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FBI Special Agent Richard Deslauriers told reporters Tuesday, April 16, that the probe had no leads 18 hours after two explosions blew up at the annual Boston Marathon’s finishing line, killing three people and injuring 176 – 17 critically. debkafile’s counterterrorism sources can disclose however that the investigation has in fact homed in on a suspected terror cell of three Saudi nationals, very possibly tied to Al Qaeda. The flat they share in the Revere, Massachusetts, near Boston, was searched after the questioning of one of the suspects, a Saudi student, who was hospitalized with badly burned hands. One of...

Republicans are blasting the Obama administration for detaining a Somali terror suspect for two months aboard a U.S. warship before flying him to New York over the July Fourth holiday to face charges in a civilian trial. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, who has ties to the Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab, was captured April 19 in the Horn of Africa region, possibly in Yemen. At his arraignment in New York Tuesday, he pleaded not guilty to the nine charges he's been indicted on by a federal grand jury, including providing material support to a terrorist organization. "The Obama administration won't detain terrorists...

SNIPPET: "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has released the 10th edition of Inspire, its English language propaganda magazine that is marketed to Westerners. The magazine features an article by Adam Gadahn, the American traitor who works with al Qaeda's core leadership cadre in Pakistan." SNIPPET: "Gadahn also advises jihadists in the West to continue "direct engagement [attacks] at home and abroad with America and its NATO parents, particularly France and Britain."" SNIPPET: "Gadahn is believed to be based in Pakistan and is known to work with As Sahab, al Qaeda's primary propaganda production outfit. He also releases propaganda via...

SNIPPET: "Below is the full transcript of Adam Gadahn's latest tape, " A Call to Arms." Gadahn, al Qaeda's American-born spokesman, is thought to have been captured in Karachi on March 7, but there is much controversy over the reports." Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2010/03/transcript_of_adam_gadahns_a_c.php#ixzz0hZclnjoa

A drone strike in the eastern Yemeni province of Shabwa last month killed the top religious cleric for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a source close to the group said on Tuesday. "A drone strike had targeted Sheikh Adel al-Abab's vehicle but he escaped and fled to a mountainous region where a raid by another drone killed him immediately," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity. Abab had graduated from the Dawa Islamic studies center, in Sana'a and had served as the top religious cleric for AQAP. American drone strikes against Al-Qaeda terrorists are frequent in Yemen, home...

US drones yet again targeted al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters in Yemen, this time outside the capital of Sana'a. The strike today is the fourth by the US in Yemen in five days. The US has expanded the drone campaign throughout all of Yemen over the past year. The CIA-operated, remotely piloted Predators or the more deadly Reapers attacked a vehicle as it traveled in a rural area outside of Sana'a, according to Reuters. Six AQAP members are said to have been killed in the attack. No senior AQAP fighters are reported to have been killed in today's...

A federal judge in Manhattan refused on Wednesday to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret,” she wrote. “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

SNIPPET: "They are: Soheil Omar Kabir, 34, a Pomona man who is an American citizen from Afghanistan; Ralph Deleon, 23, an Ontario man who was born in the Philippines; Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 21, an Upland man who was born in Mexico and whose was U.S. citizenship was pending; and Arifeen David Gojali, 21, of Riverside." SNIPPET: "The three men followed the essays of the now-deceased al-Qaida leader Anwar Al-Awlaqi, who led terrorist operations in the Arabian Peninsula." SNIPPET: "Santana and Deleon told the plot to a confidential informant working for the FBI, according to the complaint." SNIPPET: "In order...

It has become accepted to use the term al Qaeda when referring to any violent Islamic grouping that appears to have a broader organizational connection. To refine that definition there has been added the recognition of at least three so-called "franchises" with a national or regional orientation: al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). All have an outreach beyond their immediate geographical area. The mistake that is made, however, is to characterize al Qaeda as the overall operational director of the movement.The theoretical central control organization, al...

Its hero and editor are dead, but the al-Qaida magazine, Inspire, continues to do just that. According to the complaint filed in federal district court in New York, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, a student from Bangladesh arrested Wednesday and charged with trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in ManhattanÂ’s Financial District, was the latest Islamist militant to try to follow the example of the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and the English-language magazine, Inspire, created in his honor. Quazi Nafis, who came to the United States last January on a student visa, had big...

@alanagoodmanAre you safer now than you were four years ago? ThatÂ’s the most important question that needs to be answered in Monday nightÂ’s foreign policy debate. Unfortunately for President Obama, thereÂ’s ample evidence that the answer is no. His administration killed Osama bin Laden, but the war on terror is still very much alive. And while the Benghazi attack has been getting most of the attention lately, itÂ’s just the latest symptom of a much more systematic national security problem for this administration.Here are some questions that are indirectly related to Benghazi that would be interesting to raise at MondayÂ’s...

Updated at 8 p.m. ET: NEW YORK - A suspected terrorist parked a van packed with what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb next to the Federal Reserve building in Lower Manhattan and tried to detonate it Wednesday morning before he was arrested in a terror sting operation, authorities said. The suspect, 21-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, is a Bangladeshi national who came to the U.S. on a student visa in January for the specific purpose of launching a terror attack here, authorities said. He allegedly told an undercover agent last month that he hoped the attack would disrupt...

Said al-Shihri, described as the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been killed in an operation in southern Yemen, government officials say. Al-Shihri was reportedly killed with six others in the Hadramawt area.

The revolutions that swept the Middle East and North Africa also emptied prisons of militants, a problem now emerging as a potential new terrorist threat. Fighters linked to one freed militant, Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad, took part in the Sept. 11 attack on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya that killed four Americans, U.S. officials believe based on initial reports. Intelligence reports suggest that some of the attackers trained at camps he established in the Libyan Desert, a former U.S. official said. Western officials say Mr. Ahmad has petitioned the chief of Al Qaeda, to whom he has long ties, for...

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...

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A Chicago teen was arrested in Chicago for trying to blow up a bar with a car bomb. News 9 reported: Undercover FBI agents arrested an 18-year-old American man who tried to detonate what he believed was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar, federal prosecutors said Saturday. Adel Daoud, a U.S. citizen from the Chicago suburb of Hillside, was arrested Friday night in an undercover operation in which agents pretending to be extremists provided him with a phony car bomb. The U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Chicago announced the arrest Saturday and said the device was inert and...

SNIPPET: "I. When considering the matter of jihadis online, remember that most of what we think we know is based on analyses of the comments made by an handful of vocal activists. The vast majority of jihadis online, be they on forums or social networking sites[i], say nothing. Skillful translations and insightful analyses by definition tell us little about this potentially lethal yet silent majority."

SNIPPET: "Google removed 640 videos from YouTube in the second half of last year amid fears they promoted terrorism. The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) made a request for five user accounts to be closed for allegedly promoting terrorism. Google agreed and deleted the 640 videos."