Yemen 'al-Qaeda commander held'

Yemeni police have captured an al-Qaeda commander said to be behind the security threats that resulted in the closure of foreign embassies, officials say.

Mohammed al-Hanq had evaded arrest on Monday during a raid by security forces in Arhab, 40km north of Sanaa, in which two of his relatives were killed and three other people wounded.

"Mohammed al-Hanq and two others who were wounded were captured in a hospital in Amran [province], north of Sanaa," the official told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.

They were found in a hospital in Reedah, in Amran, he said.

The US embassy, which had closed for two days due to security concerns over an al-Qaeda threat, cited "successful" security operations north of the capital as it reopened on Tuesday.

The British and French embassies, which also closed their doors, resumed operations on Wednesday.

The French embassy remained closed to the public on Wednesday but the ambassador and staff reported for duty.

The French foreign ministry announced the move on Tuesday night, saying: "We decided on the closure as a security measure after threats made public by known terrorist groups."

Concerns that Yemen, a country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, has become a haven for armed groups were thrown into sharp focus when a Nigerian man allegedly trained in Yemen was charged with trying to blow up a US-bound jet.

The botched Christmas Day attack was claimed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which also urged attacks on Western interests in Yemen.

In the wake of the failed attack, General David Petraeus, the US regional military commander, travelled to Sanaa for talks with Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president.

At the same time, Yemen sent army reinforcements to the eastern provinces of Abyan, Bayada and Shawba, where al-Qaeda fighters have hideouts, and raised the alert level in those regions.

Al Jazeera

US and Britain shut embassies in Yemen after al-Qa'ida threats

THE US and British embassies in Yemen closed last night in response to al-Qa'ida threats to attack Western interests.

The move came after US President Barack Obama blamed a Yemen-based al-Qa'ida affiliate for the foiled Christmas Day attack on a US airliner, and a day after a visit by the American regional military commander, General David Petraeus.

Al-Qa'ida's franchise in Yemen had called on Monday for embassies to be targeted as it claimed responsibility for the thwarted attack on the Detroit-bound Northwest airliner.

“The US Embassy in Sanaa is closed today, January 3, 2010, in response to ongoing threats by Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to attack American interests in Yemen,” said a statement posted on the embassy's website.

On Thursday the US mission sent a warden message to American citizens in the country reminding them of the “continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against American citizens and interests throughout the world”.

While stressing there were no direct threats, a UK official said the embassy had been closed out of fear of al-Qa'ida “reactions”.

AQAP on Monday urged further attacks on Westerners in the Arabian Peninsula.

“We call upon every Muslim who cares about his religion and doctrine to assist in expelling the apostasies from the Arabian Peninsula, by killing every crusader who works at their embassies or other places, declare it an all-out war against every crusader on Mohammad's peninsula on land, air and sea,” an AQAP statement said.

Both London and Washington have agreed to fund Yemen's special Counter-Terrorism Unit after Mr Obama on Saturday for the first time singled out the al-Qa'ida franchise in Yemen for the thwarted attack.

The special force had in the past received US training and assistance.

On September 17, 2008, the US embassy was the target of an attack claimed by al-Qa'ida in which 19 people were killed - seven attackers and 12 others, including Yemeni guards and civilians, one of them an American woman.

Last month the defence ministry newspaper said that a raid north of the capital on December 17 killed four suspects and foiled a plot to bomb the British embassy in Sanaa.

Yemen yesterday welcomed the British and US decision to fund the special force.

“Any assistance provided to Yemen's counter-terrorism force will be most welcome,” a government official said.

The official also said that Sanaa would need help to modernise its coastguard “in light of the danger coming from Somalia”.

Somalia's Shebab insurgents pledged on Friday to send militants across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen to help the al-Qa'ida affiliate behind the failed US airliner bombing.

Mr Obama on Saturday blamed Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch for the attack on the US jet by 23-year-old Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

“We know that he travelled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies,” Mr Obama said in an address posted on the White House website.

