Category Archives: Libya Benghazi Muslim Brotherhood murder

35 and 56…Watch Out, Ask Lots of Questions, Gitmo

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The White House Guantanamo Detention Center plan calls for transferring another 35 detainees to other countries and shifting the remaining 56 to US-based facilities. These guys really want to give up top notch healthcare, food, housing and soccer?     

In 2009: TheHill: The House instructed conferees negotiating with the Senate on a final version of the Homeland Security spending bill to include language prohibiting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil. The bill already includes a provision prohibiting the detainees from air travel within or to the United States.

Appropriators have placed Guantanamo provisions into at least four other bills. The Senate Defense spending bill, which has yet to pass the chamber, and the House-approved version would also block the use of federal money for the transfer of detainees to the United States. The House Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill and the State Department spending bill would block 2010 federal funding for the closure of the prison. Those bills have been passed by the House and are awaiting Senate action. *** The Senate did confirm and Obama signed it into law as it was in the spending bill. Note the year, this was a Democrat controlled Congress. If Obama does move forward in any method, he will have to sign a waiver of the law and then a Constitutional crisis begins as the military knows this is a law. Does the military comply with the Commander in Chief or do they comply with the law?

Then again in 2010:

Congress Bars Gitmo Transfers  

WSJ: Congress on Wednesday passed legislation that would effectively bar the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for trial, rejecting pleas from Obama administration officials who called the move unwise.

A defense authorization bill passed by the House and Senate included the language on the offshore prison, which President Barack Obama tried unsuccessfully to close in his first year in office.

*** Then again this month, February 2016:

Military Tells Congress It Can’t Send Gitmo Detainees to U.S.

Bloomberg: Just as President Barack Obama is planning to send Congress his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison this year, leaders of the military say it will not transfer any detainees to the U.S., unless the law prohibiting such transfers is changed.

Lt. General William Mayville Jr., the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as much in a letter to Congress last week, which I obtained. Mayville’s letter gets to the heart of a knotty constitutional issue on Guantanamo: Does President Obama have the authority to close the facility without the consent of Congress?

Writing to 16 House members who served in the military, Mayville writes: “Current law prohibits the use of funds to ‘transfer, release or assist in the transfer or release’ of detainees of Guantanamo Bay to or within the United States, and prohibits the construction, modification or acquisition of any facility within the United States to house any Guantanamo detainee. The Joint Staff will not take any action contrary to those restrictions.”

Start here and this was today further telling how reckless the whole release thing really is:

4 Arrested in Spain, Morocco for IS Armed Group Ties

ABC: Spanish and Moroccan police on Tuesday arrested four suspected members of a jihadi cell that sought to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group, including one described as a former Guantanamo detainee who once fought with militants in Afghanistan.

Three people were arrested in Spain’s North African enclave city of Ceuta while a Moroccan was arrested in the Moroccan border town of Farkhana, next to Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave, statements from the two nations’ interior ministries said.

One of those detained in Ceuta was the former Guantanamo detainee who was not named by Spanish authorities but described as “a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics.” After being captured in 2002 and held in Guantanamo, he was returned to Spain in 2004, said Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz.

Another suspect was the brother of a fighter who blew himself up during an attack in Syria and man detained Tuesday “was inclined to do the same thing,” he said.

The suspects had set up contacts to try to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials and were aiming “to carry out terrorist acts in Spanish territory,” the Spanish ministry statement said, without specifying possible targets.

They also worked to recruit teenagers from Ceuta to join IS in Iraq and Syria, the Spanish statement said.

Spanish police arrested about 100 suspected Islamic extremists last year and more than 600 total since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured nearly 2,000.

Rubio: Today, In the Senate, I have sponsored and supported legislation to prohibit dangerous detainee transfers, block funds for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and prevent the return of the facility to Cuba. And I have stood with Senators Tim Scott (R-SC), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Pat Roberts (R-KS) to oppose bringing terrorists to facilities in South Carolina, Colorado, and Kansas, because it is unnecessary, expensive and, most importantly, dangerous.

 

 

Top Cop Says Obama is Spiteful, Schumer

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Politics over policy and politics over safety. Iran gets first billing at all costs when it comes to the Obama administration.

