Free Republic

Every year, as we enter a New Year, my mind goes back to Daniel Pearl, the Mumbai-based American correspondent of Wall Street Journal, who met with a brutal end to his young life during a visit to Karachi in January 2002 to enquire, inter alia, into the suspected Pakistani links of international jihadi terrorists. In his keenness to find out the truth, Pearl fell into a treacherous trap laid by a mixed group of Pakistani terrorists belonging to different organisations and orchestrated by Omar Sheikh, a British resident of Pakistani origin, who had participated in the so-called jihad against the...

ABC News is reporting that Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert. The disgrunted intelligence officers even disclosed an actual list of 12 high-value targets allegedly held by the CIA, and ABC is reporting it : Abu Zubaydah: Held first in Thailand then Poland Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi: Held in...

The 9/11 Commission claimed to have discounted the testimony of Captain Scott Phillpott in July 2004 on Able Danger specifically because of his assertion about when his team identified Mohammed Atta as a potential al-Qaeda terrorist in the United States. The official timeline for the Commission on Atta starts on June 3, 2000, when INS records the first of only three entries for Atta in Newark, New Jersey. Captain Phillpott insists that his team ID'd Atta in the US in January or February 2000, months earlier. I covered the timeline issues in my Daily Standard column and in my follow-up...

<p>WASHINGTON — A worldwide manhunt is on for a Yemeni man who was supposed to be the 20th hijacker on Sept. 11.</p> <p>Ramzi Omar, also known as Ramsi Binalshibh, is believed to have intended to be part of the terror team that hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) --U.S. investigators believe that a man being sought by German authorities in connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks was the intended 20th hijacker, sources told CNN Thursday.</p> <p>The man, Ramzi Binalshibh, also known as Ramzi Omar, is the focus of a worldwide manhunt. Sources said he tried to enter the United States several times with the help of Mohamed Atta -- a key figure among the alleged hijackers -- but never gained entry.</p>

The Daily Standard has just published my latest column, which reveals to those who missed my earlier post on the arrests of two Iraqi spies in Heidelberg during February 2001. The discovery of these agents, especially given the time frame, should set off warning bells about potentially devastating connections to the 9/11 plot: In the years following the 9/11 attacks, there has been much argument about the nature of Saddam Hussein's connections to terror. How could the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission fail to consider this, given the other activity occurring in Germany during this period: * Mohammed Atta...

According to The New York Times (8 July 2003): "the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said today that its work was being hampered by the failure of executive branch agencies, especially the Pentagon and the Justice Department, to respond quickly to requests for documents and testimony." Several alternative media have joined the bandwagon. George W. Bush is accused of obstructing the investigation...Former Jersey governor Thomas Kean, the commission's chairman is presented as an honest and uncompromising individual, who is courageously confronting the US government: "Without greater cooperation, Kean said, ''we cannot do the job we are supposed...

don't have time to elaborate - see for yourself. This guy was the one Able Danger team briefed who decided it was not worthy of inclusion into the 9/11 report or even to the ears of comittee members since it did not fit their conclusions about Atta. THIS NEEDS TO P*O*P!

The links between Nick Berg and Zacarias Moussaoui, once described as the 20th hijacker of 9/11, opened now room for new speculations, if there are deeper ties between the OKC Bombing'95 and 9/11, than thought before. Apparently Berg knew also Moussaoui's roomates. One of them was Mujahid Menepta, who is connected to both 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 OKC bombing. But Menepta wasn't arrested in Summer 2001, when Moussaoui got caught. The FBI waited until after Sep11th.Why?Berg, Moussaoui and the OK bombing tieshttp://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=269 By Ewing20012004/5/24 On May 18th, 2004, according to Newsmax, Nick Berg's family insisted that...

HAMBURG, Germany, Aug. 10 — A German court today began a retrial of Mounir el-Motassadeq, the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with the disclosure that the United States will for the first time share evidence about the plot. Mr. Motassadeq's conviction was thrown out in March by an appeals court, which said that critical evidence had been withheld by American authorities. After having been sentenced to 15 years in prison, Mr. Motassadeq was freed in April. The decision by the United States to offer limited cooperation to the Germans introduces a combustible element to...

