Ilyas Kashmiri: Most dangerous man on Earth?

[TATA]

Ilyas Kashmiri: Most dangerous man on Earth?

(CNN) -- He has one eye, a thick beard streaked with henna and has lost a finger. He wears thick aviator-style dark glasses. At least we think so. There are very few photographs of 40-something Ilyas Kashmiri. But to counter-terrorism officials on three continents, he is one of the most dangerous men in the world.

Kashmiri is a veteran jihadist who in his early years fought the Indians in the disputed territory of Kashmir and the Russians in Afghanistan, which is where he lost his eye. He famously escaped from an Indian jail and then fought with a unit of Pakistan's special forces.

And he is ruthless. Ten years ago, Indian troops carried out a raid into Pakistani Kashmir. Pakistani officials said 14 civilians including several children were slaughtered.

The next day Kashmiri led a retaliatory raid. He and his fighters kidnapped and beheaded an Indian army officer -- his head later paraded in the bazaars of Pakistani Kashmir.

But then he fell out with his sponsors in the Pakistani military. At one point -- the date is disputed -- he was arrested in connection with an attempt to assassinate General Pervez Musharraf in 2003. For reasons unknown, Kashmiri was released a short time later.

And that was where the trouble really started, when a local jihadist went viral, moving his base of operations from Pakistani Kashmir to North Waziristan. As commander of "Brigade 313," part of Harakat-ul-Jihad-Islami (Movement for an Islamic Holy War), he formed a close relationship with al Qaeda in the wild frontier territory of Pakistan.

Kashmiri's number one enemy is still India. His group was thought responsible for the bombing of a bakery popular with foreigners in Pune in 2009. But there is plenty of evidence he has ambitions beyond South Asia.

David Coleman Headley, the US citizen who confessed to helping scout targets for the Mumbai attack in November 2008, said after his arrest that he had twice met Kashmiri.

During questioning by India's National Intelligence Agency -- which was given access to him in Chicago in June -- Headley said he'd been taken to Pakistan's tribal territories to meet Kashmiri early in 2009.

A copy of the interrogation obtained by CNN reveals that Kashmiri sent Headley on another trip to survey targets in India -- one place he said he video-taped was the Pune bakery.

He also said Kashmiri had encouraged him to attack the offices of the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. According to the indictment of Headley, Kashmiri told him he could "provide manpower, weaponry and funding for the Denmark operations." Headley says Kashmiri gave him $1,500 and told him to "concentrate on the Denmark attack at the earliest."

Headley traveled to England, Sweden and Denmark to refine his plans, before being arrested at Chicago airport in October 2009 as he planned to leave for Pakistan. In a plea deal this year, Headley confessed to his involvement in both the Mumbai and Danish plots.

Now intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic believe Kashmiri is trying to get teams into Europe that would launch coordinated Mumbai-style attacks in several cities. The British Home Secretary, Theresa May, said last week that police were receiving special training to handle such an attack.

New details on the Europe plot

In a rare interview with Asia Times Online last year, Kashmiri boasted of those plans. The newspaper's Islamabad reporter, Syed Saleem Shahzad, says he was taken to a secret location in North Waziristan, in October 2009. Kashmiri apparently wanted to use the occasion to refute claims that he'd been killed in a drone strike near the town of Mir Ali the previous month.

Shahzad describes meeting a tall, well-built man with a firm handshake. He asked him whether the world could expect more "Mumbai-style" attacks. "That was nothing compared to what has already been planned for the future," Ilyas replied.

European intelligence officials are now anxious "the future" may be imminent, with al Qaeda looking to use people with Western passports in attacks -- Europeans and North Africans, for example.

There are plenty of foreign fighters in the Pakistani tribal territories -- as many as 10,000 according to a Pakistani military commander. One of them, Ahmed Sidiqi, was detained in Kabul last July and interrogated by US forces at the Bagram Airfield. According to European counter-terrorism sources, Sidiqi said he had met Kashmiri, though there is no confirmation that he did.

Another man alleged to have sought out Kashmiri is Chicago taxi driver Raja Lahrasib Khan, who traveled to Pakistan in 2008 and 2009. He was arrested this year in the United States and charged with attempting to provide support to al Qaeda.

Court documents say Khan met Kashmiri, who had told him that he "wanted to train operatives to conduct attacks in the United States." The documents include a conversation Khan is alleged to have had with an unidentified conspirator about Kashmiri's relationship with Osama bin Laden.

UC1: OK, Osama bin Laden's giving orders.

KHAN: Yeah.

UC1: Does he give orders to Kashmiri? Did Kashmiri...

KHAN: Just, yeah, to Kashmiri, then Kashmiri give the order to mujahideen...

Khan has pled not guilty.

