Free Republic

Virginia man charged in alleged plot to assassinate Bush By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press Writer ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- A former high school valedictorian in Virginia was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and conspiracy to support the al-Qaida terrorist network. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, a U.S. citizen, made an initial appearance Tuesday in U.S. District Court. He claimed that he was tortured while detained in Saudi Arabia since June of 2003 and offered through his lawyer to show the judge his scars. The indictment said that in 2002 and 2003 Abu Ali and an unidentified coconspirator...

Three Lashkar ultras shot dead in Delhi New Delhi, March 6. (PTI): Foiling an attempt by Lashkar-e- Toiba militants to attack Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun, police shot dead three members of the outfit, including two Pakistani nationals, in an encounter here tonight. Shahnawaz and Bilawal, both Pakistani nationals, and Shams alias Prevez hailing from Patna, were killed in a 50-minute-long encounter in Suraj Vihar in Uttam Nagar of south-west Delhi, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Ashok Chand told PTI. Three AK-56 rifles and a huge amount of explosives and ammunition had been recovered from them, he said....

BERLIN (Reuters) - German authorities have arrested an Egyptian man they describe as a "known Islamist extremist" trained in Pakistan, and aim to expel him within weeks, officials said on Wednesday. The Bavarian Interior Ministry said the man, named only as Omar Y., was 21 years old and had lived in Germany since he was a child. He was arrested on Tuesday night and would be held in custody throughout the deportation proceedings to prevent him from disappearing. "The responsible authorities believe Y. took part in paramilitary training at a camp of the extremist Islamist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, and...

Brigitte spills beans on Aussie terror plan Ben English 18oct04 WILLIE Brigitte has told French investigators of his extraordinary journey from failed butcher to linchpin in an al-Qaida plan to launch a terror attack on Australia. He has detailed the high-altitude paramilitary training he undertook in a vast camp overlooking the Himalaya in which he and thousands of other jihad warriors were schooled in terrorism. And he has told of how Osama bin Laden's allies have penetrated the Pakistani Army to thwart US efforts to crack terrorist training operations in the remote Pakistani mountain regions that border Afghanistan. A year...

The Hyderabad police on Sunday arrested eight suspected operatives of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and unearthed an alleged plot to detonate bombs near Ganesh temple in Secunderabad during the forthcoming Ganesh festival in the city. Seven other suspects are absconding. Police Commissioner RP Singh said that the arrested included a religious leader, Maulana Naseeruddin, who was the kingpin behind the plot. Naseeruddin headed an organisation known as Tahreek Tahfuz Shariat-e-Islami (Movement for Protection of Islamic Law). "Naseeruddin has been working clandestinely on behalf of LeT and their leaders Abdul Bari alias Abu Hamza and Shahed alias Abu Nidal, both natives of...

Earlier this month, five Palestinian brothers were convicted in federal court of conspiring to use their Texas-based computer company to make illegal shipments of high-tech goods to Libya and Syria, two nations the State Department considers sponsors of terrorism. One of the brothers, Ghassan Elashi, the company's vice president of international marketing, was convicted of three counts of conspiracy, one count of money laundering and two counts of making false statements about the shipments. Mr. Elashi, along with two of his brothers, also faces a separate federal trial on charges relating to business dealings with Mousa Abu Marzook, the deputy...

PAKISTANI-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is alleged to have trained Australian terror suspects David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, is extending its operational tentacles into Southeast Asia. A terrorism white paper released by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday examines the future of the terrorist threat to Australia. It says support for al-Qaeda regional offshoot Jemaah Islamiah is growing despite the arrest of more than 300 operatives in the wake of September 11 and the Bali bombing. Though Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in providing training to Southeast Asian-based terrorist groups such as JI and the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf in Pakistan and Kashmir, some...

