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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A former third-grade teacher at a Muslim school was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday for providing support to a Pakistani terrorist organization. Ali Asad Chandia, 29, who taught at the al-Huda school in College Park, Md., is one of 11 Muslim men convicted in what prosecutors called a "Virginia jihad network." The network involved a group of men who played paintball in the Virginia woods in 2000 and 2001 as a means of training for global holy war. After the Sept. 11 attacks, some group members turned their efforts against the United States, traveling to...

File picture of former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. (Agence France-Presse) LAHORE: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has admitted in an interview that Islamabad supported and trained groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in the 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir. The former army chief has also said that Lashkar leaders like Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi enjoyed the status of heroes at that time. Speaking to Pakistani news channel Dunya News on Sunday, Mr Musharraf said, "In the 1990s, the freedom struggle began in Kashmir...At that time, Lashkar-e- Taiba and 11 or 12 other organisations were formed. We supported...

CHICAGO (AP) -- A federal jury convicted a Chicago businessman on Thursday of helping plot an attack against a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad but cleared him of the most serious charge accusing him of cooperating in the deadly 2008 rampage in Mumbai. The jury reached its split verdict after two days of deliberations, finding Tahawwur Rana guilty of providing material support to terrorism in Denmark and to the Pakistani militant group that had claimed responsibility for the three-day siege in India's largest city that left more than 160 people dead, including six Americans.

NEW DELHI: The agreement between David Coleman Headley and US authorities, under which he pleaded guilty to being part of the 26/11 plot in order to dodge the death sentence and extradition to India, has considerably abated the fear here that the Americans would let off Headley aka Daood Gilani, a suspected "double agent", lightly. It also marks a big boost to New Delhi's efforts to expose Pakistan's propaganda to project Lashkar as a group focused on J&K. Details of the "guilty" plea made by Headley validate India's claims about the Lashkar leadership masterminding 26/11, and suggest that the American...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, March 18, 2010 Chicago Resident David Coleman Headley Pleads Guilty to Role in India and Denmark Terrorism Conspiracies Admits Conducting Surveillance for Lashkar e Tayyiba in Planning 2008 Mumbai Attacks David Coleman Headley, a U.S. citizen of partial Pakistani descent, pleaded guilty today to a dozen federal terrorism charges, admitting that he participated in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, as well as later planning to attack a Danish newspaper. In pleading guilty to all 12 counts that were brought against him in December and were...

DUBLIN (AP) -- Four people, including an American woman, arrested over an alleged plot to assassinate Swedish artist Lars Vilks have been freed without charge, but three others remain in custody, Irish police said Saturday. Seven people - three Algerians, a Libyan, a Palestinian and a Croatian and the American woman, who is married to one of the Algerians - were arrested Tuesday in Ireland hours before U.S. authorities unveiled a terror indictment against a 46-year-old Philadelphia woman, Colleen LaRose.

One of the two men arrested for illegally buying mobile phone cards used by gunmen in the Mumbai attacks is a counter-insurgency police officer who may have been on an undercover mission, security officials said Saturday. The officials in Indian Kashmir demanded that police in Calcutta, where the suspect is being held, arrange for his quick release.

NEW DELHI: Terror does leave a calling card. As the enormity of the attack on Mumbai sank in, it seemed like the arrival of al-Qaida in India, a version of 9/11 designed to attract a global audience given the scale of violence and the planned targeting of westerners. With the capture of a terrorist, the actual authors were revealed. It wasn't the al-Qaida. But the jihadi credentials were not much less impressive with Lashkar-e-Taiba named as the suspect. Given the operation's obvious planning, few doubted it was the deadly firm of LeT-ISI in action yet again. Yet the difference between...

The arrest of three Pakistani nationals hailing from Multan in connection with Mumbai siege has once again revealed the role of Lashkar-e-Tayiba in terror strikes in India after the Akshardham attack in 2002. Police and central security personnel have arrested at least three Pakistanis, including Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot near Multan in Pakistan's Punjab province. All the three belong to the suicide squad of Lashkar-e-Tayiba. The terrorists told interrogators that 12 of them had left in a merchant vessel from the port city of Karachi, which was on its way to Vietnam, from which they got down...

CHAKANDRA: Security agencies in a raid at the residence of the house of prominent doctor here have recovered 6 suicide jackets and explosive materials. Security agencies early Monday morning raided the house of child specialist Dr Mohammad Rasool and arrested him along with his wife and son and recovered 6 suicide jackets and explosive materials from his house. The security agencies had received information that Al-Qaeda leader Mohammad Yousaf was residing at the Doctor’s house. However he fled prior to the raid. The security agencies have started interrogations from the arrested doctor and his family. It is believed that the...