The NYPD Commissioner, Bratton is furious.

Bratton furious over Obama’s anti-terror funding cut

White House slashed NYC terror funding to punish Schumer, former top cop says

WashingtonExaminer: New York City’s former top cop said Sunday that the Obama administration cut funding to fight terrorism in the city to retaliate against Sen. Chuck Schumer for opposing a nuclear deal with Iran.

“There’s a certain amount vindictiveness on the part of Washington aimed at Sen. Chuck Schumer,” Ray Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said in an interview with John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York.

“Apparently they remember very well that Sen. Schumer did not support their Iran deal,” Kelly said, arguing the proposed cut “was aimed at getting a reaction from Sen. Schumer.”

Schumer was the most senior Democrat in Congress last year to oppose an international agreement under which Iran agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

Schumer, a Democrat set to become the party’s Senate leader, joined New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s police and fire commissioners to blast a White House budget plan that would cut annual funding for the city’s Urban Area Security Initiative from $600 million to $330 million.

As the country’s largest city and the only U.S. location repeatedly attacked by terrorists, including the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, New York officials have long sought extra consideration in allocation of federal anti-terror funds.

“New York is an enduring target,” Kelly said. “It always will be.”

Schumer statements drew a pointed White House response, an unusual reaction aimed at a key Democratic ally.

“At some point, Sen. Schumer’s credibility in talking about national security issues, particularly when the facts are as they are when it relates to homeland security, have to be affected by the position that he’s taken on other issues,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

“Sen. Schumer is somebody that came out and opposed the international agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He was wrong about that position,” Earnest said. “And when people look at the facts here when it comes to funding for homeland security, they’ll recognize that he’s wrong this time too.”

Earnest said financing for the program was cut because New York failed to spend the money it had already received.

Kelly, though a de Blasio critic, is a Schumer ally. The senator has unsuccessfully proposed Obama nominate Kelly a head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security.

*** New York Congressman King is not happy either.

Slashed funding for local counterterrorism and other security measures in the White House’s budget proposal is a “punch in the gut” that couldn’t come at a worse time, Sen. Chuck Schumer said Sunday.

From across the aisle, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) agreed the pot shouldn’t be “decimated” with the threat of the Islamic State looming.

President Barack Obama’s fiscal blueprint recommended funding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative grant program — which goes toward NYPD counterterrorism training, FDNY tiered-response training and other first-responder preparedness — with $330 million for the upcoming fiscal year, compared with $600 million in the current year.

“This year, bureaucrats got through a very serious mistake that must, must, must be reversed,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a Manhattan news conference. “Do your homework, bureaucrats, on New York City, on the NYPD, on all the groups on Long Island that have gotten this money. . . . The dollars can save lives.”

The senator said it’s “not an accident” that the region hasn’t seen a successful terror attack since 9/11.

King said security funding across the board was reduced in the budget proposal.

“Here’s time when ISIS has never been more of a threat, when al-Qaida has never been more of a threat,” said King, a former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

He said he would fight alongside Schumer for restoration of the funds.

“This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue,” King said. “In many ways, it’s an issue of life or death.”

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton called the initiative the “lifeblood” for antiterrorism funding in major American cities.

Among those urban areas, New York City is statically the No. 1 terror target, and the “terrorism threat is more complex and layered than any time since 9/11,” Bratton said in a statement.

“We would hope, in the aftermath of a series of recent plots against New York, as well as the attacks from Paris to San Bernardino, that any such cuts be reconsidered,” he added.

An official with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget said Sunday night the Obama administration has no higher priority than keeping Americans safe.

The grant program was restructured recently for efficiency, and the new funding level is expected to meet demand, the official said, adding that the proposed budget includes $139 million in other regional and state grants to help prepare and respond to complex terror threats.

Obama released his $4.2 trillion spending plan Tuesday. It requests $40.6 billion in net discretionary funding for the Department of Homeland Security, including $2 billion in grants for state and local governments for terrorism and other catastrophes.

Aside from the Urban Area Security Initiative reductions, the budget cuts state homeland security grants to $200 million from $467 million, port security grants to $93 million from $100 million and transit security grants to $85 million from $100 million.

