Yahoo Hosted Al Qaeda Terror Group Apparently Pulled Days Prior To Iraqi Elections
By Jeremy Reynalds (01/21/05)
In the days leading up to the Iraqi election, a propaganda war continues to be fought on the Internet by radical Islamics.
However, one apparent major purveyor of terror appears to be off line – at least for the moment.
Yahoo group Global Islamic Media (GIM) which has been on and off line in the last few months (but which until Jan. 18/19 2005 was online at http://thisway.to/jabha and
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/markazislamiilami)
was continuing to post regular messages as well as links to a variety of terror related materials.
While an e-mail requesting comment to Yahoo requesting comment about the company's continuing hosting of this group was not answered, the site was apparently taken off line somewhere between 12 and 15 hours after the Jan. 18 e-mail was sent.
While Yahoo does not apparently answer specific media inquiries about its hosting of radical Islamic sites, in about mid-2004 this general policy statement was received from Yahoo.
It was from Mary Osako, Yahoo's Director of Communication. She said that those wishing to use Yahoo Groups "agree to not use the Service to upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable. When notified of content that may be in violation of our Terms of Service, we are committed to reviewing each report and taking appropriate action, generally within 24 hours."
LINKS FROM GIM
One link from the now defunct GIM site was to http://heretic.maid.to/cgi-bin/stored/serio0232.swf. The still working location contains a video presentation by the self-proclaimed "Global Islamic Media Front." It is a grizzly montage of pictures which includes pictures of burning military vehicles against a backdrop of thick plumes of smoke, an individual with only stumps left of his legs after presumably having had them blown off and a coffin surrounded by agonized relatives.
Another presentation by the same group (at http://heretic.maid.to/cgi-bin/stored/serio0229.swf) shows another video that includes more destroyed military vehicles, a bandaged up face of a soldier and soldiers caring for their injured colleagues.
Another link from a GIM message went to www.tetsuson.org/2001/tetsuon/tmp/up0676.zip. This site is apparently hosted in Japan and is still working. One of the items available in this file was a video again produced by Global Islamic Media Front which showed Iraqi security forces being trained by (presumably) American military.
The video included still pictures of Iraqi security forces laughing with troops, Iraqis and coalition forces walking together and Iraqis being saluted by coalition forces. A member of the military was also seen pinning a badge on an Iraqi security officer.
After the happiness came the explosion and the bloodthirsty pictures of seriously wounded or dead Iraqi security forces. The obvious implication was that this the fate of Iraqis who choose to cooperate with the "infidels."
Another link from a message on Global Islamic Media is to www.hostinganime.com/emarah. This site appears to be a duplicate of the Yahoo GIM group and is still available on line.
Hosting Anime is the mysterious and elusive free Internet service provider that at one time was hosting as many as 15 to 20 al Qaeda affiliated and other well known terror sites. Several sites quickly gained notoriety for either showing or providing links to videos of the numerous beheadings that occurred in Iraq.
Hosting Anime provided a trail of false contact information that ranged from a mail drop close to Los Angeles to false names and telephone numbers in Seattle. The only thing certain about Hosting Anime is that its operators leased computer space on equipment belonging to the Houston, TX Internet service provider, "Everyone's Internet."
Hosting Anime was apparently sold a few months ago and most of the terror sites that were at one time using its services were quickly pulled by the new owners. However, at least this one is back (or remained).
Attempts to contact Hosting Anime were unsuccessful as there was no working contact information on the web site at the time this article was written (www.hostinganime.com/contact.shtml).
HISTORY
GIM's apparent operator may be a Canadian with possible ties to Islamic militant Ramzi Ahmed Yousef.
Yousef was sentenced in 1998 to 240 years in prison for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and to a life term for plotting to blow up U.S. airliners in Southeast Asia and kill as many as 4,000 Americans (www.metimes.com/2K2/issue2002-24/reg/september_11_suspect.htm).
