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A look at the Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam, blamed for attacks in Iraq and supported by a network of members in Europe, according to authorities. -HISTORY: Founded in late 2001 in Kurdish part of northern Iraq by Mullah Krekar, who has lived as refugee in Norway since 1991. Area was beyond Saddam Hussein's control thanks to Western-enforced no-fly zones. Supporters set up an enclave near the Iranian border ruled by strict Islamic law. Members trained in Afghanistan and provided safe haven to al-Qaida members fleeing after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. -SIZE: Ansar al-Islam fighters in Iraq, believed to...

BERLIN (AP) - Islamic extremists accused of plotting to kill Iraq's prime minister in Germany are smuggling battle-hardened fighters from Iraq to Europe, raising a potential new terrorist threat on the continent, according to German officials. More than 20 alleged supporters of Ansar al-Islam have been arrested in Europe in the past year as authorities move against the group that has links with al-Qaida and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who's been leading bloody attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. Ansar al-Islam is suspected of spiriting dozens of fired-up young Muslims to Iraq to join the insurgency, but the latest...

BAGHDAD — A purported new message from Osama bin Laden yesterday condemned all Iraqis who cast ballots in upcoming elections as "infidels," and it endorsed Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist leader who is attempting to halt the Jan. 30 vote.     Hours before portions of the audiotape aired on the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera, suicide terrorists bombed the Baghdad home of a top Shi'ite political leader, and Iraq's main Sunni political group said it would boycott the elections. [snip] On Iraq's upcoming elections, it said:     "The constitution imposed by the American occupier Bremer is blasphemous ... and anyone who takes...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Ansar al-Sunnah Army has emerged from its roots as a little known militant group operating in northern Iraq to become the country’s deadliest terror network, capable of carrying out spectacular strikes like last week’s suicide bombing at a U.S. base and virtually eclipsing al-Qaida’s cell in the war-torn nation. Unlike al-Qaida, Ansar al-Sunnah is believed to be made up mainly of Iraqis, and its apparent strategy of targeting only Americans and those viewed as collaborating with them — Iraqi security forces and Kurds — may have increased its support, in contrast to other groups that have...

HAMBURG - German intelligence services have deciphered secret codes used by the Ansar al-Islam organization which is suspected of being behind many of the kidnappings and terror attacks in Iraq, according to German news magazine Focus. In a report, Focus quotes police and intelligence authorities as saying the arrest of a man believed to have been planning an attack on Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Berlin earlier this month has led to the codes being deciphered. Franz-Hellmutt Schuerholz, president of Baden-Wuertemberg state police department, is quoted as saying: "We have managed to break the structures of the terrorist...

The Iran Connection US News & World Report - by Edward T. Pound Nov 14, 2004 In the summer of last year, Iranian intelligence agents in Tehran began planning something quite spectacular for September 11, the two-year anniversary of al Qaeda's attack on the United States, according to a classified American intelligence report. Iranian agents disbursed $20,000 to a team of assassins, the report said, to kill Paul Bremer, then the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq. The information was specific: The team, said a well-placed source quoted in the intelligence document, would use a Toyota Corona taxi and a...

ARIS, Oct. 22 - France's antiterrorist police on Friday identified a young Frenchman killed fighting the United States in Iraq, the first confirmed case of what is believed to be a growing stream of Muslims heading from Europe to fight what they regard as a new holy war. Redouane el-Hakim, 19, the son of Tunisian immigrants, died during an American bombardment of insurgents in Falluja on July 17, according to an intelligence official close to the case. Intelligence officials fear that for a new generation of disaffected European Muslims, Iraq could become what Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya were for European...

Masters of Chaos, by U.S. News Senior Writer Linda Robinson, tells the stories of the men who fight the nation's murky wars in the world's far corners. In Iraq, the Pentagon's special operations forces were critical to the capture of most of the top leaders of Saddam Hussein's regime, and they led two of three major battlefronts in the war to liberate Iraq. In one of them, in northern Iraq, Army Special Forces soldiers faced down 13 Iraqi divisions and attacked a camp believed to be harboring al Qaeda terrorists and other foreign jihadists, as well as a shadowy figure...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces have captured the leader of a suspected militant cell during a raid in the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk, the U.S. military says. A statement said U.S. troops captured Hussein Salman Mohammad al-Jabburi during a raid on Monday afternoon. It said Jabburi was believed to have led a Kirkuk-based militant group with links to Ansar Al Sunna, another militant group which is itself believed to be linked to Ansar al Islam, a northern Iraqi Islamic militant network. Washington says Ansar al Islam, whose mountain bases along the border with Iran were destroyed in the early...