Schumer said he didn’t get a “good explanation” from the administration on why the money would be withheld.

King said the impression he gets is that “because these programs are working, there’s no need to be giving more money — which makes no sense at all.”

 

New Anti-Terrorism Commission via Blair and Panetta

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Frankly this mission appears to be riddled with political correctness and even more a robust agenda to influence the candidates running for the Oval Office. They want to study radical or militant Islam? Really? What more needs to be learned and understood?

This new commission also speaks to the fact that Obama and Cameron both refuse to speak the truth on the effects of militant Islam, such that all existing approaches have been feeble and feckless. Wonder if this commission will include Iran, Syria, Russia, Iraq, Libya, an Nusra, Hamas, Hezbollah or al Qaeda, much less the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

Tony Blair, Leon Panetta to launch antiterrorism commission

WaPo: Former British prime minister Tony Blair and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta are launching a commission on violent extremism that will aim to help the next U.S. administration counter radicalization among Muslims.

The soon-to-launch effort, which also hopes to guide European leaders, will unite experts to study extremist groups like the Islamic State and recommend ways to blunt their appeal among disaffected youth. It is being sponsored by the CSIS Commission on Countering Violent Extremism.

Commission organizers said they plan to produce a report by the end of July to coincide with the Republican and Democratic political conventions, where party nominees will be decided.

“Whoever is the next president is going to have to deal with this,” Blair said Sunday during an interview in Washington.

“I want to produce a practical policy handbook … something that, if I was sitting in office today, would give me a comprehensive view of the different dimensions of this issue.”

Panetta, who led the CIA from 2009 to 2011, said government leaders do not yet fully understand the problem.

“We haven’t been very effective at developing a strategy to reduce the allure of extreme ideologies both at home and abroad, to understand what we can do to undermine this narrative that attracts so many recruits to violence,” he said in a phone interview on Friday.

The problem of competing for the hearts and minds of Muslim youth has dogged experts for years. But the rapid rise of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have made a solution more urgent for world leaders.

Radical Islam has also become a topic of discussion on the presidential campaign trail.

Amid a contentious primary, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has vowed to “quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS … [so] no one will mess with us.” At one campaign event, candidate Ted Cruz said he would “carpet bomb” ISIS “into oblivion.”

“I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out,” Cruz said.

While declining to criticize the candidates directly, Panetta lamented the “simplistic solutions” offered on the campaign trail and suggested the commission could broaden the debate.

“It is is our nature to want to hear simple solutions to complex problems,” Panetta said. “But the reality is that this threat, which I think is a clear and present danger, requires a much more thoughtful and comprehensive approach.”

Blair argued that Republicans’ plans to counter to ISIS with vast bombing campaigns are unwise.

“Anything that ends up alienating a large part of the Muslim world is counterproductive. So let’s be clear: We need allies in this fight, and they are our allies. They’re also the biggest victims of this terrorism.”

“The religion of Islam in its nature is peaceful and honorable and has made great contributions to the world,” he added.

For Panetta, the venture represents a kind of unfinished business in Washington. Since 2013, the former congressman has been retired in California, running his Panetta Institute for Public Policy and tending his walnut farm. Few expected him to return to D.C. for commission work.

“Whether it was a Republican or Democratic administration, I think a lot of the response to the terrorism threat has been based on the crisis of the moment,” said Panetta, who has criticized President Obama’s leadership on foreign policy. “What we have not done is taken in the bigger picture of violent extremism and tried to understand the root causes.”

Asked what would constitute success for his effort, Panetta called it a “damn good question.”

“A lot of these commission reports have stayed on the shelves for a long time,” he said, pointing to the failure of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit commission to produce reforms. “But history tells us that if we care enough about a problem we’re confronting, that ultimately we can find a way to deal with it. For that reason, I think this effort is worth it.”

The commission’s executive director is Shannon Green, a former Obama administration official who worked on the National Security Council and in the U.S. Agency for International Development. Green is director and senior fellow with the CSIS Human Rights Initiative.

