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American al Qaeda: U.S. should convert to Islam
POSTED: 1149 GMT (1949 HKT), September 3, 2006

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A new videotape has surfaced featuring Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and an American member of al Qaeda wanted by the FBI, according to a counterterrorism expert.

The tape, called "Invitation to Islam," runs 48 minutes, expert Laura Mansfield said. Al-Zawahiri speaks for about 4 minutes on the tape, and the American narrates the rest.

Californian Adam Gadahn, wearing a white robe and turban, introduces the message by calling on Westerners to convert. (Watch Gadahn accuse President Bush of not caring about U.S. troops -- 5:42)

Gadahn says that even Americans working with President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are invited to embrace Islam, but they should hurry.

"We invite all Americans and believers to Islam, whatever their role and status in Bush and Blair's world order," Gadahn says. "Decide today, because today could be your last day."

Mansfield, who is a writer and corporate adviser on the Middle East, Islam and terrorism, said the time reference could indicate an attack is near. Muslims believe that non-believers should be given a chance to convert before they are attacked, Mansfield said.

"This may well be a warning," she said.

The only indication of when the tape was made is a reference to the recent fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, which ended August 14.

Gadahn, also known as "Azzam the American," previously has been featured in al Qaeda tapes and is listed as armed and dangerous by the FBI on its Web site. (Watch why it 'makes sense' to use Gadahn as a spokesman -- 3:29)

He is wanted by the FBI in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States.

Gadahn appeared on a tape last year on the fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He also was on a tape earlier this year, on the first anniversary of the London subway bombings. (Watch story of Gadahn's journey from Orange County to al Qaeda -- 1:39)

Much of his portion carries Arabic subtitles, while the segments in Arabic carry English subtitles. CNN is analyzing the tape.

CNN's Henry Schuster contributed to this report.

CNN.com - American al Qaeda: U.S. should convert to Islam - Sep 2, 2006

A reason to hate

What makes an al-Qaida suicide bomber? After a year spent talking to the terrorists and their families, Peter Taylor is convinced that it's all down to Iraq - whatever Tony Blair might claim

Friday September 1, 2006
The Guardian


One of the most bewildering sights since last month's dramatic Heathrow alert has been the succession of government ministers insisting that the terrorist threat has nothing to do with Iraq and British support for American foreign policy. Such political certainties fly in the face of all the empirical evidence I have found in a year of investigating how young Muslims are radicalised and recruited to fight in Iraq, not just in Britain but across Europe and the Middle East. Whenever and wherever I asked the families and friends of suicide bombers why their loved ones had been prepared to blow themselves up, top of their list was Iraq. Some were radicalised by the alleged illegality of the US invasion, others by torture at Abu Ghraib and abuses by the American military, and all by the continuing occupation of a Muslim land by foreign forces - including the British army.
Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, put it bluntly: "Iraq is an almost unimaginable force multiplier for Bin Laden, al-Qaida and their allies," he told me.

In the Middle East, I met a young Arab who was hoping to go to Iraq and become a shaheed, a martyr. He told me he had already tried to get into Iraq via Syria to join the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaida in Iraq, but had returned home to try again later after some of those he travelled with were arrested near the border. Some, he said, managed to get through. At some stage he hoped to follow.

He was clearly nervous. He was young, barely 20, with a red keffiyeh covering his face to conceal his identity. He said he planned to go to Iraq "to support our oppressed brothers and send the enemy out of Muslim lands, to fight in the name of God and ask for entry into paradise". I had no doubt he meant it. He said he was prepared to become a suicide bomber. "The important thing is to be killed as a martyr," he said.

Shezhad Tanweer, one of the 7/7 bombers from Leeds, expressed much the same sentiments in the video he recorded before he killed himself and seven passengers on the Circle line near Aldgate. He made it clear "to the non-Muslims of Britain" why he had done it. "Your government has openly supported the genocide of 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja," he said. "You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq to this day."

It is not known precisely how many Muslims have left the UK for Iraq. I asked Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, if it was possible to put a figure on the number. "We don't know exactly how many. We simply don't have a very clear picture of the total scale of the problem," he admitted. Muslims about to go to Iraq do not tell even those closest to them what they are intending to do. There is at least one case in Britain where an individual appears to have been stopped, but it is currently sub judice and cannot be discussed.

Wail al-Dhaleai, 22, from Sheffield was the last person his friends ever dreamed would go to Iraq and die. He is thought to have been shot dead by US troops in 2003 while trying to blow them up. He had never figured on the radar of South Yorkshire special branch or MI5. The first they appear to have heard was when a newspaper in his native Yemen reported that a family friend had called with the news that Dhaleai had become a shaheed.

Dhaleai came to the UK in 2000 as an asylum seeker, settled down and married a young Yorkshire woman at Sheffield registry office in January 2002. His wife converted to Islam. Dhaleai soon became a father. He appears to have been universally popular, not least because of the martial arts skills he developed and passed on to others at the young people's class he set up. His tae kwon do mentor and friend was Andy Hill. He knew that Dhaleai was a Muslim who took his faith seriously - he would sometimes stop in class to pray - but never realised how deep that faith ran until Dhaleai took the examination for his black belt. After displaying his skills before the visiting grand master, Dhaleai had to bow before him. To Hill's horror, he refused. "I bow to no man but Allah," he said. "Bollocks!" was Hill's reaction. Dhaleai stood his ground - and was still awarded his black belt.

