pastor Terry Jones canceled a plan to burn copies of the Koran at his obscure Florida church

A Christian pastor on Thursday canceled a plan to burn copies of the Koran at his obscure Florida church, which had drawn international condemnation and a warning from President Barack Obama that it could provoke al Qaeda suicide bombings.Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Terry Jones, an obscure minister who heads the tiny Dove World Outreach Center church in the Florida town of Gainesville, to urge him not to go ahead, the Pentagon said.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Gates had expressed “grave concern” in the brief telephone call with Jones that the Koran burning “would put the lives of our forces at risk, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.”Jones later told journalists outside his church that he was calling off his plan, which had caused worldwide alarm and raised tensions over this year’s anniversary of the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

He confirmed Gates’ call but linked his decision to what he said was an agreement by Muslim leaders — which they denied — to relocate an Islamic cultural center and mosque planned close to the site of the September 11 attacks in New York.The proposed location has drawn opposition from many Americans who say it is insensitive to families of the victims of the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.”The imam has agreed to move the mosque, we have agreed to cancel our event on Saturday,” Jones said.

CONFUSION OVER MOSQUE “DEAL”

He said he would fly to New York on Saturday with Imam Muhammad Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida to meet the New York imam at the center of the controversy, Feisal Abdul Rauf.But Rauf said in a statement he was surprised by the announcement. “I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Korans. However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones or Imam Musri. I am surprised by their announcement,” he said.

“We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony,” he said.Sharif el-Gamal, the project developer for the New York mosque, said in a statement: “It is untrue that the community center known as park 51 in lower Manhattan is being moved. The project will proceed as planned. What is being reported in the media today is a falsehood.”Musri conceded to reporters: “This is not a done deal yet. This is a brokered deal,” he said. He said he had no fixed time for him and Jones to meet Rauf in New York.

INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION

Earlier, world leaders had joined Obama in denouncing Jones’ plan to burn copies of the Islamic holy book on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.The international police agency Interpol warned governments worldwide of an increased risk of terrorist attacks if the burning went ahead, and the U.S. State Department issued a warning to Americans traveling overseas.

Jones has said Jesus would approve of his plan for “Burn a Koran Day,” which he called a reprisal for Islamist terrorism.The United States has powerful legal protections for the right to free speech and there was little law enforcement authorities could do to stop Jones from going ahead, other than citing him under local bylaws against public burning.Many people, both conservative and liberal, dismissed the threat as an attention-seeking stunt by the preacher.”This is a recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda,” Obama said in an ABC television interview.

“You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities.The president, who has sought to improve relations with Muslims worldwide, spoke out in an effort to stop Jones from going ahead and head off growing anger among many Muslims.Insults to Islam, no matter their size or scope, have often been met with huge protests and violence around the world. One such outburst was sparked when a Danish newspaper published a cartoon mocking the Prophet Mohammad in 2005.

Pentagon spokesman Morrell said earlier in the day that there was intense debate within the administration over whether to call Jones. Officials feared of setting a precedent that could inspire copy-cat “extremists.”Jones’ plan was condemned by foreign governments, international church groups, U.S. religious and political leaders and military commanders.It also threatened to undermine Obama’s efforts to reach out to the world’s more than one billion Muslims at a time when he is trying to advance the Middle East peace process and build solidarity against Iran over its disputed nuclear program.(Reuters)

Cuba U.S. Military jurors fly to Guantanamo Bay to hear 1st war-crimes trial under Obama

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba U.S. military officers were flying in Sunday to serve as jurors in war-crimes proceedings as the Guantanamo tribunal system geared up for one of its busiest weeks under President Barack Obama.The Pentagon is holding military commission sessions this week for two detainees: a young Canadian going on trial for the slaying of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and an aide to Osama bin Laden who is to be sentenced after pleading guilty in a deal with prosecutors.

