The Insider: Daily Terrorism Report
Sept. 16, 2004 -- Chechnya's feared warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the deadly school hostage taking in southern Russia that killed more than 330 people, today's news reported. Rebels commanded by Basayev have "carried out a series of successful military operations," including "the operation in the town of Beslan," said a letter signed by the 39-year-old and posted on the rebel website kavkazcenter.com. The authenticity of the letter has not yet been verified.
And the Associated Press reports that two members of a panel hearing cases of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay should be dismissed because their pasts may make them biased against the defendants, the presiding officer recommended.
THE WAR ON TERROR
INVESTIGATIONS
RussiaChechnya Warlord Claims Beslan School Hostage Taking Chechnya's feared warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the deadly school hostage taking in southern Russia that killed more than 330 people. (Channel News Asia)
Putin Threatens Preventive Terror ActionsPresident Vladimir Putin said Friday the Kremlin was preparing to take preventive action against terrorists, even as a Chechen rebel leader purportedly claimed responsibility for a series of attacks that killed hundreds of people and threatened more violence. (AP)
IndonesiaIndonesian Police Detain Seven People on Terror LinksIndonesian police have detained seven people linked to terrorism since last week's bombing outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed nine people and wounded 182, officers said on Friday. (Reuters)
United StatesSenior CIA Officer Says Efforts Against Al Qaeda Still LagA senior CIA officer says bad decisions, understaffing and infighting among intelligence agencies stifled efforts to stop Osama bin Laden and his network. More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency remains short-staffed, he says. (AP)
Ex-Sailor Had Access to Naval Data in Terrorism CaseVeteran was aboard the U.S. warship whose movements were passed to an accused ally of militants. Investigator says he backed jihad. (LA Times)
United States/GermanyU.S., Berlin to Swap Anti-Terror Data; Offers Easier Visas The United States and Germany are to speed up swaps of data used for the fight against terrorism, Interior Minister Otto Schily and visiting Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge agreed Friday in Berlin. (Deutsche Presse Argentur)
EuropeBinational Patrols to Target Islamists, ETASpain and France have agreed to set up joint police units to investigate Islamic militant groups and the Basque separatist organization ETA, Spain's Justice Ministry said. (LA Times news wires)
United KingdomU.S. Apologizes For Terror News LeaksPresident Bush's chief domestic security official yesterday apologised for the disruption of a big MI5 and police surveillance operation in Britain. (Guardian)
AfricaU.S. Engages Africa In Terror FightThe U.S. is rolling out a nine-country, $125 million military training program. (CS Monitor)
CanadaToronto Teenager 'Admits He's Terrorist'A Canadian detained as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay has admitted he is a trained al Qaeda terrorist and that he killed an American soldier in Afghanistan, according to internal U.S. military documents disclosed yesterday.A summary of the U.S. government's case against Omar Khadr reveals for the first time that the Toronto-born teen was trained by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, acted as a translator for the terrorist network and tried to blow up American soldiers. In June, 2002, the then-15-year- old "conducted a surveillance mission" in which he spied on an airport near the Afghan city of Khost to collect information about military convoys, it says. He is also accused of planting 10 land mines a few weeks later that were aimed at U.S. forces operating in the region. (National Post —Canada)
LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS
Dismissal Urged for 2 on Guantanamo PanelTwo members of a panel hearing cases of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay should be dismissed because their pasts may make them biased against the defendants, the presiding officer recommended. (AP)
Terror Indictments May Be Linked to PadillaTwo men allegedly aided extremists with funds and recruitment. 'Dirty bomb' suspect may have been a beneficiary of their support. (LA Times)
IRAQ NEWS
U.S. Forces Pound Fallujah; 44 Said DeadA suicide attacker detonated an explosives-packed vehicle near a row of police cars blocking off a bridge in central Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding 20, officials said. The attack came hours after U.S. jets pounded the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, leaving at least 44 dead. (Associated Press)
2 Americans, Briton Seized By Gunmen In BaghdadMasked gunmen kidnapped two Americans and a Briton from their Baghdad residence Thursday in an attack that appeared to herald a new level of danger for foreign civilians in Iraq. (Washington Post)
Gunbattles Rage After Car Bomb Tries to Ram Baghdad CheckpointGunbattles raged for hours between US-led Iraqi troops and insurgents in a Baghdad bastion of Saddam Hussein loyalists after an explosives-rigged car tried to ram a checkpoint, the US military said. (Agence France-Presse)
