Free Republic

Counterterrorism efforts got a major boost last week when a U.S. district court found three Muslim organizations and one individual, mostly based in the Chicago area, guilty of funding Hamas and fined them an astonishing $156 million. The four were found liable for their roles in the murder of an American teenager, David Boim, on May 13, 1996, when he was shot by Hamas operatives as he waited for a bus near Jerusalem. This case is important in itself, providing some measure of justice and relief for the Boim family. Beyond that, it helps fight terrorism in four ways. First,...

AUGSBURG, Germany (Reuters) - Almost 300 German police raided 32 premises in a renewed crackdown on suspected members of a banned Islamist group, authorities said on Friday. Police in the southern city of Augsburg said officers had searched the homes and prayer areas of suspected members of the Cologne-based group known as the Kalifatstaat (Caliphate State) in several German states. "We found indications that the group continues to exist," said Klaus Bayerl, a spokesman for Augsburg police. Police said they had not made any arrests, but that 24 persons, predominantly of Turkish origin, were under investigation on suspicion of having...

Algerian sources report that the seventeen hostages freed in Algeria were in the hands of Muslim extremists. The kidnappers are said to belong to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a banned Islamist organisation suspected of having links with al-Qaeda. The freed tourists are all ten Austrians, six Germans and one Swede. There is great concern about the fate of the fifteen hostages still missing. The German government regards their situation as precarious. It is not clear how the hostages were freed. The Algerian army is said to have killed nine hostage-takers in the southern region of Tamanrasset....

An Islamist group warned the Lebanese army on Monday it would pay dearly for the arrest of a suspected Muslim militant. In a statement, quoted by Reuters, the group, Jamaat an-Nour, also stated it was responsible for planting a bomb at a mosque frequented by a cleric who helped in the arrest. The army defused a bomb on Saturday at a mosque in Sidon, where Muslim clerics last week handed over Badie Hamadeh, a Lebanese man charged with killing three security officers before taking refuge in a Palestinian refugee camp. In its statement, Jamaat an-Nour alluded to the bomb incident...