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Crew members and passengers wrestled a 28-year-old man to the cabin floor after he began pounding on the cockpit of a plane approaching San Francisco. The man was yelling as he brushed past a flight attendant about 10 minutes before American Airlines Flight 1561 from Chicago was due to land on Sunday night, police said. Rageit Almurisi, 28, carried a Yemen passport but his nationality is not clear, a spokesman said. [Snip] Passengers told of how Almurisi was heard to shout 'Allahu Akbar'--or 'God is great'. Passenger Angelina Marty said: 'I kept saying to myself,

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani authorities still have three of Osama bin Laden's wives and eight of his children in custody, nearly a week after the U.S. raid that killed the Saudi terrorist leader, and no countries have asked for their return, the government said Sunday. Pakistan gained custody of bin Laden's family members after the covert U.S. operation on May 2 that killed the al-Qaida chief and four others at his hide-out in the northwestern city of Abbottabad and further strained relations between the two nations. Their questioning could provide more information on the U.S. military operation and help reveal how...

Anti-government protesters march to the presidential palace in Sanaa February 13, 2011. Yes "democracy" is sweeping the Middle East.

A young Jewish boy was kidnapped in Reida, Yemen on the Sabbath, according to the Yemen Post. The child was reportedly taken hostage in an attempt to force the local Jewish community to forgive a terrorist killer. The kidnap victim has been identified as eight-year-old Yamin Ameran Al-Nahari. Sources told the Yemen Post that the kidnapping was linked to the 2008 murder of Moshe Nahari, a Torah teacher and leading member of the Jewish community. Nahari's killer, local Muslim man Abed el-Abdi, called out “Jew, receive the message of Islam” before shooting him. The kidnappers are hoping to pressure the...

A storage facility housing Yemen's radioactive material was unsecured for up to a week after its lone guard was removed and its surveillance camera was broken, a secret U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed Monday. The message, dated Jan. 9, relates the worries of a Yemeni official, whose name was removed, about the unguarded state of a National Atomic Energy Commission facility. He pushes the U.S. embassy to urge his own government to secure the material. "Very little now stands between the bad guys and Yemen's nuclear material," the official is quoted as saying in the cable, which...

Federal agents have raided several convenience stores and a mosque in tiny Henderson, N.C., while arresting at least two Muslim men in connection with the raid. Authorities suspect the stores were operating a so-called hawala money-transfer network supporting terrorist activities in Yemen, including al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, WND has learned. AQAP's leaders include fugitive al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been linked to 10 major terror plots in the past year alone.

At the top-of-the-hour newsbreak it was reported a "material witness" being held since Sept related to the 9/11 attacks has gone missing. His lawyer has reported he has no information on the whereabouts of his client. The client has not been seen since last Wednesday morning when he appeared in NY to give testimony. He was told then, apparently, that he faced charges back in San Diego for falsifying information on his application for asylum. The suspect is a student at San Diego State University.

A radical US-born Yemeni Islamist cleric has called for the killing of Americans in a new video message posted on radical web sites. Anwar al-Awlaki said no permission was needed to kill Americans as they are from the "party of devils". It comes shortly after authorities intercepted air cargo bombs sent from Yemen to the US in a plot linked to Mr Awlaki. Investigators have linked Mr Awlaki to the US army base killings in Fort Hood, Texas, last year's Christmas airline bomb attempt, and the failed Times Square bombing in New York.

ABC reports: Two men taken off a Chicago-to-Amsterdam United Airlines flight in the Netherlands have been charged by Dutch police with “preparation of a terrorist attack,” U.S. law enforcement officials tell ABC News. A spokesman for the Dutch public prosecutor, Ernst Koelman, confirmed the two men were arrested this morning and said “the investigation is ongoing.” He said the arrests were made “at the request of American authorities.” The two were allowed to board the flight at O’Hare airport last night despite security concerns surrounding one of them, the officials said. The men were identified as Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al...

