The Insider: Daily Terrorism Report

Sept. 15, 2004 -- 10 Pakistanis were arrested by Spanish police in northeastern Catalonia, Spain on charges of "suspected involvement in Islamic extremism", who emphasized that the arrests had no connection to the Madrid attacks earlier this year, according to AFP.

And in Iraq, anxious civilians walked back through rubble of flattened buildings to resume life after a two-week siege by U.S.-led forces targeting foreign fighters ended in Tal Afar, the Associated Press reported.

THE WAR ON TERROR

INVESTIGATIONS

Pakistan10 Suspected Pakistani Extremists Held In Spain: Police Spanish police arrested 10 Pakistanis suspected of involvement in extremism during an operation in the northeastern region of Catalonia. (Channel News Asia)

United StatesC.I.A. Unit On bin Laden Is Understaffed, a Senior Official Tells LawmakersThree years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.(NY Times)

U.S. Fears Terrorism Via Mexico's Time-Tested Smuggling RoutesIntelligence reports, security alerts and other incidents have led to increased security, greater cooperation on both sides of the border. (LA Times)

IndonesiaIndonesian Police Issue Sketches of 10 Most-Wanted After Embassy Blast Indonesian police issued sketches of their 10 most-wanted suspected extremists after last week's Australian embassy bombing and said they were closing on the owners of a van used in the attack. (Channel News Asia)

Terror In Indonesia Is Strand of Extremist Political WebThroughout the bloody American involvement in Vietnam, the most perceptive anti-insurgency experts in the West always understood that the aim of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese was political —the establishment of a communist regime in Saigon - and that military operations were but a means to that end. (CS Monitor)

AfghanistanAmericans Jailed In Afghan "Private Prison" TrialThree Americans were sentenced to up to 10 years in jail after being found guilty by an Afghan court on Wednesday of running a private jail and illegally detaining and torturing men in a freelance war on terror. (Reuters)

FranceFrance Detains Suspected Islamic MilitantsFrench counterterrorism officials detained five suspected Islamic militants thought to be linked to a Moroccan man with alleged ties to al-Qaida, judicial and police officials said. (AP)

RussiaPowell Warns Putin On Terror PlanSecretary of State Colin L. Powell warned Russia yesterday that broad new anti-terrorism moves announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin could harm the country's still-struggling democracy. (Washington Times)

Unrivaled Guerrilla Leader to the Terror of RussiaThe most loathed man in Russia moves in secret along the edges of a nation whose security services were once thought to be all-knowing. It should be hard for him to hide, having only one foot, a shaved head, and a beard reminiscent of the Taliban. (NY Times)

Chechen Is Charged in Deadly School Siege Russian prosecutors charged a Chechen man with terrorism, murder, kidnapping and other counts in the deadly hostage-taking at a school in southern Russia, the Interfax news agency reported. (LA Times)

LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS

SpainAznar Called To Testify At Bombing ProbeFormer Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has been summoned before a parliamentary commission investigating the Madrid train bombings to give his version of the most devastating attack in modern Spanish history. (Reuters)

9/11 InvestigationsWitness To Testify He Saw Suspect With 9/11 Hijacker A new witness in the retrial of the only Sept. 11 suspect ever convicted says he saw the defendant with the Hamburg-based suicide pilots four months before the 2001 attacks, a judge said Tuesday. (AP)

U.S. Court Agrees to Al Qaeda TestimonyZacarias Moussaoui, allegedly a 20th hijacker who did not die in the September 11 attacks, is entitled to use imprisoned al-Qaida leaders in his defence, an appeal court in Virginia ruled yesterday. (Guardian)

YemenUSS Cole Bombing Trial Ends In YemenThe trial of six Yemenis charged with the October 2000 attack on the U.S. navy ship USS Cole ended on Wednesday with the court saying it would deliver verdicts on September 29. The Sana'a counter-terrorism court held Wednesday its final hearing into the case, during which it listened to concluding statements by prosecutors and defence lawyers.In their statements, two prosecutors asked the court to hand down the death penalty to four of the men who are accused of forming an armed band and killing 17 U.S. sailors. The prosecutors asked the court to sentence to seven years in prison the two other suspects, policemen charged with helping the main suspects to get forged ID documents. Five of the suspects were present in the court during the trial, while the alleged mastermind of the attack, Abdul-Raheem al-Nashri, alias Mulla Bilal, was being tried in absentia. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur)

