Free Republic

White House to testify at hearing on ‘home-grown’ militantsSaturday 3rd December 2011 | Muharram 7, 1433 WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has signaled it will cooperate with a controversial congressional inquiry into alleged threats posed by “home-grown” Islamic militants that critics have branded a “witch hunt.” The House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security said on its website that the White House would supply two official witnesses for the December 7 hearing on “The threat to military communities inside the United States.” The committee, chaired by Republican Representative Peter King, had led controversial hearings earlier this year on alleged domestic Islamic...

Mogadishu, Somalia - An al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group on Sunday posted a tape allegedly made by an American citizen who blew himself up during an attack on an African Union base in Somalia's capital that left at least 10 people dead. The young man, who would be at least the fourth American to become a suicide bomber in Somalia, urges other young people not to "just chill all day" and instead fight nonbelievers around the world.The website Somalimemo.net, often used by the al-Shabab militia, said Somali-American bomber Abdisalan Taqabalahullaah had emigrated to the U.S. when he was 2 years old.

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A team of suicide bombers and gunmen disguised as soldiers assaulted an African Union base in the Somali capital on Saturday, sparking a two-hour gunfight that left at least 10 people dead, security officials said. The al-Qaida-linked Islamist militant group that claimed the attack said one of the bombers was Somali-American. The attack underscored the militants' ability to carry out complex and deadly operations even after AU troops forced them from most of Mogadishu and a famine in their strongholds weakened their forces. Earlier this month, Kenya sent troops into Somalia following a string of cross-border...

A US drone strike in north-west Pakistan has killed two top commanders of one of Pakistan's most influential Taliban groups, officials say. They say that among the four people killed is the brother of top Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir. Maulvi Nazir's Taliban faction is based in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region where the drone attack on Thursday took place. His forces are blamed for attacks on Nato troops in nearby Afghanistan. The militants were killed when four missiles were fired at a pick-up truck they were driving in Azam Warsak, 20km (13 miles) west of Wana, the main town in...

It was the second gunbattle between Kashmiri rebels and troops in northern Kupwara district this week. On Thursday, an army officer was killed in the same district in a clash with infiltrating militants. "We have foiled yet another bid by militants to infiltrate into our territory from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," Indian army spokesman J.S. Brar told AFP in the state summer capital Srinagar.

(CNSNews.com) – At a congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization in U.S. prisons, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said that investigators needed to analyze Christian militants in America because they too might try to “bring down the country.”In an exchange with witness Patrick Dunleavy, the former deputy inspector of the criminal intelligence unit, New York Department of Correctional Services, Rep. Lee mentioned the case of a man who blew up an abortion clinic and proposed that this perhaps was an attempt to undermine U.S. law that allows a woman to procure an abortion. Rep. Lee then said, “As we look to...

SANAA, Yemen – Yemeni security officials say hundreds of Islamic militants have seized control of a southern city, killing eight policemen and two civilians in gunfights. The men took over two banks in Zinjibar as well as the city's tax bureau and two security offices. After the fight, witnesses say, the men could be seen driving freely around the city.

GAZA — A Palestinian human rights group in Gaza took the unusual step this week of condemning the building and storage of anti-Israel rockets in densely populated areas, a practice that has led to injuries and deaths of civilians. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that it had investigated recent rocket explosions and found that locally produced projectiles had fallen on homes in Gaza or exploded in factories where they were made or stored. Shrapnel severely wounded a number of people, including a 22-year-old woman and her 7-month-old baby. It called on the Hamas government, which controls Gaza, to...

Reported attack comes a day after Gaza groups signaled they would halt rocket fire if IDF stopped carrying out targeted attacks as well. The Israel Air Force killed two Palestinians and wounded three more in an attack on the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, according to Palestinian media reports. The five Palestinians were clustered just east of the Jabalya refugee camp at the time of the attack, said the reports. The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed the casualties as its members. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the report.

Tensions continued to rise along Israel's border with the Gaza Strip earlier Wednesday, as Gaza militants fired a Grad-type Katyusha rocket at the southern city of Be'er Sheva early Wednesday, mere hours after another Grad exploded south of the coastal city of Ashdod. According to initial reports, the Grad rocket struck a street in the middle of one of the city's residential areas. Upon impact, a piece of shrapnel penetrated a nearby third-floor apartment, moderately wounding one man. The attack came after a Grad rocket fired from Gaza exploded south of Ashdod on Tuesday, following after a day of escalation...

