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Pittsburgh was treated to an impressive show the week of the recent G20 conference. A nice assortment of military choppers of various types and missions, along with odder aircraft difficult both to identify and explain. Both police and the National Guard were out in force, with downtown nearly sealed off. None of this hardware was used against the "3,000 - 4,000" (more like a few hundred) anarchist demonstrators when they turned their righteous wrath on a dozen Starbucks and a Whole Foods store. No serious confrontation was expected and none occurred. Because all of it - the Guard troops, the...

Airplane shoe bomber Richard C. Reid no longer faces severe limits on his prison activities or communications after the Obama administration quietly ended years of hard-nosed curbs against the British-born al-Qaeda terrorist. This summer the Justice Department halted six years of measures that kept Reid from associating or praying with fellow jailed Muslim terrorists, and limited his access to the news media and pen pals.

Airplane shoe bomber Richard C. Reid no longer faces severe limits on his prison activities or communications after the Obama administration quietly ended years of hard-nosed curbs against the British-born al-Qaeda terrorist. This summer the Justice Department halted six years of measures that kept Reid from associating or praying with fellow jailed Muslim terrorists, and limited his access to the news media and pen pals. That move has outraged victims of al-Qaeda and security experts. The recommendation to lift the restrictions was made with input from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, which prosecuted Reid in 2002, federal officials said......

Richard Reid, the man who tried to blow up American Airlines flight 93 is housed in the Supermax prison in Colorado. Until this month, he had been subject to security restrictions which prevented his communication with other Al Qaeda members, where ever they are. Not anymore. The Holder Justice Department has decided to relax these security measures against an unrepentant terrorist... (Read the rest at muffledoar.blogspot.com)

Regular old U.S. criminals should be so lucky as to enjoy the devoted legal representation that has rallied to the sides of Islamist terrorists convicted of plotting the mass murder of Americans ---snip--- Reid sued, went on a hunger strike and was force fed. Last December, the Justice Department asked a judge to dismiss the suit, citing a Muslim radical who had assisted the first WTC attack from behind bars. But the department, now led by Attorney General Eric Holder, has since abandoned that position

The Obama Justice Department has withdrawn the "special administrative measures" imposed at the federal prison in Colorado against "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid, the jihadist who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001. Special administrative measures (SAMs) are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when "there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury" to others." snip ... the list of Reid’s potential fellow congregants at ADX Florence [the supermax Colorado prison] reads like a Who’s Who of al-Qaida’s most dangerous members: Ramzi...

... Why had Attorney General Eric Holder decided not to renew his security measures, kept in place since 2002? ... Reid claimed that SAMs violated his First Amendment right of free speech and free exercise of religion. In a hand-written complaint, he asserted that he was being illegally prevented from performing daily “group prayers in a manner prescribed by my religion.” Yet the list of Reid’s potential fellow congregants at ADX Florence reads like a Who’s Who of al Qaeda’s most dangerous members: Ramzi Yousef and his three co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui;...

Today, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled 'Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’: The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in,' Debra Burlingame writes: On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier [June 9, 2007 pdf file at link], the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner -- Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber” --...

Last May at the National Archives, President Barack Obama warned that “more mistakes would occur” if Congress continued to politicize terrorist detention policy and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “[I]f we refuse to deal with those issues today,” he predicted, “then I guarantee you, they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.” On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal...

From Gloucester to Afghanistan: the making of a shoe bomber Saajid Badat this week pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up a plane. What drove this quiet football fan to thoughts of terror? Mark Honigsbaum and Vikram Dodd Saturday March 5, 2005 The Guardian He seemed the model British Muslim citizen - a poster boy for integration whose knowledge of the Qu'ran and achievement at grammar school made Gloucester's close-knit Islamic community proud. When in November 2003 anti-terrorist police turned up at the terraced house in the Barton and Tredworth district of the city that Saajid Badat shared with his...

 A British-born Muslim admitted yesterday conspiring to blow up a passenger aircraft at the same time as Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, tried to bring down an American Airlines flight.Saajid Badat, 25, who trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey after being linked to an al-Qa'eda plot.   Saajid Badat Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said: "Three years of intensive and painstaking international investigation brought us to the point where Badat had no option but to plead guilty to this horrendous offence."His conviction demonstrates the reality of the threat...

