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Legal aid bosses have seized the house belonging to radical cleric Abu Hamza to pay off some of his defence costs. The Legal Services Commission appropriated the property in Greenford, west London, despite Hamza claiming it did not belong to him. It will now be sold in an attempt to pay off some of the £300,000 of taxpayers' money spent on his legal bills. Officials hope to raise £280,000 from the sale. Hook-handed Hamza, 51, is in jail as he attempts to fight extradition to the U.S. on terror charges at the European Court of Human Rights. He is also...

A senior Amnesty International official has been suspended after attacking the human rights charity for allying itself with 'Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban'. Gita Sahgal, head of the organisation's gender unit, branded Amnesty's links to former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg a 'gross error of judgment'. She was removed from her post within a few hours of her criticism...and now a bitter war of words is raging between the activist and her employer. Both have angrily defended their position over Mr Begg, 42, a Briton held at Guantanamo for three years until 2005 because of suspected links to...

On Capitol Hill, there's a war being fought over the War on Terror, and so far, Republicans are winning. Or at least they're winning the Battle of Miranda. GOP lawmakers believe they are having some success in the effort to stiffen the spine of the Obama administration as it makes policy for dealing with captured terrorist suspects in the future. Even as the administration defends its decision to grant accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, the president himself is hinting that things might be done differently in the future. "Should the practice of reading suspected...

A Christian teacher yesterday claimed he was forced out of his job after complaining that Muslim pupils as young as eight hailed the September 11 hijackers as heroes. Nicholas Kafouris, 52, is suing his former school for racial discrimination. He told a tribunal that he had to leave his £30,000-a-year post because he would not tolerate the 'racist' and 'anti-Semitic' behaviour of Year 4 pupils. The predominantly Muslim youngsters openly praised Islamic extremists in class and described the September 11 terrorists as 'heroes and martyrs'. One pupil said: 'Don't touch me, you're a Christian' when he brushed against him. Others...

A security breach at Detroit's Metro Wayne County Airport resulted in the arrest of a man just before 8 a.m. Eastern today. It also prompted re-screenings of hundreds of passengers.

SNIPPET: "Troops say they have seen insurgents sending out boys to lay IEDs, sometimes only 150 yards from British positions. A senior Army source said: ‘The Taliban know that if they get caught in the sights of our snipers, they don’t last long, so they have resorted to hiding behind compound walls and directing children to plant bombs for them. ‘Lots of home-made IEDs detonate before they have even been laid, but the Taliban don’t seem to care whether a child gets killed or maimed. Some boys are as young as 12.’" SNIPPET: "In neighbouring Musa Qaleh district, where Prince...

President Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder issued conflicting statements on how captured Islamic terrorists should be treated. Holder insisted that those like the Christmas day bomber will be handled under existing criminal statutes. This includes advising them of their right to remain silent. “We cannot sacrifice the rights of the accused to the notion that the safety of innocent victims takes precedence,” Holder said. “Saving lives may seem important to some, but preserving our system of jurisprudence has got to be a higher priority.” On the other hand, President Obama asserted that “the idea that we can...

Mumbai: An Emirates airline plane enroute to Dubai aborted take-off at the Mumbai airport on Sunday after an anonymous caller rang up to say that there was a terrorist onboard. The Emirates Mumbai-Dubai flight EK-502, carrying about 356 passengers, was already on runway and scheduled to take off at 9.58 am when the anonymous call came at 9.30 am, an airport official said. Following the call, the flight was called back from the runway and all passengers deplaned. "Checking is on now," an airport official said, adding two passengers were being questioned. Sources said the anonymous caller gave specific information...

I thought Saddam Hussein and the Sunni Muslims were the bad guys. And aren’t Nouri al Maliki and the Shiites the good guys? Oh, wait - I forgot about Muqtada al Sadr. Why can’t I keep this straight? American soldiers and Marines fought like Hell, shed their blood, and died to take down Saddam. So how comes it now that Shiites have kidnapped another American contractor, Issa Salomi (pictured above in a Shiite video out-take), and are holding him as leverage for the release of imprisoned anti-American Shiite warriors? How can there still be Shiite anti-American fighters in Iraq? I...

