Free Republic

An al Qaeda operative at Fort Bragg By JOHN SULLIVAN and JOSEPH NEFF Raleigh News & Observer November 13, 2001 FORT BRAGG, N.C. - A former sergeant at Fort Bragg who became a close adviser to Osama bin Laden obtained sensitive documents describing how U.S. special operations units function. Ali A. Mohamed, a trusted trainer in bin Laden's al Qaeda network, walked the halls of the U.S. military's top warfare planning center at Fort Bragg for more than two years as an Army sergeant. From 1987 to 1989, he acquired sensitive documents describing how special operations units work and a...

The Arizona Senate race is one that Democrats think they can pick up. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) is unpopular; the latest crop of Republicans that have represented the state have disappointed conservatives and its trending blue. It’s going to be tight. Right now, Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally and Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema are duking it out. Sinema had a commanding lead, but the vicious fight over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh gave the GOP base a boost, plus the serial bad news from Sinema’s past activist history has turned her Senate run into something of a dumpster fire. There’s...

Al-Qaeda accused the United States of withholding necessary medication from "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the deadly 1993 World Trade Center bombing who died behind bars Saturday. They also released a final statement from the sheikh complaining of strip searches that explored his private parts "front and back," claiming that he could be poisoned behind bars and calling for "the most powerful and violent revenge" in the event of his demise. Abdel-Rahman, 78, was serving a life sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Butner, in North Carolina. He had been blinded at a young age by diabetes, and...

The spiritual leader of the Egyptian Islamist militant group Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya Omar Abdel-Rahman has died in his US prison after serving more than 20 years for seditious conspiracy to commit murder. Abdel-Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh”, was serving a life sentence in the United States for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya reported.

Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the firebrand Islamist cleric behind the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center, has died in federal prison. He was 78. Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian radical who maintained a global following even while imprisoned for more than two decades, died Saturday at Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina, where he was serving a life sentence, Reuters reported.

>PATRICK J. FITZGERALDUNITED STATES ATTORNEYNORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOISPREPARED REMARKS FOR THESUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITYCOMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARYU.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVESAPRIL 28, 2005INTRODUCTIONMr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for asking me here today. I verymuch look forward to this opportunity to discuss with you how the efforts of the United StatesAttorney’s Offices in the investigation and prosecution of terrorists have changed since thepassage of the USA PATRIOT Act (“Patriot Act”) and, in particular, section 218 of the PatriotAct which helped to dismantle what was formerly known as “the wall” between intelligence andlaw enforcement.I will state up...

Judge Rauf Rashid and Saddam Hussein Several Arab News websites are reporting the news. Al-Mesyroon reported (translated) There were reports of the execution of Iraqi judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, who sentenced Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to death, according to confirmed the pages on the social networking site, without official confirmation from the Iraqi government. The pages on social networking sites, including Page MP Jordanian Khalil Attieh on the site “Facebook” to “revolutionaries Iraqis arrested him and sentenced him to death in retaliation for the death of the martyr Saddam Hussein,” he said, adding that Rauf tried to escape from Baghdad after...

We all know CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or Fox wasn't going to do it. "Imam’s Terrorist Ties Exposed by Local News Station," from Judicial Watch, November 26 (thanks to Pamela Geller): While the Obama Justice Department tours the nation condemning unfounded discrimination against Muslims at their place of worship, a local Florida news station uncovers an imam’s ties to a blind sheik behind the first World Trade Center bombing in the early 90s. Not surprisingly, the administration’s campaign to combat mosque intolerance is being heavily promoted while the shocking imam terrorist story gets swept under the rug. We only know...

SNIPPET: "The North African terror group al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has threatened to attack this summer's World Cup games in South Africa. "How amazing could the match United States vs. Britain be when broadcasted live on air at a stadium packed with spectators when the sound of an explosion rumbles through the stands, the whole stadium is turned upside down and the number of dead bodies are in their dozens and hundreds, Allah willing," reads a statement the group published in a recent issue of the Jihadi online magazine Mushtaqun Lel Jannah (Longing to Paradise)." SNIPPET: "In addition...

Today is the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing. It also marks three weeks since the attempted murder of Lars Hedegaard, the intrepid Danish champion of free speech. These events are not unrelated. Back in 1993, there was a tireless effort to limn the WTC bombers as wanton killers. They were, we were to understand, bereft of any coherent belief system, unrepresentative of any mainstream construction of Islam. In reality, though, they were devout Muslim operatives who belonged to a jihadist cell formed in the New York area by Omar Abdel Rahman — whose notoriety as the shadowy...

