Free Republic

Migrants arriving in Germany from North Africa are disproportionately likely to commit crime, police figures show - but deporting them isn't always straightforward. After the mass sexual attacks in Cologne and other cities which eyewitnesses and police have said were carried out by men of "north African appearance" migrants from the Maghreb region have come under the spotlight. Currently, 13 of the 19 people police are currently investigating in relation to the Cologne attacks come from the Maghreb - an area encompassing Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. [...] But capturing criminals who arrive in the country as asylum seekers is...

Kuwait City, 5 Feb. (AKI) - The US air raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Layth al-Libi in Pakistan is reported to have also killed three other leaders from the terrorist network. According to the Kuwaiti daily, al-Watan, two Kuwaitis and a Libyan also died in the missile attack conducted by a Predator aircraft on January 25 in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan on the border of Afghanistan. The daily said the attack was aimed at what was believed to have been an al-Qaeda summit meeting. Abu Obeida Tawari al-Obeidi and Abu Adel al-Kuwaiti were reportedly there with al-Libi.Abu Adel...

Two years ago today, SEAL Team Six sent Osama bin Laden on his way to Davy Jones’ Locker — but his Islamist terror machine is anything but sinking to the depths. It remains a vicious, global threat. Since Osama’s demise, the terror group’s strength has ebbed in some areas, but flowed strongly in others. Indeed, one current estimate concludes that al Qaeda affiliates and associates (i.e., groups, cells or operatives) are active in more than 30 countries (of some 190) on four continents. Including our continent. While we don’t yet know the whole story behind the Boston bombing, just last...

In the wake of the Arab Spring, a number of Maghreb young people have decided to continue their struggle by taking up arms and joining jihadists in Syria. The young Maghreb militants have linked up with Syrian opposition groups seeking to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb fighters are reportedly among the latest arrivals to the Syria battle. "Young people from different Maghreb countries are fighting alongside these organised groups in Syria," confirmed Lies Boukraa, who heads the Algiers-based African Centre for Studies and Research on Terrorism (CAERT). "Those young...

Islamofascism: The terrorist attack on a vast Algerian gas plant Wednesday shows a resurgent al-Qaida that puts the lie to the Obama administration's claim that the war on terror is all but over. It may in fact be just beginning. Everything about the al-Qaida "Blood Brigade" attack on the Al Amenas natural gas plant 800 miles east of Algiers — where hundreds of workers, including Americans, were taken hostage in a bloody standoff — suggests an organization growing in strength with a bigger game than just retaliating for the French invasion of Mali. You'd never know that from our silent...

<p>The battle to retake Mali's north from the al-Qaida-linked groups controlling it began in earnest Saturday, after hundreds of French forces deployed to the country and began aerial bombardments to drive back the Islamic extremists from a town seized earlier this week.</p>

SNIPPET: "They are believed to have supported "terrorist groups that operate in the Algerian area of the Maghreb, specifically al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM), a Spanish ministry statement claimed. The group, aged 36 to 49, is also suspected of linking up with Islamist support groups in Italy, France, and Switzerland."

'Al-Qaeda snatched missiles' in Libya From correspondents in Paris From: AFP March 26, 2011 1:03PM AL-QAEDA'S offshoot in North Africa has snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there, Chad's President says. Idriss Deby Itno did not say how many surface-to-air missiles were stolen, but told the African weekly Jeune Afrique that he was "100 per cent sure" of his assertion. "The Islamists of al-Qaeda took advantage of the pillaging of arsenals in the rebel zone to acquire arms, including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries in Tenere," a desert region of...