A British-born suicide bomber plotted to bring down a packed passenger aircraft over the Atlanttic at the same time that the shoe bomber Richard Reid targeted an American Airlines flight, the Old Bailey heard today. But Saajid Badat changed his mind and dismantled his own shoe bomb, which was designed to evade airport security. Badat, 25, from Gloucester, admitted conspiring to blow up an aircraft between January 1 1999 and November 28, 2003 in a surprise change of plea today. He had been due to stand trial for the offence. Intelligence services believe Badat had been conspiring with Reid, a...

British shoe bomber Richard Reid is suing US prison authorities over his harsh prison conditions. The Londoner is being helid in a maximum security jail in Colorado for attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight in December 2001. But he has appealed to a judge to be allowed the "same rights and privileges as other inmates" at the prison. Reid is trying to end his isolation and lack of access to Arabic-language religious books. In May, prison authorities told the inmate he had been placed on special administrative measures. These restricted his access to letters, the media, telephone...

Shoe Bomber Sues Over Harsh U.S. Prison ConditionsThu Aug 19, 2004 08:39 PM ET DENVER (Reuters) - "Shoe bomber" Richard Reid has sued U.S. prison authorities for imposing harsh conditions including isolation and a lack of access to Arabic language religious books. Reid is serving a life sentence for attempting to use explosives in his shoes to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami three months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Reid, a British citizen, wants a judge to order prison authorities to give him "the same rights and privileges as other inmates held in this prison."...

DENVER — Al Qaeda member and Florence prison inmate Richard Reid has moved his court challenge of federal prison rules to Denver. Reid is serving a life sentence for trying to blow up an airplane with explosives hidden in his shoes in 2001. The Justice Department has imposed restrictions on Reid and other terrorism-related prisoners they consider a threat to national security. In a handwritten lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver last week, Reid wrote he has been kept in isolation in a cell with a window that does not let him see outside, and that his mail...

A man jailed in the US for trying to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes has gone on hunger strike, court papers have revealed. Briton Richard Reid is said to have been refusing food for several weeks and is being force-fed and hydrated. Reid, 35, is currently taking legal action against prison restrictions which, he says, prevent him from practising his Sunni Muslim faith. He is serving three life sentences at the Supermax prison in Colorado.

Convicted British ‘shoe-bomber’ terrorist Richard Reid, who was found guilty in 2003 of trying to blow up a transatlantic commercial flight, has been refusing food for several weeks and is being force fed by authorities in a US prison. Reid is currently serving a life sentence in the notorious Supermax prison in Denver, America’s highest-security federal lockup, after he was convicted of trying to ignite two bombs in his shoes while on board a Paris-to-Miami flight on American Airlines. He was subdued by passengers before he could detonate the explosives. Reid, 35, has refused 59 meals since March at the...

Two people have been taken into custody on suspicions of preparing acts of sabotage at the Oskarshamn nuclear plant on Wednesday morning, according to police and plant operators, reports the Kvällsposten newspaper. A Swedish contractor was arrested on Wednesday when traces of highly explosive material were found on him as he was about to enter a nuclear power plant in southern Sweden, police and the plant said. "At 8am we received a call from the nuclear plant at Oskarshamn. They told us one worker was stopped in the control. He had explosive material in his bags," Sven-Erik Karlsson of the...

LONDON, July 31 (UPI) -- Letters from convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid from a super-max prison in the United States include lectures to his father about Islam and dreams of freedom. The Mirror, a British newspaper, reported that it had an exclusive look at Reid's letters to his father, Robin Reid, a Jamaican-born recovering drug addict living in a London homeless shelter. Reid berates his father for a letter telling him that his aunt, Madeleine, who brought Reid up while Robin Reid was in prison, had died and was "in a better place." "What you wrote about Aunt Lynn being...

Excerpt - An FBI video has revealed in chilling detail how a British terrorist planned to blow a passenger jet out of the sky. The footage — obtained by the News of the World from security sources — show the shoe-bomb blast tearing a hole through the metal fuselage as if it were tin foil. It proves that if the attack by Brit Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami in 2001 had succeeded, all 197 on board would have died. ~ snip ~ Link to article and video...

A terror suspect arrested last week has been charged with plotting a bomb attack with al Qaeda "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. Sajid Badat, 24, of Gloucester, was also charged with possessing explosives with the intent to endanger life under the Terrorism Act 2000. Badat, who was arrested on Thursday by Gloucest More follows...

