had gotten the samples.

When Francis Cote read a news report about the fingers, he contacted the State Department but was given no confirmation or denial.

''They told us the FBI would visit us,'' Cote said.

Cote received calls Wednesday from Paul Reuben's wife, who was in tears, and Munns' mother. The hostages' families frequently contact each other to share news and compare notes, he said. Cote assured the women that the hostages were still alive.

''It's possible they did sever (the fingers) to show proof of life,'' Cote said. ''I'm sure somebody from our government was asking for proof of life and I guess proof of life was severing a finger versus delivering a video.''

Munns' mother said the FBI asked her for a DNA sample about a month ago, saying they had some evidence to test it against.

''A couple weeks later they called me back and said yes, we did have a match,'' said Jackie Stewart of Ridgefield, Wash.

The FBI did not tell her at the time where her son's DNA came from, she said.  Cote said he was frustrated by the government's reticence.

''We have no news, we have activity,'' has been the extent of officials' comments on the hostages for months, Cote said. ''It's very vague.''

Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said the report that the severed fingers had been sent to U.S. authorities was being treated as a rumor.  He said U.S. officials in Baghdad forwarded information to the Austrian Embassy in Amman, Jordan, that the Americans described only as ''based on fingerprints and DNA profiles.''

He said Austrian officials were trying to get more information from U.S. officials and other sources in the Middle East.
Obituary: Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto followed her father into politics, and both of them died because of it - he was executed in 1979, she fell victim to an apparent suicide bomb attack.

Benazir Bhutto
Ms Bhutto had a volatile political career

Her two brothers also suffered violent deaths.

Like the Nehru-Gandhi family in India, the Bhuttos of Pakistan are one of the world's most famous political dynasties. Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was prime minister of Pakistan in the early 1970s.

His government was one of the few in the 30 years following independence that was not run by the army.

Born in 1953 in the province of Sindh and educated at Harvard and Oxford, Ms Bhutto gained credibility from her father's high profile, even though she was a reluctant convert to politics.

She was twice prime minister of Pakistan, from 1988 to 1990, and from 1993 to 1996.

Stubbornness

On both occasions she was dismissed from office by the president for alleged corruption.

The dismissals typified her volatile political career, which was characterised by numerous peaks and troughs. At the height of her popularity - shortly after her first election - she was one of the most high-profile women leaders in the world.

Young and glamorous, she successfully portrayed herself as a refreshing contrast to the overwhelmingly male-dominated political establishment.

But after her second fall from power, her name came to be seen by some as synonymous with corruption and bad governance.

Asif Zardari going to court
Asif Zardari has faced numerous corruption charges

The determination and stubbornness for which Ms Bhutto was renowned was first seen after her father was imprisoned and charged with murder by Gen Zia ul-Haq in 1977, following a military coup. Two years later he was executed.

Ms Bhutto was imprisoned just before her father's death and spent most of her five-year jail term in solitary confinement. She described the conditions as extremely hard.

During stints out of prison for medical treatment, Ms Bhutto set up a Pakistan People's Party office in London, and began a campaign against General Zia.

She returned to Pakistan in 1986, attracting huge crowds to political rallies.

After Gen Zia died in an explosion on board his aircraft in 1988, she became one of the first democratically elected female prime ministers in an Islamic country.

Corruption charges

During both her stints in power, the role of Ms Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, proved highly controversial.

He played a prominent role in both her administrations, and has been accused by various Pakistani governments of stealing millions of dollars from state coffers - charges he denies, as did Ms Bhutto herself.

Many commentators argued that the downfall of Ms Bhutto's government was accelerated by the alleged greed of her husband.

None of about 18 corruption and criminal cases against Mr Zardari has been proved in court after 10 years. But he served at least eight years in jail.

He was freed on bail in 2004, amid accusations that the charges against him were weak and going nowhere.

Ms Bhutto also steadfastly denied all the corruption charges against her, which she said were politically motivated.

She faced corruption charges in at least five cases, all without a conviction, until amnestied in October 2007.

General Musharraf
President Pervez Musharraf held secret talks with Ms Bhutto

She was convicted in 1999 for failing to appear in court, but the Supreme Court later overturned that judgement.

Soon after the conviction, audiotapes of conversations between the judge and some top aides of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif were discovered that showed that the judge had been under pressure to convict.

Ms Bhutto left Pakistan in 1999 to live abroad, but questions about her and her husband's wealth continued to dog her.

She appealed against a conviction in the Swiss courts for money-laundering.

During her years outside Pakistan, Ms Bhutto lived with her three children in Dubai, where she was joined by her husband after he was freed in 2004.

She was a regular visitor to Western capitals, delivering lectures at universities and think-tanks and meeting government officials.

Army mistrust

Ms Bhutto returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007 after President Musharraf signed into law an ordinance granting her and others an amnesty from corruption charges.

Observers said the military regime saw her as a natural ally in its efforts to isolate religious forces and their surrogate militants.

She declined a government offer to let her party head the national government after the 2002 elections, in which the party received the largest number of votes.

In the months before her death, she had emerged again as a strong contender for power.

Some in Pakistan believe her secret talks with the military regime amounted to betrayal of democratic forces as these talks shored up President Musharraf's grip on the country.

Others said such talks indicated that the military might at long last be getting over its decades-old mistrust of Ms Bhutto and her party, and interpreted it as a good omen for democracy.

Western powers saw in her a popular leader with liberal leanings who could bring much needed legitimacy to Mr Musharraf's role in the "war against terror".

Unhappy family

Benazir Bhutto was the last remaining bearer of her late father's political legacy.

Her brother, Murtaza - who was once expected to play the role of party leader - fled to the then-communist Afghanistan after his father's fall.

From there, and various Middle Eastern capitals, he mounted a campaign against Pakistan's military government with a militant group called al-Zulfikar.

He won elections from exile in 1993 and became a provincial legislator, returning home soon afterwards, only to be shot dead under mysterious circumstances in 1996.

Benazir's other brother, Shahnawaz - also politically active but in less violent ways than Murtaza - was found dead in his French Riviera apartment in 1985.





Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally
NYTIMES
By SALMAN MASOOD and GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: December 28, 2007

RAWALPINDI, Islamabad — An attack on a political rally killed the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto near the capital, Islamabad, Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto was fired upon before the blast, and an official from her party said Ms. Bhutto was further injured by the explosion, which was apparently caused by a suicide attacker.

At least a dozen more people were killed. “At 6:16 p.m. she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Ms. Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack, according to The Associated Press.

Hundreds of supporters had gathered at the rally, which was being held at Liaqut Bagh, a park that is a common venue for political rallies and speeches, in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjacent to the capital.

Amid the confusion after the explosion, the site was littered with pools of blood. Shoes and caps of party workers were lying on the asphalt, and shards of glass were strewn about the ground.

Farah Ispahani, a party official from Ms. Bhutto’s party, said: “It is too soon to confirm the number of dead from the party’s side. Private television channels are reporting 20 dead.” Television channels were also quoting police sources as saying that at least 14 people were dead.

The attack immediately raised questions about whether parliamentary elections scheduled for January will go ahead or be postponed.

Ms. Bhutto was the target of a suicide attack in October in Karachi when she returned from exile to Pakistan. That attack, caused by two bombs exploding just seconds apart, narrowly missed Ms. Bhutto but killed scores of people, including many of her party workers.

