Saudi terror cell, possibly al Qaeda, behind Boston Marathon bombings - Manhunt

[bsteadman]

Saudi terror cell, possibly al Qaeda, behind Boston Marathon bombings; Manhunt for escaped suspect

Atlas Shrugs
Pamela Geller
4/17/2013

Excerpt:

I am disturbed by the speedy release of the Saudi national. It takes longer than 15 hours to investigate all of Abdul al-Harbi's relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business and school friends.

Dan F opined, " If it turns out that the demon who carried out this atrocity was motivated by Islamic political doctrine (jihad), will our Islamophile president come clean and give us all the facts, wherever they may lead? This may sound impertinent but it’s not. We have any number of examples of Obama running interference for Islamist motivation, including “work accidents” such as Major Nidal Hasan's shooting rampage at Fort Hood and Obama’s ongoing cover-up of Benghazi, to name just two." ...... one liberal idiot writing for Salon hoped for out loud, “A white American.” Who can say for sure? We’ll just have to wait for the authorities to tell us. Then see how the Administration and their media-arm spin it"

Saudi terror cell, possibly al Qaeda, behind Boston Marathon bombings. Manhunt for escaped suspect Debka

FBI Special Agent Richard Deslauriers told reporters Tuesday, April 16, that the probe had no leads 18 hours after two explosions blew up at the annual Boston Marathon’s finishing line, killing three people and injuring 176 – 17 critically. debkafile’s counterterrorism sources can disclose however that the investigation has in fact homed in on a suspected terror cell of three Saudi nationals, very possibly tied to Al Qaeda.
The flat they share in the Revere, Massachusetts, near Boston, was searched after the questioning of one of the suspects, a Saudi student, who was hospitalized with badly burned hands. One of his flatmates was taken into custody over “visa problems.” A third is on the run. All three hail from a prominent Saudi family belonging to a tribe from the Asir province bordering on Yemen.

The search for the wanted man led to the grounding of a plane at Logan International Airport Tuesday. The investigation has meanwhile broadened out to places in and outside Boston in a search for the cell’s accomplices.

The origins of the Saudi cell, if confirmed, strongly suggest that Al Qaeda of Arabia – AQAP –succeeded in planting a cell in the United States for the bombing attack in Boston – and possibly more than one in other parts of the US. Asir Province is known as a hotbed of resistance to the Saudi throne in Riyadh.
US law enforcement authorities in charge of the probe are refusing to confirm any suspects are in custody, or even leads to whoever carried out the bombings. President Barack Obama said in his second statement in 24 hours: “…we don’t know if who was behind the bombings were foreign, domestic or individual.” The President was forced to admit for the first time that the FBI was investigating “an act of terror.”

Here's what we know.

The pressure-cooker bombs that exploded in the viewing area of the Boston Marathon have long been favored by terrorists across the globe. The two used in Monday’s attack are similar to devices in the failed 2010 Times Square bombing and the 2006 Mumbai train bombings that killed more than 200 people, officials said.

“This is done just to harm people. It’s the explosive pressure that explodes out and tears the metal at like 200 mph.”

Pressure cookers have become terrorists’ bomb casing of choice because security teams usually remove garbage cans and mailboxes in advance of high-profile or sensitive events, Horace added. Pressure cookers are common in South Asia and the Middle East and don’t usually arouse suspicion there, according to an Interagency Counter Terrorism Task Force advisory sent out to NYPD and other first-responders yesterday.

[...]

When American citizen Faisal Shahzad tried to blow up Times Square with a SUV-load of explosives in 2010, he used a pressure-cooker bomb packed with 120 firecrackers as part of the payload.

Authorities also found two pressure cookers — along with other bomb-making materials — in the Texas hotel room of Naser Jason Abdo, an Army private arrested in 2011 for allegedly plotting to blow up a restaurant full of GIs.

The inexpensive bomb casings are used with greater frequency outside the United States, especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. (NY Post)

Walid Shoebat raises a number of important questions here and here.

"“Innocent” Saudi has ties to several Al-Qaeda Terrorists" Shoebat Foundation on April 17, 201

A couple of weeks ago we warned America about the very serious problem of Saudi infiltration; many of these Saudi nationals are criminals and terrorists.

