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IBDA-C leader Mirzabeyoglu – fanatical terrorist, compulsive writer
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s
intelligence and counter-terrorism sources, PKK-KADEK topped the
list of what Turkey regarded as the 10 most dangerous terrorist
organizations laid before Western colleagues. A group called the
Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front (IBDA-C) was last on the list.
Available to al Qaeda for joint suicide operations is one or more
Turkish extremist group which has no compunctions about murdering
fellow Turkish Muslims. Local Istanbul Muslims indeed accounted for
by far the largest number of victims in both series of suicide car
bombings – at the two Istanbul synagogues last Saturday and at the
British consulate and London-based bank on Thursday.
Al
Qaeda’s Turkish Knife Hangs over Europe
When informed of the
Istanbul synagogue bombings last Saturday, November 15, Turkish
prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an off-the-cup reaction, hit
the nail on the head. They are trying to destabilize Turkey, he
said, there and then cutting short his trip to Cyprus. Within hours
he had reached the scenes of destruction in Istanbul and called an
emergency cabinet session in Ankara.
The Jewish and British
sites devastated in two rounds of coordinate attacks this week, in
which at least 55 people lost their lives and 750 were maimed, are
standard targets for al Qaeda, which has declared war on the West
and the Jews. However, what the Turkish prime minister was quick to
grasp was that Osama bin Laden’s network had joined with at least
one Turkish partner-in-terror - The Islamic Greater Easter Raiders
Front (IBDA-C) and possibly others - for bigger goals and is not yet
done. Turkey has been selected as the favored target of the Islamic
international terror network for three main reasons:
1. Erdogan’s year-old
government heads a pro-Western secular democratic Muslim society, a
quadruple crime in al Qaeda’s radical fundamentalist book. Turkey is
therefore living proof that a secular Muslim democracy is possible,
vindicating the US president George W. Bush’s ideology and a model
for emulation. In al Qaeda’s eyes, therefore, Turkey is guilty on
even more counts than Saudi Arabia’s ruling house and has been
placed accordingly at the center of Bin Laden’s destabilization
agenda.
2. Available to al Qaeda
for joint suicide operations is one or more Turkish extremist group
which has no compunctions about murdering fellow Turkish Muslims.
Local Istanbul Muslims indeed accounted for by far the largest
number of victims in both series of suicide car bombings – at the
two Istanbul synagogues last Saturday and at the British consulate
and London-based bank on Thursday.
3. While rejected as a
member of the European Union, Turkey is a major gateway to Europe –
where the Islamist suicide bombers may be heading next.
One Turkish paper
Hurriyet dismisses the condemnations of terror and condolences
coming from the UK and US as crocodile tears and serving their
leaders’ political agendas. Tony Blair is described by Millyet as
trying to use the attacks in Istanbul for his own benefit, while
stuck in a corner over Iraq. Turks across the country are holding
silent processions Saturday, November 22, to express their outrage
and grief over the carnage in their country. They reject the
arguments of such fringe groups as the IBDA-C, which claimed the
attacks, that the Republic of Turkey is illegal and must be replaced
with an Islamic state.
Call it a fatal case of
shortsightedness. Back in early October, top officials of the
Turkish intelligence service, MIT, sat down with several of their
Western counterparts to discuss the number one terrorist threat
facing Turkey – the heads of the Kurdish PKK-KADEK group, Abdullah
Ocalan, captured in 1999 and serving a life sentence as the sole
inmate of a remote island prison since his death sentence was
commuted last year, and his brother Osama. Together they control
5,000 Kurdish fighters scattered across northern Iraqi Kurdistan and
southern Turkey.
(The intelligence chiefs
convened mainly because at the time, the US government viewed
Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq as a threat to key transportation
routes and planned to root them out. Washington also believed an
attack against Kurdish forces would weaken the bargaining position
of the other two top Kurdish leaders in the area, Jalal Talabani and
Mustapha Barzani).
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s
intelligence and counter-terrorism sources, PKK-KADEK topped the
list of what Turkey regarded as the 10 most dangerous terrorist
organizations laid before Western colleagues.
A group called the Great
Eastern Islamic Raiders Front (IBDA-C) was last on the list.
