The UK‘s armed forces could be used on the streets of the Britain to confront the threat of terrorism, under the terms of a strategic defence review (SDR) announced yesterday.

Two of the six “key questions” to be considered by the SDR will focus on domestic threats which “cannot be separated from international security”, according to a Green Paper setting out the grounds for a full scale review to start after the General Election.

Decisions need to be made on the “balance between focusing on our territory and region and engaging threats at a distance” and “what contribution the armed forces should make in ensuring security and contributing to resilience within the UK”.

The paper states: “Stronger, more effective partnership with other Whitehall departments, the intelligence agencies, police forces and others at the national level will become even more important to achieving our security objective.”

One proposal due to be considered was the formation of a rapid reaction force which could be deployed to counter Mumbai-style terrorist attacks and carry out swift operations outside the country.

On long-term missions overseas the economic circumstances meant that Britain will have to co-operate more closely with international allies like France, said the paper. While the US remained Britain’s most important strategic ally, much closer co-operation should take place with other countries.

“In Europe, the return of France to Nato’s integrated military structure offers an opportunity for even greater co-operation with a key partner across a range of defence activity” it added.

The main theme of the Paper was “adaptability”, imperative due to varying demands on limited resources. The 52-page document admitted that although commanders on the ground in Afghanistan have shown the ability to adapt rapidly to challenges this had been undermined by the system in London.

The Paper made it clear that the SDR will have to carried out against the backdrop of the £178bn deficit in the public finances but the £20bn updating of the Trident nuclear programme, will also go ahead.

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Read more:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/soldiers-lsquocould-fight-terrorism-on-britains-streetsrsquo-14665451.html

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cyber threats highlighted in Green Paper (computing.co.uk)
• Armed forces face ‘tough choices’ ahead, says Defence Secretary (telegraph.co.uk)
• Ministers to outline UK defence strategy (newstatesman.com)
• UK ‘At Risk From Changing Terror Tactics’ (news.sky.com)
• Searching for Terrorists (cmswatch.com)
• Lawmakers: UK response to terrorism slow, confused (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

After finding himself on the receiving end of widespread criticism and unfriendly hashtags on Twitter, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has announced that he now considers Twitter messages and social networking as terrorist threats. He is quoted in this Spanish-language news report as calling for more state control over the internet. The Great Firewall of… Venezuela? (thanks, Guido Núñez-Mujica)

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/04/venezuela-chavez-equ.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

Original article :

Chávez arremete contra Twitter y estadios de béisbol

VENEZUELA

El presidente venezolano considera los mensajes en las redes sociales como amenazas terroristas y llamó a supervisar las protestas en los estadios…more:

http://www.semana.com/noticias-america-latina/chavez-arremete-contra-twitter-estadios-beisbol/134517.aspx

Related articles by Zemanta

• Gruma Falls Most Since March After Chavez Orders Unit’s Seizure (businessweek.com)
• Venezuela To Nationalize French Retail Chain (benzinga.com)
• Chavez says U.S. military plane entered Venezuela (ctv.ca)

Last Updated: January 29. 2010 12:18AM UAE / January 28. 2010 8:18PM GMT

Religious schools are one of the means – but far from the only one – by which jihadists are recruited. Khalid Tanveer / AP Photo

LAHORE // A year ago, in the central industrial city of Gujranwala, a gentle, thoughtful giant of a man named Asim Goraya agreed to arrange meetings for The National with local representatives of Lashkar-i-Taiba, the militant group accused of carrying out the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

However, Goraya had little in common with LiT. Rather than spend his days plotting the destruction of India and the United States, he believed in a romanticised jihad that was a duty for practising Muslims and involved fighting only the non-Muslim powers occupying Muslim lands.

That sense of duty led him to run away in 1980 from home at the age of 12 to join the jihad against the Soviet forces then occupying Afghanistan; he got as far as a training camp in the north-west Khyber tribal agency before his father tracked him down four days later and took him home.

He went on to become an engineer and joined the family’s steel business, but his fascination with jihad lingered. He came to view that process of recruitment through the eyes of a businessman: it was, he said, a case of taking the natural propensity for violence of Gujranwala’s youth as a raw material, and giving it productive purpose and direction.

