Free Republic

American interrogators finally got to Omar al-Faruq, who detailed plans to launch a new terror spree in Southeast Asia. A TIME exclusive. For someone interested in quietly leading a terrorist's life, the rainy Indonesian hamlet of Cijeruk is a nice place to settle down. Nestled among lush, green paddies and swaying banana trees, an hour's drive outside the chaotic capital city of Jakarta, Cijeruk consists of a single two-lane road lined by a row of well-kept cottages. It's a good spot to hide from the authorities, if you have reason to be on the run — which may be how...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

NASSAU, Bahamas -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday the Bush administration will not support the release of $200 million in international aid to Haiti until President Jean-Bertrand Aristide takes steps to end the country's political crisis and make its democracy work better. A long-running stalemate between Aristide and the Haitian opposition, fueled by episodes of corruption and political violence, makes it impossible for international donors to deliver contributions to Haiti with confidence, Powell said. He rejected a call from Caribbean governments to help free the $200 million, programmed by the Inter-American Development Bank but held up along with ...

The secret war On the North-West Frontier, soldiers are trying to tighten the noose around bin Laden's forces. But in Europe and America, there is no clear enemy to fight - yet every expert knows that a terrorist atrocity is coming Mark Townsend in Tangier, John Hooper in Madrid, Greg Bearup in Peshawar, Paul Harris in Washington, Peter Beaumont in Baghdad, Antony Barnett, Martin Bright, Jason Burke and Nick Pelham in London Sunday March 21, 2004 The Observer There were shadows in the rocks. As the 12 US Special Forces soldiers arrived at a remote mountain region in eastern Afghanistan...

DETROIT - A man charged with smuggling dlrs 12 million in bogus cashiers checks into the United States told agents the man named on the checks may belong to al-Qaida, authorities said Wednesday. Omar Shishani, 47, also told investigators during an interview that "if you want to know about terrorism, I can help you with that," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Straus said during a hearing. Defense attorney Nabih Ayad denied his client ever made such statements. Shishani, who was born in Jordan but is of Chechen descent, was arrested last week after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on a flight...

ASIO was powerless to stop a Melbourne man who allegedly trained with al-Qaida from boarding an international flight out of Australia. The 23-year-old terror suspect, known as Abu Jihad, is now in custody in Cairo. The Federal Government, through ASIO, was forced to issue an international alert to find Jihad after he disappeared from Australia last October. Jihad was named as an al-Qaida terrorist by captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh in December 2001. But ASIO was not able to verify Lindh's claims until after Jihad had boarded the aircraft in Melbourne almost 10 months later. Jihad, a house...

While United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was patently ignoring a President Robert Mugabe oppressed Zimbabwe, his son, Kojo was making money building the Zimbabwean capitol’s airport. Mugabe runs the ZANU-PF, a regime that Condoleeza Rice labels an outpost of tyranny. Why Kojo Annan’s business activities in Zimbabwe have not surfaced in the ongoing probe of the Oil-For-Food Program should surely raise concern about both the integrity and sincerity of the investigation. It’s a global village as far as Kojo’s business agenda is concerned. First came West Africa where Annan’s youngest son was working for the Swiss-based Cotecna with ties...