terrorism

2011年6月26日星期日

Full container screening 'not best' move: US security chief (AFP)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AFP) – Asking ports of departure to perform full screening of containers before they travel to the US was probably not the best decision, US Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.

"We believe the so-called 100 percent requirement is probably not the best way to go," Napolitano told reporters at a press briefing in Rotterdam, where she was visiting Europe's largest port and the fourth-largest globally.

Napolitano is on a week-long tour of Britain and Europe to beef up security ties within the global supply chain between the US, Britain and Europe and met her British counterpart Theresa May earlier this week, her office said.

On Thursday she is to meet EU ministers and will participate in a conference of the World Customs Organisation in Brussels, where she said she would deliver a similar message.

Asked about a 2007 US Congress requirement that all containers entering the US should be scanned by their ports of exit by 2012, Napolitano said: "We at this point are not going to insist on that."

Although the 2012 deadline was set by Congress, it did give her department the opportunity to extend it if 100 percent scanning wasn't feasible.

Napolitano has previously expressed doubt about whether the mandate for all containers to be scanned by 2012 would be met.

Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security preferred a more "layered approach" including better co-operation between countries, better intelligence sharing and analysis, as well as some container scanning to prevent attacks on the United States.

"I think what we have learnt over time is that there are many different ways to achieve a security objective. You have to have multiple layers that operate effectively," she said.

Called the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the project is being run by 50 ports worldwide including Rotterdam.

The scanning initiative requires port customs to pre-scan and evaluate containers considered to be high-risk possibilities of being used in terror attacks before being put on ships bound for US ports.

Napolitano told a Congressional panel in February the US faced "heightened" threats of terror of attacks from extremists, probably the highest since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

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Petraeus ponders how far interrogators should go (AP)

WASHINGTON – Army Gen. David Petraeus is urging lawmakers to determine how far interrogators should be allowed to go when faced with a terror suspect who may have time-sensitive information like the codes to disarm a nuclear weapon set to explode in the U.S.

Testifying at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, Petraeus backed interrogation methods set out in the U.S. Army field manual. Those methods reject enhanced interrogation methods used by the CIA during the Bush administration.

Petraeus said lawmakers should consider setting policies that would require authorization from the top, implying that the president would be consulted on whether to use enhanced interrogation techniques and lower-level officials would not be under pressure to make the decision in what Petraeus called a "ticking time bomb" situation.

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Judge won't dismiss Minnesota women's terror case (AP)

MINNEAPOLIS – A federal judge won't dismiss the indictment against two Minnesota women accused of funneling money to the terror group al-Shabab in Somalia.

Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis says in a written opinion that 34-year-old Amina Farah Ali and 64-year-old Hawo Mohamed Hassan are charged with knowingly providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

He says providing material support is conduct — not protected speech.

Attorneys for the women argued their clients were charged under an unconstitutional statute, and asked that the case be dismissed.

Davis says when the case goes to trial, the women may argue they didn't know money they raised was meant for al-Shabab.

The women claim they are innocent and were raising money for the poor in Somalia.

An Oct. 3 trial is scheduled.

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Terror suspect detained in Austria (AP)

BERLIN – Austrian authorities have arrested an alleged Islamic extremist suspected of belonging to a terrorist group, German prosecutors said Saturday.

The 26-year-old, identified only as Yusuf O., was detained in Austria in late May on a German arrest warrant, the Federal Prosecutor's Office said. The arrest had not been made public earlier because extradition procedures are still under way.

The German national of Turkish descent is suspected of involvement with the German Taliban Mujahideen, a fundamentalist group that prosecutors say seeks to carry out attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and found a "religious fundamentalist society" there. Prosecutors declined to elaborate.

German media reported the suspect underwent paramilitary training in a terror camp in Pakistan's lawless border region and appeared in several Islamist propaganda videos.

On Wednesday, Austrian authorities also arrested four other suspected extremists linked to the German Taliban Mujahideen at Vienna airport on suspicion they were heading off to train at terrorism camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

But a spokesman for Germany's Federal Prosecutors Office on Saturday dismissed a report alleging that one of the four suspected extremists was plotting to attack the country's parliament in Berlin with a commercial airplane.

"There are no indications of concrete preparations for an attack in Germany," the official said on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

Austrian daily Kronen Zeitung reported that 25-year-old suspect had undergone flight training and was plotting to target Berlin's emblematic parliament building by hijacking an airplane.

The newspaper gave no source for its report. Prosecutors in Vienna were not immediately reachable for comment.

German prosecutors said there was no "criminally relevant link" between Yusuf O. and the group of four.

However, the prosecution spokesman added that the group is also under investigation in Germany, though not in connection with a concrete plot but on suspicion of "providing financial support to the violent jihad."

Germany has so far escaped a major terror attack, but several terror plots were foiled in their early stages over the past few years.

In April, German police arrested three suspected al-Qaida members in the western city of Duesseldorf allegedly working on making a shrapnel-laden bomb to attack a crowded place. Authorities believe the cell's alleged ringleader trained in a terror camp in Pakistan.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, says that about 225 people who are German citizens or have lived in Germany, have undergone paramilitary training in Afghanistan or Pakistan since the 1990s.

