2009

2009—Somalia—On October 6, 2012, three years after his kidnapping by local jihadis, bearded Denis Allex, reportedly a French intelligence officer, released a four-minute video titled Message to François Hollande in which he read a script in French. “I record this message, which I direct to you personally in the month of July 2012, three years after my abduction, three years away from my family, my wife, and my children; three years of solitude,” reads the English transcript of his statement.

January 2009—Colombia—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia bombed a Blockbuster video store in Bogota, killing two. 09019901

January 1, 2009—Pakistan—The U.S. media reported that a CIA Predator strike killed Kenyan citizen Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, alias Usama al-Kini, al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Pakistan, and his deputy, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, in a Hellfire missile strike on a building being used for explosives training. The air strike occurred near Karikot, South Waziristan Province. The duo was suspected of involvement in several recent suicide bombings in Pakistan, as well as the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

January 2, 2009—Sri Lanka—Government troops captured Kilinochchi, the de facto capital of the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Authorities met minimal resistance, suggesting that the LTTE guerrillas had retreated to jungle bases. The next day, troops bombed the port of Mullaitivu, the rebel’s last stronghold. The LTTE had begun its separatist insurgency in 1983. Since then, nearly seventy thousand people had been killed. LTTE political leader Balasingham Nadesan said that the group would keep fighting.

Meanwhile, an LTTE suicide bomber set off a motorcycle near the Sri Lanka Air Force headquarters in Colombo, killing two airmen and wounding thirty other people, including nine airmen.

January 5, 2009—Greece—Just before dawn, two gunmen fired automatic weapons at riot police outside the Ministry of Culture in Athens, severely wounding one police officer. The Revolutionary Struggle claimed credit.

January 6, 2009—Qatar—In an audiotape posted on the Internet, al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri said that the Israeli incursion into Gaza was the fault of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama. “These raids are Obama’s gift to you before he takes office.” “This is Obama, whom the American machine of lies tried to portray as the rescuer who will change the policy of America…. He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection.” He said the Israeli assault was a “link in the chain of the crusade against Islam and Muslims,” led by President Obama.

January 13, 2009—Austria—A spokesman for Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, 33, on April 29, 2010, denied Austrian police speculation of involvement in the January 2009 murder of Chechen dissident Umar Israilov in Vienna. Austria arrested three Chechens who were likely to be indicted. The Vienna Public Prosecutor’s office said, “In this final report there is circumstantial evidence that connects the killing to Mr. Kadyrov and other people in his surroundings. The police say that leads to the assumption that Mr. Kadyrov ordered at least the kidnapping and maybe the killing of Mr. Israilov.” Minutes after the shooting, a suspect made an eleven-second phone call to Shaa Turlayev, a senior aide to the Chechen president. The Austrian police said Turlayev met in Austria with some of the murder suspects three months before the attack. One of the suspect’s cell phones contained a photo of a suspect next to Kadyrov. Israilov had served as a chief witness in a case against Kadyrov at the European Court of Human Rights. The Chechen government noted that Israilov had been a rebel leader.

January 14, 2009—Greece—Revolutionary Struggle said it would continue conducting terrorist attacks. It claimed credit for the December 23, 2008, attack on a riot police bus and the January 5, 2009, wounding of a police officer in front of the Ministry of Culture.

January 14, 2009—Qatar—Osama bin Laden, in an audiotape entitled A Call for Jihad to Stop the Aggression on Gaza that was posted on the Internet, called on Muslims to attack Israel and said he would open “new fronts” against the United States. He complained that Arab leaders had not aided beleaguered Gazans, and the Arab leaders had been “avoiding their responsibility” to liberate Palestine. “If you are not persuaded to fight, then open the way to those who are persuaded.” He said President Obama would receive a “heavy inheritance” from President Bush. “If he withdraws from the war, it is military defeat. And if he continues it, he drowns in economic crisis. How can it be that [President Bush] passed over to him two wars, not one war, and he is unable to continue them? We are on our path to open other fronts, with permission from Allah.”

January 15, 2009—Philippines—Abu Sayyaf kidnapped three International Committee of the Red Cross aid workers and threatened to behead them if the government did not pull its troops out of most of southern Jolo Island. The group ultimately freed the Swiss, Italian, and Filipino hostages. The last hostage, Italian engineer Eugenio Vagni, was freed on July 12, 2009. 09011501

January 20, 2009—Indonesia—Three firebombs were thrown at the Egyptian Embassy, causing a small fire but no injuries. Egypt had kept its border with Gaza closed during the recent Israeli incursion.

January 20, 2009—United States—Politics Daily reported on January 5, 2010, that Bush administration officials learned of a plot by Somali terrorists to detonate explosives during the inauguration of incoming President Barack Obama. It was later determined that a rival Somali group had faked the information to provoke the United States to attack its foe.

January 22, 2009—Mali—Members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) kidnapped four Europeans (two Swiss, a German, and a British tourist) in an attack on their convoy near the border with Niger. The tourists had attended a Tuareg festival. The AQIM gunmen fired at the tires of the tourists’ car, forcing it to stop. On February 18, 2009, Abu Mohammed, AQIM spokesman, told al-Jazeera, “We announce to the general public that the mujahideen reserve the right to deal with the six kidnapped according to Islamic sharia law.” On April 22, 2009, AQIM posted its demands on an Islamist Web site and called for the United Kingdom to “release Sheikh Abu Qatada, who is unjustly held, for the release of its British citizen. We give it twenty days as of the issuance of this statement. When this period expires, the mujahideen will kill the British hostage.” The previous week, AQIM has released German citizen Marianne Petzold and Swiss citizen Gabriella Greitner. The group said it would hold Grietner’s husband “until we have achieved our legitimate demands.” AQIM had earlier demanded the release of twenty AQIM prisoners in Mali and elsewhere. The demand was later extended another fifteen days to May 30.

On June 3, 2009, the group said it had killed British hostage Edwin Dyer on May 31, one day after expiration of its second deadline. The al-Falojah Web site carried a two-page message in Arabic in which the group observed that “the British captive was killed so that he, and with him the British state, may taste a tiny portion of what innocent Muslims taste every day at the hands of the Crusader and Jewish coalition to the east and the west of the world.” The group had demanded a $14 million ransom for Dyer and a Swiss hostage. Dyer had worked in Austria and spoke fluent German. He was on a German travel operator’s tour in West Africa and was kidnapped after attending a cultural festival in Anderamboukane, Mali.

On June 16, 2009, Mali’s army killed several al Qaeda members in an attack on a terrorist camp near the Algeria border. 09012201

January 26, 2009—Europe—The European Union (EU) took the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran off its list of terrorist groups and lifted its economic and financial sanctions. The government of Iran said the decision promoted terrorism. France appealed the decision. This was the first delisting by the EU.

January 26, 2009—United States—Two Sri Lankan immigrants—Nadarasa Yogarasa and Sathajhan Sarachandran—pleaded guilty in a New York court to providing material support to terrorists when they tried to supply hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of surface-to-air missiles and assault weapons to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Charges against two other Sri Lankan immigrants—Sahilal Sabaratnam and Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam—were expected to go forward.

February 2009—Mexico—Al-Jazeera ran a video showing Kuwaiti dissident Abdullah al-Nafisi telling a room of colleagues in Bahrain that al Qaeda was surveilling the U.S. border with Mexico, observing,

Four pounds of anthrax—in a suitcase this big—carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the United States are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there. What a horrifying idea. 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings, and so on. One person, with the courage to carry 4 pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this “confetti” all over them, and then we’ll do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real celebration.

The Washington Times reported on June 3, 2009, that the individual was an al Qaeda recruiter and that the group was also considering working with right-wing white militia groups.

February 2009—United States—The Treasury Department froze the assets of the Maryland-based Tamil Foundation charity, saying that its officials funneled money to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

February 1, 2009—Italy—Police arrested three men for beating and torching a 35-year-old Indian immigrant man who was sleeping on a bench in a seaside town near Rome. He was hospitalized with severe burns.

February 2, 2009—Pakistan—Gunmen kidnapped American UN official John Solecki, chief of the UN refugee office in Quetta. They shot to death Syed Hashim Raza, his driver, in an 8:30 a.m. ambush of Solecki’s car in Baluchistan Province as Solecki was on his way to work. Solecki had worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Baluchistan for two years. The Pakistani militant separatist kidnappers released a twenty-second video of a blindfolded Solecki on February 13, threatening to kill him within seventy-two hours unless Pakistani authorities released 141 women from prison. He was heard saying, “This is a message to the United Nations. I am not feeling well. I’m in trouble. Please help me resolve this problem soon so that I can gain my release.” The Baluchistan Liberation United Front kidnappers also sent a letter to a local news agency, echoing the death threat. The UNHCR said that he had a serious medical condition that could threaten his life. Solecki, whose hands and feet were bound, was found otherwise unharmed on April 4, 2009, near the Afghanistan border in western Pakistan. The body of separatist politician Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, who had assisted in Solecki’s release, was found in the southwest on April 9, six days after he was abducted. The remains of two of his kidnapped colleagues were discovered with him. 09020201

February 3, 2009—Qatar—Al Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri released an audiotape on the Internet in which he said that President Obama “said he was concerned about the killings of civilians in Gaza. We thank Mr. Obama for his concern, which we received with thousands of shells and … white phosphorus.”

February 9, 2009—Sri Lanka—A Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam woman set off a bomb while being frisked by a female soldier processing refugees at a camp in Vishvamadu, killing twenty-eight and wounding sixty. Among the dead were twenty soldiers and eight women and children.

February 13, 2009—Iraq—A woman wearing an explosives-laden vest killed thirty-five Shi’ite pilgrims and injured another sixty-seven at a checkpoint in Mussayib, 35 miles south of Baghdad, en route to Karbala in southern Iraq. Local authorities suspected Sunni insurgents.

February 17, 2009—Equatorial Guinea—Sixteen Nigerians used two speedboats in an attack on the presidential compound, triggering a gun battle in which several attackers drowned and another was killed.

February 18, 2009—Greece—A powerful fertilizer car bomb exploded at Citibank’s Athens offices. On March 11, 2009, the leftist Revolutionary Struggle claimed credit. Police said the bomb had enough explosives to destroy the four-story building. 09021801

February 19, 2009—United Kingdom—The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the United Kingdom was guilty of unlawfully detaining six Algerians, a Jordanian, a Tunisian, and a stateless individual without trial under post–9/11 antiterrorism laws and ordered the government to pay them awards ranging from $2,155 to $4,944 plus legal costs. Among them were Abu Qatada and Mahmoud Abu Rideh.

February 20, 2009—Sri Lanka—The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were suspected when two planes attacked Colombo, killing three people and injuring at least forty-eight. The injured included M. F. Raheem, who had a bullet removed from his left arm. One bullet-riddled plane crashed into a building housing the Inland Revenue Department, killing the pilot and a bystander, the 14-year-old daughter of Chandregra Kamgomene. The building is near the headquarters of the Air Force. Another plane was shot down near the international airport, 22 miles north of Colombo, at 10:30 p.m., killing the pilot.

February 20, 2009—Thailand—More than twenty Muslim insurgents armed with automatic rifles beheaded two soldiers after ambushing ten soldiers who were escorting teachers to school in southern Yala Province.

February 20, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber killed at least thirty people and injured scores of others in an attack in Dera Ismail Khan in the northwest against a funeral procession for a slain Shi’ite cleric.

February 22, 2009—Somalia—Islamist insurgents killed eleven Burundian soldiers and injured fifteen others in an attack on an African Union peacekeeping force compound in Mogadishu. The insurgents fired mortars before two suicide bombers, one in a car bomb, set off their explosives. The al-Shabaab group claimed credit. 09022201

February 22, 2009—Egypt—A bomb exploded at 6:00 p.m. in the Khan el-Khalili market, a central Cairo bazaar frequented by tourists, killing a French woman and wounding at least twenty people, including thirteen French citizens, three Saudis, three Egyptians, and a German. Reports differed as to whether it was a grenade thrown by terrorists from a nearby hotel or a bomb hidden under a bench. Authorities defused a second nearby bomb. The market had been attacked by a suicide bomber in April 2005, killing twenty-one people, including an American and two French citizens. 09022202

March 2009—West Bank—Israeli soldiers shot to death a Palestinian youth who had thrown a firebomb at their vehicle.

March 1, 2009—Guinea-Bissau—A bomb exploded in the office of Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Batiste Tagme na Waie, a rival to the president, killing him and wounding five other senior military officers, two of them critically. After the attack, all local radio stations were ordered to immediately suspend their programs. His predecessor, Gen. Verissimo Correia Seabra, had been shot and killed by soldiers in October 2004.

March 2, 2009—Guinea-Bissau—President Joao Bernardo Vieira, 69, was assassinated by gunfire. Looting broke out at the presidential palace. He had become president in 1980 following a military coup. He was elected president in the country’s first free elections in 1994, but was ousted five years later in a coup. He was re-elected in 2005. The army said that this was not a coup, but rather an attack by a group of “isolated” soldiers who were to be arrested.

March 3, 2009—Pakistan—At least a dozen gunmen armed with rifles, grenades, and rocket launchers ambushed the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus, killing six police officers, the civilian driver of a Pakistan Cricket Board vehicle, and another civilian, and wounding seven players, a coach, and an umpire in a fifteen-minute gun battle 300 yards from Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium. Sri Lankan players Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana were treated for bullet wounds at the local hospital. Umpire Ahsan Raza was wounded in the abdomen. Five players, including team captain Mahela Jayawardene and British assistant coach Paul Farbrace, sustained minor injuries. Bus driver Mohammed Khalil accelerated through the gunfire and drove to the safety of the stadium. All of the gunmen escaped, apparently unharmed. They left behind machine guns, RPGs, plastic explosives, and backpacks filled with dried fruit, mineral water, and walkie-talkies, suggesting that they might have intended to make a stand and take hostages. No group claimed credit. Suspects included Lashkar-i-Taiba and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Lahore’s police chief said the attackers resembled Pashtuns. Lashkar-i-Taiba spokesman Abdullah Ghaznavi denied responsibility. On June 17, 2009, Pakistani police arrested Mohammad Zubair, a member of the Punjabi Taliban, a splinter of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. 09030301

March 5, 2009—Israel—Mar’i al-Rdaidah, 26, a Palestinian man from east Jerusalem, carjacked a construction vehicle on a major road and swung a police car into the air, then crashed it into a bus. He was shot to death by bystanders and police. Two officers inside the car were slightly injured. It was not known whether al-Rdaidah was a member of any terrorist group.

March 6, 2009—France/Spain—French authorities handed to Spanish authorities Ignacio Pedro Santesteban Goikoetxea, alias Einstein, who had been arrested in 2000 in southwestern France. Spain wanted the Basque Nation and Liberty electronics expert on terrorism charges.

March 7, 2009—Northern Ireland—At 9:20 p.m. two gunmen dressed as pizza deliverymen attacked a British Army base in Massereene, County Antrim, killing two soldiers and seriously wounding two other soldiers and two real pizza deliverymen. One of the injured pizza deliverymen was a 32-year-old from Poland who was in critical condition. Authorities said that the two soldiers, who were within hours of deploying to Afghanistan, were shot execution-style while they were on the ground. The dead soldiers were identified as Mark Quinsey, 23, and Cengiz “Patrick” Azimkar, 21. The two gunmen escaped in a car driven by a third individual. They were believed to be in their early 20s. The British Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment had arrived earlier in the week to monitor Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter groups that were believed to be planning an attack before St. Patrick’s Day. The Real IRA claimed credit on March 8 in a phone call to the Irish Sunday Tribune, using the group’s code word, saying that the British soldiers “occupied the north of Ireland.” That day, police in Randalstown, 5 miles from the army base, were investigating a car that might have been used by the gunmen.

By March 13, police had arrested three suspects, one 17 and another 37 (on March 15, the Washington Post reported their ages as 41, 32, and 21). Colin Duffy, 41, an IRA dissident who lived in Lurgan, was arrested on March 14. His arrest sparked rioting involving youths who threw Molotov cocktails at police; no one was injured. Duffy was convicted in 1993 of murdering a British soldier; the case was later dismissed when a key witness was identified as a loyalist paramilitary soldier. In 1997, Duffy was charged with killing two police officers; those charges were also dropped. His previous defense attorney, Rosemary Nelson, died in a 1999 car bombing.

On March 25, Lord Chief Justice Brian Kerr ordered the immediate release of six suspected IRA dissidents, ruling that their eleven-day detention was illegal because the lower court judge who extended their detention to a fortnight had failed to consider whether the arrests were lawful. Police released but rearrested Duffy, who was charged on March 25 with killing the two soldiers. Specific charges were two kinds of murder, five kinds of attempted murder, and one count of possession of a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life. 09030701

March 10, 2009—Greece—A bomb exploded at Citibank’s northwest Athens offices, causing damage but no injuries. On March 11, 2009, the leftist Revolutionary Struggle claimed credit. 09031001

March 10, 2009—United States—A military judge in Guantanamo Bay released the pleadings of several 9/11 defendants. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow defendants said the charges were “badges of honor, which we carry with pride…. Your intelligence apparatus, with all its abilities, human and logistical, had failed to discover our military attack plans before the blessed 11 September operation. We are terrorists to the bone.”

March 10, 2009—Northern Ireland—Continuity IRA, an Irish Republican Army splinter faction, claimed credit for the fatal shooting of Constable Stephen Paul Carroll, 48, in Craigavon. Police arrested a man in his 20s; two more had been arrested by March 15. Hundreds of mourners attended Carroll’s funeral.

On March 23, police arrested a 17-year-old in the case. He appeared in court that morning charged with belonging to the banned Continuity IRA. On March 24, police charged a 37-year-old suspect with murder and possession of a firearm.

March 11, 2009—Sri Lanka—An apparent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide bomber attacked a Muslim procession during a religious holiday, killing fourteen people and critically wounding a government minister.

