Free Republic

The federal charges lodged this week against Mahmud F. Brent read like a thriller, filled with tales of a clandestine FBI sting operation in a Maryland hotel room, terrorism training camps in the mountains of Pakistan and shadowy connections to al-Qaida. .....According to court papers, Brent, a 30-year-old West Baltimore man who drove a cab in Washington, conspired to help the armed wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based religious organization labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. government. Brent, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in Orange, N.J., outside Newark on Thursday afternoon and brought to New York. About the same time,...

A Maryland man was charged with conspiracy to help a terrorist organization after he boasted that he went to Pakistan, attended terrorist training camps and agreed to provide whatever assistance was necessary, prosecutors said Thursday. Mahmud Faruq Brent, of Gwynn Oak, Md., was charged after a New York musician arrested on similar charges in May agreed to meet with him and let the FBI record the encounter, according to a joint release by federal prosecutors, the FBI and New York police. Brent was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan with conspiracy to provide material...

NEW YORK (AP) - A bookstore owner and a jazz musician agreed soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to try to help terrorists in Afghanistan buy weapons and communications equipment to fight American soldiers, the government charged Wednesday. Assistant U.S. Attorney Victor Hou said Abdulrahman Farhane, 51, and the musician, Tarik Shah, 42, spoke with an FBI informant about the plot in Farhane's bookstore in December 2001 "while the ruins of 9/11 were still smoldering." The prosecutor asked that Farhane be held without bail on charges of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and trying to cover up his...

US officials fear that should the firm evidence emerge that the Mumbai terror attacks were planned and directed from within Pakistan, it would certainly escalate tension between the neighbouring countries and could also provoke an Indian military response, even strikes against terrorists, a media report said on Saturday. Quoting the officials in Washington, The New York Times said there was no evidence that Pakistani government had any role in the attacks. But American intelligence and counter-terrorism officials told the paper that there is mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group, most likely Lashkar-e-Tayiba, was responsible for deadly attacks in Mumbai....

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...

Mumbai: At least 15 people have been injured in gunfights between two groups in at least three places in Mumbai on Thursday night. Details are sketchy but it is believed that two gangs fired at each other at outside CST Railway Terminus, Hotel Oberoi and the popular Café Leopold restaurant in Mumbai. The first shooting took place near the CST police station

According to highly reliable intelligence sources, two boatfuls of weapons and some 18-20 terrorists most likely came from Karachi in Pakistan. Intelligence agencies are zeroing in on the Lashkar-e-Tayiba as the agency behind the terror attacks. The initial interrogation of terrorists captured in Mumbai has yielded some basic information. According to sources, for some time the directions kept coming "live" to the terrorists in Mumbai via satellite phones. The intelligence sources said information is coming out quite rapidly because some six terrorists, who are in the custody of the Mumbai police, are under interrogation right now. He said the entire...

He never made it to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, but Kwon -- a Northern Virginia engineer who fled the United States nine days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks said it wasn't for lack of effort. Kwon, 29, a South Korea-born graduate of Virginia Tech who is serving an 11-year prison sentence as a result of his guilty plea last year on federal conspiracy and weapons charges. He has emerged as the prosecution's star witness in the case against Ali Al-Timimi, an American Islamic scholar charged with recruiting soldiers for the Taliban just five days after Sept....

Terror group's threat raises Dalai Lama alert Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent April 03, 2007 SECURITY surrounding the Dalai Lama has been tightened after reports of an attempt by the al-Qa'ida-linked terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba to assassinate the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. A three-tier security ring has been thrown around the 72-year-old Buddhist head, who lives at Dharamsala, in the Himalayan foothills, Indian police spokesman Prem Lal said. All those approaching the exiled Tibetan chief will be closely watched by highly trained Tibetan security guards as well as heavily armed deployments of Indian police. Visitors are being body-searched before being allowed...

