Free Republic

Police in Bangladesh have arrested 31 men suspected of plotting a terrorist attack, an officer said yesterday. Police chief Masudul Haque Nuruzzaman, from Kushtia district 100km (62 miles) west of the capital Dhaka, said the men were members of the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir. “Among the 31 arrested was the group’s chief of the Kushtia district who trained and fought in Afghanistan,” said Nuruzzaman. “The arrests were made on Friday during a raid on a meeting. We have intelligence to suggest they were preparing an attack.” Jihadi books, leaflets, gunpowder and bomb-making materials were seized during the meeting, he said....

NOTE: Photos included. PHOTO CAPTION: "Investigation: Faisal Mostafa, pictured in 2002, is facing allegations that his orphanage was in fact an arms factory and terrorist training camp" SNIPPET: "A British charity worker twice cleared of terror charges in this country is being hunted in Bangladesh after explosives were seized at an orphanage he founded. Security forces there claimed last night that the orphanage set up by Dr Faisal Mostafa, from Stockport, was in fact an arms factory and terrorist training camp. Mostafa ran Green Crescent, a charity that provided humanitarian aid to families in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Local security forces...

Dad is a coward, a hypocrite and he deserves to rot in jail By Rajeev Syal In an exclusive interview, Donna Traverso tells The Times about the man who tore her family apart SHE knew him simply as Dad, a kindly presence in her life who would tell her that she was “his little girl” as she nestled in his muscular arms. Now Donna Traverso, 25, despises her former stepfather Abu Hamza al-Masri for shattering her family and abandoning her at the age of 5. In her first interview, she tells The Times how the Egyptian disappeared with her beloved...

The UCLA student stunned with a Taser by a campus police officer has hired a high-profile civil rights lawyer who plans to file a brutality lawsuit. The videotaped incident, which occurred after the student refused requests to show his ID card to campus officers, triggered widespread debate on and off campus Thursday about whether use of the Taser was warranted. It was the third in a recent series of local incidents captured on video that raise questions about arrest tactics. Attorney Stephen Yagman said he plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the UCLA police of "brutal excessive...

THE son of the jailed Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri declared yesterday that he was proud to be a British citizen. Mohammad Mostafa Kamel, 25, who was jailed for terrorist offences in Yemen in 1999, said that it was wrong to associate him with his father’s views. “Everybody has their own beliefs and it doesn’t mean that if my dad believes something that I believe the same,” he told the BBC World Service Outlook programme. “I don’t agree with everything my dad says.” Mr Kamel, who was dismissed from a part-time maintenance job on the London Underground after his bosses...

     Convicted fanatic ... Mostafa    EXCLUSIVE  Hook son's job on Tube By NICK PARKEROctober 31, 2006           THE terrorist son of hook-handed Abu Hamza has been working on London’s Tube, The Sun can reveal.  Mohammed Kamel Mostafa, 25 — a convicted fanatic who has glorified suicide attacks like the 7/7 slaughter — was rumbled by Underground workmates when they saw his picture in The Sun.  They went straight to bosses, who told Mohammed Kamel Mostafa, 25, to sling his hook.But last night fury erupted over the security shambles that led to the convicted terrorist being...

Iran's defense minister on Thursday vowed that his country would "use nuclear defense as a potential" if "threatened by any power." Speaking following a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Hassan Ali Turkmani in Teheran on Thursday, Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar emphasized that Iran "should be ready for confronting all kinds of threats." Teheran has denied accusations by the US and its allies that Iran was seeking uranium enrichment technologies in order to develop nuclear weapons, saying its program was only meant to generate electricity. Meanwhile, Turkmani told reporters that Syria and Iran's "policy is the policy of strengthening...