It was a self-confessed “hobby” that nearly got him into trouble with the Pakistani intelligence agencies, particularly when a correspondent for Al Jazeera who sought his help, as The National later did, broke a promise not to reveal his identity.

“After that, my friends in the Lashkar told me to stop dabbling. They told me, either commit to the jihad or keep away. So I kept a distance,” Goraya said. He died in a road accident in October.

There are many decent, reasonable individuals like Goraya around the Pakistani hinterland whose profiles – and motivations for engaging in militancy – defy the stereotype of the brainwashed, wild-eyed terrorist.

While Goraya saw jihad as a romantic duty, others view it as a grand adventure. One of the latter was Chaudhry Iqbal, the lambardar – a village headman appointed by the provincial government to keep the peace and facilitate revenue collection – of a village in Bahawalnagar, a central district bordering India.

The villages of Bahawalnagar were, for about 15 years up to 2002, a prime recruitment area for militant groups such as LiT and Jaish-i-Mohammed that waged war against India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Poverty was not a factor in the decision of the then 19-year-old Mr Iqbal to sign up for training with the Jaish, a group suspected in the brutal January 2002 murder of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter.

As the eldest son of the most prosperous farmer in his village, Mr Iqbal’s financial future and societal standing were assured.

But a programme conducted at the local high school by the Jaish, with the blessings of the government, turned Mr Iqbal’s thoughts to the nearby border, the scene of fierce tank and infantry battles in the war with India.

“I thought that, as a man of standing, I did not want to be helpless in case of another war. I did not want to be like my grandfather and father in the 1971 war, the head of an impotent home guard carrying staffs and sickles,” he said in an interview.

He was subsequently made the head of a unit of 15 volunteers who travelled from Bahawalpur, home to the Jaish headquarters, via Miranshah in North Waziristan tribal agency, into Afghanistan on March 23, 2000.

Five days of walking and road travel later and the group arrived at a training camp on the outskirts of Kabul. “I remember the sign. The name Harkat-ul-Ansar [a Pakistani militant group] had been crossed out and replaced with Jaish-i-Mohammed,” he said.

A daily regime of indoctrination classes, rest, prayer and military training followed for three months, after which the recruits from Bahawalpur were taken to the area around the Bagram airbase, then the front line between the Afghan Taliban and its rival, the Northern Alliance.

“We got there at night and were told to shoot at certain fixed positions, so we fired off all the ammunition we had and returned to the camp in the morning,” said Mr Iqbal.

He was also deployed as a guard for a makeshift jail at the camp, made out of a 20-foot steel container used to transport goods. He said the sole prisoner was a Pakistani from Islamabad, who had been infiltrated into the camp by a rival Shiite sectarian group.

“I was told to treat him roughly and not feed him more than one piece of nan [bread] a day. But I thought that was wrong, so I had long conversations with him and gave him biscuits from my ration,” he said.

But, despite the constant, passionate pleading of his militant instructors, the young Mr Iqbal stuck to his plan and returned home to his village, where he has since succeeded his father as headman.

The lives of Goraya and Mr Iqbal – and the many people like them – are reminders that those who embark on the jihad cause cannot all be easily labelled.

Read more:

thussain@thenational.ae

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100129/FOREIGN/701289914/1002/rss

Related articles by Zemanta

• The time to talk to the Taliban is now (guardian.co.uk)
• US Students Detained For ‘Terrorist Links’ (news.sky.com)
• Al-Qaeda ‘seeking South Asia war’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Pakistan Rejects U.S. Call To Go After Militants (huffingtonpost.com)

By John Robertson

THE man dubbed Scotland’s first Islamist terrorist had his conviction quashed yesterday after judges ruled he had suffered a miscarriage of justice.

• Lawyer Aamer Anwar, centre, leaves court with Mohammed Atif Siddique‘s parents, Mohammed and Parveen, after yesterday’s appeal hearing. Picture: Jane Barlow

But Mohammed Atif Siddique remained behind bars last night as prosecutors decided whether to put him on trial a second time for terrorist offences.

