[pnews-news] Islamist in Spain Arrested

     -----
    / o o \
====OO=====OO===
 http://pnews.org/
Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


--
Islamist in Spain Arrested



April 04, 2006
Spain: Internet Islamist Gets Ten Years' Jail

Ahmed BrahimNews from CNN reports that Algerian born Ahmed Brahim has been 
given a 10 year jail sentence for trying to start a web site aimed at 
recruiting jihadists and to give out fatwas to justify terror attacks.

According to the BBC, Brahim was arrested on Saturday 14 April, 2002. At 
the time of his arrest, the result of seven months' investigation 
involving countries such as the US, France and Germany, Brahim was 
suspected of being Al-Qaeda's chief financier in Europe. He was also 
suspected of involvement with the bombing of the US embassies in Dar es 
Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya on Friday August 7 1998.

Born in 1945, Brahim and his Finnish wife Pirjo had a business buying and 
selling yachts, and also worked as a public relations consultant. He had 
lived in Spain since 1987, and had no previous convictions at the time of 
his arrest. According to Daniel Pipes, in 1999, a Spanish judge, Baltasar 
Garzon, said that he had regular contact with Tariq Ramadan.

Brahim had meetings with at least six Al-Qaeda/Islamist operatives, 
including Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, who would be implicated in the 
Madrid train-bombings of March 2004, and also Mahmoud Malhoum Salim, who 
stayed at Brahim's Mallorca home in 1998. Salim, believed linked to the 
African bombings, would later be convicted in 2002 for attempted murder in 
the US, and was given a life sentence. During Salim's trial he had 
repeatedly stabbed a correctional officer in the eyes.

At the National Court on Friday (31 March), Brahim was 
found guilty on terror charges. It was said at this trial that in 2002, 
Brahim had been "creating, to distribute by Internet, a Web page to teach 
the most radical and extremist Islamic content, that proposes 'holy war' 
against all those who don't share their beliefs".

The court's 55 page ruling said: "The project aimed to permit any Muslim 
access to the most radical preachers of holy war." The website was to be 
written in French, to reach a wider number of Muslims living in the West 
than an Arabic-language site.

The BBC had reported in 2002 that before Brahim's arrest, Brahim had sent 
money to some European countries, and had also sent computer equipment to 
a number of Arab countries.

As Brahim has been in custody for four years, he will only serve six years 
in jail.

http://westernresistance.org/

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
          M A I L I N G   L I S T S
(1) pnews-news - NEWS mailing list - (text only)
    Send "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" as subject
     ----> pnews-news-request(at)inyourface.info
=======================================================
(2) pnews-views - VIEWS mailing list- (text only)
OPEN discussion - "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" as subj
 Send to  ------> pnews-views-request(at)inyourface.info
=======================================================
(3) fightback - articles and pointers distribution list
(html/text) - expert informed opin., credentialed authors
          ----> http://pnews.org/dada/
========================================================
(4) ATTN: WEBMASTERS - Link Exchange/improve site rank
----> links_only-subscribe(at)googlegroups.com - or, go to:
-----> http://groups.google.com/group/Links_Only
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||