1996

Islamic Terrorism Timeline

2/20/2007

- January 1, 1996: An American working for Hunt Oil and three others were kidnapped by Yemeni Muslims near Jenna. The kidnappers demanded that the government pay for using the land that was being exploited.

- January 5, 1996: Hamas bomb maker, Yehiya Ayyash, called “The Engineer,” was killed either by accident or intentionally by a booby-trapped cell phone. Good riddance. He had built many of the suicide bombs used to murder and mutilate innocent people throughout Israel.

- January 6, 1996: Kurdish Muslims in the UK thought it would be a good idea to pour gasoline into the Turkish National Airline office in London and then ignite it. These Kurds, and others throughout Europe, were protesting the death of three Kurdish jihadists who were killed during riots in an Istanbul prison the previous day.

- January 7, 1996: Fourteen people who were part of a scientific expedition organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature, were kidnapped by Free Papua Movement members in Jayawijaya, which is on the Indonesian half of New Guinea. A German hostage was released a week later on the condition that he serve as a negotiator between the Islamic government and the kidnappers. In May, Indonesian forces mounted a rescue operation in which the hostages were freed, although two Indonesians and six Free Papua Movement guerrillas were killed.

The Free Papua Movement seeks independence from Indonesia's Islamic religious regime. Their goal is self-rule and a return to a traditional island mode of life. Their public statements declare, “We are not terrorists! We do not want development, religious groups, aid agencies, or governmental organizations. Just Leave Us Alone, Please!”

But as we have seen in East Timor, Indonesian Muslims aren't into the notion of live and let live. When the former Dutch colony of West Papua, the western half of the island of New Guinea, was freed of European rule in 1963, it was claimed by Indonesia as part of a UN-managed decolonization program in the East Indies. Then in 1969, Muslims authorized one thousand West Papuans to vote in a referendum on inclusion with Indonesia under the Act of Free Choice. It was like holding an election in the USSR. Only those most in line with the government's agenda were allowed to vote.

After perpetrating their political scam, the Indonesian regime sent Muslims into the region, not only to exploit the island's resources, but to establish a base of operations for the purpose of control. And since Muslims are intolerant of anything which isn't Islam, this relocation seriously threatened the indigenous culture.

The Free Papua Movement has conducted small-scale raids on Indonesian government offices and military installations since 1961. In return, the Islamic government has burned down the villages where Free Papua Movement members are harbored.

- January 7, 1996: A bomb was detonated on a bus in Karachi, Pakistan, killing eight people.

- January 7, 1996: The Turkish National Airlines office in Zurich, Switzerland was set ablaze by Kurdish Muslims.

- January 10, 1996: A small bomb made from lemon, nitric acid, and acetone, and then covered with nails, was set in a garbage can outside the central bus station in Tel Aviv. Thirteen people were wounded when the crude device exploded.

A second bomb went off ten minutes later. It had been timed to wound those compassionate enough to come to the aid of the initial victims.

Since Hamas members from the Askar refugee camp had previously claimed credit for similarly constructed bombs and similar tactics, they were probably responsible for mutilating and burning these 13 civilians.

- January 16, 1996: The ferry Avrasya was hijacked in Trabzon by Turkish-Abkhazian supporters of Chechen Muslims. A security guard was injured during the assault. These jihadists threatened to blow up the vessel unless Russian forces allowed Chechen militants free passage out of a Dagestani village where they were under siege.

After being refused entry to Istanbul's harbor due to the suspected quantities of explosives on board, Turkish authorities negotiated an end to the hijacking and arrested nine Muslim militants.

- January 17, 1996: In Bahrain, a bomb exploded in the Meridian Hotel. Manama was currently hosting the Middle East Petroleum and Gas Conference.

The homemade time bomb had been placed in a basement bathroom by the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain, who also claimed responsibility.

- January 18, 1996: A bomb exploded inside a hotel in Addis Ababa. Four people were killed and 20 more were injured. A Somali terrorist group called al-Ittihaad al-Islami claimed responsibility.

Al-Ittihaad al-Islami, or Islamic Unity, is a fundamentalist religious organization trying to create an Islamic theocracy in northeastern Africa. They have been known to terrorize civilians in Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya.

AIAI was originally created to overthrow Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. But when his 22-year authoritarian regime was deposed in a 1991 coup, Islamic Unity terrorist operations expanded significantly, making them a barometer of what would happen in Iraq.

AIAI was particularly ruthless when it came to gaining control of the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, territory which borders on northern Somalia. This escalation in terror helped them impose Sharia Law on their victims and recruit substantially more jihadists. It was during this period that Islamic Unity gained the attention of al-Qaeda. Then in a show of Islamic unity, these Somali Muslims assisted the more recognizable Islamic club in their 1998 terrorist bombings of American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Those blasts left hundreds dead and thousands burned and mutilated, including many U.S. citizens.

Then, after having murdered a sufficient number of Americans, Africans, and Europeans to be elected onto Muhammad's All Star Team, AIAI changed their focus to the imposition of repressive Sharia Law in the region and similarly to eradicate all traces of competitive religious and political doctrines..

As is the case with most Islamic terrorist organizations, Islamic Unity was founded and led by an Islamic scholar. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who had directed the Islamic Courts Union, still serves as the spiritual leader of the AIAI. Also interesting is that after Sheikh Aweys changed his focus from deposing a Somali warlord to expanding the fiefdom of his successor, the Islamic Unity Group became the official militia of the Somalia state.

Today, Aweys is on the UN's list of al-Qaeda associates. Likewise, the always-ignorant and immoral United States State Department accuses Aweys of having ties to al-Qaeda as opposed to Islam.

In his religious duties, Aweys runs a number of mujahideen training camps in Somalia. On the political side, the Sheikh remains focused on establishing Islamic courts, making sure that all Somalis suffer the hardships of poverty, repression, ignorance, and totalitarian rule. He has done such a fine job, Aweys was appointed Secretary General of the Sharia Implementation Council, a group established to unify all of Somalia under Islamic law and rule.

In this capacity, Aweys declared jihad against all foreigners in Somalia in October 2005. With no infidels left to provoke jihadists hatred, Aweys keeps passions inflamed by insisting that Islam is under attack. Otherwise, how would he explain the fact that everything Islam has touched is destroyed?

- January 24, 1996: The Olympic stadium in Sarajevo was rocked by a bomb. Seven NATO troops were injured and three were killed in the blast.

- January 26, 1996: The Doman tribe kidnapped 18 French tourists in Yemen. Their intent was to use them as bargaining chips in an effort to free imprisoned members of their tribe.

- January 30, 1996: Islamic terrorists opened fire on the home of the British Deputy High Commissioner in Dhaka, Bangladesh,

- January 30, 1996: The U.S. Fifth Fleet, commissioned to protect Saudi and Kuwaiti OPECers in the Persian Gulf, reported that Iran test-fired a new anti-ship missile near the Strait of Hormuz. It displayed a 60 mile range. Oil tankers carry 15 million barrels of crude a day through the Strait so that was significant.

- January 31, 1996: A suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb outside the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 91. A staggering 1,400 people were wounded. It sounds like Islam but it was not.

Marxist Hindus, calling themselves the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), created a socialist religious cult in Sri Lanka designed to inspire suicide bombers to kill Buddhist Sinhalese citizens. Their uncivil war dated back to 1948 when Britain made Sinhala the official language of the new state and gave Buddhists a prominent role in governmental affairs. The Tamil Hindus, faced with religious and ethnic discrimination, lashed out.

Tamil Tigers are virtually indistinguishable from Islamic terrorists. They indoctrinate young recruits, teaching them that their highest calling is to kill civilians as suicide bombers. Fighting fire with fire, the Buddhist government has responded by torturing Hindus in Sri Lanka. Between 1948 and the 2002 cease fire, the combined death toll reached 65,000.

For the most part, Communist inspired and funded terrorism declined precipitously after the fall of the Soviet Union. As a result, with the exception of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, and some bad apples in Central and South America, Islam now held a virtual monopoly on terrorism. The ratio of incidents in black (non-Muslim) text to incidents in red (Islamic) text in this Terrorism Timeline, has been fewer than one entry in twenty (7 of the 150 terrorist attacks in 1996). That means that 95% of all terrorist acts were perpetrated by Muslims. It is a percentage that will hold firm until 2003, where Muslims increase their share to 99%.

- February 2, 1996: An Iranian student, who was also a defector from the Iranian intelligence service, was kidnapped from his house in Bonn, Germany. He was tortured for two days before escaping. His tormentors spoke Farsi, indicating that they were sent by the Iranian religious regime.

- February 2, 1996: Jihadists ambushed a car driven by a foreign diplomat in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

- February 6, 1996: Marxists bombed a Catholic church in Masaya, Nicaragua, near Managua on the eve of a visit by the Pope.

- February 10, 1996: A bomb exploded outside a Kurdish cultural center in Limassol, Cyprus. An Arab Muslim called a local radio station shortly before the explosion to say that a device had been planted.

- February 11, 1996: A bomb exploded at the Diplomat Hotel in Manama, Bahrain. Three employees were wounded. The Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain claimed credit for the blast in a phone call to the Associated Press.

- February 11, 1996: An Armed Islamic Group Algerian Muslim used a car bomb to kill 18, including three journalists, in France.

- February 12, 1996: Bosnian Muslims attempted to assassinate a EU administrator in Mostar. The armed protesters were advocating ethnic and religious autonomy between Serbs and the Bosnian Muslim-Croatian Catholic federation.

- February 14, 1996: The Abu Sayyaf Group attacked the Citibank headquarters in Manila, Philippines. The jihadists fired automatic weapons and then hurled hand grenades into the building.

