LITHUANIA – A court in Lithuania has sentenced Michael Campbell of Ireland to 12 years in prison for attempting to smuggle arms from that country to the Real IRA, a paramilitary group in Ireland.
Campbell was arrested in an undercover operation after handing over cash to buy a sniper rifle, detonators and timers.
According to the Daily Mail, the man boasted that he could make a day trip to London to plant a bomb and be back in Ireland by the time it exploded.
The BBC explains the undercover sting was called, “Operation Uncritical” and it involved MI5 agents travelling from England to Ireland, to Poland to Spain, and eventually to a field in the Lithuanian countryside.
Links to: Daily Mirror, BBC
PAKISTAN – A US drone strike in Pakistan killed up to 21 Afghan Al Qaeda fighters, say press agencies in the region.
The group has been blamed for some of the deadliest anti-American attacks in Afghanistan, including a suicide attack at a US base in 2009 that killed seven CIA operatives.
US officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of playing a double game with extremists, including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. It is believed that all the people killed in the strike were members of the latter.
Links to: Xinhua, Agence France Press
Norwegian media point to lone gunman, naming him and publishing photos
Update 9:20 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The death toll had risen to 87 by Saturday morning in Oslo, Norway, from a bomb at a government office and a gunman’s shooting spree at a youth political camp near the city. It is Europe’s worst attack since the 2004 bombings in Madrid, and Europeans are reacting with shock and worry, given than no group has claimed the concerted attack.
Norwegian media are saying it is the work of a single, lone extremist and they have published his name and photos, although there is no official confirmation of the information (see Sydney Morning Herald‘s report from Australia).
Police ordered people out of the city centre after the 15:30 attacks on the island of Utoya, where the Labour Party’s camp was held, and at the offices of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who was out of the office at the time.
The killer at the political camp was dressed as a police office, and entered saying he was checking security immediately after the bomb went off in the city centre. He was arrested, but only after he managed to “methodically” shoot and kill at least 80 people. Authorities in Norway say he is known to them, a 32-year-old Norwegian, and that he never worked for the police force. Norwegian media are speculating that he is a right-wing extremist who has posted online anti-Islam material.
Other European media note that this is the first time Norway has been the focus of such a terrorist attempt and ask if it is linked to Norway’s role in Afghanistan, as a member of Nato, or if the attacks may have been directed at the offices of the country’s largest tabloid, Verdens Gang, whose offices are near the prime minister’s. The Telegraph in the UK cites WikiLeaks cables, saying Norway’s security services have been unprepared for terrorist attacks.
Links to other sites: Guardian, Le Monde (Fr), NZZ (Ger), Telegraph, TSR (Fr)
Germany says it has strong evidence of alleged Islamist militants were planning attacks in the next two weeks.
Authorities ordered security at potential targets such as train stations and airports to be tightened.
Germany has long viewed itself as a potential target because it has nearly 5,000 military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent of the 150,000-strong international force fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.
Additional details: Euronews, Al Jazeera English
Jurors in New York City, USA, convicted Ahmed Ghailani of conspiracy to blow up US government buildings.
The charges were related to the Al Qaeda attacks of two US embassies in 1998.
Ghailani was acquitted on more than 280 other charges.
He is the only detainee transferred from Guantanamo Bay for trial since the US began filling the military prison in Cuba eight years ago.
Further details: Associated Press
A man died after gunmen, allegedly Taliban, torched several tankers carrying fuel to Nato troops in Afghanistan. Earlier, armed men had opened fire on a Nato convoy also going through Pakistan.
On Monday, at least six people were killed and nine others wounded on yet another attack on Nato tankers.
Disputes over how the US is fighting the war on terror in Pakistan is also increasing and have put the two nations at odds once again.
On Monday 4 October, a Nato strike killed eight anti-government fighters, five of those killed were Germans; last week a Nato-led raid killed three Pakistani soldiers.
Additional details: Al Jazeera English, Pakistan Observer
A British Embassy vehicle was attacked in the Yemen capital, San’a, on Wednesday 6 October, injuring three bystanders.
The armored vehicle was hit by shrapnel from a rocket but no one inside it was hurt.
The attack comes two days after British officials had been warned that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had plans to attack embassies in San’a.
This is the second attack targeting British officials. Earlier this year a suicide bomber struck near the ambassador’s vehicle convoy as it neared the compound.
