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Posted on Tue, Aug. 24, 2004 Swiss Accuse Group of Backing al-Qaida JONATHAN FOWLER Associated Press GENEVA - Swiss investigators have found evidence that suspected members of a group backing al-Qaida were supplying fake documents to enable collaborators to enter Switzerland and other European countries illegally, the supreme court said Tuesday. The Federal Tribunal said one suspect, whose name was not released, was found to have links to both an unidentified al-Qaida recruiter who sent volunteers to the terror group's training camps and another unidentified individual convicted of terrorism offenses in France. The support group also provided cell phone numbers...

Was it stolen for parts or to make a flying bomb? How could a Boeing 727 just disappear without a trace? You might think in this age of satellite surveillance and sophisticated air-traffic controls, it would be near impossible for a jetliner to be stolen, flown away and not seen again for more than four months. Yet, that's just what has happened in a daring feat that has governments around the world fearing the jetliner may be in the hands of terrorists, just awaiting its final suicide mission. The story began May 25, when two men climbed aboard an idle...

Was Plane That Vanished From Angola the Same One That Crashed off Benin on Christmas Day? ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press Writ By Nafi Diouf and Published: Jan 2, 2004 DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola last year, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday. Also, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot told The Associated Press he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June - a...

IN an age of constant information, the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 has been dubbed the biggest mystery in aviation history. A plane of its size has never dropped out of the sky. Or has it? In 2003, a Boeing 727 jet also disappeared. It was the largest aircraft to ever vanish without a trace. This plane, like MH370, had all the mod cons and was fitted with GPS. A crew member looks out the windows from a Malaysian air force CN235 aircraft during a search and rescue operation to find the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Source: AFP At...

WASHINGTON (June 19) -- The family of a man believed to have been piloting a Boeing 727 that mysteriously took off and disappeared from an Angolan runway last month today told of their anguish as international authorities fear the jetliner could be used for a terrorist act.

The family of a man believed to have been piloting a Boeing 727 that mysteriously took off and disappeared from an Angolan runway last month told told of their angiush as international authorities fear the jetliner could be used for a terrorist act.In a baffling vanishing act, workers at the Luanda Airport in Angola watched dumbfounded on May 25 as the Boeing 727 taxied down the runway and took off- without permission.The plane -which ABC News has learned was refitted to haul diesel fuel tanks, making it a potential flying bomb-has not been seen since. The man the United States...

A BOEING 727 passenger jet, grounded at Luanda airport a year ago, has disappeared after a mysterious unauthorised take-off, Angola state radio reported today. The plane, chartered by the Angolan airline Airangol, was grounded after being banned from overflying Angolan territory on account of a series of irregularities, said Angola civil aviation director Helder Preza. A witness to the plane's departure on Sunday, airport employee Luis Lopes, said he saw a white man start the empty plane and then take off after a few dangerous land manoeuvres. Airport chief Celso Rosa said there was some evidence to believe the Boeing...

America's norther neighbor continues to serve as a favorite operational base and transit country for terrorists. An American courtroom just witnessed the first conviction ever of a Canadian citizen in the War on Terror. Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, 21, originally from Kuwait, pleaded guilty to several charges of planning attacks against American interests outside the United States. The charges include conspiracy to kill US nationals, destroy US property abroad with weapons of mass destruction, kill American employees while on duty, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. The WMD, in this case, was dynamite. According to Canadian newspapers, Jabarah was...

Politicians serious about preventing another Sept. 11 should listen to the leader of Hizballah, and then read an indictment unsealed this month in Detroit."Let the entire world hear me," said Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27, 2002. "Our hostility to the Great Satan is absolute."There's good reason to take this sheik seriously. In 1983, his Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist group attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. According to the opinion of U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in the case of Peterson v. the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nasrallah attended the meeting in Baalbek, Lebanon, where the...

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A01 On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the...

Dearborn man pleas guilty to aiding terror group 3/2/2005, 3:36 a.m. ET The Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — A Dearborn man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. According to federal prosecutors, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, 33, hosted meetings in his home in late 2002 where a guest speaker from Lebanon solicited donations for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. The government didn't identify the speaker at the meetings. It said the money was intended for Hezbollah's orphans of martyrs program to benefit the families of those killed...

On MSNBC now -- videos of "mysterious cannisters" that appear to be Russian in origin.

SYDNEY: There is clear evidence Iraq had a biological weapons programme even though none of the armaments have been found there since US-led forces invaded the country, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Thursday. Downer cited a US Central Intelligence Agency report released yesterday, which said two trucks had been discovered in northern Iraq filled with laboratory equipment, as proof that Iraq had such a programme. No prohibited weapons were found in the trucks, but US intelligence officials say the vehicles fit a description from an Iraqi source of a mobile biological weapons laboratory. "The equipment has now been...

The sordid tale now making the rounds in the "mainstream" press of a rogue Pentagon intelligence operation has all the elements of an urban legend: heavy breathing, a secret basement office "down by the ramp" and government officials who form a hidden alliance based on long-ago ties to an obscure but influential university guru. Only the work of a few good men with the courage to face up to this "cabal" - and a few crusader-journalists to help them - can make the demons scatter and scare the dark ones into the light. Or so the story goes on those...

Hide in Plane Sight Family of Possible 727 Pilot: "He Is Not a Terrorist" W A S H I N G T O N, June 18 - While international authorities continue their search for a missing jetliner, fearful that it could be used in a terror attack, the family of the American believed to have been piloting the aircraft worries about his fate. Workers at Luanda Airport in Angola watched dumbfounded on May 25 as a Boeing 727 taxied down the runway and took off - without permission. The plane - which ABCNEWS has learned was refitted to haul...

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has suggested the US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. An investigation would expose US forces to ICC scrutiny for the first time. Delivering her annual report to members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Monday, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would decide “imminently” whether to ask judges for permission to launch a full-blown investigation as to whether US military forces and CIA operatives may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan through the “cruel or violent” interrogation of detainees. Bensouda said the Taliban, Afghan government forces and US...

Powell Plans 'Candid' Dialogue in Syria By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) says he plans to have a "good, strong, candid" dialogue with Syrian officials when he travels to Damascus. "We have issues with the Syrian government that I am going there to talk about," Powell said Thursday. He said they included support for terrorist organizations, development of weapons of mass destruction and a need to seal the border with Iraq (news - web sites) to stop former officials from taking refuge in Syria. "I will not hold back...

Saddam Hussein ordered Iraq's central bank to withdraw $1 billion for his youngest son the day before the invasion to stop it falling into foreign hands, according to a leaked letter apparently written by the former dictator. In a hand-written note to the bank's governor, marked "top secret" and dated March 19, 2003, the former president told Isam Huwaish to give $920 million and 90 million euros to his son Qusay and another man, al-Mashriq newspaper reported yesterday. The Iraqi national broadsheet reproduced the letter, which appears to bear Saddam's signature. Saddam sent bank a hand-written note Employees of the...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors who accuse nine U.S. citizens and two other men of conspiring to join a Muslim terror group presented an address list and other evidence Friday to try to link the suspects to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group. But the evidence wasn't enough to persuade U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to keep one defendant, Sabri Benkhala, in jail. Brinkema ordered Benkhala released to home detention at his father's house in Falls Church, upholding a previous release order issued by a magistrate. "There's no question the government has raised some significant issues here," the judge said....