Free Republic

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided not to seek the death penalty against a former Guantánamo detainee who was ordered by President Obama to face trial in a civilian court in New York. Mr. Holder communicated the decision to federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Friday, and they in turn informed the federal judge who is presiding in the case. “You are authorized and directed not to seek the death penalty against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani,” Mr. Holder wrote to Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Ghailani faces federal charges of conspiring...

Terrorism: At a time when the public is losing heart on the war in Afghanistan, a decisive strike on Somalia's al-Qaida chief Monday reminds us that victory is possible and President Obama is an able leader on this front.Ten days ago, Obama signed an executive order authorizing U.S. special forces to hunt down and blow away Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a ruthless Kenyan-born terrorist operating out of Somalia. In 1998, Nabhan had a role in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, which left 212 dead, including 12 Americans. The attack was so vicious, it put Osama bin...

The news last month that police had arrested Sajid Badat at his home in Gloucester, England, shook many Britons. The charges against him concerned his training with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and his possessing PETN explosives, the same substance would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid had tried to set off. Police believe Badat intended to carry off the very first suicide bombing in the United Kingdom. But not everyone was shaken by this news. Gloucester's Muslim community esteemed Badat too much to credit the charges. One admirer called him "a walking angel" and "the bright star of our mosque." Another described him...

KUALA LUMPUR: Police have arrested Wan Min Wan Mat, a key leader of Kumpulan Militant Malaysia (KMM) during an operation in Kota Baru Friday morning. Inspector-general of police Tan Sri Norian Mai said the 42-year-old former Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) lecturer was arrested at about 9.30am. Police are looking for eight suspects who are key KMM members and are offering a RM50,000 reward for information on each leader.

IN A LITTLE-NOTICED DECISION in a New York courtroom on September 25, 2003, a man described as Osama bin Laden's "best friend" got some good news. U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim could not be sentenced to life in prison. Salim--who was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989 and who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted confidants--had been captured in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States for prosecution related to his role in the grand conspiracy that resulted in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in...

Canadian admits to plotting attacksReport details role of St. Catharines man  Stewart Bell, National Post.   Friday, January 10, 2003 A Canadian man has confessed he was sent to Southeast Asia by al-Qaeda to organize a terrorist cell that plotted a massive assault that involved setting off simultaneous truck bombs at six Western buildings in Singapore. A 50-page report released yesterday by the government of Singapore provides the first official details of the terrorist activities of Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a 20-year-old student from St. Catharines. It said Mr. Jabarah had admitted he was dispatched by al-Qaeda after Sept. 11 to...

Jordan has charged three terrorists with plotting to carry out attacks, including an assassination of American President George W. Bush. Prosecutors said the terrorists also planned to strike American Danish embassies in Amman but apparently were not aware that Denmark has no offices in Jordan. The arrests were revealed Wednesday, three months after the terrorists were arrested the day before President Bush arrived in Amman for talks with King Abdullah.

If Canadians require further evidence why our allies in the war against terrorism no longer trust us, they need look no further than the Maher Arar case. This is the man U.S. authorities apprehended at Kennedy airport in New York last September, alleging he was an al-Qaeda operative. Mr. Arar is a Canadian citizen, but he also is a citizen of Syria and as such under U.S. immigration law -- Canadian law has a similar provision -- was subject to deportation to either Canada or Syria. U.S. authorities chose to send him to Syria. We can only guess why. At...

PESHAWAR, Aug 18: A son-in-law of Al Qaeda No 2 Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri is believed to be the mastermind of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights and he met one or some of the plotters at a place close to the Pakistan-Afghan border, credible sources told Dawn. “The mastermind in the planes bombing plot is Zawahiri’s son-in-law,” said the sources who did not want to be named. “He is the guy being looked for,” they added. Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant is known to have several sons-in-law. One of them was reported to have been killed in a...

