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Craig Lang, who is charged with killing a Florida couple in 2018, has become a cause célèbre in the country where he has fought as a mercenary. In the spring of 2015, former U.S. soldier Craig Lang traveled to Ukraine and joined a paramilitary group fighting the Russians. “I never noticed any fear,” said Mamuka Mamulashvili, who commanded Lang in the Georgian Legion. Four years later, Lang is under house arrest in Ukraine. His situation has nothing to do with his conduct inside the eastern European country. Lang is facing charges in the U.S. for allegedly killing a Florida couple...

Several Australian men have been arrested in a series of counter-terrorism raids across Melbourne after police uncovered a plot by Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda to mount a suicide attack on an Army base. Four men were under arrest this morning and several others were assisting police with inquiries after 400 police officers and members of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) swooped on 19 properties shortly before dawn. Authorities believe the group, of Somalian and Lebanese background, was at an advanced stage of preparing to storm an Army barracks in retaliation for Australia’s military involvement in Muslim countries. Members...

The United Nations was paying one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups after getting “too close” to it, secret documents disclose. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) had to suspend activities in southern Somalia after being manipulated by al-Shabaab, which is linked to al-Qaeda. In a meeting last year with the UN ambassador Susan Rice, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the special representative for Somalia, said the WFP had been withdrawn “because it had become too reliant upon al-Shabaab and its system of pay-offs”. Al-Shabaab, an Islamic group fighting to overthrow the Somalian government, controls much of south and central Somalia and...

Rep. Keith Ellison's request to testify at Wednesday's House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Islamic radicalization was denied by Rep. Peter King, the committee chairman. Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, sent a letter to King on Monday asking that he could testify at Wednesday's hearing, which will address Al-Shabaab, a Somali terror group. King, a New York Republican, responded that Wednesday's hearing is an extension of the March hearing on Islamic radicalization where Ellison did testify. King wrote in a letter to Ellison that Al-Shabaab was a focus of the March hearing, and he asked that Ellison...

I got myself a Twitter account just four weeks ago. It seems that my fortunes have taken a turn for the worse, having me barely edge out al-Shabaab, Islamist terrorists’ recent cause célèbre, which logged its first tweet on December 7. Al-Shabaab, or “The Youth,” is a militant Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda that has laid siege to much of southern Somalia since 2006. The group is persistently fighting (and winning) an insurgency against the United Nations-backed Transitional Federal Government, which is contained in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Still more pressingly, al-Shabaab has mounted attacks against African Union Mission in...

The girl’s voice dropped to a hush as she remembered the bright, sunny afternoon when she stepped out of her hut and saw her best friend buried in the sand, up to her neck. Her friend had made the mistake of refusing to marry a Shabab commander. Now she was about to get her head bashed in, rock by rock. “You’re next,” the Shabab warned the girl, a frail 17-year-old who was living with her brother in a squalid refugee camp. Several months later, the men came back. Five militants burst into her hut, pinned her down and gang-raped her,...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — By the time U.S. military forces left Somalia in 1994 after entering the lawless nation more than a year earlier to stop a famine, 44 Army soldiers, Marines and airmen had been killed and dozens more wounded. Thus ended America's last large-scale military intervention in Africa. But the U.S. has come back, using special forces advisers, drones and tens of millions of dollars in military aid to combat a growing and multifaceted security threat. This time the United States is playing a less obtrusive role but is focusing once again on Somalia. While putting few U.S....

South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR), Weekly Assessments & Briefings SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW Weekly Assessments & Briefings Volume 10, No. 13, October 3, 2011 INDIA Coastal Insecurity Shrideep Biswas Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management Elaborating on the threat posed by Somali pirates, Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony, while addressing the 30th Annual Coast Guard Commanders’ Conference on September 27, 2011, observed, "There are some other powerful forces behind the piracy and they are sitting somewhere else. Only a joint, coordinated effort under the United Nations can be an ultimate solution to the piracy problem.” He added that the Cabinet...

SOMALIA'S Al-Qaeda linked rebels said today they have begun moving more than 12,000 starving families back into famine zones they had fled, areas where the UN have warned they will die without help.

Somali famine refugees draw hope from Islamists' Mogadishu withdrawal Prime minister says al-Shabaab fighters have now left 90% of the capital, raising prospect of faster delivery of humanitarian aid

* Payments technically breach sanctions, say U.N. officials * Britain, United States say al Shabaab are terrorists * Pirates say forced to deal with militants * UK shipping says ransoms only way to rescue hostages NAIROBI, July 6 (Reuters) - Ransoms paid to Somali pirates to free merchant vessels are ending up in the hands of Islamist militants, laying shipping groups open to accusations of breaching international sanctions, U.N. officials told Reuters. John Steed, the principal military adviser to the U.N. special envoy to Somalia and head of the envoy's counter-piracy unit, said links between armed pirate gangs and Somalia's...

NAIROBI, Kenya - US military forces landed in Somalia to retrieve the bodies of dead or wounded militants after a US drone strike targeted a group of insurgents, Somalia's defense minister said yesterday. The operation is at least the second time US troops have landed in Somalia after a targeted strike, ...

<p>Al Qeada's terror plot in World Cup, S. Africa - 2010 & Somali Jihadists attacking, murdering football fans for watching game.</p> <p>Palestinian gunmen kill Israeli athletes In the early 1970s the PLO is widely condemned for a series of hijackings bombings and killings most notably the kidnapping and killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Arafats involvement in these events is unclear he refused to discuss such attacks though he denounced terrorism as a tactic.</p>

A wannabe terrorist from Brooklyn was indicted yesterday for allegedly seeking training and weapons from Islamic militants to fight US troops overseas. The FBI said Betim Kaziu, a US citizen, traveled to Cairo in February and later to Kosovo, where he was arrested in August. Along the way, Kaziu allegedly sought to join Al-Shabbab, an armed movement listed as a terrorist group by the State Department, and train in Pakistan to fight American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 24, 2009 PRESS RELEASE BROOKLYN RESIDENT INDICTED FOR CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER OVERSEAS AND CONSPIRACY TO PROVIDE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO TERRORISTS An indictment was unsealed in federal court this morning charging Betim Kaziu, a U.S. citizen and resident of Brooklyn, with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.1 Kaziu is scheduled to be arraigned later today before United States Magistrate Judge Joan M. Azrack, at the U.S. Courthouse, 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn, New York. The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for...