Free Republic

SNIPPET: "From a compound in Lahore, Pakistan to a home in the quiet Brad Drive neighborhood in Rockville, there's growing concern about the fate of kidnapped American contractor Warren Weinstein. "It's just a Byzantine world, it's not straight up", says Chis Meyers, a neighbor and a widely travelled retired marine. "There's people who are going to pick out Americans", he adds. Authorities say Weinstein, 70, an industrial development expert, employed by Arlington-based J.E. Austin associates was kidnapped around 3:45 Saturday morning Pakistani time. Police say eight to ten men approached Weinstein's Lahore house on a ploy. "They had come up...

In a newly released audio message, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri claims that his organization is holding hostage Warren Weinstein, a 70-year-old American who went missing last August in Pakistan. Zawahiri's statement is the first official claim of responsibility by any group in relation to the kidnapping, and a U.S. official said the statement buttressed earlier "indications" that al Qaeda might be holding the American. "I tell the captive soldiers of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and our female prisoners held in the prisons of the crusaders and their collaborators, we have not forgotten you and in order to free...

SNIPPET: "Rabat — Morocco's security forces have broken up a five-member terrorist cell that used to operate in the cities of Salé (near Rabat) and Casablanca, National Police Department said on Saturday in a statement. The statement added that the dismantled cell includes a member linked to the former emir of al Qaeda network in northern Iraq. The cell, which pledged allegiance to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, used Internet to forge close ties with al Qaida, especially in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen and Somalia, it said." SNIPPET: "To carry out their plans, the members of the cell contacted, via Internet, experts in...

Finally, we have evidence that Islamists and even al-Qaeda supporters will play a central role in Libya’s new regime. Up to now there has been reasonable speculation that the U.S. government and NATO might be installing an anti-Western, Islamist government in Libya. Now there’s proof that this is so. The actual government remains in the hands of non-Islamists, technocrats, ex-regime officials, and moderates. But the armed rebels who actually made the revolution have voted and their idol is…an al-Qaeda guy. Political power, said Mao Zedong, grows out of the barrel of a gun and in Libya’s case this seems a...

ADAM GADAHN grew up on a farm in Riverside County, California; as a teenage slob he was obsessed with heavy metal music. Today he is known as “Azzam the American” — al-Qaeda’s own Lord Haw-Haw — who stars in a video telling fellow Westerners that they must convert to Islam or be sent “straight to Hell without passing Go”. Dressed in flowing white robes and turban, Gadahn, 28, delivers a long lecture on the errors of Christianity and Judaism before setting out a critique of US foreign policy ranging from the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima to the...

This is breaking news: Ayman al-Zawahiri has officially been named ‘emir’ of Al Qaeda. This makes him the successor of Obama bin Laden, who was taken out by a team of Navy Seals earlier this month. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports that it has read classified documents from the Dutch secret intelligence organization (AIVD). According to the documents, Al-Zawahiri was appointed as Al Qaeda’s new leader during a meeting on May 9, a week after the death of OBL. “On May 9, the leadership of Al Qaeda elected Al-Zawahiri during a meeting in the tribal areas, between Afghanistan and Pakistan”,...

The September11 terror attacks in the US were staged to overcome disunity in al-Qa'ida, confidential computer records reveal. Alan Cullison reports on what happened after his laptop was wrecked while he was covering the combat in Afghanistan IN the autumn of 2001, I was one of scores of journalists who ventured into northern Afghanistan to write about the US-assisted war against the Taliban. After losing use of my computer in an accident, I scrawled stories by candlelight with a ballpoint pen and read dispatches to my editors at The Wall Street Journal over a satellite phone. When the Taliban's defences...

Osama Bin Laden's deputy led U.S. troops to the Al Qaeda leader's hideout so he could take over the terrorist group, it was claimed today. Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahiri, who has been touted widely as the man who will succeed Bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, turned his back on his terrorist leader following a prolonged power struggle, according to a Saudi newspaper. The plot to get rid of Bin Laden began when Zawahiri’s faction persuaded bin Laden to leave the protection of the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Al Qaeda's Egyptian faction then hatched a plan...

