Portugal to Accept Syrian Guantanamo Inmates

From France 24:

Portugal will accept two Syrian nationals for resettlement from the U.S. detention camp of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on a special visa, the foreign ministry said on Friday, lauding the forthcoming closure of the camp.

Their names were not revealed. The ministry said the prisoners are part of a group of several dozen detainees who had been cleared of terrorism charges, but cannot be returned to their countries due to the risk of persecution.

In December, Portugal became the first country to press publicly for a coordinated European Union resettlement plan for Guantanamo prisoners, which was followed by an EU decision in June to take in detainees on a case-by-case basis.

The foreign ministry said in a statement the government had weighed various aspects—“humanitarian, foreign relations, safeguarding security and the prospects of successful integration of the chosen ex-detainees” before taking the final decision to accept the two.The special temporary visas to be issued imply either state interests or humanitarian reasons, according to the law.

It praised the closure of the Gunatanamo detention centre as allowing “the revival of the Transatlantic relationship and a victory for all those who defend and promote the respect for human rights within the framework of the war on terror”.

The facility at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo, which opened after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, quickly became a symbol of detainee abuse and detention without charge under the previous administration of George W. Bush.

President Barack Obama has pledged to close the prison by the end of the year, and the inmates either have to face trial or be released. Washington faces opposition to transferring detainees to the United States, be it for trial or release.

Captured U.S. Soldier Used in Propaganda Video

The American soldier captured by insurgents in Afghanistan has been named by the U.S. Army.

He is Private First Class Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho, and the Army confirmed for the first time today that he is being held hostage by the Taliban.

This disturbing video was released, in which Pfc Bergdahl talks of his family, and his fears that he will never see them again:

As was expected, the Taliban are cynically using him to spread propaganda, in violation of international law. He is clearly being prompted in parts, an he urges the American government to withdraw their forces and go home.

From The Times:

Appearing nervous and frightened, he answers questions in English while drinking green tea.

“I was captured outside of the base camp. I was behind a patrol, lagging behind the patrol and I was captured,” the soldier tells an unseen questioner.

The US Defense Department said in a statement that Pfc Bergdahl was a member of the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based in Fort Richardson, Alaska. His status was changed two weeks ago from “whereabouts unknown” to “missing-captured”, it said.

“The use of the soldier for propaganda purposes we view as against international law,” said Captain Jon Stock, a military spokesman in Kabul. “We are continuing to do whatever possible to recover the soldier safe and unharmed.”

The US military has been distributing leaflets this week seeking Pfc Bergdahl's release. A military spokeswoman said that it was the first case she was aware of in which a US service member had been captured and held by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

“Well, I am scared. I’m scared I won’t be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner,” Pfc Bergdahl says.

“I have my girlfriend, who is hoping to marry. I have my grandma and grandpas. I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America.”

A voice off camera prompts:“Miss them.”

The soldier continues: “And I miss them every day that I’m gone. I miss them and I’m afraid that I might never see them again and that I’ll never be able to tell them that I love them again. I’ll never be able to hug them.”

In other clips, he appears to be in good health and is shown eating rice.

At one point the voice says in English: “Any message to your people?”

“Yes. To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it’s like to miss them: you have the power to make our government bring them home,” the soldier says.

“Please, please bring us home so that we can go back to where we belong and not over here wasting our time and our lives.”

Asked about the US-led invasion that toppled the hardline Taleban government in 2001, Pfc Bergdahl replies: “Since I’ve been here and I’ve seen how these people live and function, we have indeed invaded an independent state.

“We’re told that civilian casualties that soldiers like myself inflict ... are simply something that we have to accept in a time of war and that we’re told that they don’t matter,” he adds.

His captors show his military dog tags to the camera, with his name visible.

A Taleban commander in southeastern Paktika province has said that his group have the soldier. The June 30 abduction is believed to be the first time militants have snatched an American soldier in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

The US-based monitoring group IntelCenter said that the video contained a production group logo that has been associated with Taleban-related videos in the past.

Incredibly, one of the contributors at The Times article writes the following:

Alastair Northedge wrote:

Curious this language of 'hostage taking'. Civilians are taken hostage; soldiers are taken prisoner. I understand perfectly well that you are using slanted language in order to delegitimise the Taleban. In this case, it is so excessive as to be obvious.

Well, soldiers are captured by other soldiers; they are taken hostage by cowardly thugs who hide behind women and prams, only facing their foe when he is heavily outnumbered.

Keep Private Bergdahl and his family in your thoughts.

Captured U.S. Soldier 'Sold to Haqqani Network'

An American soldier captured in Afghanistan earlier this week has been sold to a notorious militant clan.

The Haqqani network is a group run by Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani and is widely considered one of the most ruthless Islamist outfits in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to the CIA, it is closely aligned with al Qaeda's central leadership.

From CNN:

An American soldier captured in southeastern Afghanistan is being held by a notorious militant clan, a senior U.S. military official said.

The American and three Afghan soldiers were captured by low-level militants and then quickly "sold" to the clan led by warlord Siraj Haqqani -- believed to be deeply involved in the action.

The Haqqanis operate on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are well known to the U.S. military. They are assembling shuras, or local councils of leaders, to talk and try to "legitimize" what they have done, the official said.

U.S., Afghan and Pakistani troops are sealing off the area and also are talking to tribal chiefs, village elders and leaders.

They are telling them to "do the right thing and solve this," the official said.

The U.S. military is telling people not to let Haqqani operatives move through their area and to find the American and return him. The military wants to make sure there is "no shelter" for the militants holding him.

The Taliban who captured the soldier allege he was drunk, but the American authorities insist he was on duty at the time.

From the Mail:

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the capture of the soldier, with a commander saying he had been drunk when he was captured.

The soldier visited a military post in the Yousaf Khel district in the Paktika province on Tuesday and got drunk, the Taliban commander said, according to U.S. media.

He was ambushed while returning to his car and was taken to a safe place along with three Afghan soldiers he was with, the commander said.

The U.S. military has denied the soldier was drunk, though officials did say the soldier was on duty when he went missing in the area.

He was captured by low-level militants and then sold to the clan by warlord Siraj Haqqani in south-eastern Afghanistan, an official told CNN.

The Haqqanis operate on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are well known to the U.S. military.

They are the most important insurgent group operating in that area. Haqqani himself has been accused of masterminding beheadings and suicide bombings by the U.S.

U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said: 'We have all available resources out there looking for him and hopefully providing for his safe return.'

Mathias did not provide details on the soldier, the location where he was captured or the circumstances.
The news broke as thousands of U.S. Marines launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan. The missing soldier was not part of that operation.

'We are not providing further details to protect the soldier's well-being,' she said.

Afghan Police Gen. Nabi Mullakheil said the soldier went missing in the Mullakheil area of eastern Paktika province, where there is an American base.

The soldier was noticed missing during a routine check of the unit on Tuesday and was first listed as 'duty status whereabouts unknown,' a U.S. defence official said on condition of anonymity.

It wasn't until Thursday that officials said publicly that he was missing and described him as 'believed captured.'

Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

The missing man is an enlisted soldier, and his family has been notified.

U.S. Soldier Reported Captured in Afghanistan

Various news reports today suggest that an American soldier has been captured alive by militants in Afghanistan - an unprecedented occurrence in the war so far.