Bomb Scare At Tucson Grocery Store Jenny Rose KGUN9 News An explosive situation tied up the intersection of Prince and Campbell for hours after someone found a bomb at a grocery story. Jenny Rose has the latest. http://www.kgun9.com/NewsArticle/tabid/111...38/Default.aspx

member of Al Qaeda who was involved in plans to blow up the United States Embassy in Singapore is providing federal authorities with important new details about that plot and other aspects of the Qaeda terrorist group's operations, law enforcement officials said yesterday.The Qaeda operative, Mohamed Mansur Jabarah, is being questioned by members of the F.B.I.-N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorist Task Force at a military base in the northeastern United States. The officials said Mr. Jabarah had been one of the most cooperative of the Qaeda members detained since the Sept. 11 attacks and was likely to testify at trials of...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia has extended for two more years the imprisonment of a terror suspect linked to al-Qaeda's attempts to produce chemical and biological weapons, saying he has more information about terrorist operations. Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-trained biochemist and former Malaysian army captain, was arrested in late 2001 as he returned home from Afghanistan, where officials say he was working on a biological and chemical weapons program for al-Qaeda that was ended by the U.S.-led war. Since then, he has been held without trial under Malaysia's Internal Security Act on accusations of being a member of Jemaah...

MANILA, Philippines, -- U.S. President George W. Bush's visit next month "will further seal our pact against terrorism and poverty," Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Friday. Arroyo, one of Bush's closest allies in Asia, said Filipinos look forward to the visit "with anticipation and gladness," and while the expected eight-hour stop may be short, "the expected gains are undiminished." "It will symbolize the conjoined strategic objective of the Philippines and the United States for global peace, security and development and continuing U.S. engagement in Southeast Asia," she said in a statement. She said the visit will solidify the Philippines'...

Norwegian prosecutors unveiled on Friday evidence against four men detained on suspicion of plotting to blow up the U.S. and Israeli embassies and of participating in a shooting at the Oslo synagogue last weekend. Prosecutor Unni Fries told a court the Norwegian secret services had bugged the car of the main suspect and recorded conversations between the men planning the attacks. "They spoke in detail about how to attack the synagogue and the U.S. and Israeli embassies," Fries said, asking the court to detain all four suspects for four weeks without visitors or other contact with the outside world. Early...

The Clinton-Reno Justice Department refused to allow two veteran FBI agents assigned to the anti-terrorist probe to investigate a key figure tied to Osama bin Laden. According to ABC News correspondent Brian Ross today, the two agents told him they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks. FBI special agents Robert Wright and John Vincent told Ross they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists linked to the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al-Qaeda was responsible for...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi interior minister said Tuesday that authorities had foiled an al-Qaida plot that would have put hundreds of its men at critical guard posts around Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. and other foreign embassies as well as the Iraqi government. A senior Defense Ministry official said the 421 al-Qaida fighters were actually recruited to storm the U.S. and British embassies and take hostages. Several ranking Defense Ministry officials have been jailed in the plot, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr,...

(CNSNews.com) - Fourteen miles from the U.S. Capitol, a basement-run organization with alleged ties to Hamas and al Qaeda is a crucial link in the planning of any future terrorist attacks against the United States, according to several terrorism experts who analyzed documents and other information obtained in a CNSNews.com investigation. The United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), based in Springfield, Va., is publicly identified as a Muslim think tank but has multiple ties to the terrorism underworld, according to the CNSNews.com sources, who are both inside and outside government. "UASR is a front organization for a terrorist group,"...

SO it wasn't a political stunt. It isn't about Iraq. And the threat of Islamist terror right here is more real than many pretend. How real? If the police are right, they have saved scores of you from being blown up -- as people in Madrid and London were blown up. As NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney put it, the arrest yesterday of 17 Muslim men disrupted "the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack". He said explosive material had already been collected. Yet only last week, Prime Minister John Howard was pilloried by many for having warned of an...

BaghdadOn a cool December morning, Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad waited for their distinguished guests on the sidewalk outside of the ambassador's residence in the heart of the fortified Green Zone in downtown Baghdad. Moments passed, but no one came. As Khalilzad chattered in Cheney's ear, the vice president stood looking at the cloudless blue sky with his hands clasped behind his back, sporadically shuffling his right foot back and forth. They waited some more. An eager press corps-with cameras and microphones, pens and pads at the ready--waited to capture the handshake between Cheney...

Plans, tapes diaries seized at Pearson airport Zaynab Khadr denies they belong to her OTTAWA—The RCMP and Canadian military believe they've discovered a vital cache of information on Al Qaeda that includes the whereabouts of wanted members and details of attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. The information is allegedly contained in a laptop, dozens of DVDs, audiocassettes and the pages of diaries, seized by the RCMP officers who met Zaynab Khadr at Pearson airport with a search warrant as she arrived back in Canada in February, court documents state. Khadr is the eldest daughter of a family that has...

