Tag Archives: terrorism

Syria, al-Qaeda and Germany

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This video is called ‘Al-Qaeda “army” presence in Syria much higher than officials say’.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

Washington raises specter of al Qaeda seizing Syrian chemical weapons

19 December 2012

Having first issued threats against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad over unspecified intelligence regarding its chemical weapons, the Obama administration is now warning that these arms may fall into the hands of the “rebels” which Washington itself has backed.

This is the significance of a front-page article published this week by the Washington Post, which reported that, “US officials are increasingly worried that Syria’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists, rogue generals or other uncontrollable factions.”

According to the Post, citing unnamed US officials, members of the Islamist militia, al-Nusra, which Washington has formally designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” and charged is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, overran “the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted” and were “closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions.”

While a decade ago, Washington prepared its invasion of Iraq by propagating lies about the regime of Saddam Hussein collaborating with Al Qaeda and a supposed threat he would supply the terrorist organization with “weapons of mass destruction,” today the Obama administration is floating a new and perverse pretext for war. It is raising the specter that its war for regime change in Syria might place such weapons into the hands of the Al Qaeda-linked forces that the US itself has both armed and strengthened in the bid to oust Assad.

While Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration officials have spoken publicly about the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against the insurgency in Syria being a “red line” that would trigger US “consequences,” the administration has not made such pronouncements about its response to these weapons being appropriated by Al Qaeda-linked “rebels.”

Speaking to US military personnel at the giant American base at Incirlik in southern Turkey, about 60 miles from the Syrian border, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke of the Pentagon’s preparations for intervention in Syria over the chemical weapons issue. “We have a number of options that we can deploy if we have to, when the president makes that decision, to be able to act,” said Panetta.

The Pentagon chief added: “I’m not going to go into specifics. But I can tell you that—you know, that the United States, when we decide we’re going to do something, we damned well are going to do it.”

According to the Post report, unnamed Pentagon officials said that US military officers have been “updating their contingency plans in recent weeks as chaos has overtaken Syria.” They said that Washington was “working closely with Israel, Jordan and NATO allies, including Turkey, to monitor dozens of sites where Syria is suspected of keeping chemical arms and to coordinate options to intervene if necessary.”

Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies told the Post that it would take 1,000 inspectors and specialists on the ground in Syria to “monitor the condition of each [chemical weapons] site and take inventory.”

The Post article adds, however: “That’s assuming there would be no need to provide security at the installations, much less engage hostile forces. In a worst case scenario, under which the Syrian military would gas its own people, the Pentagon has projected that it could take up to 75,000 troops to intervene.”

Meanwhile, the Assad regime has issued its own warnings. Insisting that it would never use chemical weapons against the Syrian population, it charges that the real threat comes from the “rebels” and their imperialist patron in Washington.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations in a letter to the Security Council and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed concerns in Damascus that the US and its allies could supply the Islamist militias with chemical weapons and then accuse the Syrian government of using them to provide a pretext for direct intervention.

“We have repeatedly stated publicly and through diplomatic channels that Syria will not under any circumstances use any chemical weapons that it may have, because it is defending its people from terrorists backed by well-known states, at the forefront of which is the United States of America,” wrote Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari. The letter was dated December 8 but first made public on Monday.

“We are genuinely worried that certain states that support terrorism and terrorists could provide the armed terrorist groups with chemical weapons, and then claim they had been used by the Syrian Government,” Ja’afari continued.

In response to Washington’s threats of intervention over a supposed danger that the Syrian regime will employ the weapons against the country’s population, the ambassador wrote, “States such as the United States of America that have used chemical and similar weapons are in no position to launch such a campaign, particularly because, in 2003, they used the pretext of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction in order to justify their invasion and occupation.”

Last week, in conjunction with a “Friends of Syria” conference in Morocco, the Obama administration took the combined actions of recognizing the Syrian National Coalition—whose leadership had been cobbled together the previous month under the direction of the US State Department at a luxury hotel in Doha—and of placing the al Nusra front on its list of “foreign terrorist organizations.

The incongruity of these two measures, one of which signals a policy of war for regime change until victory, while the other seeks to distance Washington from what is widely acknowledged as the leading fighting force in this war, has led to protests from among the supposed “moderates” that the US publicly backs.

