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The show begins with dis­cus­sion of the death of a 9/11 activist who had met with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma short­ly before her death in a plane crash. Skep­ti­cal of the offi­cial ver­sion of events, the late Bev­er­ly Eck­ert had gar­nered the Pres­i­den­t’s atten­tion.

A con­sid­er­able por­tion of the first side high­lights aspects of the recent wild­fires that struck the Vic­to­ria sec­tion of Aus­tralia. That region has been the focal point of reli­gious strife between Mus­lims and some of their Chris­t­ian prelate neigh­bors. In that con­text, it  is impor­tant to note that Aus­tralian Jihadists have been urg­ing the use of wild­fires as weapons against “infi­dels.” By the same token, jihadists have tak­en sat­is­fac­tion in the recent wild­fires in Vic­to­ria. Did they author these events?

Next, the pro­gram con­tin­ues exam­i­na­tion of pos­si­ble jihadist activ­i­ty in South Asia by turn­ing to the sub­ject of the ter­ror­ist attack on the Sri Lankan nation­al crick­et team in Lahore, Pak­istan. After exam­in­ing a num­ber of con­spir­a­to­r­i­al analy­ses prof­fered by knowl­edge­able Pak­ista­nis, the broad­cast sets forth inves­ti­ga­tors’ analy­sis that Pak­istani jihadist ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and al Qae­da authored the event.

Oth­er Pak­istani Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ates have launched ad cam­paigns on pub­lic tran­sit sys­tems in both the Bay Area and New York. The Islam­ic Cir­cle of North Amer­i­ca is not a benign orga­ni­za­tion. Much of the rest of the pro­gram also deals with the Broth­er­hood.

Although it rep­re­sents itself as a peace­ful, civ­il right rights orga­ni­za­tion for Mus­lims, the Broth­er­hood is actu­al­ly an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion that has enjoyed con­sid­er­able pub­lic rela­tions suc­cess. After dis­cussing the Broth­er­hood’s appar­ent pen­e­tra­tion and dom­i­na­tion of the Al Jazeera net­work, the broad­cast sets forth a num­ber of recent devel­op­ments in that orga­ni­za­tion’s attempts at dom­i­nat­ing the U.S. Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty and issues relat­ing to Amer­i­can Mus­lims. One for­mer FBI agent claims that all sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can Mus­lim insti­tu­tions are dom­i­nat­ed by the Broth­er­hood.

Con­clud­ing with an event that high­lights how Islam­ic fas­cist ele­ments fit into, and net­work with, the Under­ground Reich and the post­war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al, the broad­cast revis­its the 1994 AMIA bomb­ing in Argenti­na. An event authored by a net­work bring­ing togeth­er Shi­ite reac­tionar­ies in Iran and Lebanon, Argen­tin­ian secu­ri­ty forces and Amer­i­can neo-fas­cist and white suprema­cist ele­ments, the AMIA bomb­ing con­tin­ues to be active­ly cov­ered-up. An inves­ti­ga­tor into that attack was recent­ly kid­napped, tor­tured and point­ed­ly warned, appar­ent­ly by Argen­tine secu­ri­ty forces linked to the per­pe­tra­tors of the event.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Amer­i­can Mus­lim Broth­er­hood attempts at chang­ing lan­guage that would weak­en attempts at reign­ing in jihadist ele­ments in the U.S.; protests by the Broth­er­hood of infil­tra­tion of mosques by secu­ri­ty forces, despite proof that jihadist ele­ments are delib­er­ate­ly using mosques as refuge from scruti­ny; British intel­li­gence agents’ down­play­ing of the the poten­tial threat of Hamas and Hezbol­lah ele­ments.

1. The show begins with dis­cus­sion of the death of a 9/11 activist who had met with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma short­ly before her death in a plane crash. Skep­ti­cal of the offi­cial ver­sion of events, the late Bev­er­ly Eck­ert had gar­nered the Pres­i­den­t’s atten­tion. Had she gar­nered the atten­tion of ele­ments hos­tile to [and dead­ly for] her sit­u­a­tion?

” . . . [9/11 activist Bev­er­ly] Eck­ert was going to Buf­fa­lo, her home­town, to cel­e­brate the 58th birth­day of her late hus­band, Sean Rooney, and to award a schol­ar­ship in his mem­o­ry. On Sept. 11, 2001, he had phoned his wife to say a last good­bye as the South Tow­er of the World Trade Cen­ter burned around him and then col­lapsed.

Last week, Eck­ert vis­it­ed the White House when Pres­i­dent Oba­ma met with rel­a­tives of those killed in the 9/11 attacks and the bomb­ing of the USS Cole, to explain the new admin­is­tra­tion’s poli­cies on cap­tur­ing and pros­e­cut­ing ter­ror­ism sus­pects, and pre­vent­ing future attacks.

Speak­ing at the White House on Fri­day, Oba­ma praised Eck­ert as ‘an inspi­ra­tion to me and to so many oth­ers.’ . . .”

“2 Well-Known Advo­cates among the 50 Killed in Plane Crash” by Bob Dro­gin [Los Ange­les Times]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 2/14/2009; p. A6.

2. A con­sid­er­able por­tion of the first side of the broad­cast high­lights aspects of the recent wild­fires that struck the Vic­to­ria sec­tion of Aus­tralia. That por­tion of Aus­tralia has been the focal point of reli­gious strife between Mus­lims and some of their Chris­t­ian prelate neigh­bors.

“The Supreme Court of Vic­to­ria in Aus­tralia upheld the appeal of two Aus­tralian pas­tors who could have faced jail time for pub­licly com­par­ing Chris­tian­i­ty with Islam.

The court ruled in favor of Daniel Scot and Dan­ny Nal­li­ah, who were pre­vi­ous­ly found to have ‘vil­i­fied Islam’ with their pub­lic com­ments by the Vic­to­ri­an Civ­il and Admin­is­tra­tive Tri­bunal.