Whilst the Taliban and assorted Afghan militias have captured aid workers, journalists and other civilians in the past, this is the first time that an Allied soldier has been captured alive.

From the LA Times:

An American soldier is believed to have been captured by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said today.

The soldier has been missing from his unit since Tuesday, said Army Capt. Elizabeth Mathias. Citing concern for his safety, she did not disclose the circumstances of his disappearance, explain how military authorities had concluded that he was being held, or say whether there had been any communication with insurgents about the missing man.

The brief military statement was not definitive about a capture having occurred; Mathias said the soldier was "believed" to have fallen into the hands of "militant forces."

There was no immediate public claim of responsibility from any insurgent group. A number of militant commanders, not all of them affiliated with the Taliban, operate in eastern Afghanistan.

However, the Reuters news agency quoted a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Sangeen, as saying the soldier was captured this week as he left a base in Paktika province on patrol.

If the reports are borne out and an American soldier was seized alive, it would be an unprecedented coup for the insurgents. They could exploit a capture for propaganda purposes or demand concessions such as a prisoner exchange.

The news comes on the day that U.S. forces have launched a massive operation to clear southern Helmand Province of Taliban influence:

Thousands of US Marines stormed into an Afghan river valley by helicopter and land early today, launching the first major military offensive of Barack Obama's presidency with an assault deep into Taleban-held territory.

Operation Khanjar, which the Marines call simply "the decisive op", is intended to seize virtually the entire lower Helmand River valley, a heartland of the Taleban insurgency and the world's biggest heroin producing region.

It is the biggest operation launched by the US Marines Corps since the retaking of Fallujah in 2004 and seeks to break the grinding stalemate between Nato forces and the Taleban in the province.

US commanders stressed this morning their desire to move quickly and decisively with overwhelming force to seize the entire southern Helmand River valley from Taleban control ahead of the delayed Afghan Presidential elections on August 20.

"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," Marine Corps Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan said in a statement.

He told his staff before the operation: "The intent is to go big, go strong and go fast, and by doing so we are going to save lives on both sides."

The 4,000 men from US 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade enjoy the support of their own integrated air wing, giving them more air support than the entire 8,000 strong British force has had at its disposal.

The US force went into action with the support of 650 Afghan troops, an operation by foreign ground troops on a scale unseen in Afghanistan since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

The operation would have an initial highly aggressive stage lasting 36 hours, AFP reported.

Also reported today was the news that two British soldiers died yesterday in an explosion. The soldiers, from the Welsh Guards and the Royal Tank Regiment, were on patrol near Lashkar Gah in Helmand province on Wednesday afternoon.

***Update 3rd July 12:12***

One of the British soldiers killed was Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, 39, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards.

He is the most senior British soldier to die in action since Lieutenant-Colonel 'H' Jones was shot dead during the Falklands campaign in 1982.

Trooper Joshua Hammond, 19, was also killed when th Viking armoured vehicle was blown up. Six soldiers were wounded, some critically.

171 British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan.

Former Guantanamo Detainee Responsible for Yemen Massacre?

I wrote previously about the group of Westerners who went missing in Yemen whilst on a picnic.

The group consisted of a German doctor, his wife and three children, a British engineer and his South Korean wife, and two German nurses. All worked for a Dutch charity in a hospital in Sadaa.

The bodies of three females were found mutilated soon afterwards, and were identified as the Korean lady and the two German nurses, Rita Stumpp and Anita Gruenwald (below).

The Yemeni government is still searching for the other six, and they are presumed dead.

Terrorism experts think that the man responsible may be Said Ali al-Shihri (above), a deputy leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, and former prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

From Fox:

But terrorism experts say their abductors and killers are almost certainly not a mystery. They say the crimes bear the mark of Al Qaeda, and they fear they are the handiwork of the international terror organization's No. 2 man in the Arabian Peninsula: Said Ali al-Shihri, an Islamic extremist who once was in American custody — but who was released from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

And if al-Shihri is behind the gruesome murders and abductions, they say, it raises grave concerns that the scheduled January 2010 closing of the Guantanamo prison and the release of most of its prisoners to foreign countries will galvanize Al Qaeda and compromise American national security.

The nine foreigners — four German adults, three small German children, a British man and a South Korean woman — were abducted on June 12 after they ventured outside the city of Saada without their required police escorts, according to a spokesman from the Yemeni Embassy in Washington. Days later the bodies of Rita Stumpp and Anita Gruenwald, German nurses in training, and Eom Young-sun of South Korea were found shot execution style in the Noshour Valley in the province of Saada, an area known to be a hotbed of Al Qaeda activity.

No one has claimed responsibility for the abductions and murders, but experts say killing women and children is considered off-limits among many jihadist groups — though not to al-Shihri, a Saudi national who was released from Guantanamo in November 2007 and sent to a Saudi Arabian "rehabilitation" program for jihadists. It wasn't long before a "cured" al-Shihri was released from the program, crossed into Yemen and rejoined Al Qaeda, with whom he quickly rose to deputy commander.

In addition to last week's kidnappings, he is believed to have been behind the September attacks that left 16 dead at the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of San'a.

“This bears the marks of al-Shihri’s activity and bears the signs of his beliefs and assumptions of his behavior that are not viewed by other jihadists,” said Robert Spencer, terror expert and director of Jihad Watch, referring to the killing of women and presumed killing of the three small children.

Defense officials said that "while there is suspicion that Said Ali al-Shihri is involved in these latest attacks, we can't confirm it."

“There is great presumption of his involvement, but it’s not open and shut,” Spencer said.

“If he believed that these people picnicking in Yemen were aiding in the war against Islam, then he can justify these killings as legitimate — it’s this kind of perspective that this guy holds to, that it’s right to kill people who would normally be considered off-limits,” Spencer said.

“Christians aren’t allowed to proselytize in the Muslim world, and if that’s what was going on here ... well then, there you go."

The Revenge of the Taliban

The current goings on in Pakistan hold a valuable lesson for all of us. They tell us in no uncertain terms that many interpretations of Islam cannot be appeased or accommodated; there is no victory and no peace until the infidels feel themselves defeated.

I suppose the Pakistani army learned this the hard way, although it was always fairly obvious that the Taliban were not going to just back down and go away after being given free reign in one province; as every good zealot knows, if the enemy is weak enough to have one chink in his armour he has two, and then a third - it is just a question of finding them.

The Pakistani authorities now seem to be fighting as successful a campaign as possible against the Taliban. Removing civilians from the Swat valley was tactically a very wise move, depriving the insurgents of their recruits and their human shields in one fell swoop. But every wise move has its down side - the human suffering, obviously, but also the fact that many of the nearly three million refugees are now seething with anger at the government.

The Taliban are especially dangerous because they are not just at war with infidels but with other interpretations of Islam.

Earlier this month suicide bombers found and killed Dr. Sarfaraz Naeemi - a Pakistani scholar who had called suicide bombings illegitimate in Islam.

The problem is that the Taliban is just one manifestation of the tribal rivalries which marr Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly the frontier; many have equally extreme and old fashioned Islamic practices written into their culture. The mainstream politicians of both countries are forced to make concessions in order to exist.