In September 2003, Dhaleai made a pilgrimage to Mecca and brought back an Arab tea set for Hill. He was very touched. Dhaleai said he had met someone who had offered him a job as a security guard in Dubai. The next month, he left. On the eve of his departure, a friend asked him why he was leaving when he had such a great family and prospects. Dhaleai replied that where he was going he would meet an even more beautiful woman. Presumably he meant paradise.

A fortnight later, special branch came to Hill's door, questioned him and then told him what was said to have happened to his friend. Hill was shattered. "I still can't believe that somebody so nice could do that," he says.

Last year, French intelligence neutralised five networks that were channelling young Muslims to Iraq. Unlike Clarke, France's anti-terrorist coordinator Christophe Chabout will put a figure on the numbers who have gone to Iraq. He estimates around 20 and says that most of them went to join "al-Qaida in Iraq", which is subordinate to al-Qaida's central command. Chabout is also concerned about new networks emerging to replace those that have been broken. "It's quite amazing to see how fast these young men can be convinced and brainwashed to go to a country they have no idea of," he says. "But that's the reality."

The most startling example of rapid radicalisation involved a number of North Africans from the Parisian suburb of Butte Chaumont who are said to have fallen under the influence of a 22-year-old self-proclaimed imam called Farid Benyettou. Three died of them died on suicide missions in 2004. They were aged 18, 19 and 20. Benyettou is now in prison awaiting trial. So too are others he allegedly recruited. One has just been sentenced to 15 years in an Iraq prison after being arrested by the Americans in Falluja. Another, Thamer Bouchnak, was intercepted at Orly airport before he could fly to Iraq. His lawyer knows what things made his client angry. Abu Ghraib was one. "When he saw his Muslim brothers being tortured and humiliated by the American forces and being killed by American soldiers for oil and petrol and not to set people free, he was revolted and wanted to fight."

There is now another growing worry: that jihadis trained in Iraq are returning to carry out operations back home, as happened with the Afghan jihadi diaspora. It is known as "blowback". It is a concern that Britain shares. Although Clarke says there is not much evidence of people returning to Britain from Iraq, he adds the rider "as yet". "It's something that we're looking at very closely," he says.

In France, there is already evidence of blowback. Hamid Bach, a French Moroccan living in Montpellier, is now awaiting trial on charges of making a bomb and planning an attack in France. As part of his radicalisation, he was taken to listen to Abu Hamza at Finsbury Park mosque. Iraq appears to have triggered his decision to take drastic action. His wife told me about the conversations they used to have at home. "We discussed Iraq, like all families. We can't ignore it. It's dreadful to see people being bombarded day and night. These people suffer and we suffer with them." Hamid decided to do something about it and was recruited by a network to go to Iraq. His wife says that when he crept out of the house one morning, she had no idea where he was going. When he got to Syria and found out that he had been selected to become a suicide bomber, he had second thoughts. He had wanted to fight like a soldier and not blow himself up. In order to return to Montpellier, he told his lawyer, he had agreed to assist with logistics for an operation in France. Back home, he bought 19 bottles of hydrogen peroxide from the local supermarket and accessed details of explosives and detonators on the internet. According to his lawyer, he was only going through the motions to make it appear to those who might be watching that he was keeping to his part of the bargain.

In Jordan, I saw the sorrow of parents who had lost a son. Raed Elbana was a young lawyer who went to California and enjoyed a rock'n'roll lifestyle. He returned to Jordan during the Iraq war where, according to one of his college friends, Abdullah Abu Rahman, he was radicalised by Salafi jihadis. "They told him about holy war and fighting the Americans," he said. When his father noticed that he was growing a beard, Elbana explained it away by saying he had been travelling for three days and had not had a chance to shave. He then told his parents he was leaving for Dubai, where he had got a legal job. Later, his father got a phone call from Iraq saying, "Father of Raed, I congratulate you. Raed was martyred." Then the line went dead.

According to al-Qaida in Iraq's website, Elbana was a shaheed who attacked a Shia clinic in the Iraqi town of Hi'lla; 118 died. It was said he was handcuffed to the steering wheel of the car bomb.

In the wake of last year's bombings in London, Tony Blair said, "Let us expose the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism." Such attacks in London and elsewhere are undoubtedly obscene, but the reason for them is scarcely beyond doubt. As Scheuer says, "Iraq is a self-recruiting machinery for al-Qaida. Al-Qaida doesn't have to do anything except let Iraq speak for itself".

· Al Qaeda: Time to Talk?, the first programme in Peter Taylor's new series, will be shown this Sunday at 9pm on BBC2.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Peter Taylor: What makes an al-Qaida suicide bomber?

They kill them selves for these Masterminds. But when the #2 in Al-Queda was found today, and arrested like Sadam, they don't even put up a fight, like they recruit others to do.

How "Stupid" are these people to not realize this? I just dont get it, or understand their minds, of the Religion they are serving.