The attack is the latest blow to Pakistan’s treacherous political situation. state of emergency

Ms. Bhutto, 54, returned to Pakistan to present herself as the answer to the nation’s troubles: a tribune of democracy in a state that has been under military rule for eight years, and the leader of the country’s largest opposition political party, founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of Pakistan’s most flamboyant and democratically inclined prime ministers.

But her record in power, and the dance of veils she has deftly performed since her return -- one moment standing up to General Musharraf, then next seeming to accommodate him, and never quite revealing her actual intentions -- has stirred as much distrust as hope among Pakistanis.

A graduate of Harvard and Oxford, she brought the backing of Washington and London, where she impresses with her political lineage, her considerable charm and her persona as a female Muslim leader.

But with these accomplishments, Ms. Bhutto also brought controversy, and a legacy among Pakistanis as a polarizing figure who during her two turbulent tenures as prime minister, first from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, often acted imperiously and impulsively.

She faced deep questions about her personal probity in public office, which led to corruption cases against her in Switzerland, Spain and Britain, as well as in Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto saw herself as the inheritor of her father’s mantle, often spoke of how he encouraged her to study the lives of legendary female leaders ranging from Indira Gandhi to Joan of Arc.

Following the idea of big ambition, Ms. Bhutto called herself chairperson for life of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, a seemingly odd title in an organization based on democratic ideals and one she has acknowledged quarreling over with her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, in the early 1990s.

Saturday night at the diplomatic reception, Ms. Bhutto showed how she could aggrandize. Three million people came out to greet her in Karachi on her return last month, she said, calling it Pakistan’s ”most historic” rally. In fact, crowd estimates were closer to 200,000, many of them provincial party members who had received small amounts of money to make the trip.

Such flourishes led questioning in Pakistan about the strength of her democratic ideals in practice, and a certain distrust, particularly amid signs of back-room deal-making with General Musharraf, the military ruler she opposed.

“She believes she is the chosen one, that she is the daughter of Bhutto and everything else is secondary,” said Feisal Naqvi, a corporate lawyer in Lahore who knew Ms. Bhutto...
AGAINST TERROR
Bhutto says she might allow U.S. strike on bin Laden
Reuters
1 Oct. 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said on Monday that she might allow a U.S. military strike inside Pakistan to eliminate al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden if she were the country's leader.
 
"I would hope that I would be able to take Osama bin Laden myself without depending on the Americans. But if I couldn't do it, of course we are fighting this war together and (I) would seek their cooperation in eliminating him," Bhutto said in an interview on BBC World News America.

Bhutto, who has vowed to return to Pakistan on October 18 after eight years of exile, was speaking less than a week before an October 6 election that President Pervez Musharraf is expected to win despite his slumping popularity.

She has been in talks with Musharraf about a post-election power-sharing deal that would shore up his position, which has become more precarious amid violent clashes with Islamist militants.

U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders are being protected by tribal leaders in an area of northwestern Pakistan near the Afghanistan border that is largely inaccessible even to Pakistani forces.

Bush administration officials fear that unilateral U.S. action against the al Qaeda safe haven could destabilize Pakistan and jeopardize the government of Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in Washington's struggle against militants.

Asked by the BBC whether she would agree to let the Americans take action against bin Laden in Pakistan, Bhutto said her decision would depend on the strength of the evidence.

"I think one really needs to see the information. So I would really, really need to see the evidence," she said, according to a transcript of the BBC interview.

"But if there was evidence, my first reference would be to go in myself and if ... there was a difficulty on that I'd like to cooperate with the Americans."

Bhutto has remained in exile rather than face corruption charges at home. On Monday, one of her lawyers filed an application for bail in case authorities arrest her when she returns.

ACROSS THE POND...

On July 1, a day after a Jeep Cherokee rammed into a terminal at the Glasgow airport, investigators marked evidence at the scene.  Underground attack  "7/7" came prior to more recent plot.

Remember this?
Doctor Convicted in British Bombing Case
NYTIMES
By JOHN F. BURNS
December 16, 2008

LONDON — A terrorism trial centering on the use of a bomb-laden Jeep to crash into Glasgow’s main airport terminal on a Saturday in June 2007 ended on Tuesday with the conviction of a 29-year-old British doctor with family roots in Iraq who was one of the two men who mounted the attack.

A jury found the man, Bilal Abdulla, a passenger in the Jeep Cherokee, guilty of two charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to cause explosions in a series of three bungled car bombings in Glasgow and London over a 24-hour period that caused widespread alarm in Britain. The judge in the case will sentence Dr. Abdulla on Wednesday. Both charges carry potential life sentences.

The driver of the jeep, Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian-born engineer who made the bombs, died of burns received in the Glasgow airport attack, which failed when the flaming gasoline did not ignite gas canisters in the jeep’s trunk. Two Mercedes-Benz sedans, also laden with gas canisters designed to be ignited by blazing gasoline, failed to detonate in London’s West End theater district the previous night.

A third man, Mohammed Asha, 28, an Indian-born doctor who, like Mr. Abdulla, was employed in Britain’s National Health Service, was acquitted of all charges. Dr. Asha had been accused of providing cash and advice to Dr. Abdulla, but his defense counsel said that he had been duped into cooperating with the two bombers and that it was Dr. Abdulla who loaded incriminating documents indicating terrorist sympathies onto Dr. Asha’s laptop computer.

The trial, at Woolwich Crown Court in London, was one of a series of sensational terrorism trials in the past two years that have combined to foster widespread public anxiety in Britain about the risk of a major terrorist attack succeeding.

Only one such attack, the quadruple suicide bombings on London’s transit system in July 2005, succeeded, killing 56 people, including the four bombers. But Britain’s intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned that the country remains at high risk of new attacks.

Dr. Abdulla contended in his trial that he and Mr. Ahmed, the driver of the jeep that crashed into the air terminal in Glasgow, had intended only to “scare” people and to draw attention to what Dr. Abdulla described as the outrages committed by the foreign troops in Iraq.

But prosecutors said the intention of the Glasgow and London attacks had been to kill hundreds of people and to cause chaos across Britain. Experts at the trial testified that the “fuel air” bombs, though amateurishly constructed, had the capacity to cause widespread death.

A notable feature of the trial was that it did not directly involve Islamic militants with a history of family ties or training in Pakistan, in the pattern of many of recent terrorist trials in Britain.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during a weekend visit to the Indian subcontinent that three-quarters of all terrorist plots investigated by Britain’s intelligence and security agencies involved links to Pakistan, the ancestral homeland of about two-thirds of Britain’s Muslim population, which has been estimated at between 1.5 million and 2.5 million people.

The 2005 London transit bombings, as well as an alleged plot in 2006 to bomb at least seven trans-Atlantic airliners in midair with liquid bombs disguised in soft-drink bottles, involved extensive ties to Pakistan. The airliner bombing trial ended in September with a jury, also sitting at the Woolwich court, convicting three men of conspiring to commit mass murder through suicide bomb explosions, but failing to reach verdicts on charges that the men conspired to attack aircraft.

A new trial on those charges will begin early in 2009.

In the case of the Glasgow and London attacks, the plot had its origins in Iraq. Dr. Abdulla, the man convicted on Tuesday, was born in Britain as the son of an Iraqi physician who migrated from Baghdad.

The prosecution said he masterminded the attacks as a revenge for the role of British and American troops in the invasion and occupation, including the bombing onslaught on Baghdad in March 2003 that began the war, witnessed by Dr. Abdulla on a visit to his family in the Iraqi capital.

