Intel Ops update:

Pakistan announced the capture of senior Taliban figures, including two close aides to Mullah Omar, just a few hours ago. Security forces captured four high-value targets in two raids in the city of Quetta:

An Afghan intelligence source told the BBC four senior associates of Mullah Omar were being held after operations by Pakistani security forces. The arrests took place in two areas of the city of Quetta in western Pakistan.

The source said those arrested included two men responsible for Mullah Omar's letters and communications. They have been named as Mullah Jahangir and Mullah Mohid.

Others now in detention are said to be Mullah Nazir, who was Taleban commander in the southern Afghan province of Urozgan, and Mullah Tahir, the former Taleban commander for the capital, Kabul.

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According to Asia Times Online contacts, NATO and its US backers have gotten their wish: coalition forces will start hitting targets wherever they might be.

Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf is expected to make an important announcement on extremism during an address to the nation in the next day or two.

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coalition intelligence has pinpointed at least four centers in the tribal areas of North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan from which Taliban operations inside Afghanistan are run. These bases include arms caches and the transfer and raising of money and manpower, the latter in the form of foot-soldiers to fight with the Taliban-led insurgency.

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ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan is moving closer to a raid on a besieged mosque in Islamabad on Sunday, after officials said Al-Qaeda-linked rebels including foreigners had seized control and may start killing hostages.
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Government forces tightened the noose on day six of the siege of the Red Mosque as a top commando died in an operation to blast through the wall around the building and allow women and children allegedly held inside to flee.

Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul Haq said the government believed the mosque's firebrand deputy leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, had effectively been deposed by the extremists.

"Ghazi is no longer in control. The hardcore militants are in control of the mosque," Haq told AFP. "Our fear is that they may start killing the women and children to press for their demand for safe passage."

Haq said that inside the mosque there were "terrorists who are wanted within and outside Pakistan. These terrorists have links with Arabs."

One or two militants from Uzbekistan were also involved, he said.

Arabs, Uzbeks and Chechens formed the backbone of an Al-Qaeda force that fled into Pakistan's troubled tribal areas after the US-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

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New UK bomb warnings. The Daily Star is reporting that "the security services now believe that the global Islamist terror network has more outrages primed to happen in the UK." Al-Qaida expert and author Neil Doyle tells the Daily Star that Jihadist web site inactivity is a sign of pending plots: "What terrorists do is issue a general alert as an instruction to everyone to shut their mouths."

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Modern militant 'recruits himself'. The Australian reports on analysis of the approach by the latest Jihadists, that rather than being recruited and groomed by Al Qaeda, that such Jihadists effectively "recruit" themselves.

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As jihadist plots continue to be uncovered from Glasgow to New Jersey, it is plain that no place can be considered entirely safe. That includes placid, would-be neutral Switzerland, where a series of incidents and controversies in recent months points to a small but untiring Saudi-sponsored Islamist presence--and to a growing determination to resist its excesses on the part of some Swiss citizens and the Swiss authorities.

Switzerland has more than 300,000 Muslims--some 4.3 percent of the population--few of whom are of Arab descent. Most came as migrants or refugees from the former Yugoslavia (57 percent) or Turkey (20 percent). Yet the small minority who are Arabs (5 percent) have made their mark.

The influential Geneva Islamic Center was founded as long ago as 1961, with roots in the international Islamist movement. Its leader, Said Ramadan, had been expelled from Nasser's Egypt for ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by his father-in-law, Hassan al-Banna. Ramadan also helped create the World Muslim League, funded by the Saudi establishment for the purpose of spreading Wahhabism around the world. Today, Ramadan's sons Tariq, intellectual superstar of European Islamism, and Hani, head of the Geneva Islamic Center, continue to serve the cause.

But the Islamic Center is not the only Islamist institution in the Swiss capital. There is also the Grand Mosque of Geneva, which has undergone sweeping leadership changes in recent months. It has a new director, fresh from Jeddah, who suddenly fired four executives at the end of March. The Swiss daily Le Temps reported that the firings were initiated by the Saudi consul general in Geneva. The fired executives have sued, claiming they lost their jobs for being too moderate.



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http://counterterrorismblog.org/