Al-Qaeda Offers Bounty for Killing Cartoonist and Editor

New Terrorism Case Confirms That Denmark Is a Target
September 17, 2007
New Terrorism Case Confirms That Denmark Is a Target
By NICHOLAS KULISH
New York Times

This article was reported by Nicholas Kulish, Souad Mekhennet and Eric Schmitt, and written by Mr. Kulish.

COPENHAGEN, Sept. 16 ?- After three terrorism cases in less than two years, including an alleged bombing plot broken up this month, intelligence officials say tiny Denmark is on the front line in the battle against Islamic terrorism in Europe.

"Even though we've prevented one terrorist attack, we know that there are still people in Denmark and abroad that have the capacity, the will and the ability to carry out terrorist attacks in Denmark," Jakob Scharf, the head of Danish intelligence, said in an interview in his office here.

He was referring to predawn raids on Sept. 4 that resulted in the arrests of eight suspects, two of whom are still in custody on terrorism charges and are accused of planning a bombing attack.

American authorities helped Danish security officials locate the suspects through electronic intercepts from Pakistan, just as they did in arrests the same day in a bombing plot in southern Germany, intelligence officials in Washington said. They said one of the men in the Danish case received instruction within the past 12 months in explosives, surveillance and other techniques at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.

With Europe again focused on the threat posed by terrorist plots, Denmark illustrates the powerful interplay between foreign agitation and domestic discontent. The country became a target of foreign Islamist terrorist groups two years ago after a conservative newspaper here published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, drawing worldwide attention. At home, the children of Muslim immigrants complain of job discrimination and integration problems, feeding the disenchantment of the small but growing Muslim population.

"In the schools, Danish teachers are always talking about democracy and human rights, but now they see what Denmark is doing in Afghanistan and what they did here with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad," said Imran Shah, 31, who leads a youth group at a local mosque. "They ask themselves, is this a democracy or are they talking about double standards?"

While much of the world's attention was focused on the arrests that took place that same day in Germany, but were announced one day later, intelligence officials here and in Washington said at least one suspect in the Danish group had direct ties to leading figures in Al Qaeda, which has regrouped in northwestern Pakistan.

"What's coming from this is that they are now able to give military and terrorist training and able to plan and steer specific operations in Europe," Mr. Scharf, the Danish intelligence chief, said. "Al Qaeda is back."

Mr. Scharf drew a clear distinction between independent or loosely affiliated groups drawing inspiration from Al Qaeda's ideology and specific control of plans for attack, saying the Danish bomb plot was clearly the latter. "I'm not indicating a direct phone line to Osama bin Laden," he said, but leading members are able to "direct operations outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan."

This case was the first time officials here have linked an operation in Denmark to the group that masterminded the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

While Mr. Scharf underscored the threat posed by Islamic terrorism, he also differentiated between the religion of Islam and those who commit violence in its name, an important distinction in a country where debates over the role of Islam in a traditionally Christian society have often been contentious and the lines sometimes blurred.

The case in Denmark also highlights the uneasy coexistence of intelligence and prosecution. Danish authorities gave no indication of the quantity of explosive material found in Copenhagen this month, but they said suspects had begun mixing precursor chemicals for bombs. Of the eight men arrested, the authorities quickly released six of them, fueling skepticism about the strength of the case and the government's ability to turn arrests into convictions.

In the first of the recent terrorism cases, stemming from arrests in October 2005, three of the four defendants found guilty by jurors had their verdicts overruled by a three-judge review panel. The fourth was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison on terrorism charges, and prosecutors say they will retry another. In the second case, nine suspects were initially arrested, of whom four are on trial. The court proceedings are under way in Copenhagen.

"They are manipulating the press and the public by giving the impression that they have a very serious case," said Bjoern Elmquist, a lawyer for defendants in two of the cases, including this one. "They are scaring people."

With a population of 5.5 million, Denmark is smaller than New York City by several million people, but it is a disproportionately large target on jihadist Web sites. Not only did Denmark achieve infamy across the Muslim world for the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, which incited violent and even deadly protests in other countries, it also has troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are no official statistics, but researchers estimate that there are roughly 210,000 Muslims in Denmark. It is not a homogeneous group but is split among Turks, Iraqis, Bosnians and others. That jihadist Web sites have been translated into Danish for such a small and disparate group demonstrates the interest and effort they are putting into the country.

Mr. Scharf said the profile of Muslim men pulled into extremism was young, "normally in the age from 16 to 25." The young men are courted by mentors whose job is to identify those predisposed to a jihadi mind-set, radicalize them and put them in touch with others who could help them plan violent acts.

"This is not taking place when the imam is preaching in the mosque," Mr. Scharf said. "I think that these imams play a very important role in preventing the radicalization" of young Muslims.

