Militants hang 8-year-old boy in southern Afghanistan

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- An 8 year-old boy was hanged by militants in Afghanistan's Helmand province after the boy's father -- a police officer in the southern city of Gereshk -- refused to comply with militants' demands to provide them with a police vehicle, officials said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the hanging, saying "this action is not permitted in any culture or any religions," according to a statement Sunday, which provided details of the incident.

Karzai said he has ordered local authorities to root out the militants and arrest them "as soon as possible."

The boy was kidnapped Friday. It was unclear when he was killed.

The incident comes amid a recent wave of attacks on local officials who are considered anti-Taliban. Less than two weeks ago, Ahmed Wali Karzai, Karzai's half-brother and a provincial council chief in neighboring Kandahar, was killed in his home by a longtime bodyguard.

Elsewhere on Sunday, formal ceremonies marking the handover of security to Afghan forces took place in Kabul and Panjshir province.

They are the fifth and sixth areas to be transferred to national forces.

Last week, the capital of Helmand province -- Lashkar Gah -- was transferred to local control as NATO begins a drawdown of troops.

The area was a scene of heavy fighting and stiff resistance last year as a coalition "surge" swept southward in an effort to drive Taliban forces from their traditional heartland.

Read More

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/24/afghanistan.militants.hang.boy/

Al-Zawari becomes new al Qaeda leader

Al Qaeda has a new leader. That's according to a statement on an Islamist website published today. It says Ayman al-Zawari, Osama bin-Laden's long-time lieutenant, has now taken full command of the group's operations.

Zawari, who has long been viewed as bin-Laden's most likely successor, vowed earlier this month to press ahead with al-Qaeda's campaign against the US and its allies. It was his first public response to the U.S. commando raid in Pakistan last month, in which bin-Laden was killed.

Believed to be in his late 50s, Zawahri met bin-Laden in Pakistan in the mid-1980s, while helping guerrillas fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. He now tops Washington's most-wanted list, with a 25-million U.S.-dollar bounty.

Read More

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-06/17/c_13935432.htm

Militant attack in Pakistan's northwest kills at least

Around 150 militants armed with rockets attacked a security checkpost in Pakistan's Waziristan on Thursday, killing eight soldiers, intelligence officials said, as tensions rise in the border region.

Twelve militants were killed in retaliatory firing by security forces.

The attack came on the heels of stepped-up missile strikes by U.S. drone aircraft in the tribal region along the Afghan border regarded as a hub of militants from around the world.

"The militants were carrying rockets and heavy weapons and attacked the checkpost shortly after midnight," an intelligence official in the region told Reuters.

"Eight soldiers were killed and twelve were wounded," he added.

Security forces hit back at the militants, killing at least 12 of them and wounding five, another official said.

The attack took place in Makeen, an area on the border between North and Waziristan, which was once a stronghold of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the main alliance of Pakistan's homegrown militant groups involved in suicide and bomb attacks across the country.

Pakistan army launched a major offensive in South Waziristan in 2009, driving TTP fighters out of their bases in the restive region.

Many TTP leaders, including its chief Hakimullah Mehsud, were believed to have fled into North Waziristan.

The United States has been urging the Pakistani military to launch a ground offensive in North Waziristan, which is also the main of the Haqqani network that leads the insurgency just over the border in eastern Afghanistan.

Read More

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/09/us-pakistan-violence-idUSTRE7580IM20110609

Headley says he was trained in espionage by ISI

Mumbai attacks co-accused David Coleman Headley has testified that he received espionage training against India from Pakistan’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

“ISI did provide me (espionage) training,” Headley told a Chicago court as he was grilled by the defence attorney Charles D Swift on the third day of the trial of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana, another co-accused in the 26/11 attacks, in a Chicago court.

The statements formed part of the testimony of Headley, who has pleaded guilty.

These disclosures, which further cements India’s charges that elements of ISI were involved in the Mumbai attacks, is also corroborated by information given by federal prosecutors in the documents to the court, which were unsealed on Wednesday.

The ISI training to Headley was provided by Major Iqbal, who was his ISI handler, in a two-storey safe house in Lahore near the airport, the Mumbai terror suspect told judges during the course of questioning by Swift.