Iraq Study Finds Desire for Arms, but Not CapacityA new report on Iraq's illicit weapons program is expected to conclude that Saddam Hussein's government had a clear intent to produce weapons. But, like earlier reports, it finds no evidence that Iraq had begun any large-scale program for weapons production by the time of the American invasion last year, the officials said. (NY Times)
U.K. ready to Send More Troops to IraqBritain is prepared to send more troops to Iraq if necessary to safeguard elections planned for next year, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has said. (Al Jazeera)
AMS: U.S. Actions Foiling Hostage DealIraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) has accused the US army of hampering efforts to secure the release of two abducted French journalists. (Al Jazeera)
Armitage: Iraq Elections Will Be Held As PlannedElections will take place in Iraq as planned by next January, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said here Friday after talks with Polish officials. "We realise they might not be pretty, but they will be held," he said, referring to the disastrous security situation in occupied Iraq. (Middle East Online)
Unease Shadows Bush's OptimismA combination of escalating bloodshed, gloomy assessments and deteriorating security conditions in Iraq are challenging the Bush administration's upbeat view of the struggle to establish democracy in the beleaguered Middle East nation. (LA Times)
Humvee Windows Divide Two Starkly Different WorldsBaghdad's Sadr City neighborhood is divided into two worlds: the one Iraqis live in and the one U.S. soldiers drive through. (Knight Ridder Newspapers)
ANALYSIS & OPINION
'Coordinated Attacks Signal Sophisticated Iraqi Insurgency' The scale and sophistication of militant attacks in Iraq are steadily increasing, with coordinated strikes and complicated ambushes that increasingly hit their targets, officials and analysts say. (AP)
Iraq's Universities Face CatastropheIraqi universities, once among the most prestigious in the Arab world, are facing potential catastrophe, with rampant kidnappings and murders causing the post-Saddam Hussein intelligentsia to flee abroad en masse. (Middle East Online)
Spreading Illusions On IraqIt should not be surprising that a classified National Intelligence Estimate completed last month projects three scenarios for Iraq over the next 18 months that range from dicey to disastrous - from fragile stability to civil war among Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds. What is surprising is that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney go on campaigning as if their Iraq policy has been a great success. (Boston Globe)
The War Was IllegalWhile Kofi Annan's verdict on the war is welcome, the pity is that he did not have the courage to make it last year, before the US and Britain embarked on war. (Guardian)
This Is Bush's VietnamGeorge W. Bush is now trapped as tightly in Iraq as Johnson was in Vietnam. (New York Times)
See Ya, Iraq?Leaving unilaterally from Iraq would be a tragic mistake. We have already done something like that before —many times. What rippled out afterwards was not pretty. (National Review)
Securing the March Towards Democracy It goes without saying that free and fair elections can never be conducted in the absence of some semblance of peace and stability. (Jordan Times)
When Death Is Okay Some 10,000 Iraqis have lost their lives in Baghdad alone since the Americans entered the city a year and a half ago, both from insurgent and criminal acts. Such a great loss of human lives can never provide the right grounds for any Iraqi population approval of the American misadventure in Iraq. (Yemen Times)
Assessing the Risk of Terrorism in the Broader Scale
The bottom line is this: there will always be terrorists and legitimate efforts to catch them. But meanwhile, the bigger statistical threat comes from the driver next to you who is talking on the mobile phone (The Irish Times, subscription required.)
Operation in Tribal Belt
If analyzed with a pragmatic way, Pakistan's success in the fight vis-à-vis terrorism is matchless, explicitly when the figures of those killed, injured or arrested by Pakistan's forces is steadily going up. (Pakistan Times)
It's Up to Indonesians Themselves to Fight Terrorism
[The Indonesian] government carries too much baggage. It has little moral authority to deal with Islamic groups, lacks public support because of corruption and its security forces are seen as a problem rather than the solution. [The people] need to be the ones to fight back. (Time Asia)
Testing Our 'Ally,' Pakistan
Why not seek answers from that great friend of the United States, Pakistan? After all, Pakistan is known to have sold nuclear weapons technology to other nations, helping them develop the kind of weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration erroneously said would be found in Iraq. (LA Times)
The Insider Daily Terrorism Report (DTR) is a summary of major news articles and broadcasts relating to international terrorism and developments in Iraq. The DTR is edited daily from foreign and U.S. sources by Chris Isham, Hoda Osman, and Brinda Adhikari of the ABCNEWS Investigative Unit. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ABCNEWS.