Daily Babe News

From News&Observer; RALEIGH -- Anes Subasic, a refugee from Bosnia and one of eight men charged in a terrorist plot, was ordered by a U.S. magistrate to stay in jail until his trial.

U.S. Magistrate Judge William A. Webb said he found much of the evidence about the terrorist plot to be convincing.

"These are men discussing a conspiracy to go overseas and commit terrorist acts," Webb said. "There are shocking bits of information about acts of domestic terrorism."
[read more]

From Reuters; HAMILTON (Reuters) - Four Guantanamo prisoners who were released to Bermuda in June have been given jobs tending a public golf course on the tiny Atlantic island.

The four members of China's Muslim Uighur minority began working last week to help prepare the lush, seaside Port Royal course to host the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in October.

The hiring raised eyebrows in the British territory, where employers can only take on foreigners if no qualified local wants the job. Wendall Brown, chairman of the board of trustees for Bermuda's public golf courses, said the men replaced a group of Filipino workers who left at short notice. [read more]

From News&Observer; RALEIGH -- A half-dozen young men could spend the rest of their lives in prison for rubbing shoulders with a man who federal investigators say stockpiled military weapons and ranted about plots to murder those without faith in Islam.

At the end of a two-day hearing to determine whether seven Triangle terrorism suspects could be released before their trials, prosecutors said they have a pile of evidence against the supposed ringleader, Daniel Boyd. Against the others: vague connections and travel plans that defense attorneys say they can easily explain away.

Boyd and five of the young men were denied bail Wednesday. Another had his hearing continued.
[read more]

From NewsObserver;

RALEIGH -- Daniel Boyd told an informant that he would hurt or kill on U.S. soil if he was unable to leave the country to attack non-Muslims overseas, according to an FBI agent who testified Tuesday about a four-year investigation into Boyd's actions.

Federal agents seized 27,000 rounds of ammunition and more than two dozen guns from the Willow Spring man's home and truck. Boyd, 39, and seven younger men, including two of his sons, are accused of plotting violence in support of terrorist causes.

"If I don't leave this country soon, I'm going to make jihad right here in America," FBI Special Agent Michael Sutton quoted Boyd as saying.
[read more]

From NY Times; CARACAS, Venezuela — Despite repeated denials by President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials have continued to assist commanders of Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even obtain identity cards to move with ease on Venezuelan soil, according to computer material captured from the rebels in recent months and under review by Western intelligence agencies.
The materials point to detailed collaborations between the guerrillas and high-ranking military and intelligence officials in Mr. Chávez’s government as recently as several weeks ago, countering the president’s frequent statements that his administration does not assist the rebels. “We do not protect them,” he said in late July. [read more]

From Yahoo News; NEW YORK – The central terminal at New York's LaGuardia Airport was evacuated Saturday morning after a man entered the building with a fake bomb in a bag, police said.

The scare was over in a few hours, but it disrupted travel plans for thousands of people as flights were postponed and vehicle traffic to the airport was briefly halted. Delays rippled across the country as well as airlines adjusted their schedules.

Authorities identified the man as Scott McGann, 32, of New York. He had a ticket on a United Airlines flight that was headed to Chicago, with connecting flights that would have ultimately taken him to Oakland. McGann faces charges including placing a false bomb in a transportation facility and making terroristic threats. [read more]

From NY Times; WASHINGTON — Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials.

The plans remained vague and were never carried out, the officials said, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month.

Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles. How could the role of the United States be masked? Should allies be informed and might they block the access of the C.I.A. teams to their targets? What if American officers or their foreign surrogates were caught in the midst of an operation? Would such activities violate international law or American restrictions on assassinations overseas? [read more]

From The Strata-Shere; The top al-Qaeda liason between al-Qaeda leaders hiding out in the Afghan-Pak tribal areas and al-Qaeda in Iraq has been captured and is in US custody at GITMO:

An Afghan national accused of enabling the movement of Al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq has been transferred to the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The Pentagon said he was captured recently “as a result of ongoing Department of Defense operations against violent extremists in Afghanistan,” identifying the detainee as “Inayatullah.” Some Afghans have only one name.

“Due to the continuing threat this terror suspect represents and his high placement in Al Qaeda, he has been transferred to Guantanamo,” it said in a statement.

The Pentagon said he had admitted to being the “Al-Qaeda emir of Zahedan, Iran and planned and directed Al-Qaeda terrorist operations.

[read more]

From Bloomberg; German police arrested three people suspected of planning ``massive'' terrorist attacks on U.S. and other targets in the country, preventing the deaths of ``many, many people,'' the Chief Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said.