Siddique, 24, a former student who had threatened to become a suicide bomber in the heart of Glasgow, must wait two weeks to learn whether the Crown wants to try to prosecute him again.

He asked to be released after yesterday’s judgment at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, but the judges said they would wait until the issue of a possible retrial had been settled.

Siddique’s parents, Mohammed and Parveen, appeared delighted as they left the court with their solicitor, Aamer Anwar, but declined to comment. Mr Anwar said there could be no statement until the case’s final outcome.

The appeal judges held that Lord Carloway, the judge at Siddique’s trial in Glasgow in 2007, had misdirected the jury on the elements that needed to be proved for a conviction under the 2000 Terrorism Act. They also faulted Lord Carloway’s directions on a statutory defence to the charge.

“In these circumstances, the appellant’s conviction on charge one in the indictment, in our judgment, amounts to a miscarriage of justice,” said Lord Osborne, sitting with Lords Reed and Clarke.

Siddique had also been found guilty of three other charges, but those were unaffected by the judgment. He had received a total of eight years’ imprisonment, six years for the main charge.

When the Crown is not to blame for a miscarriage of justice, it can seek authority from the appeal court for a fresh prosecution. In Siddique’s case, the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, QC, was given until 9 February to study the judgment and decide whether to ask for a retrial. But even if she were to make the request, it would still be open to the court to refuse it.

Siddique, of Alva, Clackmannanshire, was a student of Glasgow’s Metropolitan College when he was arrested in April 2006 at Glasgow airport, waiting for a flight to Pakistan. Police found al-Qaeda material on his laptop and at his home. At his trial, his defence was that he had accessed terrorist websites out of curiosity.

However, the jury convicted him of the main charge, of possessing articles in circumstances which gave rise to a reasonable suspicion of a connection with terrorism.

He was found guilty of a breach of the peace by showing fellow students images of terrorists murdering and beheading victims, and by threatening to become a suicide bomber in Glasgow.

A third charge involved setting up websites which contained links to documents providing instructions on how to operate weapons and to make bombs.

A fourth charge was of distributing terrorist publications through the websites.

Earlier, Siddique had been granted leave to appeal in respect of the first and fourth charges. The appeal against the fourth charge was dismissed yesterday.

On the first charge, Lord Osborne said that, in any criminal trial, the jury had to be given directions on the definition and meaning of any crime in the indictment and on the elements that had to be proved by the prosecution.

Guidance had been issued by the House of Lords, but that guidance had not been available to Lord Carloway.

“While it is evident that, at the very outset of his consideration of the offence … the trial judge followed the statutory language of section 57(1), almost immediately he then departed from the use of that language and … treated the offence as if section 57(1) contained no reference to ‘circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion’. We consider that that amounted to a material misdirection,” said Lord Osborne.

He added: “In our view, the giving to the jury of the directions to be found in the charge relating to these matters amounted not only to a misdirection, but also to a miscarriage of justice.”

THE APPEALED CHARGES

CHARGE 1: The main indictment, under section 57(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000, of possessing articles in circumstances which gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession was for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism. APPEAL UPHELD: “In our judgment … a miscarriage of justice,” say Lords Osborne, Reed and Clarke.

CHARGE 2: He was found guilty of a breach of the peace by showing fellow students images of terrorists murdering and beheading victims, and by threatening to become a suicide bomber in Glasgow. DENIED PERMISSION TO APPEAL.

CHARGE 3: Involved setting up websites that contained links to documents providing instructions how to operate weapons and make bombs. DENIED PERMISSION TO APPEAL.

CHARGE 4: Distributing terrorist publications through the websites. APPEAL DISMISSED.

