A Sarajevo court sentenced two Bosnians, a Dane and a Swede to jail terms from 2 1/2 to 15 years for terror-related crimes. The Bosnia-Herzegovina court in Sarajevo jailed Mirsad Bektasevic, 19-year-old Swede from Kungalv near Gothenburg, and the man with dual Danish and Turkish passports, to 15 years each, Sweden's TheLocal.online newspaper reported Wednesday.
The two Bosnians were sentenced to 8 years and 2 1/2 years imprisonment, respectively. The four men were charged with preparing terror attacks somewhere in Europe, the report said. Bosnian police arrested the two Scandinavians in October 2005 in a Sarajevo apartment, where they uncovered 44 pounds of explosives, hand grenades and guns.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi/20070110-014626-4790r.htm
Fundamentally Freund: Here Comes Muslim Europe
Jan 10, '07
The Muslim takeover of Europe is happening more quickly than people think. Just take a look at the demographic decline of traditional Europe and contrast it with the rapid growth of the continent's Muslim population. This trend has far-reaching consequences for the US and Israel, and it is time that our decision-makers start taking it into account as they plan for the future....
Excerpted
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=119190
Hicks 'took orders from bin Laden'
January 11, 2007
US prosecutors say Australian terror suspect David Hicks was a fully-fledged member of al-Qaeda who took orders from Osama bin Laden, rather than a naive adventurer out of his depth.
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Hicks's imprisonment without charge at Guantanamo Bay Colonel Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the US Office of Military Commissions, rejected the portrait of Hicks as merely someone in over his head.
The 31-year-old former Adelaide man has been held at the notorious US jail in Cuba since January 2002 after being captured a month earlier in Afghanistan. Col Davis said today the US believed it had a strong case against Hicks and he was not convinced of his innocence.
Hicks returned to Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US with the expressed purpose of fighting with al-Qaeda, he said. "He (Hicks) had experience in Kosovo, he had experience in Kashmir, he's been to a number of combat and terrorism training courses put on by al-Qaeda and from my understanding when 9/11 happened he was out of the country.
"But once he saw the US had been attacked he made a conscious choice to try to get back to Afghanistan, report in to a senior al-Qaeda leader and, in essence, say: `I'm David Hicks and I'm reporting for duty'," Col Davis said on ABC radio.
Excerpted
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21042091-5007133,00.html?from=public_rss
Occupied Jerusalem: Al Qaeda has sent large numbers of people to Lebanon, Syria and Egpyt, according to a report in an Israeli newspaper. Israel's military intelligence chief Major General Amos Yadlin told a meeting of the Knesset (parliament) Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “dozens” of al Qaeda operatives had arrived in Lebanon.
He was quoted by the local paper Yedioth Ahronoth as saying: "Dozens, if not hundreds, of al-Qaida operatives arrived in Lebanon. “These operatives are trained and have terror knowledge. According to estimates, the organization's number two Ayman Al Zwahiri gave orders to operatives to spread in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt," he added.
He warned that there could be attacks in the near future on United Nations peacekeeping forces in Lebanon as well as Western targets.
http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Lebanon/10095852.html