MADRID, Spain - A suspected al-Qaida cell leader was convicted Monday of conspiring to commit murder in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, concluding Europe's biggest trial of alleged members of the terrorist group.
American troops and the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr clashed in the slums of Baghdad yesterday, raising fears for the future of a year-long US truce with the fiery Shia cleric's gunmen.Imad Yarkas, one of 24 defendants on trial, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for conspiracy and of being a leader of a terrorist organization. ...
Twenty-one others also stood trial, but on charges not directly related to Sept. 11. Of those, 16 were convicted of belonging to or collaborating with a terrorist organization and five were acquitted.
One of the 16 was Tayssir Alouny, a correspondent for the pan-Arab TV network Al-Jazeera. He was convicted of collaboration and sentenced to seven years in jail.
All 24 were expressionless as the verdicts were read in the National Court.
The fighting came as insurgent attacks took the lives of at least 31 people, including 13 commandos from the elite Wolf Brigade, the Iraqi army's showcase anti-terrorism unit, killed when a suicide bomber rammed into their convoy in the south-east of the capital.
Mahdi Army gunmen opened fire on US forces that entered their stronghold in Baghdad's Sadr City slums to arrest three of their colleagues accused by the Americans of running a "kidnap and torture" cell.
Coalition forces in Iraq appear to have run out of patience with the Mahdi Army after what one US officer described as "repeated provocation" in recent months.
The crackdown began last week when British officers arrested three senior Mahdi Army officials in Basra on suspicion of carrying out attacks on military targets in southern Iraq.
The arrests caused a week of tension in the southern city between British forces and Sadr's outlawed Mahdi Army, which was suspected of having taken captive two undercover British soldiers who were later arrested.
What price loyalty to the UK?
One in 10 Muslim students would not inform police if they learnt of a fellow Muslim planning a terrorist attack, a survey of young Muslims reveals.
The poll, by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, found that although 72 per cent would inform police straight away, some said that they “would never grass on a Muslim”, while others cited mistrust of the police.
The findings, which canvassed the views of 466 British Muslim students, were described as extremely worrying by Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister. The poll also revealed that 85 per cent condemned the London attacks.
Nice on Italy!
MILAN - Italian police in Milan on Monday raided apartments and companies owned by a group of Algerians suspected of belonging to The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), an extremist Islamic group, the police said....
The raids in Milan came on the day French police detained seven people in the Paris region and in nearby Normandy, in a crackdown on suspected GSPC members.
GSPC, Algeria’s main armed Islamic group, is suspected of being linked to Al Qaeda.
Peace and tolerance from Thailand:
BANGKOK - Suspected Islamist insurgents avoided capture after torturing to death two Thai marines by beating and stabbing the bound-and-gagged victims behind a human shield of defiant Muslim women and children, horrifying the government and plunging southern Thailand into a fresh security crisis.
Amid the world's most violent Islamist insurgency outside Iraq, angry and confused security forces hunted the elusive killers, described as three or four young men who ran away, leaving the marines' bloodied bodies in Tanyong Limo village.
"They were brutally beaten to death with machetes and sticks, while their hands and legs were tied up, and they were gagged and blindfolded," Lieutenant General Kwanchart Klaharn, commander of the Fourth Army and director of the Southern Border Provinces Peace-building Command, told reporters.
The bodies were locked inside a building near a mosque, prompting security forces to break down a door to gain access before transporting them to a hospital morgue, he said.
Even France is catching them:
PARIS - French police on Monday detained nine people suspected of ties to a fundamentalist Algerian militant group possibly planning to attack France, officials said....
French television station LCI said the group, known by its French initials GSPC, was suspected of planning attacks in France.
The GSPC is the most structured group among Algerian Islamic insurgents battling the North African state since 1992 in a bid to topple the government. In recent years, it has turned its sights on jihad, or holy war, beyond Algerian borders.
Now live from Fox News, death to the infidels. Allah be praised etc....all Israels fault, whine whine, we are mis understood etc.
Al-Waleed, the nephew of the late Saudi King Fahd, was in the news when he visited the World Trade Center's remains just after the September 11th attacks and offered then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani a $10 million check for relief efforts. Al-Waleed then released a statement blaming US foreign policy and support for Israel for the attacks.
Giuliani returned the prince's check with a statement that, "There is no moral equivalent for this attack. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification when they slaughtered . . . innocent people ... Not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem."
Iran behind attacks?
British military intelligence officers believe that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are responsible for training and supporting members of the Shia group that seized and threatened to kill the two SAS troopers.
They are investigating suspected links between Iran and more than a dozen groups in southern Iraq that are believed to be behind the upsurge in attacks on coalition forces.
"We know that scores of Iranian agents have been operating in southern Iraq, and we have received reports that the group that briefly held the two British soldiers has links to Iran," said a senior coalition security officer. "From what we have seen, the Iranians are setting out to incite the local Shia to attack coalition troops."
** Sounds like a good enough reason to fire a few nukes at them methinks.
And some more savages caught www.sunstar.com.ph/static/zam/2005/09/27/news/troops.capture.7.suspected.sayyafs.in.tawi.tawi.html/
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