Among the latest to criticize Washington’s actions is Riad Seif, the wealthy exiled Syrian businessman who collaborated with the State Department in launching the initiative for the new Syrian opposition front. He disputed the terrorist designation, telling the French daily Le Figaro: “They do not hurt anyone. Generally, the Syrian Islamists are known for their moderation.”

Seif made this statement after a video placed on YouTube and reposted by the Syrian state news agency Sana had been widely viewed in Syria—though not even mentioned by the US corporate media. It depicts Sunni Islamist “rebels” physically abusing two captured Syrian Alawite officers (from the same sect as Assad) and then beheading them, with a boy appearing to be about 10 years old given a sword to take the first hack at one of their necks.

The video is emblematic of the bitter sectarian character of the civil war into which Syria has been plunged by US and Western intervention.

Washington’s feigned concern for the Syrian people in the face of an alleged threat from chemical weapons is a lie and a pretext. US imperialism is working in a de facto alliance with the most reactionary Islamist forces, including Al Qaeda, in a concerted attempt to lay waste to Syrian society, as part of a broader campaign to reorder the Middle East in its own interests.

Anti-Nato protest marches in fear of turning ‘Turkey into a battlefield’: here.

By Ulrich Rippert in Germany:

German parliament votes to station Patriot missiles on Syrian border

19 December 2012

On December 14, the German parliament (Bundestag) voted overwhelmingly to send 400 German soldiers and two units of its Patriot air defence system to Turkey, to be stationed on the country’s 900-kilometer border with Syria. All parliamentary parties, with the exception of the Left Party, voted in favour of the military deployment.

The parliamentary mandate also clears the way for the use of AWACS reconnaissance aircraft stationed in the region. The aircraft are to monitor air space over the border.

The deployment was justified in parliament as a purely defensive measure in line with Germany’s commitments to its allies, i.e., to protect its NATO partner Turkey from missile attacks by the Syrian army.

In reality, the parliamentary resolution is a prelude to military intervention in Syria. For months, the United States, together with other NATO states, has intensified its pressure on the Syrian government. NATO is systematically fuelling a civil war by inciting religious and ethnic differences and sending armed mercenaries to the country.

Official propaganda has sought to portray the conflict as a popular uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In fact, what is taking place is a campaign to bring about regime-change in Syria while weakening the position of Iran.

Turkey is now a major staging ground for assembling imperialist troops to be used against Syria. The government in Ankara has been providing the so-called “rebels” with weapons and equipment for months. It is also offering the services of Turkish officers as consultants to opposition militias. It has allowed the opponents of Assad to operate from Turkish territory and is home to a CIA base from which American intelligence officers pass on arms, money and intelligence to the insurgents.

Contrary to propaganda claims that the deployment is aimed at combating Syrian missiles aimed at Turkey, the Patriots can prevent operations by Syrian military aircraft in northern Syria. This would facilitate the creation of a no-fly zone, permitting easy access to Syria by Assad’s opponents. A similar move was carried out by the US and NATO in Libya last year as the first step in direct military intervention.

The decision of the Bundestag to back the stationing of missiles marks a new phase of imperialist violence in German foreign policy. During the campaign against Libya last year, the German government abstained in the United Nations Security Council on the issue of military involvement. In retrospect, this decision was considered a major foreign policy error by political and business circles.

For years, the German army operation in Afghanistan was described as a “humanitarian measure,” and any talk of direct military intervention was denied.

Now the situation is changing. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (Free Democratic Party—FDP) has been criss-crossing the Middle East and travelled to Turkey several times in the past few months. The German government had already made up its mind about the Patriot missile deployment prior to the request from Ankara, with Westerwelle announcing that Germany was ready and willing to send missiles, troops and aircraft. …

Left Party spokesman Jan van Aken explained the negative attitude taken by his parliamentary group. …

Van Aken sarcastically addressed the defence minister, who had referred in his own contribution to the danger of Syrian chemical weapons: “I think, Mr. de Maizière, if you once again raise the issue of chemical weapons you should be condemned to years in purgatory, stuck between Colin Powell and George W. Bush.”

Instead of criticising the German government and military leadership, he attacked the Turkish government, which had long been seeking “to be a regional power.” He appealed to the CDU-led German government, saying, “You really cannot, you must not show any allegiance, because Turkey is pursuing its own interests.”

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German nazi terrorism scandal continues

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This video from Germany is called Hidden Danger – Rightwing Terrorism.

