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NOTE The following text is a quote: www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2013/tunisian-man-charged-with-visa-fraud-related-to-terrorism-intended-to-remain-in-u.s.-to-facilitate-an-act-of-international-terrorism Tunisian Man Charged with Visa Fraud Related to Terrorism, Intended to Remain in U.S. to Facilitate an Act of International Terrorism U.S. Attorney’s Office May 09, 2013 Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; George Venizelos, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); and Raymond W. Kelly, the Police Commissioner of the city of New York (NYPD), today announced the unsealing of charges against Ahmed Abassi, a Tunisian citizen, for...

The Tunisian Embassy says one of two men accused of plotting to derail a train in Canada is a Tunisian citizen. The embassy said Thursday that 30-year-old Chiheb Esseghaier came to Quebec in August 2008 and is registered at the Consulate of Tunisia in Montreal. …

Canadian authorities announced Monday they have broken up an Al Qaeda-linked terror plot to attack a passenger train as it crossed over a bridge in the Toronto area. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Monday that two suspects have been arrested on terrorism charges. Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, who live in greater Montreal and Toronto -- were conspiring to carry out an Al Qaeda-supported attack against Via Rail, but posed no immediate threat to the public. "It was definitely in the planning stage but not imminent," RCMP chief superintendent Jennifer Strachan told reporters at a news conference. Read more:...

Deep Thoughts by Thomas Friedman But don’t worry, the term “admits” is a bit strong. It’s more like the weatherman who predicted there wouldn’t be a flood for a month straight clinging to an antenna on the roof of his house and trying to find reasons why he was right all along even while the sharks are circling his chimney. The standard fallback position for Tahrir’s international cheerleaders is to argue that we were expecting positive results too quickly. The term “Arab Spring” has to be retired. There is nothing springlike going on,” Friedman says. “It’s best we now speak...

Earlier today, members of Ukrainian feminist group Femen staged protests across Europe as they called for a "topless jihad." The demonstrations were in support of a young Tunisian activist named Amina Tyler. Last month, Tyler posted naked images of herself online, with the words "I own my body; it's not the source of anyone's honor" written on her bare chest. The head of Tunisia's "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," reportedly called for Tyler to be stoned to death for her putatively obscene actions, lest they lead to an epidemic. Tyler has since gone quiet, leading...

Air force pilots have requested guidance from the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Sadeq Al-Ghariani, about targeting smugglers on the southern Tunisian-Libyan border, according to the Libyan daily, Libya Al-Jadidah. The air force has been carrying out reconnaissance flights over southern border areas to monitor smuggling operations and have fired on smuggler groups. Interior Minister Ashour Shuwail reported to Congress yesterday Sunday, on the issue. An airman was quoted today by the newspaper saying that about 20 trucks smuggling Libyan fuel into Tunisia were crossing the border daily in the Wazen-Dhahiba area. Twenty-nine rockets had been fired at the smugglers, he said,...

Syrian rebel forces have seized a 25-kilometer (15 mile) buffer zone stretching from the Jordanian border to the Golan Heights. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog agency, “Fighters loyal to Al Nusra Front, Al Yarmuk Brigade, Al Mutaz Billah Brigade and others took control of Al Rai military checkpoint” east of Sahem al-Golan, in the Dara'a province. snip The rebel forces referred to in the statement are part of the radical jihadist group known as the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Syria, which despises what it considers the rival Western-backed Syrian National Council, the larger...

Social disruption, dramatic declines in mining and tourism and the Feb. 6 assassination of popular leftist leader Chokri Belaid, who was gunned down outside his home in the capital apparently by hard-line Islamists, known as Salafists, have all contributed to a darkened atmosphere inside the birthplace of the Arab Spring. There’s a sullen resentment at the failure of the Islamist government -- it is ruling with two secular center-left parties – to move the economy on.

TRIPOLI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Libyan authorities have detained a man investigators believe could be an important witness or suspect in the attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya last September, according to people familiar with the matter. The man, a Libyan national identified as Faraj al-Chalabi, fled to Pakistan after the attacks and only recently returned to Libya, said the sources, who include people in the United States and Libya close to the ongoing investigations. One Libyan security source said he was from Eastern Libya. The U.S. government is aware of al-Chalabi's detention and there are signs American investigators may have...