This fiasco disgusts Americans. A February 1 Rasmussen survey discovered that only 16 percent of likely voters want terrorists to enjoy the same legal rights as U.S. citizens, while 74 percent disagree. Meanwhile, HumanEvents.com (which often posts my columns) has gathered 126,665 signatures on its online petition demanding KSM and company’s ejection from civilian court. “These proceedings will make the O. J. Simpson trial look like a traffic-court hearing,” says Marc Thiessen, author of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack , a new bestseller on the Obama administration’s soft-on-terror...

President Barack Obama's delusional perspective on fiscal issues is only surpassed by his surreal approach to the war on terror, which he doesn't even consistently recognize as a war. The ideological extremism of his policies is only surpassed by his flailing incompetence in administering them. During his presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly denounced President George W. Bush's "unilateralist" and "imperialistic" foreign policy. Obama carefully cultivated an image as a domestic and global healer who could leverage his personal background to rise above internal and foreign bickering and address the root causes of this conflict en route to a peaceful resolution. Frighteningly...

KARACHI — Relatives of a Pakistani scientist found guilty of trying to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan slammed the US justice system on Thursday, declaring her innocent and vowing to fight for her release. A US jury found Aafia Siddiqui, 37, a mother and neuroscientist trained at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, guilty on all charges. She could face life in prison when sentenced on May 6... Siddiqui was accused of grabbing a rifle at an Afghan police station where she was being interrogated in July 2008 and trying to gun down US servicemen. Although she was not charged...

By George FriedmanThis weekend’s newspapers were filled with stories about how the United States is providing ballistic missile defense (BMD) to four countries on the Arabian Peninsula. The New York Times carried a front-page story on the United States providing anti-missile defenses to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, as well as stationing BMD-capable, Aegis-equipped warships in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the front page of The Washington Post carried a story saying that “the Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for...

In Israel and the US, the official reactions to two terror attacks, one resulting in the murder of a 40-year-old father of seven and the other in the realization that increased travel security measures are necessary, seem to indicate that the US still has much to learn from the Jewish state about how to keep civilians safe. In the West, in general, terrorist attacks do not usually garner much attention unless they actually result in death and destruction. However, the December 24th murder of Rabbi Meir Avsholom Chai, a 40-year-old father of seven from Shavei Shomron, was overshadowed by the...

I was listening to a debate on talk radio whether two Liquefied natural gas (LNG) Tankers should be allowed into Boston harbor on 2/11/10. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino had asked that they not be allowed in due to security concerns. But others say it's perfectly safe, that there's plenty of security and so on. And my first impulse was to think, how likely is it that there would be such an attack on a known target with everyone watching?

In their Wall Street Journal op-ed today, David B. Rivkin and Marc Thiessen understated the significance of the Bush doctrine arguments filed on December 18, 2009 by the Department of Justice and used to rebut the Speedy Trial Motion to dismiss the federal case against Ahmed Ghailani. Surely U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara did not file contrary to the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Bharara is no doubt a dedicated public servant. I have great personal faith in his abilities, loyalty to our Nation, and willingness to do all that he can to successfully prosecute Ahmed Ghailani to the...

Five American Muslims in custody in Sargodha threw a handwritten note to reporters from a police vehicle while on their way to a court hearing...Tuesday, stating: “Since our arrest, the U.S.A., F.B.I., and Pakistani police have tortured us,” according to their representative, Khalid Khawaja. A Pakistani relative of one of the men also claimed that the police had threatened to give them electric shocks. A spokesman for the American Embassy in Islamabad, Richard W. Snelsire, said that the United States “categorically rejects those allegations.” Mr. Khawaja, whose organization provided the young men’s lawyer, said a bail hearing would be held...

Quietly, without much fanfare, the U.S. intelligence community started raising numerous red flags on Tuesday of potential imminent terrorists attacks. Instead of the now infamous ‘orange alerts’ that made Tom Ridge a laughingstock, current CIA director Leon Panetta quietly presented his assessment to numerous Senators behind closed doors. The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including “clean” recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. Al-Qaida is also inspiring homegrown extremists to trigger violence on their own, Panetta added.

