Brooklyn Resident Pleads Guilty to Supporting al-Qaida

A Brooklyn resident pleaded guilty Monday to providing money and computer assistance to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Sabirhan Hasanoff was charged in an indictment unsealed in April 2010 along with Wesam El-Hanafi with conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida. A superseding indictment accused the two men on three additional counts, including providing material support to al-Qaida, and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in connection with their support to the terrorist group.

Hasanoff, a successful accountant who held a senior position at PricewaterhouseCoopers, is a dual citizen of the United States and Australia. He was arrested in 2010 in Dubai and brought to the United States to face charges of providing material and technical assistance to al-Qaida.

Prosecutors allege that in November 2007 Hasanoff received around $50,000 from a confidential co-conspirator to move money and perform other tasks for al-Qaida. Both Hasanoff and El-Hanafi subsequently had a discussion with the co-conspirator about joining al-Qaida. Hassanoff also instructed the co-conspirator to avoid using his U.S. passport for traveling because a "passport with fewer immigration stamps would be more valuable to al Qaeda." Prosecutors claim Hasanoff is widely traveled and has visited several countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

El-Hanafi, a U.S. citizen and computer engineer living in Brooklyn, traveled to Yemen in February 2008, where he met with two al-Qaida members "who instructed him on operational security measures and directed him to perform tasks for al Qaeda." While in Yemen, El-Hanafi swore an oath of allegiance to al-Qaida. He also subscribed to a software program to enable him communicate securely with others on the Internet. Both Hasanoff and El-Hanafi used code words to communicate their desire to fight jihad in Internet chat rooms and connect with other al-Qaida members. The term "safari" was used as a codename for "jihad" and saying a friend was "hospitalized" implied he was "in prison." El-Hanafi also made an online purchase of seven Casio digital watches for al-Qaida.

Hasanoff faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced July 23. El-Hanafi has pleaded not guilty in the case.

Pascrell (Still) Won't Repudiate anti-Semitic Slurs

On the eve of an election that will decide his political future, Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., remains under fire for refusing to condemn anti-Semitic comments from his supporters. With New Jersey losing a congressional seat due to federal redistricting, Pascrell and fellow eight-term Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman are running against each other in Tuesday's hotly contested primary in the 9^th Congressional District. The winner will be favored to win in November in this heavily Democratic district.

In the waning days of the primary race, American Arab Forum (AAF) President Aref Assaf (who has a large-sized picture of Pascrell and an Arabic-language Pascrell campaign sign emblazoned on his Facebook page) continued to suggest that supporters of Rothman, who is Jewish, are putting Israel's interests ahead of America's.

In a Memorial Day blog posting, Assaf said that some people refer to the city of Paterson, Pascrell's hometown, as "Little Jerusalem." Relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims there "have generally been friendly and cooperative," he wrote.

But he hinted that Jewish support for Rothman over Pascrell had the potential to change things, and not for the better.

"The Arab and Muslim community of northern New Jersey is taking notice of how Steve Rothman is using his support of Israel as the centerpiece of his campaign," Assaf wrote. "They take issue with Rothman bragging about his help in getting Israel over $50 billion in aid since 2001, while bringing only $2 billion to New Jersey residents." Rothman critics see this as "lopsided math expressive of misdirected commitment" to Israel, he added.

But according to Assaf, Arabs and Muslims weren't taking Jewish support for Rothman lying down. Motivated by "the candidates' position on Palestine," they were mobilizing across District 9 to raise money and get out the vote for Pascrell. Assaf boasted that James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, has raised more than $50,000 for Pascrell.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., an Islamist whose slurs even target Muslims who don't toe the Islamist line, also is helping Pascrell's campaign get out the Muslim vote. Ellison campaigned for Pascrell and Assaf believes Pascrell's re-election effort will be aided by his opposition to the deportation of radical Imam Mohammed Qatanani.

Assaf is no stranger to anti-Semitic comments. Earlier this year, he published several op-eds suggesting that Rothman supporters "demand total and blind support for Israel" and that "Jewish sources" criticized Pascrell because he was not "a perfect example of an Israeli loyalist."

Pascrell has refused to condemn Assaf's slurs. Susan Rosenbluth, publisher of the Englewood, N.J.-based Jewish Voice and Opinion, said Pascrell's refusal to speak out was disturbing. "I called Pascrell's office and asked, 'Will you condemn it?'" she told the Washington Free Beacon. "They said, 'We didn't write it.'"

AP's NYPD Reporting Blasted

Pulitzer Prize winning stories about New York Police Department intelligence and surveillance activity by the Associated Press are inaccurate, misleading and harmful, a top NYPD official writes just days after leaving the department. One allegation was "pure fiction."

Mitchell Silber was the department's director of intelligence analysis from 2007 through last month. His first public act in the private sector is a compelling 6,000 word dissection of the AP reports published in Commentary.

