Free Republic

Swiss hold 8 over Saudi suicide bombs Alison Langley in Zurich, and Brian Whitaker Saturday January 10, 2004 The Guardian The Swiss authorities have arrested eight people in connection with suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia. The arrests on Thursday were part of a national operation by 100 police officers who raided homes in Geneva, Bern, Zurich, Vaud and Aargau and questioned about 20 suspects. Those arrested are suspected of providing logistical support for a series of attacks by Islamic militants on housing compounds in Riyadh last May which killed 35 people, including nine assailants. Officials said all the suspects were...

Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, by Caroline Fourest; foreword by Denis MacShane (Encounter Books, 262 pp., $23.95) In the 1990s, Western liberals, alarmed at the presence of Islamic fundamentalists in their midst, turned in desperation to Muslims whom they dubbed “reformers” or “modernizers.” They hoped that these figures would have a moderating influence on disaffected Muslim youths who refused to integrate into Western society. One such “reformer” is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born academic. Ramadan has won the confidence of many in the West, including the British government, which asked him to serve on its task force for...

Al Qaeda released a 106-minute Arabic language video Tuesday titled "The West... and The Dark Tunnel" featuring Al Qaeda's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri predicting the downfall of Barack Obama. During the documentary-style video to mark the ninth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, Al Qaeda leaders comment on events in the past year such as the U.S. presidential elections, the global financial meltdown, and the latest on jihadist movements around the world. "America has come in a new, hypocritical face. Smiling at us, but stabbing us with the same dagger that Bush used," said Zawahri in the message....

The deepening global financial crisis has focused international attention on failing companies, rising unemployment, and diving stock markets. Little attention, however, has been given to the downturn's significant effect on terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, which has altered its central message and is facing dwindling financial resources. Although the economic situation has likewise affected government and private-sector counterterrorism efforts, steps can be taken to improve the current counterterrorism financing regime even in these troubled times.

Al-Qaeda welcomes Michael Jacksons conversion to Islam 22-11-2008 Initial reports are already filtering through that Al-Qaeda has warmly welcomed Michael Jackson into their faith 'as they would any sincere new adherent' and are confident that this high profile conversion will prove to be the turning point whereby millions of young Americans, already disillusioned by the economic crisis that is sapping Americas confidence will turn to the Koran for inspiration. Sources close to Al Qaeda leadership are said to have have confirmed the open satisfaction of senior figures including Deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri regarding the pop star's conversion, according to some Pakistani...

Fresh links between Iran's Revolutionary Guards and al-Qaeda have been uncovered following interception of a letter from the terrorist leadership that hails Tehran's support for a recent attack on the American embassy in Yemen, which killed 16 people. Delivery of the letter exposed the rising role of Saad bin Laden, son of the al-Qaeda leader, Osama as an intermediary between the organisation and Iran. Saad bin Laden has been living in Iran since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, apparently under house arrest. The letter, which was signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, was written...

A recently released propaganda video by the Islamic extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir is quite revealing. Not only does the video demonstrate the group’s growing effort to package arguments in a manner designed to appeal to Westerners on the political left, but it also serves as a barometer of radical Muslim groups’ broader shift in rhetorical strategy. The video, “Iraq: Past and Present Colonialism,” appears for the first twenty-seven minutes to be a standard leftist critique of the Iraq war, indistinguishable from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. The slickly-produced video begins with the history of past colonialism in Iraq—including the Mongol conquest...

Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri is rumored to have been killed in a July 28 U.S. airstrike in Pakistan

U.S. counterterrorism officials said Friday they have seen no evidence to support a media report that al Qaeda's No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be critically wounded or dead. A $25 million reward has been offered for Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command. A $25 million reward has been offered for Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command. A senior intelligence official told CNN there is no evidence to support a CBS News report on al-Zawahiri, and no reason to believe it is true. "This is utterly uncorroborated, and at this point there is no reason to believe that al-Zawahiri has been injured...

Unverified Letter Obtained By CBS News Urgently Requests Doctor To Treat Ayman al-ZawahiriCBS) Ayman al-Zawahiri - the second most powerful leader in al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden's No. 2 - may be critically wounded and possibly dead, CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports exclusively. CBS News has obtained a copy of an intercepted letter from sources in Pakistan, which urgently requests a doctor to treat al-Zawahiri. He's believed to be somewhere in Pakistan's remote tribal areas of Pakistan. The letter refers to Sheikh Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri by name - and says that he is in "severe...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

March 24, 2008, 5:00 a.m. Chilling ConfirmationYes, Saddam Hussein was an Islamofascist threat. By Deroy Murdock As Operation Iraqi Freedom is now five years old, a new study confirms that ousting Saddam Hussein was justified and vital to U.S. national security. Though war critics hate to admit it, the Baathist dictator was up to his mustache in aid for Islamofascist terrorism. As a report from the Institute for Defense Analyses explains, “captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.” IDA’s review of some 600,000 documents discovered in Iraq since...