Outside View: Pakistani jihadis in IraqBy Kaushik Kapisthalam A UPI Outside view Atlanta, GA, Jul. 6 (UPI) -- It is well known by now that the forces confronting the soldiers of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq include a significant number of foreign "jihadis." While U.S. attention seems to be largely focused on the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al Tawhid force, one group that hardly gets a mention in U.S. media is the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT, is a Pakistani Salafist (Wahhabi) jihadi group that was formed in 1987 as the armed wing of the...

As a columnist for FrontPage Magazine who gravitates toward controversial subjects, I get my share of responses, sometimes from unexpected quarters. In April of 2003, I received an e-mail from someone calling himself “Ismail Royer.” At the time, I didn’t realize the importance of this correspondence: I had just been contacted by a terrorist. Background Randall Todd “Ismail” Royer, a native of St. Louis, converted to Islam at the age of 19, at the impetus of an acquaintance and a “singing bird.” He began attending mosque and, in 1994, took a position with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a self-proclaimed Islamic civil rights group. CAIR, at the...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 12 — Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani officials said today. The Pakistani officials said most of the men had been picked up along with other suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members in joint American-Pakistani raids in the country's remote tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan. They said they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside Al...

Tyler, TX – A virtually unnoticed federal arrest here this Spring of a well-educated Pakistani man caught trying to buy illegal silencers, firearms and C-4 explosives has set off a nationwide FBI counterterrorism investigation, CBS-11 has learned. The investigation centers on whether Osama Haroon Satti, 35, came to Tyler on behalf of a terrorist cell hoping to arm for a plot to rob and murder wealthy Jews and other non-Muslims on the West Coast, sources familiar with the FBI investigation tell CBS-11. Satti is currently in federal custody on charges of buying an illegal silencer and handgun. Federal prosecutors connected...

THE arrest of a Sydney student on terrorism training charges has intensified the police focus on four Sydney men allegedly linked to a Pakistan-based terror cell that ASIO suspects plotted to bomb Australian military bases last year. Fourth-year medical student Izhar Ul-Haque has spent his second night in the nation's highest-security prison, the Supermax at Goulburn, after becoming only the second person charged in Australia with terrorism offences since the 1978 Hilton bombing. NSW Premier Bob Carr confirmed yesterday that his Government had been asked to make preparations to house more than one suspect in its prison system. "We were...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI made a series of arrests in three states Friday of men suspected of ties to an anti-U.S. terrorist organization whose main goal is driving India out of the disputed Kashmir territory in South Asia. The arrests of at least seven suspects were made in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, said federal law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity. Federal charges against the men, and several others who are overseas, were to be announced later in the day. The men are alleged to be part of an extremist Muslim organization called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is on the...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors who accuse nine U.S. citizens and two other men of conspiring to join a Muslim terror group presented an address list and other evidence Friday to try to link the suspects to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group. But the evidence wasn't enough to persuade U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to keep one defendant, Sabri Benkhala, in jail. Brinkema ordered Benkhala released to home detention at his father's house in Falls Church, upholding a previous release order issued by a magistrate. "There's no question the government has raised some significant issues here," the judge said....

<p>Three Muslims who are American citizens were declared guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria of varying charges of conspiracy to support terrorist operations and illegal use of firearms.</p> <p>The government obtained convictions on all of the most serious charges it filed against the three men: Masoud Khan, 32, of Gaithersburg; Seifullah Chapman, 31, of Alexandria, and Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35, of Falls Church. All three face a potential maximum sentence of life in prison.</p>

Terrorists ready for holy war in 40 American states IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent February 11 2004 ISLAMIC terror commandos are being infiltrated into the US in preparation for "an American jihad" from within, according to intelligence sources. Dozens of radicals trained in camps in western Pakistan and Kashmir are already believed to have slipped into the country and been absorbed in sleeper cells in unsuspecting Muslim communities as the vanguard of a holy army estimated to be several hundred strong. An FBI spokesman said al Qaeda and allied organisations were thought to be operating in 40 American states, awaiting orders...

