 A helicopter raid in southern Somalia has killed a man wanted for questioning over the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in 2002, unnamed US sources say. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al-Shabab commander, was killed along with at least one other fighter from the group when their car came under attack on Monday. The US official, who did not want to be named, said the body of Nabhan, 28, was in US hands. Nabhan, born in Kenya, was high on the FBI's list of most wanted "terror" suspects. US special forces are believed to have attacked the car carrying Nabhan, also described as an al-Qaeda operative, in Barawe district. An American official told the broadcaster ABC that a US Navy ship had been in the area to monitor the situation and to provide assistance. The US says al-Shabab, which is fighting against the Somali government, has links to al-Qaeda. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, had said earlier on Monday that he would not comment on the operation or on any potential US involvement. Nabhan is believed to have owned the lorry used for the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel on Kenya's coast that killed 15 people. He was also wanted over a failed attack on an Israeli airplane leaving Mombasa airport the same year. He is thought to have fled to Somalia afterwards. Several residents in Barawe said Nabhan had been killed in the Barawe attack, along with at least one other person. Abdi Ahmed, a resident, said six helicopters flew over the village before two of them opened fire. "White" foreign soldiers in military uniforms then got out and left with two wounded men, he said. Al-Shabab confirmed to Al Jazeera that the attack had taken place, but refused to give more details. Earlier reports suggested that the helicopters were French, but the French military denied its troops had been involved. Barawe district, about 250km south of the capital, Mogadishu, is controlled by al-Shabab fighters. Source: Al Jazeera (English) 
Sadanand Dhume | July 22 TERRORISTS love luxury digs, but not for the same reasons as most of us. LAST Friday's bombing of the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta underscores the emergence of a new terrorist target of choice: the international luxury hotel.
In the 19 months leading up to the Jakarta attacks, Islamic terrorists have brought their holy war to upscale properties in Kabul, Islamabad, Mumbai and Peshawar. The casualties thus far number about 116 people killed and hundreds more injured. More often than not, the terrorist predilection for five-star mayhem is explained in purely practical terms. Compared with fortified and heavily guarded embassies, hotels, welcoming to strangers by design, make relatively soft targets. Their international clientele, as well as the visual effect of the mangled facade of a familiar building, guarantees terrorists publicity. When the hotel brand in question is American, such as the Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton, the terrorist faithful gain the added benefit of hurting their foremost foe. From a radical Islamic perspective, however, an international hotel is much more than merely a convenient target of opportunity. It also represents, in microcosm, the antithesis of the world that radical Islamists, violent and non-violent, seek to create. In a modern hotel, for example, men and women are treated equally. More effort is expended on segregating smokers from non-smokers than on segregating the sexes. The bar, the gym and the swimming pool are gender-neutral spaces. Nobody seeks to enforce special dress codes on women. Nor would any international hotel dream of privileging one faith over another. By contrast, under the radical Islamic world view, Muslims are entitled to special privileges. This world view provides the underlying principle for things such as Pakistan's harsh anti-blasphemy laws and Malaysia's lopsided affirmative action program for its Malay-Muslim majority. True, a hotel in, say, Jakarta, may place a Koran by the bedside table and mark the direction of prayer to Mecca on the ceiling. But these are innocent gestures, designed as a convenience for Muslim guests rather than to inconvenience, much less to actively discriminate against, those of other backgrounds. For Islamic radicals, who seek to order all aspects of 21st-century life, from banking to burkas, by the medieval precepts enshrined in sharia law, the secular nature of a hotel is galling enough. But perhaps this would not matter as much if it didn't appeal to local elites. In a place such as Peshawar or Kabul, and to a large degree even in Jakarta or Mumbai, a five-star hotel represents an island of order and prosperity in a sea of squalor. It hints at the prosperity promised by free markets and a culture of individual liberty. It is living proof that the worldly can be split successfully from the divine. Read more here,,, Source: The Australian Sadanand Dhume is a Washington-based writer and author of My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with an Indonesian Islamist (Text Publishing, 2008).
“I have no reason to believe that the events of the past few days have changed or lessened the president's desire” to visit Indonesia, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Obama spent a few years as a child living in Jakarta from 1967 to 1971 after his mother remarried to an Indonesian national.
He told reporters in June: “Oh, I need to come to Indonesia soon. I expect to be travelling to Asia at some point within the next year and I would be surprised if when I came to Asia I did not stop by my old home town of Jakarta.