The Obama administration plans to transfer a Guantanamo detainee to Yemen despite its ban on the repatriations due to security concerns in the Arab country, The Washington Post reported Saturday. The administration's January decision on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the prison camp where nearly half of the remaining inmates are from Yemen, cast further doubt on President Barack Obama's vow to shutter the center seen by the White House as a prime recruiting tool for radical Islamic groups. But US District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr has forced the administration's hand in "emphatically" ordering Mohammed Odaini to be released back to his...

Yemen faces an abundance of complex and interrelated social, economic, and environmental problems. Yemen's many challenges are compounded by the country's addiction to qat. Large parts of Yemen’s society and economy are organized around the consumption and production of this stimulant. Qat consists of the tender leaves and shoots of the tree catha edulis, which contain the amphetamine cathinone. Qat must be consumed soon after being harvested because the cathinone begins breaking down after 24 hours. When chewed, qat brings about a state of mild euphoria in the user, often followed by insomnia. Qat is considered a Class 1 drug...

… 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 – An al-Qaida leader believed to have played a key role in the bombing of a CIA post in Afghanistan last December was apparently killed by an American missile strike last week, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. The counterterrorism official said Hussein al-Yemeni was believed killed in a strike in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Drone strikes in Pakistan's border region, largely conducted by the CIA, have escalated in recent months, proving an effective way to target al-Qaida and Taliban leaders hiding in the...

prominent Yemeni sheik came to Brooklyn in 1999, raised money at mosques that was ostensibly for charity and then went to Italy, where he met with a top operative of Al Qaeda, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.The sheik, Abdullah Satar, then made a speech in Italy calling upon people to join the jihad and denounced the United States for pursuing a terrorism suspect "to curry favor with the Jewish population and to project hatred upon Muslims,'' according to testimony of an F.B.I. agent at a trial of a New Jersey man in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that...

NEW YORK (AP) - A Yemeni sheik accused of funding terrorist organizations boasted of his ties to Osama bin Laden and Palestinian militant leaders on surveillance tapes played Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. "He used to say that I'm his sheik," Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad said of bin Laden on the tapes secretly recorded in a German hotel room. "I used to teach him some of the Islamic laws," he added. Defense lawyers said al-Moayad made idle boasts to wheedle millions of dollars from an FBI informant posing as a militant Islamist. The informant had proposed giving al-Moayad $2.5 million...

Yemen's president said he is ready to talk to al-Qaida members who renounce violence, suggesting he could show them the same kind of leniency he has granted militants in the past despite U.S. pressure to crack down on the terror group. Yemen is moving cautiously in the fight against al-Qaida, worried over a potential backlash in a country where anger at the U.S. and extremism are widespread. Thousands of Yemenis are battle-hardened veterans of past "holy wars" in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq, and though most are not engaged in violence now they preserve a die-hard al-Qaida ideology. "Any movement...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASES Sunday, December 20, 2009 United States Transfers 12 Guantanamo Bay Detainees to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland Region Twelve detainees have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland region. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of each of these cases. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including potential threat, mitigation measures and the likelihood of success in habeas litigation, the detainees were...

A senior official from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has recently met with Houthi rebels and Hizbullah activists in Yemen to coordinate joint military operations against Saudi positions along the border. Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, quoted on Sunday Arab sources as saying the three-way meeting also aimed at developing a plan to escalate the military situation along the Saudi-Yemeni border.

Breaking News: Pakistan Reportedly Detains Five D.C.-Area Muslims on Suspicion of Terror IPT News December 8, 2009 **Updated December 9, 9:00 a.m. EST A Pakistani newspaper reports the arrest of five foreign nationals after a raid in a town called Sargodha. The raid took place at the home of a member of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, a Pakistani movement designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2001. According to the report, "The DPO told that these people had been living in Sargodha since Nov 30 and it was quite a possibility that they were engaged in acts of...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Plans to close Guantanamo are not sitting well with the Sept. 11 victims' relatives who sat stunned while two alleged terrorists declared they were proud of their role in the plot.