The stories cast the NYPD as waging unchecked, wholesale, undercover surveillance of Muslim communities inside and outside the city, done without cause and in likely violation of civil liberties protections.

It is the product. Silber argues, of "broad allegations and cherry-picked and misconstrued examples to support particularly damaging charges." They were "accepted as gospel" and "created fissures between the police and the communities it sought to protect, undermined confidence in the NYPD."

Although New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was critical of some of those disclosures, a review by New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa found no laws were violated.

Court-approved guidelines allow the NYPD to gather information in public places and from public websites. That's where the bulk of the surveillance took place, he writes. Rare cases in which undercover agents were deployed were done "only on the basis of a lead or investigation reviewed and authorized in writing at the highest levels of the department" (emphasis original).

NYPD does this, Silber explains, to identify pockets of radicalization and potential plots before they materialize. It's a requirement brought on by successful terrorist attacks against the city in 1993 and 2001 and more than a dozen attempts, some of which were interdicted at last minute. In the two attacks on the World Trade Center, conspirators used New Jersey as a base in part because demographics allowed them to lay low.

The same tactics are used to stop everyday criminal networks, from drug dealers and gangs to human trafficking. They are used because they work, he writes, citing the arrest of two men trying to join the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab, and Jose Pimentel, who lived in upstate New York and was "one hour away from completing the construction of a pipe bomb intended for detonation in New York City" when he was arrested.

AP reporters and editors, along with critics of the NYPD who embraced their reporting either haven't read the court guidelines, don't understand them or ignored them, Silber writes. "Anyone who denies the success of the demographics initiative is fortunate not to carry the burden of responsibility should there actually be a counterterrorism failure resulting in an attack. I, for one, would have borne that responsibility. The AP team would not have."

He believes the flaws were intentional.

"The war on the NYPD's method of combating terrorism is a war on the war on terror by proxy—an effort to portray the least controversial aspect of homeland security as instead a matter of great civil-libertarian concern," Silber writes in conclusion.

"By portraying the NYPD efforts as rogue operations, the AP and the Pulitzer committee are seeking to slacken attempts inside the United States to stop terrorist plots before they happen. Letting these false and misleading stories alter local counterterrorism work would be catastrophic."
Read the whole response here.

Palestinians Hail "Martyrs" Remains Returned by Israel

In a goodwill gesture aimed at resuming peace negotiations, Israel returned the bodies of 91 Palestinian militants Thursday to the West Bank and Gaza.

The dead included suicide bombers and other terrorists responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis, mostly civilians, over the last three decades.

Among them were the suicide bombers from the August 2003 No. 2 bus attack in Jerusalem and at Cafe Hillel in the city's German Colony the following month. The dead also included Abdullah Badran, a suicide bomber who killed four Israelis at Tel Aviv's Stage nightclub in 2005; Hiba Daraghmeh, the woman who killed three people in 2003 when she blew herself up at a mall in Afula; Hassan Abu Said, the Islamic Jihad terrorist who blew himself up at an open-air market in Hadera in 2005, killing five people; and Labib Azzam, who in 1995 murdered five Israelis and wounded 23 others in Ramat Gan.

Seventy-nine of the bodies were delivered to representatives of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, where they were immediately transferred to the Mukata headquarters of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. There, the PA held a "national rally" to honor the "martyrs," which was attended by Abbas, PLO leaders, and families of the dead.

The coffins, adorned with Palestinian flags, then were taken by the relatives for full military burials in their hometowns.

Another 12 coffins were delivered to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where they were greeted by hundreds of Palestinians and a 21-gun salute by an honor guard.

Work on the transfer began in January during exploratory discussions between Israeli and Palestinian envoys in Jordan. International powers urged Israel to offer goodwill gestures to keep the talks going and, unwilling to meet Abbas' demand for prisoner release, Israel settled on the repatriation of dead Palestinian terrorists instead.

More remains are scheduled to be transferred in the following weeks, while a decision on a prisoner release has not yet been made.

"We hope that this humanitarian gesture will serve both as a confidence-building measure and help get the peace process back on track," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. "Israel is ready for the immediate resumption of peace talks without any preconditions whatsoever."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton commended the gesture. "We believe that there is opportunity for direct negotiations. And we hope it was enhanced by the release of bodies today by the Israelis of Palestinians," she said Thursday in Copenhagen.

Despite the tough Israeli decision, Abbas said he still abhorred the "obstacles to the peace process created by the insistence of the Israeli government on changing the international reference points and by not ending settlement in the Palestinian territories."

PA Honors Repatriated Bodies of Terrorists

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas welcomed the bodies of 93 terrorists handed over by Israel in a pro-peace gesture, the Jerusalem Post reports. The move deeply upset the chairman of Israel's Almagor Terror Victims Associations, which petitioned the country's Supreme Court against the release and the subsequent glorification of the terrorists.