Authorities found a bag which had fallen out of one of the four vehicles used during the raid. It contained an RPG, grenades, an assault rifle, and priest's robes.

- February 20, 1996: Two Iranian dissidents who were affiliated with Mujahideen-e Khalq, were executed in Istanbul, Turkey. Islamic militants in the group claimed that Iranian diplomats had ordered the assassinations.

- February 25, 1996: The Palestinian religious and political organization HAMAS, detonated a pair of human bombs in public busses in Jerusalem and Ashkelon. They killed 28 civilians and wounded 80 more. Three of those injured were U.S. citizens—all of whom later died of their wounds.

In Islam, a woman's womb is a weapon of mass destruction.

The first Islamic suicide bomber detonated himself on the No.18 Egged bus in Jerusalem. His 22-pound bomb killed 23 Jews and Americans while mutilating 50 others. Immediately after the attack, the Ezzedin al-Qassam wing of Hamas, claimed credit for the savagery, saying that it was in retaliation for the killing of Yehiya Ayyash—Hamas' most notorious suicide bomb maker. While “The Engineer” had died in a bomb blast from a booby-trapped cell phone, it could well have been a case of premature detonation. And even if Israel had killed him, assassinating a mass murderer isn't morally equivalent to committing mass murder – at least to non-Muslims that is.

The second Islamic suicide bomber blew himself to Allah 30 minutes later. He was riding in an Ashqelon bus. Trying to be as deceptive as possible, this bomber wore an Israeli army uniform. He killed three IDF soldiers and wounded thirty civilians.

HAMAS is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawammah al-Islammiyya. It means Islamic Resistance Movement. The terrorist group is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood - the same organization that has spawned most fundamentalist Islamic hate groups. The Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni, Salafist, Islamist, religious movement that originated in Egypt. It seeks the forced imposition of fundamentalist Muslim social, moral, legal, religious, and political mandates on the world.

Throughout the late 1960s, HAMAS's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was actively engaged in the Muslim Brotherhood. He was an Islamic preacher, educator, and charity/social worker. In 1973, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin established al-Mujamma' al-Islami as an umbrella organization overseeing Muslim Brotherhood projects in Gaza. By the early 1980s, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin's fundamentalist Islamic ideology caused him to include jihadist acts along with his preaching and educating duties. He openly espoused violence against Israel and America.

After the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada (armed Islamic uprising) in December 1987 (called by Fatah and the PLO), HAMAS was established as the political/religious/militant arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel. HAMAS members began actively terrorizing and killing Jews.

In August 1988, HAMAS released its official charter. It stated that HAMAS was "committed to creating an Islamic state in the territory of Palestine" which it took to be all of Israel. According to the HAMAS charter, "the land of Palestine has been endowed to Islam, and it is therefore the duty of all Muslims to liberate Palestine through violent jihad." In this regard, the charter of HAMAS is indistinguishable from that of the PLO and it differs only in respect to scope with that of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jihad, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, and al-Qaeda.

HAMAS remains zealously dedicated to its violent, fundamentalist Islamist goals and seeks to destroy Israel and replace the Palestinian Authority with an Islamic state. While HAMAS and the Palestinian Authority/PLO do cooperate occasionally, HAMAS has generally presented itself as a pure Islamic alternative to Arafat's Marxist Muslim Fatah. HAMAS has violently opposed any political compromises with Israel and has frequently used suicide bombings and rocket attacks against to derail the peace process.

As part of its Islamist ideology, HAMAS maintains an active network of social services within the Palestinian Territories. They are funded by the OPECers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran (somewhat surprising since Iran is Shia, not Sunni) and are designed to bribe Muslims into compliance with fundamentalist, jihadist, Islam. If you were a Palestinian, the choice would be between starving and submission.

HAMAS's substantial financial support comes with strings attached. Children mus attend their schools and mosques and parents must sign oaths of allegiance. Hamas provides financial, food, housing, education, health care, religious, and recreation services that the Palestinian Authority has been unable to provide because they are more interested in enriching themselves than indoctrinating the populous in Islam. These inducements have substantially increased popular support for HAMAS, drawing political support away from Fatah, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority. HAMAS has been able to leverage this support into an increased barrage of terrorist activities.

In January 2006, HAMAS ran candidates for Palestinian parliamentary elections for the first time. Shocking everyone in the West besides those who had read Tea With Terrorists, HAMAS won a landslide victory, winning over 65% of the vote and garnering 76 out of a possible 132 seats. While Western politicians and media spokespeople claimed that this negative turn of events could not have been predicted, I actively predicted this very outcome in the book and on radio shows beginning in 2002. Read the opening and title chapter of Tea With Terrorists if you'd like to know what other predictions I got right.

In a public address given on Wednesday evening, October 11th, 2006, George Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said: "Palestinians deserve to live better than they do, and to be free of the humiliation of occupation in a state of their own." She was therefore saying that the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas was the victim of humiliating oppression rather than the oppressor of the Palestinian people, the opposite of what is actually true. She was also fabricating history. Before the Fatah and Hamas intifada against Israel, back when Muslims were integrated into the Israeli society, the "Palestinian people" were the best educated, most prosperous and most free Muslims in the world. But after their violent terrorist uprising, the Palestinians who were now separated from Israel became as indoctrinated, oppressed, humiliated, impoverished, hateful, and violent as all of the other Muslims who surround Israel's oasis of relative civility.

But worse than all of her revisionism and deceit, there is the moral question. To say that the "Palestinians deserve...a state of their own" is to say that terrorism is a valid and justified political strategy. The Palestinians are second only to the Pakistanis in the application of terror. And the only moral response to terror is rebuke, not reward.

America's second-most prolific and deadly liar went on to tell the audience of Palestinians: "I promise you my personal commitment to that goal." At the dinner marking the third anniversary of the American Task Force on Palestine, Rice preached: "There could be no greater legacy for America." The legacy of looting Israel, of thinning the nation at its waist, of giving her land to her enemy, is vividly portrayed by the prophet Isaiah. He says that such a nation will be pruned back and that its cities will be laid waste.

Let's examine some of the people who contributed to the rise of the Islamic Resistance Group - one of the world's most vicious and deadly terrorist associations. It's important to know the nature of those to whom America wants to turn over the keys of the Promised Land. We begin with the Islamic Resistance Group's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He was born in the late 1930s and became paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a childhood accident. During his teenage years, he was heavily influenced by Muslim Brotherhood teachers. Thereafter, Sheikh Yassin began training as an Islamic teacher in Cairo.

In the late 1960s, Yassin began efforts to encourage pious Islamic religiosity and ritual observances among Gaza youth. He was briefly imprisoned by Egypt in 1966 and became disillusioned 1967 following Israel's rout of Team Islam in the Six-Day War. Thereafter, Sheikh Yassin focused on preaching and teaching fundamentalist Islam.

This focus on Islamic religiosity prompted Yassin to revive Muslim Brotherhood activities in Gaza. In 1973, he founded the Islamic Center which coordinated Muslim Brotherhood activities in the Gaza Strip. He was arrested in 1983 and 1984 after arms caches were discovered in his home. Such weaponry, therefore must have been part and parcel of his preaching and teaching fundamentalist Islam, and central to the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood.

For accumulating weapons whose purpose was to kill Jews, Yassin was given a 13-year sentence. He was released in May 1985 following a prisoner exchange. He was arrested again in May 1989 and sentenced in to life imprisonment. He was again released in a prisoner exchange in October 1997. The Palestinian Authority tried to place Yassin under house arrest in December 2001, leading to widespread clashes. Finally, he was killed in an Israeli missile attack on March 22, 2004.

Abd al-Aziz Rantisi was another influential Hamas member. He was born in 1947 in Yabna and grew up in the Khan Yunis refugee camp. He was educated as a pediatrician at Alexandria University starting in 1972. That is where he first came into contact with the Muslim Brotherhood. He helped establish the Islamic Center in Gaza in 1973 and became a bona fide member of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1976. He worked at Khan Yunis hospital as head of pediatrics but was dismissed by Israel in 1983 and was imprisoned multiple times for jihadist activities.

Abd al-Aziz Rantisi led Hamas starting in April 1989 but was deported by Israel to Lebanon in 1992 for inspiring and planning terrorist attacks. There he served as the spokesperson for other deportees. On his return, he was rearrested by Israel in December 1993 and held until April 1997. He was then held by the Palestinian Authority in detention for 21 months until February 2000. He was arrested again in July 2000 after calling the Palestinian participation in the Camp David talks an act of treason. He was released in December 2000, but has been rearrested multiple times since. He currently operates out of the Shaykh Radwan area of Gaza City where he served as a spokesman for Hamas. Following the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Rantisi was elected as the group's commander. Rantisi was killed by an Israeli missile strike on April 17, 2004.

Mahmud al-Zahhar is one of Hamas's most senior political and religious leaders. He was educated as a surgeon and served as a lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza. He became Hamas's chief recruiter and publicist in April 1989. He then served as Hamas's representative to the PLO from January 1990. He was also deported to Lebanon in December 1992. Al-Zahhar was the target of an unsuccessful Israeli assassination attempt in September 2003 in Gaza City. The raid killed his son and a bodyguard in addition to injuring members of his family. With Hamas's victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections, al-Zahhar joined the government as their Foreign Minister. His first major initiative was a tour of neighboring Islamic countries where he was able to garner substantial aid from OPECers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Ibrahim Ghousheh was born in Jerusalem in November 1936. He was trained as a civil engineer in Cairo and then worked as an engineer in Jordan between 1962 and 1966. He served the Kuwaiti Emirs in 1971 and 1972. He toiled in Hamas public relations beginning in late 1992, operating out of Amman, Jordan. In 1999, he was arrested and held by Jordan, but was eventually deported to Qatar. In June 2001, Ghousheh attempted to return to Jordan, provoking an international dispute with Qatar. Jordan finally permitted him to stay on the condition that he curtail his work with Hamas, seeing that it was a terrorist organization.