The tribunal system that ground to a halt after Obama took office is coming alive with lawyers, human-rights observers and more than 30 journalists who are at the U.S. Navy base in southeastern Cuba to attend Monday’s proceedings in two courtrooms.Obama has introduced some changes designed to extend more legal protections to detainees, but the tribunals’ long-term future remains cloudy as the president struggles to fulfill a pledge to close the prison altogether.

The trial for Omar Khadr, the Toronto-born son of an alleged al-Qaida financier, is expected to begin Tuesday following pretrial hearings.It is to be the first trial under Obama and only the third at Guantanamo, where the system that former President George W. Bush established for prosecuting terror suspects after the 9/11 attack has faced repeated legal setbacks and challenges.Khadr is accused of lobbing a grenade that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer of Albuquerque, New Mexico, during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of charges including murder, conspiracy and spying.

His lawyers deny he threw the grenade and argue that Khadr, the last Westerner at Guantanamo, deserves leniency because he was only 15 when he was captured. They contend the prosecution rests on confessions extracted following abuse that included sleep deprivation and threats of rape.”President Obama has decided to write the next sad, pathetic chapter in the book of military commissions and unfortunately the president is starting the military commissions with the case of a child solder,” Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, Khadr’s attorney, said at a news conference Sunday.

Khadr said in a May letter to one of his Canadian lawyers, Dennis Edney, that he was resigned to a harsh sentence from a system that he called unfair.”It might work if the world sees the U.S. sentencing a child to life in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham (sic) this process is,” Khadr wrote.

A spokesman for the military commissions prosecutors, Navy Capt. David Iglesias, said the defendant’s age may be considered at sentencing if Khadr is convicted but has no legal bearing on his prosecution.”What you look to is did he know what he was doing,” Iglesias said. “We’ll let the evidence speak for itself.”The U.S. Supreme Court last week rejected a last-ditch request to halt the trial on grounds the system is unconstitutional.

In the other case, a military panel will begin deliberations as early as Monday on a sentence for Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, a Sudanese detainee who pleaded guilty last month to one count each of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.Al-Qosi was accused of acting as accountant, paymaster, supply chief and cook for al-Qaida during the 1990s when the terrorist network was centered in Sudan and Afghanistan. He allegedly worked later as a bodyguard for bin Laden.

The 50-year-old from Sudan faced a potential life sentence if convicted at trial. Terms of the plea deal, including any limits on his sentence, have not been disclosed. Iglesias said it may remain sealed even after the case is resolved.Both detainees have been held at Guantanamo since 2002.(AP)

24 people died in bomb attacks at a secondary school and a crowded market in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan

Peshawar, Pakistan At least 24 people died in bomb attacks at a secondary school and a crowded market in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, officials said. Those attacks, which occurred with a few hours time difference between one and another, making the number of victims killed in bombings in Pakistan’s northwest to 73 in three days. Suicide attacks last weekend, characterized by the Taliban killed 49 people in the town of Kohat.

On Monday evening in Peshawar market Qissa Khawani, a suicide bomb attacker walked into the crowd and blew himself up. An AFP reporter at the scene saw scattered shoes, pieces of body and car were destroyed. “Twenty-three people were killed, including three policemen. At least 27 people hospitalized longer,” said senior police official told AFP Imran Kishwar. Senior provincial ministers Bashir Bilour confirm that toll.

Shafqat bomb squad chief Malik told reporters the explosion was caused by an attacker wearing a bomb vest weighing six to eight kilograms. We have found the attacker’s head and feet,” he added. The blast came after protesters who marched against rising inflation and power outages left the area, said some police.

Several hours earlier, a boy who was eight years old were killed and at least 10 people were injured in a bomb attack outside a middle school in Peshawar. Police did not say who had put the bomb in a city hit by Taliban attacks. Bombing came after three suicide attacks within 24 hours killed 49 people in the town of Kohat, Pakistan’s northwest.

