The Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades in Khan Yunis kidnapped Saturday afternoon two Spanish journalists, sources in the Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post.

According to sources based in Gaza, representatives of the PA Preventive Security Service are currently conducting negotiations with Aksa Brigades members for the release of the journalists.

The abduction apparently took place at the Tufrah Junction in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sources told the Post that the abductors are the same militants who took part in the July kidnapping of four French nationals. The French, two men and two women, were kidnapped as they were drinking coffee at a cafe in Khan Yunis.

Read more…

[via TBIFOC]

Welcome! This briefing will be looking hard at the dark places most mainstream media seem determined to look away from, to better understand our declared enemies on their own terms and without illusions. Our goal is to bring you some of the top jihadi rants, idiotarian seething, and old-school Jew-hatred from around the world, leaving you more informed, more aware, and pretty disgusted every month. This Winds of Change.NET HateWatch briefing is brought to you by Lewy14. (Email me at my handle “hatewatch” here at windsofchange.net). Past briefings and posts on related topics can be found here. Entil’zha veni!

HIGHLIGHTED TOPICS

• Religious Hate: Texas Shi’as honor Khomeini; Sectarian hatred from Hamas; MSA – pro terror organization? Radical Islamists proselytizing in Prison; Coptic Christians forcibly converted in Egypt; Portrait of an Iranian martyr and her father; Web site warns kids against loving infidels.

• Idiotarian Seethings: Mark LeVine blames the West; Erasing Christ from Christmas in Italian schools; Islamic Rights chairman: Van Gogh should have been arrested; Michael Moore: Republicans are like domestic abusers; Antiwar, Anti-American & Right-Wing.

• Race and Culture: Iranian TV promotes Jewish conspiracy theories; Hizballah TV banned in France; Swastika flower beds in Melborn; WWII Legacies slipping from memory in Europe; We don’t hate Jews… as such; Weisenthal center promoting Islamophobia?

• A Hopeful Note: $156M judgment against charities funding Hamas; World Net Daily gets results shutting down Hamas web sites; Times of London on the reaction against Eurabia; Dearth of bad news at MEMRI.

AFP: France’s highest civil court orders end to Hezbollah TV broadcasts

France’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, ordered the satellite company Eutelsat to stop broadcasts of Al-Manar television, the mouthpiece of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah.

The bans on the broadcasts within the European Union had to be implemented with 48 hours, the court said after ruling that the channel had violated laws against inciting racial hatred.

Al-Manar is broadcast in Europe via Paris-based Eutelsat as part of a package of nine channels put out by Saudi-based Arabsat.

JERUSALEM POST: Arab states launch terror financing watchdog

Arab states agreed Tuesday to work together to try to keep money out of the hands of terrorists.

Tuesday’s creation of the 14-member Middle East-North Africa Financial Action Task Force was hailed by the US Treasury Department official responsible for fighting terrorist financing, Juan Carlos Zarate. Zarate said at the inaugural session in Bahrain that the step showed the region “has taken this threat seriously.”

The task force is the first of its kind in the region, which has come under increased scrutiny following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States. The United Arab Emirates, which joined the new task force and is known for its freewheeling financial sector, has been identified by US investigators as a major money transfer center for al-Qaida, the terror network responsible for Sept. 11.

The watchdog bringing together Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, Tunisia, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen will be a regional version of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force. The 33-member FATF was set up in 1987 to monitor and fight money laundering, and in 2001 expanded its role to combatting the financing of terror.

Iraqi officials attended the Bahrain meeting as observers, as did officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United States, Britain and France.

The AP via theNew York Times is reporting:

Two leaders of a mosque in Albany, N.Y., were arrested on charges stemming from an alleged plot to help a man they thought was a terrorist purchase a shoulder-fired missile, federal authorities said Thursday.

Read the rest here.

Reuters reports on a foiled terrorist attempt to strike an embassy of a North African country in Vienna.

Reuters:

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian anti-terrorism investigators found detailed plans of a North African embassy with notes on its security gaps during a raid last year and may have foiled an attack, officials said Wednesday.

The raid has only now been made public as the Federal Constitutional Protection and Anti-Terrorism Agency presented its annual report on security threats in Austria.

The agency’s head said the Vienna embassy which he declined to identify had been immediately informed and extra protection assigned while it beefed up its own security.