Mahmud Abu Hanud was born in 1967 and graduated from Islamic College in Jerusalem. He was an active participant in the 1987 intifada, being wounded in a raid during that time. In 1992, he was deported to Lebanon where he is believed to have acquired military training. Following his return to the Palestinian Territories, he became the West Bank commander of Hamas's ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassem Brigades. In 1994, he was detained by the Palestinian Authority for firing on settler vehicles near Nablus, though he was released soon after his arrest. Israel attempted to assassinate him in Asira al-Shamaliyya in September 2000. He surrendered to Palestinian Authority forces and was detained until May 2001 when Israel bombed his prison in Nablus. He was finally killed on November 23rd 2001 when an Israeli missile hit his van. Keep in mind that the only reason that Israel was interested in this man was that he, like his comrades, was inspiring and equipping suicide bombers.

Musa Abu Marzuq was born in 1951 in Gaza. He studied engineering at Ayn Shams in Cairo and worked in the United Arab Emirates until 1981. He was a student in the United States from 1981 through 1991, receiving his PhD and gaining residency rights. After returning to the Middle East, he became the head of Hamas's Political Bureau. Musa Marzuq was expelled from Jordan, where he was in charge of public relations, in 1995. He was arrested at New York's JFK airport, though the U.S. dropped all charges against him in 1997, allowing him to return to Jordan. Marzuq was expelled again from Jordan in August 1999 when Hamas's offices there were closed by the Kingdom because of their terrorist affairs. Marzuq is now a Yemeni national and operates out of Damascus, Syria. He has been cited as a leading terrorist figure in assaults against Americans, and yet, Musa Marzuq uses Islamic charities in the United States to raise money for Hamas.

Ismail Abu Shanab was born in 1955. He was educated as a construction engineer at Colorado State University, where he received his Masters degree. He taught engineering at Gaza's Islamic University and served as deputy to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas. For his involvement in Hamas terrorist acts against Israel, he was imprisoned for seven years. After his release in 1996, he served as Hamas's observer to the PLO Central Council and toiled as Hamas's representative to the Committee of National and Islamic Forces. He was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza on August 21st, 2003.

Salah Shihadah was born in Gaza in 1953. He obtained a secondary school certificate, but his financial circumstances did not allow him to pursue his university education. He was, however, later invited to study medicine and engineering in Turkish and Russian universities. He continued his education in the Higher Institute for Social Service in Alexandria, where he first became affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Salah Shihadah was arrested in 1984 on anti-Israel terrorist activities and was jailed for two years. After being released in 1986, he worked as Director of Student Affairs at the Islamic University until Israeli authorities closed the university during the first Palestinian intifada. Ignoring the closure, Salah continued to work at the school, and was arrested again in August 1988. Shihadah was the founder of the first organized militant apparatus of Hamas, known as the Palestinian Mujahideen. This jihadist was killed in an Israeli missile strike on his residence in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City in 2002.

- February 25, 1996: In Pakistan, Muslims attacked the American School in Karachi with assault rifles. Two people were killed and two were injured.

- February 27, 1996: Another Islamic suicide bomber detonated his explosive pack of nails, metal balls, and rat poison at a hitchhiking post in Ashkelon. One IDF soldier was killed and 34 others were injured, many seriously.

Hamas laced their explosive vests with rat poison and tacks so their victims would be lacerated with wounds which would continue hemorrhaging.

- March 3, 1996: Another person poisoned by Islam was beguiled into becoming a suicide bomber. Standing within inches of those he would kill and looking many of his victims in the eye, the boy who would grow up to be a bomb, detonated himself at 6:27AM on an Egged bus in Jerusalem. Nineteen people were extinguished by Islam and ten more were wounded by Satan's religion.

Hamas claimed responsibility. In their religion, what they had done was considered good.

The Oslo Accords was clearly a bad idea.

- March 4, 1996: Today, an Islamic suicide bomber in Tel Aviv killed 20 Jews. A total of 160 more were burned and mutilated in the blast. Attempting to murder the most people possible, these religious terrorists chose the Dizengoff Center Building, Israel's largest shopping mall. Hamas and Islamic Jihad vied for credit.

Yes, there are people sufficiently corrupted to believe that the fastest way to paradise is to commit mass murder. Good Muslims are so immoral that they actually believe the Qur'anic rubbish which proclaims that there are multiple perpetual virgins in paradise awaiting successful killers. Having an enemy this incapable of rational thought would be good news if only the West weren't so universally ignorant.

- March 4, 1996: Two Sunni Iranian clerics who were opposed to the Shia Islamic regime in Iran, were assassinated in Karachi, Pakistan.

- March 5, 1996: A member of the People's Mujahideen, an armed Iranian opposition group, was executed in Baghdad while sitting in his car. The Iranian opposition group accused the Iranian secret service of carrying out the assassination.

- March 7, 1996: Turkey's Consulate in Hamburg, Germany was firebombed and then smeared with painted slogans by a gang of 15 Kurdish people.

- March 8, 1996: A North Cyprus Turkish Airlines Boeing 727 was hijacked while en route from Ercan, Cyprus to Istanbul. The plane, with 101 passengers, was redirected to Sofia, Bulgaria, and then onto Munich, Germany.

The hijacker was a 20-year-old Turkish Muslim with Chechen sympathies. The jihadists demanded the opportunity to make a statement on behalf of Chechen Muslims. After speaking with a Munich journalist he released the passengers.

- March 13, 1996: The 28 world leaders at an anti-terrorism “Peacemaker Summit” in Egypt pledged to fight against terrorism and to promote the Middle East peace process. They defined terrorism as Jewish and American aggression and Middle East peace as the elimination of Israel.

- March 14, 1996: A Bangladesh-owned and themed restaurant in Manama, Bahrain was set ablaze. Three Shiite Muslims were sentenced to death in July for the attack, because seven Bangladeshi citizens were burned alive in the attack.

- March 17, 1996: Four members of a Kurdish terrorist group were killed in a village held by Kurds outside Irbil, Iraq.

- March 19, 1996: In Bahrain, a bomb blasted a hotel in Manama. Two Indian citizens were injured.

- March 21, 1996: A car bomb detonated in a crowded Delhi, India marketplace killed 30 people and injured more than 50. The Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front claimed responsibility.

- March 21, 1996: In Somalia, four U.N. staff members and a representative of the World Health Organization were kidnapped at the Baledogle Airfield while riding in their UNICEF vehicle. They were ambushed by 10 jihadists. However, later in the day a rival militia attacked the kidnappers who surrendered. Local villagers then robbed the kidnap victims of their personal belongings.

- March 23, 1996: In Somalia, armed jihadists ambushed a car carrying a female employee of the U.S. branch of Action International Contre La Faim. Her security guard was killed. The American and her driver were kidnapped by the Muslim militants who said they were members of the Ali Suleiyman subclan of the Majertain.

The local Somali Salvation Democratic Front militia was then employed to pursue the kidnappers. After a firefight the next afternoon, the aid worker was rescued unharmed.

- March 27, 1996: An EgyptAir Airbus A320 was hijacked after leaving Cairo, Egypt on a flight to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A Muslim man entered the cockpit holding a Molotov cocktail and a container of gunpowder. He demanded to be taken to Libya where he wanted to convey a message from Allah to Colonel Qadhafi. The jihadist also called for “lifting the siege of the Palestinians.”

When the pilot said that there wasn't sufficient fuel to fly to Libya, the man tried to ignite his homemade bomb. Based upon the threat, the pilot entered Libyan airspace, and landed at the Martubah airport, 50 miles from Tobruk, Libya.

The hijacker was reported to be a restaurant owner from southern Egypt. His two sons were also involved in the hijacking. The Libyan news agency reported that they had commandeered the plane to protest the Sharm el-Sheikh anti-terrorism conference, and a show of support for Qadhafi in having rejected the symposium.

Upon arrival in Libya the passengers were released and the hijackers were jailed for at least a day or two.

- March 27, 1996: The Armed Islamic Group kidnapped seven French monks. The Trappist monks were abducted from their monastery in Medea, Algeria. Their severed heads were found on May 30th. Their bodies were never recovered.

Headquartered in Algeria, the Armed Islamic Group comprises Muslim fundamentalists who sought to overthrow the Marxist Muslim regime in Algeria and replace it with a Salafist Islamic state under Sharia Law. They were founded in early 1992, immediately after the Algerian government banned their parent organization - the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front.

The Groupes Islamiques Armes, known by the acronym GIA (in Arabic, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyah al-Musallah) was born when the Algerian OPEC regime declared the election landslide of the Islamic Salvation Front null and void following their overwhelming victory in December 1991. The ISF was Algeria's largest political and religious party, and resolutely Salafist. The Algerian government, as dictatorial regimes are wont to do, outlawed the popular Islamic Salvation Front, and threw thousands of their leaders and activists in jail. Since the ISF was banned, the GIA was conceived as nothing more than a new name for the old group. Their membership and leadership was populated exclusively by the parent's best (read fundamentalist and jihadist) Muslims.

The Armed Islamic Group, as their name implies, engaged in frequent jihadist attacks against civilians, especially journalists and teachers in secular schools. They didn't care much for police or government workers either. This fundamentalist Islamic gang was so ruthless, they would often wipe out entire villages during one of their raids - indiscriminately killing women and children, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Like their prophet, they were especially good at rape, plunder, and the slave trade. Islam is as Islam does.