Headley told the court that when he met Major Iqbal in 2006, he expressed dissatisfaction at the military and espionage training that he had received from the LeT earlier.

Major Iqbal told him that the training received from LeT was “not very good” and was “very elementary”, so he decided to give instructions to him.

Headley told the defence attorney that this training in espionage against India was given to him in Lahore on the streets and a safe house near the airport.

It was a two-storey house in a residential neighbourhood and there was a small compound outside the house, Headley said when pressed by Swift during the closing hours on the third day of the trial.

Despite repeated questioning, Headley said that he did not know the full name of Major Iqbal, but was sure that he was from the ISI.

He was introduced as Major Iqbal to him.

Although Major Iqbal was never seen by Headley in military uniform, he came to meet him several times in a military jeep and his subordinates had military designations, Headley said.

Headley said he never went to the ISI headquarters and added that he was introduced to Major Iqbal by military personnel, a fact corroborated by the unsealed document.

Read More

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2050374.ece

Pakistani Taliban claims responsibility for Pakistan naval base attack

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for a deadly weekend attack on a naval base in Karachi.

The group's spokesman, Ihsan Ullah, told CNN on Monday that the attack at the naval air station in the coastal city was to avenge the killing of innocent civilians. The group said Pakistani security forces are carrying out the killings on the instruction of the United States in the name of a "war on terror."

At least 10 militants attacked the base with guns and grenades about 11 p.m. Sunday, leading to several explosions and an hours-long gun battle with Pakistani forces that killed four naval officials, authorities said.

Besides the four dead, nine navy personnel were injured in the attack on the grounds of the Mehran base, said Pakistani navy spokesman Irfan Ul Haq early Monday. He did not have the number of militants who died or were injured.

Two witnesses -- Amjad Bashir and Talha Hashmi -- reported at least 10 explosions in the subsequent hours.

Read More

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/23/pakistan.base.attack/

Double bombing in Iraq kills 27, injures dozens

Reporting from Kirkuk, Iraq, and Baghdad—
A double bombing killed at least 27 people, almost all of them police officers, and wounded dozens in a parking lot outside the main police offices in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq on Thursday, according to security officials.

The attack came after a car bombing early this month outside a police station in the southern city of Hillah that killed 16 people, including some officers, and a later failed jailbreak from Baghdad's Interior Ministry compound that left six police officers dead, including a counter-terrorism general.

Eight police officers were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted their convoy as they rushed to the scene in Kirkuk.

The spate of attacks and daring attempts to escape jail has put Iraq's forces under new scrutiny as the last of the U.S. troops prepare to leave the country at the end of the year. "This has the fingerprint of Al Qaeda," said Brig. Jamal Tahi, Kirkuk's police chief.

Read More

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-bombing-20110520,0,6719256.story

Osama bin Laden praises Arab spring in posthumously released tape

A tape recorded by Osama bin Laden before his death in an American special forces raid earlier this month has been posthumously released onto Islamic militant websites.

The message, recorded some time in the ten weeks before the 54-year-old al-Qaida leader was killed in Pakistan on May 2, praises the "Arab Spring" protest movements across the Middle East and predicts that revolutions will spread.

"I think that the winds of change will blow over the entire Muslim world, God willing," bin Laden said in the 12-minute message.

The message, though a video clip, contains only an audio track and an old photo of the terrorist leader, probably indicating that it was designed to be edited with images but that al-Qaida media technicians were either unable to do so or that a decision was taken to upload the tape quickly.

The senior al-Qaida leadership were caught out by the unrest in the Arab World this spring and had difficulty framing an effective response to an outpouring of enthusiasm for democracy and pluralism.

In deposing President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine el Abedine ben Ali in Tunisia, protestors achieved fundamental aims of al-Qaida itself without violence.

In the recording, Bin Laden accused rulers in the Middle East of building themselves into idols and manipulating the media to stay in power.

Al-Qaida figures have frequently blamed the media for the failure of the majority of Muslims to heed its call to arms.

