Two men taken off a Chicago-to-Amsterdam United Airlines flight in the Netherlands have been charged by Dutch police with “preparation of a terrorist attack,” U.S. law enforcement officials tell ABC News.
U.S. officials said the two appeared to be travelling with what were termed “mock bombs” in their luggage. “This was almost certainly a dry run, a test,” said one senior law enforcement official.
A spokesman for the Dutch public prosecutor, Ernst Koelman, confirmed the two men were arrested this morning and said “the investigation is ongoing.” He said the arrests were made “at the request of American authorities.”
The two were allowed to board the flight at O’Hare airport last night despite security concerns surrounding one of them, the officials said.
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Two on United Flight from Chicago arrested in Amsterdam, ‘preparation of a terrorist attack’
Uhh: Obama Admin halts prosecution of alleged USS Cole bomber
The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing.
The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major al-Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions. And it comes practically on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden.
In a filing this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”
The statement, tucked into a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri’s attorneys, suggests that the prospect of further military trials for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has all but ground to a halt, much as the administration’s plan to try the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court has stalled.
Leaked CIA document warns of violent American Jews, calls US an “exporter of terrorism”
A CIA document released by Web site Wikileaks on Wednesay expresses concern that the US had become an “exporter of terrorism,” specifically mentioning American Jews in Israel.
The classified report, titled “What if Foreigners See the United States as an Exporter of Terrorism?” was produced in February 2010 by the CIA’s Red Cell, a think tank set up in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center. It mentions incidents in which Americans joined terrorist groups such as the Taliban and the Irish Republican Army, and committed acts such as the 2008 Mumbai bombing.
One of the four groups mentioned by the CIA is American Jews in Israel.
“Some American Jews have supported and even engaged in violent acts against perceived enemies of Israel,” the leaked report reads. “In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American Jewish doctor from New York, emigrated to Israel, joined the extremist group Kach, and killed 29 Palestinians during their prayers in the mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron”
State Department: Imam’s controversial remarks taken out of context
State Department officials say they are aware of the controversial remarks Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf made in 2005. Rauf is the Imam of the controversial so-called Ground Zero mosque and is presently on a State Department funded outreach tour of Middle Eastern countries.
During a 2005 conference in Australia, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf compared the United States to Al Qaeda and said, “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”
Rauf made the comments while speaking at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center during a question and answer session, as part of what sponsors say was a dialogue to improve relations between America and the Muslim world.
Rauf added, “You remember that the U.S. led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations.”
“We are aware of those remarks,” said State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley. “I would just caution any of you that choose to write on this that once again you have a case where a blogger has pulled out one passage from a very lengthy speech, if you read the entire speech, you will discover exactly why we think he is rightfully participating in this international speaking tour.”
Counter-terrorism adviser Brennan storms out of interview
Mr. Brennan cut the meeting short and stormed out of our offices thereafter following a question posed by senior editorial writer Jim Robbins (transcript and video below). Referring to a quote Mr. Brennan said in May, calling jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” Mr. Robbins looked to discuss the concept of jihad further with the Obama administration adviser.
Ground Zero mosque developer: US is worse than Al Qaeda
“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims,” Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a 2005 lecture sponsored by the University of South Australia.
US calls for Lockerbie bomber to be returned to jail
The Obama administration used the anniversary of the bomber’s release on compassionate grounds – because he had advanced prostate cancer – to condemn the decision.
The US president’s office said it had advised Libyan officials of its view that Megrahi should not be free.
John Brennan, Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, criticised the “unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision.”
He said: “We’ve expressed our strong conviction that Al Megrahi should serve out the remainder – the entirety – of his sentence in a Scottish prison.”
Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, said that a “cloud of suspicion” hung over the decision to release Megrahi, who is now living with his family in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Hamas insists on Ground Zero mosque
A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.
“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.
“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC.
“We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”
10 Christian medical workers executed by Taliban
The Christian Science Monitor,
The execution-style killings of 10 people working for a Christian medical team in a remote region of northern Afghanistan fit into Taliban insurgents’ stated shift in tactics: Target Western civilians, especially Christians, as “foreign invaders.”
The Taliban took credit for one of the deadliest attacks yet on aid workers in Afghanistan, saying the Christian charity workers were proselytizing to poor villagers – a charge that the International Assistance Mission, which dispatched the team, denies.
The bodies of six Americans, a Briton, a German, and two Afghan interpreters were discovered Friday in a forested part of Badakhshan Province in remote northern Afghanistan – until now considered a relatively peaceful region known mostly to adventure travelers. The only person in the party not killed was a local translator who offered proof he was a Muslim by quoting the Koran, according to the Associated Press.
New al-Qaida leader lived in US for more than 15 years
AP,
A suspected al-Qaida operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.
Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaida’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed – his former boss.
ACLU seeks to represent terrorist recruiter al-Awlaki
Last month, the Treasury Department designated the younger Mr. al-Awlaki as a foreign terrorist and began to go after his financial assets.
But the two civil liberties groups are saying: Not so fast.
Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that a court of law should determine whether Anwar al-Awlaki’s recruitment activities qualify as an immediate or imminent threat that would let a single agency of the U.S. government act as an unreviewable judge, jury and executioner.
“Whether or not it is an imminent threat, whether those sermons qualify or whether or not there is an immediacy to what he is saying is precisely what should be argued in a court of law,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU.
Adam Szubin, the director of Treasury’s foreign asset control agency, said Tuesday that the ACLU’s charge that it had been prohibited from representing Nasser al-Awlaki was misleading.
The ACLU applied for a license to represent the elder Mr. al-Awlaki 11 days ago, but has yet to receive it.
White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber
THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be “far preferable” to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.
Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.
The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.
The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama’s claim last week that all Americans were “surprised, disappointed and angry” to learn of Megrahi’s release.
UK gov’t admits: Releasing Lockerbie bomber was a mistake
The controversy surrounding the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing reignited yesterday after Britain’s ambassador to the US said the government regretted the Scottish decision to free Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and considered it a “mistake”.
Sir Nigel Sheinwald’s remarks come amid claims by a group of Democrat senators that BP lobbied the British government to release Megrahi to help it secure an oil deal with Libya.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is to look into the allegations, while the powerful Senate foreign relations committee will question BP executives at a special session later this month. The prisoner transfer agreement with Libya was signed in 2007 – the same year BP sealed a $900m (£584m) exploration agreement with Tripoli.