“The Maldives has many uninhabited islands, which could be used by Al Qaeda not only for training jihadi terrorists, but also for mounting a major act of maritime terrorism against American ships visiting ports in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and against the US naval base in Diego Garcia. Al Qaeda has suspected for a long time that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who allegedly orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, and Hambali of the Jemmah Islamia were kept by the US intelligence in Diego Garcia before they were flown to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.”
The “Threats Watch”, a well-known US group, which, inter alia, closely monitors the various Internet sites known to be or suspected to be associated with Al Qaeda and disseminates its observations, has carried an alert titled ” Ansar Al Mujahideen Targets the Maldives“.It is reproduced below:
Ansar Al Mujahideen Targets the Maldives
A previously unknown group called “the Media Section of Ansar Al Mujahideen” posted a teaser video today on a well-known Internet forum associated with al-Qaeda that promotes an upcoming full-feature package called “Your Brothers in Maldives are Calling You!”
The teaser lasts 1 minute and 49 seconds and features clips recorded inside a Wahhabi mosque during the October 6, 2007, standoff between approximately 90 masked militants armed with swords and iron rods and 100 government soldiers on Himandhoo island. The tiny island, which belongs to Alif Alif atoll, lies 50 miles to the west of Male’, measures only 750m across and has a population of 583 residents. It is known as a hotbed of Wahhabi activity and, according to multiple intelligence sources, was a major transit point for South and Southeast Asian militants traveling by boat to fight in Somalia in the Fall and Winter of 2006.
The standoff occurred at the unregistered Dhar-al-Khuir Mosque on October 6, 2007, which was harboring at least two members of a cell that orchestrated the country’s first Jihadist terror attack. The attack, on September 29 at a popular tourist drop-off point in Male’, injured 12 foreign nationals and, according to police investigations, was funded by Islamic NGOs in Pakistan and the UK. Although the NGOs have not yet been named publicly, knowledgeable Maldives observers suspect the Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq NGO, the charitable wing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
When fully released, the video will mark the first al Qaeda messaging product that features the Maldives. It is likely a call for foreign recruitment and financing for the local terror cell, which is believed to have grown considerably in the past year. The Maldives is believed to fall under the purview of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a Comorro who is wanted for the 1998 East Africa embassy attacks and is believed to be hiding inside Somalia.
Interestingly, the teaser appears to be an indigenous product. It was seeded in 3 file formats (WMV, MP4 and FLV) and 4 sizes across 23 sites, including rapidshare.com, zshare.net, megaupload.com, badongo.com, and archive.org. The archive.org location appears to be the master distribution point and is registered to a false e-mail address “walad99@spambog.net.” It also contains documents with keywords related to travel and tourism, which is the main source of income for the country and the main issue of contention for Maldivian militants.
My comments on this worrisome development are as follows: In 2002, a 28-year-old Maldivian national named Ibrahim Fauzee was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, and taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba by the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on suspicion of his having links with Al Qaeda. As his interrogation did not confirm this suspicion, the FBI sent him to the Maldives. He lives in Male and is subject to regular police surveillance. The reported expansion of Al Qaeda’s arc of jihadi operations to the Maldives should be of concern to India, Sri Lanka, the US, Singapore and the international maritime community as a whole. The Maldives has many uninhabited islands, which could be used by Al Qaeda not only for training jihadi terrorists, but also for mounting a major act of maritime terrorism against American ships visiting ports in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and against the US naval base in Diego Garcia. Al Qaeda has suspected for a long time that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who allegedly orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, and Hambali of the Jemmah Islamia were kept by the US intelligence in Diego Garcia before they were flown to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba. KSM was arrested in Rawalpindi in March,2003, and Hambali in Ayuthya in Thailand in August,2003.Even though there have been periodic reports of Al Qaeda planning a major maritime terrorism strike, it has not been able to mount a successful act of maritime terrorism after its attack on a French oil tanker (Limburg) off Aden in 2002. India has to be specially concerned not only over the possibility of an Al Qaeda-mounted operation in ports in South India, but also over the possibility of attacks on Indian ships and military personnel visiting the Maldives.
The role of the Bangladeshis is not yet clear. A Police spokesman said on November 8, 2007, that 10 other Maldivian nationals had participated in the plot, but they managed to run away to Pakistan before the explosion. The Police have sought the assistance of the INTERPOL for their arrest by the Pakistani authorities and deportation to the Maldives.
this article is regarding the explosion in a park in Male, the capital of the Maldives, on September 29,2007, in which eight Chinese, two Japanese and two British tourists were injured.he Chinese were from the Chinese mainland.