Related stories, CNN: Yemen fights al-Qaeda, BBC
The youngest Guantanamo detainee is to go on trial today 10 August. Omar Khadr was arrested when he was fifteen years-old in an Afghanistan battlefield.
Khadr is a Canadian citizen, now 23, who according to his defense attorneys, was forced into war by a family with close ties to Osama bin Laden.
According to reports, his father, an Egyptian-born Canadian is an alleged terrorist financier.
Also in: The Vancouver Sun, Al Jazeera English
Canada is expected to release a report on the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight, en route to India, which crashed into the Atlantic killing all 329 people on board.
The four-year investigation lead by a Canadian commission is to be released in Ottawa on 17 June.
Canadian authorities say independentist Sikh militants are to blame and in 2005 two Canadians were tried and found not guilty.
The report is expected to put the spotlight on Canada’s failure to bring to justice those responsible for the deadliest bombing of an airliner in history. The Canadian Broadcasting Company, CBC, says it has learned that the report shows national security continues to be badly organized between the Mounties and Canada’s spy agency.
Link to CBC
Five states on high alert
India will rethink its strategy for countering terrorism attacks, officials have said, following the second major Maoist attack in two months, where 50 people (figure: Times of India) were killed in Chhattisgarh when a landmine was exploded under the bus in which they were traveling. The state, in the centre of the country, is rich in minerals. Five Indian states are on high alert, with Maoists declaring two days of attacks.
Links to other sites: Reuters, Times, India, Wall St Journal
US Justice officials say Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested Monday 3 May, has admitted to planting an explosive device in a car in Times Square, and told them he was trained in Pakistan. He was arrested in New York after the Emirates flight to Dubai that he was on was asked to turn around and return as it taxied down the runway for takeoff. Shahzad’s name had been on a no-fly list but he had managed to order his ticket while en route to the airport, pay cash for it, make it through JFK Airport security and board the plane. Customs officials found his name on the boarding list shortly before takeoff and turned the plane around. A Justice Department official says there was never any danger he would have left the country, however.
He will be charged with terrorism across national borders, according to the Justice Department.
Links to other sites: US Justice Department and BBC, New York Times
The Australian, British, Canadian and US governments are warning tourists of an increased risk of militant attacks in public areas of New Delhi, India.
The US said 21 April that it had information of “specific” threats to New Delhi’s shopping areas. The warning is similar to the one given by the Canadian government which also cites the Chandni Chowk area in Old Delhi as a possible target for terrorists. The Australian government in India has also advised its citizens to stay clear of market areas in the city.
Sources: Canadian department of foreign affairs, US Department of State, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Australian department of foreign affairs,
A man walked up to two police officers guarding the Pentagon, US military headquarters in Washington, DC, and “without emotion”, according to the head of the Pentagon police, started shooting them. The officers, who have non-life-threatening graze injuries, returned fire and critically shot the man, John Patrick Bedell, who later died at a nearby hospital. Several shots were fired at 18:40 local time, at the busy subway entrance that leads to the large Pentagon complex. Bedell, 36, grew up in the area and had been a graduate student in physics at San Jose University in California, according to the Washington Post.
The newspaper notes that “The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon – the U.S. capital’s ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 – came four months after a deadly attack on the Army’s Fort Hood, Texas, base allegedly by a US Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings. In the immediate aftermath Thursday, investigators did not think terrorism was involved but were not ruling that out and did not discuss possible motives.
Links to other sites: CNN, Washington Post
US President Barack Obama says he takes the blame personally for recent lapses in the US security system, in the fight against terrorism. The White House issued a report on the 25 December bomb attempt of a Northwest Airlines plane near Detroit. It calls for quicker and better exchanges of information about possible threats. People who have known the man who attempted to blow up the plane, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, are recalling the very religious and quiet man they knew.
Links to other sites: The Globe & Mail, Canada, National Public Radio, US, Times, UK and White House summary of report
Five Sydney men have been found guilty of preparing terrorist acts in one of Australia’s longest criminal trials, which began in November 2008 and involved 180 “sitting days” in a specially-built courtroom. The jury was out for 23 days deliberating. The men, charged with possessing chemicals and bomb-making instructions, cannot be named for legal reasons. They are expected to be sentenced in December. BBC, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The man suspected of aiding terrorism who was arrested by French police 8 October was charged in Paris Monday 12 October and it appears likely he will remain in detention. Internet surveillance of terrorist groups led investigators to e-mail exchanges the 32-year-old man had with terrorist groups. Swiss television TSR quotes a source close to the man’s file who says that he had not moved to the stage of being involved in planning attacks but that he had shown his interest and desire to do so.