More than 3200 people died in suicide attacks and bombings in Pakistan in three years. The violence was blamed on Muslim militants opposed to alliance with the U.S. government. Pakistan’s increasing international pressure to crush militant groups in the region and the northwest tribal zone amid rising attacks cross-border rebel against international forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s tribal areas, particularly Bajaur, plagued by violence since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels fled to the region after the US-led invasion in late 2001 toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Pakistani forces launched air and ground offensive into the South Waziristan tribal region on October 17, with 30,000 soldiers who assisted jet fighter and helicopter guns.

Although there is resistance in South Waziristan, many officials and analysts believe that most of the Taliban insurgents had fled to neighboring areas of North Waziristan and Orakzai. North Waziristan is the stronghold of the Taliban, militants associated with Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, which is famous for attacking American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the U.S. make that area as a target of missile attacks unmanned aircraft.

Some analysts have also warned that the Taliban and their allies will be stepped up attacks on security forces in Bajaur and other tribal areas to divert the focus of attention from South Waziristan. Security forces conduct large-scale operation against Islamic militants in the Mohmand and Bajaur in August 2008. In February 2009, the military said that net Bajaur after a fierce battle for months, but unrest continues.

According to the military, more than 1,500 militants have been killed since they launched an offensive in Bajaur in early August 2008, including Al-Qaeda’s operational commander in the area, Abu Saeed Al-Masri is an Egyptian. The area was also hit by a missile attack that almost about Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second person, in January 2006. U.S. forces declared, that border area is used for militant groups as a place to do training, a rearrangement of forces and launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan. ( AFP)

bomb that is controlled remotely detonated near a family who was traveling in southern Afghanistan

Kandahar, Afghanistan A bomb that is controlled remotely detonated near a family who was traveling in southern Afghanistan Wednesday, killing at least 13 people and wounding about 40, said some NATO officials and Afghanistan. Previous reports from the area, said that a suicide bomb attack on foot sparked an explosion near a group of local officials who are distributing seedlings to villagers as part of a program to persuade people not to plant opium.

A NATO officials and a spokesman for the provincial governor of Helmand said 13 people were killed and 40-45 people were injured in the blast. NATO officials said, a military helicopter flew the Afghans are injured from the scene, some of them died later of their wounds. He added that the incident happened in a district of Helmand province – the Nahr-e-Saraj or Gereshk.

In the past, the Taliban claimed responsibility for attacks in Afghanistan, where they led a rebellion against the government of Afghanistan and foreign troops. Last year, according to the UN, a large number of civilians were killed in that war, mostly due to guerrilla attacks.

The NATO commander has warned Western countries that are ready to face falling victim because they’re implementing a strategy to end the eight-year war in that country. U.S. Marines currently heads the 15,000 U.S. soldiers, NATO and Afghanistan in Operation Mushtarak which aims to quell the militants, which was launched before dawn Saturday (13 / 2) to pave the way for the Afghan government to control more areas of Helmand producer of opium.

Offensive was reportedly getting fierce resistance from the Taleban, who launched the attacks from behind human shields and put bombs on roads, buildings and trees. President Hamid Karzai has warned that the army had to take all steps necessary to protect civilians.

Currently there are more than 120,000 soldiers internationally, especially from the United States, which deployed to Afghanistan to assist the administration of President Hamid Karzai to overcome rebellion fought by the remnants of the Taliban. Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan since 1996, fomenting rebellion since ousted from power in that country by US-led invasion in 2001 because it refused to hand over leaders of al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden, accused of being responsible for attacks on American soil that killed about 3,000 people at 11 September 2001.

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) led NATO force of more than 84,000 soldiers from 43 countries, which aims to restore democracy, security and rebuilding Afghanistan, but is still trying to quell the Taliban and its allies. The violence in Afghanistan reached its highest level in the war for more than eight years with Taliban insurgents, who broadened the rebellion from the south and east of the country to the capital and the regions that previously peaceful.

