MidnightWatcher's Blogspot

By Christopher Bucktin and Andy Lines, Mirror News – “The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers.

Police believe Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack.

More than 1,000 FBI operatives were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston in the hours before Dzhokhar’s dramatic capture after a bloody shootout on Friday.

A source close to the investigation said: ‘We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.

‘They were too advanced. Someone gave the brothers the skills and it is now our job to find out just who they were. Agents think the sleeper cell has up to a dozen members and has been waiting several years for their day to come.’ …

Neighbours of the family said older brother Tamerlan had recently become obsessed with Islam. He mysteriously left the US in January last year to spend six months in Russia. Yesterday senior FBI counter-terrorism official Kevin Brock said: ‘It’s a key thread for investigators.’

It also emerged the Bureau interviewed Tamerlan two years ago, at the request of the Russian government, but could not establish that he had ties to terrorist radicals.

This was despite his worrying Russian-language YouTube page featuring links to extremist Islamic sites and others since taken down by YouTube.

One link showed an hour-long speech by an Islamic teacher called Shaykh Feiz Mohammed, while other videos are labled ‘Terrorists’ and ‘Islam’.

The radical cleric, with links to extremist British Muslims, encouraged his followers to become martyrs for Islam. He said: ‘Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid.'” Read more.

Flashback: Islamist Sleeper Cells Are In The USA And Canada – “There is every reason to suspect that we will endure suicide missions by Islamist sleeper cells. They are already in place. They are waiting for the right time. I know this from experience. I have worked over 15 years as a U.S. Federal Agent, a U.S. State Department Arabic linguist, and the first civilian Federal Agent deployed into Iraq at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003… Upon returning from Iraq I left Federal Service to pursue a career educating U.S. law enforcement in the U.S. I wrote a book titled ‘Arabic for law enforcement and military’. During my lectures to local, county, and state law enforcement officers it was revealed the true first line defenders in the U.S. are not trained nor prepared to combat terrorism in the U.S.” Read more.

If Tom Brokaw simply took the time to open a Qur’an or read a few Hadiths, then he wouldn’t be nearly as dazed and confused as he apparently is. In the muddled mind of the former NBC News anchor, the use of drones in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq is creating a generation of young Muslim terrorists. I guess all those imaginary American missles raining down on Chechnya convinced the Tsarnaev brothers it was time to defend Grozny from the evil Bostonians. If you’re serious about working “a lot harder to understand” what motivates this Beast, Tom, you’ll have to first stop trying to read the signs of the times with eyes that are closed to the truth …

Qur’an Sura 5:51a, “O you [Muslims] who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other …”

Qur’an Sura 8:12b, “… terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.”

Qur’an Sura 8:39, “And fight with them until there is no more fitna [disorder, unbelief] and religion should be only for Allah”

WND – “Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw strongly suggested Sunday that America is partly to blame for the gruesome terrorists attacks in Boston, because the young, Muslim men involved may have felt ‘alienated’ and angry over U.S. drone strikes on ‘innocent civilians’ in Muslim countries abroad.

Brokaw, who has been playing the role of media elder statesman since retiring, went on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ with host David Gregory to discuss last week’s Boston bombings, which killed three and injured 183.

‘There are a couple of things to remember here, David, I think for all of us,’ Brokaw intoned. ‘With the death of Osama bin Laden, Islamic rage did not go away. In fact, in some ways it’s more dangerous. This is a perfect example.’

He said Americans need to take a hard look at ‘the roots’ of why so many Muslims, including Americanized terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, want to kill them.

‘There’s a lot that we still need to know about what motivated them, obviously,’ Brokaw said, noting the Muslim faith of both bombers. ‘And the fact is that that Islamic rage is still out there.’

Added Brokaw: ‘But I think that there’s something else that goes beyond the event that we’ve all been riveted by in the last week. We have to work a lot harder (to understand) a motivation here.

‘What prompts a young man to come to this country and still feel alienated from it, to go back to Russia and do whatever he did? And I don’t think we’ve examined that enough,’ he added. ‘I mean, there was 24/7 coverage on television, a lot of newspaper print and so on, but we have got to look at the roots of all of this, because it exists across the whole subcontinent and the Islamic world around the world.’

Finally Brokaw offered an explanation: ‘I think we also have to examine the use of drones that the United States is involved (in), and there are a lot of civilians who are innocently killed in a drone attack in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

‘And I can tell you having spent a lot of time over there, young people will Read more…

It’s okay for the government to double its aid to the Syrian rebels, but if you try to help some of them yourself you’ll get charged with terrorism-related charges …

Fox News – “A suburban Chicago teenager has been arrested on terrorism-related charges and accused of seeking to join an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in war-torn Syria, the FBI announced Saturday.

Abdella Ahmad Tounisi was arrested Friday night as he attempted to board a flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Turkey, which borders Syria, the FBI said. He hoped to join Jabhat al-Nusrah, a group fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime in a bloody civil war.

There are no links between Tounisi and the Boston Marathon bombings earlier in the week, the head of the FBI office in Chicago, Cory B. Nelson, said in a statement announcing the arrest.

Tounisi, a U.S. citizen, was snared in an Internet sting after contacting a sham website set up by the FBI that purported to hook up would-be fighters with terrorists, the federal complaint says.

The 18-year-old Aurora man was surprisingly frank about his lack of fighting experience.

‘Concerning my fighting skills, to be honest, I do not have any,’ he allegedly wrote in one email written this year, according to the complaint. ‘I’m very small … physically but I pray to Allah that he makes me successful.’

At the top of the website were the words, ‘A Call for Jihad in Syria,’ and the site invited interested parties to ‘come and join your lion brothers … who are fighting under the true banner of Islam.’ Elsewhere, the site advised users on how to conceal their Internet tracks, the complaint says.” Read more.

US Pledges To Double Syrian aid to $250M, Rebels Want More – “The United States said Sunday that it will double its non-lethal assistance to Syria’s opposition as the rebels’ top supporters vowed to enhance and expand their backing of the two-year battle to oust President Bashar Assad’s regime. Yet the pledge fell far short of what the opposition had made clear it wanted: weapons and direct military intervention …” Read more.