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Israel tried to kill bin Laden in 1996: paper Thu Jan 26, 2006 10:57 AM ET JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's Mossad spy service and a foreign counterpart enlisted a confidante of Osama bin Laden to kill the al Qaeda leader in 1996 but the plan fell apart over a political dispute, a newspaper said on Thursday. Mossad picked up bin Laden's trail while helping U.S. and Egyptian agents probe an attempt by Islamist militants on the life of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak as he visited Ethiopia, Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth said citing security sources. According to the report, Mossad recruited...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Two bombs exploded in a bank and outside a government building Tuesday, killing six people and injuring 46 in a southwestern city with a history of violence involving members of Iran's Arab minority, the official news agency reported. The president had been expected to meet his Cabinet in the city on Tuesday but canceled the visit. Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said the attacks in Ahvaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province which borders Iraq, were foreign-inspired and related to last year's bombings in the same city. Ahvaz was the scene of bombings in June and October...

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma and leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party has suggested that the Soviet Union and its surrogate states would have been justified to kill Pope John Paul II who, he claims, was planted in the Vatican by the CIA to wrest Poland from its pro-Soviet rulers. In an interview with a Russian radio statio, on the day the Pope's would-be assassin, Ali Agca, was released from an Istanbul jail, Zhirinovsky was asked whether the KGB, had commissioned the attack. "There is no direct evidence necessarily of a Russian connection here, but...

The release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who narrowly failed in his attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, has understandably revived interest in one of the great unsolved whodunnits of the 20th century. At the time of the shooting, which took place as the Pope rode around the piazza in front of St Peter's Basilica in his Popemobile, it was initially thought that Agca had acted as a lone fanatic. He had, after all, previously written to the Pope informing him of his murderous intentions - hardly the modus operandi of the professional assassin....

CUBA lay behind the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald and its agents provided the gunman with money and support, an award-winning German director says in a new documentary film. Wilfried Huismann spent three years researching Rendezvous with Death, based on interviews with former Cuban secret agents, US officials and a Russian intelligence source, and on research in Mexican security archives. The film, shown to journalists in Berlin, says Oswald travelled to Mexico City by bus in September 1963, seven weeks before the Kennedy shooting, and met agents at the Cuban embassy there who paid...

Description American Gunfight is the fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event -- the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D.C., that saved the president's life. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Hunter, the widely admired and bestselling novelist and author of such books as Havana, Hot Springs, and Dirty White Boys, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research and the vivid and dramatically told story of...

INDONESIA'S president is under threat of assassination, his spokesman said today amid stepped-up security nationwide for the New Year holiday period in response to fears of extremist attacks. Security forces in the world's most populous Muslim nation have been on high alert over the Christmas period, fearing reprisal attacks after last month's killing of Malaysian bombmaker Azahari Husin, a key member of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) extremist network. Documents found in Azahari's East Java hideaway indicated extremists were planning attacks over the holiday period. His chief accomplice, Noordin Mohammad Top, remains on the run. Asked whether reports that President Susilo...

By JAMES GORDON MEEK WASHINGTON - Before he was captured last spring, Osama Bin Laden's top operational commander was solely focused on killing President Bush and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharaff, the Daily News has learned. The capture last May of Al Qaeda's No. 3 leader, Abu Faraj Al-Libi, apparently thwarted plots to assassinate the two partners in the global war on terror, said a senior Pakistani official, whose information was corroborated by two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials. "Al-Libi had one mission: Kill Bush and Musharraf," the Pakistani official told The News. "He wanted to kill Bush in the White...

Before he was captured last spring, Osama bin Laden's top operational commander planned to assassinate U.S. President George Bush, it was reported Friday. The New York Daily News said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf also was a target in the plot. The capture last May of al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Abu Faraj Al-Libi,...

TEHRAN, (Reuters) - Iran denied on Monday media reports that a firefight last week in the country's lawless southeastern borderlands was an assassination attempt on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Government officials said Ahmadinejad was making a speech in Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, on Wednesday when a car carrying security forces was attacked by smugglers on the road to the Gulf port of Chaharbahar. "During the attack, the local driver and a Revolutionary Guardsman was killed. The police immediately intervened. One smuggler was killed and one arrested," government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a news conference. Some domestic and foreign reports described...

