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When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a brief self-congratulatory trip to Tripoli, Libya, in October 2011 -- with U.S. military assets lurking offshore in case they needed to rescue her -- she joked, in the presence of then-Ambassador Gene Cretz and Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman, that they had not-so-long-ago been worried that the ambassador might end up the target of a murderous Libyan assault. "As Gene and Assistant Secretary Feltman and I were walking through here, they were talking about how the last time Jeff was here was when we were very worried that Gadhafi and [Libyan...

SNIPPET: "A webmaster from Normandy, northern France was arrested and charged on Thursday for "provoking" and condoning terrorism. He is accused of translating articles from the jihadist magazine Inspire into French." SNIPPET: "The 26-year-old, identified as Romain, was detained Tuesday for his role as administrator of the Ansar al Haqq website, a "reference" for the radical Islamist movement, and as a translator of magazines put out by militant group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Paris prosecutors said. Detained by intelligence officers in his native Calvados region of northern France, Romain said he converted to Islam when he was 20, prosecutors said. The Ansar...

Al Qaeda's mission may be "overthrowing godless regimes" and replacing them with Islamic ones, according to its handbook, but even that is still a tangible goal, and the group has corporate-style protocols for achieving it. And just like any corporation, Al Qaeda has to deal with personnel problems. On Tuesday, the Associated Press told the story of the group's biggest human resources headache yet, in the form of Moktar Belmoktar, an ambitious regional commander in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb who bridled under the group's strict structure and, after AQIM sent him a letter detailing his shortcomings, split off...

SNIPPET: "So, what I’m seeing here is that the death of these two Mauritanian scholars offered a convenient opportunity for al-Qaida to start co-branding Abu Yahya al-Libi and Atiyah abd al-Rahman (Attiyatallah) together as the unified tip of al-Qaida’s ideological spear. In other words, the leadership transition has begun. The heirs are no longer apparent. They have been named. It began with letters to al-Zarqawi and videotaped interviews and recorded statements and sermons. The naming continued with getting props in Exoneration and photoshoots and now joint releases. This jointly written eulogy release (I have never seen AQ release a two-authored...

French Soldier Stabbed In Neck Near Paris Adam TaylorMay 25, 2013, 1:43 PM A soldier patrolling as part of France's Vigipirate anti-terrorist surveillance plan was stabbed in the neck this afternoon, Reuters reports. A police source told the news agency that the soldier would survive the attack. He is 23 years old, according to CNN. Le Parisien is reporting that the attacker was of Northern African appearance, aged around 30 years old and wearing a jilbab, a type of Islamic garment. The man quickly fled the scene and has not been caught. The attack happened in La Défense, to the...

Two years ago today, SEAL Team Six sent Osama bin Laden on his way to Davy Jones’ Locker — but his Islamist terror machine is anything but sinking to the depths. It remains a vicious, global threat. Since Osama’s demise, the terror group’s strength has ebbed in some areas, but flowed strongly in others. Indeed, one current estimate concludes that al Qaeda affiliates and associates (i.e., groups, cells or operatives) are active in more than 30 countries (of some 190) on four continents. Including our continent. While we don’t yet know the whole story behind the Boston bombing, just last...

Image that accompanied Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's audiotape announcing the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The flag was originally al Qaeda in Iraq's banner, but has been adopted by other al Qaeda affiliated and associated groups. Image from the SITE Intelligence Group. The emir of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Abu Bakr al Baghdadi (also known as Abu Dua), has announced a new brand for his organization's efforts: the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant." The new name replaces all previous brands used by al Qaeda's affiliates in Iraq and Syria, including the...

Signs that Canadian citizens were involved in the attack by hostage-taking Islamist militants on a remote gas plant in Algeria are of great concern to American authorities, U.S. intelligence officials said on Thursday. While Algerian authorities apparently have not yet provided Western governments with cast-iron proof, a senior U.S. intelligence official said: “We’re taking very seriously the reports of the two Canadians’ involvement.” ... Confirmation that Canadian citizens were involved in the attack on the In Amenas facility in the Algerian desert would raise concerns about a worrying nexus between North America and North African militants. At least 38 plant...

Shortly after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last September, a phone call was placed from the area. Whoever made the call was excited. "Mabruk, Mabruk!" he repeated, meaning "Congratulations" in Arabic. Two sources with high-level access to Western intelligence services have told CNN the call was made to a senior figure in al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. There is no proof that the call was specifically about the attack, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, but the sources say that is the assumption among those with knowledge...

