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DETROIT - A Cleveland imam convicted of hiding terrorist ties has agreed to leave the United States, ending his deportation case, his attorney and government officials said Thursday. The agreement allows Fawaz Damra to resettle in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Egypt or the Palestinian territories, said Greg Gagne, a spokesman for the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review. A judge has approved the agreement with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which will decide his destination. Damra is still in federal custody, said Robert Birach, a Detroit lawyer who negotiated for him. He declined to discuss more...

SO it wasn't a political stunt. It isn't about Iraq. And the threat of Islamist terror right here is more real than many pretend. How real? If the police are right, they have saved scores of you from being blown up -- as people in Madrid and London were blown up. As NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney put it, the arrest yesterday of 17 Muslim men disrupted "the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack". He said explosive material had already been collected. Yet only last week, Prime Minister John Howard was pilloried by many for having warned of an...

A SYDNEY man allegedly telephoned the suspected leader of al-Qa'ida in Spain – Abu Dahdah – seeking help to move a "brother" and his family throughout Europe. The allegation about former Qantas baggage handler Bilal Khazal – made in documents tendered in Mr Dahdah's terrorism trial – contradicts claims by him that he had never spoken to the alleged terror chief, or even knew who he was. As more details of a network of alleged terror supporters in Australia emerged yesterday, it has been claimed a second Australian named in the Spanish court documents, Melbourne cleric Sheikh Mohammed Omran, was...

Victim's brother targeted bomber By John Stapleton16sep03 THE brother of a Bali bombing victim has claimed he travelled to the island to kill one of the bombers during the trials. "The courtroom - well I tell you straight, I had organised my will and I was going there to kill him," Louie Zervos told the ABC's Four Corners last night. "I got there the day before and I went to kill him. "I finally got my senses about me and I couldn't really move in anyway, the feds were all over me." Mr Zervos, from the eastern Sydney suburb...

CLEVELAND -- A federal judge made a decision today involving convicted Islamic leader Imam Fawaz Damra's U.S. citizenship.Judge James Gwin ordered that Damra's citizenship be revoked, with the understanding from the government that he will not be detained while pending appeal.Damra was sentenced Monday to two months in federal prison and four months of house arrest for lying about his connections to terrorist groups when he applied for U.S. citizenship.Damra is expected to begin serving his sentence after the Muslim holiday of Ramadan ends in November.Damra is the leader of Ohio's largest mosque, the Islamic Center of Cleveland in Parma.

Washington- Cleveland Islamic leader Fawaz Damra has been linked to a Florida man who was indicted yesterday as the leader of an alleged terrorist group responsi ble for more than 100 deaths in the Middle East. A 50-count federal indict ment accuses Sami Amin Al- Arian, 45, a University of South Florida engineering professor, and seven other al leged Palestin ian Islamic Ji had members of criminal racketeering, money laundering, conspiring to kill and maim people abroad, extortion, visa fraud, perjury and other charges. The defendants all face life in prison if they're convicted. "We will bring justice to the...

ROME (AP) - An Italian prosecutor is investigating whether U.S. agents played a role in the alleged abduction from Milan of a suspected Islamic militant, according to news reports. The 41-year-old imam, identified as Abu Omar, disappeared in the northern Italian city in February 2003. Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro is looking at whether he was seized in a CIA operation and flown to Egypt for interrogation, the Corriere della Sera and other newspapers have reported. Last week, the prosecutor visited a joint U.S.-Italian air base in Aviano to find documents on air and vehicle traffic that might shed light on...

Italy orders arrest of CIA agents over Imams abduction 6/24/2005 10:45:00 PM GMT Italian authorities ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents accused of kidnapping a Muslim leader Italian authorities ordered the arrest of 13 agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) accused of kidnapping a Muslim leader in northern Italy, an Italian newspaper reported on Friday. The arrest warrants were issued by Italian Judge Chiara Nobili at the request of the anti-terrorist division of the state prosecutor's office, the Corriere della Sera said. The 13 agents are suspected of kidnapping Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar,...

A new Islamic advocacy group in Boca Raton is under scrutiny for its ties to William W. Baker, a former chairman of the neo-Nazi political party of presidential candidate David Duke who was run out of town last year when he attempted to speak at Florida Atlantic University. Local Jewish and civic leaders said Friday they were alarmed that the Assadiq Islamic Education Foundation, whose headquarters are listed at 831 E. Palmetto Park Road in Boca, had invited Baker back to Boca as featured speaker at an April 30 banquet at the Boca Marriott. Invited by Muslim students to speak...

The conviction last week of Ali al-Timimi, an American-born Islamic scholar, on terrorism charges thrust the so-called "Virginia Paintball Jihad" case to the forefront as the federal government's greatest court victory against terrorism. All told, federal prosecutors counted 10 convictions in the case. Al-Timimi's conviction marked the first post-Sept. 11 case in which the government won a terrorism conviction for actions tied to philosophy and words designed to help the enemy, rather than deeds, such as providing money, equipment or actual combat help to that enemy. "Until now these people have escaped. It is a very powerful position to be...

