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MINNEAPOLIS – A man who authorities believe might have been part of an al-Qaida "sleeper cell" obtained a license to haul hazardous materials months after he was identified as a suspected terrorist by the FBI, officials said. The FBI identified Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi as a suspected terrorist before the attacks of 2001, the Star Tribune reported Wednesday, citing unidentified law enforcement officials. Yet Minnesota Department of Public Safety officials said they did not know that Elzahabi was suspected of having al-Qaida connections when he applied in early 2002 for a commercial license to drive a school bus and haul hazardous...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

ROME - Anti-terrorism police arrested the Algerian cleric of a mosque and four Tunisians Sunday in a crackdown authorities said was aimed at preventing an al-Qaida-linked cell from sending suicide attackers to Iraq (news - web sites). The suspects were seized in pre-dawn raids in three cities in the northern Tuscany region, Genoa's Police Chief Oscar Fiorolli said. Genoa, a northern port city, began the investigations that led to the arrests. The suspects allegedly belonged to a cell of Ansar al-Islam, an organization based in northern Iraq with links to al-Qaida, Fiorolli told the Associated Press in Rome in a...

Apparently, being the parent of a child murdered by a Muslim terrorist gives one moral credibility. There is no other way to explain the vast attention paid to the ideas of Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, the American who was slaughtered by the Islamic sadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That is also the only explanation for the all the attention Cindy Sheehan has received. It is not because of the intellectual and moral depth of her worldview. But the attention paid to Michael Berg has been very helpful in enabling many more people to understand the thinking and values of...

Twenty-six-year-old American communications contractor Nick Berg was beheaded a hostage in Iraq on this date in 2004 — allegedly by the personal hand of Al-Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that al-Qaida leader and Egyptian terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri,...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - An Iraqi Shi'ite Islamist opposition group Sunday accused members of an Iraqi militia of conducting joint training with al Qaeda loyalists aimed at carrying out operations against U.S. interests. The Tehran-based Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said elements of "Saddam's Fedayeen," a militia force led by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son Uday, were training with a group linked to al Qaeda in northern Iraq. "Sixty elements of Saddam's fedayeen militias joined the Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), which is a follower of the al Qaeda organization in Iraqi Kurdistan," SCIRI said in a statement...

Summary Norwegian authorities are dropping charges against Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam, who had been charged with conspiracy to murder his political foes in Iraq. He is to be deported to Iraq after the government is handed over to the Iraqis on June 30. Analysis A Norwegian court threw out charges against Mullah Krekar, the founder of militant Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, on June 15, citing insufficient evidence. Krekar had faced charges of conspiring to murder political rivals in Iraq. He has lived in Norway since 2003, despite an expulsion order. Now that he no longer faces trial,...

Norway’s Progress Party has called for the immediate arrest of Mullah Krekar after the firebrand jihadist spoke of the need for renewed terrorist attacks on the United States. The Norway-based extremist made the comments in an interview with Finland’s MTV3. He also claimed that Islam “will control the entire world” within the next 20 years. More than a decade on from the devastating terrorist attacks in the United States that left almost 3,000 people dead, Krekar said: “They have learned nothing from the 9/11 attacks. That’s why they need two more attacks. It’s the only way the Americans will understand...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Three undercover CIA officers arrived in Norway in the spring of 2003 as part of a possible secret operation targeting for rendition an Islamic militant living in Oslo known as Mullah Krekar, The Washington Post reported. Citing lawyers and unnamed European investigators, the newspaper said shortly after the agents arrived, Krekar received a warning from an anonymous Norwegian official that Krekar, then head of a Kurdish insurgent group, was a CIA target and should watch his back. The spies left Norway by the end of the summer, the report said. If the CIA was planning to abduct...

ALBANY - The prosecutor who sent two local Muslim men ensnared in an FBI terror sting to prison is on the short list for a federal judgeship. Many in the Capital District's growing Muslim community are outraged. Members of Albany's Muslim Solidarity Committee say they will do everything in their power to ensure Glenn Suddaby doesn't receive the nomination. The activists formed their group after the arrest and conviction of Mohammad Hossain, an Albany pizza shop owner, and Yassin Aref, an Albany imam. Despite grass roots opposition, Suddaby has at least one pretty big name supporter - U.S. Sen. Charles...

