Free Republic

Much of the story behind Saddam Hussein's eight months on the run has yet to be made public. But US military and intelligence officials say the Iraqi dictator never wandered far from the banks of the Tigris. Remaining within his Sunni heartland, he scrambled from one farmhouse to the next, sometimes by car or van, sometimes by boat. By contrast, Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, appears to have become far more adept at evading the manhunt. The US is unshaken in its resolve to find its other most-wanted fugitive. Earlier this month, General Richard Myers, chairman...

<p>The CIA has been quietly building a case that the anthrax attacks of 2001 were in fact the result of an international terrorist plot.</p> <p>U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports tell us the information showing a terrorist link to the anthrax-filled letters sent by mail in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks is not conclusive. But it is persuasive.</p>

The recent bomb blasts in Istanbul are neither isolated incidents nor simply local actions. All indications point towards global Islamic radicals determined to create a Muslim backlash against the West through more suicide attacks in both Turkey and Europe. Initial European intelligence reaction suggests that the Istanbul suicide blasts were the work of the Tauheed group led by a Jordanian national of Palestinian origin, Abu Mosub al-Zarqawi, who, it is speculated, planned, helped finance and executed the attacks in conjunction with Turkish counterparts. Al-Zarqawi, known in senior al-Qaeda circles, has recently been the focus of revived United States attempts to...

The international community should pay more attention to continued clashes in western Sudan, the head of the United Nations refugee agency has said. Diplomats have described the fighting in Darfur as "ethnic cleansing" with Arab militias, possibly backed by the government, destroying entire villages. UNHCR chief Ruud Lubbers says some 500,000 people have fled their homes. The chaos there is in contrast to the situation in the south, where an end to 20 years of civil war is now in sight. "There is severe fighting there. There are people driven out of their houses," Mr Lubbers said. "It is a...

PKK-Al Qaeda link feared Both Iraqi Kurds and Turkish intelligence sources agree that bringing the PKK down from the mountains of northern Iraq is mission impossible. They say a PKK-Al Qaeda link may give Bin Laden's people a foothold in the Kandil Mountains and create nightmare for Turks, Iraqis and the US. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ilnur Cevik ANKARA - Iraqi Kurdish officials have serious fears that Turkey's PKK terrorists holed up in the mountains of northern Iraq will join forces with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda men in Iraq to form a dangerous unholy alliance which will be a nightmare for Turkey...

Security forces recovered a bio-terror manual and traces of possible biological weapons in a raid on a Jemaah Islamiah hideout in the southern Philippine city of Cotabato, the army said today. Local police said up to eight local and foreign JI suspects escaped yesterday's raid in central Cotabato but left behind what vice chief of staff Lieutenant General Rodolfo Garcia described as possible residues of a "tetanus virus-carrying chemical". A "bio-terror manual" was also recovered, Garcia said over ABS-CBN television. The raid on a Cotabato apartment unit was launched a day after the visit to Manila of US President George...

Rumors of Bin Laden’s Lair Some believe life on the run has made it impossible for Osama bin Laden to control and lead Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan’s Kunar province, people tell a different story. Sept. 8 issue — Gray-bearded and almost toothless, Khan Kaka lives in a mud house with a weather-beaten pine door beside a little plot of corn and vegetables. But to his neighbors in this corner of Afghanistan’s remote Kunar province, the gangling, tobacco-chewing old man is one of the most respected figures in the Pech River valley.

An Eritrean official accused Sudan of supporting groups with links to Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, implicitly admitting to confrontations between the Eritrean army and these groups. The Gash district governor, Baraka Mustapha Nour Hussein, told Al-Hayat upon his return from the Sudanese city of Kasla, where he supervised the arrival of aids to those affected by Gash river's floods: "the support has nothing to do with the deteriorating relations between the two countries." Adding, "Eritrea' aids is an expression of good intentions and a confirmation of the depth of relations between the two people." After pointing to...

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish troops clashed with Kurdish rebels in the country's southeast on Friday. Seven Kurds and two Turkish soldiers were killed, the military said. The battle in Batman province came two weeks after the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party rejected a government amnesty that would give reduced prison terms to rebels who have engaged in violence if they provide information about the group. Two soldiers were killed and three were wounded, the military said in a statement. Earlier Friday, a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said nine soldiers were wounded. The outlawed PKK declared a unilateral cease-fire...

