Free Republic

ALBANY -- The spiritual leader of an Albany mosque repeatedly called a phone number in Syria that an FBI report indicates had been used to gather terrorist intelligence for Osama bin Laden, according to classified documents unsealed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The FBI report, which was based on information from a confidential informant, was among several once-secret documents that federal authorities say raise questions about Yassin Aref's connections to terrorist organizations across the Middle East. Aref, 35, a Kurdish refugee who moved to Albany with his family in 1999, is in jail without bond while awaiting trial on...

In the coded language of Lokman Amin Mohammed's smuggling network, fighters and suicide bombers sent to Iraq were called "workers" for "the firm." When one band of fighters he smuggled from Germany launched its first attack, Mohammed exclaimed in a phone conversation: "They have celebrated their first feast." Last month, the 33-year-old was sentenced in Munich to seven years in prison for smuggling fighters to and from Iraq, and for membership in "the firm," better known as Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda-linked group responsible for suicide attacks against civilians and U.S. soldiers. During sentencing, Justice Bernd von Heintschel-Heinegg said Mohammed's...

An American citizen held in Iraq since 2004 allegedly worked with terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and helped plan insurgent attacks on foreigners in Iraq, NBC News has learned.

Brescia and Naples, 18 Nov. (AKI) - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed...

Twisting the Al-Qaida Connection Posted by Mithridate Ombud on November 28, 2005 - 15:22. Robyn Blumner, former ACLU Director and current St. Petersburg Times columnist retreads this old leftist tire: Fox News gives its audience what it wants, too. That's why, in 2003, a survey from the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 67 percent of its loyal viewers believed the fallacy that Saddam Hussein was connected to al-Qaida, whereas only 40 percent of those who relied on print media were confused on that point. Welcome to the "informed" electorate of a newspaper-free world. It's already starting to give...

At the time, the meeting hardly seemed notable--let alone the start of the world's deadliest partnership. It was late in 1999, and Osama bin Laden was sheltering in Afghanistan, already deep into his plot to attack the World Trade Center. His visitor was a burly young Jordanian, bruised and furious after spending six years inside his country's worst prisons. Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi had traveled to Afghanistan with a proposal for the al-Qaeda chief: he wanted to rally Islam's "true believers" to rise up against corrupt regimes in the Middle East. Bin Laden was skeptical. While al-Zarqawi advocated a war on...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three Iraqi men will stand trial in Germany accused of planning to kill their visiting prime minister and belonging to a terrorist group, the German prosecutor's office said on Wednesday. It said the three were members of Ansar al-Islam, which the United States calls a major insurgent group linked to al Qaeda. Two of them, named as Ata R., 31, and Mazen H., 23, are also accused of collecting and transferring funds to Iraq and Iran on behalf of the network. The third man, named as Rafik Y., 31, had phoned the others to obtain their approval...

LONDON, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- British officials say as many as 70 young Muslim men have left the country for Iraq to fight in the insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation. The London Sunday Times cited unnamed British counterterrorism officials whom it did not quote directly, except to describe the movement of young fanatics to Iraq in the past two years as "a steady trickle." The paper said Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had set up a network in Britain "to recruit and train would-be suicide bombers and gunmen." It said the group was called Ansar al-Fath, or Partisans of...

ALBANY, N.Y. - Two Muslim men caught up in an anti-terrorism sting operation pleaded innocent Friday as details emerged about 10 new charges against them. Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain were accused Thursday of attempting to provide support to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based group listed by the federal government as a terrorist organization. Aref, who leads a mosque, also was charged with lying to federal officials. The pair were initially charged in August 2004 with conspiring to launder money and promoting terrorism. They now face a total of 30 charges. Entered as new evidence against Aref were entries in his personal...

London – An Iranian military source has disclosed an initiative on behalf of 'Al Quds Corps', which is affiliated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, to reinforce its relations with 'Ansar Al Islam Organization' in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Qa'idat Al Jihad Fi Bilad Al Rafidain (The Base of Jihad in the Land of the Two Rivers) in the center and south of Iraq. The Iranian officer, who is a former colonel in 'Al Quds Corps' told Al Sharq Al Awsat that officials from the Revolutionary Guard have recently me[t] with leaders of Ansar Al Islam and the Jihad organizations in...

Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested an Islamist with ties to many upper tier al-Qaida members. The man not only tried to get asylum in Germany, but claims to have known about the London bombings beforehand and to have helped the 9/11 pilots. The Turkish interrogators in Istanbul's high-security prison wanted to be polite; they wanted to show respect for Islam. They offered their prisoner, an Islamist named Luai Sakra, 31, a chance to pray during a pause in questioning. They'd done the same thing with earlier suspects. The move was supposed to establish trust. But this prisoner reacted a...

AS THE WAR with Saddam's Iraq approached, a small group of terrorists in Kurdish-controlled Iraq garnered a significant amount of news coverage. Senior-level Bush administration officials had claimed that this group, Ansar al Islam, represented a key link between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. There was evidence, after all, that Saddam's intelligence operatives funded and supplied the al Qaeda terrorists who joined this group's ranks in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan. That evidence was hotly contested for months until the story of Ansar al Islam gradually receded from the headlines. Today, the group is hardly even mentioned--if at...

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraqi Kurdistan - "A series of suicide bombings in previously peaceful South Kurdistan (Iraqi Kurdistan) has aroused suspicions that elements of the Iranian regime are backing efforts to destabilize the region." writes The Washington Times. "Before then, Tehran was keen to see the Kurds cooperate with the [Iraqi] Shi’ite parties," he said. "Now that the Shi’ites are on top, Iran is doing its best to weaken the Kurdish wing in parliament. Bomb attacks up here are an ideal distraction." said a Kurdish official. At least 85 persons have died and hundreds have been injured in three attacks over the...

"In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."  U.S. government "Summary of Evidence" for an Iraqi member of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay, CubaFOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or...

A SERIES of arrests in Spain, Germany, France and Holland has revealed a European terror network that recruits fighters and suicide bombers and sends them into Iraq.For two years recruiters have been providing fake documents, training and finance for the fighters, communicating secretly over the internet and liaising with cells based in Syria. Despite much closer links between intelligence and law enforcement agencies across Europe, experts say that the terrorists are moving between European countries to avoid detection. “The terrorists are operating internationally, even if the law enforcement agencies are a long way behind them,” said M J Gohel, chief...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A former Iraqi general believed to be Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's "military adviser" was arrested west of Baghdad. Abed Dawood Suleiman and his son, former army captain Raed Abed Dawood, were picked up in a morning raid on their house in Khalidiya, west of Baghdad, a defense ministry source said Wednesday. Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, is believed to have masterminded much of the country's violence, including car and suicide bombings that killed almost 700 people in May alone. He has a 25-million-dollar price on his head. "Abed Dawood Suleiman is considered to be Abu...

MADRID: Spanish authorities have arrested 19 suspected extremists, including five linked to last year's deadly Madrid train bombings, the interior ministry announced Wednesday. The other 14 suspects are alleged to be connected with the radical group Ansa al-Islam, which is believed to have links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is blamed for many of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq. More than 500 police were mobilised for the swoops, which were carried out in the regions around Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Andalucia as well as in the Spanish enclave of Cueta north of Morocco. The March 11, 2004 train bombings in...

Former Ansar Al-Islam leader mullah Krekar compared his goal for Kurds with the establishment of the state of Israel as he testified in his trial to overturn a decision to expel him from Norway. Laywer Brynjar Meling (right) and mullah Krekar during a pause in proceedings at Oslo's Court of Appeals. On Thursday morning mullah Krekar began his explanation of why he should not be sent out of the country. Before beginning his testimony the mullah kissed the Koran and said that Norwegian authorities were justified in their investigation but explained that he felt a victim of religious persecution. "I...

The accused terrorist and former leader of Ansar-Al Islam Mullah Krekar is in these days trying to prevent being expelled from Norway by sueing the Norwegian Goverment. Norwegian Minister Erna Solberg (Conservative)has decided that Krekar is a threat to the Norwegians and there for signed his deportation order on the grounds that he has broken the terms of his assylum by traveling back to North Iraq and that he posses a threat to national security. Krekars laywer, Meling claims that Krekar will not be safe if expelled and therefore can not be forced out. Nor is the country stable enough...

Baghdad, 23 May - The number two of the al-Qaeda network, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited Iraq under a false name in September 1999 to take part in the ninth Popular Islamic Congress, former Iraqi premier Iyad Allawi has revealed to pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. In an interview, Allawi made public information discovered by the Iraqi secret service in the archives of the Saddam Hussein regime, which sheds light on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Islamic terrorist network. He also said that both al-Zawahiri and Jordanian militant al-Zarqawi probably entered Iraq in the same period. "Al-Zawahiri was summoned by Izza Ibrahim...