This has some rather interesting parallels. Winston Churchill experienced this region as a young war journalist in 1897. First, here is what tribal elders who remember their relatives talking about the war against the British said:

Back in Islamabad, another retired general, Talat Masood, says that while the army can beat the Taliban, 'it cannot beat the Pashtun tribes'.

Success depends on the Taliban being seen as extremists and outsiders, who subvert, rather than express, the frontier's Pashtun identity. Here the example of Churchill's campaign in 1897 is not encouraging.

Among the people of the frontier, I discover a rich oral tradition, which remembers Swat's 'Mad Mullah' and his comrades as 'mujahideen' - the term for holy warriors once used about the Pashtuns who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan.

'He was a little mad, but he was pious,' says Hazrat Ahmed, 70, in the camp at Katlang. 'So when he said that if they fought the British they would defeat them, the people believed him. There are a lot of graves of martyrs who died fighting the British in 1897.

'Now some people admire the Taliban. Others say they are foreigners, and not good Muslims. Insh'allah [God willing] whoever is right about the Taliban there will be a victory for Muslims, because when Islam is finished, the world will end.'

Nizar Mohammed, 76, explains: 'The jihad against the British was a special type of war, what we call a ghazar. That means a war in which the Prophet has a personal stake. That's how our people saw it.'

Pashtun children still learn songs that commemorate the battles of 1897 and the years that followed.

One of the most haunting celebrates a warrior called Beram Khan. It imagines the words of his wife: 'O Beram Khan, if your body comes back with countless bullets in your chest, I will never mind. But I don't want to hear that you left the battlefield fearing death. O Beram Khan, if you are martyred defending your country, I will weave your shroud with the hair from my head.'

From his very different perspective, Churchill paid an equivalent tribute. Although the fighters of Mohmand and Dir had 'struck a blow at civilisation, civilisation will ungrudgingly admit they are a brave and warlike race. The valley and its people have become historic.'

The journalists reporting from this region acknowledge they are not the first to cover such a conflict:

But we weren't the first to cover a conflict against jihadists trying to overthrow a government in this region. Among our predecessors was an Army captain turned reporter who came this way in 1897: the future Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill, then aged 23.

That summer the frontier tribes were inspired by radical mullahs to drive out the British. When the revolt started, Churchill was on leave in England from his regiment, which was based 2,000 miles from the front in Bangalore, south India.

But thanks to his acquaintance with the British commander, the curiously-named General Sir Bindon Blood, he secured what would now be termed a media 'embed'. Churchill's first book, The Story Of The Malakand Field Force, was the result.

Reading it now, the parallels between that distant campaign and Pakistan's present crisis seem close, a point clearly recognised by Pakistan's army.

Its chief spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, says: 'Going through the old Imperial gazetteers, you see ambushes are taking place in exactly the same locations now as they were in the 1890s.

The causes for the uprising and the phenomenon of tribes uniting is also described:

Kumbar Bazaar was the home of Sufi Mohammed, the fundamentalist ideologue who led 10,000 frontier Pakistanis to fight the jihad against US forces in Afghanistan after 9/11.

His simple, unprepossessing house has now been trashed by the army, which reduced some of his extensive jihadist library to a pulp by running the books through his washing machine. He is now among the country's most wanted men.

It was Mohammed who earlier this year negotiated a peace deal under which Pakistan's homegrown Taliban were allowed to run the district of Swat, the next valley across from Dir to the east, and it was this deal's speedy breakdown that triggered the army offensive launched on April 26.

Mohammed does not like to compromise. 'We hate democracy,' he told a crowd in Swat's capital, Mingora, earlier this year. 'We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by infidels.'

Mohammed's damaged home, where the sitting room bears the slogan 'Jihad Is Great' engraved in the plaster in letters a foot high, commands a magnificent view of the mountains around the valley.

Although almost everyone in the area speaks Pashto, the area is far from homogenous. The history of Dir and Swat, which during the Empire were ruled by princes who swore allegiance to the Crown, is different from the wilder tribal areas to the southwest. There the writ of Pakistani law has never run, and one of them, South Waziristan, has long been thought to harbour Osama bin Laden.

Similarly, the radical movement in Dir and Swat is different from the bigger, highly organised Taliban in Waziristan, which has been closely linked with Al Qaeda since 2001 and was responsible for the murder of Benazir Bhutto last winter.

Between 2004 and 2007, while Sufi Mohammed was in prison, the main leader in Dir and Swat was his son-in-law, a former ski-lift operator named Maulana Fazlullah. He built Taliban support through Mullah Radio, an illegal FM station that broadcast his sermons and those of his junior commanders, along with lists of those the movement was targeting for assassination - usually by decapitation.

Now, however, the insurgents from different tribal areas are starting to unite. 'Integration and networking are taking place,' says Lieutenant-General Durrani. 'You now have what amounts to a bigger, Pakistan-wide Taliban group, and it's in their interest to help each other. They're not goofs or fools.'

Brigadier Amal Zada adds: 'Communication intercepts show the militants in Dir have been asking for reinforcements from Swat, Bajaur [another tribal area], North and South Waziristan and from across the Afghan border.'

General David Petraeus, the American commander who led the 'surge' in Iraq and is now responsible for the whole of Asia from Pakistan to the Middle East, has said repeatedly that this alliance, which is also responsible for the spate of terrorist bombings in Pakistan's big cities, poses a threat so great that the country's very existence is at stake.

He might be right. But this is not the first time militants from disparate frontier tribes have been spurred on by radical mullahs to fight as one. It also happened in 1897, as described by Churchill.

Just as in 2009, the 1897-8 campaign began in Swat, when thousands of tribesmen attacked British forts at Malakand and Chakdara less than 20 miles from Kumbar Bazaar.

And just as the 2009 conflict shows every sign of doing, it went on to involve operations the length and breadth of the frontier, from Buner, 40 miles to the north of what is now Islamabad, through the Dir, Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber areas all the way to Waziristan. The Empire had to mobilise 75,000 troops.

It is easy to see why Churchill felt he could not stay away. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had died at 45, and Winston was convinced he must make his mark while young.

'The rising of 1897 is the most successful attempt to date to combine the frontier tribes,' wrote Churchill. 'It will not be the last. The simultaneous revolt of distant tribes is an evidence of secret workings. These features will be more pronounced in the future.'

Like his distant successors, Churchill believed these frontier battles had an 'existential' significance: 'Civilisation is face to face with militant Mohammedanism. When we reflect on the moral and material forces arrayed, there need be no fear of the ultimate issue, but the longer the policy of half measures is adhered to, the more distant the end of the struggle will be.'

His description of the enemy sounds familiar. Churchill singled out a 'Mad Mullah': 'A wild enthusiast convinced of his divine mission preached a crusade, here called Jihad, against the infidel. Even after the fighting - when the tribesmen reeled back from the terrible army they had assailed, leaving a quarter of their number on the field - the faith of the survivors was unshaken.'

In fact, the evidence suggests the 1897 uprising was even more organised than Churchill thought. Behind the 'Mad Mullah', whose fiery sermons could be said to equate to Fazlullah's FM talk shows, stood a group of radical frontier clerics.

As in 2009, the fate of the eastern side of the frontier was bound up with events in Afghanistan. In 1897, the mullahs attended secret meetings in Kabul with Abdur Rehman, the Afghan 'Iron Amir', still smarting from being forced to cede chunks of his country to the British in 1893.