By Bernd Reinhardt in Germany:

Fifth German secret service resignation in NSU far-right terror scandal

3 December 2012

The resignation of Berlin secret service chief Claudia Schmid on November 14 was the fifth resignation by a secret service chief over the cover-up of information about the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) in Germany. Federal Secret Service (BND) President Heinz Fromm and the heads of state secret services in Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt have already resigned on similar grounds.

Schmid’s resigned over the destruction of files containing information relevant to the on-going inquiry into a trio of far-right terrorists from the NSU, whose activities came to light last year. The secret services apparently maintained extensive networks of agents inside the NSU and its periphery. The destruction of files also led to suspicions that the secret services were attempting to block the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the NSU affair.

In the past few weeks, the far-right Pro NRW has conducted racist protests outside refugee camps in North Rhine-Westphalia as part of a campaign for a “people’s initiative against the abuse of asylum.” Their demands for a criminal offence of “asylum fraud” have received support from members of the Pirate Party: here.

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Murderer Breivik’s Belgian accomplices investigated

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This video about the mass murder by Anders Behring Breivik is called Norway marks one year since massacre.

Translated from Belga news agency in Belgium:

Secret service conducts research into Belgian supporters of Breivik

28/11/12, 6:25

More than a year after the mass murders in Norway, the intelligence service of our country is investigating whether Anders Behring Breivik received information from Belgian accomplices. In his manifesto there are passages pointing into that direction, the Belgian Concentra newspapers say.

In Breivik’s manifesto there are some Dutch words, suggesting that he got information from Belgian allies. It is investigated from whom exactly the information was, the papers say. From his 1500 pages long manifesto it is apparent how terribly big his hatred of the European Union was.

“If Breivik would not have been arrested, and after the attacks of 22 July 2011 in Oslo he would have returned to the underground, we probably would have to fear attacks against the European institutions in Brussels”, the annual report of the state intelligence service says literally. The Tihange nuclear power plant is named in his manifesto as well.

According to the Gazet van Antwerpen daily, one of the people in Belgium to whom Breivik sent his manifesto, is Tanguy Veys of the extreme Right racist political party Vlaams Belang.

Breivik’s manifesto traslated into Dutch: here.

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German Ku Klux Klan and secret service

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This music video is by the Ramones, The KKK took my baby away, LIVE in Sweden.

By Sven Heymanns in Germany:

German Ku Klux Klan founded by state’s intelligence agency

1 November 2012

The German branch of the racist secret society, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), was set up and led by an undercover agent of the state of Baden-Württemberg’s secret service.

According to a report in the Tagesspiegel daily newspaper, an organisation called the “European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan–Realm of Germany” was established by a white supremacist government spy in October 2000. A short time later, the man was appointed by a KKK group in the US to the position of national leader, a “Grand Dragon”. The German branch existed until early 2003.

But that was not all. The agent was not only working for the secret service of a German state; it appears he was also operating with the official protection of one of his colleagues. An employee of the intelligence agency is suspected of having passed on to him “anonymous confidential information” in 2002. In particular, this person allegedly warned him that his phone was being tapped.

The Ku Klux Klan is one of a long line of ultra right-wing organisations set up by German secret service agents with the help of state funds.

Investigations into the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party (NDP) associations in the states of Thuringia and North Rhine-Westphalia had already revealed they could not have developed as they did without funding provided by the secret service. Several neo-Nazis openly boasted they had drawn funds from the intelligence service for a number of years.

Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Minister Reinhold Gall (Social Democratic Party, SDP) would not confirm that the founder of Germany’s extreme right-wing KKK organisation was an undercover agent belonging to his state’s secret service agency. However, he also did not deny the allegation, instead drawing attention to the case’s highest level of secrecy that ostensibly made it impossible for him to comment on media reports.

Beate Bube, head of the state’s secret service agency, also refused to confirm whether an agent was associated with the founding of the local KKK. She said the identity of undercover agents had to be protected and added: “The issue could involve a criminal betrayal of state secrets, and that’s precisely what we want to avoid doing”.

Although Gall had confirmed before the domestic affairs select committee that a member of the secret service had cautioned the leader of the KKK about certain state surveillance measures, he avoided repeating this to the press.

As is now customary in such episodes, Gall and Bube asserted that the case was an “isolated” one. According to Die Welt, the daily newspaper, Bube said there is “no reason to doubt that agency employees fulfil their statutory duties correctly and irreproachably, and there is no reason to believe that they lack awareness of democratic procedures”.