Eight Maldivian nationals and three Bangladeshi nationals are under questioning in Police custody. The eight Maldivian nationals under questioning are: 21-year old Moosa Inas and 20-year-old Ahmed Naseer, both of the Laamu Atoll, Gaaf Ali, 19-year-old Mohamed Sobah of Villigilli near Male and Moosa Fazeel, Amir Abdullah, Asrar Saud and Ismail Nasser, all four blacksmiths from Rinbidhoo, who were working in Male. A local source reported that in addition to these eight, two other Maldivian nationals— Abdul Latheef Ibrahim, age 24, of Green Villa, L. Kalhaidhoo and Ali Shameem aged 25 of Dhoores Sh. Komandoo were also arrested in a house at Manchangolhi, but this was not confirmed. According to the Police, these two have fled to Pakistan.
Out of the eight Maldivian nationals arrested so far, three —Moosa Inas, Ahmed Naseer and Gaaf Ali—were reported to have fled to an unidentified foreign country after the explosion. They were arrested by the authorities there and sent back to the Maldives.A closed circuit TV footage showed Moosa Inas and Ahmed Naseer entering the Sultan Park, where the explosion took place, 10 minutes before the explosion and leaving the park on foot separately of each other seven minutes later. Three minutes later,Moosa Inas returned to the park on a motorcyle. The explosion took place a minute later. He immediately fled from the area on his motor-bike. According to the Police, the improvised explosive device was triggered off by a mobile phone, which was later recovered at the instance of one of the arrested persons.
In addition to these eight Maldivian nationals, the Police also reportedly detained for questioning three Bangladeshis working in the Maldives—- Abdur Razzaq, Khabir Hussain and Imran Ali.Razzaq was working for Travelling Maldives, a company which owns two resorts and a number of safari boats, while Hussain and Ali were working for a fisheries company called HMS Maldives.
The role of the Bangladeshis is not yet clear. A Police spokesman said on November 8, 2007, that 10 other Maldivian nationals had participated in the plot, but they managed to run away to Pakistan before the explosion. The Police have sought the assistance of the INTERPOL for their arrest by the Pakistani authorities and deportation to the Maldives. The spokesman was quoted as saying: “They masterminded the bombing and then fled to Pakistan. Three of the men have confessed to police that they planted the device to target, attack and injure non-Muslims, to fulfil jihad.Two of the suspects in Pakistan, Ali Shameem and Abdul Latheef Ibrahim, both Maldivian nationals, were on a travel blacklist after family members voiced concerns about their intention to travel to Pakistan to train for militant attacks. They slipped out of the country with the assistance of an immigration officer who has been arrested. Several of the fugitives, as well as some of the suspects detained in the Maldives, received training in bomb making in Pakistani madrasas.”
It is not yet known whether the persons already arrested and those, who have fled to Pakistan, belonged to any jihadi organisation. However, all of them are suspected to be Wahabis, who were practising and preaching Wahabism. Did the spread of Wahabi influence come from Pakistan or directly from Saudi Arabia? Immediately after the explosion, there was speculation that the perpetrators had studied in Pakistani madrasas. This was refuted by the Pakistani High Commission in Male.
Dr. Jamaluddin, Second Secretary in the Pakistani High Commission, was quoted by the media as saying as follows: “It is 100% untrue to say Maldivians are coming to Pakistan to study in radical madrasas. Its not possible for them to do so.Rigorous visa checks mean it is impossible for Maldivians to enter Pakistan for religious training. There are less than 100 Maldivians in Pakistan right now.Most of those are in medical colleges or other professional institutions. Or they are police officers receiving training. We only issue visas when there are recommendations from the Government here, and confirmation from the colleges in Pakistan.”
8. This was corroborated by an unidentified source in the Maldivian Foreign Office, who was quoted by the media as saying that the Governments of the two countries had agreed “several years ago to only issue study visas for Maldivians who produced letters of enrolment from bona fide universities, excluding religious schools.”
Despite this, the Police spokesman claimed on November 8,2007, that some of the perpetrators had received training in bomb-making in Pakistani madrasas. Well-informed sources in the Maldives Government say that while the local police and immigration keep a strict watch on persons travelling directly to Pakistan, they may not know if some persons go to India or Bangladesh and from there proceed to Pakistan for training without any entry in their passports regarding their visit to Pakistan. The suspicion is that either the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) or the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) might be recruiting young Maldivians studying in Indian educational institutions and taking them across to Pakistan or Bangladesh for training.
