Thread: Recruits trained in terror, returned to North America

FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN

Recruits trained in terror, returned to North America

Western travel documents leave radicals 'potentially very dangerous'

Posted: January 19, 2011 9:27 pm Eastern
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.


Ottawa

Security analysts are increasing alarmed because al-Qaida not only has been recruiting Westerners as terrorists and sending them back to their home countries but because the "home country" in an increasing number of cases shares with the United States the world's longest essentially unprotected border – Canada, according to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Analysts say the Taliban has been recruiting militants from the northern neighbor to the U.S., training them in al-Qaida hideouts in North Waziristan in Pakistan, then sending them home to foment terror.

Sources report al-Qaida and the Taliban appear to be looking for Westerners who hail from nations that are part of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, including a number of countries from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Previously, according to reports, terror recruits have come from Germany, the U.K. and Great Britain and ranged in age from their 20s to their 50s.

The training, in what is considered the most lawless part of Pakistan, is raising concern even inside Pakistan, where officials have watched the growing trend of Westerners arriving and linking up with al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Even now, a special Pakistani unit is trying to track Westerners who arrive at the nation's airports and are given visas that are good for only a month.

The trouble, however, is that jihadist recruits avoid airport surveillance by going into the tribal areas through Turkey and Iran.

One U.S. counter-terrorism official said that the Western influx into Pakistan to join al-Qaida and the Taliban "is obviously a serious concern."

"Any terrorist with Western travel documents is, to put it mildly, a potentially very dangerous terrorist," the U.S. official said.

A Pakistani official said it's getting worse.

"We are tired of arresting such people," the official said. "There seems no end to them."

Pakistani analysts now point to a new wave of recruits from Canada who will receive their training and then be sent back into Canada to launch attacks.

One militant told Asia Times Online that a group of Canadians went to Afghanistan in February 2010.

"There were 12 of them," said Arif Wazir, a militant from Darpakhel in North Waziristan. "After nine months, al-Qaida's leaders decided to send them to North Waziristan and they reached Darpakhel in November last year.

"In Afghanistan, they received basic jihadi training, while currently they are busy doing some special courses," Wazir said. "The main learning is how to use sophisticated weapons, and how to connect with local smuggling networks in North America.

"They are also learning how to use ordinary material like sugar and basic chemicals to make powerful explosives," he said. "These militants will then return to their country to execute al-Qaida's plan of targeting big cities in Canada."

The trend, while alarming analysts, isn't completely new. WND reported exclusively as far back as 2002 on the case of 16-year-old Omar Khadr of Toronto, who was accused of murdering an American soldier in Afghanistan.

Khadr was 15 at the time of the killing, and the U.S. military believed he and his family were tied to al-Qaida.

The case against the suspect wound up only a few months ago, when he pleaded guilty to "all charges and specifications." He was sentenced to eight years.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, meantime, is investigating reports of the 12.

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Damn the porous borders will be the death of us.

"Any terrorist with Western travel documents is, to put it mildly, a potentially very dangerous terrorist," the U.S. official said."