Free Republic

JAKARTA, April 14 (IslamOnline) - Alleged Al-Qaeda operative, Yazid Sufaat, denied terror charges, while he admitted that he met two Arab nationals at his condominium in Kuala Lumpur two years ago, a news report from Malaysiakini.com said on Sunday. However, Sufaat, high on the FBI list of suspects from South East Asia, who might be members or operatives of the Al-Qaeda, stressed the duo could not be involved in the Sept 11 attacks as they were amputees shopping for prosthetic legs in Malaysia. The 37-year-old pathologist and former army captain, who is also a businessmen in Malaysia, told this to...

Rashid Rauf, the suspected ringleader for the 2006 plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, has been killed by a U.S. drone in Waziristan, Pakistan. The news comes as a surprise. What is not surprising is that the 27-year-old British terrorist of Pakistani descent was hiding in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan. Or that he was killed by a Predator drone carrying hellfire missiles launched from a U.S. base in Afghanistan and guided by technicians in Nevada. What’s surprising is that it was the Americans who got him...

Al Qaeda Bag of Shit, Rashid Rauf, heads off to see the virgins Gotta love Hellfire packin' Predators. More . . .

A fugitive British militant linked to an alleged UK plot to use liquid bombs to blow up transatlantic airliners has been killed in Pakistan, reports say. Pakistani media said Rashid Rauf, born in Birmingham, was killed in a US air strike in North Waziristan, a haven for militants and the Taleban. Mr Rauf, on the run after escaping from a Pakistani jail, was alleged to have helped the group planning the attacks. Three men were convicted in the UK in September of conspiracy to murder. News of the liquid bomb plot paralysed global air travel, prompting authorities to implement stringent...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A man who was arrested in Pakistan last year on suspicion of plotting to blow up trans-Atlantic airplanes and who faced extradition to Britain in another case, escaped from his guards Saturday after a court hearing here, officials said Sunday.The suspect, Rashid Rauf, 26, apparently slipped out of his handcuffs and darted away just after the afternoon extradition hearing, said Muhammad Arshad, the station officer at the local Margalla police station. Two of the policemen guarding him were arrested in the incident, he said, but he added that he did not think they had helped Mr....

Rashid Rauf, a British suspect in an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners, escaped from police custody in Pakistan on Saturday, officials said. Rauf escaped after appearing before a judge at a court in the capital, Islamabad, said Khalid Pervez, a city police official. Pervez said Rauf managed to open his handcuffs and evade two police guards who were taking him back to jail in the nearby city of Rawalpindi. "We do not know how he escaped. But we do know he has escaped and the two policemen have been taken into custody for negligence," Pervez told The Associated...

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay. Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred...

Islamabad, Feb 2 (DPA) Pakistan has told Britain that the alleged mastermind of thwarted bombings of transatlantic flights cannot be extradited until his trial in local courts concludes, news reports said on Friday. Pakistani authorities earlier clarified their position to a British delegation that was in Islamabad to finalize an agreement on a joint working group to enhance cooperation against terrorism and organized crimes, the Dawn newspaper reported. 'Rashid Rauf is also an accused in a case being tried in Pakistan, and according to the law of the country, he cannot be handed over to the UK unless the...

Police are trying to trace a gang of British Muslims who are thought to have returned to plot terror attacks in Britain after being trained abroad for more than a year by al-Qaeda, Nine Britons, all said to be in their twenties, were among a group of 12 Western recruits groomed by al-Qaeda at a secret camp near the Afghan border to set up new terror cells in London and other Western capitals. Police do not know the real identities of this gang, who are known as the “English brothers” because of their shared language. As well as nine Britons,...

Excerpt - ISLAMABAD (AFP) - A Pakistani court has dropped terrorism charges against a British man suspected of being a key figure in an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners. Rashid Rauf, 25, was arrested in central Pakistan in early August. Pakistani officials said that his detention led to the uncovering of the conspiracy and that he was linked to Al-Qaeda. ~ snip ~

In December 2001, as the investigation into the U.S. anthrax attacks was gathering steam, coalition soldiers in Afghanistan uncovered what appeared to be an important clue: a trail of documents chronicling an attempt by al-Qaeda to create its own anthrax weapon. The documents told of a singular mission by a scientist named Abdur Rauf, an obscure, middle-aged Pakistani with alleged al-Qaeda sympathies and an advanced degree in microbiology. Using his membership in a prestigious scientific organization to gain access, Rauf traveled through Europe on a quest, officials say, to obtain both anthrax spores and the equipment needed to turn them...

