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ALBANY, N.Y. - Two Muslim men caught up in an anti-terrorism sting operation pleaded innocent Friday as details emerged about 10 new charges against them. Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain were accused Thursday of attempting to provide support to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based group listed by the federal government as a terrorist organization. Aref, who leads a mosque, also was charged with lying to federal officials. The pair were initially charged in August 2004 with conspiring to launder money and promoting terrorism. They now face a total of 30 charges. Entered as new evidence against Aref were entries in his personal...

Two New York mosque leaders charged with conspiring to support terrorists. Amazing how they could have risen to the leadership of a Muslim religious center while so thoroughly misunderstanding Islam. Funny thing: the same thing happened in Lodi, California. And all over the world, as we document here every day, we see Islamic clerics -- people who have dedicated their lives to studying and living out the religion -- at the forefront of terrorist movements. And yet so many people refuse to see what is right in front of their faces: maybe they aren't misunderstanding Islam at all. Aref and...

CANBERRA, Australia - The Australian government on Wednesday re-listed Ansar al-Islam, Lashkar-e Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad, from Pakistan, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as terrorist organisations, Efe news agency reported. These organisations, which have been listed since 2003, would continue to be listed for another three years, according to a statement from the Australian Attorney-General's Department. Under this measure, it remains a criminal offence to direct the activities of, be a member of, recruit for, train for or receive training from these groups. It would also be a criminal offence to get funds to, from, or for, provide support to,...

World 15 Islamist Kurds suspected of planning attacks arrested across Europe 12/11/2015 BARCELONA, Spain - Radical Kurdish cleric "Mullah Krekar" and 14 other Iraqi Kurds were arrested across Europe on Thursday in a coordinated police swoop on Islamist militants planning attacks, Italian media reported. The Corriere della Sera newspaper said the suspects were arrested in countries across Europe in collaboration with police from Italy, the UK, Norway, Finland, Germany and Switzerland. A non-Kurd, a man from Kosovo, was also arrested. Among the suspects picked up for links to the Islamic State group (ISIS), seven were arrested in Italy, four...

Two years ago this month, the U.S. television network NBC had the bright idea to create a reality show about vigilante terrorist hunters who would do something unspecified to terrorists who had evaded the long reach of justice. The first episode of the execrable series, "The Wanted," put the spotlight on Mullah Krekar, an Iraqi national flagged by the United States, the U.N., and Interpol for his involvement with Iraqi terrorist groups. The program showed NBC's terror team stalking Krekar on the streets of Oslo, a venture that was depicted as extremely dangerous, although Krekar was always just a phone...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Only the Islamic State (ISIS) can “fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” said firebrand Kurdish cleric Mulla Krekar, who was recently freed from a Norwegian jail. “The Islamic State is not something strange; it is the only element that can fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” he said in an Al Jazeera interview. The 58-year-old preacher added that all Muslims calling for resistance to the extremist Sunni ISIS “Caliphate” are “cowards,” and accused them of following orders from the United States and Shiite Iran. He called upon ISIS to appoint someone “with the courage to fight the infidels...

SNIPPET: "Mullah Krekar, the Norway-based Islamic extremist, is under investigation by German police for seeking to establish a Europe-wide terror network, Sweden's Expo magazine has reported.   The Germans have asked Sweden to interrogate a 28-year-old man from Västerås, who was in contact with Krekar in 2010.    "The German police have requested that we interrogate him, and they want it done in a court of law," Prosecutor Ronnie Jakobsson told the magazine.    Although the man is not suspected of any crime, German police believe that he has information about an Islamist terror network they suspect Krekar and another...

SNIPPET: "New York City is the center of a public uproar as Internet blogger Pamela Gellar rises with an “anti-jihad” ad campaign." SNIPPET: "Gellar and her group are protesting the Jihad, which in definition is the religious duty of Muslims. According to the Dictionary of Islam, jihad is defined as “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad . . . enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims.” The literal meaning of jihad, according to the British Broadcasting Network, “is struggle or effort, and it means much more than...

