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Police in Spain arrested a French-Algerian man suspected of fighting for Al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria, the Spanish interior ministry said on Wednesday. Spanish officers with the help of French police seized Abdelmalek Tanem, 24, in the southern city of Almeria on Wednesday afternoon, the ministry said in a statement. They said he was thought to have carried out "terrorist activities" in Syria with two jihadist factions: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and the Al-Nusra Front. He is suspected of serving as a "combatant" as well as a "facilitator" on the Syria-Turkey border helping other Europeans travel...

Eleven Al Qaeda-linked terrorists were arrested in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, according to the Daily Mail, in connection to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March. The eleven, whose ages range from 22 to 55 and include students, business professionals, odd-job workers and even a young widow, are being questioned intensively over the flight after an investigation by several intelligence organizations. Despite repeated denials that the flight's disappearance was a terror attack, Malaysian officials finally admitted after the arrests that the new development raises the possibility of Al Qaeda's involvement. "The possibility that the plane was diverted by...

Sarah Palin would like all terrorists to know that if she were in charge, waterboarding is how the United States would baptize them. At least that's what the former Alaskan governor and ex-vice presidential nominee told thousands of attendees this weekend at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Indianapolis. "If I were in charge," Palin said Saturday during a Stand And Fight rally at Lucas Oil Stadium, "[our enemies] would know that waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists." Palin mocked what she called the Obama administration's coddling of suspected terrorists

Shin Bet officials announced on Wednesday that they have arrested three Palestinians, two of them East Jerusalem residents with Israeli identification cards, for alleged involvement in an Al-Qaida plan to carry out terror attacks in Israel. The group had planned two simultaneous suicide attacks, the Shin Bet said, one at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem and the other at the United States embassy in Tel Aviv. The three men were arrested on December 25, a gag order on the case lifted Wednesday revealed. A high-ranking Shin Bet official told reporters in Tel Aviv that a member of one of...

MOSCOW - Police have killed a senior Islamist militant in Russia's North Caucasus ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, where security forces searched on Tuesday for a woman they fear is planning an attack during the Games. Eldar Magatov, a suspect in attacks on Russian targets and alleged leader of an insurgent group in the Babyurt district of Dagestan, died in a shootout, the National Anti-Terror Committee said on Tuesday.

BRUSSELS — The United States and Russia have opened discussions about using sophisticated American electronic equipment, developed by the Pentagon to counter improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq, in a new effort to help secure the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi next month. The potential for a technological exchange was part of an extensive discussion here Tuesday when Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held his first face-to-face meeting with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff. The Defense Department would be willing to provide equipment designed to detect...

We use Facebook for many things, some of us use it for posting pictures of our food, others for posting the infamous “selfie”, and some of us to vent our frustrations with thegovernment and politics as a whole. No matter the reason you use Facebook, you expect to be able to post just about anything you want(aside from death threats to the President) without being hassled since our right to free speech is protected. Well that’s not the experience Blaine Cooper from Humboldt, AZ had. The 34 year old posted a rant on Facebook showing his frustration with the country and within...

Comment is free I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on Few of the politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue how it actually works (and doesn't) Share 51006 117 inShare158 Email Anonymous woman on grey Heather Linebaugh theguardian.com, Sunday 29 December 2013 07.30 EST Jump to comments (2811) Hermes 450 drone An Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drone. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a...

Lebanese security forces have captured Majid bin Muhammad al Majid, a Saudi jihadist who leads the al Qaeda-associated Abdullah Azzam Brigades, according to reports. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades has stepped up attacks against Hezbollah for its involvement in the Syrian civil war. Majid was reportedly detained on or before Dec. 29, according to Reuters, but the circumstances of his capture were not disclosed. Lebanon's defense minister told AFP that Majid is in custody and is being interrogated. US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal said that Majid is in Lebanese custody and was detained in early December. The...

Vladimir Putin has vowed to pursue terrorists to “total annihilation”, in his first public comments since the Volgograd suicide bombings. In his traditional New Year's Eve address, which was broadcast at midnight from the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, (5pm in Moscow), he praised Russia’s unity in the face of both terrorism and natural disasters and promised to continue an unrelenting fight against the bombers. “In the past year we have faced problems and serious challenges including the inhuman terror attacks in Volgograd and unprecedented disasters in the Far East,” he said. “Dear friends, we bow our heads in memory...