The close links between the state and the Ku Klux Klan raises new questions about possible links between government agencies and the right-wing terrorists of the National Socialist Underground (NSU). Plenty of overlap has been discovered between the KKK and the NSU.

Two of the three members of the NSU, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Tschäpe, were spotted near Jena at a cross burning attended by 20 neo-Nazis in the mid-1990s. Tschäpe even had photos of the scene and personally informed the public prosecutor about their attendance. That was before Tschäpe, Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos went into hiding and began their killing spree.

The identity of another undercover agent, operating in the KKK’s ranks under the code name “Corelli”, was discovered by police in 1998 on an address list Mundlos had hidden in a garage. But the main cause of suspicion is the fact that two members of the relatively small KKK group in Baden-Württemberg were close colleagues of the NSU’s last murder victim, policewoman Michèle Kiesewetter. Kiesewetter was shot in April 2007 and the series of NSU killings then abruptly ceased.

The murder of a German policewoman is not commensurate with the criminal operations of the NSU. All the other murders had immigrants as their victims and were obviously racially motivated. To date, there is no plausible explanation why Kiesewetter became a target of the NSU. The question arises as to whether the former KKK memberships of her squad leader and another police colleague played a role.

A parliamentary committee of inquiry into the NSU is now dealing with the case. But no clarification can be expected from that quarter because the investigation is systematically blocked by the authorities and the committee itself has little interest in bringing the facts to light. Finally, all the parties represented on the committee are involved to some extent in government office and are therefore responsible for police and the intelligence service.

Only occasionally, when it is all too obvious they are being led around by the nose, do the committee members allow some measure of the truth to surface. Responding to the new revelations about the KKK, Free Democratic Party deputy Hartfrid Wolff groaned: “Were there then any members [of the KKK] who were not in the police or secret service?” A legitimate question!

The authorities are continuing their attempt to prevent any further unravelling of the events. They have stopped referring to undeniable revelations as “mishaps”, “slips” and “isolated cases”; they append the official designation of “secret” to files that could lead to further clarification, or they destroy huge numbers of them. It is now known that far more records relating to the NSU affair have been destroyed than was initially announced.

Heinz Fromm resigned in July from his post as president of the Federal Office of the Secret Service, following the official revelation that numerous files relevant to the case had been shredded immediately after the breaking up of the NSU cell last November.

A secret interior ministry report in possession of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper has now revealed that, between the discovery of the NSU gang and Fromm’s resignation, not only folders detailing 26 wiretappings of right-wing extremists were destroyed. The obliteration of evidence also extended to 94 personnel files, eight evaluation case files, 137 research and public relations records and 45 files on so-called “warranted persons” of the secret service.

During his appearance before the parliamentary committee, former vice president of the Constitutional Committee Klaus-Dieter Fritsche displayed an arrogance that infuriated even the normally meek parliamentary deputies. He pointedly told them they would be receiving only officially approved documents, and more or less declared them an outright security risk.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich (Christian Social Union, CSU) did assure the committee that it would be given the files of all the secret service authorities. But these will be heavily redacted. Friedrich also said the real names of undercover agents could not be disclosed to the deputies. Insight into the “inside operations” of the security agency will not be permitted, because “the life and death of people are concerned. And it’s a matter of public welfare”.

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Libya, the CIA and Syria

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This video is called Libyan militias are spiralling out of control.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

Attack in Libya disrupted major CIA operation

25 September 2012

The September 11 attack that claimed the life of the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans disrupted a major CIA operation in the North African country.

According to the New York Times, at least half of the nearly two dozen US personnel evacuated from the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi following the fatal attack on the US consulate and a secret “annex” were “CIA operatives and contractors.”

“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” a US official who had been stationed in Libya told the Times. “We got our eyes poked out.”

The Times report describes the mission of the CIA station in Benghazi as one of “conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of armed militant groups in and around the city,” including Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist militia that has been linked by some to the September 11 attack, and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.

It further states that the CIA “began building a meaningful but covert presence in Benghazi” within months of the February 2011 revolt in Benghazi that seized the city from forces loyal to the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Stevens himself was sent into the city in April of that year as the American envoy to the so-called “rebels” organized in the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC).

