Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Think at your own risk.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Cabana radicals

Update (7/18): Pictures of Germaine, and reports on his family's shock and anguish over his alleged involvement in the London bombings.

Update: The Times of London has more on the susected Jamaican jihadi in London:

THE fast-moving inquiry into the London bombings took a further twist yesterday when the terrorist on the Piccadilly Line train was identified as a Jamaican-born Muslim convert.

Lindsey Germaine, who was believed to be in his late 20s, was said by security sources last night to have died when he detonated his rucksack bomb as the southbound train pulled out of King’s Cross, killing at least 26 people and himself.

... Mystery surrounds Germaine. Police were uncertain about how he spelt his name and what or how many names he may have used. He had been living in a rented house in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, for only a short time before embarking on
what he will have believed to be his martyrdom mission. His wife, who is believed to be called Samantha, is a white woman said to have converted to Islam in the past two years. She is thought to have changed her name to Sherafiyah [and according to another source, was always seen wearing flowing abaya-type robes]. The couple had a young daughter.

But his appearance in the jigsaw of how this terrorist operation was planned and executed also answers some questions. It explains why the three bombers from Leeds travelled south by car instead of taking a train directly to King’s Cross. Germaine’s home in Aylesbury is 20 miles from Luton, where the West Indian Muslim met his Pakistani co-conspirators early last Thursday morning. Their controllers will have wanted the four to meet, to say a prayer, strengthen each other’s resolve and synchronise their watches before setting off to London.

Germaine, who is believed to have Islamicised his name after his religious conversion and to have called himself Jamal, was said to have been seen in Leeds with some of the other bombers. ... Security sources said last night that they were investigating the likelihood that Germaine first met his Leeds contacts during a trip to a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan.

Jamaica's Gleaner newspaper is reporting that islanders sharing Germaine's surname (there is confusion as to whether his name is Germaine Lindsey or Lindsey Germaine) have been swamped with calls from the various British tabloids, who are desperately seeking more info on the family, and of course, are in a race for the first picture of Germaine. And there's this:

Efforts to contact the president of the Islamic Council of Jamaica, Mustafa
Mohammed proved futile, but one high-ranking member who requested anonymity told The Gleaner that "Islam is a religion of peace, we do not agree with violence committed against innocent people". There are reportedly 4,000 practising Muslims in Jamaica. [Out of a total population of some 2.7 million people]

"No, I'm not surprised that a young Jamaican male may be involved. People don't understand the Koran but there are clear verses that instruct Muslims to destroy the opponents of Allah. The new radical Islam is spreading all over... and it is spreading all over the world so it is not surprising that a Jamaican may be involved, " Lloyd Cooke, a lecturer at the Jamaica Bible College in Mandeville, told The Gleaner yesterday. "Nationality has nothing to do with it, it has everything to do with conviction."

Indeed. But I think it's clear that now, British Jamaicans will join East Asians and Arabs in getting the scrutiny of customs officials, police and the intelligence services.

Original post (7/14, 6:36 p.m.): Word that the fourth suspected member of London's tube station death squad was a Jamaican-born Briton was a shocker. Like shoe bomber Richard Reid, Lindsey Germaine emigrated with his family to the U.K. from the Caribbean. Like Reid, he was a convert to Islam. But the question is, was he unusual. If not, then the mission to uproot radical Islam around the world has to make a sharp U-turn, from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, right to our American backyard. Lindsey seemed ordinary to his neighbors:

One neighbour said: "They are a couple, a black man in his early 30s and a woman in her 20s who has converted to Islam. They have a little boy who's about 18 months old.

"They moved into the house about six months ago. They were just about to renew the contract, I think."

He worshipped at the local mosque. And apparently, he entered the tube station at Russell Square on the morning of July 7th and blew up the contents of his backpack.

So just how prevalent is radical Islam, or regular Islam for that matter, in the Caribbean? The history of Islam apparently dates back to the slave trade, when Black Muslims from West Africa were brought to the islands. Islam surged during the 1950s and 1960s, in part inspired by politically active Black Muslims in the U.S., such as the Nation of Islam. During the 1980s, an Islamic Council of Jamaica was formed, which now includes at least six organizations or "jamaahs." (get more detail here.)

As to the more radical variety, it appears there is real cause for worry that groups like al-Qaida are looking more and more often to the Caribbean (not to mention to Latin America and even to gangs that overlap the U.S. border) for both recruits and target practice. This alarming article from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, dated November, 2004, spells out the threat in Trinidad and Tobago. First the target practice:

ver the past several years, maritime attacks have become more violent, more frequent and clearly more organized. It is believed that militant groups, particularly in South East Asia, are practicing hijacking ships for their possible use as weapons. Of all types of vessels oil and chemical tankers are perhaps the most attractive targets for terrorists. These vessels are manned by smaller crews and loaded with volatile substances that could potentially cause significant damage. According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) attacks against tankers are growing at an alarming rate.

While all eyes are placed on the area surrounding the Malacca Straits, the world oil bottleneck, and on the Indonesian coast off Aceh, very little attention is placed on the U.S. underbelly of the Caribbean and the softer targets in the region closest to America's back yard: Trinidad, Venezuela and the Bahamas. These Caribbean countries are among the short list of natural gas producing countries and liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) exporters. Trinidad and Tobago alone account for 80% (1st quarter 2004) of all U.S. LNG imports, up from 68% in 2002. Therefore, any incident involving an LNG tanker along the Caribbean routes could harm not only U.S. energy security but also the economies of the Caribbean islands, affecting tourism and other industries.

And then there's this:

Trinidad and Tobago is a beautiful country in the Southern part of the Caribbean. It is in fact the southernmost of the Caribbean islands and the last island before Venezuela. It is one of the most affluent of the Caribbean islands with, for several years, the highest foreign direct investment per capita in the entire western hemisphere except for Canada. The home of tourism, steel band, calypso and carnival is unfortunately also the home of one of the first attempts at violently establishing a modern Islamic extremist state in the region after the attempted Islamic coup in July 1990. 15% of the island's population is Muslim.

The questions is, how extensive is the problem, which clearly doesn't belong to England, Europe or the Mideast alone. In the U.S. we've had our Tim McVeighs - homegrown terrorists who strike seemingly out of nowhere. But the surge in active recruiting of disgruntled Muslims and Muslim converts by terrorist organizations represents a threat that can't be ignored, and suggests that we're being far too narrow in focusing our efforts on questioning and detaining mostly Arab men. Muslim converts in the "Stans" are white -- and thre are Moroccan, Sudanese and other African Muslims, Asians, Hispanics and on and on. You can't infiltrate every ethnic community in every large city with a large population, and you can't bug every mosque, charitable organization or youth meeting (at least not as far as I know, but don't quote me on the Patriot Act.)

So what exactly do you do?

posted by JReid @ 9:15 AM