The Saudi role in the spread of Wahabism arises from the large flow of funds from Saudi Arabia for promoting religious education. An unidentified observer commented as follows:”Signs of “creeping Islamisation,” as one Maldivian described it, have been growing for over a decade. Walk through any island in the country in 2000, and you would be hard pressed to spot a veil,” the editor of a local paper told me. “Now on some islands it is difficult to find a woman without one.” As in several Western countries, the burka has come to represent Islam for many in the Maldives. A sign of the veil’s new status came in March, when opposition activist Aishath Aniya, who has never worn the burka, penned an article openly hostile to the practice. Death threats related to her article forced Aniya into hiding. And public outcry forced her to resign from her position in the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party. The Saudi Government has pumped millions into the Maldives, notably building an Islamic college. And with Saudi money have come preachers of the Saudis’ conservative Wahabi Islam. Characteristically wearing their pants above the ankle and with longer beards, Wahabis have become an increasingly common sight on the streets of Malé, even in my six months here. Sensational stories, apparently not apocryphal, of young brides persuading a close friend to become their husband’s second wife to speed their passage to heaven, are common in Malé. Wearing full veil, with no flesh showing, is not permitted under the country’s moderate state Islam. But women fully covered in black are now occasionally seen on the street.”
The Wahabis coming from Saudi Arabia have been accusing scantily-clad Western tourists of damaging the Islamic culture and the Islamic way of life through their life style while visiting the tourist spots. Tourism is being projected as harmful to the pristine purity of Islam. Similar allegations were also made against volunteers of the humanitarian relief organisations, who had come to the Maldives after the Tsunami of December,2004, to provide relief to the victims. The destruction caused by the Tsunami also saw a large flow of funds from Saudi institutions and Pakistani organisations such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent organisation of the LET, to provide humanitarian relief to the victims.
There were sporadic violent incidents even before the explosion, which had not received attention outside the Maldives. To quote the same observer: “Violence is not unknown. Most famously on Himandhoo island last year, Wahabis barricaded the island mosque after rumours it was constructed on a burial ground. An island official was found dead on the island’s beach in December, after enforcing a government decision to close a breakaway mosque. His younger brother had narrowly escaped a burning speedboat with huge gashes to his chest two months earlier. The police have not prosecuted anyone in relation to either incident. But the island has since divided between pro-government moderates and conservatives, with the latter refusing to send their children to a government school as instruction is not in Arabic. But violence has only reached the capital once. In June police and radical youths fought a pitched battle in Malé as the government tried to close an illegal Friday prayers meeting. A policeman was hospitalised by masonry thrown from the congregation before several of the prayer group were forced into a police van.”
The Adhaalath [Justice] Party, founded in 2005 by religious scholars, has been canvassing for governance in accordance with the Sharia, but it has not come to notice for indulging in any violent activities so far.
The police investigation so far has been focussed on the activities of the radicals in the island of Himandhoo where the writ of the State is hardly effective and on special pro-Wahabi prayer groups in Male, which do not accept the Government regulation that mosques can be established and run only by the Government and that clerics appointed for conducting religious services must be approved by the Government. The radicals in the Himandhoo island constructed their own mosque to hold prayers in accordance with Wahabi traditions. When the Government had it demolished, they had it re-built. On October 7,2007, there were reports of a clash between the police and the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) and the radicals of the island when the Police and the MNDF went to the island to arrest some persons in connection with the investigation into the explosion. The radical elements even seized a member of the MNDF and held him as a hostage for some time in order to demand that the Police and the MNDF should leave the island. While the Wahabis in Male have not built their own mosque, they avoid going to the Government-run mosque and prefer to hold their prayers in the residences of the members of the group by rotation.
On October 18,2007, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ordered that fundamentalists should not be allowed to conduct religious services and that foreign clerics should not be allowed to enter the country without special permission.Under the new measures, the Government will also not recognise educational qualifications obtained from madrasas. Commenting on these measures, Mr.Abdul Majeed Abdul Baari, the leader of the Adhaalath Party, said: “Banning the full covering and the full veil for women would not stop terrorism.
The Government is going to fight terrorism by banning the beard and the burka.We are asking the Government to study the causes of terrorism and extremism.’
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has also been using the Maldives as a transit point for its arms smuggling activities for many years. There were reports of the Maldivian authorities co-operating with the Sri Lankan Navy in some of its recent operations to disrupt arms smuggling by the LTTE. Thus, the LTTE has reasons for anger against the Maldivian authorities.
