Richard Bennett

Apparently, Al Qaeda attempted to attack the UK, India, and Australia on 9/11/2001, but just couldn’t pull off all the attacks. Melanie Philips quotes the Times of London on the recent conviction, in India, of an AQ terrorist:

‘An Indian man was jailed in Bombay yesterday for plotting to fly passenger jets into the House of Commons and Tower Bridge in London on September 11, 2001.

‘Mohammed Afroze was sentenced to seven years after he admitted that he had a role in an al-Qaeda plot to attack London, the Rialto Towers building in Melbourne and the Indian Parliament. His lawyer has claimed, however, that the confession was “forcefully taken” and that Afroze was tortured by Indian police.

‘Afroze admitted that he and seven al-Qaeda operatives planned to hijack aircraft at Heathrow and fly them into the two London landmarks. The suicide squad included men from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afroze said. They booked seats on two Manchester-bound flights, but fled just before they were due to board.’

So much for the theory that AQ is avenging Saddam these days.

H/T Captain Ed.

Scotland Yard deals with a terrorist:

At Stockwell Station, armed officers opened fire on the suspect after he hurdled a ticket barrier and raced along a platform.

Police screamed at passengers to evacuate and are thought to have shot the suspect as he stumbled on to a train.

My haiku for the occasion:

[Redacted out of respect for the dead man’s innocence.]

Here’s an eyewitness account from the Grauniad:

“An Asian guy ran on to the train. As he ran, he was hotly pursued by what I knew to be three plain-clothes police officers.

“He tripped and was also pushed to the floor and one of the officers shot him five times.

“One of the police officers was holding a black automatic pistol in his left hand. They held it down to him and unloaded five shots into him. I saw it. He’s dead, five shots, he’s dead.

“I’m totally distraught. It was no more than five yards away from where I was sitting as I saw it with my own eyes.

“As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified.

“He looked like a Pakistani but he had a baseball cap on, and quite a thickish coat. It was a coat like you would wear in winter, a sort of padded jacket.

“Maybe he might have had something concealed under there, I don’t know. But it looked out of place in the weather we’ve been having.

“He was quite large, big built, quite a sort of chubby guy.

“I was crouched down and basically ran as fast as I could in a crouched position. I just was worried about bullets flying around.

“It was just an instinctive reaction to get out – people running in all directions, looks of horror on their faces, screaming, a lot of screaming from women, absolute mayhem.

“And the smell of cordite as well, the gunpowder smell, that sort of acrid sort of gunpowder smell.

“It was an absolute nightmare. I’m just waiting for the pubs to open to be quite honest – nice stiff Scotch.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I saw them kill a man basically. I saw them shoot a man five times.”

The Brits don’t fool around.

CORRECTION: It wasn’t Scotland Yard that shot the terror dude, it was the London Metropolitan Police. Sorry for the mistake. See CNN for more details.

UPDATE: It turns out that the suspect, for all his suspicious behavior, wasn’t actually involved with the terrorists. That doesn’t mean I fault the police for shooting him, because the climate of fear the terrorists created was the real culprit. That’s what terror does, after all.

Portland is a haven for terrorists, refusing to participate in the Joint Terrorism Task Force. So it comes as no surprise that one of the terrorists behind the London bombings trained fellow terrorists in Oregon:

July 21, 2005 — An al Qaeda operative who once traveled to the United States to help set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon was identified yesterday as the chief organizer of the London subway bombings.

U.S. and British officials named Haroon Rashid Aswat, who is British-born and of Indian descent, as the mysterious “fifth man” in the London attacks.

They said he entered Britain two weeks before the attacks despite being on a terror watch list, likely led the operation and then left the country a day before the blasts.

The Times of London reported cellphone records indicated he had 20 conversations with two of the London bombers in the days before the attacks and telephoned one of them the morning of the attack.

There were numerous reports that Aswat was already under arrest in Pakistan, but U.S. officials were unable to confirm that last night.

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials said they believe Aswat is likely the same man who surfaced in 2003 in the Justice Department prosecution of a group of fanatics who tried to set up a jihad training camp in Bly, Ore., in 1999.

Actions have consequences, and coddling terrorists leads to more terrorist actions. This isn’t rocket science, folks.

The liberation of East Timor from Indonesia was Noam Chomsky’s pet issue for many years. It’s clear to people familiar with that issue that it was a major irritant to Southeast Asia’s Muslim fanatics, and a root cause of the Bali bombings, among other atrocities. Yet journalists of the “who am I to judge” school forget this, so people like Australian prime minister John Howard have to educate them:

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia’s involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn’t have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq — a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations — when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

Jeff Jarvis opined recently that he thinks Chomsky sincere. I think his flip-flop in East Timor proves that he’s not. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and 7/7 were not retaliating for the liberation of Iraq.

See the full transcript of Howard and Blair’s press conference here. The good part is toward the end.

Here we go again:

Terrified passengers were evacuated from parts of London’s transport system today after incidents involving explosives at three underground stations and a bus.

The explosions were attempts to kill that had failed, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said tonight.

Two small blasts occurred on tube trains: one near Warren Street station in central London, and the other on a tube train near Oval station in south London.

A third small explosion was reported on a No 26 bus in Shoreditch, east London.

A suspect package was also found at Shepherd’s Bush station in west London.

One woman was reportedly injured at Warren Street, but there were no reports of casualties during the other incidents, which happened shortly before 1pm.

Sir Ian said tonight: “The intention must have been to kill.”

But he added: “The intention of the terrorists has not been fulfilled.”

Or maybe not, since these terrorists couldn’t pull it off. But this is a really bad sign because it probably signals a copy-cat bombing attempt that will be followed by others.