At six feet four inches tall, Richard Reid makes a forbidding figure, even from behind the iron grates, steel doors and automated locks that separate him from his prison guards in this place they call Terrorist Central. Richard Reed after his arrest (Richard Reid) Held in darkness and paranoiaHunched on a stool that is moulded to the floor of his broom-cupboard-sized cell, he turns the pages of the newspaper spread out on the concrete desk before him, soaking up stories and pictures from an outside world that he will never see again. "Do you need anything today?" a prison guard...

More than 70 Muslim workers at France's main airport have been stripped of the security clearance for allegedly posing a risk to passengers, officials say.The staff at Charles de Gaulle airport, including baggage handlers, are said to have visited terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One man is thought to have been a friend of Richard Reid, the so-called British shoe bomber. Richard Reid tried to blow up a flight from Paris to the US in 2001. Discrimination lawsuitsEarlier this year officials at Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, conducted a security review of staff and questioned dozens...

Remember the guy who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and tried to light it? Did you know his trial is over? Did you know he was sentenced? Did you see/hear any of the judge's comments on TV or Radio? Didn't think so. Everyone should hear what the judge had to say. Ruling by Judge William Young, US District Court. Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say. His response: After admitting his guilt to the court for the record, Reid also admitted his "allegiance to Osama bin Laden,...

The explosive seized among terrorists supposed in Denmark was TATP COPENHAGEN - the substance, seized at one of the terrorists supposed stopped in Denmark last week, is TATP (triacetone triperoxyde), a chemical explosive snuffed by the islamist ones and used in particular at the time of the attacks of London, according to a Danish newspaper The bottle seized on September 5 in the residence of one of the supposed terrorists, at the time of a haul of the police force with Odense, contains "a clear liquid including/understanding a synthetic mixture for the manufacture of the TATP and of the...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- CNN's Becky Anderson interviews Peter Herbert, a British human rights lawyer who visited Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe-bomber" in a U.S. jail in 2002. Herbert, who had no role in Reid's defense, was interviewed at his office in London. Here is the full transcript: Anderson: So you traveled to see him? (Watch the interview -- 3:04) ... Q. Well, you talked at length I believe and perhaps with more detail than you might have expected about what had happened that day and indeed why Richard Reid had been involved. When you asked him why young men...

BRITISH police investigating a terror plot by Islamic saboteurs have found chemical warfare protection suits in a north London mosque. The discovery has shocked detectives, who believe the find confirms supporters of Osama bin Laden were planning a poison attack on civilian targets in Britain. Scotland Yard and MI5 detectives had kept the discovery of the nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) suits secret. They feared disclosing it would spark panic. Government ministers have warned any suggestion that the Finsbury Park mosque had been involved would have worrying racist overtones. Police initially revealed they had seized a cache of weapons, including...

Houston police and the federal Transportation Security Administration disagree over who is responsible for allowing a man with what appeared to be bomb components board an aircraft at Hobby Airport last week. The report states that a man with a Middle Eastern name and a ticket for a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta shook his head when screeners asked if he had a laptop computer in his baggage, but an X-ray machine operator detected a laptop. A search of the man's baggage revealed a clock with a 9-volt battery taped to it and a copy of the Quran, the report...

Defense lawyers for confessed Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui have asked a judge to subpoena testimony from shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Moussaoui’s court-appointed lawyers, trying to spare him from a death sentence, are seeking to show that Moussaoui was lying when he testified he was training to pilot a fifth plane as part of the Sept. 11 operation. They asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to issue the subpoena late Monday. Moussaoui told the jury at his death-penalty trial that Reid, who later was convicted of trying to ignite a shoe bomb aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, was to be part of his...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions. Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested...

NEW YORK - Authorities at New York's La Guardia airport have evacuated a terminal and halted outbound flights after a security alert over a passenger's shoes, they said Friday. "The decision was taken to remove passengers from the terminal out of an abundance of caution," said Yolande Clark, a spokeswoman for the federal Transport Security Administration. The incident occurred shortly before 3:00 pm (2000 GMT) at the Delta Airlines terminal. According to Clark, a male passenger who was selected for secondary screening set off an alarm when his shoes were passed through a detector that checks for explosives. "The passenger...