“These measures (the raid) may at least have prevented the planning of an attack,” Gert-Rene Polli told Reuters.

The 2003 report said there was no evidence of a direct threat to Austria, but that a latent threat hung over all of Europe and the danger of Islamic militant attacks was growing.

Investigators found the embassy drawings while serving a search warrant on suspects from North Africa, who left the country before prosecutors could take up the case.

Polli said the leads generated by the raid were more important than the fact no one was tried.

“We found very interesting material that took us further,” he said.

more on this at Southern Watch

JERUSALEM POST: Carlos the Jackal on hunger strike in prison

Jailed terrorist Carlos the Jackal is on a hunger strike to protest being transferred to solitary confinement at a high-security French prison, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, stopped eating and drinking Tuesday after prison authorities tried to move him from his cell, said his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre.

After refusing the transfer, Ramirez was put in a special disciplinary section and was to appear Thursday before a disciplinary panel, prison officials said. The officials declined to specify why he was being switched to solitary confinement, saying it was part of prison procedure.

Coutant-Peyre also said that Ramirez was being “deprived” of his diabetes medication, a claim prison authorities denied, saying Ramirez was refusing the treatment.

Columbia professor and terror apologist Edward Said is dead of leukemia. He was 67. *Tap, tap, tap.* Nope. sympathy meter still seems to be busted.

As an aside, MuslimPundit's article "When Ibn Warraq Met Edward Said" remains one of my favourite articles over at Winds of Change.NET.

More here...

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday.

TOP TOPICS

• LA Times: "After more than a decade of working behind layers of front companies and in hidden laboratories, Iran appears to be in the late stages of developing the capacity to build a nuclear bomb." They've done a special investigative report. As WATCH/ notes, the NY Times has a similar investigative report.

• Fierce Highway has a great analysis of the missing 9/11 report pages, the Saudis, and U.S. policy. See also the sequel: "More Reason, Not Less".

Other Topics Today Include: Defining our enemies, defining ourselves; Duelling WMD reports; Iraq - view from the streets; German post-occupation history 1945-49; Shredders revisited; Rebuilding the oil industry; NK and the bomb; Terrorists strike in the USA; Regime decapitation; Afghanistan; Syria; Good fences in Israel and India; Chechnya; and 50 things every guy should know.

read the rest! »

CNN:

MOZDOK, Russia -- A suicide truck bomber has destroyed part of a military hospital complex in southern Russia near Chechnya, killing at least 20 people and injuring 30 others, news agencies reported.

Rescue workers were hampered by fires as they tried to pull survivors from the rubble at a major military base in Mozdok in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia, according to reports.

At least 10 bodies have been pulled from the wreckage, CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty quoted Russian media as reporting.

More...

AP:

MOMBASA, Kenya - A terrorist suspect detonated a hand grenade Friday as he was being arrested near Mombasa's central police station, killing himself and a policeman, according to witnesses and police.

Police in a pickup truck stopped a vehicle and tried to apprehend several men inside when one of them detonated the grenade, killing himself and one of the police officers, bystanders said.

Dida G. Dima, the head detective in the port city of Mombasa, said one police officer was killed and another seriously injured when "our people went to arrest a suspected terrorist."

More...

This is priceless. MuslimPundit isn't exactly happy about having to share his residence in the British Isles with the likes of hate-spewing jihadis like Abu Hamza. The good news is, he may not have to much longer. Or as Adil puts it: Stupidity, Thy Name is Abu Hamza Al-Misri....

"When he isn't inciting supporters to combat their humiliation with arms and martyrs (and then accidentally blowing his own limbs off with home-made explosives), Abu Hamza "Captain Hook" al-Misri casts a blind eye to the resolve of those "soft, weak" Brits who do not subscribe to his mad delusions of grandeur:

"Hamza is said to have been so convinced by a British undercover investigator posing as an extremist website operator that he allegedly sent him several secret propaganda films designed to attract new recruits. The videos were used, say investigators, to convince British Muslims to undergo jihad training at camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia.

The tapes and e-mails were obtained by Glen Jenvey, a 38-year-old freelance counterintelligence investigator from Wiltshire, over a period of more than a year. As the evidence flowed in, Jenvey forwarded it to the FBI, which is now building a case to extradite Hamza to America.

