Free Republic

June 30, 2006 - A former Valley school administrator will likely be going to prison. Friday afternoon, a Fresno jury came back with a verdict in the trial of the administrators of a now defunct local charter school. They were accused of misusing taxpayer money. An Action News investigation revealed the Gateway Charter School operated with little oversight, sparking a probe by the State Department of Justice. There were three defendants in the case, and the jury treated them all differently. Two of the former Gateway administrators probably won't see any jail time at all, but jurors decided one woman...

Fresno County Superior Court Judge R.L. Putnam on Monday issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Khadijah Ghafur, superintendent and president of the now-closed GateWay Academy charter school system, after she failed to show up for her ongoing trial, where she is accused of stealing public funds. (excerpt)Ghafur is charged with five counts of misappropriation of public funds and five counts of grand theft by embezzlement.

The subscription site, STRATFOR or Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - issues almost daily a TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE REPORT with a self described "track record on accurate, insightful global intelligence and analysis earning itself a reputation as the world’s most respected private intelligence company". Strafor's Fred Burton updates the ongoing cartoon controversy (02.21.2006)as follows : "Fatwas and Rewards: An Inflection Point in the Cartoon Controversy" (I have highlighted key points received today via e-mail). "Two minor Shariah courts in India's Uttar Pradesh state have issued fatwas calling for the death of a Danish cartoonist who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The fatwas,...

HOMELAND INSECURITY Probe finds terrorists in U.S. 'training for war' Neighbors of Muslim encampment fear retaliation if they report to police Posted: February 17, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Entrance to Hancock, N.Y., encampment (Courtesy Northeast Intelligence Network) The Pakistani terrorist group Jamaat ul Fuqra is using Islamic schools in the United States as training facilities, confirms a joint investigative report by an intelligence think tank and an independent reporter. A covert visit to an encampment in the Catskill Mountains near Hancock, N.Y., called "Islamberg" found neighboring residents deeply concerned about military-style training taking place there but frustrated...

During the Beltway Sniper crisis, back in the fall of 2002, a series of articles in The Washington Times described John Allen Muhammad’s conversion to Islam, and his later break with the Nation of Islam (the articles are no longer available, but extracts have been preserved here). Apparently the NOI was not militant enough for Mr. Muhammad, and he left it to become involved with a group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra (Arabic for “community of the impoverished”), a terrorist organization founded by a notorious Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani. What drew my eye in the article was the mention of...

FBI probe uncovers a list of potential Southland targets and suggests a connection between prison groups and Islamic extremists. A Pakistani national has been arrested by authorities in connection with a far-reaching investigation of a possible terrorist plot targeting any of nearly two dozen locations in Southern California, including National Guard recruitment centers, law enforcement sources said Monday. The suspect, identified as Hamad Riaz Samana, 21, of Los Angeles, was quietly taken into custody last week by counter-terrorism officials as part of a probe that began with the arrest of two men in Torrance suspected of robbing gas stations. The...

A terrorist plot to attack military and Jewish sites in the Los Angeles area this coming Sept. 11 was devised inside a cell at the New Folsom State Prison, a maximum-security prison outside Sacramento, Calif. Law enforcement officials told ABC News that Peter Martinez, a former Oakland street gang member, and his cellmate Kevin James organized the plot and recruited as many as 13 other inmates in a jihad against the United States. The two inmates have since been placed in special confinement, according to officials. "Al Qaeda recruits in prisons. They really do," said Edward Caden, a retired prison...

During the raid to arrest two robbery suspects at a local apartment, police said officers uncovered details of a possible terrorist cell, with alleged plans for an attack in the Southland. Images In an exclusive investigation, Channel 4 News has learned more about the two suspects under investigation by the FBI's counter terrorism task force and an alleged plot that targeted several prominent locations in the Los Angeles area.ANA GARCIA (REPORTER): Is it possible that an Islamic Prison Gang with possible links to Middle Eastern operatives were planning to blow up these targets? El Al Airlines at LAXIsraeli Consulate On...

Michael Wagner lied about his name. He told the trooper who stopped him for not wearing a seat belt that he couldn't find his identification. Then, Iowa State Patrol Trooper Kenneth Haas found a gun, three bulletproof vests, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a flight simulator and a bag of flight manuals dating to 2001. Haas testified at a federal court hearing Tuesday that he also found a 5-foot telescope hooked to camera equipment, night-vision goggles and a night-vision rifle scope when searching Wagner's sport utility vehicle on July 14 on Interstate 80 near Council Bluffs. The materials, said Assistant...

