AFP reports that on Sunday, the Israeli cabinet authorized the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners in a gesture of goodwill toward Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This comes on the heels of continuing conflict around the Gaza Strip which is ruled by Hamas.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made such a pledge for the release of prisoners during talks with President Abbas on November 17.
View story here.
Pirates have negotiated to release the MV Faina, a Ukranian transport ship laden with tanks, tank artillery shells, small arms, and grenade launchers, originally bound for Kenya. The report is unclear whether the pirates are Somali.
The transport ship was hijacked over two months ago off the eastern coast of Africa, presumably around the Gulf of Aden; because of the cargo, U.S. Naval ships have been monitoring the MV Faina to ensure it does not fall into the hands of terrorists.
The pirates have reached a deal with the Ukranian owners of the ship and talks are ongoing as to how to deliver the ransom money.
View story here.
Update, December 3, 2008: The Mail Online reports that twenty-one year old Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, a.k.a. Azam Amir Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist who perpetrated the attacks in Mumbai, has been captured – after pretending to be dead and being taken to hospital – and has given authorities a full account of the attacks and the circumstances and events surrounding the attacks.
He has revealed not only that the attacks were carried out by ten highly trained terrorists but that they had been planned months in advance and were intended to kill 5,000 people, with Westerners as a premier target. Originally, the operatives “planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages,” but the group underestimated the plastic explosives with which they were armed.
Details of his account were reported by the Indian police, who maintain that Kasab confessed to being a member of the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which has denied involvement in the carnage, and claimed that for the last 18 months, he and others were trained by LeT in Pakistan-based camps. Pakistan banned LeT in 2002, after an attack on the Indian parliament that brought the nuclear rivals to the brink of war.
Some analysts have noted a tendency for Indian authorities to blame Pakistan without verifiable concrete evidence.
There is much more to this developing story – click here for the Daily Mail article and here for the CNN update.
NYT reports that the Mumbai terrorist attacks have come as steps towards peace were made; the worry is that a connection exists between Pakistan and the Mumbai attacks. The Hindustan Times, a prominent Indian news organization, reported that Indian security forces believed that the militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba had a hand in the attacks from their base of operations in Pakistan.
Even if there is no Pakistani involvement, the suspicion will stall any progress towards peace between the two countries for a while. Furthermore, the focus of the Pakistani military will be on India and not on dealing with extremist insurgents in its lawless northwest region.
View story here.
Update: the specific fear is not only that insurgent radical groups such as Lashkar-i-Taiba would be responsible, but that the Pakistani intelligence services such as the Inter Services Intelligence Agency might have sponsored or supported the actions of such groups.
Lashkar-i-Taiba reportedly has “operated joint training camps in Pakistan with al-Qaeda and the Taliban” and used to receive proxy support from Pakistani intelligence services to fight the Indian army over disputed territory in Kashmir. According to MSNBC.com, analysts suspect that Lashkar-i-Taiba “continues to enjoy the backing of some Pakistani politicians and security officials.”
View story here.
At the first onslaught of the Mumbai terrorist attacks within the train station, a Mumbai photographer witnessed “masses” of armed police hiding throughout the station who refused to return gunfire during any point in the siege.
View report here.
(via instapundit.com)
H/T: rhetorican.com’s author for the story.
Counterterrorism has suffered a tough blow with the death of one of India’s officials in a raid on the Mumbai terrorists. Hemant Karkare, the Chief of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, was killed as he led his men into the Taj Mahal Palace, one of the hotels used as a terrorist stronghold in the Mumbai attacks.
View Times Online article here.
Karkare was cited as a specialist in “encounter killings,” a controversial method of law enforcement in India said to have broken the grip of Mumbai’s crime syndicates. The loss of his leadership and expertise comes at a time when they may be of particular use in cracking down on further insurgencies.
View here for BBC.com article on Mumbai’s crack team of “encounter” police.
As tensions have been rising between Iran and Israel, Iran has made a show of rolling up alleged spy networks and arresting left and right those whom they label as Israeli spies (see my earlier posts).
It is widely believed that one of the most recent is Hossein Derakhshan, who has been credited with starting the Iranian blogosphere and publishing oft critical, occasionally laudatory views of Iranian life and politics.
He traveled to Israel as something of a self-appointed cultural ambassador of peace and blogged from there with the stated goal to humanize Israel for Iranians and vice versa. Although he predicted that he would face the ire of the Iranian authorities, he decided to return to Iran earlier this November.
While reports of his arrest have been broadly circulated and accepted as true, Iranian authorities have not confirmed his arrest, but only that someone matching his description has been detained.
View abcnews.com report here.
Apparently, it works best if you’re a twelve-year old girl and their number is already programmed into your mom’s speed-dial.
Click here for BBC News report.
