Free Republic

Italian police foiled a terrorist plot to bomb London. They arrested five Morrocan men, believed to have connections with al Qaeda, near Venice... Developing...

Turkish-U.S. Couple Charged in Bomb Plot Wed Jan 15, 7:59 AM ET FRANKFURT, Germany - Prosecutors on Wednesday charged a Turkish man and his American fiancee with conspiring to attack a U.S. military base last year. Osman Petmezci, 25, and his fiancee Astrid Eyzaguirre, 23, who were arrested in early September, were charged with "plotting to carry out an explosion...at the U.S. military base in Heidelberg," city prosecutors said in a statement. Investigators found nearly a pound of gunpowder and six pipes at the couple's apartment in Walldorf, south of Heidelberg, as well as other chemicals that they believed could...

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets of the capital, Tehran, to mark Jerusalem Day and show their solidarity with the Palestinians. Vast columns of people from all walks of life converged on Tehran university, the traditional location for Friday prayers, to protest against the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem. The marchers denounced Israel and the US Marchers waved banners and effigies of Israeli and US leaders, and chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" slogans. But there was no violence - the demonstration was fully supported and indeed encouraged by the authorities. Correspondents says the march...

Putin Questions Terrorism Efforts By RON FOURNIER AP White House Correspondent PUSHKIN, Russia (AP)--Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Bush on Friday the United States should not wage war alone against Iraq, and questioned whether White House allies like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are doing enough to fight terrorism. ``Where has Osama bin Laden taken refuge?'' the Russian said in a joint news conference with Bush at an 18th-century czarist castle. The sharply worded question, though not a direct criticism of Bush, underscored the frustration felt by U.S. officials since the al-Qaida leader resurfaced after months of silence in an...

Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile By Philip Delves Broughton November 17 2002 The Sun-Herald An Al Qaeda terrorist has confessed that he planned to drive a giant explosive device into a United States air force bunker in Belgium believed to contain nuclear warheads. News of the plot came as the US warned that a broadcast thought to contain the words of Osama bin Laden foreshadowed a likely attack. The FBI said national landmarks and the aviation, oil and nuclear industries were all possible targets. In an interview with a Belgian radio station, Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, 31, a former...

Helsinki bomb was built with "some sort of professional knowledge" The 5-pound device, small enough for the suspect to conceal on his person, was packed with shotgun pellets and metal shards. The blast sent glass and steel flying and terrified 2,000 shoppers in the Myyrmanni mall, 10 miles north of Helsinki in the town of Vantaa. "Nothing like this has ever happened in Finland before," said Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who called his government into an emergency session as mourners lighted candles and flocked to churches. "The information we have suggests that the explosives were constructed so as to cause...

12/10/2002 15:48 - (South Africa) Helsinki bomb was 'act of terror' Helsinki - Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen said Saturday that a bomb blast at a suburban Helsinki shopping centre that killed seven people and injured more than 80 was an "act of terror". "It was an act of terror as it was," he told reporters, adding: "It is too early to say whether it was a terrorist organisation or a single person acting." According to Lipponen's spokesperson Mikko Norros, the government did not believe a foreign terrorist organisation was responsible for the bomb, but rather a deranged individual or...

Fifty-Eight Dead, Mostly Foreigners, in Bali Sat Oct 12, 7:43 PM ET BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - At least 58 people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed and over 120 wounded in a wave of bomb attacks on revelers on Indonesia's resort island of Bali Saturday night, officials said. Police said there had been three blasts, two at nightclubs in the heart of the main Kuta Beach tourist area and one at Sanur, near a U.S. honorary consulate. An officer said they had occurred simultaneously at around 11:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. EDT). In the early morning hours of Sunday flames...

Refugee camp is empty because of post-Sept. 11 immigration crackdown Sat Oct 12,12:31 AM ET By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press Writer COMER, Georgia - The once-crowded refugee camp in the foothills of the Appalachians is practically a ghost town. Gone are the Afghans studying English, children from Kosovo playing basketball and Sudanese "lost boys" learning how to adjust to life in America. Refugee transition centers across the United States are in the same situation: Housing is empty, schools are half-filled and volunteers are not being put to work. Most of the centers are deserted because the U.S. government tightened the...

U.S. Arrests 6 on Terror Charges Fri Oct 4, 1:21 PM ET By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Authorities arrested six men Friday in Oregon and Michigan on charges they conspired to wage war on the United States and provide support to al-Qaida. Attorney General John Ashcroft ( news - web sites), announcing the arrests at a Justice Department ( news - web sites) news conference, called it a "defining day" in the fight against terrorism. Ashcroft noted the sentencing in federal court Friday of John Walker Lindh and the guilty plea in Boston from accused shoe-bomber...