This is not getting in any MSM news. The report is out and it is very interesting. There are alot of facts I was not aware of. (From a quick glance of the report)Two registered democrats (yet paid republican poll watchers) as well as other witnesses stated they felt threatened and were called racial names by the new black panthers individual (s)? Click below to read the report and testimony. Commission Interim Report USCCR.Gov NBPH

They may still wear braids, but living in the turbulent northern Jammu and Kashmir state, these girls are no strangers to violence. One who lost her grandmother to a militant attack is eager to learn. [Sunaina, Girl Receiving Training] "We have been given training to use big weapons and we have learnt a lot. We felt very nice." Paramilitary troops are teaching girls to defend themselves and their villages against frequent skirmishes in the disputed Kashmir region. [S.S. Chillar, Commanding Officer] "This is basically to provide training to the children, especially girls, living near the Line of Control areas to...

(Reuters) - Indonesian militants captured in recent police raids were planning a series of attacks including a Mumbai-style hotel siege targeting foreigners and an assault on the president at an independence day ceremony, police said on Friday. The men also planned to target U.S. President Barack Obama, who is scheduled to visit the country later this year, and plotted the attacks to install sharia law in the world's most populous Muslim nation, officials said. Police have arrested and killed several suspected jihadists during a series of raids across Indonesia since February when they discovered a militant training camp in the...

ISLAMABAD – They were never routed, no matter what Pakistan claimed. Instead, the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters have merely relocated. They're still near the Afghan border. Months after Pakistani troops chased them from South Waziristan, these militants have established a new base farther north under the protection of an insurgent leader who has cut past deals with the Pakistani army, according to residents, militants and reports from Associated Press correspondents who visited recently. The fighters — including Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks — roam through markets, frequent restaurants and watch jihadi movies or surf the Web at Internet cafes, their weapons...

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somali radio stations stopped playing music on Tuesday after hardline militants called it un-Islamic and ordered stations to take songs off the air. The edict is the latest unpopular order from Islamists, who also have banned bras, musical ringtones and movies. The order to stop the music echoes the Taliban's strict social rules imposed on Afghans beginning in the late 1990s. Somalia has a tradition of music and most residents greeted the ban with dismay. Rock, rap and love songs from the U.S., Europe and Africa could be heard on Somali stations before the ban. "Now I...

ISLAMABAD (AFP) – At least 30 militants were killed in an air strike by the Pakistani military as two suicide bombers attacked police stations in northwest Pakistan Saturday, officials said. The air strike took place in South Waziristan district where the military in October launched an air and ground offensive to flush out Taliban militants.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) – Numerous missiles fired from US drones on Tuesday killed at least ten militants in a village in Pakistan's northwest tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials said. "Up to eight US drones fired some 18 missiles at multiple militant targets in Datta khel village," a senior security official told AFP. "Ten militants were killed in the missile strikes," the official said. Local administration and intelligence officials confirmed the deaths after the volley of strikes reportedly struck militant hideouts and a training centre in three places in the village. Residents in Miranshah, the main town of...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The Saudi Interior Ministry says an investigation has shown that three Saudi militants were killed in a Sept. 14 blast outside the country. The official Saudi Press agency quoted a ministry statement as saying Monday that DNA tests showed the three were militants who had fled the country to join militants abroad. It did not say in which country the blast took place.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A classified Pentagon assessment shows one in five detainees released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay has joined or is suspected of joining militant groups like al Qaeda, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The disclosure comes amid revelations that former detainees were playing a leadership role in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- a Yemen-based group believed to be behind a failed plot to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day. Under pressure to increase safeguards, President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday he had suspended the transfer of additional Guantanamo detainees to Yemen,...