Approximately 2,000 Palestinians attended a "national rally" on behalf of the "martyrs" at the Palestinian presidential compound in Ramallah, including Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and other government officials. While Hamas members attended the Ramallah ceremony, their primary event was held in Gaza. Hamas members fired 21-bullet salutes in honor of the suicide attackers, as a "salutation for their sacrifices."

Almagor Terror Victims Association filed a petition against the diplomatic move late Wednesday night, but it was denied by Israel's Supreme Court without a hearing. The group also said that it would press Israel's parliament, the Knesset, to remedy the "lack of legal status for victims of terrorist murderers, while the Palestinians have the right to build monuments to the murderers in [Palestinian-controlled West Bank] Area A and B territories."

The PA frequently glorifies suicide bombers while delegitimizing Israel's right to exist, according to Palestinian Media Watch. On May 2, the Palestinian government hosted a soccer tournament for al-Quds University in Abu Dis, naming teams after famous terrorists. A May 15 op-ed in the PA's official daily called Israel's founding "the greatest theft in history" and continued with anticipation of Israel's destruction. PA TV also frequently broadcasts programs and music videos calling for attacks against Israel.

Arab Americans Seek Disadvantaged Minority Status

The U.S. Commerce Department is considering a petition to include Arab Americans on the list of socially and economically disadvantaged minority groups eligible for special business assistance.

The petition was submitted earlier this year by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) to make Arab Americans eligible for the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). The MBDA helps minority entrepreneurs establish and grow their businesses.

According to the ADC petition there has been an increase since 9/11 in "discrimination and prejudice in American society resulting in conditions under which Arab-American individuals have been unable to compete in a business world."

To support its claims, the ADC's petition emphasized the National Security Entry Exit Registration System, "which required non-immigrants to register at ports of entry and targeted males from Arab nations; stricter travel guidelines; and 'no-fly lists' that predominantly contained the names of Arab-Americans."

What the ADC petition ignored, however, were facts showing Arab Americans were more successful and better educated than the average American. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau from 2007-2009 showed that the mean individual income for Arab Americans was 27 percent higher than the national average and the percentage of Arab Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher was 45 percent compared to 28 percent for Americans at large.

The same patterns held true in the 2000 census and the 1990 census.

The Department of Commerce is investigating whether there is social and economic discrimination against Arab Americans and is seeking examples. The MBDA is scheduled to decide on the matter by June 27.

MBDA services are now offered to African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Spanish-speaking Americans, American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, Hasidic Jews, Asian-Pacific Americans and Asian Indians.

Iranian Official Admits Helping Syria

The Iranian government has consistently smuggled weapons and explosives to proxies in Syria and Lebanon using passenger jets, German broadcaster ZDF reported Wednesday.

Citing Western security officials and information from unspecified sources, the report alleges that Iranian-based commercial airlines Iran Air and Yas Air have transported weapons to Beirut and Damascus on several occasions on aircraft designated as passenger planes.

Though the types of weapons are unknown, ZDF asserts that the weapons were ordered by Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

The ZDF report came days after the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force admitted lending military support to President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.

Speaking to Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency, Deputy Commander Esmail Ghani said the Quds Force played a "physical and non-physical" role in Syria. This role, he claimed, mitigated the loss of life in the Syrian government's prolonged crackdown on its citizens, which Syrian authorities have consistently blamed on "terrorists" within its borders.

Coincidentally, Ghani's comments came shortly after Assad's forces massacred at least 108 people and injured 300 more in Houla in Homs province on Friday.

"If the Islamic Republic were not present in Syria, the killing of citizens would be greater," Ghani said.

His comments were removed from the ISNA website soon after they were published and no other official news outlet in Iran reported them.

Instead, other Iranian officials have blamed the death of Syrian civilians on Israel.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparsat told Iran's official news agency, IRNA, that Israel was "the root of the problems," and that "the Zionist regime's weakening position in the region" had led to "provocation."

Echoing these sentiments, former Revolutionary Guard chief and current secretary-general of Iran's Expediency Discernment Council Mohsen Rezaee criticized Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for accusing Iran and Hizballah of involvement in the Houla massacre. Though Netanyahu blamed Iran, "evidence suggests the influence of the Zionist regime in Syria," Rezaee said.

Though the United States, European Union and Syrian opposition leaders have long accused Iran of aiding Syria, Ghani's comments on Sunday mark the first time an Iranian official has publicly admitted that the Islamic Republic has a presence in Damascus.

The ZDF report is just the latest development in the history of cooperation between these two Islamic nations. In March, the US Department of the Treasury actually designated Ghani, as well as two other Revolutionary Guard officials and Yas Air, as terrorist entities for shipping weapons to Syria to support Assad's regime.

