Free Republic

Dramatic daylight terror raids on a university may have been linked to a plot to blow up a shopping centre or nightclub, police fear. Students at Liverpool John Moores University watched in shock yesterday as two men were hauled outside and forced to the ground by armed police.  Witnesses said the duo  -  students at the university's Business School  -  were wearing combat trousers and hiking jackets, and claimed there were rumours of 'a bomb' on the premises.  (edit) The raid was one of a series carried out simultaneously across the North-West in which 12 suspects believed to be...

A team headed by Bruce Riedel, a former CIA Middle East expert, asked to overhaul US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, has concluded that stabilising Pakistan is now the higher priority, a source familiar with the discussions has revealed. The report, prepared in conjunction with the National Security Council, will focus on the need to co-opt moderate Taliban elements and shut down militant safe havens in Pakistan's he lawless northwest border region. It will also urge a sharp increase in military and civil assistance. .... In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph in January Mr Riedel argued that British al-Qaeda...

WASHINGTON: American terrorism experts are now warning that the next major attack on the US soil may come from militants associated with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and not al-Qaeda. Juan Zarate, the deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism in the Bush administration, told the Chicago Tribune that even before the Mumbai terrorist attacks last November, the FBI and other US intelligence agencies were focusing on LeT as the next big threat to US security. ‘We are and should be concerned about the threat LeT poses, given its global network,’ said Zarate in an interview published on Sunday. ‘It doesn’t just reside in South...

Unknown before 2008, the Indian Mujahedeen (IM) has emerged as a well-organized jihadi terrorist group in India, claiming responsibility for a number of terror attacks perpetrated in various urban centers of India during 2007-2008. Even though the exact moment of IM’s formation is not known, the recent arrest of a number of IM operatives has revealed its possible existence and involvement in terror strikes in India as far back as late October 2005. The name “Indian Mujahideen” was reportedly conceived at a terrorist conclave attended by top leaders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) in Pakistani-administered Kashmir in...

The Saudi Connection to the Mumbai Massacres Jerusalem Issue BriefInstitute for Contemporary Affairsfounded jointly with the Wechsler Family FoundationVol. 8, No. 21 12 February 2009The Saudi Connection to the Mumbai Massacres:Strategic Implications for IsraelCol. (res.) Jonathan FighelThe Mumbai attacks have been linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and radical Islamic groups in Kashmir generally. Yet it would be a mistake to see Lashkar only as a local organization with only a local agenda.Saudi Arabia has contributed very much to what Lashkar-e-Taiba looks like, how it thinks, its motivation, ideology, and funding. Saudi Arabia presents itself as the protector and the spearhead of...

CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US Barack Obama has been warned by the CIA that British Islamist extremists are the greatest threat to US homeland security. By Tim Shipman in Washington 07 Feb 2009. The CIA has told President Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain. They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US...

NEW DELHI: For all the protestations that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a charitable organisation and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is an injured innocent, it's clear that the organisation and Saeed's family, in particular, have been in the crosshairs of US government for several years and a couple of Saeed's family members are already in US custody. As the Lashkar-e-Taiba grew in stature, profile and links to violent terrorism in Pakistan, curiously, its amir Saeed's family kept making tracks to the US to live and work there over the past decade. Over the years, LeT aka Jamaat-ud-Dawa has morphed from an ISI-sponsored terror...

NEW DELHI: The US Technological Intelligence Unit has alerted Indian security agencies about a possibility of the Lashkar-e-Taiba carrying out an airborne attack on the Indian warship INS Viraat. The aircraft career Viraat is currently undergoing repairs at the Cochin shipyard, where its security cover has been beefed up after the alert. Intelligence reports through surveillance of internet traffic uncovered the Lashkar plot to target Viraat. "On the 23rd night I noticed on some national channel about threat by aircraft to INS Viraat , which is berthed at Kochi ...No ship can come towards the INS Viraat till about 150...

The Islamic fundamentalists who run the Markaz-e-Taiba complex near Lahore like to boast that it was inspired by Aitchison College, Pakistan's poshest private school. It is, as they describe it, the Eton of Wahhabi Islam, complete with polo ponies and a swimming pool. Yet when it comes to their links to Pakistan's intelligence service and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the militant group blamed for last month's attacks in Mumbai, they seem to suffer from collective amnesia. “We've never had any connection to either,” Mohammed Abbas, the administrator of the complex, told The Times. But it was here, in April 2001, that Hafiz...

12 Dec 2008, 2240 hrs IST, IANS ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will not hand over any of its nationals to India or to any other country in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, the government said on Friday. This was decided at a meeting of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani here Friday, Geo TV reported. According to a government statement, the president and prime minister exchanged views on the current situation in the country. Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sherry Rehman was also present at the meeting. Sources in the presidency told Geo News that...