AMMAN (AFP) – A suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA base in Afghanistan was an Al-Qaeda triple agent who duped Western intelligence services for months before turning on his handlers, jihadist websites boasted on Tuesday. The Jordanian intelligence services, believing the bomber to be their double agent, brought him to eastern Afghanistan with the mission of finding Al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the websites and Western intelligence agents cited by US media said. But instead he blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Pakistani border, killing seven CIA agents and his...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistan's military on Friday killed 20 insurgents in operations against Taliban strongholds, as the prime minister warned that militants were striking back with attacks in big cities. Armed forces this year launched multiple operations across the northwest tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, the stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban and a haven for Al-Qaeda fighters and other militants. In Orakzai district in the centre of the tribal belt, nine militants were killed and two hideouts destroyed in airstrikes on the villages of Ghiljo and Mamoonzai, paramilitary force spokesman major Fazalur Rehman told AFP. The UN said Friday that...

TACOMA, Wash. — Authorities have charged four people with aiding the man accused of killing four Washington state police officers and plan on indicting two more in what investigators call a network of friends and relatives that helped Maurice Clemmons avoid capture. Rickey Hinton, 47, pleaded not guilty Thursday at his arraignment to three counts of first-degree rendering criminal assistance. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Frederick Flemming ordered him held on $2 million bail. Court documents accuse Hinton, Clemmons' half brother, of lying to police Sunday when they stopped him for questioning near the property owned by Clemmons where Hinton...

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say. Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar. The militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.The militants had made their hideout in a cave which was actually the bear's den, said police officer Farooq Ahmed.The dead have been identified as Mohammad Amin alias Qaiser, and Bashir Ahmed alias Saifullah. News of the attack emerged when their...

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say. Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar. The militants were armed with AK-46s but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked. It is thought to be the first such incident since Muslim separatists took up arms against Indian rule in 1989.

SHERWANGI, Pakistan (AFP) – Hundreds of foreign fighters were on the run in this battle-scarred region near Afghanistan Sunday, the military said, pressing a major offensive into a third week. Between 600 and 800 foreign militants had been in around Kanigurram town but their resistance was broken by heavy bombing from jet fighters, helicopters and artillery, Brigadier Mohammad Ihsan told reporters on a visit to the normally closed conflict area. Commanders have described Kanigurram as a major Tehreek-e-Taliban "operational centre" and base for Uzbek fighters. "They are on the run," Ihsan said. The foreigners were mostly Uzbeks but also Chechens...

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army pushed deeper into a Taliban sanctuary close to the Afghan border Tuesday, claiming to have killed 42 militants in the latest stage of an offensive against extremists blamed for relentless attacks in recent weeks . In the capital, gunmen attacked a high-ranking Pakistani army officer in the second targeted shooting against top military brass in less than a week, part of a wave of violence sweeping the country in apparent retaliation for the 11-day long offensive in South Waziristan. The army officer, and his mother who was traveling with him, escaped unhurt from the assault in...

LONDON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the latest militant attack in Pakistan shows an "increasing" threat to the state, but voiced confidence Islamabad was in control of its nuclear arsenal. Clinton told reporters in London that the militants' brazen bid to storm the Pakistani military headquarters in Rawalpindi on Saturday highlighted the scale of the threat. The attack brought renewed US focus on Pakistan, which has won praise from Washington for its new crackdown on militants, just as the Obama administration tries to revise its strategy in neighboring Afghanistan. "Yesterday was another reminder that extremists...

Military officials in Pakistan say a siege by militants near the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad, is over. Commando forces raided a building where militants were holding hostages just before dawn Sunday. Four militants, two soldiers and three hostages were killed during the operation. Another wounded militant was captured. The violence began just before midday Saturday when a group of heavily armed militants in army uniforms tried to enter the Pakistani military headquarters. As soon as they were stopped at a main check post, the attackers lobbed several grenades and opened fire with automatic weapons on the...

<p>DETROIT (AP) - A retired police officer-turned-pastor shot and wounded a man who broke into his Detroit church, police said Monday.</p> <p>Lawrence Adams went to Westside Bible Church on Sunday evening and found the intruder inside the building, said Detroit police Sgt. Eren Stephens. The man began swinging an object at the retired police lieutenant, who pulled out a handgun and shot him in the abdomen, he said.</p>

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A U.S. drone attacked militants in Pakistan in Tuesday, killing at least 45 of them, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan launched an operation against militants Sunday in a district covered by a government-backed peace deal, threatening the survival of a pact that raised U.S. concerns about the country's willingness to confront the insurgents. A top government official insisted the deal remained "intact" and denied American pressure prompted the offensive, while another warned that the Taliban in a valley that was the focus of the deal must disarm or "face action." A military statement said the offensive in Lower Dir had already killed "scores" of militants, including a commander, and left at least one paramilitary soldier dead. It...

