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Ex-Sailor Found Guilty of Leaking Ship Movements FEATURE STORY   by IPT IPT News March 3, 2008*Updated NEW HAVEN - Months after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors docked in Yemen, a battle group led by the USS Constellation prepared to sail for the Persian Gulf. The U.S. was saber rattling. Retaliation against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda for the Cole attack was anticipated. Unbeknownst to Navy leadership, a signalman on the destroyer Benfold was in direct communication at the time with a British-based publishing house openly supporting the Taliban and...

Inquiry launched into 'bugging' of Muslim MP By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor Last Updated: 1:52am GMT 04/02/2008 Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has launched a formal inquiry into claims a senior Labour Muslim MP had been bugged during private meetings with a constituent. David Davis' bugging warning letter in full Leader: Reasoning to listen with Sadiq Khan MP Scotland Yard is alleged to have eavesdropped on meetings between Sadiq Khan, a Government whip, and a terrorist suspect currently being held in prison. The police and security services have been barred from bugging MPs for more than 40 years. Watch:...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

WASHINGTON (AP) - An al-Qaida terror suspect detained in England was sent to the United States in early 2001 by the principal architect of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings to perform surveillance on economic targets in New York, according to U.S. officials and government interviews with other captured terror suspects. They said the suspect claimed he has associates in America, possibly in California. Abu Eisa al-Hindi was arrested in a roundup last week in Britain along with 11 others. The disclosure that al-Hindi also was known as Issa al-Britani provides tantalizing details that further link al-Hindi to recent Bush administration...

WASHINGTON — A former Navy sailor was arrested on terrorism charges Wednesday for alleging mishandling classified information that ended up in the hands of a suspected terrorism financier. Hassan Abujihaad, 31, of Phoenix, was arrested in a case that began in Connecticut and has stretched across the country and into Europe and the Middle East. Abujihaad, who is also known as Paul R. Hall, is charged in the same case as Babar Ahmad, a British computer specialist accused of running Web sites to raise money for terrorism. He is schedule be extradited to the U.S. to face trial. Abujihaad was...

March 7, 2007 — A former U.S. Navy sailor has been charged with allegedly passing military secrets about U.S. Navy movements through waters in the Middle East to al Qaeda-related Web sites during the spring of 2001, just months after the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen. Hassan Abujihaad, formerly known as Paul R. Hall, allegedly passed information about U.S. Navy warship movements in the Straits of Hormuz in April 2001 while he was a member of the Navy. The information passed along contained details about vulnerabilites of U.S. vessels — including susceptibility to small boat attacks by terrorists. Abujihaad...

Two terrorist suspects today lost their High Court battle to avoid extradition to the U.S.. Lawyers for Haroon Rashid Aswat and Babar Ahmad argued that, despite U.S. assurances, there was 'a real risk' that the men would be mistreated, or tried and sentenced as enemy combatants if sent to America. Dismissing their appeal, Lord Justice Laws, sitting in London with Mr Justice Walker, said the allegation that the US might violate undertakings given to the UK "would require proof of a quality entirely lacking here". Ahmad, a computer expert from Tooting, south London, is accused of running websites inciting murder...

WASHINGTON — A terrorism suspect arrested in Britain this week was in Internet contact with a U.S. Navy reservist and had detailed information about the sailor's San Diego-based battleship carrier group, including its classified travel plans and its vulnerability to attack, British and American prosecutors said Friday.

"A British man was indicted Wednesday on charges he helped run terrorism fundraising websites, set up terrorists with temporary housing in England and possessed a classified U.S. navy document revealing troop movements. Syed Talha Ahsan, 26, was arrested at his home in London on a federal indictment in Connecticut charging him with conspiracy to support terrorists and conspiracy to kill or injure people abroad...."

Watching the ball drop, twirling a noisemaker, kissing your sweetheart, and making a resolution that rarely comes to pass -- everyone looks forward to the memory of a new year. But one group will be ringing in the New Year a little differently…through a children’s jihad retreat, with a guest speaker who exalts terrorists and another who is linked to al-Qaeda. The majority of Islamic organizations within the United States have, at one time or another, been cited for their connections to terrorism, whether by support of terror groups or through actual terrorist activity carried out by its members. Two...

Accused of running jihadi Web site, Briton pushes message from jail LONDON - Second of three articles Babar Ahmad, a 31-year-old computer whiz and mechanical engineer, was hailed as a big catch by U.S. law enforcement officials when he was arrested here one year ago on charges that he ran a network of Web sites that served as a propaganda and fundraising front for Islamic extremists, including Chechen rebels, the Taliban militia and al Qaeda affiliates. Since then, Ahmad has been locked up inside British prisons as he fights extradition to the United States. But the imprisonment has done little...