Prior to starting the Global Islamic Media group on Yahoo, Abu Banan operated a site called www.guraba.com.
In a 2004 interview with this writer, a spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Phil Gibson, said he was unable to confirm whether Banan was a subject of interest to the Canadian government. "Investigations are matters of operational interest and we don't ever talk about them," Gibson said.
However, a 2004 e- mail from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police also to this writer said the agency "can't comment on ongoing investigations."
A spokesman for the FBI's Washington office declined to tell this writer in 2004 if Banan was wanted, or a person of interest in the United States.
The Istanbul office contact for Guraba was listed as an Abdullah Yolcu (http://web.archive.org/web/20030604184344/http://guraba.com/aaboutus.htm). It is unclear whether Banan was using an alias or Yolcu was a colleague.
A May 13 1999 article in the Turkish Daily News (http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:LSDLEsp3STIJ:www.turkishdailynews.com/past_scanner/05_13_99/scanner.htm+%22Abdullah+Yolcu%22&hl=en&start=8&ie=UTF-8) hinted at some sort of connection between Yolcu and Yusuf.
The article read, "According to a report prepared by U.S. terrorism experts, radical Islamist militant Remzi Yusuf, who bombed New York's World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, called more than two places in Istanbul more than 10 times prior to the bombing. The mysterious calls were placed from the house Yusuf had been staying at in New York and from a phone in New Jersey. One of these two places is a house in Istanbul's Uskudar district where a man from Kirkuk named Abdullah Yolcu has been staying. The other number belongs to a business place in Istanbul's Aksaray district, an office which Yolcu had later, along with his two Saudi partners, handed over to a textile company named Gureba Tekstil. Yolcu told journalists he did not know who did the World Trade Center bombing and that he did not know the person named Remzi Yusuf. One of these conversations, placed from New Jersey on Jan. 5, 1993, lasted 27 minutes while all the rest were one-minute conversations."
Yousef's real name may be Abdul-Basit Baluchi (www.metimes.com/2K2/issue2002-24/reg/september_11_suspect.htm). Commenting on Yolcu's claim that he did not know Yousef, a source close to the first World Trade Center bombing speaking on condition of anonymity said in 2004, "Just because someone claims not to know him by the name Ramzi Yousef hardly means that someone does not know the person who is actually Abdul Basit."
That same individual added, "I believe (Yousef lieutenant) Mohammed Salameh (http://specials.ft.com/attackonterrorism/FT3FJ5RJMUC.html) was living with Yousef throughout the latter's stay in the U.S.; they were both using the phone in each location, and I believe -- although this is just educated speculation -- that Salameh used the phone more often."
The source speculated that if "the Istanbul location was an al-Qaeda hostel for the mujahideen as they made their was through Afghanistan ... possibly ... many people were staying there and that, even though the phone may have been registered in one name, the people on this end were actually talking to someone else when they called."
While it is difficult to find out much about Banan, he has been making use of the Internet for some time. This appears to be one of his earlier communications. http://web.archive.org/web/20010815184810/www.angelfire.com/al/guraba/guraba.html
From that page, there was also a link to a Global Islamic site from Montreal; (http://web.archive.org/web/20010828000553/www.angelfire.com/al/guraba/montreal.html) with a Montreal address and phone number. (7600 Earle Rd. # 1103, Cote St. Luc , Montreal , QC H4w 1N9 Tel: (514) 369-6107). The telephone number is no longer in service.
A floating button outlined in red on that site invited browsers to "click here," and took them to a page apparently hosted at one time on the servers of Montreal's McGill University. (http://web.archive.org/web/20010923221643/ssmu.mcgill.ca/iss/Chechnya2.html). There readers found an appeal for Muslims in Chechnya.
Alerted to this in 2004, a McGill University spokesman was not immediately certain of the school's current policy on student run sites, but acknowledged to this writer that there had obviously been a lot of changes since 9/11.
