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Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (Abu-Mazin), in an interview with the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat, claims that Hamas has brought Al-Qaida into Gaza as an ally. The interview was conducted by Ghassan Shirbil, published on February 27 in Al-Hayat and translated into English by BBC Worldwide Monitoring [available by subscription]. A report of the interview can be found in the Jerusalem Post.

[Shirbil] You said on a previous occasion that there are indicators of an Al-Qa'idah presence in Gaza. Hamas has denied such a presence. What do you say today?

[Abbas] I believe that Al-Qa'idah is present in the Palestinian territories.

[Shirbil] Where?

[Abbas] In Gaza. And it is Hamas who brought in Al-Qa'idah and who facilitates its coming in and going out in ways that are known to the Hamas Movement.

[Shirbil] This is a serious accusation. Hamas says it is the barrier to the possibility of Al-Qa'idah infiltration into the Palestinian Territories.

[Abbas] Al-Qa'idah is present in Gaza, and I think they are allies.

[Shirbil] Are you saying that Hamas is an ally of Al-Qa'idah?

[Abbas] Yes, I believe that is the case. I firmly believe that Al-Qa'idah has a presence in the Palestinian territories and that presence has been facilitated by Hamas in Gaza in particular.

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Back in November 2004, this space reported on Yossef Bodansky's allegation that Richard Reid's shoe bomb was the result of a network of cooperation between Iran, al-Qaeda and Hamas in Gaza ("An Axis of Terror: Chechen Rebels, Hamas and Al Qaeda"):

Reid's shoe bombs were based on Iranian-origin technology and were made of new type of high-explosives. Reid -- then an acknowledged bin Laden operative -- received his shoe-bombs in the Palestinian Jebalya camp in the Gaza Strip. At the time, he was a trainee-guest of Nabil Aqal, a senior commander of the Hamas' Izz al-Deen al-Qassim Brigades and a protege of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. The key components of the bombs had been smuggled to Gaza from Lebanon via Egypt by then-Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat's ally and confidante, Jamal Sema Dana. The Hamas support for Reid a major deviation from Yassin's long-standing insistence that the Hamas cadres limit their operations to the Palestinian theater in order to contribute to international operations under the banner of a global jihadist entity. However, by the late 1990s, the Hamas needed foreign support from the global Islamist-jihadist movement and Yassin was willing to "pay" by increasing its direct involvement in the international jihad.

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UPDATE: Intelligence Online (subscription) reported on May 12, 2006 of Al Qaeda's Infiltration into the Gaza Strip:

Even more worrisome, however, the Egyptian investigation and inquiries by Jordanian intelligence have revealed that Al Qaeda has begun to infiltrate Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip, crossing over from the Sinai desert. According to the Jordanians, an extremist wing of the Ezedeen al Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas that rejects the truce with Israel, has set up a new group linked to Al Qaeda. It is reportedly led by the boss of the Brigades, Mohammed Deif, while his right hand man is Jamal Abu Samhadan, chief of the Salaheddin Brigades cell in the Jabalia camp. An outpost of Al Qaeda is said to have also established itself at Nablus on the West Bank, with Diaeddin al Qodsi, an Afghanistan veteran, at its head.

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UPDATE: More recent news of Mohammed Deif and Al Qaeda in Gaza from Intelligence Online, "How Hamas Organizes its Defenses," January 4, 2008:

Another sign that Hamas is girding itself for an Israeli attack was the return of Muhammad Daif, chief of the al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. Wounded in an Israeli assault on July 11, 2006 against the residence of Nabil Abu Silmiyya, Hamas chief in Gaza, Diaf spent 14 months under medical treatment in Cairo. However, he remains half paralysed. Immediately on his return he appointed a new commander of the al Qassam Brigades. He is Ahmed Nimr, the Hamas leader in the town of Khan Younes, where Daif himself was born.

Traditionally suspicious of international Jihadist movements of the Al Qaida type, Hamas has ended up by closing ranks with them in order to find militants willing to commit suicide bomb attacks against Israeli tanks.

Indeed, Hamas has given its blessings to the formation of the Army of Islam, a cell affiliated to Al Qaida and headed by Mumtaz Dormush. He is a former member of the Peoples' Resistance Committee, a small armed Palestinian group founded in 2000.