After the bombings, a Saudi by the name of Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi was hospitalized and became a ‘suspect’, then a ‘person of interest’. His apartment was searched by federal and local authorities. No confirmation has been given so far to his involvement. The Media were quick to claim his innocence, of course.

This brings us to the Boston marathon bombings. Foreign Policy is reporting that he’s ‘no longer a person of interest’, which means he’s “innocent”, right?

Perhaps a quick look at the Arabic sources should raise the eyebrows of every American relative to the extent of the problem at hand. Many from Al-Harbi’s clan are steeped in terrorism and are members of Al-Qaeda. Out of a list of 85 terrorists listed by the Saudi government shows several of Al-Harbi clan to have been active fighters in Al-Qaeda:

#15 Badr Saud Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
#73 Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
#26 Khalid Salim Uwaid Al-Lahibi Al-Harbi
#29 Raed Abdullah Salem Al-Thahiri Al-Harbi
#43 Abdullah Abdul Rahman Muhammad Al-Harbi (leader)
#60 Fayez Ghuneim Humeid Al-Hijri Al-Harbi
Source: http://aalhameed1.net/vb/showthread.php?t=1565

Then you have Al-Harbi clan members in Gitmo:

Salim Salman Awadallah Al-Sai’di Al-Harbi
Majid Abdullah Hussein Al-Harbi
Muhammad Abdullah Saqr Al-Alawi Al-Harbi
Ghanem Abdul Rahman Ghanem Al-Harbi
Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awfi Al-Harbi
Source: http://www.muslm.net/vb/showthread.p...مو

There are specific Saudi clans that are rife with members of Al-Qaeda, which makes it quite alarming as to why nearly a hundred thousand student visas are issued to these. Americans are clueless as to clan ties when it comes to terrorism.

Lesson one: Terrorism and crime by the Saudis is interlinked extensively within families, as we see in the Harbi clan.

Let me explain. Americans will never find the Kaczynski Clan official website supporting Ted Kaczynski.

Saudi Arabia is a far different story.

Take Khalid Aldawsari, a Saudi national. He is a student and an Al-Qaeda terrorist who planned to use weapons of mass destruction in the U.S., to include an attempted assassination of president Bush. Aldawsari was not a lone wolf; he was backed by an entire system. The wealthy and powerful Aldawsari clan, which includes the powerful Sheik Saud Bin Mut’ab who hosted a support group for the terrorist defending him publicly while funding his legal team.
.................................................. .......

View the complete article at:

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/a...ists.html#more

[bsteadman]

The Epic Failure of the Intel Agencies on the Boston Bombing

American Thinker
Pamela Geller
4/17/2013

Excerpt:

I find it very disconcerting that thirty-six hours (as of this writing) after the Boston terrorist bombing, law enforcement and counterterrorism officials are running hotlines and calls for "anyone seen with an unusually heavy, dark bag" in the Boston area. A $50,000 reward has been offered for clues leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator. Officials are saying that this case is "wide open."

Wide open? Really?

This is where the status of the investigation is. In Europe, and in Israel, whenever there is a terrorist attack, they have someone or some group in their sights or in custody every time. Take 3/11 in Madrid, 7/7 in London, the Glasgow jihad plot -- every jihad attack and jihad plot in Europe, European authorities are right on it, identifying and apprehending the perpetrators. They know exactly who the bad guys are. They know exactly where to go. This is a historical first: that America is not dramatically ahead of the curve, but dramatically behind the curve. So American citizens are now considered expendable, just the way our soldiers are in Afghanistan.

It should bother every American that Europe and Israel are so far ahead of us in intel that we're begging CNN and Fox for clues -- and apparently detaining people who have nothing to do with the bombing, raiding their homes, taking bagfuls of evidence out, and then saying, "Never mind."

Really? The billions that Americans spend for the CIA, FBI, DHS, NSA, JTTF, and all the other various counterterrorism agencies, and they don't have a clue? All they have for us is 1-800-CALL-FBI? This is unconscionable. If that's where we are, disband these incompetent, inane agencies that call jihad "workplace violence" and name Atlas Shrugs as a "domestic hate group," when in fact Atlas Shrugs is battling violence and mass murder across the world. How did this happen eleven years after 9/11?