Intelligence officials say that besides being an experienced operator, Kashmiri has also managed to navigate the often perilous waters of jihadist rivalries, attracting members of other Pakistani groups to his "313 Brigade" and retaining a measure of autonomy despite pledging allegiance to al Qaeda.

That's probably in part because of his operational prowess. If Osama bin Laden is al Qaeda's "spiritual" leader and Egyptian cleric Ayman al Zawahiri its philosopher, Kashmiri is the organization's military brain.

As one U.S. official put it recently, Kashmiri is "the key ingredient in the bad stew of senior terrorists who are planning operations in the region and beyond."

Ilyas Kashmiri: Most dangerous man on Earth? - CNN.com

 

[Alphatech]

Ilyas Kashmiri: Most dangerous man on Earth?

Not while George Bush is still alive.

 

[riju78]

Hamburg, Germany (CNN) -- Al Qaeda is still planning Mumbai-style attacks in Europe, with the United States also possibly being targeted, counter-terrorism officials in Europe and the United States tell CNN.
The discovery of al Qaeda's plans to launch coordinated attacks in several cities in Britain, Germany, and France led to the U.S. issuing an unprecedented travel advisory in October for its citizens traveling in Europe.
European counter-terrorism officials tell CNN they believe the aim was to carry out the attacks before the end of this year. The expected timeframe of the plot had not previously been disclosed.
In November 2008 gunmen belonging to Lashkar e Taiba, a Pakistani Jihadist group affiliated with al Qaeda, went on a shooting rampage against several targets in Mumbai, including its most prestigious hotel, the main railway station and a Jewish center, killing more than 160 people.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Dr. August Hanning, a former head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, said intelligence indicated that al Qaeda had already started planning to launch Mumbai-style attacks in the United States.
"We have got information that they have planned or are planning a plot like the Mumbai plot in Europe and the United States," said Hanning who retired late last year as State Secretary in Germany's Interior Ministry, one of the country's most senior counter-terrorism positions.
The revelation is the most concrete indication yet that al Qaeda is planning mass casualty gun attacks on U.S. soil.
A senior U.S. counter-terrorism official told CNN that U.S. intelligence agencies have for some time been concerned that al Qaeda would attempt to replicate aspects of the 2008 Mumbai attack on US soil. "The assumption has been that they would make plans to do this and the potential threat is being treated very seriously," the official told CNN.
The capture of Ahmed Sidiqi, a militant from the German port city of Hamburg, in Afghanistan in July, helped Western intelligence uncover the conspiracy, according to European and U.S. counter-terrorism officials. Sidiqi is currently being held in American custody at Bagram air force base in Afghanistan.
Information came from "different sources ... and this is one of the sources," Hanning told CNN. His statement was echoed by a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official.
Western intelligence agencies also learned that Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior al Qaeda operative, had a planning role in the plot. According to U.S. counter-terrorism officials, Osama bin Laden himself signed off on the plot.
Kashmiri, a veteran jihadist who made his name fighting Indian troops in the Kashmir conflict, has in the last year emerged as a key planner of al Qaeda operations against the West, according to Western officials and court documents.
Last month Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper citing intelligence sources reported that Kashmiri met with Sidiqi in Pakistan's tribal areas and boasted that he had already dispatched terrorist teams to Britain and Germany to launch Mumbai-style attacks.
"[Kashmiri] knows our situation in Germany and therefore he is dangerous," Hanning told CNN.
German authorities may have particular cause for concern. German authorities are investigating the alleged involvement of several militants from Hamburg, including Bagram detainee Sidiqi, in the al Qaeda plot against Europe.
Sidiqi and 10 other militants from Hamburg set off for the tribal areas of Pakistan in March 2009, according to German intelligence officials. "When they left Hamburg they [had] decided to join the jihad in Afghanistan or Pakistan but then they came into contact to certain groups then after this they developed the plan ... not to stay there and fight there but to go back and commit some crimes in Germany in Europe," Dr. Manfred Murck, Hamburg's Intelligence chief told CNN in an exclusive interview.