Eight years after the overthrow of the Taliban of power in Afghanistan, more than 40 countries preparing to increase the number of soldiers in Afghanistan until it reaches approximately 150,000 people within a period of 18 months, in a new effort to combat the guerrillas.

Approximately 520 soldiers foreigners were killed during 2009, which made that year as the year the deadliest for international troops since the US-led invasion in 2001 and create public support for the West against the war slump. Taliban insurgents rely heavily on the use of roadside bombs and suicide attacks against Afghan government and foreign troops stationed in that country. Homemade bombs known as an IED (improvised explosive) resulted in 70-80 percent casualties among foreign troops in Afghanistan, according to the military.(Reuters)

New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to "JihadJane," her Internet alias

New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to “JihadJane,” her Internet alias, was unique in many ways, but a common thread ties the alleged Islamic militant to other recent cases of homegrown terrorism: the Internet.

From charismatic clerics who spout hate online, to thousands of extremist websites, chat rooms and social networking pages that raise money and spread radical propaganda, the Internet has become a crucial front in the ever-shifting war on terrorism.”LaRose showed that you can become a terrorist in the comfort of your own bedroom,” said Bruce Hoffman, professor of security studies at Georgetown University. “You couldn’t do that 10 years ago.”

“The new militancy is driven by the Web,” agreed Fawaz A. Gerges, a terrorism expert at the London School of Economics. “The terror training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being replaced by virtual camps on the Web.”

From their side, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are scrambling to monitor the Internet and penetrate radical websites to track suspects, set up sting operations or unravel plots before they are carried out.

The FBI arrested LaRose in October after she had spent months using e-mail, YouTube, MySpace and electronic message boards to recruit radicals in Europe and South Asia to “wage violent jihad,” according to a federal indictment unsealed this week.That put the strawberry-haired Pennsylvania resident in league with many of the 12 domestic terrorism cases involving Muslims that the FBI disclosed last year, the most in any year since 2001. The Internet was cited as a recruiting or radicalizing tool in nearly every case.

“Basically, Al Qaeda isn’t coming to them,” Gerges said. “They are using the Web to go to Al Qaeda.”

In December, for example, five young men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of seeking to join anti-American militants in Afghanistan.A Taliban recruiter made contact with the group after one of the five, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, posted comments on YouTube praising videos of attacks on U.S. troops, officials said. To avoid detection, they communicated by leaving draft e-mail messages at a shared Yahoo e-mail address.

Hosam Smadi, a Jordanian, was arrested in September and accused of trying to use a weapon of mass destruction after he allegedly tried to blow up a 60-story office tower in downtown Dallas. The FBI began surveillance of Smadi after seeing his anti-American postings on an extremist website.And Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, two middle-class kids barely out of high school near Atlanta, secretly took up violent jihad after meeting at a mosque.

“They started spending hours online — chatting with each other, watching terrorist recruitment videos, and meeting like-minded extremists,” the FBI said in a statement after the pair were convicted of terrorism charges in December.

Prosecutors alleged that the pair traveled to Washington and made more than 60 short surveillance videos of the Capitol, the Pentagon and other sensitive facilities, and e-mailed them to an Al Qaeda webmaster and propagandist.

U.S. authorities also closely monitor several fiery Internet imans who use English to preach jihad and, in some cases, to help funnel recruits to Al Qaeda and other radical causes.The best known is Anwar al Awlaki, an American-born imam who is believed to be living in Yemen. U.S. officials say more than 10% of visitors to his website are in the U.S.

Among those who traded e-mails with Awlaki were Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with shooting and killing 13 people in November at Ft. Hood, Texas, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, part of the Muslim American Society, noted that many extremist websites featured fiery images, loud music and fast-moving videos of violence and death.”They use video games and hip-hop to bring young people in, sometimes in very benign ways,” he said. “Then they make this transition by showing all the horrific things” and by then, some would-be recruits are hooked.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said his group had struggled to compete with the instant attention that grisly videos of beheadings, roadside bombs or masked men with weapons draw on the Internet.”They get the backdrop of the Afghani mountains or the battlefields of Somalia,” he said. “We’re speaking from conference centers and quiet halls. Somehow, we have to figure out a way to make our message more newsworthy. We’ve issued YouTube videos, and it barely gets a couple of hundred hits.”