The prosecution said Dr. Abdulla was also influenced by links to the Sunni insurgency in Iraq that began shortly after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In a tape-recording played to the court, Dr. Abdulla was heard condemning coalition troops for what he described as their indiscriminate attacks on Iraqi civilians. “The soldiers killed the young and the old,” he said. “They do not discriminate between men and women, so why should we?”

Disclosures during the trial showed prescience by Britain’s intelligence services about the risk of the Iraq occupation leading to terrorist attacks in Britain. In 2004, a warning that Iraqi militants “will come to the U.K.” to launch terror attacks was given in 2004 by the Joint Intelligence Committee, a powerful coordinating body.

The committee was heavily criticized for its role in preparing the so-called dodgy dossier in 2002 that asserted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, a empowering finding for former prime minister Tony Blair as he prepared to join President Bush in the Iraq invasion. 

At the trial, prosecutors noted that all three men implicated in the London and Glasgow bombings were middle class, with professional educations, and not from the poorer backgrounds common among many of the Islamic militants who have engaged in terrorist plots in Britain.  Jonathan Laidlaw, the chief prosecutor, told the jury that it might find it hard to believe that doctors dedicated to preventing suffering could become terrorists.

“Frankly, who would have believed that doctors would involve themselves in this sort of murderous activity on the streets of this country”, he said.

Dr. Abdulla, a Baghdad medical school graduate, was a junior doctor at a state-run hospital in Paisley, a Glasgow suburb only a few miles from the airport at the time of the attack. Mr. Ahmed, who died in the Glasgow attack of 90 percent burns to his body, was the son of two Indian doctors who migrated to Saudi Arabia, and was studying for a doctorate in computational fluid dynamics at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge at the time of the attacks.

Dr. Asha, found not guilty on Tuesday, was a neurologist at a state-run hospital in Newcastle-under-Lyme in the British midlands.

“This case demonstrates, does it not,” Mr. Laidlaw told the jury, “that nothing can be taken for granted when you are dealing with extremists of this sort?”

British Inquiry of Failed Plots Points to Iraq’s Qaeda Group
NYTIMES
By RAYMOND BONNER, JANE PERLEZ and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: December 14, 2007

LONDON — Investigators examining the bungled terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow six months ago believe the plotters had a link to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which would make the attacks the first that the group has been involved in outside of the Middle East, according to senior officials from three countries who have been briefed on the inquiry.

The evidence pointing to the involvement of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia includes phone numbers of members of the Iraqi group found on the plotters’ cellphones recovered in Britain, a senior American intelligence official said.

British authorities have said that the plotters, Bilal Abdulla, a British-born doctor of Iraqi descent, and Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian aeronautical engineer, parked two vehicles laden with gas canisters and explosives near a popular nightclub in central London at the end of June. The cars, apparently positioned to strike people leaving the nightclub, failed to ignite.

The next day, the two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas canisters into the Glasgow airport. It erupted in flames, and the driver, Mr. Ahmed, was severely burned and died several weeks later.

British intelligence agencies have feared a blowback from Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, and after the events in London and Glasgow officials and terrorism experts speculated that Iraq-based groups could have been involved. More recently, as the investigation progressed, British intelligence officials told foreign diplomats that they believed the attacks were the first sign of such a reaction, said a senior diplomat of a country allied with Britain.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners.

The American intelligence official noted several similarities between the events in Britain and attacks in Iraq attributed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, including the use of vehicle-borne explosives aimed at multiple targets. The officials agreed to talk about the attack only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing secret intelligence information.

While officials stopped short of saying that the plot originated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or was directed by the group, they did say it was the closest collaboration they knew of between the Iraq group and plotters outside the Middle East. The American official who noted the evidence found on the recovered cellphones was unable to provide details about how often the accused plotters called Iraq or how soon before the bungled attacks calls were made.

Two other American counterterrorism officials generally concurred with this assessment of the link to the Iraqi group, but one of them cautioned against overstating the role of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, or A.Q.I., saying, “The event is best viewed as A.Q.I.-related, rather than A.Q.I.-directed.”

However, none of the officials would divulge the exact nature of the group’s involvement in the operation.

Recent terrorist attacks in Britain, including the July 2005 bombing of London’s transit system that killed 52 commuters, and several foiled plots appeared to have some connection to Pakistan. They have been conducted mostly by Britons of Pakistani origin, and some of the suspects trained in Pakistan.

Yet before the failed attacks in London and Glasgow, the British intelligence services suggested in a quarterly review on the terrorist threat that an attack against Britain was possible from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

“While networks linked to A.Q. (Al Qaeda) Core pose the greatest threat to the U.K., the intelligence during this quarter has highlighted the potential threat from other areas, particularly A.Q.-I (Al Qaeda in Iraq),” said the report by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center based at the headquarters of MI5, the domestic intelligence service. Parts of the report were published in The Sunday Times in April. According to the newspaper’s account of the intelligence report, British intelligence officers wrote that “we are aware that A.Q.-I networks are active in the U.K.”

According to officials who have been briefed on the inquiry, investigators suspect that Dr. Abdulla, the British-born doctor reared in Baghdad, was the connection to the Iraq-based network, although it is not clear what they see as the nature of the link.

Dr. Abdulla was working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, Scotland, after qualifying for a limited registration in the diabetes department at the time of the attacks. After his arrest, colleagues told Scottish newspapers that Dr. Abdulla was hard to motivate to do medical rounds because he seemed preoccupied by following Islamic affairs on his computer.

Dr. Abdulla has been charged with conspiracy to use explosives, and the trial is expected to begin next year. Six people were initially detained in Britain in connection with the attack. Three have been released; two others in addition to Dr. Abdulla have been charged.

Martin Rackstraw, a lawyer for Dr. Abdulla, said he was unable to comment on the case under British law.

The son of a prominent doctor, Dr. Abdulla returned to Britain in 2004 with his new Iraqi medical degree, said Shiraz Maher, a British Muslim who knew him when they both lived in Cambridge. Before joining the hospital, Dr. Abdulla worked part time at a Staples store in Cambridge, while studying for the exams he needed to pass to practice medicine here, Mr. Maher said in an interview.

Mr. Maher, who at the time was a member of the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, said he remembered Dr. Abdulla from that period as being obsessed by the war in Iraq, and as someone who practiced an intense and “austere” form of Wahhabism, a conservative strain of Islam. He was outraged, Mr. Maher said, by the American attack on Falluja, Iraq, in November 2004. Dr. Abdulla was not a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Mr. Maher said.

He was with Dr. Abdulla on almost a daily basis for prayers, he said. Mr. Maher, who left Hizb ut-Tahrir in mid-2005, said he did not see Dr. Abdulla again after that.

Mr. Maher described Dr. Abdulla as “defiant” and said that Mr. Ahmed, the man who died of burns suffered in the Glasgow attack, was more passive. “They had a close relationship,” Mr. Maher said.

Whatever the extent of assistance or inspiration the plotters may have gotten from Iraq, counterterrorism officials and experts said they were struck by the amateurish nature of the attacks. The cars parked at the London nightclub were packed with propane gas tanks, but they failed to explode because the plotters did not leave the windows open enough to allow air in to ignite the fuel in the gas tanks, said two terrorism experts with knowledge of the case.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor of international relations at Georgetown University, said the plotters appeared to be relatively efficient at organizational planning but had failed to pay enough attention to making the bombs. “Technical expertise is different from operational sophistication,” Mr. Hoffman said.