…to U.S. forces, in northern Iraq. Apparently so they don’t have to carry out suicide missions on behalf of the group.
View story here.
The WSJ reports the Iraq parliament approved a security pact with the U.S., with the backing of key Shiite, Kurdish and Arab Sunni blocs. The pact allows American troops to stay in Iraq until 2012. As it stood, the deal allowing troops’ current presence in the country was due to expire December 31st.
The new pact must be ratified by the Presidential Council, whose three members each have veto power.
View story here.
…where a fast talker packing a gun and claiming to be Homeland Security schemed his way past security and on to a plane. View report here. (via instapundit.com)
H/T to rhetorican.com’s author for the excellent alerts, as always…
UPDATE: CNN and Fox News report that the F.B.I. has warned of a “plausible but unsubstantiated” plot said to have been floated in September by al Qaeda members to hit the New York City subways and other transit systems over the holidays. The internal F.B.I. report noted al Qaeda discussions of using suicide bombers or explosives in the rail systems.
UPDATE: a FOX News correspondent has reported that although the al Qaeda discussion took place in September, the U.S. government got this information just yesterday from a reliable source. In another more recent update (video below), the same correspondent reported that the F.B.I. had not seen any financial activity by al Qaeda that could signal a progression to bring this from the planning stages into reality. Although the memo mentioned New York City specifically, the F.B.I. bulletin was sent nationally so security around the country could be heightened. Video here:
Fox News: terrorists have attacked up to 7 10 different locations in Mumbai, India including luxury hotels and train stations, wounding killing close to 25 100 200 people. Reportedly, in one of the hotel attacks the terrorists were specifically targeting Westerners, asking if there were British or Americans as they opened fire.
Historically, terrorists staging attacks in Mumbai have used grenades or bombs, but these terrorists have also used automatic weapons, a notable difference in operational strategy.
View Fox News early report here and Time Magazine’s ongoing report here.
Update: Hostages have been taken, standoffs and violence have occurred between the terrorists and police, commercial centers and cultural icons have been targeted… and more. A group calling themselves the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility. Are they connected to the Indian Mujahideen? Lashkar-e-Taiba may also be involved.
Update – November 29, 2008: Indian police report that the terrorist attack is over and that the last gunmen have been killed in a fiery showdown inside one of the hotels. The death toll is now close to 200.
According to WorldNetDaily.com and Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, MI6 has issued a “global priority warning” that “Islamic terrorists are now closer to obtaining material to create a dirty bomb to launch against Western targets.” Reportedly, the revitalized Taliban in Pakistan has proclaimed its focus in creating a “dirty bomb” and obtaining access to materials to do so.
Former President Musharraf helped prevent this from happening during his tenure by agreeing to stringent security around Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and placing rogue Islamist nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan under house arrest (Khan had been operating a nuclear smuggling ring, among other enterprises, for years). However, the shift in leadership in Pakistan with the election of the controversial President Asif Zardari calls into question whether the resurgence and revitalization of the Pakistani Taliban can be controlled. Reportedly, security restrictions around Dr. Khan’s residence have been lifted.
The Economist reports that British Telecom is hoping to sell underground London tunnels formerly used by MI6. The tunnels, spanning a mile in total length, were first designed as air-raid shelters during World War II and then were taken over by the R&D division of MI6. Through the Cold War, the tunnels had hosted secure hotlines between world leaders and were designed to accommodate “a basic domestic network for Britain that would keep the country connected in the event of a major strike.” This included “a restaurant, licensed bar and games room, including two snooker tables and a tank of tropical fish.”
More recently the tunnels were owned by the Postal Service and then by British Telecom, which is hoping to sell the underground space for 5 million pounds.
Check out this related post here on another blog which has posted pics of the tunnels, including the snooker table and lounge areas.
Iran’s nuclear chief has announced that it is running 5,000 uranium centrifuges at the country’s central plant. These operations are in direct defiance to U.N. demands that Iran cease its nuclear program. The report of 5,000 centrifuges is up 1,000 from the 4,000 reported in August.
View story here.
Jones will be Obama’s National Security Advisor and Gates will stay on as Defense Secretary. Apparently, we’ll get the rest of the foreign policy lineup after Thanksgiving.
View report here.
CBS reports that D.C. Federal judge Ricardo Urbina has ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs who have been detained in Guantanamo Bay since their 2001 capture in Afghanistan by Pakistani forces. In his ruling, he criticized President Bush for a detention that “crossed the constitutional threshold into infinitum.”
While the U.S. reportedly no longer considers the men “enemy combatants,” it will not send them back to China, where they are considered terrorists and could be tortured or killed. Thus far, no other country has been willing to accept them as refugees. As a result, the U.S. government has continued to detain them for an indefinite time period.
The Justice Department is appealing Judge Urbina’s order, and arguments were scheduled for yesterday in the United States Courts of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Click here for the article.
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