March 11, 2009—Ecuador—Police captured Sixto Antonio Cabana, a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander who was wanted by the United States on charges of running cocaine smuggling operations. It was Ecuador’s first arrest of a FARC member since it broke diplomatic relations with Colombia a year earlier over a raid by Colombian authorities into Ecuador.

March 12, 2009—Sudan—Gunmen kidnapped three Medecins San Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) staffers—a Canadian nurse, an Italian doctor, and French coordinator Raphael Meunier—along with two Sudanese workers during the night in Serif Umra Province in northern Darfur. The two Sudanese were soon freed. The trio was working for the group’s Belgian section. The previous week, the Sudanese government had ordered thirteen aid groups to leave the country after the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The kidnappers demanded a ransom. The foreigners were freed on March 15 (some reports said March 13). No ransom was paid to the Eagles of al-Bashir. 09031201

March 12, 2009—Netherlands—Dutch police received an anonymous warning of a plot by Moroccan immigrants to bomb an Amsterdam shopping district. Police arrested six men and one woman. One man had connections to the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombers. Police released all seven the next day.

March 12, 2009—France—A Paris appeals court overruled the 2007 convictions on charges of “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise of former Guantanamo Bay detainees Ridouane Khalid, Brahim Yadel, Khaled ben Mustafa, Nizar Sassi, and Mourad Benchellali.” The court held that French DST agents overstepped their authority in questioning the five at the U.S. military prison facility in 2002 and 2004. Prosecutors planned an appeal to the Court of Cassation. The five were arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and were repatriated to France in 2004 and 2005. In their 2007 trial, they had admitted receiving military training in Afghan camps.

March 13, 2009—Afghanistan—Taliban spokesman Mohammed Ibrahim Hanafi, self-proclaimed commander in Helmand Province, told CNN that the group would execute foreign aid workers as spies or hold them hostage for the release of Taliban fighters. “If we get someone, that it how we will deal with it under our new constitution.” He also called on “Afghan brothers not to work with NGOs.”

March 14, 2009—Qatar—Al Jazeera Television broadcast an audiotape from Osama bin Laden in which he called Israeli actions against Hamas in Gaza a “holocaust.” “The Gaza holocaust is an historic event and a tragic turning point. The road of returning al-Aqsa needs righteous leadership.” He claimed that “it was clear that some of the Arab leaders have collaborated with the Crusader-Zionist alliance against our people, those whom America calls the moderate leaders. We must disown ourselves from all those” governments. He called for Muslims to aid Iraqi insurgents in efforts to “liberate” Iraq “so they can defeat the greatest ally to the Zionists.” After that, they could move on to Jordan to “liberate all of Palestine from the sea to the river” from Israel.

March 15, 2009—West Bank—Gunmen shot to death two Israeli policemen during the night near the Massua settlement, a Jewish enclave in the Jordan Valley. Palestinian nationalists were suspected. The police vehicle was found upside down.

March 15, 2009—Yemen—Terrorists threw a bomb at tourists posing for photograph near the ancient fortress city of Shibamd, killing four South Korean tourists and their guide. 09031501

March 16, 2009—Somalia—Kidnappers released a Somali and three foreign staff members who were working in Wajid for a UN humanitarian organization. The four had been en route from semi-autonomous Puntland to Kenya when they were kidnapped. 09031601

March 17, 2009—Sudan—Gunmen attacked a vehicle and shot to death a UN–African Union peacekeeper in the Darfur region. 09031701

March 19, 2009—Qatar—Osama bin Laden issued an audiotape in which he called Somali President Sheik Sharik Sheik Ahmed a tool of the United States and called for his overthrow. A group of Somali Islamic clerics rejected the suggestion.

March 22, 2009—United Kingdom—Passengers from Emirates flight EK011 flying from Dubai to London’s Gatwick Airport were evacuated after landing at 6:45 a.m. Ten minutes earlier, a passenger found a threatening note. Bomb techs inspected the plane. The airport was temporarily closed.

March 22, 2009—Israel—Authorities found a 200-pound car bomb that malfunctioned near a Haif’s Lev Hamifrtz shopping center. Police heard a small explosion, which could have been the detonator, inside a Subaru in the mall’s parking lot. The bomb was packed with ball bearings. The car had been stolen from East Jerusalem. A little-known group from Galilee claimed credit.

March 24, 2009—Qatar—In a video, al Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Sudanese to begin a “long guerrilla war” against President Umar al-Bashir, whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) had charged with war crimes. “The Sudanese regime is too weak to defend the Sudan, so you must do what was done by your brothers in Iraq and Somalia. So make preparations, by training, equipping, storing, and organizing for a long guerrilla war, for the contemporary Crusade has bared its fangs at you.” He complained about Sudan’s 1996 decision to expel Osama bin Laden. “The Bashir regime is reaping what it sowed.” He said that al-Bashir’s “former trail-mates” have “revolted against him.” He said the ICC decision was a pretext for a Western invasion. “You are being targeted so Islam can be eliminated from the Sudan.”

March 26, 2009—Somalia—A bomb exploded around noon at the Bakaraha market in Mogadishu, injuring Interior Minister Abdukadir Ali Omar in the leg and killing one of his secretaries. Al-Shabaab was suspected.

March 27, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber attacked a crowded mosque in Jamrud in the Khyber tribal agency in the northwest, killing fifty-one and injuring several more. Authorities said the death toll could hit seventy.

March 30, 2009—Pakistan—Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamist leader from the South Waziristan tribal area, claimed credit for the Taliban Movement of Pakistan attack on a policy academy in Lahore. Eleven people died in the attack on the police academy. He said that his group was going to conduct an “astonishing” attack in Washington in revenge for more than thirty strikes by U.S. UAVs against terrorist sanctuaries.

April 2009—Iraq—A suicide bombing at the Imam Wais area of a restaurant where Iranian pilgrims were gathered for lunch killed more than fifty Iranians and injured dozens of others. 09049901

April 2009—Pakistan—As of April 13, James McLintock, 44, a British convert to Islam, had been held for two weeks in Peshawar on suspicion of involvement in assisting British Muslim militants to make contacts in Pakistan.

April 2009—United States—Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud falsely claimed credit for a mass shooting at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York.

April 5, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber at the entrance to a crowded mosque in Chakwal city in Punjab Province, 50 miles south of Islamabad, killed twenty-two people, wounded dozens, including at least one police officer, and damaged a car and four motorcycles. A little known group believed tied to the Pakistani Taliban claimed credit.

April 7, 2009—Saudi Arabia—In raids in several areas, including near the Yemen border, the government arrested eleven al Qaeda–linked insurgents and confiscated arms. Authorities said the cell planned attacks and kidnappings.

April 8, 2009—United Kingdom—Police arrested a dozen men, including ten Pakistanis who entered the United Kingdom on student visas, another Pakistani, and a Briton, in raids on eight locations in Manchester, Liverpool, and other locales. Operation Pathway arrests took place at an internet café and a residence in Manchester, a guest house and home improvement store in Chlitheroe, and a library at John Moores University in Liverpool. They were from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and were members of a suspected al Qaeda cell planning an attack in Manchester. They were in their late teens to 41 years old. Police continued a search for their bomb factory.

The country’s most senior counterterrorism official, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, head of Special Operations at Scotland Yard, resigned after being photographed carrying secret antiterrorist documents, which could be read clearly by passersby. The raids had to be conducted quickly after the inadvertent leak of the materials. Quick had used the documents to brief the prime minister regarding the suspects, who had been under surveillance for a month. The documents included such details as “AQ driven attack planning within the UK” and “Merseyside—Dynamic entry, firearms.”

On April 11, police released without charge an 18-year-old suspect, who was then questioned by immigration authorities from the Border Agency. On April 21, 2009, police released nine of the eleven Pakistani suspects into the custody of the British Border Agency, who wanted the group deported on grounds of national security. On April 22, the final two suspects were freed. None of them were charged. Authorities wanted to deport eleven of the twelve.

April 12, 2009—Egypt—Egyptian and Israeli authorities claimed that Hizballah was planning to attack Israeli tourists at Sinai Peninsula resorts. Egypt said it had arrested forty-nine Hizballah members between November and January. They were led by Lebanese citizen Sami Shihab and smuggled weapons and ammunition, plotted attacks, and spied. Egypt’s Al Ahram said the network included twelve Egyptians plus individual citizens from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Sudan. The authorities discovered $2 million and stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. They had rented a building in Cairo and properties in southern Egypt, along the Israel border and in Red Sea tourist resorts. They were also in a villa on the Suez Canal, from where they could “monitor and target ships.”

April 13, 2009—Gaza Strip—An unmanned Palestinian fishing boat crammed with hundreds of pounds of explosives detonated off the coast of Gaza but caused no casualties. Israeli authorities said terrorists were planning to attack a naval patrol in the area. Al-Jazeera reported that the previously unknown Secret Special Units, a Palestinian group, used a remote-control device to set off the bomb.

April 14, 2009—Turkey—Security forces arrested two Kurdish rebels for plotting bombings in the west.

April 16, 2009—India—Maoist rebels attacked fourteen polling stations and vehicles carrying election officials, killing seventeen people in the east and central regions of the country.

April 18, 2009—France—Police from Spain and France arrested Jurdan Martitegi Lizaso, 28, the suspected leader of the Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA), and two accomplices in Montauriol village near Perpignan in southeastern France. He was linked to three car bombings, including one in September 2008 in Santona that killed an army officer and injured six other people. Police had followed a local ETA leader from Spain to France, where he met with Martitegi for two hours to learn about handling explosives and weapons. He was among those arrested. Police seized three pistols, two vehicles, and explosives from the detained trio. Nine members of ETA had been arrested in recent days; five leaders had been arrested in France in the previous fortnight.

April 18, 2009—Spain—Hours after the arrest in France of Martitegi, police arrested six other Basque Nation and Liberty suspects whose ages ranged from 25 to 31.

April 19, 2009—Somalia—Gunmen in the Bakool region kidnapped two staff members—a Dutch and a Belgian—of the Belgian chapter of Doctors Without Borders. 09041901

April 19, 2009—India—Soldiers killed five militants in a shootout in Assam. Three were believed to be from a splinter of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, while the other two were from the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam. Police seized weapons and ammunition in the raid.

April 20, 2009—Jamaica—A mentally disturbed gunman in his 20s got past a security guard and walked onto CanJet (a Canadian carrier) flight 918, a B737 that had arrived from Halifax, Canada, with 174 Canadian passengers and 8 crew members and was scheduled to fly to Santa Clara, Cuba, from Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport. As he was taking the passengers hostage, he fired a bullet that grazed the co-pilot’s face. After robbing passengers, he allowed them to depart, but kept 6 crew hostage and demanded to be flown off the island. Two of those crew members locked themselves in the cockpit. The hijacker’s father and Prime Minister Golding were among those who negotiated with him. Eight hours later, troops stormed the plane and arrested the hijacker at 7:00 a.m. No one else was injured. Among the passengers was Christian Gosselin, one of a twenty-five-person wedding party. He and his girlfriend were among those released. Also on the plane was passenger Brenda Grenier. Gosselin said the hijacker demanded money from all of the passengers. 09042901

April 20, 2009—Spain—A bomb exploded at 9:00 a.m. in a stolen van outside construction company Ferrovial Agroman’s building in northeast Madrid, following a 7:37 a.m. warning phone call by Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA) to the Red Cross. No injuries were reported but thirty vehicles were damaged. The firm is involved in building a high speed train line in the Basque region, which ETA has opposed. On February 9, 2005, the ETA bombed a glass-facade office building in the same neighborhood, causing dozens of injuries.

April 20, 2009—Qatar—Ayman al-Zawahiri posted to an Islamist Web site a screed against U.S. President Barack Obama, saying he was the same as his predecessor. “America came to us with a new face, with which it is trying to fool us. He is calling for change, but (he aims) to change us so that we abandon our religion and rights…. Obama did not change the image of America among Muslims…. America is still killing Muslims.” He complained that the United States was sending more troops to Afghanistan, even though it was losing in Iraq and Afghanistan. He told Hamas not to bow to Egyptian pressure and that Palestinians should attack Israelis around the world. “If circumstances were difficult in one place they are easier in other places. Our enemies, crusaders and Jews, are scattered everywhere.”

April 21, 2009—United States—The FBI announced it had added to its Ten Most Wanted Terrorists Daniel Andreas San Diego, 31, an animal rights activist who had attempted to close a U.K. animal testing company. He was wanted for bombing two biotech firms in San Francisco that are linked to Huntingdon Life Sciences, in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom. He was believed to be carrying a handgun. The FBI offered a reward of $250,000 for information leading to his arrest. His chest tattoo features burning hillsides with the words, “It only takes a spark.” A tattoo of burning and collapsed buildings graces his back. The FBI called him “a well-known San Francisco Bay area animal rights extremist involved with the Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty campaign, commonly referred to as SHAC.” SHAC was founded in the United Kingdom in 1999 and moved to the United States the next year.

He was accused of placing an explosive booby trap at the entrance of the Chiron Life Science Centre building in California in 2003. Other explosives went off before they could be defused. He was also believed involved with the nail bombing of the Shaklee Corporation, also in California, a few weeks later.

April 22, 2009—Germany—A Berlin court began a trial of three Germans and a Turk who had by September 2007 accumulated enough chemicals to make a half ton of explosives, which were to be used in bombings of U.S. military bases, dance clubs, bars, and other American hangouts in Germany. Those accused were Fritz Gelowicz, 29; Adem Yilmaz, 30, a Turk who grew up in Germany; and Daniel Schneider, 22, a Muslim convert. While overseas, the group met a recruiter for the Pakistan-based Islamic Jihad Union, which had been accused of bombing the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 2004. The four were charged with membership in a foreign terrorist organization.

April 26, 2009—Brazil—Sao Paolo police detained an unnamed Arab resident of Brazil who ran a Web site that could be linked to terrorists. The site included anti–U.S. screeds in Arabic. He was suspected of being an al Qaeda member and being a facilitator of its international communications. Police seized his computers. A court ordered his release after he was jailed for three weeks.

April 30, 2009—Netherlands—On Queen’s Day, a 38-year-old man tried to crash his car into a bus carrying Queen Beatrix at a parade in Apeldoorn, killing six people, including a military policeman, and injuring twelve others, including two teens and a 9-year-old girl. Princess Maxima and Prince Willem Alexander were among those who watched him drive past police barriers into Dutch festival attendees. The driver, who acknowledged that he was trying to attack the Queen and her family, died the next day. He had no history of mental illness. Neighbors said he had recently been fired and was facing eviction. He was not believed to be linked to a terrorist group. No explosives were found.

May 2009—Kenya—The Somalia-based Islamist group al-Shabaab kidnapped an outspoken cleric from a refugee camp 50 miles inside Kenya. 09059901

May 2009—United Arab Emirates—The Washington Times reported on September 17, 2009, that Emirates authorities had broken up an al Qaeda terrorist ring that planned attacks in Dubai. The plot originated in Ras al-Khaimah, the comparatively poor member of the seven-nation United Arab Emirates. The terrorists had video surveillance of the Dubai Towers and had designated suicide bombers, who had yet to make martyrdom videos. The Israeli press claimed the Iranian government was behind the plot. The Times reported that Muhammad Ali al-Mansuri, former Minister of Public Lands for Ras al-Khaimah and now a human rights lawyer, was arrested on June 7 but was bailed out.

May 12, 2009—United States—A Miami federal jury convicted five of the remaining Liberty City Six in their third trial of charges of planning to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Sentencing was scheduled for July 27, 2009. The group had been arrested in June 2006.

May 12, 2009—Italy—Italian authorities delivered arrest warrants for Marcel Gendron, 34, alias the Engineer, a French engineer and computer specialist and Islamic convert, and cellmate Bassam Ayachi, 63, a Syrian-born French citizen, on suspicion of being al Qaeda representatives in Europe who were planning attacks in the United Kingdom and France. The duo were already in a prison in Bari, Italy, held on charges of organizing illegal immigration. Their bugged cell conversations indicated that they were planning a plane attack on Charles de Gaulle Airport and had a “ton of grenades.” They had been stopped in November 2008 in Bari after disembarking from a ferry from Greece. Hiding in their vehicle were five illegal immigrants—two Palestinians and two Syrians—who were sent back to Greece. The two had links to a dozen other people who were arrested in December in France and Belgium and who were being investigated for international terrorism and training and recruiting for terrorist purposes. French and Belgian police suspected the duo of recruiting and sending volunteers to fight in the jihad in Afghanistan. The duo were represented by attorney Ornella Romito. Both had resided in Belgium for several years.

May 17, 2009—Greece—Incendiary bombs exploded outside a private security firm, a car dealership, and a company selling surplus military equipment.

May 18, 2009—Sri Lanka—Government troops ended the decades of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorism with the death of the group’s leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, 54. Troops also killed his son, Charles Anthony, who was head of the LTTE’s tiny air force; Pottu Amman, the group’s intelligence chief; and Soosai, the head of the “Sea Tiger” naval wing. The survivors, on a patch of jungle the size of a football field, surrendered.

May 20, 2009—Argentina—The government issued an international arrest warrant for Samuel Salman El Reda, a Colombian of Lebanese descent, in connection with the July 1994 bombing of a Jewish charities building in Buenos Aires that killed eighty-five and injured three hundred.

May 20, 2009—United States—The FBI arrested James Cromitie, 53, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Haitian citizen Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, New York, in connection with a plot to set off a car bomb at a Jewish temple in the Bronx and fire guided missiles at military planes at the New York Air National Guard base in Newburgh. The undercover operation had lasted a year. The four Muslim extremists were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told reporters that Cromitie, the ringleader, had more than two dozen arrests on minor charges in New York. They were arrested at 9:00 p.m. while planting inert bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Jewish Center and the Reform Riverdale Temple. They had intended to then drive 60 miles to the Newburgh Air National Guard base, where they would fire a missile which also had been made inert. An informant had told Cromitie that he was a representative of Jaish-e-Muhammad. On June 14, 2010, Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District indefinitely delayed the trial, saying that prosecutors had not provided relevant information to the defense during discovery. She also scheduled a bail hearing and was willing to hear a petition to dismiss the eight counts, for which they faced life in prison. Samuel Braverman was among the defense lawyers. On October 18, 2010, the four defendants were convicted of plotting to blow up New York City synagogues and shoot down military planes. A jury deliberated eight days. The four faced life in prison. On September 7, 2011, Laguerre Payen, 29, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.