Three Doctors Among Terror Suspects; Eight now in custody in attacks in Britain
DAY
By David Stringer , Associated Press Writer (a "stringer" perhaps [not on staff] ?)
Published on 7/3/2007
 
London — At least three physicians were identified Monday among suspects arrested in Britain's failed car bomb attacks, and authorities announced three new arrests — including a doctor in Australia — as the investigation spread overseas.

British media reports said an Indian doctor also was among the eight people in custody and another outlet said at least five of the detainees in Britain were physicians. British police confirmed a Palestinian doctor and Iraqi physician were among those held, while Australian officials said a foreign doctor working there had been detained in the case.

Officers used heightened stop-and-search powers and armed response vehicles to hunt for anyone else who might have been involved in the plot, and police put on a show of force to bolster security at airports and train stations and on city streets.

Hours after police announced the arrests of two more people in the Glasgow area, officials said an eighth suspect was detained “abroad by local authorities” Monday.

Australian authorities later said he was arrested at the airport in Brisbane while trying to leave the country. Queensland state Premier Peter Beattie described the suspect as a 27-year-old man but withheld his identity. Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock said the suspect was a doctor at a hospital in Queensland state but was not a citizen.

A British security official said earlier in the day that Pakistan and several other nations were asked to check possible links with the suspects. British-born terrorists behind the bloody 2005 London transit bombings and others in thwarted plots here were linked to terror training camps and foreign radicals in Pakistan.

“We have asked partners overseas to check possible links and that work has begun,” the security official said, adding that it was still possible some British-born people were involved in the plot. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Authorities said police searched at least 19 locations as part of the “fast-moving investigation,” which has come at a time of already high vigilance before the anniversary of the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people on July 7, 2005.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has said the group behind the weekend attacks was “associated with al-Qaida,” got a call from President Bush commending him for Britain's response.

“President Bush concluded by reiterating that the United States is prepared to offer any assistance desired, and noted the importance of continued cooperation,” said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House's National Security Council.

Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, who agreed to discuss the case only if not quoted by name, said the attackers in Britain were Islamic extremists sympathetic to al-Qaida, but investigators were still trying to figure out whether there were any direct links.

One of the officials also said there continued to be concerns about possible plots to attack the United States, including the potential for a large-scale assault by al-Qaida. Among the factors contributing to the worry are al-Qaida's efforts to recruit in Pakistan's tribal areas and its increased flow of public messages, the official said.

In the latest attacks, two car bombs failed to explode in central London on Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport and then set it on fire Saturday.

The British government security official said investigators were working on one theory that the same people may have driven the explosives-laden cars into London and the blazing SUV in Glasgow.

The unidentified driver of the Jeep was being treated for serious burns at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, where he was under arrest by armed police. Bomb experts carried out a second controlled explosion on a car at the hospital Monday, after a similar blast Sunday. Police said the car was linked to the investigation, but no explosives had been found.

Police announced Monday that they arrested two men the previous day at residences at the hospital, but would not say whether they were doctors. Britain's Sky Television described them as trainee physicians, without citing a source for its report.

Four men and a woman were detained earlier.

Authorities identified Bilal Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor who worked at the Glasgow hospital, was the other man arrested at the airport and said he was being held at a high-security police station in Glasgow.

According to the British General Medical Council's register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at the Glasgow hospital said Abdulla was a diabetes specialist.

A man arrested late Saturday on a highway in central England was also a physician, Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, police said. A Jordanian official said Asha was of Palestinian descent and carried a Jordanian passport.

Britain's The Independent and The Muslim News newspapers reported that a man arrested in Liverpool late Saturday was a 26-year-old doctor from Bangalore, India, who worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, northern England. Police would not immediately comment on the reports.

The Muslim News also said the Indian doctor had used the car, cell phone and Internet account of a fellow physician who had moved from England to Australia around a year ago. It said police had asked friends of the Indian for details about the man who went to Australia.

“This case could be the final proof that an idea those involved in these type of attacks are all young, angry and poorly educated is a mistake,” said Paul Cornish, a former British army officer and director of defense studies at London's Chatham House think tank.

“It's wrong to suggest al-Qaida are ignorant hill men. They are often middle or upper class and well educated,” Cornish said.

Former U.S intelligence officer Bob Ayers, now a security analyst based in London, said wealth or intelligence matters little to people committed to extremism.

“We shouldn't be surprised that educated men are as involved as poor youngsters,” he said. “They all subscribe to the same radical ideology, that's the only criteria they need to fill.”

Salil Vengalil, a doctor at North Staffordshire Hospital, near the Midlands town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, said Asha worked in the neurology department at that hospital.

A doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, who refused to give his name, said he recognized Asha as a doctor who also kept an office there. The hospital would not confirm that.

In Amman, Jordan, Asha's father, Jamil, denied his 26-year-old son had any terrorist leanings.

“My son is a moderate Muslim and carried out his religious duties, but he never embraced fanaticism,” he told The Associated Press.

Information also surfaced Monday suggesting authorities had been close on the trail of the alleged plotters before the attack at the Glasgow airport.

Rental agent Daniel Gardiner, whose company leased a Glasgow-area house searched by police, said officers contacted his firm just before the airport blaze to say they had tracked phone records linked to the property.

Officials recovered at least one cell phone from the car bombs in London, Rep. Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, said Friday after being briefed about the London situation.

As the investigation spread, police flooded London's subway and train stations, even clamping down on access to the Wimbledon tennis tournament, where concrete blocks were set in front of the main entrance.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith urged Britons to remain united.

“Let us be clear: terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religious backgrounds,” she said. “Terrorists attack the values that are shared by all law-abiding citizens. It is through our unity that the terrorists will eventually be defeated.”


Mastermind of 9-11 attacks, below, center. Pleads "guilty" Dec. '08, seeks martyrdom...

At left, above, not a page from your high school yearbook...
Above, from the files, (bottom row, second from left - the individual in the article below);  "crotch" bomber from Nigeria by way of Yemen and his "undies" at right.

Page last updated at 13:12 GMT, Monday, 4 January 2010

France follows Britain and US in shutting Yemen embassy
Guarded entrance to UK embassy in Sanaa (2008)
It is not clear when the embassies in Sanaa will reopen

France has become the third Western nation to shut its Yemen embassy, after threats from an al-Qaeda offshoot, the foreign ministry in Paris announced.

The US and UK missions, which closed on Sunday, remain shut.

Yemeni security forces, meanwhile, shot dead two militants north of the capital, Sanaa, said officials.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula last week said it planned an alleged plane bomb attempt on Christmas Day and urged attacks on "crusaders" in embassies.

From Monday all travellers flying to America are being subjected to new security measures, introduced by the US government.

WHERE NEW MEASURES APPLY
Flights from Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria (countries classified by US as state sponsors of terror)
Also, flights from Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen

Airport staff will now carry out extra screening of people from 14 countries, including those the US considers to be state-sponsors of terrorism - Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

Yemen and Nigeria - through which the alleged bomber travelled - also face the new restrictions.

Passengers travelling from other countries will be checked at random.

On Monday in Paris, French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters their Yemen ambassador had decided a day earlier to suspend public access to their embassy.

French citizens in the country had been warned to remain vigilant and to limit their movements, he added.

The US was the first to announce the closure of its embassy on Sunday, citing "ongoing threats" by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and the UK followed suit.