Dawn Karachi, December 12, 2008 First Published: 14:04 IST(12/12/2008) Last Updated: 19:02 IST(12/12/2008) Crackdown hints at Faridkot-Mumbai link Dawn's special report The targeting of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaatud Dawa and the rounding up of the activists belonging to the two jihadi organisations appear to have been triggered by information originating in India following the capture of one of the 10 men who attacked several targets in Mumbai towards the end of last month. During the course of Dawn’s own investigations last week our reporters were able to locate a family who claimed to be the kin of the arrested young man...

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations Security Council has placed sanctions against Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a front organization for Lashkar-e-Taiba, declaring it a terrorist organization. The Council panel has designated four men linked to the Mumbai attacks as terrorists subject to sanctions. The four men are believed to hold leadership positions in the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba that is accused of orchestrating last month's attacks that left over 180 dead in Mumbai. Designated as terrorists subject to UN sanctions were Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar's operations chief; Muhammad Saeed, the group's leader; Haji Muhammad Ashraf, its chief of finance; and Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed...

House Panel to Ask for NSA Spying Probe A congressional panel will ask the National Security Agency's internal watchdog to investigate whether the super-secret spy agency eavesdropped without warrants on a Muslim scholar and later hid that evidence in a 2005 terror prosecution that got him a life sentence.The House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel and the judge overseeing the case want the NSA's inspector general to find out if the government failed to disclose evidence that might have cleared the name of a Northern Virginia spiritual leader Ali al-Timimi, Rep. Rush Holt (D- New Jersey) told the New York Times.That...

I want to see my mother: Kasab 9 Dec 2008, 0308 hrs IST, S Ahmed Ali, TNN Print Email Discuss Share Save Comment Text: MUMBAI: Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist in police custody, repents his act and wants to return to Pakistan. On Saturday night, he broke down in custody, police sources said. "Mujhe maaf kar do, mujhe apne desh Pakistan jana hai, meri emmi ke paas'' (Please forgive me, I want to see my mother, I want to go back to my country Pakistan)" Kasab is said to have told policemen interrogating him. "I want to live,"...

The suspected planner of last month's Mumbai terror attacks has been arrested in a raid on a militant group in Pakistan, an official close to the extremist organisation said today. The official from Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the charity and education arm of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, told Reuters that Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was among four men taken into custody after a raid yesterday on a camp outside Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir. Lakhvi, one of Lashkar's operations chiefs, was named as a ringleader in the Mumbai plot by Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunmen captured after the attacks, according to...

Tonight (Friday a.m. US time) Pakistan gave its official answer to India on the request to turn over to India ASAP Islamic terrorists based on Pakistan soil and operating out in the open. Our friend and good ally India has ramped up the pressure and now banned the entry of Pakistani nationals into it's country by land, sea or air.The massive terrorist attack in Mumbai had a strong element of not only India being targeted, but the United States as well. Our fellow Americans were sought out, and some were killed.All intelligence points to Pakistan as the base for these...

Mumbai: The group of 11 terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks had boarded a fishing boat near Karachi in Pakistan five days earlier, a senior investigating official revealed on Sunday. According to the investigation, the terror group loaded their arms and ammunition and boarded the boat on November 21 from a location near Karachi, said the official who declined to be identified. All the terrorists - in their 20s - are said to be members of the Lashker-E-Taiba (LeT), he said. They all had undergone rigorous training in terror camps in which they learnt all ways to create terror, especially...

NEW YORK --A Florida doctor was convicted Monday of providing material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida fighters so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans. Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 52, was convicted in federal court in Manhattan after a three-week trial that featured testimony by him and Ali Soufan, an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter in a sting operation that led to four arrests. When the verdict was read, Sabir looked straight ahead. Later, as he was escorted from the courtroom, he waved to supporters, who said, "Stay strong." His lawyer, Ed...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York jazz musician and martial arts instructor was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday for agreeing to help train al Qaeda fighters in hand-to-hand combat. Tarik Shah, 44, a Muslim born and raised in New York, received the maximum sentence in Manhattan federal court under a plea agreement with U.S. prosecutors in which they dropped one of the terrorism charges against him. -snip-

BALTIMORE -- Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a Maryland man with conspiracy to provide information to terrorists. The U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York said Thursday afternoon that Mahmud Faruq Brent, also known as Mahmud Al Mutazzim, is in federal custody in New York. He was arrested Thursday in Newark, N.J. Brent, of Baltimore, faces charges of conspiring to provide resources to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been linked to bombings in India, from 2001 through the current year. Federal authorities, along with the Baltimore Joint Terrorism Task Force, searched Brent's northwest Baltimore residence following the arrest. Federal...