LONDON -- Babar Ahmad, a 31-year-old computer whiz and mechanical engineer, was hailed as a big catch by U.S. law enforcement officials when he was arrested here one year ago on charges that he ran a network of Web sites that served as a propaganda and fundraising front for Islamic extremists, including Chechen rebels, the Taliban militia and al Qaeda affiliates. …One top-selling video, titled "Martyrs of Bosnia," was produced in 1997 and featured a masked narrator -- thought to be Ahmad -- waving an automatic rifle and urging Muslims to go to the Balkans to kill nonbelievers.

LONDON (AP) - The British government said Friday it has been granted more time to decide whether to extradite a British man facing terrorism charges in the United States. A judge ruled May 17 that Babar Ahmad could be sent to the United States to face charges of supporting terrorism, conspiring to kill Americans and running a Web site used to fund terrorists. Home Secretary Charles Clarke, the top British official in charge of law and order, had 60 days to decide whether Ahmad would be extradited. That period expires Friday, but the Home Office said Clarke had obtained an...

Terror mastermind lived in flat under Heathrow approach By Daniel Foggo and Massoud Ansari (Filed: 08/08/2004) An al-Qaeda "communications chief" who is believed to have been co-ordinating a plot to bomb Heathrow spent three weeks living near the airport late last year, the Telegraph can reveal. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, 25, who is under arrest in Pakistan, lived in a ground floor flat in Reading, Berkshire. The address, on Wensley Road near the centre of town, lies below a western approach flight path to the airport. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan: reconnaissance He lived there with his grandmother, Batool Begum, and...

A British computer specialist has been indicted formally in the US on charges that he used websites to recruit and finance Taliban fighters. Babar Ahmad, 30, was arrested in London in August and has been held in the UK pending the outcome of extradition proceedings. Ahmad allegedly ran the site azzam.com, which investigators say was used to funnel money to terrorists. "Azzam Publications has been set up to propagate the call for jihad ... to incite the believers and also, secondly, to raise some money for the brothers," the website allegedly said. Donors were encouraged to smuggle cash into Pakistan...

Brown's photo 'on al-Qaida disks' Seized computers included chancellor's image among information on potential US attacks David Teather in New York and Patrick Barkham Monday August 9, 2004 The Guardian Details emerged yesterday of potential terrorist targets found on captured al-Qaida computers, including a downloaded picture of Gordon Brown, and possible plans to use helicopters to attack New York. Information gleaned from the three laptops and 51 computer disks seized in Pakistan led to the specific warnings issued last week about possible attacks on five financial institutions in the US. US officials have hailed as a breakthrough the arrests and...

Investigators are trying to determine whether a San Diego sailor passed Navy secrets about security weaknesses and warship movements to a British man accused of having terrorist links, according to court documents unsealed yesterday. E-mail messages from the unnamed sailor, sent in late 2000 and 2001 before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were found in December in computer files belonging to Babar Ahmad, who was detained Wednesday in London, according to the 31-page arrest affidavit. The computer files contained details about security arrangements and movements of the San Diego-based Constellation carrier battle group, which included the destroyer Benfold, on which...

August 7, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - A U.S. sailor aboard one of America's high-tech Navy warships sent e-mails to a suspected London-based al Qaeda terrorist and may have revealed sensitive military secrets, authorities announced yesterday. The traitor sailor, who has not been identified, praised Muslim terror strikes against America and may have turned over detailed plans about the Navy's USS Benfold and more than a dozen other ships in its battle group as they were moving through the Mideast, officials said. The information about the American sailor was disclosed yesterday by federal prosecutors in Connecticut who said he had been...

Briton 'had Gulf battle plans and links to US navy mole' By David Rennie in Washington and David Millward (Filed: 07/08/2004) A Briton who appeared in court in London yesterday on extradition charges allegedly was in possession of US navy battle plans and had contacts with an apparent Islamist spy within the service. American authorities claim that Babar Ahmad, 30, ran a terrorist fundraising and recruiting agency on the internet, much of it on behalf of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Two members of Babar Ahmad's family leave the court Ahmad, who appeared at Bow Street magistrate's court, was told his...

British citizen facing extradition to the United States on terrorism charges was found in possession of detailed military plans for a US Navy battle group in the Gulf, federal prosecutors said. AFP/File Photo An indictment unsealed in Connecticut also accused Babar Ahmad, 30, of operating two US-based web sites that solicited financial support for terrorist organizations, including the Taliban and Chechen rebels. "In order to dismantle terrorist organizations, we must attack them at their roots, so it is critical that we uncover and sever the financing stream and communication that supports the terrorists' violent intentions," said US Attorney Kevin O'Connor....

A British citizen wanted on terrorism charges in the US has been arrested in the UK under anti-terror laws, Scotland Yard has said. Babar Ahmad, 30, is being held in London on a US extradition warrant. The warrant alleges that via websites and e-mail he solicited people to provide funds to further terrorist acts in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Ahmad, whose arrest is not thought to be linked to 12 terror arrests earlier in the week, is due in court on Friday. Websites allegedly used by Ahmad, a resident of south London, are based in the US. The warrant also alleges...