18-Mar-18: Unanswered questions about terrorists hiding in plain sight

Ahmad Hassan [Image Source]

This past Friday in London, a criminal court convicted a young man, just 18, of attempted murder.

This arose from his planting a bomb on a busy London Underground train carriage whose detonation at Parsons Green station injured 51 people. His name is Ahmed Hassan. The judge, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, is reported to have told Hassan that his conviction by the jury was on the basis of "overwhelming evidence". He is going to be sentenced this week.

The Guardian's report of the trial's outcome sets the tone for a somewhat familiar scenario:

Small, shy and undoubtedly damaged, Ahmed Hassan attracted no end of kindness and sympathy when he arrived in Britain in the back of a cross-Channel lorry in October 2015, saying he was Iraqi and 16 years old... ["'A duty to hate Britain': the anger of tube bomber Ahmed Hassan", March 16, 2018]

From the brief reports, it seems life in England was not so terrible for the refugee. He won an Amazon voucher for becoming "student of the year"; he then used it buy one of the key chemicals for the explosive device. Just before executing his plan, he texted to a woman described in reports as his college mentor: "It's almost better to be back in Iraq. It's better to die because you have heaven."

Another clue to the personality throbbing inside the young jihadist is (as ITV nooted that he "got off the train one stop before the bomb partially exploded on the floor of the carriage" and "fled London with more than £2,000 in cash but was picked up by police at the Port of Dover the next day."

Also that he filled the bomb with shrapnel, including five knives, two screwdrivers, and nails and screws. This is what you do when you want to maximize carnage and agony, as the man who made the bomb that destroyed the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 did.

Some details from ITV's report:

• The court was told Hassan told Home Office officials he was trained by Islamic State "to kill" after he arrived in Britain in the back of a lorry in 2015. He was taken in by foster parents Penny and Ron Jones MBE, and studied media and photography at Brooklands College in Weybridge.
• The Iraqi-born teenager is said to have prepared the attack while his foster parents were away on holiday between September 1 and September 8 last year... The Old Bailey heard he wanted to cause "maximum" carnage to avenge the death of his father, who was blown up in Iraq more than 10 years before.
• One woman, known only as Miss S, giving evidence from behind a screen said she had been horribly scarred and burnt. Through tears she described hearing the bomb, seeing a giant flame and then realising her body and clothes were burning.
• Another victim, Ann Stuart told jurors: "What I saw was this flash and whoosh that came up from my side. My hair was smoking. I patted myself out and got off the train and this man picked me up and held me."
• Some 23 passengers suffered burns, with some describing their hair catching fire and their clothes melting in the blast. Another 28 suffered cracked ribs and other crush injuries in the stampede to get out of the platform via a narrow stairway.
• Commander Dean Haydon, head of Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command, said: "I describe Hassan as an intelligent and articulate individual that is devious and cunning in equal measures... On the one hand he was appearing to engage with the (Prevent) programme but he kept secret what he was planning and plotting. We describe him as a lone actor... It was only through good fortune that it only partially exploded. If it had, without a doubt we would have been dealing with many fatalities."

Here's how the UK's Security Minister at the Home Office, Ben Wallace, greeted Friday's verdict.

"I welcome the conviction of Hassan who sought to spread terror in this country and murder innocent people. This case is a bleak reminder of the devastating consequences of radicalisation... It is clear that there are some lessons to be learned in this particular case... However we should not allow this to undermine all the good work taking place across the country to stop terrorism and our work to help those who are legitimately in need. Ultimately, no one should be in doubt that those who bear responsibility for the atrocious attacks we have seen in the past year are the terrorists themselves."

The shrapnel

There is another way to look at this. It's well expressed in a leading article in today's Times of London. Some excerpts:

More than a century ago, in his book The Man Who Was Thursday, GK Chesterton introduced us to the idea of the terrorist hiding in plain sight... 

Ahmed Hassan, a teenage Iraqi asylum seeker, who in 2015 arrived in Britain illegally on a lorry going through the Channel tunnel, could hardly have done more to show he was serious about his terrorism... 

When it was discovered by staff at his sixth-form college that he seemed to be raising funds for Isis, he said it was his duty to hate Britain. He was referred to the government’s Prevent programme and its Channel project, which has the aim of mentoring young people and steering them away from radicalisation. It failed.

When he received a prize of an Amazon voucher for his studies at the college, he bought bomb-making equipment.

When he was placed with Ron and Penny Jones, foster parents appointed MBEs for their work, they were not told about his claims of Isis links or fears that he was being radicalised. But his behaviour did lead them to think he was suffering from a “mental deterioration”. They are now said to have stopped fostering.

