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A cab driver who was accused of kidnapping a female passenger in Chicago and then sexually assaulting her pleaded guilty this week to one count of criminal sexual abuse causing bodily harm in exchange for a sentence of two years of probation, according to court records. Prosecutors dropped five Class X felony charges in their deal with Tarek Masri, including multiple counts of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Masri, now 59, was arrested at his Joliet home in 2018 after DNA material generated a hit in the sexual assault, which occurred three years earlier, police said. Early on...

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan security forces have killed Abu Muhsin al-Masri, a senior al Qaeda leader who was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) said in a tweet late on Saturday. Al-Masri has been charged in the United States with having provided material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation, and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. Al-Masri, believed to be al Qaeda’s second-in-command, was killed during a special operation in Ghazni province, the NDS said. The FBI declined to comment. The al Qaeda operative, who also went by the...

Turkey al-Qaida Leader Said Killed in Iraq Fri Sep 10, 2:52 PM ET By JAMES C. HELICKE, Associated Press Writer ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish television broadcast on Friday a video from militants saying that the suspected leader of a Turkish al-Qaida cell blamed for suicide bombings in Istanbul was killed by U.S. airstrikes in Iraq (news - web sites). The video showed a body of a bearded man with a bloody face said to be that of Habib Akdas. A man, apparently a Turkish militant, was heard in the video saying Akdas was killed in a bombing raid this week...

Bin Laden Plotted New Attack By SIOBHAN GORMAN Osama bin Laden was working to assemble a team of militants to attack the U.S. on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, according to communications Navy SEALs seized from his Pakistani hideout when they killed the al Qaeda leader this spring. Bin Laden and his operations chief, Attiyah Abd al-Rahman, swapped views about the composition of the attack team, with bin Laden repeatedly rejecting names that Mr. Rahman suggested, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence taken from the bin Laden compound. The plans were only in the discussion phase, U.S. officials...

Pajamas Media | Friday, December 12, 2008 The funeral for Shirwa Ahmed last week in Burnsville, Minnesota, punctuated a growing national security threat metastasizing inside the U.S. — one Homeland Security and law enforcement authorities have quickly taken note of. Ahmed, who killed himself in a suicide bombing attack in Somalia in October, is just one of up to 40 men from the Twin Cities area who have disappeared and are feared to have returned to their homeland for training with the al-Shabaab terrorist group to wage jihad. The FBI is investigating similar disappearances in other major Somali communities in...

A 26-year-old Chicago man was trying to help finance al-Qaida and hoped to blow himself up in a suicide mission, authorities say. Shaker Masri was arrested Tuesday evening and charged by federal prosecutors on Wednesday with knowingly intending to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States. Authorities said Masri told an FBI informant that he planned to go to Somalia and help al-Qaida, and asked the informant for money to help buy guns once they got there. He also told the informant that he hoped to become a martyr by wearing a suicide vest, the criminal complaint...

...possible successors to the [Zarqawi]. One of them, Iraq-based Egyptian terrorist Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was also named by Major-General William Caldwell... The other two are an Iraqi named Abu Aseel and a Syrian named Abu al-Ghadia. Masri (reportedly... born in 1966) is believed to have entered Iraq to join Zarqawi in 2002 and founded a cell for al-Qaeda in Baghdad. ...Masri received his training at military camps in Afghanistan during the Taliban rule and met bin Laden at the Farouk Camp, where Masri was working as an instructor... is also reportedly close to Egyptian Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri... Abu Aseel and...

Al-Qaeda has confirmed the death of a chemical and biological weapons expert whose killing in a suspected US strike was reported by Pakistan, an Islamist militant website said on Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT Abu Khabab al-Masri was among a group of "heroes" who joined "the caravans of martyrs," said a statement signed by Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, Al-Qaeda's general commander in Afghanistan.

Officials: Al Qaeda's Mad Scientist Killed One of al Qaeda's top chemical and biological weapons experts was killed in an air strike by a CIA pilotless drone in a remote Pakistani border region, senior Pakistani intelligence officials told CBS News Tuesday morning. Intelligence officials investigating the Sunday night missile attack confirmed that Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri was one of six men killed and his remains had been positively identified. "We now have a positive ID on the body. I can confirm to you that Al-Masri has been killed,"

The militant is known as Abu Ubaida al Masri, and charting his path reveals his vulnerabilities and those of the terrorist group. COPENHAGEN -- If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it's likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers. His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic "spectacular" aimed at U.S.-bound...