Three months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. Today, in the first of four parts, the role of a Pakistani training camp is revealed.- - - BALAKOT, Pakistan - A worn footpath climbs from the Kaghan Valley highway into the lush mountains above the River Kunar, on Kashmir's western frontier. The locals all know where it leads. An hour's walk up the steep trail there is a training camp built by Islamic militants called Madrassa Syed Ahmed Shaheed...

London, Aug 20: Rashid Rauf, regarded as one of the prime suspects in the terror plot to blow up the US-bound planes from Britain, may be the pivotal figure linking senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to the alleged plotters. Rauf, arrested in Pakistan, was the Pakistani equivalent to the Avon Lady. A successful cosmetics salesman who traveled frequently on business, Rauf was above suspicion in his middle-class neighbourhood, 'The Sunday Times' said in a report today. According to the report, the man now considered one of the prime suspects in the plot, moved into a smart area of Bahawalpur in...

Islamabad - Pakistan has informed US-led coalition forces that an al-Qaeda kingpin linked to an alleged plot to blow up airliners is based in eastern Afghanistan, security officials said on Friday. The senior Pakistani officials said the unnamed al-Qaeda member was based in Afghanistan's volatile eastern province of Kunar, which borders Pakistan's militant-infested north-western tribal areas. The information came from the interrogation of Rashid Rauf, a Briton whose arrest by Pakistani agents in early August allegedly led to the uncovering of the conspiracy to bomb US-bound planes, they said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not identify the...

Up to 50 people worldwide may have been part of the alleged conspiracy to explode bombs on aircraft heading from Britain to the US. New details about the plot are contained in a briefing document from the counterterrorism section of the New York Police Department. "Bombs were to be placed on up to 10 different airliners," the document says. "Explosives were to be detonated mid-flight over the Atlantic … Liquid explosives were to be used as the main charge … [They] would have been smuggled on board … then assembled on board." It says three terrorists would have been assigned...

Terror message prompted authorities to act fast Ian MacLeod and Steven Shukor CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen Saturday, August 12, 2006 LONDON -- A message intercepted from Pakistan this week -- "Do your attacks now" convinced British officials to urgently arrest 24 Britons allegedly planning suicide bombing missions aboard up to 10 U.S.-bound airliners, say security intelligence and British government officials. The message, intercepted and decoded by U.S. intelligence, is one of several pieces of information that indicate a deepening Pakistani connection to the suspected plot. The Pakistan government on Friday named Rashid Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani origin...

Excerpt - The arrest in Pakistan of up to three British men allegedly caught meeting local militants was on Friday night being heralded as the key breakthrough that helped foil a suspected terrorist plot to blow up US-bound aircraft, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. One of those arrested, Rashid Rauf, was last night named by Pakistan’s interior minister as a “key person”. Aftab Khan Sherpao told AP Mr Rauf had ties with al-Qaeda and added: “We arrested him from the border area and on his disclosure we shared the information with British authorities which led to further arrests in Britain.”...

Qaeda Letters Are Said to Show Pre-9/11 Anthrax Plans WASHINGTON, May 20 -Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan began to assemble the equipment necessary to build a rudimentary biological weapons laboratory before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, letters released by the Defense Department show.... The letters are among the documents recovered in late 2001 after the invasion of Afghanistan that United States intelligence officials have frequently cited as evidence that Al Qaeda was working to develop biological weapons.The letters...detail a visit by an unnamed Qaeda scientist to a laboratory at an unspecified location where he was shown "a special confidential room"...

<p>An al Qaeda sleeper agent "wrapped in his cloak of American citizenship" has secretly pleaded guilty to aiding Osama bin Laden by scouting out bridges and railroads for destruction in New York and Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday.</p>