Free Republic

Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what career officers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa. Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably widespread al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. “The Iranian strategy is two-fold: upping the...

Abu Hamza The infamous Arab Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masry, dubbed the 'hate cleric,'[1] in 1994, he began traveling back and forth to Bosnia in order to support Jihadist activities there. And, in 1995, he founded the Jama'at Ansar al-Shari'a (Supporters of Sharia, SOS), organization in order to promote the establishment of Sharia law worldwide.[2] In 2006, he was jailed in Britain for inciting murder and racial hatred.[3] He has been charged with 11 counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish...

SNIPPET: "New York City is the center of a public uproar as Internet blogger Pamela Gellar rises with an “anti-jihad” ad campaign." SNIPPET: "Gellar and her group are protesting the Jihad, which in definition is the religious duty of Muslims. According to the Dictionary of Islam, jihad is defined as “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad . . . enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims.” The literal meaning of jihad, according to the British Broadcasting Network, “is struggle or effort, and it means much more than...

After more than two weeks of obfuscation and misdirection from the Obama administration, the American public is coming to understand what the U.S. intelligence community learned in the 48 hours immediately following the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Among the important new details: * Top Pentagon officials declared the assault a terrorist attack on “Day One.” Doing so enabled them to expedite any response to the attack (Yahoo! News). * U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials understood right away that the attacks were planned for the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 (THE WEEKLY STANDARD). * Within 24...

Suspicion in last week's attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans has focused on members of a hardcore Islamist militia known for its sympathies to al-Qaida, its fierce animosity to the U.S. and its intimidation of other Muslims who don't conform to its harsh ideology. That doesn't mean Libyan authorities will move against Ansar al-Shariah soon. The group is among the most powerful of the many, heavily armed militias that the government relies on to keep security in Benghazi. In fact, it guards one of Benghazi's main hospitals. Libya's militias are a legacy of last...

Thousands of pages of previously secret military documents about detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison now put a name, a history and a face on hundreds of men in captivity there. The documents include details on 158 men on whom no information has ever been released. The hundreds of classified documents - marked "secret" and "noforn" meaning the information is not to be shared with representatives of other countries - are assessments, interviews and internal memos from the Pentagon's Joint Task Force at Guantanamo. The task force was supposed to determine who the detainees were, how they might be connected...

In a newly disclosed file by WikiLeaks that was written in 2005, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu was identified as a “probable member of Al Qaida and a member of the African Extremist Network”. The revelation will raise concerns about the range of factions fighting Gadaffi in Libya, some of whom have been associated with Al Qaeda. Qumu was previously a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, but allegedly left the proscribed group in 1998 to join the Taliban. In the report, US investigators classified Qumu as a “medium to high” risk because he was “likely to...

BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept 22 (Reuters) - An Islamist militia was driven out of the city of Benghazi early on Saturday in a surge of anger against the armed groups that control large parts of Libya more than a year after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. A spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia, which some U.S. and Libya officials blame for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last week in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed, said it had evacuated its bases "to preserve security in the city". In a dramatic sign of Libya's fragility, after sweeping...

Fierce fighting broke out on Friday night after crowds trying to storm the Benghazi base of a militia blamed for the death of US ambassador Chris Stevens came under fire. Earlier in the evening protesters calling for an end to militia rule had stormed the headquarters of the Islamic Ansar al-Sharia brigade in the city, setting fire to buildings after pushing past guards who fired in the air. But the protesters ran into a hail of fire when they moved south to storm a much larger secondary base of the militia, whose members are accused of the attack on the...

...Residents of another main eastern city, Darna, have also begun to stand up against Ansar al-Shariah and other militias. The anti-militia fervor in Darna is notable because the city, in the mountains along the Mediterranean coast north of Benghazi, has long had a reputation as a stronghold for Islamic extremists. During the Gadhafi era, it was the hotbed of a deadly Islamist insurgency against his regime. A significant number of the Libyan jihadists who travelled to Afghanistan and Iraq during recent wars came from Darna. During the revolt against him last year, Gadhafi's regime warned that Darna would declare itself...

BENGHAZI, Libya — Galvanized by anger over the killing of the popular American ambassador here last week, thousands of Libyans marched through this city on Friday, demanding the disarming of the militias that helped topple the dictatorship but have troubled the country with their refusal to disband. In a show of mass frustration at the armed groups, protesters seized control of several militia headquarters on Friday night and handed them over to Libya’s national army. They also stormed the headquarters of Ansar al-Sharia, a hard-line Islamist militia that has been linked to the attack on the United States mission in...

A poster at Twitter with the handle @FreeBenghazi, who says she is not currently in Libya, has posted a series of tweets on a reported popular uprising tonight in Benghazi against Islamist militias.The initial tweet, posted at 5:07 p.m. EDT, was accompanied with a screen grab of an Arab language news broadcast:BREAKING "People of Benghazi have taken over headquarters of Ansar al-Shariyah & handed it over to army" #Libya pic.twitter.com/Pxnql4bOShe then tweeted another report with a screen grab showing a large group of men entering a building courtyard:Benghazi youth have taken over Ansar Shariyah base & waiting for #Libya army...

Galvanized by anger over the killing of the popular American ambassador here last week, thousands of Libyans marched through this city on Friday, demanding the disarming of the militias that helped topple the dictatorship but have troubled the country with their refusal to disband. In a show of mass frustration at the armed groups, protesters seized control of several militia headquarters on Friday night and handed them over to Libya’s national army in what appeared to be a coordinated sweep. They also stormed the headquarters of Ansar al-Sharia, a hard-line Islamist militia that has been linked to the attack on...

A senior Qaeda militant in Yemen linked to the deadly bombing of an American warship there in 2000 was killed in an airstrike on Sunday, the Yemeni government said, in the latest sign of an escalating American campaign to counter the terrorist threat there. Yemeni authorities said the militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, 37, who has been on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list in connection with the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000, died in the strike in Shabwa Province in one of the rugged tribal areas controlled by insurgents. The Yemen Embassy...