“It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qa'ida, and that this group, al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

General Petraeus on Saturday personally delivered a message from Mr Obama to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on bilateral cooperation against terror groups.

Britain, meanwhile, has called an international meeting on combating extremism in Yemen for London on January 28, in parallel with a conference on Afghanistan drawing senior ministers or leaders from more than 40 nations.

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al-Qa'ida chief Osama bin Laden.

The Australian

Islamist MP threatens Israelis

Cairo - An Egyptian Islamist MP called on Sunday for the storming of Israeli embassies around the world if Israelis entered Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Subhi Saleh, an MP affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest but banned opposition group, said Israeli embassies "in every country" should be stormed if Israelis enter the site.

"Embassies have diplomatic immunity but our holy places have divine immunity, so if they enter Al-Aqsa let us enter their embassies," he said during a heated meeting of his parliamentary bloc.

Tensions over the compound turned violent on September 27 when Palestinians hurled rocks at a group of visitors whom they suspected of being rightwing Jewish extremists.

Home to the Western Wall of the Second Temple, it is Judaism's holiest site and Islam's third most sacred.

Amid the tensions, Israel a week ago denied access to the site to non-Muslim visitors and to Muslim males under the age of 50. But it re-opened the compound on Sunday.

In September 2000, the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, erupted after Ariel Sharon, a rightwing politician who went on to become Israel's prime minister, visited the site.

Source: News24

ACT NOW!

By Robert Spencer

An urgent message from Iranian freedom activist Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi:

ACT NOW! Please call up your foreign office and demand from them to have their embassy in Tehran open their gates for injured people!

People are arrested in the hospitals and therefore cannot go there for treatment. A number of embassies have already opened their gates, including Australia and Great Britain.

I am quite tied up today trying to finish my upcoming book; for extensive and up-to-the-minute coverage of what is going on in Iran, see here and here at Atlas Shrugs.

Source: JihadWatch

First Guantanamo detainee arrives in US: Justice Department

June 09

THE first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be transferred to US soil arrived early today in New York to face terrorism charges, the Justice Department said.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an Al-Qaeda suspect from Tanzania held at Guantanamo since 2006, arrived at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre to face charges over his alleged involvement in the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa.

He was expected to make his first appearance in a Manhattan federal court tomorrow, according to Attorney General Eric Holder.

"With his appearance in federal court today, Ahmed Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people," Mr Holder said.

"The Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case."

Ghailani faces 286 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder, bomb and maim, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against US nationals, charges for which he could receive the death penalty.

According to the indictment from March 2001, Ghailani also conspired with Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other Qaeda members to kill Americans.

Expectations had grown in recent weeks that Ghailani would be the first Guantanamo inmate to be brought to US shores and tried in a civilian court.

President Barack Obama has vowed to close by January 2010 the Guantanamo detention centre which still houses about 240 "war on terror" inmates, most of whom have been detained since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The US leader hopes other countries will take in some of the 50 detainees so far cleared for release. An Algerian national has been taken in by France, while an Ethiopian-born British resident was returned to Britain, but finding homes for the others has proven to be difficult.

Many leaders of countries who called for the facility to be shut down have refused to harbor its former inmates, and the US Congress has opposed moves to let them stay in the United States.

Mr Obama is under intense pressure to decide the fate of the detainees from 30 nations at the camp, many of whom have not been charged.

Some may be impossible to try, as their evidence may be inadmissible in court due to interrogation methods branded by critics as torture, but may also be deemed too dangerous to release.

Last week Canada turned down Washington's requests to take in Guantanamo detainees, becoming the third US ally to put a snag in efforts to shutter the infamous prison.

Ottawa last month turned down a US request to take in three of 17 Chinese Muslim detainees cleared for release from the US naval base in southern Cuba because of "significant security concerns," Canadian immigration ministry spokesman Alykhan Velshi said.

Germany and Australia also have been urged to take in Guantanamo inmates, but both have appeared reticent.