Federal agents on Thursday detained a Washington County lawyer in connection with the deadly March 11 terrorist attack in Madrid -- the first American connection to the worst terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.Brandon Mayfield, 37, who lives in Aloha and played a minor legal role in the Portland Seven terrorism case, was picked up at his West Slope law office on a material witness hold Thursday morning, said Tom Nelson, Mayfield's attorney. < snip >

MADRID, Spain — The fingerprints of the American attorney arrested as a material witness in the Madrid train bombings were found on a plastic shopping bag that held detonators like the ones used in the deadly March 11 terrorist attacks.

MADRID, Spain (AP) - The fingerprints of the American lawyer arrested in Oregon in the Madrid terror bombing probe were found on a bag containing detonators like those used in the March 11 attack, the Spanish government said Friday. The plastic shopping bag was found inside a stolen van left near the train station from which three of the four bombed trains departed, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. Brandon Mayfield, a 37-year-old lawyer and former U.S. Army officer who converted to Islam, was taken into custody Thursday by FBI agents, who also searched his home in...

Law-enforcement officials detain an Oregon man they say may be linked to Europe’s 9/11 FBI agents today detained a Portland, Ore., lawyer after receiving evidence from Spanish authorities that the man’s fingerprints allegedly were found on bomb-related evidence associated with the March 11 railway attack in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded 2,000 people, Newsweek has learned. The arrest of the lawyer was described by federal law-enforcement authorities as a major investigative breakthrough that for the first time suggests links between an individual inside the United States and the Madrid bombing — the worst act of terrorist violence since...

<p>WASHINGTON  — FBI agents arrested a Portland, Ore., man Thursday as part of the investigation into the deadly train bombings in Spain, federal officials said.</p> <p>Brandon Bieri Mayfield, a U.S. citizen, was taken into custody on a material witness warrant, said a senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The arrest, first reported in Newsweek, is the first known in the United States with connections to the March 11 bombings in Madrid.</p>

A jury will not hear key pieces of defence evidence that could detract from the theory that former West Vancouver students Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns killed Rafay's parents and sister in their Bellevue home near Seattle in 1994.Their trial on charges of aggravated first-degree murder begins Monday in Seattle.King County Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel ruled this week that the defence may not introduce testimony from a criminal psychologist who would have testified that innocent people sometimes make false confessions.His evidence would have helped the defence show that the two could have made false confessions to RCMP undercover agents...

OTTAWA (CP) - Attacks like the bombing of the British consulate in Istanbul on Thursday could take place in Canada as terrorists target coalition partners in the war on Iraq, an RCMP intelligence report suggests. The newly released assessment of extremist threats warns that although Canada is not a member of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, terrorists might strike at participants with assets on Canadian soil - an obvious reference to embassies and consulates. The war in Iraq is "likely to result in retaliatory terrorist attacks against the coalition countries and their interests," the RCMP report says. "Coalition interests in...

Islamists arrested in Pakistani clampdown By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore (Filed: 17/11/2003) Pakistani police arrested dozens of Islamist activists yesterday after President Pervaiz Musharraf outlawed three militant religious parties that had reformed under new names following an earlier ban. President Musharraf The banned groups are better known by their original names. Two are Sunni Muslim militant parties, Sipah-e-Sahab and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which have close links to al-Qa'eda. The third is a Shia party, Therik-e-Jafria. "Those who are indulging in extremist acts are harming both Pakistan and Islam," Gen Musharraf was quoted as telling senior officials. In addition, the largest extremist Sunni...

<p>The man accused of murdering sheriff's deputy Erik Telen would not receive a fair trial in Fresno County because of the victim's hero status and the media's false vilification of the defendant as a terrorist group member, a defense attorney said in a motion filed Thursday. Ramadan Abdur-Rauf Abdullah's trial should take place outside Fresno County, where pretrial publicity has been pervasive and prejudicial to the defendant, attorney Peter Jones says in the change of venue motion.</p>

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | A year ago, when the self-regarding buffoon Chief Charles Moose was bungling the Washington sniper investigation and the cable-news shows were full of endless psychological profiles of "white male loners," a few of us columnists entertained the notion that the killer was linked to Islamist terrorism. The Chicago Sun-Times' Richard Roeper thought this was so absurd he very kindly apologized to readers on my behalf. "An awful lot of conservatives really, really wanted the snipers to be terrorists," explained Richard. "But they were wrong. I'll say that because they never will." Even at the time, the Roeper position...