Free Republic

In the 1980s, it was Afghanistan to which international Islamic fighters came, helping the mujahedeen successfully take on the Soviet army and its puppet regime in Kabul. Then came Bosnia in the 1990s and Iraq in the 2000s, in both of which veteran jihadists fought a sectarian war on behalf of outgunned Sunni minorities.In 2012, they’re flocking to Syria With funding from private organizations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, they are making their way across the frontiers from Iraq and Jordan, hooking up with opposition elements in Syria and taking the battle to Damascus and the heart of the...

SNIPPET: "In July, the British government warned that Al Qaeda’s exploitation of social networking websites is on the rise." SNIPPET: "The massive and multifarious network of websites and social media has presented a challenge to authorities in trying to combat it. Additionally, civil liberty concerns have conflicted with government efforts to spy on communications. Reducing terrorist activity on social media sites has been particularly difficult because users have adopted new forms of communication to conform with the new formats. Many Arabic speakers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other sites use Arabizi, a form of colloquial Arabic written in the Latin...

A Dominican with an anti-American grudge has been busted for building a bomb in his upper Manhattan apartment to blow up a police station, sources said Sunday night. -snip- The suspect was identified through one of the al-Awlaki web sites, where he posted anti-American comments, the source said.

Former detainee at Guantánamo Bay has taken a leading role in the military opposition to Col Muammar Gaddafi, it has emerged, alongside at least one other former Afghan Mujahideen fighter. Rebel recruits in the eastern port city of Derna are being trained by Sufyan Bin Qumu, a Libyan who was arrested following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and held at Guantánamo for six years. Port city of Derna, Libya Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi, a senior Libyan rebel commander in Derna, was also held following the invasion of Afghanistan and handed over to Libyan custody two months later. Both men...

DARNA, Libya—Two former Afghan Mujahedeen and a six-year detainee at Guantanamo Bay have stepped to the fore of this city's military campaign, training new recruits for the front and to protect the city from infiltrators loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi... Abdel Hakim al-Hasady, an influential Islamic preacher and high-school teacher who spent five years at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan, oversees the recruitment, training and deployment of about 300 rebel fighters from Darna... Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden's holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan,...

Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, it will be reported on Tuesday (in the NY TIMES)... MORE... A senior U.S. intelligence official denied the warning was received...

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the overall commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, is moving to sharply increase Afghan police forces drawn from villages in southern provinces, and is employing the help of former mujahedeen commanders to recruit them, NATO officials said. [snip] NATO commanders hope that they can be used to help raise as many as 30,000 local police officers within six months, providing a critical element to help the government and coalition forces hold on to areas newly cleared of Taliban insurgents, the officials said. Though some NATO commanders remain cautious about using the mujahedeen, others say the village-based...

TEHRAN/BAGHDAD - On Tuesday, Iraqi soldiers and riot police stormed Camp Ashraf, where Mojahedin Khalq Organization members had been based, triggering violent clashes that left at least 260 people injured. Iraqi officials say clashes broke out as they were trying to establish a police post in the camp. “After the failure of negotiations with the Mojahedin (Khalq) to enter peacefully, the Iraqi army entered Camp Ashraf with force and it now controls the interior and all entrances to the camp,” an Iraqi military source said. An Iraqi army spokesman in Diyala said two battalions of 400 soldiers each plus 200...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A man accused of joining al-Qaida in the early 1990s and helping teach fellow Muslim extremists how to bomb U.S. and European targets pleaded guilty Tuesday to planning terrorist attacks. Christopher Paul, 44, pleaded guilty to a count that carries a maximum life prison sentence, but entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors that calls for a 20-year term. U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost accepted the plea but said he would not give final approval to the deal until he sees the government's pre-sentence report, which is not expected for several months. No sentencing date...

YouTube Videos Are Produced by Al Qaeda and Other Terror Organizations; Videos Show Attacks on U.S. Soldiers, Civilians WASHINGTON – Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Monday called on Google to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The videos – readily available on YouTube –show assassinations, deaths of U.S. soldiers and civilians, weapons training, incendiary speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and other material intended to encourage violence against the West. The videos are branded with Al-Qaeda logos – a practice detailed in a recent bipartisan Committee staff report entitled “Violent Islamist Extremism,...

