I reported last night on one of the “Swedish” terrorists captured in Pakistan who turned out to be the daughter of the President of the Swedish Muslim Council.
The report below (including a translation) was prepared by our Swedish correspondent CB. It offers a wealth of background on Safia Benaouda and the “Swedes” of Al Qaeda:
This is an update to the Mehdi Ghezali story, and it sure is like Gudmundson says: What a story!
Per Gudmundson, an expert about Islamic terrorism and an editorialist at the major conservative newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, gives us this interesting update about the Ghezali case. I think he’s correct in asking questions about one of the central persons in this, Helena Benaouda, the leader of the Muslim Council of Sweden and a Swedish convert to Islam.
First some brief background on Safia Benaouda.
She is the daughter of the powerful president of the Muslim Council of Sweden, and in the 2007 Christmas break from school, she and her husband traveled to Dubai and then to Somalia — to experience an authentic Muslim country. This authentic Muslim country was at the time ruled by the Muslim courts, whose youth organization is the infamous al-Shabab that is terrorizing Somalia today.
One might wonder why young Swedish Muslims travel to such a country. It might be that the kids just were naïve enough to think this was an Islamic paradise, and got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. But Safia’s husband is said to have been recruiting jihadists in Denmark prior to this trip. And they were traveling with the American wife of the confessed terrorist Daniel Maldonado (a.k.a. Daniel Aljughaifi), guilty of training with al-Qaeda in Somalia.
So it might be understandable why the Ethiopians and Americans had an interest in these young people. Note that Helena Benaouda claimed that Safia was kidnapped in Somalia and was totally innocent. Is she “innocent” this time as well?
The Muslim Council of Sweden has close ties to both the Swedish Social Democrats and the Muslim Brotherhood and Yusuf Qaradawi. It was only recently (February 2009) that one of the main figures in the council, Mahmoud Aldebe, distanced himself from Qaradawi when the latter said that Allah sent Hitler to punish the Jews. Aldebe said, “Qaradawi’s statement doesn’t really help our [the Muslims’] cause.”
Qaradawi’s hatred against Jews was not a new thing for the Muslim Council of Sweden, but with Hitler on the table things probably got a little to hot to handle. The Muslim Council was also instrumental in inviting Tariq Ramadan in 2006 to a joint appearance with the Social Democrats’ “Christian” wing, where Ramadan and Helena Benaouda spoke about the Muslims’ place in Europe. And this is the same “Christian” Social Democrats who are fostering closer ties with Hamas. All admittedly to win more Muslim votes in the upcoming election (the elections of 2006). Some of the leaders of the council have tried to get the Swedish government to give legal status to shari’a laws regarding family rights.
Helena Benaouda, the present president of the Muslim Council of Sweden, has argued strongly in public many times against Islamic marriage practices in Sweden, and that Muslims should abide by Swedish law in this instance. But she has also defended the infamous Cherin Awad, the program leader of Halal TV on Swedish public TV, and claimed that Awad was a good spokesperson for Muslims.
This is the Awad who claimed that stoning for marital infidelity was the correct method of handling things — until the public heat became too embarrassing for her and Muslims in Sweden. This is the Islamic ruling on family matters, and Benaouda thinks that ideas like this are representative of Swedish Muslims.
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Benaouda has also written an article in which she claimed that the Muslims should make contacts with the Jews to learn how to avoid the next holocaust — this time a holocaust of the Muslims in Sweden and perhaps Europe, one has to assume. This is a tactic used by Muslims in different European countries, like the Muslim Council of Britain, to silence criticism of the religiously-motivated violence committed by their co-religionists.
This tells us that there is plenty to investigate about when it comes to who Benaouda is, and what her views and allegiances really are.
Gudmundson is correct in his wish that there should be probes into what the basic political and religious views of Benaouda and her relatives are.
Why did Benaouda defend her underage daughter’s travels to a Somalia ruled by the Islamic courts? I know that they claim Safia went without Mrs. Benaouda’s knowledge, and that Safia’s husband is the one who must have been pulling the strings — but the mother is the leader of one of the most powerful Muslim organizations in Sweden, with a lot of political clout.
Who believes that a devout underage Muslim woman doesn’t tell her mother such a thing? Will Helena Benaouda claim that her daughter was on vacation this time, too, to explore the mountains in North West Pakistan — and, as last time, that she was kidnapped?
There are some questions to be asked of the Muslim Council of Sweden and their president. And there should be hard questions asked of the Social Democrats, too, about their strange bedfellows.