YEMEN FACTS
Map
Population: 23.6 million (UN, 2009)
Capital: Sanaa
Language: Arabic
Major religion: Islam
Oil exports: $1.5bn/24.5m barrels (Jan-Oct 2009)
Income per capita: US $950 (World Bank, 2008)

A US diplomat told the Reuters news agency on Monday: "The embassy is still closed again today... We are continuing to make the security review."

The Yemeni authorities have tightened security measures at Sanaa's airport, as well as around several other embassies.

The US embassy was the target of an attack in September 2008 in which 19 people died, including a young American woman. The attack was blamed on AQAP.

On Sunday, the US deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counter-terrorism said there were "indications that al-Qaeda is planning to carry out an attack against a target inside of Sanaa, possibly our embassy".

John Brennan told ABC the group had "several hundred members" in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and was posing an increasing threat.

Last week, AQAP urged Muslims to help in "killing every crusader who works at their embassies or other places" and said it was behind the failed attempt to destroy the Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 on Christmas Day.

Speaking to CNN, Mr Brennan said there were "indications" a radical US cleric of Yemeni origin had links both to the Nigerian charged with the bomb plot, and the man accused of the Fort Hood shootings in November.

He said the preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki, had had direct contact with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, while he was allegedly being trained by AQAP operatives last year.

Anwar al-Awlaki
Mr Brennan said Anwar al-Awlaki seemed to be linked to the bomb plot

It was clear, he said, that Mr Awlaki had also been in touch with Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army major charged with shooting dead 13 people at Fort Hood.

On Saturday, the head of US Central Command, Gen David Petraeus, visited Yemen's President Ali Abdallah Saleh to pledge support for its fight with al-Qaeda, after Washington doubled its counter-terrorism aid.

Yemeni officials last week said they had sent more troops to hunt down al-Qaeda militants in the provinces of Abyan, Baida and Shabwa.

Correspondents say the security situation in Yemen is complicated by an abundance of firearms, an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.

But the prospects of re-asserting central government authority over the lawless areas where al-Qaeda is based look, in the opinion of some analysts, remote - even with beefed-up American support.

Map


Airliner suicide mission blessed by imam
Washington Times
Victor Morton
 Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner had his suicide mission personally blessed in Yemen by Anwar al-Awlaki, the Muslim imam suspected of radicalizing the Fort Hood shooting suspect, a U.S. intelligence source has told The Washington Times.

The intelligence official, who is familiar with the FBI's interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said the bombing suspect has boasted of his jihad training to the FBI and has said it included final exhortations by Mr. al-Awlaki.

"It was Awlaki who indoctrinated him," the official said. "He was told, 'You are going to be the tip of the spear of the Muslim nation.' "

Mr. al-Awlaki, an American-born imam who once led a large Northern Virginia mosque but now lives in Yemen, has gained notoriety in recent months because of his influence on Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim accused of killing 13 people at the Texas military base.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula took credit Monday for the Christmas Day attack on Northwest Airlines 253, an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight. The al Qaeda group and U.S. officials both say that Mr. Abdulmutallab was able to smuggle explosive powder in his underwear and only a detonator failure prevented him from blowing up the plane and killing almost 300 passengers and crew.

On Tuesday, President Obama made his second public address on the attack, saying there had been a "systemic failure" in intelligence-sharing among U.S. agencies.

He characterized the lapse as "totally unacceptable," distancing himself further from Sunday's widely derided comments by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that "the system worked."

Also Tuesday, Democrats reacted to criticism that the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees U.S. flight security, still does not have a top administrator. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, vowed to ensure confirmation of Eroll Southers and blamed Republicans for holding up the nomination.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he has learned of personal ties between Mr. Abdulmutallab and Mr. al-Awlaki, though he said he could neither confirm nor deny that the two men had been in the same Yemeni prayer room.

"From what I've heard, the relationship would have been closer than what Awlaki had with Hasan," Mr. Hoekstra told The Times. "He trusted [Mr. Abdulmutallab] more."

Mr. al-Awlaki had e-mail contact with Maj. Hasan as many as 20 times between December 2008 and the shootings at Fort Hood. Mr. al-Awlaki praised Maj. Hasan as a "hero" and said all Muslims in the U.S. military should "follow the footsteps of men like Nidal."

Monday's al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula statement spoke similarly, calling on every "soldier who works for the crusader armies" to "emulate the example of the heroic [mujahedeen] brother, Nidal Hasan."

According to the U.S. intelligence official, Mr. Abdulmutallab cited Maj. Hasan in his interrogations, but only to cite him as "an example of how Islam accepts even American soldiers." Mr. Abdulmutallab did not show any operational knowledge of the Army major or the Fort Hood attack.

In his FBI interrogation, according to the U.S. intelligence official, Mr. Abdulmutallab spoke of being in a room in Yemen receiving Muslim blessings and prayers from Mr. al-Awlaki, along with a number of other men "all covered up in white martyrs' garments," and known only by code names and "abu" honorifics.

The official said such clothing and the lack of familiarity among the men suggests that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula intends to use the men in that room in suicide missions.

The intelligence official's description comes in the wake of several reports that Yemen is breeding scores of jihadists ready to strike the West.

Yemen's top diplomat said Tuesday that hundreds of al Qaeda militants are in his country and pleaded for foreign help and intelligence in rooting them out.

"They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit. There are maybe hundreds of them -- 200, 300," Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi told the Times of London.

The Sun also reported Monday that "British extremists in Yemen [who] are in their early 20s and from Bradford, Luton and Leytonstone, East London ... are due to return to the U.K. early in 2010 and will then await Internet instructions from al Qaeda on when to strike."

The British tabloid quoted an unnamed Scotland Yard source as saying, "We know there are four or five radicalized British Muslim cells in Yemen."

While the U.S. intelligence official cautioned that Mr. Abdulmutallab may simply have been boasting to his FBI interrogators, he told them that "this is just the beginning."

"I beat your security, and you can't stop us," the intelligence official cited Mr. Abdulmutallab as telling the FBI.

Al Qaeda's presence in Yemen also is being boosted by the release of detainees from U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At least three current or recent al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leaders -- Ibrahim Rubaish, Said Ali al-Shihri and Muhammad Attik al-Harbi -- were released to Saudi Arabia in 2006 and 2007.

Two other former Guantanamo inmates -- Fahd Saleh Suleiman al Jutayli and Yousef Mohammed al Shihri -- have been killed in shootouts with Yemeni and Saudi security forces after having joined the al Qaeda group.

But the Obama administration insisted Tuesday that the Detroit attack and the revelations about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would not change its plans to close the Cuban facility and house terror detainees at a federal prison in Thomson, Ill.

"The detention facility at Guantanamo has been used by Al Qaeda as a rallying cry and recruiting tool, including its affiliate Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. As our military leaders have recognized, closing the detention facility at Guantanamo is a national security imperative," a White House source told Politico on the condition of anonymity.

Later Tuesday, three hawkish senators -- Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut -- called on the Obama administration at least to halt releases to Yemen in light of the situation there and the Detroit attack.

"In view of these events, the planned repatriation of six Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay is especially alarming," the three men said in a joint statement Tuesday. "The current conditions and threat of AQAP activities are clear evidence of the danger in repatriating these Yemeni detainees. ... We request an immediate halt to the transfer of all detainees to Yemen until the American people and the Congress can be assured of the security situation in that country.

