1997

Islamic Terrorism Timeline

8/13/2006

- January 2, 1997: A series of letter bombs, disguised as holiday greeting cards, with Alexandria, Egypt, postmarks were discovered at Al-Hayat newspaper bureaus in Washington, New York City, London, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Three similar devices, also postmarked in Egypt, were found at a prison facility in Leavenworth, Kansas. Bomb disposal experts defused all the devices, but one detonated at the Al-Hayat office in London, injuring 2.

- January 28, 1997: Islamic guerrillas in Algeria shot and killed a top union leader, Abdelhak Benhamouda.

- February 4, 1997: Near Komsomolabad, Tajikistan, a militant group led by Bakhrom Sodirov abducted four United Nations military observers. The kidnappers demanded safe passage for their Muslim supporters from Afghanistan to Tajikistan.

In four separate incidents occurring between Dushanbe and Garm, the Islamic terrorist group kidnapped two International Committee for the Red Cross members, four Russian journalists and their Tajik driver, four UNHCR members, and the Tajik Security Minister.

- February 20, 1997: U.S. Air Force officials announced the deployment of 30 warplanes and more than 1,000 airmen in Qatar to help train the emirate's Air Force and enforce the no­-fly zone over southern Iraq, which was established in 1991 after Iraq crushed a rebellion by Shiite Muslims following the Gulf War.

- February 23, 1997: A Palestinian gunman opened fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland, and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claimed this was a "punishment attack against the enemies of Palestine.".

- March 21, 1997: Islamic suicide bombings on a Tel Aviv sidewalk café killed the Muslim madman plus 3 others, wounding 46. HAMAS claimed responsibility.

- April 10, 1997: A German court convicted 4 for the Mykonos murders and accused Iran of ordering theses killings.

- April 30, 1997: For the fourth year in a row, three OPECers (Iran, Iraq, and Libya) were named on the U.S. State Department's list of the top sponsors of international terrorism. Of the other countries on the list, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, only the Islamic nations were actually guilty. Appearance on the list automatically triggered U.S. government sanctions, including: a ban on military sales and aid, including prohibitions on economic assistance.

- May 5, 1997: HAMAS leader abu Marzuq was deported to Jordan.

- May 10, 1997: Libya's oil minister reported that his country had lost about $3 billion in oil revenues since the United Nations imposed sanctions in 1992. The sanctions (which limit diplomatic contacts, ban arms sales, and prohibit air traffic in and out of Libya) were intended to force the surrender of two Libyan suspects wanted in connection with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people were killed.

- May 23, 1997: The International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a communiqué reaffirming that oil security remained a "serious concern," particularly given the prospect of increasing import dependence and the increasing concentration of remaining oil reserves in the Muslim Middle East. The IEA stated that spare crude oil production capacity was lower than before the 1990 Gulf crisis, and the potential alternative fuel sources, had diminished. America was vulnerable.

- May 23, 1997: The Taliban, being Sunni Muslims, executed 11 Iranian Shiite Muslim diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, moments after they conquered the city.

- May 24, 1997: The government of Pakistan was the first to formally recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

- May 24, 1997: Mohammad Khatami, called "a moderate cleric," was declared the winner in Iran's presidential election. He would succeed the fundamentalist Islamic President Hashemi Rafsanjani. The U.S. was still touting the false notion that Iran was becoming liberal, and that they were on the cusp of overthrowing the conservative Islamic clerics. They were wrong.   .

- May 29, 1997: Muhammad Abou-halima was found guilty of helping his brother, Mahmud, one of the World Trade Center bombers, but he left the U.S. before he could be incarcerated.

- June 9, 1997: In Egypt, the suspected leader of al Gama at al-Islamiyyah, Mustafa Abu-Rawaash, was killed in Cairo. 40 members of the terrorist gang were also nabbed.

- June 17, 1997: In Canada, the Khobar Towers bombing suspect, in Saudi Arabia, Hani Al-Sayegh, was deported to the U.S. on terrorism charges. So what was the killer of 19 U.S. servicemen and mutilator of over 500 others doing in Canada?

- June 26, 1997: Iranian Oil Minister, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, reported that U.S. sanctions to deter Iran's ability to attract outside capital "hadn't worked at all" because creative financing methods had allowed foreign companies to avoid punishment under the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (which was passed in 1996 and applied to investments of $40 million or more). He cited the use of buyback contracts under which companies were paid for development rights in oil rather than in dollars, and direct financing by foreign banks (which was not covered by the sanctions law). He was right. America was funding its own funeral. Enron wasn't the only oil company using creative and questionable accounting.  .

- June 30, 1997: Iran's top military commander said in English that his country did not intend to start a war with the United States (although in Arabic he said the opposite), but promised to turn the Persian Gulf into a slaughterhouse if attacked. The pledge followed a series of U.S. warnings about Iran's potential to use missiles to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers and other shipping.

- July 30, 1997: In Israel, double suicide attacks killed 16 people, including 1 American and 2 despicable animals (whose remains should have been scrapped up and fed to pigs). More than 165 innocent civilians were mutilated in this Jerusalem market. The fundamentalist Islamic terrorist gang HAMAS claimed responsibility. As predicted in Tea With Terrorists, they were freely elected by the Palestinian people and are now in charge of the PA.