”Don’t you think they
should be ranked higher,” a senior Western intelligence official
asked his Turkish colleagues.
”No. I can give you my
personal guarantee that this organization is toothless. It can’t do
anything. All its members are sitting in our Metsian jail,” a top
MIT man replied.
He was referring to some
300 members of the group, including its leader, Salih Mirzabeyogly.
Arrested on December 24, 1998, Mirzabeyogly was put into solitary
confinement and the rest of his men were thrown into the
dungeon-like cells of the prison, some 50 miles (80 km) south of
Istanbul.
On Saturday, November 15,
IBDA-C detonated truck bombs outside the Neve Shalom and Beit Israel
synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25 people and wounding more than
300. The attack’s planners and chief bomb-maker left the country via
Istanbul international airport three hours before the blast. Their
destination: Abu Dhabi, where they apparently caught a flight to
Iran or Pakistan.
Just five days after the
synagogue bombing disaster, IBDA-C struck again. This time, two
truck bombs exploded outside the British consulate in Istanbul, the
headquarters of the HSBC bank and the Metro Center mall in the north
of the city. At least 27 people were killed and about 450 wounded.
In the space of six days,
the “toothless” terrorist group managed to kill 52 people and wound
more than 750.
Adding insult to injury,
IBDA-C carried out Thursday’s attack to coincide with the high
points of President George W. Bush’s state visit to London,
declaring the bombings were “a gift to Al Qaeda”.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s
counter-terrorism sources note the relationship between the two
terrorist groups is relatively new, dating back only three to four
years. After Mirzabeyoglu and his men were arrested in 1998, about
50 to 70 members of the organization managed to flee Turkey for
Afghanistan, Chechnya, Greece, Bosnia and Germany. Some of the
Turkish terrorists teamed up with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and
Chechnya and fought alongside Osama bin Laden’s men. Other IBDA-C
members underwent training in Bosnia, while those who escaped to
Greece came under the wing of local intelligence officers who, back
in the 1980s when Greek-Turkish tensions were high, had used the
organization for sabotage missions in Turkey.
In Germany, the IBDA-C
fugitives set up logistical and intelligence networks to support
members of the group working with Al Qaeda.
Far from the prying eyes
of Turkish security services and Western counter-terrorism agencies,
IBDA-C and Al Qaeda established one of Europe’s most dangerous
terrorist networks.
IBDA-C followed
Thursday’s attacks against British targets in Istanbul with an
ominous warning: “This is just the beginning.”
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s
counter-intelligence sources fear that before Ramadan ends next week
the Turkish terrorists will activate their sleeper networks in
Germany and that some had transferred recently to Britain. The
group’s operatives are Turkish Kurds who can easily blend into
Europe’s large Kurdish émigré population.
Despite its cooperation
with Al Qaeda, IBDA-C is very different from the fundamentalist
Islamic group. Although it is comprised of Sunni Muslims, the group
espouses the Trotskyite version of Communism. Mirzabeyoglu, a
professional boxer in his youth, has written 42 books, including
“Diary of a Fox” – compulsory reading for all new recruits who are
required to memorize it. The terrorist-boxer-author has described
his doctrine as a mixture of Plato, Hegel, Trotsky and Sufi Islam,
the last based on the belief that there is no real difference
between good and evil and that Allah determines the will of man. The
Sufi sect is particularly strong among Kurds and in Turkey, making
that country a fertile ground for the IBDA-C.
Bin Laden and his deputy
Ayman al-Zawahiri have little use for the IBDA-C’s philosophy. It is
just one more fringe organization under the radar and at their beck
and call. Their willingness to use the group points again to their
operational flexibility and shows how little Western intelligence
services really know about what is happening in the labyrinth of
Islamic terror.
DEBKA 22.11.2003
British intelligence ran
a campaign designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction, a former US intelligence officer has claimed. He told
reporters in the House of Commons that he was involved personally
with Operation Mass Appeal between the summer of 1997 until August
1998 when he resigned from the UN.
I6 ran 'dubious' Iraq
campaign
British intelligence ran
a campaign designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction, a former US intelligence officer has claimed.