Osama bin Laden's son has a chilling warning for those who are hunting his father with drones, secret agents and missile strikes.

Osama bin Laden’s son has a chilling warning for those who are hunting his father with drones, secret agents and missile strikes.From Omar bin Laden’s up-close look at the next generation of mujahideen and al Qaeda training camps he says the worst may lie ahead, that if his father is killed America may face a broader and more violent enemy, with nothing to keep them in check. “From what I knew of my father and the people around him I believe he is the most kind among them, because some are much, much worse,” Omar bin Laden, who was raised in the midst of his father’s fighters, told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “Their mentality wants to make more violence, to create more problems.”

Omar has turned his back on his father’s philosophy, a remarkable step for a man in an Arab culture where it is a sin to disobey his father and taboo to openly criticize him. It was doubly significant for Omar bin Laden because his father had picked him to succeed him as the leader of jihad.The son spoke out again recently after hearing his father in an audio tape praise the attempt by the so-called “underwear bomber” to blow up a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.

“Attacking peaceful people is not being fair, it is unacceptable. If you have a problem with armies or governments you should fight those people. This is what I find unacceptable in my father’s way,” Omar told ABC News.”My father should find some letter to send to all of these people, at least to tell them they shouldn’t attack the civilians,” he said. Omar is a clearly conflicted peacenik, bearing some signs of a loyal son and trying to explain his father’s hatred. When asked whether there is anything his father likes about the United States, Omar says “their weapons,” and nothing else. The son of Osama, however, had praise for the U.S. saying, “They don’t care what is your race, what is your skin, where you come from, this is very good.” And despite the $25 million bounty on his father’s head and the ever-searching drones, Omar is confident that his father won’t be caught and that no Afghan will turn him in. “It’s been 30 years now since he started fighting there. Who could catch him? No one…. This is the country that whoever gets in is stuck, be it the armies or the mujahideen,” he said. Omar says even he does not know where his father is.

Recent combined air and ground assaults against al Qaeda in Yemen last month were American-led

combined air and ground assaults

Recent combined air and ground assaults against al Qaeda in Yemen last month were American-led, according to a U.S. special operations expert who trains Yemeni forces.”It was cruise missile strikes in combination with military units on the ground,” Sebastian Gorka, an instructor at the U.S. Special Operation’s Command’s Joint Special Operations University, told CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier.”It was a very distinct signal from the Obama administration that they are serious in assisting Yemen to remove these al Qaeda facilities from its soil.”That was very much something executed by the United States, but with heavy support by the Yemeni government,” Gorka told Dozier.The target was al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate of Osama bin Laden’s group with a popular following in Yemen. AQAP, as it’s known in the counterterrorist world, claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253, which resulted in the arrest of Nigerian Umar Farouk AbdulmutallabU.S. counterterrorist teams have been tracking al Qaeda in Yemen since the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000. And the Defense Department has been training Yemeni counterterrorist forces since 1990. Training has been conducted by a range of troops. U.S. Marines did much of the training when President George W. Bush was in office. More recently, the Pentagon has dispatched units from the Army’s Special Forces/Green Berets, who specialize in what’s called “foreign internal defense.”

The top American commander in the region, Central Command’s Gen. David Petraeus, visited Yemen’s capital Sanaa Saturday. It was his last stop in a tour of the region. Earlier, when he stopped in Baghdad, he praised the joint strikes in Yemen in December.

