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Posted by: kwflatbed

Wednesday, February 06, 2008
By Jennifer Griffin


WASHINGTON — Coalition forces acting on a tip from a local Iraqi planned a surprise raid last week on a home in Kirkuk, where an 11-year-old boy, the son of a Kurdish mechanic, was being held for $100,000 ransom by Al Qaeda.

The kidnappers had held the boy, Ammar, for four days.
Kidnapping and extortion are how Al Qaeda in Iraq finances its attacks. It is big business. But this time there was a happy ending.
"As he came out from under that curtain you could tell he looked terrified," Rear Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, told FOX News in an interview, speaking about the boy. "He gave his name and they said, 'You’re the one we are looking for,' and you could tell he was much relieved at that point."
The raid began before dawn.
"They approached on foot," Smith said from Baghdad. "They knew precisely what door they needed to go to. They came down a small alleyway. The door was locked, they yelled inside for it to be unlocked, it was not unlocked so they broke the door down."
The security forces entered a small room.
"The Al Qaeda member who had custody of this young boy was also in shock by the entrance and the quick operations by the Iraq security forces," Smith said.
One of the kidnappers was caught inside the room where the boy was hiding. All of the shooting and shouting left the boy terrified, according to those who participated in the raid.
"They got him into the car," Smith recalled. "They handed him a cell phone so he could call his mother, and he was very composed. He just said, 'Hello. This is Ammar.'
"He said, 'I am here. I am safe.'"
An officer on the other end of the line could hear the family screaming and shouting. Soon after, the boy was delivered back to cheering neighbors and family members.
This story had a happy ending, but most kidnappings in Iraq do not. Ammar was from a simple family, and his father never could have paid the $100,000 ransom.
In an interview after his son was returned to the family, Ammar's father said, "The kidnappers told us that if we fail to pay the ransom, they will behead my son and put his head in the garbage can in front of my house. We told them that we don't have money."
The raid netted five kidnappers and led the coalition forces to another boy being held in a hideout nearby. He was freed on Sunday.
Al Qaeda’s networks are not difficult to unravel once a successful raid has been completed. Its operatives' obsessive need to keep accurate books, such as an accountant might, has provided coalition troops with a treasure trove of intelligence.
Much like the Nazis in World War II, Al Qaeda operatives document their every action, be it a bombing or kidnapping. It is the way they get paid by the organization.
The kidnapping ring that was broken last week had recorded 26 other kidnappings. Coalition forces did not know how many had ended in release, and how many in death.
But another capture during a Dec. 4 raid in Khan Bani Sad — about halfway between Baghdad and Baquba — gave even greater insight into the organization.
That raid netted five propaganda tapes that would have made Nazi propaganda filmmaker Joseph Goebbels proud.

• Click here to view video.

The tapes are training videos showing black-masked Iraqi children between 6 and 14 being taught how to hold AK-47s, how to stop a car and carry out a kidnapping, how to break into a house and how to break into a courtyard and terrorize the individuals living there.
Footage aired for reporters showed an apparent training operation in which the boys are shown storming a house and holding guns to the heads of mock residents. Another tape showed a young boy wearing a suicide vest and posing with automatic weapons.
They also are seen being taught to use rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
"These were young boys all masked and hooded, all outfitted with weapons; adults were doing the training," Smith said.
"Al Qaeda is clearly using children to exploit other children to get the interest of Jihad spread among teenagers far and wide. They use this footage on the Internet to encourage other young boys to join the jihad movement."
And at a U.S. military briefing on Wednesday in Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, he added: "Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis. It is offering children as the new generation of mujahedeen," he said, using the Arabic term for holy warriors.
Other scenes from the Khan Bani Saad video showed masked boys forcing a man off his bicycle at gunpoint and stopping a car and kidnapping its driver along a dusty country road. At one point the boys — wearing soccer jerseys with ammunition slung across their chests — sit in a circle on the floor, chanting slogans in support of Al Qaeda.
Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari told reporters that militants are kidnapping more and more Iraqi children, though he could not offer details or numbers.
"This is not only to recruit them, but also to demand ransom to fund the operations of Al Qaeda," al-Askari said.
The group included about 20 children being "trained." At the end of the hourlong video they are sent into their parents’ arms, suggesting the training has parental approval and that the children likely come from Al Qaeda-affiliated households.
The tapes' discovery adds to Al Qaeda's exploitation of children as well as women; just last weekend two female homicide bombers wrapped in bombs targeted a Baghdad market, killing nearly 100 people.
Smith pictures of the bombers' remains show their faces to have distinctive Down Syndrome features, making them unlikely suspects.
After the attack, Iraqis in Baghdad demanded more protection for markets, saying one of the bombers was not searched because she was known as a local beggar and the male guards were reluctant to search women because of Islamic sensitivities, as women are not searched in public places.
The police are recruiting female officers, yet there does not appear to be a plan to train them to search women.
As for the tapes, "We don't think they were being trained precisely to go out and conduct operations any time soon," Smith said. "But clearly there is a pattern of training and a pattern of indoctrination that is being used by Al Qaeda.
"Very young individuals who are very obviously innocent and impressionable, these videos convince them early on that the jihadist movement, the Al Qaeda movement, is something they should belong to and look up to."
All of this suggests that Al Qaeda in Iraq is planning to continue its recruiting operations for years to come, Smith said.
"In this instance we believe it was for a greater purpose than trying to produce footage for film," Smith said.
"That footage can be used again on the Internet to convince other young boys around the world to join the movement."
The U.S. military on Wednesday said coalition forces had killed seven suspected insurgents and detained 34 others during five days of raids across Iraq.
Also Wednesday, a roadside bomb exploded near a police convoy transporting suspected Shiite militia fighters south of Baghdad, killing four passers-by and wounding nine other people, police said. At least 19 people were killed or found dead Wednesday across the country.
The roadside bombing was an apparent attempt to free the 10 detainees who were linked to the Mahdi Army militia that is nominally loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to police Brig. Gen. Ghassan Mohammed Ali.
He said the detainees had been captured over the past month and had been accused of attacking civilians and U.S. and Iraqi security forces in the city.
The bomb went off in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, where there have been fierce clashes between rival Shiite militia factions engaged in a violent power struggle in the oil-rich area.
Two women and two men in a car near the explosion were killed, and nine other people — two policemen, three prisoners and four civilians — were wounded, Ali said.
Al-Sadr has ordered his militia to stand in a six-month cease-fire that expires at the end of February, but the U.S. military says disaffected fighters have broken with the movement and persisted with attacks.
Iraqi security forces in the area also often are accused of being infiltrated by militia fighters, particularly from the Badr Brigade, the militant arm of the largest Shiite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC.