29 January 2010 11:41 PM

Read more:

http://news.scotsman.com/news/39First-Islamic-terrorist39-suffered-a.6028500.jp

Related articles by Zemanta

• Terror conviction ‘to be quashed’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Control orders were unlawful says judge (telegraph.co.uk)
• Anwar Ibrahim loses final appeal ahead of sodomy trial (telegraph.co.uk)
• Turkish raids snare 120 al-Qaeda suspects (cbc.ca)
• Analysis: Al-Qaeda’s versatility unexpected (nationalpost.com)

posted at 10:55 am on January 29, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Over the last few days, the Obama administration reliance on a law-enforcement approach to counterterrorism has come under bipartisan fire.  Reports that key CT officials were not consulted on how to handle the EunuchBomber angered Congress enough to propose a law requiring such consultation in the future.   Now, with Democrats beginning to object to the New York City trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the closure of Gitmo hopelessly mired in what the Washington Post calls “dwindling options,” Lindsey Graham will attempt to reintroduce a bill prohibiting any funding for federal trials of 9/11 terrorists, at least:

The closure of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is beginning to look like a protracted and uncertain project for the Obama administration as political, legal and security concerns limit the president’s options.

Having blown the one-year closure deadline set last January in an executive order, the administration is planning to transfer some detainees to a state prison it hopes to acquire in Illinois. But there appears to be little mood in Congress to provide the administration with either the funding for the prison or the authority to transfer detainees who will be held indefinitely. …

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) plans to introduce a bill next week that would prohibit funding of a federal trial for Mohammed and other Sept. 11 defendants, in an effort to force the case into a military tribunal. An earlier such legislative effort failed, but a spokesman for Graham said that the senator has been taking the pulse of his colleagues and that “momentum has been building.”

Until the attempted bombing of Northwest 253 on Christmas Day, Obama appeared to have some momentum on the law-enforcement approach.  However, the outrage over reading a terrorist his rights and providing him an attorney rather than a lengthy interrogation to discover what we could about any impending attacks has seriously derailed both the trial process and the closure of Gitmo.  After all, if the terrorists can’t get tried in federal court, they will have to be both tried and held in military custody — which means Gitmo, at least for the foreseeable future.

This could set up a constitutional showdown between Congress and the judiciary, depending on whether the courts eventually reject the current military commission system.  If Congress refuses to provide funds for criminal trials and the Supreme Court throws out the current military system (which I believe has yet to be challenged to that court), then the detainees will be left in limbo.  The three branches will have to fight for jurisdiction, which could make the entire process a decades-long mess, with some of the detainees expiring of natural causes before anything gets settled.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is attempting to cut a plea deal with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aka The EunuchBomber, to get the information that CT specialists could have extracted without playing Monty Hall:

Authorities are inching toward an agreement that would secure cooperation from the suspect in the failed Detroit airliner attack, according to two sources familiar with the case, even as fresh details emerged about the intense and chaotic response to the Christmas Day incident.

Seizing on the near miss, GOP lawmakers have mounted a sustained attack on President Obama and the Justice Department, saying they may have lost out on valuable intelligence by charging Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in a federal court rather than under the military justice system. …

Public defenders for the Nigerian student are engaged in negotiations that could result in an agreement to share more information and eventually a guilty plea, the sources said.

Negotiations could still collapse before the next scheduled court date, in April, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. But senior members of the administration’s national security apparatus have publicly said that a plea deal is likely, given the virtual life sentence that Abdulmutallab could face on charges of using an airplane as a weapon of mass destruction.

So the administration’s CT strategy is to catch those terrorists who remain alive after an attack attempt, and then offer them eventual freedom for their part in targeting hundreds of civilians for mass murder?  Yes, I can see al-Qaeda shaking in their boots now.  Maybe Abdulmutallab can help radicalize his prison population, assuming they allow him enough time to do so.

Read more:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/29/momentum-building-for-blocking-terrorist-trials/

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Should the U.S. Try Terrorism Suspects? (time.com)
• Should terrorists be treated as enemy combatants or criminal defendants? (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Laps in security (powerlineblog.com)
• A mistake that can be rectified (powerlineblog.com)
• Detainees Will Still Be Held, but Not Tried, Official Says (nytimes.com)
• Bomb Suspect, Terrorism: How to Prosecute Domestic Cases? (time.com)

Published January 29, 2010

The collaboration with Yemen provides the starkest illustration to date of the Obama administration’s efforts to ramp up counterterrorism operations, including in areas outside the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones. Efforts in Yemen have resulted in more than two dozen ground raids and airstrikes.  Obama also has sent U.S. military forces briefly into Somalia.  He has embraced the notion that the most effective way to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates is to work closely with foreign partners, including those with feeble democracies, shoddy human rights records and weak accountability over the vast sums of money Washington is giving them to win their continued participation in these efforts.  Targeted killing of US citizens abroad is part of the discussion.