Friday September 27, 4:59 AM Explosives found on Moroccan plane in France Around 100 grams of explosives were discovered aboard a Royal Air Maroc airplane when it arrived at the Metz-Nancy airport in eastern France, investigators said. The explosives -- wrapped in aluminum, but lacking a detonator -- was discovered wedged between two seats in the passenger cabin by a sniffer dog, during a routine customs check just minutes after the arrival of flight 5764 from Marrakesh late Wednesday. The airline said investigations had so far revealed nothing about the source or destination of the explosives. "At this stage of...

Friday September 27, 4:24 PM US govt gave Moussaoui secret documents -- by mistake US justice officials faced public humiliation, after a federal judge disclosed they had mistakenly supplied terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui with dozens of secret Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents. US District Judge Leonie Brinkema had ordered the documents retrieved from Moussaoui's cell and, in a move exposing the government's clumsiness, released Thursday a collection of letters from federal prosecutors in which they acknowledge the mistake and plead for her help. The contents of the 48 documents have not been formally disclosed. But they are reported to...

<p>September 13, 2002 -- A Jordanian student who was indicted for allegedly lying about his links to a Sept. 11 hijacker is now suing the feds, claiming he was falsely arrested and maliciously prosecuted.</p> <p>A lawyer for California college student Osama Awadallah said yesterday the 21-year-old has a strong case, due to a ruling in May by a New York federal judge who found that Awadallah was detained illegally.</p>

The following is a vanity and posted as such. The conclusions reached are my own but I think they are worthy of review Bush shuts down terrorist financial support network in U.S. that Clinton knew existed and ignored On August 28, 2002 the AP reports: Federal grand juries charged six men with conspiring to support Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network Wednesday as the government escalated its efforts to stifle the flow of money and assistance from U.S. soil to overseas terrorist groups. In Seattle, American citizen and Muslim activist James Ujaama was accused in a two-count indictment of trying to...

Six men indicted as government focuses on alleged U.S.-based support of terror groups Wed Aug 28, 7:24 PM ET By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Federal grand juries charged six men with conspiring to support Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites)'s al-Qaida network Wednesday as the government escalated its efforts to stifle the flow of money and assistance from U.S. soil to overseas terrorist groups. In Seattle, American citizen and Muslim activist James Ujaama was accused in a two-count indictment of trying to set up a "jihad (holy war) training camp" on the West Coast and...

Miami Airport Concourse Evacuated Wed Aug 21,12:20 PM ET MIAMI (AP) - A Miami International Airport concourse was evacuated Wednesday after fumes caused people to have trouble breathing, officials said. Paramedics treated at least 36 people at the scene. The evacuation of Concourse B, which serves international flights, was ordered after several passengers going through the line began coughing, said airport spokeswoman Inson Kim said. Hazardous material crews were searching for the source of the fumes. "It's some type of aerosol, is what they're guessing," said Jeff Hackman, a Miami-Dade Fire Department spokesman. People in or near a second-floor security...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Officials weighing whether to dispense smallpox vaccine to the nation were presented with the possibility Saturday that the virus might be a more effective terrorist weapon than they thought. U.S. researcher Alan Zelicoff, drawing on long-secret Soviet documents, reported on an isolated 1971 outbreak that he said appeared to have been caused by smallpox that was tested as a weapon and carried miles through the air. If that was in fact the cause of the outbreak that killed three people, it suggests that a disease known to spread mainly in close quarters also has the potential to...

<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Months before the September 11 attacks, the CIA knew two of the hijackers were in the United States and that they were connected to the al Qaeda organization, Newsweek reported Sunday.</p>

White House - AP Cabinet & State Agent Linked Pilot Trainees, Bin Laden Thu May 23, 7:46 AM ET By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Weeks before Sept. 11, an FBI (news - web sites) agent connected several students at Arizona aviation schools to a militant Muslim group whose founder talked of attacking airports and received a letter from Osama Bin Laden (news - web sites) encouraging the downing of commercial airliners, government officials say. Agent Ken Williams' July 2001 memo raised concerns about the students' affiliation with Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed's group because the sheik had...

F.B.I. Agent Says Superior Altered Report, Foiling Inquiry Sat May 25, 8:53 AM ET By JAMES RISEN The New York Times WASHINGTON, May 24 A senior F.B.I. agent in Minneapolis has accused a supervisor at the agency's Washington headquarters of altering a report in a way that made it impossible for investigators to obtain crucial evidence in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, government officials said today. Coleen Rowley, an agent and counsel in the F.B.I.'s Minneapolis field office, wrote in a 13-page letter received this week...