From 1993 to 1998, the Armed Islamic Group, which was nothing more than a new name for Algeria's majority political and religious party, was directly involved in the slaughter of more than 80,000 Algerian civilians. Most were killed in surprise raids perpetrated by armed militias against defenseless and impoverished farming communities.

These Muslim militants deployed the standard fare of Islamic tactics, including assassination, kidnap for ransom, suicide bombers, car bombs, and IEDs. They were textbook terrorists whose favorite tactic was to abduct a person from a town, torture them, and then behead them by slitting their throats while reading passages from the Quran.

The long arm of Islamic terror reached out into other nations infected by this disease. The Islamic Salvation Front's Armed Islamic Group killed hundreds of Algerian expatriates living in exile in Europe. But they were equal opportunity haters and became proficient at killing foreigners in addition to Algerians. In 1993, Groupes Islamiques Armes announced a campaign against non-Muslim infidels living in Algeria. The two French businessmen decapitated in September of 1993 were their initial victims.

In an event that foreshadowed September 11th, the Islamic Salvation Front's Armed Islamic Group hijacked an Air France jet before it departed from Algiers to Paris on Christmas Eve in 1994. The hijackers' downfall was their braggadocios attitude. After they released some women, children, and elderly passengers before takeoff, the freed hostages told French authorities stationed in the former colony that the jihadists wanted to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower and have it explode over Paris. All four Armed Islamic Group militants were killed when French security forces stormed the plane.

In 1995, the GIA took credit for a series of subway bombings in France. The Armed Islamic Group killed seven passengers and wounded another 80 French citizens.

In December 1999, Ahmed Ressam, a GIA member, was arrested at the U.S.-Canadian border with a carload of explosives. Ressam, an Algerian Muslim who was living in Canada, had schemed to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve, 2000. Ressam, who was convicted on terrorist charges, led investigators to Islamic co-conspirators in Canada and the United States.

As a result of the carnage, in September 1997 the Algerian military junta agreed to implement the Islamic Salvation Front's plan to expand Sharia law into all areas of public and private life throughout the OPEC nation. Their focus was women's rights (or lack thereof). Like Saudi Arabia women were denied access to cars, travel, education, work, and politics. And they were required to comply with Islam's hideously discriminatory dress code.

However, unable to restrain themselves, the GIA continued to conduct terrorist operations through August of 2001. But just because that was the last jihadist raid perpetrated by the Islamic Salvation Front's Armed Islamic Group, doesn't mean that the terrorists set down their swords, guns, and bombs and became civil. No. They simply changed their name and started expressing the true nature of their religion under the Salafist Group for Call and Combat brand.

In September 2005, the Algeria regime capitulated once again to the Islamic Salvation Front and their Armed Islamic Group and Salafist Group for Call and Combat. They adopted the "Peace and Reconciliation Charter" which pardoned all Islamic militants who were not responsible for civilian massacres, rapes, or bombings of public places. The ISF's imprisoned leaders, were all released because in jail, they had only inspired but not actually done these crimes.

Abassi Madani was the founder and leader of the Islamic Salvation Front, taking the organization from a Qur'an study group to the majority religious and political party in Algeria. When his fundamentalist Islamic organization garnered the most votes in a 1991 national election, Madani became a target of the Algerian regime. He was arrested on June 30th 1991, and served the next several years in a military prison. He was released on parole in July 1997 once the military junta had capitulated to his primary demands. He was rearrested however in September 1997. Madani was confined to an apartment in Belcourt, Algeria in response to public comments and a letter he sent to the United Nations requesting a solution to the ongoing civil war in Algeria - one he himself had started. Madani remained incarcerated until July 2003, when he was sent into exile. As a condition of his release, the Islamic cleric and terrorist was banned from all political activity.

Abassi Madani still heads the Islamic Salvation Front, though he now lives in Doha, Qatar. He routinely meets with Saudi officials as he shares their fundamentalist view of Islam. And as one might expect, the Quran scholar is critical of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Madani's partner in establishing the ISF was Ahmed Zaoui, a professor of Islamic theology at the University of Algiers. Zaoui fled to Belgium in 1993. Under pressure from Algeria, a Belgian court charged him with traveling with forged documents and membership in a "criminal organization." While under house arrest in Belgium, Zaoui fled to Switzerland and soon thereafter was deported to Burkina Faso. After two years, Zaoui moved to Malaysia. Upon the discovery of the Malaysian government's intent to extradite him back to Algeria, where he would be executed, Zaoui fled to New Zealand. In 2003, Zaoui's application for refugee status was approved, though he would not be released from prison on bail until 2004.

Ali Belhadj was another of Abassi Madani's partners in crime. He was a Algerian schoolteacher before becoming a leader in the Islamic Salvation Front. Belhadj was the second in command of the Islamic Salvation Front and was known as one of the more violent members of the group. In March 1991, Belhadj was instrumental in organizing a general strike in protest of an electoral law which redistricted seats to favor Algeria's governing regime. For his role in the protests, Belhadj was sentenced to 12 years in jail.

Released in 2003, Belhadj was banned by the Algerian government from taking part in politics. In 2005, Belhadj was re-arrested after allegedly "praising terrorism" in an interview on al-Jazeera. In March 2006, Belhadj was released from prison under a national reconciliation act with Islamic terrorists.

Ahmed Abu Abdullah joined the Armed Islamic Group shortly after its birth in early 1992. He had been a member of the Islamic Salvation Front's Jihad Justice Council. Ahmed Abu Abdullah was implicated in a number of assassinations of public figures and foreign businessmen in Algeria. In one of his more infamous incidents, Ahmed Abu Abdullah ordered his jihadists to murder five French diplomats living in the French Embassy's housing complex in August 1994.

Also known by the alias Sherif Ghousmi, Ahmed Abu Abdullah became the head of the GIA following the death of Mourad Sid Ahmed. A press release from the Armed Islamic Group in August 1994 claimed that the GIA had created an Islamic government - and that Ahmed Abu Abdullah was the chief executive of Algeria. But not for long, Ahmed Abu Abdullah was killed in Algiers on September 26th 1994.

Djamel Zitouni became head of the GIA after Ahmed Abu Abdullah was killed. Under his leadership, the GIA hijacked an Air France flight with the intent of turning it into a suicide bomber over Paris. Later in 1995, Djamel Zitouni's Armed Islamic Group claimed credit for a series of subway bombings in France, killing seven people and injuring 80 more. Then in April 1996, the GIA executed seven kidnapped French Catholic priests.

Zitouni's GIA continued to terrorize Algerians, increasing their raids on civilians living in small towns. They wanted to coerce villagers to move to cities to put additional pressure on the military junta.

Zitouni was killed in July 1996 by a rival faction within the Islamic Salvation Front's consortium of jihadist groups. A statement released by the ISF at the time of his assassination announced his expulsion from the organization for "debauchery." Zitouni had been feuding with fellow GIA terrorists, including Hadj Kartali and Abu Abd al-Rahim Khalid, and well as with leadership of the parent Islamic Salvation Front, the political and religious movement from which the GIA had been spawned. Deadly clashes between Zitouni's supporters and those of other GIA commanders were common during this time.

While Djamel Zitouni may have been a drunken libertine and rapist, it wasn't debauchery which got him killed. It was Zitouni's strategy of murdering family members of former GIA jihadists who had given up killing and surrendered to authorities. Islam is like the Mafia in this way. Once in, there is no way out. The Qur'an says: "If a Muslim abrogates his faith (ceasing to be a jihadist), kill him."

The assassinations of two Islamic Salvation Front politicians, Mohamed Said and Abderrezak Redjam, who Zitouni ordered murdered in November 1995, also contributed to Zitouni's problems. Both Said and Redjam had been members of the GIA before trying to leave the group.

- March 30, 1996: Hizballah fired numerous rockets into northern Israel from southern Lebanon, killing two Israeli civilians.

- April 3, 1996: A U.S. Air Force passenger jet crashed in Croatia, killing Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. While pilot error and a rain storm were blamed, he was in the crosshairs of a fight between Bosnian Muslims and the secular Serbian government.

- April 7, 1996: Three stores in a shopping mall in a diplomatic area of Manama, Bahrain were set ablaze.

- April 9, 1996: Hizballah terrorists fired more Iranian Katyusha rockets into northern Israel from their positions in Lebanon. This barrage injured 30 Israeli civilians.

- May 13, 1996: Muslim gunmen in the West Bank opened fire on a bus filled with Yeshiva students near the Bet El settlement. They murdered a dual U.S./Israeli citizen and wounded three Jews. Hamas claimed credit.

- April 18, 1996: Islamic jihadists unloaded their assault rifles on a group of Greek tourists outside the Europa Hotel in Cairo. These Muslims murdered 18 people and injured 15 others.

The attack was claimed by al-Gama'a al-Islamiya—the Islamic Group. These jihadists must have been disappointed in finding out that their victims were not Israelis, which would have earned them double jihad points with Allah.

- April 21, 1996: A bomb exploded in a hostel popular with foreign backpackers in New Delhi, India. The device was constructed of 50 pounds of explosives. A total of 12 tourists were killed in the blast and 40 others were injured.

Two Islamic terrorist groups vied for credit, but authorities blamed the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Party of Holy Warriors.

- April 22, 1996: Two bombs were thrown into the US Information Service center in Lahore, Pakistan.

- May 25, 1996: Palestinian, Khalik Abd al-Rahim was extradited from Greece to Italy. Way back in 1985 this sub-human Muslim had led the Achille Lauro hijacking in which jihadists murdered a paraplegic American tourist.

What's interesting about this is that Italy had been instrumental in letting him go free in the first place.