Washington Post, January 27,  2010

U.S. military teams, intelligence deeply involved in aiding Yemen on strikes

By Dana Priest

U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.

The operations, approved by President Obama and begun six weeks ago, involve several dozen troops from the U.S. military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose main mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. The American advisers do not take part in raids in Yemen, but help plan missions, develop tactics and provide weapons and munitions. Highly sensitive intelligence is being shared with the Yemeni forces, including electronic and video surveillance, as well as three-dimensional terrain maps and detailed analysis of the al-Qaeda network.

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.

The broad  outlines of the U.S. involvement in Yemen have come to light in the past month, but the extent and nature of the operations have not been previously reported. The far-reaching U.S. role could prove politically challenging for Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who must balance his desire for American support against the possibility of a backlash by tribal, political and religious groups whose members resent what they see as U.S. interference in Yemen.

The collaboration with Yemen provides the starkest illustration to date of the Obama administration’s efforts to ramp up counterterrorism operations, including in areas outside the Iraq and Afghanistan war zone.

“We are very pleased with the direction this is going,” a senior administration official said of the cooperation with Yemen.

Obama has ordered a dramatic increase in the pace of CIA drone-launched missile strikes into Pakistan in an effort to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban members in the ungoverned tribal areas along the Afghan border. There have been more such strikes in the first year of Obama’s administration than in the last three years under President George W. Bush, according to a military officer who tracks the attacks.

Obama also has sent U.S. military forces briefly into Somalia as part of an operation to kill Saleh Ali Nabhan, a Kenyan sought in the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned resort in Kenya.

Republican lawmakers and former vice president Richard B. Cheney have sought to characterize the new president as soft on terrorism after he banned the harsh interrogation methods permitted under Bush and announced his intention to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama has rejected those two elements of Bush’s counterterrorism program, but he has embraced the notion that the most effective way to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates is to work closely with foreign partners, including those that have feeble democracies, shoddy human rights records and weak accountability over the vast sums of money Washington is giving them to win their continued participation in these efforts.

In the case of Yemen, a steady stream of high-ranking officials has visited Saleh, including the rarely seen JSOC commander, Vice Adm. William H. McRaven; White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan; and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command.

A Yemeni official briefed on security matters said Tuesday that the two countries maintained a “steadfast cooperation in combating AQAP, but there are clear limits to the U.S. involvement on the ground. Information sharing has been a key in carrying out recent successful counterterrorism operations.” AQAP is the abbreviation for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate operating in Yemen.

In a newly built joint operations center, the American advisers are acting as intermediaries between the Yemeni forces and hundreds of U.S. military and intelligence officers working in Washington, Virginia and Tampa and at Fort Meade, Md., to collect, analyze and route intelligence.

The combined efforts have resulted in more than two dozen ground raids and airstrikes. Military and intelligence officials suspect there are several hundred members of AQAP, a group that has historical links to the main al-Qaeda organization but that is thought to operate independently.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, told a Navy War College class in early January that the United States had “no plans” to send ground troops to Yemen and that he had been concerned about the growing al-Qaeda presence there “for a long time now.”

“We have worked hard to try to improve our relationships and training, education and war-fighting support,” Mullen said. “And, yet, we still have a long way to go.”

Saleh has faced pressure not only from the United States but also his country’s main financial backers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to gain better control over its lawless northern border. In August, Saleh asked U.S. officials to begin a more in-depth conversation over how the two countries might work together, according to administration officials. The current operation evolved from those talks.

“President Saleh was serious about going after al-Qaeda and wasn’t going to resist our encouragement,” the senior official said.

The Obama administration’s deepening of bilateral intelligence relations builds on ties forged during George J. Tenet’s tenure as CIA director.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Tenet coaxed Saleh into a partnership that would give the CIA and U.S. military units the means to attack terrorist training camps and al-Qaeda targets. Saleh agreed, in part, because he believed that his country, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, was next on the U.S. invasion list, according to an adviser to the Yemeni president.