Three months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. Today, in the first of four parts, the role of a Pakistani training camp is revealed.- - - BALAKOT, Pakistan - A worn footpath climbs from the Kaghan Valley highway into the lush mountains above the River Kunar, on Kashmir's western frontier. The locals all know where it leads. An hour's walk up the steep trail there is a training camp built by Islamic militants called Madrassa Syed Ahmed Shaheed...

The alleged mastermind of a planned terrorist attack in Australia used a NSW Government website to get maps, data and satellite images of potential targets, including Sydney's Centrepoint, the Parramatta CBD and transport systems. "He was using it during office hours to look at things like the numbers of floors in a building," a former colleague of Faheem Lodhi told the Herald. "He was interested in areas dead smack in the middle of the city." Lodhi, 34, also bought a map of the country's energy supply system, which gave details of the routes of gas pipelines and the location of...

From TimesOnline: "Train bombers 'funded by British businessmen'" SOME of the main fundraisers for the terror group suspected of masterminding the Bombay train bombings are operating from Britain, according to Indian intelligence officials. The officials accuse Britain of failing to act against a number of wealthy businessmen, who they claim are using bogus charities to funnel up to £8 million a year to Kashmiri militants groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which remains the main suspect for orchestrating the synchronised bombings that killed 182 people. Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, raised the terror link with Tony Blair at the G8 summit...

The awful rush-hour bombings of trains in Mumbai raise an important and ominous question: How far can India be pushed? This question was asked by a former director for South Asia at the US National Security Council, Xenia Dormandy, Wednesday as the United States - from President George Bush to the mainstream American media - joined the rest of the world in condemning the terror attacks in India. Pakistan needs to respond to militants, she herself answered in an article in the Washington Post, noting that in December 2001 India and Pakistan almost went to war when a group of...

A third-grade teacher at a Muslim school in Maryland traveled to Pakistan shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, trained with a terrorist group there and later served as chauffeur for one of that group's leaders during his U.S. travels, federal prosecutors said yesterday. Prosecutors and defense attorneys made their closing arguments yesterday in the trial of Ali Asad Chandia, 29, who is charged with providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group that supports Muslim control of the disputed Kashmir territory on the India-Pakistan border. The jury began its deliberations yesterday afternoon. The U.S. government declared Lashkar a terrorist group in...

TERROR suspect David Hicks received advanced training with al-Qa'ida for up to six months, the federal Government has been told. The allegation is believed to be part of the US case against the Australian, who has been held in a US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the past 19 months without charge or trial after being captured in Afghanistan. The Government has been told the US will allege Hicks learnt to use a range of weapons and carry out surveillance and ambushes during six months of training in al-Qa'ida's program. The new details emerged after The Australian launched...

Australia's top investigators claim Mamdouh Habib trained as a terrorist before the September 11 attacks. Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib trained as a terrorist in Pakistan before moving to Afghanistan to serve as a mercenary with al-Qaeda, Australia's top policeman has told a parliamentary inquiry. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Mr Habib received firearms training in Pakistan in the days before September 11, 2001 to prepare him for a border crossing into Afghanistan to join Osama bin Laden's terrorist organisation. Habib was arrested by Pakistani police inside Pakistan on October 5, 2001. "The investigators formed the view...

A Delhi bus driver who saved the lives of around 70 passengers when he took a bomb from his vehicle during last month's terror attacks has been speaking of his experience. More than 60 people were killed and hundreds were injured when three bombs exploded in busy shopping districts in the Indian capital on 29 October. Among the wounded was Kuldeep Singh, who carried a bomb off his bus after it was found by one of the passengers. Mindful of the fact that the bus was fuelled by highly-explosive compressed gas, he urged the 70 passengers to flee while he...

Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba militant Mohammad Arif alias Ashfaq was today handed down the death penalty and fined Rs 4.35 lakh by a Delhi court in the December 2000 Red Fort attack case for waging war against the country and killing three Army personnel. The court also awarded life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs one lakh each to two other convicts hailing from Jammu and Kashmir, Nazir Ahmed Qasid and his son Farooq Ahmed Qasid, who also have been found guilty of waging war against the state and criminal conspiracy. "I direct that he (Ashfaq) shall be hanged by neck...

The Front for Islamic Uprising, a little-known group that police said was linked to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, took responsibility Sunday for a series of bombings that killed 59 persons and wounded 210 in New Delhi.