What the Times omits from its account of CIA activities in Benghazi, however, is that the agency was not merely conducting covert surveillance on the Islamists based in eastern Libya, but providing them with direct aid and coordinating their operations with those of the NATO air war launched to bring down the Gaddafi regime. In this sense, the September 11 attack that killed Stevens and the three other Americans was very much a case of the chickens coming home to roost.

There is every reason to believe that the robust CIA presence in Benghazi after Gaddafi’s fall also involved more than just surveillance. Libyan Islamists make up the largest single component of the “foreign fighters” who are playing an ever more dominant role in the US-backed sectarian civil war being waged in Syria with the aim of toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. According to some estimates, they comprise anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 of approximately 3,500 fighters who have been infiltrated into Syria from as far away as Chechnya and Pakistan.

The CIA has also set up a center on the border between Turkey and Syria to oversee the funneling of arms, materiel, money and fighters into the Syrian civil war. Given the relationship established between the US agency and the Libyan Islamist militias during the US-NATO war to topple Gaddafi, it seems highly probable that the departure of such elements from eastern Libya and their infiltration into Syria would be coordinated by CIA personnel on both ends.

The government installed by the US-NATO war in the Libyan capital of Tripoli was apparently unaware of the size of the CIA presence in Benghazi, though the agency was supposedly cooperating with Libyan intelligence officials in monitoring the activities of the Islamists.

According to a report published September 21 in the Wall Street Journal, the attempt by Libyan government forces to coordinate a response to the militia assault on the US consulate and the “annex” used by the CIA was hindered by the refusal of American officials to provide the Libyans with GPS coordinates for the “annex,” which came under sustained assault and where two security contractors, former Navy Seals, were killed.

When the US and Libyan rescuers managed to evacuate some 30 Americans from the “annex” and bring them to the Benghazi airport, Libyan officials were stunned by the number of US personnel there and had to bring in a second plane to fly them all out.

“We were surprised by the numbers of Americans who were at the airport,” Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagour told the Journal. “We have no problem with intelligence sharing or gathering, but our sovereignty is also key,” he added.

In the aftermath of the attack in Benghazi, the question of security at US facilities has become a politically contested issue, with Republicans charging that the Obama administration had behaved irresponsibly in not having US military personnel protect Stevens and other personnel. They have also accused the administration of misleading the public by describing the assault on the two buildings as an outgrowth of a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Islamic film that has triggered protests throughout the Muslim world, rather than a terrorist attack.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon, a California Republican, last week declared the lack of military guards in Benghazi as “inconceivable” given an earlier attack on the Benghazi compound and other incidents of armed violence in the city.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to the criticism by insisting that local security forces and a private security company that deployed Libyan guards had provided security “of the kind that we rely on in many places around the world.”

By late last week, administration officials had begun referring to the assault as a “terrorist attack.” With the US having deployed warships, drones and a 50-member US Marine rapid reaction force to Libya, this may be preparation for military retaliation.

In Libya itself, thousands of people marched in Benghazi on Friday against the militias. Crowds laid siege to the headquarters of Ansar al-Sharia and another Islamist militia, the Rafallah Sahati brigade, leading to at least four deaths.

The demonstrations clearly expressed public anger over the sway of the Islamists over Benghazi, with participants talking of the need for “a new revolution.”

Late on Saturday, the authorities in Tripoli responded to the popular frustration. The Libyan army chief, Yusseff Mangoush, and national assembly leader Mohamed Magrief announced that “illegitimate” militias would have 48 hours to disarm and disband, or the army would use force.

What this meant was far from clear, however, as Libyan President Mohamed el-Megaref called upon Libyan protesters to leave the “legitimate” militias alone. The president demanded that the demonstrators stop attacks on militias that are “under state legitimacy, and go home.”

The spokesman for the national assembly went further. According to the Wall Street Journal, the spokesman, Omar Humidan, declared that while the militias “have wrong practices… serve their own agenda and have their own ideology… striking these militias and demanding they disband immediately will have grave consequences.”

He continued: “These are the ones that preserve security. The state has a weak army and no way it can fill any vacuum resulting in eviction of these militias… The street is upset because of the militias and their infighting. We are worried of the fallout in the absence of those militias. The state must be given time.”

