Free Republic

Early Friday morning, President Trump tweeted, “Iran is playing with fire — they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” Earlier in the week, both the president and National Security Advisor Mike Flynn said they were putting Iran “on notice,” without defining what that notice meant. Mr. Trump likes to keep our adversaries guessing, and that’s a good thing, if he actually does it. More definitively, a statement by Flynn said, “The days of turning a blind eye to Iran’s hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.” For the...

Osama bin Laden´s son-in-law has been captured and is in the hands of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, two administration officials said on Thursday. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was captured within the last week in Jordan, according to a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Peter King of New York. The lawmaker had been told of the capture by law enforcement officials. Congress was notified when Ghaith was taken into U.S. custody, the officials said.

Two top nuclear scientists of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) are currently in Taliban custody. The two were working at PAEC’s facility in North West Frontier Province. Zee News investigations reveal that the two scientists were kidnapped about six months ago. To avoid international embarrassment Pakistan Government has kept this information under wraps. According to information available with Zee News, nuclear scientists have been kidnapped by Taliban at the behest of Al-Qaeda.

An Al-Qaeda terrorist convicted of plotting attacks against US targets in Europe received about €78,000 in compensation, as he claimed his human rights were violated by his extradition to the US, it has emerged. The information was revealed in Belgian media on Thursday. The compensation to the extremist – who was convicted of planning an attack on troops at a Belgian airbase and was suspected of planning an assault on the US embassy in Paris – was approved by the European Court of Human Rights back in 2014. Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian professional football player turned jihadist, was convicted on...

The military tribunal verdict convicting Salim Hamdan of providing material support to terrorism was eminently just. The guy was, after all, Osama Bin Laden's driver, and he was, after all, arrested with two surface-to-air missiles in the back of his car. And there was, after all, the video of a 1998 Al Qaeda news conference for Pakistani journalists that at one point showed Hamdan with a machine gun and at another juncture captured him smiling at Bin Laden. And there were, after all, the undisputed facts that Hamdan fell in with Bin Laden in 1996 and worked with him through...

The White House has appointed pro-Muslim Brotherhood Robert Malley as a new special assistant to President Barack Obama. As if this is not bad enough, Malley is in charge to cover the whole kitten caboodle: The Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region. This appointment happens to be at the same time that Erdogan of Turkey and Qatar had a millstone breakthrough in reviving the Muslim Brotherhood by gaining special provisions for the Islamist organization in Saudi Arabia and the Arab gulf. Malley, who now works as Senior Director of National Security Council of the White House (NSC) on...

A man purporting to lead an African branch of al-Qaida claimed responsibility yesterday for the beheading of a Sudanese newspaper editor who was found dead last week. The man, in a statement distributed to Sudanese newspapers, called editor Mohamed Taha a "dog of dogs from the ruling party", and accused him of insulting the prophet Mohammad. The statement was signed by Abu Hafs al-Sudani, who said he was the leader of al-Qaida in Sudan and Africa. Taha, an ally of the government who was himself an Islamist, was reported kidnapped from outside his home in the capital Khartoum a week...

Police discover "bullets, Islamist propaganda and unauthorised madrassa" in raid after closure of mosque in Lagny-sur-Seine, outside Paris, in wake of Paris terror attacks.

AL-QAEDA’S leadership secretly directed the Islamic militants whose armed revolt at the Red Mosque in Islamabad ended last week with more than 100 deaths after it was stormed by the Pakistan army. According to senior intelligence officials, the troops who finally took control discovered letters from Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were written to Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Abdul Aziz, the brothers who ran the mosque and adjacent madrasah. Government sources said up to 18 foreign fighters � including Uzbeks, Egyptians and several Afghans � had arrived weeks before the final shootout and set up firing ranges to...

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri again referenced the Benghazi, Libya, attack in an audio tape posted on jihadist websites last week, in remarks that, like all his statements, were immediately carefully scrutinized by counter-terrorism analysts searching for clues about the terrorist network’s operations. Al-Zawahiri had called for Americans to be targeted in Libya the day before the diplomatic mission was attacked, leading to speculation that al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan had some sort of role or influence in the attack.

(CNN) -- A pro-al Qaeda group responsible for a previous armed assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is the chief suspect in Tuesday's attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, sources tracking militant Islamist groups in eastern Libya say. They also note that the attack immediately followed a call from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for revenge for the death in June of Abu Yahya al-Libi, a senior Libyan member of the terror group. The group suspected to be behind the assault -- the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades -- first surfaced in May when it claimed responsibility...