The “Arab spring” has benefited Islamists rather than democracy advocates, while political transitions and unrest in the region have provided opportunities for terrorists to mount attacks against U.S. interests, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told lawmakers Tuesday. … “Islamist actors have been the chief electoral beneficiaries of the political openings, and Islamist parties in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco will likely solidify their influence in the coming year,” he told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a written statement. … “Sequestration forces the intelligence community to reduce all intelligence activities and functions, without regard to impact on our mission,”...

Salafist Muslims tried to prevent the filming of current Internet craze the "Harlem Shake" at a Tunis school on Wednesday, but were driven off after coming to blows with students, a correspondent said. When the dozen or so ultra-conservative Muslims, some of them women in veils, showed up at the Bourguiba Language Institute in the El Khadra neighbourhood, a Salafist bastion, students shouted "Get out, get out!" One of the Salafists, wearing military gear and carrying a Molotov cocktail he never used, shouted "Our brothers in Palestine are being killed by Israelis, and you are dancing." The Islamists eventually withdrew,...

The cradle of the Arab Spring is increasingly looking like the birthplace of jihadists. Long before Tunisia ousted its dictator and inspired the North African pro-democracy movement, the small, relatively prosperous country had the more dubious distinction of exporting Islamic militants. Now, as the country wrestles with the creation of a new government after the killing of a liberal opposition leader, experts say the flow of fighters is getting worse. The repressive measures of the old secular dictatorship fueled the anger that produced jihadi movements, but its ruthless security apparatus also kept them largely in check. The much more relaxed...

John Brennan is no Chuck Hagel. That much was clear from the confirmation hearings on Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA. Unlike Hagel, who stumbled and mumbled through his performance, Brennan demonstrated a deep knowledge of his brief and answered (or gamely parried) tough questions with great self-assurance and forcefulness. But several of Brennan’s answers before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were problematic. Indeed, his three and a half hours of testimony raised important questions on two issues central to his nomination: the politicization of intelligence and the Obama administration’s approach to fighting radical Islam. Brennan will face additional...

As dozens of riot police fired volleys of tear gas towards crowds of angry youths on Bourghiba Avenue this week, the scene was disturbingly reminiscent of what happened on this very avenue two years ago. Even the chanting was the same: "We want the downfall of the regime!" The target of the crowd's anger may be a different government, but many here feel their efforts in 2011, when they succeeded in removing Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, may have been for nought. Many outsiders, myself included, always believed the Tunisian "Jasmine" uprising had the best chance of succeeding, of building a...

Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid was buried as a martyr for freedom and democracy in a country that is threatened with the loss of both, as an uprising against the ruling Islamist party gained momentum. Mr. Belaid’s assassination triggered a ferocious backlash against the main Islamist party, Ennahda, one that continued during the funeral Friday, attended by as many as 100,000 people. The midafternoon funeral on Friday was a largely peaceful event marred by bouts of violence – and brief periods of panic – as crowds tried to outrun billowing clouds of tear gas aimed at demonstrators and looters on...

There’s been a lot of discussion within some in the media regarding the demographic changes taking place in Europe. But those of us who’ve travelled there have observed it firsthand: namely, the decreased birthrate among Europeans compared to the enormous birthrate increase among Muslim immigrants. Overall, the birthrate across the continent is far below the replacement level of 2.1 children per couple. Italy, Spain, Austria, and Germany have a fertility rate of only 1.4, while Poland and Russia languish at 1.3 and 1.2, respectively. However, as a subgroup, Muslims in Europe are producing from 4 to 6 children per couple....

At least 12 men had hands or feet cut off after MUJAO (Movement for Jihad and Unity), and its allies in AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), took control of Gao last April. The exact number is not known because some were amputated in the military base... The mayor's office, a few yards from the punishment ground, was turned into a sharia court... Suspects were confined to a small room where they were tied up and beaten, before being brought before Islamic judges, known as marabous, who sat every Monday and Thursday. Ali Altini and Mohammed Aklini were due to...

