Free Republic

MANILA, Oct 3 (AFP) - The Abu Sayyaf Muslim kidnap gang is flexing its muscles in the southern Philippines, staging bombings and abductions two months after US troops ended an anti-terror campaign. A daring bomb attack that shook the relatively peaceful southern port city of Zamboanga late Wednesday and killed three people, including a US soldier involved in relief work, has been blamed on the notorious group. The blast occurred just as a motorcyclist carrying the bomb drove in front of a karaoke bar where the victims were gathered, officials said. National police chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane said...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of Osama bin Laden's top deputies, Abu Zubaydah, is being held at a U.S. naval facility on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, Time magazine reported on Sunday. Zubaydah is the highest-ranking al Qaeda member known to have been taken into U.S. custody during Washington's war against terrorism triggered by the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed about 3,000 people. U.S. officials, who have been interrogating him for months, have steadfastly refused to disclose where he was being held. Before his arrest in Pakistan in April, Zubaydah, a 30-year-old Pakistani, was thought...