Free Republic

Election '08: Bill Ayers isn't out bombing anymore, but he has never stopped being a radical. His ties to hostile Marxist regimes remain, raising more questions about Barack Obama's refusal to fully repudiate him. Distancing himself, as Obama did, from the "detestable acts" of the founder of the Weather Underground terror organization, is one thing. Ayers' terror attacks — in armed robbery, police murder, attempted killings of U.S. troops, and bombings of U.S. democratic institutions to advance a Marxist revolution — were quite easy to disavow. But Ayers' supporters say his violence was all a long time ago.

A day after major Indian cities were placed on high alert following blasts in the IT city of Bangalore, as many as 17 blasts ripped through Ahmedabad, capital of the affluent western Indian state of Gujarat. Some 30 people were killed, some at hospitals where bombs were timed to go off when the injured from other blasts were being brought in. (Later, in Surat, a center for the world's diamond industry, a bomb was defused near a hospital and two cars packed with explosives were found in in the city's outskirts.) Investigators pointed fingers at the usual Islamist suspects: Pakistan-based...

MADRID — A Spanish court absolved four men and upheld the acquittal of a fifth on Thursday in the convoluted legal proceedings relating to the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings that killed 191 people in the deadliest attack by Islamic militants on European soil. The rulings followed appeals of some of 21 convictions by a lower court after a five-month trial that ended in October. Seven other people were acquitted at that time. Most dramatically, the court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of one of the bombing’s accused masterminds, Rabei Osman, an Egyptian, who was found guilty in 2006 in...

Bombs killed 11 people Monday in northern Iraq, where U.S. and Iraqi troops continue to battle al Qaeda in Iraq militants, police said. A suicide car bomber struck an Awakening Council checkpoint south of Samarra. Four members of the group were killed, police said, and six others were wounded, including three members of the U.S.-backed group, which has emerged as a foe of al Qaeda in Iraq. A bomb ripped through a shop near Baquba, killing a female and wounding 15 people. Police said they believe al Qaeda in Iraq militants planted an explosives-filled plastic bag outside the store. The...

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2008 – Military officials condemned a pair of suicide bombings that occurred near an Iraqi hospital today, killing 29 Iraqis and wounding 52. In the small Diyala province village of Balad Ruz, an Iraqi woman, disguising deadly explosives in a mock-pregnant belly, detonated her suicide bomb next to a children's shoe store and a cafe. As emergency response units arrived on the scene, a male bomber detonated his suicide explosives, military officials said. “By striking near a hospital, targeting civilians and wounding even small children, the enemy has once again demonstrated its total depravity and complete disregard...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon announced Monday war crimes charges carrying the death penalty against a Tanzanian inmate held in Guantanamo Bay arising from Al-Qaeda attacks on US embassies in East Africa a decade ago. The Defense Department said Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani would face a special military tribunal on nine counts including murder related to the August 1998 bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 11 people and injured hundreds. Military prosecutors said that after the twin bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, which altogether killed more than 200, Ghailani worked as a bodyguard for Al-Qaeda leader...

MADRID (Reuters) - A Moroccan suspected of direct involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people was arrested on Sunday in Rabat, a judicial source in Spain familiar with the case said on Monday. Abdelilah Hriz, 29, will be tried in his home country for his suspected part in Europe's deadliest Islamist attack, the first time Morocco has agreed to try one of its citizens for crimes allegedly committed abroad, said the source. Spanish Judge Juan Del Olmo recently traveled to Morocco to question Hriz and take DNA samples, the Moroccan state news agency MAP said last...

Baghdad, Jan 10, 2008 / 02:05 pm (CNA).- New fears of an organized campaign to flush Christianity out of Iraq have been sparked by the recent attacks on churches in leading Iraqi cities. Concerns about a new "religious-cleansing" drive were raised by sources close to the Church reeling from Sunday's (January 6) coordinated bomb-blasts on at least six church buildings in Mosul and Baghdad. Iraqi Church sources, who requested anonymity out of concern for their safety, told the Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), that while only one person was injured by the bomb attacks, the...

33 YEARS JAIL FOR BOMBER WHO LOST HIS NERVE AT LAST MINUTETHE fifth failed July 21 suicide bomber was jailed for 33 years yesterday and will be booted out of Britain once he is free. Manfo Asiedu, 34, joined the gang of would-be mass murderers setting out to attack London’s transport network with rucksack bombs. But then he lost his nerve and dumped his device before fleeing. His bomb was made of chapati flour and liquid peroxide, inside a plastic container with screws and washers taped to the side. It was to be set off by a detonator made of...

A search warrant filed in Hennepin County connects a shooting investigation to a possible terror plot. According to court documents, four Somali teenage males were riding in a cab on June 24 the same night a man was shot in the chest around 9:00 p.m. Video surveillance at the Glendale Housing Projects captured the cab fleeing near the scene of the shooting. Police were able to identify the taxicab and located the vehicle at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport four days later. Inside the cab, police found a handwritten note describing acts of terrorism and bombings. Police questioned an 18-year-old relative...

