Free Republic

BRUSSELS, Belgium Sept. 30 A former pro soccer player who joined the al-Qaida terrorist network was convicted and sentenced to prison Tuesday for plotting to bomb a NATO base believed to contain nuclear weapons. Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia, who once played professional soccer in Germany, received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and acquitted five others in the largest terrorism trial in Belgium's history. Trabelsi admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, a Belgian military post used by NATO where...

The Long War Journal: Al Douri forms nationalist Sunni coalition; 1920s Revolution Brigades denounces al Qaeda Written by Bill Roggio on October 4, 2007 11:34 AM to The Long War Journal Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/10/al_douri_forms_natio.php The Sunni insurgency continues to fracture as US and Iraqi forces are on the offensive in central and northern Iraq. Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, the most wanted Baathist and leader in the Sunni insurgency, has formed a new insurgent front which is willing to negotiate, while a faction of the 1920s Revolution Brigades openly denounced al Qaeda. A grouping of 22 Sunni insurgent groups have...

The Islamic State, despite being driven by Kurdish fighters from its one-time Syrian stronghold in Kobani last week, nevertheless is extending its reach well beyond Iraq and Syria, military officials and analysts warn -- represented, by some estimates, in nearly a dozen countries. Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, delivered a grim assessment earlier this week in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, as he described how the group was surfacing in North Africa. "With affiliates in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, the group is beginning to assemble a growing international footprint that includes ungoverned and under...

Six Bosnian natives who immigrated to the U.S. sent money and military equipment to support Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State terror group, the Justice Department said Friday night. The conspiracy, which authorities say dates back to May 2013, supported Abdullah Ramo Pazara and others fighting with the terror groups, according to a federal indictment. The suspects sent multiple payments using PayPal, as well as U.S. military uniforms, combat boots, tactical clothing and gear, military surplus goods, firearms accessories, rifle scopes and first aid supplies to Turkey. The supplies and money eventually made their way to fighters in...

Fox News Correspondent James Rosen reported on Wednesday night that a “major investor in the parent company” of Fox News has been implicated in financing the terrorist group al-Qaeda. Rosen made the embarrassing disclosure in a story on the channel’s “Special Report” show hosted by Bret Baier. The alleged al-Qaeda financier, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, is a very close friend of Rupert Murdoch and his family, who control major media companies like News Corp and 21st Century Fox. The latter is now the parent company of the Fox News Channel. Fox News is to be congratulated for reporting...

The Obama administration is considering whether to declassify still-secret sections of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks which examined Saudi Arabian support for Islamist militants, the White House said on Thursday. Interest in the 28-page section of the report was raised after an imprisoned former al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, said in deposition transcripts filed this week that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures donated to his group in the late 1990s. Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the report's classified section, which documented the involvement of Saudi families and entities in financing terrorism, were...

The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lieutenant General Vincent R. Stewart, warned during congressional testimony yesterday that the "security challenges" the US faces are "more diverse and complex than those we have experienced in our lifetimes." Stewart delivered his remarks to the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing devoted to assessing worldwide threats. While Stewart addressed diverse national security issues, much of his written testimony was focused on what was once called the global war on terror. Al Qaeda in Syria may "expand its territory," while threatening the West The Islamic State's advances in Iraq and Syria...

RUSH: Hey, did you see what Jordan did, folks? Not Michael; the nation, the country. ISIS burns to death one of Jordan's pilots. So Jordan went to their prison and they grabbed a couple of Al-Qaeda prisoners and they hanged 'em. And, by the way, that's the right way to say it. It's not correct to say they hung 'em. That's how you describe somebody's physiology. But you don't say somebody was hung unless you want to talk about the way they look. Really. Hanged is correct. I'm just telling you, if you say that Jordan went in there and...

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants are selling abducted Iraqi children at markets as sex slaves, and killing other youths, including by crucifixion or burying them alive, a United Nations watchdog said on Wednesday. Iraqi boys aged under 18 are increasingly being used by the militant group as suicide bombers, bomb makers, informants or human shields to protect facilities against US-led air strikes, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said. "We are really deeply concerned at torture and murder of those children, especially those belonging to minorities, but not only from minorities," committee expert Renate...