A Dutch television programme claims one of the organisers of the September 11 terrorist attacks looked into the possibility of taking flying lessons in the Netherlands. Yemeni national Ramzi Binalshibh, who is now in prison in the United States, met with the director of a Dutch flying school, who advised him to take lessons in the US because it was less expensive there. The pilot of the second plane to crash into the World Trade Centre also spent some time in the Netherlands. He is believed to have participated in Islamic seminars in Eindhoven.

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Fedayeen was the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday, which was deployed to do much of the regime's dirty work. The U.S. has never been sure Shakir was at the Kuala...

A young man went in to buy a car and realized he had been mistakenly identified as a terrorist. Ryan Allen (pictured, left), 19, turned up on a government list that includes Osama bin Laden and members of al-Qaida. Allen wanted to buy a new Chevrolet Cavalier. He filled out the paperwork at a Kansas City dealership and then the results of the credit bureau check came back. "I filled out the credit thing. I'm probably sitting there an hour ... hour and a half," Allen said. But the dealership's manager came back with what Allen thought was an odd...

Operation Infinite Freedom Link to the previous thread Good Morning. Welcome to the daily thread of Operation Infinite Freedom - Situation Room. It is designed for general conversation about the ongoing war on terror, and the related events of the day. In addition to the ongoing conversations related to terrorism and our place in it's ultimate defeat, this thread is a clearinghouse of links to War On Terrorism threads. This allows us to stay abreast of the situation in general, while also providing a means of obtaining specific information and mutual support.

KARLSRUHE, Germany - The only person in the world convicted in the Sept. 11 attacks won a retrial Thursday after an appeals court faulted Washington for refusing to allow testimony from a key al-Qaida captive. The Federal Criminal Court overturned the conviction of Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan, leaving German prosecutors with little to show for their efforts to pursue suspects who may have belonged to the Hamburg cell that included three of the suicide hijackers. A month ago, el Motassadeq's friend Abdelghani Mzoudi was acquitted of identical charges of giving logistical aid to the cell. Relatives of Sept. 11...

HAMBURG, Germany - A Moroccan charged with aiding a Hamburg al-Qaida cell that included three of the Sept. 11 hijackers can remain free while his trial continues, a court announced Tuesday, rejecting a request by prosecutors to return him to custody. The Hamburg state court freed Abdelghani Mzoudi on Dec. 11 after German federal investigators presented a statement quoting an unidentified informant as saying that only four people in Hamburg knew of the Sept. 11 plot — not including Mzoudi. Prosecutors lost a federal appeal against the decision Friday. On Tuesday, the Hamburg court said it had denied their second...

BERLIN -- A Saudi diplomat met a member of the Hamburg, Germany, terrorist cell shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., according to a confidential police report.The diplomat, Muhammed Fakihi, is said to have met Mounir el-Motassadeq when the 29-year-old Moroccan was contemplating fleeing Germany. A few days after the November meeting, Mr. Motassadeq was arrested. This year, he was convicted of accessory to murder in 3,066 cases and of membership in a terrorist organization. He is the only person world-wide to have been convicted for participating in the attacks.The alleged meeting is detailed in a two-page...

THE two main planners of the September 11 terrorist attacks have revealed details of Osama bin Laden's close involvement in organising the atrocity, according to leaked transcripts of their interrogations. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, who were captured in Pakistan and are in US custody, have disclosed that bin Laden chose the pilots who flew the doomed jets and headed a committee that debated details of the attacks. The pair have filled in many of the gaps in knowledge about how the attacks were planned, and have named previously unknown co-conspirators and other fellow al-Qaeda members, according to...

A wedding video shot in a Hamburg mosque has been broadcast for the first time and shows grainy scenes of Sept. 11 al-Qaida suicide pilots celebrating with other alleged plotters, possibly including suspects still not formally identified. The video of the October 1999 wedding of Said Bahaji being celebrated in a large room at the al Quds mosque suspected as a recruiting center for al-Qaida operatives has been in the hands of investigators since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks, the Bahaji wedding video provided investigators critical...

<p>WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Jailed Al-Qaida member Zacarias Moussaoui says he was part of a planned second-wave terrorist attack outside the United States after Sept. 11 2001, lawyers assisting him said in declassified documents made public Tuesday.</p> <p>The disclosure in papers unsealed by a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., is the most detailed acknowledgment by Moussaoui that he was preparing to participate in an attack when he was detained in the Twin Cities on Aug. 16, 2001. He was taken into custody after arousing suspicious while learning to fly a jumbo jetliner at an Eagan flight school.</p>