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Imam Fawaz Damra helped lay the groundwork for an organization that ultimately merged into al-Qaida in the late 1980s. He was an unindicted co-conspirator of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. And he passionately raised money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which killed dozens of Jews in Israel during the 1990s. Yet Damra, spiritual leader to thousands of Muslims in Northeast Ohio, seemed to fly comfortably beneath the radar of U.S. terror investigators - until Tuesday. FBI agents swooped in on the Palestinian cleric at his Strongsville home, arresting him on a relatively minor - and...

A poor, agrarian, landlocked country in South America with a nearly 100 percent Christian population is hardly the place one would expect to become a hotbed of Islamic extremism in the Western Hemisphere. But a recent report by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it's so. .... One Muslim leader named in the OSC report is Mahmud Amer Abusharar, founder of the Centro Islamico Boliviano (CIB) in Santa Cruz. Abusharar emigrated from the Palestinian territories in 1974 and claims to have built Bolivia’s first mosque in 1994 so that he would...

Ahmed Omar Abul Ali, the Virginia Muslim charged with conspiring to assassinate President Bush, met several times with Zubayr al-Rimi—Al Qaeda’s number two man in Saudi Arabia, killed in a shootout with Saudi forces in September 2003: Abu Ali linked to Saudi Arabia al Qaeda leader. (Hat tip: The Jawa Report.) A Falls Church man accused of conspiring to assassinate President Bush met several times with an al Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia who once was the target of a global manhunt and a key suspect in an attack that killed nine Americans in Riyadh, law-enforcement authorities said. Ahmed Omar...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON — A US man has been charged after he compiled a hit list of 15 people he believed had harmed Muslim civilians and deserved to die, court documents showed Wednesday. Paul Rockwood and his wife Nadia were charged with lying to federal investigators about the compilation and content of the list, which Nadia Rockwood delivered to an unnamed individual in April at her husband's request." SNIPPET: "According to plea agreement documents obtained by AFP Wednesday, Paul Rockwood converted to Islam around late 2001 and soon "became a strict adherent to the violent jihad-promoting ideology of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki."...

Opportunities to "Take Out" Radical Cleric Anwar Awlaki In Yemen "May Have Been Missed" White House lawyers are mulling the legality of proposed attempts to kill an American citizen, Anwar al Awlaki, who is believed to be part of the leadership of the al Qaeda group in Yemen behind a series of terror strikes, according to two people briefed by U.S. intelligence officials. One of the people briefed said opportunities to "take out" Awlaki "may have been missed" because of the legal questions surrounding a lethal attack which would specifically target an American citizen. A spokesperson said the White House...

Last October, the Yemeni government came to the CIA with a request: Could the agency collect intelligence that might help target the network of a U.S.-born al-Qaida recruiter named Anwar al-Awlaki? What happened next is haunting, in light of subsequent events. The CIA concluded that it could not assist the Yemenis in locating al-Awlaki for a possible capture operation. The primary reason was that the agency lacked specific evidence that he threatened the lives of Americans — which is the threshold for any capture-or-kill operation against a U.S. citizen. The Yemenis also wanted U.S. Special Forces' help in pursuing al-Awlaki;...

Rashad Hussein, White House official and President Obama’s newly appointed Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, has a history of participation in events connected with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood as well as support for Brotherhood causes, once having called prosecution of the U.S. leader of a Palestinian terrorist organization one of many “politically motivated persecutions.” Mr. Hussain’s official biography states: Rashad Hussain is presently Deputy Associate Counsel to President Obama. His work at the White House focuses on national security, new media, and science and technology issues. Mr. Hussain has also worked with the National Security Staff in...

Anwar Al-'Awlaki, al Qaeda linked Muslim Cleric on his contact with the Fort Hood Terrorist Major Hasan: "Naturally, as I told you, the first message was asking for an edict regarding the [possibility] of a Muslim soldier killing his colleagues who serve with him in the American army. In other messages, Nidal was clarifying his position regarding the killing of Israeli civilians. He was in support of this, and in his messages he mentioned the religious justifications for targeting the Jews with missiles. Then there were some messages in which he asked for a way through which he could transfer...

SNIPPET: "...let's get back to the woeful tale of Bro. Ismail Royer, as presented at the Umar Lee blog:" SNIPPET: "Mr. Royer, formerly associated with CAIR, is currently serving a 20 year sentence for his work on behalf of designated Terrorist group Lashkar e Taiba. Lashkar e Taiba is notable among other things for having killed 171 people in Mumbai in 2008, among many other atrocities."