Twelve foreign tourists—- eight Chinese, two Japanese and two British— were injured in an explosion on September 29, 2007, in a park near the main mosque in the Maldives capital of Male. It is not yet known whether the Chinese were from mainland China or elsewhere. Nor is it known whether the explosion specifically targeted the foreign tourists or whether the tourists just happened to be near the scene when the explosion took place. The local police, however, seem to suspect that the blast was meant to target foreign tourists and affect the flow of tourists to the country. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the blast.
The Friends of Maldives (FOM), a non-Governmental organisation, which has been supporting the pro-democracy movement in the Islands, has strongly refuted insinuations allegedly made by President Abdul Gayoom and a Government spokesman that the FOM, which, according to them, has been carrying on a Boycott of Tourism to the Maldives campaign, might have been behind the blast. In a statement, Mr. David Hardingham, the founder of the FOM, has stated as follows: “The FOM has never requested tourists NOT to visit the Maldives .The FOM campaign asks tourists to choose a resort not closely associated with the repressive Regime of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
FOM understands that the bombing has potentially significant ramifications for the Maldives tourism industry and in solidarity with the people of the Maldives, the FOM has decided on a temporary suspension of the FOM Selected Resorts Boycott Campaign. This will be reviewed at the end of October 2007. The FOM maintains the importance of the installation of a liberal and democratic Maldives where tourism and free enterprise can flourish and prosper. The current dictatorship and their refusal to allow a real democracy and respect for human rights will continue to create an environment where criminal activity and extremism will flourish. The international community must be more active in this regard.”
According to the local media, the improvised explosive device (IED) used in the blast consisted of a gas cylinder, a washing machine motor and a mobile telephone. It is not yet clear whether the mobile telephone was used as a remote control device or as a timer. Automobile fuel, gas cylinders and mobile telephones were also used by the jihadi terrorists—one of them an Indian Muslim from Bangalore— who attempted to stage terrorist strikes in London and Glasgow in the last week of June, 2007. The Maldivian Police claim to have detained two persons for questioning. They are also reportedly examining the pictures in the Closed Circuit TV cameras installed in the park.
Since 9/11, there have been reports of the spread of fundamentalist ideas to the Maldives from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In 2002, a 28-year-old Maldivian national named Ibrahim Fauzee was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, and taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba by the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on suspicion of his having links with Al Qaeda. As his interrogation did not confirm this suspicion, the FBI sent him to the Maldives. He lives in Male and is subject to regular police surveillance.
In the spring of 2006, the Maldivian authorities announced the arrest in Sri Lanka of three Maldivians—two women and a man—who were allegedly on their way to a jihadi training camp in Pakistan, but they were not prosecuted for want of satisfactory evidence. Fatimah Nisreen, a policeman’s daughter, was accused of helping them to go to Pakistan, but she refuted this allegation.
Ahmed Shah, a Maldivian national, was reported to have attended a training camp of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) at Muridke, near Lahore. He was deported to the Maldives by the Pakistani authorities. In April last year, seven young Maldivians were arrested by the Maldives Police on a charge of encouraging other Maldivians to wage jihad abroad, but they were not prosecuted for want of evidence.
Himendhoo, one of the outlying islands, has been described as a centre for Wahabism. A Hindu school teacher working in the island was allegedly beaten up badly by Wahabi elements last year.
For over a year now, the local Wahabis of the island have been refusing to obey Ibrahim Abrahman, the Government-appointed chief cleric in the island. They have declined to pray in the Government-maintained mosque. They constructed their own mosque, which was demolished by the Government. They built another. Cassettes containing the video and audio messages of Osama bin Laden and his No.2. Ayman al-Zawahiri freely circulate in the island and nearby islands. Some students from the island, who were studying in the Lal Masjid of Islamabad, were reported to have recently returned home after the Lal Masjid was raided by the Pakistani commandos between July 10 and 13, 2007. They have also been spreading stories of what is projected as the glorious martyrdom of the girl students of the Lal Masjid’s madrasa for girls.
Saudi money has funded the construction of a high school in Male, called the Islamic Studies Institute, where the students are taught, inter alia, the Arabic language. This is becoming another centre for the spread of Wahabism.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has also been using the Maldives as a transit point for its arms smuggling activities for many years. There were reports of the Maldivian authorities co-operating with the Sri Lankan Navy in some of its recent operations to disrupt arms smuggling by the LTTE. Thus, the LTTE has reasons for anger against the Maldivian authorities.
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