Abdullah Khadr at large: Brothers were caught in Afghanistan, father is wanted for aiding Osama bin Laden The federal government released secret intelligence documents yesterday revealing that an al-Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan was under the command of a Scarborough man whose two brothers are captives in the war on terrorism. Abdullah Khadr, 22, is described in a Privy Council Office intelligence report as a suspected al-Qaeda member who is thought to have "commanded an extremist training camp in Lowgar Province in Afghanistan." He is the fourth member of the Khadr family to come to the attention of Canadian...

<p>CHICAGO (AP) -- Federal prosecutors accused a Syrian-born American of once leading a Muslim charity that the Treasury Department calls a terrorist group, and said he tried to help Osama bin Laden get a nuclear weapon.</p> <p>The government said Mohamed Loay Bayazid was president of the suburban Chicago-based Benevolence International Foundation in 1994, about the same time he is accused of trying to get uranium for al-Qaida.</p>

"In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."  U.S. government "Summary of Evidence" for an Iraqi member of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay, CubaFOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Al-Qaida plotted bombings and poison gas attacks against the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan, two conspirators said in a confession aired Monday on Jordanian state television. Azmi al-Jayousi, identified as the head of the Jordanian cell of al-Qaida, appeared Monday in a 20-minute taped program and described meeting Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi in neighboring Iraq to plan the foiled plot. A commentator said the plotters wanted to kill "80,000" Jordanians and had targeted the prime minister's office, intelligence headquarters and the U.S. Embassy. Another Jordanian suspect, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, was shown saying...

AMMAN, Jordan - Islamic militants planned to detonate an explosion that would have sent a cloud of toxic chemicals across Jordan, causing death, blindness and sickness, a chemical expert testified in a military court Wednesday. Col. Najeh al-Azam was giving evidence in the trial of 13 men who are alleged to have planned what would have been the world's first chemical attack by the al-Qaida terror group. The accused include al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab Al-Zarqawi, and three other fugitives who are being tried in absentia. Jordanian security services foiled the plot in April last year. Jordanian officials say that...

Suspicious packages turned up at four foreign missions and at Parliament House in Canberra today. The packages were received by the British high commission and the United States, Japanese and South Korean embassies. Each of the embassies that received the packages represents a country with troops in Iraq. "We can confirm the commission received a suspicious package earlier this morning," a British high commission spokesman said. "We are following AFP [Australian Federal Police] guidelines at present." The US embassy in Canberra has been closed. "I can confirm that the US embassy did receive a suspicious package," a US embassy spokeswoman...

The three ambassadors who died violent deaths were Cleo Noel Jr.,killed in March 1973 when Palestinian terrorists struck an embassy in Sudan; Adolph Dubs, killed in 1973 when Afghan police stormed a hotel room where he was being held by terrorists; and Arnold Raphel, who died in 1988 when a plane crashed. Receiving waivers as longtime diplomats with military service were William Rivkin and Philip Crowe. Rivkin, who died in 1967, served as ambassador to Senegal, Gambia and Luxembourg and spent five years of in the Army during World War II, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Crowe, who...

The Associated Press NAPLES, Italy Jan. 31 — Police arrested 28 Pakistanis found in possession of explosives, hundreds of forged documents and maps of the Naples area with "sensitive targets" circled, authorities said Friday.In a statement, police said they had uncovered an "al-Qaida terrorist cell," but gave no further details on the Pakistanis' alleged involvement with al-Qaida or any other international terrorist group.A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said late Friday officers "might have gotten ahead of themselves" in announcing an al-Qaida link in the headline of their news release.The official also dismissed Italian news reports that the...

TERRORISM: Al Qaeda Group Busted in Italy February 2, 2003: During a routine sweep for illegal immigrants, Italian police rounded up 28 Pakistanis suspected of being terrorists. Police found two pounds of dynamite, 165 feet of explosive fuse and various detonators, as well as hundreds of forged documents and maps of metropolitan Naples. Authorities said "sensitive targets" were circled with a pen but would not elaborate, while Italian news reports said the possible targets included the U.S. Consulate in Naples and nearby NATO bases. One map was to the town of Bagnoli (outside Naples), where the NATO southern headquarters is...