In 2004, the tri­bunal ruled that the pas­tors were in vio­la­tion of Victoria’s Racial and Reli­gious Tol­er­ance Act. It deemed the pas­tors’ beliefs ‘offen­sive’ and ‘unrea­son­able’ inter­pre­ta­tions of Chris­t­ian and Islam­ic teach­ings. It also ordered the pas­tors to apol­o­gize for their ser­mon. The pas­tors could have faced jail time if they refused to com­ply. . . .”

“Court Rules in Favor of Aus­tralian Pas­tors, Accused of Vil­i­fy­ing Islam”; The Indi­an Catholic; 12/14/2006.

3. Aus­tralian Jihadists have been urg­ing the use of wild­fires as weapons against “infi­dels.”

“Aus­tralia has been sin­gled out as a tar­get for ‘for­est jihad’ by a group of Islam­ic extrem­ists urg­ing Mus­lims to delib­er­ate­ly light bush­fires as a weapon of ter­ror.

US intel­li­gence chan­nels ear­li­er this year iden­ti­fied a web­site call­ing on Mus­lims in Aus­tralia, the US, Europe and Rus­sia to ‘start for­est fires’, claim­ing ‘schol­ars have jus­ti­fied chop­ping down and burn­ing the infi­dels’ forests when they do the same to our lands’.

The web­site, post­ed by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islam­ic Net­work, argues in Ara­bic that light­ing fires is an effec­tive form of ter­ror­ism jus­ti­fied in Islam­ic law under the ‘eye for an eye’ doc­trine.

The post­ing — which instructs jihadis to remem­ber ‘for­est jihad’ in sum­mer months — says fires cause eco­nom­ic dam­age and pol­lu­tion, tie up secu­ri­ty agen­cies and can take months to extin­guish so that ‘this ter­ror will haunt them for an extend­ed peri­od of time’.

‘Imag­ine if, after all the loss­es caused by such an event, a jihadist organ­i­sa­tion were to claim respon­si­bil­i­ty for the for­est fires,’ the web­site says. ‘You can hard­ly begin to imag­ine the lev­el of fear that would take hold of peo­ple in the Unit­ed States, in Europe, in Rus­sia and in Aus­tralia.’

With the nation head­ing into anoth­er hot, dry sum­mer, Aus­tralian intel­li­gence agen­cies are treat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that bush­fires could be used as a weapon of ter­ror­ism as a seri­ous con­cern.

Attor­ney-Gen­er­al Robert McClel­land said the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment remained ‘vig­i­lant against such threats’, warn­ing that any­one caught light­ing a fire as a weapon of ter­ror would feel the wrath of anti-ter­ror laws.

‘Any infor­ma­tion that sug­gests a threat to Aus­trali­a’s inter­ests is inves­ti­gat­ed by rel­e­vant agen­cies as appro­pri­ate,’ Mr McClel­land said. . . .”

“Islam Group Urges For­est Fire Jihad” by Josh Gor­don; theage.com.au; 9/7/2008.

4. After the Vic­to­ria wild­fires of ear­ly 2009, jihadists cel­e­brat­ed the event. Is there any con­nec­tion between the reli­gious dis­cord between Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian in Vic­to­ria, the call for “jihadist” for­est fires in Autralia and the recent con­fla­gra­tion?

“Jihadists are cel­e­brat­ing the worst tragedy in Vic­to­ri­a’s his­to­ry.

Ter­ror watch­dogs said fun­da­men­tal­ists had blogged on web­sites across the globe, applaud­ing the lives lost and destruc­tion in the Vic­to­ria fires.

Senior ana­lyst at SITE Intel­li­gence Group Adam Rais­man said they were post­ing pic­tures of burnt homes and dev­as­tat­ed vic­tims and ‘tak­ing joy in the scenes’, the Sun­day Her­ald Sun reports.

One jihadist wrote: ‘It would be an act of revenge for Aus­tralian’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.’

Bush­fires vic­tims said they were stunned.

‘We’re mind­ing our own busi­ness and try­ing to cope with all this and they are cel­e­brat­ing our suf­fer­ing,’ said Denise McCann who lost her home in the Kinglake blaze. . . .”

“Jihadists Cel­e­brat­ing Vic­to­ria Fires; Tak­ing Joy in the Scenes” by Eleni Hale; The Aus­tralian; 2/15/2009.

5. Next, the pro­gram turns to the sub­ject of the ter­ror­ist attack on the Sri Lankan nation­al crick­et team in Lahore, Pak­istan. In Pak­istan, con­spir­a­to­r­i­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the event abound, var­i­ous­ly attribut­ing author­ship to, among oth­er ele­ments: Pak­istani secu­ri­ty forces, Indi­an secu­ri­ty forces, Pak­istani-based Islamists and for­eign Islamists.

“Yes­ter­day after­noon, Ali Raza went to the hos­pi­tal. A 25-year-old con­sta­ble in the Pun­jab police depart­ment, Ali Raza was accom­pa­ny­ing an old man who need­ed an M.R.I. scan. In the recep­tion area, he noticed that the wait­ing patients had aban­doned their chairs and were stand­ing around the tele­vi­sion. They had been watch­ing the same images all day: a dozen uniden­ti­fied gun­men, two wear­ing back­packs, fir­ing at a van near the Lib­er­ty Mar­ket round­about. The intend­ed vic­tims, the TV sta­tions had report­ed, were mem­bers of the Sri Lankan nation­al crick­et team, in town here to play Pak­istan. The dead: eight Pak­ista­nis, includ­ing six of Ali Raza’s fel­low police offi­cers.

‘Every­one at the hos­pi­tal was say­ing the same thing,’ Ali Raza told me lat­er that night, as we stood in line at a bright­ly light­ed stall sell­ing paan — a mild stim­u­lant made with betel nuts — near the Main Mar­ket round­about, just a short walk away from the site of the attack. ‘They were say­ing that this was done to show the Indi­ans that we in Pak­istan are also the vic­tims of ter­ror­ism.’

‘You think our own gov­ern­ment did it?’ I asked.

‘No one else could get away with this kind of thing,’ he insist­ed.

He described the attack­ers’ feat: they appeared out of nowhere at one of the city’s busiest inter­sec­tions and fired for more than 20 min­utes at the van car­ry­ing the play­ers to Qaddafi Sta­di­um, and then fled in rick­shaws.