Ah, these plucky infidels and their personal home computers. This is playing dirty, and I advocate it strongly....

read the rest! »

AP:

MOSCOW - In the wake of twin suicide attacks at a Moscow rock festival, President Vladimir Putin vowed Monday that Russia would not give in to terrorism and asserted that Chechen rebels are supported by international groups.

The separatist rebels that have been fighting Russian forces for nearly four years in Chechnya are seen by officials as being behind the Saturday blasts that killed 15 people, including the two female bombers, and injured scores.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but news reports have said a passport was found at the site showing that one of the bombers was a Chechen.

Putin, in a meeting with his Cabinet, said "today, after the latest series of terrorist acts, we can say that the bandits active in Chechnya are not simply connected with international terrorist organizations, they have become an integral, maybe the most dangerous part, of the international web."

More...

NJ.com:

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Imprisoned Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman says the violent attempt to overthrow Peru's government that he launched two decades ago was a "popular war" and not terrorism.

A copy of a statement Guzman gave to court officials was made available to The Associated Press on Friday by Guzman's lawyer, Manuel Fajardo. Fajardo said the statement was presented on May 5 to judges preparing Guzman's new public trial, which is expected to begin in two to three months.

"I am a Marxist, Leninist, Maoist and, until my detention, president of the Peruvian Communist Party and therefore responsible for the popular war that my party led from May 17, 1980," Guzman said.

"The Peruvian government called it and continues to call it terrorism. To call it terrorism does not correspond to the facts, to reality," he said.

More...

USA Today:

HATAT, Yemen (AP) — Yemeni troops attacked Islamic militants holed up in the southern mountains Wednesday, ending days of negotiations with the al-Qaeda-linked group.

The soldiers fired artillery and Katyusha rockets at the hideouts of the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army near the village of Hatat, some 280 miles south of the capital San'a.

The Aden-Abyan militants fled to the mountains after they attacked a military medical convoy on Saturday, wounding seven soldiers. The group is known for kidnapping 16 Western tourists in 1998. Four of the tourists died in a botched rescue attempt by soldiers.

Full article...

BBC:

Israeli prosecutors have charged a leader of Israel's Islamic Movement and three other senior members with belonging to a terrorist organisation.

Sheikh Raed Salah and the three other men were also charged with channelling funds to charities inside the Palestinian territories linked to the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Along with a fifth man - the mayor of the northern Arab town of Umm al-Fahm - they were indicted over alleged contacts with foreign intelligence agents.

Full article...

From Jerusalem Post:

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin were at odds Monday over discussions within the EU to outlaw Hamas' political wing

Calling for an international crackdown on the radical Palestinian group, Straw said Monday that Hamas was trying to blow up the Middle East peace process.

Dominique de Villepin, making a distinction between "mass movements" and "terrorists" argued that Hamas remained a necessary player in the peace process.

De Villepin also urged Hamas to make more efforts in ending terrorist acts from Palestinian militants. "We call on Hamas to demonstrate that they are against all terrorist activities," he said.

Speaking to reporters at a EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg, Straw called Hamas a "terrorist group" and added that it was "literally trying to blow this process to pieces."

From Ha'aretz:

Outgoing EU Middle East peace envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos was quoted by the Spanish daily El Pais on Monday as saying the 15-nation bloc should add Hamas to its list of terrorist organizations, whose assets may be seized.

The comments followed a strong weekend condemnation of Hamas by President George Bush, who said the free world should deal "harshly" with the Islamic organization, which Bush singled out as "sabotaging peace."

Speaking of terrorist groups and the EU, from Ha'aretz:

Palestinian Minister for Security Affairs Mohammed Dahlan told European Union consuls that the Palestinian Authority needs $400 million to rebuild its security organizations into an effective force.

Dahlan, who is expected to lead the efforts of the Palestinian Authority in taking security responsibility in areas vacated by the IDF, met recently with consuls of countries with representation in the Palestinian Authority. Among them were the consuls of Germany, Sweden, France, and Spain, who met Dahlan in Jericho, the West Bank city where the Palestinian minister is concentrating efforts to rebuild his security forces.

It's very expensive to run a security operation that refuses to arrest rocket-launching terrorists and won't be answerable to the Prime Minister as the EU "expects" in the Roadmap, you know.

From BBC:

A bomb found in a van at Londonderry was one of the biggest ever found in the UK, police have said.

The device, containing 1200lbs of explosives, was primed and ready for detonation.