<p>Islamic radicals are being trained at terrorist camps in Pakistan and Kashmir as part of a conspiracy to send hundreds of operatives to "sleeper cells" in the United States, according to U.S. and foreign officials.</p> <p>The intelligence and law-enforcement officials say dozens of Islamic extremists have already been routed through Europe to Muslim communities in the United States, based on secret intelligence data and information from terrorists and others detained by U.S. authorities.</p>

WASHINGTON -- Two members of a Virginia-based Islamic terrorism network pleaded guilty to weapons and explosives charges Friday and promised to help the government, Attorney General John Ashcroft said. Randall Royer and Ibrahim al-Hamdi, who entered their pleas in suburban Alexandria, Virginia., had ties to the Lashkar-e-Taiba group seeking to drive India out of Kashmir. A federal indictment said the Northern Virginia group also had broader goals of helping the al-Qaida network; Afghanistan's former ruling militia, the Taliban; and rebels in Chechnya. Both Royer, 30, and al-Hamdi, 26, pleaded guilty to using and discharging a firearm during, and in relation...

<p>ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Three men accused of practicing military tactics at a paintball field outside Washington were sentenced to prison Friday for their roles in a Virginia jihad network that trained members to support a Pakistani terrorist group.</p> <p>Yong Ki Kwon and Khwaja Mahmood Hasan of Fairfax, Va., and Donald T. Surratt of Suitland, Md., pleaded guilty to conspiracy and gun charges in August.</p>

WASHINGTON: Three members of Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, accused of a scheme to engage in "holy jehad" against Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir , have been sentenced by a US court to prison terms ranging from three to 11 years following guilty pleas in August to conspiracy and weapons charges. US District Judge Leonie M Brinkema in Alexandria on Friday sentenced Yong Ki Kwon, 27, a naturalised US citizen of Fairfax, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, 27, a Pakistani-born US citizen who lived in Alexandria, and Donald T Surratt, 30, a former US soldier of Suitland. The three men were among...

September 10th, 2003 will forever be remembered as a grim day for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). On that day, the eve of the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, CAIR faced up to its own terrorist connections. It ran away from testifying before an influential Senate panel that heard a barrage of incriminating evidence about the group and its connections. It saw one of its former officials plead guilty to terrorist-related crimes in Federal Court. And, it was stood up by two Department of Justice officials at an immigration symposium in Florida. CAIR should find it hard...

Terror charges link Montco to Kashmir. By Jennifer Lin, Mark Fazlollah, Maria Panaritis and Jeff Shields On Sept. 18, 2001, three men from Virginia pulled into the quiet Walnut Crossing apartment complex in Royersford, Montgomery County. They headed for Unit 607, the home of Mohammed Aatique, a wireless-phone engineer who had just moved there with his family. Like the rest of the country after the 9/11 attacks, the mood among residents was somber but patriotic. Aatique's upstairs neighbor had draped an American flag from her balcony. Yet the men at Aatique's home were planning an expedition that federal prosecutors would...

<p>FBI agents have arrested eight men in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania in a suspected scheme by Islamic extremists to engage in "holy jihad" to drive India out of the disputed Kashmir territory in South Asia.</p> <p>The men, along with three others, were named in a 41-count federal grand jury indictment handed up in U.S. District Court in Alexandria accusing them of conspiracy to "prepare for and engage in violent jihad" against foreign targets in Kashmir, the Philippines and Chechnya. Nine of the 11 were identified as U.S. citizens.</p>

<p>BOMBAY &#8212; India blamed Islamic militant groups yesterday for twin car bombings in Bombay, the worst terrorist attack in a decade in the country's financial heart which killed at least 50 persons and left 154 wounded.</p> <p>The bombs were planted in two taxis and exploded minutes apart Monday, ripping through a crowded jewelry market, the Zaveri Bazaar, and in front of a colonial-era tourist attraction, the Gateway of India.</p>