Members will include academics, former government officials and several technology leaders, including Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google general counsel Kent Walker. The presence of tech executives speaks to the need to counter ISIS and other groups online, where they maintain vast recruitment and radicalization networks, organizers said.

Blair, who served as prime minister during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and was criticized for involving British troops in the invasion of Iraq, works on issues of radicalization at his Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Officials at CSIS called him a natural fit to lead a commission on violent extremism.

He argued against using the term “clash of civilizations,” a favorite of GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, to describe conflicts between the West and extreme versions of Islam.

“I don’t think it’s accurate,” he said. “The majority people in Islam want to counter this. … It’s a tragedy that their religion is hijacked by the extremists but that’s a reality that we have to face and have to deal with.”

 

Is There a Future for Gitmo?

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For the Obama administration when it comes to terrorists or enemy combatants, the title of the playbook is ‘Let Some Other Country Handle It’.

Guantánamo parole board OKs release of Osama bin Laden bodyguard

Majid Ahmed at Guantánamo in a photo from his 2008 prison profile provided to McClatchy Newspapers by WikiLeaks.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba

MiamiHerald: The national security parole board, in just a month, has approved a former Osama bin Laden bodyguard for release to another country as the Pentagon-run panel works on accelerating reviews.

The board has six more hearings scheduled into May — two of them so-called “forever prisoners” like the man whose approval to go was disclosed Friday and four of them who were at one time considered candidates for war-crimes trial.

In the latest decision, the board recommended release of Yemeni Majid Ahmed, 35, to an Arabic-speaking country with security precautions. An intelligence assessment concluded that he was recruited to join the Taliban at age 18 or 19 and became a bin Laden bodyguard at 21, a month before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The decision to approve the release of Ahmed means that, of Guantánamo’s 91 captives, 35 are approved for transfer, 10 are in war crimes proceeding and the rest are either forever prisoners or candidates for war crimes trial.

The board said Ahmed “has been relatively compliant during his time at Guantánamo, although he has been largely uncooperative with interrogators.” The intelligence profile said he “still harbors anti-U.S. sentiments and holds conservative Islamic views that may make transfer and reintegration to many countries difficult.”

The board’s three-paragraph statement disclosing Ahmed’s approval for transfer, dated Feb. 18, recommended release to resettlement in an Arabic-speaking country, “with appropriate security assurances.” It was available on the Pentagon’s parole board website Saturday, a month after his Jan. 19 hearing. Full story here.

*** What will a new U.S. president do on the war on terror and will there be an approval for capturing future terrorists?

What to do if U.S. begins capturing more suspected terrorists?

MilitaryTimes: WASHINGTON — President  Obama has refused to send any suspected terrorists captured overseas to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. But if the U.S. starts seizing more militants in expanded military operations, where will they go, who will hold them and where will they be tried?

Those are questions that worry legal experts, lawmakers and others as U.S. special operations forces deploy in larger numbers to Iraq, Syria and, maybe soon, Libya, with the Islamic State group and affiliated organizations in their sights.

Throughout Obama’s presidency, suspects have been killed in drone strikes or raids, or captured and interrogated, sometimes aboard Navy ships. After that, they are either prosecuted in U.S. courts and military commissions or handed over to other nations.

This policy has been enough, experts say — at least for now.

“If you’re going to be doing counterterrorism operations that bring in detainees, you have to think through what you are going to do with them,” said Phillip Carter, former deputy assistant defense secretary for detainee policy. “If the U.S. is going to conduct large-scale combat operations or large-scale special ops and bring in more detainees, it needs a different solution.”

Rebecca Ingber, an associate law professor at Boston University who follows the issue, warns that if the U.S. engaged in a full ground war in Syria, “chances are there would need to be detention facilities of some kind in the vicinity.”

Obama has not sent a single suspected terrorist to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where many have been detained for years without being charged or tried — something the president says is a “recruitment tool” for militant extremists.

He is to report to Congress this month on how he wants to close Guantanamo and possibly transfer some of the remaining detainees to the United States. That report also is supposed to address the question of future detainees.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., believes that the absence of a long-term detention and interrogation facility for foreign terrorist suspects represents a “major shortcoming in U.S. national security policy.”