Costly as it was, the 1897-8 campaign ended in victory for the British. But as Churchill realised, it was not the end of the story: 'I do not see any sign of permanency in the settlements that have been made with the tribesmen in Dir, Swat and Bajaur. They have been punished, not subdued; rendered hostile, but not harmless.

Some of the parallels are too big to ignore; the fact is that whilst the army can defeat the Taliban, the chances of defeating their interpretation of Islam seem slim indeed.

As our own young men are dying in Afghanistan, the Taliban are still able to commit atrocities against female school pupils, and the tribal elders are still able to influence the policy of the government paid for with Western blood and Western money in their favour.

Muslim Student Jailed for Jihad Bid

Mohammed Abushamma, 20, from Islington, north London, has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for attempting to fly to Afghanistan and fight coalition forces.

His defence barrister, Imran Khan, said that Abushamma was rebelling again his illustrious family - his grandfather was the first president of Sudan.

From the BBC:

Abushamma, 20, from Islington, north London, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in April last year, along with co-defendant Qasim Abukar.

Abukar, from Tufnell Park, north London, went missing halfway through his court case. He was found not guilty in his absence at Croydon Crown Court.

Abushamma pleaded guilty to preparing acts of terrorism.

Mr Justice Bean said: "You were setting out to overthrow the Afghan government by force, fighting against that government and the coalition forces in order to advance the ideological cause of militant Islamism."

The court heard that Abushamma carried out detailed online research into jihad and indicated he would be involved in violence "with a Koran in one hand and an AK47 in the other."

Four Uighur Terror Suspects Living it up in Bermuda

After the idea of releasing inmates from Guantanamo Bay into mainstream American society was resoundingly rejected, Barack Obama had to look around for governments gullible or eager to please enough to take the inmates who were blocking the camp's closure.

Where to resettle the 17 Uighur inmates was a particularly pressing problem - as America pressured smaller governments to accept the men, China was also putting pressure on countries to reject them.

The Uighur are China's Muslim, Turkic minority, and many desire the independence of their home province, Xinjiang, from China. Because of this, China has demanded their repatriation so they can be put on trial. To be completely fair, whilst assuring us that they are not 'enemy combatants', the U.S. has failed to explain the presence of the men in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they were arrested.

It was announced on Saturday that the small Pacific island nation of Palau would take 13 of the men for 'temporary resettlement'. It seemed the perfect solution - Palau got $200 million in development aid, and it has no diplomatic relations with China. They would also get favourable conditions when re-negotiating a defence agreement with the United States.

What of the remaining 4 Uighurs?

Well, Obama palmed them off on the island of Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory located about 640 miles south west of North Carolina.

The only problem is that he failed to get the permission of officials in London - or even tell them that the deal was taking place:

The Foreign Office responded with ill-disguised fury tonight after it emerged that Britain's oldest colony has done a deal behind its back with the U.S. to accept four Guantanamo detainees.

The four Chinese Uighurs are already on the tiny North Atlantic island, with the U.S. Justice Department extending its thanks to the semi-autonomous Government of Bermuda.

But the Foreign Office slammed Bermudian Premier Ewart Brown's decision to accept the detainees without consulting the British Governor on the island first.

Though Bermuda's Constitution renders it largely independent, Britain retains control over four reserve powers including international affairs and security.

Tonight Sir Richard Gozny, Governor of Bermuda, said he and London had no knowledge of the deal struck by the Bermuda government.

He said: 'We were not involved in the negotiations, and we should have been. The government of Bermuda should have consulted government house at every stage and through me the British government.

'They didn’t do that.

'This is an issue that goes far wider than these four individuals. We now need to assess these four individuals.'

He said London has launched urgent talks with Washington.

Announcing the decision to accept the Guantanamo detainees this morning, Premier Ewart Brown said they would have the option to apply for Bermudian status - making them citizens of the British colony and theoretically able to apply for a British passport. He told a press conference: 'These men are landed in Bermuda in the short term, provided with the opportunity to become naturalized citizens and thereafter afforded the right to travel and leave Bermuda, potentially settling elsewhere.'

Ah yes. So, send them to a small country which does not have the power to resist - then let them apply for their Western passports later, when all the fuss has died down.

Some typically Machiavellian thinking from the Obama administration there.

The four men in question are Abdul Nasser, Huzaifa Parhat, Abdul Semet and Jalal Jalaladin. They were secretly flown to Bermuda two days ago, and are now living in beach front cottages at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Bermudian Home Affairs Minister David Burch made it quite clear that the men are innocent and more than welcome in Bermuda - but he did concede:

'We've underlined to the Bermuda Government that they should have consulted with the United Kingdom as to whether this falls within their competence or is a security issue, for which the Bermuda Government do not have delegated responsibility,' an FCO spokesman said.

'We have made clear to the Bermuda Government the need for a security assessment, which we are now helping them to carry out, and we will decide on further steps as appropriate.'

Yesterday the Daily Mail treated us to a spread about the new lives the Uighur are enjoying in Bermuda, which is a millionaire's playground with one the highest GDPs on earth.

They enjoyed sunset swimming, fishing, and a spot of shopping. Their dream is to open Bermuda's first Uighur restaurant:

'When we didn't have any country to accept us, when everybody was afraid of us ... Bermuda had the courage and was brave enough to accept us,' said Abdulla Abdulgadir, who at 30 is the youngest of the four men who relished their first weekend of freedom in seven years.

'We are not moving anywhere,' he said.

He and his companions have traded drab prison jumpsuits for comfortable cotton pants and knit shirts, and razor wire-encircled jail compounds for beach cottages, where they are staying at U.S. taxpayers' expense.

They hope to quickly find jobs in Bermuda - one of the world's wealthiest places because of its financial and insurance sector - and eventually start families.

The four Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs) also have immediate priorities, such as learning to drive, scuba dive and bowl, said Glenn Brangman, a former military official who is helping reintroduce them to the world outside prison.

'I told them one step at a time,' Mr Brangman said. 'They're beginning to live all over again.'

The latest developments have sparked a rash of jokes with Bermuda's tourism slogan 'feel the love' changed to 'Bermuda, it don't GITMO better than this'.

Aww. Despite all the cries about innocence - still no one has explained just what they were doing when they were captured, or why so many released prisoners from Guantanamo returned to terrorism, often fighting against Allied troops in Afghanistan.

Let's hope that this decision doesn't turn out to be as rash as it first appears.

An Aston Villa Supporting Taliban Found

British troops fighting in Afghanistan have found a dead Taliban insurgent with a tattoo of the Aston Villa FC emblem.

From the Mail:

Army top brass fear the Taliban is recruiting Brummie Muslims to fight in Afghanistan after a dead insurgent was found - with an Aston Villa FC tattoo.

Military spies have also reported hearing Taliban fighters talking with distinctive Birmingham accents over the airwaves.

A senior military source said: 'It's been well-known for some time among soldiers in Afghanistan that at least one Aston Villa fan was fighting for the Taliban.

'A body of one of the men was found to have an AVFC tattoo on it.

'We've known for a long time that foreign fighters, many with thick Birmingham accents, have been recruited to fight against us for the Taliban.

'Some of the linguistics specialists have picked up West Midland and Manchester accents too.'

