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A court convicted 15 Yemeni militants on terror charges including the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and plotting to kill the US ambassador. One man was sentenced to death for killing a Yemeni police officer and seven received 10 year prison terms. Six of the defendants plus the one man tried in absentia, who received the longest prison terms, 10 years, were found guilty of participating in the October 2002 bombing of the Limburg oil tanker, which killed one Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden. The conviction of one of...

Brown's photo 'on al-Qaida disks' Seized computers included chancellor's image among information on potential US attacks David Teather in New York and Patrick Barkham Monday August 9, 2004 The Guardian Details emerged yesterday of potential terrorist targets found on captured al-Qaida computers, including a downloaded picture of Gordon Brown, and possible plans to use helicopters to attack New York. Information gleaned from the three laptops and 51 computer disks seized in Pakistan led to the specific warnings issued last week about possible attacks on five financial institutions in the US. US officials have hailed as a breakthrough the arrests and...

ALGIERS (Reuters) - The deputy chief of al Qaeda's North Africa wing, believed to be the group's operational leader, was killed along with two other rebels in a gun battle with Algerian troops, local newspapers said on Tuesday. Hareg Zoheir, also known as Sofiane Abu Fasila, was said to be the second-in-command of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and suspected of being behind planning most of the suicide bombings in Algeria in the recent months. He was shot dead on Sunday at a check point in the eastern region of Tzizi Ouzou, the country's leading dailies reported. "Sofiane is...

ASIO was powerless to stop a Melbourne man who allegedly trained with al-Qaida from boarding an international flight out of Australia. The 23-year-old terror suspect, known as Abu Jihad, is now in custody in Cairo. The Federal Government, through ASIO, was forced to issue an international alert to find Jihad after he disappeared from Australia last October. Jihad was named as an al-Qaida terrorist by captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh in December 2001. But ASIO was not able to verify Lindh's claims until after Jihad had boarded the aircraft in Melbourne almost 10 months later. Jihad, a house...

Top Al Qaeda operative taken into US custody 10 minutes ago The United States has taken into custody a top al-Qaeda operative who plotted to assassinate Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and other officials, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday. Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi, who was taken to the US navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba about a week ago, was intercepted while trying to reach Iraq to take over Al-Qaeda operations and to plot attacks from there against western targets outside Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He is "one of Al-Qaeda's highest ranking and senior operatives at the time of...

Jordan has charged three terrorists with plotting to carry out attacks, including an assassination of American President George W. Bush. Prosecutors said the terrorists also planned to strike American Danish embassies in Amman but apparently were not aware that Denmark has no offices in Jordan. The arrests were revealed Wednesday, three months after the terrorists were arrested the day before President Bush arrived in Amman for talks with King Abdullah.

Pakistani convicted for plot to bomb New York subway05-25-2006, 00h32 NEW YORK (AFP) In this courtroom illustration, James Elshafay (C) and Shahawar Matin Siraj (R) appear August 2004 in Federal District Court in New York, before Magistrate Kiyo Matsumoto (R rear) during an arraignment on charges related to an alleged plot to bomb a New York City subway station. Standing at left are Assistant US attorneys John Nathanson (L) and Kelly Currie (2nd L). (AFP/Getty Images/File) A Pakistani man was convicted of planning to blow up a New York subway station ahead of the Republican National Convention held before the...

BRAMPTON, Ont. (CP) - One of the suspects in a Toronto terror plot is accused of wanting to behead Canada's prime minister, his lawyer said Tuesday. Lawyer Gary Batasar says the allegations against his client are very serious and include his personal threat against the prime minister. Steven Chand is also accused of plotting to storm and bomb various buildings, he says. Chand is among 17 people accused of plotting to stage a massive terrorist attack in southern Ontario. Fifteen of the 17 people facing charges are in court today. Family members who arrived to support them were met by...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A top U.S. Democratic congressman met a leader of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's most powerful rival, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, U.S. officials and the Islamist group said Saturday. Visiting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, twice on Thursday -- once at the parliament building and then at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, said Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan. U.S. Embassy spokesman John Berry would confirm only that Hoyer, who represents Maryland, met with el-Katatni at U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone's home at a...

Jordan Hangs 2 for U.S. Diplomat's Murder Two militants were executed by hanging on Saturday for the killing in Amman of a U.S. diplomat. Laurence Foley, a 60-year-old administrator of U.S. aid programs in Jordan, was gunned down outside his Amman home on Oct. 28, 2002. Jordanian authorities have blamed al Qaida in Iraq's top operative, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for Foley's death. The two militants are Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan, and Yasser Freihat, a Jordanian. They were part of an 11-member cell headed by the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi. A Jordanian military court found 10 of the cell members, including al-Zarqawi,...

TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Deep in a violent and lawless slum just north of this coastal city, 12 men whose faces were shrouded by scarves drilled with Kalashnikovs. In unison, they lunged in one direction, turned and lunged in another. “Allah-u akbar,” the men shouted in praise to God as they fired their machine guns into a wall. The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda. He has...

Paul Campos has beclowned himself. He did it in the usual way, by arguing loudly about things he does not understand. Campos chose to devote an entire column (“The right’s Ward Churchill,” Feb. 20) to a blog entry of mine from last week, in which I wondered why the Bush administration wasn’t acting covertly to kill radical mullahs and atomic scientists, rather than preparing a major attack on Iran. (Silly me, I thought this was advocating a less warlike approach). According to Campos, this suggestion was both morally wrong — suggesting that we kill people this way made me a...

France has deported a Tunisian man to his homeland despite protests that he could face torture there. Adel Tebourski, 42, was put on an Air France flight back to Tunisia on Monday, officials said. Tebourski had served a jail sentence in France after being convicted of helping the killers of Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Masood in 2001. The French authorities described Tebourski as a serious threat to national security. French campaigners have said he could be tortured in Tunisia, and the UN torture committee last month called on Paris to suspend his deportation, the French news agency AFP reports....

PARIS, Nov 19, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Counter-terrorism agents this week arrested a man suspected of links to the assassins of anti-Taliban military commander Ahmed Shah Massood, France's interior minister said Wednesday. The suspect, not identified by name, was arrested Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy told lawmakers during a question and answer session. Sarkozy said the suspect "was in liaison with the assassins of Commander Massood," the western-backed head of the northern alliance opposed to the Taliban. Massood was slain on Sept. 9, 2001 in northern Afghanistan, two days before the terror attacks in the United States, by two men...

BRUSSELS -- A Belgian court extended Tuesday the detention of a 35-year-old Moroccan accused in connection with the killing last year of the Afghan anti-Taleban commander Ahmad Shah Masood, officials said. The suspect, whose identity has not been officially revealed, was arrested on October 8 in Antwerp and has been charged with complicity in the September 2001 killing of the Afghan opposition leader, a spokesman as said. The Brussels court extended his detention warrant by a month pending an investigation into an operation to provide false passports, AFP quoted prosecution spokesman Jos Colpin as saying. Belgian press reports have named...

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A telephone operator arrested for being a leader of Greece's deadly November 17 terrorist group admitted taking part in the 1975 killing of a CIA official and said the triggerman already is in police custody, judicial sources said Friday. The surprise confession by alleged second-in-command Pavlos Serifis added important details about the ambush killing of CIA station chief Richard Welch outside a Christmas party — a killing that launched a 27-year string of assassinations, bombings and robberies by the once-untouchable group. Serifis also admitted participating in the 1980 slayings of two Greek policemen and said the...

How can anyone be a bystander while someone is stabbed? By Mark Steyn (Filed: 13/09/2003) On September 11, 2001, the first individual to be named among the dead was the wife of the US Solicitor-General, Barbara Olson, whom I'd sat next to at dinner a couple of months earlier. On September 11, 2003, I woke to the news of the death of the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, whom I also sat next to a couple of months ago, at a conference. I can't claim anything other than the most casual acquaintance with either lady, but even an accidental proximity...

Police arrested six suspected militants on Monday, including the Pakistani aide of a Libyan Al-Qaeda operative accused of masterminding two assassination attempts a year ago against President Pervez Musharraf, an official said. Malik Tehsin, 31, was nabbed in the eastern city of Lahore as he travelled in a car with three other Pakistanis, and information from Tehsin led to the arrests of two other Pakistani men at a house in the city later Monday. Shafqaat Ahmed, a senior police superintendent, told a news conference that Tehsin had arranged accommodation, transportation and other facilities for Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan terror...

PESHAWAR, Aug 18: A son-in-law of Al Qaeda No 2 Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri is believed to be the mastermind of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights and he met one or some of the plotters at a place close to the Pakistan-Afghan border, credible sources told Dawn. “The mastermind in the planes bombing plot is Zawahiri’s son-in-law,” said the sources who did not want to be named. “He is the guy being looked for,” they added. Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant is known to have several sons-in-law. One of them was reported to have been killed in a...

MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES - There are so many links between the Abu Sayyaf Group of the Philippines, which beheaded an American hostage a few months ago, and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network, that on paper they look like the route map for a Peshawar-based airline. The links run from that high, bleak border city in Pakistan to terrorist dens in Afghanistan and Yemen; to murders and bombings in the Philippines; to the first attack on the World Trade Center; to a foiled attempt to assassinate the pope during a 1995 visit to Manila. A captured Abu Sayyaf guerrilla, ...