South African Terrorists?

Sara, one my most astute commenters, points out in the comments section that some “chatter” that may or may not be related to the latest terrorist threat is actually right out there for anyone to see:

Actually you can track some of the chatter if you regularly use Google News to track articles on al-Qaeda in the World Press. And something is going on.

The arrest of the Tanzanian last sunday which broke in the US on Thursday just before Kerry’s speech, involved a 14 hour gun battle in Gugera, with follow up arrests in four other cities — I think a total of 17. Apparently all had South African Passports — some good, others frauds. The Pakistani’s found that over 60 local police were involved with hiding these al-Qaeda linked persons, most of whom had recently left Waziristan — the police have been fired and arrested.

Additional arrests were made in neighboring towns after the gunfight, and then two days ago an attempt was made on the newly designated Prime Minister’s life — Suicide Bomber, and many were killed.

South African papers are full of material on their investigations subsequent to the identification of the passports. Turns out someone in the passport office was part of a syndicate stealing and selling SA passports to al-Qaeda. This apparently also ties to recent arrests in Italy, which also involved people with SA passports. Then last weekend in McAllan Texas a woman with a modified SA passport was arrested who had walked over from Nexico, and was trying to board a plane for NYC. Her passport tracks back to the SA syndicate. She was carrying a large amount of money.

The South African connection here is to the Muslim-Asian population in the Cape area of S. Africa, a population decended from Muslim-Indians brought in the mid 19th century by the British for indentured servant work. Apparently al-Qaeda has been successful in recent years recruiting from this group.

It may all be related to Ridge’s warnings — may not be, but it is a breaking story in several parts of the world right now, and worth following.

This is interesting because Ridge was asked directly if the woman arrested in McAllen had anything to do with this and he denied it. (He gave Pakistan, however, high praise.) But, obviously others are on this same wavelength. As Sara says, this may not be related, but it is certainly a big al-Qaeda story that is breaking right now.

One of the more interesting aspects of this is the South Africa connection, which I hadn’t known about. (Yet another group to get hysterically frightened of when they go to the bathroom in an airplane.)

Personally, I’m not worried one bit about this. Zell Miller told Little Russ this morning that we are fighting all the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here. Tom Ridge must be talking about something else.

Here are a few links. There are many more:

SA woman held in US ‘not al-Qaeda’

New twist in al-Qaeda arrests

SA men in Pakistan face battle

What were SA men doing in Pakistan?

Gujrat raid for Qaeda: South Africa wants access to held nationals

S. African Detained in Texas May Have Terrorist Ties