The militias in Benghazi are almost all offshoots of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a jihadist group that had ties to Al Qaeda and whose leaders were abducted and tortured by the CIA as part of Washington’s “global war on terror.” This is the case with Ansar al-Sharia, which is responsible for providing security at the Al Jala hospital in Benghazi, as well as the Rafallah Sahati brigade, which has also been deployed as a security force in the city, including during the national elections.

In the aftermath of last Friday’s demonstrations, the militias struck back, claiming that the popular repudiation of their policies had been stirred up by supporters of the former Gaddafi regime.

The Rafallah al-Sahati militia announced Monday that it had rounded up 113 people for alleged involvement in the protests. A leader of the group claimed that most of those detained were former members of the Gaddafi-era military or supporters of the deposed president.

Libyan state television reported Monday that on the outskirts of Benghazi the bodies of six Libyan soldiers were found shot, execution style, with their hands cuffed behind them. It was also reported that an army colonel had disappeared and was believed to have been kidnapped.

According to the Wall Street Journal: “Some media reports accused militiamen of taking revenge on Gaddafi-era veterans in the military; in contrast, a military spokesman, Ali al-Shakhli, blamed Gaddafi loyalists, saying they were trying to stir up trouble between the public and the militias.”

German nazis, secret service, armed forces

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This video is called Series of Crimes Linked to Germany’s Neo-Nazi Groups.

By Sven Heymann in Germany:

German police and secret services linked to neo-Nazi murder band

21 September 2012

More information came to light last week about the intimate links between numerous state intelligence and police bodies with the ultra-right terrorists of the “National Socialist Underground” (NSU). Not only did the German intelligence agencies, both at a state and federal level, maintain contact with, fund and cover up for the terrorist cell, a similar role was also played by the German Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) and various police bodies.

…

Last Thursday, it was confirmed that the neo-Nazi Thomas Starke was a “trusted contact” of the Berlin State Criminal Police Agency (LKA) for more than ten years.

According to the daily Junge Welt, Starke was considered a “key figure in enabling the NSU to go underground”. He has already confessed to having provided explosives to the NSU in the late 1990s. From 2000, Starke then worked for the Berlin LKA and was only removed from operations in January 2011, just months before reports emerged of the killing spree that left ten people dead.

Spiegel Online reports that Starke had spoken to the LKA about the NSU on at least five occasions between 2001 and 2005. He is said to have concealed his own role as a supporter (delivering explosives, providing housing).

Already in 2002, he had drawn the attention of investigators to Jan Werner, a senior representative of the “Blood & Honour” neo-fascist network. Werner was already under observation by the Brandenburg state secret service, who suspected him of supplying weapons to the NSU.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, Werner cooperated personally with the Berlin LKA from 2001 to 2005.The newspaper quoted an LKA fax in which the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) was asked to inform Berlin about any action taken against Werner.

Clearly the Berlin police authorities had enough information to take action against the three members of the NSU—Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt—who had been underground since 1998 and murdered at least ten people between 2000 and 2007. However, the Berlin LKA, like the other official bodies, took no action.

Both the current Interior Minister in the Berlin state legislature, Frank Henkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and his predecessor Erhart Körting (Social Democratic Party, SPD) knew about the services of Thomas Starke. In March, Henkel provided the information to the Attorney General, but only after this was requested. But neither Henkel nor the Attorney General thought it necessary to inform the NSU investigatory committee of the Bundestag (parliament) about the case, let alone the public. Henkel cited on-going investigations which made it impossible for him to publicise the case.

Last Tuesday it was announced in the parliamentary committee that MAD was also deeply involved in the affair. In the 1990s, German military intelligence had a file on Uwe Mundlos. MAD is said to have even tried to recruit Mundlos as a source on the right-wing extremist scene, but he rebuffed this approach.

Until Tuesday, neither the parliamentary committee nor the public had been informed about the existence of such a file, although the Defence Ministry had been informed about it last December. In March, the Attorney General and the BKA were also informed, upon request.

A spokesperson for the Ministry referred to a complex legal process that had stood in the way of releasing information. Moreover, according to Financial Times Deutschland, the Ministry had initially wanted to select files “with a different focus for the committee”. The response of MAD and the Defence Ministry reeks of a cover-up and raises the question: what further information and links to the neo-fascists are they concealing?

MAD claims to have destroyed its file immediately after Mundlos finished his military conscription. However, the agency had previously sent a copy to the Federal Secret Service Agency and its state offices in Thüringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Nevertheless, only the Federal Agency had responded to the committee’s request of the previous month. The other official bodies concealed the existence of the file and lied to the committee.