One reason Mr. al-Awlaki is so dangerous to the U.S., terrorism scholars and analysts say, is that he is a native speaker of English and a longtime U.S. resident. This gives him the cultural familiarity and shared experience to recruit jihadists and terrorists from among the millions of Muslims in the West who may be unreachable by Middle Eastern imams.

The intelligence official said Mr. Abdulmutallab speaks English with a heavy British accent, which he may have picked up either during his 2005-08 studies in London or in his native Nigeria, a former British colony where his father is a wealthy banker.

In December, U.S.-backed Yemeni forces made at least two unsuccessful attempts to kill Mr. al-Awlaki. The latest was the day before the Detroit plane was to be attacked. In its Monday statement, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said the Northwest plot was launched in response to recent "American aggression" in Yemen.

However, Mr. Hoekstra expressed skepticism about claims that the bombing plot was retaliation for the December strikes because the terrorist attack likely would have been in the works long before then. He described the timing of the U.S. strikes as simply giving al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula a convenient peg for saying its airplane plot was retaliatory.

The Yemeni Foreign Ministry said Monday that Mr. Abdulmutallab had been in the country from August to early December, having received a visa to study Arabic at the San'a Institute for the Arabic Language. A trip to Yemen to learn Arabic was also a major step in the radicalization of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban."

According to an Associated Press dispatch from San'a, Yemen's capital, the Yemeni Embassy in the U.S. has been told not to issue student visas without Interior Ministry approval. The school's director also is being questioned by Yemeni authorities.




CIA Destroyed Al-Qaida Interrogation Tapes; Officials Say Two Videos Were Trashed In Part Out Of Legal Concerns 
DAY
By Mark Mazzetti , New York Times News Service    
Published on 12/7/2007 

Washington — The CIA in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two al-Qaida operatives in the agency's custody, a step it took in the midst of congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

In a statement to employees on Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the CIA director, said that the decision to destroy the tapes was made “within the CIA” and that the reason was to protect the safety of undercover officers and because the tapes no longer had intelligence value.

The destruction of the tapes raises questions about whether agency officials withheld information from the courts and from the Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program.

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which was appointed by the president and Congress, and which had made formal requests to the CIA for transcripts and other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

The disclosures about the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over laws that allow the CIA to use interrogation practices more severe than those allowed to other agencies. A congressional conference committee voted late Wednesday to outlaw those interrogation practices, but the measure has yet to pass the full House and Senate and is likely to face a veto from President Bush.

The New York Times informed the CIA on Wednesday evening that it was preparing to publish an article about the destruction of the tapes. In his statement to employees on Thursday, Hayden said that the agency had acted “in line with the law” and said he was informing CIA employees “because the press has learned” about the matter.

Hayden's statement said that the tapes posed a “serious security risk” and that if they had become public they would have exposed CIA officials “and their families to retaliation from al-Qaida and its sympathizers.”

It was not clear who authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said the action was approved by officials within the Directorate of Operations, the agency's clandestine service.

Two former intelligence officials said that Porter J. Goss, the director head of the agency at the time, was not told that the tapes would be destroyed and was angered to learn about it. Through a spokeswoman, Goss declined to comment on the matter.

In his statement, Hayden said leaders of congressional oversight committees had been fully briefed about the tapes' existence and destruction. But the two top members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2005 said Thursday that they had not been notified in advance of the decision to destroy the tapes.

•••••

Rep. Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee between 2002 and 2006, said that she told CIA officials several years ago that destroying any interrogation tapes would be a “bad idea.”

“How in the world could the CIA claim that these tapes were not relevant to a legislative inquiry?” Harman said. “This episode reinforces my view that the CIA should not be conducting a separate interrogations program.”

A spokesman for Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee between 2004 and 2006, said that Hoekstra was “never briefed or advised that these tapes existed, or that they were going to be destroyed.”

The spokesman, Jamal Ware, also said that Hoekstra “absolutely believes that the full committee should have been informed and consulted before the CIA did anything with the tapes.”

In both 2003 and 2005, CIA lawyers told prosecutors in the Moussaoui case that the CIA did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge. Moussaoui's lawyers had hoped that records of the interrogations might provide exculpatory evidence for Moussaoui — showing that the al-Qaida detainees did not know Moussaoui and thus clearing him of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.

Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokes-man, said that the court had sought tapes of “specific, named terrorists whose comments might have a bearing on the Moussaoui case” and that the videotapes destroyed were not of those individuals. Intelligence officials declined to identify the al-Qaida operative other than Abu Zubaydah whose interrogation was recorded on a videotape that was later destroyed.

Hayden has said publicly that information obtained through the CIA's detention and interrogation program has been the best source of intelligence for operations against al-Qaida. In a speech last year, Bush said that information from Zubaydah had helped lead to the capture in 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission, which completed its work in 2004, expressed surprise when they were told that interrogation videotapes existed until 2005.

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings,” he said.

•••••

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with al-Qaida leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed. If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it's a big deal, it's a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

Gimigliano, the CIA spokesman, said that the agency “went to great lengths to meet the requests of the 9/11 commission,” and that the CIA had preserved the tapes until the commission ended its work in case members requested the tapes.

Several current and former intelligence officials were interviewed for this article over a period of several weeks. All requested anonymity because information about the tapes had been classified until Hayden issued his statement on Thursday acknowledging that they had been destroyed.

The CIA program that included the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects began after the capture of Zubaydah in March 2002. The CIA has said that the Justice Department and other elements of the executive branch reviewed and approved the use of a set of harsh techniques before they were used on any prisoners, and that the Justice Department issued a classified legal opinion in August 2002 that provided explicit authorization for their use.

Some members of Congress have since sought to ban some of the techniques, saying that they amounted to torture, which is prohibited under U.S. law. But Bush, who revealed the existence of the CIA program in September 2006, has defended the techniques as legal, and has said they have proven beneficial in obtaining critical intelligence information.

Some of the harshest techniques, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning and near-suffocation, were used on several of the first Qaida operatives captured by the CIA, including Abu Zubaydah. But intelligence officials have said that waterboarding is no longer on an approved list spelled out in a classified executive order that was issued by the White House earlier this year.

In his statement, Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with “established legal and policy guidelines.” Hayden said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.

“The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages,” he said. He said they were destroyed only after the agency's office of the general counsel and office of the inspector general had examined them and determined that they showed lawful methods of questioning.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said Hayden's claim that the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA officers “is not credible.”

“Millions of documents in CIA archives, if leaked, would identify CIA officers,” Malinowski said. “The only difference here is that these tapes portray potentially criminal activity. They must have understood that if people saw these tapes, they would consider them to show acts of torture, which is a felony offense.”

•••••

It has been widely reported that Zubaydah was subjected to several tough, physical tactics. But the current and former intelligence officials who described the decision to destroy the videotapes said that CIA officers had judged that the release of photos or videos depicting his interrogation would provoke a strong reaction.

“People know what happened, but to see it in living color would have far greater power,” the official said.

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring “quality control” at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and CIA officers became concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.

In exchanges involving the Moussaoui case, the CIA did notify the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., in September that it had discovered two videotapes and one audio tape that it had not previously acknowledged to the court, but made no mention of any tapes destroyed in 2005.

The acknowledgment was spelled out in a letter sent in October by federal prosecutors that amended the CIA's previous declarations involving videotapes. The letter is heavily redacted, with sentences identifying the detainees blacked out. Signed by the U.S. attorney, Chuck Rosenberg, the letter states that the CIA's search for interrogation tapes “appears to be complete.”