Libyan officials were deeply concerned in 2011, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was trying to remove Moammar Gadhafi from power, that weapons were being funneled to NATO-backed rebels with ties to al Qaeda, fearing that well-armed insurgents could create a safe haven for terrorists .. The reports included a 16-page list of weapons . ... the Qataris, they are doing this with every country, with every country,” Mr. Gadhafi said. “This is their plan, I mean in public. This is their own agenda. I mean, it’s not something hidden, ... A lot of jihadists that had been locked...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

US Central Command, or CENTCOM, reported yesterday that it killed Abu Malik, an Islamic State "chemical weapons engineer," in an airstrike near Mosul, Iraq. Abu Malik was associated with al Qaeda in Iraq and then the Islamic State for a decade before he was killed. "Malik was an ISIL (Islamic State) chemical weapons engineer who worked at Saddam Hussein's Muthana chemical weapon production facility before affiliating with al Qaeda in Iraq in 2005," according to the CENTCOM press release. "He later joined ISIL and his past training and experience provided the terrorist group with expertise to pursue a chemical weapons...

The Islamist terror group, Jabhat al-Nusra—the Al Qaeda affilate in Syria—executed a woman in the main square of the village of Ma'arrat Misrin after accusing her of adultery. In a video made of the execution (see below), the woman appears to be in her forties. Before being executed by a gunshot wound to the head, a man stands near the executioner reading out the sentence. He quotes the Quran (Surah 5:33) as the source for the punishment: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but...

Australians were among the largest contingent of foreign jihadists killed in the battle for Kobani, a senior US state department official has said, after Kurdish forces announced the “liberation” of the Syrian city on Monday. A coalition of Kurdish and Syrian rebel fighters claimed full control over Kobani, located less than a mile from the Turkish border, after a bloody four-month siege by the militia group known as Islamic State (Isis or Isil). Their victory was confirmed by a senior US state department official on Tuesday, who told AFP: “[Isis] is now, whether on order or whether they are breaking...

Problematic, in a very big way even if the offer was made.Qatar’s ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t news. They’ve effectively served as intermediaries in everything from ransom exchanges for hostages to Taliban negotiations. But actually trying to secure terrorist swaps for prisoners on their own behalf would have been a new frontier. Before he was released from a U.S. maximum-security prison last week, a confessed al Qaeda sleeper agent was offered up in a potential prisoner swap that would have freed two Americans held abroad.According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the case, the proposition was...

President Obama should think before bowing to Saudi Arabia's new king in his Tuesday visit. King Salman has a history of funding al-Qaida, and his son has been accused of knowing in advance about the 9/11 attacks. When it comes to jihadism, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud is more of a hardliner than his older brother, King Abdullah, who died last week of a lung infection. As such, any commitment he makes to helping the U.S. destroy al-Qaida and Islamic State terrorists should be viewed with great suspicion. The 79-year-old Salman once ran a Saudi charity tied to al-Qaida and...

The Obama administration says it is "in a war against al Qaeda." But at the same time, it is trying to release 54 more Gitmo detainees, 47 of them from Yemen, which is one of the "dark corners" where al Qaeda operates. "We say we're in a war against al Qaeda," White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "We have just never said we have been in a war against terrorism, which is a tactic...We are, however, at war against al Qaeda, its manifestations in Yemen, its manifestations in South Asia, its manifestations...

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Sunday accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of conspiring with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group. “It’s very clear. Because whenever we make advances in some place, they attack in order to undermine the army. It’s very clear,” Assad told the American Foreign Affairs magazine in excerpts of an interview that will be published in full on Monday. “That’s why some in Syria joke, how can you say that Al-Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force,” he added.

<p>If they ever put a bullet in your brain I'll complain.</p> <p>Obama's strategy for the rest of the world is to "turn the page" on it. Libya, where he chose to go to war, is now a failed state. Syria, where he drew a red line, has some 200,000 dead. ISIS, which he dismissed as the junior varsity of jihad, controls half of Iraq and Syria and is executing US citizens live on camera and auctioning Japanese hostages for a fifth of a billion dollars. In West Africa, to whom his wife held up a pouty-faced cardboard hastag #BringBackOurGirls, the girls haven't been brought back and Boko Haram are setting up a local variant of an ISIS state. In Iran, where he claimed he'd halted their nuclear program, their stockpile of enriched uranium has increased since his so-called deal. Al-Qaeda, which he said for years was" on the run", has just pulled off a high-profile mass murder in Paris that struck at the heart of a core western value – freedom of speech.</p>

WASHINGTON - California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she has no information to support White House claims that its secret wiretapping helped thwart a 2002 Los Angeles terrorist attack. President George W. Bush implied in a speech Thursday that information gleaned from the wiretaps helped foil an al-Qaida plot to crash a commercial jetliner into the US Bank Tower. But after a closed-door briefing, Feinstein said she'd heard nothing to indicate a wiretap played any part in foiling the plot. "I have no way of knowing whether it did or not," Feinstein said....