"So, what are you waiting for?" Bin Laden asked in the most recent tape. "Save yourselves and your children, because the opportunity is here."

Bin Laden, who is thought to have been living in a three-storey house in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad for up to five years, spoke in high rhetorical language and avoided the more violent or apocalyptic language of many previous statements.

A full transcript of the tape is yet to be made available but bin Laden appears not to have threatened the West directly as has previously often been the case.

Read More

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/19/osama-bin-laden-tape-posthumous-arab-spring

Al-Qaida in the midst of fierce succession battle

A fierce succession battle appears to be gripping the senior ranks of al-Qaida in the wake of the death of leader Osama bin Laden earlier this month, pitting regional affiliates against the central "hardcore" of the organisation.

Reports from Pakistan named an Egyptian former special forces officer known as Saif al-Adel as the acting leader of al-Qaida.

Al-Adel, who is in his late 40s, is a veteran militant who was close to bin Laden in the 1990s before being detained in Iran after fleeing Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. According to Noman Benotman, a former Libyan militant now living in London, al-Adel was released from Iranian detention and returned to Pakistan last year.

The report in the Pakistani The News newspaper identified al-Adel as having been chosen as "interim leader" of al-Qaida after a meeting at "an undisclosed location". It also said that "none of sons of Osama Bin Laden has shown willingness" to take up a formal position within the organisation.

One of the 54-year-old al-Qaida leader's adult sons, Khaled, was killed with his father in the raid on Abbottabad. Others have been groomed for leadership roles but are currently too young or too inexperienced to command any real support.

If confirmed, the appointment of al-Adel is a major blow to bin Laden's close associate Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian extremist strategist who has long been seen as the group's number two.

Al-Zawahiri is reported to have been given the important, and usually shortlived, role of director of external or international operations for the group. This would nonetheless be something of a demotion for a man who was bin Laden's closest associate and a major figure in his own right.

Read More

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/18/al-qaida-succession-battle-saif-al-adel-acting-leader

French arrest 6 in jihad-training sweep

PARIS — French police arrested six men yesterday, including an Indian who was seized at the airport as he arrived from Algeria, as they investigated an alleged recruiting network to train jihad fighters in Pakistan.

Police swept into homes in a search for clues and were holding the suspects following the arrests north of Paris at Charles de Gaulle airport and in the towns of Stains and Garges-les-Gonesse.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters about the arrests yesterday during a news conference ending a meeting on fighting cocaine trafficking.

Another Interior Ministry official said the arrests did not immediately appear to have links to any possible terrorism plots in France.

Those arrested are thought to have links with two residents of the Paris region arrested in January in Lahore, Pakistan, and suspected of wanting to train for a holy war, according to a police official. The official requested anonymity.

France and other Western countries remain on high alert for possible terror attacks after Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a May 2 US military raid in Pakistan.

Read More

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2011/05/11/french_arrest_6_in_jihad_training_sweep/

Bin Laden's death ushers in whirlwind week as clues emerge

The curtain is just beginning to rise on the scope and power of the world's most-wanted terrorist one week after U.S. Navy SEALs killed him during a daring nighttime raid.

New details have been released almost daily since a team of American commandos stormed bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Islamabad, killing him and four others.

For Americans, and much of the world, news of the killings brought a sense of relief, even satisfaction.

The pain, the frustration, the sadness elicited by the 9/11 attacks have never really left. How could they? For much of the past decade, Americans processed the world through the lens of the worst terrorist attacks ever committed on U.S. soil.

Since that attack, citizens of the United States, Britain, Spain and other countries had grown startlingly accustomed to terror strikes and near-misses. Adding to the pain was the ever-growing laundry list of indignities, the "fog of war," and the clarity to know that personal freedoms were eroding in agonizingly public ways.

Then it happened. Bin Laden was killed.

Read More

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/08/bin.laden.week.wrap/?hpt=C1

17 killed in prison uprising in Iraq

BAGHDAD — The accused coordinator of a fatal Baghdad church siege last year was shot and killed yesterday after wresting a gun from a prison guard and launching an hourslong revolt that left 17 people dead, including a top Iraqi counterterrorism general.