Andrew McCarthy: Don't think Obama will release him? Not so fast! An ugly and confusing terrorist attack at an Algerian gas facility is getting even more troubling as the Islamic radicals now demand the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and another prominent terrorist in exchange for the remaining American hostages. Abdel Rahman is the blind sheikh now serving a life sentence for masterminding the 1993 attack against the World Trade Center. Terrorists are also demanding the release of Aafia Saddiqui, who is imprisoned on her conviction for attempted murder. And the captors in Algeria are not the only ones...

Hagel, Brennan, Kerry ... and now Denis McDonough. President Barack Obama plans to name Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough as his next chief of staff, a Democratic source briefed on the plans tells POLITICO. McDonough would replace Jack Lew, the communist Obama nominated to be his new Treasury secretary. Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor and a former senior fellow at the uber far left Center for American Progress, is the man most responsible for orchestrating the Benghazi jihad cover-up. McDonough rewrote the CIA talking points on Benghazi, misrepresenting the video, when the true motive behind the terrorist attack...

Are senior Obama administration officials considering transferring to Egypt a poisonously influential Islamist cleric serving a life term in federal prison for trying to unleash a war of urban terrorism in the United States? That's the impression several officials have given over the past three months, apparently out of fear that if the cleric dies in U.S. custody, American outposts in the Middle East could be overrun by vengeful mobs. Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, is one of the world's leading theologians of terrorism. Abdel Rahman, who has diabetes and is in his mid-70s, is confined at the...

Dozens protested Thursday in front of the US Embassy in Cairo, calling for the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, leader of the Islamist group Jama'a al-Islamiya, who is detained in the US on allegations of inciting terrorism. Abdel Rahman's son Abdullah said his father's release is first a human request and second a popular one. he also added that the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar called on US President Barack Obama to release Rahman.

The Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Since becoming the new Egyptian President, Mohammed Morsi has vowed to secure his return to Egypt, as a "nod to his base" of "hard-line Salafi Islamists," as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The bomb in 1993 killed six Americans and injured more than a thousand. Omar Abdel-Rahman's terror organization masterminded the assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and he was reported to have a "close association" with Osama bin Laden. would Americans want to see this man walk...

CAIRO - In his first public speech addressing tens of thousands of mostly Islamist supporters, Egypt's president-elect Mohammed Morsi has vowed to free the blind sheik jailed in the U.S. for a plot to blow up New York City landmarks. Morsi, Egypt's first Islamist and civilian president-elect, promised Friday to work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He also promised to free detained Egyptian protesters facing military tribunals.

‘Every conspiracy against Islam and scheming against Islam and the Muslims — its source is America.” “Jihad is Jihad. There is no such thing as commerce, industry, and science in jihad. This is calling things other than by its [sic] own name. If Allah says, ‘Do jihad,’ it means do jihad with the sword, with the cannon, with the grenades, and with the missile. This is Jihad. Jihad against Allah’s enemies for Allah’s cause and his word.” “Why do we fear the word ‘terrorist’? If the terrorist is the person who defends his right, so we are terrorists. . ....

WASHINGTON - An American who has made al-Qaida propaganda videos is charged with aiding terrorists in a secret federal indictment expected to be unsealed soon, the New York Daily News has learned. Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a 28-year-old Californian who now calls himself Azzam al-Amriki, has appeared in four al-Qaida videos. In two of the videos, released since the July 7 anniversary of last year's bombings of London's transit system, he appears with his face uncovered. The federal indictment is expected unsealed in Los Angeles in the next few days, three sources said. It will likely charge Gadahn with giving material...

NEW YORK, Dec. 23, 2004 — A California woman reveals to ABC News that she unknowingly married a Muslim extremist who helped set up what authorities say was one of the first al Qaeda sleeper cells out of their Orange County apartment complex. Saraah Olson says she watched as her then-husband, Hisham Diab, and his group transformed local teen Adam Gadahn into an America-hating fanatic who she says is the masked man who promised in an al Qaeda video message released in Pakistan late October that the "streets of America will run red with blood." Olson said she repeatedly tried...

CAIRO – Hundreds...have staged a protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to demand the release of an Egyptian cleric imprisoned in the United States for plots to blow up New York City landmarks. Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as the blind sheik, is serving life in prison after a 1995 conviction for his advisory role in conspiracies to blow up the United Nations and several New York bridges and tunnels. ....Thursday, protesters near the heavily fortified embassy held banners reading "freedom for our sheik" and chanted slogans and held prayers. The protest leader was Abboud el-Zomor, who...