Mohammed el-Banna, an imam from the famous family of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, said, "They like heroes, and heroes, from their point of view, are not those who talk but those who fight." He preaches at a mosque in Heimdalsgade that Politiken, a leading newspaper here, reported had been attended by suspects in all three of the alleged plots. "We cannot check the ID cards of people who attend the prayers," he said.

Mr. Banna, 49, moved to Denmark from Egypt in 1985. He is a Danish citizen and has four children, the eldest of whom is studying computer science at a university in Denmark. Saying he was speaking for himself and not the mosque, Mr. Banna said that before the cartoon controversy, Denmark enjoyed a very good reputation in the Muslim world, as a nation that did business in the Middle East rather than fighting or keeping colonies there.

For second-generation Muslims coming of age after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the American-led invasion of Iraq, it is a different story. Mr. Banna said young men had come to him looking for religious justification to go and fight in Iraq. "When I told them that there is no justification, they would look for someone else to get the justification," he said.

The generational gap is a concern not only for security officials, but for Muslim parents grappling with the anger of their children.

"Young people have a problem of identity," said Bilal Assaad the spokesman for the Community of Islam Mosque in Copenhagen, which led the protests here against the Muhammad cartoons. "They were born in Denmark but they don't feel Danish. They don't have good possibilities to get jobs because their name is Muhammad. My son tells me, ?'Yes I can see that I'm Muslim, but I can't see that I'm Danish.' "

Mr. Shah, the youth group leader, said, "When I'm going on a train with my backpack, people start to look at me in a different way." He said that he appreciated the irony of the fact that, while under suspicion on his commute, he was on the way to his job as a security guard at the airport.

Of the 11 locations searched by Danish authorities in the recent raids, it was an apartment on Glasvej Street in a mixed neighborhood of Muslim immigrants and ethnic Danes where investigators say the bomb-making materials were found. The front door is cracked where it was broken open by a police battering ram.

The apartment was occupied by two brothers of Pakistani descent. Both were arrested in the raids. The older of the two, who is 24, was released after less than a day. "They came at 2 o'clock," he said. "They broke open the door. They broke everything. They came as animals."

He added that he had not seen his brother since going to sleep the night before their arrest. Under Danish law, the authorities do not release the names of suspects, and he asked not to have his name used. The authorities say he remains under investigation.

"I work all day," he said in a soft voice. "I don't know what my brother and his friends do."
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Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet reported from Copenhagen, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Al Qaeda Threatens Swedish Paper Over Mohammed Caricature
Al Qaeda Threatens Swedish Paper Over Mohammed Caricature
By E&P Staff
Published: September 17, 2007 5:00 PM ET

A Swedish newspaper is under death threats from Islamic extremists after publishing a drawing of the Prophet Mohammed.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is offering a bounty for the murders of artist Lars Vilke and Ulf Johansson, editor in chief of the newspaper Nerikes Allehanda -- which published a cartoon depicting the founder of Islam as a dog. Islam forbids depictions of Mohammed, and in many Muslim areas, it is a grave insult to liken anyone to a dog.

Johansson published the drawing to accompany an Aug. 18 editorial expressing dismay that several art galleries had refused to show Vilke's drawing, and to emphasize the right to free expression, according to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

"Art galleries let themselves be frightened by a diffuse threat," Johansson wrote in the editorial. "This sends a signal that it is easy to silence people through scaring them."

"While appreciating that the publication of the drawing may have caused offence to many Muslims, WAN emphasizes that the Nerikes Allehanda enjoys full freedom of expression and that a choice to publish the drawing falls within that right and should be duly respected," the Paris-based WAN said.

WAN said it is heartened to see that the newspaper has strong support among the Swedish publishing industry.

The publication was also officially condemned by the governments Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Jordan, according to a sourced entry in Wikipedia.

The controversy recalls the furor -- and frequent death threats -- that followed publication of a series of imagined images of Mohammed in the Denmark newspaper Jyllands-Posten in Sept. 2005. At least 200 people were killed in demonstrations or sectarian violence sparked by protests over the cartoons. A Roman Catholic priest was murdered in Turkey by a Muslim who said he was influenced by the publication of the cartoons.

AAEC Officers React to al-Qaida's Call for Murders
AAEC Officers React to al-Qaida's Call for Murders of Cartoonist and Editor
By Dave Astor
Published: September 17, 2007 3:10 PM ET

Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) President-Elect Nick Anderson responded today to an al-Qaida leader's offering of large bounties to kill a Swedish cartoonist and editor.

"It will come as a surprise to no one that al-Qaida opposes the concept of freedom of expression," said the Houston Chronicle cartoonist, when contacted by E&P. "In the Western world, the appropriate response to offensive speech is more speech. But then, we wouldn't be at war if al-Qaida embraced Western thinking."

Anderson, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner, added: "My colleague, AAEC Vice President Ted Rall, quipped, 'It's about time someone was willing to pay real money for a cartoonist.'"

Rall also said wryly: "Anyone who doubts political cartoons are powerful should note that al-Qaida is trying to silence political cartoonists. Fire a cartoonist -- refuse to hire a cartoonist -- and the terrorists have won."