‘I know the kind of pre­cau­tions we have to take when we are in a V.I.P. motor­cade,’ the young offi­cer told me. ‘And this was a ‘V.V.I.P.’ motor­cade. Every house in that neigh­bor­hood was sur­round­ed by the police. My friend was there and he told me the attack­ers didn’t receive a sin­gle wound.’

A young man in a T‑shirt who was stand­ing next to us at the paan stall asked, ‘Was your friend hurt?’

Ali Raza said, ‘He is fine, by the grace of God.’

This kind of talk was not lim­it­ed to paan stalls. There had been all sorts of opin­ions expressed on the pri­vate­ly owned TV chan­nels, which now bring live video and com­men­tary from the sites of ter­ror­ist attacks to much of Pakistan’s urban pop­u­la­tion. The gov­er­nor of Pun­jab Province, who last week oust­ed the elect­ed provin­cial gov­ern­ment on the orders of Pres­i­dent Asif Ali Zardari, was on cam­era imme­di­ate­ly after the attack, and com­pared it to the ter­ror­ist attacks in Mum­bai, India, last Novem­ber.

Oth­ers were more spe­cif­ic: a mem­ber of the oppo­si­tion Pak­istan Mus­lim League said he ‘had no doubt’ that this was the work of the Indi­an intel­li­gence agen­cies. A for­mer head of Pakistan’s secu­ri­ty ser­vice, the I.S.I., agreed with him. An ana­lyst from Islam­abad, dis­cussing the attack lat­er in the day on a pop­u­lar chat show, said that ‘from every angle’ it was evi­dent that India, by attack­ing a for­eign crick­et team in Pak­istan, had gained. ‘Who ben­e­fits?’ she said. ‘You have to ask who ben­e­fits.’

Anoth­er guest on the show, an elder­ly sage in a dark blue suit and a bright blue tie, wear­ing spec­ta­cles and speak­ing with slow, slot­ting move­ments of his hand, said that the blam­ing of one coun­try by anoth­er was always coun­ter­pro­duc­tive because, in the end, it took the focus away from domes­tic trou­bles. He gave the exam­ple of Benazir Bhutto’s assas­si­na­tion, which had imme­di­ate­ly led to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries but was still await­ing a prop­er inquiry. ‘When there is con­fu­sion,’ he said, ‘the only peo­ple who ben­e­fit are the mis­cre­ants.’

A for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial I know had a dif­fer­ent the­o­ry. He said he had seen a report some weeks ago warn­ing of exact­ly this kind of attack in Lahore, pos­si­bly against a crick­et team. He said it came from the rumor mill that ‘leads back to Waziris­tan’ in Pakistan’s trib­al areas. ‘So this is a secu­ri­ty fail­ure,’ he said. ‘But it’s not an intel­li­gence fail­ure.’

Lat­er at night it was report­ed that the gov­ern­ment had found bags that held guns, hand grenades and almonds. This was fol­lowed by the tele­vised funer­al of one of the slain police­men. His female rel­a­tives were sit­ting around his corpse, wail­ing and beat­ing their chests. His father, sur­round­ed by cam­eras, was look­ing at the floor and say­ing that he was proud of his son for serv­ing his coun­try.

Again at the paan stall, now sur­round­ed by lis­ten­ers, I asked Ali Raza if he thought there was a chance that the attack was the work of ter­ror­ists or crim­i­nals. ‘There is a chance,’ he admit­ted. ‘But it could be the agen­cies. It could be the gov­ern­ment. It could be India also.’

I asked, ‘What about oth­er peo­ple?’

‘Which oth­er peo­ple?’

I said, ‘The peo­ple who kid­nap jour­nal­ists and bomb the homes of politi­cians and slit the throats of gov­ern­ment spies.’

He was think­ing about it.

The man oper­at­ing the paan stall was lin­ing moist­ened betel leaves with spices and condi­ments. He had on a tat­tered apron, which is worn by men like him to keep the noto­ri­ous­ly messy paan juice from stain­ing their clothes. He smiled at us and said, ‘Who­ev­er has done this has a lot of intel­li­gence.’ He paused. As he did, I looked over the crowd, and thought that for all our var­i­ous the­o­ries, it was a point we could agree on. And then he fin­ished, ‘For poor peo­ple, every­thing is the same.”

“Lahore Mur­der Mys­tery” by Ali Sethi; The New York Times; 3/4/2009; p. A21.

6. Pak­istani author­i­ties have con­clud­ed that al-Qae­da affil­i­ates were respon­si­ble for the attack.

“Pak­istan has iden­ti­fied the gun­men who attacked Sri Lanka’s crick­et team in Lahore and arrest­ed some key sus­pects, includ­ing the broth­er of the sus­pect­ed mas­ter­mind, accord­ing to sev­er­al offi­cials.

Most of the two dozen detainees belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the out­lawed mil­i­tant groups with close links to al-Qae­da, secu­ri­ty offi­cials have told The Times.

Senior police offi­cials said that the men behind Tues­day morn­ing’s attack might also have links to oth­er mil­i­tants fight­ing in Pak­istan’s law­less trib­al region bor­der­ing Afghanistan.

How­ev­er, it remained unclear last night whether those arrest­ed includ­ed the gun­men who killed eight Pak­ista­nis and injured six Sri Lankan play­ers and one British assis­tant coach in Lahore. Salman Taseer, the Gov­er­nor of the east­ern province of Pun­jab, said only that the Gov­ern­ment had iden­ti­fied the attack­ers but refused to give details until the inves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed.. . .”

“Gun­men Who Attacked Crick­eters in Lahore ‘Had Links to al-Qae­da” by Zahid Hus­sain; timesonline.co.uk; 3/6/2009.

7. A Pak­istani Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is the exec­u­tive force behind a pub­lic­i­ty cam­paign being car­ried out on Muni bus­es in the Bay Area.