It was found in a van seen being driven suspiciously on the Foyle Bridge at about 0615 BST on Sunday.

Reuters

BILBAO, Spain - Police in Spain's troubled Basque region defused on Saturday a car bomb that was packed with 66 pounds of explosives and believed to have been planted by the Basque separatist group ETA.

Police cordoned off the streets, leaving a bride and the rest of her wedding party stranded on the streets of Bilbao until the bomb squad deactivated the device.

Basque regional police were tipped off to the car bomb, parked near the football stadium, by a phone call in the name of ETA to a local newspaper, a Basque police spokesman said. The explosives were packed in a cooking pot and attached to a timer.

ETA, western Europe's most active guerrilla force, has killed 841 people since 1968 in a bombing and shooting campaign for an independent state in northern Spain and southwestern France.

Full article...

From Reuters:

Italy's Muslim League suspended the imam of Rome's main mosque Friday after he praised Palestinian suicide bombers at Friday prayers and called on Allah to "annihilate the enemies of Islam."

Mahmoud Ibrahim Moussa, an Egyptian national, made the declarations in his sermon at prayers last Friday, causing a storm of protest that led to his ousting a week later.

"That unfortunate sermon drew criticism from all over the place, even from the Interior minister, so we decided it would be opportune to replace the imam," Mario Scialoja, head of the Italian branch of the Muslim World League, told Reuters.

Scialoja said Moussa was young and inexperienced and the sermon was a "sin of youth."

London's Abu Hamza al-Masri would have lent a hand to fellow imam Mahmoud Ibrahim Moussa if he only had one to give.

From Ha'aretz:

The European Union will consider how to cut off funding for Hamas after Wednesday's suicide attack in Jerusalem by the militant organization, the bloc's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said Friday.

"The EU will discuss this issue with a view to finding ways to end external support to Hamas," said a statement by Solana.

An official said the statement showed the EU - which has the military wing of Hamas on its list of banned "terrorist" groups but not its charitable wing - finally opened the debate on a wider clampdown long sought by Washington.

One suggestion: fire Commissioner Chris Patten for resisting the audit of EU aid to the palestinians and for being so stupid as to believe that the charity and political wings of Hamas don't share funds with the military wing.

BBC News:

Thailand has detained three Thai Muslims they suspect were planning to attack western embassies and tourist spots in the country.

The men were detained in southern Narathiwat province bordering Malaysia and have been linked with regional terrorism network Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

Australia and New Zealand last month advised against non-essential travel to Thailand, warning that the country was at risk of attack by Islamic militants.

Full story »»

ABC News has this FAQ on Hamas:

What is Hamas?
Hamas is literally the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, which began operating in early 1988 after the start of the 1987 uprising -- also known as the first Palestinian intifada.

Who founded Hamas? And who is the leader? The spiritual leader of Hamas is Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic currently based in Gaza. Born in 1938, Yassin founded the organization along with a core group of men associated with the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. A fiery orator, Yassin is internationally viewed as an extremist, but in a sign of the growing radicalization in the territories, the aging sheik is regarded as the moderate face of the Palestinian Islamists. What are the goals and ideology of the group? Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas believes in the revival of strict Islamic values in government and society. The official Hamas rhetoric is opposed to the very existence of the Israeli state, but in reality, the group has altered its position to oppose Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

From the New York Times:

The southern Philippines has become the training center for Al Qaeda's Southeast Asia affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah, drawing recruits from a number of countries, according to Western and Philippine officials.

For the last six to nine months, recruits mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, but also a few from as far off as Pakistan and the Middle East, have received training at inaccessible, rough-hewn sites — basically a few huts and some tents — in a marshy region on the island of Mindanao, officials said.

The training is similar to what their older colleagues in terrorism got in Afghanistan when that served as Al Qaeda's base, they added.

Full story »»

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer/Agence France-Presse:

SYDNEY -- An Indonesian group linked to the al-Qaeda network held a high-level meeting last month in Indonesia, possibly to identify new terrorist targets, The Australian newspaper reported Friday.

Citing unidentified intelligence sources, the newspaper said the meeting involved members of four cells of Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic group blamed for killing 202 people in a car bombing last October.

The meeting included a former resident of Australia, Abdul Rahim Ayub, who reportedly heads a Jemaah Islamiyah cell responsible for actions in Australia, the newspaper said.

Full story...