Should the US outsource its security to a war criminal? The global reach of al Qaeda in Yemen became clear when a Nigerian disciple of the murder cult nearly blew up an airliner over Detroit. In response, the Obama administration is strengthening its support for Yemeni President Ali Abdull...ah Saleh, one of the regions longest serving dictators and one of the most corrupt. President Obama said he hopes to communicate to “Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death, including the murder of fellow Muslims, while the United States stands with...

On the eve of Groundhog Day, it is worth asking whether President Obama's terrorism policy is facing six more weeks of bitter chill. Obama has been forced to backtrack on several signature initiatives -- the commitment to close Guantanamo by Jan. 19, 2010, the commitment to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan, and the hounding of Department of Justice lawyers from the Bush era over interrogation-related rulings -- and it has gotten so bad that over at Politico.com they are asking whether Obama's entire terrorism policy is unraveling. It does appear that the triangulation at...

The five senior leaders of the U.S. intelligence community told a Senate panel Tuesday they are "certain" that terrorists will attempt another attack on the United States in the next three to six months. The warning came during the annual threat briefing to Congress in response to questions from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who asked, "What is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the U.S homeland in the next three to six months? High or low?"

LONDON – Agents for Britain's MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up....

Headline on Drudge. Link says server is too busy. More saber rattling? But if true, is our young, man-child Mowgli prepared to handle?

He's the expert's expert on this issue and it's impossible to ignore his reasoning!In an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post Former CIA Director Michael Hayden describes how the political decisions taken by Obama and his Dept. of Justice have undermined our national security. Covering areas like CIA interrogations and the KSM trial, the op-ed deserves to be read in full. The following excerpts deal primarily with the issues raised by the handling of the Christmas Day aka "Underwear" Bomber: Obama administration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism By Michael V. HaydenWashington Post Sunday, January 31, 2010 ...We got...

As I wrote here in December: "One thing we have seen over the years since 9/11 is that airport security is always one step behind the jihadists: after jihadist Richard Reid attempted to set off a bomb hidden in his shoes, we all have to take off our shoes and send them through security scanners. After a group of jihadists tried to sneak onto planes explosive chemicals hidden in drink bottles, we can't carry drinks through airport security terminals. Because Abdulmutallab attempted his jihad attack just before the plane landed, now we can't get up during the last hour of...

Accused Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried and convicted and is likely to be executed, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Sunday. Interviewed on CNN's "State of the Union," show, Gibbs said: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he's going to meet his maker. He will be brought to justice and he's likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed." Gibbs did not confirm reports that the Obama administration has begun looking for places other than the heart of New York City to prosecute self-professed mastermind Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators...

In Northern Virginia, a private school needed the local county's approval to expand to serve more students. This would have hardly raised an eyebrow had it not been for one particular detail: The school is Islamic, funded by the government of Saudi Arabia. The Islamic Saudi Academy, located in Fairfax County, has long been under the microscope of its opponents. But for residents along the two-lane country road where the school sits, the debate was transformed from a local land-use issue into a heated discussion about the school, its teachings and the relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims in the United...

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Nappertaliano announced that “our efforts against terror have taken a significant step forward with the arrest of James O’Keefe and his accomplices in Louisiana this past week.” O’Keefe is the journalist who gained notoriety last September for exposing corruption in the offices of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). He and three associates were arrested in the Louisiana office of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La) and accused of attempting to “bug” the Senator’s phone lines. “Based on his past activities, it is clear that Mr. O’Keefe represents a real threat to the government...

The positive symbolism of American-style justice – bringing 9/11 terror suspects back to the scene of the crime – marked the Obama administration’s bold decision last year to try the suspects in lower Manhattan, just five blocks from where the twin towers fell. But the cost and practical reality of trying accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Al Qaeda lieutenants in New York City proved...too large a burden. The Obama administration on Friday acknowledged that it has abandoned Lower Manhattan idea and is looking for other sites in New York. The administration says it’s making a pragmatic move...

Here is video of Karl Rove talking with Bill O'Reilly tonight about the White House running scared on having the Terror Detainee trials in New York City. Democrat Senators Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer have apparently told the White House they can't plan to have the trials in New York City. The White House is reportedly looking for another site. Karl Rove said that Feinstein and Schumer have actually saved Obama the embarrassment of the Congress voting to not fund the terror trials there, and they now at least can look elsewhere. But Rove said it does not get at...

10:55 AM Friday, January 29 | Scott Shane of The New York Times says Ken Bazinet’s story in the NY Daily News “is wrong.” Read about our conversation at the bottom of this thread. – p.k. January 29, 12:56 AM | NOTE TO READERS: I began this story to document the slowness of the Times’ coverage of a huge national story that the Daily News ran with hours before, and which was broadcast to the globe by Drudge. However, the story has changed; it is now about a direct conflict between the Daily News’ claim that Obama “ordered” Justice to...

The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane...but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the control of the U.S. government. After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did... We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director...

Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has condemned the US and other industrial economies, holding them responsible for the phenomenon of climate change. In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera, bin Laden criticised George Bush, the former US president, for rejecting the Kyoto pact and condemned global corporations. "This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions - whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take," bin Laden said. "Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact."...

Five years after being barred from the U.S. for making charitable contributions to a group that sent those contributions to the jihad terror group Hamas, internationally renowned Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, often mislabeled “the Muslim Martin Luther,” is allowed to enter the country again. The turnabout comes not because Ramadan has been cleared of these charges, but because Secretary of State Clinton has, in the words of State spokesman Darby Holladay, “chosen to exercise her exemption authority for the benefit of Tariq Ramadan.” Holladay disingenuously suggested that the Bush Administration had barred Ramadan from the country because of his opposition...

Florence, 27 Jan. (AKI) - Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini on Wednesday voiced his opposition to the face veil. Women wearing the garment pose security issues and symbolise "a refusal to integrate" by Muslim immigrants in a host country, he said. ''Let's ask ourselves if covering one's face isn't the first sign of refusal to integrate and closing oneself off... from the host community and its traditions," Frattini said. He was speaking at a conference of young publishers taking place in the Tuscan city of Florence, a day after France moved a step closer to banning the face veil. A...

Refugee Resettlement Watch ably sums up the problem with this below: "On top of that, in many cities around the world, the Somali diaspora is producing jihadist fighters." Among those cities, of course, is Minneapolis. And despite all this, there is still no sign whatsoever that immigration officials are even interested in the jihadist sentiments of the people they are bringing in to the U.S., or that they are making any attempt (an attempt which would be imperfect at best in any case) to screen for them (which is not the same thing as screening for "Al-Qaeda connections," which screening...

When al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off a planned chemical attack on New York's subway system in 2003, he offered a chilling explanation: The plot to unleash poison gas on New Yorkers was being dropped for "something better," Zawahiri said in a message intercepted by U.S. eavesdroppers. The meaning of Zawahiri's cryptic threat remains unclear more than six years later, but a new report warns that al-Qaeda has not abandoned its goal of attacking the United States with a chemical, biological or even nuclear weapon. The report, by a former senior CIA official who led the agency's hunt...

Even the Washington Post has come out in opposition to the Obama administration’s decision to treat the crotch-bomber (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) as nothing more than a common street criminal: Whether to charge terrorism suspects or hold and interrogate them is a judgment call. We originally supported the administration's decision in the Abdulmutallab case, assuming that it had been made after due consideration. But the decision to try Mr. Abdulmutallab turns out to have resulted not from a deliberative process but as a knee-jerk default to a crime-and-punishment model. ~~~ ...Some intelligence officials, including personnel from the Office of the Director...

The inability of theologians to admit their collective cluelessness makes giving kudos to Islamic madmen painful. Yet I am forced to acknowledge that jihadist psychopaths have the minor advantage of uncertainty. While promoting their mass murder, they routinely utter “Allah willing,” a sign that they understand God’s will is both uncertain and indeterminable. Which is why it is safe to say that Allah has abandoned Usama. ... Usama bin Laden’s latest radio rant is further evidence that Allah is unwilling to help Usama or his cruel cause. While claiming to be behind the failed “underwear bomber”, and to be the...

A man is being questioned by police after trying to force his way into the cockpit of a plane flying from Cardiff to the Canary Islands. He was overpowered and restrained by passengers and flight attendants on the 0810 GMT Thomson Airways service. He was arrested by police when the aircraft landed safely at Las Palmas airport in Gran Canaria. Thomson Airways said the man "demonstrated aggressive behaviour towards customers and crew". The company said: "Thomson Airways can confirm that a passenger became disruptive during flight TOM 6102, flying from Cardiff to Las Palmas airport, Gran Canaria, on 25 January,...

