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The Obama administration is considering whether to declassify still-secret sections of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks which examined Saudi Arabian support for Islamist militants, the White House said on Thursday. Interest in the 28-page section of the report was raised after an imprisoned former al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, said in deposition transcripts filed this week that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures donated to his group in the late 1990s. Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the report's classified section, which documented the involvement of Saudi families and entities in financing terrorism, were...

A sensuous Paul Gauguin painting of two Tahitian girls has been sold from a Swiss private collection for close to $300 million, one of the highest prices believed to have been paid for an artwork, according to European and American art world insiders with knowledge of the matter. The sale of the 1892 oil painting, “Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?),” was confirmed by the seller, Rudolf Staechelin, 62, a retired Sotheby’s executive living in Basel, Switzerland, who through a family trust owns more than 20 works in a valuable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including the Gauguin,...

Al Gore, Al Jazeera to Fight Over $65 Million in Court February 6, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield 0 Comments  Print This Post It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys. Al Gore used his contacts to get a sweetheart deal for a lefty news network no one wanted that he then sold out to the state sponsor of ISIS, Qatar’s Al Jazeera, which then used it to get even less viewers. Then Qatar screwed Al Gore. And Al Gore is suing Al Jazeera. If only they would agree to end this with an ankle-biting contest. A trial will be...

The Justice Department has agreed to end its investigation into an international financial network with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and a Saudi prince in a settlement in excess of $30 million, sources tell the Investigative Project on Terrorism. But DOJ officials refuse to release a copy of the settlement or make any comment on it. "Unfortunately, we're unable to provide anything in connection with this matter," DOJ spokesman Charles Miller wrote in response to a query Aug. 16. He did not contest the existence of the settlement with the Islamic Investment Company of the Gulf (IICG). Repeated attempts to...

FORT HUACHUCA — It was about 9:57 p.m. Wednesday when a Delta commercial jet touched down at Libby Army Airfield. Inside the plane were 257 soldiers of the 40th Expeditionary Signal Battalion returning from a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The plane’s main cabin door door opened at 10:07 p.m. and soon the soldiers began walking down the steps to be greeted by senior post officers and others of the 40th who were on hand to welcome them back to their home turf. At the bottom of the steps was the commander of...

Libyan officials were deeply concerned in 2011, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was trying to remove Moammar Gadhafi from power, that weapons were being funneled to NATO-backed rebels with ties to al Qaeda, fearing that well-armed insurgents could create a safe haven for terrorists .. The reports included a 16-page list of weapons . ... the Qataris, they are doing this with every country, with every country,” Mr. Gadhafi said. “This is their plan, I mean in public. This is their own agenda. I mean, it’s not something hidden, ... A lot of jihadists that had been locked...

Problematic, in a very big way even if the offer was made.Qatar’s ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t news. They’ve effectively served as intermediaries in everything from ransom exchanges for hostages to Taliban negotiations. But actually trying to secure terrorist swaps for prisoners on their own behalf would have been a new frontier. Before he was released from a U.S. maximum-security prison last week, a confessed al Qaeda sleeper agent was offered up in a potential prisoner swap that would have freed two Americans held abroad.According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the case, the proposition was...

It’s been formally acknowledged that U.S. NATO ‘ally’ Turkey is providing safe haven to leaders of Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) so designated by the U.S. State Department. By its very definition, an FTO should be considered declared enemy of the U.S. Despite this, Turkey doesn’t appear to be paying any price. Another player in all this is the small nation of Qatar. It is desperately trying to play both sides of a political fence as leaders of Hamas – to include the terrorist organization’s political leader Khaled Meshaal – has been forcibly relocated to Turkey. The reason these...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyTel Aviv, Israel — January 21, 2015 … An elite Israeli police unit, which serves both prisons and courts, reacted quickly in capturing a 22-year-old Islamic terrorist from the West Bank city of Tulkarm. The terrorist boarded bus number 40 in central Tel Aviv and began to attack the driver. The wounded driver Herzl Biton, 55, a father of three and a bus driver for over 23 years responded by spraying the attacker with mace spray. Biton, who was stabbed in the chest, was evacuated by Magen David Adom emergency medical services to Ichilov and...

Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the executive summary of their final report investigating the CIA's controversial detention and interrogation program. As part of their study, the Democrats compiled twenty case studies, which were intended to address claims made by the CIA regarding the efficacy of its interrogations. One of those case studies focused on the identification and arrest of Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, who was freed from a US prison just days ago. Al Marri served as a "sleeper" operative for al Qaeda inside the US in 2001....

WASHINGTON - A Qatari diplomat who sparked a bomb scare after sneaking a smoke in an airplane's bathroom will be sent home or transferred to another country, U.S. officials said Thursday. The officials said that as a result of his recall, the U.S. government would not take any formal action against the diplomat. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said they expected Mohammed Al-Madadi to leave the United States later Thursday or Friday in accordance with assurances given to them by the Qatari embassy in Washington and authorities in the Qatari capital...

Long War Journal reports that the Obama administration has released Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri from a U.S. prison – not from Gitmo, but from a civilian jail after a federal terrorism conviction. Al-Marri is an al-Qaeda operative who was planted as a “sleeper” in the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed to await instructions on carrying out a second wave of attacks after the 9/11 atrocities – against water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. military academies, and other targets. The Justice Department quietly sprung him on Friday so he could return to his native Qatar, a country the...

Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, an admitted former al Qaeda operative, has been released from a American jail and permitted to return home to Qatar. No formal statement has been released yet by either government, but it is being reported that al Marri's release was the result of a bilateral agreement between the Qatari and American governments. According to the US Bureau of Prisons, a prisoner with the same name and estimated age (ID number 12194-026) was freed on Friday. Additionally, a source from al Marri's family told the Qatari press he was recently released and arrived in Doha Saturday....

Ships are not responsible for damaging undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean, Egypt's Government says. Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia. A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said. Egypt's transport ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged....

British-Lebanese human rights lawyer urges Egyptian president to expedite release of Canadian-Egyptian reporter.British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has called on Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to release and pardon an imprisoned Egyptian-Canadian journalist for Al Jazeera, whom she represents. The attorney - who recently wed Hollywood star George Clooney - released a statement Friday, expressing disappointment over the lack of "concrete" progress toward the release of Mohamed Fahmy following a meeting with Egyptian and Canadian diplomats, Egypt's Al-Masry Al-Youm reported. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird expressed cautious optimism for Fahmy's release after talks with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shukri...

Satellite images released on 15 January 2015 provide indisputable and shocking evidence of the scale of last week’s attack on the towns of Baga and Doron Baga by Boko Haram militants. Before and after images of two neighbouring towns, Baga (160 kilometres from Maiduguri) and Doron Baga (also known as Doro Gowon, 2.5 km from Baga), taken on 2 and 7 January show the devastating effect of the attacks which left over 3,700 structures damaged or completely destroyed. Other nearby towns and villages were also attacked over this period. “These detailed images show devastation of catastrophic proportions in two towns,...

The US Department of Defense is to send 400 troops and hundreds of support staff to train moderate rebels against Islamic State (IS) in Syria. It is not yet clear where the troops will be drawn from or where they will be based, though Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have offered to host them. The US aims to train more than 5,000 rebels annually for three years.

Royal Dutch Shell won’t move forward with plans for a new petrochemical plant in Qatar, the company announced Wednesday, citing the “economic climate” facing the energy sector today. The project, dubbed Al Karaana, had been in the works for more than three years. It would have been a joint venture between Shell, which had a 20 percent stake in the project, and state-owned Qatar Petroleum, which had an 80 percent stake. Shell said in a statement that it decided not to move forward with Al Karaana after receiving bids from engineering and construction firms that ”showed high capital costs, rendering...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman in Riyadh on Sunday as part of a diplomatic tour of OPEC members to discuss falling oil prices, which have hit its economy hard. The Saudi side in the meeting included Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and several princes including Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin, intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar and three sons of King Abdullah, who is in hospital, state media reported. No details of the meeting were given by the official Saudi Press Agency and there was no indication that the world's biggest oil exporter was any closer to...

Representatives of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait stressed a dozen times in the past six weeks that the group won’t curb output to halt the biggest drop in crude since 2008...The global oversupply is 2 million barrels a day, or 6.7 percent of OPEC output, Qatar estimates.