<p>Only last week, a global terrorism index listed India as one of the 10 countries most vulnerable to an attack. Yesterday the latest -- and most deadly -- in a series of bombings in Bombay proved that prediction sadly correct.</p>

WASHINGTON: One of the three men who appeared in a US court on charges of running a local 'jehad' network has admitted to receiving arms training in northern Virginia and LeT's terror camp in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir for a possible mission in Jammu & Kashmir. While the three accused pleaded guilty of "conspiracy and gun charges" in the Federal Court in Virginia on Monday, Yong Ki Kwon admitted that, besides in US, he recieved training at a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistan. At the LeT camp, Kwon said he fired weapons ranging from machine guns to rocket-propelled grenades. Kwon, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan and...

<p>BOMBAY, India &#8212; A pair of car bombs ripped through lunchtime crowds in India's financial capital, Bombay, yesterday, killing 46 persons and wreaking havoc at a crowded jewelry market and a popular historic landmark. More than 150 people were wounded.</p>

<p>Referred to by her spy masters only as "Mrs. Galt," she is by day an unremarkable American housewife and mother. But after her two children go to bed, she plunges into a secret world of Internet chat rooms and Web sites populated by some of the most dangerous people on earth.</p>

NEW DELHI: The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has been acting as "a secret police" for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, according to American and Indian intelligence officials. They, however, differ on whether the Pakistan-based terror outfit's operatives would "directly" participate in attacks on the United States or its facilities. Former senior officers of FBI and Indian agencies have been quoted in a US congressional paper on homeland security as saying that the recent arrest of 11 men in Virginia, allegedly connected with LeT, raised the prospects of "a new terrorist threat in the US". A special report in the Congressional quarterly homeland security...

<p>ALEXANDRIA - The final three of 11 defendants in an alleged "Virginia jihad network" accused of training to support a Pakistani terrorist group are in U.S. custody.</p> <p>The three defendants - Seifullah Chapman, Sabri Benkhala and Khwaja Mahmood Hasan - had been in Saudi custody for nearly one month but arrived in the United States during the weekend and made an initial appearance yesterday in U.S. District Court.</p>

<p>The latest three of 11 men accused of plotting holy war in Virginia will be held in U.S. custody pending a bail hearing Thursday, a federal magistrate in Alexandria said yesterday.</p> <p>The three, captured recently in Saudi Arabia, are named in a 41-count federal indictment accusing them of conspiring to "prepare for and engage in violent jihad" against foreign targets in Kashmir, the Philippines and Chechnya.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON - Randall Royer converted to Islam in St. Louis just after the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, with racial tensions high nationwide. When the 19-year-old Caucasian kid from Manchester walked into a mosque on the St. Louis University campus, he felt those tensions subside.</p>

A former spokesman for leading Islamic lobby groups opposed to U.S. counterterrorism efforts was among 11 men indicted for conspiring to train on American soil for a "violent jihad." Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer – who little more than five weeks ago was communications director for a fund-raising effort sponsored by the American Muslim Council – allegedly trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmiri terrorist group with reported ties to al-Qaida. Royer, 30, of Falls Church, Va., also was on the national staff of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that considers itself a leading civil rights voice for American Muslims. Most...

On 3 July, 2003, ABC News announced that the government has presented information leading to the federal indictment of eleven men who had trained in the woods of Fairfax County, Virginia with “AK-47” style assault weapons. According to the government, the men had also participated in warlike paintball games to practice military tactics in Spotsylvania County and had practiced shooting at various shooting ranges. Of the eleven indicted, one name stands out: Mr. Randall Todd Royer, who has served as a communications specialist and as a civil rights coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). The government alleges...