“In one case, forestalling an attack of four suicide bombers were moving into Sana’a,” Petraeus told reporters. “Two training camps targeted and some senior leaders believed to have been killed or seriously injured as well. Certainly there were activities going on there, one of which resulted in the failed attack on the airliner.” But Petraeus was careful to emphasize that the Yemeni government was the decision maker in choosing the targets. He called it “so very important indeed that Yemen has taken the actions that it has and indeed, not just the United States, but countries in the region.” Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Britain have all had a role in providing training and other strategic assistance.

While U.S. military officials say the Yemeni counterterrorist forces aren’t yet ready to go it alone, Petraeus says their intelligence sources are proving so good that “sharing of intelligence and information” has become what he called a “two-way street,” such that “the operations that were carried out in December were very significant.” Yemeni local media report that three strikes on Dec. 17, 2009, hit Abyan, Arhab and San’a, and killed several al Qaeda targets, including one former Guantanamo detainee Hani Abdu Musalih Al-Shalan. He’d been repatriated to Yemen in June 2006 and returned into al Qaeda’s fold. More strikes on Christmas Eve targeted American-born al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki. They struck in Rafd, a mountain valley in Yemen’s Shabwa province, but intelligence officials believe Awlaki survived the attack. He was initially thought to be a more inspirational figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but multiple intelligence officials tell CBS News they now believe he is taking an active role in planning operations, including the attempted December airliner bombing. U.S. officials had kept fairly quiet about the extent of American involvement in the recent Yemeni strikes. But with so many Americans asking what their government is doing to keep them safe after the Christmas Day bombing attempt, many more officials seem eager to describe how they’re striking back. They also say to stand by for more joint U.S.-Yemeni action.(CBS)

Saudi Arabia has urged Iran to allow a daughter of Osama Bin Laden to leave the country

Osama bin Laden

Saudi Arabia has urged Iran to allow a daughter of Osama Bin Laden to leave the country after the Iranians acknowledged she was in Tehran.The Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said his government was in talks with Iran over freeing the fugitive al-Qaeda leader’s daughter. Iman Bin Laden, 17, is said to have recently escaped from a compound where she and others were under house arrest. She took refuge in the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Iman and five siblings have been held under house arrest by Iran since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported last month.

The newspaper, which is owned by a cousin of Prince Saud, says the embassy has issued her with a travel permit to allow her to return to Saudi Arabia. It also quoted Zaina Bin Laden, the wife of Bin Laden’s fourth son Omar, as saying that Bin Laden children and Bin Laden’s wife Khayriyah were living in a residential compound on the outskirts of Tehran.

The “Bin Laden children are living in adjacent houses with gardens, they have a laptop but no internet access, and there is a swimming pool in the compound”, Zaina Bin Laden was quoted as saying. Both she and her husband Omar, who live in Qatar, had spoken to one of the children by telephone, the paper said, adding that Zaina hoped to visit Tehran.

‘Humanitarian issue’

Speaking in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Prince Faisal said his country considered the matter to be a “humanitarian issue”. “We are negotiating with the Iranian government on this basis,” he added. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said last week that he had been informed that Bin Laden’s daughter Iman was staying in Tehran.

He said it was “unclear” how she she had got there but she could leave if she obtained the right travel documents. Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have long been marked by rivalry and suspicion, due in part to sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims, analysts say.

Osama Bin Laden, accused of 9/11 and other attacks, was born into a wealthy Saudi family but was expelled from the country in 1991 because of his anti-government activities. Omar Bin Laden was quoted by Asharq al-Awsat as saying his relatives in Tehran had nothing to do with “accusations of terrorism made against” his father.

