AP Exclusive: Al-Qaida trains Norwegian to attack

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Jun 25, 8:44 PM EDT

AP Exclusive: Al-Qaida trains Norwegian to attack

By KARL RITTER
Associated Press
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STOCKHOLM (AP) -- A Norwegian man has received terrorist training from al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen and is awaiting orders to carry out an attack on the West, officials from three European security agencies told The Associated Press on Monday.

Western intelligence officials have long feared such a scenario - a convert to Islam who is trained in terrorist methods and can blend in easily in Europe and the United States, traveling without visa restrictions.

Officials from three European security agencies confirmed Monday the man is "operational," meaning he has completed his training and is about to receive a target. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly. They declined to name the man, who has not been accused of a crime.

"We believe he is operational and he is probably about to get his target," one security official said. "And that target is probably in the West."

A security official in a second European country confirmed the information, adding: "From what I understand, a specific target has not been established."

European security services, including in Norway, have warned in recent years of homegrown, radicalized Muslims traveling to terror training camps in conflict zones. Many of the known cases involve young men with family roots in Muslim countries.

But the latest case involves a man in his 30s with no immigrant background, the officials said. After converting to Islam in 2008, he quickly became radicalized and traveled to Yemen to receive terror training, one of the officials said. The man spent "some months" in Yemen and is still believed to be there, he said.

The official said the man has no criminal record, which would also make him an ideal recruit for al-Qaida.

"Not even a parking ticket," he said. "He's completely clean and he can travel anywhere."

The official would not specify what preventive measures were being taken but said "there is a well-established relationship between Western security services, and they share the information needed to prevent terrorism."

The officials declined to specify what makes them think the man is operational.

Signs that a would-be jihadist is ready for an attack could include the creation of so-called martyrdom videos for release online in conjunction with an attack, or an abrupt cutoff of communication and contacts with peers to avoid detection.

The man has not been accused of a crime in Norway, where traveling abroad to attend terror training camps is not a crime per se. In many European countries, suspects are not named unless they have been formally charged with a crime.

Yemeni military officials said they had information on Europeans training with al-Qaida in the southern part of the country but that they weren't aware of a Norwegian being among them. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

CIA and FBI officials in the U.S. declined to comment on the AP report.

Trond Hugubakken, a spokesman for Norway's PST security service, also declined to comment on the case. He referred to a PST security assessment in February, which highlighted that "several" Islamic extremists have traveled from Norway to conflict zones to attend training camps.

Hugubakken acknowledged that converts who turn to violent extremism pose a particular challenge.

"Converts will have a different level of cover, especially if they have no criminal record," he said, adding that most Muslim converts do not turn to extremism.

There are several examples in Europe and the U.S. of converts linked to terror plots, from failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid, a British convert, to a Pennsylvania woman dubbed "Jihad Jane," who pleaded guilty last year to charges that she plotted to kill a Swedish cartoonist who caricatured Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Norway saw the first convictions under its anti-terror laws this year when two men were given prison terms in January for plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that also had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

In March, Mullah Krekar, a radical Iraqi-born cleric who came to Norway as a refugee, was sentenced to five years in prison for making death threats against Norwegian officials and three Kurdish men he claimed had insulted Islam.

But Norway's most serious attacks happened last year at the hands of a right-wing, anti-Muslim extremist, Anders Behring Breivik, who admitted to killing 77 people in a bombing-and-shooting massacre on July 22. The self-styled militant's trial ended last week with conflicting claims about whether he is criminally insane. A verdict has been set for Aug. 24.

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Associated Press writer Paisley Dodds in London, Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier and AP writer Eileen Sullivan in Washington and Ahmed al-Haj in Sanaa, Yemen, contributed to this report.

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Thursday, July 05, 2012
Trading the Left for the Jihad
Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an MSM article about the ethnic Norwegian Al Qaeda terrorist who has drawn so much attention over the last few days. The translator includes this explanatory note:

The “Blitz” movement mentioned in the article is a violent anarchist organization established in the early 1980s. Drammen is a city approximately 40 kilometres west of Oslo.


The translated Dagbladet article:

This is the Norwegian male who has been trained by Al Qaida

He always kept to himself, according to sources associated with one of the mosques frequented by the 33-year-old.

Drammen/Oslo (Dagbladet): The Norwegian male who has undertaken terrorist training in Yemen converted to Islam in 2008 after being loosely affiliated with several organizations on the political Left in Norway. After converting he withdrew from these and began avoiding his old friends.

Read the full story about what was a normal Norwegian male with a clean police record until 2007 in the print edition of Dagbladet.

The 33-year-old is a former leftist radical with a clean police record, born and raised in the Oslo region. His parents are white ethnic Norwegians, and one of his relatives works in a department of the Norwegian government. The 33-year-old is married to a diplomat’s daughter and used to belong to the Blitz movement in Oslo. According to his CV he has spent time in the building industry and worked in a kindergarten.

Confirms

Sources in contact with Dagbladet confirm that the 33-year-old and a small clique of conservative Muslims have on several occasions attended the Rabita Mosque in Calmeyers Gate in Oslo and a mosque in Drammen. The Rabita Mosque is run by The Islamic Council of Norway and is one of the most renowned mosques in the country.

Both King Harald and Crown Prince Haakon visited the mosque in 2009.


The mosque has additionally arranged several highly publicised seminars about Islam in Norway. It also has a Koran school for children, arranges language classes in Arabic, lessons about Islam and the Koran and has its own scouts group.

“I have had my suspicions about who he is and I have seen him in the Rabita Mosque on several occasions,” says the leader of the Islamic council of Norway, Bazim Ghozlan (47) to Dagbladet.

Quiet and reserved

The Rabita is a large mosque that is open 24/7. Most Muslims in Oslo have attended it at one time or another.

“We know that he has studied Arabic in Yemen, but we have no knowledge of him belonging to any special cliques within the mosque and we have a fairly good knowledge of the people who come here. He is a quiet person who has never had any formal position or responsibilities in the mosque,” says Ghozlan.

Dagbladet has learned that whenever the 33-year-old showed up he kept to himself: he arrived, prayed, cited Koranic verses and then left. Dagbladet was also told that the 33-year-old disappeared couple of months ago and that he hasn’t been seen in the mosque since.

Extreme views

The counterterrorism department of the PST [security police] are monitoring the smaller Islamic extremist groups in Oslo and Drammen that have links to several different Mosques.

They are so-called subgroups whose members have extreme anti-Norwegian and anti-Western views.

Dagbladet have been informed that agents from PST have contacted members from these groups and attempted to establish dialogues with those individuals about whom the security services have concerns.

Cold shoulder

Dagbladet was told that several of the individuals who have been radicalised by these groups have given the PST the cold shoulder. These members, who are closely monitored by the PST, are not interested in talking with the security services.

Sources that have an extensive knowledge of the PST tell Dagbladet that it’s almost impossible to know what is going on inside these extreme Islamic groups, the main reason for this being a lack of resources within the PST.

The PST’s preventive work with extremist Islamic groups in Norway is described as difficult.


Afterword from the Baron: The PST is low on resources because it has expended so much of its time, talent, and treasure on impounding the socks of right-wing bloggers and similar crucial security operations.
Posted by Baron Bodissey at 7/05/2012 06:59:00 PM