LONDON (Reuters) - A British court ruled Thursday that radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri could be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges including trying to set up an al Qaeda training camp in Oregon. Egyptian-born Hamza, 49, serving a seven-year jail term in Britain for inciting his followers to murder nonbelievers, is wanted by U.S. authorities on 11 charges. The U.S. indictment accuses Hamza -- who had a hook in place of a missing hand -- of attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, from 1999 to early 2000, and also providing...

Excerpt: Use of poisons U.S. intelligence officials believe that Marri trained for two years in Afghanistan, among other things receiving instruction in the use of poisons and toxins at the Derunta camp near Jalalabad, sources said. He is believed to have trained under Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Egyptian specialist in chemical and biological weapons who was killed ... *** U.S. authorities allege that Marri had gone to the United Arab Emirates in August 2001 to get more than $13,000 in cash from Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster for the Sept. 11 plotters. *** The Islamic Assembly of North America,...

GERMAN prosecutors have ordered arrest warrants for 13 people working for the CIA in connection with the alleged kidnapping of a Lebanese-born German man, public broadcaster NDR reported today. Authorities in the southern city of Munich are probing allegations by Khaled el-Masri that he was abducted by US agents in the Macedonian capital Skopje on New Year's Eve 2003 and flown to a prison in Afghanistan for interrogation before he was released five months later in Albania. Masri has said he was tortured while imprisoned. The Munich prosecutor's office declined to confirm the report. NDR said that the 13 suspects...

Picture Proof: The Saddam-Al Qaeda Connections The following information did not make it into the Senate Intelligence Committee's report released last Friday, that claimed Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates. What do you suppose the committee had to say about these documents? Captured Iraqi Document ISGC-2004-019920 Page 6From blogger The Dread Pundit Bluto: ISGZ-2004-0199202002 Iraqi Intelligence Correspondence concerning the presence of al-Qaida Members in Iraq. Correspondence between IRS members on a suspicion, later confirmed, of the presence of an Al-Qaeda terrorist group. Moreover,...

Dad is a coward, a hypocrite and he deserves to rot in jail By Rajeev Syal In an exclusive interview, Donna Traverso tells The Times about the man who tore her family apart SHE knew him simply as Dad, a kindly presence in her life who would tell her that she was “his little girl” as she nestled in his muscular arms. Now Donna Traverso, 25, despises her former stepfather Abu Hamza al-Masri for shattering her family and abandoning her at the age of 5. In her first interview, she tells The Times how the Egyptian disappeared with her beloved...

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has authorised a reward of up to $A6.7 million for information leading to wanted Al Qaeda leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri in Iraq. Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli says the reward has been offered in the hope it would encourage persons to come forward with information on al-Masri. The State Department says al-Masri is an Egyptian national and a senior Al Qaeda leader in Iraq. He is a direct associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who was recently killed by US forces. "Trained in Afghanistan and...

BAGHDAD, June 16, 2006 – The new lead terrorist in Iraq is a founding member of al Qaeda in Iraq and had a close relationship with the now-killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, coalition officials said. Officials revealed yesterday that Abu Ayyub al-Masri succeeded Zarqawi following the Jordanian terrorist's elimination June 7 in a precision-bomb attack on his safe house in Iraq. They said Masri fully bought into Zarqawi's bloody tactics that have left thousands of innocent men, women and children across Iraq dead or maimed. Al-Masri - which means "the Egyptian" - is another foreign fighter who trained in Afghanistan like...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US military released pictures of the man it said was the successor of slain Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. US-led coalition forces spokesman Major William Caldwell said the new leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, alias Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Mohajer, was believed to be operating out of Baghdad.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Information Germany shared with the United States may have prompted the CIA to abduct a German citizen and fly him to Afghanistan for interrogation as a suspected terrorist, a newspaper reported on Friday. The report added to pressure on the government to reveal what officials may have known about the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who is suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment after being held in an Afghan prison for five months last year."It is possible that information we exchanged with the U.S. authorities alerted the CIA to Masri," an unnamed German security official...

A suit was filed Tuesday in the United States on behalf of a German man who alleges he was kidnapped and tortured by U.S. agents for five months in 2004. The suit charges the man was mistakenly suspected of being an associate of the 9/11 hijackers. Khaled Masri, a 42-year-old man of Lebanese decent, claims that he was taken on New Year's Eve 2003 by CIA operatives from his vacation in Macedonia to a prison in Afghanistan.