According to European counter-terrorism officials, Sidiqi revealed that four other members of his group were part of al Qaeda's plans to attack Europe. Several of them met with Younes al Mauritani, a senior al Qaeda operative who tasked some of them to return to Europe to prepare the attack, according to the officials.
"The general assumption would be that Sidiqi and some others planned to come back to Germany and might develop terrorist attacks in the long term," Murck told CNN, "this is the general assumption that we do have, but it's not concrete, we don't think they had a concrete plan."
Murck said Hamburg's intelligence agency has found it difficult to untangle how the Hamburg group fitted into Al Qaeda's plans because they have had no direct access to him in Afghanistan. "As far as we can see we don't have the evidence that [theirs] was a terrorist attack in the Mumbai style," Murck stated.
In early October two members of the Hamburg group -- Naamen Meziche and Shahab Dashti -- were reported killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan, one of Pakistan's tribal territories. According to European intelligence officials the group's travel coordinator -- Asadullah Muslih -- is still believed at large somewhere in Pakistan. Murck said his intelligence agency has evidence that Dashti was killed but has not been able to verify the reported death of Meziche.
Rami Makanesi -- another member of the Hamburg travel group allegedly implicated by Sidiqi -- is currently in custody in southern Germany. He is being investigated for membership of a terrorist group but has not been formally charged by German authorities. "He wanted to go to the German embassy or consulate [in Islamabad] and then he was picked up," Murck told CNN.
Murck hinted that some of the Hamburg group may have wanted to return to Europe because they were fed up with conditions in the al Qaeda camps in Pakistan.
"It's not the nice romantic jihad they were thinking about," he said.
According to German intelligence officials, the Hamburg group were recruited by Meziche, the group's ringleader in the Taiba mosque in Hamburg , a mosque -- previously called Al Quds -- attended by 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in the late 1990s. In August this year Hamburg authorities closed down the Taiba mosque because of its ties to extremists.
Murck told CNN that 15 foreign radical extremists were deported from Germany based on information authorities collected at the Taiba mosque. But over time he said, more and more clusters of radical extremists formed in the mosque.
"If there is one place, from Denmark even to the United States, where people know if you want to be a brother in the name of Allah and have an idea to be a member of jihad then go to al Quds mosque in Hamburg. It was that famous, and this was one of the reasons that we decided to close it."
Hamburg authorities had to fight a tough legal battle to close the mosque. "We have a Constitution and churches, mosques are protected by our Constitution and it's very difficult for German authorities to forbid praying in such kinds of mosques," August Hanning told CNN.
Hamburg intelligence officials stress that Hamburg is not unique among European cities grappling with the problem of violent Islamist extremism.
"We count about 40 persons at the moment ... who justify violence and find it's right that there is an international jihad ... and that terrorism might be right, and there might be a 100 more that are in close contact to them," Murck told CNN.
"Taken altogether we don't have a real chance to look at each of those 40 or 140, 24 hours a day, every week so what we have to do is to look at the [radical] scene, to have some human sources within that scene."
Radicalization is on the rise in Germany according to German counter-terrorism officials with hotspots emerging in such cities as Berlin, Bonn, Ulm, Frankfurt, Cologne and Hamburg, fueled by radicals' exploitation of online social media sites.
According to Hanning, around 100 to 200 hard cores supporters of al Qaeda in Germany currently pose the greatest concern.
The trajectory that has most worried German counter-terrorism officials is Germans who have gone overseas for terrorism training and returned.
"Our estimate is 220 people who have left Germany for training purposes in Pakistan, being trained in terrorist techniques and nearly half of them have come back to Germany and that has been the real threat for us. ... We know that they still have contact with these dangerous groups in Pakistan," Hanning told CNN.
Murck, Hamburg's Intelligence Chief, says the city's intelligence agencies are determined to do everything they can to prevent a terrorist attack on the city. "We just have to live with the possibility it might happen and with our responsibility to hinder it."

