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Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims to attack U.S., European, Israeli and Russian targets in a speech on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. SITE Intelligence Group reports that in a video released by the militant group, Zawahri also criticizes "backtrackers" from jihad, referring to former jihadis who changed their views in prison and called the 9/11 attacks unacceptable because innocent civilians were harmed. Zawahri, an Egyptian, became leader of al Qaeda following the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALS. He is believed to be hiding somewhere in...

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called Wednesday on Muslims to attack U.S., European, Israeli and Russian targets in a speech on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online activity of jihadist groups, reported that in a video released by the militant group, the 68-year-old al-Zawahiri also criticizes "backtrackers" from jihad, referring to former jihadis who changed their views in prison and called the 9/11 attacks unacceptable because innocent civilians were harmed. "If you want Jihad to be focused solely on military targets, the American military has presence all over the world, from the...

The Al-Shabaab terrorist group said on Wednesday it carried out the deadly attack on a Nairobi hotel and office complex in retaliation for US President Donald Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December, AFP reported. The group said in a statement picked up by the SITE monitoring group that its fighters stormed the DusitD2 complex on instructions by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. "It is a response to the witless remarks of the US president, Donald Trump, and his declaration of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel," said Al-Shabaab. The assault with guns and explosives claimed the lives...

"The polonium trail started on 16 October 2006 when Litvinenko met Lugovoi and Kovtun in London. ..." "When Lugovoi and Kovtun's movements were mapped against the sites of polonium contamination, there was an exact match. The evidence of guilt was strong. In May 2007, the then Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald announced that Andrei Lugovoi was to be charged with murder and his extradition would be sought from Russia. Kovtun was charged in 2010. ..." Prof Norman Dombey, a physicist who has a deep knowledge of Russian nuclear sites, gave evidence at the public inquiry. Dombey says there is...

Abu al Khayr al-Masri, the No. 2 man for al Qaeda behind leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been killed by a missile strike in Idlib, Syria, according to multiple sources. Two US officials said al-Masri was killed in an attack directed by the US intelligence community. Abdallah al-Muhaysini, a senior member of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, acknowledged the death in a eulogy posted on his official Telegram channel.

A senior figure from a Syrian rebel group with links to al Qaida was allowed into the United States for a brief visit, raising questions about how much the Obama administration will compromise in the search for partners in the conflict. Labib al Nahhas, foreign affairs director for the Islamist fighting group Ahrar al Sham, spent a few days in Washington in December, according to four people with direct knowledge of the trip and who spoke on condition of anonymity. His previously undisclosed visit is a delicate matter for both sides – the conservative Salafist insurgents risk their credibility with...

Capture of an Ayman al Zawahiri coordinator discussed with the journalists of Long War Journal. Discussion of whether he was involved in the Benghazi attack. Podcast.

Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has warned the US of the “gravest consequences” if Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or any other Muslim prisoner is executed. Tsarnaev, named in Zawahiri’s online video message, was sentenced to death by lethal injection last year for the 2013 bomb attack that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Tsarnaev committed the bombing with his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police in the manhunt that followed it. “If the US administration kills our brother the hero Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or any Muslim,” Zawahri said in an online video, “[it]...

If there is a positive side to the rise of ISIS, it is that the West has had its head jerked from the sand and has been made to witness a bottomless, bloodthirsty evil: crucifixions, beheadings, enslavement of women, live burial of children, mass executions. But as one analyst writes, this violence is not “whimsical, crazed fanaticism, but a very deliberate, considered strategy” – one that seems to derive in part from a book called The Management of Savagery. In the spring of 2004 a strategist who called himself Abu Bakr Naji published online The Management of Savagery: The Most...

Arms dealer .. Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar. Yes he's got a lot of names. Also a longtime associate of Osama bin Laden who helped establish training camps for Al Qaeda after the US bombed them. He served as an explosives and weapons trainer at terrorist training camps. And commanded a training camp. He was an arms dealer who worked with Osama bin Laden and plotted to carry out IED attacks against US forces. He also has ties to Zawahiri and the mastermind of the USS Cole Bombing. He's listed as posing a high risk to the US...