Visitors to that McGill student site (http://web.archive.org/web/20010305214721/ssmu.mcgill.ca/iss/Chechnya1.html) were invited to donate to among others, the Al Haramain Foundation, some branches of which have been designated by the American government as being supporters of terrorism (www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js1183.htm)
Another option on the old McGill site for giving was listed as the Global Relief Foundation, which was also accused by federal officials of providing financial assistance to terrorists (www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/01/28/inv.charilty.lawsuit/) The organization's former president and co-founder, Rabih Sami Haddad, lost his immigration appeal and was removed from the United States (www.ice.gov/text/news/newsrel/articles/removal071503.htm)
Visitors to the site whose "heart did not move much" were invited to look at http://web.archive.org/web/20011003200735/www.amina.com/war/mines/, where they saw pictures of landmine victims in the war between Russia and Chechnya.
Banan has left many other electronic footprints across the Internet. Abubanan: Global Islamic Media Group (http://web.archive.org/web/20011227153924/groups.yahoo.com/group/abubanan/) which was started by him on June 29 2001, had 663 members on Dec. 27 the same year. By Feb. 12 2002 the group's membership had increased to 1,042 (http://web.archive.org/web/20020212034232/groups.yahoo.com/group/abubanan)
There was also an invitation on www.guraba.com in late 2002 (http://web.archive.org/web/20021211110048/www.guraba.com/AbuBanan.htm) inviting those interested to join the Yahoo group.
The www.guraba.com/Abu Banan page billed Global Islamic Media as a source that "brings to you the real and true news from trustiest sources."
The Yahoo hosted Abu Banan Global Islamic Media quickly grew in numbers, and later changed its name to Global Islamic Media. The group listed 6,500 members until it was presumably closed by Yahoo in late April.
The group achieved recent notoriety in part because in Dec. 2003, Islamic militants discussed the possibility of a terrorist attack designed to affect the Spanish general election.
In a March 2004 Agence France Press (AFP) story, the news agency reported that Britain's Channel 4 News revealed that a Dec. 10 posting on GIM, which had previously carried statements purporting to be from Al-Qaeda affiliates, suggested that attacks could help bring about a Socialist election victory and the withdrawal of Spain's troops from Iraq.
According to Channel 4 News, the GIM posting was issued under the name of the Centre for Services to the Mujahideen and read, "The approaching general elections in Spain in March next year must be exploited to the extreme. We think that the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most, before it will be forced to withdraw (from Iraq) because of the public pressure on it. If its forces remain after these blows, the victory of the Socialist party will be almost guaranteed, and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its campaign manifesto."
After the bombings, which killed 200 people and injured 1,500, Spain's conservative party was defeated. Spain's new Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who criticized President George W. Bush for the Iraq campaign, withdrew Spanish troops.
In late April 2004 the group changed its name to Global Islamic Media Centre and again opened up on Yahoo. Soon after a story aired on CNN about GIM, that group also ceased operating. It returned under different names. GIM has been operating with its current name since Sept. 17 2004 and at the time of writing had 523 members.
Banan has a variety of e- mail addresses that include abubanan@hotmail.com, abobanan@hotmail.com and guraba@hotmail.com. Requests for information to those addresses about his on line activities were not answered but an e- mail from this writer sent to Banan at bnmnet@yahoo.com, an address given for him as site administrator, was answered with a terse, "I am not Abu Banan. It's wrong e mail!"
That e-mail appeared to originate from an Internet service provider based in Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the possible alias mentioned above, Banan could be using a variety of other names that include Abu Banan Ayad, Abdul Hamid, Ayad Kerkukly, Ayad Hamid Kirkukly and AbuBanan Kirkukly.
The www.guraba.com domain name is currently for sale. In July 2004 the administrator was listed as Abdullah Banan with a false address in the United Kingdom. As of Jan. 18 2005 the domain name is owned by a David Graham in Australia. An e-mail to Graham requesting information was not immediately answered.
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