Tenet provided Saleh’s forces with helicopters, eavesdropping equipment and 100 Army Special Forces members to train an antiterrorism unit. He also won Saleh’s approval to fly Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles over the country. In November 2002, a CIA missile strike killed six al-Qaeda operatives driving through the desert. The target was Abu Ali al-Harithi, organizer of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Killed with him was a U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, who the CIA knew was in the car.

Word that the CIA had purposefully killed Derwish drew attention to the unconventional nature of the new conflict and to the secret legal deliberations over whether killing a U.S. citizen was legal and ethical.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose “a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,” said one former intelligence official.

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, “it doesn’t really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them,” a senior administration official said. “They are then part of the enemy.”

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called “High Value Targets” and “High Value Individuals,” whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi’s name has now been added.

Intelligence officials say the New Mexico-born imam also has been linked to the Army psychiatrist who is accused of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., although his communications with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan were largely academic in nature. Authorities say that Aulaqi is the most important native, English-speaking al-Qaeda figure and that he was in contact with the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker al-Qirbi said in Washington last week that his government’s present goal is to persuade Aulaqi to surrender so he can face local criminal charges stemming from his contacts with the Fort Hood suspect. Aulaqi is being tracked by the country’s security forces, the minister added, and is now thought to be in the southern province of Shabwa.

Staff writer R. Jeffrey Smith and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

shortlink to this post:  http://wp.me/p3xLR-mG

Read more:

http://mlyon01.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/us-military-and-intelligence-in-yemen-shows-obamas-expansion-of-war/

Related articles by Zemanta

• U.S. military teams, intelligence deeply involved in aiding Yemen on strikes (starting-points.blogspot.com)
• U.S. deeply involved in deadly Yemeni strikes (msnbc.msn.com)
• Al-Qaeda is almost the least of Yemen’s problems (cbc.ca)
• Yemen Attacks Involve U.S. Military (huffingtonpost.com)
• Obama Orders Americans Killed (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Former Guantánamo bay detainee warns of inmates’ return to extremism (telegraph.co.uk)
• Yemen declares ‘open war’ on al-Qaeda (telegraph.co.uk)
• U.S. increases efforts to boost security in Yemen amid increasing terror threat (starting-points.blogspot.com)

Jan 26, 2010, 10:24 GMT

Nairobi/Abuja – Nigerian police have arrested over 300 suspects in the wake of last week’s bloody clashes between Christians and Muslims in the city of Jos, The Punch newspaper reported Tuesday.

The paper cited a police spokesman in reporting the figure, with 139 of those arrested having been taken to the capital Abuja.

The number of those killed in the unrest was put at 362. Meanwhile some 40,000 people have fled Jos and surrounding towns, according to Nigeria‘s national crisis centre.

Police chief Ikehukwu Aduma condemned what he called ‘senseless violence’ committed in which religion was just used as an excuse.

Jos has repeatedly been the scene of such clashes in recent years, resulting in hundreds of deaths.

Human rights groups and the Nigerian lawyers’ association over the past few days have criticised the fact that not a single person involved in such past violence had ever been charged or sentenced.

Read more:

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/africa/news/article_1528485.php/Over-300-arrested-from-Christian-Muslim-unrest-in-Nigeria-report?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mass arrests after Nigeria clash (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Nigeria: Chilling messages sent before killings (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Soldiers Patrol Nigerian City (online.wsj.com)
• Police: 326 killed in Nigeria religious violence (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Religious violence erupts again in central Nigeria (ctv.ca)

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 26 (UPI) — The Afghan Taliban’s strategy has made its insurgency increasingly effective, says CNN, citing a briefing by the top U.S. intelligence official in the country.

CNN reports the Dec. 22 briefing by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, which it obtained, says the Taliban’s “organizational capabilities and operational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding,” giving it greater capability for more frequent attacks.

CNN reported factors sustaining the insurgency include increased availability of bomb-making technology and material, the Taliban’s access to funding from opium and donations from Muslim countries through the “hawala” system of informal banking, and its continuing ability to recruit foot soldiers.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/01/26/Taliban-insurgency-increasingly-effective/UPI-29801264509618/?