The White House has given details of 10 major terror plots that President Bush says have been foiled by the US and its allies since the 11 September attacks. Mr Bush cited the disrupted plans in a speech, designed to boost support for the so-called war on terror. They include a plot to use hijacked aircraft to hit the US East and West coasts and to attack Heathrow Airport. But the sketchy details provided by the White House make it hard to assess how serious or advanced the plans were. Most of the plots have been previously reported in some...

JFK Screeners Find Bomb Residue, Let Man Go Man Released After Positive Explosives Test At JFK Image Scott Weinberger Reporting Save It Email this Article Email It Print this Article Print It (CBS) QUEENS A man's sneakers tested positive for explosives at JFK airport. The sneakers were confiscated, but the man walked free. However, federal screeners didn’t tell any member of law enforcement what happened for days. The man used the name Gamal Badawi with U.S. immigration officials last Friday at JFK airport. At the time, authorities were unable to use the computerized system that takes a visitor's fingerprints and...

Federal law enforcement sources tell ABC News they had been on the alert for a possible shoe bomber when a federal air marshal opened fire at the Miami International Airport today. In today's incident, an agitated passenger claimed to have a bomb in his backpack was shot and killed by a federal air marshal, officials said. No bomb was found. Officials say a 50-year old Egyptian man was stopped six days ago at New York's John F. Kennedy airport. Sources say he had a suspicious pair of shoes that tested positive five times for the explosive substance TATP on the...

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or if you think you are a soldier. You are not----- you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to...

Unrepentant, and convinced that Muslims across the world are the victims of American oppression, the mind of Richard Reid, the attempted shoe bomber from South London, was shown today in a letter published in a Scottish legal magazine. The letter, written by Reid from his prison cell in America on October 24, 2002, and published by The Firm magazine today, was sent to the magazine's US correspondent instead of an interview. In the letter, Reid, now 31, gave a rambling but cogent reply to a note sent to him by Noel Young, The Firm's journalist, who offered Reid the chance...

BLY, Ore. — This hard-knocks hamlet seems an unlikely place to search for clues to the al-Qaida terrorist network. It sits on an arid plateau in Southern Oregon, about 50 miles east of Klamath Falls. With a population of about 250, it has a couple of cafes and small stores, an antique shop, and the razed foundation of an abandoned lumber mill. But in late 1999, federal authorities and other sources say, the area had something far more unusual: militant Muslims scouting a ranch outside of town as a possible training camp for jihad fighters. That aborted effort has now...

Terrorists came from Finsbury Park Mosque in London  Militant Islam Monitorhttp://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/294UK .. You will pay ..Bin Laden's on waySickening sight .........Abdul Rehman Saleem of the Al-Muhajiroun, burns the Union Jack and warns of bloodshed on the streets of London Richard Reid (shoe bomber) and Germaine Lindsay( London Subway bomber) went to the Finsbury Mosque in London, it appears that Zacarias Moussaoui and James Ujaama of Seattle WA also attended the Finsbury Mosque along with the two suicide bombers who attacked Mike's pub in Israel last year. British police have released the former leader of the Finsbury Park Mosque Abu...

As Londoners recover from bombing attacks that left 50 people dead and 1,000 wounded yesterday, suspicion is focusing on a radical Muslim cleric who urged his flock to commit suicide bombing attacks in Britain and preached anti-Semitic hate from his mosque in Finsbury Park. Abu Hamza al-Masri went on trial in London this week, charged by British officials with incitement to murder and other terrorist offenses. But the activities of his followers - like convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid and the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui - suggest that Hamza's rhetoric may have helped spur new attacks. For years before...

The following is a partial transcript of the court hearing in which Richard Reid was sentenced to life in prison for his confessed plan to try and blow up a jetliner with explosives he had hidden in his shoes. The exchange is between Reid and Judge William Young. RICHARD REID: I start by praising Allah because life today is no good. REID: I further admit my allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah. So, for this reason, I think I ought not apologize for my actions. I am at war with your country. JUDGE...

Paris court convicts three aides to shoebomber ReidA top French court jailed three men for terrorist conspiracy on Thursday after finding them guilty of helping "shoebomber" Richard Reid, who narrowly failed to destroy a U.S. airliner over the Atlantic. (snip) Jacqueline Rebeyrotte, presiding judge at the main Paris criminal court, sentenced Ghulam Rama to five years in prison and expulsion from France once his sentence was served. (snip) His co-accused, Frenchmen Hakim Mokhfi and Hassan El Cheguer, both aged 31, were each jailed for four years, one year suspended. The court ordered them released as they have been in preventive...