ISLAMABAD – A suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles Wednesday at an alleged hide-out connected to a Taliban leader who has threatened to attack Washington, killing 12 people and wounding several others, officials said. The attack came a day after Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a police academy in the eastern city of Lahore, saying it was retaliation for U.S. missile strikes on militant strongholds along the Afghan border. Mehsud also vowed to launch an attack on Washington or even the White House in phone interviews with The Associated Press and local media....

BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan – The compound bore no sign. Residents referred to it simply as the school for "jihadi fighters," speaking in awe of the expensive horses stabled within its high walls — and the extremists who rode them bareback in the dusty fields around it. In classrooms nearby, teachers drilled boys as young as 8 in an uncompromising brand of Islam that called for holy war against enemies of the faith. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Dar-ul-uloom Madina school, they rocked back and forth as they recited sections of the Quran, Islam's holy book. Both facilities are run...

Palestinian militants launched a rocket and a mortar shell into Israel on Sunday, causing no injuries. Rocket fire by Gaza militants and Israeli retaliatory airstrikes have become nearly daily occurrences.

"Fruit of Islam JR. Drill Team of Mosque #7 of the Nation of Islam in New York. The Fruit of Islam is the Brown Shirt-like paramilitary group run by Louis Farrakhan."

Federal officials said this morning they have indicted an Afghan national for lying about his alleged ties to terrorists in a bid to fraudulently obtain a U.S. passport. Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, 34, who was arrested without incident this morning at his Tustin residence by members of the joint terrorism task force, was named in a five-count indictment returned Feb. 11 by a federal grand jury. The indictment, unsealed this morning, alleges Niazi hid associations with “Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” groups including Al Qaeda, Hizb-i-Islami and the Taliban, when he

(IsraelNN.com) Islamists reached new heights of audacity in a face-off with pro-Israel demonstrators in Malmö, Sweden on Sunday, firing rockets and throwing pipe bombs at the pro-Israel group in broad daylight and under police's noses. No one was hurt. The incident was videotaped by Swedish blogger Ted Ekeroth, whose blog contains videos showing the attack. Between 400 and 500 people gathered in Stortorget Square for a peaceful pro-Israeli protest. The police sealed off the entire square and only allowed in the protesters, as well as a smaller group of Islamists, and separated the two groups from each other. Blogger Ekeroth...

A shocking new video that appears to show Pakistani militants beheading a kidnapped Polish engineer has emerged. The seven-minute video appears to show the Polish hostage, Piotr Stanczak, sitting on the floor flanked by two masked men. Off camera, a militant briefly engages him in conversation before three others behead him. The video is so horrifying that some news wire agencies chose not to distribute the images. One of the hooded men then addresses the camera, blaming Pakistan for the killing for not agreeing to their demands to release Taliban prisoners. If confirmed, Stanczak's death would appear to be the...

Pakistan's military says its troops have killed at least 35 insurgents in the northwestern Swat valley. In a statement Tuesday, Pakistani officials say the army targeted militants in an overnight operation in the Khawaza Khela part of the valley. Militants in Swat are battling to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law in the one-time tourist haven. A Taliban leader has told families there that girls will be killed if they attempt to go to classes when schools reopen next month.

Al Qaeda terrorists have been left fearing the Black Death plague after it wiped out at least 40 insurgents at an Algerian training camp, it was reported today. The horror disease, which killed 25 million people in medieval Europe, is understood to have been found in a militant’s body dumped at a roadside. Terror group AQLIM (al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb) was forced to turn its shelter in the Yakouren forests into mass graves and flee, it has been claimed. Now al Qaeda chiefs are said to fear the plague has been passed into other cells...

AP's headline is "Cousins plead guilty in plot to kill US soldiers." But of course they didn't get involved in this plot because they were cousins. The Department of Homeland Security doesn't need to begin a Global War On Cousins. They did this because they wanted to wage jihad. They met the jihad recruiter at a Muslim convention. They were clearly inspired by Islamic teachings regarding the necessity to wage war against unbelievers. But since none of that is suitable for an AP headline, we get...cousins. An update on this story. "Cousins plead guilty in plot to kill US soldiers,"...