None of the prisoners — all suspected members of Al Qaeda in Iraq— managed to break out of the heavily fortified Interior Ministry headquarters in eastern Baghdad. Ringleader Abu Huthaifa al-Battawi, who allegedly led the October attack on the Our Lady of Salvation cathedral that left 68 dead, was slain as he tried to flee in a car.

The midnight melee at what is supposed to be one of country’s most secure jails heightens doubt about whether Iraqi forces are ready to protect the nation as US troops prepare to leave by December.

“Where are the authorities? There is no government,’’ shouted Dhia Raheema al-Taiee, nephew of the slain counterterror chief, Brigadier General Muaeid Mohammed Saleh.

“He was in a secure compound, and he is a high rank, and yet he was killed so easily at the hands of prisoners who were able to obtain weapons,’’ Taiee said at his uncle’s funeral yesterday afternoon. Nearby, police officers fired their handguns and rifles into the air in a show of grief and anger.

Six police officers and 11 detainees were killed in the attempted jailbreak, said Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, Baghdad’s top military spokesman.

Moussawi and two Interior Ministry officials described a dramatic blitz by Battawi as he and up to 24 other prisoners were being taken from their cells to interrogation rooms.

Usually, guards unshackle prisoners as they are being interrogated, but Moussawi said Al Qaeda suspects should have been restrained since they are top terror threats.

Battawi’s hands had just been unbound when he wrested a gun from a guard, killed him, and freed his fellow prisoners.

Read More

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2011/05/09/17_killed_in_prison_uprising_in_iraq/

US Intelligence: Al-Qaida Considered 9-11 Anniversary Attack

U.S. officials say an initial review of documents seized from Osama bin Laden's compound shows al-Qaida considered carrying out a terrorist plot against the United States on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

A Homeland Security Department document obtained Thursday by U.S. news organizations says al-Qaida considered an operation against trains at an unspecified location in the United States.

The document says al-Qaida thought about tampering with rail tracks so a train would fall off the tracks in a valley or over bridge.

U.S. officials say they have no evidence the plot was active.

This information appears to be the first widely circulated intelligence stemming from the raid Sunday by an elite U.S. Navy SEAL team on bin Laden's compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. In the raid, the Navy SEALs killed bin Laden and took documents and other valuable intelligence information.

Read More

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Intelligence-Al-Qaida-Considered-9-11-Anniversary-Attack-121361629.html

Osama bin Laden's bodyguard: I had orders to kill him if the Americans tried to take him alive

A SHIVER ran down Nasser al-Bahri’s spine as he heard the gruesome details of Osama bin Laden’s final moments.

He was suddenly transported back in time to a cave in Afghanistan where the terrorist mastermind had told him exactly how he intended to die.

It was August, 1998, and al-Qaeda had just bombed two US embassies.

Bin Laden knew he was now America’s most hunted man so he called in his devoted bodyguard and gave him a chilling order.

Al-Bahri recalls how “The Sheik”, pulled out a revolver with two bullets in the chamber and handed it to him.

“He told me, ‘If ever the Americans encircle me, I absolutely do not want to end my life as a prisoner of the United States. So you will be in charge of killing me’.”

Bin Laden drew him closer and explained: “I would rather receive two bullets in the head than be taken prisoner. I want to die a martyr – but certainly not in prison.”

Al-Bahri says: “When I heard of his death my first thought was that he had got his wish. But I’m glad I did not have to pull the trigger.”

While millions in the West were celebrating the death of his former boss, al-Bahri, 39, was mourning the loss of the fanatic he still describes as “an unrivalled leader of men”.

Read more:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/05/04/osama-bin-laden-s-bodyguard-i-had-orders-to-kill-him-if-the-americans-tried-to-take-him-alive-115875-23105618/#ixzz1LM4EkuQc

No apology for violating Pakistan air space: White House

Washington: US would not make any apology for its unilateral military action against al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan, the White House has said.

"We make no apologies about that," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said when asked that US should not have gone unilaterally inside Pakistan to get bin Laden.

"He was enemy number one for this country and killed many many innocent civilians. And no apologies," Carney said.