A KEY al-Qaeda operative responsible for recruiting the shoe bomber Richard Reid and one of the September 11 hijackers helped to kidnap five British children from their Norwich home and take them to Libya, a court was told yesterday. Djamel Beghal, 39, is serving ten years in a French prison for plotting a suicide attack on the US Embassy in Paris and was described as so dangerous that even other al-Qaeda members thought him beyond the pale. While he was living in Leicester in the late 1990s Beghal, an Algerian, met Azzedin Journazi, from Libya, at a city mosque and...

(AP) - ALEXANDRIA, Va.-A federal judge said Monday she soon will set a trial date for Zacarias Moussaoui, the only defendant charged in the United States in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said the government and Moussaoui's lawyers have conferred privately and agreed on a trial schedule. Brinkema did not reveal the agreement but said she has misgivings about the proposal. She promised, in a two-page order, to set a date "in the near future."

GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND - The house at 44 St. James St. looks like all the others in a slightly rundown neighborhood of two-story brick homes, except that people seem to flinch a bit when they walk by. That's probably because they are uncomfortably aware that a young man who lived there kept enough plastic explosives rolled up in his socks to take out a whole city block or blow an airliner out of the sky, which was his plan. "It was too damn close," said Martin Stephens, who lives on the next block. "It would have killed us all. People are...

Terror suspect Saajid Badat has become the first al-Qaeda suspect to be convicted in Britain. Badat had trained as a suicide bomber in Afghanistan and Pakistan and had conspired with Richard Reid, the British man who became known as the shoe-bomber, to blow up an aircraft. Badat had been preparing to attack – he had booked a flight to the United States, via Amsterdam. At the Old Bailey today he admitted that he had conspired to put an explosive device on a plane in the months after September 11 2001. The 25-year-old said he had been given the training and...

LONDON (Reuters) - "Shoe bomber" Richard Reid had planned with an accomplice to bring down more than one aircraft at around the same time, a London court heard Monday. Reid failed in his bid to blow up an American Airlines plane from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001 after passengers and crew overpowered him as he tried to ignite explosives in his shoe. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. court in January 2003. At the Old Bailey Monday, his accomplice Saajid Badat, 25, pleaded guilty to conspiring to use an explosive device identical to that of...

LONDON (AFP) - A British Muslim pleaded guilty to conspiring with jailed "shoe bomber" Richard Reid to try and blow up airliners, an admission police hailed as a major breakthrough in anti-terrorism efforts. Intelligence services believe Saajid Badat, 25, who was arrested in Britain in late 2003, had volunteered to mimic Reid's failed suicide bomb attack by igniting a shoe packed with explosives during a commercial flight. Fellow Briton Reid, a self-professed follower of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), was jailed for life by a US court in early 2003 for trying to blow up a...

Algerian radical spills beans on bin Laden "terror network" An Algerian Islamic radical arrested in France has proved a goldmine for investigators probing Osama bin Laden's militant network in Europe in the wake of the September 11 attacks, magistrates told AFP. French investigators now believe that after key testimonies from a handful of well placed members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network the exiled Saudi extremist's secret organisation in Europe is unravelling fast. Since his arrest in Paris last Monday 27-year-old Yacine Aknouche has revealed his links with several al-Qaeda suspects including "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "20th...

Militant Imams Under Scrutiny Across Europe By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and LOWELL BERGMAN ONDON, Jan. 24 - In nightly sermons broadcast on the Internet, Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, a 46-year-old Syrian-born cleric, has urged young Muslim men all over the world to support the Iraq insurgency on the front line of "the global jihad," investigators say. He struck a similarly defiant tone this month at a rally attended by 500 people at a central London meeting hall, where a giant screen behind him showed images of the World Trade Center falling. "Allah akbar!" - "God is great" - some...

French anti-terror magistrates wrapped up an investigation into four Islamists who may have helped British shoe bomber Richard Reid in France. Le Parisien reports the suspects include the head of a Paris mosque, the leader of a Pakistani community and two other men. Reid spent several days in Paris before boarding a Miami-bound plane in December 2001 with explosives stuffed in his sneakers. Last year, Reid was sentenced to life in prison by a U.S. court for trying to blow up the flight. One of the French suspects, Imam Kamel Lakhram, reportedly acknowledged to French authorities Reid had slept at...