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Man on Flight to Detroit Claims al Qaeda Ties; Obama Tightens Security WASHINGTON -- U.S. prosecutors charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with attempting to carry out a Christmas Day terrorist bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight on its approach to Detroit. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was charged in a federal criminal complaint with placing a destructive device on Flight 253. Federal Bureau of Investigation analysts, in preliminary tests, determined the device contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a highly explosive compound, the Justice Department said. In addition, FBI agents recovered what appear to be the remnants of the syringe from the...

In the uproar caused by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.'s announcement that the alleged planners of the 9/11 attacks are to be tried in U.S. District Court in New York City, and the suspects in the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole will go on trial before military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the public discourse has lost sight of the fundamental principles that guide the government when it makes such decisions. Unfortunately, the government has lost sight of the principles as well. When President George W. Bush spoke to Congress shortly after 9/11, he did not ask for...

Pittsburgh was treated to an impressive show the week of the recent G20 conference. A nice assortment of military choppers of various types and missions, along with odder aircraft difficult both to identify and explain. Both police and the National Guard were out in force, with downtown nearly sealed off. None of this hardware was used against the "3,000 - 4,000" (more like a few hundred) anarchist demonstrators when they turned their righteous wrath on a dozen Starbucks and a Whole Foods store. No serious confrontation was expected and none occurred. Because all of it - the Guard troops, the...

Airplane shoe bomber Richard C. Reid no longer faces severe limits on his prison activities or communications after the Obama administration quietly ended years of hard-nosed curbs against the British-born al-Qaeda terrorist. This summer the Justice Department halted six years of measures that kept Reid from associating or praying with fellow jailed Muslim terrorists, and limited his access to the news media and pen pals.

Richard Reid, the man who tried to blow up American Airlines flight 93 is housed in the Supermax prison in Colorado. Until this month, he had been subject to security restrictions which prevented his communication with other Al Qaeda members, where ever they are. Not anymore. The Holder Justice Department has decided to relax these security measures against an unrepentant terrorist... (Read the rest at muffledoar.blogspot.com)

The Obama Justice Department has withdrawn the "special administrative measures" imposed at the federal prison in Colorado against "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid, the jihadist who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001. Special administrative measures (SAMs) are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when "there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury" to others." snip ... the list of Reid’s potential fellow congregants at ADX Florence [the supermax Colorado prison] reads like a Who’s Who of al-Qaida’s most dangerous members: Ramzi...

Better have something to bite on before you start reading the intrepid Debra Burlingame's Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning — your teeth are going to be gnashing big-time. Unbelievably, the Obama Justice Department has withdrawn the "special administrative measures" (SAMs) imposed at the federal supermax prison in Colorado against "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid (the jihadist who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with nearly 200 people on board). As Debra explains, the "SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when 'there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons...

Today, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled 'Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’: The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in,' Debra Burlingame writes: On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier [June 9, 2007 pdf file at link], the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner -- Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber” --...

Last May at the National Archives, President Barack Obama warned that “more mistakes would occur” if Congress continued to politicize terrorist detention policy and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “[I]f we refuse to deal with those issues today,” he predicted, “then I guarantee you, they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.” On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal...

From Gloucester to Afghanistan: the making of a shoe bomber Saajid Badat this week pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up a plane. What drove this quiet football fan to thoughts of terror? Mark Honigsbaum and Vikram Dodd Saturday March 5, 2005 The Guardian He seemed the model British Muslim citizen - a poster boy for integration whose knowledge of the Qu'ran and achievement at grammar school made Gloucester's close-knit Islamic community proud. When in November 2003 anti-terrorist police turned up at the terraced house in the Barton and Tredworth district of the city that Saajid Badat shared with his...

 A British-born Muslim admitted yesterday conspiring to blow up a passenger aircraft at the same time as Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, tried to bring down an American Airlines flight.Saajid Badat, 25, who trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey after being linked to an al-Qa'eda plot.   Saajid Badat Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said: "Three years of intensive and painstaking international investigation brought us to the point where Badat had no option but to plead guilty to this horrendous offence."His conviction demonstrates the reality of the threat...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - After more than five years, the Pentagon revealed why it is holding a Saudi nicknamed "the Professor" at Guantanamo Bay, saying he once lived with a Sept. 11 conspirator and received a stipend from Osama bin Laden. Shaker Aamer's lawyer denies the allegations, made after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week requested the release of the Saudi, who has been an unofficial leader among the detainees, and four other former residents of Britain. The Bush administration, which has been urging other nations to accept Guantanamo prisoners amid international pressure to close the military jail,...