PARIS (AP) - France has declared war on al-Qaida, and matched its fighting words with a first attack on a base camp of the terror network's North African branch, after the terror network killed a French aid worker it took hostage in April. The declaration and attack marked a shift in strategy for France, usually discrete about its behind-the-scenes battle against terrorism. "We are at war with al-Qaida," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau. The humanitarian worker had been abducted April 20 or 22 in Niger...

al Zahiri sounds a good bit like Hitler here. It plays well with his audience. "Al-Qaeda: Al-Zawahiri calls to 'disinfect the Maghreb of Spanish and French nationals"

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed narcotics and terrorism charges on Friday against three West Africans they identified as associates of Al Qaeda and a related terrorist group. While the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has long maintained that Al Qaeda has been involved in drug trafficking, officials at the agency said the case represented the first time such charges had been brought against people linked with the group. The three men — identified as Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman — were arrested on Wednesday in Ghana and flown to the United States on Thursday night, law enforcement officials...

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed narcotics and terrorism charges on Friday against three West Africans they identified as associates of Al Qaeda and a related terrorist group. While the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has long maintained that Al Qaeda has been involved in drug trafficking, officials at the agency said the case represented the first time such charges had been brought against people linked with the group. The three men — identified as Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman — were arrested on Wednesday in Ghana and flown to the United States on Thursday night, law enforcement officials...

Note: This older thread and related links are posted here for archival purposes. Fyi. # TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2009 SNIPPET: "After dismantling the 'Afghan channels' whose goal was to send candidates to Jihad in Afghanistan, the anti-terrorism unit heard of a suspect who was contacted via the internet by a senior leader in ASIM and asked to commit a suicide-attack in France. The man refused, but an investigation revealed that other people received this proposition. Though al-Qaeda is growing weaker in the Maghreb, the security services are taking this matter very seriously. However, they do not know whether there are...

Al Qaeda terrorists have been left fearing the Black Death plague after it wiped out at least 40 insurgents at an Algerian training camp, it was reported today. The horror disease, which killed 25 million people in medieval Europe, is understood to have been found in a militant’s body dumped at a roadside. Terror group AQLIM (al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb) was forced to turn its shelter in the Yakouren forests into mass graves and flee, it has been claimed. Now al Qaeda chiefs are said to fear the plague has been passed into other cells...

.."surrendered after disagreements with other leaders in the organization."

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...

CAIRO (AFP) - A Japanese archeological team has discovered three painted wooden coffins in Egypt, including two from the little-known Middle Kingdom period dating back more than 4,000 years. The sarcophagi were found in tomb shafts in the vast Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said on Saturday. "It is significant because of the discovery of two sarcophagi from the Middle Kingdom," said Japanese team leader Sakuji Yoshimori. The Saqqara burial grounds which date back to 2,700 BC and are dominated by the massive bulk of King Zoser's step pyramid --...

Abdulwahab heard of a plan to put Jewish women in a brothel Israel's main Holocaust memorial centre has for the first time nominated an Arab to be recognised as a "righteous gentile" for saving Jewish lives.Researchers at Yad Vashem will now examine the life of Khaled Abdulwahab, who died in his native Tunisia in 1997, to see if he is eligible for the award. He is said to have sheltered Jews on his land during the Nazi occupation. The Righteous Gentile award has already been bestowed on about 22,000 non-Jews, including 60 Muslims from the Balkans. The request to...

Asharq Al-Awsat, Rabat - Investigations carried out by the Moroccan security services after the arrest of a terrorist cell that was made up of 17 members have uncovered the cell's terrorist plans. These plans included restructuring the Al-Qaeda organization in Saudi Arabia following the Saudi security forces' success in finding and arresting a number of its activists. The cell also planned to have the extremist Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) rejoin Osama Bin Ladin's organization and set up an Al-Qaeda branch in the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) as a base for attacks to be launched on...

According to an AP story at the French Yahoo website, Pope Benedict has been making fatally naïve, classically deluded, liberal-style comments about the meaning and “message” of the Muslim riots in France, namely that the riots express a “dissastisfaction” with society that society must do something about. Why can’t the Pope understand that the riots are not an expression of dissatisfaction with France, but an expression of emnity toward France, not a plea for better “integration” in France, but a scream in the face that no integration is possible? And when will Christians understand that unless the Church stands with...