CAIRO Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula expands operations

CAIRO  Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the attempted attack on a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit, is led by a Yemeni who was once a close aide to Osama bin Laden.The group formed in January this year, when leader Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi announced a merger between operatives from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.Al-Wahishi, who goes by the alias Abu Basir, was among 23 al-Qaida figures who escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006. He is on Saudi Arabia’s most wanted list, which includes many militants currently in Yemen.At least two former detainees released in November 2007 from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have resurfaced as al-Qaida commanders in Yemen.Said al-Shihri, who was released from a Saudi rehabilitation program last year, is a deputy leader of the organization in Yemen. Another former Guantanamo inmate, Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, surfaced in January in a video clip showing him sporting a bandolier of bullets as an al-Qaida field commander.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has been blamed for a series of attacks in Yemen, including an assault against the U.S. embassy in San’a, and suicide bombings targeting South Korean visitors.Recently, the group indicated it was ready to take its fight beyond Yemen. The government there said the Nigerian accused in the Christmas day attack on the U.S. airliner visited Yemen this year.

In claiming responsibility for that attack, al-Qaida urged supporters to get the “infidels” out of the Arabian peninsula. The call echoed Osama bin Laden, who criticized Saudi Arabia for hosting American military bases.

The group’s first operation outside Yemen was carried out in Saudi Arabia this August against the kingdom’s counterterrorism chief, though that bomb attack failed.Experts believe the al-Qaida fighters number in the low hundreds. The group appears to be well funded and has found sanctuaries among a number of Yemeni tribes, particularly in three eastern provinces.

Yemen, the ancestral home of bin Laden’s family, has been an al-Qaida haven partly because of a weak central government and rugged terrain where it is easy to hide.The country was the scene of the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden Coast that killed 17 American sailors.Just before the failed Christmas attack, Yemeni airplanes, backed by U.S. and Saudi intelligence, carried out two air strikes against al-Qaida operatives in eastern Yemen.

Airliner plot raises fears about al-Qaida in Yemen "terror"

Detroit Metropolitan Airport

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia A Nigerian man’s claim that his attempt to blow up a U.S. plane originated with al-Qaida’s network inside Yemen deepened concerns that instability in the Middle Eastern country is providing the terror group with a base to train and recruit militants for operations against the West and the U.S.Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been charged with trying to destroy a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas day in a botched attempt to detonate explosives. The 23-year-old claimed to have received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, a U.S. law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing.If confirmed, it would be the second known case recently by the relatively new group, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, of exporting terrorism out of Yemen – a country with a weak central government, many lawless areas and plentiful supplies of weapons. But Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, has long been an al-Qaida stomping ground.In August, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, in a suicide bombing in an attack that bore similarities to the airliner plot. The explosive device Abdulmutallab used was attached to his body, just below his torso. The Saudi attacker is believed to have attached the explosives to his groin or inserted them inside his body.

According to U.S. court documents, a preliminary analysis of the device used by Abdulmutallab showed it contained PETN, a high explosive also known as pentaerythritol. The same material is believed to have been used in the August attack in Saudi Arabia by Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri, who had traveled to Yemen to connect with the al-Qaida franchise there. PETN was also what convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid used when he tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001.

The botched attack on the U.S. plane came a day after Yemeni forces, with the help of U.S. intelligence, launched the second of two major air and ground assaults on major al-Qaida hideouts in Yemen. At least 64 militants were killed in the two operations.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said in a statement, dated from last week and posted online Sunday, that the first airstrike was conducted by American jets. The group urged followers to attack U.S. military bases, embassies and naval forces in the region.The mass shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas Army post on Nov. 5 added to the concerns about al-Qaida threats from Yemen. U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people, had exchanged dozens of e-mails with radical U.S. cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who was hiding in Yemen. Last week’s attack on al-Qaida hideouts targeted a meeting of Yemeni and foreign al-Qaida operatives, believed to include al-Awlaki.

A video posted online four days before the bombing attempt featured an al-Qaida operative in Yemen threatening the United States and saying “we are carrying a bomb.” Though it was not immediately clear whether the speaker was anticipating Friday’s bombing attempt, it has attracted scrutiny because of reports that the bombing plot may have originated in Yemen.

Yemen’s weak central government, whose authority does not extend far outside the capital San’a, is battling two rebellions – a secessionist movement in the south and a war with Shiite rebels in the north – as well as al-Qaida militants. Al-Qaida’s presence is particularly worrying because the lawlessness of the country allows it to roam freely.

