Abou El-Abbes, Abdelhalim Grig-Ahsine of AQIM Captured

Algiers - A senior member of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim), Athmane Touati, alias Abou El-Abbes, has surrendered to the security services in Algeria, a security source said on Monday.

The security services "succeeded on May 25 2010 in obtaining the surrender" of Touati, an Aqim officer in the central zone east of Algiers, and a member of the leadership of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, the source said, according to the APS news agency.

This radical Islamist, born in Bordj Menail near Boumerdes, 50km from Algiers, turned himself in after being persuaded by his wife to abandon the armed groups he had joined in 1993, APS said, without giving further details or saying where he had surrendered.

The security services the same day "obtained repentance" from another radical Islamist, Abdelhalim Grig-Ahsine, who had also been active in the central region after joining the insurgents in 1993.

Aqim, which grew out of the GSPC whose predecessors waged a low-level civil war in the 1990s and first years of this century - is led by Abdelmalek Droukdel. He loses with Abou El-Abbes "a third essential aide" in two months, according to the security source.

Ahmad Mansouri Ahmed, known as Abdeldjebbar, who led the El-Farouk cell, surrendered last April 16, and two days later Lounis Mokadem, alias Abou Naamane, the former head of Aqim's medical commission, surrendered, after being a guerilla since 1996.

The Algerian security services argue that the defection of these "veterans" of armed groups, who were all "considered members of the hard line of GSPC/Aqim," reflects "the state of collapse and flight" in armed Islamic groups in Algeria.

Thousands of former Islamist guerrillas laid down their arms when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika offered an amnesty, then he proposed a "charter for peace and national reconciliation" in 2005, during his second term. This has ended the civil war in Algeria, though sporadic conflict continues.

The Rest @ SAPA
- SAPA

Yusuf Ali Nur Martyred by al Shabaab

Al Shabaab Militants Execute Christian Leader in Somalia
Wednesday, 05 May 2010 18:25 Simba Tian

Islamic extremists run into 57-year-old Yusuf Ali Nur after battle with rival group.
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 5 (Compass Direct News) - Islamic militants yesterday killed another leader of the underground church movement in Somalia, sources said.

Before he was fatally shot on Tuesday (May 4) in Xarardheere, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Jowhar, 57-year-old Yusuf Ali Nur had been on a list of people the Islamic extremist al Shabaab suspected of being Christian, sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told Compass. Al Shabaab, said to have links with al Qaeda, has vowed to rid Somalia of Christianity.

The militants fighting the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu had been engaged in a two-hour battle with a rival rebel group, the Ahlu Sunna Waljamer, which had taken control of the Xarardheere area, before they came across Nur. Nur had lived in Xarardheere since leaving Jowhar in July 2009.

Eyewitnesses said that after al Shabaab took control of the area, they went from house to house looking for enemy fighters when they arrived at Nur's rented home at about 10:30 a.m. Sources said that upon finding Nur, one of the militants remarked, "Oh! This is Yusuf, whom we have been looking for," before they sprayed him with bullets at close range.

Nur is survived by his wife, whose name was withheld for security reasons, and three children, ages 11, 9 and 7.

This latest death comes after several execution-style murders of Somalis suspected of being members of a suppressed yet resilient underground faith movement in Somalia. A number of Christians have been beheaded by the radical Islamists out to topple the fledgling TFG and introduce a strict version of sharia (Islamic law).

Al Shabaab, which controls large parts of central Somalia, recently banned radio stations from playing music and outlawed bell ringing that signals the end of school classes "because they sound like church bells."

Nur, who had worked on a farm while in Jowhar, had long being monitored by al Shabaab, the sources said. After settling in Xarardheere, he became the head teacher of Ganane Primary School and also taught English. The al Shabaab militants object to the use of English, preferring Arabic, and even after relocating to Xarardheere Nur realized he was in danger of the militants finding him, sources said.

Ganane is a private school owned by wealthy Somali proprietors.
In 2009 Islamic militants in Somalia sought out and killed at least 15 Christians, including women and children. This year, on Jan. 1 al Shabaab members murdered 41-year-old Mohammed Ahmed Ali after the Christian had left his home in Hodan, on the outskirts of Mogadishu.