The news last month that police had arrested Sajid Badat at his home in Gloucester, England, shook many Britons. The charges against him concerned his training with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and his possessing PETN explosives, the same substance would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid had tried to set off. Police believe Badat intended to carry off the very first suicide bombing in the United Kingdom. But not everyone was shaken by this news. Gloucester's Muslim community esteemed Badat too much to credit the charges. One admirer called him "a walking angel" and "the bright star of our mosque." Another described him...

(CBS/AP) Sources tell CBS News that British police have foiled a plot to blow up an airliner en route from London's Heathrow Airport to the U.S. Sajid Badat, a Pakistani Briton, was arrested in his hometown of Gloucester last week during a series of police raids across Britain. Badat, 24, was charged Wednesday with conspiring with Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," and "others unknown" to cause an explosion "likely to endanger life" between September 1, 2001 and November 28, 2003. He is also charged with two lesser offenses of "possessing explosives." Shortly after the arrest, Home Secretary David Blunkett...

British Muslim Sajid Badat has been remanded in custody after appearing at Bow Street magistrates court in London charged with conspiring with shoe bomber Richard Reid to cause a life-threatening explosion. Badat, 24, of St James Street, Gloucester, was arrested by anti-terrorist police last week in the first of a series of raids nationwide. Badat has been charged with unlawfully and maliciously conspiring with Richard Reid and others to cause an explosion, and two further charges of possessing explosive materials, Scotland Yard said. Reid, 29, who tried to blow up a transatlantic jet with explosives hidden in his footwear, began...

our America before Obama - a true American judge...BEAUTIFUL! MUST READ and Pass it on, just to remind everybody what we are loosing because of IDIOTS!!! Remember the shoe bomber? When America was "a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere"? Remember the guy who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and tried to light it? Did you know his trial is over? Did you know he was sentenced? Did you see/hear any of the judge's comments on TV or Radio? Didn't think so.!!! Everyone should hear what the judge...

Convicted British ‘shoe-bomber’ terrorist Richard Reid, who was found guilty in 2003 of trying to blow up a transatlantic commercial flight, has been refusing food for several weeks and is being force fed by authorities in a US prison. Reid is currently serving a life sentence in the notorious Supermax prison in Denver, America’s highest-security federal lockup, after he was convicted of trying to ignite two bombs in his shoes while on board a Paris-to-Miami flight on American Airlines. He was subdued by passengers before he could detonate the explosives. Reid, 35, has refused 59 meals since March at the...

We have plenty of basis and evidence that [Binyam] Mohammed is dangerous. But Holder’s sense of “responsibility ... as attorney general ... for the safety of this nation” did not stop him from agreeing to Mohammed’s release and transfer to England — where he now plots freely while on the British dole. Naturally, having discerned that all the tough talk was just that, talk, British authorities are back on the administration’s doorstep, demanding the release of Shaker Aamer. He’s a bin Laden confidant who trained aspiring terrorists at al-Qaeda camps, met with shoe-bomber Richard Reid, and traveled widely in the...

LONDON, July 31 (UPI) -- Letters from convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid from a super-max prison in the United States include lectures to his father about Islam and dreams of freedom. The Mirror, a British newspaper, reported that it had an exclusive look at Reid's letters to his father, Robin Reid, a Jamaican-born recovering drug addict living in a London homeless shelter. Reid berates his father for a letter telling him that his aunt, Madeleine, who brought Reid up while Robin Reid was in prison, had died and was "in a better place." "What you wrote about Aunt Lynn being...

A U.S. defense analyst and author says Americans should be very concerned about some radical Muslim paramilitary compounds that have sprung up around the country and that are surrounded with "No Trespassing" signs. Hear This Report Greg Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), says the compounds are often populated with former U.S. convicts who were converted to Islam in prison. These convicts, he contends, are connected to a Pakistani organization. "Islamberg in New York, Ahmedabad in Virginia, and Holy Islamville in South Carolina, and so on are places which have been formed largely by Jamaat ul-Fuqra," Copley...