Four more bombs, but it's OK because I'm in Sweden

Four more bombs in London. You will all have woken up to that by the time you read this I guess. Not deadly this time, but then it seems at the moment to have been failed attacks for some reason. I won't go into this at the moment, I'm sure the next couple of days will have enough of that from the usual quarters.

A slightly different topic is little countries like Sweden and NZ, what they think and expect to happen. Here in Sweden the overriding feeling is that since they stayed out of Iraq and all that nasty war business then the crazy fundies aren't going to take a crack at them. A feeling I think is reflected in NZ to a certain extent.

There is an article in Göteborgs Posten (the major West Coast daily) today quoting Musharraf, condeming attacks etc, which finishes with a little piece about the suspected man behind the attacks...

Despite this, certain intelligence sources are saying to the media that a Pakistan born Briton, Haroon Rashid Aswad, has been detained. He could be a leading member of al Qaeda and is thought to have rung the suicide bombers shortly before the attacks. Aswad could be the "brain" which the British police have hunted since the terror attacks.

In a more detailed article The Times gives far more information with a rather sinister Swedish connection...

FBI documents obtained by The Times reveal details of how a London-based cleric sent Aswat to America in 1999 to set up camps in Oregon for US-born recruits.

The papers indicate that Aswat spent three months in America and engaged in firearms and poisons training but decided against using a remote ranch in Bly as an al-Qaeda camp. The CIA is keeping in close touch with Aswat’s interrogation and British detectives are seeking permission to speak to him.

The FBI is to question a number of figures held in the US, including James Ujaama, an American convert to Islam who met Aswat, and a second al-Qaeda emissary in Seattle.

Ujaama has pleaded guilty to assisting the Taleban and is now a “co-operating witness” who has given details of Aswat’s activities in the US.

Aswat flew into New York on November 26, 1999, on an Air India flight with Oussama Abdullah Kassir, who has Swedish nationality.

Kassir, 38, described himself as “a hitman for Osama bin Laden” and claimed to have fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Ujaama drove the pair to the ranch but they complained that it did not have the facilities — especially barracks for otential recruits — that they had been led to believe existed.

During November and December 1999, Aswat and Kassir met potential candidates for jihad training.

The FBI document details how they secured the Bly property with guard patrols and passwords and they and others received training in firearms and “improvised poisons”.

Aswat and Kassir were still in the United States in February 2000. They were living in Seattle where they “expounded the writings and teachings” of their London-based mentor in lectures to young Muslims at a city mosque.

Kassir also provided what the FBI described as “urban tactical training”.

In 2002, an associate of Kassir was arrested in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, attempting to board a flight to London carrying a revolver.

Kassir, a Lebanese-born Swede, was jailed for ten months in November 2003 for possessing illegal weapons at his home in Stockholm.

Charges that he was planning a terrorist attack were dropped.

Aswad/Aswat was planning on constructing an al Qaeda training camp in Ohio. This Kassir fellow, a Swedish citizen, was helping him. Kassir has been busted at least once but apparently no terrorist charges could be pinned on him but his mates have tried to leave Stockholm on planes with guns.

Funny, but I don't at all feel secure living in a country that bends with the UN wind and avoids making war on crazymen on the off chance that said crazies will leave us alone. The fact that the Kassir connection isn't even reported in the Swedish papers is disturbing enough (couldn't find any mentions of him in the major papers), what on earth are the reporting staff doing?

Moral of the story, citizenship doesn't mean anything to jihadis. They don't care which country they live in and feel no respect to it. Whackjobs like this Kassir could be running camps in wastes of the Swedish north or the Taranaki hill country and no one would know. There isn't any safety in living in a small inoffensive country, specially when it isn't even reported that there are numerous samples of the jihadis living in your own backyard.

I'm just glad I drive to work.