The suspects, two Germans and a Turkish national, were arrested yesterday at a house in Oberschledorn, a village in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, officials said. Bomb- making materials and military detonators were also seized. The trio are alleged members of a local cell of the Islamist terrorist organization Jihad Union, which has links to al-Qaeda, Harms told reporters in the southern city of Karlsruhe today.

Police foiled ``one of the worst terror acts ever planned in Germany,'' Harms said. ``We've said repeatedly for months that Germany is in the sights of Islamist terrorism and that we have to be vigilant.''

The alleged terrorists planned attacks on sites in Germany frequented by U.S. citizens among others, including discos, bars and transport facilities, Harms said. The peroxide-based liquid explosives seized were equivalent to 550 kilograms of TNT, greater explosive power than in the London bombings of July 2005, Joerg Ziercke, head of the Federal Criminal Office, told the same press conference. [read more]

From Michael Yon; Today marks “D +16” of Operation “Arrowhead Ripper,” the Battle for Baqubah. Arrowhead Ripper kicked off on 19 June 07. I have several dispatches in the works about the major events since that time. Although the serious fighting seems to be over, there remains a possibility for some sharp fighting in the near future. The morning of 06 July began with the sounds of American cannons firing, shells whizzing through the air, while they checked systems and aiming for combat. Apache helicopters orbited Baqubah as the orange sun crested into view.

Media coverage went from a near monopoly (Michael Gordon from New York Times and me) to a nearly capsized boat as journalists flooded in from other parts of Iraq to see the fight. They managed to miss most of it. Today, I’m told, there are now only 3 journalists remaining, including one writer (me).

As with the Battle for Mosul, which I held in near monopoly for about five months during 2005, the most interesting parts of the Battle for Baqubah are unfolding after the major fighting ends. But as the guns cool, the media stops raining and starts evaporating, or begins making only short visits of a week or so.

The big news on the streets today is that the people of Baqubah are generally ecstatic, although many hold in reserve a serious concern that we will abandon them again. For many Iraqis, we have morphed from being invaders to occupiers to members of a tribe. I call it the “al Ameriki tribe,” or “tribe America.”

I’ve seen this kind of progression in Mosul, out in Anbar and other places, and when I ask our military leaders if they have sensed any shift, many have said, yes, they too sense that Iraqis view us differently. In the context of sectarian and tribal strife, we are the tribe that people can—more or less and with giant caveats—rely on. [read more]

From FrontPage magazine; This was not how Gordon Brown hoped to begin his term as Britain’s new prime minister. But shortly after assuming office last Wednesday, Brown found himself facing a full-blown terror spree: 36 tension-filled hours that saw two car bombs discovered in London and found grim punctuation this weekend when a Jeep Cherokee, manned by Islamic terrorists, crashed in a fiery blaze into the main terminal of Scotland’s Glasgow Airport.

No one familiar with the events of recent years will surprised to learn that the suspects are all Muslims. Media accounts of the Glasgow attack described the men as “Asian,” a common shorthand for Britons of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, and witness accounts left little doubt about the attackers’ faith tradition: Those on-scene in Glasgow recalled that one of the attackers, even as he was engulfed in flames, bellowed “Allah, Allah” while resisting police. And while reports that one of the attackers had donned a Hamas-style suicide belt await further corroboration, British counter-terror forces have no illusions about whom they’re dealing with. Lord John Stevens, a former police chief who has been tapped as a terrorism adviser to Brown, made that abundantly clear when he noted that “[t]his weekend's bomb attacks signal a major escalation in the war being waged on us by Islamic terrorists.” [read more]

From The Daily Standard; THE PAST WEEK has been a good one for terrorists. The birth of the world's first truly terrorist state in Gaza was quickly followed by a Western response that, if sustained, all but guarantees that terror state's survival.

While there are plenty of examples, past and present, of states that encourage, fund and even practice terrorism, no nations have ever been created explicitly for the sake of terrorism. Not even the Taliban. Hamas was built upon the terrorist edifice created by the organization it recently supplanted--the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), or "Fatah" as it is has become more recently known. The PLO was created in 1964, three years before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, not to create the world's 22nd Arab state, but to destroy its only Jewish state. Hamas overthrew the PLO in Gaza not to change the PLO's dream, but to fulfill it.

