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Brescia and Naples, 18 Nov. (AKI) - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed...

His style was that of a celebrity lecturer, spreading "enlightenment" in a rich baritone with the help of jokes and references to pop stars as he addressed rapt audiences the length of Britain. News of the arrival of the extremist Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal would spread by word of mouth, and he attracted crowds of up to 150 people at a time. But beneath his jocular manner lay a philosophy skewed by hatred of "kuffars", or unbelievers, and shared by a web of associates allegedly leading back to Osama bin Laden.Yesterday Faisal, 39, was convicted of soliciting murder and stirring...

The 19-year-old suicide bomber responsible for the Kings Cross explosion, known as the "fourth man", is thought to have played a key co-ordinating role in the London bus and Tube terrorist atrocities that killed 55 people. Anti-terrorist detectives now believe Jermaine Lindsay or Lindsay Jamal, who changed his name to Abdullah Shaheed Jamal when he converted to Islam, may have been the most senior of the four bombers. Details about Jamal's role in the bombing came as Britain buried its first bombing victim - a beautiful young Muslim who bore the name of the religion in whose misguided service the...

The number of Islamic extremist security suspects in Britain has increased by 50 percent since the deadly suicide bombings in London last year, The Observer newspaper said on Sunday. A senior intelligence source at the country’s domestic spy agency MI5 was quoted as saying that they were targeting 800 such suspects before the bombings on July 7 last year, but that figure now stood at 1,200. In September 2001, the number of people deemed a “risk to national security” was 250, the newspaper said. The unnamed MI5 source did not give a reason for the apparent rise in radicalisation but...

London (PTI) -- Anjem Choudary, a radical Islamist preacher with dual British and Pakistani nationality, was on Tuesday jailed for life with a minimum term of 28 years behind bars by a UK court for directing a terrorist organisation.Choudary, 57, had been found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of directing Al-Muhajiroun (ALM) and encouraging support for the proscribed organisation through online meetings. Sentencing him at the same court to a prison term means he would be in his 80s by the time he can seek parole. Justice Mark Wall told Choudary his behaviour was of the “highest culpability”. “Organisations such...

Ed Husain's autobiography The Islamist: why I joined radical Islam in Britain, what I saw inside and why I left (Penguin, 2007) is a remarkably candid account of the life of a British-born Muslim who was initially seduced by radicalism but gradually came to his senses to return to the more spiritual and devotional Islam that had defined his early years. It is also an important work, in that it both carefully grounds the issue of radicalisation that has so dominated recent intellectual and political discussion of Muslim communities in Britain, and points to potential solutions. Ed Husain grew up...

Interesting.... This muslim Cleric visited london EXACTLY one year ago from the date of the attacks, July 7, 2004 CNSNews.com) - London Mayor Ken Livingstone's previous support of a Muslim cleric who advocates suicide bombings may cause him some embarrassment as he now must speak for the city in the wake of Thursday's terrorist bombings. Livingstone condemned the Thursday attacks as "mass murder," and added that "this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners." Yet Livingstone has in the past...

Islamists stockpiled explosive chemicals and weapons in plan to launch major attack to avenge wars in Iraq and Afghanistan The men, all from Sydney's south-west, were arrested in a series of raids on their homes in 2005. They were accused of conspiring between July 2004 and November 2005 to carry out a violent jihadist act, possibly targeting the then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, to force the government into changing its policies on the Middle East. They spent months working to acquire chemicals, firearms, and bomb making equipment, the court heard. Materials found at the homes of some of...

Note: Photo included. Trio not guilty of helping 7/7 London bombers Jury clears men of conspiring with four bombers over London 2005 explosions that killed 52 Rachel Williams guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 April 2009 17.01 BST Three British Muslims were today cleared of helping the 7 July bombers choose their targets by carrying out a reconnaissance mission in London seven months before the attacks that killed 52 people and injured almost 1,000. A jury at Kingston crown court unanimously found Waheed Ali, 25, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and Mohammed Shakil, 32, all from Beeston, Leeds, not guilty of conspiring with the four...

Every year, as we enter a New Year, my mind goes back to Daniel Pearl, the Mumbai-based American correspondent of Wall Street Journal, who met with a brutal end to his young life during a visit to Karachi in January 2002 to enquire, inter alia, into the suspected Pakistani links of international jihadi terrorists. In his keenness to find out the truth, Pearl fell into a treacherous trap laid by a mixed group of Pakistani terrorists belonging to different organisations and orchestrated by Omar Sheikh, a British resident of Pakistani origin, who had participated in the so-called jihad against the...