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Saddam's Ambassador to al-QaedaBy Jonathan SchanzerWeekly Standard | February 23, 2004 A RECENTLY INTERCEPTED MESSAGE from Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi asking the al Qaeda leadership for reinforcements reignited the debate over al-Qaeda ties with Saddam Hussein's fallen Baath regime. William Safire of the New York Times called the message a "smoking gun," while the University of Michigan's Juan Cole says that Safire "offers not even one document to prove" the Saddam/al-Qaeda nexus. What you are about to read bears directly on that debate. It is based on a recent interview with Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in...

The London accountant who accompanied Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to Timbuktu on three occasions in 1998, 1999 and 2000 says the 'father' of the Pakistani bomb witnessed the digging of a well, toured an ancient Islamic library and enjoyed the views of the desert. A remote outpost in the middle of the West African desert, Timbuktu usually attracts explorers associated in the popular mind with the adventures of the comic character Tin Tin. And Pakistani dissidents told rediff.com the reason for Khan's visit to Timbuktu, part of landlocked West African state of Mali, was to prospect for uranium. They say...

Ahmed Ressam was resentenced this morning to 22 years in federal prison for conspiring to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport despite telling a judge that he recanted everything he has told the federal government about terrorist activities. Federal prosecutors had urged U.S. District Judge John Coughenour to send Ressam to prison for life — a sentence Ressam said he would accept now that he had cleared his conscience about his cooperation, which ended in 2003. Prosecutors pointed out that Ressam's defiance has cost two high-profile terrorism prosecutions so far, and that Ressam has actively tried to help the cases...

BRITAIN has resorted to detaining as an illegal immigrant a man regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most dangerous terrorists. Abu Doha, whose various aliases include “The Doctor”, has been in Belmarsh highsecurity jail for almost six years facing extradition to the United States on charges of running a jihad training camp in Afghanistan and plotting to blow up Los Angeles airport. But the US has been forced to drop the case against him after an informer refused to give evidence. A British judge described the extremist network created by Abu Doha as “one of the most significant groups of terrorists...

.."surrendered after disagreements with other leaders in the organization."

ALGIERS (Reuters) - The deputy chief of al Qaeda's North Africa wing, believed to be the group's operational leader, was killed along with two other rebels in a gun battle with Algerian troops, local newspapers said on Tuesday. Hareg Zoheir, also known as Sofiane Abu Fasila, was said to be the second-in-command of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and suspected of being behind planning most of the suicide bombings in Algeria in the recent months. He was shot dead on Sunday at a check point in the eastern region of Tzizi Ouzou, the country's leading dailies reported. "Sofiane is...

ALGIERS, Algeria (Reuters) -- Algerian security forces have killed the mastermind of suicide bombings including a triple attack in Algiers in April that claimed 33 lives, a government-run newspaper reported on Thursday. Rachid Sid Ali, a military adviser to the al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, was killed on July 30 in the troubled Kabylie region east of Algiers, El Moudjahid said. He was killed along with his aide Haroun El Achaachi "thanks to the help of the local population of Iboudranene" village near Kabylie's main town of Tizi Ouzou, the daily added, citing a security source. Attacks plotted...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police on Tuesday arrested three Moroccans suspected of having links to al Qaeda and recruiting people to send to training camps in Africa. Police said in a statement they had detained Mohamed Laksir, 23, Moulay Lahoucine Miftah Idrissi, 27, and Mohamed Akazim, 32, in Barcelona under international warrants lodged by Moroccan authorities, who want them extradited. The Spanish police said the men were linked to al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). Police said they were suspected of recruiting people and indoctrinating them with radical...

Seven Islamic extremists and two members of Algeria's security forces have been killed in the violent run-up to parliamentary elections, newspapers reported Saturday. Three armed Islamists and one soldier were killed Thursday when fighting broke out during a military operation in the Tizi Ouzou region of Kabylie, 110 kilometres (70 miles) east of Algiers, the Liberte newspaper said. Another three extremists were killed on the same day in another military sweep, in Saida, 430 kilometres southwest of the capital, it added, as Algerians looked forward to the May 17 legislative polls. All six Islamists were said to be members of...

Algiers, 10 May (AKI) - In a major anti-terror police operation, the Algerian army has surrounded an area on the outskirts of Tizi Ouzou, in Kabylia, 100 km from Algiers to hunt down al-Qaeda militants allegedly hiding in the area, the local al-Watan paper reported Thursday. The operation reportedly kicked off Wednesday morning and is being carried out with ground troops and helicopters. Security around public buildings was also boosted over fears that would-be suicide bombers are preparing to strike. Local terror experts fear militants are preparing to strike in Tizi Ouzou in retaliation for the death of Samir Saioud,...