- April 28, 1996: A bomb exploded near the Aeroflot International Airlines office in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, Turkey. Responsibility was claimed by a previously unknown group calling themselves the Organization for Solidarity with the Chechen Resistance Fighters. There were no Chechen resistance fighters, only Chechen Muslims fighting to spread Islam on the region.

- May 5, 1996: Taliban Islamic fundamentalists fired rockets into the Iranian Embassy in Kabul. Two people were injured.

- May 5, 1996: Ten Nepali workers were kidnapped from Srinagar, India by Islamic terrorists. Eight were killed and two escaped with gunshot wounds.

- May 13, 1996: An American was killed in Israel and at least three other people were injured when two Muslims opened fire on a bus as it waited at the Beit El stop.

- May 16, 1996: In Peru, fifty pounds of dynamite was detonated in a stolen car by Sendero Luminoso in Lima. Ten people were injured, one seriously. The Shining Path is a Marxist organization.

- May 28, 1996: A former Iranian cabinet minister under the Shah was assassinated in his Paris home.

- May 30, 1996: Hizballah detonated three IEDs as Israeli patrols passed. Four soldiers were killed and seven were wounded.

- May 30, 1996: An Iranian dissident living in exile in Beirut, Lebanon was the target of an assassination attempt. Shia Muslims in cars opened fire on the victim, seriously wounding him. He was taken to the American Hospital where Iranian diplomats arrived and attempted to have the victim turned over to them.

- June 4, 1996: Three Red Cross workers in Burundi were gunned down as they returned from transporting medical supplies and water. The attack, which was preceded by a host of death threats, resulted in the Red Cross pulling out of the region.

- June 4, 1996: The wives of two Russian servicemen stationed in Tajikistan were killed. The fundamentalist Islamic group known as the Muzlokandov Gang dragged them into a cemetery in Dushanbe and then executed them.

- June 4, 1996: A Canadian geologist was killed when four terrorists opened fire on a helicopter owned by the Arimco Mining Corporation. The helicopter was hit three times by rifle fire in the Nueva Viscaya province of the Philippines.

- June 8, 1996: The Islamic Kurdish terrorist group, PKK attacked the Uzuncayir dam and power station in Tunceli, killing seven.

- June 8, 1996: Palestinian Arabs, claiming to represent the PFLP, ambushed a car near Zekharya. They murdered a U.S. citizen and an Israeli couple who were traveling with their baby.

- June 10, 1996: Five Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush in southern Lebanon by the Iranian-backed Hizballah militants.

- June 15, 1996: Sprinkled intermittingly among the deluge of Islamic attacks, there is news that Catholic terrorists operating under the IRA moniker continue to be violent. On this day, an IRA truck bomb detonated at a Manchester shopping center, wounding 206 people.

Founded in the late 19th century, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is arguably the longest-operating guerilla organization in Western Europe. Despite its longevity, the group remains committed to its founding goal, an Ireland fully independent of Great Britain. While the IRA is a Catholic organization, and not an Islamic one, the group is often cited to suggest that there are other significant contributors to terrorism other than Islam. With that in mind, let's examine the history and nature of the IRA

Ireland was ruthlessly ruled and oppressed by England, its southern neighbor, from the 18th century until 1921 so the Irish have a legitimate complaint. Between 1919 and 1921, Irish separatists engaged in a violent guerilla war on British forces within Ireland. (I use the term guerilla rather then terrorist because the preponderance of IRA attacks were on armed individuals serving the British government in police or army units.)

In 1921, the Irish separatists, led by the political party Sinn Fein, reached an agreement with the United Kingdom. With the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the UK agreed to grant full independence to the southern 26 counties of Ireland while retaining sovereignty over the remaining six northern counties which would soon be known as Northern Ireland. As a result, a civil war erupted in Ireland between pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions. While the acceptance of the treaty was ratified by referendum, there was a large minority that continued to find the creation of Northern Ireland an unacceptable compromise.

In 1922, the IRA was founded by members of the anti-treaty faction who had participated in the guerrilla war against the British. While they had lost the brief civil war, they continued to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland.

In 1969, the IRA split into two rival factions, the Official and Provisional IRA. The Official IRA, with its Marxist-oriented ideology, was opposed to an armed campaign against the British and would later declare an indefinite ceasefire in 1972. Although there have been recent accusations of criminal involvement, the Official IRA is not active in a militant capacity.

It was then that Roman Catholic members of the IRA who espoused the traditional republican ideology and opposed the Official IRA's Communist leanings, formed the Provisional IRA in order to escalate the armed campaign against the British troop presence in Northern Ireland. The PIRA was therefore a pro-Catholic and anti-Communist enterprise.

After 1972 ceasefire declared by the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA became the de facto IRA, desiring the removal of British troops and the unification of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Operating as the IRA, they seek to unite all 32 counties into one Irish state, independent of Great Britain. Due to their opposition to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, the IRA does not recognize the legitimacy of the governments of Ireland or Northern Ireland although these views have been moderated somewhat in recent years.

The Catholic IRA is known for their use of car, pipe, and mail bombs, assassinations, kidnappings, beatings, extortion, smuggling, and robberies, most of which have been conducted in Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Great Britain. Although its primary targets have been the British military and police in Northern Ireland, the IRA has also carried out operations against Protestant civilians and British government officials. Advanced warning for bombing attacks was often given in order to minimize civilian causalities. After several instances of successful U.K. police infiltrations, the IRA reorganized itself into small Active Service Units, under the leadership of the Army Council, to maintain operational security.

In the mid-1980s, the Catholic IRA received large quantities of modern weaponry, including heavy machine guns, thousands of assault rifles, hundreds of pistols, rocket propelled grenades, flamethrowers, surface to air missiles, and substantial amounts of plastic explosive semtix from the Muslim dictator Muammar Qadhafi. The Islamic OPECer provided enough weapons to arm the equivalent of three infantry battalions. As a result, most of the IRA's murders and mutilations were conducted in the late ‘80s using Libya's arsenal. This rapid escalation in violence was equated by the IRA's leadership to the Vietnamese Tet Offensive. The Muslim link to Catholic terror was further confirmed when the French intercepted one of the Libyan arms donations aboard the Eksund.

In August 1994, the Catholic IRA declared a cease-fire. While the cease-fire briefly broke down in 1996, negotiations resumed in the summer of 1997. The cease-fire culminated in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The IRA made a drastic shift in their policy and agreed to work towards a united Ireland exclusively using peaceful terms. After the signing of the Accords on April 12, 1998, the IRA stopped deploying guerilla tactics, however, its members continued to engage in criminal activities such as smuggling and robbery.

Violent splinter groups, such as the Real IRA and Continuity IRA, were formed in opposition to the organization's participation in the ceasefire and the peace process. Despite temporary setbacks, negotiations continued, and in 2001, the IRA announced that it would disarm and seek to quiet its splinter groups. In July 2002, the IRA issued a public apology to the civilian victims of its attacks. In July 2005, the IRA formally ordered an end to their armed campaign, pledging to use non-violent means to achieve their goals. In September of that year, an independent commission set up to oversee the disarmament process, the Independent Monitoring Commission, reported that the IRA had in fact scrapped their arsenal.

While the IRA was reprehensible and ruthless, and their behavior mostly inexcusable, their twenty-year reign of violence cannot be compared to Islam. Muslim terrorists have killed an average of 400 people per day over the past 50 years. So over the same period of time, Islam out-murdered the Catholics 1,725 to one.

The total number of casualties perpetrated by the PIRA during the twenty years following the Catholic-Communist split to the IRA's cease fire accords, were between 1,700 and 1,800. Of these, one third, or 621 were civilians - most of whom were Protestants. The largest number of casualties, 1,013, were British forces, mostly army but some police. Thirty-five of those killed by the IRA were British or Irish political figures, and 63 of the dead were suspected informers. The PIRA lost 276 members, 103 of whom died as a result of their own premature explosions.

- June 17, 1996: A bomb exploded in a car owned by a Saudi Arabian in Manama, Bahrain. Shi'ite terrorists were suspected.

- June 19, 1996: In Burundi, two Algerian doctors were killed and another was kidnapped. The attack occurred in the region of Bujumbura, while they were engaged on an aid mission.

- June 19, 1996: Thirty-three election workers in Somotines, Nicaragua were kidnapped by Contra rebels and taken into Honduras. Twenty-eight of the hostages were members of Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council, and three were officials in the Ministry of Agriculture. The hostages were released two days later. Negotiations were undertaken by the Organization of American States and the Catholic Church's Bishop of Esteli. As a result, the Nicaraguan Army withdrew troops from the area.

- June 23, 1996: A bomb exploded near the Le Vendome Intercontinental Hotel in Manama, Bahrain. Bahraini authorities claimed that religious fundamentalists from an indigenous Shiite Muslim community were responsible. Bahrain also accused Iran of plotting to destabilize the government in order to put an Islamic regime in power.

- June 24, 1996: In Uganda, West Nile Bank Front terrorists attacked refugee camps in Koboko where International Red Cross and other relief agencies were assisting Sudanese civilians displaced by the long and deadly genocide perpetrated against them by the Sudan's Islamic regime. Ten people were killed including one Red Cross worker. Twenty-three people were injured.

The same day, a German aid worker with the Deutschland Volunteer Service was kidnapped by the West Nile Bank Front.

The WNBF had been terrorizing Ugandans for several years. They attacked out of bases in Zaire and the Sudan. The terrorist organization was led by a former associate of Idi Amin—the poster boy of bloodthirsty Muslim syphilitic ignoramus egocentric despots.

