Free Republic

A man reported to be a serving soldier is dead and two people have been shot in Woolwich, south east London, after what Sky sources understand is being treated as a terrorist attack. Downing Street has called a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee after the incident in John Wilson Street, which David Cameron described as "truly shocking". Sky sources understand that senior police officers believe the killing was likely to be a politically-motivated Islamist terrorist attack. Dozens of weapons - including a number of knives - and pools of blood could be seen on the ground, where a...

SNIPPET: "A genuinely inspiring issue of AQAP's flagship English language publication. This is what pages 1, 2, & 3 look like:" SNIPPET: "The remaining pages were rendered intentionally blank by person or persons unknown."

Reprinted from PeaceandTolerance.org. “This is alarming, but I’d need to see a smoking gun.” That’s what a Boston Rabbi said after we’d spent an hour in his office walking him through mounds of evidence that linked the leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) to terrorism and hate speech against Jews and Christians. He wouldn’t speak publicly about the radical leadership of the ISB mosque, he explained, for fear of giving offense, for fear of breaking with a certain understanding about these things, for fear of being labeled a bigot. For 10 years, this reluctance to speak honestly about...

Since 2010, al-Qaeda has apparently been publishing an English-speaking magazine called Inspire meant to attract Muslims into extremism and teach them how to wreak massive amounts of violence onto innocent people. “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” reads one of the headlines. At first, Americans laughed at Inspire and didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. But then we realized just how powerful this propaganda could be considering the relationship the average Muslim has with the American people these days. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman described the purpose of Inspire as “getting frustrated Muslim youth to buy into al-Qaeda’s...

Authorities believe neither brother had links to terror groups. However, two U.S. officials said Tuesday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev - who died last week in a gunbattle - frequently looked at extremist websites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida's Yemen affiliate. The magazine has endorsed lone-wolf terror attacks.

To borrow a line from Dennis Green, they are who we thought they were. From his hospital bed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has acknowledged his role in planting the explosives near the marathon finish line on April 15, the officials said. The first successful large-scale bombing in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era, the Boston attack killed three people and wounded more than 250 others.The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police as the two attempted to avoid capture, do not appear to have been...

SNIPPET: "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say Russian sports officials said they will beef up security at forthcoming sports events and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the wake of deadly explosions at Boston's marathon that killed three people, and injured over 140 others." "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say" SNIPPET: "The World Athletics Championship takes place in Moscow on Aug 10-18, and the event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort...

Flanked by almost 20 men with rifles, Omar Abu al-Chechen kneels on a carpet and delivers a rousing speech urging fellow Muslims to support the 'jihad' against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Dressed almost entirely in black, the militant from Russia's Chechnya region declares an Islamist state is within reach. Fellow fighters from the brigade of foreign militants he leads translate his Russian words into Arabic. "Jihad needs very many things. Firstly it needs money. Much is dependent on money today for jihad," said al-Chechen, his nomme de guerre, the leader of what rebels and websites call the Brigade of Migrants,...

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America’s Cross Hairs By MARK MAZZETTI, CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — One morning in late September 2011, a group of American drones took off from an airstrip the C.I.A. had built in the remote southern expanse of Saudi Arabia. The drones crossed the border into Yemen, and were soon hovering over a group of trucks clustered in a desert patch of Jawf Province, a region of the impoverished country once renowned for breeding Arabian horses. A group of men who had just finished breakfast scrambled to get to their trucks....

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

SNIPPET: "A seventh man, aged 20, was arrested on Thursday and continues to be questioned." SNIPPET: "Irfan Nasser, 30, from Sparkhill, and Irfan Khalid, 26, from Sparkbrook, are accused of travelling to Pakistan for terrorism training, including bomb making, and weapons and poison making; as well making a martyrdom video and planning a bombing campaign. Ashik Ali, 26, from Balsall Heath, and Rahi Ahmed, 25, from Moseley, face charges related to planning a bombing campaign in the UK, including constructing a home-made explosive device for terrorist acts and stating an intention to be suicide bombers. Two other suspects - Bahader...

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...

  "German Islamists Target Youth on the Internet" By Christoph Sydow 11/01/2012 "Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan." PHOTO CAPTION: "A growing community of German-speaking Islamists has developed on the Internet. Aiming to find new recruits, they glorify jihad and call for attacks on Germany. A new study warns that such online propaganda might foster a new generation of terrorists." SNIPPET: "International terrorist groups like al-Qaida recognized the importance of the Internet for recruiting new supporters early on." SNIPPET: "Intelligence services can also take advantage of the anonymity of Internet forums to deliberately plant false information or obtain insider...

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...

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...

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...