EU Found No Room on Terror List for Turkish Synagogue Bomb Group

European Commission President, Romano Prodi hurried Saturday November 11 to condemn the terrorist car bombings at two Istanbul synagogues, Neve Shalom and Beit Israel, even before the final tally of the dead. The Italian official made the gracious gesture of visiting the central Milan synagogue and bringing the condolences of “the entire European Union” to Milan Rabbi Giuseppe Laras. After the meeting, the Italian official said: “There is no Europe without tolerance and these episodes are incompatible with our European nature.” He went on to say in reference to the car bomb attacks in Istanbul, “I fear we do not put the same energy into loving as terrorists put into hating. Old fears in Europe could open up again.”
Fine words. But the European diplomat forgot to mention one important thing:
Last month, the European Union turned down a Turkish request to list the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front – IBDA-C – as a terrorist organization. This is the group that claimed the Istanbul synagogue bombings. The EU rejected Ankara’s request on the grounds of “human rights.”
This action by European officials is consistent with the general thrust of its policies.
The same European sources have generously funded the privately-instigated Geneva Understandings to be posted in every Israeli mailbox Sunday, November 16, in a massive drive to break down popular Israeli resistance to the initiative. The bombers that Europe refused to categorize as terrorists later attacked Istanbul synagogues. This fact, plus the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, discourages most Israelis from trusting in the judgment and fairness of European governments individually and as a union with regard to any of its Middle East policies.
The photo illustrating this article is a rare presentation of imprisoned IBDA-C members seizing the rooftop of the Metris Prison in June 2000 to prevent their leader Salih Mirzabeyoglu being brought before a state security court for a hearing. More than 60 inmates and police were injured in that clash.
The Front is one of several Turkish illegal Islamist terrorist groups who use terrorist tactics to fight for the establishment of an Islamic republic in Turkey that is based on strict Shariah or religious law. However the IBDA-C is unique in that it also espouses a Trotskyist version of Communism – a doctrinal mishmash that might be described as left-wing Wahhabism.
Since the 1970s, the IBDA-C has carried out a steady three to four attacks a year – like its fellow groups, with an unexpected variety of logistic bedfellows. In the 1980s, a period of high Turkish-Greek friction, it accepted the backing of Greek intelligence. In the waning years of the Soviet Empire, the Islamic Raiders Front worked with the Armenian Asala underground which was linked to KGB elements operating in West Europe and the Middle East. Of late, the Turkish group is associated with the “Jerusalem Brigades”, the clandestine terrorist arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. One of the Brigades’ current responsibilities is to guard the senior al Qaeda operatives hiding up in Iran.
debkafile‘s counter-terror experts believe it very likely that while moving in these murky circles, the Turkish IBDA-C formed a relationship with the Iraqi Kurdish extremist Ansar al-Islam which operates in northern Iraqi near the Turkish frontier, or directly with Iran-based al Qaeda leaders, such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, who in addition to being Osama bin Laden’s top bio-weapons and chemical warfare expert, is commander of the organization’s anti-Israel and anti-Jewish front.
Sought by the American authorities for masterminding major terrorist operations against the Jordanian embassy and UN Headquarters in Baghdad, Zarqawi or one of his comrades in Iran may very well have helped the Turkish terrorists pinpoint their Istanbul targets and helped plan the operational side of the attacks on the two synagogues.