On March 15, al Shabaab rebels shot Madobe Abdi to death on March 15 at 9:30 a.m. in Mahaday village, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Jowhar. Abdi's death was distinctive in that he was not a convert from Islam. An orphan, Abdi was raised as a Christian
Advocacy group International Christian Concern has reported that three members of al Shabaab killed Somali Christian Mu'awiye Hilowle Ali in front of his home in Afgoye on March 23, executing him with close-range shots to his head and chest.

The transitional government in Mogadishu fighting to retain control of the country treats Christians little better than the al Shabaab extremists do. While proclaiming himself a moderate, President Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed has embraced a version of sharia that mandates the death penalty for those who leave Islam.

The Rest @ Right Side NEws

Iranian State Reporter Arrested for Arms Trafficking

Italy frees Iranians 'jailed over arms trafficking'

Italian anti-terrorist prosecutor Armando Spataro (right) views a selection of the weapons that were seized in March 2010. Italy has freed two Iranians who were arrested on suspicion of trafficking arms to the Islamic republic, according to Tehran's ambassador to Rome.

AFP - Italy has freed two Iranian men jailed since March on suspicion of trafficking arms to the Islamic republic but is keeping them under house arrest, Tehran's ambassador to Rome said on Friday.

Ali Damirchi-Lou and state television reporter Hamid Masoumi-Nejad were released from jail on Thursday and "placed under house arrest," Ambassador Mohammad Ali Hosseini told Fars news agency.

The Rest @ France24

Masoumi-Nejad's release was announced Thursday on state television by Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh, who is charge of expatriate affairs, but there had been no immediate word on Damirchi-Lou's fate.

Masoumi-Nejad was freed "after efforts by the expatriate Iranian's council, the presidential office and the foreign ministry," Malekzadeh said.

Iran's ambassador to Italy also said that a Milan deputy prosecutor told him that "Masoumi-Nejad will be able to resume his reporting job although he is under house arrest." He did not elaborate.
The Italian news agency Ansa on Thursday confirmed that Masoumi-Nejad had been released and placed under house arrest, adding however he would be allowed to go to work.

Masoumi-Nejad -- who worked as a reporter for state television in Rome -- was arrested along with Damirchi-Lou and five Italian businessmen in Turin in March on suspicion of trafficking arms to Iran in violation of UN sanctions.

Tehran insists that the Iranian men are innocent and has repeatedly called for their release.
"We will keep our efforts until we secure their innocence verdict and complete freedom," ambassador Hosseini told Fars news agency.

Italian anti-terrorist prosecutor Armando Spataro said in March that the pair worked for Iran's secret services and that two other Iranians, believed to be in the Islamic republic, were sought in the same operation.

Italian police said the businessmen, receiving orders from Tehran, bought weapons in Europe, mainly from Germany.

They allegedly transported the arms through third countries such as Britain, Switzerland and Romania before shipping them to Iran using other companies as cover.

Some shipments passed via the Gulf state of Dubai, according to Italian police.

The scheme fell apart following a simple check by a Romanian customs officials, who confiscated 200 gun sights. Another 100 were seized in London, the police said.

Revolution Muslim Website Dead

Revolution Muslim Telephone # 718-312-8203 (USA)
Revolution Muslim
This is a dead website, but the cache holds these names:

Abu Saif
Younes Abdullah Mohammad
Abdullah al-Amin
Abu Talha al-Amriki
Al X
Shaykh Abdul Malik
Qismah bint Faisal
Linda G. Richard


If you can’t figure out why the right to offend is as important as the right of free speech, consider the warning that “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have received over their cartoon depiction of Muhammad in a bear suit.

• “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show,” Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee wrote.
• “This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”Al-Amrikee, a New York resident and admirer of Osama bin Laden, posted the warning – with a photograph of a dead Van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker shot and stabbed in 2004 for his film about Muslim women – on the Web site RevolutionMuslim.com

The REst @ Free Frank analysis
Links worth analysis

Allah’s Governance On Earth
99 Names of ALLAH - Ibn Qayyim
Study of Sharh al-'Aqida al-Tahawiyya
Malik's Muwatta - Sh. Suhaib Hassan
In Pursuit of Allah's Pleasure
Islah.info
Live Anti Saudi Radio (Arabic)
Milestone by Syed Qutb R.A.

