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Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

A bit of good news on the road to an eventual handover CHALK up a win for the good guys in Iraq. Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, al-Qa'ida in Iraq's No 2 man was captured this weekend, hiding out in a residential neighbourhood of Baghdad. Besides taking out of circulation a terrorist leader probably responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths and targeted assassinations, Saeedi's arrest is important for a variety of other reasons. It shows that al-Qa'ida's top management in Iraq is under constant threat of death or capture, making it that much more difficult to both recruit and...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi and coalition forces have arrested the second most senior figure in al-Qaida in Iraq, Iraq's national security adviser announced on Sunday, saying the group now suffered from a "serious leadership crisis." Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, was captured north of Baghdad a few days ago "along with another group of his aides and followers," Mouwafak al-Rubaie said. He was the second most important al-Qaida in Iraq leader after Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who took over the group after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. air strike north of Baghdad...

The recent arrest and confessions of Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi shines an uncomfortable light (uncomfortable for those who warned such cooperation wasn't possible due to ideological differences) on what many observers of the Iraq war warned wasn't possible: Cooperation between Iraqi Baathists loyal to secular Saddam Hussein and religiously fanatic al-Qaeda. al-Saeedi, also known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, told his captors that he has been "'responsible for more attacks than he can remember' and has been involved in the insurgency almost from its beginning three years ago," according to officials. al-Saeedi admitted that "Al Qaeda in Iraq was...

WASHINGTON, Sep. 4, 2006 – The capture of a top-tier terrorist has left al Qaeda in Iraq in a "serious leadership crisis," an Iraqi government official said here yesterday. Iraqi forces, with coalition support, captured Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, who is thought to be responsible for the Feb. 22 bombing of a Samarra shrine sacred to Shiia Muslims, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, national security adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in a nationally televised address. The mosque bombing helped fan the flames of sectarian violence in Iraq. Saeedi – also known as Abu Humam and Abu Rana – was reportedly...