The Foreign Office yesterday confirmed RAF radio operators had reported hearing Midlands accents while listening in to Taliban fighters talking on the ground.

An insider said: 'There will always be a number of people who are radicalised in this country and want to leave the UK.

'The details of Aston Villa fans in the Taliban does not shock or surprise me.

'We have never had any hard and fast evidence to tie all of these snippets of information together, but we are sure they equate to a wider ongoing radicalism in the UK.'

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: 'Some young Taliban fighters have been heard with strong Black Country accents.

'Wherever there is any firm evidence of Brits going abroad to wage jihad we work with governments to stop them.

'There is a long-term set of work with the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan to look at issues of radicalisation both in the UK and abroad.

'It is important that British Muslim communities make clear that they reject this kind of activity.'

But don't let this distract you - the most important thing in Britain today is preventing any dissenting voices on immigration and multiculturalism being heard - with violence if necessary.

If anything sums up the criminal insanity of our immigration policies, it is surely this - young men given everything by this country going to Afghanistan in the hope of killing and maiming our troops.

It should be beyond belief - but is it?

Obama Calls the U.S. 'a Muslim Country'

Well, this time he only bowed to the Saudi King to allow the medal to be placed around his neck, but I think Obama's very presence in Saudi Arabia, the very purpose of this Middle East tour, speaks volumes about him and his agenda.

He does not go as an equal, or as the leader of the world's most powerful nation - he goes as a submissive, an adherent in all but name. Like Chamberlain, he does not wish for peace (for he surely knows that peace will never be forthcoming on America's terms without inflicting a crushing defeat) - he simply wishes to surrender.

Chamberlain surrendered before a shot was fired, abandoning an ally to the tender mercies of the Nazis.

Now Obama is in Saudi Arabia, plotting the best way to sell out Israel, a close friend and ally of America and the American people, not to mention the region's only truly free nation.

I will wait until his speech tomorrow before going into more detail, but this story from Islam in Action is worthy of note; yesterday Obama called the United States of America, home of the brave and land of the free, victim of countless terrorist atrocities fuelled by Islam both at home and abroad 'one of the world's largest Muslim countries'.

He seems to think that America's 3 million or so Muslims, about 1% of its population, mean that some could see it as a Muslim country is they so chose:

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He sought to downplay the expectations of the speech, but he said he hoped the address would raise awareness about Muslims.

“Now, I think it’s very important to understand that one speech is not going to solve all the problems in the Middle East,” Mr. Obama said. “And so I think expectations should be somewhat modest.”

He previewed several themes and objectives for the speech, which aides said the president intended to tinker with — and rewrite — aboard Air Force One during his 12-hour flight to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“What I want to do is to create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States, but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what’s happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Mr. Obama said.

The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.”

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

The speech on Thursday has many intended audiences, but among them are the young people in Cairo and beyond.

“I think the most important thing I want to tell young people is that, regardless of your faith, those who build as opposed to those who destroy I think leave a lasting legacy, not only for themselves but also for their nations,” Mr. Obama said. “And the impulse towards destruction as opposed to how can we study science and mathematics and restore the incredible scientific and knowledge — the output that came about during centuries of Islamic culture.”

Here is a video of his arrival in the Muslim kingdom:

Four Arrested in New York Terror Plot

Four Muslim men have been arrested for planning a series of terrorist attacks in New York.

The men, of whom three are U.S. citizens and one Haitian, bought what they thought were explosives from an undercover FBI agent and tried to rig car bombs outside two synagogues in the Bronx.

They were arrested after the cars failed to detonate. It was then revealed that the men had bought a deactivated missile from their FBI source - with which they intended to shoot down a military jet at the Stewart Airport New York Air National Guard base.



They were named as James Cromitie (also known as Abdul Rahman, top), David Williams (aka Daoud and DL, above right), Onta Williams (aka Hamza, above left) and Laguerre Payen (aka Amin and Almondo).

From the BBC:

In November, on a trip to a meeting of the Muslim Alliance of North America in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cromitie is said to have declared that 'the best target was hit already' - referring to the World Trade Center, destroyed in the September 11 attacks of 2001 - and to have added: 'I hate those motherf ******s, those f****** Jewish bastards ... I would like to get a synagogue.'

The group allegedly "expressed desire" to attack targets in New York and Mr Cromitie "asked the informant to supply surface-to-air guided missiles and explosives", prosecutors say.

In April 2009, the group agreed on the synagogues they intended to attack and proceeded to conduct surveillance, including taking photographs of the warplanes at the military base, prosecutors say.

Mr Cromitie allegedly pointed out Jews in the street, saying "if he had a gun, he would shoot each one in the head", according to the district attorney's statement.

According to the statement, he told the informant that attacking the Jewish community centre would be a "piece of cake".

He also said he would be interested in joining Jaish-e-Mohammed - a Pakistan-based group considered a terrorist organisation by Washington - "to do jihad".

'British' Bomber Fighting for the Taliban

New evidence has come to light of British passport-holders operating with terrorists and insurgents against British and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The Mail has more:

A British bombmaker is fighting for the Taliban against British troops in Afghanistan, it has been revealed.

DNA from a terror suspect with British nationality has been found on an unexploded roadside bomb planted by the Taliban.

The sample matched with a database of UK terror suspects and confirms mounting fears that British nationals are now fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The DNA sample was taken from an roadside bomb that was diffused by bomb disposal experts in Helmand Province.

It is believed to be an exact match with a known Muslim extremist who was naturalised in England after arriving from Pakistan, according to the Sun.

He was radicalised in Britain before disappearing two years ago and heading to Afghanistan.
Recent intelligence reports show that rising numbers of home-grown jihadists have joined the Taliban so they can kill British soldiers.

Carla Bland, whose 21-year-old brother Wayne was killed in a bomb blast in August told the paper: 'These people are traitors and sick in the head.

'It’s hard enough for the soldiers over there without having to face their own people as well.

'My brother was trying to help Muslim people. These bombers aren’t helping Afghans - they’re just making it worse for everyone.'

Senior military sources say UK troops are engaged in a 'surreal mini-civil war' in the dusty badlands of Helmand Province.

Surveillance operations from the warzone has picked up voices talking with West Midlands and Yorkshire accents, according to official briefing documents.

The electronic 'chatter' shows that young disaffected Muslims are travelling to southern Afghanistan to commit violence against British targets.

MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British Muslims had travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for military training, with 'dozens' switching to the front-line.

RAF spy planes have 'listened in' to the conversations of Taliban fighters, and officials now believe the British jihadists are mounting missions against British and Western targets in the warzone.

A Ministry Of Defence spokesman refused to comment on the latest report.

I think evidence such as this really puts the multicultural dream into some perspective.

What could possibly possess young men born and bred in Britain to hate this country so much they wish to travel to a war zone to perpetuate violence against British troops?

Some argue they are underprivileged or disaffected, but the fact is they are enormously privileged just by virtue of being born or allowed to remain in this country. If that's not the case, why do so many more seek to live here?

The elephant in the room here is that Islam as a creed is disastrously incompatible with our values and way of life.

Mass immigration from the Third World must be one the most tragic mistakes ever to be made - and this is one of a variety of compelling reasons why that mistake should be halted and reversed where possible.