May 22, 2009—Iraq—The body of Jim Kitterman, American citizen and president of Janus Construction, a small company he formed in 2008, was found in a car in Baghdad’s Green Zone. He had worked in Iraq for the Houston-based KBR construction company and the Kuwait-based Peregrine Development companies in Iraq for several years. The former U.S. Navy chief petty officer had been stabbed several times as well as bound at the hands and blindfolded. 09052201

May 23, 2009—Pakistan—Armed men kidnapped a French tourist in Baluchistan. They handed him over to authorities on August 21, 2009. 09052301

May 25, 2009—Iraq—Terrence Barnich, 56, deputy director of the U.S. Department of State’s Iraq Transition Assistance Office in Baghdad, a U.S. soldier, and a civilian Defense Department contractor were killed when a roadside mine exploded as their convoy was leaving the construction site of a U.S.-funded water treatment plant in Fallujah. Two other people were wounded. Barnich had arrived in Iraq in January 2007. 09052501

May 27, 2009—Pakistan—A car bomb exploded in the morning outside two police buildings and a Lahore office of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency on Mall Road, killing 30 people, including 9 police officers, and injured 250. Gunmen crashed their car through a security barrier, jumped out, and fired on the ISI office. After a gun battle, the car blew up. The gunmen continued firing and threw grenades fifteen minutes after the detonation of 200 pounds of explosives, which damaged an emergency response center (Rescue 15), the ISI office, and operating rooms of a neighboring hospital. The Taliban and Islamists were suspected; no immediate claims were made. Two people were arrested.

May 27, 2009—United States—Shukri Abu Baker, 50, and Ghassan Elashi, 55, two founding members of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, were sentenced to sixty-five years in prison for funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. They had been convicted in November 2008 on 108 counts, including funding schools and social welfare programs controlled by Hamas. Three other members of the group were also sentenced.

May 28, 2009—Iran—A bomb exploded in the second-largest Shi’ite mosque in Zahedan, killing 25 and wounding 125. Jundallah claimed credit. Less than thirty-six hours later, three suspects were hanged in front of the mosque.

May 30, 2009—Iran—A homemade bomb was found and defused on a domestic flight from Ahvaz to Tehran. Rumors suggested former president Mohammad Khatami, who was campaigning for president, was on board.

May 31, 2009—United States—At 10 a.m., a gunman shot to death George R. Tiller, 67, a late-term abortion doctor who was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. The gunman fled in a car. Hours later, police arrested a suspect.

Tiller had been shot in both arms by a protestor in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985. The shooter, abortion protester Rachelle “Shelly” Shannon, remains in prison. Tiller had begun conducting abortions in 1973. He ran Women’s Health Care Services, one of only three clinics that perform late-term abortions. In March 2009, he was acquitted on charges of performing late-term abortions without getting a second medical opinion.

Hours after the deadly attack, police stopped and detained Scott Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kansas, as he was driving the getaway car on Interstate 35. He had posted a note in May 2007 on Operation Rescue’s Web site, calling on people to question the church’s hierarchy. He was held in Sedgwick County Jail. He had been arrested in April 1996 in Shawnee County, Kansas, with bomb components in his car. He was convicted in June 1996 of criminal use of explosives and sentenced to sixteen months; he was discharged in March 1998 and the conviction was overturned that year when a court ruled that the car’s search was improper. His father said his son was a member of the Montana Freemen, an anti-government group. Roeder pleaded not guilty on July 27, 2009, to murdering Tiller. Roeder was ordered held on a $20 million bond. Trial was scheduled for September 21, 2009. Scott Roeder phoned the Associated Press from his jail cell to take credit for George Tiller’s murder, saying, “Because of the fact pre-born children’s lives were in imminent danger, this was the action I chose…. I have been told so far at least four women have changed their minds, that I know of, and have chosen to have the baby. So even if one changed her mind it would be worth it. No, I don’t have any regrets.” Roeder was charged with first degree murder and aggravated assault.

Tiller’s family announced on June 9 that it would not reopen his Kansas Women’s Health Care Services abortion clinic.

On January 29, 2010, jurors deliberated for thirty-seven minutes before convicting Scott Roeder of premeditated, first-degree murder and aggravated assault for pointing a gun at two ushers at Tiller’s church after the shooting. He was represented by attorney Mark Rudy. Roeder faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison, with the possibility of parole after twenty-five years. Sentencing was scheduled for March 9, 2010. The prosecution said it would pursue a “hard fifty” sentence, requiring him to serve at least fifty years before parole eligibility. On April 1, 2010, the court sentenced Scott Roeder to life in prison, eligible for parole only after fifty years. He showed no remorse at the sentencing hearing, saying that God “will avenge every drop of innocent blood.”

May 31, 2009—Iran—Authorities defused a bomb on a Kish Air flight from Ahvaz to Tehran with 131 people on board.

May 31, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed that it had destroyed several Chevron oil pipelines and thus put a storage facility out of commission. 09053101

June 2009—Kenya—Western officials warned expatriates to stay away from Nairobi malls because of possible suicide attacks. A few weeks later, the Somalia-based Islamist group al-Shabaab threatened to destroy Nairobi’s “tall glass buildings.” 09069901-02

June 2009—Italy—Authorities issued arrest warrants for two Tunisians, two Moroccans, and an Algerian plotting attacks on a church and a subway line.

June 2009—Afghanistan—On August 7, 2012, Reuters and other U.S. news media reported that the U.S. administration was considering transferring five senior Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay prison to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Among the detainees was Mullah Mohammed Fazl, a former Taliban deputy minister of defense, believed behind the killing of thousands of Shi’ites; Noorullah Noori, a former top military commander; Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former deputy intelligence minister; and Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former interior minister.

June 2009—Mauritania—In late June, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed credit for shooting Christopher Leggett, an American, on a Nouakchott street. Three Mauritanians were charged with murder in early August 2009; one was wearing a suicide belt that did not explode when he was arrested in July. 09069903

June 1, 2009—Iran—Arsonists torched the Zahedan branch of the Mehr Finance and Credit Institution, killing five people.

June 1, 2009—United States—Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, born Carlos Bledsoe, 24, was arrested moments after shooting at recruiters outside a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. He killed William Long, 24, of Conway, Arkansas, and wounded Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, of Jacksonville, Arkansas. Police said Muhammad had probably acted on “political and religious motives.” The two soldiers had recently completed basic training and were serving in the office as part of the Hometown Recruiting Assistance Program. The FBI was investigating reports of his 2006–2007 links to a small mosque in Columbus, Ohio, that had been visited by convicted terrorists Iyman Faris (convicted in 2003 of planning to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge), Nuradin Abdi (convicted in 2007 of planning to blow up an Ohio shopping mall), and Christopher Paul (convicted in 2008 of conspiracy to bomb targets in the United States and Europe). He had been arrested in Yemen in 2008 and was imprisoned there for several months for overstaying his visa and holding a fraudulent Somali passport. While in Yemen, he might have attended the Damaj Institute, which was frequented by radicalized U.S. converts, including John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” captured in Afghanistan in 2001. Muhammad was represented by attorney Jim Hensley, who said Muhammad was teaching English to Afghan war refugees in Yemen. Muhammad had used Google Maps to find recruiting centers in New York, Atlanta, Louisville, and Philadelphia, plus Jewish institutions, a day care center, a post office, and a Baptist church. He pleaded not guilty to the shooting, despite earlier reports that he had confessed upon arrest.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, on July 31, 2009, again pleaded not guilty to charges that he fatally shot Pvt. William Andrew Long. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty. A Pulaski County, Arkansas, judge set a February 15, 2010, trial date. The defendant twice phoned the Associated Press about the shooting, saying that he had killed Long, but it was not a murder because U.S. military actions in the Middle East justified it.

On January 21, 2010, he asked a Memphis judge to change his plea to guilty and said that he was a soldier in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who conducted “a jihadi attack” in retribution for the killing of Muslims by U.S. troops. “I wasn’t insane or post-traumatic nor was a I forced to do this act,” he wrote in pencil, saying he was a member of “Abu Basir’s Army,” believed to refer to Naser Abdel-Karim al-Wahishi, alias Abu Basir, head of the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda. Muhammad had spent sixteen months in Yemen beginning in fall 2007, allegedly to teach English and learn Arabic. While there, he married a Yemeni woman. Yemen deported him to the United States in January 2009. He was represented by attorney Claiborne Ferguson. Muhammad was charged with capital murder, attempted capital murder, and ten counts of unlawful discharge of a firearm. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty.

June 2, 2009—Iran—Rebels killed a passenger when they fired on a bus in the southeast.

June 2, 2009—Qatar—Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second in command, released on Islamist Web sites a twelve-minute audiotape entitled Tyrants of Egypt and America’s Agents Welcome Obama in which he said that U.S. President Barack Obama is not welcome in Egypt because of its alliance with Israel. He called the president an enemy of Muslims for his support for “Zionist aggression,” sending more soldiers to Afghanistan, ordering bombings in the tribal areas of Pakistan, and administering a “bloody campaign against Muslims” in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. He said Obama was invited to Cairo by the “torturers of Egypt” and “slaves of America.” “His bloody messages were received and are still being received by Muslims, and they will not be concealed by public relations campaigns or by farcical visits or elegant words.” He labeled Obama,

that criminal who came seeking, with deception, to obtain what he failed to achieve on the ground after the mujahideen ruined the project of the Crusader America in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia…. The White House declared that Obama will send a message from Egypt to the Islamic world but they forget that his messages were already received when he visited the Western Wall and wore the Jewish yarmulke and when he prayed their prayers…. His administration continued to reject the appliance of the Geneva Conventions regarding Muslim prisoners in the crusade war against Islam that they call the war on terror…. His bloody messages were received and they are still coming and they will not be obstructed either by the public relations campaign, the shenanigan visits, or the articulate words.

June 3, 2009—Qatar—While U.S. President Barack Obama was visiting Saudi Arabia and later addressing an audience at Cairo’s al-Azhar University, al-Jazeera aired a four-minute audiotape from Osama bin Laden in which the al Qaeda leader attacked U.S. policy on Pakistan. Bin Laden said Obama is “walking the same road of his predecessors to build enmity against Muslims and increasing the number of fighters, and establishing more lasting wars.” He claimed Obama had ordered Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari,

to prevent the people of Swat from implementing sharia law through killing and bombing and destruction…. All this led to the displacement of about a million Muslims—elderly, women and children—from their villages and homes to become refugees in tents. They became refugees in tents after they were honored in their own home…. This basically means that Obama and his administration put new seeds of hatred and revenge against America. The number of these seeds is the same as the number of those victims and refugees in Swat and the tribal area in northern and southern Waziristan. Obama has followed the steps of (Bush) who established wars with other nations. American people should prepare themselves for coming wars…. The American people need to prepare to only gain what those seeds bring up…. Let the American people prepare to continue to reap what has been planted by the heads of the White House in the coming years and decades.”

He said the war is “fulfilling an American, Jewish and Indian plot…. Zardari and Ishfaq Kiyan are working on diverting the Pakistani Army from its missions which are protecting Islam and its people and instead they fight Islam and Muslims specially the Pashtun and Bloush tribes in Swat valley, though most of the Pakistani people reject this unjust war. Zardari did this in response to the ones paying him in the White House—not 10 percent but multiple folds of that.”

Moving on to India, he observed that it is “easy for India to subject the disassembled territories of Pakistan, one after another, for its own benefit, like the case of eastern Pakistan [Bangladesh] before, or even worse. This way, America eases its worry towards Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.”

I have also a few words to America and may the wise hear, I will disclose the reasons why people are eager to fight America and why the hatred always increases. I say that the freemen who conducted the 9/11 attacks weren’t displaced by the U.S. Army and haven’t tasted the unjust of America, but they heard what had happened to people in Palestine. That’s why they left their universities and homes and went toward America to fight and punish it. You can imagine what would the freemen (al Qaeda members) do if they were touched by the unjust of America.

June 9, 2009—Pakistan—Three to five terrorists in a Toyota Corolla and a pickup truck fired weapons to get onto the grounds of the 5-star Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, then set off a 500 kilogram car bomb, killing themselves and eleven people, including a Nigerian who worked for the United Nations and Aleksandar Vorkapic, an official with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who was from Belgrade, Serbia, and wounding fifty others. The terrorists destroyed thirty cars and caused extensive damage to the hotel, destroying ten rooms and damaging fifty others. The hotel frequently hosts foreigners and diplomats. Police detained two hotel security guards for questioning. 09060901

June 10, 2009—United States—A federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, convicted Syed Haris Ahmed, 24, of conspiracy to support terrorists. He had gone to Washington, DC, in April 2005, where he made short digital videos of the U.S. Capitol, Pentagon, George Washington National Masonic Memorial, the World Bank, and fuel tanks near I-95 in northern Virginia.

June 10, 2009—United States—At 12:44 p.m., white supremacist James Wenneker von Brunn, 88 (thereby setting a new record), from Annapolis, Maryland, doubleparked his red Hyundai on 14th Street and walked into the Holocaust Museum with a 70-year-old Winchester .22-caliber rifle and fired three shots, killing African American security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, of Temple Hills, Maryland, and wounding another guard. Two officers from Wackenhut Services, Jason McCuiston and Harry Weeks, fired back eight .38-caliber rounds, hitting von Brunn, who was expected to survive. Von Brunn was taken into custody and charged with murder. The Mensa member had written several anti–Semitic screeds, in print and on the Internet.

The Holocaust denier had on December 7, 1981, tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors but was captured carrying weapons outside a board meeting at Fed headquarters at 20th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC. He told the court that he was trying to place the board under “legal, nonviolent citizen’s arrest,” although he was carrying a revolver, sawed-off shotgun, and knife. He was sentenced in 1983 to more than four years in prison for attempted armed kidnapping. He was released in 1989.

Von Brunn had captained a PT boat in the Pacific in World War II.

During his September 2, 2009, court hearing, von Brunn opposed a psychiatric evaluation. U.S. District Judge Reginald Walton denied him bail and ordered a psych evaluation within thirty days at a facility in Butner, North Carolina. Von Brunn was represented by public defender A. J. Kramer. Prosecutors said he had planned the attack for months and intended for it to be a suicide mission that would “send a message to the Jewish community” that the Holocaust was a hoax. On January 6, 2010, von Brunn died at a North Carolina hospital.

June 11, 2009—Yemen—Houthi Shi’ite rebels stopped a bus and seized twenty-four medical workers, who were from India, Egypt, the Sudan, and the Philippines, in Amran Province. The gunmen demanded the release of tribesmen arrested in a war between the government and the rebels in 2008. The hostages were released unharmed. 09061101

June 11, 2009—Italy—Police arrested six suspected leftists who were planning a terrorist attack in La Maddalena, an island off Sardinia, which had been scheduled to host the G-8 Summit in July. Among the detainees was a man who earlier was investigated on suspicion of providing support to the Italian Red Brigades.

June 11, 2009—Colombia—Authorities captured Martin Cuero, the fourth-ranking leader of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in the northwestern city of Calarca. He was a senior aide to FARC leader Mono Jojoy. Cuero had belonged to FARC for twenty years and liaised with Colombian drug traffickers to funnel money to weapons purchases. He was wanted on charges of murder, terrorism, and rebellion.

June 12, 2009—Yemen—Authorities arrested Hassan Hussein bin Alwan, a Saudi, whom the government described as “the biggest and the most influential” financier for al Qaeda in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The date of the arrest was not disclosed. He was believed to have financed attacks in two neighboring countries. Yemen charged him with forming a terrorist group in Yemen and financing its activities. 09061201

June 12, 2009—Yemen—Houthi Shi’ite rebels in northern Saada Province kidnapped seven Germans, a Briton, and a South Korean—among them three children under the age of 6—from a hospital where the six adults worked for the World Wide Services Foundation, a Dutch international medical relief group. On June 15, Yemeni officials in the Noshour Valley in Safrah district in Saada Province found the bodies of three kidnapped women—South Korean teacher Eom Young-sun and German nurse trainees Rita Stumpp and Anita Gruenwald—all in their 20s. The Germans had attended a Bible school and Eom had attended a Christian missionary school in South Korea. The Yemen Post had claimed that seven hostages were killed, but SABA reported the next day the belief that six were still alive. Houthi rebels accused drug traffickers and regional tribesmen of the murders. Fox News blamed al Qaeda and Said Ali al-Shihri, an Islamist extremist who was the group’s number 2 leader in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi had been released from Guantanamo Bay military prison in November 2007 and sent to a Saudi rehabilitation program for repentant Islamist terrorists. He was also believed to have been involved in the September 2008 attacks that left sixteen dead near the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen. 09061202

June 12, 2009—Italy/United States—American and Italian authorities arrested a group of hackers who allegedly stole from phone companies around the world. The illegal profits apparently funded terrorist activities. A federal grand jury in New Jersey indicted three people who live in the Philippines, including one man who has been linked to al Qaeda. The trio was accused of providing Pakistani nationals in Italy with access to stolen phone lines. The company that paid the hackers also financed the communications of terrorists in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Italian officials arrested five Pakistanis in raids on ten call centers suspected of involvement. Among those arrested were a husband-and-wife team who managed call centers in Brescia, Italy—Mohammad Zamir, 40, and Shabina Kanwal, 38.

June 12, 2009—United Kingdom—A London court sentenced Arunchalam Chrishanthakumar to two years in prison after the British Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader was convicted of supplying bomb-making equipment to the LTTE.

