Free Republic

It was here at the courthouse in Benghazi where the first spark of the Libyan revolution ignited. It’s the symbolic seat of the revolution; post-Gaddafi Libya’s equivalent of Egypt’s Tahrir Square. And it was here, in the tumultuous months of civil war, that the ragtag rebel forces established their provisional government and primitive, yet effective, media center from which to tell foreign journalists about their “fight for freedom.” But according to multiple eyewitnesses—myself included—one can now see both the Libyan rebel flag and the flag of al Qaeda fluttering atop Benghazi’s courthouse. According to one Benghazi resident, Islamists are driving...

An al Qaeda video calling for "electronic jihad" illustrates the urgent need for cybersecurity standards for the most critical networks in the United States, a group of senators said. The video calls for cyberattacks against networks such as the electric grid and compares vulnerabilities in the United States' critical cyber networks to the vulnerabilities in the country's aviation system before 9/11, according to a statement Tuesday from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. "This is the clearest evidence we've seen that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups want to attack the cyber systems of our critical infrastructure,"...

Al-Zawahiri, chief of al-Qaeda, has pledged his terrorist organisation’s support for the rebels in Syria. How reassuring to see therefore, that our very own Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and al-Qaeda are on the same side. Quite a triumph for foreign policy that: discovering that we share one of the main aims of the international jihadist gang we have been trying to exterminate for the last decade. Naturally, the bien pensants, the neocons and the obsessive democrats in the West – notably in the BBC and whole sections of the press – are all on the side of the Syrian rebels....

BAGHDAD — Al-Qaida’s chief has called on Muslims from other countries to support rebels in Syria seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad, saying they cannot depend on the West for help. Ayman al-Zawahri, in a videotaped statement released late Saturday, asked Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to join the uprising against Assad’s “pernicious, cancerous regime.” All four states border Syria. 0 Comments Weigh In Corrections? A senior Iraqi security official also told the Associated Press on Saturday that intelligence over the last four months has revealed a flow of al-Qaida-linked fighters from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul...

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Hundreds of Islamist militants were among the prisoners freed from a notorious Tripoli prison this week, according to a former Libyan jihadist. The freed militants had been imprisoned in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison by Moammar Gadhafi's regime during the height of the insurgency in Iraq, according to Noman Benotman, once a senior figure in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Benotman said he believes as many as 600 militants may have been among the prison population at Abu Salim. It's not known how many prisoners were held in the vast facility. Human Rights Watch said Gadhafi's prisons...

Tension is mounting as Israel comes to grips with the new reality of Islamist Egypt. On Thursday, a team of 15 to 20 armed al-Qaeda terrorists (members of the Palestinian Popular Committees, an al-Qaeda affiliate) snaked through tunnels from Gaza to Sinai. From there, they hiked 200 kilometers over land, either ignored or facilitated by Egyptian army forces. They were thus able to sneak into Israel through the porous border at Eilat — porous because Israel has not needed to worry much about its Egyptian border for the last 30 years. At around noon, the terrorists took up positions along...

People with any familiarity with guns raised an amused eyebrow at American-born Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn's claim that at gun shows in the U.S., one could buy "a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card." Fully automatic firearms are, of course, very heavily regulated in the U.S. The inconvenient little fact of Gadahn's lie was not enough to stop various "gun control" groups from milking this new "crisis" for all it's worth (although they did eventually start to simply omit mention of the "fully automatic" part). Rabidly anti-gun...

Tripoli: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his wife survived a NATO air strike that killed his youngest son Saif al-Arab Gaddafi and three grandchildren. Hours after NATO rejected Gaddafi's offer for ‘a ceasefire and negotiations,’ Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said on Sunday that the house of Saif al-Arab, one of the Libyan dictator's seven sons, was attacked on Saturday night with full power. "This was a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country. This is not permitted by international law. It is not permitted by any moral code or principle. What we have now is the law...

MOSCOW | Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:47pm IST (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday it was open to dialogue with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Interfax reported, echoing the U.S. position aimed at ensuring regional stability as Washington prepares to pull out its troops. Russia fears the withdrawal of 100,000 U.S. troops, scheduled to begin in July, will leave a power vacuum in Afghanistan, allowing militants to filter into the oil and gas-producing countries of former Soviet Central Asia. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in February that the United States was mounting a "diplomatic surge" to end the war,...

