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Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

A computer nerd from Shepherd's Bush, West London, became al Qaeda's top internet agent, it can be revealed today. Younes Tsouli, 23, an IT student at a London college, used his top-floor flat in W12 to help Islamist extremists wage a propaganda war against the West. Under the name Irhabi 007 — combining the James Bond reference with the Arabic for terrorist — he worked with al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and came up with a way to convert often gruesome videos into a form that could be put onto the Web. Videos he posted included messages from Osama bin...

Terrorists' suicide attack on British embassy plot foiled By JASON LEWIS - More by this author » Last updated at 23:32pm on 8th September 2007 Terrorists plotting a suicide attack against the British Embassy in Denmark were rounded up last week as they put the finishing touches to a devastating bomb. The men are believed to be the remnants of the so-called "007" terror network, co-ordinated by London based Islamic militants using a series of secret internet sites. Senior intelligence sources say the group planned to target Western embassies in Copenhagen with the British and American missions at the top...

Three men who used the internet to incite Muslims to wage murderous holy war against non-believers were jailed yesterday. They included Younes Tsouli, 23, who hosted a jihadi chat site, which attracted a message from a purported group of 45 doctors who wanted to use car bombs and grenade rockets to launch attacks in the US. Tsouli, who also ran a site which regularly featured beheadings, was imprisoned for 10 years. Tariq Al-Daour, who was also involved in a £1.8 million fraud, was jailed for six and a half years. The third man, Waseem Mughal, was given a seven-and-a-half-year sentence...

'Spooky' website calls doctors to jihad By John Steele, Crime Correspondent Last Updated: 8:22pm BST 04/07/2007 A group of 45 Muslim doctors threatened to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States during discussions on an extremist internet chat site, it has emerged. Anti-terrorist police found details of the discussions on a jihadi site run by one of a three-strong “cyber-terrorist” gang. They were discovered at the home of Younis Tsouli, 23, Woolwich Crown Court in south east London heard. One message, thought to have been sent on February 12 2005, read: 'We are 45...

Judge to prosecutor: 'So what's a Web site?' During Internet terrorism trial, judge asks attorneys to keep it simple By Mark Trevelyan Updated: 3:05 p.m. ET May 16, 2007 LONDON - A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet. Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals. "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is," he told a...

The Internet has become a virtual operations center replacing the Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Bosnia. SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA — They never met face to face, but the two young zealots became brother warriors in the new land of jihad: the Internet. Investigators say their bond made them central figures in a terrorism network that spanned eight countries, involved more than 30 suspects and hatched plots in Washington, Toronto, London and Sarajevo. Maximus was the online moniker of Mirsad Bektasevic, a lanky Bosnian refugee with a dark stare and a hunger for action. At 18, he returned from Sweden to...

It’s been two years since I first locked horns with a cyber jihadi by the name of Terrorist 007. I was working as the assistant director for the Northeast Intelligence Network (NEIN) and a writer for World Net Daily when I ran into Terrorist 007, or Irhabi 007, on the old Ansar forum, an Arabic language message board frequently used by Al Qaeda sympathizers. Irhabi 007 was bragging about his hacking abilities, in an attempt to weasel his way into the “in crowd” of vetted jihadis. Over the next few months, I watched as Terrorist 007 began to establish himself...

<p>For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.</p>