Yesterday, the Investigative Project on Terrorism led with the story of five DC Area students who disappeared and were believed to be heading for terrorist training. December 8: Federal investigators are searching for a Howard University dental student and four other missing Muslim men reported missing from the Washington, D.C. area, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has learned. There is concern they may have been sent abroad to train for jihad. The five were last seen November 29.The identities of two of the missing men, Howard student Ramy Zamzam and Waqar Khan, have been mentioned in online postings, including...

United States Army Major Nidal Hasan told a radical cleric considered by authorities to be an al-Qaeda recruiter, "I can't wait to join you" in the afterlife, according to an American official with top secret access to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, over a six month period between Dec. 2008 and June 2009.

Senior Official: More Hasan Ties to People Under Investigation by FBI Alleged Shooter Had "Unexplained Connections" to Others Besides Jihadist Cleric Awlaki By MARTHA RADDATZ, BRIAN ROSS, MARY-ROSE ABRAHAM, and REHAB EL-BURI Nov. 10, 2009 A senior government official tells ABC News that investigators have found that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had "more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI" than just radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The official declined to name the individuals but Congressional sources said their names and countries of origin were likely to emerge soon. Nidal Malik Hasan, left, is seen...

A senior government official tells ABC News that investigators have found that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had "more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI" than just radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The official declined to name the individuals but Congressional sources said their names and countries of origin were likely to emerge soon. Questions already surround Major Hasan's contact with Awlaki, a radical cleric based in Yemen whom authorities consider a recruiter for al Qaeda. U.S. officials now confirm Hasan sent as many as 20 e-mails to Awlaki. Authorities intercepted the e-mails but later...

The soldier accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas, on Thursday attended Barstow Community College from spring 1989 to spring 1990, college records show. Maj. Nidal M. Hasan was a straight-A student and on the dean's list at the college, said Maureen Stokes, the public information officer at the school. He took six classes and earned 19 credit hours. His classes - all basic courses - were English, history, sociology, math, political science and biology. Hasan's official transcript indicates he was an enlisted man, an E-3, at Fort Irwin at the time but John...

The Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood massacre apparently acted alone and without outside direction in the attack, investigative officials said Monday evening. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will be charged by the U.S. military rather than in a civilian court, they said. Although investigative officials portrayed Hasan as a lone wolf, the investigators and a U.S. official disclosed that Hasan communicated 10 to 20 times with a radical imam overseas who in the past came under scrutiny for possible links to terror groups. The investigative officials said the communications began last year and continued into this year and "were...

The Army psychiatrist suspected of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian here last week was in e-mail contact earlier this year with a radical cleric in Yemen who has decried what he calls America's war against Islam, a federal law enforcement official said Monday. U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted between 10 and 20 e-mails from Maj. Nidal M. Hasan to Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen who once was a spiritual leader at the suburban Virginia mosque where Hasan had worshipped, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said later Monday. Aulaqi responded to Hasan at least...

And so a personnel file already teeming with red flags gets another giant one. If you’re wondering how a British newspaper managed to track down this information when the U.S. military apparently couldn’t, you’re not alone. There’s no question now that we need congressional hearings into how the army missed the warning signs on Hasan, especially given the suspicions as to why they might have looked the other way. Chop chop, Messrs. Boehner and Cantor. Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in...

The suspect, a Virginia Tech graduate and one-time Vinton resident, was shot but survived at Fort Hood, Texas. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of shooting 12 people to death and wounding 31 others at Fort Hood, Texas, on Thursday, was the son of Roanoke merchants and restaurateurs, lived in Vinton and graduated from Virginia Tech. Hasan was born in Arlington to Palestinian immigrants from near Jerusalem who later settled in Vinton. Neighbors on Vinton's Ramada Road remembered him as a "studious" boy who went by "Michael." While his brother Eyad -- "Eddie" -- would play football with...

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a Falls Church man and a member of al Qaeda who admitted he was planning to assassinate then-President George W. Bush, was sentenced to life in prison Monday at federal court in Alexandria. Abu Ali was originally sentenced in 2005 to 30 years in prison. U.S. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of the U.S. District Court for eastern Virginia ruled Monday that Abu Ali should spend life in prison partially because he never renounced his al Qaeda ties. After the initial sentencing, both sides filed appeals. Abu Ali completed some of his sentence in solitary confinement at...

MAS' Esam Omeish Seeks Virginia Office Campaign Mum on MAS Ties, Radical Omeish Speeches IPT News May 1, 2009 The last time the public got a good look at Esam Omeish, he was resigning from a Virginia immigration panel, claiming that the posting of videos showing him praising Palestinians who chose "the jihad way" to liberate their land was part of a smear campaign against him. Now Omeish is diving into the deep end of smear campaigns, offering himself as a candidate for a partisan legislative seat in Northern Virginia. Omeish is among four Democrats vying to win their party's...