Oct. 28, 2003 Iran rejects U.S. demand to extradite al-Qaida operatives By ASSOCIATED PRESS TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iran rejected a U.S. demand to hand over senior al-Qaida operatives in its custody, Tuesday, saying the terror suspects would stand trial in Iranian courts, state-run radio reported. A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that senior al-Qaida operatives held by Iran should be turned over to their countries of origin or to the United States for interrogation and trial. "Al-Qaida operatives currently in (our) custody have committed crimes in Iran," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted by...

Islamabad - Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, an alleged key al-Qaeda operative of Libyan origin, has been killed in a suspected US drone strike in Pakistan's lawless tribal region, security officials said on Saturday. The US had placed a $1m bounty on al-Rahman, who was killed Thursday when a CIA-operated unmanned aircraft fired two missiles on a vehicle in Khushali Jungle area of North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan. A total of four people died in the strike. "We have received reports that al-Qaeda leader Atiya Abd al-Rahman has been killed in the October 07 drone attack. Together with him another low-ranking al-Qaeda...

DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - A Jordanian man on trial in Germany on charges of belonging to a terror group said on Thursday he got an order to attack German Jewish targets just after the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States. Shadi Mohammed Mustafa Abdalla told a German court he received a coded message -- "You are going to get married" -- to launch an attack on September 12, 2001. Abdalla, who said he served as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden before rejecting violence, has already told the court he had selected a Jewish community center in Berlin...

ALBANY -- The spiritual leader of an Albany mosque repeatedly called a phone number in Syria that an FBI report indicates had been used to gather terrorist intelligence for Osama bin Laden, according to classified documents unsealed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The FBI report, which was based on information from a confidential informant, was among several once-secret documents that federal authorities say raise questions about Yassin Aref's connections to terrorist organizations across the Middle East. Aref, 35, a Kurdish refugee who moved to Albany with his family in 1999, is in jail without bond while awaiting trial on...

BAGHDAD, July 15 (VOI) - Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, Iraq's former military commander and Saddam Hussein's vice president, criticized al-Qaeda network in Iraq and Mahdi Army militias loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in his first audio call, vowing to fight U.S. troops in Iraq. Al Douri, who has not been seen since the last days of Saddam's rule, became the leader of the Baath Party after Saddam's execution in December 2006. It was unclear why al Douri chose this time to release an audio tape — his first ever at a time that Iraq is witnessing an all time...

Time magazine this week is putting Yahya Sinwar on their cover, with a red X across his face, something they have only done four previous times: Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden

In the wake of yet another foiled ISIS-inspired terrorist plot, this one by a Canada-based Pakistani seeking to kill Jews in New York on the anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack in Israel, everyone is loudly proclaiming: “ISIS is back.”And yet, this analysis is wrong.For someone or something to “be back,” it has to have left in the first place. This return can be surprising or expected, but in the end it is of note. With respect to the ISIS terrorist group, it has not “resurged” because it never went away in the first place.The group has been around since...

THE Muslim teacher who insisted on wearing a veil in class has been following a fatwa issued personally to her by a Islamic cleric belonging to a hardline sect. Aishah Azmi found herself in the middle of a national row about integration when she took her school to an employment tribunal after it suspended her for refusing to remove the veil in class. Tony Blair joined the debate about the wearing of veils — opened by Jack Straw, the Commons leader — and supported the school’s actions. Azmi, 24, has maintained that her decision to wear the veil was driven...

Madness -- politically correct madness. The FBI showed it wasn't anti-Arab by hiring Nada Prouty, and she handsomely repaid them for it, too. Nada Nadim Prouty Update: "Fake citizen worked on major terror cases," by David Ashenfelter for the Detroit Free Press (thanks to Sr. Soph): Nada Prouty, the Lebanese immigrant who parlayed a sham marriage into U.S. citizenship and key jobs at the FBI and CIA, worked on several counter-terrorism investigations, including the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, her lawyer said in court documents Thursday. "Nada Nadim Prouty accepts full responsibility for her actions and is...