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APNewsBreak: Norway questions NYC subway plotters (AP)

OSLO, Norway – Security officials investigating a terror plot in Norway will seek testimony in New York this week from three American al-Qaida recruits turned government witnesses, defense lawyers told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The Norwegians are preparing terror charges in a case that investigators have linked to foiled plots to bomb the New York subway and a shopping mall in Manchester, England.

The defense lawyers told the AP that Norway's Police Security Service will question Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay, who have pleaded guilty in the foiled 2009 subway plot. They will also seek testimony from Bryant Neal Vinas, an American al-Qaida recruit who has cooperated with U.S. authorities since his capture in Pakistan.

Trond Hugubakken, a spokesman for Norway's Police Security Service, or PST, confirmed that Norwegian investigators were traveling to New York this week to talk to people in the "Zazi case," but wouldn't give details.

The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, which prosecuted all three men, declined comment on Tuesday.

Norwegian authorities last year arrested three suspects accused of plotting a terror attack against a Danish newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

Intelligence officials believe the main suspect, Mikael Davud, was in contact with an al-Qaida operative in Pakistan who also communicated with the New York and Manchester plotters. Davud, a Chinese Muslim who came to Norway in 1999, also is believed to have traveled to an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan about two years ago.

Davud's defense lawyer, Carl Konow Rieber-Mohn, told AP he expects Norwegian investigators to try to get testimony from the three Americans that backs up the Pakistan link. While Davud has admitted to some of the terror allegations, he denies having traveled to al-Qaida camps in Pakistan.

Rieber-Mohn said he was already in New York and would be present during the questioning.

"If these interrogations are going to be valid in a Norwegian court, the defendant's lawyers must be present to be able to ask control questions," he said.

Davud was arrested in July last year along with Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd and Uzbek national David Jakobsen, who has since been released but remains a suspect in the investigation. Norwegian authorities also seized bomb-making material.

Bujak and Davud have confessed to plotting terrorism. Bujak said their planned target was a newspaper that caricatured Muhammad while Davud claims the target was the Chinese Embassy in Oslo. Investigators doubt Davud's version, saying he wasn't able to show them the embassy's location on a city map.

Bujak's lawyer Arvid Sjoedin, who was not traveling to New York, said he believed the testimony would primarily deal with Davud. The trial is expected to start in Oslo in October.

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Ritter reported from Stockholm. Associated Press writer Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.

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Pakistan, India say they'll keep pushing for peace (AP)

ISLAMABAD – India's foreign secretary said Friday that her country remains concerned about the threat of terrorism, but is committed to peace talks with Pakistan that have stumbled since the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Nirupama Rao's comments capped two days of meetings in Islamabad between delegations from the nuclear-armed archrivals — the first formal talks between the neighbors on the disputed region of Kashmir since the attacks in the Indian financial hub.

Both nations claim Kashmir in its entirety, and have fought two of their three wars over the region since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.

The siege of Mumbai killed 166 people and has been blamed on Pakistani militants belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group Pakistan's spy agencies are suspected of nurturing as a proxy fighting force in Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any state institutions played a role in the attack on Mumbai.

"We must do away with the shadow of the gun and extremist violence because it's only in the atmosphere free of terror and violence that we can discuss the resolution of such a complex issue" as Kashmir, Rao said during a press conference with her Pakistani counterpart, Salman Bashir.

Pakistan has nudged India to push ahead with talks even as it has struggled to stem the growth of the Taliban and other militants who have proliferated on its soil since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Bashir said the issue of terrorism "requires objectivity, requires to be addressed in a collaborative approach."

Bashir and Rao's meetings were aimed in part at laying the groundwork for ministerial level meetings in the next few weeks.

A joint statement issued after the sessions Friday said the two countries would keep discussing a range of subjects, including confidence building measures involving their nuclear programs and trade across the border that divides each side's current section of Kashmir.

Last month, Indian and Pakistani officials met in the Indian capital and agreed to continue working to reduce tension on a glacier battlefield in the Himalayas where grueling conditions have killed more troops than hostile fire.

The home secretaries from both sides met in New Delhi in March and agreed to set up a terrorism hotline and to cooperate on the Mumbai attack investigation — a major step in placating India's concerns. The secretaries for commerce also met in April.

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Associated Press Writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this report.

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Gates: Iran supplying arms to Iraqi Shiite groups (AP)

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Shiite extremists, not al-Qaida terrorists, are to blame for most of the recent U.S. military deaths in Iraq, and they're "clearly getting some fairly sophisticated and powerful weapons" from Iran.

Gates tells CNN's "State of the Union" that he's worried about the Iranian influence in Iraq and he thinks Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is beginning to take these Shiite groups seriously.

Gates says that the U.S. and Iraq are taking steps to try to limit the threat.

A Shiite militia group has claimed responsibility for an attack that killed five American troops on June 6. It was the single largest loss of life for American troops in two years.

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