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NBC: Terror network seeks material to explode bomb in U.S. WASHINGTON, April 22 — A captured key strategist for the al-Qaida network told interrogators Monday that al-Qaida was working to obtain fissionable material for radiation bombs to be exploded in the United States, NBC News has learned. U.S. officials could not confirm the assertions of the strategist, Abu Zubaydah, but said they were taking him at his word. SOURCES TOLD NBC News that Zubaydah, believed to be one of the top lieutenants of Osama bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United...

A senior Qaeda militant in Yemen linked to the deadly bombing of an American warship there in 2000 was killed in an airstrike on Sunday, the Yemeni government said, in the latest sign of an escalating American campaign to counter the terrorist threat there. Yemeni authorities said the militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, 37, who has been on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list in connection with the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000, died in the strike in Shabwa Province in one of the rugged tribal areas controlled by insurgents. The Yemen Embassy...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — They knelt in prayer, ignored the judge and wouldn't listen to Arabic translations as they confronted nearly 3,000 counts of murder. The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four co-defendants defiantly disrupted an arraignment that dragged into Saturday night in the opening act of the long-stalled effort to prosecute them in a military court. It wasn't until more than seven hours into the hearing that prosecutors at the U.S. military base in Cuba began reading the charges against the men, including 2,976 counts of murder and terrorism in the 2001 attacks...

A new lawsuit raises the possibility of Tehran's complicity in al Qaeda's infamous attacks. Philip Shenon reports fresh details on who will testify—and the mysteries they could unlock. With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming, a federal lawsuit in Manhattan offers the possibility of resolving a central mystery about the attacks: Was Iran involved? Former investigators on the 9/11 Commission, which uncovered tantalizing but inconclusive evidence of Tehran's ties to the plot, tell The Daily Beast they welcome the lawsuit, because they believe the U.S. government has done little to follow up on the commission's evidence of Iranian...

Thousands of pages of previously secret military documents about detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison now put a name, a history and a face on hundreds of men in captivity there. The documents include details on 158 men on whom no information has ever been released. The hundreds of classified documents - marked "secret" and "noforn" meaning the information is not to be shared with representatives of other countries - are assessments, interviews and internal memos from the Pentagon's Joint Task Force at Guantanamo. The task force was supposed to determine who the detainees were, how they might be connected...

ASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying...

… the remarkable reach of the global-terror network A little-noticed investigation by Swiss federal police has uncovered the existence of an apparent terror-support network with ties to the upper levels of Al Qaeda — including an operative believed to have played a role in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the May 2003 bombing of a housing complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The discovery of a largely invisible Al Qaeda network in the peaceful alpine nation has gotten virtually no public attention outside of Switzerland. But criminal charges outlined in a July 30 Swiss prosecutor’s report —...

WASHINGTON - Pakistani authorities have captured a man accused of playing a leading role in the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of an American warship in Yemen, a catch President Bush called a "major, significant find" in the war against the ailing al-Qaida network. Waleed bin Attash, also known as Tawfiq Attash or just Khallad, coordinated the activities of at least two of the hijackers who crashed into the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. counterterrorism officials said. He is also one of two figures described as masterminds of the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer on Oct....

SAN`A, Yemen (AP) - A Yemeni politician and religious figure - designated a suspected terrorist by the United States - declared his innocence Saturday and called on Washington to substantiate its allegations. On Tuesday, Sheik Abdulmajid al-Zindani, an Afghan war veteran and the spiritual leader of the Islamic-oriented Islah Party, was added to a U.S. Treasury Department list of those suspected of supporting terrorist activities. The allegation claimed al-Zindani, who is in his 60s, had "a long history of working with Osama bin Laden, notably serving as one of his spiritual leaders." The Treasury Department said al-Zindani had actively recruited...

Investigators are trying to determine whether a San Diego sailor passed Navy secrets about security weaknesses and warship movements to a British man accused of having terrorist links, according to court documents unsealed yesterday. E-mail messages from the unnamed sailor, sent in late 2000 and 2001 before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were found in December in computer files belonging to Babar Ahmad, who was detained Wednesday in London, according to the 31-page arrest affidavit. The computer files contained details about security arrangements and movements of the San Diego-based Constellation carrier battle group, which included the destroyer Benfold, on which...

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has arrested 13 suspected members of an Islamic militant group with links to Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman on trial for the September 11 attacks on the United States, Bernama news agency said on Friday. The suspects, belonging to a wing of a group the authorities call Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM), had connections with Moussaoui when he was in Malaysia between September 4 and 15 and again on October 5 in 2000, the state-run news agency quoted Inspector-General of Police Norian Mai as saying. "They were arrested because they are believed to be carrying out activities ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. military prosecutors have requested the death penalty for the alleged mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole warship that killed 17 U.S. sailors in 2000, the Pentagon said on Monday. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian national of Yemeni descent being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, faces eight charges, including murder and terrorism, for the attack in the Yemeni port of Aden on October 12, 2000, that wounded 47 sailors. Prosecutors have also charged al-Nashiri over a failed attack on another U.S. warship, the USS The Sullivans, in Aden in January 2000 and an attack...

Obscure al-Qaida Chemist Worries Experts By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 7 minutes ago He's a mystery in a red beard, with a strange alias and a degree in chemical engineering. In the hands of this alleged al-Qaida operative, it's a specialty that summons visions of poison gas and mass terror. Al-Qaida is "wedded to the spectacular," notes U.S. counterterrorism analyst Donald Van Duyn, and elusive Egyptian chemist Midhat Mursi was said to be exploring such possibilities when last seen, brewing up deadly compounds and gassing dogs in Afghanistan. Van Duyn's FBI and other U.S. agencies are interested enough...

The secret war On the North-West Frontier, soldiers are trying to tighten the noose around bin Laden's forces. But in Europe and America, there is no clear enemy to fight - yet every expert knows that a terrorist atrocity is coming Mark Townsend in Tangier, John Hooper in Madrid, Greg Bearup in Peshawar, Paul Harris in Washington, Peter Beaumont in Baghdad, Antony Barnett, Martin Bright, Jason Burke and Nick Pelham in London Sunday March 21, 2004 The Observer There were shadows in the rocks. As the 12 US Special Forces soldiers arrived at a remote mountain region in eastern Afghanistan...

Yemeni al Qaeda leader Jamal Badawi has surrendered to police in Yemen. Badawi was the leader of the al Qaeda cell that responsible for the December 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. Al Qaeda carried out the bombing using suicide attackers in explosive-laden inflatable boats. Seventeen 17 US sailors were killed in the strike. The FBI placed a $5 million reward for Badawi's capture. Badawi is believed to have surrendered to authorities after negotiations with the government to halt attacks in exchange for a reduced sentence or freedom if he promises to eschew violence....

The U.S. citizen killed by a missile launched from a pilotless drone aircraft over Yemen was the ringleader of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in Lackawanna, N.Y., administration officials said yesterday. Kamal Derwish, one of two unindicted co-conspirators in the Lackawanna case, died along with the intended target of the attack, senior al Qaeda leader Abu Ali al-Harithi, who is accused of masterminding the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in which 17 sailors died. These two men and four others were traveling in a car outside the Yemeni capital of Sanaa when they were hit by a Hellfire...

JERUSALEM - The international media this week buzzed with the news that Israel had accused the UN of allowing its ambulances in Gaza to participate in terrorist activities, only to back down when local representatives of the world body fought back. But far less attention was given to the fact that the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) in the Gaza Strip openly admitted Monday to having Hamas members on the payroll.