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran called on the United States on Tuesday to extradite members of a “terrorist group” which the Islamic Republic has linked to this month’s killing of a university scientist in Tehran.

Iranian officials have blamed both Israel and the United States for the January 12 bomb attack that killed professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi. Washington has dismissed the charge of U.S. involvement as absurd.

Some Iranian media have also reported that a Western-based pro-monarchy group claimed responsibility for the attack, but have not said how they knew this.

On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast named the group as Tondar (Thunder), without giving details. He said the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Monday.

“Regarding the assassination which was claimed by Tondar, we asked the Swiss embassy for an explanation on how the U.S. accepted to have this terrorist group in their country,” he told a weekly press briefing.

Read more:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100126/n_top_news/cnews_us_iran_usa_group

Related articles by Zemanta

• Iran Holds Bodies of Slain Protesters (abcnews.go.com)
• Iran nuclear scientist killed; both sides claim his support (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Officials: Iran responds to fuel swap offer (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

An al Qaeda operative from Jordan was killed during a recent US airstrike in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan,

Mansur al Shami, a longtime jihadi whose real name is Mahmud Mahdi Zeidan, was confirmed to have been killed in a statement released on the Al Faloja and Shamukh al Islam jihadist web forums, according to the SITE Institute.

“The martyrdom of Mahmud Mahdi Zeidan… on the soil of Pakistan, the land of the diligent and of the mujahedeen is confirmed,” the statement read.

Shami’s family was also contacted by a member of al Qaeda who was present during the strike. “A man called me on Sunday and said my brother died in the US attack,” Shami’s brother Omar told AFP. “He spoke bad Arabic and said he escaped the attack. I think he is a Pakistani.”

Shami served as an ideologue and as a bodyguard for senior al Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu Yazid, the group’s commander in Afghanistan and chief financier. According to Shami’s brother, he worked for Taliban Radio in Afghanistan in 2001. Shami’s father is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that is a gateway to al Qaeda, and Shami’s other brother Ibrahim was captured by US forces in Afghanistan in 2001 and spent five years at Guantanamo Bay before being released in 2006.

Shami starred in two propaganda tapes in the past six months. The tapes were released by As Sahab, al Qaeda’s primary media production arm. His last tape was released just one week before his death was announced. On Jan. 4, 2010, Shami was seen in a sermon for the Eid al Adha holiday. In August 2009, Shami also appeared on a tape that provided advice to foreign fighters flocking to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It is unclear which US strike in North Waziristan killed Shami. There have been three strikes in North Waziristan since Jan. 4; however, it is possible Shami was killed in a prior strike, a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

“Al Qaeda often has a lead time for its tapes to be released, usually days or weeks, for security reasons,” the official said. “He [Shami] could have been killed in any of the strikes from New Year’s Eve onward.” The US has conducted six strikes in North Waziristan since another Jordanian carried out a suicide attack on a CIA base in Khost Province that killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian intelligence officer.

US intelligence officials would not comment on the target of the strike that killed Shami; however, given that he is Yazid’s bodyguard, it is likely the US was gunning for the al Qaeda leader.

Yazid has been targeted by the US several times since January 2008. As al Qaeda’s chief financial officer, he is responsible for managing and disbursing the terror group’s funds. Yazid is also one of al Qaeda’s top propagandists; he has released numerous audio and videotape statements. Most recently, Yazid released a statement on the death of the Jordanian suicide bomber and claimed the attack was in revenge for the death of two top al Qaeda leaders and the former leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/01/jordanian_al_qaeda_o.php#ixzz0cUz2go3i

Related articles by Zemanta

• Suicide bomber’s wife ‘proud’ husband killed CIA officers (nationalpost.com)
• Blast Injures Governor of Afghanistan’s Khost (abcnews.go.com)
• CIA Bomber Calls for Attacks on US in Video (abcnews.go.com)
• Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould: SHADOW WAR (huffingtonpost.com)
• Did a “triple agent” kill eight CIA agents in Afghanistan? (newstatesman.com)
• Afghanistan: Gen Stanley McChrystal says troops surge is starting to work (telegraph.co.uk)