June 12, 2009—United States—The Department of Justice announced that it had sent three Saudi detainees who had been held at Guantanamo Bay to their home country. The trio—Khalid Saad Mohammed, Abdalaziz Kareem Salim al-Noofayaee, and Ahmed Zaid Salim Zuhair—would be subject to Saudi judicial review before entering a rehabilitation program.

June 13, 2009—Qatar—Adam Yahiye Gadahn, alias Azzam, the American al Qaeda spokesman, released another video admitting that he had Jewish roots. “Let me here tell you something about myself and my biography, in which there is a benefit and a lesson…. Your speaker has Jews in his ancestry, the last of whom was his grandfather.” He noted that his grandfather was a “Zionist” and “a zealous supporter of the usurper entity, and a prominent member of a number of Zionist hate organizations. He used to repeat to me what he claimed are the virtues of this entity and encouraged me to visit it, specifically the city of Tel Aviv, where relatives of ours live.” His grandfather gave him Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s book A Place Among the Nations, about which Gadahn said the “rabid Zionist” posits “feeble arguments and unmasked lies to justify the Jews’ rape of Muslim Palestine.” Referring to the Zionists, Gadahn asks, “How can a person with an ounce of self-respect possibly stand in the ranks of criminals and killers who have no morals, no mercy, no humanity and indeed, no honor…. Isn’t it shameful enough for a person to carry the citizenship of America, the symbol of oppression and tyranny and advocate of terror in the world?” [Gadahn did not notice the unintended irony, given his position in the al Qaeda organization.] Gadahn called on his fellow Muslims for “our weapons, funds, and jihad against the Jews and their allies everywhere.” He criticized U.S. President Barack Obama, observing that the “Zio-Crusader alliance” was fighting his “brothers” in “open faced aggression” attributable to Obama, who offers “other deceptive, false, and sugarcoated words of endearment and respect.” Gadahn spoke Arabic with English subtitles; As-Sahab Media released an English transcript.

June 15, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) warned the International Football Association (FIFA) to “rethink” allowing Nigeria to host the upcoming under–17 World Cup series from October 24 to November 15. “The safety of international players and visitors cannot be guaranteed due to the current unrest,” MEND said in an e-mail. 09061501

June 15, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it had attacked Chevron’s Abiteve oil flow station in the Niger Delta at 2:00 a.m. as part of its “Hurricane Piper Alpha” campaign against the government. MEND claimed it had sparked a fire that was consuming the entire facility. 09061502

June 17, 2009—Nigeria— The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed it blew up Shell’s major crude oil trunk in Bayelsa State as part of its campaign “to cripple the entire oil and gas export of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” MEND said the company should “vacate the Niger Delta region to avoid collateral damage to their investment and death to staff.” Shell halted production “to avoid potential environmental impact.”

June 18, 2009—Algeria—Gunmen believed affiliated with the local al Qaeda organization shot to death eighteen paramilitary policemen and a civilian.

June 18, 2009—Somalia—Islamists killed National Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden, four other government officials, and eighteen other people in a suicide car bomb attack at a hotel frequently by government officials. He was meeting with other government officials and clan leaders in Beledweyne, 200 miles north of Mogadishu, near the Ethiopia border. The government blamed al Qaeda, saying that at least two hundred foreign fighters, mostly from Yemen and Pakistan, were aiding al-Shabaab, the al Qaeda affiliate, which claimed credit for the attack.

June 19, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) attacked a Nigerian military gunboat and bombed a major oil pipeline owned by the Italian gas company Agip in Bayelsa State. MEND said, “All the soldiers numbering seven (7) were dispossessed of their weapons. The gunboat was also stripped of its weapons before it was disabled by explosives. The soldiers pleaded for their lives to be spared and we did.”

June 19, 2009—Spain—The Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA) set off a car bomb in a parking lot in Arrigorriaga, about 30 miles south of Bilbao, killing Spanish police officer Eduardo Puelles, a senior figure in the fight against ETA. The group called him a “torturer,” saying, “he was also the one responsible for pressuring young independence activist militants on the street for their collaboration by means of threats.”

June 21, 2009—Nigeria—Royal Dutch Shell reported that three of its oil pipelines in the eastern part of the Niger Delta in Nigeria had been attacked. One offshore facility was “engulfed in fire,” according to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

June 22, 2009—Russia—A car bomb injured Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, 45, president of Ingushetia, west of Chechnya, as his motorcade was on a road outside Nazran. One person was killed and several others, including his brother, were injured. Reports differed as to whether a suicide bomber drove into the convoy or a parked car was remotely detonated. The former military intelligence officer had offered amnesty to the insurgents.

June 25, 2009—Colombia—Police and an air force task force attacked a rebel camp in the Amazon jungle, killing twenty-five Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia members, including Juan Carlos Usuga, alias El Enano (The Dwarf).

June 25, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) took credit for attacking a Royal Dutch Shell pipeline and warned Russia not to invest in Nigeria. Hours later, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua offered amnesty to MEND if they would hand over their weapons and renounce armed struggle. 09062501

June 29, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta took credit for a “massive explosion” at the Forcados terminal, one of Royal Dutch Shell’s two main export terminals. MEND said it had sunk a Nigerian military patrol boat with more than twenty soldiers on board. 09062901

June 29–30, 2009—Afghanistan—The Taliban was believed to have kidnapped U.S. Army Pfc. Bowe Robert Bergdahl, 23, an airborne infantryman, after his shift in Paktika Province during the night. He was believed to be the only American soldier in Taliban captivity. The group released a video of him on July 19. Another one surfaced on December 25, 2009. A seated Bergdahl was wearing a U.S. military helmet, uniform, and sunglasses. Text read, “An American soldier imprisoned by the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” During the video, he said he was born in Sun Valley, Idaho, and provided his rank, birth date, blood type, his unit, and mother’s maiden name before reading a verbal attack on the U.S. conduct of the war in Afghanistan and its relations with Muslims. He was forced to say,

I’m afraid to tell you that this war has slipped from our fingers and it’s just going to be our next Vietnam unless the American people stand up and stop all this nonsense…. To all you soldiers out there who are getting ready to come over here for the first time because of the stupidity of our country and leaders … you are fighting very smart people who know exactly how to kill us and are extremely patient…. I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me, as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jail that I have mentioned.

The video also showed prisoners in U.S. custody being abused. At the end of the video, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid added demands for a “limited number of prisoners” to be exchanged for Bergdahl. On April 7, 2010, the Taliban released a seven-minute video of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl saying that he wanted to return to his family in Idaho and that the war was not worth the cost of lives. On December 8, 2010, the Taliban released the fourth video of Bergdahl, with bags under his eyes and an abrasion on his left cheek.

June 30, 2009—France—Al Qaeda posted on Islamist Web sites a threat to attack France “by every means and wherever we can reach them” in reaction to official French statements against the wearing of burqas in public. Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, self-identified commander of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, said, “We will not tolerate such provocations and injustices, and we will take our revenge from France.” The statement, dated June 28, came five days after President Nicolas Sarkozy told parliamentarians that “the problem of the burqa is not a religious problem. This is an issue of a woman’s freedom and dignity. This is not a religious symbol. It is a sign of subservience; it is a sign of lowering. I want to say solemnly, the burqa is not welcome in France.” Parliament began an investigation into whether the burqa threatened the secular nature of the French constitution. Al Qaeda said France was

committing all of these grievances in a time when we see their women flooding our nations, filling our shores, poorly dressed and nude in a deliberate defiance to the feelings of Muslims and in clear contempt to the teachings of the Islamic faith, traditions, and norms. Our Muslim brothers in France in particular and in Europe in general are increasingly troubled by the practices of the French politicians and their leaders, and their constant harassments of our people regarding the burqa issue. Yesterday they targeted the veil, today the burqa and maybe tomorrow their evil hands could be extended to defame our pillars of faith, like praying, fasting, or the pilgrimage.

July 2009—Yemen—A court on July 7, 2010, found Mansour Daleel, 18, and Mubarak al-Shabwani, 23, guilty of ambushing and looting a military truck and carrying weapons and killing a civilian, a policeman, and three soldiers in a gun battle after the initial attack. Prosecutors said they also attacked a convoy and killed two senior police officials, including the director of political security, in November 2009. The duo were arrested in December 2009 in Maarib Province. The duo admitted membership in al Qaeda. Daleel said he would appeal.

July 2009—Kenya—Gunmen kidnapped three aid workers affiliated with Action Against Hunger in the northeast and took them across the border into Somalia. Their whereabouts were unknown as of mid–August 2009. 09079901

July 2, 2009—Afghanistan—The Washington Times reported that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was buying children, including 7-year-olds, from their parents for between $7,000 to $14,000 to serve as suicide bombers.

July 3, 2009—Sudan—Aid workers Hilda Kawuki, 42, and Sharon Commins, 33, were kidnapped in Kutum. On October 18, 2009, they were freed in good health. They were initially interviewed in Kutum. No ransom was paid for the employees of the Irish aid agency GOAL. 09070301

July 6, 2009—Philippines—A bomb in Mindanao killed six people. Abu Sayyaf was suspected.

July 7, 2009—Philippines—Two bombs exploded in Mindanao, killing a total of six people and injuring fifty-three. Abu Sayyaf was suspected.

July 8, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta sabotaged oil pipelines run by Royal Dutch Shell and Agip, an Italian firm. 09070801-02

July 9, 2009—Qatar—Abu Mansour al-Amriki, an American al Qaeda member who has often served as one of its spokesmen, issued a twenty-minute English-language audiotape entitled The Beginning of the End. Al-Amriki said that al-Shabaab, the Somali al Qaeda affiliate, was stronger than ever. Condemning President Barack Obama’s efforts to create a “new beginning” with the Muslim world, the speaker said, “Despite the fact that you have been … forced [by Muslim fighters] to at least pretend to extend your hand in peace to the Muslims, we cannot and shall not extend our hands. Rather, we shall extend to you our swords, until you leave our lands.” “Let this not come as a surprise to those who are mesmerized by Obama’s speech in Cairo, our positions … have not changed in the least. If we study his words carefully, we can note very clearly that this new beginning is still heavily based upon American interests…. Not because he loves the Muslims he lived with in Indonesia, as a boy, but rather, it is because the only way to defeat the Muslims is by distracting them with his temporary life.” He said Obama’s speechwriters were responsible for “one major miscalculation…. A Muslim doesn’t look to peace, security, education, work, or the love of any other number of things as his ultimate goals. Instead, a Muslim is always working and striving to please the one true Creator.” “As you have presented to us a new beginning, we reply by saying that by the permission of Allah, this beginning is … the beginning of the end—the end of the tyranny and oppression so common to America. This is the cause of the entire Muslim [world], and it is being carried even by those who are considered legal citizens of your own country, according to your own laws.” “As far as your claims with regard to improving some of the policies of Bush, you are claiming that Guantanamo Bay will be closed down early next year. We won’t be satisfied until all the Guantanamos … around the world have been closed, and all of the Muslim prisoners—male and female—have been released. You claim that you will fully pull out all of your troops from Iraq by 2012. We won’t be satisfied until you pull out all of your troops from all of the Muslim lands.” He mentioned an al-Shabaab member who was killed in Somalia, observing, “We want to inform his family that he was one of the best brothers here. We need more like him, so if you can encourage more of your children and more of your neighbors, anyone around, to send people like him to this jihad it would be a great asset for us.”

July 10, 2009—Mexico/Colombia—Interpol issued a worldwide extradition “red notice” in which Colombia asked for the arrest of Mexican student Lucia Morett, 28, who survived the March 2008 Colombian bombing of an Ecuadoran camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Bogota wanted her for organized crime, transnational crime, and terrorism. She ran for congress in Mexico’s elections on July 5, but did not win, thereby not gaining parliamentary immunity.

July 11–12, 2009—Indonesia—Attacks on the U.S.-owned PT-Freeport mining company killed an Australian mine technician and two Indonesians. 09071101, 09071202

July 12, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) set alight an oil depot and loading tankers in Lagos, killing five people in its first attack outside the Delta region. Jomo Gbomo, spokesman for the MEND, claimed that “led by a pillar of fire, heavily armed MEND fighters today … carried out an unprecedented attack on the Atlas Cove Jetty in Lagos State. The depot and loading tankers moored at the facility are currently on fire.”

July 12, 2009—United States—A federal grand jury unsealed the indictments of Salah Osman Ahmed, 26, and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, 25, both of Minnesota, charged on one count each of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure people overseas between September 2007 and December 2008 in the recruiting of Somali al-Shabaab militants in the United States. The jury also charged Ahmed with two counts of making false statements to investigators when he told FBI agents that he had traveled alone on a flight to Somalia when, in fact, he and another person went together “so that they could fight jihad in Somalia.” Authorities arrested Ahmed, who lived in New Brighton and worked as a security guard. Isse had been arrested in the spring in Seattle. At least a dozen young Somali men had disappeared from Minneapolis; three had been killed in Somalia. Among them was Shirwa Ahmed, 27, who blew himself up in October 2008, killing twenty-nine others. Burhan Hassan, 17, went missing in October 2008 and was killed in Somalia in June 2009. Zakaria Maruf, 30, and Jama Sheikh Bana, 20, died in a gun battle in Mogadishu on July 10, 2009.

Isse had pleaded guilty in April to one count of providing material support to terrorists.

On July 28, 2009, Ahmed pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists. Other charges—one count of conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, and injure and two counts of lying to the FBI—were to be dropped at sentencing as part of the plea deal. He faced fifteen years in prison. He was represented by attorney Jim Ostgard, who said his client intended to battle Ethiopian soldiers, not fight alongside terrorists.

July 13, 2009—Nigeria—Government officials freed the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta leader Henry Okah to meet an insurgent demand. The group’s main arms smuggler was arrested in September 2007 in Luanda, Angola, and was later extradited to Nigeria.

July 14, 2009—Somalia—Ten gunmen stormed the Sahafi Hotel International in Mogadishu and seized two French security advisors—Marc Aubriere and Denis Allex—who were working with the Somali government. Some reports said they were training Somali intelligence and defense officers. The gunmen disarmed the hotel’s security guards, then went on a room-to-room search for the Frenchmen, who had registered as journalists. The blindfolded and bound hostages were taken on foot to the Bakara market. Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda–linked group, was suspected of kidnapping the French citizens who had arrived in the country nine days earlier. There was no immediate claim of responsibility; no ransom was demanded. An al-Shabaab spokesman said the duo would be tried under sharia law. The government said the pair was taken out of Mogadishu.

On September 17, 2009, al-Shabaab issued demands for the release of Allex—Aubriere, held by the militia Hezb-ul-Islam, had escaped three weeks earlier—calling for Paris to stop supporting the transitional government, release al-Shabaab prisoners, and withdraw African Union peacekeepers, French antipiracy warships patrolling the Somali coast, and French security companies operating in the country.

On January 12, 2013, French commandoes failed in a nighttime rescue raid in Bulomarer, Somalia. Hostage Denis Allex, a member of the French General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), reportedly died in the raid, as did a French soldier. The French government said the kidnappers killed Allex during the raid. Other reports said Allex and another French soldier were missing and might have been killed. At least seventeen al-Shabaab members were killed. Al-Shabaab claimed that Allex was alive, would be “judged within two days” for the attack, and would probably be executed. The group also claimed a wounded French soldier was in its hands. “In the end, it will be the French citizens who will taste the inevitable bitter consequences of the irresponsible attitude of their government with regard to the hostages.” On January 16, the terrorists said they had sentenced Allex to death. On January 17, 2013, they claimed they had executed him at 11:30 a.m. on January 16. Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group’s military operations spokesman, said, “Let Muslims enjoy his execution and the French cry.”

President Obama sent a letter to Congress noting that United States fighter jets flying from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti “provided limited technical support” to the French rescue team. 09071401

July 15, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) called a sixty-day cease-fire to its attacks on oil installations and kidnapping of foreigners. But the group threatened to go back to fighting after charging that seven military joint task force (JTF) gun boats with heavily armed troops were headed toward a camp near the border of the coastal states of Delta and Ondo. MEND spokesman Jomo Gbomo said,

If this information from a very reliable source within the JTF happens to be true, the cease-fire will be called off with immediate effect…. We are monitoring the armada and sincerely hope that the planned attack will be converted to a war exercise…. A compulsory prelude to talks is the withdrawal of the military joint task forces from the Gbaramatu communities and the return of all the displaced persons back to their various homes. Hopefully, the cease-fire period will create an enabling environment for progressive dialogue.

July 15, 2009—Qatar—Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s deputy leader, released a nine-minute English-language audio message entitled My Muslim Brothers and Sisters in Pakistan on Islamist Web sites. He called upon Pakistanis to support Islamists in countering U.S. influence in Pakistan.

I believe that every honest and sincere Muslim in Pakistan should seriously contemplate … Pakistan’s present state and expected future, because the blatant American crusader interference in Pakistan’s affairs … has reached such an extent that it now poses a grave danger to Pakistan’s future and very existence…. If we stand by passively without offering due support to the mujahideen, we shall not only contribute to the destruction of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but we shall also deserve the painful punishment of almighty Allah…. It is the individual duty of every Muslim in Pakistan to join the mujahideen, or at the very least, to support the Jihad in Pakistan and Afghanistan with money.

He said Islamists plan “to establish Pakistan as a political entity standing as a citadel of Islam in the subcontinent…. The scholars of Islam have unanimously agreed that if the infidel enemy enters a Muslim country, it is the duty of all of its inhabitants, and when needed their neighbors, to mobilize for Jihad. The Americans are today occupying Afghanistan and Pakistan, so it is the duty of every Muslim in Pakistan to rise up to fight them.” He called the Pakistani government:

A clique of corrupt politicians and a junta of military officers who are fighting to remain on the American pay list by employing Pakistan’s entire military and all its resources in the American crusade against Islam…. The current ruling class in Pakistan is lining up under the cross of the modern Crusade and competing for American bribes. Hence, the actual ruler of Pakistan is the American ambassador, who pays the bribes and issues the orders…. The only hope to save Pakistan from this disastrous fate of Jihad [because other institutions are] either sunk in the swamp of corruption or are too helplessly crippled and paralyzed to bring about any change.

