 | This article needs to be updated.(June 2024) |
A Pakistani Canadian document-forger and immigrant-smuggler, [1] Michael John Hamdani (also Amarjit Singh Sangha, Azam Shah, Ranjit Singh, Ahmad Malik [2] ) rose to notoriety after he entered a plea bargain with authorities, and triggered a manhunt for five fictitious Middle Eastern terrorists he invented. [3] Authorities were later chastised for crying wolf, and frightening the public with a terrorism alert from the information they had. [4]
"We need to know why they have been smuggled into the country and what they're doing in the country"
President George W. Bush [5]
Arrested in October 2002 with $600,000 worth of forged traveler's cheques, [6] Hamdani later told prosecutors that Middle-Eastern men had approached him about acquiring documentation to allow them to travel from Pakistan, to England, to Canada, and finally entering the United States on December 24. [7] [8] He claimed to have been offered a large sum of money, [7] but denied that he had created the false passports. [9]
By December 29, the FBI had alerted authorities across the country to be on the lookout, transmitting photographs, names and birthdates of five people provided by Hamdani. [10] The names and ages were Abid Noraiz Ali, 25; Iftikhar Khozmai Ali, 21; Mustafa Khan Owasi, 33; Adil Pervez; 19; and Akbar Jamal, 28. [11] [12] The following day, a woman reported having seen two of the men on a ferry in Vancouver, British Columbia three weeks earlier. [13]
The Toronto Sun stated that the men had arrived at Pearson Airport weeks earlier, and claimed refugee status. [13] Some media outlets began claiming the men had crossed the border in Mohawk Territory, leading to a complaint from natives that they were being unfairly blamed when no evidence supported the claim. [14] On December 30, anti-terrorism police stormed six locations in Brooklyn and Queens, New York in connection with the investigation. [5]
Several days after the manhunt began, a jeweler in Lahore, Pakistan named Mohammed Asghar came forward to state that one of the photographs was of him, and that he had no idea why it had been released with the name "Mustafa Khan Owasi", or associated with any investigation. [10] [15] Authorities then declined to release the other 14 names, due to the "dubious quality" of the information. [10]
Hamdani was arrested again in January 2008, along with his wife, son, daughter and son-in-law, for continuing to operate his forgery business while living in Guelph, avoiding police in Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver. [1] [2]
Ramzi Mohammed Abdullah bin al-Shibh is a Yemeni citizen currently being held by the U.S. as an enemy combatant detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He is accused of being a "key facilitator for the September 11 attacks" in 2001 in the United States.
A series of Islamist terrorist attacks linked to al-Qaeda were planned to occur on or near January 1, 2000, in the context of millennium celebrations, including bombing plots against four tourist sites in Jordan, the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), USS The Sullivans, and the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814.
Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah was a citizen of Saudi Arabia and a senior member of Al-Qaeda. He was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in the United States.
Abderraouf bin Habib bin Yousef Jdey is a Canadian citizen, who was found swearing to die as a shaheed (martyr) on a series of videotapes found in the rubble of Mohammed Atef's house in Afghanistan in 2002.
Terrorism in Saudi Arabia has mainly been attributed to Islamic extremists. Their targets included foreign civilians—Westerners affiliated with its oil-based economy—as well as Saudi Arabian civilians and security forces. Anti-Western attacks have occurred in Saudi Arabia dating back to 1995. Saudi Arabia itself has been accused of funding terrorism in other countries, including Syria.
The FBI Seeking Terror Information list is the third major "wanted" list to have been created by the United States Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation to be used as a primary tool for publicly identifying and tracking down suspected terrorists operating against United States nationals at home and abroad. The first preceding list for this purpose was the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, that list was supplanted by the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list, for the purpose of listing fugitives who are specifically wanted for acts of terrorism.
Faker Ben Abdelazziz Boussora born March 22, 1964, in Tunisia is a Canadian citizen, and a senior member of al-Qaeda. He also went by the name Abu Yusif al-Tunisi. The US Department of State has authorized a reward of $5 million under the Rewards For Justice Program for information leading to the arrest of Faker Ben Adbelazziz Boussora.
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is a British Pakistani terrorist. He became a member of the Islamist jihadist group Harkat-ul-Ansar or Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in the 1990s, and later of Jaish-e-Mohammed and was closely associated with Al-Qaeda.
Prior to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) posed the greatest threat to the Karimov administration. In 2002 the IMU was reclassified as terrorist by the United States. Since the invasion, the IMU has been greatly weakened due to US military actions which cut off its supply of resources and killed its leader, Juma Namangani.
An Egyptian resident of British Columbia, Essam Hafez Mohammed Marzouk arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1993 as a refugee fleeing persecution in Pakistan. He was one of 14 people subjected to extraordinary rendition by the CIA prior to the 2001 declaration of a war on terror. Marzouk was the contact point for a bin Laden terrorist cell in Canada.
Attribution of the 2008 Mumbai attacks were first made by the Indian authorities who said that the Mumbai attacks were directed by Lashkar-e-Taiba militants inside Pakistan. American intelligence agencies also agree with this attribution. Pakistan initially contested this attribution, but agreed this was the case on 7 January 2009. To back up its accusations, the Indian government supplied a dossier to Pakistan's high commission in Delhi. The Pakistan government dismissed the dossier as "not evidence," but also announced that it had detained over a hundred members of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity linked with Lashkar-e-Taiba. In February 2009, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik agreed that "some part of the conspiracy" did take place in Pakistan.
In the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, there were multiple and far-ranging events that were observed. Besides the immediate impact on the victims and their families, the attacks caused widespread anger among the Indian public, and condemnations from countries throughout the world.
Project Thread was a Canadian police operation that resulted in the arrest of 24 immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area in 2003 amidst incorrect allegations they formed a threat to national security, and maintained "suspected ties to al-Qaeda". It was later determined that police had based their operation on "flimsy evidence and stereotypes".
The 2009 New York City Subway and United Kingdom plot was a plan to bomb the New York City Subway as well as a target in the United Kingdom.
The Federal Investigation Agency is a border control, criminal investigation, counter-intelligence and security agency under the control of the Interior Secretary of Pakistan, tasked with investigative jurisdiction on undertaking operations against terrorism, espionage, federal crimes, smuggling as well as infringement and other specific crimes.
David Coleman Headley is an American terrorist. He is currently serving a 35-year sentence in the United States after pleading guilty to 12 international terrorism charges.
The D.C. Five is a group of Muslim Americans from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with suspected ties to terrorism. The five men were detained on December 9, 2009, during a police raid in Pakistan on a house with links to a militant group. In part of an increasing trend in homegrown terrorism, they were in their late teens or early twenties.
Thomas Lewis Lavy was an American farmer who attempted to cross the Canada–US border into Canada from Alaska with several firearms, ricin toxin, and $89,000 in cash in 1993. He was turned away at the border, and the toxin impounded. Lavy claimed at the time that the ricin was to poison the coyotes on his farm. More than two years later he was arrested by the FBI on terrorism charges relating to the border incident, and Lavy hanged himself in his jail cell four days later.
On 2 November 2014, a suicide bombing took place at Wagah border following the daily border ceremony in Pakistan. The attack was claimed by three rival militant groups.
In late December 2015, authorities in several countries announced the discovery of attack plots, organized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), targeting New Year's celebrations. Police in North America and Europe were on high alert in December 2015 because of a series of terrorist attacks and attack plots, including the November 2015 Paris attacks, and because of information picked up by security agencies indicating that militants might plan to attack public New Year's Eve celebrations.