Last Thursday, the Chief of the Saxony-Anhalt state intelligence agency, Volker Limburg, resigned after admitting one day earlier that his office possessed a copy of the file but had not been able to find it. Limburg is thus the fourth boss of a German secret service agency to have resigned in connection with the scandal in the past two and a half months.

The files and connections which have emerged in the last week make increasingly clear that government agencies were apparently well informed of every detail on the activities of the terrorists. State intelligence and police not only knew of weapons and explosives supplies, but even paid the parties involved. It is now irrefutable that state institutions covered up for those behind the murder attacks and financed them.

It is only a small step to the conclusion that state forces were directly involved in the crimes themselves. It is still unclear what role was played by a member of the Hesse state secret service who was present at the April 2006 murder of Halit Yozgat in his Internet cafe. Despite repeated dragnets he had not reported to the police. Known among his acquaintances as “little Adolf”, he was transferred within the state agency and has still not been subjected to any public questioning.

According to Junge Welt, more than one in four members of the Thüringia Heimatschutz (Thüringia Homeland Security, THS) could have been on the secret service payroll. The NSU emerged directly out of the THS at the end of the 1990s. It should be recalled that in 2003 the Supreme Court judges ruled that the far right German National Party (NPD) should be adjudged to be a “state function” when it was revealed that one in seven of NPD functionaries was a state informer.

The systematic cover-up and falsification by the authorities hinders any serious investigation of this situation. This cover-up is provided a political cover by the parliamentary committee in which representatives of all the parties sit and participate in federal and state governments. They have no interest in a thorough investigation that would reveal the culpability of colleagues in their own parties. The committee has not even exhausted its own legal powers and ordered a systematic inquiry for information from the state police agencies. Almost all of the information so far uncovered came to light partly as a result of persistent research by third parties, partly by coincidence, but never as a result of the initiative of any of the authorities involved.

Right-wing terrorists within US Army

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This video from the USA is called U.S. Soldiers Busted Plotting To Kill President Obama And Overthrow The Government.

By Ed Hightower in the USA:

Right-wing terrorist organization worked within US Army

15 September 2012

On Monday prosecutors in Liberty County, Georgia indicted five men for illegal gang activity including burglaries, thefts and car break-ins, alleging they were all part of a militia group calling itself FEAR, or, Forever Enduring, Always Ready. In August, prosecutors indicted three other men, including purported FEAR leader Isaac Aguigui, for the murder of a former member and his girlfriend last December, allegedly out of concern that the couple would reveal the group’s existence and its plans.

One of the accused in the murders, Army private Michael Burnett, 26, pleaded guilty to two charges of manslaughter in order to avoid the death penalty. Burnett testified at a court hearing in August that Aguigui, a private at Fort Stewart, Sergeant Anthony Peden and Private Christopher Salmon led former soldier Michael Roark, 19, and his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tiffany York, into a secluded woodland area near the Fort and shot them execution style. Roark had recently left the Army. Aguigui and his cohorts were concerned that he and York would expose their terrorist plots and FEAR’s existence at Fort Stewart, Burnett said.

He said that Aguigui introduced him to “the manuscript … a book about true patriots,” and said that FEAR wanted to “give the government back to the people.” According to prosecutor Isabel Pauley, Aguigui sought to recruit soldiers who were disillusioned or in trouble, showing them an article about a video game where soldiers take over the government and gauging their reaction before encouraging them to join. Aguigui called this process “the awakening.”

So far, ten people have been charged with crimes pertaining to FEAR, most of whom are either current or former soldiers at US Army Fort Stewart in southeastern Georgia. It appears that the militia group intended to take control of the fort itself, commit various acts of terrorism and ultimately overthrow the US government. There were plans to bomb a fountain in Savannah’s Forsyth park, bomb a dam in Washington state, poison that state’s crop of apples, car bomb various politicians and judicial figures in Georgia and vehicles of the Department of Homeland Security, and assassinate President Obama.

Prosecutors allege that FEAR leader Aguigui’s pregnant wife died last July under suspicious circumstances, leaving him the proceeds of a $500,000 life insurance policy. From this sum, Aguigui and others purchased $87,000 worth of military grade rifles and bomb components as well as land in Washington state intended to serve as a training camp.