Sources: Al Qaeda eyes more Mumbai-style attacks - CNN.com

 

[riju78]

AN EXTREMIST who helped plot the Mumbai terror attacks met two men in Derby to plan a bombing in Denmark.
David Headley is in prison in America awaiting sentence for scouting targets in Mumbai prior to the 2008 atrocities, which killed 170.
He has told interrogators that he travelled to Derby in August last year for a meeting over the Danish assault.
According to secret documents seen by the Derby Telegraph, Headley was given money by the two men he met here. One also said he was "available" for the plot.
It is believed MI5 may have monitored the meeting and tipped off US intelligence services when Headley flew across the Atlantic.
He was arrested in Chicago and later admitted 12 counts of conspiracy.
The US authorities allowed Headley, a member of the Laskkar-e-Taiba militant group, to be quizzed for 34 hours by Indian interrogators about the Mumbai plot.
In a transcript of the interview, Headley described the meeting with the Derby men, whom he said were originally from the Kotali area of Pakistan.
Headley said he was working for Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani militant with links to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Notes of the Indian security service's interview with Headley have been shown to the Derby Telegraph.
In them he describes how he travelled to England in August last year and met his two contacts in Derby.
"They also gave me some money and said that only one was available for the Denmark plot," he said.
Headley, who was born in Pakistan but raised in America, has admitted plotting an assault, possibly using suicide bombers, in Denmark.
He said he was told by Kashmiri to focus the attack on the offices of the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which printed controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
The Indian authorities had sought to extradite Headley but a plea bargain was struck which meant he would remain in America in return for passing on information.
It is not known whether his two contacts in Derby were interviewed by British police or arrested following the detention of Headley last October, two months after the meeting.
A spokesman for the Home Office said: "We do not comment on security issues for obvious reasons."
Derbyshire police also refused to comment on specifics of the case, saying only that the force "works closely with the security service to try to ensure the safety of the public".
Assistant Chief Constable Alec Wood added: "Derbyshire Constabulary is committed to working with our partners to make Derby a safer place to live and work in.
"Radicalisation and extremism are two of the potential issues that partnership working tackles.
"We are not in a position to talk about specific cases or allegations, but would reiterate that allegations of involvement with any extremist activity are taken extremely seriously and investigated thoroughly.
"Any member of the public with concerns can discuss them with the police."
Derby Muslim community leader Gulfraz Nawaz said he hoped the police would have arrested the two Derby men.
Mr Nawaz, former secretary of Normanton's Jamia Mosque, said: "I'm shocked and surprised that something like this could have gone on in Derby."
The incident is the latest in a string of high-profile terror-related cases that have been linked to Derby.
Last year, Krenar Lusha, of Moore Street, Normanton, was jailed for seven years. The 31-year-old Albanian Muslim was found with more than 70 litres of petrol and bomb-making manuals when his home was raided.
In February, 2008, Derby-born Parviz Khan was jailed for life for plotting to kill a British Muslim soldier.
In 2006, a Derby terror suspect was given a control order restricting his activities. Known only as GG, he was one of five Iraqi Kurds arrested on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks in London.
Another Derby man, Umran Javed, was jailed for six years for shouting pro-terrorism remarks at a protest outside the Danish embassy in London in February, 2007.
The most notorious city link to terror is the case of Omar Sharif, 27. He planned a suicide bomb attack on a Tel Aviv bar in 2003 but the explosive failed to detonate.
Sharif, of Northumberland Street, Normanton, fled and his body was found in the sea two weeks later.
The Home Office is funding a pilot scheme in Derby which aims to help youngsters thought to be at risk of extremism.
Almost 70 people in the city have been referred to the programme, called Channel.
Mr Nawaz said Derby may be gaining an undeserved reputation for extremism.
"These people seem to move to Derby for a couple of months. They do not seem to be born and bred in Derby," he said.

AN EXTREMIST who helped plot the Mumbai terror attacks met two men in Derby to plan a bombing in Denmark.

 

[Spring Onion]

When is US drone going to kill him instead of sheltering him ??

 

[Vimana1]

nice article but US drones did try to kill him but he survived and gave a intresting interview on asia news after that incident.


Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan

 

[prototype]

Were is this moron hiding now

He warned all the foreign visitors to India not to visit during Hockey world cup,Commonwealth games and Cricket world cup as he will make India bath in blood

2 events had passed by and the moron is nowhere to b seen

 

[REHAN NIAZI FALCON]

what about ball takhurey .......................

 

[SpArK]

what about ball takhurey .......................

never heard anyone with that name...

 

[REHAN NIAZI FALCON]

all foreign and indian propaganda....................... he may be dangerour but on minor scale in presence of big fishes with crown of nobility..........

 

[SpArK]

^^^
I thought some comment like that will be coming soon.. Yes dear its all propaganda by India and foreign... nothing local about it.

 

[REHAN NIAZI FALCON]

http://data:image/jpg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wCEAAkGBhQSERUUEhQUFBQSFhQYFBMWFxQaFRIWFRcYFBQQFBQXHSseGB8lGhUUHy8iIycpLSwsFR4xQTQqNSYrLCkBCQoKDgwOGA8PGiocHSUsKSksKSkpLCkpKSwpKSkpKSkpNSkpKSkpNSksKS0sLCopKSwpKSksLCkpKSkpLiksKf

never heard anyone with that name...

hope u know him..................

 

[SpArK]

http://data:image/jpg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wCEAAkGBhQSERUUEhQUFBQSFhQYFBMWFxQaFRIWFRcYFBQQFBQXHSseGB8lGhUUHy8iIycpLSwsFR4xQTQqNSYrLCkBCQoKDgwOGA8PGiocHSUsKSksKSkpLCkpKSwpKSkpKSkpNSkpKSkpNSksKS0sLCopKSwpKSksLCkpKSkpLiksKf

hope u know him..................

nope there is nobody with that name in this country... you can refer to directory or search the net.

 

[REHAN NIAZI FALCON]

bal thakre

 

[Peacefulll]

what about ball takhurey .......................

Pakistanis are the only people in the world who consider him in that category. Best of luck convincing the rest of the world about it.