We know that the bomb mimics the IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know that it is the same kind of bomb that Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square jihad car bomber, used to try to murder hundreds, if not thousands, on a crowded Saturday night in Times Square. News reports from Boston hospitals said that "patients had completely mangled and destroyed extremities." We know that the recipe for this bomb was published in the al-Qaeda four-color glossy, Inspire magazine. These bombs were designed to cut through bone and flesh and mutilate as many humans as possible. And we have nothing almost two days into the bombing? As an American, I'm ashamed.

It's unconscionable that they would allude to jihad with the taking into custody of the Saudi national, who was a devout Muslim from Medina -- and this was run not only in the New York Post, but on CBS and in mainstream media websites -- and then say, "Never mind." Of course counter-jihad websites would run these stories. It's what we do. But the last thing we want to do is smear anyone, because we have experienced the very same smear. If Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi was completely innocent of any involvement in the attacks, law enforcement officials bear a tremendous responsibility for the besmirching of his name.

Who's running the investigation? The Keystone Kops? The question is: was this attack a jihadi operation, or are we facing some brand new threat that we have never seen before in the United States? We have seldom seen bombs going off in the name of any ideology other than jihad. Timothy McVeigh was a one-off. He didn't represent any major movement. And to this day, there are questions about the third man who was involved.
.................................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/...n_bombing.html

[bsteadman]

'Dark-skinned' bombing suspect identified

Breakthrough from analysis of department-store video

WND
Joe Kovacs
4/17/2013

Excerpt:

Authorities probing the Boston Marathon bombings believe they have identified a suspect and are now circulating photos of two persons of interest, but the U.S. Justice Department is denying earlier broadcast reports someone has been arrested.

The suspect, described as a “dark-skinned” male, was picked up on security camera footage from the Lord & Taylor department store along the marathon route, near the site of the second explosion.

It was reported the suspect could be seen on camera dropping a black bag.

The source also indicated video from a Boston television station contributed to the progress in the hunt for the party responsible for the April 15 explosions that left at least three dead and some 175 injured.

After initial reports saying the suspect was in custody, CNN reporter Fran Townsend said, “There’s not somebody in custody or arrested. The situation is very fluid. They’re working to positively identify this individual … There has been a misunderstanding … as law enforcement tries to work through this.”

Justice Department officials told CNN’s Joe Johns there was indeed no one in custody Wednesday afternoon.

After CNN and others wrongly reported an arrest had been made in Boston, the FBI is urging media to “exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.”

“Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack,” the FBI said. “Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.”

Meanwhile, Rick Leventhal of Fox News reported, “Law enforcement is circulating photos of two suspects in this case who may have been involved.”

“They’re definitely looking for them. They want to talk to these men. They may have been involved in this bombing. But we are not showing you the photo for fear of jeopardizing the investigation,” he added, noting that he personally had seen the photos.

CBS correspondent Bob Orr said authorities have video of a man in a black jacket on a cell phone, wearing a gray hoodie and a white baseball cap backwards placing a black bag at the second bomb site outside of the Forum restaurant on Boylston Street and then leaving the area before that explosion.

Orr said the man was on the phone at the second bomb site when the first bomb exploded.

Orr said the FBI looked at the time the man was on his cell phone and then went back and scanned all the calls made in the area to track who they wanted to talk to.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told CNN Wednesday evening, “Every hour we’re closer [to finding the perpetrator].”

“I wish they had nailed the perpetrator within minutes of this catastrophe, but I also understand from experience this is going to take some time,” Patrick said. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack as the old saying goes. … I’m pretty sure they’ll find that needle.”

Patrick added it was too early to tell if the party responsible for the carnage were a foreign or domestic terrorist.

“It’s not that this is about fitting some pattern, foreign or domestic or so on, it’s about finding individual pieces of evidence and following that trail and letting the facts lead us to the story rather than letting a set of suppositions lead us,” he explained.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh scorched CNN for withholding details about the suspect, as the network noted the details were sensitive.

“If they had news that the perpetrator here was white, we would have had height, weight, clothes, facial hair,” Limbaugh said. “We would know everything. We would know what radio show the guy listens to, what TV network he watches, what publications he reads. We would know everything there is if the guy was white.”
..............................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/dark-skin...ct-in-custody/