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Friends say victim knew Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev ORLANDO, Fla. - The FBI confirms a special agent was involved in a deadly shooting early Wednesday near Universal Orlando, and two friends of the victim say he was from Chechnya and knew one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. The fatal shooting happened just after midnight at 6022 Peregrine Avenue in Orlando. "We are currently responding to a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent," FBI Special Agent Dave Couvertier told Local 6. "The incident occurred in Orlando, Florida. The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties. The...

ORLANDO, Fla. – A civil rights group plans to sue the FBI for $30 million on behalf of the family of a Chechen man who was fatally shot while being questioned about a Boston Marathon bombing suspect. The Council of American-Islamic Relations Florida on Monday filed a notice of claim stating its intention to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the FBI over the death of Ibragim Todashev.

An extraordinary legal filing revealed two of the hijackers responsible for the September 11 terror attacks had a much more intimate relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency than previously known. At least two of the 9/11 hijackers were being closely monitored by the CIA and may have even been recruited by the agency well before they helped fly a pair of Boeing 767s into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, newly-released documents reveal. The jaw-dropping court filing contains extensive testimony by multiple FBI investigators who maintain that the CIA obstructed official investigations into the notorious terrorist attack in...

Dr. Meryl Nass, a Maine doctor with more than 40 years experience cannot practice after her medical license was suspended for ‘spreading Covid misinformation’ and treating Covid patients with Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Meryl Nass was also ordered to undergo a neuropsychological evaluation. “The information received by the Board demonstrates that Dr. Nass is or may be unable to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety to her patients by reason of mental illness, alcohol intemperance, excessive use of drugs, narcotics, or as a result of a mental or physical condition interfering with the competent practice of medicine,” the evaluation...

Two Pakistani brothers held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay detention facility for two decades were freed and returned home on Friday to be reunited with their families, officials said. Pakistan arrested Abdul and Mohammed Rabbani on suspicion of links to al-Qaida in 2002 in Karachi, the country’s southern port and largest city. That same year, Ramzi Binalshibh, a top al-Qaida leader, was arrested by Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence on a tip from the CIA. The Rabbanis’ releases come months after a 75-year-old Pakistani, Saifullah Paracha, was freed from Guantanamo. The Foreign Ministry later Friday released a statement...

While Americans were focused on a Chinese spy balloon making its way across the country, the Biden administration quietly released an al Qaeda terrorist radicalized by the September 11 attacks from Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that Majid Khan, 42, was moved to Belize after spending 16 years in CIA custody. Authorities have maintained he was a close personal ally of al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who helped deliver money and transport other senior terrorists. And under Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's plans, Khan would have attacked US gas stations and water reservoirs.

The special counsel named by the Biden administration to investigate Donald Trump oversaw a Justice Department unit rebuked by the Supreme Court for its prosecution of a prominent Republican and was linked by Congress to the IRS scandal that targeted conservative groups. Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague and former chief of the DOJ public integrity section, was named Friday by Attorney General Merrick Garland to take over two investigations of Trump related to Jan. 6 and classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. In 2014, the House Oversight Committee concluded that during Smith's earlier stint at DOJ he...

U.S. military prosecutors are reportedly negotiating potential plea deals with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other conspirators imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. The plea deals may allow the five dependents to escape a potential death penalty, according to CBS. Mohammed is widely credited with being the architect of the 9/11 terror attacks. The other four defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi. Attorneys for the defendants reportedly say they would be willing to enter a guilty plea in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, as well as for getting treatment...

WASHINGTON Captured Al Qaeda official Abu Zubaydah won't be tortured by the U.S. or allied interrogators, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday. "We intend to get every single thing out of him to try to prevent terrorist acts in the future," Rumsfeld said, but the idea that the U.S. might use proxy torturers to keep its hands clean was "wrong and irresponsible.""Believe me, reports to that effect are wrong, inaccurate, not happening and will not happen," he said. "He will be properly interrogated by proper people, who know how to do those things."The interrogators probably will be from the...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. American officials caution that Mr. Ani may...

As one of the hundreds of thousands who has proudly worked for the National Security Agency either directly or as a subcontractor, I believe the New York Times missed the real story under its Dec. 16 headline "Bush lets U.S. spy on callers without courts." Here is why. The New York Times concedes the story starts with the CIA capture of top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. With Zubaydah's capture came a treasure trove of eavesdropping intelligence sources -- e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, and personal phone directories. These are prime intelligence sources that may...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for the U.S. government in a case involving a Guantanamo Bay detainee seeking what the government said is secret information. Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, was once thought to be a high-ranking member of the terrorist group al-Qaida. Zubaydah was seeking to get the testimony of two former CIA contractors as part of an Polish investigation into his treatment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in an opinion joined by six of his colleagues that the government had argued “Zubaydah’s discovery request could force former CIA contractors to confirm...

ISLAMABAD (AP) — An Afghan prisoner held in U.S. custody for nearly 15 years has been released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center after a federal court ruled that he was unlawfully detained, the U.S. Department of Defense said Friday. Asadullah Haroon Gul’s release was first announced earlier in the day by the Taliban in Afghanistan and an international human rights group. From Kabul, Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban-appointed deputy culture and information minister, tweeted that Gul was one of the last two Afghan prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Photographs of Gul being greeted by senior Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar,...

My late Friday night involved hitting refresh on PACER every so often, incurring the $0.10 charge for each search result as I waited on Special Counsel John Durham’s latest filing in the Michael Sussmann case. (Exciting, I know.) The motion exceeded expectations, discussing CIA conclusions that Sussmann was providing implausible data to federal authorities, providing CIA notes regarding their meeting with Sussmann, and confirmation that they essentially spied on President-Elect Trump. The motion can be found here. It was filed as part of the government’s efforts to convince the court that the evidence it seeks to admit in Sussmann’s trial...

The "Tech Executive-1" in John Durham's indictment of a Democratic cybersecurity lawyer testified in a lawsuit that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when asked to testify by the special counsel. Rodney Joffe, former senior vice president at Neustar, coordinated in 2016 with Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Hillary Clinton's campaign and Joffe, from the FBI in September 2016 when he pushed debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank. Alfa Bank filed a "John Doe" lawsuit and deposed Joffe in...

(CNN)Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was criticized by two Republican senators on Tuesday at a confirmation hearing over language they claimed she had used in the past while challenging the indefinite detention of clients who were being held without charges at the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

As Durbin resumed the hearing, Graham got up and walked out of the room, taking a bottle of soda with him.

A board reviewing the status of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has decided against releasing a Saudi who U.S. authorities believe narrowly avoided becoming one of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Lawyers for prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani asked the Periodic Review Board last month to send the prisoner to a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia for treatment of severe mental illness. The board, made up of representatives of six government agencies, turned down the request in a statement released Wednesday. …

Ketanji Brown Jackson's defense of Gitmo detainees and criticism of U.S. government likely to be spotlighted in confirmation process. 0:00 / 0:00 By Aaron Kliegman Updated: February 25, 2022 - 11:37pm Article Dig In President Biden's nominee for the Supreme Court represented suspected terrorists when she was a federal public defender, going well beyond a bare-bones defense to lambaste the U.S. government for some if its counterterrorism policies and broader approach to the War on Terror. Biden on Friday nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, currently a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...