The next time there is a terror event on an airplane, does the perpetrator get interrogated or Mirandized, given the right to remain silent the right to lawyer up? It is important for safety that we know ahead of time.

A tape said to be from Osama Bin Laden says al-Qaeda was responsible for a Christmas plot to blow up a plane. In the newly released audio tape aired on al-Jazeera, Bin Laden also warns the US there will be more attacks if it continues to support Israel. "If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn't have carried them to you by planes," the tape says. The authenticity of the tape has not been verified. It says: "The message sent to you with the attempt by the hero Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a...

Prosecutor: Won't waive death penalty in GI shootingsBy By Andrew DeMillo, The Associated Press Friday, January 22, 2010 5:11 p.m. A prosecutor said Friday that he won’t waive the death penalty in the slaying of a soldier outside an Arkansas military recruiting center after the suspect asked to change his plea and claimed ties to al-Qaida. Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley said he still planned to move forward with the June trial of Abdulhakim Muhammad, who faces capital murder and attempted capital murder charges. Pvt. William Long of Conway was killed in the June 1 shooting in Little Rock. Pvt....

LONDON — Britain raised its terror threat alert to the second-highest level Friday, one of several recent moves the country has made to increase vigilance against international terrorists after a Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Europe-U.S. flight. The threat level was raised from "substantial" - where it had stood since July, indicating a strong possibility of a terrorist attack - to "severe," meaning such an attack is considered highly likely. In making the announcement, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the raised security level means that Britain is heightening its vigilance. But he stressed that there was no intelligence suggesting...

All victimization of innocent people is reprehensible. This survey is speaking, rather, about "dislike" of various religions. One may suspect that the widespread "dislike" of Islam comes not from ignorance of it, but from the increasingly common phenomenon of its most devout adherents murdering members of other faiths and justifying those murders by reference to Islamic texts and teachings. See Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan's Power Point presentation for a key example of this. But of course in this AP article it is all ascribed to "Islamophobia" that will be cured with education about Islam. "More Bias In US Against...

The Muslim man who killed one US Army soldier and wounding another outside a Little Rock, Arkansas military recruiting center last spring has asked a judge to change his plea to guilty, claiming ties to Al Qaeda. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad is merely confirming what many already realized. The Little Rock Army Recruiting Center attack has basically been forgotten and the media has either ignored or failed to realize the obvious pattern that it set.

In the tense new world of air travel, we're stripped of shoes, told not to take too much shampoo on board, frowned on if we crack a smile. The last thing we expect is a joke from a Transportation Security Administration screener - particularly one this stupid. Rebecca Solomon is 22 and a student at the University of Michigan, and on Jan. 5 she was flying back to school after holiday break. She made sure she arrived at Philadelphia International Airport 90 minutes before takeoff, given the new regulations. She would be flying into Detroit on Northwest Airlines, the same...

NEW DELHI — Indian airports were on high alert Friday after intelligence services received information that Al Qaeda-linked militants were plotting to hijack a plane. Such an attack would be the first major terror strike against India since 10 militants rampaged through the city of Mumbai for three days in November 2008, killing 166 people. Aviation spokeswoman Moushumi Chakravarty said that the airports were placed on alert Thursday after the government received warnings from the intelligence agencies.(continued)

The attack was treated nearly entirely as a criminal matter!Shocking information came from Wednesday's Senate hearings with the Administration's top intelligence and homeland security officials. At the top of that list was the admission that Nigerian would be bomber Abdulmutallab had been interrogated with an eye towards criminal prosecution by local FBI officials. He was not interrogated by intelligence specialists with an eye towards collecting key information that could prevent future attacks. And after Abdulmutallab was given his Miranda rights, he stopped talking altogether. Just who it was at the Dept. of Justice who made these decisions is not clear....

According to an article by the AP, Muslim groups are pissed off about defense contractor Trijicon using Biblical reference codes in their serial numbers for their tactical gun sights they sell to the military. Muslim groups reacted angrily Wednesday after it emerged that the U.S. military is using combat rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references..... Markings on the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, which is standard issue to U.S. special operations forces, include "JN8:12," a reference to John 8:12: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, 'I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk...