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Ali al-Timimi will be serving life for sedition. Specifically he was recruiting for al-Qaeda from the US. Scary enough, but read the whole article. It appears al-Qaeda had infiltrated US biodefense and has supporters/agents with access to the Ames strain of anthrax and the know how to make dried concentrated forms of the spores.Via Bloggernews.net:A colleague of famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, a prolific Ames strain researcher, has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life in prison. He worked in a program co-sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection and had access to...

Salafists who caused outrage by mounting patrols in western Germany as "Shariah Police" have ditched their vests and changed their name, but pledged to continue to take action. It comes as political leaders were accused of creating a "safe zone" for Islamists. North Rhine-Westphalia has become the national front runner in imports and exports of holy warriors,” Christian Democratic Union (CDU) state parliament member and interior policy spokesman Theo Kruse said on Friday. Kruse argued that the state had become a “national space of peace and recovery for Salafists" and a "safe zone" for Islamists. ... Salafism is the fastest-growing...

A banner showing al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and former emir Osama bin Laden is placed outside the French Embassy in Cairo, Egypt during a protest organized by Mohammed al Zawahiri. Image from Euronews. Within the past few days, Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, has threatened France and the West while condemning the intervention in Mali. The younger Zawahiri promised that if France and its allies continue to fight in Mali, then Westerners will be the "first to burn." During an interview broadcast by Euronews on Jan. 22, Mohammed al...

A jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda has threatened to carry out terrorist attacks in Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain that is home to the largest concentration of radical Islamists in Europe. The threats were issued by a group called "Africamuslima" in response to efforts by Catalonian lawmakers to increase surveillance of radical Salafists seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law in Spain and other parts of Europe. Catalonia -- a region of 7.5 million people centered on the Mediterranean city of Barcelona -- is home to the largest Muslim population in Spain. Most of the estimated 450,000 Muslims...

TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Two car bombs outside mosques in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli following Friday prayers killed at least 42 people and wounded more than 400, security sources said, as the country’s caretaker defense minister warned of a ‘terrorist scheme’ aimed at further violence. The two afternoon blasts, one outside the Taqwa Mosque that was soon followed by another outside the Salam Mosque as hundreds of worshipers finished Friday prayers, highlighted the deteriorating security situation in Tripoli, the scene of repeated bouts of clashes linked to the war in Syria. The violence in Tripoli comes only eight days after...

A senior U.S. diplomat on Monday urged Egypt’s military and new interim leadership to ensure an “inclusive” transition to democracy, dismissing accusations that Washington backs any one side in the deeply polarized country. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns was making highest level visit to Egypt by an American official since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was overthrown by the military on July 3 following days of mass protests. Morsi’s opponents have long accused the United States of backing the Islamist president during his year in office. Tamarod, the main activist group that organized the protests against Morsi, said it refused...

The constitutional declaration shows the strong leverage the Salafist Al-Nour party has on the transitional process, already blocking two prime minister nominations. One of the main objections to the 2012 Constitution by the liberal opposition was to the Salafist-written Article 219, which elaborated on the “principles of Islamic Sharia” stated in the famous Article 2 rather than keeping the text open-ended and more flexible. The controversial Article 219 actually remains. In fact, the previous articles 1 (which mainly spoke of democracy, identity and citizenship), 2 and 219 have been merged into a unique, new, Article 1. The new article reads:The...

The Salafis have come a long way in Egypt. From an underground and frequently persecuted movement, whose members gathered in mosques under the radar in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, to being key players in the formation of an interim government after Mohammed Morsi’s removal from power. The Muslim Brotherhood may have been in power for the past year, but the biggest political rise after the January 2011 revolution was that of the ultra-conservative Salafis—who adopt a very strict interpretation of Islam and call for Sharia law. …

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri commented on the current events in Egypt in a video released online, in which he criticised Islamists for losing power and not uniting to implement Sharia. “The battle isn’t over, it has just started…the Islamic nation should offer victims and sacrifices to achieve what it wants and restore power from the corrupt authority governing Egypt,” Al-Zawahiri said. He said that the struggle in Egypt was clear, claiming that secular groups united with the church and empowered by “Mubarak’s armed forces” supported by the West waged a battle against Islamist forces in Egypt that strove to implement...

In a further sign that Syria’s civil war is increasingly becoming a theater of battle between Shi’ite and Sunni extremists – under the respective flags of Hezbollah and al-Qaeda – a group of Sunni radicals in Egypt is citing the Syrian situation in its appeal to Sunnis everywhere to support a jihad against Shi’ites. Twenty Egyptian Salafists including Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Sunnis to target Hezbollah and others involved in the fighting in the Syrian town of al-Qusair (al-Qusayr)... thousands of Shi’ite fighters from Hezbollah, Iran and Iraq have been involved in the fighting...