President Barack Obama offered on Saturday to provide any assistance the Algerian government needs after a deadly hostage siege at a desert gas plant and said the United States was seeking a "fuller understanding" from Algerian authorities of what took place there. "The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the families of all those who were killed and injured in the terrorist attack in Algeria," Obama said in his first comments on the hostage crisis. Obama's written statement was issued by the White House after the Algerian army carried out a dramatic final assault to end a...

It feels strange visiting a country like Morocco and listening to people extol the virtues of a political system my country waged a revolution against. Morocco has a king, and he’s a real one too, not some kind of a figurehead. But I went there, I listened, and after almost ten years of visiting Middle Eastern countries wracked by tyranny, terrorism, botched revolutions, and wars, I was perhaps a bit more willing to hear what they had to say than I might have been a decade ago. A monarchy is a tough sell for Americans. The founders of our country...

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) -- Tunisian authorities conditionally released one of the only men in custody for alleged links to September's attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi, the latest blow to an investigation that has limped along for months.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation is assisting the nation of Tunisia in achieving greater economic growth by getting it to improve its government and private-sector institutions, which MCC says suffer from a bloated workforce and strict labor laws that keep that unwieldy labor market intact. Tunisia, a North African nation tucked between Libya and Algeria, has agreed to pursue their reforms as a step toward signing a formal compact with MCC. First it must undergo scrutiny via MCC’s Threshold Program, which: assists countries in implementing policy changes in order to improve prospects for MCC Compact eligibility. MCC has signed 23 threshold...

A media outlet for Ansar al Sharia Tunisia has released pictures purportedly showing three FBI agents who interviewed Ali al Harzi, a suspect in the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. The release of the pictures on jihadist forums was first noticed by the SITE Intelligence Group. The US government had been seeking access to Harzi for more than two months, since he was arrested in Turkey and deported to his native Tunisia in October. Harzi's lawyer told the Associated Press yesterday (Dec. 22) that the FBI had finally been given permission to interview him. The interview last...

Concerned by what they say is incompetent and corrupted media, the League for the Protection of the Revolution (LPR), a group of activists that is, according to Tunisia’s opposition, close to the Islamist party in power, organized a “flash mob” protest in the city of Sousse. Television sets were thrown onto the beach like rubbish. After chanting slogans calling for the purification of the media, the protesters were asked to scatter their television sets and newspapers along Boujafaar beach, situated in the town center. …

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares to testify on Capitol Hill next week about last September’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, a Republican lawmaker is urging her to cut aid to Tunisia over its refusal to allow the FBI to talk to the only known detained suspect in the attack. Speaking on the U.S. House floor Wednesday, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) accused Tunisian authorities of hampering the FBI’s investigation into the attack in Libya’s second city, during which U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed. …

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

Illustrating that the jihadist enterprise transcends all borders, American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals — prompting Egyptian intellectual Essam Abdallah to lament that "the most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring … is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington" — several of the groups' past and current officials have emerged as key...

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in an operation that marked the second major attack by violent jihadists against the World Trade Center. There wasn’t much mystery about who had carried out these atrocities — unless you were Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Marayati warned Americans not to conclude that the suicide hijacking attacks were the work of Muslim terrorists. “If we are going to look at suspects,” he told a Los Angeles radio station, “we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I...

(Reuters) - A Tunisian man suspected of being involved with the September 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya has refused to be interviewed by FBI investigators, his lawyer said on Monday. Ali Ani al-Harzi, jailed and under investigation in Tunisia over the attack having been deported from Turkey, said he would not see the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents alone, Anouar Aouled told Reuters. Harzi was one of two Tunisians named in October by the Daily Beast website as having been detained in Turkey over the attacks in Benghazi in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to...

Nearly two years after the Jasmine Revolution brought down the government, Tunisians are still not satisfied, and renewed riots started last week over economic difficulties once again, sparking concerns over more Islamist unrest. The economic struggles that ignited the self-immolation of a despairing pushcart vendor set off what days later became known as the country's “Jasmine Revolution.” The decades-old regime of President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali was ousted by protesters in January 2011, setting off the region-wide Arab Spring uprisings. But in the final analysis, the country is still struggling. And Tunisians still take to the streets and clash...

