Free Republic

Although the birth of the Islamic State and the herald of the caliphate are often regarded as some of 2014’s “big shockers,” they were foretold in striking detail and with an accurate timeline by an al-Qaeda insider nearly one decade ago. On August 12, 2005, Spiegel Online International published an article titled “The Future of Terrorism: What al-Qaeda Really Wants.” Written by Yassin Musharbash, the article was essentially a review of a book written by Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist with close access to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, including the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who pioneered the videotaping of beheadings...

Image that accompanied Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's audiotape announcing the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The flag was originally al Qaeda in Iraq's banner, but has been adopted by other al Qaeda affiliated and associated groups. Image from the SITE Intelligence Group. The emir of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Abu Bakr al Baghdadi (also known as Abu Dua), has announced a new brand for his organization's efforts: the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant." The new name replaces all previous brands used by al Qaeda's affiliates in Iraq and Syria, including the...

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,...

July 14, 2005 JS-2632 Treasury Designates MIRA for Support to Al Qaida ******In 2003, MIRA and Faqih received approximately $1 million in funding through Abdulrahman Alamoudi. According to information available to the U.S. Government, the September 2003 arrest of Alamoudi was a severe blow to al Qaida, as Alamoudi had a close relationship with al Qaida and had raised money for al Qaida in the United States. In a 2004 plea agreement, Alamoudi admitted to his role in an assassination plot targeting the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and is currently serving a 23 year sentence.******

The government of Iraq is secretly holding a Baathist cabal of military officers it claims attempted a coup against Prime Minister al-Maliki. The plotters were rounded up July 5 with the help of American military authorities after the Iraqi government's security warning center sent word to Mr. Maliki, who was in Kuwait on his first official visit as head of state, two highly placed Iraqi sources said. The prime minister quickly canceled a scheduled trip to Amman, Jordan, and returned to Baghdad to attend to the matter. At the time, Mr. Maliki's staff told reporters that the prime minister was...

Israeli-made targeting pod used to kill al Zarqawi Rafael’s Litening system marks the target, guides the ordinance with lasers, and evaluates damage. Amnon Barzilai 18 Jun 06 10:37 Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al-Qaida’s top terrorist in Iraq, was killed with help of Israeli target acquisition technology fitted onto a US Air Force F-16. Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd. supplies Litening advanced airborne infrared targeting and navigation pod to Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC), which installs them on combat jets under a cooperation agreement. The Israel Air Force also uses the Litening. According to a report by senior US Air Force officers, al...

The death in Iraq of Muslim terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the recent arrest of 17 Muslim would-be terrorists in Canada, reminds us that the war on terrorism is global and it will be fought forever. Too many people do not understand the origins and motivations of our enemy – Muslim terrorists. This lack of understanding causes some politicians to make stupid and anti-American statements that the liberal media lap up and highlight dozens of times. The media hardly mentioned the important developments in Iraq that coincided with al-Zarqawi’s death – namely, that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has...

Apparently, being the parent of a child murdered by a Muslim terrorist gives one moral credibility. There is no other way to explain the vast attention paid to the ideas of Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, the American who was slaughtered by the Islamic sadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That is also the only explanation for the all the attention Cindy Sheehan has received. It is not because of the intellectual and moral depth of her worldview. But the attention paid to Michael Berg has been very helpful in enabling many more people to understand the thinking and values of...

The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has brought a temporary halt to the media feeding frenzy regarding the alleged murder of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq and a possible cover-up of the incident by high-ranking military officials. Al-Zarqawi's death has dominated the news coming out of Iraq in recent days, but the press is sure to re-focus its attention on those Marines accused of massacring 24 men, women and children. The Haditha incident reportedly began when a Marine was blown in half by a roadside Improvised Explosive Device (IED). It has been alleged irate Marines then went on a murderous...

On a cold and blustery evening in December 1989, Huthaifa Azzam, the teenage son of the legendary Jordanian-Palestinian mujahideen leader Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, went to the airport in Peshawar, Pakistan, to welcome a group of young men. All were new recruits, largely from Jordan, and they had come to fight in a fratricidal civil war in neighboring Afghanistan—an outgrowth of the CIA-financed jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet occupation there. The men were scruffy, Huthaifa mused as he greeted them, and seemed hardly in battle-ready form. Some had just been released from prison; others were professors and sheikhs. None...