- June 25, 1996: In Saudi Arabia, a fertilizer and fuel oil truck bomb exploded outside the housing complex for United States Air Force personnel in Dhahran on the King Abdul Aziz Air Base. Nineteen American airmen were killed by the blast, which devastated the Khobar Towers complex. Over 500 more people were burned and mutilated in the attack.

A guard had been seen directing the truck, which was then parked next to a perimeter fence. Then the occupants of the truck escaped into a waiting car.

Responsibility for the mass murder of Americans was claimed by a consortium of Shia religious organizations: Saudi Hizballah, the Legion of the Martyr Abdullah al-Huzaifi, and the Islamic Movement for Change. There was considerable evidence that the attack was orchestrated by the Iranian religious regime and that preparatory meetings were held in Damascus, Syria—the headquarters of Allah's Party. The prime suspects were Ahmed Ibrahim al Mughassil, Ibrahim al-Yacoub, and Abdel Karim al-Nasser.

Sadly, rather than blaming Islam for motivating these mass murderers, the Saudis for educating these terrorists, or the Iranians for financing and directing them, the United States reprimanded U.S. Brig. General Terry Schwalier, the Wing Commander of the 4404th, disciplining him. There was no other American military response.

In June 1997, a Saudi suspect was deported to the US by Canada. The Shia terrorist was a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Saudi Hezbollah, both controlled by Iran's religious regime. The only difference between them is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards wear army fatigues and Hizballah conceals themselves in black robes. The Saudi Shia Muslim was offered a plea bargain, whereby he exchanged information on the attack for a reduced sentence on other charges against him.

Five years later, in June of 2001, a U.S. Grand Jury indicted 14 members of Hizballah—Allah's Party. The indictment detailed the nature of the terrorist club and their relationship to Iran and Syria.

- June 26, 1996: The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) kidnapped six Catholic missionaries, including three Australian nuns. It charged them with spying and also with spreading Catholicism.

The Roman Catholic Church sided with the ruthless Islamic regime in the Sudan, rather than condemn them during the thirty-year genocide. Pope John Paul II even held a mass in Khartoum during the height of the slaughter. While Protestant Christians have done compassionate and courageous work in the Sudan during the genocide which has killed nearly three million Africans, Catholics have been counterproductive.

- June 26, 1996: Three Germans and their Pakistani driver were kidnapped in a remote area of Pakistan.

- July 1, 1996: An Islamic PKK suicide bombing killed six Turkish soldiers, injuring 30 more in Tunceli.

- July 12, 1996: A group of armed Kurdish Muslims with PKK connections occupied the Reuters news agency office in Vienna, Austria.

- July 13, 1996: An Islamic Turkish prayer center in Frankfurt, Germany was firebombed by Kurdish terrorists who scribbled their slogans at the scene.

- July 15, 1996: A female employee of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was stabbed by a young Muslim man in Egypt. The jihadists had a history of mental illness, which is an interesting diagnosis from those who condone murder as godly and good.

The attack took place in the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo—a building named after the Babylonian prototype for the Catholic Madonna and Child, Queen of Heaven, and Mother of God.

The Egyptian press reported that she was targeted because of her work, saying that the selection of this particular victim was too precise and telling to be random.

- July 17, 1996: TWA flight 800 from JFK to Paris crashed just after takeoff, killing all 230 aboard. The location of the explosion over the plane's fuel tank was identical to the point of detonation on PAL flight 434, on December 11th, 1996—a test bombing carried out by Ramzi Yousef. While many still see this crash as a terrorist attack, the NTSB suggested that the explosion was caused by an electrical short, albeit without providing the source of the charge. Witnesses claim to have seen a missile. All one can say for sure is that the cause remains controversial.

- July 19, 1996: Showing that good Muslims are political and that militant Islam is fundamental Islam, Osama bin Laden held an international meeting of Muslims from every major Islamic sect and nation. They confirmed that they were salaf, or fundamentalists, and that they were united in their hatred of “Zionists and Crusaders”—Christians and Jews.

The problem is Islam, not Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. They are only symptoms.

- July 20, 1996: A bomb exploded in the international passenger area at Reus airport, near Barcelona, Spain, injuring 53 people. Many of the victims were British tourists flying home to Manchester and Birmingham. Eight of the injured were Spaniards.

A warning had been received by two daily newspapers in advance of the blast, advising them to clear the airport. But the bomb exploded before that was done when it was inadvertently triggered prematurely by a cleaning person. Although it had been intended to destroy property it had inflicted serious bodily harm. The bombing was claimed by ETA, and was accompanied by similar attacks on other parts of the Spanish tourist industry.

A review of the Basque Fatherland and Freedom group is available at the end of the Islamic Clubs Listing. By reading it you will discover why they were more interested in sending messages than killing people.

- July 22, 1996: A bomb hidden inside a briefcase exploded outside the domestic departure lounge at Lahore Airport in Pakistan. Nine people were killed and 68 were injured.

The bomb exploded as Pakistan International Airlines flight 315 was leaving for Karachi, Pakistan. While the Pakistani Islamic regime tried to blame the Indian government for the blast, they provided no evidence whatsoever.

- July 23, 1996: A mosque in Dortmund, Germany was firebombed by Turks. The same day, a Turkish social club in Bremen was set ablaze, seriously burning one person.

Later, a Turkish publishing house in Kreuzberg, Berlin, was bombed. That was followed by a Molotov cocktail attack on a cafe in Cologne. Five Turkish citizens were detained by police as they tried to flee the scene.

- July 24, 1996: The Turkish Airlines office at Stuttgart Airport in Germany was occupied by armed Kurdish militants linked to the PKK. They demanded that all flights to Turkey be stopped.

- July 24, 1996: The Turkish Embassy in Paris, France, was attacked by a group of 30 Muslim militants wielding stones, sticks, and cans of spray paint.

- July 25, 1996: A bomb was detonated in a crowded commuter train during the evening rush hour in Paris, France. Four people were killed in the blast and 62 people were wounded. The explosion occurred outside St. Michel-Notre-Dame station. The Algerian Armed Islamic Group was responsible for the assault.

- July 29, 1996: A car bomb was defused near the Chase Plaza building in Jakarta, Indonesia.

- July 30, 1996: In Afghanistan, a rocket exploded outside the UNICEF offices in Kabul. The Afghan government accused the Taliban of the rocket attack even though they had agreed to a five-day ceasefire in order for UNICEF to carry out a vaccination campaign.

- July 31, 1996: The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported that two bombs were discovered and defused in the Algiers Airport shortly before the French Foreign Minister was due to arrive. The Algerian government, however, denied the reports, claiming they were “pure fantasy.”

- August 1, 1996: In Algeria, a bomb planted by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group in the home of French Archbishop of Oran, killed the Archbishop and one of his associates.

The French bishop in Oran had just returned from a ceremony honoring the seven French monks abducted and beheaded by the Armed Islamic Group on March 27th this year.

The bishop and his chauffeur were mutilated and burned beyond recognition in the blast. The suspects, all members of the GIA, were killed by government security forces during a raid on August 11th.

- August 5, 1996: The local representative of the Kurdish Democratic Party was executed in Paris.

- August 5, 1996: A bomb exploded at a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia injuring 17 people and killing one man, a Belgian citizen.

- August 7, 1996: A group of 59 Ukrainian construction workers were kidnapped in Grozny by Chechen Muslims during an armed raid. On October 8th, 34 of the workers were released following negotiations between the mayor of Odessa and Chechen Muslims. The fate of the remaining captives is unknown.

- August 8, 1996: In Mauritania, a Muslim man who tried to hijack an Air Mauritania flight was disarmed after he pointed his gun at the pilot's head. The incident occurred in Nouadhibou, the country's second largest city. The first leg of the flight had originated in Nouakchott and the plane was scheduled to fly on to Las Palmas.

The hijacker, a policeman from the northern town of Zouerate, entered the cockpit, pointed the gun at the pilot and demanded to be flown to Morocco. The pilot struggled with the man, and the gun discharged. The bullet missed him and lodged in the ceiling. The hijacker was overpowered by the flight crew and the pilot flew on to Nouakchott, where the hijacker was arrested.

- August 11, 1996: Al-Ittihaad al-Islami terrorists in Beledweyene, Somalia killed two Ethiopian businessmen.

- August 15, 1996: Six Roman Catholic priests and nuns were kidnapped by African rebels in the Sudan. They were held for two weeks and released unharmed.

The kidnappers, from the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) accused the Roman Catholics of being spies for the National Islamic Front—the mass murdering terrorist militia backed by the Sudan government. The SPLA was fighting to thwart the Sudan's Islamic regime's genocidal campaign against African Animists and Christians. While Arab Muslims were the perpetrators of the genocide which had killed nearly three million Africans in the Sudan, the SPLA saw the Roman Catholic Church as being sympathetic to the jihadists.

- August 17, 1996: In Tajikistan, the headless bodies of three Russian civilians were found bound and decapitated in Rogun. The victims included a 55-year-old man who was the manager of the Rogun hydroelectric power station, his daughter, and a welder who worked at the power generation facility.

- August 23, 1996: Osama bin Laden released a written declaration at the conclusion of his united jihad conference. It declared that he, and his fellow Muslims, intended to attack the United States. In this open letter, Bin Laden revealed the source of his rage: the U.S. was still in Saudi Arabia and he was not.

- August 26, 1996: The Russian Embassy in the capital of Bahrain came under attack from Islamic gunmen. A guard was wounded. Iranian Shiites were suspected.

- August 27, 1996: An American missionary was kidnapped in the Sudan.

- August 28, 1996: Shots were fired at a passenger bus in Bethlehem. Two Israeli women were pierced by the jihadist's bullets.