There are so many things wrong with the Hassan case that it goes beyond what Ben Wallace, the security minister, has described as “some lessons to be learnt”. The collective failure of the security services, Surrey county council and other bodies could easily have resulted in a devastating loss of life... Many of those who were injured at the time are still affected. More questions need to be asked about Prevent, supposedly a deradicalisation programme.

Above all, why was Hassan here at all? At a time when this country has problems enough neutralising the danger from returning British Isis fighters, providing asylum to an Iraqi who claimed he had been trained to kill by Isis seems perverse in the extreme. His story, that he had been kidnapped and trained against his will, was hokum. He should have been put on the next plane out of Britain. Where terrorists are concerned we can never afford to be a soft touch. This time we were. ["Britain was a soft touch for this terrorist", The Sunday Times, March 18, 2018]

If these questions posed by Time of London's editorial people aren't asked in the right places, and the right places are not only in London or the UK, then it's a certainty that luck is going to run out at some point. The next seething, zealous, well-trained would-be mass-murderers are almost certainly located right now already inside the countries they lust to attack. It's insanity to ignore, in the name of political-correctness, the life-and-death dangers they respresent.

And if you're a senior politician doing the ignoring, that's irresponsible recklessness of a kind that has no expiation.

19-Jul-16: With ISIS involved, the refugee and the knifer/axer get some media attention; the victims, not so much

The 17 year-old slasher: German security officials chased him
and shot him dead, bringing last night's attack to an end [Image Source]

We now know more about the minor who carried out the knifing/axing attack on innocent travelers aboard a German train last night that we reported here earlier today.

Bavaria's interior minister Joachim Herrmann said the teen — who came to Germany over a year ago as an unaccompanied minor and had lived with a foster family for about two weeks — appeared to have acted alone. He told a press conference that the handpainted ISIS flag was found in the teen's room along with texts discussing the life of Muslims and how they "have to stand up and fight." A note found also suggested the teen may have written a farewell letter, Herrmann added. The ISIS-affiliated Amaq Agency issued a statement saying a "soldier" responding to the militant group's call to target the West was responsible for the attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. The statement did not indicate that ISIS had any role in directing or organizing the attack. Herrmann, however, said the motive for the attack still needed to be investigated and that authorities were trying to find out more about about the suspect's background and route to Germany. "I cannot say if this is the result of a network," he told the press conference.

Over at the website of i24news.tv, they are reporting that the attacker was in the service of ISIS when he carried out the slashing rampage - and they seem to be relying on the very same source as the report above:

The Islamic State group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for an axe and knife attack carried out on a German train by a 17-year-old Afghan refugee the night before, according to the IS affiliated Amaq agency. The "individual who carried out the axe attack in Germany was a soldier of the Islamic State who executed the operation in response to calls to target nations in the coalition fighting the Islamic State," said the statement.

Israel National News has this:

In the footage released by ISIS's al-Amaq propaganda outlet, 17-year-old Afghan national Mohammed Riyad can be seen delivering a speech in the Pashto language, while brandishing a knife. He is described in the video as "a soldier of the Islamic State who carried out the Wurzburg attack."

For the record, here is how the German national broadcaster Deutsche Welle is currently (in the past hour) reporting this latest development:

Afghan migrants fear backlash after Würzburg attack | Afghan asylum seekers in Germany say the recent terror attack in Würzburg could further delay their asylum applications and trigger a backlash against them. They urge not to be painted with the same brush... Germany saw an influx of over 1.1 million asylum seekers in 2015, more than any other European country. The highest number of asylum seekers came from Syria, followed by Afghanistan. Many of them were underage, unaccompanied boys and girls fleeing their countries in search of a better life in Europe.

We checked to see what Deutsche Welle had reported in the past 18 hours on the victims of the slashing attack. So far all we could find was this:

Four passengers were injured. Two of them are still in mortal danger. [Source: Axe attack on German train]

and

"Hong Kong's government condemns Würzburg train attack"

Being a victim was never much good, but it's especially true about being a victim of a terrorist attack. Basically, no one in the media is that interested. It's the perpetrators that tend to get the lion's share of the attention.