Jennifer Griffin is FOX News' National Security Correspondent.

FOX News' Courtney Kealy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,328832,00.html

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Posted by: Cinderella

Caught on camera: The 10-year-old Al Qaeda fanatics ready to launch terror attacks in Iraq



Weighed down with ammunition belts and guns as big as themselves, these masked boys as young as ten are being trained by Al Qaeda to be its new generation of killers, the U.S. military claimed last night.


The terror group is said to be recruiting Iraqi boys who should be in primary school to carry out assassinations, suicide bombings and kidnappings.
Officials in Baghdad released a video seized during a raid on a suspected Al Qaeda safe-house which showed the children apparently undergoing training. The images are said to be a propaganda tool designed to recruit more children to the cause.

Even by the standards of the terror network, the pictures are chilling, with black-masked boys - some of whom appeared to be aged about 10 - storming a house and holding guns to the heads of mock captives.
Another tape showed a young boy wearing a suicide vest and posing with automatic weapons while a third contained pictures of masked youngsters forcing a man from a bicycle at gunpoint in an apparent kidnapping.
About 20 boys wearing ski masks are shown carrying rocket propelled grenade launchers - some of which dwarf the youngsters - assault rifles and pistols. The release of the footage, which was seized last December from a house at Khan Bani Saad, north-east of Baghdad, was further indication that Al Qaeda is increasingly using children and women for its terror operations, the U.S military said.

Iraqi officials say that more and more young boys are being snatched by militias and Al Qaeda as "recruits" suitable for training.
Iraqi Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari gave no details of numbers but said the abductions were taking place "not only to recruit them, but also to demand ransom to fund the operations of Al Qaeda." Both children and women are able to move more freely through the increasingly effective local and US security checks in major Iraqi cities.

Only last Friday two women with Down's Syndrome wearing remote-controlled explosives carried out a bombing in a busy pet market in Baghdad, killing dozens.
The US said prior to 2007, five women had been responsible for suicide bombings and other attacks across Iraq.
Ten women have carried out attacks since then, and there have been four female suicide bombers already in 2008.
It violates Muslim religious beliefs to use women in fighting.
US military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said there was evidence that Osama Bin Laden's representatives had taken the decision to target children.
"Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," he said, "It is offering children as the new generation of mujahedeen (holy warriors)," he said.
"We believe this video is used as propaganda to send out to recruit other boys ... and to send a broader message across Iraq to indoctrinate youth into Al Qaeda." He continued: "That is a disturbing trend that obviously shows the desperation that Al Qaeda is currently going through to use whatever means necessary to achieve its ends."

Other scenes from the Khan Bani Saad video showed masked boys forcing a man off his bicycle at gunpoint and stopping a car and kidnapping its driver along a dusty country road. At one point, the boys - wearing soccer jerseys with ammunition slung across their chests - sit in a circle on the floor, chanting slogans in support of Al Qaeda.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1811

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