He said the Americans feared the use of nuclear weapons by Islamists. “This is why the Western Crusade, headed by America and served by the puppet rulers of our countries with their armies, security organizations, media, judiciary and jails, aims at halting the escalating jihadi tide in the Muslim World. The crusade aims at eradicating the growing jihad nucleus in order to break up this nuclear capable country, and transform it into tiny fragments, loyal to and dependent on the neo-crusaders.”

July 15, 2009—Kenya—The Somalia-based Islamist group al-Shabaab broke into a Kenyan school and told the children to quit their classes and join jihad.

July 16, 2009—Pakistan—Gunmen shot to death Zil-e-Usman, 59, a Pakistani field officer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, as he was coming out of an office in the Kacha Garhi camp near Peshawar. He was hit in the chest in a gun battle in which a security guard was killed and another employee was wounded in what appeared to be a botched kidnapping attempt. He had worked for UNHCR for twenty-five years. 09071601

July 16, 2009—Egypt—In the corridors of the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement’s summit, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani and Indian Prime Minister Moanmohan Singh announced an agreement to “share real-time, credible and actionable” counterterrorist intelligence.

July 17, 2009—Colombia—Police found a video in a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) computer that showed the FARC deputy chief reading the deathbed manifesto of FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, in which he said that the group provided funding to the 2006 election campaign of Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa.

July 17, 2009—Indonesia—The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was suspected of the 7:48 a.m. bombing of the luxury Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels in Jakarta, killing nine and wounding fifty, including at least thirteen foreigners from Italy, South Korea, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Eight were from the United States. Among the dead were:

• Australian Trade Commission officer Craig Senger

• Perth businessman Nathan Verity

• Timothy David Mackay, 62, a New Zealander who headed Indonesian operations for cement products manufacturer PT Holcim

The wounded included:

• Kevin Moore, American general manager of Husky Oil North Sumbawa

• Jim Castle, an American business consultant and head of CastleAsia who had lived in Indonesia since 1977 and was an advisor to the U.S.-Indonesia Society. He was a major promoter of investment in Indonesia. He suffered some hearing damage.

• a Chevron employee

• two directors of the Phoenix-based PT-Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., who were injured at the Ritz-Carlton

Police defused another bomb found in a laptop in room 1808 of the Marriott hotel. It was set to go off. Analysis of the bombers’ DNA matched that of the homemade bomb found on floor 18.

The second floor windows of the Ritz were blown out, suggesting the bomb was planted inside the hotel’s Airlangga restaurant. The Marriott bomb went off in the basement. The two hotels are 50 meters apart—an underground passageway connects them.

Suicide bombers were later suspected, and authorities believe the attacks were the work of Malaysian fugitive Noordin M. Top, who leads a breakaway faction of JI. A man who checked into room 1808 two days earlier gave his name as Nurdin. He offered a $1,000 cash deposit, claiming he had no credit card.

In a security video, a man in a cap could be seen pulling a wheeled suitcase across the Ritz’s lobby and entering a restaurant. Seconds later, the bomb went off.

The Marriott was hosting a meeting of foreign executives of major companies in Indonesia organized by the consultancy firm CastleAsia, which is headed by an American. The Manchester United football team, which had been scheduled to stay at the Ritz-Carlton, canceled its visit to Indonesia.

Authorities said that the homemade high-explosive bombs were filled with nails.

On July 29, Noordin Top posted responsibility claims on Web sites on behalf of al Qaeda in Indonesia. One statement on an Islamist Web site said the Ritz attack was by “one of our mujahideen warriors against the American lackeys and stooges visiting the hotel…. God has given us a blessing for us to find a way to attack the biggest hotel that America owns in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta—the Ritz-Carlton, where security was very tight making it very difficult to initiate the attack that we did.” He noted that the Manchester United soccer team “players are Christians and therefore do not deserve Muslims’ money and respect.” He said the Marriott target was Americans with ties to the Kadin, the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

On August 7, Detachment 88 troops tracking down Noordin Mohammad Top raided an apparent terrorist safe house in the Central Java town of Temanggung, conducting a gun battle with at least four individuals. The raid began after two people believed to be nephews of its owner were arrested earlier that day. Top was initially reported to have died in the eighteen-hour exchange of fire. Authorities later identified the decedent as Ibrohim, a florist at the Ritz-Carlton, who was suspected to have been the inside man. 09071701-02

July 17, 2009—Indonesia—Two hours after the hotel bombings, a car bomb exploded near a shopping complex in northern Jakarta.

July 18, 2009—Kenya—Three foreign aid workers were kidnapped near the Somalia border. 09071801

July 19, 2009—Indonesia—On September 17, 2009, Indonesian commandos raided a Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) hideout in Solo, Central Java, killing JI leader Noordin Muhammad Top and Bagus Budi Pranoto, who were wanted for the hotel bombings.

July 21, 2009—Lebanon—The Lebanese Army arrested ten members of a terrorist group suspected of planning attacks abroad. Most of the detainees were non–Lebanese Arabs. Some had used business cover for their operations, which were designed to aid “radical elements” from Fatah al-Islam and give them fake documents to get into the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, target the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) troops, smuggle wanted terrorists from the Ein el-Hilweh camp to other countries, provide them with fake documents and money, and surveil money exchange centers and jewelry stores as robbery targets. 09072101

July 22, 2009—United States—The FBI announced that Long Island, New York, native Bryant Neal Vinas, alias Ibrahim, Bashir al-Ameriki, and Ben Yameen al-Kandee, 26, had pleaded guilty as “John Doe” in a sealed courtroom in Brooklyn on January 28, 2009, to conspiracy to murder Americans, to providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and to receiving military-type training from a foreign terrorist organization in connection with a September 2008 rocket attack on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. Vinas along with others fired rockets at the military base during a 2008 attack. He was also accused of giving information about the New York transit system and the Long Island Railroad to al Qaeda. He was arrested in Peshawar, Pakistan, in November 2008. He apparently received five months of military training from al Qaeda in the mountains of Waziristan in 2008. His mother said she had not seen him since he moved out at age 18 after his parents divorced. His father is Peruvian-born.

European investigators linked him to Moez Garsallaoui, a Tunisian Islamist militant and husband of Malika el-Aroud, at training camps in Pakistan; and with a Belgian cell that included Hicham Beyayo, who was arrested in December 2008 in Belgium. In July 2008, Garsallaoui talked of cross-border attacks on U.S. bases. Beyayo provided authorities with information on the training he received, according to Len Kamdang, his attorney.

Vinas joined the U.S. Army in 2002 but washed out after three weeks at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He converted from Catholicism—he might have earlier served as an altar boy—to Salafi Islam in 2004. He attended the Islamic Association of Long Island in Selden, New York, where others remembered him as polite and soft-spoken. He left New York on September 11, 2007, and arrived in Lahore the next day. He soon met al Qaeda militants in Pakistan and decided that month to wage jihad in Afghanistan. After a few weeks, he and twenty insurgents surveilled an American combat outpost in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, but decided not to fire their mortars because of American air patrols circling overhead. He went on to Mohmand, Pakistan, where he was asked to become a suicide bomber. Agreeing, he went to Pakistan for further instruction, but was told that he needed more religious training.

Upon graduating, Vinas moved to Waziristan, meeting al Qaeda members from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. From March to July 2008, he attended three al Qaeda courses on how to fire an AK-47, an RPG, and handguns. He learned how to use C4 and TNT explosives and make suicide bombing vests. He apparently did not take the electives in forgery, poison, and advanced bombing. In September 2008, he joined a group near the Afghanistan border to fire rockets at the U.S. base. In one attack, radio problems aborted the mission; in the other, the rockets fell short. He spent several weeks in the Waziristan mountains meeting with al Qaeda leaders to discuss attacks in the West. He left the Pakistani tribal areas in October 2008 to find a wife in Peshawar, where he was arrested a few weeks later. He said he had met a few Belgian and French citizens in early 2008, who trained with him in al Qaeda camps. Belgian prosecutors interviewed him in March 2009 in support of their case against six militants who were arrested in December 2008. He was in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Belgian prosecutors told CNN that one of Vinas’s contacts, Walid Othmani, 25, a Frenchman, spent time with him. Othmani was arrested in Europe. He was charged in France with participation in a criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing a terrorist act.

July 22, 2009—Indonesia—PT Freeport, an American copper and gold mining firm, denied press reports that two people were killed in an attack on a twelve-bus convoy in easternmost Papua Province. The firm said a vehicle was wrecked, and one person and several were wounded, but no shots were fired. However, when police and mechanics arrived to assist, shots were fired at them, and three people were wounded in the gunbattle. The Antara News Agency claimed two people were killed in an attack on the convoy. 09072201

July 22, 2009—Iraq—Gunmen ambushed a three-bus convoy of Iranian pilgrims in the Imam Wais area about 43 miles northeast of Diyala’s provincial capital of Baquba, killing five and wounding thirty-five. Sunni extremists were believed responsible for the attacks on the Shi’ites. 09072202

July 23, 2009—Afghanistan—U.S. officials said that Saad bin Laden, 27, third-oldest son of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, may have been killed in a U.S. air strike in Pakistan in late spring. No body or DNA evidence was recovered to prove it. He went to Iran after 9/11 and was held under a form of house arrest from 2003 to 2008, before turning up in Pakistan. On January 16, 2009, the U.S. Treasury imposed financial sanctions on the Saudi, saying Americans would be barred from engaging in financial transactions with him. Officials claimed he worked with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and participated in the planning of the March 2002 bombing of the Djerba synagogue in Tunisia in which seventeen were killed. He was also believed to have facilitated communications between Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Iranian Quds Force after al Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in 2008.

July 24, 2009—Belgium—Gunmen hijacked a helicopter, forcing the pilot to land in the courtyard of a prison near Bruges. Inmates Mohammed Johry, Abdel Had Kahjary Mulloul, and Ashraf Sekkaki escaped. Sekkaki had more than sixteen convictions for violence, including bank robbery and kidnapping. A 22-year-old Moroccan accomplice had to stay behind because the helicopter was full. Helicopter pilot Ludwig Louwagie was unhurt. He said a couple had booked the helicopter for a sightseeing tour, but once off the ground, the man pulled a gun and took away his headset. On August 1, the trio robbed a bank, a gas station, and two storage facilities in only two hours. 09072401

July 26, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta released its remaining six hostages, but rejected the government’s offer of amnesty.

July 26, 2009—Egypt—Egypt’s prosecutor general charged twenty-six, including two Lebanese, a Sudanese, and five Palestinians, for spying for the Lebanese group Hizballah, as well as plotting terrorist attacks and aiding militants in the Gaza Strip. The group members were arrested in April. The case was to be tried in the State Security Emergency Court. The prosecutor called for Lebanon to arrest senior Hizballah official Mohammed Qabalan and three Egyptians. The defendants were represented by attorney Montasser al-Zayat. Some eighteen suspects were charged with providing Hizballah since 2005 with information about Suez Canal schedules, tourist destinations in the Sinai, and tourist travel routes. Two suspects had worked in the Suez Canal shipping industry. Others were Egyptians living on the Gaza border. The Lebanese funded the cell and gave it technical expertise to collect information and acquire explosives “for activities to destabilize security and public order.” Egypt’s official state news agency said Qabalan disbursed $38,000 to Egyptian operatives to buy explosives and hide them in Sinai. Three suspects were charged with digging tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border with the intention of smuggling people and goods. Others were charged with providing safe houses for militants smuggled across the border. The prosecutor accused five members of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood of belonging to the Hizballah cell.

July 26, 2009—Russia—A suicide bomber killed six people and ten civilians while trying to enter a concert hall in Grozny minutes before the start of a play. Four police officers stopped him 130 feet from the hall; all were killed. Some eight hundred spectators were evacuated. A Turkish construction manager and a Georgian died in the hospital. 09072601

July 27, 2009—United States—U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee sentenced an unrepentant Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 28, to life in prison. The al Qaeda member had joined the group in Saudi Arabia in 2002 and plotted to assassinate then–President George W. Bush. In 2008, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond ordered a new sentencing hearing, saying his thirty-year sentence was too lenient. His attorney, Joshua Dratel, planned an appeal.

July 27, 2009—United States—Authorities in North Carolina arrested seven men who were then charged in court in Raleigh with providing material support to terrorism and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim, and injure people abroad. Daniel Patrick Boyd, alias Saifullah (“Sword of God”), 39, a North Carolina drywall contractor, had trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan and fought Soviets there between 1989 and 1992, according to the unsealed indictment. He reportedly encouraged others to engage in jihad. Two suspects were his sons: Zakariya Boyd, 20, and Dylan Boyd, alias Mohammed, 22. The other defendants were Anes Subasic, 33; Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 22; and Ziyad Yaghi, 21. The six were U.S. citizens who lived in North Carolina. Yaghi and Subasic are naturalized U.S. citizens. Hysen Sherifi, 24, a native of Kosovo and a U.S. legal permanent resident of North Carolina, was also charged. The indictment said Boyd and several of the defendants traveled to Israel in 2007 to engage in “violent jihad.” Boyd was also accused of trying to raise money in 2008 to fund others’ travel overseas for jihad. Sharifi allegedly went to Kosovo to engage in violent jihad, according to the indictment. Several of the defendants, including Daniel Patrick Boyd, were also charged with practicing military tactics on a private property in Caswell County in June to July 2009. A Justice Department official said Daniel Boyd had “conspired with others to recruit and help young men travel overseas in order to kill.” Authorities mentioned a cache of several semiautomatic weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and carbines modeled after military-issue M14s and M16s. The defendants faced life in prison.

Authorities were searching for another U.S. citizen, whose name has been redacted from court documents but was identified by the news media as Jude Kenan Mohammad, 20, from Raleigh, who was believed to be hiding in Pakistan. The North Carolina resident traveled to Pakistan on October 3, 2008, to “engage in violent jihad,” according to the indictment.

The indictment also said Boyd lied to the FBI and Customs and Border Protection agents at the Atlanta, Georgia, and Raleigh airports in 2007 regarding his trip to Israel and that he had traveled to Gaza in March 2006 “to introduce his son to individuals who also believed that violent jihad was a personal obligation on the part of every good Muslim.” The indictment said Sherifi went to Kosovo in July 2008, Yaghi to Jordan in October 2006, and the eighth defendant to Pakistan in October 2008. All the trips were taken to “engage in violent jihad.”

Daniel Boyd and his brother, Charles, were convicted in 1991 of bank robbery in Peshawar, Pakistan. The duo was also accused of carrying ID cards for the Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami (Party of Islam). They were sentenced to have their right hands and left feet cut off for the robbery, but the country’s Supreme Court overturned their convictions on the urging of the U.S. Department of State. Daniel Boyd and his wife, Sabrina, were profiled in the Washington Post in 1991.

The New York Times reported that Boyd, the son of a Marine, sent an e-mail to Sherifi about dying as a martyr in a suicide attack. The Washington Post reported that the arrests occurred after learning that Daniel and Sabrina Boyd and their two sons might be moving to Jordan.

FBI agents seized from Daniel Boyd’s house and truck an antiterrorism handbook used by emergency response units, four gas masks, $13,000 in cash, an anti–U.S. fatwa, and more than twenty-seven thousand rounds of ammunition, including armor-piercing bullets. Authorities also found a trench under a deck of the house which a witness claimed was a bunker to store weapons. On August 5, Federal Magistrate Judge William Webb denied bail to six defendants. The seventh suspect’s hearing was postponed because he was appointed a new attorney. Daniel Boyd was heard on a May 2009 tape talking about hitting Wells Fargo trucks and banks to finance jihad.

On September 23, 2009, MSNBC reported that Daniel Patrick Boyd and Hysen Sherifi were indicted for plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. They had obtained maps of the base, according to a superseding indictment. The original indictment said only that they had plotted international terrorism and conspired to support terrorism. The new indictment added weapons charges against Daniel Boyd, Hysen Sherifi, and Zakariya Boyd.

On February 9, 2011, Daniel Boyd pleaded guilty in federal court in New Bern, North Carolina, to conspiracy to assist violent jihadists and to participate in attacks in foreign countries. Sentencing was scheduled for May 2011. He faced fifteen years in prison on the single count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and a life sentence for conspiracy to “murder, kidnap, maim, and injure persons in a foreign country.” On August 15, 2011, Dylan Boyd, Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, Ziyad Yaghi, Hysen Sherifi, and Anes Subasic, all from North Carolina, pleaded not guilty to multiple felony counts that they had planned terrorist attacks against a Marine base in Virginia and overseas.

On December 20, 2011, the court sentenced Zakariya Boyd, 22, to nine years in federal prison and Dylan Boyd, 25, to eight years. Each had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, which carried a maximum of fifteen years in prison and $250,000 fine.

July 27, 2009—India—A landmine went off under a police van in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh State, killing six police officers and injuring three others who were returning from duty. Maoist Naxalite rebels were blamed.

July 28, 2009—Colombia/Venezuela—Venezuela denied allegations that a cache of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) arms seized in 2008 from a guerrilla base had come from Venezuela. The rockets had been made in Sweden by Saab Bofors Dynamics. Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos argued that AT4 shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons purchased by Venezuela had ended up in FARC hands. Venezuela announced that it would withdraw its ambassador from Bogota and freeze diplomatic relations.

July 30, 2009—Nigeria—Following a week of violence in which more than four hundred people were killed, Nigerian troops raided the northern Nigerian compound of the Boko Haram Islamist sect that wants to impose sharia. The violence began after troops had arrested some sect members. The group attacked police, military, and government facilities in Bauchi State; violence spread to three other states. During a gun battle, troops killed one hundred militants, including Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf, the sect’s leader (authorities later said he was shot and killed in custody), who was hiding in a goat’s pen at the home of his in-laws. On July 29, troops took over the group’s compound in Maiduguri, Borno, and killed the group’s deputy chief.

