Faisal Shahzad, Times Square Bomber, Criminal Complaint

Pakistan, traveled to the United States, transported a sports utility vehicle to the vicinity of 45th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, New York, and attempted to detonate explosive and incendiary devices located inside the sports utility vehicle. [...]

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Labels: Faisal-Shahzad, INTELFILES, Pakistan, Taliban, Times-Square

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

The Genius of Radicalism

Revolution Muslim managed to illustrate the reason its bloggers hate South Park so much. They are seriously humor-impaired. It's an occupational hazard when you spend all your days and nights trying to maximize your rage.

Anyway, RM posted an item discussing the watchlisting of Faisal Shahzad. The post by Taliba Al Quran was pulled back pretty quickly this morning but I happened to catch it before it vanished.

This "law enforcement system" uses methods like this, from Andy Borowitz's article:

The surveillance team's revelations come on the heels of the Dept. of Homeland Security's shocker that it had friended Mr. Shahzad on Facebook weeks ago and had even played the popular online game Farmville with him.

"A few days before the Times Square incident, Mr. Shahzad attempted to blow up one of our sheep," a Department spokesman said. "In retrospect, that should have been a red flag."

Yes, you may want to read that again. Blowing up a sheep in an online game should "raise red flags." Ya Allah protect us all from these "Security" people! Well, it should serve as a lesson. If you are playing an online game, and are Muslim - don't blow stuff up in "Farmville."

Yes, you may want to read that again. RM bloggers are so eager to wind up their engines of outrage over imagined slights to Muslims that they actually believed DHS was playing Farmville on Facebook with Faisal Shahzad last week.

Labels: Faisal-Shahzad, Revolution-Muslim, South-Park, Times-Square, Weblog

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Mehsud Letter Again Cites Aafia Siddiqi

From the Associated Press:

In an undated letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, the militant commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, threatened attacks on America and Pakistan in retaliation for the conviction in the United States of Aafia Siddiqui, a 37-year old Pakistani scientist.

Siddiqui was convicted in New York in February of trying to kill American service personnel in Afghanistan. Her case has triggered anger among Pakistani Islamist $groups and in sections of the media, where she is portrayed as innocent.
The letter is addressed to Siddiqui's sister, Fozia, who is campaigning for her release.

"We are with you in the pain you have suffered in connection with Aafia Siddiqui. God willing, we will give a reply to America and the cruel rulers in Pakistan in such a way they will remember for their whole life."
The letter was given to the AP by a reporter for the local TV station that first reported its existence.

Click on the tag for previous posts on this subject.

Labels: Aafia-Siddiqui, Hakimullah-Mehsud, Pakistan, Taliban, Times-Square, Weblog

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Times Square: A Dramatic Arrest And A Parcel Of New Questions

In a dramatic last-minute save, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen of Pakistani origin, was snatched off an airplane bound for Dubai and a connection to Pakistan.

The FBI issued a cautiously worded statement indicating it was still looking for possible other conspirators, but Shahzad claimed to have been working alone. He had traveled to Dubai at least one time previously.

It's not clear when he was last in Pakistan, and his family is from the Northwest. All of this lends significant credibility to Sunday's claim of responsibility by the Pakistani Taliban, first reported by the Long War Journal. The claim was initially greeted with some skepticism by many people, including (I must admit) myself. A follow-up message indicated that multiple terrorist operatives were deployed to the U.S., a possibility which must be taken very seriously.

HAKIMULLAH MEHSUD

The head of a major Pakistani Taliban faction, Hakimullah Mehsud has not exactly been a household name in the United States, although he's a well-known figure to anyone following events in the Af/Pak region.

Mehsud was thought to be dead, or at least that's the story the Pakistani government was peddling, so his sudden re-emergence in conjunction with an attack on the U.S. homeland is a rather dramatic turn of events and one which leaves Pakistani counterterrorism officials with egg on their collective face.

As I noted earlier, the Pak Taliban claim of responsibility for the "recent attack" in the U.S. cited U.S. treatment of Aafia Siddiqi as one of the reasons for the attack. It's bad enough that Mehsud came back from the dead in dramatic manner to strike a blow against the United States on its own soil (albeit a failed blow), but that attack is also tied to an issue that has a lot of traction among ordinary Pakistanis. As I reported a couple weeks ago, the tale of Aafia Siddiqi has been boiling over in Pakistani media outlets, with no sign of cooling.

