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New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall tells ABC News she was assaulted by plain-clothed government security agents while reporting in Quetta, a Pakistani city near the Afghan frontier where NATO suspects the Taliban hides its shadow government. Akhtar Soomro, a freelance Pakistani photographer working with Gall, was detained for five-and-a-half hours. According to Gall, the agents broke down the door to her hotel room, after she refused to let them enter, and began to seize her notebooks and laptop. When she tried to stop them, she says one of the men punched her twice in the face and head. "I...

Amrullah Saleh, 48, is the former vice president of Afghanistan, who escaped Kabul as the Taliban advanced to join Ahmad Massoud and the National Resistance Front in the Panjshir Valley. The remote, 70 mile long valley, bordered by high mountains, is a geographical stronghold and the last province in Afghanistan to hold out against the Taliban. After peace negotiations failed, battle has now been joined with each side claiming territorial gains and heavy casualties in the past 48 hours. In a courageous and moving dispatch from the frontline, Saleh - whose leader, President Ashraf Ghani, fled Kabul for the UAE...

Al-Qaeda joined the Taliban in the group’s offensive on the Panjshir valley on Thursday, Ahmad Massoud’s forces say, according to Al Arabiya sources. Both sides have suffered casualties during fighting in recent days as the hardline group that has seized most of the country attempts to take the last pocket of resistance to its rule. Militiamen and remnants of the previous Afghan government gathered in the Panjshir valley after the fall of Kabul on August 15. The mountainous region is home to Ahmad Massoud, son of commander Ahmad Shah Massoud – a significant figure in resisting the 1979-89 soviet occupation....

Ahmad Massoud, the son of the 'lion of Panjshir' has been backed by Afghanistan’s top spy and ousted Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who has a network of spies inside Kabul An Afghan educated in Britain is leading the fightback in his home country, which has already seen between 60 to 100 Taliban killed. Ahmad Massoud, son of a legendary mujahideen commander, is heading up the heavily-armed uprising.... ...A source told us: “Over the past three days, remnants of the Afghan National Defence and Security Force made their way to Panjshir. "They are bolstering, joining and supporting Massoud’s alliance.... ...Massoud’s father...

FBI affidavit details Abdel-Rahman's jailhouse pipeline JUNE 3--Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman laughed at the ease with which his legal team improperly smuggled messages that allowed the Muslim extremist to continue directing terrorist operations while serving a life sentence in a Minnesota prison cell, according to a sealed FBI affidavit obtained by The Smoking Gun. Abdel-Rahman joked that "trained doves" were transporting messages to his disciples. "I really would like that they arrest those doves. I wish that one day I read, 'The FBI was able to arrest the doves that are contacting the Sheikh.'" The convicted terrorist then added, "as...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch police have arrested a Muslim man suspected of preparing a suicide attack, officials said Thursday. The prosecutor's office said only that the 22-year-old man is a Muslim of Moroccan ancestry, but did not release his name. He recorded a farewell message to his family on an audio cassette and was "presumably recruited and prepared to be sent out to die in international 'jihad,' or armed struggle against 'enemies of Islam,'" according to a statement by prosecutors. A second man was detained but later released, it said. The two were picked up in the southern city...

EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands - A member of the Hamburg terrorist cell that planned the Sept. 11 terror attacks visited this southern Dutch town a number of times before the attacks, said German and Dutch authorities. The Dutch secret service also confirmed yesterday that German authorities were investigating the trail of money that flowed through here from Saudi Arabia to finance possible terrorism operations. A spokesman in the German federal prosecutor's office declined to comment, and it is not clear whether a link has been established between the suspected Hamburg cell member, Mounir el-Motassadeq, who is on trial in Germany, and...

A veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistan expert is under federal investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe and has had her security clearances withdrawn, according to U.S. officials. The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week. Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying...

Our Political Bureau NEW DELHI MANY functionaries of the United States State Department, who handled South Asia under the Clinton Administration, may have to face embarrassment when the Bush regime gets down to locating the factors that made it easier for terrorists to carry out the September 11 carnage. These functionaries, it is reliably learnt, ignored the warnings about the activities and intentions of the terrorist groups operating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. One of such reports had come from Michael Sheehan, the head of counter-terrorism wing of the State Department. Sheehan’s report also listed the measures that the ...

'The Path to 9/11'CLINTON FAILURE TO ORDER 'PURE KILL' CUT CHANCES OF GETTING BIN LADEN IN HALF 8(WHICH TIPPING HIM OFF QUICKLY REDUCED TO ZERO) 9 'WHY THE CLINTONS FAILED "TO CAPTURE OR KILL THE TALLEST MAN IN AFGHANISTAN"(DID THEY REALLY WANT TO TAKE HIM OUT ANYWAY?) Part Two:   by Mia t, 9.8.06     9/11 Commission: Clinton Refused to Let CIA Kill Bin Laden Announcing some of its preliminary findings on Wednesday, the 9/11 Commission has confirmed that President Clinton ordered the CIA to take Osama bin Laden alive or not at all - a directive that...