In September of last year, a female family member of one FEAR member facing murder charges contacted police in Washington state about Aguigui’s purchase of 15 firearms, including semi-automatic rifles, at a store in Wenatchee while on military leave. The police contacted Army investigators at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, who confirmed the existence of an ongoing investigation into the death of Aguigui’s wife. Police also contacted FBI supervisory special agent Frank Harrill in Spokane, who may have interviewed Aguigui, but declined comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

Authorities in Elbert county in northern Georgia believe that one Adam Dearman, held since last December on charges of shooting and wounding a man, did so in connection with FEAR, and also coordinated some of the thefts other members committed.

Civilian authorities do not know how large the militia may be, and Army authorities at Fort Stewart, while confident that there are no unidentified members, will not comment further on the militia’s size.

The exact political makeup of FEAR is not yet known. Members reportedly have tattoos of anarchist symbols and, based on their purported targets, appear to be influenced by the right-wing, anti-government militia movement that began in the early 1990s.

Quite some corporate media refer to this gang as “anarchist”. To put things kindly, that is extremely premature. The only thing maybe pointing in that direction is tattoed symbols; symbols of which the terrorists might not understand the meaning. Anarchists usually don’t join join armies, especially not the United States army. Now, if the gang leader Aguigui, instead of having been, as things look now, a page at the Republican Party Convention, would have been a page at an anarchist convention … err, there are no pages at anarchist conventions, so make that “participant” instead of “page”.

One of the defendants charged on Monday in relation to the December murder, 21-year-old former soldier Timothy Joiner, told The Associated Press by telephone that he was a “proud Republican.” He is charged with three home burglaries, nine car break-ins, and thefts of items including guns, cell phones, GPS devices, a bulletproof vest, a motorcycle helmet and a woman’s debit cards.

It appears that Aguigui served as a page at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Someone with his same name and likeness is in a Reuters photograph and caption of the event.

Revelations about the FEAR group, its activities and secret existence in and around the military are part of a broader phenomenon, an increasing symbiosis of right-wing extremist groups and the US military. For its part, the military permits and encourages fanaticism, consciously cultivating Christian fundamentalism in particular. US imperialism appreciates a soldiery and officer corps indoctrinated in antidemocratic principles who will carry out brutal attacks, including on civilian populations.

The August killing of six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin was the work of a former military neo-fascist, Wade Page.

For their part, right-wing militia groups recruit within the armed forces, and send members in to gain combat training.

A Reuters article in August highlights the intersection of the militia movement with the US military, referring to a 2008 report commissioned by the Justice Department, which found that half of all right-wing extremists in the United States had military experience.

Nonetheless, Fort Bragg spokesman Colonel Kevin Arata told Reuters, “We don’t really think this is a huge problem, at Bragg, and across the Army.

“In my 26 years in the Army, I’ve never seen it,” he added.

Former Marine T.J. Leyden, a former member of the skinhead group Hammerskin Nation, told Reuters about the tolerant attitude he encountered in regards to his support for neo-Nazism from 1988 to 1991. Leyden wore a tattoo of SS lightening bolts above his collar. He kept a swastika emblem on his locker, removing it at the request of a superior only during inspections of the barracks by higher officials.

Leyden told Reuters, “I went into the Marine Corps for one specific reason: I would learn how to shoot. … I also learned how to use C-4 (explosives), blow things up. I took all my military skills and said I could use these to train other people.”

According to the Reuters article, right-wing groups who send members into the military are preparing for “rahowa,” or racial holy war.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks right-wing extremist and hate groups, the number of anti-government “patriot” groups rose from 824 in 2010 to 1,274 in 2011. Since the mid-2000s violent attacks by people affiliated with such right-wing groups has nearly doubled.

What stands out about FEAR is the advanced nature of their plans, their willingness to commit murder to protect these plans, and their secret existence within a US Army base. A 2009 report released by the Department of Homeland Security warned against the danger that right-wing extremist groups were both contemplating terror attacks and seeking recruits among US military veterans. Many Republican politicians vigorously attacked the report as targeting opponents of abortion, being anti-military, only underscoring the party’s intimate ties with these fascistic groups.

The Obama administration cowered before this attack, repudiating the report and dissolving the DHS team that had monitored so-called non-Muslim domestic terrorism. As the Washington Post reported in June of last year, “the department had not reported in depth on any domestic extremist groups since 2009.”