And now CB’s translation of Gudmundson’s post:
Crazy Inga now in Pakistan
[“Crazy Inga” is the name fellow prisoners gave to Safia Benaouda in the Ethiopian prison in 2007]
TV4 [one of the major TV channels in Sweden] was first with the news that the Swedish woman who was apprehended together with Mehdi Ghezali is said to be a 19-year-old Swedish woman who was previously arrested “two years ago in Somalia, and also at that time there were suspicions about terrorism”.
What a story!
The unobtrusive Mehdi Ghezali from Örebro, on a joint expedition with the Stockholm resident Safia Benaouda. Dare one to guess that the third Swede is her husband? At least, I have a source that claims that this has been stated in Pakistan.
Not only was Safia Benaouda arrested before, on the run from Somalia, when the Ethiopian forces overthrew the Islamic courts. She is also the daughter of the president of Sweden’s Muslim Council.
The last time the Muslim leader Helena Benaouda maintained that the daughter “was kidnapped and incarcerated in January 2007, when she had traveled to Somalia during her vacation.” What she didn’t speak loudly about was that her daughter was apprehended together with the wife of Daniel Maldonado — a convicted terrorist.
This time she will have to explain how it is that her daughter is traveling with a former Guantanamo inmate and declared religious fundamentalist in Pakistan. One can only hope that the discussion will zoom in on the political and religious viewpoint which led them there — and whether that viewpoint has anything in common with Helena Benaouda’s own.
Considering the ties between the council and the Social Democrates it makes me feel uneasy when I think of that the next prime minister will probably be Mona Muslim, leader of the said party. The islamisation will probably continue like on rails but stepping up the speed some, I guess. Our only consolation is that The Three Islamostooges is so screwed. Unfortunately I’m not so sure Mama Stooge is done for just yet.
I am currently researching the history of the computer virus and Fred Cohen. It appears that the rise of Islamicization is not unlike this – it takes over in one little way, consolidates, pushes for innocuous little permissions here, gets them from an unsuspecting host, builds on these and so on.
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Swedish Radio sources say that a group from the Swedish Security Service(?) is now on place in Pakistan to learn more about the arrested Mehdi Ghezali’s alleged terror connections. This morning (9/17), however, SÄPO [Swedish Secret Police] denies that it should have sent personnel to Pakistan.
Yesterday, the Swedish Ambassador, Ulrika Sundberg, met with the Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik to discuss the four Swedes. (photo)
Ghezali is believed to have met with wanted terrorists. The 19-year-old woman, Safia Benaouda, mother of the conveied 2 year old child, said that she made the journey to Pakistan on her husband’s orders, it was her duty to obey him. She claims that she thought it was a legitimate religious journey[SIC] aiming to meet other devout Muslims. Along the way she came to realize that everything was not right she also claims, but it had not been possible for her to return home.
According to Pakistani authorities, it is possible that the woman’s primary role during the trip was to deflect suspicion and prevent Ghezali and fellow-travellers and their vehicle from being stopped by police, because of the tradition in strong conservative parts of Pakistan not to bother travellers in company of women.
Pakistani authorities believe they will need more time to gather evidence against Ghezali in order to prosecute him under the country’s terror laws. They now co-operate closely with the Americans to identify his contacts, not only in Pakistan but also in Turkey, Saudi and Iran, countries the group passed through before he and his fellow-travellors were arrested.
Pakistani authorities also try to ascertain what role several Turkish nationals — travel companions, played. Swedish Radio sources also say that several suspected extremists have been arrested in the Waziristan region, as a direct result of information obtained in connection with the Ghezali arrest.
The principal Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat reports 17.8.2009, that Safia Benaouda has a Finnish mother whose first name is Helena and who moved from Haukiputaa, Finland to Sweden 1979.
In case Safias father is from the middle east and her mother is a Finn, she is not a ethnic Swede allthough she obviously is a Swedish citizen.
Mr. Mehdi Ghezalin has a Finnish mother and Algerian father.
A correction. The date Helsingin Sanomat published a story about Safia and Mehdi is 17.9.2009.
But why have these persons Finnish mothers. Perhaps the mothers have failed to get along with the Swedish society and hence started to blame Sweden for their shortcomings and were attracted to islam.
Perhaps a failure kid has a failure mother.
Anyone knows how long Momma Stooge has been a mahoundian? When did she convert?
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Helena Benaouda, nee Fagerdin and mother of Safia Benaouda, is born May 22, 1959 in Haukipudas, Finland. She is since 2004 the chairman of the Muslim Council of Sweden. Ms Benaouda moved to Sweden in 1979 and it was in her twenties that she came in contact with Mahoundianism, which she then converted to. She is said to have studied sociology, economics etc. She lives at 165 75 HÄSSELBY/Stockholm on Glädjevägen [Joy Road]. Further detailes via “hitta”!?
Absolutely fab, AI. Does Momma Stooge also have a known email addy?