Hizbul Islam Charging "tax' of Khat Trucks

Mogadishu (Alshahid) – The drivers of the vehicles that transport Khat (a stimulant leaves chewed by most Somalis) from Afgoye town to the capital Mogadishu complained about the money that Hizbul Islam militias take from them.

The drivers said that Hizbul Islam militias have several check points on the highway that connects Afgoye to Mogadishu and every militia group in those check points ask for money to allow the vehicles pass.

The Hizbul Islam police chief in Afgoye Mohamed Hassan Omar who talked to the reporters in Mogadishu denied the complains saying that only Somali Shilling 300 are taken from each vehicle and that amount goes to the road maintenance.

Mr. Omar said that any vehicle which doesn’t comply with the rules of Hizbul Islam will not use the road.

Swedish Recruiting

Stockholm (Alshahid) – The former Somalia Premier Nuur Hassan Hussein (Nuur Adde) who is currently serving as the Somalia’s ambassador to the European Union on Saturday addressed a gathering the Swedish capital of Stockholm which was attended by a large number of Somalis who live in that city.

Ambassador Nuur Adde talked at lengthy about the peace conference held at Djibouti that led to the formation of TFG led by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed accusing the western governments of failing to honor their pledged support for the TFG.

Mr. Nuur urged the Somalis in the Diaspora to tell the governments of their host nations about the real situation in Somalia.

The Ambassador told the attendants that his office will soon launch the issuing of the new Somali passports in the European countries starting with Italy.

alsahid Network

Pakistani Clerics and Shabaab Recruiting Efforts

Small footnotes to the following CS Monitor article is the specialization of Southern Somalia al Shabaab Training Camps, the recruiting of "wives" for fighters, and Pakistani clerics leading, (and possibly paying signing bonunses) for al Shabaab Recruits.

-Shimron Issachar


When Dahir Abdi joined the Somali extremist group Al-Shabab early last year, his motive had more to do with money than with God.

Back home in the Barawa district of southern Somalia, his parents and younger brothers and sisters were living on less than a single meal per day. His mother was too weak to fetch firewood to sell in the market, and too poor to buy the all-covering veil that was now required by Al-Shabab.

So when a recruiter from Al Shabab (whose name means “the youth” in Arabic) gave him $400 and the promise of a regular salary, Dahir joined willingly. He knew that even if he didn’t survive the war, his family would have a better chance to ward off starvation.

By the time Dahir arrived for six months of training at a camp in the densely forested southern coastal town of Ras Kiamboni, it was clear that he was just one of hundreds of young recruits preparing for war. It was clear, too, that deserting from Shabab – which has declared its allegiance to Al Qaeda – would be dangerous.

“When they recruited me, I was told I am going to fight against the African Union troops and against the Transitional Government, which didn’t want an Islamic government,” says Dahir, a talkative young man with a lean frame, who deserted Al Shabab late last year and now lives in hiding. Looking nervously from side to side as he spoke with a reporter in the Dagahley refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, he continues. “I was given $400 before I left home, and this I gave to my father and bid my family goodbye. They didn’t want me to leave. My father looked at me in tears and prayed for my safe homecoming.”

When the government of Somalia launches its long-threatened offensive against Al Shabab, it will be young men like Dahir who will be in the front lines, recruited by unscrupulous businessmen, trained by Pakistani, Afghan and Arab experts, and guided by a harsh ideology of jihad promulgated by Al Qaeda and its Islamist followers.

Al Shabab losing its appeal?

Somalia has been largely ungoverned for nearly 20 years, so the appeal of a hard-talking government based on religion has strong appeal in certain quarters. But the testimonies of several Al Shabab deserters interviewed by the Monitor shows that the Islamist militia is built less on a firm ideology – seen by many Somalis to be alien to their understanding of Islam — than on a combination of monetary lures and threats.

“Everybody hates to die, and everybody wants to go to heaven, but to go to heaven, you have to die: that is what they tell recruits,”

says Omar Sharif, a Somali businessman who travels between Mogadishu and Nairobi, and who has family members on both sides of the looming fight. “Shabab is in a decline right now, because people are not happy with what they are doing, but they still have a strong impact on youths inside the country, as well as here in Kenya.”

Yet as long as Somalia remains war-torn, and as long as Somalis remain poor, Shabab will be able to find willing fighters, Mr. Sharif says. “Somalis have a lot of children, and the school system is destroyed, so for many poor families, the madrassas (religious schools) are the only option where children can get at least a basic education. That is where Shabab goes to recruit.”