Islamist Pleads Guilty To Marine Car Attacks

A Seattle man has pleaded guilty to felony harassment and attempted malicious mischief after trying to run two Marine recruiters off the road last July. Michael Dale McCright, known online as Mikhail Jihad, also is suspected of ties to a plot targeting the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in the State of Washington.

McCright's plea to lesser charges allows him to avoid a life sentence under the Washington's three-strikes law, although he remains under investigation for "possible ties to domestic terrorism." According to charging documents, he spotted the Marines by their license plate and uniforms, "appeared to become angry," and tried to force them off the road.

Police discovered a cell phone in McCright's possession when they arrested him in September that had been used to call terror suspect Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, the ringleader of a plan to attack the Military Entrance Processing Station at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Law enforcement suspected a strong connection between McCright and Abdul-Latif because both targeted the American military.

Prosecutors have agreed to seek a four and a half year sentence, as part of the plea agreement. He was originally held on a $2 million bail, and his extensive criminal past included first-degree robbery, assault, and other felony crimes.

Muslim Brotherhood Election Success Threatens Israel

The Muslim Brotherhood's success in the first round of elections doesn't mean that the group is prepared to drop its militancy, despite promises of new rights for women and minorities in a broad political coalition. In an Arabic-language speech on May 17, the MB's General Guide Mohammed Badie called for Arab forces to take on Israel and not to forget the sacrifices that his group had made to destroy the Jewish state.

Badie referred to the West as the "colonial powers" that were "allied to forces of evil and world aggression," and explained that their complicity empowered the "Zionist enemy and its racial project, aimed at emptying Palestine of its people."

"As we salute the struggle, battle and Jihad of those who bear upon their shoulders their support of the Palestinian cause … let us reaffirm our adherence to all the constants of the Palestinian cause," he stated.

MB founder Hassan al-Banna "spent a large part of his life defending the cause of Palestine and the homeland, with his pen, his tongue, his wealth and himself," Badie said. The Brotherhood "expended through their history – and still does – self, money, effort, sweat and blood in support of Palestine and its people." He also rewrote history to claim that the Brotherhood had been suppressed by the Egyptian regime largely as a "penalty for their jihad and their martyrdom seeking for the sake of Palestine."

The message of the Arab revolutions is that the people can topple "corrupt regimes which knelt at the feet of the Zionists, and were subject to their orders," Badie said. "We have succeeded in toppling the most repressive regimes with will and determination; and you will succeed, with Allah's permission, in supporting the Palestinian cause," he added, calling Israel "the source of terrorism and true instability, not just in the region but in the whole world."

Evidence Ties Iran to Diplomat Assassination Plots

New evidence reveals Iranian agents and Hizballah militants have conspired to assassinate foreign diplomats from countries hostile to Iran, specifically targeting American, Israeli and Saudi officials, the Washington Post reports.

Several assassination plots in at least seven different countries during the past 13 months have been linked to either Iranian operatives or Iran-backed Hizballah agents.

American and Middle Eastern experts "see these incidents as part of an ongoing shadow war, a multi-sided covert struggle in which Iran also has been victim of assassinations," the Post reports.

The plots targeted foreign diplomats in Thailand, Pakistan, Turkey, Indian and Georgia.

Cables from the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan last November showed that Iranian nationals crossed into the country last fall and planned to use "silencer-equipped rifles" and car bombs to assassinate U.S. diplomats.

An unnamed foreign intelligence agency intercepted electronic messages which linked the plot back to an Azerbaijani individual with criminal history, named Balagardash Dashdev. He reportedly has strong ties to militant groups and intelligence agents based in Iran.

The assailants had "names [of employees]," a former State Department official said. "And they were interested in family members, too."

Investigators have obtained phone records, forensic tests, travel plans and cell phone SIM cards purchased in Iran as evidence in the plots.

The attacks were to be in revenge for deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists, which Iran blames on Israel and the United States. A statement from the Iranian Embassy in Baku denies the allegations and suggests the plot was fabricated.

"We believe that the glorious people of Azerbaijan understand that this part of the script of Iranophobia and Islamophobia is organized by the Zionists in the United States."

The Obama administration refused to directly link the Azerbaijan plot to the Iranians, perhaps fearful of obstructing U.S.-Iranian negotiations regarding Iran's nuclear program.

"The idea that Iran and Hezbollah might have worked together on these attempts is possible… but this conclusion is not definitive," a senior U.S. official who has examined the evidence stated.

However, officials have analyzed an abrupt freeze this spring in planned assassinations as Iran tuned down its anti-Western rhetoric and threats.

"There appears to have been a deliberate attempt to calm things down ahead of the talks…What happens if the talks fail — that's anyone's guess," said a Western diplomat who was briefed on the plots.

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