Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [93]
In other messages around the same period, Gilani characterized terrorism, suicide bombings, and beheadings as heroic.
Some of us are saying that “Terrorism” is the weapon of the cowardly. I will say that you may call it barbaric or immoral or cruel, but never cowardly. Courage is, by and large, exclusive to the Muslim nation.67
Gilani’s disposition toward violence was not mere talk. In a discussion with his LeT handler, he was already laying out the scope of a new attack. Gilani suggested that they target the Danish newspaper’s editor and cartoonist. “All Danes are responsible,” his handler replied.
Gilani returned to the United States and began to plan his reconnaissance mission. He made up business cards and contacted Jyllands Posten to ask about placing an ad, the pretext he would use to enter the office. In January 2009 he flew to Copenhagen. As in Mumbai, he took extensive video of the newspaper’s buildings and the surrounding area. He also succeeded at getting inside the building.
Returning to Pakistan, he reported on the site, but the attack had to be postponed. LeT was feeling the heat that Mumbai had created. At the direction of Ilyas Kashmiri, Gilani was instructed to meet with a contact in Europe who would provide non-LeT manpower willing to carry out a suicide attack. Kashmiri told Gilani to make sure the volunteers recorded martyrdom videos before the attack. Unsatisfied with the grisly carnage that LeT had wrought in Mumbai, he also told Gilani that the attackers should decapitate the newspaper’s employees and throw their severed heads out of the building’s windows. The attack was to take place as soon as possible, Kashmiri told the American terrorist, intimating that the leaders of al Qaeda wanted it that way.
But in July 2009, Gilani’s LeT handler switched gears again, postponing the Denmark attack (to Gilani’s dismay) and calling him back to Pakistan in order to work on a follow-up attack in India. Gilani was resistant, complaining that his handlers “had rotten guts” and telling an associate that he could complete the project without the organization’s assistance.68
He had overestimated his chances. In October 2009 Gilani was arrested at the airport while trying to fly from Chicago to Philadelphia, apparently in preparation to connect to Denmark. In his luggage FBI agents found maps of Copenhagen and a memory stick containing video surveillance of the newspaper office and other locations.69 He cut a deal and pleaded guilty to complicity in the Mumbai attack.70
As of this writing, he may also face charges in India.71 Under interrogation by Indian officials as part of his plea agreement, Gilani was said to be abusive, referring to his interrogators with “the choicest of Hindi expletives” and mocking Indian intelligence.
“The attack was planned and executed in your own backyard. You didn’t even get a whiff of it and now you want to question me,” Gilani reportedly scoffed.72
AL SHABAB
Somalia has known little but violence since the ruling dictatorship collapsed in 1991. The conflict was one of al Qaeda’s earliest investments (see chapter 6). In 2004 a fragile agreement was crafted to restore order to the country under the auspices of a transitional government.73
Barely two years later, an Islamist movement known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) confronted the young government. The ICU, which wanted to establish shariah law, looked like a group of extremists to many observers, and there were rumors of links to al Qaeda. Although much of its activity was directed against the remaining shreds of the Somali government, ICU leaders blamed neighboring Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian nation, for interfering in Somalia’s affairs and blamed