To have people capable of waging guerrilla warfare in our midst, at our expense and by invitation, surely demonstrates that adequately?

An Audience with Yvonne Ridley (II)

Please read Part One first.

So, to continue from the last post, who is Yvonne Ridley, the woman we saw recently leading the 'Viva Palestina' convoy to Gaza? What is her agenda?

At the lecture I described in the first part, she was introduced to us as an ordinary, liberated, British woman and mother who had simply found the truth of Islam, with no political or other agenda. I will now expose this for the outright lie it is.

Here's the biography from her official website:

British-born, award-winning journalist Yvonne Ridley is well known in the Muslim world for her outspoken views and defence of Islam. She endeared herself to the Muslim community in Britain when she reverted to Islam 30 months after making international headlines when she was captured by the Taleban on an undercover assignment in Afghanistan. She was a senior reporter of the Sunday Express at the time, having spent nearly 10 years in Fleet Street working for several prestige titles including The Sunday Times, The Observer, Daily Mirror and Independent on Sunday...

I found an interview she gave to the BBC shortly after her conversion was announced. It confirms a few of the points she told us in the lecture which I described in my first post, including here first thought about the Taliban soldier capturing her being 'he's gorgeous'.

More on the Taliban:

"I couldn't support what they did or believed in, but they were demonised beyond recognition, because you can't drop bombs on nice people."

She says of reading the Koran and converting:

"I was absolutely blown away by what I was reading - not one dot or squiggle had been changed in 1,400 years.

"I have joined what I consider to be the biggest and best family in the world. When we stick together we are absolutely invincible."

She also described the Koran as 'a Magna Carta for women', and stated Islamic abuses of women stem from local cultures rather than Islam, as Islam 'makes it clear women are equal'.

One thing they miss, though - Ridley was 'defending Muslims' and radical Islamic causes long before she became a Muslim herself. Oh yes, indeed.

In fact, her first husband was a colonel in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the PLO. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to be specific.

You could not make this stuff up. What is this individual, Daoud Zaaroura, up to these days? You may well ask - he is the chief executive of the North of England Refugee Service.

His biography:

"...Daoud Za'aroura is a Palestinian refugee, born in 1947 in a little town near Nazareth (Saffouri). In 1948 his family left Palestine to Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian refugees who have lived since then in Palestinian refugees camps. As a young Palestinian he joined the Palestinian resistance movement and was active within the Palestinian political groups. He left the Middle East in 1992 and arrived in Britain where he was granted political asylum. Since then he has been working with refugees and homeless people in a charitable refugee organisation in Britain. He continues to be involved in refugee issues and social justice research.

He and Ridley met in Cyprus whilst she was on an assignment; in 1992, they had a daughter together, so presumably that's what got him into the UK.

When they met, he was still an active officer in the PLO. I shan't comment on the wisdom of letting such a man run a 'refugee' service - you, the reader can make up your own mind about whether this is sensible or desirable. But please bear in mind that 'resistance movement' is a coy euphemism for 'terrorist organisation' - and one of the most vicious and violent the world has ever known.

However, these are the sorts of circles in which she has moved since her younger days. On this basis, I find it very hard to believe that she only troubled herself to find out about Islam after her release from Taliban captivity.

Don't most non-Muslim women who marry Muslim men have to convert? Wouldn't her daughter have been born and raised a Muslim? Even if she didn't convert, wouldn't she have been at least a little curious? Why does it seem she took on his politics but not his religion?

For the record, I recognise the PFLP is technically a secular, Marxist branch of the Palestinian terror tree. But to be accepted under the PLO umbrella, there must have been some recognition of the majority agenda - Islamic supremacy and Arab nationalism.

There is a conspiracy theory which suggests Ridley's capture was staged, part of a ploy to draw attention to various Islamic 'resistance' movements and rehabilitate the Taliban in the same vein as the PLO.

Frankly, I think the whole situation is bizarre enough, although I'm sure her ex-husband could have pulled some strings somewhere. Many believe that she would have been killed as a spy had it not been for her already impressive CV of militant Islamic connections.

After her release and conversion, Ridley's life becomes a murky stew of warped views, questionable motives and shady connections. You have to ask whether Islam can change someone totally - or perhaps like attracts like?

Soon after her conversion, she started insisting that the CIA and Mossad were conspiring to kill her in order to escalate the war in Afghanistan. No reason was given why they would do this or desire it - apart from the worldwide conspiracy against peace-loving Muslims, obviously.

Ridley supports the vast majority of the Muslims jailed for terror offences in the UK, no matter how extreme. Her website hosts poems and letters by jailed Babar Ahmad (who, as I reported earlier, also counts Sadiq Khan MP amongst his friends), awaiting extradition to the US for hosting terrorist funding websites.

Among the websites he hosted and ran was 'azzam.com' a site which raised funds for Mujahideen fighting British, American and coalition troops in Afghanistan. The organisation 'Stop Political Terror', formerly 'Stop Police Terror', is also heavily involved in the campaign to prevent his extradition - and Ridley was closely linked to this organisation.

A barrister friend assures me that Ahmad would not have been in jail for 5 years awaiting extradition unless the evidence was 'overwhelming enough to convict him here'.

In fact, comparing democratic Western leaders and institutions to the bloody, murdering, terrorist ones she supports and apologises for is a bit of a forte of hers. I believe the psychological explanation for this phenomenon is 'projection'.

She wrote an article on her website saying she wouldn't blame Iraqi terrorists for cutting off George Bush's head, or at least wanting to; she compared Tony Blair to Pol Pot, and calls Israel

"...that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East" and further that her party, the Respect Party, "is a Zionist-free party...if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists," while both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were "riddled with Zionists." [9][10]

Presumably, these would be the same 'Zionists' or, if we're being honest, Jews who want to kill her because she's just so important it would intensify a foreign war.

Despite claiming these organisations wished to kill her, she was allowed into the US for a university speaking tour. She mocked US intelligence services:

In an article about her conversion she taunted members of US intelligience agencies as "incompetant spooks"and joked about "opening a Madrassah for [al-Qaeda] recruits from my flat in Soho".

Ridley calls the PLO and the Taliban resistance to coalition forces in Afghanistan 'humanitarian organisations', and when asked about British Muslims found with footage of Western hostages being beheaded in Iraq, her response was thus (according to her own Wikipedia page):

At the "Muslimer i Dialog" conference in Copenhagen in September 2005, Ridley was asked if she didn't see it as a problem that militant Islamists distribute recruiting videos of Iraqi insurgents killing hostages. She replied that it was necessary for Muslims to have these videos at home as an alternative form of news to what she perceived as the propaganda of Western media. At the same meeting she compared British Prime Minister Tony Blair with Pol Pot.

As far as I can tell, the 'Yvonne Ridley' Wikipedia page many of these quotes come from is maintained by herself and her supporters - she is referred to as 'sister' throughout.

Now, the following is very serious, and reveals much about her character and her interpretation of Islam. Here is a set of quotes from radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, taken from his wiki page - please read them carefully:

Abu Hamza claims that the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was a sign from God:

"These missions would increase the number of satellites for military purposes. It would increase the slavery of governance of other countries by America. It is a punishment from God. Muslims see it that way. It is a trinity of evil because it carried Americans, an Israeli and a Hindu, a trinity of evil against Islam. The fact that the motor of the craft fell on Palestine [a town in Texas] – all these are messages from God. It is a strong message, for the Israeli, to be taken up there to space and he spoke about the Holocaust, to try to make religious advancement from it and gain some moral high ground, hence you have seen this message over Palestine."

