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June 23rd, 2009 | Iran, Strategy SNIPPET: "How will the Iran debacle affect al-Qaida? This was the question raised yesterday in a short strategic study titled “The Iran Crisis and Its Effects on the Global Jihad by Abu al-Fadl Madi..." SNIPPET: "If, as Abu al-Fadl suggests, the geopolitical nature in the Middle East changes because of the Iran crisis, the question will become how will the jihadi movement react to the possibility of a weakened Hezbollah, Syria, or Hamas? "

IN A LITTLE-NOTICED DECISION in a New York courtroom on September 25, 2003, a man described as Osama bin Laden's "best friend" got some good news. U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim could not be sentenced to life in prison. Salim--who was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989 and who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted confidants--had been captured in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States for prosecution related to his role in the grand conspiracy that resulted in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in...

CHICAGO (AP)--Prosecutors accused an Islamic charity leader of extensive ties with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, saying he ushered dozens of armed warriors into Bosnia to establish a base there. Enaam Arnaout ``allowed violent persons both inside and outside of the al-Qaida network to flow to areas of conflict and survive there under the cover of an American charity,'' prosecutors said in court papers made public Friday. Arnaout, 41, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday on racketeering charges. He admitted defrauding donors to Benevolence International Foundation by sending supplies to military-style units in Bosnia and Muslim rebels fighting Russians in...

It was an extraordinary coup: in the late 1990's, federal prosecutors sat down to interview their first major informer against Al Qaeda — Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a former payroll manager for Osama bin Laden who would become the government's chief witness in its first trial of Qaeda operatives. But it was followed by an extraordinary blunder: for two years, even as the authorities cloaked Mr. Fadl in the secrecy of the federal witness-protection program, keeping him in undisclosed locations and communicating with him in videoconferences through a special telephone hookup, many hours of those conversations were recorded on videotape. The...

Special Dispatch Series - No. 616 November 26, 2003 No.616 President Bush's Appointee to Commission on International Religious Freedom, Prof. Khaled Abou Al-Fadl, Warns Against Reelecting Bush Professor Khaled Abou Al-Fadl,(1) originally of Egypt, was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he is the only Muslim member. Recently he gave an interview to the Egyptian government weekly October in which he strongly criticized the American president. The following are excerpts from the interview:(2)'Bush is a Religious Fundamentalist like Former Colonialists in Muslim Countries'Question: "What is the truth about the connection between...

Professor Khaled Abou Al-Fadl, a Bush appointee to the Commission on International Religious Freedom, recently gave an interview to the Egyptian government weekly in which he warned of the dangers of a second Bush term in the White House. According to a report in the Middle East Media Research Institute, Al-Fadl told the Egyptian publication that Islamic organizations helped Bush reach the White House out of shortsightedness and ignorance. "I met with many leaders of these organizations and I told them that I have known Bush well since he was governor of Texas, where I live, and I am familiar...

< snip - main article below >Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, a Sudanese national and the star witness for the prosecution in the current trial, has been in U.S. custody since 1996, when he turned himself in to an American embassy claiming to have information vital to U.S. national security. Allegedly, he warned an embassy official that a terrorist group wanted “to make war against your country,” but the warning did not prevent the subsequent bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He was taken into F.B.I. custody and eventually entered the U.S. witness protection program, where he became the...