WASHINGTON - Documents found by American troops at a terrorist camp in Iraq last year contained the name of a New York mosque imam now facing federal charges of plotting to obtain a shoulder-fired grenade launcher, law enforcement officials said Friday. An entry in an address book found by the soldiers at an Ansar al-Islam camp last summer in northern Iraq referred to Yassin Aref as "the commander" and included his address and telephone number in Albany, N.Y., the officials said. Although Aref had come to the FBI's attention before the address book's discovery, two law enforcement officials speaking on...

Albany Mosque Leaders Arrested On Terror Charges AUGUST 05TH, 2004 Two mosque leaders accused of agreeing to help an undercover informant smuggle a shoulder-fired missile to terrorists were arrested in an Albany Thursday. Meanwhile, the FBI says it is keeping a close watch on suspected terrorists in and around New York City. excerpt.... In New York City, several people with links to the terror groups Al Qaeda, Ansar al Islam and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad are under surveillance in New York City, an FBI spokesperson says. The FBI says there is no evidence that the suspects it is monitoring have...

Mohammed Hossain   Last updated: 9:18 a.m., Thursday, August 5, 2004 Editor's note: As part of its recently published special report on Albany's Central Avenue, the Times Union featured a profile of Mohammed Hossain, one of the suspects arrested Thursday during an FBI raid of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany. Here is the text of that story. Mohammed Hossain's journey to owning Little Italy pizzeria began in an unlikely place: Bangladesh. Hossain and his wife, Mossamat, emigrated with their 1-year-old son, Abuhamza, from Bangladesh in 1985 in search of opportunity to lift themselves out of grinding poverty. Their...

Intercepted call linked Saddam to al-Qa'ida terror cellBy Andrew Buncombe in Washington 07 February 2003 He was supposed to have been a professional. He should have known better, but in the end he could not resist. Using a satellite phone, the senior al-Qa'ida operative excitedly called two associates and congratulated them on their cold-blooded assassination of an American diplomat. The call cost the man his liberty. It may yet cost him his life but, more importantly, it could have provided America with the "smoking gun" evidence it has long sought and which apparently links the Iraqi regime to an active...

ALBANY, N.Y. — Federal agents and Albany police raided a Muslim mosque overnight Wednesday and arrested two men for helping someone they thought was a terrorist, a law enforcement official confirmed to FOX News on Thursday. A block of downtown Albany (search) was sealed off with armed officers for several hours after the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agents executed search warrants at the Masjid As-Salam mosque (search) and two Albany-area residences, officials said. Yassin Muhhiddin Aref, 34, the Imam of the mosque, and Mohammed Mosharref Hoosain, the 49-year-old founder of the mosque, were arrested early Thursday morning....

The United Nations may indeed be the answer, as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy insist it is. But only if the question is ‘what is the most morally corrupt international organization in the world?’ Without argument the UN has degenerated into what esteemed journalist Claudia Rosett refers to as an institution mired in corruption, secrecy, venality and total lack of accountability. That degree of ethical collapse might still be repairable, but only if the UN admits its errors. To date there are no signs of institutional remorse. In fact, the organization flouts its criminal actions in the face of the...

WASHINGTON - At the request of CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the military to secretly hold a suspected terrorist in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said. The suspected terrorist has been held since October without being given an identification number and without the International Committee of the Red Cross being notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Both conditions violate the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners of war. Rumsfeld ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have the prisoner secretly detained on the day last October, when Tenet made the request, Whitman said. "The director of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - At the request of CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the military to secretly hold a suspected terrorist in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said. The suspected terrorist has been held since October without being given an identification number and without the International Committee of the Red Cross being notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Both conditions violate the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners of war. Rumsfeld ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have the prisoner secretly detained on the day last October, when Tenet made the request, Whitman said. "The director...

OSLO, Norway - A Norwegian prosecutor dropped all charges against the founder of Ansar al-Islam, a suspected terror group, citing a lack of evidence and fears that witness testimony in Iraq was coerced. Mullah Krekar, 47, a refugee in Norway since 1991, had been in and out of custody on numerous charges, including financing terror and allegations that he plotted to kill political rivals in northern Iraq between 2000 and 2001. Prosecutor Tor-Aksel Bush said Tuesday that he was dropping the case after more than two years of investigation. "The prosecutor has not found grounds to charge Krekar for any...

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Fedayeen was the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday, which was deployed to do much of the regime's dirty work. The U.S. has never been sure Shakir was at the Kuala...

A CIA official said Thursday that U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was, in "high probability," the person shown on a video beheading American Nicholas Berg, based on an analysis of the voice on the video. The speaker on the video, now believed to be al-Zarqawi, reads a lengthy statement criticizing Islamic scholars and taunting the crusaders. Standing alongside four other militants wearing headscarves and masks to disguise themselves, al-Zarqawi then kills Berg. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters Thursday in Baghdad that it appears al-Zarqawi was responsible. The...