Terror // Current

Doctor admits he is 'a terrorist'

An NHS doctor accused of attempted car bombings in London and at Glasgow Airport has admitted that according to English law he is... more

bonemachine
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Suicide bomber hits US convoy in Afghanistan

How far is the drive from Iraq to Afghanistan??.........in a tank?

bansheewail
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Rape victim, 13, stoned to death

A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped has been stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants.

Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death on October 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses.

The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.

Initial local media reports said Miss Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told Amnesty International that they had reported she was 23 based upon her physical appearance.

"This child suffered a horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayo," David Copeman, Amnesty International's Somalia campaigner, said in a statement on Friday.

Somalia is among the world's most violent and impoverished countries. The nation of some eight million people has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 then turned on each other.

A quarter of Somali children die before age five; nearly every public institution has collapsed. Fighting is a daily occurrence, with violent deaths reported nearly every day.

Islamic militants with ties to al Qaida have been battling the government and its Ethiopian allies since their combined forces pushed the Islamists from the capital in December 2006. Within weeks of being driven out, the Islamists launched an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians.

In recent months, the militants appear to be gaining strength. The group has taken over the port of Kismayo, Somalia's third-largest city, and dismantled pro-government roadblocks.

They also effectively closed the Mogadishu airport by threatening to attack any plane using it.

The rest of the world truly is a beautiful place. We should listen to them, take suggestions, apologize for having more, and by all means ensure that they are educated. NOT!!!!!!A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped has been stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic... more

nobamajon
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29 responses

6 days ago

A proposito di TERRORE....

Filmato RAI scoperto da BBC covaliderebbe ammissione poliziotto: le molotov alla scuola Diaz le avrebbe effettivamente portate lui!

palindromo
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0 responses

7 days ago

OSAMA Bin Laden is set to release a video threat to Barack Obama, fanatics have warned.

The al-Qaeda chief’s first message in months could come when Mr Obama names his first Cabinet. Hate preacher Omar Bakri... more

sunnyspeaks
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3 responses

9 days ago

Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks... more

sunnyspeaks
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0 responses

9 days ago

White House concerned over al Qaeda terror attack during transition

President Bush on Thursday said he is concerned that al Qaeda will try to test the incoming Obama administration with a terror... more

sunnyspeaks
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9 responses

12 days ago

Bin Laden Son Loses Asylum Plea

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- One of Osama bin Laden's sons has been denied asylum in Spain, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman told... more

TyMarshal
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0 responses

13 days ago

The Raven -Edgar Allan Poe

Happy Halloween... And on Halloween it wouldn' t be complete without a reading from Vincent Price (the laugh from Michael... more

JanforGore
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3 responses

18 days ago

Experience True Halloween Terror!

Okay, so today is Halloween. It's tradition to fantasize about things that scare the crap out of us. So let me use this time... more

LarzNero
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6 responses

19 days ago

Tea With the Taliban?

As U.S. and European officials ponder what to do about the situation in Afghanistan, they are coming to a perhaps surprising conclusion: The simplest way to stabilize the country may be to negotiate a truce with the Taliban fundamentalists.

The question isn't whether to negotiate with the Taliban but when. There's a widespread view among Bush administration officials and U.S. military commanders that it's too soon for serious talks, because any negotiation now would be from a position of weakness. Some argue for a U.S. troop buildup and an aggressive military campaign next year to secure Afghan population centers, followed by negotiations.

A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that the U.S. would consider any discussion with the Taliban militants who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden as he planned the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The painful experience of Iraq and Afghanistan has convinced many U.S. commanders that if you can take an enemy off the battlefield, that's better than getting pinned down in protracted combat.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the argument for negotiations with the Taliban during a meeting with NATO allies who are weary. "There has to be ultimately -- and I'll underscore ultimately -- reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this," Gates said. "That's ultimately the exit strategy for all of us."

Gen. David Petraeus, who has overall responsibility for the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has made similar arguments. He believes that the U.S. must work to separate the "reconcilables" among the Taliban from those who are allied with al-Qaeda, and draw the moderates into the government. Petraeus successfully pursued that strategy with Sunni Muslim insurgents in Iraq -- encouraging them to break with al-Qaeda then forming alliances with them.

Petraeus believes an effort to co-opt the Afghan insurgency should probably be accompanied by a stronger U.S. troop presence, just as it was in Iraq. He argues that it's a mistake to think that there's a purely military solution in either country. "You can't kill or capture your way out of this," he explains.

A move to negotiate with the Taliban is already underway thanks to a quiet diplomatic push by Saudi Arabia. Late last month, at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Saudi King Abdullah met in Mecca with representatives of the Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, who was represented in Mecca by his brother Qayoum Karzai, supported the Saudi mediation. "We're at the very early stages now, but we do have hope for the future," Qayoum Karzai said.

President Karzai is said to have demanded that the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, publicly renounce bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as a condition for further talks. A Taliban representative took this demand to Mullah Omar in his hideout in Afghanistan and returned to Mecca with a positive answer, according to a source familiar with the talks.

Mullah Omar has sent the Saudis a list of seven demands of his own, according to this source. Among the items on the Taliban agenda are a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan; a role for Taliban representatives in provincial and national government; assimilation of Taliban fighters into the Afghan army; and amnesty for guerrillas who fought against the United States.

The Saudis have proposed a second round of discussions in Mecca, when the hajj pilgrimage season begins. U.S. officials are said to be skeptical, but France and Britain appear to be encouraging the Saudi effort. Some Pakistani government and army leaders are also supportive.
Gates notes that we reached just such an accord in Iraq with Sunni insurgents. "At the end of the day, that's how most wars end," he said.
As U.S. and European officials ponder what to do about the situation in Afghanistan, they are coming to a perhaps surprising... more

starr111
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4 responses

20 days ago

Charles Burns on FEAR(S) OF THE DARK

This was actually supposed to be a video piece, but a really nasty bug forced me to do it as a phoner. Still, some great insights... more

DanPersons
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28 days ago

At least five Chase banks hit with "white powder" letter threats

DENVER (Reuters) - At least five branches of Chase bank in Colorado and Oklahoma received threatening letters on Monday, some... more

bansheewail
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4 responses

29 days ago

Lawyers Criticize Quality of Guantanamo Interpreters

Something was being lost in interpretation. Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national accused of war crimes and murder for his alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was speaking in Arabic. Ralph H. Kohlmann, a Marine colonel and military judge at Guantanamo Bay, was listening to a simultaneous interpretation in English.

At a recent pretrial hearing, Hawsawi, according to his military lawyer, wanted to discuss the potential responsibilities of his attorneys and the implications of representing himself before the military commission. Those in the courtroom, however, often heard head-scratching sentences such as, "In the beginning of the timing of the laws, I said there is no difficulties base."

A linguist working with Hawsawi's team later estimated that half of what the defendant said was rendered incorrectly by court interpreters and that Hawsawi didn't understand at least 25 percent of what was said in English.

As five key defendants charged in the Sept. 11 attacks -- including self-described mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- move toward a trial by jury, defense lawyers and human rights advocates charge that the fairness of the most significant proceeding at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is routinely undermined by incompetent interpretation.

"Regular omissions, or mistranslations of key words or phrases often led to disjointed, incomprehensible or misleading translations into both English and Arabic," Hawsawi's attorneys wrote in a draft document supporting a motion they filed asking to halt the case until qualified interpreters are hired. The lawyers asked the court to order the government to produce an Arabic transcript of each hearing -- a motion military prosecutors are resisting.

The Pentagon rejected charges that interpreters at Guantanamo Bay are not qualified, but Defense Department officials said they were instituting new controls to address attorneys' concerns. Officials said that only native speakers or native-level speakers are hired and that they are equal to interpreters used in federal court. The interpreters are subject to in-house testing by the Pentagon's contractor, based on State Department standards, as well as testing by an outside firm, officials said.

"We work hard to provide the most qualified translators to do an important mission for our nation," Joseph DellaVedova, a spokesman for the Office of Military Commissions, said in an e-mail. "Nevertheless, because of concerns expressed by counsel -- particularly regarding their ability to speak at normal pacing -- OMC is instituting an additional quality control system which will enable us to pre-screen potential interpreters to assess their skill level."

Defense lawyers and court observers said the Guantanamo interpreters do not approach the standards for interpretation in federal courts or in forums such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. "There is no way someone who doesn't understand what's going on in court can get a fair trial," said Army Maj. Jon Jackson, military counsel to Hawsawi. "This is being done on the cheap."

Something was being lost in interpretation. Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national accused of war crimes and murder for his... more

starr111
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1 response

1 month ago

Oil pipeline a target of bombings in Canada

A terrorist(s) is on the loose in northern Canada. A second pipeline along the B.C.-Alberta border has been bombed, marking the... more

urlspotter
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1 response

1 month ago

Immigration Control - Special Registration's Legacy

The special registration measure that required men from Arab and Muslim countries to register with the government has been suspended since December 2003. But a New York court just upheld its validity. NAM contributor Edward Alden writes that it has become a form of immigration control instead of being about counter-terrorism. Alden is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security Since 9/11. He was formerly the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times.

More than 140,000 Arabs and Muslims in the United States were forced to register with the government after the September 11 attacks in a heavy-handed effort to keep terrorists out of the country. The registration scheme did not uncover any terrorists, but it did find some 13,000 immigration violators, who were then deported.

Last week a New York appeals court upheld the program. The court ruled unequivocally that the U.S. Justice Department had the authority to enforce the so-called National Entry-Exit Registration Scheme (NSEERS) that was set up in 2002, and to deport anyone who ran afoul of its rules. Constitutionally, the court was right; in every other respect – economically, diplomatically, and morally, it was wrong.

Of all the programs set up after 9/11 with the goal of catching terrorists on U.S. soil, none was more ill-conceived than NSEERS. It set out special rules for most male visitors from two dozen Arab and Muslim countries, requiring lengthy security screenings before they came to the United States and forcing them to register with the government again if they spent more than a month here. Citizens of those countries living here already without green cards were also required to register, and if they were found to be out of immigration status, they were deported. While the special registration requirements were abolished at the end of 2003, much of the program remains in place today.

Imad Daou, a young Christian from Lebanon, is just one of thousands – none of whom has ever been shown to have any connection to terrorism – who got caught out by the scheme. I met Daou this spring in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, a violent border city that has been crippled by the drug wars. It was the last place Daou ever expected to end up when he left his home in Beirut in July of 2003 to come to Texas A & M International University (TAMIU) to do a master's degree in computer science.

TAMIU is in Laredo, only a few miles from the border with Mexico. During his first weekend at the school, he was standing at a bus stop when he met Maria Guadelupe Garcia, a Mexican-American who was studying for her master's in international business at TAMIU and teaching at a Laredo high school. He seemed, as she later put it, "lost and in great need of help"; the bus he was waiting for did not run on the weekends. She later invited him to attend Catholic mass with her and other students from the university dorms. They fell in love, and got engaged, with plans to marry when the academic term ended in the spring of 2004.

In November, 2003, she decided to make it official with her family. First, she introduced him to her parents in Del Rio, Texas and then, with the easy informality that had long connected both sides of the border, they crossed the Rio Grande into Acuna, Mexico to meet her sister and to invite her to a Thanksgiving dinner in Texas the next day. The two had already been to Mexico several times together and had faced no problems coming back. But when they returned to the border after a two-hour visit, the U.S. inspector looked at Daou's Lebanese passport, checked in his computer system and determined that Daou had failed to register with the U.S. government after 30 days as was required under NSEERS.
************CONTINUESThe special registration measure that required men from Arab and Muslim countries to register with the government has been... more

goldenways
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1 month ago

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval." The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said. The concerns grew more pronounced after the revelations of mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and further still as tensions grew between the administration and its intelligence advisers over the conduct of the Iraq war.

"It came up in the daily meetings. We heard it from our field officers," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the events. "We were already worried that we" were going to be blamed.

A. John Radsan, a lawyer in the CIA general counsel's office until 2004, remembered the discussions but did not personally view the memos the agency received in response to its concerns. "The question was whether we had enough 'top cover,' " Radsan said.

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use... more