THE death of Special Air Service soldier Sergeant Matthew Locke on Thursday in Afghanistan is a terrible reminder that there is rarely such a thing as a war without casualties. Sergeant Locke died fighting a barbaric enemy that seeks not just to take Afghanistan back to the dark ages but to use it as a base from which to destroy us. Worryingly, the death of two Australian soldiers in three weeks is not just a tragic coincidence. Things are not going well in the poorly named war on terror. As Frank Furedi writes in Inquirer today, we have been unable...

Al-Qaida is aggressively recruiting black Americans for suicide operations against the homeland, say FBI analysts who have reviewed recent videotaped messages from the terror group's leaders. A speech released May 5 by Osama bin Laden's deputy confirms earlier fears that African-Americans are the No. 1 recruiting target for the next generation of attacks. Al-Qaida has been trying to lower its Arab profile to reduce the odds that its terror cells will be subjected to security scrutiny. "Federal and local law enforcement authorities should be aware that al-Qaida terrorists may not appear Arab," warns a recent Homeland Security intelligence report obtained...

Report: Al-Qaeda No. 2 Visited Bulgaria Politics: 20 March 2004, Saturday. Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, travelled to Bulgaria among other countries on Islamic Jihad business and under an assumed name, Birmingham Post-Herald claims. According to the article Zawahiri visited Switzerland, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Dagestan, a Russian province and even made surreptitious fund-raising swings through Texas, California and New York in the 1990s. In 1998, Zawahiri and bin Laden officially aligned, and al-Qaeda was born. In a separate development Ayman al-Zawahiri biographer, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, announced that Zawahiri, visited New Zealand and Australia in 1996 to recruit...

Last year, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, wrote to the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, telling him to "be ready starting now" for America to run from Iraq, reminding him how America cut and ran from Vietnam and the "aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam, and how they ran and left their agents." Alas, Zarqawi never got to implement his Iraq takeover plan because the same troops that are allegedly losing the war right now killed him in June. But al Qaeda in America isn't ready to quit, yet! New York Times...

10/03/2006 - By Michael Scheuer (from Terrorism Focus, October 3) - The past week produced messages from the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who uses the name Abu Hamza al-Muhajir and may be an Egyptian by the name of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and al-Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. While there is nothing startlingly new in either message, both provide occasions for examining al-Qaeda's ability to stay on message, to learn from and try to redress serious errors and to deploy Islamic history and tradition in support of its case for a "defensive jihad" against the United States and its...

Islamabad - Pakistan has informed US-led coalition forces that an al-Qaeda kingpin linked to an alleged plot to blow up airliners is based in eastern Afghanistan, security officials said on Friday. The senior Pakistani officials said the unnamed al-Qaeda member was based in Afghanistan's volatile eastern province of Kunar, which borders Pakistan's militant-infested north-western tribal areas. The information came from the interrogation of Rashid Rauf, a Briton whose arrest by Pakistani agents in early August allegedly led to the uncovering of the conspiracy to bomb US-bound planes, they said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not identify the...

Recent reports outlining what Time magazine has called the "untold story" of a cancelled al Qaeda plot against the New York subway system have excited considerable media hype and public consternation. The account is part of Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine, that was excerpted in the June 26 edition of Time. According to Suskind, al Qaeda developed a "revolutionary new WMD device" that would generate cyanide gas, and these weapons -- which he refers to as "mubtakkar" devices -- were to have been planted on subways by operatives who were in place and preparing to act in...

Today's announcement by Al Qaeda second in command Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri that the multinational terror conglomerate has been joined by a portion of the Egyptian group "Jamaa Islamiya" is both puzzling and not surprising. It is unclear how large the faction is from Jamaa Islamiya that is aligning itself with Al Qaeda. Neither Zawahiri nor Mohamed Khalil Hukayma, who made the announcement for Jamaa Islamiya, was clear about how many members were involved in the merger, although Zawahiri did refer to of the large crowd and the majority of Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya, in the following statement: Abu Jihad Al-Masri, Mohamed...