UPDATE Wednesday July 20, 2016: It's now evident that the murder-minded axe/knife attacker in Monday night's slashing of passengers on a German train (a) has a name different from the one the German authorities reported; (b) is not from Afghanistan but a different country; (c) while yesterday he was neither a radical nor a fanatic today he appears to have been both; (d) there was no evidence tying him to the global jihadists on Tuesday but on Wednesday it's fairly overwhelming; and (e) the authorities in Germany, which will have taken in about a million more refugees and asylum seekers by the time 2016 is over, are completely on top of things and the situation could hardly be better, more or less. This is from today via AFP:

"Sources close to the German security services now think he might have pretended to be Afghan on arrival in Germany in 2015 in order to have a better chance at securing asylum, television station ZDF reported. In the IS video the youth uses phrases of a dialect of Pashto spoken in Pakistan and not Afghanistan and experts have indicated that his accent is also clearly Pakistani, ZDF said. A Pakistani document was also found in his room. The name he used in the video, “Mohammed Riyadh,” does not match the name under which he registered in Germany, Riaz Kahn, the station added... Locals described the assailant, identified in media reports as Riaz A., as “calm and even-keeled” and a “devout Muslim who did not appear to be radical or a fanatic,” according to Joachim Herrmann, interior minister of Bavaria state.
“According to the investigation thus far, there was no evidence on site to point to him belonging to the Islamist network,” Herrmann said. Police however later found a farewell letter he apparently left for his father in which he said the world’s Muslims “must defend themselves.”
“Now pray for me that I can take revenge on non-believers, pray for me that I can get to heaven,” the note said. Prosecutors said he shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) three times as he made his way through the carriage. An eyewitness told DPA news agency that the train, which had been carrying around 25 people, looked “like a slaughterhouse.”

19-Jul-16: Tentacles in Germany: Again, a train, an axe, a religious war-cry, innocent victims and a search for motives

Sadly familiar: Disingenuous reporting from
Aljazeera where the "real" victim gets
mentioned in the headline and motive is always
a deep mystery [Source]

From Associated Press this morning:

A man armed with an ax and a knife attacked passengers aboard a regional train in southern Germany | Police kill attacker who slashed passengers on German train
Monday, July 18, 2016 | BERLIN (AP) — A man armed with an ax and a knife attacked passengers aboard a regional train in southern Germany on Monday night, injuring four people before he was shot and killed by police as he fled. Wuerzburg police said on their Facebook page that three of the victims suffered serious injuries and one was slightly injured. Another 14 people were being treated for shock. Police said there was not yet any information on the motive behind the attack, nor details on the identity of the attacker. The train was on its way from the Bavarian town of Treuchtlingen to Wuerzburg, which is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Nuremberg.

Certainly not the first such recent attack on a European train [background]. And reminiscent of an attack in May 2016 when a man shouting "Allahu Akbar" stabbed one innocent victim to death and slashed three others at a railway station near Munich. That act of evident jihad "raised fears that Germany... was now being targeted by Islamist extremists". That's a dramatic revelation.

And did we mention the role of "Allahu Akbar" in last night's attempted murder-by-slashing? Though it does not get mentioned at all in AP's report or in the vast majority of newspapers this morning, one British source says

Police have confirmed that 18 people have been injured in the horrifying attack - which began in a train this evening. Four are understood to be seriously injured. A 17-year-old Afghan refugee believed to be behind the attack was shot dead by police as he reportedly charged at them following the incident at Würzburg-Heidingsfeld station. The boy is reported to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" before the attack... The Bavarian Interior Ministry has now confirmed the attacker shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) before hacking at passengers... An official has said the incident was ‘probably’ linked to Islamic extremism.

Aljazeera manages to avoid touching on any issues of religion or the theological war cries in telling what happened. It's sadly typical of a certain kind of disingenuous reporting in which they specialize there. See "Afghan refugee shot dead after train attack in Germany" and note whose victimhood is mentioned in the carefully-phrased headline.

Here's how German's state broadcaster recounts what happened:

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann confirmed in a television interview that the teenager boarded the train in Ochsenfurt, where he had been staying with a foster family after traveling unaccompanied to Germany to seek asylum. "The attacker appears to have been a 17-year-old Afghan who has been living in Ochsenfurt for some time," Herrmann said. "He suddenly attacked passengers with a knife and an axe, critically injuring several. Some of them may now be fighting for their lives." The Afghan national reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" before launching the attack, wielding a knife and axe. "The perpetrator was able to leave the train, police left in pursuit and as part of this pursuit, they shot the attacker and killed him," a police spokesman said. The motive of the attack was not immediately clear.

The BBC says

Although the motive has not been established, the BBC's Damien McGuinness in Berlin says there is nervousness in Germany about attacks by Islamist extremists following the attacks across the border in France.

Yes, we can fully understand the nervousness.

But among the questions we're left to ponder: don't they do careful checks of passengers on public transport in Germany to see if they happen to be carrying axes? Or knives? Perhaps they should.

And at what point, under what circumstances, does the motive of a young man with a knife and an axe and an urge to kill people by slashing them to death while invoking an only-too-familiar religious war cry become "immediately clear"? If ever?