Although the town is a suburb of Jerusalem, it is said to be in the West Bank. Bill Clinton's brilliant Oslo Accords gave control of much of the West Bank to Islamic terrorists. One could argue that Clinton's land for peace worked. There are no longer Muslim suicide bomber attacks on Jews in Bethlehem. Of course, that's only because the intolerant Muslims drove them all out of the city.

- August 28, 1996: A Molotov cocktail was thrown into the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia. The Islamic perpetrators were shouting "I really hate the United States!"

- August 31, 1996: Palestinian gunmen shot and wounded two Romanian workers shopping in the West Bank. Security sources said the two may have been mistaken for Jews.

- September 4, 1996: A UN employee was kidnapped from southern Mogadishu in Somalia.

- September 4, 1996: A group of Muslim students belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist organization, attacked the U.S. Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan. They were protesting American policy towards Iraq.

- September 5, 1996: Ramzi Yousef, a disciple of the blind Qur'an scholar Sheikh Abdel Rahman, was convicted for his 1995 plot to blow up 12 civilian airliners leaving the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia en route to the United States using liquid explosives concealed in cosmetic and beverage containers.

Ramzi Yousef was also directly involved in the 1993 World Trade Center and 1995 Oklahoma City Federal Building bombings. Moreover, absolute proof was found in his Manila apartment to prove that Ramzi Yousef conceived the plan to train Islamic pilots to hijack American airliners and fly them into American buildings like the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

During his trial, the Philippine intelligence briefing dated January 2, 1995 in this timeline, was used to convict him. And that means Americans knew the who, what, where, how, and why of 9/11 five years in advance. This also shows how

- September 13, 1996: In northern Iraq, four aid workers (one French, one Canadian, and two Iraqis) representing Pharmaciens sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) and UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) were kidnapped in a Kurdish refugee camp near the Iranian border. They were taken to Iran.

The Islamic Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) claimed credit.

- September 19, 1996: An aid worker for the Swedish Life and Peace Institute was kidnapped in Mogadishu, Somalia.

- September 24, 1996: An airplane carrying members of the Taliban militia from Herat to Kandahar was hijacked to Bagram air base in Afghanistan. The hijackers wanted to hand over the plane, along with the Pakistani and Taliban jihadists on board, to "My Islamic State.”

It was not clear who was responsible for the hijacking, although it may have been committed by pro-government forces hoping to expose Pakistani support for the Taliban. One report denied that any Pakistani nationals were on the plane, while another claimed that five Pakistani military officers were aboard.

But this we know for sure: the Taliban is a product of the Pakistani government. When America allied with Pakistan to depose the Taliban in October 2001, the United States sacrificed its blood and coin in complete ignorance of this reality.

- September 25, 1996: Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya terrorists opened fire on a flotilla of tourist boats in Mallawi, south of Cairo, Egypt.

- September 26, 1996: Three Italians working for the Intersos humanitarian organization were kidnapped in Chechnya.

- September 27, 1996: In Afghanistan, the fundamentalist Islamic political and religious organization known as the Taliban (or “religious students”) took control of Kabul by force. Their first order of business is to hang rival Muslim, Muhammad Najibullah, on a public street.

The Taliban are Sunni Muslims, educated in Islamic religious schools called madrasas. These “schools,” which exist around the world, are primarily financed by Saudi OPECers.

What's interesting here is that the Taliban was against education. The Pakistani salafists known as “the religious students” immediately shut down Kabul University. They passed a law that limited the schooling of males to high school. Sexist, they kicked every girl over the age of 12 out of all public and private schools.

The civil war the Taliban waged against the Muslim Marxist government caused the death of 50,000 civilians—a disproportionate percentage of whom were Persian Muslims. This followed immediately on the heels of the Great Jihad, a civil war which claimed the lives of over one million Afghanis.

The Taliban is an infamous organization, having ruled Afghanistan under strict Islamic Sharia Law for five years, between 1996 and 2001. While the Taliban has been ousted from its control of Kabul, it has re-surfaced working with Islamic warlords throughout the rest of Afghanistan.

The Taliban first emerged as a significant force in 1994. The group principally comprises Afghanistan's Pashtun tribesmen who had found refuge in Pakistan. These Muslim refugees studied in Pakistan's madrassas, which are Islamic religious schools. They received assistance from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - the equivalent of America's CIA. The Taliban's membership grew to include mujahideen (holy Islamic warriors) who had fought the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

In 1994, at the request of the Pakistani government, the Taliban served as a security force for a Pakistani mission aimed at opening up trade between Pakistan and Central Asia. This exercise would prove to be the first step towards the Taliban's overthrow of the Afghan government.

The Taliban's initial conquest was the city of Kandahar, which it wrested away from a rival jihadist group. The Taliban continued to expand its territory, sometimes through armed conflict but also through negotiations and bribes to regional warlords. In 1996, the Taliban took control of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city, thus becoming the de facto government. By late 2001, the Taliban would control 95 percent of the country.

As an interesting side note, the Bush Administration, in consort with Unocal, invited a Taliban delegation to Washington, D.C. to meet with political and corporate leaders in the Spring of 2001. More interested in rewarding the oil industry than in prosecuting terrorism, they brokered a deal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan with Taliban support. In on the deal was Hamid Karzai, which is how he became Afghanistan's President. And not surprisingly, he has signed documents approving the pipeline. A comprehensive review of this tragic tale can be found in the "Pipeline to 9/11" appendix to the Islamic Terrorism Timeline. There you will learn a great deal more about the Taliban, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as their dealings with America's corporate and political leaders.

Having replaced a Marxist Muslim government, the Taliban, being Islamic fundamentalists, immediately imposed Islamic Sharia Law throughout Afghanistan. While Americans are wont to ignore it, Hamid Karzai's government has re-imposed Sharia Law. After all Hamid Karzai was an Islamic Jihadist and Mujahideen, serving as the Taliban's Foreign Minister before he joined Unocal.

As we have come to expect from all fundamentalist Islamic groups, the Taliban's goal is to establish the most pure Islamic state in Afghanistan. As a direct result, once empowered they imposed restrictions on women. They could neither work nor go to school. The Taliban also enforced amputations and public executions for violating Islamic Sharia law. The Taliban, in its campaign to impose salafi Islam, curtailed the flow of information by banning the Internet, television, and radio. The group forced Hindus and other religious minorities to wear symbols that identified them as non-Muslims and forced Hindus to wear veils as all Muslim women were required. In that regard they were akin to Hitler's Nazis.

As we have witnessed with all Islamic regimes, the Taliban arrested foreign aid workers who were assisting the poor Afghani population. On the positive side, the Taliban did enact certain reforms that garnered support among the people. They greatly reduced the rampant corruption that had taken hold within the former Marxist Muslim government. Second, the Taliban diminished violence in Afghanistan by reducing the internal fighting between warlords and diminishing the warlords' control of Afghan's civilian population. During their rule, terrorism was virtually non-existent, especially compared to the level it has risen to today.

The Taliban is infamous for providing safe haven to the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Not only was bin Laden allowed to roam freely within the country, he also established training camps for legions of future mujahideen militants, most of whom were being equipped to terrorize Kashmir on behalf of the Pakistani government.

The decision to host bin Laden destroyed the Taliban's chance of attaining international credibility - at least outside the Islamic world. Only three countries, Pakistan who created the Taliban, Saudi Arabia who financed the Taliban, and the United Arab Emirates who laundered their money, recognized the Taliban government.

Despite the pressure on the Taliban, they continued to rule the country under strict Islamic law and to allow bin Laden safe haven from 1996 to 2001. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Taliban's support of bin Laden was alleged to be the reason the Islamic regime was deposed in December 2001, with the Afghan Interim Authority of another Mujahideen, Hamid Karzai, replacing the Taliban government - at least in Kabul. The truth, however, is considerably less noble. You will find the somber reality in the Pipeline to 9/11 and discover why neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban were captured in the invasion.

As a result of an amnesty deal brokered by Karzai, the Taliban temporarily faded into the Islamic community. But they quickly re-emerged and now control most of Afghanistan apart from Kabul.

Mullah Muhammad Omar, also known as "Amirul Momineen," (Commander of the Faithful) remains head of the Taliban. He was born near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1959. His path to power began with the fight against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, during which he gathered a group of Pashtun warriors to fight both the Soviets and other Mujahideen who were raping and looting villages near his hometown. In this regard Mullah Muhammad is a carbon copy of Hamid Karzai. But while Karzai would go on to cozy up to the Bush family and Unocal, Omar built his group of jihadists into the Taliban. With Pakistani support, they took control of most of Afghanistan by 1998.

Omar is committed to a strict literal interpretation of Islam. His Taliban has become notorious for his application of Sharia Law while he ruled Afghanistan. Mullah Muhammad Omar accepted the title "Commanded of the Faithful" in 1996, the first Muslim since a nephew of the prophet Muhammad to do so.

During his fight against the Soviets, Omar met Osama bin Laden. After Omar's Taliban took control of Afghanistan, he provided safe haven to his jihadist friend and allowed him to establish training camps within the country after he was booted out of the Sudan.

During his reign, Omar never once traveled to Kabul to establish a functioning government. Now that the Taliban has been ousted from power, Omar remains the Taliban's leader and is protected by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and millions of loyal Muslims.

- October 14, 1996: Ugandan terrorists thought to belong to the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) attacked government army barracks and looted UN compounds in Pakelle. UN staff were evacuated from the compounds which were being used to help Rwandan refugees.

Based in Northern Uganda and the Sudan, the Lord's Resistance Army was financed and equipped by Sudan's Islamic government. And that is because the LRA seeks to destabilize and overthrow the government of Uganda - which is both expansionist and one of the most ruthless Islamic regimes on the planet. Formed in 1992, the group's founder, Joseph Kony, claims to be a mystic who receives orders from spirits during nightly dreams.