War On Terror: Caving to Muslim pressure groups, the Bush administration has banned the term "jihadist" to define the enemy. Islamic terrorists will now be known as "violent extremists." Our war on radical Islam has been hamstrung by political correctness from the start. First, we couldn't call the campaign to strike back at al-Qaida a "crusade" because Muslims found it historically offensive. Then we couldn't define the enemy as "Islamic terrorists" because it insulted Islam — even though it accurately described the Muslims committing murder and mayhem in the name of Islam. To appease critics, we narrowed the terminology, confining...

LONDON - A British court ordered an Iranian opposition group removed from the government's list of terrorist organizations Friday, potentially giving one of the Iranian government's fiercest foes more freedom to organize and raise money in Britain. The People's Mujahedeen of Iran is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and European Union and experts say it has trained operatives devoted to toppling the Iranian regime. The group's British backers say it no longer engages in any kind of armed struggle and that Friday's court decision in London could help bring the organization back in from the cold. Hundreds...

By Renate Flottau in Sarajevo, Bosnia The Dayton Peace Accords called for the removal of foreign combatants from Bosnia after the Balkans war. But hundreds of mujahedeen fighters stayed, and today they are successfully spreading their fundamentalist Islamist views. AP A mosque in Sarajevo: Bosnia has seen a surge in its Muslim population of al-Qaida sympathizers. Thick iron bars block the entrance to Abu Hamza's store in Sarajevo's Islamic shopping center. Affixed to the bars is a handwritten note: "My Bosnian citizenship has been revoked. I have to defend myself, and for this reason my store is only open sporadically."...

Bijeljina/Beograd (Belgrade) - A Bosnian TV station has broadcast part of an alleged new video apparently showing gruesome crimes perpetrated againt Bosnian Serbs by a unit of Muslim fighters during Bosnia's 1992-1995 civil war. The footage, broadcast by BN TV apparently shows the 'El Mujahadid' unit "sharpening axes" which they later allegedly used to behead a Bosnian Serb soldier. The video also reportedly shows footage of the mujahadeen in playing football using a decapitated head instead of a ball, Serbian news agency Tanjug reported. It contains chilling scenes showing mutilated corpses and mujahadeen tying up and abusing prisoners of war....

Most brutal dictator of our time SADDAM w/ Quran, devout Muslim (just like Idi Amin) The media like to paint him as "secular". Well, let's just check some facts, Shall we? Saddam holds a Quran all the time during his trial (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9652810/ Saddam — holding a copy of the Quran he brought with him into the session and held throughout — replied quietly, “I said what I said. I am not guilty,” referring to his arguments earlier in the session). 1990 Interview on ABC's Diana Sawyer he so (ironicolly) says "The biggest sin a man can make is to forget...

<p>Fox News reporting a new video is out. It shows two dead american soldiers burned and being dragged through the streets.</p> <p>There is a belief that they are the bodies of troopers Tucker and Menchaca.</p>

It's now open & 'official', Islamists call Christians 'animals' ISLAMOFASCISM! http://www.dailybulletin.com/ci_3959579 2 US soldiers bodies found mutilated and tortured http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/20/soldiers.missing/index.html [Islamic website connected to Al Qaeda said:] "We announce the good news to our Islamic nation that we executed God's will and slaughtered the two crusader animals we had in captivity," said the claim, reportedly from the Mujahedeen Shura Council, a group linked to al Qaeda.

AUVERS-SUR-OISE, France, June 16 (UPI) -- The Paris Courts of Appeals revoked all restrictions Friday on members of the Iranian resistance group, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, who were detained on June 17, 2003. The announcement was made by Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, on the third anniversary of the restrictions. "Today's ruling is one to be jubilant about. Yet, it is also very painful because for three years these unjustified restrictions disrupted our legitimate and legal activities to expose the clerical regime's atrocities," said Rajavi. The leader of the NCRI stated that "the court has concurred that...

Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? Let's face it. He shouldn't be hard to find, especially from a Predator, an aerial reconnaissance vehicle that can read the minute hand of a wristwatch from an altitude of 26,000 feet. Bin Laden is very tall – slightly over 6'6" – and incredibly thin, less than 150 pounds. He wears shalwart kameez – the loose-fitting tunics and baggy pants of al-Qaida and Taliban soldiers – and, when the weather is cold, he dons a camouflage jacket. Although he was born in 1957 and far from retirement age, the al-Qaida chieftain appears...