“And I'll go visit Menteng Dalam and have some bakso -- Nasi Goreng. These are some special dishes here that I used to eat when I was a kid.”
Gibbs said Obama's upcoming itinerary would be discussed in meetings at the White House this week.
However, the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to be held in Singapore in November could provide an opportunity for a stopover in Indonesia.
Gibbs again on Monday stressed the special importance that Indonesia holds for Obama, saying: “Obviously it is a country with the largest number of Muslims in the world, important to him from that standpoint as well as personal.”
Two bombers killed seven people including three Australians, a New Zealander and an Indonesian in almost simultaneous blasts at two Jakarta luxury hotels on Friday. More than 50 people were injured.
 A PAKISTANI man on trial for last year's Mumbai attacks has pleaded guilty, admitting his part in the atrocity for the first time. India's NDTV news channel said Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, stood up at a special prison court where he had originally pleaded not guilty and said he wanted to confess, before narrating how the attacks were carried out."I want to confess my crime," he told the court. "Yes, I did it." Kasab's lawyer, Abbas Kazmi, was unaware that his client was going to take such action, TV news channels reported. Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told reporters that Kasab had "stood up and informed the court that he was willing to confess." A total of 166 people died and more than 300 others were wounded when 10 heavily armed gunman attacked sites across south Mumbai, including luxury hotels, the city's main railway station, a restaurant and a Jewish centre. Kasab and an accomplice opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles and threw hand grenades at commuters at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, killing 52 and wounding 109 in the bloodiest episode of the 60-hour reign of terror. The pair, who were seen on CCTV cameras and by a string of witnesses, then fled the station, firing indiscriminately on the way, killing civilians and a number of senior police officers. Among the dead was the head of the city's Anti-Terrorism Squad, Hemant Karkare. Kasab was the only one of the 10 gunmen to survive. All are said to have been trained, equipped and financed by the banned, Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). "I believe that the entire conspiracy was hatched by these Pakistani nationals and it was only a formality,'' Ashok Chavan, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is capital, told the NDTV news channel. "All those involved in the 26/11 (November 26) attacks should be hanged.''
 Soldiers threw a cordon around Jakarta's Ritz-Carlton hotel,
one of two hotels struck by suicide bombers.Tom Allard and Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta July 19, 2009 SOUTH-EAST Asia's most wanted man, militant Islamist Noordin Mohammed Top, is behind the twin bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, according to Indonesian officials, who have launched a manhunt for the terrorist wanted over a string of attacks since he plotted the first Bali bombings. As the investigation intensified yesterday, the families of two Australians killed in Friday's blasts — Nathan Verity and Craig Senger — grieved, with Mr Verity's wife Vanessa and father arriving in Jakarta to identify his body and bring it home. A third Australian, Garth McEvoy, has been identified as being at the epicentre of the blast in the Marriott. Australian authorities are yet to officially confirm his death, but Indonesia's Health Ministry has listed him among the fatalities. Police are trying to identify some of the victims from the attack, which killed nine, including at least four foreigners. All three Australians had been attending a business breakfast at the Marriott hotel in a private room adjacent to where the bomb went off. Mr Verity ran a recruitment firm, Mr McEvoy was a lawyer for the construction services company Thiess, while Mr Senger was a senior trade official working at the Australian embassy. A source within CastleAsia, a Jakarta-based consultancy that organised the breakfast, said it was likely terrorists had targeted the high-profile gathering to send a message to the foreign business community. The senior anti-terrorism official at Indonesia's ministry for political, legal and security affairs, Ansyaad Mbai, said it was clear from the way the attacks were carried out that Top was involved. An undetonated bomb and examination of the bomb site have confirmed that the explosives were similar to those previously used by Top. Mr Mbai noted that the attackers had changed their tactics to circumvent security arrangements outside the hotels. "Before, the suicide bombers attacked from outside … (now) they have penetrated this increased security system and reached the heart of the target," he said. The undetonated bomb discovered in room 1808 of the Marriott hotel had been installed inside a hollowed-out laptop computer. Indonesia's Detik news yesterday reported that the man who brought the explosives into the hotel had set off the building's metal detectors but was waved through after assuring security personnel that it was his computer that had triggered the alarm. Meanwhile, Jakarta's residents remained defiant in the aftermath of the attacks. Outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel a sign reading "We are not afraid, they only make us stronger" was surrounded by flowers and wreaths. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith arrived in Jakarta yesterday with a team of security officials, saying Australia would provide "any assistance" required. Australian Federal Police are helping Indonesian officers with crime scene and ballistic analysis, and guidance on intelligence matters. Source: The Age
