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France warned on Wednesday the seizure of northern Mali by a Tuareg-led rebellion was playing into the hands of local al Qaeda units, urging neighbours including Algeria to do more to tackle the threat. For long one of the most stable democracies in West Africa, Mali has plunged into turmoil since a widely condemned March 22 coup that emboldened Tuareg rebels in their quest for a northern homeland. They have been joined by Islamists bent on imposing Islamic sharia law across the whole of the moderate Muslim state, the latest security worry for a region battling organised crime and home-grown...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- A blackout of al-Qaida's main Web sites is in its 11th day, and officials think the forums may have been brought down in a cyberattack. While no one has claimed credit for disabling the sites..." SNIPPET: "The loss of information typically confuses and frustrates the readers of the Web sites. "It leaves the rank-and-file to guess which messages and which messengers are genuine al-Qaida, and provides undercover operators with new opportunities to disrupt the movement," said A. Aaron Weisburd, senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute."

SNIPPET: "MADRID – Spanish police on Tuesday arrested a suspected member of Al Qaeda who was key to the terror group's Internet propaganda and recruiting operations, officials said. The suspect arrested in the eastern city of Valencia "administered one of the world's most important jihadist forums", dedicated to recruiting and indoctrinating Islamic terrorists, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said. The name of that forum and the suspect's name were not given, only his initials, M.H.A. He is Jordanian-born with Saudi citizenship." SNIPPET: "The suspect worked at home "8 to 15 hours a day" for al-Qaida and for two offshoots, Al...

SNIPPET: "There are some good reasons for allowing at least a few jihadi forums to operate." SNIPPET: "However, there are limits to our ability to exploit all the intelligence opportunities a forum may present. To put it another way, jihadi forums contribute to future terrorism in ways that are unpredictable and/or beyond our ability to control. This would be the view held by those other government agencies who prefer to seek out and destroy forums and to take down forum activists. For my part, I can live with keeping online those forums we have sufficient access to monitor and resources...

SNIPPET: "Rabat — Morocco's security forces have broken up a five-member terrorist cell that used to operate in the cities of Salé (near Rabat) and Casablanca, National Police Department said on Saturday in a statement. The statement added that the dismantled cell includes a member linked to the former emir of al Qaeda network in northern Iraq. The cell, which pledged allegiance to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, used Internet to forge close ties with al Qaida, especially in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen and Somalia, it said." SNIPPET: "To carry out their plans, the members of the cell contacted, via Internet, experts in...

The killing of British hostage Chris McManus in Nigeria is a wake-up call to the threat posed by Islamic militants in Africa, warns former kidnap victim Robert R FowlerIn December 2008, I was making my third trip to Niger as the United Nations Special Envoy, attempting to broker a peace between the government and rebel Tuareg groups. One Sunday, two weeks before Christmas, my colleague, Louis Guay, and I were returning to the capital, Niamey, in a UN vehicle when a truck passed us, slewed in front and forced us to a stop. Two AK-47s were aimed at the face...

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan is facing a double challenge with a series of sectarian attacks by the Boko Haram Islamist group and deadly protests over a fuel subsidy removal. When he took over the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation in 2010, Goodluck Jonathan seemed destined to live up to his name. But that was until recently, when a steady drum-roll of bad news from Nigeria appeared to be reaching an alarming crescendo. On two different fronts, Jonathan is facing challenges that are threatening the stability of Africa’s largest oil-producing nation. A wave of violence blamed on the Boko Haram...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — By the time U.S. military forces left Somalia in 1994 after entering the lawless nation more than a year earlier to stop a famine, 44 Army soldiers, Marines and airmen had been killed and dozens more wounded. Thus ended America's last large-scale military intervention in Africa. But the U.S. has come back, using special forces advisers, drones and tens of millions of dollars in military aid to combat a growing and multifaceted security threat. This time the United States is playing a less obtrusive role but is focusing once again on Somalia. While putting few U.S....

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Three European aid workers continue to be held by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) after being kidnapped from refugee camps controlled by the Polisario Front near Tindouf, Algeria last week. According to reports, Polisario members in the camps helped the kidnappers by supplying weapons and directions to the victims' location. The two Spanish and one Italian hostages are being held at an undisclosed location. They remain alive, though no demands or conditions for their release have been made, despite considerable efforts by the international community. Agence France Press (AFP) reports that "less than...