The Army of Islam was responsible for the kidnapping of BBC newsman Alan Johnston who was held for 114 days, and took part in capturing Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit. With a large stock of chlorine it acquired from Egyptian and Iraqi smugglers, Hamas and its affiliated organizations are reportedly now in a position to carry out toxic gas attacks.

Labels: Abu-Mazin, Ahmed Nimr, al Qaeda, Al-Hayat, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Gaza, Hamas, Izz al-Deen al-Qassim Brigades, Mahmud Abbas, Muhammad Daif, Mumtaz Dormush, Nabil Aqal, Richard Reid

Careful inspection of the wave of terrorism that hit Russia in August 2004 reveals how closely the network of Islamist-jihadists has integrated the objectives and resources of the international jihadist movement with local Islamist causes and assets. That is the lesson of a lengthy special report in today's Defense & Foreign Affairs by Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor of Global Information System ("Russia's Chechnya Terrorism Highlights Broader Links and Objectives, Linking to anti-US and Palestinian Terrorism," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, November 29, 2004 -- no link can be provided, since the article is not publicly available on the web).

The spectacular assaults on Russia in August 2004 displayed a "mix and match" of local and imported contributions. The two Chechen women who served as martyr-bombers were identified as members of the "regional Shakhid unit of Moscow of the battalion of Shakhid, Riyad us-Salihin" by Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader (whose top aide, Akhmed "White Arab" Sambiyev was just killed late Thursday by Russian security forces). Forensic evidence reveals that the bombs used on the two Russian planes were similar to the bomb that was seized from the shoes of Richard Reid, after he attempted to bomb an American Airlines flight on December 22, 2001.

Remarkably, Bodansky also claims that the bombs used on the Russian planes were also similar to the "bomb used by Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen also known as Farouk the Tunisian, who, on November 12, 2001, brought down an American Airlines aircraft soon after taking off from JFK to the Dominican Republic." The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has maintained that the crash of AA 587 was accidental, and argues that the detachment of the vertical fin could not been the result of an event within the cabin. Suspicion that the crash was the result of sabotage has persisted, however, and just last August, Daniel Pipes reported in FrontPage Magazine the information (which Pipes called "not exactly rock-hard") that AA 587 was the result of an Al-Qaida operation with "Farouk the Tunisian" as the bomber.

Bodansky also reveals the source of Richard Reid's shoe bomb. The details illustrate the close cooperation between Iranian and Palestinian jihadist forces and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.

Reid's shoe bombs were based on Iranian-origin technology and were made of new type of high-explosives. Reid -- then an acknowledged bin Laden operative -- received his shoe-bombs in the Palestinian Jebalya camp in the Gaz Strip. At the time, he was a trainee-guest of Nabil Aqal, a senior commander of the Hamas' Izz al-Deen al-Qassim Brigades and a protege of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. The key components of the bombs had been smuggled to Gaza from Lebanon via Egypt by then-Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat's ally and confidante, Jamal Sema Dana. The Hamas support for Reid a major deviation from Yassin's long-standing insistence that the Hamas cadres limit their operations to the Palestinian theater in order to contribute to international operations under the banner of a global jihadist entity. However, by the late 1990s, the Hamas needed foreign support from the global Islamist-jihadist movement and Yassin was willing to "pay" by increasing its direct involvement in the international jihad.

Some of this foreign support Hamas received from international Islamist-jihadists was from Chechnya. Just after the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000, Shamil Basayev and Hattab, the "Black Arab" (who was later poisoned by the Russian secret service in 2002), sent 150 Chechen and Arab-Chechen "expert bomb-makers, snipers and fortification-builders" to Gaza and the West Bank. The extremely powerful bombs that Palestinians used to destroy several Israeli tanks were provided by the Chechens. Muhammad Dahlan, now head of Palestinian security services in Gaza, ran a program of smuggling into the Gaza Strip al-Qaida fighters and Chechens from Afghanistan-Pakistan. Each of the al-Qaida transplants received a $5,000 cash bonus, contributed from Saudi Arabia. A few of the Arab-Chechens had even been members of the Hamas Iss al-Din al-Qassim Brigades before they left Gaza and Nablus for advanced training in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