(Reuters) - France has ordered special forces to protect uranium sites run by state-owned Areva in Niger as the threat of attacks on its interests rises after its intervention against rebels in Mali, a military source said on Thursday. ... Seven workers, including five French nationals, were kidnapped in Arlit by al Qaeda's north African arm AQIM in September 2010. It later released three of the hostages but four French citizens are still being held. ... According to a parliamentary committee enquiring into France's supplies of uranium, about 18 percent of the raw material used to power France's 58 nuclear...

The supposed “responsibility to protect” has taken America into a war on the side of the ultimate killers of innocents. (See also "Rebel Libya: ‘Brothers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, now is the time to defend your land!" on the Tatler.) In the absence of any evident national interest justification for bombing Libya, the Obama administration is said to have been motivated by the so-called responsibility to protect — or “R2P” per the wonkish English acronym. In American discussions, “R2P” has quickly come to be associated with Obama advisor Samantha Power. But “R2P” did not emerge full-grown from the...

WASHINGTON – There remains frustration in trying to track down up to 20,000 missing shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles taken out of the bunkers during the waning days of the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. Now that they have disappeared, and despite a U.S. program worth tens of millions of dollars to try and relocate them, only 5,000 have been turned in. Concern is that many of them were acquired by al-Qaida elements in Libya and surrounding countries. Increasingly, intelligence sources also are seeing these weapons wind up in the hands of...

...Lets start by stating the obvious: AQIM is not a product of the Arab Spring. AQIM exists because of the military coup that ended the 'Algerian Spring' two decades ago. And it has not been strengthened by the Libyan revolution, but rather by the failure of state-building in northern Mali, the absence of post-conflict reconciliation and reintegration in Algeria, and a lack of accountability for a shadowy Algerian security establishment whose brutal methods have proven woefully inadequate to the challenge. AQIM's real origins AQIMs history can be traced directly to the coup staged by a handful of Algerian generals against...

At least 12 men had hands or feet cut off after MUJAO (Movement for Jihad and Unity), and its allies in AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), took control of Gao last April. The exact number is not known because some were amputated in the military base... The mayor's office, a few yards from the punishment ground, was turned into a sharia court... Suspects were confined to a small room where they were tied up and beaten, before being brought before Islamic judges, known as marabous, who sat every Monday and Thursday. Ali Altini and Mohammed Aklini were due to...

Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday. The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official...

A week of violence in Algeria and Mali has transformed al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch into a cause celebre for militant Islamists around the globe, boosting recruitment and fundraising for the jihadists and spurring fears of further terrorist attacks in the region and beyond. Even after suffering tactical defeats in both countries in recent days, the movement known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is being lionized in Internet chat rooms and in official statements by extremist groups, some of which are urging reprisal campaigns against Western interests. U.S. officials and terrorism analysts are pointing to last week’s hostage drama in...

President Barack Obama offered on Saturday to provide any assistance the Algerian government needs after a deadly hostage siege at a desert gas plant and said the United States was seeking a "fuller understanding" from Algerian authorities of what took place there. "The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the families of all those who were killed and injured in the terrorist attack in Algeria," Obama said in his first comments on the hostage crisis. Obama's written statement was issued by the White House after the Algerian army carried out a dramatic final assault to end a...

Emboldened by America’s projection of weakness abroad, Islamists apparently linked to al-Qaeda reportedly continue to hold about 40 foreign hostages including seven Americans seized Wednesday at a natural gas field in Algeria.At press time, conflicting media reports had been emerging from the region. Some claimed that the hostages have been freed; others, that several hostages have been killed. The mass kidnapping at a BP (formerly British Petroleum) gas site near the Libyan border, which may very well have been accomplished with U.S.-supplied weapons left over from the ouster of the late Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, seems to be a...

Islamofascism: The terrorist attack on a vast Algerian gas plant Wednesday shows a resurgent al-Qaida that puts the lie to the Obama administration's claim that the war on terror is all but over. It may in fact be just beginning. Everything about the al-Qaida "Blood Brigade" attack on the Al Amenas natural gas plant 800 miles east of Algiers — where hundreds of workers, including Americans, were taken hostage in a bloody standoff — suggests an organization growing in strength with a bigger game than just retaliating for the French invasion of Mali. You'd never know that from our silent...

'Thirty-five hostages killed in Algerian helicopter attack on BP gas plant siege': Two Brits feared dead, but some captives including Americans and Irish have escaped Helicopters 'began strafing' complex, also killing 15 militants, claim rebelsMilitants had earlier threatened to blow up the hostages if they intervened Al-Qaeda group also demand safe passage out of facility with the hostagesTwo British nationals and Algerian are believed to have been killed in siegeBritain will allow Algeria to 'take the lead', but will consider request for helpPM Cameron: 'Extent of attack suggests considerable degree of planning'Attack was planned by 'one-eyed Islamist known as...