A Malian lawmaker who has been outspoken about his country's alleged role in providing refuge to an offshoot of the al-Qaida terror network says he was stopped in traffic Sunday in the capital by armed men who warned him to stop talking about the matter.

Morocco said yesterday it had broken up a three-man cell with links to Al Qaeda which planned to carry out attacks on security headquarters and Western interests in the kingdom. "The members of this cell intended to join camps of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) outside Morocco to undergo military training with the aim of returning to the kingdom to carry out criminal acts," the interior ministry said. The cell, which called itself the Al Battar Squadron, "included a former detainee under anti-terrorist legislation, and was headed by one of the most active individuals on jihadist Internet sites...

SNIPPET: "They are believed to have supported "terrorist groups that operate in the Algerian area of the Maghreb, specifically al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM), a Spanish ministry statement claimed. The group, aged 36 to 49, is also suspected of linking up with Islamist support groups in Italy, France, and Switzerland."

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 figure harshly criticized Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a new audio tape Saturday, accusing him of being an enemy of Islam and threatening a wave of attacks against the North African country because it improved relations with the U.S. ADVERTISEMENT In the 28-minute audio tape called "Unity of the Ranks," Ayman al-Zawahri also announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was joining ranks with al-Qaida. "The Islamic nation is witnessing a blessed step ... The brothers are escalating the confrontation against the enemies of Islam: Gadhafi and his masters, the Washington crusaders," al-Zawahri said...

http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007413.html "Whither the jihadi forums?" SNIPPET: "There are currently only three jihadi forums that are sufficiently active and well-connected to be of any interest whatsoever. Why we claim to be on the verge of defeating al-Qaida while simultaneously watching passively as they use these forums to regroup and regenerate is beyond me. These are the forums three: • al-Fidaa, a forum created by al-Qaida core. That it is directly linked to al-Qaida by definition moves it to the top of the list. Current membership: 2,462, all of whom can be considered "active" if only because they just joined the forum....

Top jihadi forum list updated

The Mauritanian army said it had destroyed a camp in neighbouring Mali Friday night that was sheltering militants linked to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Al Qaeda ’s North African offshoot carries out armed attacks from bases in Mali. AFP - The Mauritanian army has "completely destroyed" an Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb camp in neighbouring Mali in an assault that left four soldiers wounded, a security source said. Friday's attack in the forest region of Wagadou in western Mali involved air strikes and was staged in the evening, the Mauritanian source told AFP, adding that the "terrorists" struck...

MARRAKESH – A bomb killed 14 people including foreigners in Morocco's bustling tourist destination of Marrakesh, officials said on Thursday, in an attack that bore the hallmark of Islamist militants. The blast ripped through a cafe overlooking Marrakesh's Jamaa el-Fnaa square, a spot that is often packed with foreign tourists. A Reuters photographer said he saw rescuers pulling dismembered bodies from the wreckage. If the bombing is the work of Islamist militants, it will be the first time they have carried out a major attack in Morocco since 2003, when a series of suicide bombings in the commercial capital, Casablanca,...

'Al-Qaeda snatched missiles' in Libya From correspondents in Paris From: AFP March 26, 2011 1:03PM AL-QAEDA'S offshoot in North Africa has snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there, Chad's President says. Idriss Deby Itno did not say how many surface-to-air missiles were stolen, but told the African weekly Jeune Afrique that he was "100 per cent sure" of his assertion. "The Islamists of al-Qaeda took advantage of the pillaging of arsenals in the rebel zone to acquire arms, including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries in Tenere," a desert region of...

'To my Dear Obama, our son', says Gaddafi, defending attack on rebels CAIRO: Calling Barack Obama as "our son", Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sent a message to the US President defending his decision to attack the rebels fighting to overthrow him. Gaddafi (68) also wrote a letter to the French and British leaders, and the UN Secretary General, saying the Security Council resolution was "void" and violated the UN charter, warning them that they would "regret" any intervention. "Libya is not for you, Libya is for the Libyans," he said. Details of Gaddafi's letters were released by the Libyan government...

BAIDA, LIBYA - Forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi fought Thursday to take back territory from a popular revolt that is steadily advancing toward the capital, as the United States and other Western powers considered possible responses to the bloodshed including a military "no-fly zone." Loyalist forces made up of Libyan militiamen and foreign mercenaries attacked rebels in two cities near the capital, but the anti-government movement made new gains and seized control of an air force base, news agencies reported. The fighting came as Gaddafi blamed the revolt in his country on Osama bin Laden, in what came across as...