Some analysts say increased activity by al-Qaida in Yemen suggests the group has strengthened and taken root in a country whose proximity to the world’s top oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and vital maritime routes make it strategically more important than Afghanistan.Anwar Eshki, the head of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies based in Jiddah, said al-Qaida in Yemen “is stronger than it was a year ago and is turning Yemen into its base for operations against the West.” Eshki’s center closely follows al-Qaida in Yemen.

“Yemen is al-Qaida’s last resort,” Eshki said. “There’s no doubt that al-Qaida’s presence in Yemen is more dangerous than its presence in Afghanistan.”Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator for the New York-based NEFA Foundation, which researches Islamic militants, suggested rivalry among al-Qaida’s branches may be a factor behind the focus on the U.S. He said al-Qaida central in Afghanistan and Pakistan is still the main source of attempts to attack the United States.

“There’s now a competition in the world of al-Qaida between various al-Qaida factions, with each trying to prove themselves and prove their worth,” he said.

“The ultimate achievement for these folks is being able to replicate something that previously only al-Qaida central could achieve,” he added. “If you can be sophisticated enough to hit a target in the continental United States, that’s a tremendous achievement for these folks.”Yemen has not confirmed Abdulmutallab’s claims that he was aided by al-Qaida operatives in the country and officials told The Associated Press investigations are ongoing. Significantly, the government has not denied his claims.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s government appears to be mounting a serious and aggressive campaign against al-Qaida after years of treading carefully with the militants. The intensified battle coincides with increased Yemeni-U.S. cooperation.Last week’s attack targeted a meeting of Yemeni and foreign al-Qaida operatives believed to include the top leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, Naser Abdel-Karim al-Wahishi, and his deputy Said al-Shihri. There were reports, later denied by family and friends, that al-Awlaki, the radical cleric linked to the Fort Hood shooter, was killed in the bombings.

Shihri was one of 11 former Guantanamo detainees that Saudi Arabia said went through a rehabilitation program but later joined al-Qaida. He emerged as a leader of Yemen’s branch of al-Qaida after being released from the Saudi program last year.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr al-Qirbi discussed Yemen’s campaign against al-Qaida with Arab diplomats on Sunday, but it was not clear whether Abdulmutallab’s case came up.In a statement, al-Qirbi said his country had long planned the operations against al-Qaida elements and the decision to execute them was expedited because al-Qaida has increasingly threatened the country’s stability.

“Al-Qaida elements went far by carrying out attacks against security officers, and threatened the country’s stability and economic interests which made the decision impossible to postpone,” he said.The United States and Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s powerful northern neighbor, have expressed concern over al-Qaida’s growing presence in Yemen. The Pentagon has spent about $70 million this year on assisting Yemen against the militants as U.S. officials pressed that country to take tougher action.Yemen, at the tip of the Arabian peninsula, straddles a strategic maritime crossroads at the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the access point to the Suez Canal. Across the Gulf is Somalia, an even more tumultuous nation where the U.S. has said al-Qaida militants have been increasing their activity.

The hard-to-control border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia means private money from the rich kingdom can easily be smuggled to al-Qaida operatives in Yemen. Yemen’s proximity to the Arab world and the Horn of Africa makes it easier for the group to recruit young Muslims, an effort fed by rampant poverty.Yemen was the scene of one of al-Qaida’s most dramatic pre-9/11 attacks, the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden coast that killed 17 American sailors.

But the difference now is that rather than just carrying out attacks in Yemen, the new generation of al-Qaida militants appears to be trying to establish a long-term presence here, uniting Yemenis returning from fighting in Iraq and other areas and Saudis fleeing the kingdom’s crackdown on al-Qaida. A year ago, the terror network’s Yemeni and Saudi branches merged into Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, another factor that may have strengthened the group.