The Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Friday said that an Egyptian national who was arrested on suspicion of having ties with al-Qaeda is not a member of the separatist group. Radio reports quoted MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu as denying even knowing Mohamad Said, who was arrested early Wednesday morning after police found a number of explosive devices and bomb-making materials inside his apartment in Cotabato City.
Kabalu also said they have no idea how Said, known by his aliases Mohamad Sayed and Abu Hussien, got a hold of a copy of the MILF booklet that police recovered from him. Aside from the booklet, several explosive devices were also confiscated from the Egyptian national. But Said denied owning any of the seized items.
He is currently being subjected to a tactical investigation by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Police, reports said. Police also said they have yet to determine whether Said has any links to the Jema’ah Islamiyah, the al-Qaeda arm in Southeast Asia. Said reportedly told investigators that he previously stayed in the country for two years before going back to his homeland. He also claimed that when the arrest happened, he has just gone back from Egypt to teach Islam in Cotabato City.
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/73801/Egyptian-explosive-expert-not-our-member---MILF
Khan offered nukes to Syrians
December 21, 2007
VIENNA: Syria received a letter purportedly written by the head of the same nuclear black market that supplied Iran and Libya with its atomic technology but did not respond, President Bashar Assad said in comments published yesterday.
Mr Assad's comments appeared to be the first time that a senior Syrian official had linked the country to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the top Pakistani scientist who was exposed in 2004 as the head of an international black market in nuclear technology.
Excerpted
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22955653-2703,00.html
WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan's remote Afghan border area and begun to focus attacks on the Pakistani government and military, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.
Excerpted
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071221/ts_nm/usa_qaeda_gates_dc
Iran: Europe will become a Muslim continent, says Khamenei's spokesman
21 Dec. 2007
Tehran - Europe will eventually become a Muslim continent, according to a representative of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. "In a dozen years, Europe will be an Islamic continent," said Rasul Jalilzadeh on Friday as he was speaking to the basiji, a voluntary organisation in the capital Tehran. "The Islamisation of the European continent is imminent and this step favours the arrival of the Mahdi," he said, referring to the 12th imam of Shiite Islam.
Shiites believe that the Imam Mahdi, who disppeared as an adolescent, will return to bring an end to chaos and bring universal justice. Rasul Jalilzadeh believes that "the Islamisation of Europe is one of the consequences of the Islamic revolution in Iran" in that "the messages and values that this revolution has transmitted to the Europeans, to convince them "to abandon their current faiths and convert to Shiite Islam."
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1696552901