Moussaoui was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been pushing legislation in Congress to have all detainee interrogations videotaped so officials can refer to the tapes multiple times to glean better information.

Holt said he had been told many times that the CIA does not record the interrogation of detainees. “When I would ask them whether they had reviewed the tapes to better understand the intelligence, they said, 'What tapes?' ” he said.


WHO IS ADAM VOTING FOR WITH AN OVERSEAS BALLOT?
Adam Gadahn, minus turban, warns of "worse than Septgember 11, 2001" attacks in the future. 

Officers: Pakistan arrests American-born al-Qaida
YAHOO
By ASHRAF KHAN, Associated Press Writer
March 7, 2010

KARACHI, Pakistan – The American-born spokesman for al-Qaida has been arrested by Pakistani intelligence officers in the southern city of Karachi, two officers and a government official said Sunday, the same day Adam Gadahn appeared in a video calling for Muslim violence.

The arrest of Gadahn is a major victory in the U.S.-led battle against al-Qaida and will be taken as a sign that Pakistan is cooperating more fully with Washington. It follows the recent detentions of several Afghan Taliban commanders in Karachi.

Gadahn — who has often appeared in al-Qaida videos — was arrested in the sprawling southern metropolis in recent days, two officers who took part in the operation said. A senior government official also confirmed the arrest.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, and converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County.

He moved to Pakistan in 1998, according to the FBI, and is said to have attended an al-Qaida training camp six years later, serving as a translator and consultant for the group. He has been wanted by the FBI since 2004, and there is a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

The 31-year-old is known by various aliases including Yahya Majadin Adams and Azzam al-Amriki.

He has posted videos and messages calling for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. The most recent was posted Sunday, praising the U.S. Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, as a role model for other Muslims.

A U.S. court charged Gadahn with treason in 2006, making him the first American to face such a charge in more than 50 years. He could face the death penalty if convicted. He was also charged with two counts of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Gadahn has appeared in more than half a dozen al-Qaida videos. The video released Sunday appeared to have been made after the end of the year, but it was unclear exactly when.

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Southfield, Mich., condemned Gadahn's call for violence, calling it a "desperate" attempt by Al-Qaida's spokesman to provoke bloodshed within the U.S.

Walid, a Navy veteran, said Muslims have honorably served in the American military will be unimpressed by al-Qaida's message aimed at their ranks.

"We thoroughly repudiate and condemn his statement and what we believe are his failed attempts to incite loyal American Muslims in the miltary," he said.

Imad Hamad, the senior national adviser for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, based in Dearbon, Mich., condemned al-Qaida's message and said it would have no impact on American Muslims.

"This a worthless rhetoric that is not going to have any effect on people's and minds and hearts," he said.

Al-Qaida has used Gadahn as its chief English-speaking spokesman, and he has called for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. In one video, he ceremoniously tore up his American passport. In another, he admitted his grandfather was Jewish, ridiculing him for his beliefs and calling for Palestinians to continue fighting Israel.
U.S. al Qaeda militant warns of worse attacks
By Inal Ersan
May 29, 2007
 
DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States will face worse attacks than those on September 11, 2001 if it does not heed al Qaeda demands effectively allowing the group control over Muslim countries, a U.S. Islamist militant said on Tuesday.

Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam and the first American to be charged with treason since the World War Two era, appeared in a video posted on the Internet. Gadahn, wearing robes and a turban, is believed to be in Pakistan.

"Your failure to meet our demands ... means that you and your people will, Allah willing, experience things which will make you forget about the horrors of September 11," said the bearded Gadahn, addressing his comments to President George W. Bush.

"This is not a call for negotiations. We do not negotiate with baby killers and war criminals like you," said Gadahn.

"You will go down in history not only as the president who embroiled his nation in a series of unwinnable and bloody conflicts in the Islamic world but as the president who set the United States up on its death march."

Listing al Qaeda's demands, Gadahn said: "Pull every last one of your soldiers... out of every Muslim land. If so much as one single U.S. soldier or spy remain on Islamic soil it shall be considered sufficient justification for us to continue our defensive jihad against your nation and people."

Gadahn demanded the United States end all support "moral, military, economic or otherwise to the bastard state of Israel and ban your citizens ... from traveling to occupied Palestine or settling there."

He said a U.S. pullout from Iraq alone would not do.

"Things are not going too well for your crusader coalition," Gadahn said of U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We will continue to strike hard this year, next year, the year after that and so on until the last crusader goes home, whether waving a white flag or lying in a flag-covered casket."

The treason charge against Gadahn carries a maximum punishment of death. Last year, an indictment delivered by a grand jury in a federal court in California accused him of making a series of al Qaeda propaganda videos.

The FBI has been seeking to question Gadahn since May 2004, and the U.S. government has offered up to $1 million in reward money for information leading to his arrest.

Gadahn converted to Islam from a Jewish-Christian family when he was 17 and a few years later moved to Pakistan. He was previously known as Adam Pearlman and grew up on a goat ranch outside Los Angeles.

Four suspected bombers killed in Casablanca
By Tom Pfeiffer
10 April, 2007
 
CASABLANCA (Reuters) - Three suspected suicide bombers blew themselves up on Tuesday following a police raid on a house in a Casablanca slum in which a fourth man was shot dead, police sources said.
 
Two of the men had been on the run since the dawn raid in Fida neighborhood in which one suspected Islamist militant was killed by police and an accomplice blew himself up after he was trapped on a roof terrace, the sources and witnesses said.  The four were members of a gang of up to 12 that police have been looking for since March 11, when the alleged leader of a suicide squad detonated his explosives belt in a cybercafe to stop police arresting him, the police sources added.

They said they believed the bombers had started wearing the belts all the time to stop security forces taking them alive.

Morocco has been on the alert for attacks since 2003 when 13 suicide bombers killed themselves and 32 other people in central Casablanca in an attempt to punish the country for being a staunch ally of the United States in its "war on terror."  The MAP state news agency said two police officers were injured when the third suspect blew himself up later in the day, and that one of the officers died from his wounds.

"The fourth suicide bomber blew himself up when he saw there was no way for him to break through the police cordon," a senior security source told Reuters, adding that he was the last suspect in a group targeted by the raid.

"At least 19 people including five policemen were injured when the fourth suicide bomber blew himself up," said a policeman at the scene adding that the bomber appeared to deliberately target the police.

TARGETED POLICE

"He sneaked through the police cordon and then elbowed his way through a crowd on onlookers and journalists to move close to a cluster of policemen where he blew himself up," the policeman said.

MAP identified the third suspected suicide bomber as 37-old Rachidi Mohamed and said he belonged to a "terrorist cell" behind the killing of paramilitary gendarme in 2003.  Residents said police had cordoned off part of Fida, a poor working-class suburb of Morocco's economic capital, and were trying to trace other suspects who had managed to escape.  Hundreds of onlookers were near the house that was raided and a forensic investigation team sifted through debris after the first bomb blast.

Zohra, who lived in the house next-door, said she had been awoken by gunfire early in the morning and heard a loud blast shortly afterwards.  She said neighbors told her a young man had blown himself up on the roof after police cornered him.

"He and three or four other young men moved into a flat in the building about two months ago," she told Reuters. "They aren't from around here. They kept themselves to themselves. They dressed normally, in jeans and trainers."

Abdellatif, 40 and unemployed, said he was with some friends when a police car screeched to a halt in front of them and officers dashed into a side street.

