Free Republic

A senior figure from a Syrian rebel group with links to al Qaida was allowed into the United States for a brief visit, raising questions about how much the Obama administration will compromise in the search for partners in the conflict. Labib al Nahhas, foreign affairs director for the Islamist fighting group Ahrar al Sham, spent a few days in Washington in December, according to four people with direct knowledge of the trip and who spoke on condition of anonymity. His previously undisclosed visit is a delicate matter for both sides – the conservative Salafist insurgents risk their credibility with...

In recent days, pro-al Qaeda jihadists claimed to confirm a recent news report saying that several senior al Qaeda leaders have been released from Iranian custody. Sky News reported earlier this week that five veteran jihadists were released in exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been kidnapped in Yemen. Several jihadists on Twitter who are connected to al Qaeda have said the report is accurate. One of them is known as “Al Siyasi al Mutaqa’id,” who has relayed accurate information on al Qaeda in the past. The five jihadists who were reportedly freed are: Saif al Adel, Abu Mohammed...

Abu Khalid al Suri, whose real name is Mohamed Bahaiah, has been reportedly killed in a suicide attack in Aleppo. Al Suri's death has been confirmed on several Twitter feeds managed by Ahrar al Sham and the Islamic Front. Al Suri, a longtime al Qaeda operative, was a founding member of Ahrar al Sham and a senior leader in the organization at the time of his death. Ahrar al Sham is arguably the most powerful rebel organization within the Islamic Front, a coalition of rebel groups that was formed late last year. Hassan Abboud, a top official in Ahrar al...

SNIPPET: "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say Russian sports officials said they will beef up security at forthcoming sports events and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the wake of deadly explosions at Boston's marathon that killed three people, and injured over 140 others." "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say" SNIPPET: "The World Athletics Championship takes place in Moscow on Aug 10-18, and the event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort...

Flanked by almost 20 men with rifles, Omar Abu al-Chechen kneels on a carpet and delivers a rousing speech urging fellow Muslims to support the 'jihad' against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Dressed almost entirely in black, the militant from Russia's Chechnya region declares an Islamist state is within reach. Fellow fighters from the brigade of foreign militants he leads translate his Russian words into Arabic. "Jihad needs very many things. Firstly it needs money. Much is dependent on money today for jihad," said al-Chechen, his nomme de guerre, the leader of what rebels and websites call the Brigade of Migrants,...

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old Islamist gunman who hunted down three Jewish children and a rabbi after murdering three French paratroopers in Toulouse last month, didn't act alone. In his journey from the slums of Toulouse, to the local mosques, to the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan that he described to French police, to filming his murder of the terrified children in order to post video clips on the web, Mr. Merah was following a path marked out years earlier by the coldblooded jihadist theoretician Abu Musab al-Suri. What is perhaps more disturbing, Mr. al-Suri was recently set free...

terrorist mastermind behind the July 7 London bombings is reported to have been freed from a Syrian jail by President Bashar Assad's regime. Abu Musab al-Suri had been held in Syria for six years after being captured by the CIA in 2005 and transported to the country of his birth under its controversial extraordinary rendition programme. But he is now said to have been released as a warning to the US and Britain about the consequences of turning their backs on President al-Assad’s regime as it tries to contain the uprising in the country. Al-Suri, also known as Mustafa Setmariam...

The U.S. State Department offered a $10 million reward Thursday for information that helps authorities find Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, better known as Yasin al Suri, an Iran-based senior financier of Al Qaeda. Suri, operating under an agreement between Al Qaeda and the Iranian government since 2005, allegedly moves money and recruits through Iran and on to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the department said in its announcement.

Police in Hamburg shut down the notorious al-Quds mosque, renamed the Taiba mosque in 2008, led by German-Syrian national and voluntary imam Mamoun Darkazanli. Darkazanli (a.k.a. Abu Ilyas al-Suri) has been a suspected al-Qaeda operative, primarily as a financier and logistician, in the European Union for close to two decades. Long active in al-Qaeda circles, Darkazanli first surfaced on the radar of Western intelligence agencies when he purportedly helped procure a cargo ship named “Jennifer” for Osama bin Laden as early as 1993 (Hamburger Abendblatt, October 16, 2004). Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA- Federal Criminal Police Office) admitted that it had been...