WASHINGTON, April 30 — The broadcasts last week by three of the world's best-known terrorist leaders shared at least one common goal, American intelligence officials say. They sought to embarrass the West by showing that the terrorists were still able to communicate with their followers, despite the intensive efforts to capture or kill them and the $25 million bounty that is on each of their heads. But the officials interviewed on Sunday also said that the messages of the three men — Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — show the differing motives and political interests of...

Al-Qaida Figure Backs Iraqi Insurgents Top al-Qaida Figure Ayman Al-Zawahri Urges Support for Iraqi Insurgents in Video The Associated Press (snipped) CAIRO, Egypt - No. 2 al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri praised insurgents in Iraq, particularly Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and called on all Muslims to support them in a video posted Thursday on the Internet. The video was dated with an Islamic month corresponding to November 2005 and al-Zawahri mentions an Oct. 23 earthquake that hit Pakistan and Afghanistan. But it appeared to be the first time the 28-minute video has been made public. It was not clear why the video...

MADRID (Reuters) - An al Qaeda cell based in France planned a chemical attack on a U.S. naval base in Rota, Spain, newspaper ABC reported on Tuesday. Algerian Said Arif, extradited to France from Syria last year, has admitted his cell was plotting a chemical attack on the southern Spanish base controlled by the United States since 1953, the Spanish daily reported. The paper said Arif was considered a lieutenant of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. Zarqawi himself was accused of planning a chemical attack last year in his native Jordan, which authorities thwarted. Arif was...

Two al-Qaida militants reported missing and suspected killed in Friday's U.S. missile attack in Pakistan are key regional commanders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Afghan and Pakistani analysts said. Marwan As-Suri, believed to be in his 30s, is a Syrian who recently had been appointed to head al-Qaida operations in part of the Pakistani areas bordering Kunar, the Afghan said. According to the Afghan source, another important al-Qaida invitee to the dinner was Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, who reportedly has served as a liaison between al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida-backed guerrilla leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Brescia and Naples, 18 Nov. (AKI) - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 11 - The story told by the two Iraqi guerrillas cut to the heart of the war that Iraqi and American officials now believe is raging inside the Iraqi insurgency. In October, the two insurgents said in interviews, a group of local fighters from the Islamic Army gathered for an open-air meeting on a street corner in Taji, a city north of Baghdad. Across from the Iraqis stood the men from Al Qaeda, mostly Arabs from outside Iraq. Some of them wore suicide belts. The men from the Islamic Army accused the Qaeda fighters of murdering their...

Every year, as we enter a New Year, my mind goes back to Daniel Pearl, the Mumbai-based American correspondent of Wall Street Journal, who met with a brutal end to his young life during a visit to Karachi in January 2002 to enquire, inter alia, into the suspected Pakistani links of international jihadi terrorists. In his keenness to find out the truth, Pearl fell into a treacherous trap laid by a mixed group of Pakistani terrorists belonging to different organisations and orchestrated by Omar Sheikh, a British resident of Pakistani origin, who had participated in the so-called jihad against the...

A busy time in the U.S. Senate, the "world's greatest deliberative body." Judging from the 2006 conference report, the Senate subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education -- Chairman Arlen Specter (R), ranking member Tom Harkin (D) -- has been deliberating especially hard: "Sec. 221. (a) The Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center Building (Building 21) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hereby renamed as the Arlen Specter Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center. (b) The Global Communications Center Building (Building 19) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hereby renamed as the Thomas R....

A report to be published Saturday says that Demi Moore's ex will pony up a million cash to any civilian who turns in the terrorist scum. Bruce Willis is such a die-hard patriot that he's offering $1 million to any civilian who turns in terror kingpins Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The hairless Hollywood he-man announced his bounty offer on MSNBC's "Rita Cosby: Live and Direct" this week. Willis also revealed he was in talks to make a movie about the Deuce Four, the soldiers whose heroic exploits have been chronicled by embedded blogger Michael Yon....

Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested an Islamist with ties to many upper tier al-Qaida members. The man not only tried to get asylum in Germany, but claims to have known about the London bombings beforehand and to have helped the 9/11 pilots. The Turkish interrogators in Istanbul's high-security prison wanted to be polite; they wanted to show respect for Islam. They offered their prisoner, an Islamist named Luai Sakra, 31, a chance to pray during a pause in questioning. They'd done the same thing with earlier suspects. The move was supposed to establish trust. But this prisoner reacted a...