<p>June 27 (Bloomberg) -- Eight men were arrested on charges they formed a ``Virginia jihad network'' with ties to the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-E-Taiba and planned terrorist attacks overseas, the U.S. government said.</p> <p>The men, along with three others believed to be in Saudi Arabia, are accused of plotting to engage in a ``jihad,'' or holy war, in Kashmir, Chechnya, the Philippines and other countries. U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, who announced the indictment today in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to say whether any attacks were planned in the U.S.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In Friday morning raids, the FBI arrested at least seven men suspected of having ties to a foreign terrorist organization, government sources told CNN.</p> <p>The men are believed to be linked to Lashkar-E-Taiba, a Kashmir separatist group that the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2001.</p>

Nine Americans were among 11 men charged today with conspiring to train on U.S. soil for a "violent jihad" overseas. According to an indictment issued by the federal government, the men belong to the Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or "Army of the Righteous," which seeks to drive India out of the disputed Kashmir province, Fox News reported. "These indictments are a stark reminder that terrorist organizations of various allegiances are active in the United States and these groups exploit America's freedom as a weapon to recruit and position themselves on our shores, in our society," U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty...

LeT founder rejects Indo-Pak talks, vows for Jihad The founder of terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has rejected any dialogue with India and called for continuing Jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. "Jihad will continue and it must be strengthened," said Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LeT founder in a speech in Muzzafarabd on late Wednesday. Lashkar along with another terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) was blamed by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in January 2002. Saeed has now set up a new organisation, Jamaat ud Dawa. "Whatever stance Pakistan may adopt, the base of Jihad is and should remain in Azad (free) Kashmir," Saeed...

MOSCOW: Russia on Friday banned the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and two other militant groups from operating in the Russian Federation. The decision by the Supreme Court came on a plea from the state prosecutor to ban the group, as also the Jamayat-Islami and Hizbul-e-Tahri. Under the verdict, based on country's new anti-terrorist law, the assets of these organisations would be seized and their bank accounts closed. India has blamed the Lashkar-e-Taiba for the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament in which nine security personnel were killed. The state prosecutor, officials said, had provided a list of 15 terrorist organisations,...

<p>ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Since 1995, at least 27 Americans have attended four Pakistani religious schools, called madrassas, that preach a radical form of Islam calling for the destruction of the United States, say U.S. and Pakistani officials and clerics at the schools. Most of those students are Arab-Americans or African-Americans who joined and, in some cases, fought for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, the Taliban militia or Islamic guerrillas in Kashmir. At least three of the Americans are believed to have been killed in battle. The whereabouts of the others are unknown.</p>

PARIS: A Paris court on Tuesday ordered that a Pakistani national placed under investigation at the weekend for allegedly helping accused "shoe bomber" Richard Reid remain in detention, court sources said. Ghulam Mustafa Rama, along with two Frenchmen, is being investigated on suspicion of having "conspired to prepare a terrorist act". One of the French nationals was placed in preventive detention on Monday. Reid, 28, was caught with explosives in his shoe on an American Airlines jet from Paris to Miami in December, and has pleaded not guilty to charges in the United States of terrorism, attempted murder and attempting...

Fifteen thousand feet high in Kashmir and armed with a Kalashnikov–that was not how friends thought Jibreel al-Amreekee would end up. All of 19, the restless kid from Atlanta had grown up in a wealthy family attending Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr. A soft-spoken youth with long dreadlocks, al-Amreekee had a passion for sky diving and reading books on the world's religions. One religion that drew his interest was Islam, and while he was at North Carolina Central University, that interest grew into a calling. By 1997, he had converted and was spending his...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani officials suspect that Friday’s attack outside the US consulate in Karachi was carried out by a freshly minted coalition of militant organisations drawn from the remnants of extremist groups scattered during a crackdown Musharraf ordered earlier this year. The new coalition of militant groups is called Lashkar-e-Omar, formed by guerrilla fighters in January after leaders of several extremist groups had been arrested. According to the Pakistani officials, Lashkar-e-Omar was formed by the survivors of three militant Islamic groups targeted by Musharraf: Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and the Sunni Muslim group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The officials said the three Islamic groups, as well...