Free Republic

The military chief of Syria's al-Nusra Front militant group has been killed in an air strike, the jihadist group has said on social media. Three other leaders were killed along with Abu Homam al-Shami, it says. Syria's state-run news agency said the army had targeted Nusra leaders as they met in northern Idlib province, the Associated Press reported. Al-Nusra is one of the most powerful groups fighting the army and has long been seen as an affiliate of al-Qaeda. It was involved in a major attack on the Air Force Intelligence headquarters in the embattled city of Aleppo on Wednesday.

A ‘moderate rebel’ group in Syria that the U.S. helped create, called the Hazm Network, has fallen apart after recently being defeated by Jahbat al-Nusra, an al-Qaida linked terrorist group. The Hazm Network gave all their US weapons to al-Nusra and took off to join the Shamiah Front, another Muslim Brotherhood group in Syria that includes hardline Salafis.

President Barack Obama’s lax immigration policies are inviting another massive jihad attack similar to the 9/11 atrocity, says Kenneth Palinkas, president of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees’ union. Obama’s deputies are “lessening the vetting of each and every alien who applies for permanent residency or citizenship in the U.S.,” Palinkas said in a statement Tuesday. “By not scrutinizing each and every applicant to the fullest extent possible to ensure America’s security, we invite an even more catastrophic event than what occurred on 09/11/2001,” he said. Obama’s rollback of security checks means that “it is more than likely that...

ISIS has been under attack in the last few days from Twitter, which has quietly suspended at least 2,000 accounts linked to the terror group and its supporters, according to people with knowledge of the operation. The sites shut down include some of the most important distributors of ISIS messages in a major escalation against ISIS's propaganda and recruitment efforts, according to J.M. Berger, a terrorism analyst who monitors ISIS online messaging. "Twitter has been doing a whole lot over the past week. They've slammed them pretty hard, including the official media distribution guys," Berger said. He said 13 of...

Show availability of Iran for al Qaeda training, plotting. This week, prosecutors in New York introduced eight documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan as evidence in the trial of a terrorism suspect. The U.S. government accuses Abid Naseer of taking part in al Qaeda’s scheme to attack targets in Europe and New York City. The files do not support the view, promoted by some in the Obama administration, that bin Laden was in “comfortable retirement,” “sidelined,” or “a lion in winter” in the months leading up to his death. Some of the key revelations in the newly-released...

FULL TITLE: Hillary Clinton’s Top Aides Knew from First Minutes that Benghazi Was a Terrorist Attack, E-mails Disclose From the very first moments of the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides were advised that the compound was under a terrorist attack. In fact, less than two hours into the attack, they were told that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility. These revelations and others are disclosed by a trove of e-mails and other documents pried from the State Department by Judicial Watch...

Amid Al-Shabaab terror threats officials reveal the FBI has been staging mock attacks in US malls for nearly two years to test readiness After a recent terror threat on an American mall, an official has revealed that the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation has been staging mock attacks in U.S. shopping centers for nearly two years to test their readiness. The secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson recently warned shoppers at Minnesota's Mall of America to remain vigilant after a new terrorist video from Al-Shabaab -- An Al-Qaeda-linked militant group out of Somalia -- threatened an attack on the...

The Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has become a bitter rival of Al Qaeda, its parent organization. Its leaders represent a new generation of Islamist militants who have broken with Al Qaeda in a power struggle over Syria and the future of the global Islamist revolution. Both groups share the same ultimate goal: the establishment of a global caliphate, to be ruled under a harsh brand of sharia (Islamic law). But they clash over what strategy and tactics are best, as well as who should lead the global jihad (holy war) to...

Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Thursday called on Middle Eastern leaders to stand up to "violent extremism" and stop proxy wars that fuel the rise of terror groups. "The notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly lie," he told the final day of a conference on combatting extremism. "And all of us, regardless of our faith, have a responsibility to reject it." Obama challenged Middle Eastern powers to stop actions that he claimed have stoked the rise of Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and others. Fighting between Sunnis and Shia "will only end when...

"What is the Islamic State? Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as...

As the White House kicks off day-two of a summit on combating generic violent extremism, President Obama has published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times titled, "Our fight against violent extremism." While the administration has overtly refused to specifically name "Islamic" terror, the piece finally acknowledges (albeit inadvertently) the regular existence of violence inside Islam. Still, Islamic extremism isn't specifically named and won't be during the three-day conference at the White House this week. The United States has made significant gains against terrorism. We've decimated the core al Qaeda leadership, strengthened homeland security and worked to prevent another large-scale attack...