Jordan's King Abdullah revealed on Saturday that vehicles reportedly containing chemical weapons and poison gas that were part of a deadly al Qaeda bomb plot came from Syria, the country named by U.S. weapons inspector David Kay last year as a likely repository for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "It was a major, major operation. It would have decapitated the government," King Abdullah told the San Francisco Chronicle. Jordanian officials estimated that the death count could have been as high as 20,000 - seven times greater than the Sept. 11 attacks. Abdullah said that trucks containing 17.5 tons of explosives...

<p>An al Qaeda suspect in custody in Belgium told American investigators he saw members of the terror organization training snipers in preparation for attacks on U.S. soil, a source told The Post last night.</p> <p>One of the planned attacks targeted U.S. senators on a golf course.</p>

DJ Al-Qaida Man Claims To Have Seen Sniper Training -ABC 10/17/2002 Dow Jones News Services (Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--At least one member of al-Qaida now in custody has told U.S. investigators he witnessed training by three man sniper squads practicing to launch attacks on U.S. soil, ABC News reported Thursday. The claim is made by an al-Qaida member being held for allegedly plotting to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris, the report said. The man was questioned by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation this week in Belgium, ABC News...

Police in the Malawi city of Blantyre have fired tear gas at Muslims protesting against the arrest and deportation of five suspected al-Qaeda members. The al-Qaeda suspects are now in US custody The Muslims, coming from Jumm'ah, or obligatory Friday prayers, chanted slogans against the government and their own association, the Muslim Association of Malawi (Mam). They accused the government of losing sovereignty by secretly handing the suspects over to American CIA agents, despite a High Court ruling ordering the government to charge or release the men. They also accused their association of failing to protect fellow Muslims, despite the...

<p>The American Muslim leader charged with smuggling $340,000 out of Libya was suspected of funneling cash from Osama bin Laden to blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in the failed 1993 attempt to blow up New York City landmarks, The Post has learned.</p>

<p>His capture was one of the civilized world's biggest coups in the War on Terror. The August arrest of Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, removed another al Qaeda killer from global circulation. Hambali was the terror mastermind behind Jemaah Islamiyah (JI, al Qaeda in Southeast Asia). The "brain" who planned the October 2002 mass murder in Bali, he served as both people "connector" and supply conduit for numerous attacks throughout the region.</p>

<p>March 25, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Captured thug Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has revealed that the al Qaeda terrorists who plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have as many as two-dozen more terror plans already in motion against U.S. and Israeli interests, it was reported yesterday.</p>

When controversial New York attorney Stanley Cohen came to court last week seeking to represent Portland Seven defendant Patrice Lumumba Ford, the focus was on Cohen's prior representation of the spiritual leader of a Portland mosque where Ford had worshiped. How can Cohen fairly represent Ford, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked, when Cohen's former client Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye is being investigated for allegedly helping to finance the same conspiracy with which Ford is charged? According to an FBI affidavit unsealed Friday, Kariye may have raised $12,000, through unidentified worshipers at Masjed As-Saber in Southwest Portland, for Ford...

<p>ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Jordanian authorities said Saturday that they had arrested two confessed members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist group who assassinated U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley on October 28 in Amman, Jordan.</p> <p>BOETTCHER: Foley was head of the ... USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman.</p>

INGAPORE, Jan. 25 — Shortly after the United States began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, a 30-year- old Indonesian traveling on a false Filipino passport slipped into this tightly controlled city-state carrying a plan to strike back at America. His mission, investigators say, was to activate a "sleeper cell" of Islamic militants who had long been waiting for a call from Al Qaeda's leaders in Afghanistan. This group, which had been loosely organized for eight years, began planning to blow up the embassies of the United States, Israel, Australia and Britain, the investigators say. The plot was foiled when 13 ...

Singapore -- The government said Friday that 13 of 15 people arrested here last month for suspected links to al-Qaida terrorists plotted to blow up Western embassies, U.S. naval vessels and a bus carrying American soldiers. &quot;The plan was apparently ... ready for activation,” a government statement said, but was thwarted when documents and evidence found in Afghanistan allowed authorities to arrest the suspects. Singapore released evidence, including notes in Arabic and a videotape it said was &quot;found in the rubble of an al-Qaida leader's house in Afghanistan.” In the tape, one detainee told how explosives could be carried ...