A Toronto man caught smuggling handguns into Canada pleaded guilty to terrorism charges yesterday, making him the latest of the "Toronto 18" group to admit to wrongdoing.
Ali Mohamed Dirie, 26, who was born in Somalia and raised in Syria and Toronto, is scheduled to appear in court tomorrow for a sentencing hearing after pleading guilty to participating in the activities of a terrorist group. The sentence will be handed down on Oct. 2.
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http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2017799
Algerian terror suspect arrested in Rome (Italy)
22 Sept.2009
A 41 year-old Algerian man with alleged links to a terror organisation has been arrested in the Italian capital, Rome. The man is wanted by Algerian authorities for forming and participating in the Islamist organisation, the Armed Islamic Group or GIA.
Police said the man had been on the run since 2003, after an extradition order was issued against him. The man, who at the time of his arrest held an Irish passport, was arrested by anti-terrorism police or DIGOS, at a hotel in Rome. He was detained after he matched aspects of a fugitive profile issued by international authorities.
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http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3798840123
Shoe bomber’s Colo. pen at center of terror plot
Monday, September 21, 2009
Three terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 have sent 90 letters exhorting holy war to overseas al-Qaeda units from the same prison in Colorado where shoe bomber Richard C. Reid is doing life, angering security experts who question why the feds have relaxed curbs on Reid’s access to the outside world.
The letters were brandished like trophies and printed in Arabic newspapers, said Debra Burlingame, a member of the board of directors for the National Sept. 11 Memorial Foundation. She noted that some of those letters went to terrorists associated with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, known as the Spanish 9/11.
The Sunday Herald reported yesterday that earlier this summer, the Obama administration quietly dropped tough restrictions on Reid, who tried to blow up a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001 by igniting a bomb in his shoe. The Justice Department refused to say why the special administrative measures were lifted in the wake of a lawsuit filed by Reid challenging them.
Reid, who is still heavily monitored in prison, has refused to cooperate with efforts to uncover the al-Qaeda network that set his shoe bomb plot in motion. Security experts told the Herald that given the ongoing nature of al-Qaeda terror plots, Reid should not be allowed to expand the orbit in which he communicates.
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Thanks for the round-up.