” . . . The Islam­ic Cir­cle of North Amer­i­ca (ICNA) was found­ed in 1971, via the Mus­lim Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion (MSA), as an umbrel­la group for South Asian-ori­ent­ed mosques and Islam­ic cen­ters.  It also con­tains a youth divi­sion called Young Mus­lims (YM), a mul­ti­me­dia divi­sion called Sound Vision, a web infor­ma­tion cen­ter called Why Islam, a mag­a­zine called The Mes­sage Inter­na­tion­al, and char­i­ties which go by the names ICNA Relief and Help­ing Hand.

When ICNA was cre­at­ed, it was to act as the Amer­i­can coun­ter­part to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood of Pak­istan, Jamaat-e-Isla­mi (JI).  Indeed, if one looks at the web domain infor­ma­tion for ICNA’s offi­cial web­site (as well as the site for Why Islam), he/she will find that the site is reg­is­tered to farrukh.net, a for­mer mir­ror (repli­ca) site of JI’s media divi­sion.  Today, farrukh.net is being used to show­case the works of Maulana Muham­mad Yusuf Islahi, a Jamaat leader.

Fur­ther evi­dence of the con­nec­tion between ICNA and JI is found in a July 2000 “Uni­ty Meet­ing” that took place in New York between ICNA and its Bal­ti­more-based rival, Jamaat al-Mus­limeen. [pdf] Speak­ing for the side of ICNA, in his native lan­guage of Urdu, was none oth­er than the Pres­i­dent (Amir) of JI, Qazi Hus­sain Ahmad (who is still the head of JI). Dur­ing the meet­ing, he stressed the need for “par­tic­i­pa­tion in Jihad;” he stat­ed that “Islam must be trans­lat­ed into polit­i­cal dom­i­nance;” and he said that “the sword and the Quran go togeth­er…”  His sharp rhetoric was not unusu­al, giv­en his pub­lic sup­port for the Tal­iban and his numer­ous get-togeth­ers with Osama bin Laden. . . .”

“Help­ing Hand to Hamas” by Joe Kauf­man; FrontPageMagazine.com; 5/15/2007.

8. The same group is con­duct­ing a sim­i­lar cam­paign on New York City sub­ways.

“Ads pro­mot­ing Islam are to be placed on New York sub­way cars in Sep­tem­ber, but a U.S. con­gress­man finds peo­ple spon­sor­ing the mes­sages unac­cept­able.

“I have no prob­lem with the ad itself, but I have a very, very real prob­lem with those behind it,” Rep. Peter King, a New York Repub­li­can, said Tues­day. He is urg­ing the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­i­ty to reject the ads.

The cam­paign is to fea­ture ads on 1,000 of the sub­way sys­tem’s rough­ly 6,200 cars. The main spon­sor is a grass-roots orga­ni­za­tion, Islam­ic Cir­cle of North Amer­i­ca. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

The ads, sim­ple black-and-white pan­els, will fea­ture key words or phras­es about Islam on one side of the pan­el such as “Head Scarf?” or “Prophet Muham­mad?” and the words “You deserve to know” along with the Web site address WhyIslam.org on the oth­er side.

“The idea is to evoke cer­tain thoughts in the mind­set of the per­son who is look­ing at the ads and get them to a point where they can reflect upon cer­tain words that one could define as hot words or key­words that get thrown around a lot but are not nec­es­sar­i­ly defined in the most prop­er con­text,” said New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s Imam Khalid Latif, a cler­ic who is pro­mot­ing the project in a YouTube video cre­at­ed by the Islam­ic Cir­cle.

Anoth­er of the back­ers of the adver­tis­ing cam­paign — which will launch in Sep­tem­ber to coin­cide with the month­long Islam­ic hol­i­day of Ramadan — is Sir­aj Wah­haj, imam of a Brook­lyn mosque.

Wah­haj was the first Mus­lim to lead a prayer before the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, but King objects to him because he was a char­ac­ter wit­ness for con­vict­ed 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing mas­ter­mind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rah­man.

“He is a known Islam­ic extrem­ist, and you would be giv­ing him cred­i­bil­i­ty and stature through a known gov­ern­ment facil­i­ty,” said King, rank­ing mem­ber of the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee. Wah­haj also appeared on a list of 170 poten­tial unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tors in the 1993 bomb­ing case. A pros­e­cu­tor said that not every­one on the list was con­sid­ered a co-con­spir­a­tor. . . .”

“Islam Sub­way Ads Cause Stir in New York”; cnn.com; 7/22/2008.

9. Sad­ly, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood appears to be tak­ing over the Al Jazeera net­work.

“The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Report (free sub­scrip­tion required) has an inter­est­ing look at the grow­ing Islamist agen­da of the al Jazeera TV sta­tion, and the roots of the shift in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

It is an impor­tant obser­va­tion since so much of the Arab world-as well as the West­ern media-look to the sta­tion to por­tray and inter­pret events, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Hamas-Israeli con­flict.

It is easy to for­get (and shock­ing­ly sel­dom report­ed) that Hamas is an organ­ic part of the glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, accord­ing to arti­cle 2 of its own char­ter. So that the Ikhwan would seek to con­trol the main medi­um for the out­side world to inter­pret the con­flict is not at all unusu­al.

The report looks at Wadah Khan­far (aka Wad­dah Khan­far), the station’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, as the dri­ving force behind al Jazeera’s move toward embrac­ing the Islamist agent, while mar­gin­al­iz­ing oth­er voic­es in the sta­tion that once had a sig­nif­i­cant role.

In Octo­ber 2006, one of Al Jazeera’s own cor­re­spon­dents stat­ed that Mr. Khan­far had a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood back­ground and asked him about it direct­ly, receiv­ing a non-denial and eva­sive reply:

Mr. Wad­dah, you have and Islam­ic back­ground, specif­i­cal­ly Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, don’t you think that this is con­flict­ing with your posi­tion as a head of the biggest Arab media orga­ni­za­tion now? In fact, I do not clas­si­fy myself as belong­ing to a cer­tain polit­i­cal ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment, this is first­ly an impor­tant issue which is very .. (inter­rupt­ing) ..Or you were belong­ing .. I think that first­ly I belong to this Nation includ­ing its col­lec­tive lega­cy and mind, and that this some­thing I val­ue and am keen on it, but I tell you clear­ly and frankly, Aljazeera taught us always that our affil­i­a­tion to Aljazeera- as an admin­is­tra­tion or press- is an affil­i­a­tion to an insti­tu­tion with deep-root­ed rules and with a clear iden­ti­ty based pri­mar­i­ly on pro­fi­cien­cy and respect­ing the opin­ion and the oth­er opin­ion, and it isn’t absolute­ly based on dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between peo­ple on ide­o­log­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al or par­ty bases.Inter­est­ing­ly, it was the Nation Mag­a­zine arti­cle from 2007 that first report­ed on the grow­ing Islamist agen­da of the TV sta­tion.