Syria’s Civil War is leaking out of its borders into Lebanon. The two countries share a porous border and very close communal ties. As tensions between Sunnis and Shiites rise in Syria, so too do they mount in Lebanon. The Sunni-Shiite faultline in Lebanon is being projected onto the Syrian civil war. Sunni militants view their jihad against the Shiite movement as a mirror image of the Syrian rebels’ fight against the Alawite-dominated regime of Assad. They see the Lebanon’s Shiite movement of Hezbullah and the Assad regime as both enemies of the Sunnis. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, an...

The Bashar al-Assad rule in Syria has come under heavy fire from people who believe that the regime must quit over its atrocities. But any attempt by the US-led West to impose a replacement will backfire soon India’s oil-rich western neighbourhood, extending from the Arabian Sea to the Bosporus, is engulfed in conflicts arising from sectarian and civilisational rivalries, aggravated by the meddling of external powers. With an arsenal of over 100 nuclear weapons, Pakistan is today witnessing a period of internal strife, largely arising from the pernicious role of its military establishment and tensions across its disputed borders with...

A September attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tunis left four dead, 49 injured, several buildings looted and burned out and the black Salafi flag flying above the embassy grounds... --snip-- Broadly speaking, Islamists divide into three types: 1. Salafis, who revere the era of the salaf (the first three generations of Muslims) and aim to revive it by wearing Arabian clothing, adopting antique customs and assuming a medieval mindset that leads to religious-based violence. 2. Muslim Brothers and like types aspire to an Islamic version of modernity. Depending on circumstances, they might act violently or not. 3. Lawful Islamists...

As you know, a Tunisian man was seen on the Consulate videotape the day of the attack.  He was arrested a short time later in Turkey at their airport as he tried to pass through with false documents.  The Turkish authorities turned the man over to Tunisia (not the USA for questioning) and the Tunisian government has not let our FBI interview him.  The US has not explained why they could not get access to interview this man.   About 3 nights ago, Senator Lindsey Graham learned of the foregoing and was outraged that we had not interviewed this man....

An Egyptian suspected of involvement in last month’s attack on the US mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Chris Stevens was slain in Cairo yesterday, Wednesday. According to the Egyptian Interior Ministry, the man — named only as Hazem — died in a shoot-out with security forces at an apartment in Nasr City, northeast Cairo. They had been sent to arrest him following information received implicating him in the Benghazi attack. He is said to have recently returned from Libya. Security sources say he threw a bomb from the ground floor apartment but it bounced back into the building. Police...

The Phoenicians were originally based in a series of city-states that extended from southeast Turkey to modern-day Israel. They were great seafarers with a taste for exploration. Accounts survive of its navigators reaching places as far afield as Northern Europe and West Africa. They founded settlements throughout the Mediterranean during the first millennium B.C. Carthage, whose Phoenician name was Qart Hadasht (new city), was one of those new settlements. It sat astride trade routes going east to west, across the Mediterranean, and north to south, between Europe and Africa. The people spoke Punic, a form of the Phoenician language... The...

NOTE The following text is a quote: http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2011/alleged-terrorist-indicted-in-new-york-for-the-murder-of-five-american-soldiers Alleged Terrorist Indicted in New York for the Murder of Five American Soldiers U.S. Attorney’s Office December 09, 2011 Eastern District of New York NEW YORK—Today, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, N.Y., returned an indictment charging Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa, 38, aka “Faruk Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa,” “Sayfildin Tahir Sharif” and “Tahir Sharif Sayfildin,” with aiding in the murder of five American soldiers in a suicide-bomb attack in Iraq in April 2009. Specifically, he is charged with the murders of Staff Sergeant Gary L. Woods, 24, of Lebanon Junction, Ky.; Sergeant First...

TUNISIAN CHILDREN’S MAGAZINE SHOWS KIDS HOW TO MAKE A MOLOTOV COCKTAIL ... Sadly not a misprint. Because that’s the first thing that’s on any kid’s mind, how to light someone else on fire. Kind of reminiscent of the Hamas’ kiddie program featuring mice and bunnies that incite children to commit acts of terrorism. So no folks, this is nothing new. RTNews: A Tunisian children’s magazine “Kaws Kouzah” has recently published a detailed step-by-step instruction of how to make a Molotov cocktail. Now the periodical is facing a lawsuit for endangering kids lives. The Tunisian Ministry for Women and Family Affairs...