<p>Recently, London Mayor Boris Johnson described Jihadists as “porn driven losers” who have “low self-esteem and are unsuccessful with women.”</p> <p>According to Syrian doctors in a report in the British media, ISIS fighters are buying frilly underwear for their wives and sex slaves — and subjecting them to abnormal and sadistic sexual practices. They may well have learned this from pornography.</p>

Radical Islamist group Hizb-ut- Tahrir which cleverly avoided global scrutiny while spreading its ideology may become a more dangerous terrorist group than the ISIS and it's presence in South Asia should be a cause for concern for India, according to a report. "While ISIS runs amok in Syria and Iraq, demanding media attention through acts of barbarous cruelty, HuT (Hizb-ut- Tahrir or the Party of Liberation) is quietly building a global infrastructure of radicalised youth and deep-pocketed Arab support in preparation for the global Khilafat," said the report published in the latest edition of CTX Journal. The group has cleverly...

...Al-Muhallab said, “You must use deception in war, for it is more effective than reinforcements.” Some methods of deception include: a. Planting spies. b. Reconnaissance. c. Feigning an intent to attack an area other than the actual target, for when the Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam) wanted to attack one area, he would give his army the impression they were going to attack another. “If a man’s chest is too narrow to hold his own secret, then the chest of the one with whom he stores the secret is even narrower” [Poetry]. And be on guard against your enemy at...

A prominent Iraqi politician and the longtime head of the De-Ba'athification Committee, Mithal al-Alusi, survived an apparent attempt on his life when armed men fired on his car on the morning of 8 February. Two of al-Alusi's sons -- Ayman and Jamal -- and a bodyguard who were inside his vehicle were killed, however, when the assailants struck just outside al-Alusi's Baghdad home. Radio Free Iraq (RFI) spoke with al-Alusi, who is secretary of Iraq's Democratic Umma Party [Hizb al-Umma al-'Iraqi al-Dimuqrati], after the incident. The following is an edited transcript of that interview. Al-Alusi: Again, the ghosts of death...

Harith al Nadhari recorded an audio eulogy for Mohammed al Zahawi, the leader of Ansar al Sharia Libya, shortly before his own death. Shortly before his own death in a US airstrike on Jan. 31, Harith al Nadhari, a senior sharia official in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), recorded an audio eulogy for another slain jihadist, Mohammed al Zahawi. Ansar al Sharia Libya confirmed earlier in the month that Zahawi, the group's leader, had died of wounds he suffered while fighting in Benghazi. And Nadhari wanted to make it clear that al Qaeda considered Zahawi to be...

BAGHDAD - The most prominent figure in a U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Iraq was killed Thursday by a bomb planted near his home in Anbar province, 10 days after he met with President Bush, police and tribal leaders said. Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, also known as the Anbar Awakening — an alliance of clans backing the Iraqi government and U.S. forces. Officials said his assassination would be a huge setback for U.S. efforts in Iraq, because it sends a message to others who are cooperating with coalition forces or thinking...

Al Qaeda-linked fighters seized a large army base in a dawn attack in southern Yemen on Thursday, militants and residents said, hours after the United Nations warned that the country was on the brink of civil war. The base in the southern province of Shabwa, housing a brigade of up to 2,000 government soldiers, fell after several hours of heavy clashes, residents and local news sites said.

Political Correctness: The Army has announced that as a result of Congress' making victims of attacks by foreign terrorist acts eligible, the Fort Hood victims will get Purple Hearts, and civilians will get Defense of Freedom medals. That language broadened the definition of an attack on eligible victims to include an assault by "a foreign terrorist organization." The definition includes attacks by a perpetrator or perpetrators in contact with a foreign terrorist organization or "inspired or motivated by a foreign terrorist organization" prior to the attack. The Nov. 5, 2009, attack on Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan, in which...

Six Bosnian immigrants have been accused of sending money and equipment to terrorists oversees, including fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and al-Qaida in Iraq, the U.S. attorney’s office announced Feb. 6. An indictment unsealed Feb. 6 in St. Louis said the defendants donated money themselves and in some cases collected funds from others in the U.S. and sent the donations oversees. It says two of the defendants used some of the money to buy U.S. military uniforms, firearms accessories, tactical gear and other equipment, which was shipped to people in Turkey and Saudi...