CAIRO - The head of Al Qaeda in Egypt has fled the country for the Gaza Strip, arrested members of the network revealed during interrogation, a security official said on Sunday.
Khaled Mahmud Ahmed fled to Gaza, which is now under the control of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, as Egyptian authorities began arresting members of his group in April, the official said
Excerpted
Jails set for 1,000 radicals (U.K.)
July 16, 2007
The number of al-Qaeda terrorists held in UK prisons could top 1,000 in five years, jail bosses said yesterday. And it is feared the extremists will plan attacks from inside and try to radicalise young convicts.
Forty trials involving Islamic fanatics have yet to come before UK courts and MI5 has 2,000 terror planners under surveillance. Steve Gough of the Prison Officers’ Association said: “We are possibly going to have hundreds more entering the prison system. “The radicalisation of young men will be our biggest problem.”
HMP Belmarsh in South East London — the prison where most terrorists are housed — is already close to full. The POA’s warning comes as security chiefs revealed 4,000 extremists have visited terror training camps in Afghanistan then returned to Britain. Last week the head of Interpol accused the UK of failing to check people entering the country against a terror suspect database.
A new Home Office report reveals one in four terror suspects arrested in Britain is an asylum seeker. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “Our porous borders have got worse under this Government.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007320792,00.html
Fears Grow Over Mega Mosque
Sunday July 15,2007
Gordon Brown is under pressure to block a £75million “mega mosque”, amid claims one of the suspected Glasgow Airport bombers belongs to the radical Islamic group behind it.
More than 200,000 people have signed a Downing Street petition calling on the Prime Minister to intervene over plans for the mosque near the Olympics site in east London. It is being funded by the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat sect. One member of the sect is said to be Kafeel Ahmed, who was engulfed in flames when a Jeep laden with gas canisters crashed into a Glasgow Airport building two weeks ago.
The 27-year-old from Bangalore is fighting for his life in hospital after suffering 90 per cent burns. He is said to have taken up the teachings of Tablighi Jamaat after he was asked to leave his local mosque which he had tried to convert to what he called a purer form of Islam. The 7/7 suicide bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer attended the European headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat at Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
The sect’s plans for a huge mosque just a mile from the main Olympics stadium have caused much concern. Local Tory councillor Alan Craig said: “It will be a horrendous security nightmare if they are allowed to build this large mosque so close to the Olympics. “They have a growing and ominous track record as further young men follow Tablighi teaching about Islam and then go on to plan horrendous atrocities.” The Newham councillor accused the sect of radicalising and dehumanising young Muslims and said: “The dangerous truth about Tablighi Jamaat is coming out.
Excerpted
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/13553/Fears-growing-over-
DALLAS — A Richardson-based Muslim charity and five of its officers are scheduled to go on trial here today on charges of funneling at least $12.4 million to Hamas, a Palestinian group that the U.S. government says is a terrorist organization. The trial comes at the end of a long-running federal investigation that began with FBI agents' surveillance on officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development at a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia.
A federal indictment alleges the group was set up in 1988 to provide financial and material support to Hamas, a radical Islamist group that sponsors suicide bombings in Israel and more recently gained political power in the Palestinian territories. President Bush closed the charity by executive order in December 2001 and froze $4 million of its assets.
At the time, it was the largest Muslim charity in the United States. Holy Land Foundation leaders have long maintained that they aided only health clinics, orphanages and others in need. "This case involves whether humanitarian assistance in Palestine is going to be treated as a crime," said defense lawyer John Boyd, who is representing both the charity and its chief executive officer and co-founder, Shukri Abu Baker, a 48-year-old Garland resident. "There is no allegation that the Holy Land Foundation gave money to Hamas or that any of its funds were used for terrorism," Boyd said.
A 42-count indictment alleges that the foundation supported Hamas through donations to charity committees and other organizations in the West Bank and Gaza that were under Hamas' control. It also accuses the group of funding "family members of individuals who were either 'martyred' or jailed for terrorist-related activities."
The intent of the group, it is alleged, was to "effectively reward past and encourage future suicide bombings and terrorist activities" by Hamas. "Not only did HLF operate to support the Hamas agenda, but it was created for that very purpose," a government brief contends.
Excerpted
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA071607.03B.terror_trial_.34ef8fc.html