RABAT (Reuters) - Moroccan security forces broke up a network helping to recruit fighters for al Qaeda's North African branch and arrested around 20 people overnight in several towns across the country, a government official said on Sunday. The gang was involved in sending volunteers to training camps run by the Algerian-based al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), the official said, confirming an earlier report by state news agency MAP. "The operation ... allowed the arrest of around 20 people in several towns across the kingdom," MAP said....

TORONTO - Canadian counter- terrorism investigators have dismantled a suspected terrorist cell in Toronto whose members included an al-Qaeda-trained explosives expert, the National Post has learned. The cell consisted of four Algerian refugee claimants who had lived in Canada for as long as six years and were alleged members of a radical Islamic terror faction called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat. The central figure of the Toronto-area cell was a former al-Qaeda training camp instructor who studied bomb-making at Osama bin Laden's Al Farooq and Khaldun training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The group was watched by intelligence officers...

Fernando Huarte Santamaría, a leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in the northern city of Gijón, Asturias, contacted Algerian terrorist Benesmail Abdelkrim in the Villabona prison in 2001. Huarte even got Abdelkrim a furlough to go to the dentist and paid his bill; the two last met in October 2004. A few days later, the police arrested Abdelkrim and found the address of a well-known ETA terrorist in his pocket. Abdelkrim served time with two other notorious prisoners, Spaniard Antonio Toro Castro and Moroccan Rafá Zouhier, two police informants accused in the March 11, 2004 bombings. In April 1997...

An underground film showing the slaughter of Algerian soldiers is being used as a recruitment tool for British Islamic radicals The trail runs from a wet corner of a west London street to the dusty mountains of eastern Algeria, from a garage on the Thames to the Mediterranean, from a mosque off north London's Seven Sisters Road to Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. In one direction the trail is a conduit for volunteers and money - both heading for Islamist rebels fighting a brutal war against Algeria's government. In the other direction flow political refugees, communiqués boasting of ...

RABAT, Morocco - Two brothers strapped with explosives blew themselves up near an American cultural center in Casablanca Saturday, and police arrested another three suspects — including one wearing an explosives belt — hours later, an official said. The attacks came just days after three suspected militants blew themselves up as they were cornered by police in Casablanca, and al-Qaida claimed suicide car bombings in neighboring Algeria that killed 33 people. The attacks have stoked new fears of Islamic terrorism in North Africa — especially in Morocco, long known for its stability. The Moroccan and Algerian governments have not addressed...

With its endless expanse of desolate sands, the Western Sahara might not seem worth fighting over. But the thinly populated, Italy-sized region on Africa's northwest coast is at the heart of a three-decade-long dispute that, U.S. officials and analysts say, inhibits the fight against terrorism across North Africa. Any doubts about the seriousness of the terrorist problem in the region were undercut by attacks in Morocco, on Tuesday and Saturday, and Algeria, on Wednesday. In the latest attack, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Casablanca near an American cultural center. The incidents followed expressions of interest by al-Qaida in...

On September 11 last year, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Ayman al Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, announced a formal merger with one of the most violent groups to have emerged from Algeria’s bloody civil war. The announcement came within days of the expiry of the Algerian government’s six-month amnesty for militants and sparked an upsurge in terrorist activity by the GSPC (Salafist Group for Call and Combat). The union was further cemented in January when the GSPC declared that it would be known in future as the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb. The targets for the resurgent group’s bombers in...

ALGIERS, April 9 (Reuters) - Nine soldiers and at least four Islamist rebels were killed in clashes between Algerian government troops and militants seeking to set up an Islamic state, newspapers reported on Monday. It was the largest reported single casualty toll among government forces since Islamist guerrillas killed at least seven troops in November 2006 in the Bouira region east of the capital Algiers. Liberte and El Watan said that in Saturday afternoon's incident five soldiers were also wounded when militants ambushed an army foot patrol in the southwestern province of Ain Defla, 150 km (93 miles) from Algiers....

The decision of the leaders of Algeria's Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) to pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda has been well-covered. The GSPC's proven combat capabilities, willingness to send fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq and other Islamist insurgencies, widespread presence in Western European cities, connections and working relationships to criminal enterprises in Europe and its status as a potential al-Qaeda-related threat to Western oil and natural gas supplies emanating from Algeria are all positive benefits for al-Qaeda [1]. Beyond these tactical and strategic—at least regarding energy supplies—advantages, the GSPC's decision to join al-Qaeda is, from the...

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian police have dismantled a network suspected of funnelling weapons to an al Qaeda branch in North Africa, a newspaper said on Saturday. The busted ring included French, Tunisian and Algerian nationals and was believed to supply the Al Qaeda Organisation of Islamic Maghreb, the daily Liberte said, citing unnamed sources. A French national, two Tunisians and 24 Algerians were in custody in the eastern town of Constantine after they were arrested by police following a search operation there. Police raided a safe house in Constantine, 430 km (268 miles) from Algiers, on February11 and seized 165...