ANKARA - A web-site was prepared to explain massacres committed by terrorist organization PKK/KADEK, foreign supporters of the terrorist organization and Turkish Armed Forces' struggle against it. The web-site includes more than 300 photographs. The web-site ''www.kadek.org'' reminds its readers that Turkey had been exposed to terrorism for long years that had never been experienced before in any country, thousands of innocent people lost their lives in terrorists attacks while thousands of others were maimed, and the country had suffered an economic loss of billions of U.S. dollars. The site stresses that the terrorist organization KADEK had caused more pains...

Minutemen of the Third Reich.(history of the Nazi Werewolf guerilla movement) Author/s: Perry Biddiscombe Issue: Oct, 2000 AS WORRIES INCREASE about neo-Nazi and skinhead violence in Germany, it is worth remembering that this type of terrorism is a nasty constant in the history of the German radical-right. A case in point is the Nazi Werewolf guerrilla movement founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1944, which fought the occupying forces of Britain, America and Russia until at least 1947. The Werewolves were originally organised by the SS and the Hitler Youth as a diversionary operation on the fringes of the Third Reich,...

4 Killed in Village Raid; KADEK Suspected Bingol, TURKEY, July 12, 2003 - Four people were killed and one fatally wounded when gunmen attacked villagers near the East Anatolian town of Bingol yesterday. Governor of Bingol Huseyin Avni Cos said the incident might have been an inside job. Two gunmen pretending to be village guards came to eight-home Yenikoy village, 43 kilometers outside Bingol at 7,30pm. They gathered the villagers in the area by reading their names out loud before taking them to the fields in the mountains. The villagers were told that a list of people with the following...

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<p>TUWELLA, Iraq -- Beyond the ridge where the Zagros Mountains divide Iran and Iraq, several hundred Islamic militants vanished into the early spring snow.</p> <p>On the eve of the Iraq war in March, a barrage of US cruise missiles and a sweep by thousands of Kurdish soldiers cleared the fighters of Ansar al-Islam from mountain strongholds in northeast Iraq from where they had plagued the Kurds for years.</p>

<p>Videocassette warns of more terror ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — An Arabic-speaking guerrilla, his face wrapped in a black turban, said the al-Qaeda terror network was behind suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco and warned of more attacks in a new videotape. If authentic, the video would be the first al-Qaeda claim of responsibility for the bombings of foreign housing compounds in Riyadh, which killed 35 people, and the attacks in Casablanca that killed 43 people and 12 suicide bombers.</p>

CAIRO, Egypt - The pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera aired excerpts Wednesday of what it said was an audiotape of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s top lieutenant calling on Muslims to imitate the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in strikes on the United States and its allies in the war on Iraq (news - web sites). "Consider your 19 brothers who attacked America in Washington and New York with their planes as an example," a strong voice could be heard saying as the station showed a file photo of the lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, wearing a white turban. Children's voices could...

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine government withdrew Tuesday from informal talks with Muslim rebels after a guerrilla attack killed 22 soldiers and civilians. Government negotiators were scheduled to meet with Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels Friday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said the meeting will wait "until we can establish more auspicious circumstances to move the peace process forward." The government cannot tolerate "terrorism in the guise of a fight for freedom," Arroyo said. Malaysia's envoy to Manila, Mohamed Taufik, said the postponement was disheartening. "We're hoping that the talks would proceed ... We're ready anytime," he...

(CBS) The al Qaeda terror network remains a serious threat, with sleeper cells and agents who "are always ready to act," the world's top justice and interior ministers said Monday. "Terrorism continues to present both a pervasive and global threat to our societies," ministers from the Group of Eight nations said in a statement. They also warned of a risk that terrorists may use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in attacks. "We must address ways to anticipate and respond to such threats," the statement said. The ministers also said al Qaeda still appeared to have terrorist bases. "The threat from...

WASHINGTON – As the US has focused on the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda may have been lying low - watching and waiting for the right opportunity to strike. To be sure, the US has accumulated a string of successes in combating Osama bin Laden's umbrella terrorism group. At least five top-tier Al Qaeda operatives, who may provide information that helps authorities head off future attacks, have been apprehended since March 2001. Overall, the news on terrorism has been good. Terrorist attacks worldwide dropped by 30 percent from 2001 to 2002, according to a new State Department report. But some...

Introduction One of the main requirements for reform in the Palestinian Authority was the appointment of a prime minister with actual powers. Both the Europeans and the Americans saw Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, as the appropriate candidate who, if appointed, could play a major part in leading the Palestinians towards renewed negotiations known as the "road map." The Basic Law, the PA's temporary constitution, was modified to establish the executive position of Prime Minister and following the changes, on March 19, 2003, Abu Mazen was appointed prime minister of the...