Iran President's Bodyguard Dies in Ambush IRGC Officers

The new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, whose Hojattieh beliefs put him among the lunatic fringe category of Islam was last Thursday reportedly the target of an assassination attempt in the south Eastern Province of Sistan/Baluchistan. (see my article on him and the Hojattieh at http://www.middleeastfacts.com/guests/contributor-alan_peters.php and some other of my writings on Iran),

Gunmen ambushed the motorcade of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, leaving his driver and one of his bodyguards dead, however the hard-line leader escaped injury because he was not in the car at the time. "At 6:50 pm on Thursday, the lead car in the presidential motorcade confronted armed bandits and trouble-makers on the Zabol-Saravan highway," the semi-official Jomhouri Islami reported today. "In the ensuing armed clash, the driver of the vehicle, who was an indigenous member of the security services, and one of the president's bodyguards died, while another bodyguard was wounded." Tehran often uses "bandits" and "trouble-makers" to identify...

Bandits killed a guard of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hours before the leader visited southeastern Iran this week, state-run television reported Saturday. The broadcast said another guard and a driver were wounded in Thursday's assault on a road 1,240 miles southeast of the capital, Tehran. The guards were making security checks in the area several hours before Ahmadinejad passed in a motorcade, the report said. The motive for the attack was unclear. Officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Ahmadinejad provoked an international stir during the three-day trip to the region when he called the Holocaust a "myth" used as...

Tehran, Iran -- One of the bodyguards of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed and another wounded when an attempt to ambush the presidential motorcade was thwarted in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, according to a semi-official newspaper and local residents. “At 6:50 pm on Thursday, the lead car in the presidential motorcade confronted armed bandits and trouble-makers on the Zabol-Saravan highway”, the semi-official Jomhouri Islami reported on Saturday. “In the ensuing armed clash, the driver of the vehicle, who was an indigenous member of the security services, and one of the president’s bodyguards died, while another bodyguard...

Police taped terror plot to kill Howard TWO Melbourne terror suspects discussed killing John Howard and his family, launching a large-scale attack at a football game and causing carnage at a train station as part of a religious war in Australia. In a series of chilling conversations caught on police listening devices and revealed yesterday, self-styled Muslim cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 46, and 20-year-old Abdulla Merhi discussed the terror plot as payback for the deaths of Muslims. "For example, if John Howard kills innocent Muslim families do we ... do we have to kill him and his family ... (and)...

Plot to kill PM, court told Katie Lapthorne17dec05 TERROR suspects talked about killing John Howard and his family as payback for the deaths of innocent Muslims, a court heard yesterday. The conversation between accused would-be suicide bomber Abdullah Merhi and his spiritual leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika was secretly recorded in September last year. The pair allegedly discussed taking an eye for an eye. The Melbourne Magistrates' Court heard Mr Merhi, 20, told the leader of the alleged Melbourne terrorist cell: "If, for example, John Howard kills innocent Muslim family . . . do we have to kill him and his...

TWO men accused of being members of a terrorist organisation allegedly discussed whether Prime Minister John Howard and his family should be killed as payback for the deaths of innocent Muslims, a Melbourne court has been told. The allegation was made at the second day of a bail hearing for Abdulla Merhi, 20, of Fawkner, and Hany Taha, 31, of Hadfield, at the Melbourne Magistrates' Court. They are among 10 men charged with being members of a terrorist organisation last month. Eight of the men also have been charged with financing a terrorist organisation. The alleged leader of the group,...

Plot to Rocket Saddam Trial Uncovered 14 minutes ago A Sunni Arab insurgent group was plotting to attack the trial of Saddam Hussein when it resumed Monday, Iraq's national security adviser said Sunday. The statement by national security adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie's office said the 1920 Revolution Brigades planned to fire rockets at the court building during Monday's session. Iraqi intelligence uncovered the plot, but the statement did not say whether anyone had been arrested. Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for the 1982 killing of more than 140 Shiite Muslims in the town of Dujail following an assassination attempt...

Iraqi police say they have arrested eight Sunni Arabs allegedly planning to assassinate a judge presiding over the trial of ousted leader Saddam Hussein. The arrests Saturday in Kirkuk came as prosecutors prepared to call their first witnesses when Saddam's trial resumes Monday. Saddam and seven co-defendants are charged with crimes against humanity in the deaths of more than 140 Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in 1982. Meanwhile, former Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad, and in some instances worse, than under Saddam's rule. Mr. Allawi - a secular...