Page 142 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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116———Ecoterrorism

more terrorist acts, and viewing execution by lethal Further Reading
injection as causing less suffering than life behind bars.
Bergen, Peter L. Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of
Though three of the men—all but el-Hage—were
Osama bin Laden. New York: Free Press, 2001.
convicted of mass murder, they were all arguably Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of
lower- to mid-level players in Al Qaeda in the late Terror. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
1990s. Their convictions did nothing to dismantle the Reeve, Simon. The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin
Al Qaeda base inside Afghanistan, given safe harbor Laden, and the Future of Terrorism. Boston: North-
by the Taliban. Indeed, the indictment underlying their eastern University Press, 1999.
prosecution named 18 additional Al Qaeda operatives,
mostly fugitives at the time, including bin Laden; his
top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri; his military comman-
der, Muhammad Atef; and the ground coordinators of ECOTERRORISM
the embassy bombings.
When the four defendants were convicted, there Since the late 1980s, ecoterrorism, a blanket term
were six other indicted men in U.S. or U.K. custody; referring to various forms of violence and sabotage
one in particular stood out. Ali Abdelseoud Mohamed, committed in the name of the environment, has
a former Egyptian and U.S. Army officer and a bin accounted for about one-third of the “single issue”
Laden associate who once provided military and sur- domestic terrorist threats in the United States;
veillance training to recruits, pleaded guilty to terror- antiabortion and animal rights terror groups are other
ism conspiracy charges in October 2000. Mohamed examples. The growing radical environmental move-
told the court that he conducted surveillance of the ment has become a pressing concern of the FBI,
U.S. embassy in Kenya as early as 1993. “Bin Laden which estimates that more than 600 ecoterrorist acts
looked at the picture of the American embassy and (doing damage of nearly $45 million) were commit-
pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber,” ted between 1996 and the end of 2001.
Mohamed said, thus providing the first direct evidence Radical environmentalism went public in the United
against the terrorist leader. States in 1969, when a small group of environmental
The embassy bombings carried out by bin Laden’s activists—the Don’t Make a Wave Committee—boarded
followers forced the United States to reexamine a rented boat they called Greenpeace and attempted to
embassy security abroad, just as the 1993 World halt nuclear testing on the Aleutian Islands. Although
Trade Center bombing and 1995 Oklahoma City fed- this mission failed, the movement grew. Five years
eral building bombing forced the United States to later, Greenpeace was known worldwide for its Save
fortify government buildings at home. But the bomb- the Whales campaign, in which members in a small
ings’ expressed purpose remained unfulfilled long craft placed themselves directly between whales and
after the trial was over: thousands of U.S. troops were whaling boats. Over the next decade, as the movement
still stationed on Saudi soil, and little that offended grew, Greenpeace members took on new issues, divid-
bin Laden about U.S. foreign policy, such as support ing the campaigns into four major categories: nuclear
for Israel or sanctions against Iraq, had changed. The energy, toxic pollution, ocean ecology, and atmosphere
embassy bombings trial in lower Manhattan allowed and energy.
the U.S. to claim its first courtroom victory against “Loner” environmentalists throughout the country
Al Qaeda, but while the prosecution progressed were active in the 1970s. In Chicago, an ecological
throughout 2001, sleeper cells were inside the U.S. saboteur known only as the Fox targeted large-scale
training for and planning the suicide hijackings that industrial polluters, once redirecting toxic waste into an
would occur on September 11, again targeting the executive’s office. Minnesota’s Bolt Weevils toppled
World Trade Center, just a few blocks away from the more than a dozen power poles to protest a massive
courthouse. power line across that state. Michigan had “billboard
See also MOHAMED RASHED AL-’OWHALI; AL QAEDA; bandits”; Arizona had “ecoraiders.” Ecoterrorists’ early
tactics were inspired, in part, by Edward Abbey’s 1975
OSAMA BIN LADEN; WADIH EL-HAGE; KHALFAN KHAMIS
MOHAMED; MOHAMED SADEEK ODEH; RAMZI AHMED radical environmentalist novel, The Monkey Wrench
YOUSEF Gang.