Despite President Obama’s assertion on Thursday that he reserves “the options of taking additional steps, both diplomatic and military,” foreign intervention in Syria seems a distant prospect, and that, along with a string of military successes, has fueled the perception that president Bashar al-Assad now has the upper hand in his country’s bloody civil war. As Republican Sen. John McCain bluntly put it this week: "Right now, Bashar al-Assad is winning."

Anjem Choudary and his fellow protestors can be seen fighting with what was reported as other Muslim groups on London's Edgware Road. ... Protestors marched with hard-line Salafist placards and flags, many of which read, "Support Jund Al Sham". ... The protestors were marching in opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who they are known to deplore for his Alawite religion. Protestors also took up the cause against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah, who they deem as "Shia Enemies of Allah" for their Shi'ite Muslim backgrounds. The protestors are thought to be hard-line Salafists, who have...

The Palestinian movement Hamas which rules Gaza has arrested two Islamists in connection with rocket attacks on Israel, sources close to a Salafist group said Thursday... The source said it was part of a "campaign to pursue Salafists after the targeting of Israel with rockets." A Gaza-based Salafist group claimed firing rockets at Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday that landed in open fields, causing no damage or casualties. In response, Israel carried out two air strikes, also without causing harm. The Mujahedeen Shura Council said the rocket attacks were a response to the death of a Palestinian who died of...

Islamist extremist in Germany are under scrutiny once again after raids on members of Salafist groups coincided on Wednesday with the foiling of a suspected murder plot by individuals linked to the movement. One senior politician wants to make it easier to deport radicals. Following police raids of Salafist groups on Wednesday in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia, in addition to the foiling of an apparent Salafist plot to attack senior members of the regional, right-wing populist party Pro-NRW, German conservatives are demanding further action against the Islamist extremists. ... The call came a day after police arrested four...

Islamist movements and Salafi parties plan to organize a demonstration in Tahrir Square on 15 March to protest what they see as normalization in relations with Iran and Shia Muslims, and to pressure the president and Muslim Brotherhood to stop exchanging visits with Iran. The Salafi Nour and Asala parties, the Jama’a al-Islamiya’s Construction and Development Party and the Muslim Rebels, Sahaba and Omatuna movements, as well as the Hazemoun — a group supporting former presidential hopeful and Salafi Sheikh Hazem Salah Abu Ismail — plan to participate. “We will escalate the matter if the Brotherhood keeps signing agreements with...

Libyan Islamists detained 48 Egyptian Christians in Benghazi last week, torturing them and using acid to burn off tattoos of the cross, according to family members. The Christians, who are peddlers, were arrested by Islamist Salafists in Benghazi, who said they had Christian icons at their marketplace stalls ... Benghazi residents have expressed outrage at the hardcore Salafists, who are believed to have been behind the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Repression of Christians living in Libya is on the rise ... Kamel’s uncle, Khalaf Naguib Salib, said the Copts...

Salafist Muslims tried to prevent the filming of current Internet craze the "Harlem Shake" at a Tunis school on Wednesday, but were driven off after coming to blows with students, a correspondent said. When the dozen or so ultra-conservative Muslims, some of them women in veils, showed up at the Bourguiba Language Institute in the El Khadra neighbourhood, a Salafist bastion, students shouted "Get out, get out!" One of the Salafists, wearing military gear and carrying a Molotov cocktail he never used, shouted "Our brothers in Palestine are being killed by Israelis, and you are dancing." The Islamists eventually withdrew,...

New light is being shed on the 2001 anthrax attacks in a fascinating open letter to Ayman al Zawahiri of al Qaeda, written by a jihadi living in London. Numan Bin Uthman, a former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, provides yet more evidence that the global Islamic jihad movement is losing its resolve.  But the letter contains a startling admission. Uthman tells us of a conversation he had with al Qaeda leaders before the 9/11 attacks in which he urged them not to use WMD. From AKI News: Uthman also said that he had taken part in...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid was buried as a martyr for freedom and democracy in a country that is threatened with the loss of both, as an uprising against the ruling Islamist party gained momentum. Mr. Belaid’s assassination triggered a ferocious backlash against the main Islamist party, Ennahda, one that continued during the funeral Friday, attended by as many as 100,000 people. The midafternoon funeral on Friday was a largely peaceful event marred by bouts of violence – and brief periods of panic – as crowds tried to outrun billowing clouds of tear gas aimed at demonstrators and looters on...