Free Republic

Court Reinstates Charges Against Local 9/11 Figure; El Cajon Student Accused Of Lying About Ties To Hijackers SAN DIEGO -- A federal appeals court Friday reinstated charges against a Jordanian college student accused of lying about his associations with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court judge's ruling that had dismissed perjury charges against Osama Awadallah in April 2002. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin had ruled that the government's jailing of material witnesses for a grand jury investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was unconstitutional. Awadallah was among...

The government’s jailing of terrorism witnesses for a grand jury probe of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is unconstitutional, a federal judge concluded Tuesday in dismissing a perjury case against a Jordanian college student. In a ruling that, if upheld, would have far reaching implications on the government’s approach to investigating terrorism, Judge Shira Scheindlin attacked the reasoning of Attorney General John Ashcroft. She criticized Ashcroft’s reported statement that “aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks.” Scheindlin wrote that “Relying on the material witness statute to detain people who are presumed...

Senator: At Least One Foreign Country Assisted the 9/11 Terrorists Senator Graham knows where the bodies are buried>>> On 11 December 2002, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees released portions of their joint report on intelligence failures regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, on PBS, reported on the release that day. After asking her guests a bunch of predictable questions, and receiving predictable answers, guest host Gwen Ifill asked Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a good question and got an amazing answer. GWEN IFILL: Senator Graham, are there elements...

The following is a mostly complete set of Associated Press articles, news alerts, bulletins and flashes that ran on the morning of September 11, 2001 - BC-APNewsAlert,0018 NEW YORK -- Plane crashes into World Trade Center, according to television reports. (Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) (New York-AP) -- There's word of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York. (Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) AP-Plane Crash-World Trade Center URGENT, take 2 C-N-N quotes a witness as saying that it was a twin-engine plane that flew right into the trade...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Opposition leader and former defense chief Ahmed Shah Massood was injured and his close aide was killed Sunday in an explosion in northern Afghanistan, said Hajji Kahar, an opposition spokesman. Two men from Algeria posing as journalists apparently hid the explosive device in their camera, Kahar told The Associated Press in a satellite telephone interview from Khodja Bahauddin in northern Takhar province, where the explosion occurred. It's not clear whether the two men with the camera were killed. It's believed they were suicide bombers. "There was a lot of noise and smoke," said Kahar. Massood ...

The U.S. government's detaining of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba is supremely ironic given Fidel Castro's long-standing support for global terrorism. As we continue our worldwide battle against terrorists, this sly but significant terror monger on our very own doorstep should not be overlooked. Castro is a bankrupt dictator with a decades-long history of support for violent, anti-American terror groups, obsessive hatred of the U.S., sophisticated spy rings operating on our soil and a potentially deadly biowarfare capability. While he has not been directly linked to the attacks of Sept. 11, considerable circumstantial evidence ties...

Our Political Bureau NEW DELHI MANY functionaries of the United States State Department, who handled South Asia under the Clinton Administration, may have to face embarrassment when the Bush regime gets down to locating the factors that made it easier for terrorists to carry out the September 11 carnage. These functionaries, it is reliably learnt, ignored the warnings about the activities and intentions of the terrorist groups operating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. One of such reports had come from Michael Sheehan, the head of counter-terrorism wing of the State Department. Sheehan’s report also listed the measures that the ...

"I was close to Chavez, but now he wants me dead." The million dollars from Chavez to Al Qaeda is just the tip of the iceberg in a long series of connections between worldwide terrorist organizations and the Venezuelan strongman, according to one of those who knows most about Chavez and the inside of his presidential palace: His former personal pilot. Major Juan Diaz Castillo is the man who flew the equivalent of Air Force One. In this interview with Venezuela's weekly news-magazine Zeta, he reveals formerly unpublished details of the operations that Chavez had him organize. By Maria Angelica...

KINGSTON, Jamaica June 23 — The mother of teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo says no one took her seriously before the shootings when she warned U.S. authorities her son was in danger from John Allen Muhammad. In a taped interview aired Sunday with Jamaican television station TVJ, Una James said she told police in Bellingham, Wash., in September 2001 that Muhammad was a bad influence and asked that her son be removed from his care. "They were to blame," James said of police in her first aired interview since her son's arrest. "I told them that I needed help,...

The Associated Press reported this week that a Saudi cleric, Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, funneled money to an Egyptian, Rabei Osman Ahmed, who is said to be the mastermind of the Madrid train bombings last March. Al-Awdah's name has been repeatedly linked to al-Qaeda and bin Laden, yet since 9-11, he has tempered his rhetoric. The disparity between his public and his covert activity can be explained by a secret agreement between the Saudi regime and al-Adwah's Movement for Islamic Resurgence.Osman Ahmed's Milan apartment was reportedly wiretapped by Italian anti-terrorism police. In one taped conversation he is reported to say that...