On Monday, Pakistan termed the US commando operation in Abbottabad that killed Laden an "unauthorised, unilateral action" without its knowledge.

The White House said America has never been at war with Islam. "This has never been a war against Islam. President (George W) Bush said that; President (Barack) Obama has said that. Osama bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims, as well as people of other faiths," Carney said.

Read More

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/no-apology-for-violating-pakistan-air-space-white-house-103239

Osama bin Laden changed us in ways minute, monumental

Without him, there would probably be no Department of Homeland Security, no Patriot Act, no Qur’an-burning pastors.

Had Osama bin Laden never been born, there would surely be fewer memorials to slain firefighters, less need for prosthetic limbs for young troops, an American public still largely ignorant of the Muslim notion of martyrdom.

Our military probably would still be more interested in tanks and aircraft carriers, less wary of roadside bombs and suicide belts. The development of killer robot planes might not have come so far. The need to deal with asymmetric threats — battling an army not of battalions but of insurgents — would not be so pressing.

And America would certainly be a country with far fewer long-fading yellow ribbons.

The man who came to symbolize a bloody rejection of all things U.S. left a legacy among those he hated, and those he inspired to hate them. Little wonder that his demise brought so little sympathy.

“In the past few years, (bin Laden’s) main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey,” wrote pundit Christopher Hitchens on news of bin Laden’s death and dumping at sea. “Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

In ways small and monumental, bin Laden’s two decades on the world stage changed how America operated within its borders and with other nations. It may not have been entirely his doing, but his life had a profound impact on the nation he so loathed.

It was after he mobilized al-Qaida against the United States, after all, that Washington set up the legal purgatory of Guantanamo Bay for foreign fighters. Since then, the country tormented itself over whether waterboarding is torture and whether torture is always a bad idea.

As fate would have it, the first bits of intelligence that ultimately tracked down bin Laden came from secret prisons overseas. That won’t end the torture debate, but it looks to have ended bin Laden’s run.

Current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, provided the pseudonym of a bin Laden courier. The CIA also got tips from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both men underwent harsh interrogation at CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

It was, in a way, the nature of bin Laden’s tactics that prompted America to bend its own ways.

Bin Laden no more invented the suicide bomber than Henry Ford invented the automobile. He just made more of them than anyone had before.

Under his leadership, al-Qaida shifted the rationalization behind suicide bombings. The ultimate attacks of 9/11 weren’t done with bombs, but they fit with a devolved sense of justifications for killing. No longer did a man with an explosive vest need to aim for Israeli soldiers or some other combatants. Now, went the reasoning sold by bin Laden’s organization, truck bombs could target civilians as long as the victims could be painted as somehow sympathetic to Islam’s supposed enemies.

“They built this narrative that Muslims are being besieged and humiliated and targeted by the West in wars and occupation,” said Mohammed M. Hafez, an associate professor at the Naval Post Graduate School who has researched suicide bombers. “They elevated martyrdom in online documents and videos. … They’ve really taken the art of martyrdom veneration to a new level.”

Impact on politics

Bin Laden’s more lethal brand of terrorism changed, too, the dynamics of American politics.

George W. Bush arguably would have had a harder time at re-election in 2004 were he not, as he put it, “a war president.”

Barack Obama’s re-election prospects — had he ever made it to the White House — might look bleaker now had troops on his watch not slain the face of terrorism.

And the hope that bin Laden’s 9/11 terrorist attacks might unite a polarized U.S. turned out to be fleeting at best.


Read more:
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/02/2844626/osama-bin-laden-changed-us-in.html#ixzz1LGFH9sU3

Obama Announces Killing of Osama bin Laden

WASHINGTON —President Obama announced late Sunday that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, was killed in a firefight during an operation he ordered Sunday inside Pakistan, ending a 10-year manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist. American officials were in possession of his body, he said.

“On nights like this one, ‘’ the president said, “we can say that justice has been done.’’

The fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda number two in command, was unclear.