"Killing of the kafir (non-believer) for any reason you can say it is OK, even if there is no reason for it." He called on his followers to poison, ambush and kill non-believers and added: "You must have a stand with your heart, with your tongue, with your money, with your hand, with your sword, with your Kalashnikov. Don't ask shall I do this, just do it."[16]

He suggested that people coined the term suicide attack to put others off it. "It is not called suicide - this is called shahada, martyring, because if the only way to hurt the enemies of Islam except by taking your life for that, then it is allowed," adding: "The person who hinders Allah's rule, this man must be eliminated".

In January 2006 while on trial, he accused the Jewish people of being "blasphemous, treacherous and dirty" and explained that this was "why Hitler was sent into the world".[18]

He also called for "a world dominated by a caliph, sitting in the White House".[16] Whilst under cross-examination Hamza claimed the Jews control the Foreign Office, the media and the money supply in Britain and the USA.[19]

OK. Nice chap, right? What does Yvonne think? He phoned her after news of her conversion broke:

He said, 'Sister Yvonne, welcome to Islam, congratulations'.

"I explained I hadn't yet taken my final vows and he said, 'Don't be pressured or pushed, the whole community is there for you if you need any help, just call one of the sisters.'

"I thought, I can't believe it, this is the fire and brimstone cleric from Finsbury Park mosque and he is quite sweet really.

"I was just about to hang up when he said, 'But there is just one thing I want you to remember. Tomorrow, if you have an accident and die, you will go straight to hellfire'.

"I was so scared that I carried a copy of the vows in my purse until my final conversion last June."

A sweet guy. Someone who believes Hitler was born to teach the Jews a lesson. You have to ask yourself at this point what sort of person would want to be associated with the religion of a man like him. What impressed Ridley most, however, was how generous he was in lending her Islamic texts.

Anyway, after her conversion Ridley became even more prominent in the Muslim world. She joined the Islam Channel, then al-Jazeera, then Press TV, all of them English-speaking Muslim backed channels with an agenda.

In fact, she was instrumental in setting up the English section of al-Jazeera and helping it spread, propagating the lie that Western media outlets were more biased than the Islamist shills she worked for.

On at least two of these channels she hosted programmes called 'The Agenda with Yvonne Ridley' - apparently without irony.

In 2005 she courted yet more controversy by backing the radical cleric Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his campaign of violence in Iraq and Jordan, describing the victims of the 9 November 2005 Amman bombings in Jordan, which saw 60 persons killed and 115 injured, as:

"Iraqi collaborators, Saudi, Indonesian and Chinese intelligence officers and the upper echelons of society." The outpouring of public outrage manifested in spontaneous demonstration she described as staged and the work of "Jordanian troops out of uniform" and "government lackeys" together with "Christian and Muslim Bedouins" who had all been commandeered or paid to demonstrate by the Jordanian government and the CIA."

Al-Zarqawi was denounced by his family after the bombings, a move that Ridley thought "cowardly." She said of al-Zarqawi himself that she would "rather put up with a brother like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi any day than have a traitor or sell-out for a father, son or grandfather" – a reference to Jordanian royal family. [13].

In 2006 she was active in the propaganda campaign against Israel in its struggle with Hezbollah, which had breached its borders and captured and killed a number of Israeli soldiers. Here is a video of her speaking outside the Israeli (or possibly American) embassy on 22/10/06:

To screams of 'Allahuakbar' and 'long live Hezbollah', Ridley mounts the platform. She launches into a rant - the people in the embassy are 'behind the wire', under siege. Hezbollah 'whupped the arse' of the world's fourth most powerful army. By that, I assume she's referring to the 121 Israelis who died in the 2006 Lebanon War, 44 of them civilians.

She then informs us that 'drinking Coca-Cola is the same as drinking the blood of Palestinian children' and 'shopping at Marks & Spencer is the same as giving bullets to Israeli soldiers to shoot into the backs of Palestinian schoolgirls'. She calls Israel an apartheid state, quoting the words of that well known authority on morality, leader of the Iranian Revolution Ayatollah Khomeinei.

After that, she blesses the 'Palestinian resistance movement' and the Second Intifada which was responsible for the deaths of 1,079 Israelis, 731 of them civilians.

But then, 2006 seems to be the year in which Yvonne sank further and further into extremism. In June 2006, this had occurred:

At a meeting of the Respect party on 6 June 2006, following a controversial police raid in Forest Gate, East London, on 2 June 2006, Ridley urged all Muslims in Britain to "boycott the police and refuse to co-operate with them in any way, shape or form until the boys are released," including "asking the community copper for directions to passing the time of day with a beat officer." Her comments were labelled as "sheer, undiluted madness" by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis.

Yeah, David Davis usually hits the nail on the head, I find. But when George Galloway thinks your beliefs are too extreme, well, maybe the message should be heeded.

After the Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev (accused of the Moscow theater hostage crisis and blamed for the Beslan school massacre) was killed, Ridley wrote an article referring to Basayev as a "shaheed". She went on to refer to Basayev as leader of "an admirable struggle to bring independence to Chechnya". [17]

As you can see, with Yvonne Ridley there is no attempt to claim the middle ground - she is an unashamed extremist.

Now, last but not least, we will look at her recent activities in the 'free Gaza' movement, which she joined in August 2008. This movement took a flotilla of boats from Cyprus to 'break the Israeli blockade' around the Gaza strip and deliver aid and supplies.

They completed this mission, and Ridley was given a genuine Palestinian diplomatic passport by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who described her as 'an ambassador for Palestine'. Here you can see her pathetic attempts to reconcile her beliefs with reality at the Rafah border crossing:

Finally, it all came full circle with the setting up of 'Viva Palestina' and the £1 million, 100 vehicle aid convoy which drove from London to Gaza. After the 25 day journey, she wrote the following article for the 'Viva Palestina' website:

"I'VE never been a huge flag-waving fan of the Union Jack because to me it was largely a symbol of the old British Empire and all the bad things it once represented in terms of occupation, slavery, tyranny and imperialistic wars."

Yes, it must be nice to be part of a 'worldwide family', as you term your religion, that would never dream of being involved in any such shenanigans. Never mind the fact that Islam is synonymous with slavery, tyranny, occupation and imperialistic wars. Never mind the fact that Muslims would rather die and violently slaughter innocents around the world for a 20,770 / 22,072 km2 (151st in the world) 8,019 / 8,522 sq mi strip of land, Israel, because people who aren't Muslims dare to live there and run a successful, modern state - when they could be enjoying the 13,953,041 km2 (2nd) (5,382,910 sq mi) which is the Arab League alone.

Still, why would a little thing like reality intrude?

She continues:

"I can't really remember the urge to pick up the Union Jack again declaring to the world: "I am proud to be British".

As Leo Tolstoy once remarked, such patriotism in its simplest form is nothing more than a "means of obtaining for rulers their ambitions" as well as a sign from us lesser mortals as our "slavish enthralment to those in power".