Republican candidates who want to succeed Obama are telling voters that they would keep Guantanamo open.

“Law enforcement is about gathering evidence to take someone to trial, and convict them,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. “Anti-terrorism is about finding out information to prevent a future attack so the same tactics do not apply. … But, here’s the bigger problem with all this: We’re not interrogating anybody right now.”

That’s not true, said Frazier Thompson, director of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. The tight-lipped team of interrogators from the FBI, Defense Department, the CIA and other intelligence agencies gleans intelligence from top suspected terrorists in the U.S. and overseas.

“We were created to interrogate high-value terrorists and we are interrogating high-value terrorists,” Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Since it was established in 2009, that team has been deployed 34 times, Thompson said, adding that other government agencies conduct independent interrogations as well. “We are designed to deploy on the highest-value terrorist. We are not going out to interrogate everybody,” he said.

Thompson would not disclose details of the cases his team has worked or speculate on whether he expects more interrogation requests as the battle against IS heats up.

“If there is a surge, I’m ready to go. If there’s not, I’m still ready to go,” Thompson said.

The U.S. has deployed about 200 new special operations forces to Iraq, and they are preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after IS fighters and commanders, “killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.

Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter IS, told Congress this month that in the final six months of 2015, 90 senior to midlevel leaders were killed, including the IS leader’s key deputies: Haji Mutazz, the top leader in Iraq, and Abu Sayyaf, the IS oil minister and financier.

Sayyaf was killed in a raid to rescue American hostage Kayla Mueller; his wife, known as Umm Sayyaf, was captured.

Her case illustrates how the Obama administration is prosecuting some terrorist suspects in federal courts or military commissions or leaving them in the custody of other nations.

Umm Sayyaf, a 25-year-old Iraqi, is being held in Iraq and facing prosecution by authorities there. She also was charged Feb. 9 in U.S. federal court with holding Mueller and contributing to her death in February 2015.

Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated and supervised international terrorism cases, including the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen the 1990s, said sending suspected terrorists through the American criminal justice system works. He said the courts are more effective than military commissions used at Guantanamo that have been slow in trying detainees who violate the laws of war.

“The current practice of investigating and prosecuting terror suspects has proved incredibly effective,” Soufan said, noting that since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, only seven people have been tried and convicted under military commissions. “During that same time period, hundreds of terrorists have been convicted in federal courts and almost all are still in jail.”

But it’s hard to evaluate the effectiveness of the system.

The Justice Department declined to provide the number of foreign terrorist suspects who have been prosecuted or the number handed over to other countries, or their status. Lawmakers, including Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., have asked the Defense Department for the numbers.

Reports on how other countries handle the suspects are classified.

Raha Wala, senior counsel at Human Rights First, also is concerned about detention operations abroad.

“The government needs to be more transparent to the American people — and to the world — about who it is transferring overseas, and what procedures are in place to make sure we are not transferring individuals into situations where human rights will be abused,” he said.

38 Text Messages

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Protests planned across US to back Apple in battle with FBI

  • SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ” Protesters are preparing to assemble in more than 30 cities to lash out at the FBI for obtaining a court order that requires Apple to make it easier to unlock an encrypted iPhone used by a gunman in December’s mass shootings in Southern California.

This site has posted at least one previous article on the Islamic strain on Tablighi Jamaat, which is at the core of mosques throughout the United Kingdom and the United States.

It also must be noted that while there is an epic debate on the matter of Apple writing code to gain access to the Farook cell phone, the matter goes deeper with regard to the pathway and destination of the data on the phone meaning to iCloud and perhaps even iTunes.

REVEALED: San Bernardino Terrorist’s Mosque Cleric Exchanged ​38​ Texts With Terrorist, Claimed ‘Casual’ Relationship

The mosque at the centre of the San Bernardino terrorist attack is back in the spotlight after one of the organisation’s clerics, Roshan Abbassi, was found to have had repeated contact with terrorist Syed Farook in the months before the deadly attack which left 14 people dead and 24 people injured.

Breitbart: Mr. Abbassi and his fellow teachers at the mosque had previously claimed that they barely knew Mr. Farook, despite his repeat attendance at the Dar al Uloom al Islamiyyah mosque in San Bernardino.