A former D.C. cab driver pleaded guilty today to conspiring to support a Pakistani group on the U.S. terrorism list by attending one of its training camps, officials said. Mahmud Faruq Brent, of Gwynn Oak, a Baltimore suburb, was arrested in 2005. He had been scheduled to go on trial on April 24 along with two New Yorkers and a Florida doctor. During a hearing in U.S. federal court in Manhattan, Brent acknowledged that he attended a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in 2002, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office in New York. The Islamic guerrilla group is fighting...

The Pakistani authorities have confirmed the American findings that the imams of three mosques arrested on November 15 in Boston happen to be the close relatives of the founder of the deadly Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who now heads the Jamaatul Daawa. Pakistani interior ministry sources said that the three Boston-based imams — Hafiz Muhammad Hannan Hafiz Muhammad Masood and Hafiz Mohammad Hamid — are close relatives of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. The sources said they have informed the American authorities that while Hafiz Muhammad Masood and Hafiz Hamid happen to be the real brother of Saeed, Hafiz Muhammad Hannan is...

BRITISH AUTHORITIES have been slow to acknowledge openly the Pakistani-Muslim background of the suspects arrested in the mass terror conspiracy that brought chaos to British and American airports Thursday. At first, official sources in the United Kingdom would confirm only that they were working with "the South Asian community" on the case; then it was disclosed that the Pakistani government was involved in the investigation. This reticence in naming the focus of so significant a terrorism inquiry is a symptom of the larger problems of Islam in Britain, and of "Euro-Islam" more generally. Put plainly, Pakistani Sunnis in Britain--more than...

The recent train bombings in India have intensified the scrutiny of the Pakistan-based, al Qaeda affiliated terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. In particular, one key question is being asked: What role does LET play in the war against Islamofascists and their allies? The al Qaeda-linked Wahhabi group, formed in 1989, has been blamed for a number of attacks on Indian officials and civilians. It was added to the U.S. terrorist list in December 2001. LET’s agenda, as announced in one of their pamphlets and detailed by MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, is to wage jihad with the goal of imposing their narrow version...

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...

IN THE WEST, Qana, a small Lebanese village southeast of Tyre, is believed by some to be the place where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine. In Lebanon and throughout the wider Arab and Muslim world, however, the village's name has for the last decade been synonymous with something else: the killing in April 1996 of more than 100 men, women and children who had taken refuge in a U.N. compound, hiding from Israeli shelling directed at Hezbollah. Over time, Qana has been sculpted by Hezbollah into a symbol of martyrdom, a Shiite version of Sabra 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...

SUSPECTED French terrorist Willie Brigitte tried to get information from his wife, former soldier Melanie Brown about the top-secret spy facility at Pine Gap, French police sources say. During her four days of interrogation by French officials in Paris last month, police said Ms Brown recalled incidents with Brigitte in Sydney that, on reflection, seemed suspicious to her. In particular, Ms Brown is understood to have told French interrogators that Brigitte questioned her at length about the US-Australian electronic intelligence station at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs. He asked her if she had ever been inside the base when...

THE Sydney woman who in September wed al-Qaeda operative and alleged terrorist Willie Brigitte after converting to Islam had been part of a Jewish gay group just 18 months earlier. Melanie Brown was photographed on the edge of a float in the 2002 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, wearing long lace-up Doc Martens. The float called "Twice Blessed" was built by Dayenu, a support group for Sydney's Jewish gays and lesbians. The Daily Telegraph understands Ms Brown became part of Dayenu in 2000 and then worked to build its floats in both 2001 and 2002. A former member of Dayenu...

Terror suspect linked to Afghan assassination October 28, 2003 - 9:11AM A Frenchman under investigation in Australia and France for possible terrorist activities was also suspected of links to the assassination of an Afghan leader, authorities said. Willie Virgile Brigitte, 35, is in custody in a Paris area jail where he is being held on suspicion of association with a terror group, French police and justice officials said. Investigations are under way in France and Australia into Brigitte's alleged links to the al-Qaeda terror network, French officials said today. A judicial official said that Brigitte was also suspected of running...