Whether it’s report­ing the Hamas per­spec­tive from the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries with­out men­tion of the Pales­tin­ian Authority’s ver­sion of events, or the fawn­ing depic­tion else­where of Islamist par­ties and mili­tias as the grass­roots reflec­tion of Arab sen­ti­ment, Al Jazeera has moved away from its ide­o­log­i­cal­ly diverse ori­gins to a more populist/Islamist approach. After the March 2003 US inva­sion of Iraq, Al Jazeera replaced its long­time sec­u­lar bureau chief in Bagh­dad, Faisal Yasiri, with Wadah Khan­far, who had report­ed from Afghanistan after the Amer­i­can inva­sion in 2001 and then Kur­dish-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry as the war with Iraq was launched in 2003. Short­ly there­after, the sec­u­lar head of Al Jazeera, Mohammed Jassem Ali, was oust­ed and replaced by Khan­far, whom nine cur­rent and for­mer employ­ees of the sta­tion inter­viewed for this arti­cle char­ac­ter­ize as an Islamist. It was around this time that Jazeera’s Iraq bureau “became a plat­form for [Sun­ni] extrem­ists,” says Shak­er Hamid, a sec­u­lar Jazeera cor­re­spon­dent in Bagh­dad from 1997 to 2000, who left to work at anoth­er Arab satel­lite sta­tion after get­ting what he says was a bet­ter offer. “I can’t say that Jazeera’s rhetoric is com­plete­ly against Shi­ites,” Hamid says. “The Amer­i­cans intro­duced this, but the media should not make it worse, and Jazeera did.”

I am all for free­dom of expres­sion and the rights of oth­ers to get their mes­sage out. But I am also in favor of full dis­clo­sure of own­er­ship and inter­ests. Al-Jazeera is los­ing its right to claim to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent voic­es, because the Islamist agen­da has made it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for any oth­er voic­es to be heard.”

“The Islamist (MB) Takeover of Al Jazeera?” by Dou­glas Far­rah; www.douglasfarah.com; 1/16/2009.

10. The Amer­i­can branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has weighed in against the arrest of bin Laden’s broth­er-in ‑law, lob­by­ing against the use of FBI infor­mants in mosques. Sad­ly, mosques have been a fre­quent loca­tion for Islamist oper­a­tional plan­ning and–in some places–weapons stor­age and man­u­fac­ture.

“The U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is react­ing to the arrest of a broth­er-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s body­guard on charges of lying about his ties to ter­ror­ist groups on his cit­i­zen­ship and pass­port appli­ca­tions. An AP report describes the case as fol­lows:

In the Cal­i­for­nia case, infor­ma­tion about the infor­mant who spied on the Islam­ic Cen­ter of Irvine came out last week at a deten­tion hear­ing for a broth­er-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s body­guard, an Afghan native and nat­u­ral­ized U.S. cit­i­zen named Ahmadul­lah Niazi. Niazi, 34, was arrest­ed Feb. 20 on charges of lying about his ties to ter­ror­ist groups on his cit­i­zen­ship and pass­port appli­ca­tions. He will be arraigned Mon­day in U.S. Dis­trict Court in San­ta Ana. FBI Spe­cial Agent Thomas J. Ropel III tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing that an FBI infor­mant infil­trat­ed Niazi’s mosque and sev­er­al oth­ers in Orange Coun­ty and befriend­ed Niazi. Ropel said the infor­mant record­ed Niazi on mul­ti­ple occa­sions talk­ing about blow­ing up build­ings, acquir­ing weapons and send­ing mon­ey to the Afghan muja­hadeen. Niazi has not been charged with ter­ror­ism and it’s not yet clear if the FBI was focused on any­thing beyond his activ­i­ties. Nei­ther the mosque nor any oth­er of its mem­bers have been charged. A 46-year-old fit­ness instruc­tor told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press last week he was the infor­mant. Craig Mon­teilh of Irvine said Niazi talked about blow­ing up build­ings and dis­cussed send­ing Mon­teilh to a ter­ror­ist train­ing camp in Yemen or Pak­istan. Mon­teilh said his tenure as an infor­mant end­ed after Niazi and oth­er mem­bers of the Islam­ic Cen­ter of Irvine report­ed him to author­i­ties. A Mus­lim advo­ca­cy group has demand­ed a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into whether Niazi was arrest­ed because he refused to become an FBI infor­mant after telling the agency about Mon­teilh.

The Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil (MPAC) has react­ed by stat­ing that the use of infor­mants in mosques “stig­ma­tizes” the mosques and erodes trust. Accord­ing an arti­cle on the MPAC web­site:

Trust is the cor­ner­stone of any part­ner­ship between law enforce­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. It can only be estab­lished and main­tained through clear and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion. With­out this, trust is erod­ed and sus­pi­cions arise on all sides. This clear­ly does not serve anyone’s interests.Federal law enforce­ment can­not estab­lish trust with Amer­i­can Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties through meet­ings and town­hall forums, while at the same time send­ing paid infor­mants who insti­gate vio­lent rhetoric in mosques. This mere act stig­ma­tizes Amer­i­can mosques and casts a shad­ow of doubt and dis­trust between Amer­i­can Mus­lims and their neigh­bors. It has also led many mosques and com­mu­ni­ty groups to recon­sid­er their rela­tion­ship with the FBI, includ­ing most recent­ly the Islam­ic Shu­ra Coun­cil of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. It is now up to the FBI and law enforce­ment agen­cies to re-engage with the Mus­lim Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, and re-build trust and respect. MPAC will con­tin­ue to raise these com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns with fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cials in its efforts to help form poli­cies that pre­serve civ­il lib­er­ties while also pro­tect­ing our nation.