Bellevue firm tied to pro-Hamas Web siteBy Peter LewisSeattle Times staff reporter, April 23, 2005 A Bellevue company has helped support a Web site dedicated to advancing Hamas, an Islamic organization the U.S. government considers a terrorist group. The site features videos of Humvees blowing up and U.S. soldiers being killed. The site was down temporarily yesterday but was working again last evening. Content included a training video of the "Mujahideen Army" and a message to the American people that said in part they had "elected criminals and are responsible for their actions." The Bellevue company, eNom, apparently is...

<p>October 15, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Pentagon investigators will question a Muslim chaplain who arranged a trip to Mecca for Islamic U.S. servicemen that was paid for by a Saudi charity linked to al Qaeda, a top Defense Department official said yesterday. In March 2001, Capt. Rasheed Muhammad led a "Haj tour" for about 60 Muslim service people that was paid for by the Muslim World League, which is dedicated to the spread of an extreme form of Islam embraced by Osama bin Laden.</p>

Two held over US fears of radical cell in forces By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 24/09/2003) The United States military is urgently investigating a potential radical Muslim cell among its own servicemen at the Guantanamo Bay prison as it emerged yesterday that two more members of the garrison are in custody. Senior Airman Ahmad I al-Halabi, an Arabic language translator, was secretly arrested a month ago, Pentagon officials said last night. He is being held at an air base in California and is charged with more than 30 counts of espionage, aiding the enemy, disobeying a lawful order and...

Militant Imams Under Scrutiny Across Europe By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and LOWELL BERGMAN ONDON, Jan. 24 - In nightly sermons broadcast on the Internet, Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, a 46-year-old Syrian-born cleric, has urged young Muslim men all over the world to support the Iraq insurgency on the front line of "the global jihad," investigators say. He struck a similarly defiant tone this month at a rally attended by 500 people at a central London meeting hall, where a giant screen behind him showed images of the World Trade Center falling. "Allah akbar!" - "God is great" - some...

The Islamic organization poised to build the largest mosque in the Northeast on a site in Roxbury has long-standing ties to an Egyptian cleric who praises suicide bombings and a Muslim activist indicted last week in a terrorism financing probe. The Islamic Society of Boston, which has city approval to build a sprawling $22 million Islamic cultural center and mosque on Malcolm X Boulevard, has had a long association with Dr. Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, whose vocal support of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas prompted the State Department to bar him from entering the U.S. four years ago. The local religious...

NEW YORK (AP) - A Yemeni sheik and his assistant were convicted Thursday of plotting to funnel money to al-Qaida and Hamas, handing a victory to prosecutors shaken last year when the man who was supposed to be their star witness set himself on fire outside the White House. Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed were found guilty on all but two of the 10 charges in an indictment that accused them of vital roles in a terror-funding network that stretched from Brooklyn to Yemen. In a meeting with FBI informants in a German hotel room,...

Ahmed Omar Abul Ali, the Virginia Muslim charged with conspiring to assassinate President Bush, met several times with Zubayr al-Rimi—Al Qaeda’s number two man in Saudi Arabia, killed in a shootout with Saudi forces in September 2003: Abu Ali linked to Saudi Arabia al Qaeda leader. (Hat tip: The Jawa Report.) A Falls Church man accused of conspiring to assassinate President Bush met several times with an al Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia who once was the target of a global manhunt and a key suspect in an attack that killed nine Americans in Riyadh, law-enforcement authorities said. Ahmed Omar...

Extremist cleric staged al-Qaeda recruiting rally By Sean O’Neill and Richard Ford THE radical Islamist cleric whose internet sermons are being investigated by police has held a secret conference at which British Muslims were urged to join al-Qaeda. About 600 people, including women and children, punched the air and chanted Allahu akbar (God is greatest) as they were shown videos of hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical Syrian-born cleric, said that if the British Government did not relax its tough anti- terrorism laws, the response from...

Mar. 5, 2003 Yemeni cleric charged with raising funds for Al Qaida and Hamas By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK A Yemeni cleric detained in Germany bragged to an FBI informant that he supplied $20 million, recruits and weapons to Osama bin Laden in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, US officials said Tuesday. Much of the money came from contributors in the United States, including worshippers at the Al Farouq mosque in New York, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in announcing charges against Sheik Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad. Amid an undercover operation, Al-Moayad "boasted that jihad...

THE trial of a Yemeni imam accused of supplying millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden and Hamas began in New York today. Jury selection was expected to take about two weeks, with the prosecution to begin presenting its case on January 25. Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad, 56, was detained with another Yemeni in Germany in January 2003 and extradited to the United States later that year. US Attorney-General John Ashcroft said in announcing charges against Mr Al-Moayad in March 2003: "The FBI undercover operation developed information that Al-Moayad personally handed Osama bin Laden $US20 million ($26.3m) from his terrorist...