On and around September 11, 2012, al Qaeda attacked multiple American assets around the world. The attack that has received the most attention is the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But the U.S. consulate in Libya was not the only diplomatic facility assaulted by al Qaeda-affiliated groups in September. Terrorists with ties to al Qaeda’s senior leaders, including al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, were involved in at least three other U.S. embassy sieges in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, and possibly elsewhere. A timeline of these assaults is...

Canadian authorities announced Monday they have broken up an Al Qaeda-linked terror plot to attack a passenger train as it crossed over a bridge in the Toronto area. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Monday that two suspects have been arrested on terrorism charges. Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, who live in greater Montreal and Toronto -- were conspiring to carry out an Al Qaeda-supported attack against Via Rail, but posed no immediate threat to the public. "It was definitely in the planning stage but not imminent," RCMP chief superintendent Jennifer Strachan told reporters at a news conference. Read more:...

Some intelligence agencies warn the five men may travel to Syria and make use of its chaotic landscape to plot attacks elsewhere. Iran has released five senior al Qaeda operatives from detention and will soon allow them to leave the country, prompting fears they will join other terrorists in Syria planning attacks on the West. According to intelligence sources, three of the five are members of al Qaeda's ruling committee the Shura Council. Among those released in exchange for the Iranian diplomat was Abu al Kheir al Masri - the former head of al Qaeda's "external relations" committee, who was...

The Obama administration's policy toward Syria and its more than four-year civil war is rapidly becoming a black mark on the president's legacy. And a scathing new report by Peter Baker of The New York Times details the mind-boggling decision by the White House to refuse to accept any responsibility. The blame for the failed US effort to train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS "should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place," administration officials told Baker. There are only "four or five" US-trained rebels left fighting...

It is now emerging from intelligence sources that the reason the United States was able to give Saudi Arabia the heads-up it ignored on the terror bombings in Riyadh, is because the CIA had been intercepting communications between al-Qaeda operatives in Arabia and Iran. The hits themselves helped to clarify co-ordinates; and there is thus little doubt remaining in American minds that Iran is sheltering senior al-Qaeda leaders. The ayatollahs are most likely trying to integrate surviving al-Qaeda resources with those of Hezbollah, their own main horse in terror international. I read some hint of that into the strange remarks...

When Osama bin Laden was banished from Sudan in 1996, he left the country in a rented Soviet jet — an aged and antique Tupolev flown by a Russian pilot he did not trust. With him were a few bodyguards, his military commander, Saif al-Adel, and two sons named Sa’ad and Omar — both young men in their late teens. Although it was the corrupt Islamic government of Sudan that had robbed Osama bin Laden of much of his vast personal wealth, he blamed America for his misfortunes, according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright. “He held America responsible for the...

Saturday's Washington Post had an article which quotes the usual unnamed intelligence sources saying that they are surprised to discover that al Qaeda has "reconstituted" itself. This surprise derives from, inter alia, the computer data found recently in Pakistan, intelligence sources (both ours and friends'), and simply looking at the range of activities in which the terrorists engage. This surprise is, as usual, unsettling, since it has been quite clear for some time now that al Qaeda and the other major terrorist groups — Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Jamaa, etc. — are all working together, and have been ever since...

January 6, 2014 Group Run by al Qaeda Terrorist Invited to Brief Dems on Drone Policy Alana Goodman The representative of a human rights group headed by a designated al Qaeda terrorist was denied a visa by the State Department after being invited by congressional Democrats to discuss drone strikes.Mohammad Al Ahmady, the Yemen director for Geneva-based NGO Al Karama, was expected to brief Reps. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.), Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), and Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.) the morning of the Nov. 19, according to press release from Grayson’s office.Ahmady, who also serves as a top official in an...

Scandal: A month before the terrorist attack, the State Department was warned Benghazi couldn't protect itself and was surrounded by Islamist militia and al-Qaida camps. It was 3 a.m. and the administration pressed "snooze." When the U.S. mission in Benghazi called an Aug. 15 emergency meeting, it wasn't to discuss an obscure Internet video. It was to discuss the lack of security for a consulate surrounded by at least 10 terrorist camps. An Aug. 16 cable to the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and obtained by Fox News reported that the State Department's senior security officer "expressed concerns...