Update 12:50 Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL, Lausanne’s Polytechnic institute, said Monday morning 12 October that it has blocked all computer access to an area where a possible terrorist suspect has been working, but it cannot yet confirm that the person under suspicion is indeed the person arrested 8 October in France. If so, he has been giving courses once a week at the university although he has recently been off work on sick leave. Britain’s Telegraph reported late Sunday night 11 October that the unnamed man arrested last Thursday south of Lyons, France on terrorism charges was working on projects at both Cern and EPFL. EPFL has not been given a name by French police. The university and Swiss Federal Police say they are ready to help French police, but no official requests have been made.
Cern LHC tunnel that runs under Geneva and neighbouring France
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Cern (European Centre for Nuclear Research) confirmed over the weekend that a man arrested with his brother in the south of France Thursday 8 October has worked at Cern since 2003 as a contract employee for an outside company, not as a Cern employee. “His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism,” the organization says in a press release, noting that “Cern is a particle physics research laboratory whose research addresses fundamental questions about the universe. None of our research has potential for military application.”
French authorities say the two men, whose identity has not been released, were taken into custody in Vienne, south of Lyons.
Pakistan and India, meeting in Egypt, have agreed to work closely together to combat terrorism, in a move that puts very strained relations in 2008 in the past. Pakistan has admitted that the 2008 Mumbai bombing that killed at least 160 people was planned at least in part in Pakistan. BBC
The US government has been talking to the island nation of Palau, reports CNN, about taking 17 prisoners from Guantanamo, part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the Cuban prison. Palau is a former US trust territory that became independent in 1994. The prisoners under consideration are a Chinese minority group of Muslims, Uighurs. Senior US officials confirmed the information a day after the first Guantanamo prisoner to be tried in the US arrived there, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.
Ghailani is Tanzanian, detained in Guantanamo since 2006, accused of participating in the simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanazania in 1998. He pleaded not guilty in federal court in Manhattan Tuesday 9 June. Reuters, BBC
Cuba and the US have agreed to talks about improving migration from the island to the US to make it safer and more orderly. They will also discuss direct mail service between the two countries. Senior State department officials in Washington confirmed Saturday that Cuban officials have left open the possibility that future talks might include other topics, such as disaster-preparedness, counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism. US President Barack Obama earlier lifted restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba.
This comes as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Honduras for a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), where calls for Cuba’s readmission to the group will be debated. CNN, USA Today
Four men have been arrested in New York, USA, after they agreed to buy missiles in an undercover operation. The men are being charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States. The FBI (US Federal Bureau of Investigation) says the men were plotting to leave a bomb at the Riverdale Synagogue in the Bronx, then travel 85 km north of New York City to aim missiles at military planes. One of the men is the son of immigrants from Afghanistan. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement that their arrest shows that “homeland security threats against New York City [are] sadly all too real”. Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, New York Times, Xinhua
In related FBI news a Canadian citizen, originally from Somalia and resident in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the US, pleaded guilty to charges of providing material support to Al Qaeda.
India’s security agents may have been lax before the attacks in Mumbai the last week of November that killed nearly 200 people, US authorities told several news agencies Tuesday. No details were provided, and the information was made available on condition of anonymity, but the US officials said that India had been warned of possible attacks.
Reuters writes that pressure is mounting from around the world on India and Pakistan to avoid letting the killings in Mumbai at the end of November lead to a confrontation or “Mumbai fallout.” The BBC reports that India is clearly turning the heat up on Pakistan.
An Indian doctor in Australia who loaned his cell phone to a cousin, who has been charged with terrorism in Britain, was released in Brisbane, with authorities saying his arrest three weeks ago was a mistake. CNN
Media in Indonesia are criticizing the handling of last week’s executions of three people found guilty of the Bali bomb attack, saying interviews with the condemned man by television and the government’s indecision caused more pain for victims and fanned the flames of terrorism. The country is on “high alert” for terrorist attacks and mobs, reports The Age, Australia. Jakarta Post; Reuters
Pakistan’s new President Asif Ali Zardari, widow of the country’s former leader, the slain Benazir Bhutto, was sworn into office Tuesday and immediately met with and held a press conference with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai. The two often at-odds neighbours vowed to fight terrorism together. AFP