"A while later two guys ran out of a house with the police in pursuit," said Abdellatif. "The police officers ordered the men to stop and one of the men shot at them. The police shot back and he fell. The other got away."

Security officials said last month police foiled a plot by Islamist militants to blow up foreign ships at the port of Casablanca, and other landmarks, including hotels in Marrakesh and Agadir. Police had arresting more than 40 people, most of them living in Casablanca's slums, they said.

(Additional reporting by Lamine Ghanmi in Rabat)
Denmark Arrests 9 In Terror Plot;  Muslim cartoon flap began there last year
DAY
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times 
Published on 9/6/2006
 
Berlin — Nine men suspected of gathering explosives for a terrorist plot were arrested in Denmark early Tuesday, according to Danish authorities.

Police said the men, including one ethnic Dane and eight with immigrant backgrounds, were arrested in a 2 a.m. raid in Odense in western Denmark. The suspects possessed “materials that can be used for the construction of explosives in connections with preparation for an act of terror,” according to a statement by the Danish Security Intelligence Office.

The accused had been under surveillance, but officials did not say what the suspects were targeting or what stage the alleged plan had reached.

Lars Findsen, head of the intelligence office, said the arrests were made because “with the general terror situation” authorities did not want to “run any unnecessary risk.”

Justice Minister Lene Espersen told Danish television: “The clues police found indicate that they were very likely planning an attack somewhere in Denmark. It was the most serious matter I have had in my time as justice minister.”

The arrests came days from the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and nearly one year after the Jyllands-Posten newspaper printed cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. The drawings, including one in which the Prophet is wearing a headdress shaped like a bomb, led to weeks of protests and rioting across Europe and the Middle East.

Abu Bashar, an imam from Odense, told The Associated Press that he knew the suspects arrested Tuesday and predicted the charges would be dropped. He added, however, that he expected terrorists eventually would strike Denmark, which has about 500 soldiers supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

“Osama bin Laden said in a message three years ago that he will punish the countries that have (troops) in Iraq,” said Bashar. “Denmark is on the list.”

There are about 200,000 Muslims living in Denmark, in an overall population of 5.4 million. Resentment over integration failures in recent years has been further strained by the rise of the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party and Denmark's support of President Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The nation raised its terror threat after the July 7, 2005 bombings in London's transit system. A Moroccan-born Danish publisher was arrested shortly afterward on charges of instigating terrorism by distributing “inflammatory jihadist” videos, according to police. Last month, Danish authorities charged four men with supplying explosives to suspects in Bosnia who allegedly were planning an attack in Europe.

Two anti-terror officials in Europe said the impending anniversaries for Sept. 11 and the publication of the Mohammad cartoons have led to a heightened alert across the continent.

“We have seen the faces of terror in Madrid and London. We know that there are potential terror threats in the whole Western world,” Denmark's Deputy Prime Minister Bendt Bendtsen told Danish television.  
 

Canada plot suspect accused of plan to behead PM
By Cameron French and Jonathan Spicer
June 6, 2006
 
BRAMPTON, Ontario (Reuters) - One of 17 men accused of plotting bombings in major Canadian cities and of training militants also faces an allegation that he sought to behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Steven Chand, 25, was among 15 members of the alleged terrorist ring who appeared in a heavily guarded courtroom north of Toronto to set dates for bail hearings.

The Muslim men, five of them under the age of 18, were arrested on Friday in Canada's largest counterterrorism operation, and police said more arrests are possible.

Chand's lawyer, Gary Batasar, said his client faced several serious charges and was concerned that intense media interest in the details of the case in Canada and the United States could jeopardize Chand's chances of a fair trial.

Allegations include plans for the "storming and bombing of various buildings," Batasar told reporters.

"There's an allegation apparently that my client personally indicated that he wanted to behead the prime minister of Canada," Batasar said.

"It's a very serious allegation -- he's said nothing about that. My clients retains the right to silence."

Members of the group are alleged to have considered plans to take hostages and to attack Canada's parliament in Ottawa, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. building in Toronto and power grids, according to a synopsis of charges Batasar said he saw.

"It appears to me that whether you're in Ottawa or Toronto or Crawford, Texas, or Washington D.C., what is wanting to be instilled in the public is fear, and that's why everybody's here today, and that's unfortunate," he said.

Another place mentioned by court documents as a possible target for the group included the Toronto office of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, at the foot of the landmark CN Tower.

The accused men, wearing white T-shirts and gray sweat pants, were escorted into the small courtroom four at a time, shackled together. About 20 family members sat together while more than two dozen other people, mostly media, crammed inside.

Snipers were on the roofs of nearby buildings and police cradled guns beside an airport-style security checkpoint.

At the proceeding, a justice of the peace ruled that one of the accused, Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, will appear at a bail hearing July 4.

All the others will appear June 12 to set hearing dates.

In what has raised questions about the safety of Canadians and U.S. border security, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police say the men took delivery of three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be mixed with fuel oil to produce a powerful explosive.

It took just one tonne of the fertilizer to build the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb that killed 168 people.

Other charges against the men include trying to build bombs and training, or being trained, as terrorists, according to court documents. Police haven't named the five youths in the group, or listed charges against them.

Canadian newspapers said the men had a training camp in a wooded area north of Toronto. Residents have been concerned about night-time gunfire and wondered what police helicopters were looking for as they buzzed overhead.

Lawyers complained their clients were being kept in isolation in jail and were barred from seeing family members or praying as a group.

"We'd like to be able to facilitate that religious freedom that they're entitled to," said Donald McLeod, attorney for accused Jahmaal James, 23.

The men and youths arrested were all Canadian citizens or Canadian residents. Seven worshiped at the same mosque and two were already in jail on weapons charges.

Muslims make up some 2 percent of Canada's population of 33 million, and leaders fear the arrests will spark attacks on their community.
Bomb-making among charges
Toronto STAR
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER
Jun. 5, 2006. 03:51 PM

The twelve men arrested Friday and charged as adults in connection with alleged terrorist acts are linked together in six categories of charges, court documents reveal.

Documents filed at the Brampton courthouse indicate that the charges range from conspiracy to carry out a terrorist activity, to training for terrorist purposes, to bomb making and illegally importing guns and ammunition.

All twelve are charged with knowingly participating in a terrorist group for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activity in Mississauga, Toronto, Fort Erie, the Township of Ramara and elsewhere in Ontario, between March 1, 2005 and June 2, 2006.

The 12 adults are Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Qayyum Abdul Jamal. Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid.

Three of the 12 are also alleged to have imported a firearm and prohibited ammunition into Canada for the benefit of a terrorist group in Mississauga, Toronto, Fort Erie and elsewhere in Ontario, between March 1, 2005 and 14 August 2005. They are Fahim Ahmad, Mohammed Dirie and Yasim Abdi Mohamed.

These three men face a related charge of collecting three prohibited weapons and 182 rounds of ammunition for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activity during the same time period.

Ahmad, Amara, Ansari, Jamal, James, Durrani, Chand alias Shakur, Ghany and Khalid, are charged with receiving training for the purpose of enhancing the ability of a terrorist group to carry out terrorist activity, in Mississauga, Toronto, the Township of Ramara, and elsewhere in the province, between Nov. 27, 2005, and Dec. 31, 2005.

Ahmad, Amara, Durrani, Chand and Shakur, face a separate charge of providing training for the purpose of enhancing the ability of a terrorist group to carry out a terrorist act at the same locations and between