The death of Mr. Bin Laden is a defining moment in the American-led war on terrorism. What remains to be seen is whether the death of the leader of Al Qaeda galvanizes his followers by turning him into a martyr, or whether it serves as a turning of the page in the war in Afghanistan and gives further impetus to the Obama administration to bring American troops home.

President Obama said that on Sunday, a small team of U.S. operatives launched a “targeted assault’’ on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad where months of intelligence work had established that Mr. Bin Laden was living. Mr. Bin Laden was killed after a firefight, and the troops took custody of his body.

The killing ended a 10-year manhunt in which Mr. Bin Laden repeatedly eluded his pursuers, deeply frustrating the Bush administration and counterterrorism officials.

The news of the death of the leader of Al Qaeda electrified the world — crowds gathered outside the White House, cheering, as they waited for the president to confirm the news. Mr. bin Laden was able to elude capture by hiding out in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere. He initially escaped from Tora Bora in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan after an American invasion routed the Taliban, his protectors.


Since then, he issued some 30 messages, in audio, video or electronic text, sometimes taunting, sometimes gloating, sometimes urging new terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials believe the messages were passed from hand to hand repeatedly to obscure any trail back to his hiding place. Even while in hiding, he remained a potent symbolic figure. And American officials believe, based on intercepted communications from second- and third-tier Qaeda operatives, that he also still helped shape Al Qaeda’s strategy.


Read More

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/bin-laden-dead-u-s-official-says/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Terrorists safe havens in Pak a challenge: Pentagon

WASHINGTON: Continued presence of terrorist safe havens and role of certain "actors" in Pakistan remains a challenge in the war against terror, a US defence official has said.

"The concern about the role of safe havens in Pakistan and the role of actors in Pakistan, including the Haqqani Network, the Afghan Taliban who are located primarily, the leadership is located either in the south or in the north around Peshawar, that remains a significant challenge," a senior defense official said at a Pentagon briefing.

Pentagon has sent its six-monthly report to the Congress on progress made in Afghanistan, the official said, adding that the United States is looking for continued and increased cooperation with the Pakistanis on the border.

"As we've seen it some areas; other areas we've seen it doing very well in some areas; other areas it's gotten better; other areas we're seeking much more improvement. That's something that we continue to look at very closely. It's certainly an area of strategic risk," the official said.

"At the same time, given the progress that we've made in areas that we've put our effort into over the last 18 months ... are we through that success on the ground able to mitigate that?"

One of the keys is the fact that some of the people who are coming in to reintegrate were in Pakistan before, the official said adding that there was a recent ceremony in Kandahar where a group of about 40 or 50 Taliban fighters appear to have come in and reintegrated.

Read More

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Terrorists-safe-havens-in-Pak-a-challenge-Pentagon/articleshow/8123993.cms

WikiLeaks: al Qaeda watched towers burn

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 plot mastermind for al Qaeda, was in Pakistan, watching the attacks on television. according to WikiLeaks documents.

Each of us remembers where we were on September 11, 2001, but we never knew what the masterminds of al Qaeda's terrorist plot were doing that terrible day.

Now, we have an answer, as found in more than 700 documents from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and just published by WikiLeaks.

As it turns out, while Americans watched in horror as the twin towers burned, al Qaeda's top leaders were watching, too. CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the plot mastermind, was in Karachi, Pakistan, watching on television with Ramsi bin al Shib, the day-to-day coordinator of the operation.

"After the success of the attacks, the operatives prostrated themselves and gave thanks to Allah," one document says.

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who engineered the bombing of the USS Cole, couldn't be there. He was in a Karachi hospital after having had his tonsils out. Nashiri may have been the most dedicated terrorist of all. "He reportedly received injections to promote impotence (rather than be distracted by women)," a document says.

The documents, based on the interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, say after 9/11, all senior operatives left Pakistan for Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden, who had watched the attacks from Kandahar.

Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, spent the next couple of months moving about Afghanistan by car, finally taking refuge in the Tora Bora mountains. In mid-December 2001, the two disappeared across the border into Pakistan. The others were eventually captured, but not before Bin al Shib threatened to slit his own throat rather than be taken alive.

Of course, one should not believe everything a captured terrorist says. One sensational but unconfirmed claim found in the documents says al Qaeda had a nuclear bomb it would set off if Bin Laden were ever captured.