 THE terrorist bombings in Jakarta are a savage blow against Indonesian democracy and society that demonstrate the ferocious resilience of Islamist extremism as a motivating ideology, and the terrorist groups that give life to it. No country has done more, or better, than Indonesia in fighting Islamist terrorism. There have been hundreds of arrests, dozens of transparent trials that have educated a sceptical Indonesian public about the intentions and capabilities of the Islamist groups. Hundreds of people have gone to jail long-term. A society-wide consensus has been forged against terrorism. The biggest and most influential Islamic groups all condemn terrorism without qualification. Indonesia has not done all this to please Washington, still less to please Australia. The nation has taken this stand because it reflects Indonesia's values and interests and identity. Indonesia is not a permissive environment for terrorism. Yet seven years after the Bali bombings, Islamist terrorists can still blow up a five-star hotel, the JW Marriott which they bombed five years ago. In hitting Jakarta's Ritz Carlton, they hit the very heart of Indonesia's commercial engagement with the world. Of course, they also stand a chance of hitting Jakarta's leading commercial and political figures. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, just re-elected President in a landslide victory, described the bombings as a cruel and inhuman act. Kevin Rudd rightly described them as barbaric, said they were an attack on us all and that we remain under threat from terrorism. SBY is right. This act is cruel not only to its victims but to all Indonesia, which has done so well to consolidate democracy, weather the global economic crisis and turn its face hard against extremism. Rudd is also right -- we are all under threat from terrorism. Islamist extremism is an exceptionally resilient and powerful ideology. Read more here... Source: The Australian
AT LEAST seven people, including several foreigners, were killed this morning when bombs ripped through two neighbouring luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
One Australian man was reportedly among the 48 people hurt in the explosions, which Indonesian police are treating as a terrorist attack.
Suspicions immediately centred on terror network Jemaah Islamiah, responsible for the attack on the Marriott hotel in 2003, when 12 people died.
The method of attack would represent a shift in strategy for JI.
Consular staff in Jakarta are urgently checking to see whether Australians are among the dead or injured.
The first explosion occurred inside the Ritz-Carlton just before 8am local time, followed by the Marriott blast minutes later. The hotels are located in the upscale Mega Kuningan business district in the centre of the city.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was re-elected to a second term in the mainly Muslim country last week, was “deeply concerned over this incident,” a spokesman for his office said.
Ritz-Carlton vice-president of security Kevin Cruise said the explosion occurred inside the Airlangga Restaurant, blowing out the windows.
“I was in the restaurant immediately after the explosion,” Mr Cruise told The Australian. “It looks terrible with a lot of cosmetic damage and I was really afraid about injuries but there appears to have been no serious ones.”
However, Mr Cruise is still awaiting a final report, amid “incomplete and incorrect information”.
Tom Warden, 25, a Kiwi working in Ritz-Carlton food and beverage, said the blast occurred as he prepared to have breakfast.
“There were people in the elevator saying `we have got to get the hell out of here'.
“The doors opened and the lobby was filled with smoke and everyone was evacuated.”
Ritz-Carlton guests and staff have moved to an area in front of the hotel.
Police have sealed off the area near the Ritz-Carlton and the JW Marriott.
In a statement this morning, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was checking on whether any Australians were hurt in the explosions.
Dubai-based Venatol and Al Mulla hospitality group which has launched the world's first Sharia compliant hotel brand portfolio under three core brand names of Cliftonwood, Adham and Wings taking next step in the expansion of the brands in main cities in Europe.
'There are plenty of individual Sharia compliant hotels throughout the world. However their positioning is usually dictated by the owner, either as an independent hotel, and one within a chain or due to the Sharia law of country where they are situated,' says Mr. Abdulla Al Mulla.
The required Sharia hotels for Europe would be in total 352 houses to serve this segment. 'We will start with 20 hotels in Europe this is less than 6% of EU market and required $800.000m,' added Mr. Michael Sacks. Source: AME InfoH/T: Weasel ZippersMichael Sacks
Barbara Urasch
Latest recipients of The Dhimmi Award
 |
|
|
Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved.
E-mail: info AT ReformIslam.org
|
|
|
A helicopter raid in southern Somalia has killed a man wanted for questioning over the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in 2002, unnamed US sources say. 
Posts
