Beware of Hez in NY

Beware of Hez in NY

Old Warnings from Argentina

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/beware_of_hez_in_ny_pZK3aSHWrWehlPnJ2hHsAN

 

    By MATTHEW LEVITT

    Last Updated: 12:08 AM, July 18, 2013

    Posted: 11:55 PM, July 17, 2013

 

Next week, European leaders will meet to decide whether to designate the

military wing of Iranian-backed Hezbollah a terrorist organization.Banning

the group in Europe is long overdue, but the issue is only now on the agenda

due to the Hezbollah bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria, a year ago today.Only

after a successful Hezbollah strike on European soil has the issue of

banning it in Europe - and only the group's military wing, at that - risen

to the attention of European lawmakers.

 

But today's date was significant in the annals of Hezbollah long before last

year's attack in Bulgaria:Nineteen years ago today, Hezbollah operatives and

Iranian agents blew up the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires,

killing 85 and injuring 150 others. It was Hezbollah's second bombing in the

city in less than two years. And it appears that Hezbollah operatives in New

York City played a part.

Hezbollah's hand: Firemen search the rubble of the AMIA Jewish community

center in Buenos Aires after the terror attack there 19 years ago today.

AFP/Getty Images

Hezbollah's hand: Firemen search the rubble of the AMIA Jewish community

center in Buenos Aires after the terror attack there 19 years ago today.

 

Most important, the group's global reach today seems to be as potent as

ever.

 

In the weeks leading up to the 1994 attack, a flurry of calls was made to

coordinate final details. Most of the calls were made within South America,

but a few were directed through a New York City switchboard.

 

On July 1, 1994, a call was placed from the pay phone near the AMIA building

to a New York number. The call was presumably from Samuel el-Reda, who

prosecutors concluded coordinated the Hezbollah cells in Buenos Aires and in

the tri-border area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet.

 

Eleven days later, another call was placed to the New York number, this time

from a pay phone less than two miles west of the AMIA building. A third call

was placed to that number on July 17, the day before the bombing. Still

another was made from the same phone to a line investigators identified as a

Hezbollah communication center in Beirut.

 

These calls and others reveal what investigators concluded was a

command-and-control communication system among Hezbollah operatives on the

ground in Buenos Aires and coordinators in the tri-border area, New York and

Beirut.

 

Later on July 17, Mohsen Rabbani placed a call on his cell phone from the

vicinity of the garage where the car bomb was parked - just blocks from the

AMIA building - to Samuel el-Reda at the al-Tauhid mosque in Buenos Aires.

The call lasted a mere 26 seconds, "just the amount of time," prosecutors

would later comment, "that would have been necessary to confirm the success

of a key phase of the operation."

 

Prosecutors concluded that Rabbani, an Iranian who lived in Argentina for 11

years and played a key role in the Islamic Republic's intelligence

operations in South America, was the driving force behind Iran's

intelligence efforts in Argentina - andthe primary architect of the AMIA

plot.

 

Rabbani, who began laying the groundwork for his spy network after arriving

in Argentina in 1983, apparently had ties to other operations in New York as

well. According to Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman and federal

courtdocuments in Brooklyn, Rabbani helpedfour men who were plotting to bomb

JFK International Airport in 2007 and who sought technical and financial

assistance forthe operation, code-named "Chicken Farm."

 

One co-conspirator in that plot was Kareem Ibrahim, an imam and leader of

the Shiite Muslim community in Trinidad and Tobago.During cross-examination

at trial, Ibrahim admitted that he advised the plotters to approach Iranian

leaders and to use operatives ready to engage in suicide attacks at the

airport. In one of the recorded conversations, Ibrahimtold Russell Defreitas

- a plotter who was a JFK baggage handler and a naturalized US citizen -

that the attackers must be ready to "fight it out, kill who you could kill

and go back to Allah."

 

Documents seized from a house in Guyana belonging to another co-conspirator,

Adul Kadir, demonstrated that he was a Rabbani disciple who built a Guyanese

intelligence base for Iran much like his mentor had built in Argentina.

 

In 2011, evidence emerged suggesting that Rabbani was still doing

intelligence work in South America. One Brazilian official commented,

"Without anybody noticing, a generation of Islamic extremists is appearing

in Brazil." Last summer, the State Department warned that "Hezbollah could

attack in Europe or elsewhere at any time with little or no warning."And

just a few weeks ago, the department's annual terrorism report noted a

"marked resurgence" of "Iran and Hezbollah's terrorist activity."

 

When they meet next week, European leaders should follow the evidence from

Burgas, to Buenos Aires, to New York and beyond - and ban Hezbollah as the

terrorist organization it is.

 

==========================================

(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this

message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to

these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed

within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with

"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.

The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The

Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain

permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials

if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,

teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria

for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies

as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four

criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is

determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not

substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use

copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you

must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

 

THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS

PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.