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 26 — An ambitious terrorist plot to attack a host of American interests overseas was foiled by the capture of a key Osama bin Laden operative, sources tell ABCNEWS. Intelligence sources in Europe and the United States say the intended targets included the American embassy in Paris, the U.S. consulate in Marseilles, France, buildings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France. The outlines of the plan were known to French and American authorities before Sept. 11, but the attacks were not ...

        FBI Raids Dallas-Area Internet Business as Part of Terrorism Investigation By David Koenig Associated Press Writer Published: Sep 6, 2001 DALLAS (AP) - Federal agents continued searching the headquarters of an Internet company Thursday as part of an ongoing terrorism investigation, the FBI said. Muslim leaders said authorities acted on scant evidence and anti-Arab stereotypes. InfoCom Corp., based in suburban Richardson, says it sells computer systems and Internet services to many large Islamic organizations in the United States and businesses in the Middle East. The FBI said the search, which began Wednesday, was part of a two-year ...

WELLSVILLE -- Despite having three places he was involved in searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday, Dr. Kenneth M. Berry, 46, of Wellsville, was arrested, but on a domestic violence charge in New Jersey. Point Pleasant Beach (N.J.) Police charged Dr. Berry with four counts of assault and a temporary restraining order was issued by Judge James A. Ligouri. Agents from the FBI executed a search warrant at two homes in Wellsville Thursday as part of an investigation into "the origin of the anthrax-laced letters mailed in September and October of 2001 which resulted in the deaths...

Perhaps it was just a little “Pillow Talk” with his Iranian wife!  Who is Dr. Mohamed El Baradei? A quick Google search yields the following general biographical information:Dr. ElBaradei is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], an inter-governmental organization based in Vienna, and formed under the auspices of the United Nations in 1957. He was appointed to the office effective Dec. 1 1997, and re-appointed to a second term in Sept. 2001. El Baradi was born in Egypt in 1942. He gained a Bachelor’s degree in Law in 1962 at the University of Cairo, and a...

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami came to New York City on Nov. 8 to attend a U.N. summit as U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies explored new information tying his regime's intelligence services to Sept. 11 and to previous anti-American terrorist attacks, Insight has learned.The information is coming from a variety of sources and shows a clear pattern of operational contacts between the Iranian government and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. These contacts include joint planning of terrorist operations, military training of bin Laden operatives inside Iran and by Iranian personnel in Syria and Lebanon, financial assistance to clandestine terrorist and surveillance ...

Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested an Islamist with ties to many upper tier al-Qaida members. The man not only tried to get asylum in Germany, but claims to have known about the London bombings beforehand and to have helped the 9/11 pilots. The Turkish interrogators in Istanbul's high-security prison wanted to be polite; they wanted to show respect for Islam. They offered their prisoner, an Islamist named Luai Sakra, 31, a chance to pray during a pause in questioning. They'd done the same thing with earlier suspects. The move was supposed to establish trust. But this prisoner reacted a...

Norway probes four refugees suspected of al-Qaeda links Monday, 26-Aug-2002 4:40AM      Story from AFP Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) </CLARI-ITEM HEADER>OSLO, Aug 26 (AFP) - Norway's intelligence agency PST has launched a probe into four refugees suspected of having links to the al-Qaeda network, Norwegian daily Verdens Gang reported Monday.One of the four being investigated at the request of British and US intelligence agencies is Mullah Krekar, a Kurd presumed to be the leader of the suspected bio-warfare group Ansar al-Islam, which is linked to al-Qaeda.The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration confirmed last week that Krekar has had...

DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - A Jordanian man on trial in Germany on charges of belonging to a terror group said on Thursday he got an order to attack German Jewish targets just after the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States. Shadi Mohammed Mustafa Abdalla told a German court he received a coded message -- "You are going to get married" -- to launch an attack on September 12, 2001. Abdalla, who said he served as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden before rejecting violence, has already told the court he had selected a Jewish community center in Berlin...

Four top members of the Taliban's new interim government are former Guantanamo Bay prisoners who were freed by the Obama administration in a prisoner exchange for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. The four new officials were members of the hardline 'Guantanamo Five' who were traded to free Bergdahl from the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in 2014. The Taliban on Tuesday announced the appointment of Acting Director of Intelligence Abdul Haq Wasiq, Acting Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs Norullah Noori, Deputy Defense Minister Mohammad Fazl, and Acting Minister of Information and Culture Khairullah Khairkhah. The four men, who also took part in...

This week, the Globe and Mail asked General Lewis McKenzie (Retired) to write the obituary of American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. It was a good idea. The two men had crossed paths more than once on the global stage of the Great Game. McKenzie declined. Holbrooke had just died and the general knew that what he had to say would hardly produce the standard panegyric. When I caught up with McKenzie, he was shoveling snow after a spell away from home. I asked for an interview and to my surprise, he agreed. “I’m just going to tell you what I thought...