What, then, is Washington's answer to Hamastan in Gaza? Why, another bailout of the one organization responsible for the entire debacle in the first place--the PLO. After 45 years of ground work preparing for Hamas' takeover by radicalizing Palestinian society through blood-curdling terrorism, mind-boggling corruption, and world-class inefficiency, the U.S. and Israeli governments have announced their gratitude to Fatah with a billion dollar emergency aid package. [read more]

From Powerline;

Audrey Hudson's Washington Times story on the DHS Inspector General report related to the government's handling of Northwest Flight 327 is now up. Michelle Malkin has posted an excellent round-up ending with conclusions and open questions:

So top brass at FAMS, the FBI, and TSA all wanted to downplay the incident and keep it out of the homeland security database. But HSOC believed the case warranted reporting after an inquiry from the White House Security Council and coverage by the Washington Times--all prompted by citizen whistleblower Annie Jacobsen's eyewitness account and investigative research.

Several questions remain: What was in that FBI ACS report about Nour Mehana's previous suspicious behavior? Was that a test run or misinterpretation? The OIG report does not say. Because of the heavy redaction, it is also unclear whether Flight 327 was a jihadi test run. What is clear is that some federal agency officials have a bad habit of denying the obvious. What is also clear from the OIG report is that the feds remain woefully underprepared to handle jihadi test runs--let alone the real thing.

[read more]

From The Scotsman; A LIST of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners wanted in exchange for long-term hostage Corporal Gilad Shalit has been presented to the Israeli government in the biggest sign of progress towards securing his release for nearly a year.

The continued captivity of Cpl Shalit, who was seized in a cross-border raid from Gaza in June last year by militants allied to the Hamas faction, has added further acrimony to the poisoned Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, has accused the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, of failing to deliver on a pledge to secure the soldier's release before last month's formation of the new Palestinian national unity government of both the Fatah and Hamas factions.

Freeing Cpl Shalit has also been cited by some European countries as one of the steps the coalition cabinet must take if it wants the crippling sanctions imposed after Hamas took office last year, to be eased. [read more]

From FOX News; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to that attack and a string of others during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released Wednesday by the Pentagon.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said during the session, which was held last Saturday.

Mohammed claimed responsibility for planning, financing, and training others for bombings ranging from the 1993 attack at the World Trade Center to the attempt by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes.

Click Here to Read the Transcript (pdf) [read more]

From Sky News; The eight people arrested by terror police in Birmingham were allegedly planning an Iraq-style kidnapping and beheading in the UK.

Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt says they intended to post a video of the hostage being tortured and killed on the internet.

Their target was a British Muslim soldier in his twenties who is now under police protection.

The soldier, who has not been named, has served with UK forces in Afghanistan.

His abduction would have mirrored the kidnappings of the British hostages Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan by Iraqi insurgents.

The suspects - believed to be of Pakistani origin - were detained under the Terrorism Act after a six-month surveillance operation. [read more]

From Daytona Beach News Journal; Four of the five Americans killed when a U.S. security company's helicopter crashed in a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad were shot execution style in the back of the head, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Wednesday.

A senior Iraqi military official said a machine gunner downed the helicopter, but a U.S. military official in Washington said there were no indications that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot out of the sky.

In Washington, a U.S. defense official said four of the five killed were shot in the back of the head but did not know whether they were still alive when they were shot. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The Iraqi official, who also declined to be identified because details had not been made public, said the four were shot in the back of the head while they were on the ground. [read more]

From YouTube; A known British Mullah Mr. Anjum Chaudri describes the "Killing of Innocent" Non-Muslims civilians in the suicide bombing as "Legitimate". For videos containing simialr views of world's #1 Muslim debator and most watched Scholar Dr. Zakir Naik & other popular Muslim scholars, please visit www.real-islam.org/audio

From CNN; Two civilians thwarted an attempted terrorist attack Tuesday when a vehicle loaded with explosives attempted to crash through the front gate of a U.S. base in the Afghan capital, according to the U.S. military.

The two men, an interpreter and a security guard, dragged the apparent suicide bomber from the vehicle before he could detonate explosives, said Col. Tom Collins, the chief spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

"I think it's a pretty amazing and heroic event," Collins said.

He said that at about 9 a.m. Tuesday (10:30 p.m. ET Monday) a driver crashed his vehicle into Camp Phoenix, the base where the Afghan National Army and police are trained. The driver reached for what appeared to be a cord to detonate a bomb, he said.

"Amazingly, a couple of Afghans who just happened to be on the scene there realized what was happening," Collins said.

"Anyone's inclination would have been to run away but these guys are genuine heroes," Collins said. [read more]

From LGF; This is part one of the much-anticipated UK Channel 4 documentary Dispatches: Undercover Mosque, exposing evidence of Islamic supremacism, shocking misogyny, and support for violence at a number of Britain’s leading mosques and Muslim institutions. (Thanks again to LGF operative kasper.)

If the videos don’t play, try again in a few minutes. YouTube uses a distributed server network, and videos sometimes take a little while to propagate across the network. [read more]