July 30, 2009—Ecuador/Colombia—Ecuadoran officials released excerpts from the twenty-page diary of deceased Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) deputy leader Raul Reyes in which he said that FARC had donated to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa’s 2006 campaign. Reyes observed in 2008 that “trusting Correa was suicide.” The diary claimed that Ecuadoran officials, including former head of security Gustavo Larrea, former under-secretary for governing Ignacio Chauvin, retired Col. Jorge Brito, and dentist Luis Ayala, accepted FARC money and had connections with Mexican drug gangs. The Ecuadoran government denied the allegations and asked the Organization of American States to investigate. The diary covered July 2007 to February 23, 2008. Reyes died in a bombing attack in early March 2008.

July 30, 2009—Spain—A remotely-detonated Basque Nation and Liberty bomb hidden under a parked car killed two Civil Guards driving by outside barracks on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.

August 1, 2009—United States—Authorities evacuated thousands of travelers from New York’s La Guardia Airport Central Terminal from 5:20 a.m. until 9:00 a.m. after Scott McGann, 32 (who lived on New York streets for a year), apparently intoxicated, was spotted at a security checkpoint carrying a backpack stuffed with wires and two six-volt batteries. Port Authority police told him not to move, but he instead tried to push a switch which activated nothing. He was placed in custody. He had tickets on a United Airlines flight to Chicago and a connector to Oakland, where he has family. The backpack also had other electronic devices and personal items. His rap sheet included three prior arrest in the New York area, including two in 2008 and one in June 2009 involving tampering with evidence and resisting arrest. The bomb squad determined that it was a hoax device and blew it apart with a water cannon. Likely charges included placing a false bomb in a transportation facility and making terroristic threats.

August 1, 2009—United Kingdom—London’s Daily Telegraph reported that MI5 had fired six Muslim recruits. Two attended training camps in Pakistan where they might have met al Qaeda recruiters; they had trained at MI5 for several weeks. The other four had unexplained gaps of up to three months in their resumes. MI5 spokesmen said none of them had actually started work.

August 2, 2009—Pakistan—Authorities charged Sufi Mohammad, father-in-law of Swat Valley Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, with criminal charges of aiding terrorism, sedition, and conspiracy against the government. The charges carry a minimum life sentence and a maximum of death. Mohammad had given a speech in April 2009 in which he condemned democracy and elections and deemed the constitution un–Islamic. The cleric had helped negotiate a failed peace deal with the Swat Taliban.

August 3, 2009—Qatar—In a ninety-minute videotape entitled The Realities of Jihad and the Fallacies of Hypocrisy that was released to Islamist Web sites, al Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri said “Obama wants a Palestinian state that works as a branch for the Israeli government.” He observed,

Israel is a crime that needs to be wiped out…. The promises of the two states and ending the settlements were made by Bush, so what’s new? This is the continuation of the same Zionist crusader crime against Muslims since the end of World War II…. Obama can come with all the eloquent words he has, but it is nothing but illusions…. The mujahideen opened the doors to start a new relationship, but [the Americans] insist that their relationships with the Muslim world must be based on hurting us and oppressing us…. What new did Obama bring us? He brought us the bombing of Gaza where one thousand martyrs died. He brought us the destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. What else? He expanded the American prisons so they can absorb more innocent Muslims…. We are not idiots to accept meaningless flexible words. Obama is the new face with the same old crimes.

He said the truce offered to President Bush still was available, but U.S. forces must leave Afghanistan and all Muslim countries in the Middle East. “These offers were dealt with impolitely but are still valid, and the offer is fair. But they want a relationship with us based on suppression. Obama is like a wolf whose fangs tear your flesh and whose paws slit your face and then he calls on you to talk about peace.” He noted that post 9/11 antiterrorism efforts had failed. “After seven and a half years, their campaign failed in Iraq and in Afghanistan just like it failed in Somalia and will fail in Pakistan…. The only reason the American administration changed its policy from Bush’s motto that you are either with them or against them to Obama’s saying that he wants to deal with the Islamic world based on a new policy [is] because of the heavy losses that they suffered from by the hands of the mujahideen.” He predicted that the mujahideen will go on fighting. “They will face that campaign no matter how long it will last, even till Judgment Day. No surrender, no defeat, no submission, no retreat when it comes to the right of the Muslims and their pride.” He praised Afghan insurgents for challenging the United States, calling the action “an achievement by itself because it stood for its pride, dignity and lands…. What’s happening in Afghanistan is a lesson, which the Muslim world should learn. American forces have been defeated by the Taliban.” He also said that Tehran “never supported the Palestinians in Gaza, they didn’t launch any rocket to aid them as they promised to do if Israel attacks Lebanon—or is it that the Palestinians are second-class citizens? … Iran is ready to sell out the Muslims anytime and aid the crusaders in their campaign against them.”

August 4, 2009—Australia—Some four hundred police officers executed nineteen search warrants in nine Melbourne neighborhoods and arrested four Australian suspects, some of Lebanese and Somali descent, believed planning an attack on a military base with automatic weapons, deemed by police “the most serious terrorist attack on Australian soil.” The group was believed linked to al-Shabaab of Somalia. Several other people were detained for questioning regarding the planned suicide attack on the Holsworthy Barracks in western Sydney. The terrorists would have shot as many people as they could until they were themselves killed. They had sought support from Islamic leaders to issue a fatwa in support of the attack. One of the men had participated in the Somali insurgency. The men, aged 22 to 26, had been spotted surveilling the barracks. Police charged Nayed El Sayed, 25, from Glenroy, with conspiring to plan or prepare for a terrorist act. He did not enter a plea nor request bail when he appeared in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on August 4. Police were also questioning Saney Aweys and a fifth man, 33, already in custody. Aweys and the three other suspects were not immediately charged.

August 4, 2009—Argentina—A bomb exploded at 2:30 a.m. at a Chilean LAN Airlines ticket office in Buenos Aires, causing moderate damage to a door, window, and furniture, but no injuries. The owner of a pickup truck was arrested. A hooded person leaving a package in front of the office was seen on a security video. 09080401

August 6, 2009—Nigeria—The government announced an amnesty for rebels, guaranteeing them a pardon and a job. By August 25, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed the amnesty deal was a charade, but one thousand rebels turned in buckets of bullets and boxes and boxes of machine guns and rocket launchers. MEND commander Ebikabowei “Boyloaf” Ben said his group was committed to dialogue. The amnesty was scheduled to last until October 4. MEND threatened further attacks on the oil industry at the end of its sixty-day cease-fire on September 15.

August 7, 2009—Sri Lanka—Authorities arrested Selvarajah Pathmanathan, the new head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who succeeded Velupillai Prabhakaran, founder of LTTE, who was killed on May 18 in a gun battle with the government. Pathmanathan had run the LTTE’s arms and smuggling operations for decades.

August 8, 2009—Indonesia—A raid in the Jakarta suburbs thwarted a planned assassination attempt on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Authorities found a cache of 100 kilograms of explosives, bomb-making materials, and a truck. Detachment 88 troops killed two militants linked to the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing.

August 8, 2009—Indonesia—Authorities in north Jakarta arrested Suryana, alias Yayan, alias Gepeng, on suspicion of terrorism.

August 8, 2009—Mauritania—A suicide bomber killed himself and wounded two embassy security guards who were jogging near the walls of the French Embassy during the night. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was suspected of having brought in militants from Mali. A government-linked Web site said the Mauritanian bomber yelled, “Allahu akbar” before blowing himself up. 09080801

August 9, 2009—Spain—Two bombs exploded at the La Rigoletta restaurant on the Paseo del Portitxol street in front of the Can Pere Antoni beach in Palma de Mallorca, the capital of Mallorca Island, at 3:00 p.m., causing no injuries. The Basque Nation and Liberty warned police. The first bomb was in a bag in the women’s rest room. The second exploded soon after.

August 9, 2009—India—The Badminton England team withdrew from the World Badminton Championships in Hyderabad after threats by the Laskhar-e-Taiba (Urdu for “Soldiers of the Pure”). Badminton Scotland vowed to stay, as did three Welsh Badminton players. 09080901

August 11, 2009—Kuwait—Authorities arrested six Kuwaiti members of an al Qaeda–linked group planning to attack Camp Arifjan, a U.S. military logistics and supply base in the desert 38 miles south of Kuwait City, as well as Kuwait security agencies and other targets. The six confessed to purchasing a truck and filling it with chemicals and gas cylinders, which they would then crash into the camp. The camp is used as a staging area for operations into Iraq. The six had made martyrdom videos claiming credit for the attack. One of the detainees was believed involved in the 2002 armed attack on Marines training in Failaka Island that killed one and injured another. 09081101

August 12, 2009—Somalia—Gunmen in central Somalia shot to death eight Muslim missionaries near a large mosque in Galkayo, Puntland. Seven were from Tabliq in Pakistan; the fifth was from Somalia. 09081201

August 17, 2009—Russia—A suicide truck bomber drove through the gates of a police building in Ingushetia and set off his explosives, killing 20 and injuring 130, including 10 children. The 440 pounds of TNT destroyed the Nazran police headquarters when police were arriving for morning roll call. Terrorists fired at police fleeing the fire, killing another three police officers. Local police had been tipped off but were unable to find the truck. Ingushetia President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov blamed Islamist militants.

August 19, 2009—Saudi Arabia—The government announced that it had arrested forty-four al Qaeda–linked suspects during the past year.

August 19, 2009—Iraq—In the bloodiest day in Baghdad since U.S. troops withdrew, suicide truck bombs exploded at the Finance Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and three other locations, killing one hundred people and wounding hundreds of others. Authorities detained eleven senior security officials for questioning. Members of an insurgent cell were also arrested. On August 23, Iraqi officials released a confession by Wissam Ali Kadhim Ibrahim, 57, a former Ba’athist police official, who said he was acting on orders of Sattam Farhan, a Ba’athist exile living in Syria. Ibrahim said the truck bomb was built in Khalis, northeast of Baghdad. He claimed $10,000 was given to a man who let the truck pass through Diyala Province checkpoints. Ibrahim had served as a town police chief in Diyala. On August 26, Iraq and Syria recalled their ambassadors. Iraq demanded that Syria extradite two of the Iraqi suspects, Sattam Farhan and Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, a former senior member of Saddam Hussein’s regime, living in Syria.

August 22, 2009—Pakistan—A car bombing in Peshawar killed two people, including the spokesman for Ansar ul-Islam. Two suspects were arrested.

August 22, 2009—Nigeria—A fortnight after the start of a sixty-day amnesty, hundreds of Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta insurgents turned in their weapons, mortar shells, and gunboats.

August 23, 2009—Pakistan—The government announced that it had arrested thirteen people, including three Pakistani Taliban members wearing suicide vests inside a bus station in Sargodha. They were planning on attacking two Shi’ite mosques, police stations, and a Norwegian telecommunications company in Punjab. Other terrorists were planning to attack the parliament building, the intelligence service, and other federal institutions. Those detained included the leader of the Pakistani Taliban in Punjab. Police also announced the arrest of seven Lashkar-e-Jhangvi members carrying suicide vests and ammunition in Karachi. Authorities seized explosives, assault weapons, and heroin at their Karachi hideout.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber in Peshawar killed three and injured fifteen, including two women and seven children. Police stopped him when they saw him acting suspiciously. In the ensuing gunfight, he ran out of bullets and blew himself up, destroying five houses.

August 26, 2009—United States—The press reported on October 26 that six Harvard University Medical School Pathology Department researchers were poisoned by coffee tainted with sodium azide, a chemical preservative. Symptoms included dizziness, tinnitus, and passing out; they can also include rapid breathing and nausea. It was unclear whether the poisoning was intentional. The lab had not received threats by animal rights protestors.

August 27, 2009—Saudi Arabia—Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Assiri, 23, a suicide bomber carrying a cell phone bomb (other reports said it was hidden in his colon) slightly injured Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, assistant interior minister for security affairs, at his palace in Jeddah. Authorities said the “wanted militant” had earlier said he wanted to turn himself in. The bomb went off while he was passing security guards at 11:30 p.m. Nayef had said he could go past the guards as a sign of good faith in turning himself in. Nayef runs the country’s antiterrorism program. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed credit. The Saudi government announced that al-Assiri hid his 100 grams of PETN plastic explosives in his underwear—not his rectum, as had been earlier reported—hoping that cultural taboos against intrusive searches would protect him.

August 28, 2009—Germany—German federal prosecutors arrested Kadir T., a German of Turkish origin who was a suspect in a plot by the Uzbek militant group Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) to attack U.S. troops in Germany, including those at Ramstein Air Base. He had tried to acquire a video camera and night-vision equipment for the group, shipping them to Waziristan in Pakistan. Four IJU members, known as the Sauerland Group, three of whom were arrested in September 2007, were on trial for plotting attacks against the United States.

August 28, 2009—Qatar—Ayman al-Zawahiri released a twenty-two-minute video, entitled Path of Doom, on radical Islamist Web sites in which he called on Pakistanis to back Islamic militants in tribal areas against American “crusaders” and the Pakistani Army. He observed,

The war in the tribal areas and Swat [Valley] is an inseparable part of the crusaders’ assault on the Muslims the length and breadth of the Islamic world…. This is the battle, briefly and plainly; and this is why anyone who supports the Americans and Pakistan Army—under any pretext, ploy or lie—is in fact standing with, backing and supporting the crusaders against Islam and Muslims. [The United States] wants to eliminate the Mujahideen (Islamic militants) in the tribal areas so they can seek to smother the Jihad in Afghanistan. [However] no people abandon Jihad without Allah giving them a general punishment…. There is no honor for us except through Jihad…. People of Pakistan … back the jihad and mujahideen with your persons, wealth, opinion, expertise, information, and prayers and by exhorting others to help them and preach their message.

August 28, 2009—Pakistan—Authorities arrested four Swedes and seven Turks planning to travel to North Waziristan to join al Qaeda operatives hiding there. One of the Swedes was identified as Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali, who had earlier been held at Guantanamo Bay. He had been arrested in Pakistan in 2001 and was released in 2004 by the United States.

August 29, 2009—Sudan—Gunmen kidnapped a Nigerian man and a Tanzanian woman who were working for the joint UN–African Union force in Darfur. It was the first time UNAMID staff had been abducted. The two were freed on December 13, 2009. The kidnappers were not publicly identified. 09082901

August 17–September 14, 2009—China—As of September 14, authorities had recorded 530 stabbings with hypodermic needles by Uighurs in Urumqi of Han Chinese. China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences said that the syringes contained nothing lethal—no viruses, radioactive substances or harmful chemicals—and no illnesses nor infections were reported. On September 12, three people were sentenced to up to fifteen years for the stabbings.

September 2009—Sweden—Abdirh Abdi Hussein, 25, a Somali hip-hop artist in Rinkeby who campaigns against al-Shabaab, was attacked on the street by a masked man who slashed him on the forehead. The attacker said in Somali, “Leave us alone or we’ll kill you.” No suspect had been found as of January 2010. 09099901

September 2, 2009—Greece—The Revolutionary Struggle was suspected when a car bomb injured one person in front of the Athens Stock Exchange. Police, acting on a tip, had evacuated the building.

September 2, 2009—Peru—Shining Path rebels shot down an air force helicopter trying to evacuate soldiers wounded in a rebel ambush in the Andes mountains, killing the pilot and co-pilot, both of whom held the rank of major, and wounding a third. A second helicopter rescue mission was scheduled. Machine-gun fire hit the helicopter’s rotor, causing it to crash upside down.

September 4, 2009—United States—The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) used a stolen excavating machine to pull down two KRKO radio station towers in Snohomish County, Washington. The station remained on air via a backup transmitter site. ELF said, “AM radio waves cause adverse health effects including a higher rate of cancer, harm to wildlife, and the signals have been interfering with home phone and intercom lines.” It called itself “an international underground organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop the systematic exploitation and destruction of the planet. Since its inception in North America in 1996, ELF has inflicted well over $150 million in damages to corporations and governmental agencies that are profiting from the destruction of the Earth.” The group’s public spokesman, Jason Crawford, told the press, “When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet.”

September 4, 2009—Germany—The United Press International reported that former Red Army Faction (RAF) member Verena Becker had been arrested in her Berlin apartment in connection with the April 1977 murder of Siegfried Buback. She reportedly had been paid $70,000 by the German intelligence service for tips that led to the arrests of several terrorists. Although RAF terrorists Christian Klar, Knut Folkerts, Guenter Sonnenberg, and Brigitte Mohnhaupt were convicted of planning and carrying out the killing, several observers had questioned the verdict. Becker had been sentenced to life in prison in 1977 for seriously injuring a police officer, but was pardoned in 1989. When she and Sonnenberg were arrested, they had the Buback murder weapon, but she was never tried in the case. She then alerted police to the hiding places of Klar and Mohnhaupt.

September 5, 2009—Afghanistan—Gunmen kidnapped New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, 46, a dual Irish-U.K. national who was covering a NATO air strike on a Taliban-held area south of Kunduz. While interviewing villagers, one of them yelled, “Taliban,” and Abdul Hamshid, Farrell’s driver, panicked and ran off with the car keys. Gunmen hit Afghan journalist and translator Sultan Munadi with a Kalashnikov rifle, but the hostages were otherwise well-treated. The International Committee of the Red Cross, Muslim cleric Mullah Saleem, tribal elders, and relatives of kidnapped Afghan journalist Sultan Munadi, 34, negotiated with the kidnappers. After his release, Farrell wrote on his blog, “It became a tour of a Taliban-controlled district of Afghanistan, and that control appeared total…. At no point did we see a single NATO soldier, Afghan policeman, soldier, or any check to the Taliban’s ability to move at will…. We were paraded to the children in the street: the infidel and his translator, to be laughed at and mocked.” However, the kidnappers’ “operational security was hopelessly inept.” In cell phone calls, the Taliban referred to Farrell, “heedless of who was, almost certainly, monitoring the calls…. They drove with headlights full on at night as they moved us from house to house, at least three different buildings a day.” During their third night of captivity, there apparently was a rescue attempt, but the kidnappers moved them to another location within minutes.