Virtually unknown four years ago, Al Shabab has rapidly grown to become the strongest military force in Somalia, imposing its own selective interpretation of Islamic law on the southern half of Somalia that is under its control. Al Shabab troops in the very heart of Mogadishu prevent the weak Western-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed from extending its authority beyond a few square blocks of the capital, along with the airport and Mogadishu’s seaport.

Estimates of Shabab’s fighting force are quite small, often around 3000 trained fighters with perhaps another 3000 untrained and poorly armed militia members providing logistical support. Mixed into this ragtag army are perhaps 200 foreign fighters – including Afghans, Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, and even a few white American converts — attracted to Al-Shabab by the promise of establishing and defending a “pure” Islamic state, as described by the Prophet Mohammed in the Quran.

Shabab’s strongholds are in the lower third of the country, from the borders of Kenya and Ethiopia and over to the coastal cities of Mogadishu and Kismayo. Shabab deserters say different camps specialize in different types of training.

The Al Faruq Brigades, who train at Elberde in the Hiraan region, for instance, trains suicide bombers, as does the Salahudeen unit in the Huriwa district of Mogadishu. The Muaskar Faruq base in Ras Kiamboni specializes in automatic weapons and hand-to-hand combat, while the Eel Aarfid base specializes in training kidnapping skills.

Liban Elmi, a 30-year-old recruit from Nairobi, was jobless and attending a religious school, or madrassa, when he was recruited by an cousin to join Al-Shabab. His cousin’s selling point was simple and direct: Since Mr. Elmi was an orphan with few job prospects, it would be better for him to go up north to his family’s ethnic homeland and fight an Islamic war of liberation than to continue living off his relatives.

“I was desperate, and I was convinced to join because I had nothing else to do,” says Elmi, speaking to a reporter in a private home in Dadaab, close to the refugee camp where he lives.

• The recruiters told him to change his image, stop shaving, and to start chewing khat, a leaf that has mildly narcotic qualities.
• In this way, when he disappeared, people would just assume that he had simply gone astray, rather than gone to join a pious religious movement like Al Shabab.
• Crossing into Somalia on foot, he and a group of 40 other recruits travelled with a group of Pakistani clerics to the town of Ras Kiamboni.
• It was there that Elmi joined a fighting unit, and got training in the use of AK-47s and in martial arts. Within weeks of the end of training, Elmi was sent to Mogadishu, where he quickly found himself on the front lines.
• In heavy fighting last August, a bullet struck Elmi in his right leg, which later had to be amputated by a Shabab doctor. He now hobbles around on an artificial leg that was purchased in Nairobi, but fitted onto him at a Shabab hospital in Mogadishu.
  
  “Now, I’m looking for a way to sustain myself,” he says, bitterly. “I can’t join them again, because even though it’s possible to fix my leg to allow me to fight in combat again, Al Shabab won’t spend the money on me because I’m a foreign fighter. I still resent my cousin, who told me to join.”
  
  Young women are not exempt from Al Shabab recruitment. In the displacement camps on both sides of the Kenyan-Somali border, older women travel from tent to tent, encouraging impoverished families to give their daughters to the holy struggle, or jihad.
  
  “The women tell our parents, ‘Before a man is given a gun, he must be given a woman, so that he can leave something behind,’” says Shamis Abdulaziz, a 25-year-old, who is herself married to an Al-Shabab fighter. “They say, ‘There is no need for you at home. Get married to the mujahideen who are fighting in the fields.’”
  
  Ms. Abdulaziz left her family in Afmadow, a district of southern Somalia, as a willing Shabab recruit. She had been told she would receive training in collecting intelligence, in carrying explosives, and driving supplies from one camp to another. On arrival at the Shabab camp near Afmadow, each girl was told to take off her shoes and put them in a pile. A few minutes later, Shabab fighters walked into the tent and chose a shoe at random. The owner of that shoe became his wife.
  
  “They told us it was our responsibility on behalf of the jihad,” says Abdulaziz proudly. “Now,” she says, “I am one of those women, who convinces young women to marry a young Shabab fighter.”
  
  ____
  
  The Rest By CSMonitor by way of the Bartamaha

Shimron Issachar
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