AL-QAEDA’S leadership secretly directed the Islamic militants whose armed revolt at the Red Mosque in Islamabad ended last week with more than 100 deaths after it was stormed by the Pakistan army. According to senior intelligence officials, the troops who finally took control discovered letters from Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were written to Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Abdul Aziz, the brothers who ran the mosque and adjacent madrasah. Government sources said up to 18 foreign fighters � including Uzbeks, Egyptians and several Afghans � had arrived weeks before the final shootout and set up firing ranges to...

The woman who wrote the definitive book on a Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City bombing says the classified terror-threat report at the center of a criminal investigation of former Clinton aide Sandy Berger might include information about a high-level al-Qaida operative having visited OKC ahead of the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building. As WorldNetDaily reported, Berger removed handwritten notes and secret documents from a National Archives reading room prior to his testimony before the 9-11 Commission. One of the documents was the draft of an after-action report he ordered his anti-terror czar, Richard Clarke, to write...

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri again referenced the Benghazi, Libya, attack in an audio tape posted on jihadist websites last week, in remarks that, like all his statements, were immediately carefully scrutinized by counter-terrorism analysts searching for clues about the terrorist network’s operations. Al-Zawahiri had called for Americans to be targeted in Libya the day before the diplomatic mission was attacked, leading to speculation that al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan had some sort of role or influence in the attack.

(CNN) -- A pro-al Qaeda group responsible for a previous armed assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is the chief suspect in Tuesday's attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, sources tracking militant Islamist groups in eastern Libya say. They also note that the attack immediately followed a call from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for revenge for the death in June of Abu Yahya al-Libi, a senior Libyan member of the terror group. The group suspected to be behind the assault -- the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades -- first surfaced in May when it claimed responsibility...

Al Qaeda confirmed that the US killed its military commander for the "Khorasan," or Afghanistan and Pakistan, in a drone strike in Waziristan in early 2014. Sufyan al Maghribi, a Moroccan who served as the group's military chief in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of many unknown al Qaeda leaders who "work in silence and leave in silence," according to a prominent jihadist who reported his death one year ago. Maghribi was also a contributor to the jihadist group’s Vanguards of Khorasan magazine. Maghribi's death was confirmed in a message released yesterday by al Qaeda that featured Ayman al Zawahiri....

File picture of former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. (Agence France-Presse) LAHORE: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has admitted in an interview that Islamabad supported and trained groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in the 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir. The former army chief has also said that Lashkar leaders like Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi enjoyed the status of heroes at that time. Speaking to Pakistani news channel Dunya News on Sunday, Mr Musharraf said, "In the 1990s, the freedom struggle began in Kashmir...At that time, Lashkar-e- Taiba and 11 or 12 other organisations were formed. We supported...

Just ahead of the fourteenth anniversary of al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks on the U.S., the leader of the terrorist group took aim in an angry speech at a mortal enemy -- but not American “crusaders” this time. Rather, the object of his tirade was the leader of ISIS in a declaration of war that will “irreconcilably” divide the two terror groups in a way the U.S. may be able to exploit, experts say. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who replaced Osama bin Laden as the head of al Qaeda four years ago, in a new audio message accused ISIS top...

Retired Army Sgt. 1st Class William Kotel said this was done in an attempt to paint a rosy picture of the coalition's efforts in the Middle East. "They left key information out of intelligence, such as attacks," Kotel said. "The idea was that Al Qaeda was decimated, so therefore it wasn’t part of the threat analysis that should be submitted higher." Kotel said that is very critical information that is important to the nation's safety and security. "The chain of command and higher don't see a clear picture if we leave intelligence out, especially about attacks and any kind of...

In recent days, pro-al Qaeda jihadists claimed to confirm a recent news report saying that several senior al Qaeda leaders have been released from Iranian custody. Sky News reported earlier this week that five veteran jihadists were released in exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been kidnapped in Yemen. Several jihadists on Twitter who are connected to al Qaeda have said the report is accurate. One of them is known as “Al Siyasi al Mutaqa’id,” who has relayed accurate information on al Qaeda in the past. The five jihadists who were reportedly freed are: Saif al Adel, Abu Mohammed...

LONDON (from compiled intelligence briefs) - Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that...