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) announced that is plan­ning to file a request for the U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al to launch an inves­ti­ga­tion into the FBI’s arrest:

On Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 24, the Greater Los Ange­les Area chap­ter of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR-LA) will host a news con­fer­ence to announce the fil­ing of a request for the U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al to launch an inves­ti­ga­tion into the FBI’s arrest last week of Ahmad Niazi. The news con­fer­ence will imme­di­ate­ly fol­low a court hear­ing Tues­day for Niazi in San­ta Ana, Calif. Mem­bers of his fam­i­ly will take part in the news con­fer­ence. Mr. Niazi is charged with per­jury, nat­u­ral­iza­tion fraud, mis­use of a pass­port obtained by fraud, and mak­ing a false state­ment to a fed­er­al agency. He claims the charges are in retal­i­a­tion for his refusal to become an FBI infor­mant. Mr. Niazi pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed to CAIR-LA and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers that, dur­ing a raid of a friend’s house, an FBI agent urged Mr. Niazi to work with the agency, say­ing that if he refused to coop­er­ate his life would be made a “liv­ing hell.”

MPAC was estab­lished in the mid 1980’s by indi­vid­u­als whose back­grounds are like­ly root­ed in the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and since its incep­tion has act­ed in con­cert with the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The orga­ni­za­tion, like oth­er U.S. Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tions, has a long his­to­ry of fun­da­men­tal­ism, anti-Semi­tism, and sup­port for ter­ror­ism. The orga­ni­za­tion has long enjoyed gen­er­al­ly good rela­tions with the U.S. gov­ern­ment and func­tions essen­tial­ly as the polit­i­cal lob­by­ing arm of the U.S. Broth­er­hood.

Doc­u­ments released in the Holy Land Tri­al have revealed that the founders and cur­rent lead­ers of CAIR were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as well as iden­ti­fy­ing the orga­ni­za­tion itself as being part of the U.S. Broth­er­hood. Inves­tiga­tive research post­ed on GMBDR had deter­mined that CAIR had it ori­gins in the U.S. Hamas infra­struc­ture and is an inte­gral part of the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood with a long his­to­ry of sup­port for fun­da­men­tal­ism, anti-Semi­tism, and ter­ror­ism. Numer­ous ear­li­er posts have report­ed on the rela­tion­ship between the FBI and CAIR which appears to have been ter­mi­nat­ed by the FBI

Both orga­ni­za­tions have long his­to­ries of oppos­ing almost all ele­ments of U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism strat­e­gy. CAIR in par­tic­u­lar has defend­ed numer­ous indi­vid­u­als accused and/or con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism offens­es and a num­ber of CAIR employ­ees have also been con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism.”

“U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Reacts to Arrest of Bin Laden Broth­er-in-Law”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

11. A well placed British intel­li­gence offi­cer is join­ing the grow­ing cho­rus of mis­cre­ants run­ning inter­fer­ence for Hamas [Pales­tin­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood] and Hezbol­lah.

“For­mer British intel­li­gence agent Alas­tair Crooke has pub­lished a new book which one review­er says is aimed at reas­sur­ing the West that Hamas and Hezbol­lah are not ene­mies of the West. Accord­ing to a review of the book by jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh post­ed on the web­site of Crooke’s orga­ni­za­tion:

Crooke’s mis­sion in this eru­dite and most read­able book is to reas­sure Amer­i­ca and the rest of the world that Hamas, Hezbol­lah and the seem­ing­ly men­ac­ing Islam­ic gov­ern­ments in Iran and else­where are not the ene­mies of the West… a schol­ar­ly and close­ly argued cri­tique of what pass­es for West­ern diplo­ma­cy today.

Crooke is a a for­mer agent of the British MI6 for­eign intel­li­gence agency and is described in a media report as secret­ly one of Britain’s lead­ing inter­me­di­aries with mil­i­tant groups. For­mer CIA agent Milt Bear­den, who played a lead­ing role in the war against the Sovi­ets in Afghanistan, and Gra­ham Fuller, a for­mer Vice-chair of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil at the CIA, are mem­bers of the Advi­so­ry Board of the Con­flicts Forum head­ed by Crooke. Also a mem­ber of the Advi­so­ry Board is Azzam Tami­mi, a leader fig­ure in the U.K. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and often described as a Hamas spokesman.

The media report­ed cit­ed above describes a March 2005 meet­ing in Beirut attend­ed by Crooke that includ­ed the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as well as Musa Abu Marzuq, deputy leader of Hamas, and two of his senior col­leagues, lead­ers of Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pak­istan’s Jamaat-e-Isla­mi par­ty. The report states that Crooke is part of an effort to estab­lish a dia­logue with rad­i­cal Islamists through the Con­flicts Forum, described by Crooke as an “action tank, not a think-tank”.”

“New Book by For­mer British Spy Says Hamas/Hezballah Not Ene­mies of the West”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

12. Accord­ing to a for­mer FBI agent, vir­tu­al­ly all U.S. Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions are sub­sumed into the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work. In this con­text, it is essen­tial to keep in mind the orga­ni­za­tion’s vio­lent, fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy and his­to­ry. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood can only be under­stood as part of the post­war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al.

“U.S. media is report­ing that a for­mer FBI agent with exper­tise in Islam­ic extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism has said that all major U.S. orga­ni­za­tions are con­trolled by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood but that FBI offi­cials are unwill­ing to act. Accord­ing to the report:

A for­mer FBI spe­cial agent told law enforce­ment and Home­land Secu­ri­ty per­son­nel that a net­work of Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing to incre­men­tal­ly imple­ment Islam­ic law in the Unit­ed States. Dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Bed­ford Coun­ty Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, for­mer FBI agent John Guan­do­lo briefed mem­bers about groups such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which he claims is work­ing with oth­er Islam­ic groups to slow­ly imple­ment Shari­ah, also known as Islam­ic law, which encom­pass­es all areas of life……..Every major Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tion is con­trolled by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the for­mer FBI agent said, which he said was formed to over­throw Amer­i­ca and estab­lish Islam­ic law. “They’re hav­ing great suc­cess of imple­ment­ing Shari­ah law, I could give you a thou­sand exam­ples,” Guan­do­lo said. He said small con­ces­sions like installing foot baths, and col­leges forced to have sep­a­rate swim­ming times for Islam­ic men and women so not to offend Mus­lims, are oth­er parts of the strat­e­gy. But Guan­do­lo said that fed­er­al lead­er­ship is reluc­tant to act against these Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions due to polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and the threats of law­suits. He said that Mus­lim groups will demand con­ces­sions on mat­ters by say­ing, “You have to do this; you have to do this or I will be offend­ed.” “The solu­tion to this is you,” Guan­do­lo said. “If you are look­ing to DHS, the FBI and Con­gress to solve this … you’re going to be woe­ful­ly dis­ap­point­ed.” He said that FBI agents in the field “are work­ing good cas­es,” but that the FBI lead­er­ship “is unwill­ing to do what the agents are ask­ing them to do, which is to pony up and use some courage and start step­ping on these peo­ple.” “This is polit­i­cal sub­ver­sion, this is an insur­gency in the Unit­ed States,” he said of the Islam­ic move­ment. “Insur­gency is thwart­ed at the local lev­el and the tip of the spear is local police.” Guan­do­lo also said that the group CAIR, the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions, is actu­al­ly a front for the ter­ror group Hamas.

The report also describes Mr. Guandolo’s back­ground as well as his expe­ri­ence with the FBI:

Guan­do­lo worked in the FBI since 1996, includ­ing nine years as a mem­ber of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the Bureau’s Wash­ing­ton Field Office’s Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Divi­sion, devel­op­ing exper­tise con­cern­ing Al Qae­da, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tions and the Islam­ic move­ment in the U.S. He now works with Stephen Cough­lin, for­mer Islam­ic Expert for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to advise lead­ers at the fed­er­al lev­el and also brief local law enforce­ment about the Islam­ic threat at home. Cough­lin was fired from his posi­tion with the Joint Chiefs fol­low­ing a report reveal­ing oppo­si­tion to his work by offi­cials with­in the office of Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary Gor­don Eng­land, accord­ing to a Wash­ing­ton Times report dat­ed Jan. 4, 2008. Cough­lin had run afoul of a key aide to Eng­land, Hasham Islam, who accused him of being a Chris­t­ian zealot or extrem­ist “with a pen,” accord­ing to defense offi­cials, the report states……….[Guandolo] also said that he was threat­ened with his job no less than three times by supe­ri­ors in the FBI “that told me we were cre­at­ing waves in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.”

A pre­vi­ous post has dis­cussed a report that the FBI has recent­ly cut off con­tact with CAIR as a result of the group’s ori­gins in what was described as a ‘Hamas-sup­port network.‘As oth­er posts had report­ed, the FBI has had an exten­sive ‘out­reach’ pro­gram involv­ing CAIR.“ ‘

“For­mer FBI Agent Says All U.S. Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions con­trolled By U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

13. U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers are work­ing to soft­en key lin­guis­tic terms, in order to fur­ther their cause.

“Dur­ing a Sen­ate hear­ing on Thurs­day, two lead­ers of the Lead­er­ship Group of the U.S.-Muslim Engage­ment Project, an orga­ni­za­tion whose report pro­motes the agen­da of the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, expressed sup­port for chang­ing the lan­guage used to describe ter­ror­ism, a key objec­tive of the U.S. Broth­er­hood. In her state­ment, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Madeleine K. Albright stat­ed:

West­ern media are full of ref­er­ences to Islam­ic ter­ror­ism. But what does that mean? We do not por­tray the Okla­homa City bomb­ing as Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ism, even though Tim­o­thy MacVeigh thought of him­self as a Chris­t­ian. MacVeigh was guilty of mass mur­der – and there was noth­ing Chris­t­ian about it. The same prin­ci­ple applies with Islam. When Mus­lims com­mit ter­ror­ist acts, they are not prac­tic­ing their faith; they are betray­ing it.

Dalia Moga­hed, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Gallup Cen­ter for Mus­lim Stud­ies, con­curred in her state­ment :

Our lan­guage must reflect the real­i­ty that the pri­ma­ry vic­tims of vio­lent extrem­ism are Mus­lims abroad, and that they fear falling vic­tim to polit­i­cal vio­lence more than Amer­i­cans do. We are, there­fore, nat­ur­al allies against this com­mon threat. This will mean de-empha­siz­ing the unquench­able demand for main­stream Mus­lims to con­demn ter­ror­ism again and again as this assumes their co-mem­ber­ship in one group with the ter­ror­ists, instead of with us as fel­low vic­tims of the same crime. Use of terms like “Islam­ic ter­ror­ism” or “Jihadists” glo­ri­fies the ter­ror­ists with reli­gious ven­er­a­tion, while fuel­ing the very per­cep­tions they work to exploit —that Amer­i­ca is at war with Islam.

Dur­ing her respons­es to ques­tion­ing, Ms. Moga­hed sug­gest­ed using the term “Bin Ladenism” as a sub­sti­tute for “Islam­ic Ter­ror­ism.”

Chang­ing the lan­guage used to describe ter­ror­ism has long been one of the goals of the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In Decem­ber 1999, for exam­ple, a leader of the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil (MPAC) stat­ed:

‘There is no such thing as Islam­ic ter­ror­ism, just as there isn’t Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ism or Jew­ish ter­ror­ism,” said Maher Hathout of the MPAC. ”There are Mus­lims who are ter­ror­ists, just as there are Chris­tians who are ter­ror­ists.’

Pre­vi­ous posts have exten­sive­ly dis­cussed the impor­tance of this issue to the U.S. Broth­er­hood. For exam­ple, one ear­li­er post described a Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty memo urg­ing employ­ees not to use terms includ­ing ‘jihad,’ ‘jihadist’ or ‘Islam­ic ter­ror­ist’ in describ­ing Islam­ic ter­ror­ists. The post observed that this pro­posed pol­i­cy was in accord with glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood strate­gies attempt­ing to con­trol the use of lan­guage used in counter-ter­ror­ism efforts. Anoth­er post dis­cussed pas­sages in the DHS memo fur­ther sup­port­ing the con­nec­tion to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and not­ed that the mem­o­ran­dum was based on “rec­om­men­da­tions from a wide vari­ety of Amer­i­can Mus­lim lead­ers” and orig­i­nat­ed in a meet­ing with “influ­en­tial Mus­lim Amer­i­cans” As ana­lyzed in anoth­er ear­li­er post , the attempt by the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to change ter­ror­ism lan­guage appears to be part of a larg­er strat­e­gy towards ter­ror­ism based on denial, decep­tion, defense, and obstruc­tion. As that post described the denial tac­tic:

DENIAL- Since the Broth­er­hood is pur­su­ing Islamiza­tion and even­tu­al­ly Shari­ah (Islam­ic Law), it is nec­es­sary at all costs to deny that Islam as a reli­gion has any con­nec­tion to vio­lence or ter­ror­ism. Of course, the Broth­er­hood rep­re­sents Islamism as opposed to Islam in this regard but since the gen­er­al audi­ence does not under­stand that dis­tinc­tion, it is Islam which is the Broth­er­hood ref­er­ence. They can­not afford to fail in this denial and the denial strat­e­gy is usu­al­ly pur­sued through sophistry. That is, the Broth­er­hood claims that Islam is unfair­ly asso­ci­at­ed with ter­ror­ism while Chris­tian­i­ty, Judaism, and oth­er reli­gions are not (e.g. Abor­tion bombers are not called Chris­t­ian Ter­ror­ists) and/or that oth­er reli­gious ter­ror­ism is just as dan­ger­ous as Islam­ic ter­ror­ism.

It should be not­ed that with regard to Ms. Albright’s tes­ti­mo­ny, Tim­o­thy McVeigh described him­self as an “agnos­tic” rather than a Chris­t­ian short­ly before his exe­cu­tion. In any event, the term “Islam­ic Ter­ror­ism” would appear to refer to the moti­va­tions and claims of the groups involved rather than their reli­gious iden­ti­ty per se.

Pre­vi­ous posts have dis­cussed the U.S.-Muslim Engage­ment Project which includes indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood such as Ms. Moga­hed. The Lead­er­ship Group also includes oth­er promi­nent for­mer gov­ern­ment offi­cials such as Ms. Albright, Richard Armitage, for­mer Deputy Sec­re­tary of State, and Den­nis Ross, the for­mer Mideast nego­tia­tor in the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion. As one of the ear­li­er posts dis­cussed, a close read­ing of the report issued by the Lead­er­ship Group sug­gests that its rec­om­men­da­tions, if adopt­ed, would rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant advance­ment of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood agen­da in the U.S. The rec­om­men­da­tions includ­ed:

* Rebrand­ing groups such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as “activists”

* Label­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as a group which has “renouced vio­lence”

* Ces­sa­tion of the use of any terms such as “Jihadists” which are said to link Islam as a reli­gion with ter­ror­ism

* Involv­ing the “Mus­lim-Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty” as a birdge to the Islam­ic world.”

“Lead­er­ship Group Fig­ures Sup­port U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Desire to Change Ter­ror­ism Lan­guage”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

14. Sup­ple­ment­ing past cov­er­age of the AMIA bomb­ing in Argenti­na (1994), the pro­gram notes the kid­nap­ping and tor­ture of an inves­ti­ga­tor by secu­ri­ty forces linked to the crime. Evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning through the AMIA inves­ti­ga­tion run in many direc­tions.

“The Argen­tinean dai­ly Clar­in report­ed Sat­ur­day that Clau­dio Lif­schitz, a for­mer inves­ti­ga­tor of the 1994 bomb­ing of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter in Buenos Aires, claimed he was kid­napped and tor­tured by ele­ments try­ing to coerce him into dis­clos­ing doc­u­ments relat­ed to the case.

The attack on the Argen­tine-Israel Mutu­al Asso­ci­a­tion (AMIA) build­ing, which was car­ried out with an explo­sives-laden truck, left 85 peo­ple dead and hun­dreds wound­ed. Fol­low­ing a lengthy inves­ti­ga­tion, in March 2007 Inter­pol issued arrest war­rants for five Ira­ni­ans and a Lebanese nation­al it sus­pects were behind the attack.Tehran has repeat­ed­ly denied any link to the bomb­ing, and thus far no one has been indict­ed for either orches­trat­ing or per­pe­trat­ing the attack. Israel, the US and Argenti­na con­tin­ue to argue that Hizbul­lah was behind the act, and also blame Iran, which sup­ports the Lebanese Shi­ite group.In 2008 Lif­schitz, the for­mer adjunct sec­re­tary to the judge who head­ed the AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, Juan José Galeano, report­ed to the Argen­tinean con­gress of alleged irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the probe – which even­tu­al­ly led to its col­lapse.

Lif­schitz’s attor­ney told the C5N tele­vi­sion sta­tion that on Fri­day night, at around mid­night, a pass­ing car forced his client to pull over in Buenos Aires’ Vil­la Devo­to neigh­bor­hood. He was then whisked away by unknown assailants, the attor­ney said.

Accord­ing to Lif­schitz, the kid­nap­pers cov­ered his head with a garbage bag, and, using a blow­torch, tat­tooed the case file num­ber on his arm and the let­ters A‑M-I‑A on his back.

“A van passed me by and hood­ed men stepped out of it,” he recalled. “They forced me to climb into their vehi­cle, placed a garbage bag over my head and told me not to mess with SIDE (the Argen­tinean inter­nal secu­ri­ty ser­vice). They ques­tioned me a num­ber of times about tapes that tie Iran to the ter­ror attack. They told me ‘you can relax, we won’t mur­der you. You’ll live until we decide oth­er­wise’.”

After tak­ing away his cell phone, the assailants released Lif­schitz near the police acad­e­my build­ing in the cap­i­tal.”

“Buenos Aires: For­mer Jew­ish Cen­ter Bomb­ing Inves­ti­ga­tor Says Was Abduct­ed”; ynetnews.com; 3/7/2009.