The emergence of extremist Islamists groups joining in the war against the Syrian regime has been a cause of serious concern to many on both sides of the conflict. As groups and factions split over their ideological and political agendas, fierce fighting is repeatedly breaking out in the opposition camp. Several days ago, the commander of a group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Levant, was assassinated. Abu Mohammad al-Shami, better known as al-Absi, was killed by Islamist fighters from the Salafi-leaning al-Farouq Battalion, which is also ideologically affiliated with al-Qaeda. ... Absi’s assassination was not the first time the Jihadis...

On and around September 11, 2012, al Qaeda attacked multiple American assets around the world. The attack that has received the most attention is the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But the U.S. consulate in Libya was not the only diplomatic facility assaulted by al Qaeda-affiliated groups in September. Terrorists with ties to al Qaeda’s senior leaders, including al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, were involved in at least three other U.S. embassy sieges in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, and possibly elsewhere. A timeline of these assaults is...

Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya. The soldiers' mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage. But the teams had yet to do much counterterrorism work in Libya, though the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new military task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, according to three U.S. counterterror officials and a former...

A chilling detail in this Reuters report on yesterday's protests at the US embassy in Tunisia from reporter Tarek Amara: "Obama, Obama, we are all Osamas," they chanted, in reference to the slain al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. The protesters pulled down the U.S. flag flying over the embassy, burned it, and replaced it with a black flag emblazoned with the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith.

The United States ordered non-essential staff to leave its embassies in Tunisia and Sudan on Saturday after both diplomatic posts were attacked and Khartoum rejected a U.S. request to send a platoon of Marines to bolster security at its mission there.

<p>CAIRO — An unprecedented wave of anti-American violence swept across Africa, Asia and the Middle East on Friday as protesters, angered by an amateurish video that mocks the founder of Islam, stormed and scorched U.S. embassies in Tunisia and Sudan, ransacked a German embassy in Sudan, and set a fast-food restaurant ablaze in Lebanon.</p>

Someone had better roust Barack Obama from whatever fundraiser he is attending at the moment and let him know there is a crisis going on. The State Department is belatedly trying to secure our embassies and consulates around the world; in the meantime, rioters swarmed over the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia, tore down the American flag and replaced it with the black flag of al Qaeda.

A black Islamic flag is currently flying over the U.S. embassy in Tunisia after it had been stormed by an angry mob of protesters, who were upset over an anti-Islam film that was made by Americans. This is just one of many incidents occurring around the world today, in which Americans are being targeted. In Tunis, the mob overran the compound, scaling walls and setting fire to trees before tearing down the American flag and replacing it with a symbol of Islam. It is not thought that any U.S. staff were actually in the embassy in Tunis. An American school...

TUNIS, Tunisia — Violent protests outside the U.S. Embassy in Tunis against an anti-Muslim film were met with tear gas and gunshots Friday, leaving two people dead, 29 others injured and plumes of black smoke wafting over the city. Several dozen protesters briefly stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Tunisia’s capital, tearing down the American flag and raising a flag with the Muslim profession of faith on it as part of the protests. Protesters also set fire to an American school adjacent to the embassy compound and prevented firefighters from approaching it. The school appeared to be empty and no...

Obama's foreign policy has helped set the Middle East on fire.

6 Minutes Ago - Protesters set fire to the American School in the Tunisian capital on Friday, after hundreds of people incensed by a "made in the USA" film that demeans the Prophet Muhammad invaded the US embassy compound and clashed with riot police. The school was closed on Friday. Protesters had earlier set fire to trees in the US embassy compound. "Obama, Obama, we are all Osama," the protesters chanted to the US president, referencing the slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. 20 Minutes Ago - Anti-Islam film protests Live Blog Anti-Islam film protests 7 minutes ago Protesters set...

Protesters have entered the US embassy in the Tunisian capital Tunis in the latest violence sparked by an anti-Muslim film. A large fire could be seen burning inside the compound. Police fired teargas at the crowds, who broke windows and set fire to trees. In the Sudanese capital Khartoum, some 5,000 protesters attacked the British and German embassies.