Source: The Australian

New Fatwa: Attacking Foreign Embassies in Yemen Is a Religious Duty

On November 9, 2008, the Islamist website Al-Faluja posted an audio message by Al-Qaeda in Yemen that includes a fatwa issued by Yemeni sheikhs Abu Zubayr 'Adl Al-'Abab and Abu Miqdad Al-Kindi.

The fatwa exhorts Muslims to destroy foreign embassies in Yemen, particularly the U.S. Embassy, explainingthat these embassies "oppose Allah and his Prophet" and "convert Muslims to Christianity [by] causing them to doubt their faith."

Source: MEMRI

Syria to open an embassy in Beirut

   

Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent | August 15, 2008

SYRIA is to open an embassy in Lebanon for the first time in a move that recognises its unstable neighbour's sovereignty, but fuels fears of resurgent foreign meddling.

The move by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to recognise Lebanon, which was under the tutelage of Damascus until 2005, was immediately welcomed by the US, but treated warily by the Sunni Arab world as a harbinger of Syria again seizing control of the country - this time through the cover of official channels.

New Lebanese President Michel Sleiman agreed to reciprocate by opening a Lebanese embassy in Beirut, in a sign of rapidly strengthening ties between his office and Damascus, which endorsed his appointment in May.

Syria's overlord stance towards Lebanon had long been seen by Western states as a key reason for the fragile nation's perpetual instability. A power-sharing deal brokered in May by the Gulf state of Qatar was aimed at enshrining Lebanese sovereignty following two years of blockades and political imbroglios that stemmed from the 2006 war with Israel.

However, the three months since has led many observers to conclude that the agreement has merely formalised the roles of foreign powers, such as Syria and Iran, in Lebanese affairs.

Before both presidents agreed to post diplomats to each other's capitals, the new Lebanese parliament made its first major decision - to allow militant group and political power-broker Hezbollah to retain control of its arsenal of weapons.

Neighbouring Israel, which has remained threatened by Hezbollah's growing power base and weapons stores for the past two years, immediately claimed the decision meant that any future act by Hezbollah could now be classed as having the approval of the elected Lebanese Government.

The parliamentary decision regarding Hezbollah's weapons was seen as the first test of thenew unity Government's mandate. The elected bloc of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora effectively handed over veto power to the Hezbollah-led opposition in May, on the cusp of what many in the region believe was a return to civil war.

Moves toward diplomatic recognition come as the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Tripoli in northern Lebanon recovered from a terror attack on Wednesday that claimed at least 14 lives, nine of them soldiers. Up to 40 more people were injured when a large roadside bomb destroyed a bus during morning peak hour.

Tripoli has been ravaged by violence since an al-Qa'ida-inspired uprising in July last year, in which a Palestinian refugee camp was overrun by jihadis. About 200 militants were killed in the six weeks of fighting that followed, as well as a similar number of soldiers.

The latest explosion is seen as a fallout from last year's battles. Leader of the government-linked Druze bloc, Walid Jumblatt, last night said Lebanon needed to ensure that regional "forces of darkness" did not push Lebanon back towards a sectarian battleground, or transform it into a new Iraq.

"I call on all parties to unite behind the Lebanese army and security services to face these terrorist activities and to protect north Lebanon and the city of Tripoli," he said.

Parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri said the latest bombing was linked to earlier attacks. "But we will fight this plot against Lebanon, its people and institutions," he said. "We only have the state to protect us and I call on the President to protect the citizens of Tripoli."

Hezbollah issued a statement condemning the explosion in Tripoli.

In the wake of the Qatar deal and the lifting of the Hezbollah blockade, Lebanon is enjoying its first bumper holiday season for four years.

Source: The Australian

Azerbaijan foils embassy terror plot

Muslims Against Sharia praise the National Security Ministry of Azerbaijan for preventing terrorist attacks on American and British embassies.

Source: Daily Telegraph