SNIPPET: "Two brothers of Kurdish origin are being prosecuted by the Swiss authorities on charges of being involved via the internet with an Islamic terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda. The asylum seekers are accused of setting up internet platforms that were designed to attract new members to the recently formed terrorist organisation, issue propaganda, pass on messages to the al-Qaeda network and disseminate details of terror attacks.
 
In addition, the brothers are alleged to have downloaded videos of executions and stored them on their computers.
 
According to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office, the unnamed terrorist organisation was headed by Kurdish extremist cleric Mullah Krekar,...

Norway has been unable to deport radical Islamic cleric Mullah Krekar but found a way on Monday to keep him in confinement at least for a few years. A city judge in Oslo sentenced Krekar on Monday to five years in jail for making threats against a former government minister and several identified Muslims who he felt have abandoned their faith. It was here, at a meeting with members of the Foreign Press Association in Oslo, that Mullah Krekar made death threats against former cabinet minister Erna Solberg. PHOTO: Nina Berglund/Views and News The sentence was exactly what prosecutors had...

SNIPPET: "The 55-year-old mullah, whose real name is Najmeddine Faraj Ahmad and who has lived in Norway since 1991, founded the Ansar al-Islam group. He was found guilty of threatening the life of Erna Solberg, an ex-minister who signed his expulsion order in 2003 because he was considered a threat to national security. "Norway will pay a heavy price for my death," he said during a meeting with international media in June 2010. "If for example Erna Solberg deports me and I die as a result, she will suffer the same fate," he said in Arabic. "I don't know who...

SNIPPET: "OSLO, Norway, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- A Muslim extremist leader facing terrorism charges from his Norwegian hosts said this week he's planning on leaving for his native Kurdistan. Najmaddin Faraj, who goes by the name Mullah Krekar, in the 1990s was one of the co-founders of the Kurdish extremist group Ansar al-Islam, which Western officials say has links to al-Qaida." SNIPPET: "Krekar is due in Oslo District Court next month to face terrorism charges, the news agency said. Should he instead return to Kurdistan, he won't be facing any charges from the PUK, a party lawyer told Rudaw."

Norway’s Progress Party has called for the immediate arrest of Mullah Krekar after the firebrand jihadist spoke of the need for renewed terrorist attacks on the United States. The Norway-based extremist made the comments in an interview with Finland’s MTV3. He also claimed that Islam “will control the entire world” within the next 20 years. More than a decade on from the devastating terrorist attacks in the United States that left almost 3,000 people dead, Krekar said: “They have learned nothing from the 9/11 attacks. That’s why they need two more attacks. It’s the only way the Americans will understand...

OSLO, Norway (AP) — A Norwegian prosecutor has filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he's deported from the Nordic country.

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal. His crime? Spreading “hatred.” The...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

After months of quiet diplomacy, the Norwegian government has given up on efforts to send former terrorist-group leader Mullah Krekar back to his homeland. Krekar, who has been under an expulsion order after being determined a threat to Norway's national security, initially came to Norway as a refugee from Iraq in the early 1990s. It later emerged that he was the head of guerrilla group Ansar al-Islam and he repeatedly violated the terms of his asylum by travelling back to northern Iraq to lead guerrilla activities. Krekar is the only person in Norway ever to have been sentenced to deportation...

Still in Control Pervez Musharraf was calm, confident and—despite a flurry of rumors—not about to announce his resignation. Instead, the Pakistani president's "concession" to his troubled nation was an announcement that he would allow Britain's Scotland Yard to help local law enforcement agencies with their investigation into last week's assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Speaking in a nationally televised address two hours after Pakistan's election commission announced the postponement of the ballot to Feb. 18, six weeks later than had been scheduled, Musharraf was notably deferential in his remarks about Bhutto, often invoking her "martyrdom" and extolling...

U.S. to Offer Turkey Help on PKK The U.S. is to offer Turkey a package of measures to dissuade Ankara from mounting a large-scale military incursion into Iraq to attack PKK Kurdish guerrillas, who have killed scores of Turkish soldiers in recent weeks. Ahead of a meeting in Washington on Monday between President George W. Bush and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, U.S. officials said Ankara would have to get concrete American help to combat the PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq from where it frequently launches attacks into Turkey. “Erdogan has to go back with the...