Read More

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/25/eveningnews/main20057231.shtml?tag=cbsnewsTwoColUpperPromoArea

Hundreds of Taliban in tunnel jail escape

Some 540 Taliban officers and commanders have escaped from Kandahar prison via a 320 metre-long tunnel, Afghan government officials have confirmed to Al Jazeera.

A Taliban official on Monday also confirmed the overnight escape, boasting that the prison break had been "very well-planned" and that it was five months in the making, Al Jazeera's Qais Azimy, reporting from Kabul, said.

According to a Taliban statement the tunnel was not dug by the inmates but by fighters outside the prison.

"Mujahideen started digging a 320 metre-long to the prison from the south side, which was completed after a five month period, bypassing check posts and the Kandahar-Herat main highway leading directly to the political prison," the statement read.

"The tunnel reached its target last night, from where the prisoner Mujahideen were led away through the escape route by three previously informed inmates in a period of four and a half hours, starting from 11:00 pm last night and ending at 3:30 am this morning. Mujahideen later on sent vehicles to the inmates who were led away to secure destinations."

"They all have made it safe to our centres and there was no fighting," Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said.

Ahmadi said that 106 were Taliban commanders while the rest were foot soldiers. Kandahar police said they have re-captured eight commanders so far.

The Taliban claim that the prison guards did not notice the escape until four hours after the operation was completed.

The prison in Kandahar typically holds drug dealers as well as Taliban commanders captured by NATO forces, our correspondent said.

If the officials have the correct number for those who have escaped - 540 Taliban commanders and senior officers on the run - then this break will constitute a "big success" for the Taliban.

It is also sure to "have a dramatic effect on the fight against the Taliban in the region," said Azimy.

Security concerns

There have been previous escapes from this prison. In June 2008, Taliban fighters attacked the facility in southern Afghanistan, blasting through its entrance and engaging in a gun battle with police.

Nearly all of the estimated 1,150 prisoners, including some 400 Taliban, escaped, according to Afghan officials.

A Taliban spokesperson said that two suicide bombers blew themselves up near the entrance of the gate to the prison before 30 Taliban fighters attacked and killed 16 policemen.

Kandahar prison was the scene of a mass hunger strike by hundreds of inmates in May, 2008 during which 47 of the prisoners sewed their lips shut after complaining they had been tortured and denied fair trials.

Kandahar is seen as the birthplace of the Taliban movement and the city and surrounding area is scene of some of the worst fighting in Afghanistan.

Read More

http://photogallery.indiatimes.com/news/india/sathya-sai-baba-passes-away/articleshow/8077610.cms

After the Airport Attack, Russia's Most Wanted Terrorist Hones His Message

Islamist rebel leader Doku Umarov gestures in this still image taken from undated video footage.



On Jan. 15, Russia's state news channel reported the death of Doku Umarov, the country's most wanted terrorist. It didn't say how he died, nor did it seem to care that the only source of this information was a rumor spreading through a village in Chechnya. The news was just too good not to broadcast. But it turned out to be very wrong. In the past three days, Umarov has released two of his trademark videos, claiming to be the mastermind behind the suicide blast that killed 36 people in Moscow's largest airport last month. His propaganda war — and possibly his wider insurgency against the Russian state — looks to be more alive than ever.

Compared to his previous videos — short, monotonous clips that follow almost every bombing in the Russian heartland, even if he had no connection to the incident — Umarov's latest offerings suggest a much more quick-witted approach to information warfare. In the first, undated video, which was posted on the Islamist website Kavkazcenter.com on Feb. 5, he shifts away from his usual tack of defending the Muslims in Russia's North Caucasus region. Instead Umarov tries to play on the fears of Russia's broader Muslim community, which in December became the target of a massive race riot in Moscow. "[Russians] have turned on the Muslims who have no choice but to live in Russia, to live in Moscow...and have started attacking them in huge numbers," he says, from inside what looks like a concrete bunker. "Today we are forced to answer this lawlessness."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2047079,00.html#ixzz1DQwWyDaJ