Local Afghans helped British troops in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force locate the hostages, whom they freed in a commando raid on September 9, during which Munadi; Corporal John Harrison, 29, a member of the British Parachute Regiment; a woman; and a child died. The Media Club of Afghanistan complained about Munadi’s death, saying the rescue was “reckless and double-standard behavior” because it was designed to save the Westerner’s life and Munadi’s body was left behind.

Farrell had been kidnapped in April 2004 in Falluja, Iraq, while on assignment for the Times of London.

On October 5, 2010, authorities detained a Taliban commander believed to be a district leader in Chahar Darah in Kunduz Province. He was believed to be implicated in the kidnapping. The detained Taliban leader was connected to senior leaders of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. 09090501

September 8, 2009—Yemen—Four Yemenis, aged 20 to 33, were arrested near the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a when police found them carrying grenades, automatic weapons, and ammunition in two vehicles. They were residents of Damag and members of a large radical Sunni madrassa.

September 9, 2009—Mexico—At 1:40 p.m., Jose Flores Pereira, 44, a Bolivian drug addict and alcoholic who claimed to be a church minister, hijacked Aeromexico flight 576, a B-737-800 flying from Cancun with 7 crew and 104 American, Mexican, and British passengers. He demanded to speak to Mexican President Felipe Calderon. The hijacker said the date of 9/9/09 was significant, saying that 9/9/9 is 666 upside down. He said the divine reference made him want to alert Mexico City to an earthquake. The plane landed in Mexico City five minutes ahead of schedule. He had claimed to be one of three hijackers and that his cardboard box contained a bomb. After an hour standoff, authorities stormed the plane and escorted him and several other men off in handcuffs; the latter were soon released. The bomb was colored lights attached to a can. Police later said Flores had been convicted of armed robbery in Mexico, had lived in Mexico for seventeen years, and had attended a religious meeting in Cancun a week earlier. His wife of eighteen years, Elisa Melger, 38, mother of their three sons, said he had not used drugs or alcohol during the previous seventeen years. 09090901

September 9, 2009—Jamaica—Honorary British Consul to Montego Bay John Terry, 64, was found dead in his home in Mount Carey, St. James. Police said he had a wound to his head. Terry had been an honorary consul for thirteen years.

September 12, 2009—United States—The body of part-time census worker and teacher Bill Sparman, 51, was founded hanging from a tree near a cemetery in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Clay County in rural southeastern Kentucky. The word “Fed” was scrawled on his chest. The FBI was investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government violence.

September 13, 2009—Qatar—As-Sahab Media posted an eleven-minute videotape on Islamist Web sites in which Osama bin Laden asked the American people to “lend me your ears” and said,

Reasonable people knew that Obama is a powerless man who will not be able to stop the war as he promised, but instead he will drag it to the maximum possible extent…. To the American people, this is my message to you: a reminder of the reasons behind 9/11 and the wars and the repercussions that followed and the way to resolve it…. From the beginning, we have stated many times … that the cause of our disagreement with you is your support of your allies, the Israelis, who are occupying our land in Palestine. Your stance, along with some other grievances, are what led us to carry out the events of 9/11…. Prolong the wars as much as you like. By God, we will never compromise on it [Palestine], ever…. If you think about your situation well, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups… Rather than fighting to liberate Iraq, as Bush claimed, it [the White House] should have been liberated…. The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby.

Noting that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus were holdovers from the Bush Administration who “promote the previous policies of fear to market the interest of big companies,” he claimed,

The bitter truth is that the neo-conservatives continue to cast their heavy shadows upon you…. If you stop the war, then fine. Otherwise we will have no choice but to continue the war of attrition against you on all possible axes [variant “on every front”), like we exhausted the Soviet Union for ten years until it collapsed with grace from Allah the Almighty and became a memory of the past…. Ask yourselves to determine your position: is your security, your blood, your children, your money, your jobs, your homes, your economy, and your reputation dearer to you than the security of the Israelis, their children, and their economy? If you choose safety and stopping wars, as opinion polls show you do, then this requires you to work to punish those on your side who play with our security. We are ready to respond to this choice on aforementioned sound and just bases. [Obama] has followed the steps of his predecessor in antagonizing Muslims … and laying the foundation for long wars … Obama and his administration have sowed new seeds of hatred against America. Let the American people prepare to harvest the crops of what the leaders of the White House plant in the next years and decades.

He also said an unnamed retired CIA officer had written Confessions of a Killer for Hire and could explain the reasons for 9/11. He said not understanding the Israeli issue “cost you a lot without any result whatsoever…. This position of yours, combined with some other injustices, pushed us to undertake the events of September 11.” If Americans realized the “suffering from the injustice of the Jews … you will realize that both our nations are victims of the policies of the White House,” and a “hostage” to interest groups and companies. He noted, “You are waging a hopeless and losing war, a war in which the end is not visible on the horizon…. We will continue our war of extermination against you on all possible fronts.”

September 14, 2009—United States—The Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York raided two Queens apartments after visits the previous week by airport shuttle bus driver Najibullah Zazi, 24, a suspected associate of al Qaeda. No arrests were made and no explosives were found. Zazi had moved to Colorado eight months earlier. Police confiscated a computer and several cell phones. On September 19, after Zazi had consulted an attorney and refused to continue the three-day interrogation, the FBI arrested him on charges of making false statements to federal agents. The legal permanent resident admitted receiving weap?ons and explosives training from al Qaeda in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Pakistan in 2008. Authorities also arrested Zazi’s father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, a naturalized U.S. citizen, in Denver; and Imam Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, of Queens, New York City, also a permanent resident from Afghanistan, on charges of making false statements to federal agents, which carries a penalty of eight years in prison. The media suggested he was involved in a plot to set off hydrogen peroxide-based explosives somewhere in the United States, perhaps against transportation centers such as a large railroad or bus station. Authorities seized a video of New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Prosecution documents filed with the court indicated that Zazi’s laptop computer contained e-mailed instructions about how to build explosives and detonators. Zazi, born in Afghanistan in 1985, moved to Pakistan at age 7 and emigrated to the United States in 1999. He returned to Pakistan in 2007 and 2008 to visit his wife, according to his attorney, Arthur Folsom. The defense team included spokeswoman Wendy Aiello. A federal magistrate set bail at $50,000 for the elder Zazi when the trio first appeared in court. Afzali was represented by attorney Ronald L. Kuby. Affidavits said Afzali warned Najibullah Zazi that his phone was being monitored. Afzali’s bond was set at $1.5 million. The media said the New York Police Department (NYPD) had used Afzali as an informant, but ultimately charged him, saying he had tipped off Zazi and coached him on what to say under interrogation. The press said the NYPD and FBI clashed over his use and when to arrest Zazi.

Authorities said they were seeking another dozen suspects.

On September 24, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of New York indicted the younger Zazi for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction (explosive bombs) against persons or property in the United States and deemed him a flight risk. Zazi faced a life sentence for having, between August 1 and September 21, 2008, “knowingly and intentionally conspired with others to use one or more of the explosives.” The affidavit said Zazi and others “traveled in interstate and foreign commerce, used e-mail and the Internet, and that this offense and the results of the offense would have affected interstate and foreign commerce.” The government claimed, “Zazi received detailed bomb-making instructions in Pakistan, purchased components of improvised explosive devices, and traveled to New York City on September 10, 2009, in furtherance of his criminal plans.” He went overseas to receive bomb-making instructions, conducted Internet research on explosives’ components and purchased components “necessary to produce TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) and other explosive devices.” Nine pages of handwritten notes stored on Zazi’s computer “contain formulations and instructions regarding the manufacture and handling of initiating explosives, main explosives charges, explosives detonators, and components of a fusing system.” A Denver court dismissed the false statement charges so that he could face the more serious terrorism charge. Najibullah Zazi pleaded not guilty via attorney J. Michael Dowling in Brooklyn’s U.S. District Court to the bomb-conspiracy charges on September 29. Judge Raymond J. Dearie issued a permanent order of detention. Authorities were also investigating the relation to the case of a dozen backpacks found in one of the raided apartments and an attempt to rent a U-Haul truck.

On October 4, prosecutors said Najibullah Zazi and others had flown to Peshawar, Pakistan, on August 28, 2008. His colleagues, including Naiz Khan of Queens, New York, were subsequently put under surveillance when they returned to the United States. Meanwhile, a grand jury in New York was exploring expanding the charges against Zazi, who had pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to charges of conspiring with others to detonate explosives in the United States. Prosecutors said Zazi had purchased large quantities of beauty supplies with bomb-making ingredients. The Associated Press reported on October 15, 2009, that he was suspected of having contacts with Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, 53, alias Abu Saeed al-Masri, alias Sheikh Said, an Egyptian founder of al Qaeda who headed the group’s finance committee before 9/11.

On November 2, 2009, Imam Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI.

On January 8, 2010, taxi driver Zarein Ahmedzay was indicted by a grand jury and pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI about his visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was represented by attorney Michael Marinaccio. On January 9, 2010, Bosnian immigrant Adis Medunjanin, 25, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and receiving military training from al Qaeda. He was ordered held without bond until his detention hearing, scheduled for January 14, 2010. The duo, who lived in Queens, New York, were arrested earlier in the week by FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and were tied to Najibullah Zazi.

Medunjanin was arrested and his passport confiscated on January 7 after he rear-ended another car while driving 90 miles per hour on an approach to the Whitestone Bridge linking Queens and the Bronx. He sustained minor injuries. He had called 911 before the accident, saying in Arabic, “We love death more than you love life … Allah Akbar.” He was represented by attorney Robert Gottlieb. Medunjanin came to the United States in 1994 and became a citizen in 2002. He and Zazi attended the same high school and frequented the same mosque.

On January 14, 2010, Zazi’s uncle, Naqib Jaji, 38, was quietly arrested. He had lived in Queens before moving to Denver. He was arraigned before Judge Raymond J. Dearie of the U.S. District Court. He was released from custody on January 22. He was indicted on a sealed felony charge. He was represented by attorney Donald D. DuBoulay. The New York Times suggested that Jaji was cooperating with authorities.

On February 1, 2010, Denver police arrested Zazi’s father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, at his suburban home after a previous charge of lying to the government was dropped while he was out on bail. Mohammed Zazi was charged with trying to dispose of chemicals and other evidence. A new indictment unsealed in a Brooklyn federal court accused him of conspiring with others to destroy or hide “glasses, masks, liquid chemicals, and containers” that were evidence in the foiled plot.

Najibullah Zazi pleaded guilty on February 22, 2010, in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, to commit murder in a foreign country, and to provide material support for a terrorist organization. He faced a life term at sentencing on June 25, 2010. Zazi was represented by attorney Michael Dowling. Justice Department officials said Zazi and his confederates had planned for their subway attack to occur on September 14, 15, or 16. He told the court, “In spring 2008, I conspired with others to join the Taliban, to fight along with the Taliban against the United States. We were recruited to al Qaeda instead.” He said he “had discussions with al Qaeda about targets including the New York City subway system…. In early September 2009, I drove to New York with materials to build bombs…. The plan was to use materials in the subway once the bomb was ready.”

On February 25, 2010, Adis Medunjanin, 25, and Zarein Ahmedzay, 25, already in custody, were charged in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn with plotting with Flushing High School classmate Zazi to conduct three coordinated bombings on Manhattan subways during rush hour. The duo pleaded not guilty to new charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country, and providing material support for a terrorist organization. The duo faced life in prison if convicted. Admedzay was represented by attorney Michael A. Marinaccio. Medunjanin was earlier charged with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and receiving military training from a terrorist organization. Ahmedzay had been charged with lying about his August 2008 to Pakistan with Zazi.

On March 4, 2010, Imam Ahmad Wais Afzali pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI regarding his alerting Najibullah Zazi to the investigation. Under the terms of his plea agreement, the charge was reduced from lying to federal agents “during the course of a terror investigation”—which carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison—to simply lying to federal agents, which carries a lesser maximum sentence of five years. The plea agreement recommended a sentence of zero to six months in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for April 8. He would then leave the United States within ninety days of completion of any sentence.

On April 12, 2010, the media reported Pakistani authorities arrested an unnamed Pakistani as a fourth suspect weeks earlier.

On April 23, 2010, Zarein Ahmedzay pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn courtroom to federal charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and providing material support to al Qaeda. He faced life in prison. He said that the suicide attacks were to occur during Ramadan. He said he, Zazi, and Adis Medunjanin met on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in August 2008 with Saleh al-Somali, al Qaeda’s chief of international operations, and Rashid Rauf, a senior al Qaeda operative. Rauf had planned a 2006 plot to destroy ten airliners flying from the United Kingdom to the United States. Rauf was killed in a missile strike in November 2008. Al-Somali was killed in a missile strike in December 2009.

On July 5, 2010, Imam Ahmad Afzali and his wife left on a 2:00 p.m. flight to live in Saudi Arabia as part of his plea deal. He had earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of lying to federal agents about tipping off Zazi. He was represented by attorney Ron Kuby.

On July 7, 2010, the United States charged Pakistani citizen Tariq ur-Rehman with aiding Najibullah Zazi’s plot to bomb the New York subway system and conduct attacks in shopping centers in Manchester, United Kingdom. He said on July 8, 2010, that he would fight extradition from Pakistan.

On July 8, 2010, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Adnan el-Shukrijumah, 34, a senior al Qaeda leader, with masterminding the above plots.

On July 8, 2010, Norwegian police announced the arrests of three suspected al Qaeda members—two in Oslo and one visiting a Duisburg kindergarten near Frankfurt, Germany. They were suspected of planning terrorist attacks. Norwegian police said the trio included a 39-year-old Chinese Uighur who was a naturalized Norwegian; a 37-year-old Iraqi Kurd; and a 31-year-old Uzbek asylum-seeker who had come to Norway. Germany planned to extradite the Iraqi to Norway. The two foreign nationals had legal resident permits for Norway. The Uzbek, who had been in Norway since 2002, was represented by attorney Kjell Dahl. The Uighur and the Iraqi had been in Norway since 1999. The three had been under surveillance for more than a year and were believed members of the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uighur separatist group operating in Waziristan, Pakistan. The Uighur was believed to have visited Waziristan within the previous two years and contacted al Qaeda. They were working on a peroxide-based explosive. A U.S. official suggested that Saleh al-Somali was involved in “conjuring it up.” The Norwegian authorities made the arrests after learning that the Associated Press was going to expose the case, although the news service said it was going to wait to publish until the arrests were made.

September 14, 2009—Somalia—In a 1:00 p.m. raid on Baraawe, southern Somalia, U.S. Special Operations commandos killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, believed to have been behind the November 28, 2002, bombing of a Mombasa hotel, the August 7, 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and to have personally fired a missile at an Israeli jet at the Mombasa airport on November 28, 2002. The 30-something Mombasa-born Yemeni went on to become a senior instructor for Somali Islamist recruits belonging to al-Shabaab, including some Americans, and was liaison to senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. Four military helicopters carried commandos firing .50 caliber machine guns and other automatic weapons at two trucks in the desert, killing six foreign fighters, including Nabhan, and three Somali al-Shabaab members. Nabhan was linked to Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, al Qaeda’s East Africa operations chief.

September 15, 2009—Iran—Reuters reported that senior al Qaeda advisor Mustafa Hamid, alias Abu Walid al-Masri, called on the Taliban to kidnap foreign civilians in Afghanistan to obtain the release of prisoners held by the coalition. The Internet document apparently was written in late July and was entitled U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan: The First Step for the Release of All Prisoners of the War on Terror.” Hamid had been detained in Iran since 2003 but maintained contacts with jihadi Web sites.

September 16, 2009—China—The Public Security Ministry raided a bomb-making factory in Aksu, Xinjiang, some 430 miles southwest of the regional capital of Urumqi, arresting six suspects and confiscating twenty bombs.

September 17, 2009—Indonesia—Relying on a tip, Indonesian commandos raided a terrorist hideout in Solo, Central Java, killing Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad (Organization for the Base of Jihad) leader Noordin Muhammad Top, 41, and three other terrorists during a six-hour shootout. A large bomb exploded in the house four hours into the siege. Police found 440 pounds of explosives, an M-16 rifle, a laptop computer, and documents linking Jemaah Islaymiah and al Qaeda.

Also killed was Bagus Budi Pranoto, wanted for the July 2009 suicide bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta that killed nine people and wounded more than fifty others; Adib Susilo, who had rented the safe house; and Aryo Sudarsono, a protégé of Top.

September 17, 2009—Somalia—Al-Shabaab terrorists drove two stolen UN-marked trucks laden with explosives into a meeting between senior Somali and African Union officials at a fortified base in Mogadishu, killing at least twenty-one people, including fifteen peacekeepers, among them Maj. Gen. Juvenal Niyoyunguruza of Burundi, the deputy commander of the African Union peacekeeping force, and seriously injuring several other commanders and the Somali police chief. The bombs went off at a fuel depot and the office of a U.S. logistics company. The group said the attack was in retaliation for the September 14, 2009, attack that killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. The trucks were stolen in either Baidoa or Jowhar. The next day, the Islamists threatened further attacks. A Somali official said six other UN vehicles were missing.

On September 25, a Somali Mursade subclan Web site, dayniile.com, said one of the suicide attackers was an American who had lived in Washington State until 2007, when he left the United States to join the group. 09091701

September 17, 2009—Afghanistan—A Taliban car bomb killed six Italian troops, including Capt. Antonio Fortunato, and ten Afghan civilians and injured more than fifty when the driver crashed his Toyota sedan into an Italian military convoy at a traffic circle near Kabul’s international airport. On September 21, a service was held for the Italian troops in St. Paul’s Basilica in the Vatican.