Osama Bin Laden's deputy led U.S. troops to the Al Qaeda leader's hideout so he could take over the terrorist group, it was claimed today. Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahiri, who has been touted widely as the man who will succeed Bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, turned his back on his terrorist leader following a prolonged power struggle, according to a Saudi newspaper. The plot to get rid of Bin Laden began when Zawahiri’s faction persuaded bin Laden to leave the protection of the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Power struggle: This photograph from October 2001, one...

"The Egyptian faction of al-Qaeda led by Zawahiri was defacto running the militant group, after bin Laden was taken ill in 2004 and they were trying to take full control," the paper said.

The intelligence community has obtained "positive intelligence" from the materials taken from Osama bin Laden's compound which is helping narrow down the locations of core al Qaeda leadership including the whereabouts of Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's former No. 2 man and a candidate to succeed bin Laden.

Bin Laden’s Replacement: Ayman Al-Zawahiri: By Assad Elepty Following confirmation of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Jubilation was the natural reaction. In America, U.S. citizens converged on the white house to celebrate a taste of delayed Justice after the horrific 9/11 attack. Celebration however can not allow the world to drop its guard, the death of Bin Laden will no doubt motivate Al-Qaeda to seek revenge and retaliation. Whilst Bin Laden is now dead, the vacum he leaves will be immediately filled and most likely by Ayman Muhammad Rabaie al-Zawahiri. 60 year old Al-Zawahiri is in fact far more...

SNIPPET - quote: October 11, 2010 North Carolina Muslim Admits Working with al Qaeda: "Proud to be an American Traitor" [Full text] ****Jawa Report Exclusive**** I think we can quit with the speculation about where he went and why Update by Rusty: The full text of Khan's story can be found at the end of this post. (Excerpt) Read more at mypetjawa.mu.nu ...

Egypt's interim government has released the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, his lawyer told CNN on Friday. Mohamed al-Zawahiri was released Thursday along with scores of other political prisoners after orders from Egypt's Interior Ministry, said Nizar Ghorab, who claimed al-Zawahiri was tortured in prison. Al-Zawahiri had been in jail since 1999 after being detained and extradited from the United Arab Emirates on allegations that he was linked to the assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Al-Zawahiri was acquitted on the assassination charges but later was accused of conspiring against the Egyptian government.

Today, right became left and up became down. You became the enemy and our country became the clown......While most people think of Osama Bin Laden as the leader of Al Qaeda,, they are wrong. Osama is/was the money man. Ayman al-Zawahiri is/was the brains. Here is a shot of Osama and al-Zawahiri right after 911. Please note who has the microphone. For those unfamiliar with the two, it is al-Zawahiri doing the talking not Bin Laden.....al-Zawahiri is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood under one of its early leaders, Sayyid Qutb, established the ideological framework for al...

Originally posted Sept. 29, 2003; reposted June 18, 2004 Senior investigators and analysts in the U.S. government have concluded that Iraq acted as a state sponsor of terrorism against Americans and logistically supported the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - confirming news reports that until now have emerged only in bits and pieces. A senior government official responsible for investigating terrorism tells Insight that while Saddam Hussein may not have had details of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance, he "gave assistance for whatever al-Qaeda came up with." That assistance, confirmed independently, came in a variety of...

The CIA has come closer to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden’s top deputy than was previously known, during a nine-year hunt at the root of a devastating 2009 suicide bombing at an agency base in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned. The CIA missed a chance to nab Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2003 in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, where he met with another senior al-Qaeda leader who was apprehended the next day, several current and former U.S. intelligence officials said. The fugitive Egyptian doctor may also have narrowly survived a bombing by Pakistani military planes in 2004, the...

(CNN) -- SNIPPET: "The charge centers around a one-way ticket that authorities allege Abdel Hameed Shehadeh purchased from Queens, New York, to Islamabad, Pakistan. Shehadeh originally told investigators that the purpose of his trip was to visit an Islamic university and attend a friend's engagement party. But he later admitted to FBI agents in Hawaii that he bought the ticket in order to join a fighting group such as the Taliban, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in New York Monday."

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together, a senior NATO official said. "Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved. Rather, al Qaeda's top leadership is believed to be living in relative comfort, protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services, the official said.

Al Qaeda releases new 9/11 video showing Zawahri DUBAI | Wed Sep 15, 2010 10:07am BST (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahri has appeared in an apparently new video marking the September 11, 2001 attacks...