In short, the narrative around this attack really catapults Mehsud into a position of prominence and imbues him with some populist credibility he previously lacked. It's a dangerous development. Terrorism is storytelling, and Mehsud's story just became a lot more compelling. Let's hope he doesn't have any additional operatives running around on U.S. soil.

Finally, some reports have indicated that the Taliban videos were posted from Connecticut, where Shahzad lives. The first claim video was fairly generic, but if Shahzad (or another member of his cell) was empowered to post the first video of Mehsud since his alleged death, that means he's probably more than just a useful idiot. On the other hand, that conclusion is undermined by the bomb itself.

THE BOMB DESIGN

If Shahzad is indeed affiliated with the Pak Taliban, it's really surprising that he didn't use a better bomb design.

Keep in mind that when I and others talk about the bomb design being "good" or "bad" or "amateurish" we're not saying it's undangerous or that it might not have gone off and killed people.

What "amateurish" means is that the bomb is 1) inefficient for its size, 2) not suited to its apparent target, and 3) not equipped with a reliable detonation system.

In this case, the bomb is also "amateur" looking in that it doesn't resemble the most common forms of improvised explosive devices which have traditionally been taught by Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So if Shahzad was born in Pakistan, and his family hails from the Northwest (near Peshawar per CNN TV), how is it that he became involved in this kind of operation without getting better training in bomb design?

It's possible that Shahzad was simply personally incompetent. Terrorists come in all varieties, ranging from stupid to brilliant. However, bombs come in all varieties too, from simple to complicated, and the Times Square bomb was a bad combination of complicated and inept. If Shahzad was incompetent, but working for Mehsud, I would have expected his handlers to give him the simplest possible shopping list for bomb components.

I'll have some more thoughts about this when we have more facts.

Labels: American-Jihadists, Faisal-Shahzad, Hakimullah-Mehsud, Pakistan, Taliban, Times-Square, Weblog

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Disturbing Thought of the Day

Via SpyTalk:

[Charles] Faddis, also author of “Willful Neglect, The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security,” said “terrorist groups all around the world have run probing ops in the past. Leave a package outside an embassy and then watch how security deals with it.”

“Let's hope it is not the latter, because that would imply some very smart boys have something much bigger in mind,” he said.

This would potentially explain a lot. If the device was a method to test chemical detection systems, for instance, it would be a hodge-podge of materials just like the one that was found -- gunpowder, fertilizer, propane, gasoline. And if it was to test responder times and traffic, you would make sure there were real explosives so you could track the whole process, but you wouldn't put a lot of trouble into the design.

Not enough evidence yet to say for certain, and hopefully we'll have a suspect in custody soon to refute the idea, but the number of things I don't like about the last 24 hours seems to be piling up...

UPDATE TUESDAY: CNN is now reporting a piece of data I have been waiting for. According to them, a surveillance camera caught the bomb-rigged Pathfinder entering Times Square about two minutes before it started smoking. In my opinion, this significant reduces the odds that this was a test run -- one of the things that a potential bomber would be trying to evaluate is how long the unattended vehicle could be left double-parked without attracting notice.

Labels: American-Jihadists, Faisal-Shahzad, Times-Square, Weblog

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

LWJ: Pakistani Taliban Claim "Recent Attack" in US

The Long War Journal is reporting that the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the failed attack in Times Square last night.

The claim does not make it so, but the LWJ offers some compelling reasons to think it may be legitimate. If so, this is a very interesting situation in light of the observations below, should they prove to be the culprits. I'll have more to say about that later, should the claim prove true.

An important counter-indicator is that the communique does not specify New York or Times Square, which is something between curious and suspicious. The person who posted the YouTube video may have been told to watch for an attack around this time, but may not have been told what attack to look for. That means a professional terrorist attack may still be in the works.

Also worth noting is that the message specifically cites the treatment of Aafia Siddiqi as a motive for the attack (among several other things). This may indicate an effort to win Pakistani hearts and minds -- Siddiqi's case in extremely contentious in Pakistan, where she has become something of a folk hero, depicted as a victim of America.

UPDATE: A new video of Haikimullah Mehsud, a top Pakistani Taliban leader, surfaced today to definitively refute reports of his death and to threaten attacks on the U.S. homeland within a month. That makes me increasingly uneasy that the real attack has not yet arrived. (See also this.)

Click here to see the claim of responsibility.

Labels: Aafia-Siddiqui, American-Jihadists, Faisal-Shahzad, New-York, Pakistan, Taliban, Times-Square, Weblog

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink