BERLIN: The head of Germany's intelligence agency said that "several hundred" Muslim extremists are living in Germany and that al-Qaida is forming a strong base in North Africa, a German magazine reported on Monday.
Ernst Uhrlau, who oversees the BND, the Germany intelligence agency, said that "up to 700 people are being surveilled, in different degrees," according to an interview with Der Spiegel. He was also quoted by the magazine as saying that "more than a dozen" of those people had made trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan to try to make contact with Islamic extremist groups operating there.
"Converts that end up in extremist groups often tend toward political renegades and absolute intolerance and highest radicalism," Uhrlau was quoted as saying by the magazine for its special edition on Islam in Europe.
Excerpted
U.S. releases transcripts of Fort Dix plotters
Tue, Mar. 25, 2008
Agron Abdullahu, who once faced trial alongside the five men charged in May with plotting a paramilitary attack on Fort Dix, could get less than two years in prison at his sentencing next week. The Kosovo refugee was never accused of being a part of the others' alleged plan to kill U.S. soldiers. Instead, he pleaded guilty last year to what his attorney called a "fairly technical" gun charge of supplying guns to illegal aliens.
But federal prosecutors said yesterday that Abdullahu, 25, deserves a far longer sentence for threatening national security by giving guns to people "who expressed their devotion to jihad." To bolster their arguments, prosecutors made public for the first time more than 75 pages of conversations secretly recorded by one of two FBI informants who infiltrated the group.
Excerpted
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20080325_U_S__releases_transcripts_of_Fort_Dix_plotters.html
ADDING to post no. 1043:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1991533/posts
“Saudis said to choose against building a Catholic church”
CWN ^ | 3/25/2008 | Phil Lawler
Posted on 03/25/2008 4:05:24 PM PDT by markomalley