So it was rather a peculiar feeling when I watched several members of Viva Palestina cloak themselves in the Union Jack for the final stages of our 5,000 mile journey from London to Gaza.
In truth, the British flag was flown throughout our marathon journey across nine countries and the message was loud, proud and clear at each border crossing: "We are British, the convoy is British and we support the Palestinian people."

Clearly this woman is not familiar with the term 'irony'. She claims patriotism is a means of 'claiming for rulers their ambitions' - but what is her slavish love for the Islamic world and every Muslim-backed power struggle going?

The convoy was not 'British' - it was largely made up of Muslims and deluded idiots, with a few people who can't see beyond the goodness of their own hearts for good measure.

To finish, I would like to say something to Yvonne Ridley which I'm sure she'll be familiar with:

"Not in my name."

That's what she said about the struggle to remove the Taliban from power. I repeat it back to her now about her and Galloway's shameless attempts to pretend the British people are all duped dhimmis who can't see through the 'Palestinian liberation struggle'. It's nationalism and chauvinism in its purest, ugliest, most dangerous form, pure and simple.

You're not fit to hold the Union Flag Yvonne, let alone wax lyrical about the 'noble Desert Rats'. I had two relatives who served with the British army in North Africa, and I can assure you they didn't do it with the dream of a Muslim Britain or Europe - they were fighting against evil, oppressive beliefs, not for them.

An Audience with Yvonne Ridley (I)

British journalist and prominent Muslim convert Yvonne Ridley, pictured above, was in the news a while back leading a convoy of British vehicles containing £1 million in aid to Gaza.

I have some personal experience of this woman. In 2005, whilst I was attending the University of Kent and completing a degree in Politics & International Relations, she came to the campus to deliver a talk on her time in captivity in Afghanistan and her (then) recent conversion to Islam.

The talk was organised by the university's 'Muslim Society', and I decided to attend along with three friends, two male, one female. We were all quite interested in current affairs, and thought we were simply in for a good story.

At the time I knew almost nothing about Islam, at least compared to what I know now. The talk occurred just a few months before British-born Muslim suicide bombers slaughtered commuters during London's morning rush hour on the 7th July 2005.

Like the vast majority of the civilised world, I was distressed and upset by the events of 11th September 2001, but I did not realise the inherent nature of Islam and Jihad at that time; I was more concerned about the lax immigration policies which exist in most Western countries, and which 9/11 highlighted quite mercilessly.

Anyway, my friends and I arrived at the lecture theatre in which Ridley was to speak. Three large Asian men, who wouldn't have looked out of place as nightclub bouncers but for their long beards, stood blocking the door. Next to them stood a long table, upon which were stacked scores of green-bound books, which turned out to be free, English-language copies of the Koran.

We approached the men and explained we wished to hear Ridley's talk. Their stony faced demeanour changed - they smiled and opened the door whilst wishing us As-Salāmu `Alaykum السلام عليكم.

The lecture theatre was fairly full, and I was surprised by the number of Muslims in the audience. There were also some lecturers and other students, but the vast majority of people seemed to be Muslims and Left-wing activists from outside the university staff and student body.

We found four seats next to each other and filed in. However, as we sat down, a bearded Muslim man cleared his throat and explained that 'sex segregation' was in force - women sat to the left of the aisle and men to the right, as in a mosque.

Two of the large men from the door came over, and explained again that my female friend would have to move across the aisle. She didn't particularly want to, so I told them that we were staying put - if we'd chosen to go in a mosque then I would within reason respect any requests they made, but this was a lecture theatre in an English university.

One of the men looked angry and told us we would have to leave, but the other suggested a compromise - that she sit in the aisle seat of the men's side. We agreed to this, and duly shuffled around, but by now I was wondering what on earth was going on.

It got worse, however - we were told by the president of the Muslim Society, a Muslim girl wearing a headscarf, that the car that had been sent to collect Ridley had become stuck in traffic - so to pass the time, we were going to listen to pupils from an Arabic-language Koran 'Sunday school' in Canterbury recite prayers and passages from the Koran.

The menacing bouncers shut the doors, and we resigned ourselves to sitting there and listening to one child after the other take the podium and chant in Arabic. I'm as tolerant and open-minded as the next person, but I found it an unnecessary imposition, in all honesty. I had not gone to a religious event, and even a few of the lecturers and aging Leftists looked a little uncomfortable.

After about 20 minutes of incessant chanting, the doors burst open, and the president urged our applause - Yvonne Ridley was there, wearing a pink headscarf.

She's not an imposing woman to look at or speak to - she has the air of a teacher at a polytechnic, sort of a cross between someone with an academic air of authority, and someone who just wants to be friends and buy you a pint (well, not anymore, obviously).

She sat rather than stood, and spent about an hour and a half telling us about her journalistic career, her determination to get into to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and expose the treatment of women, her subsequent capture by the Taliban and her treatment, and her conversion to Islam after her release.

Something was not quite right, though. Although she admitted she was scared when the Taliban found her wearing a burqa in the back of a taxi, that was as far as it went. She talked of gazing into the green eyes of the bearded maniac who disrobed her at the roadside, as if they were strolling along the Seine together. As it was, she was actually being arrested by one of the most fearsome and misogynistic Islamic regimes the modern world has known.

Foreigners at that time were banned from Afghanistan on pain of death. The idea of an infidel, a woman at that, trying to sneak in to reveal the plight of ordinary Afghans should have been packed with notions of courage and honour - but it simply fell flat.

It fell flat because it was obvious as soon as she opened her mouth that she had some sympathy for the Taliban - and had even before her conversion.

The rest of the story was less James Bond and more Mills and Boon; 'they were so polite, so courteous, they didn't rape me or murder me or force me to convert to Islam...' etc etc etc.

Big of them. It seems she spent some time locked in a palatial room with a Taliban big-wig - the deputy leader, their interior minister or some such. She seemed far more interested in his 'beautiful white clothes and bejewelled turban' than the medieval barbarities he was almost directly responsible for, however.

He asked her to convert to Islam, or as she put it, 'revert to Islam'. She refused, but promised him that when she was released, she would read the Koran, study its message, and make up her own mind. She also promised she would help the Taliban get 'a fair hearing' in the British media.

She kept her promise, liked what she saw, and became perhaps Britain's most famous and prominent Muslim convert. Unfortunately, instead of whiling away her days in purdah reading the Koran, she decided to proselytize and spread Islam's message.

Here's where the talk completely parted company from reality (and, let's be honest, it had been touch and go before); Islam, you'll be surprised to learn, is a religion of peace, truth and beauty. Bush, Israel and the American media distort these simple realities.

Not 9/11, not rape and forced marriage, not forced conversions, honour killings and acid attacks, not suicide bombings, not treating women like cattle, gang rapes and violence. Just Bush, Israel and the US media.

At the time, I felt angry. Not only had I been lured to the talk under false pretences, but she was taking me and every non-Muslim in the room for an idiot, a complete dupe. I gritted my teeth through the rest of it, then left speedily at the end, but not before asking her an awkward question about women's rights and taking a free copy of the Koran.

That night, I sat down and read - and I began to understand. However, the picture I formed was very different to Ridley's. But then, maybe she was always inclined that way. For who is Yvonne Ridley, this woman I am almost indebted to for helping me to discover the truth of Islam?

Please proceed in an orderly fashion to Part Two.