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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...