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A Pakistani doctor and former Mayo Clinic researcher has been indicted on one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization after authorities say he told paid FBI informants that he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and wanted to carry out lone wolf attacks in the U.S. The indictment against Muhammad Masood, 28, was announced Friday by U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald.. . . Roughly three dozen Minnesotans — mostly men from the state’s large Somali community — have left since 2007 to join al-Shabab in Somalia or militant groups in Syria, including the Islamic...

The embassy says he wasn't tracked by Saudi security services and didn't have a criminal record there. The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in London says that the Westminster attacker was in the country three times and taught English there. A statement released late Friday says Khalid Masood taught English in Saudi Arabia from November 2005 to November 2006 and again from April 2008 to April 2009.

The man police believe to be responsible for the terrorist attack in Westminster has been formally identified as Khalid Masood. Scotland Yard named the 52-year-old after Islamic State claimed that the Westminster terrorist who brought bloodshed to the heart of London was a "soldier" of the terror group.

SLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Tuesday took notice of a "search operation" conducted by Rangers at the house of Salman Masood, who is the New York Times Pakistan correspondent living in Islamabad. The interior minister ordered an inquiry into "how, why and on whose orders a raid was conducted at Salman Masood's house," read a statement issued from his ministry, adding that an explanation has been sought from police and relevant security agencies. "Such operations and raids are not acceptable at any cost," said Nisar. Earlier, Salman Masood had posted pictures on Twitter, showing several Rangers personnel...

WASHINGTON — When the U.S. State Department announced this week that it finally is going to designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, it was a nonevent for most of our countrymen. That's because few Americans know how deadly the organization is. For that we can thank those at Foggy Bottom who are wedded to the naive hope of a near-term "diplomatic breakthrough" in Afghanistan. Couple that misguided belief with the Obama administration's self-deception that the radical Islamic jihad against the West ended with the demise of Osama bin Laden and it's understandable why the Haqqani network...

France has deported a Tunisian man to his homeland despite protests that he could face torture there. Adel Tebourski, 42, was put on an Air France flight back to Tunisia on Monday, officials said. Tebourski had served a jail sentence in France after being convicted of helping the killers of Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Masood in 2001. The French authorities described Tebourski as a serious threat to national security. French campaigners have said he could be tortured in Tunisia, and the UN torture committee last month called on Paris to suspend his deportation, the French news agency AFP reports....

BRUSSELS, Belgium Sept. 30 A former pro soccer player who joined the al-Qaida terrorist network was convicted and sentenced to prison Tuesday for plotting to bomb a NATO base believed to contain nuclear weapons. Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia, who once played professional soccer in Germany, received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and acquitted five others in the largest terrorism trial in Belgium's history. Trabelsi admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, a Belgian military post used by NATO where...

An alleged Islamic militant has told a Belgian court how he plotted to bomb a military base on an al-Qaeda mission. Nizar Trabelsi, a former Tunisian professional footballer, told how Osama Bin Laden's network sent him two years ago to Belgium to bomb the Kleine Brogel base, which houses nuclear missiles. He is one of 23 alleged Islamic militants on trial. Only eight of them are in custody, while five are still on the run and the others face lesser charges. "I was supposed to go alone in a van. The bomb was behind me," Mr Trabelsi told the Brussels...

Follow up to my earlier post about 14 Belgians arrested for being al Qaeda members. It turns out one of them is Malika El-Aroud, who has been arrested in the past for running an al Qaeda support website. If you speak French and hang around the eHadis, you'd probably recognize her from her frequent appearances at the minbar-sos forum.

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

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...

Federal immigration agents arrested imams from two Boston-area mosques Wednesday, alleging they were involved in a scheme that provided religious worker visas to immigrants who used them to enter the United States and work instead as gas station attendants, truck drivers, and factory laborers. Hafiz Abdul Hannan, imam, or leader, of the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell in Chelmsford, and Muhammed Masood, imam, or leader, of the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon, were among 33 people taken into custody nationwide after a multi-year investigation led by agents in Boston and New York, said Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman for...

NEW YORK -- Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison in federal court in Manhattan Monday. She was convicted of providing support to terrorists by helping a jailed Egyptian sheik communicate with his followers on the outside. Before sentencing, her lawyer told the judge that any prison sentence for Stewart would be a death sentence because of her serious health problems. Stewart pleaded with the judge to allow her to live out the rest of her life "productively, lovingly, righteously.'' Assistant US Attorney Andrew Dember rejected defense suggestions that Stewart's conduct was judged differently after9-11. "This case...

NEW YORK -- Authorities believe a U.S. postal employee in custody here helped draft a letter of introduction that may have been used by two men who posed as journalists to assassinate a leading opposition figure in Afghanistan last fall, according to a U.S. official familiar with the case.Click here for full Washington Post article

Ahmed Shah Masood (c. 1953–September 9, 2001) (variant transliterations include Ahmad, Massoud, etc.) was a Kabul University engineering student turned Afghan military leader who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, earning him the nickname Lion of Panjshir. Various transliterations include: Ahmad / Ahmed / Akhmad / Achmad, Shah / Schah / Chah, Massoud / Massud / Massood / Mas’ud. Ahmad Shah Massoud was born 10.06.1332 (01.09.1953)[2] in Jangalak[3]/ Panjsher[5]as son of police commander Dost Mohammad Khan. At the age of five, he started grammar school at Bazarak and stayed there until second grade....

Four events today have helped to shape this entry, and have made this day one to remember. First was the cnn.com stream of 9/11 "As It Was". It took me back in time in the way that only television can. I was there, or more precisely, I was here, watching the events unfold, knowing the outcome, but glued to the broadcast nonetheless. Thank you CNN. Ya'll did a great job. Second was the plethora of images and content on the internet itself. Photographs, commentaries, recollections, prayers, memories and thoughts that have had five years to grow into a certain perspective....

"Hurry hurry hurry. We can destroy the enemy. Advance." "Hit hit hit the Taliban." "Hit him hit him hit him. Fire, fire." "We're arriving in Khalakhan." "Take care about the troops." "The Taliban are surrendering." "Bring them to me." "One hundred of them are coming to you." "El Ham captured a pickup with their weapons." These were the voices on the radio of the Northern Alliance commanders we have been visiting for weeks. Several other journalists and I were standing with some Afghan soldiers on the roof of a command post--a mud house with a tank's turret and gun jutting ...

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...

MARION, Ill., July 17 (UPI) -- An elderly Afghan man spent a year making a rug and an Illinois military reservist is trying to get it to its intended recipient -- U.S. President George Bush. Lt. Col. Grayson Giles told The Southern newspaper in Illinois that he was given the rug by a Kabul merchant, who was acting as an intermediary for the Hazara man who had made it. "I think they were under the mistaken impression that I had all sorts of access to the president, but I told them I would do my best -- that I would...

Soldier fulfilling promise to deliver Afghani rug to president BY BECKY MALKOVICH, THE SOUTHERN U.S. Army Lt. Col. Grayson Gile of Marion holds up a rug that he received while serving in Afghanistan as a member of the Combined Joint Special Operation Task Force. The men that gave it to him asked if he could get the rug to President Bush, who is depicted in the center of the rug.(STEVE JAHNKE/THE SOUTHERN) MARION - Grayson Gile may have completed his broader mission in Afghanistan as a member of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, but he returned stateside with...