Free Republic

Pakistani news outlets reported Tuesday that al Qaeda had selected Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian former special forces commander, to be the interim head of the Islamist terrorist group. According to the News International, an English-language newspaper, “the issue of the succession of Osama bin Laden was resolved in a meeting of al-Qaeda held at an undisclosed location.” The reports in the Pakistani press said al-Adel will be the interim leader of al Qaeda while Muhammad Mustafa Yamni, a Yemeni living somewhere in Africa, is being groomed for the top post. U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday could not confirm the reports....

Iran to Put Dozen Al Qaeda Captives on Trial Fri January 23, 2004 11:45 AM ET DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Iran plans to put about a dozen jailed al Qaeda suspects on trial, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Friday. "They are currently in prison. Their relations are cut off from outside and they are going to be tried," Kharrazi told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The most important al Qaeda figure that Western intelligence agencies say may be in Iran is an Egyptian -- Saif al-Adel, the network's security chief. Kharrazi declined to comment on whether Iran...

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...

Canada bankrolled man's aid agency during that time U.S. authorities have tied a Canadian aid worker to the al-Qaeda terrorist network as far back as 1988, almost a decade before the Canadian government cut off funding to his Ottawa-based Muslim charity. Evidence unsealed by a U.S. judge in Chicago shows Ahmed Said Khadr had dealings with senior al-Qaeda leaders while being financed by the Canadian International Development Agency. Although CIDA stopped giving aid money to Mr. Khadr in 1997 after he was arrested for allegedly bombing an embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, the documents allege he was working with al-Qaeda long...

Abdullah Khadr, the eldest son of a reputed Canadian Al Qaeda financier, was arrested by the RCMP yesterday on terrorism-related charges at the request of American authorities. The 25-year-old Canadian recently returned from Pakistan where he was held for 14 months without charge. He was arrested last night after agreeing to meet an RCMP officer at a McDonald's near his Scarborough apartment, his relatives said last night. His mother, Maha Elsamnah tried to intervene in the arrest and was also taken into custody, but later released without charges. Khadr's brother, 22-year-old Abdurahman was also at the fast food restaurant and...