The al-Qaida leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, offered up to $150,000 for the killing of cartoonist Lars Vilk and $50,000 for the killing of the editor of Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish paper that printed Vilks' cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog's body on Aug. 19.

Vilks told the Associated Press: "We have a real problem here. We can only hope that Muslims in Europe and in the Western world choose to distance themselves from this and support the idea of freedom of expression."

Ulf Johansson, editor in chief of Nerikes Allehanda, said he took the bounty "more seriously" than other threats he had received. "This is more explicit. It's not every day somebody puts a price on your head."

Until the bounties were offered Saturday, reaction to Vilks' cartoon had been somewhat muted compared to the protests that erupted after a Danish newspaper published Muhammad-related cartoons.

Anderson is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, while Rall does his cartoons for Universal Press Syndicate.

Freedom of expression, freedom of religion and tolerance is an unacceptable concept in the Islamic world.

Al Quaeda, which issued the death threat against Vilks, does not represent the Muslim world. How do you think Jews in Israel would react if German newspapers depicted Moses or Theodor Herzl as pigs? I think the state of Israel would issue a formal protest, and some of the fundamentalist, nutty, illegal Jewish settlers in Palestine might well issue death threats.

While Thomas' response above is certainly true, it is also a fact that, both historically and in terms of contemporary politics, Islam is and has been far less tolerant of religious freedom than has been the (remnants of the)Christian tradition in non-moslem countries.

Both expanded in part by conquest and both episodically engaged in violent oppression and extermination, however it is simply a fact that the initial expansion of Islam from Arabia across the then Christian Mid East and North Africa was done almost exclusively by conquest. Moreover it was followed by almost continuous wars of expansion that continued for centuries before an organized Christian response developed.

There is a widespread debate in the Western world about the conflict of its traditional values and practices with those of the growing Moslem immigrant population. A good deal of spontaneous introspection and accommodation is going on to adapt long-held customary practices to the sensitivities of their growing Moslem populations and to the Western values of individual freedom. However, no such spontaneous introspection and accommodation is happening in the Moslem world. On the contrary the contemporary movement, from Turkey to Morocco and Indonesia, is for increased cultural and political intolerance of non-Moslems. Oddly there is little public debate about this significant aspect of the cultural conflict which increasingly grips the contemporary world.

Why should Western nations continue to permit Saudi Arabia to generously subsidize Moslem schools and cultural centers in their midst while it continues to prohibit any expression of Christianity or even indifference to Moslem practices within its own borders - even by Western visitors???

Now George you've gone and done it now. As my grandmother would way "you're ripped your drawers with me." I am pretty sure you know better than to make the above statement because I am pretty sure you know better.
To refer to the House of Saud as the "government" is inane. The Brits (with help from the US) created the so-called Saud government as a totally bifurcated government with the house of Saud able to generate oil contracts with the west and over-see various other international issues leaving the domestic issues (local legal/education/cultural) to be within the realm of the local muslim leadership. Even when a Saud princess was accused of, and convicted of, adultery and sentenced to beheading, the house of Saud had no say to overturn (she lost her head).

Sharia at it's finest.

Joe(can't wait for the Iraqis to get their legal system going)Nation

Dys,

While I recognize the historical truth of some of your anecdotes, I don't follow your point. Saudi Arabia is indeed a country: it has a real government that functions both domestically and internationally, much as do other governments. In its domestic activities the Saudi government is a custodian (and enforcer) of the Moslem religion of virtually all of its citizens (but not that of many of the guest workers who together comprise over 20% of the population there). It does not permit the expression of any other religious views or practices within its borders, even by visitors to the country.

I don't understand your point about its supposed "bifurcation". There is the House of Saud and the government, to be sure. However they have exactly the same rule and management, and there is no independent accountability for either.

The conflict of Abdul Azziz with the Hashemites who previously ruled Mecca & Medina in the 1930s was certainly watched with interest by both Britain and The US to see who would control the vast petroleum assets of the region. While Britain had historical ties to the Hashemites dating back to the Arab uprising they financed to overthrow the Ottomans, both nations were mostly interested in close relations with whichever party won the struggle in Arabia. Both conflicting Arabian parties were dedicated to preserving the Islamic "purity" of the holy sites, but the Saudis, backed as they were by a fairly fanatic Yemeni Wahhabbi cult which provided its fiercest warriors, represented much greater systematic intolerance of anything outside their own narrow interpretations of Islam. That systematic intolerance remains today hardly diminished from its original form.

Most of the mosques are funded by the Wahhabbis and churning out fanatics. Al Queda and the Taliban might very well be creatures of the Wahhabbis. Osama even cautioned its members against attacking the Saudi oilfields. If threats are made by Muslim fanatics someone should hint at attacking Saudi oilfields for it is the petro funds that is providing the Muslim fanatics.