Free Republic

Unrepentant, and convinced that Muslims across the world are the victims of American oppression, the mind of Richard Reid, the attempted shoe bomber from South London, was shown today in a letter published in a Scottish legal magazine. The letter, written by Reid from his prison cell in America on October 24, 2002, and published by The Firm magazine today, was sent to the magazine's US correspondent instead of an interview. In the letter, Reid, now 31, gave a rambling but cogent reply to a note sent to him by Noel Young, The Firm's journalist, who offered Reid the chance...

Dutch police have arrested a man carrying a gun in his hand luggage as he checked in for departure at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, a police spokeswoman said. The weapon was found during standard safety checks on Wednesday, the spokeswoman said, adding Schiphol's police had started an investigation and questioned the man. The spokeswoman would not comment on a statement by airline Air Malta, which said the detainee was a Maltese man who was due to board a flight to Malta. "At this moment we won't give further details," she said. Air Malta said that after the discovery of the revolver,...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A Greenfield man has been indicted on accusations he tried to sell the names of U.S. intelligence agents to Iraq before the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Authorities: Man Was In Iraq In '02 Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban, a 52-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested Thursday after an investigation of more than a year by the FBI and other agencies, U.S. Attorney Susan W. Brooks said. Shaaban, also known as Shaaban Shaaban Hafed and Joe H. Brown, is suspected of going to Iraq in 2002 and making a deal to sell the names. He isn't accused...

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- A University of Idaho graduate student who is under investigation for suspected terrorism ties obtained unauthorized access to a campus lab containing radioactive material, court documents allege. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi national working on his computer science doctoral degree, quietly moved his student office from the Computer Science Department into the school's engineering isotope lab, apparently without his adviser's knowledge, according to the documents. "The investigation of Sami Al-Hussayen has, from its outset, been focused on suspected material support to terrorism, particularly to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network," FBI agent Michael Gnecknow said in the...

IN A LITTLE-NOTICED DECISION in a New York courtroom on September 25, 2003, a man described as Osama bin Laden's "best friend" got some good news. U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim could not be sentenced to life in prison. Salim--who was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989 and who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted confidants--had been captured in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States for prosecution related to his role in the grand conspiracy that resulted in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in...

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and...

A court convicted 15 Yemeni militants on terror charges including the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and plotting to kill the US ambassador. One man was sentenced to death for killing a Yemeni police officer and seven received 10 year prison terms. Six of the defendants plus the one man tried in absentia, who received the longest prison terms, 10 years, were found guilty of participating in the October 2002 bombing of the Limburg oil tanker, which killed one Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden. The conviction of one of...

When U.S. authorities got their hands on terrorist Mohammed Mansour Jabarah in May 2002, he agreed to inform on some of the most influential al-Qaeda leaders. So instead of being sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or a high-security CIA detention facility, Jabarah was housed with relatively lax security at Fort Dix, N.J., where he was allowed to watch television and movies, speak to his family in Canada by telephone, go for walks and even make his own meals, all under 24-hour FBI watch. That arrangement soon proved to be a major problem for the bureau. In court papers filed in...

THE three Bali bombers on death row say they are ready to die and will not be asking for a pardon. They have also expressed delight at the controversy surrounding their impending executions, saying the more pain they cause, the greater their reward in heaven. "I'm very happy, especially after hearing that John Howard is very angry with us," Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the so-called smiling assassin, said yesterday at the island prison where he is held. "The more he is angry, the more I will get rewards from God, right? "The more I make infidels angry, the more I will...

ASIO was powerless to stop a Melbourne man who allegedly trained with al-Qaida from boarding an international flight out of Australia. The 23-year-old terror suspect, known as Abu Jihad, is now in custody in Cairo. The Federal Government, through ASIO, was forced to issue an international alert to find Jihad after he disappeared from Australia last October. Jihad was named as an al-Qaida terrorist by captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh in December 2001. But ASIO was not able to verify Lindh's claims until after Jihad had boarded the aircraft in Melbourne almost 10 months later. Jihad, a house...

Saudi Wealth Fuels Global Jihadism Posted Oct. 27, 2003 By Kenneth R. Timmerman Generations of Muslims in the Middle East have been raised on the anti-Western, anti-Semitic theologies of Ayatollah Khomeini and in the Saudi Wahhabi system of madrassas (religious schools). This foundation set the stage for the rise of Osama bin Laden. Doaa 'Amer is a professional TV anchor who hosts Muslim Woman Magazine on IQRAA TV, a satellite channel broadcasting throughout the Arab world. As she tells it, her job is to educate the next generation of children to be "true Muslims." Readers accustomed to hearing Islam described...

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group. The...