"The document 'Jihad Recollections - Issue # 3' has been deleted"

The evolution toward smaller, more autonomous and decentralized organizational structures has been identified as a key trend in jihadi terrorism during the past few years [1]. Confronting amorphous structures and networks, which lack clearly identifiable organizational linkages and command structures and in which self-radicalization and self-recruitment are key elements, is a formidable challenge for security services [2]. The jihadi decentralization trend is clearly a result of counter-terrorism successes. These "defeats" have been scrutinized and digested in the writings of key jihadi theoreticians during the past few years. New roadmaps and operational concepts are being explored as the jihadis search for...

A SUSPECTED al Qaeda leader, accused of being involved in September 11 and planning the 2004 Madrid train bombings, has been imprisoned in a secret US jail for the past year, Spain's El Pais newspaper reported today. Mustafa Setmarian, 48, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistani and European security service officials told El Pais. A spokesman for the US embassy in Spain declined to comment on the report. Setmarian's 2005 capture was reported in May of this year after the...

The future generation of international jihadists will form a fluid, non-hierarchical movement of autonomous armed groups instigating simultaneous armed struggle, according to a leading radical Islamist ideologue. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, presents a cogent analysis of the global jihad in a series of now widely referenced online tracts, and establishes the strategic guidance for the development of what he calls the "international Islamic resistance generation". In January 2005, only weeks after the US government posted a USD5 million reward for information leading to his apprehension, Nasar returned from a self-imposed two year hiatus to post...

An Al Qaeda chief is urging extremists to carry out more terror attacks against Britain ahead of the fifth anniversay of 9/11. In a chilling message issued on the Internet, Abu Musab al-Suri has ordered terror cells across Europe to "awaken" and "move fast" over his calls to action. According to reports, his rant has been posted on 20 Al Qaeda linked websites. In it he says: "Let our sleeping cells wake, the war is at its apex. The enemy is about to collapse. "We warn Britain: respect Muslim scholars in general or jihad people in particular. Doing anything to...

ONE of al-Qaeda's chief idealogues, who has a $5 million bounty on his head and extremist links from Afghanistan to Europe, has been captured in Pakistan and is believed to be in the hands of United States intelligence, it emerged yesterday. Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al Surim or simply "The Syrian", has been flown out of the country to an unspecified location after being interrogated by Pakistani and US authorities. Confirmation of his capture lends further credence to Western intelligence claims that many of al-Qaeda's senior figures are now out of action, either detained or dead....

Breaking on KDKA Radio News in Pittsburgh. A top Al Qeada fugitive is reported to have been captured by Pakistani forces. Reports claim he will be turned over to US authorities ASAP. Sorry I do't have more...I'm at work and trying to get the original sources...The story was delivered with a "wink, wink - nudge, nudge" Probably nothing but then again....prisoner6

KHAR, April 20: A suspected Al Qaeda militant and a security official were killed in a shootout near here in the Bajaur tribal region on Thursday, a security official said. He identified the militant by his alias of Abu Marwan, a Saudi national, known for expertise in explosives. The official said that Abu Marwan was wanted by the US and he was one of the targets of a US air raid at Damadola village in Bajaur on January 18. Abu Marwan’s real name, however, could not be ascertained. His body was taken to Peshawar for a DNA test. Sources...

WASHINGTON - A key figure in al-Qaida’s terror network in Europe with a $5 million bounty offered by U.S. authorities on his head has been arrested, U.S. counterterrorism officials tell NBC News. Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the alleged terrorist, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, is an expert in explosives and chemicals who trained recruits at al-Qaida terror camps in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani security agencies have arrested two al-Qaida suspects and are investigating whether one is a Syrian believed to be a key figure in Osama bin Laden's terror network in Europe, two intelligence officials and a senior government official said Thursday. The two suspects were captured this week during a raid on a house in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, said one of the intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to address the media. A senior government official confirmed the arrests and said authorities were investigating whether...