IRAQ NEWS

U.S. Ends its Siege of Iraqi TownTurkey warned it would no longer cooperate in Iraq if offensive kept hurting its people. Anxious civilians trickled back into Tal Afar on Tuesday, digging through the rubble of buildings flattened during a nearly two-week siege by U.S.-led forces targeting foreign fighters. The blockade ended a day after Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned U.S. officials his country would stop cooperating in Iraq if the offensive against insurgents continued to harm the Turkish minority in Tal Afar, a center for Iraq's ethnic Turkmen. (AP)

Fighting In Iraq Kills 10 Insurgents: Latest Violence Leaves Over 200 Dead

Fighting between insurgents and U.S. forces killed 10 people Wednesday in the western city of Ramadi, the latest casualties in a spate of violence that has left more than 200 dead around the country. The dead in Ramadi included two women, according to Saad Amili, a senior official with the Iraqi Health Ministry who was quoted by the Associated Press. The U.S. military gave no further details. (Washington Post)

Turks Furious At U.S. Tal Afar Attacks

With their TV screens showing the Turkmen of northern Iraq coming under attack in the latest U.S. operation at Tal Afar, many Turks are angry at what is being done to a people many here see as their ethnic brethren. (Al Jazeera)

Lawmakers Concerned About Shift in Iraq Reconstruction Funds The Bush administration's plans to divert $3.46 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds for security could increase dangers in the long run, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Wednesday. (Boston Globe)

Abductions in Iraq a Big BusinessGroups tied to Abu Musab Zarqawi claim a major car bombing Tuesday, taking Westerners as hostages.When a disciplined group of uniformed men kidnapped two Italian aid workers and their two Iraqi assistants from their Baghdad office earlier this month - only to have an Islamic group claim the kidnapping hours later - it confirmed what Iraqi officials say they have suspected for months. (CS Monitor)

Militants Threaten To Kill JordanianA Jordanian truck driver was kidnapped yesterday in Iraq by militants who threatened to kill him unless his employer pull out of the neighbouring country within 48 hours, a senior official confirmed. (Jordan Times)

France Unsure of Iraq Hostage StatementThe French government said Wednesday it was still trying to authenticate a statement purportedly made by Islamic militants holding two French journalists hostage that called Paris an "enemy of Muslims". (AFP)

Islamic Army of Iraq: France is Eenemy of MuslimsStatement from Iraqi captors of two French journalists blasts France for crimes carried out against Muslims. (Middle East Online)

Australians Known To Be In Iraq Accounted ForAll 225 Australians known to be in Iraq have been accounted for, Australia's foreign office has said, two days after an unconfirmed report that two citizens had been taken hostage and threatened with execution. (Reuters)

ANALYSIS & OPINION

Withdrawal of Coalition Forces Would Lead To Fragmentation Withdrawal of the US-led coalition forces in Iraq would lead to the rapid fragmentation of the country, according to Iraq specialists yesterday. (Guardian)

Aftershock and Awe Bloodshed, mayhem and horror in Baghdad and Falluja are the daily fare of post-Saddam Iraq, but fallout from the war continues to spread far beyond. (Guardian)

It's Worse Than You ThinkAs Americans debate Vietnam, the U.S. death toll tops 1,000 in Iraq. And the insurgents are still getting stronger. (Newsweek)

Another Casualty in the Misguided War Against Terror' All around the globe, civil liberties have been trampled upon in the name of a "war on terror". Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and our own Belmarsh are symbols of a new philosophy that says once-cherished liberties must be discarded if the world is to be free of the scourge of terrorism. (The Independent)

Let's Shout Down the Voices That Preach HatredThe terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 didn't create the civilizational divide, they exposed it. Further, the attacks and their aftermath tragically provided an opportunity for extremists whose intent it has been to widen the gap between East and West and transform it into an unbridgeable chasm. (Arab News)

The Eternal Value of Autocracy Differences in the interpretation of the Beslan hostage drama by Russia and the West could well drive a wedge between the two sides, reducing relations to their lowest point since the demise of the Soviet empire.(Moscow News)

Chechnya: Why Putin is ImplacablePresident Putin has drawn a line in the mountains of the North Caucasus beyond which Russia will not withdraw. (BBC)

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.