Those who like to discredit Christianity assert that the LRA promotes a radical form of Christianity although there is no correlation between Yahweh's Scriptures and Joseph Kony's preaching or behavior. The group seeks to achieve its objectives through unbridled brutality. Rape, torture, and murder have become the LRA's hallmarks in the almost fifteen years that they have terrorized the citizens of Northern Uganda.

The ranks of the LRA are filled in large part by children, who are kidnapped and then brainwashed into service. Human rights NGOs place the number of children currently fighting with LRA at around 3,000. The Lord's Resistance Army, taking another page out of the Islamic playbook, kidnap young girls to serve as sex slaves. Many of these children have even been given as gifts to Muslim arms dealers in the Sudan who not only support the LRA, but who are also part of the Sudanese Islamic government.

Demonstrating their Islamic tendencies, the Lord's Resistance Army murdered an Italian priest. They also killed World Food Program volunteers and the former President of Uganda. After terrorizing mourners at a funeral, they forced them to cook and then eat the body of the deceased. No discernible political program underlies these attacks aside from Kony's desire to cause extreme pain and suffering on all who do not submit. In fact it would not be inappropriate to say that Kony is a carbon copy of Idi Amen, one of the most ruthless and inhuman Muslims who ever lived.

In 2002, the murderous fundamentalist Islamic Sudanese government publicly reversed its longstanding policy of support for the LRA. Despite this declaration, the LRA continued to perpetrate its brutal attacks within Uganda using Sudanese weapons.

- October 15, 1996: A United Nations compound in Kampala, Uganda was overrun by the Lord's Resistance Army. A Ugandan army captain and three others including two civilians were killed in the attack.

- October 17, 1996: A commuter train was bombed in the early morning, wounding 29 people in France. It was one more act in the continuing crusade of terror perpetrated by Algerian Armed Islamic Group militants.

- October 17, 1996: Seventeen UN workers were returning from Bo, Liberia where they had been attending to refugees, when gunmen kidnapped them. Twenty-five armed militants seized the aid workers and confiscated their possessions and supplies. They were freed the following day.

- October 21, 1996: Speaking at a rally near Bethlehem, Yasser Arafat said “We know only one word - jihad. jihad, jihad, jihad. Whoever does not like it can drink from the Dead Sea or from the Sea of Gaza.” Those who trusted Muslims and promoted the Camp David and Oslo Accords (Carter and Clinton) ought to follow Arafat's instructions.

- October 22, 1996: A PKK suicide bombing in Sivas killed three policemen and the Islamic buffoon—a Muslim woman.

- October 25, 1996: A taxi transporting 11 anti-tank and 14 anti-personnel mines was intercepted in Jordan en route to Israel. Three Jordanians had collected weapons from a nearby minefield and had stockpiled them with intent to murder tourists in Israel. This Muslim had been profoundly disturbed by the broadening political and economic developments between Israel and Jordan.

- October 27, 1996: A Palestinian Muslim was arrested trying to enter Israel from the Gaza Strip. He was carrying an explosive-packed mobile telephone. The HAMAS bomb maker Yehiya Ayash had been killed earlier by a similar device.

- October 28, 1996: A UNICEF employee was kidnapped by jihadists in Somalia. When he refused to follow the kidnappers' instructions, he was shot in the stomach.

- October 31, 1996: Four Spanish Marist missionaries were hacked to death by Hutu militias. Their bodies were found in a well at their mission.

- November 1, 1996: Turkish police arrested seven PKK terrorist who had been responsible for arranging the suicide bombing on police headquarters the previous month which had killed four officers.

- November 1, 1996: In the Sudan, three associates working for the International Committee of the Red Cross, including a U.S. citizen, an Australian, and a Kenyan were kidnapped. A month later, they were released in exchange for ICRC supplies and a health survey of a refugee camp.

The militants were loyal to Kerubino Bol. During their raid, they captured an aircraft belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which contained five injured soldiers being returned to southern Sudan following medical treatment. The ICRC was accused of smuggling arms to the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Kerubino Bol's group demanded a ransom of 50 million dollars, first aid kits, and communication equipment.

The ICRC suspended its activities in the area until the plane was returned. U.S. Congressman Bill Richardson negotiated the release of all the hostages on behalf of the pilot's family.

- November 13, 1996: A bomb exploded in a Hyundai showroom in Sitra, Bahrain, six miles southeast of Manama. A security guard was wounded by the exploding butane gas cylinder. A Shiite opposition group was suspected.

- November 15, 1996: A Bulgarian citizen was assassinated in Hammamet, Algeria. He had previously worked in the Bulgarian Embassy in Algiers as the military attaché. The Armed Islamic Group was responsible for the killing.

- November 17, 1996: A fire in a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey killed 17 Ukraianians and injured 40 other people. The Turkish Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

As with Turkish Hizballah, Turkish Islamic Jihad is financed, equipped, trained, and directed by the Iranian Shia religious regime.

In their only public statement, Turkish Islamic Jihad said that they opposed the efforts of the United States and Egypt to “divide up the Middle East.”

- November 20, 1996: A bomb was found in an unaccompanied bag in the arrivals terminal at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

- November 23, 1996: Muslims hijacked Ethiopia Airlines Boeing 767 flight ET961 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. About 20 minutes after take off from Addis Ababa, two Ethiopian Muslims started to make a commotion, and then a third stood up, this one brandishing a bomb. The co-pilot was removed from the cockpit, and one of the hijackers took control of the plane, which pitched down violently.

They demanded that the pilot fly them to Australia. When the pilot attempted to land at the island city of Moroni, it ran out of fuel. The pilot veered out to sea near the Comoros Islands rather than fly into a beach-side hotel. The plane skipped as it hit the water, breaking into pieces before coming to rest and splitting on an underwater reef. The jihadists killed 125 of the 175 passengers aboard.

The hijacker's motives were not clear, although it was reported that they had escaped from prison and that they were associated with al-Ittihaad al-Islami, known as Islamic Unity,

- November 24, 1996: An explosion destroyed a Turkish supermarket in Bremen injuring 10 people.

- November 26, 1996: Two members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Chechnya were kidnapped in Grozny. They were forced from their car, which carried OSCE markings, and transferred into another stolen car. Chechen jihadists were assumed to be responsible.

- November 28, 1996: A Jewish businessman was killed by jihadists who opened fire on his car while he drove in Bursa, Turkey. The attack was claimed by an Islamic group.

- December 3, 1996: A car bomb exploded outside the Panorama shopping complex in Lahore, Pakistan. Three Pakistanis were injured.

- December 3, 1996: A letter bomb was sent to the editorial offices of the French-Jewish weekly Tribune Juive. The bomb was hidden in a video cassette. A group of Palestinian sympathizers claiming allegiance to no specific group, other than Islam, sent an anonymous letter to the paper claiming responsibility for the attack.

- December 3, 1996: A bomb on the Paris metro killed four and seriously injured 88. As usual, the train bombing was perpetrated by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. The explosion occurred in the carriage of a train boarding passengers at the Port Royal Station in Paris as part of the Regional Express Underground Railway.

- December 8, 1996: In Tajikistan, Islamic terrorists attacked a British gold mine in Darvaz. Four employees were kidnapped. The mine was occupied for five days.

- December 15, 1996: A Russian news agency reported that four aid workers were kidnapped in Chechnya by Islamic terrorists associated with Salman Raduyev. Two of the victims were associated with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

- December 16, 1996: Palestinians Jawad Botmeh and Samar Alanir were sentenced to 20 years for plotting to bomb Jewish targets in Britain.

- December 17, 1996: In Peru, a group of Tupac Amaru Marxists entered the Japanese Embassy dressed as waiters during a celebration of the Japanese Emperor's birthday. They then set off explosions and took an estimated 600 guests hostage. About 200 hostages were released soon after the takeover. Tupac Amaru threatened to kill the remaining hostages unless 400 imprisoned comrades were freed from Peruvian jails.

Their demands were refused. So in April 1997, Peruvian soldiers stormed the Ambassador's residence and rescued the remaining 72 hostages. One Japanese hostage and two soldiers were killed. All fourteen of the Tupac Amaru terrorists were killed.

The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement is a Marxist-Leninist organization. The group was founded to overthrow the Peruvian government and replace it with a Marxist state. To achieve that goal, they are committed to expelling U.S. commercial and diplomatic interests from Peru. The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement recruits peasants, students, and members of trade unions. The TARM is the second-largest Marxist movement in Peru, following only the Shining Path.

- December 18, 1996: Masked Muslims attacked a Red Cross hospital in Novye Atagi. Once inside, they used pistols equipped with silencers to execute five nurses as they slept. One of the nurses was Spanish, one was Canadian, another was from New Zealand and two were Norwegian. A Dutch construction technician was also murdered by these Chechen jihadists. A seventh victim, a Swiss hospital administrator, survived his gunshot wounds.

- December 20, 1996: In Tajikistan, a convoy of UN military observers and Tajik officials was ambushed by Islamic militants between Fayzabad and Gharm. Twenty-three hostages were seized, including eight UN personnel. The terrorists demanded the release of several of their comrades.

- December 27, 1996: In Eritrea, five Belgian tourists and their driver were ambushed on their return from Asmara. All six were killed by Islamic jihadists.

- December 31, 1996: Fifty West Nile Bank Front terrorists attacked and looted a World Vision facility in Madi Okollo, Uganda.

- December 31, 1996: Eight Muslim militants threw Molotov cocktails into a building occupied by Shiites in the