A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks. “It was, ‘Huh, hello? What are we doing here?’” said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, in an interview with NBC News. “The results were very thin.” While Stone said the mass collection of telephone call records was a “logical program” from the NSA’s perspective, one question the White House panel was seeking to answer was whether it had actually stopped...

Judicial Watch has obtained a full transcript of a teleconference between then White House top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and members of the media. Brennan is now the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. During the May 7, 2012 conference call, Brennan twice told TV terrorism consultants that US intelligence had “inside control” of a May 2012 terror plot. Brennan’s disclosure made headlines quickly, with Reuters reporting a few days later: The next day’s headlines were filled with news of a U.S. spy planted inside Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who had acquired the latest, non-metallic model

The University of the Incarnate Word is a highly-rated Catholic college in San Antonio, Texas. It is hardly a hot bed of campus violence. When senior Robert Cameron Redus was pulled-over last Friday by campus police for “erratically speeding,” it is unlikely he had any clue of how tragically the stop would end. The campus police department contends Redus, an honors student set to graduate in May, grabbed the officer’s steel baton during a struggle. Not in dispute, however, is that Redus was shot five times by the officer, at close range, leaving him dead and the University scrambling to...

The team of less than two dozen Navy SEALs from Seal Team 6 huddled in one fast boat and headed toward the Somali shoreline under the cover of darkness in the early hours of Saturday morning. Three more small boats with additional SEALs flanked the assault team’s craft, to provide back-up and assist with the planned extraction of an al Shabaab warlord named Ikrima. According to multiple U.S. military sources, the lead boat landed, and the assault team hit the beach near the Southern Somali town of Barawe, headed for the fortified seaside compound of their target. U.S. intelligence had...

(CNN) -- U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six pulled out during a raid to capture suspected Al-Shabaab leader Ikrima when it became clear that he couldn't be taken alive, a senior U.S. official told CNN. "Their mission was to capture him. Once it became clear we were not going to able to take him, the Navy commander made the decision to withdraw," said the official, who has direct knowledge of the entire Somalia operation but declined to be identified publicly.

Past US strikes on Al Shabab leaders, even successful ones, have not diminished the group.A commando unit from the US Navy’s Seal Team Six launched an amphibious raid on a Somali town, but failed to confirm a capture or kill of their Al Shabab target, suspected to be linked to Nairobi’s Westgate mall terror attack. The operation could have opposite its intended result of discouraging further attacks. Analysts warn that even earlier successful targeted strikes against Al Shabab, a Somalia-based Islamist militant group, failed to curb the group's capacity to carry out international terror attacks, and that failed missions could...

In his article “Gulf between perception and reality of Muslims” (Oct.3), Aijaz Zaka Syed has once again echoed the feelings of all Muslims around the globe who feel bad about the way the entire community is being blamed for the wrongdoings of a few, who in the name of Islam are wreaking havoc around the world and giving a bad name to Islam and Muslims at large. It is sad to hear and read reports about killings and violence perpetrated by deviant groups who claim to be waging a “holy war.” The writer has rightly stressed that the word Islam...

Spies & Secrets: 4 True Stories From Tom Clancy's Novels Sometimes truth may be stranger than fiction, but for best-selling author Tom Clancy, the two are often more closely paralleled. Clancy died Tuesday (Oct. 1) at the age of 66, but his thrilling, espionage and military-inspired novels helped him become one of the most well-known American authors. From a dramatic Soviet-era defection to a high-profile assassination plot, here are four true stories from Clancy's novels. • The Hunt for Red October Clancy's first novel, "The Hunt for Red October," was published in 1984. The book introduced Clancy's most famous fictional...

The Department of Homeland Security is urging shopping malls in the United States to increase security in the aftermath of the carnage wrought by al Qaeda’s Somalia affiliate over the weekend in Nairobi. Malachy Kavanagh, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, told The Daily Beast on Monday that the department contacted shopping malls Sunday to check on the precautions they were taking against mass shooters. U.S. intelligence officials say there is no specific threat information suggesting that al Qaeda is planning a similar kind of mass shooting in American shopping malls. Nonetheless, security experts worry about copycats....

“You have one metric, and that is preventing all attacks. . . . If there’s one attack, you are unsuccessful,” he said. By that measure, the FBI’s record has been stained in recent years by April’s Boston Marathon bombing and by the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., in 2009. Asked what he would consider to be his least-proud moment, Mueller cited those two atrocities. “I hate to lose people, and I would say you feel most pain from what happened in some place like Fort Hood or what happened up in Boston,” he said.