LONDON: Two men arrested last week after police raids in northern England were charged Monday under Britain's Terrorism Act, police said.
A statement from London's Metropolitan Police said the men, 29-year-old Rizwan Ditta and 25-year-old Mohammad Dilal, possessed computer files and compact discs containing information useful to a person committing or planning an act of terrorism.
Police said the material was found after searches of properties in Halifax, 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of London, and included computer files entitled "Attack Against American Troops," "Hamas Bomb," and "Instructions." One of the compact discs had a clip entitled "al-Qaida," police said in a statement.
Excerpted
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/29/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Terror-Charges.php
Pride, grief and anger at a Taliban recruiting area in Pakistan
January 28, 2007
SHABQADAR, Pakistan - Near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, pride mixes with grief and anger over dozens of young men lost to a stepped-up recruiting drive for the Taliban. Like the anti-Soviet rebels of the 1980s and the pre-9/11 Taliban, the recruiters of today have turned to this cluster of about 25 ethnic Pashtun villages in search of volunteers.
The father of one dead enlistee says he feels honoured, but with many of Shabqadar's young men dead or feared missing on the battlefield, mujaheddin recruiters are no longer welcome here. A shopkeeper says 100 or more young men have gone missing, including his cousin, a 10th grade student, who mysteriously left home during the summer vacation and is believed to have gone to fight.
People here are religious, and recruiters play on that sentiment, "recruiting the youth with raw minds," he said. The shopkeeper, like many others interviewed, requested anonymity for his own safety. Pressure from residents and the shooting and wounding of a local newspaperman who reported about the "martyrs" of Shabqadar compelled authorities in November to shut a local office of Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, an outlawed Pakistani militant group. It had circulated jihadist literature and CDs and recruited mostly jobless young men to go to Afghanistan - like their fathers who fought the Soviet occupation of that country two decades ago.
Following the closure, recruiting has dried up, according to one former recruiter. But Samina Ahmed, an expert with the International Crisis Group think tank, warns that the upsurge in Taliban attacks on NATO forces is boosting the morale of sympathizers in Pakistani border areas and attracting recruits who are susceptible to militant propaganda and believe the Taliban can regain power.
Excerpted
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2007/01/28/3473067-ap.html
Israel to get smart bombs in kit form
January 30, 2007
JERUSALEM: Israel is buying thousands of kits for advanced smart bombs from the US that the Jewish state first used during the Lebanon war.
According to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, the Israeli army will buy $US100 million ($129 million) worth of joint direct attack munitions - low-cost kits produced by Boeing that turn free-fall bombs into guided "smart" munitions. During last year's month-long war in Lebanon, Israel received an emergency aerial shipment of the munitions from the US, causing an international uproar after one of the cargo planes landed in an airport in Scotland, against safety and security regulations.
Excerpted
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21139615-2703,00.html
Looks like the 2 guys in London have a lot of explaining to do.