KABUL: The latest terrorist attack on a prison in Kandahar was not the work of the Taliban alone. In fact, all significant terrorist attacks during the last several months in Afghanistan have the imprint of Al-Qaida both in the planning and execution. Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai's harsh reaction against Pakistan, by threatening to send Afghan troops into Pakistani soil to fight Al-Qaida and the Taliban in their safe houses, shows the frustration of the Afghan leadership against Pakistan's latest peace agreements with the Taliban. The US military in Afghanistan is convinced of Pakistan's duplicity and cannot ignore the threat coming...

On 9 November, a 38-year old Belgian named Muriel, blew herself to pieces in Baghdad near a group of Iraqi policemen, killing five other people. The woman had converted to Islam after marrying a Belgian of Moroccon origin. Her husband was shot down by American troops. The American authorities informed the Belgian authorities of the woman’s identity a few weeks ago, but Brussels kept it secret. Yesterday evening the Franco-Luxemburgian network RTL announced the news. Last night, the Belgian police arrested 14 people. Nine of them are Belgians, mostly of foreign origin, three are Moroccans and two are Tunisians. They...

Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards!?-Ahmad Shah Massoud, in "The Path to 9/11" Excuse me for this very short vanity, but I need to vent. After I found that only two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee opposed the nomination of that gun-grabbing nut, Eric Holder, I thought of this above line. Are we going to have to put up with the GOP cowtowing to President Obama for the next 2-4 years!? I'm fed up with these politicians who supposedly represent us. It's time to show all these weak politicans the door, and replace...

Follow up to my earlier post about 14 Belgians arrested for being al Qaeda members. It turns out one of them is Malika El-Aroud, who has been arrested in the past for running an al Qaeda support website. If you speak French and hang around the eHadis, you'd probably recognize her from her frequent appearances at the minbar-sos forum.

Massoud's Letter To The People Of America Date: 1998 A Message to the People of the United States of America I send this message to you today on behalf of the freedom and peace-loving people of Afghanistan, the Mujahedeen freedom fighters who resisted and defeated Soviet communism, the men and women who are still resisting oppression and foreign hegemony and, in the name of more than one and a half million Afghan martyrs who sacrificed their lives to uphold some of the same values and ideals shared by most Americans and Afghans alike. This is a crucial and unique moment...

PARIS, Nov 19, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Counter-terrorism agents this week arrested a man suspected of links to the assassins of anti-Taliban military commander Ahmed Shah Massood, France's interior minister said Wednesday. The suspect, not identified by name, was arrested Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy told lawmakers during a question and answer session. Sarkozy said the suspect "was in liaison with the assassins of Commander Massood," the western-backed head of the northern alliance opposed to the Taliban. Massood was slain on Sept. 9, 2001 in northern Afghanistan, two days before the terror attacks in the United States, by two men...

BRUSSELS -- A Belgian court extended Tuesday the detention of a 35-year-old Moroccan accused in connection with the killing last year of the Afghan anti-Taleban commander Ahmad Shah Masood, officials said. The suspect, whose identity has not been officially revealed, was arrested on October 8 in Antwerp and has been charged with complicity in the September 2001 killing of the Afghan opposition leader, a spokesman as said. The Brussels court extended his detention warrant by a month pending an investigation into an operation to provide false passports, AFP quoted prosecution spokesman Jos Colpin as saying. Belgian press reports have named...

“What I want to say is that he was never an extremist, neither in his private nor political life. He believed that a modern moderate Islam could work in Afghanistan. He said that the extreme left or right failed in Afghanistan, since both had neglected the needs of the people. Therefore, we could not govern Afghanistan like any traditional Muslim country.” -Ahmad Wali Massoud regarding Ahmed Massoud Shah of the Northern Alliance. In 1996, funded financially and backed morally by their allies in Pakistan, the Taliban (”Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement”) emerged as the prominent force in Afghanistan after the...

Ahmed Shah Masood (c. 1953–September 9, 2001) (variant transliterations include Ahmad, Massoud, etc.) was a Kabul University engineering student turned Afghan military leader who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, earning him the nickname Lion of Panjshir. Various transliterations include: Ahmad / Ahmed / Akhmad / Achmad, Shah / Schah / Chah, Massoud / Massud / Massood / Mas’ud. Ahmad Shah Massoud was born 10.06.1332 (01.09.1953)[2] in Jangalak[3]/ Panjsher[5]as son of police commander Dost Mohammad Khan. At the age of five, he started grammar school at Bazarak and stayed there until second grade....

<p>I didn't hear if anyone was planning for a live thread of the film tonight. Just in case anyone wants to start early. Some in Australia already have seen part 1.</p>