- August 20, 1997: The Iranian parliament confirmed all 22 of President Mohammad Khatami's nominations for his cabinet, proving that they were all good Muslims. The confirmations were ignorantly seen by American politicians as a strengthening of Khatami's mandate to move towards a less strict society and a weakening of the hard-liners' (fundamentalist Islamic) power base. They were wrong again and the consequence was growing ever more severe as Iran was continuing to develop a nuclear bomb.

- September 4, 1997: In Israel, a triple suicide bombing in the Ben Yehuda shopping mall in Jerusalem killed 5 civilians, including one American, severely wounding 173 Jews and 7 Americans. HAMAS was again irresponsible.

- September 18, 1997: A fire-bomb attack on a Cairo tourist bus by 2 Muslim militants killed 9 Germans and the driver.

- October 1, 1997: Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement, HAMAS, was foolishly freed from an Israeli prison at U.S. urging and taken to Jordan.

- October 8, 1997: An Iranian Islamic militant group calling themselves, Mujahideen-e Khalq MKO, was called a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. 220 Congressmen then signed a statement condemning Iran. The U.S. would later bomb the group's positions during the 2003 incursion into Iraq.

- October 10, 1997: In Italy, Libyan Musbah Eter, the alleged bomb maker for LaBelle disco attack, was extradited to Germany.

- October 15, 1997: In Egypt, Islamic Jihad leaders, Adel el-Bayyoumi, Adel Abdel-Bari, and Ahmed el-Nagger, were sentenced to death.

- October 16, 1997: In an ironic twist of fate, in Sri Lanka, a religious Communist terrorist organization known as LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, were using suicide bombers to kill Buddhists and Muslims. On this day a truck bomb blast at hotel in Colombo killed 18, injuring more than 100, including 7 U.S. citizens.

- October 1997: An international meeting was held in Tehran, Iran with over 20 Islamic terrorist groups in attendance. As a result, a campaign of attacks was planned against the Zionists and the Crusaders - Jews and Americans.

The Tehran summit decided to use non-Iranian Islamist organizations as the spokesmen for their agenda so as to give it a pan-Islamic flavor. Ayman al-Zawahiri's al Jihad Group, an Egyptian Sunni organization, issued the initial communiqué calling for jihad against the U.S. and Israel. The press release from the world's second best known terrorist read: "The United States will realize that its real enemy is Islamic Jihad, the Jihad of the entire Muslim nation against the world dominance of America, against the international influence of the Jews, and against the U.S. occupation of Muslim lands.".

- October 29, 1997: Iraq's Revolution Command Council, the country's main decision making body, announced that it would no longer allow U.S. citizens and U.S. aircraft to serve with the United Nations arms inspection teams. The council's statement gave U.S. citizens working with the inspection teams one week to leave Iraq. Iraq also asked the U.N. to stop flights by American reconnaissance aircraft monitoring its compliance with U.N. resolutions requiring the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

- October 30, 1997: Now that Yemen was cashing in on crude, it was time to start acting like good Muslims. Al-Sha'if militants kidnapped a U.S. businessman near Sanaa. The Muslims sought the release of two fellow jihadists who were arrested on smuggling charges.

- October 30, 1997: Egyptian brothers were sentenced to death for their firebomb bus attack outside the Cairo Museum.

- November 12, 1997: Four U.S. citizens, all oil company auditors from Union Texas Petroleum Corporation, and their Pakistani driver, were killed in a Karachi, Pakistan ambush near the Sheraton Hotel. The Muslim murderers called the U.S. Consulate in Karachi and said they belonged to the Islamic Inquilabi (Revolutionary) Council and the Aimal Khufia Action Committee. These parliamentarians said that the attack was in retaliation for the U.S. convictions of the Pakistanis who had murdered 2 CIA agents.

- November 13, 1997: Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was convicted of masterminding the 1993 New York World Trade Center bombing. The connection to Islam would go unheeded so both towers would fall to 19 Islamic suicide bombers in less than 4 years.

- November 17, 1997: In Egypt, al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), the terrorist club of blind Qur'anic scholar, and convicted terrorist (for his role in the 1993 WTC bombing), Sheikh ar-Raham, led an armed attack on the temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, leaving 68 dead. Good Muslims see the government of Egypt as insufficiently Islamic. This mission was a joint venture with Ayman al-Zawahiri's al Jihad, and the first he conducted after joining forces with his pal Osama. 58 of those murdered were Western tourists. They were beheaded and deboweled. Even by Islamic standards, it was an especially reprehensible affair.

One of the reasons thes killings were so gruesome is because Sheikh ar-Rahman, spiritual advisor to al-Jihad and al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya, and the world's foremost Qur'anic scholar, issued a fatwa, religious decree, sanctioning them.

- November 25, 1997: Five Westerners were kidnapped by Muslim militants in Yemen.

- December 1, 1997: India arrested Ghulam Nabi Baba, the leader of the Islamic terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Ansar. He was accused of involvement in kidnapping 6 Western tourists.

- December 12, 1997: Egyptian forces killed Abdul-Hafiz, an al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya leader who they thought was responsible for the Luxor massacre.