Free Republic

In the morning of March 11, 2004, Susan Lindauer woke to find five F.B.I. agents at her front door. After reading her her rights, the agents took Lindauer from her home in Takoma Park, Md., to the F.B.I. field office in Baltimore, where she was charged with having acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and otherwise having elevated the interests of a foreign country above her allegiance to the United States. ''The only visible sign of stress is that I'm chain-smoking,'' she said when I met with her recently. Forty-one and free on bail, she wore...

Feds Say Mich. Man Arranged U.S. Lawmaker Trips for Saddam Hussein's Intel Service The former spokesman of a Detroit-area Islamic charity, who organized U.S. congressional delegations to Iraq, has been indicted for alleged conspiracy to spy for Saddam Hussein's government. Muthanna Al-Hanooti, who worked as a top official at Life for Relief and Development — a charity in Southfield, Mich. — allegedly coordinated U.S. congressional delegations to Iraq at the direction of the executed dictator's intelligence service between 1999 and 2002. In return, investigators say he received payoffs via the United Nation's Oil for Food program. The indictment, which was...

    Chronology of Attacks on Westerners in Saudi ArabiaMon May 31, 2004 08:50 AM ET LONDON (Reuters) - Suspected al Qaeda militants killed 22 civilians in Saudi Arabia at the weekend. Here is a short chronology of major attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia since 1995. Nov 13, 1995 - Five Americans and two Indians killed and 60 people wounded in an explosion in a car park near a U.S.-run military training center in Riyadh. June 25, 1996 - Bomb in fuel truck kills 19 American soldiers and wounds nearly 400 people at U.S. military housing complex in...

Bill Clinton's White House was warned that Osama bin Laden wanted to crash a bomb-packed plane into an American city three years before the hijackers struck, explosive CIA files reveal. The warning was a part of a September 10, 1998 report prepared for senior Clinton officials cleared to read the then-president's most secret morning intelligence digest, according to the Wall Street Journal. Headlined 'Bin Laden's Location and Intentions,' it offered no date or target, but made clear the terror chief had Washington, DC, in his sights. Bin Laden's terrorists would crash an airplane into the Pentagon three years later. Other...

Afghan forces arrested three Americans, including a purported former Green Beret, after raiding a jail they were allegedly running in the Afghan capital and finding prisoners hanging from their feet, officials said Thursday. The U.S. military, facing a widening inquiry into prisoner abuse, quickly distanced itself from the three, who had been posing as American agents before being detained Monday. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday "the U.S. government does not employ or sponsor these men." Afghan officials also dismissed claims by the apparent ringleader, Jonathan K. Idema, that he was a "special adviser" to their security forces, saying...

George W. Bush was president during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, and he is marking the 25th anniversary of the day that changed America forever by hosting a solemn remembrance event in his home state. The event, called “A Legacy of Service: America at the 25th Anniversary of 9/11,” will take place at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, and kicks off at 6:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday evening. It will feature a conversation between former President Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who “will share their reflections on the legacy and meaning...

there has been renewed attention on the mosque’s history and past connections to individuals linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The New York Post described the mosque as one of the largest Islamic centers in California and noted that it has been the subject of national attention since the early 2000s. According to the report, two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf alHazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, attended the mosque while living in San Diego before the attacks. Federal investigators later examined their activities in the city and their connections to members of the local Muslim community. The mosque’s current imam,...

Cambridge University has been given £8 million by a Saudi Arabian prince to establish an Islamic studies centre. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, ranked in the top 20 richest men in the world, with a fortune of about £10 billion, has donated the cash to the university to fund a centre in his name for the study of the role of Islam in the Middle East and globally. The gift has been recommended by the university's general board and is expected to be announced in June. advertisement The grandson of King Ibn Saud and nephew of King Abudllah, the prince counts...

WASHINGTON - Miami's Jesús Soto supports Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's vision of ''participatory democracy.'' Valerie Pusch of Chicago backs Chávez because of his policies on behalf of the poor. And they say so loudly, as heads of their local Bolivarian Circles -- among the dozen or so U.S. copies of the groups Chávez has set up throughout his country to mobilize Venezuelans on behalf of his socialist ``revolution.'' Even as Chávez attacks President Bush as his sworn nemesis, his government is running a strong campaign to curry favor with U.S. citizens through leftist grass-roots groups, paid lobbyists and public relations...