The mosque is now believed to be a haven for Tablighi Jamaat activists – a fundamentalist, proselytising Islamic sect known in some circles as the “Army of Darkness”.

The New York Post reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has found repeated phone contact between Mr. Abbassi and Mr. Farook, dating back to a two week period in June – coinciding with the terrorist attack on two military sites in Chattanooga.

Mr. Abbassi – when not dodging difficult questions from Breitbart News journalists – emphasised to reporters during a press conference held just two days after attacks that he only knew Mr. Farook very casually.

He said at the time that he only exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Farook when they both attended the mosque.

“Hello, goodbye, how are you… just casual conversation… nothing more than that,” insisted Mr. Abbassi.

But FBI agents are now investigating at least 38 messages that were allegedly exchanged between the pair during a two week span in June 2015.

Mr. Abbassi was unusually hostile with reporters of all stripes when he was quizzed on radical Islam, FBI investigations, and his relationship with Mr. Farook on December 4th. When Breitbart News asked Mr. Abbassi whether he believed in an Islamic Caliphate, he refused to answer on multiple occasions.

***

When asked at the time if the FBI was investigating anyone else at the mosque, he replied, “No comment” before giving reporters a wry smile. He was then asked to clarify, to which he replied, “No comment”. After being pushed a third time, he responded brusquely: “You guys are our guests. If we have no comment, you cannot force us to have a comment thank you very much”.

***

And the stories between Mr. Abbassi and his fellow mosque leaders didn’t stack up either. One claimed that Syed Farook hadn’t attended the Dar al Uloom Islamiyah in a year, whereas Mr. Abbassi later revised this figure down to “a month”.

Mr. Abbassi also tried to blame the terrorist attack on “workplace anger”, stating: “Radicalisation? Never. In Islam there is no such thing as a radical Islam. There’s proof it was workplace anger. Proof. And everyone knows the argument that he got in with one of his people and why don’t they ever tell us what the argument was about”.

It was later reported that the argument between a coworker and Mr. Farook may indeed have been about the State of Israel, and Islam.

Speaking to other local imams, Breitbart News found a real fear of the Tablighi Jamaat sect, with one leader at the Corona-Norco mosque just a few miles away telling Breitbart reporters that the group was “dangerous” – especially for those who don’t know what they are getting involved in when attending such mosques.

“The Tablighi thing could get out of hand,” he said. “[They] sleep in the mosque… they have… the beards,” he dragged his hand further down his chin, widening his eyes.

Now, U.S. government officials think there could be up to 50,000 Tablighi Jamaat members across the United States.

Evidence from the United Kingdom, where the group practices aggressive tactics in their quest to build mega mosques across Britain suggests that security services and journalists may have ignored this ultra-orthodox sect – linked in numerous cases to terrorism – for too long.

Assistant FBI Director Michael Heimbach has said: “We have significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States,” adding that Al Qaeda has “used them for recruiting.”

Mr. Abbassi, who is of Pakistani origin, denies involvement in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, and has claimed that he was only discussing food donations for the mosque in his text exchanges with Mr. Farook.

Tablighi Jamaat members across the world are encouraged to lead extremely austere lifestyles, with members often sleeping in their mosques, and only eating food that has been donated by other followers.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security whistleblower – Philip Haney – told Breitbart News Daily that he was involved in an investigation that might have stopped the San Bernardino attack, but was stopped by the Obama administration in the name of political correctness.

Haney said: “Civil Rights and Civil Liberties shut the case down because we were focusing on individuals who belong to Tablighi Jamaat… This case actually took six years to develop… It started in 2006, and it gradually gained momentum over time. By 2008, I was interviewing twenty, thirty people a month sometimes.”

“It was exactly what DHS was created to do… We were doing what we took our oath of office to do. We were well-trained, capable subject matter experts, focused like a laser beam on a trend that was putting our country at threat.”

Earlier this month Breitbart London revealed that a family in Britain who claimed “Islamophobia” after being banned from the United States were too linked to the Tablighi Jamaat mosque in San Bernardino. Britain’s security services have yet to comment on the suspicions surrounding the family.