I think Glenn Beck has it right. American and Global leftists, Marxists, Socialists, Communists, radical labor, Globalists (George Soros) and Islamists unite to create global chaos under the banner of “democracy” (whatever the heck that means, as in “Democratic Republic” or “People’s Republic”). Al Jazeera’s favorite Jihad imam host who preaches that Hitler rightfully punished the Jews for their sins returns to Egypt to declare Islam will retake Jerusalem, Jimmy “I (heart) Palestine” Carter says the Muslim “dominate the world” Brotherhood is secular and harmless, while in a video recommended to me by a Ron Paul supporterDavid Duke says Egyptians...

Well, we have this interesting tidbit now from Time Magazine. The Obama administration knows that Al Qaeda is active in Libya. Quote, "Obama and his aids know that they are taking a big risk. It's a huge gamble says the senior administration official." Really? "The administration knows, for example, that Al Qaeda, which has active cells in Libya will try to exploit the power of vacuum that will come with a weak or ousted Qaddafi." Hmm. This is exactly what we said would happen. Time mentioned that we may actually be helping the terrorists with this air campaign. After all,...

(CNN) -- Al Qaeda's North African wing has said "it will do whatever we can to help" the uprising in Libya, according to a statement the militant group posted on jihadist websites The statement by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was posted Thursday, said SITE, a terrorist-tracking organization based outside Washington. In the statement, the group said Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's decision to hire mercenaries and use planes to fire on protesters invalidates claims that the group is killing innocent civilians. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb started as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat with aspirations to...

Al-Qaeda has set up an Islamic emirate in Derna, in eastern Libya, headed by a former U.S. prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, the country's deputy foreign minister told EU ambassadors in Tripoli. However, residents in the city have told reporters there is no substance to these rumors, which they claim the Libyan government is sowing to "scare Europe." "Al-Qaeda has established an emirate in Derna led by Abdelkarim al-Hasadi, a former Guantanamo detainee," Khaled Khaim said. "They have an FM radio station and have begun to impose the burqa" (head-to-toe covering for women) and have "executed people who refuse to cooperate...

MOSCOW — Russian counternarcotics agents took part in an operation to eradicate several drug laboratories in Afghanistan this week, joining Afghan and American anti-drug forces in what officials here said Friday marked an advance in relations between Moscow and Washington. The operation, in which four opium refining laboratories and over 2,000 pounds of high quality heroin were destroyed, was the first to include Russian agents and indicated a tentative willingness among Russian officials to become more deeply involved in Afghanistan two decades after American-backed Afghan fighters defeated the Soviet military there. “This is a major success for cooperative actions,” Viktor...

Evidence has reached debkafile's counter-terror sources that the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 which crashed after takeoff from Beirut on January 25, killing all 92 aboard, was blown up in mid-air. This was an al-Qaeda operation timed for one month to the day after its failed attempt to destroy an American Northwest airliner bound for Detroit. It is becoming clear that either a bomb was planted on the Ethiopian flight with a timer or a passenger acted as suicide bomber. Western security agencies in the Middle East involved in combating al Qaeda believe that its planners picked on the Ethiopian flight...

Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has condemned the US and other industrial economies, holding them responsible for the phenomenon of climate change. In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera, bin Laden criticised George Bush, the former US president, for rejecting the Kyoto pact and condemned global corporations. "This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions - whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take," bin Laden said. "Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact."...

Some days, when I just can't take it any more, I lace up my hiking boots and head to the foothills behind my home. I have been doing a great deal of that lately. I acknowledge there are glimmers of good news here and there--Scott Brown of Massachusetts for one. But the overwhelming surge of news flow is, frankly, suffocatingly depressing. Take this morning's world headlines from The Wall Street Journal (in the order they were listed): "The Taliban launched a coordinated attack on the Afghan capital, setting off bombs..at least five people were killed." "Al Quaeda...issued fresh threats against...

In the West there is a growing trend to view Hamas as separate from al-Qaeda in order to open a political dialogue with Hamas, but is this view correct? In its annual survey of terrorist threats to Israel during 2009, the Israel Security Agency noted the spread and buildup of "global jihadi" organizations in Gaza. In recent years a number of these jihadi groups have emerged that openly identify with al-Qaeda, such as Jaish al-Islam (the Army of Islam), Jaish al-Umma (the Army of the Nation), and Fatah al-Islam. Hamas was founded in 1987 as the Palestinian wing of the...

A man reportedly set off firecrackers on Delta Flight 253 that was carrying 278 passengers to Detroit from Amsterdam. "The president was notified of the incident this morning between 9:00 and 9:30 Hawaii time by the president's military aide," White House spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

Federal officials and police are interviewing a man, believed to be Nigerian, who allegedly was trying to "explode" a powdery substance aboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, injuring himself and two other passengers, law enforcement officials said.