The ideological solidarity between the Palestinians and the Islamists in Chechnya became more public in 2004 when Hamas recruitment posters and videos featured portraits of bin Laden, Yassin and Hattab as the key leaders of the Islamist movement. The Hamas video also contained a fatwa by the Chechen Mufti Muhammad Abdullah Al-Seif sanctioning martyrdom-terrorism and even authorizing the recruitment of female martyr-bombers.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Chechnya, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Gaza, Hamas, Osama bin Laden, Richard Reid, Russia, Shamil Basayev, Yassir Arafat, Yossef Bodansky

The doctrine of the Bush presidency is that the U.S. response to 9/11 must be warlike and not merely juridical. Senators Kerry and Edwards at times suggest that they reject this Bush Doctrine, but intentionally blur the question of whether Iraq helped plan the September 11 attacks with the question of whether Iraq was a supportive ally and friend of terrorist groups and a declared enemy of the United States.

While the controversy over Bush's Doctrine continues, the legal response to terror continues in the world's courts. Yesterday, the results on this front were mixed.

In Boston, a federal grand jury unsealed a seven-count indictment charging Saajid Badat with attempted murder and other charges related to an alleged conspiracy with Richard Reid, the al-Qaida member who attempted to use a shoe bomb to blow up an American Airlines flight in December, 2001.

Badat allegedly got his "custom-made" shoe bombs in al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan. The Boston Herald reports that Badat attended the North London mosque linked to Zacharias Moussaoui in Gloucester. Law enforcement officials are quoted as saying that small amounts of explosives were found in Badat's home and a stray hair of Badat's was found in Reid's shoe bomb.

Meanwhile, in Turin on Tuesday, a five-year sentence imposed on Ibraim Ellaban, an Egyptian national linked to al-Qaeda, has been set aside by an appeals court judge. Ellaban was arrested after Scotland Yard found references to him in the address book of a suspected terrorist. In Ellaban's trial, the prosecution read several letters, allegedly written by Osama Bin Laden, that called for members of his al-Qaida network to acquire weapons of mass destruction and urging them to "kill, fight, create traps and destroy" Americans. ("Bin Laden letters order US massacre," Philip Willan and Nick Hopkins, The Guardian, October 18, 2001).

In an April 16, 1998 letter, released during Ellaban's trial, Bin Laden is reported to say: "America carries out the worst international terrorism. Is it not terrible terrorism that America is carrying out in Iraq on children, women and the old, having condemned them to hunger?"

Interesting that Bin Laden should adopt the talking points of Saddam Hussein. Interesting too that the Ba'athist Iraqi regime would celebrate al-Qaeda's attacks on the twin towers in a mural on the Iraqi military headquarters of Nasiriyah.

Plainly, a purely legal response to terror will not protect the United States from the coalition of groups that are waging jihad against the West. Yet, the issue has not quite been joined in the election debates. The Kerry campaign professes support for a warlike response to terror while presuming a juridical test of legitimacy.

In the debate last night, Vice President Cheney opened with the case that Iraq was an ally of al-Qaeda:

It's important to look at all of our developments in Iraq within the broader context of the global war on terror. And, after 9/11, it became clear that we had to do several things to have a successful strategy to win the global war on terror, specifically that we had to go after the terrorists where ever we might find them, that we also had to go after state sponsors of terror, those who might provide sanctuary or safe harbor for terror.
...Concern about Iraq specifically focused on the fact that Saddam Hussein had been, for years, listed on the state sponsor of terror, that they he had established relationships with Abu Nidal, who operated out of Baghdad; he paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers; and he had an established relationship with Al Qaida. Specifically, look at George Tenet, the CIA director's testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations two years ago when he talked about a 10-year relationship.

Senator Edwards shifted the focus from that broader context to the narrower legalistic question of whether Saddam Hussein was involved in the operational planning of the September 11 attacks. His sound-bite line was: "There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th -- period."

If one agrees that the legitimate response to 9/11 is warlike, then it is important that one leave the question of prosecution of individual criminal acts to the courts and adopt a foreign policy that takes the broader view that those allied with the enemies of our country are our enemies also. A question for Senators Edwards and Kerry to ponder: after Pearl Harbor, would the United States have been justified in declaring war on Nazi Germany, Japan's ally, had Hitler not declared war on the U.S. first?

Labels: Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, jihadists, John Edwards, John Kerry, Osama bin Laden, Richard Reid, September 11