Militants are being encouraged to use the online site through postings on other Islamic forums on the Internet. Wednesday, December 3, 2008 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Islamic extremists are being instructed on how to use the popular video-sharing site YouTube as a way to disseminate propaganda videos, a U.S.-based terrorism monitor said on Tuesday. Militants are being encouraged to use the online site through postings on other Islamic forums on the Internet, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. Last week, an extremist authored step-by-step instructions on posting video to YouTube, which he described as "one of the most famous and biggest...

LOI SAM, Pakistan – Pakistan's army captured a key militant stronghold near the Afghan border, a breakthrough in a bloody push against the Taliban and al-Qaida that has claimed 95 civilian lives, the military said Saturday. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said troops on Saturday captured Loi Sam, a town in the Bajur region sitting on a vital intersection connecting the border to three neighboring Pakistani regions. "Now we have complete control in this area from where miscreants used to go to Afghanistan," Abbas told reporters flown into Bajur on a military helicopter Saturday. "Miscreants have been expelled or...

KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistani helicopter gunships, fighter jets and artillery pounded militant hideouts in a Pakistani tribal region bordering Afghanistan on Monday, killing 12 rebels, officials said. The strikes were carried out at militants' hideouts across Bajaur, where Pakistani troops and Islamic extremists have been locked in fierce fighting since August. "Pakistani helicopter gunships, jet fighters and artillery hit militants' hideouts, killing 12 militants and wounding more than a dozen others," a senior security official told AFP. Local administration official Mohammad Jamil confirmed the deaths of 12 Taliban fighters in Monday's offensive.

U.S.-led coalition troops killed 21 militants in two separate clashes in southern Afghanistan, while insurgents killed 10 civilians in the same area, the U.S. military said Thursday. Coalition troops on a security patrol Wednesday in the Shaheed Hasas district of Uruzgan province repelled an ambush by insurgents, killing 12 militants, the U.S. military said in a statement. There were no coalition casualties.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's army chief named a general considered a hawk in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban to head the country's powerful spy agency, asserting his control at a time of U.S. concern that rogue operatives are aiding Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha oversaw military offensives against militants in the lawless border regions with Afghanistan in his most recent job as director general of military operations. His appointment as head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the country's main spy agency, was part of a broader shake-up of army top brass announced...

When it comes to fiscal conservatism, George W. Bush failed us. He has angered fiscal conservatives in both parties. I don't spend much time defending Bush's fiscal record because there's really very little worth defending.   But Bush's failure wasn't because he cut taxes. Bush failed because he failed to cut spending.   P.J. O'Rourke defined fiscal conservatism as follows: "To a true fiscal conservative, tax cuts don't matter much, and neither does the national debt. That is because the real problem is spending. Even the best and most necessary public spending comes with a harrowing price: the percentage of...

"The European Union is now helping pay the salaries and pensions of Palestinian Authority workers. On August 20, officials in Brussels announced that the EU will be providing the PA with an extra €40 million ($58.8 million) in financial aid. This money comes on top of the €440 million ($650 million) in aid the EU pledged to the PA at a donors’ conference in Paris last December." "In addition to covering some of the Palestinian Authority’s salary and pension costs, a part of this European cash has been earmarked for the construction of a new Palestinian security force headquarters in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled to Islamabad and confronted senior officials with evidence of ties between Pakistan's spy agency and militants operating in that country's tribal areas, the New York Times reported in Wednesday editions. The CIA envoy presented information linking members of Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with some militant groups responsible for a string of attacks including the suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month which killed 58 people, the newspaper said. The report, based on accounts by U.S. military and intelligence officials, described the decision to confront Pakistan...

HE exploded into US politics with a message of hope and change that has people around the world believing President Obama will save America and the planet. He’s running a veritable Santa’s Grotto stacked with promises of health care reform, protectionism in trade, cheaper petrol, more money for schools, the space program, veterans, students, infrastructure, as well as lower taxes. He’s promised energy security, an end to the Iraq war, to befriend America’s enemies and remain unindentured to big business and lobbyists. A less optimistic panel of Harvard thinkers at the Centre for Public Leadership recently said the problems facing...