A Yemeni immigrant caught with a knife hidden in a book at Detroit Metropolitan Airport was sentenced Tuesday to a year in jail and faces possible deportation.
Wayne County Circuit Judge James Callahan agreed the small blade posed little threat as a weapon, but was troubled about why Mohammed S. Ghanem of Hamtramck would bring it. "It didn't really have any sharp edges to it," Callahan said of the 2 1/2 -inch blade. "Why would someone do it? One of the possible reasons to do that was to see if the security system could be breached. Thank God, it was not."
Ghanem, 22, insisted he had no idea the blade was embedded in his address book before a one-way flight to Yemen on Sept. 7. He said he was returning to his country to find a bride. Callahan ordered Ghanem to complete two years of probation after a year in jail.
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http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070117/METRO01/701170348/1006
Use children as troops, says cleric
January 18, 2007
SYDNEY'S most influential radical Muslim cleric has been caught on film calling Jews pigs and urging children to die for Allah.
Firebrand Sheik Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Liverpool, delivered the hateful rants on a collection of DVDs called the Death Series being sold in Australia and overseas.
"Today many parents, they prevent their children from attending lessons. Why? They fear that they might create a place in the their hearts, the love, just a bit of the love, of sacrificing their lives for Allah," Sheik Feiz says in the video.
"We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid (holy warrior). Put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom."
An Australian citizen born in Sydney who has spent the past year living in Lebanon, Sheik Feiz was exposed this week in a British documentary Undercover Mosque. Investigators found Sheik Feiz's DVDs being sold by children in the carpark of the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham and other Islamic bookshops. The entire set can be bought online for $150.
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Damascus, 17 Jan. 2007 - Iran's national security council president, Ali Larijani, who is also the Islamic Repbublic's top nuclear negotiatior, will visit Syria in the coming days, sources in the capital Damascus said Wednesday. Larijani is expected to deliver a letter from Iranian president Mahomoud Ahmadinejad to Syrian president Bahsar al-Assad.
Teheran and Damascus have recently intensified their relations in the face of growing criticism from the United States in relation to their support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, their role in conflict in Iraq and Iran's nuclear ambitions which Washington opposes.
Larijani's visit is likely to anger those Arab leaders in the region such as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt who are trying to isolate non-Arab Iran in an effort to curb what is seen as its growing influence.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.377316254&par=0
Indonesia: International Forum Of Muslim MPs To Start
Jakarta, 17 Jan. 2007 - Muslim parliamentarians from 28 countries worldwide are expected in Indonesia's capital Jakarta for a four-day meeting starting Thursday, the International Forum for Islamic Parliaments.
The gathering, organised by members of the Indonesian parliament, is aimed at fostering solidarity among Muslims at a time when "Islam is under trial due to war and terrorism," organizers said.
Lawmakers from countries including the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Malaysia and Thailand will attend the gathering in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will open the forum on Thursday.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.377328653&par=0
Al-Qaeda Linked Algerian Group Resurgent Says Intelligence Expert
Casablanca, 17 Jan. 2007 - Al-Qaeda linked Algerian terror formation the Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) is still active in Algeria and is setting its sights on Morocco and Tunisia in a bid to become an international network, according to an expert interviewed on Wednesday by Spanish daily El Pais, Khadija Mohsen-Finan, a Tunisian researcher at France's Institute of International Relations. Tunisian and Moroccan police also back her conclusion, El Pais said.
Tunisian and Moroccan security forces have in recent weeks carried out raids aimed at breaking up alleged terror cells, and in Morocco, smashed a cell believed to be recruiting youngsters to fight holy war in Iraq, El Pais reported.
It is also possible that the GSPC's ranks may have been swollen by Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika's amnesty last year for Islamic militants, under which the authorities have reportedly freed 2,200 jailed militants. The amnesty, approved in a 2005 referendum, was part of the reconciliation process following a civil war in which and estimated 200,000 people have died.
The Algerian authorities, after inital hesitation, sent the list of freed militants to European countries, including France and Spain. The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla - where Muslims form a sizeable group - are Islamist militant 'hotspots', and the Spanish authorities have raised their alert levels there.
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http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Terrorism&loid=8.0.377271988&par=0