The South, angry over LBJ's civil rights efforts, was smoldering when she whistle-stopped from Virginia to New Orleans on the Lady Bird Special, at first enduring catcalls and hostile placards ("Fly Away Black Bird") but the same soft tolerance she used on her husband she used on the southern crowds: "In this country we have many viewpoints. You are entitled to yours. Right now I am entitled to mine." By New Orleans the stories of her sweet courage had turned the risky political journey into a roar of approval and pride.

Police today launched the biggest ever crackdown on animal rights extremists, raiding 30 homes across Britain and Europe. More than 300 officers from at least four forces executed search warrants in a series of co-ordinated dawn raids. Protesters outside the Huntingdon Life Sciences Centre in Cambridgeshire The authorities are determined to round up militants they believe have orchestrated terror campaigns against scientists and contractors involved in animal research at laboratories, universities and research institutions. Today's operation was led by four forces in the South-East - Surrey, Hampshire, Thames Valley and Kent - with officers also involved from other forces in...

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2007 – Recent suicide-bombing attacks against innocent Afghans indicate a changed Taliban strategy that is backfiring on the radical Islamic group, a senior U.S. military officer in Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters today. A spate of suicide bombings targeting residents of the city of Khowst and other areas in Afghanistan have turned Afghans against the Taliban, Army Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, said during a satellite-carried news conference. Schweitzer’s command operates in Paktika, Paktia, Lowgar, Ghazni and Khost provinces in the southeastern part of the country. “Khowst is a...

More than 80 dead in Iraq blast There has been a recent upsurge in violence At least 82 people have been killed in a car bomb blast in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, security officials say. The attack, on a food market in the Sadriya area of the city, left scores of people injured. The blast was one of a series of bomb attacks which struck mainly Shia areas of the city, leaving at least 120 dead. The blasts came as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said Iraqi security forces would assume control of the country by the end of...

Suspects Arrested in Morocco Bombings Saturday April 14, 2007 8:01 PM By JOHN THORNE Associated Press Writer CASABLANCA, Morocco (AP) - Two brothers strapped with explosives blew themselves up near an American cultural center Saturday, and police arrested another three suspects - including one wearing an explosives belt - hours later, an official said. The attacks came just days after three suspected militants blew themselves up as they were cornered by police in Casablanca, and al-Qaida claimed suicide car bombings in neighboring Algeria that killed 33 people. The attacks have stoked new fears of Islamic terrorism in North Africa -...

WASHINGTON, April 13, 2007 – An alleged al Qaeda leader being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, denied involvement in bombings in both Indonesia and Singapore, according to a transcript of his hearing released yesterday. Riduan bin Isomuddin, known as “Hambali,” either declined to answer or said he had no involvement with the operations brought forth during his April 4 combatant status review tribunal hearing at the detention facility. The tribunal was an administrative hearing to determine only if the detainee could be designated as an enemy combatant. Hambali said that while he was a member of Jemaah Islamiyah, a...

WASHINGTON, April 1, 2007 – Recent military operations resulted in the death of one terrorist and the detention of 22, while car bombings in Iraq yesterday killed seven Iraqi civilians, military officials said. Near the Syrian border today, coalition forces killed one armed terrorist and captured two suspected terrorists with alleged ties to an al-Qaeda foreign fighter facilitation network. In Baghdad, two more foreign fighter facilitation network suspects were detained. During an operation March 29 in Arab Jabour, coalition forces detained one suspected terrorist and destroyed a weapons cache found in the man’s vehicle. The weapons consisted of a...

BAGHDAD, March 24 -- More than 45 Iraqis were killed and dozens injured in suicide bombings across Iraq on Saturday, officials said, as insurgents stepped up their offensives against the Iraqi police and military. The deadliest attack took place in Baghdad when a suicide bomber managed to get a truck loaded with construction materials -- and explosives -- past a checkpoint and into the parking lot of a Dora neighborhood police station, where construction work was being done. Fourteen policemen and six civilians were killed, and 26 people were wounded, news services reported, citing police sources.

Iraqis stand by the wreckage of a car bomb which exploded in the town of Mahmoudiyah, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, March 17, 2007. The car was parked near Mahmoudiyah market when it exploded, wounding two people. BAGHDAD - Multiple suicide bombings struck the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, and about 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops were treated for exposure to chlorine gas, the military said Saturday. At least two policemen also were killed in the attacks. The violence started Friday afternoon when a driver detonated the explosives in a pickup truck...

The wealthy Arab man, sporting a foreign accent, has just given an Iraqi teenager some cash and a bomb when police burst in and arrest him. "You come here from abroad and want to make this young man kill his Iraqi brothers?" an officer asks. Suspicion toward foreign Arabs stems, in part, from the fact that the Sunni-led insurgency has included many foreign fighters, most of them Arabs, who are blamed for deadly attacks that have claimed thousands of Iraqi lives. Foreign Arabs who live in Iraq often try to hide their identities by faking an Iraqi accent or staying...