ACCRA, Ghana, Sep 23, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Monday urged Africans to team up to fight poverty, saying boundary-less cooperation means boundless economic potential. "Through cooperation and collaborative efforts, termites have been able to pull down strong edifices," Clinton said. "Bees have been able to build houses for humans to tap heir honey from." Clinton, who is in Africa to promote efforts to fight AIDS and encourage economic development, was speaking to an assemblage of government ministers, traditional rulers and academics at the launch of Ghana President John Kufuor's Foundation for...

Chechnya: Blood, Corruption, Intrigue, And Extremist Islam By Paul M. Weyrich March 19, 2004 Name the Eurasian country where over 2,000 people have been killed or wounded at the hands of terrorists over the last sixteen months. If you named Russia, you picked right. I wonder how many people would have picked wrong. Russia's conflict with Chechnya is "foreign news" to many people in our country. It is viewed as having no real consequence since we haven't sent troops there. Chechnya is a small area. Many Americans hardly know its name, much less could locate it on a map. Many...

A Minnesota truck driver serving life in prison for murdering six northern Wisconsin deer hunters last fall is no longer a suspect in the unsolved slaying of a deer hunter in Clark County four years ago, an investigator said Tuesday. Chai Soua Vang was working as a truck driver in the Twin Cities on the day James Southworth was shot, said Kerry Kirn, a detective with the Clark County Sheriff's Department. Southworth, 37, of Medford, was shot twice in the back near his tree stand on family land near Neillsville on Nov. 23, 2001, during the nine-day deer hunting season....

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Fedayeen was the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday, which was deployed to do much of the regime's dirty work. The U.S. has never been sure Shakir was at the Kuala...

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

Saddam's Ambassador to al-QaedaBy Jonathan SchanzerWeekly Standard | February 23, 2004 A RECENTLY INTERCEPTED MESSAGE from Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi asking the al Qaeda leadership for reinforcements reignited the debate over al-Qaeda ties with Saddam Hussein's fallen Baath regime. William Safire of the New York Times called the message a "smoking gun," while the University of Michigan's Juan Cole says that Safire "offers not even one document to prove" the Saddam/al-Qaeda nexus. What you are about to read bears directly on that debate. It is based on a recent interview with Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in...

ALBAWABA- Unconfirmed reports circulating on social media and in several regional media outlets claim that Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in recent Israeli airstrikes targeting sites in or around Tehran. On Sunday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike allegedly on a Hezbollah command centre in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut, following earlier rocket fire launched into northern Israel by Hezbollah. In response, Iran declared that Israel had “crossed all red lines” in Lebanon and launched multiple waves of ballistic missile strikes targeting Israeli territory late on Sunday, June 7...

  Diary of Tube bomb plotter  Ultimate horror ... graphic shows how Barot, inset left, would have collapsed tunnel on train as it went under Thames, inset right, drowning everyone     By SIMON HUGHES and NEIL SYSONNovember 07, 2006CRAZED Dhiren Barot planned to kill thousands of innocent people in Britain and America — with his Thames Tube horror the centrepiece of his plot.The attack formed part of an horrific blitz on the UK that included the Heathrow Express rail link and possibly top London hotels, a court heard yesterday.In a chilling document, the Al-Qaeda commander GLOATED about the prospect...

Alleged Hizballah 'Fighter' Snuck Into U.S. from Mexico Posted Jan 23, 2004 An indictment returned by a federal grand jury on November 19 alleges that a Hizballah "member, fighter, recruiter and fundraiser" snuck across the Mexican border into the United States in 2001, and then conspired here in the U.S. to "provide material support" to Hizballah, which is designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. The indictment was unsealed January 15. Nabih Ayad, lawyer for the accused man, Mahmoud Kourani, told the Detroit Free Press that the charges against his client were wrong. There is "no shred...

9/11 Panel Questions Two Hijackers' Help Sept. 11 Commission Wonders Why Two Hijackers Got Help From Two Muslim Men When in U.S. The Associated Press WASHINGTON June 27, 2004 — The FBI long has contended that not a single al-Qaida operative in the United States collaborated with the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet the commission investigating the attacks has identified two Muslim men who may have had advance knowledge of the plot. The commission found that two hijackers got substantial help from Mohdar Abdullah and Anwar Aulaqi after settling in California in 2000. The bipartisan panel created...

A New York martial arts expert who is charged with conspiring to help train al Qaeda members is the victim of a "desperate prosecution on the government's behalf," his lawyer said on Tuesday. Tarik Ibn Osman Shah was arrested on Friday in New York after a two-year sting operation in which prosecutors said he had been taped pledging support to Osama bin Laden. He is charged with one count of conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Shah, who is also a professional jazz musician, was presented briefly in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday...