Security agencies arrests four Turkish al Qaeda suspects

QUETTA  ( 2008-04-04 12:09:44 ) : 

Pakistani security agencies have arrested four Turks with suspected links to al Qaeda, intelligence officials said on Friday.
Explosives, some 1,400 rounds of ammunition, and a laptop containing "jihadi" material were found on the suspects, who were detained by paramilitary troops late on Thursday as they were travelling on a bus from the western province of Baluchistan to neighbouring Sindh, the officials said.
Interrogations revealed they were Turkish, and three were carrying Turkish passports, although they all had fake identity cards.
"They are between the age of 30 and 35 and were carrying identity cards showing them as Afghan refugees," said an intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"We have arrested them on suspicion they may have links to al Qaeda."
A Frontier Corps official said the men were arrested in Dera Murad Jamali town after a tip-off, and had been handed over to an intelligence agency.
The United States is concerned that al Qaeda has regrouped in the ethnic Pashtun tribal lands straddling the Pakistan-Afghan border and is working with the new government in Pakistan to find the best approach to tackling the problem.
Arab and Central Asian militants have taken refuge in the region and young radicals from Europe have also sought militant training there, according to Western intelligence agencies.

Three killed, Iraqi TV cameraman maimed in bomb attack

BAGHDAD  ( 2008-04-02 16:09:40 ) : 

Three people were killed and 13 others wounded, including a cameraman with Iraq's independent Al-Diyar satellite television, in a roadside bombing in Baghdad on Wednesday, officials said.
A security official said the bomb exploded in the eastern neighbourhood of Talbiyah and killed three people.
Thirteen people, including Al-Diyar cameraman Maytham Ibrahim, were wounded in the attack, the official said.
Ibrahim survived but lost a leg, news editor Imed al-Abadi of the station told AFP.
Ibrahim is being treated in Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, the sprawling bastion of the Mahdi Army militia of powerful Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that bore the brunt of violence this week.
The station has asked for him to be transferred to a more sophisticated facility in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, Abadi said.
The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, meanwhile, has called for the release of Ahmed Mahmud Hassan, a journalist for Al-Sumariya satellite television channel.
It said Hassan was arrested on March 30 in Mahmudiyah, 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Baghdad, "while covering clashes between Iraqi forces and rebel insurgents."
The journalist is thought to be detained at a military base, Reporters Without Borders said.
"A score of journalists have been arrested across Iraq since the start of 2008," it said. "Arbitrary arrest has become commonplace in Iraq. The Iraqi authorities must stop this growing obstruction to the work of the media."
According to the Iraqi Journalists Freedom Observatory (JFO), which monitors violence against the media, 233 Iraqi and foreign journalists and media workers have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003.

Bush calls on Nato allies for Afghan troops

 

BUCHAREST  ( 2008-04-02 15:13:42 ) : 

US President George W. Bush urged Nato allies on Wednesday to send more troops to Afghanistan, saying the alliance could not afford to lose its battle against Taliban insurgents and al Qaeda militants.
In a keynote speech before a summit of the 26-nation defence alliance in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, Bush said: "As (French) President (Nicolas) Sarkozy put it in London last week, we cannot afford to lose Afghanistan. Whatever the cost, however difficult, we cannot afford it, we must win. I agree completely.
Noting that France and Romania were due to send more troops, he said: "We ask other nations to step forward with additional forces as well."
Nato allies want the Bucharest summit, starting later on Wednesday, to send the message that its 47,000-strong peacekeeping force will stay in Afghanistan for as long as necessary to battle the insurgency.
"Our alliance must maintain its resolve and finish the fight... If we do not defeat the terrorists in Afghanistan, we will face them on our soil," Bush said.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Tuesday Paris was looking to send several hundred more troops to Afghanistan.
That was far short of the 1,000 extra soldiers that some Nato allies had been expecting and it was not clear whether it would be enough to cover a Canadian demand for reinforcements in the south.
Ottawa has said it could pull its 2,500 troops out of the fight next year if the reinforcements were not forthcoming.

Al Qaeda in Yemen says it attacked foreign oil assets: Site

DUBAI  ( 2008-04-01 01:37:00 ) : 

Al Qaeda's wing in Yemen has said it carried out separate attacks on a French oil pipeline and a Chinese oilfield last week in Yemen, web monitoring group Site said on Monday.
The attackers, calling themselves the Jund Al-Yemen Brigades claimed they detonated a timed explosive on Thursday on a pipeline belonging to France's Total in the western Saah district, the Site Intelligence Group reported.
In a statement posted on a website, the group also said it fired mortars on Saturday at an oilfield owned by an unidentified Chinese firm in the eastern district of Hadramut.
"Both these operations are stated as means of support against the enemy," Site reported, adding that the authenticity of the message could not be verified.
There were no previous reports of the alleged attacks.

US charges al Qaeda leader with Africa bombings

 

 

 

WASHINGTON  ( 2008-04-01 01:57:43 ) : 

Military prosecutors have charged a Tanzanian al Qaeda leader held at Guantanamo Bay with war crimes for the US embassy bombings in Africa, and want his execution, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The Defense Department said Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani had been charged on nine counts including murder related to the August 1998 bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 11 people and injured hundreds.
"Six of the nine charges carry the maximum penalty of death," Brigadier General Thomas Hartman, legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, told reporters.
Hartman said the military trials gave full protection to defendants, including the right to view evidence, to call witnesses and to pursue appeals against any conviction all the way up to the US Supreme Court.
The legal rights "are specifically designed to ensure that every accused receives a fair trial consistent with American standards of justice," he said, adding that a unanimous jury of 12 is needed to deliver the death penalty.
But the Pentagon's announcement sparked an outcry from campaigners who insisted the Guantanamo Bay system enacted to prosecute the US "war on terror" was a travesty of justice.
"These commissions aren't fit to try anybody, still less to condemn anybody to death," Amnesty International USA lawyer Jumana Musa told AFP, noting that Ghailani still faced a federal court indictment issued in 1998.
In October 2001, just after the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, four al Qaeda extremists were sentenced to life without parole by a Manhattan court for their part in the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
"There's absolutely no reason why Ghailani's trial shouldn't proceed there instead of in a military commission," Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch said.
"It's a particular concern that he could be sentenced to death under a system that allows, in certain circumstances, the use of evidence obtained through highly abusive interrogations, and lacks established rules and procedures," she said.
Ghailani was arrested in Pakistan in July 2004 after a shootout with police, and transferred to US custody about five months later. He had been on the FBI's most-wanted list and had a five million dollar bounty on his head.
The Pentagon said that after the twin bombings in East Africa, which altogether killed more than 200, Ghailani worked as a bodyguard for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and forged documents and trained recruits.
When he was arrested, Ghailani was drawing up plans for a missile strike on an airliner at Nairobi airport in Kenya as well for attacks on London's Heathrow Airport and US financial institutions, Pakistani officials said.
Military prosecutors accused Ghailani of playing an instrumental role in the Dar es Salaam bombing, including buying explosives and detonators, and moving the bomb components to various safe houses around Tanzania's biggest city.
They alleged the al Qaeda suspect scouted the US embassy with the suicide bomb driver, met with conspirators in Nairobi, Kenya, shortly before the bombing, and joining them on a flight to Pakistan a day prior to the attack.
A total of 15 Guantanamo detainees have now been charged under the Military Commissions Act, which was hurriedly passed by Congress in 2006 to answer Supreme Court objections to the previous system of military justice.
Only one case has completed its course through the controversial Guantanamo trial system. "Aussie Taliban" David Hicks reached a plea deal with prosecutors and completed his sentence on home soil when he returned to Australia in May.

Turkish police detain 45 in al Qaeda crackdown: report

ISTANBUL  ( 2008-04-01 20:50:52 ) : 

Turkish anti-terror police on Tuesday detained 45 people on suspicion of belonging to the al Qaeda extremist network and planning attacks, Anatolia news agency reported.
The suspects, rounded up in simultaneous operations in eight districts of Istanbul, were being questioned by police, the report said.
A court was to decide later whether they should be charged and jailed pending trial or released.
In January, police raided 18 locations in southeast Turkey on intelligence that a local al Qaeda cell was planning car bomb attacks. Four alleged militants and a policeman were then killed in a gunfight, and 17 suspects arrested.
A Turkish cell of the extremist network was blamed for truck bombs that targeted two synagogues in Istanbul on November 15, 2003, and the British consulate and a British bank five days later. The attacks killed 63 people, injured hundreds and caused huge material damage.

Iraqi casualties at highest level since mid-2007

BAGHDAD  ( 2008-04-01 15:27:03 ) : 

Violent civilian deaths in Iraq climbed to their highest level since mid-2007, Iraqi government figures showed on Tuesday, due to a spike in violence between Iraq security forces and Mehdi Army militia fighters.
A total of 923 civilians died violently in March, up 31 percent from February and the deadliest month since August 2007, according to figures released by Iraq's interior, defence and health ministries.
Hundreds died and many hundreds more were wounded in last week's fighting, sparked by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's crackdown on fighters loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The southern Iraqi city of Basra, the focal point of last week's fighting, was relatively calm for a second straight day on Tuesday after Sadr called his fighters off the streets.
Despite the sharp rise in casualties, the March 2008 figure was still significantly lower than the 1,861 civilians who died violently in the same month a year ago. A total of 1,358 civilians were wounded, compared with 2,700 a year ago.
Violence has fallen since last summer when the US military added an extra 30,000 troops and Sadr declared a ceasefire.
But analysts warn that fighting could easily spike up again as groups vie for political control ahead of provincial elections, expected to take place by October.
The Iraqi government says the military operation in Basra last week was intended to impose law and order, but Sadr's followers say it was politically motivated.
The latest Iraqi data showed 102 policemen and 54 soldiers were killed, compared with 65 and 20 respectively in February, and that 641 insurgents had been killed and 2,509 detained.