Former UN chief weapons
inspector Scott Ritter said the disinformation drive in the late
1990s was designed to shift public opinion.
Mr Ritter has been a
vocal critic of military action against Iraq since leaving the
inspections team in 1998.
A spokesman for MI6 said
the allegations were "unfounded".
He told reporters in the
House of Commons that he was involved personally with Operation Mass
Appeal between the summer of 1997 until August 1998 when he resigned
from the UN.
Mr Ritter said the MI6
operation was designed to "shake up public opinion" by passing
dubious intelligence on Iraq to the media.
The so-called
"non-actionable intelligence" dealt with Saddam Hussein's alleged
campaign to possess and conceal weapons of mass destruction. He said
the intelligence was "single source data of dubious quality".
Mr Ritter claimed this
was the first time the existence of Operation Mass Appeal had been
revealed.
He urged MPs to hold a
fresh inquiry in the use of intelligence in the run up to the war
against Iraq.
He declined to give
specific examples of disinformation but said he was prepared to
reveal details before a public inquiry.
Dubious data
Mr Ritter said: "I was
brought into the operation in 1997 because at the UN... I sat on a
body of data which was not actionable, but was sufficiently sexy
that if it could appear in the press could make Iraq look like in a
bad way.
"I was approached by MI6
to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal operatives both in
New York and London on several occasions. This data was provided and
this data did find its way into the international media.
"It was intelligence data
that dealt with Iraq's efforts to procure WMDs, with Iraq's efforts
to conceal WMDs. It was all single source data of dubious quality,
which lacked veracity.
"They took this
information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and
domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data, to appear on
the front pages.
"The government, both
here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports,
continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader
with an addiction to WMDs."
A spokesman speaking on
behalf of MI6 told BBC News Online: "The allegation that Ritter was
using MI6 material is unfounded."
BBC 21/11/03
In the article, published
in the Saudi Gazette, Ramzi Khoury argues "it is not [Osama] bin
Laden's style of terrorism that poses a danger on the life of the
president of the United States of America but bilateral issues that
remain hanging for centuries" between the U.S. and Britain. He may
get killed for the heck of it."
Saudi: Bush 'may get killed for the heck of
it'
Newspaper says British grievances, not
terrorism pose threat
A Saudi newspaper
contended George Bush's life might be in danger during his visit to
the United Kingdom, not because of a terrorist threat but due to
unresolved issues between the U.S. and Britain.
In the end, wrote the
author, adviser to the editor in chief of the paper, the president
"may get killed for the heck of it."
In the article, published
in the Saudi Gazette, Ramzi Khoury argues "it is not [Osama] bin
Laden's style of terrorism that poses a danger on the life of the
president of the United States of America but bilateral issues that
remain hanging for centuries" between the U.S. and Britain.
Translation of the
article was provided by the Middle East Research Institute, or MEMRI.
Khoury explains why "it
is appropriate to go back to history to understand why people may
want to kill the visitor."
"But why is George Bush
Junior in such danger that big security measures are necessary?" he
writes. "Select the right answer and win the right to declare your
own constitution:"
"1. The business people
want to be compensated for all the tea dumped in the sea and in the
current situation of the British economy; they will kill for a buck.
"2. The environmentalists
are angry at introducing caffeine into the Marine life environment.
Blowing up people for the sake of animals has been recorded in the
past. In their opinion, Bush must pay the price.
"3. The English cannot
understand why a traitor to the throne would be allowed to stand
before the British government and instead of getting arrested for
high treason, he is allowed to dictate policy to a British Prime
Minister who willingly takes his orders and [abides] by them at the
expense of his own popularity amongst his people; those who stuck it
out and never immigrated from Britain enduring the worse of
consequences, such as Prince Charles and Camella [sic].
"4. Israel, famous for
assassinating politicians, civilians, anyone at any age, may kill
Bush in case Blair explains to him the similarities between how
America made history and how the Palestinians are making it today.
"5. America today is seen
as a traitor to the principles it was founded on because of its
aggressive foreign policy that promotes the loss of life, liberty,
and pursuit of happiness worldwide, especially amongst Arabs who
have never been so unhappy in history.
"6. He may get killed for
the heck of it."
World Net Daily 21/11/2003
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