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A U.S. Navy destroyer was involved in a minor collision with a Japanese tugboat Saturday during a scheduled exercise, according to the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet. The USS Benfold, a guided-missile destroyer, sustained minor damage when a tugboat lost propulsion and drifted into the ship, the Navy said. No one was injured on either vessel and an initial assessment of the damage showed that the destroyer only sustained minimal damage including scrapes. But the accident comes at a time when the Navy's 7th Fleet and the U.S. Pacific Command have come under increased scrutiny after several deadly collisions in the...

A U.S. warship collided with a Japanese commercial tug boat in Japan's Sagami Bay on Saturday, marking the fifth time this year that a ship in the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet in the Pacific has been involved in a crash. The Japanese tug boat lost propulsion and drifted into the USS Benfold during a towing exercise. The U.S. guided-missile destroyer sustained minimal damage, and there were no reported injuries on either vessel, according to a press release from the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet. The USS Benfold, which is awaiting a full damage assessment, remains at sea under its own power....

SNIPPET: "Two U.S. planes have flown radical Muslim preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri and four other suspected terrorists to the United States, hours after Britain's High Court cleared the way for their extradition. The planes departed a Royal Air Force base immediately after the British High Court rejected last-minute appeals by Hamza and the others. The five had raised legal questions about human rights and prison conditions they expected to face in the United States. In rejecting the appeals, the British court cited an “overwhelming public interest” in seeing the extraditions carried out. Hamza is wanted on U.S. charges that include...

'Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza can be extradited to the US after Europe's human rights judges rejected his request for an appeal, officials have said. Hamza wanted to fight a European Court of Human Rights ruling that extradition would not breach his human rights. But his request was rejected by a panel of judges, a spokesman for the court said. The unanimous judgment said there would be no human rights breach either as a result of likely detention in ADX Florence "supermax" prison in Colorado, or the length of possible sentences on conviction. The decision means Hamza, who was jailed...

March 7, 2007 — A former U.S. Navy sailor has been charged with allegedly passing military secrets about U.S. Navy movements through waters in the Middle East to al Qaeda-related Web sites during the spring of 2001, just months after the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen. Hassan Abujihaad, formerly known as Paul R. Hall, allegedly passed information about U.S. Navy warship movements in the Straits of Hormuz in April 2001 while he was a member of the Navy. The information passed along contained details about vulnerabilites of U.S. vessels — including susceptibility to small boat attacks by terrorists. Abujihaad...

WASHINGTON — A terrorism suspect arrested in Britain this week was in Internet contact with a U.S. Navy reservist and had detailed information about the sailor's San Diego-based battleship carrier group, including its classified travel plans and its vulnerability to attack, British and American prosecutors said Friday.

"A British man was indicted Wednesday on charges he helped run terrorism fundraising websites, set up terrorists with temporary housing in England and possessed a classified U.S. navy document revealing troop movements. Syed Talha Ahsan, 26, was arrested at his home in London on a federal indictment in Connecticut charging him with conspiracy to support terrorists and conspiracy to kill or injure people abroad...."

A British computer specialist has been indicted formally in the US on charges that he used websites to recruit and finance Taliban fighters. Babar Ahmad, 30, was arrested in London in August and has been held in the UK pending the outcome of extradition proceedings. Ahmad allegedly ran the site azzam.com, which investigators say was used to funnel money to terrorists. "Azzam Publications has been set up to propagate the call for jihad ... to incite the believers and also, secondly, to raise some money for the brothers," the website allegedly said. Donors were encouraged to smuggle cash into Pakistan...

A 30-year-old British computer expert, accused of running several Web sites to promote holy war and funnel money to terrorist organizations, was in a London court yesterday to fight a U.S. extradition request. Extradition papers filed in the case said that when Mr. Ahmad was arrested Aug. 5, he possessed classified documents describing movements of a U.S. Navy battle group in the Middle East — and instructions on how best to attack those vessels with rocket-propelled grenades from small boats. The papers said he also had communications with a U.S. Navy enlistee aboard the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer,...

Investigators are trying to determine whether a San Diego sailor passed Navy secrets about security weaknesses and warship movements to a British man accused of having terrorist links, according to court documents unsealed yesterday. E-mail messages from the unnamed sailor, sent in late 2000 and 2001 before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were found in December in computer files belonging to Babar Ahmad, who was detained Wednesday in London, according to the 31-page arrest affidavit. The computer files contained details about security arrangements and movements of the San Diego-based Constellation carrier battle group, which included the destroyer Benfold, on which...

August 7, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - A U.S. sailor aboard one of America's high-tech Navy warships sent e-mails to a suspected London-based al Qaeda terrorist and may have revealed sensitive military secrets, authorities announced yesterday. The traitor sailor, who has not been identified, praised Muslim terror strikes against America and may have turned over detailed plans about the Navy's USS Benfold and more than a dozen other ships in its battle group as they were moving through the Mideast, officials said. The information about the American sailor was disclosed yesterday by federal prosecutors in Connecticut who said he had been...

San Diego – A former sailor aboard a San Diego-based ship allegedly praised a deadly terror attack on a U.S. destroyer and communicated with a British man arrested on suspicion of having terrorist ties, according to a court document unsealed Friday. The sailor on the USS Benfold, whose name has not been released, allegedly sympathized with the jihad cause and sent e-mails to anti-Western Web sites run by Babar Ahmad. British police arrested Ahmad, 30, earlier this week on a U.S. extradition warrant charging that he used the Internet to help Taliban fighters recruit and raise money. The USS Benfold...