September 18, 2009—Germany—Al Qaeda posted a twenty-six-minute video threatening that if voters did not push political parties to withdraw Germany’s 4,200 troops from Afghanistan, “there will be a rude awakening” after the September 27 elections. Addressing himself to Chanceller Angela Merkel, the German-speaking terrorist said,

In a democracy, only the people can order its soldiers home. But if the German people decides for the continuation of the war, it has passed judgment upon itself and showed the whole world that in a democracy civilians are not innocent after all. If the German people wants to live in security again, it has the opportunity now…. The parliamentary election is the people’s only opportunity to shape the policy of the country…. With the withdrawal of the last German soldiers, the last mujaheed also will be withdrawn from Germany.

Muslims should “stay away from anything not vital for the two weeks after the elections…. Keep your children close to you.” Authorities later said the clean shaven suit-and-tie wearing terrorist was Bekkay Harrach, 32, a German-Moroccan born in Morocco and raised in Bonn, who had traveled to the West Bank in 2003.

September 18, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber drove his vehicle into a hotel in Kohat in the North West Frontier Province, killing more than thirty and wounding dozens.

September 19, 2009—Qatar—Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar posted a video on the Internet in which he complained that his regime’s treatment of women had been misinterpreted by the West.

September 19, 2009—Colombia/United States—Colombia extradited to Florida Nancy Conde Rubio, 37, who led a finance and supply operation for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). She faced charges of terrorism in a U.S. federal court. She was the former girlfriend of a FARC member who helped guard fifteen hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors, who were rescued by the Colombian military in July 2008. Conde’s intercepted phone calls helped locate the rebel hideout.

September 20, 2009—Somalia—Al-Shabaab posted on extremist Web sites a forty-eight-minute video entitled Labaik ya Osama (At your service, Osama), in which the group formally pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Members of the group were shown training, engaging in gun battles, and chanting bin Laden’s name. The video showed Omar Hammami, alias Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, who was born in Mobile, Alabama.

September 20, 2009—Germany—Al Qaeda released the week’s second anti–Germany video, criticizing its military presence in Afghanistan. Authorities said the speaker was a masked Bekkay Harrach, 32, a German Moroccan who was clean shaven and wearing a suit and tie in an earlier clip in which he said Germany faced a “rude awakening” if it did not end its “war” in Afghanistan. Four days later, the United States urged Americans in Germany to exercise caution by keeping a low profile. The travel alert remained in effect until November 11, two weeks after Germany’s federal elections. The United Kingdom also issued a travel alert regarding Germany.

On September 25, Stuttgart police and the Division for State Security Protection arrested a 25-year-old unemployed Turkish man whom they accused of uploading the video, which had been accessed nearly four thousand times. The suspect, who lives alone, was not believed to have been involved in producing the video, was actively involved in Web sites, and was a supporter of Islamic activities who had been under surveillance for some time.

September 21, 2009—Pakistan—The government claimed police had stopped a plan to assassinate provincial Education Minister Sarfar Hussain Babak and attack government facilities and security forces. Police engaged four militants in a gun battle that ended when a teen suicide bomber blew himself up. An informant had said that insurgents were holed up in a government high school in the North West Frontier Province. Three men escaped, including one who was wounded.

September 22, 2009—Russia—A court sentenced to terms of up to ten years ten mostly teenaged skinheads who had been convicted in Moscow earlier in September for the hate crime murder of a Kyrgyz national and the attempted murders of Chinese, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek citizens.

September 22, 2009—Qatar—Al Qaeda released a 106-minute video entitled The West and the Dark Tunnel, in which Ayman al-Zawahiri said that the Muslim world would overthrow U.S. President Barack Obama. He observed, “America has come in a new, hypocritical face. Smiling at us, but stabbing us with the same dagger that Bush used. God willing, your end will be at the hands of the Muslim nation, so that the world and history will be free of your crimes and lies.” The video included several appearances by Adam Gadahn, alias Azzam al-Amriki, who said “The important question is will Obama and his Democrats learn from his predecessor’s mistakes or will they go on repeating them until they too leave office in humiliation and disgrace. Unfortunately, for the Democrats, and judging by their first seven and a half months at the helm of the sinking American ship, the prognosis doesn’t look good.”

September 22, 2009—South Africa—The U.S. Embassy, consulates in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, and other U.S. aid and development offices throughout the country were ordered closed for two days after receipt of unspecified information provided by U.S. security officials.

September 23, 2009—United States—Undercover FBI agents arrested prison parolee Michael Finton, 29, alias Talib Islam, of Decatur, Illinois, for plotting to set off a truck bomb at the federal building in Springfield, Illinois, and kill its occupants. The detainee had no ties to known terrorist groups and his case was apparently unrelated to the ongoing cases in Dallas, New York, and Denver. Finton drove what he thought was a ton of explosives to the Paul Findley Federal Building and Courthouse in Springfield. Exiting the truck, he got into a waiting car with an undercover agent. A few blocks away, he tried to remotely detonate the bomb. No explosion occurred, and he was handcuffed. Finton took as his role model convicted American Taliban John Walker Lindh and said he wanted to train overseas as a jihadi fighter. An individual in Saudi Arabia funded Finton’s trip to Saudi Arabia in April and May 2008. The sting operation started in 2009. Two weeks before the attempted bombing, Finton met with an undercover agent who told him the truck would contain a ton of explosives. Finton said civilian casualties would be justified. On October 7, a federal grand jury indicted him on charges of attempted murder of a federal officer or employee and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against property owned by the United States. 09092301

September 24, 2009—United States—Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19, a Jordanian, was arrested following a sting operation for plotting to bomb the sixty-story Fountain Place office tower in Dallas, Texas. Authorities said he had hoped to stage his attack on September 11. He made violent postings on an extremist chat site. He told undercover FBI agents about his plans. At his hearing on September 25, Judge Irma Ramirez set a probable cause hearing for October 5. He entered the United States illegally and lived in Texas. He tried to set off an explosive attached to a vehicle at the base of the skyscraper. FBI officers posing as members of an al Qaeda sleeper cell were in touch with him for several months. Smadi wanted to attack the Dallas-Fort Worth airport but changed to the skyscraper that houses Wells Fargo Bank. The affidavit indicated that in a chat, Smadi told the FBI, “I have decided to change the target. God willing, the strike will be certain and strong. It will shake the currently weak economy in the state and the American nation, because this bank is one of the largest banks in the city.” He claimed to be a soldier of Osama bin Laden and wanted to commit violent jihad. The FBI undercover agents tried to talk him into nonviolent methods, but, “Smadi again communicated his continuing commitment for violent jihad,” according to the affidavit. He surveilled the bank in July, then told an undercover agent he would attack it on September 11. However, he waited until the end of Ramadan on September 20. He received an inert explosive from an undercover agent, drove a car into the parking garage of the tower, then tried to detonate the fake bomb via his cell phone. Instead, the number rang a phone in the FBI’s possession. He faced a charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine. On October 26, 2009, Smadi pleaded not guilty to two counts of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction by plotting to bomb a skyscraper in Dallas, Texas. On May 25, 2010, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi agreed to a thirty-year prison sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in his foiled truck bombing. 09092401

September 25, 2009—Germany—Al Qaeda’s As-Sahab media branch released another five-minute bin Laden video, in which he told Europeans,

Justice demands that you lift your oppression and withdraw your troops [from Afghanistan] and reason demands that you don’t hurt your neighbors. If today Europe is suffering the travails of the economic crisis, then how do you think you will fare after America pulls out, Allah permitting, for us to retaliate from the oppressor on behavior of the oppressed? … An intelligent man doesn’t waste his money and sons for a gang of criminals in Washington and it is a shameful thing for a person to be in a coalition whose supreme commander has no regard for human life and who intentionally bombs villagers from the air…. Then the Humvees come along, and when it becomes clear to them that those killed were children, American generosity gushes forth in all its abundance and they give the victims’ relatives $100 for every child killed. [Europeans would] understand the causes of the bloody events in Madrid and London [if they saw what the United States was doing in Afghanistan.] You are aware that oppression topples those who commit it and injustice has unhealthy consequences for the unjust. So on what basis are you violating what you talk about holding in high esteem, like justice and human rights?

The video included German subtitles.

September 28, 2009—Qatar—Al Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri released a twenty-eight-minute video on Islamist Web sites in which he eulogized Baitullah Mehsud, the former leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who was killed in an air strike on August 5 in South Waziristan, Pakistan. He observed,

Baitullah managed to create a massive Jihadi movement that launched wars, ambushes and battles against the crusaders and their agents in Afghanistan. He also managed to clearly show that the Pakistani government is not Islamic but instead an infidel treacherous government working as a servant to the crusaders…. To the Americans I say, you killed Mehsud, but you will not kill Islam or the Jihad. Islam doesn’t end by the death of one man…. Jihad will go on until the liberation of Afghanistan and until you run away defeated from our land. The global peace and security will not be achieved unless you withdraw from the lands of the Muslims.

Al-Zawahiri also took the opportunity to insult U.S. President Barack Obama, who is popular in the Muslim world. “Here is Obama, the fraud, who pretended to be affected by the suffering of the Palestinians and then allows the settlements to flourish in the West Bank and in Jerusalem … while pressing the weak (Arab) leaders to offer more concessions…. Is the reality of the criminal Obama now clear to us? Or do we need more crimes in Kabul, Baghdad, Mogadishu, and Gaza to be sure of his criminal nature?” He also took a swipe at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had told the German parliament that German troops in Afghanistan were supporting international peace and security, and all of NATO. “International peace and security will not be realized until you get out from the lands of Muslims and stop interfering in their affairs.” He said that Turkey, command of the month in Afghanistan for NATO, was “participating in shedding Muslim blood.”

October 2009—Israel—American-born ultra–Orthodox settler Yaakov “Jack” Teitel, 37, was arrested on terrorist charges for a series of attacks that began in 1997 against Arabs, police officers, leftists, messianic Jews, and homosexuals. Police called him a “Jewish terrorist”; his lawyer, Adi Keidar, said the West Bank settler needed psychiatric help. Keidar said Teitel admitted shooting a Palestinian man in 1997 and laying explosive devices. He also falsely admitted involvement in other crimes, such as the August 2009 shooting at a Tel Aviv gay youth club that killed two people. Teitel claimed to be doing God’s work, trying to eradicate profanities against God. Teitel was arrested in Jerusalem after hanging posters in support of the Tel Aviv attack. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld likened him to “a serial killer. This guy was a Jewish terrorist who targeted different types of people. He was deeply involved in terrorism on all different levels.” Teitel entered Israel as a tourist in 1997, smuggling a handgun on board a British Airways flight to Tel Aviv.

The first attack was the 1997 fatal shooting of Samir Balbisi, an east Jerusalem cab driver. Two months later, the same gun was used to shoot and kill a Palestinian shepherd in the South Hebron Hills. In 2008, he planted a bomb inside a package delivered to a house of a messianic Jewish family. Ami Ortiz, a 15-year-old boy, suffered serious injuries when the bomb went off. In September 2008, Teitel left explosives at the doorstep of Israel Prize winner Zeev Sternhell. The prominent left-wing activist was slightly wounded.

On November 12, 2009, Teitel was indicted on two charges of murder, four counts of attempted murder, and other charges, including carrying and manufacturing weapons. His lawyer, Adi Keidar, said Teitel had confessed to crimes he was not involved in.

October 1, 2009—Germany—Authorities arrested Adnan V., 24, a man with dual Turkish-German citizenship. He was suspected of recruiting supporters for al Qaeda and of procuring bomb-making materials. Police searched an Offenbach apartment and a Frankfurt business.

October 3, 2009—United States—Authorities arrested David Coleman Headley, 49, a U.S.-born resident of Chicago, at O’Hare Airport as he was ready to board a plane to Pakistan. He had lived in Pakistan as a youth. He changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 to avoid suspicion when he traveled. He told the FBI that he had planned to attack a building occupied by Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper in Copenhagen that in 2005 had published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. He reportedly had conspired to do so during a meeting in January 2009 in the Federally Administered Tribal Area region of northwestern Pakistan with Ilyas Kashmiri, operational chief of the 313 Brigade commando group—an al Qaeda affiliate in Pakistan—and former Pakistani military officer Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48. The affidavit said Headley traveled to Denmark to surveil the newspaper for attacks, which the trio called “the Mickey Mouse Project.” Authorities found in his checked bags a memory stick with ten videos of the entrance to the Copenhagen newspaper, military sites, and Copenhagen’s central train station. The group talked about assassinating the paper’s cartoonist and cultural editor, who they incorrectly believed was Jewish. After a predatory strike that was reported—incorrectly—to have killed Kashmiri, Headley turned to another group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. Headley was represented by John Theis. Headley was charged with conspiracy to murder and maim in a foreign country.

Rana was arrested on October 18 and charged with conspiring to support terrorists. Rana, owner of First World Immigration Services, which authorities said was a front to explain purchases made by the unemployed Headley, was represented by attorney Patrick W. Blegan. Pakistan-born Rana became a Canadian citizen who lived in Chicago. He and Headley attended a military school in Hasan Abdal, Pakistan.

October 4, 2009—Qatar—Al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri posted a ten-minute eulogy to Libyan terrorist Ali Mohammed Abdel-Aziz al-Fakheri, alias Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who he called “a veteran fighter in repelling the attacks of the hypocrite agents who were working for the crusaders against the mujahideens.” Al-Libi had falsely claimed a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Human rights activists claimed al-Libi died in May, killed,

on behalf of the American criminal monster, who fools us as the smiling Obama who seeks peace and the defender of human rights…. Obama claims to respect human rights and condemn torture, and here I will not ask him about the expansion of the Bagram prison, and will not ask how he forgave the crimes of the CIA executioners. I will not ask him about his decision not to release the detainee abuse photos and will not ask him about the program to hand over detainees to other countries to be tortured, and will not ask him about the assassination teams that are deployed to assassinate anyone who is suspected to be an extremist.

Al-Zawahiri threatened a continuation of attacks, calling U.S. officials, “murderers, criminals, vampires…. We will bleed your blood and drain your economy until you stop your crimes, you arrogant tyrants, and we will, God willing, avenge the killing of each mujahideen, widow and orphan Muslim.” He called on the United States to “apologize and pay financial and moral compensation” for those detained. “This is the least to be accepted from you and from your government.”

October 5, 2009—Pakistan—At noon, a suicide bomber in his 20s and wearing a paramilitary Frontier Corps uniform set off a vest containing 15 pounds of explosives in a reception area at the World Food Program (WFP) offices in Islamabad, killing five—four Pakistani women and an Iraqi man—and wounding eight. The UN temporarily closed its WFP office. Officials said the dead were finance assistant Mohammed Wahab, senior finance assistant Abid Rehman, receptionist Gulrukh Tahir, office assistant Farzana Barkat, and Iraqi national Botan Ahmed Ali al-Hayawi, an information and communications technology officer. Azam Tariq, Pakistani Taliban spokesman, claimed credit. 09100501

October 6, 2009—India—Maoist Naxalite rebels beheaded police officer Francis Induwar after the government refused to release London-educated Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy.

October 6, 2009—Uganda—Somali Defense Minister Yusuf Mohamed Siad was kidnapped as he walked out of a Kampala mosque. 09100601

October 7, 2009—Germany—At 6:00 a.m., more than 150 German investigators raided twenty-seven apartments in Berlin, searching for “potentially violent Islamic extremists.” The raids concentrated on fifteen suspects believed plotting bombings in Russia to be directed by a Berlin-based Islamic organization. Some may have been involved in “jihadi training” in camps along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Over the past week, three suspects were banned from leaving through Berlin’s Tegel Airport. Most of the suspects were Germans, but the group included Turkish, Algerian, Lebanese, Dutch, and Romanian nationals. Police seized computers, memory devices, and clothes.

October 7, 2009—China—Al Qaeda strategist Abu Yahia al-Libi posted an Arabic-language video on Islamist Web sites in which he called on China’s Uighurs to engage in jihad against the Chinese government. He said “There is no way for salvation and to lift this oppression and tyranny unless you … seriously prepare for jihad in the name of God and carry your weapons against the ruthless brutal invader thugs,” referring to Hans in western China’s Xinjiang Province. Referring to recent violence in the area, he observed, “What we saw and heard in the recent events in Turkistan was not accidental and didn’t happen overnight. This is an intifada [an uprising] and a usual response to the decades of oppression, the organized cleansing and the systematic repression until the people had enough…. This was not the first uprising that the oppressed Muslim people carried out, because they keep grieving and struggling to preserve their identity against the aggressors.” He called upon the world’s Muslims to support the Uighurs. He predicted that China would fail the same way the Soviets failed in their invasion of Afghanistan, saying, “To you, the state of atheism and obstinacy: You are coming to an end and you will face the same fate of the Russian bear of disintegration and division. You will encounter the same defeat when your nation will fight in its own backyard the humble minority of Muslims who are stronger in faith.”

October 8, 2009—Afghanistan—At 8:30 a.m., the Taliban set off a suicide car bomb on the corner of Passport Lane and the Indian Embassy near the Interior Ministry, killing seventeen—including two Afghan police officers and fifteen civilians—and wounding sixty-three. Three guards posted around the embassy’s fortified wall were slightly injured by shrapnel. The Ali Abad Hospital cared for eighteen of the injured, including Golam Sakhih, 46, a gardener at a nearby hotel, who had shards of glass in his leg. None of the embassy employees were hurt. Hours later, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the attack and extended the mandate of NATO-led military forces for a year. The Taliban said an Afghan drove the SUV and intended to attack the embassy. The Taliban claimed the bomb killed thirty-five, including senior Indian Embassy officials and international and Afghan police officers. Indian pundits blamed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. 09100801

October 8, 2009—France—Police in Vienne (near Lyon), France arrested Adlene Hicheur, 32, a French particle physicist born in Setif, Algeria, and Halim, his 25-year-old brother, on suspicion of passing information on possible terrorist targets in France to members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. He was working on an antimatter project at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, in the 17-mile-long tunnel under the France-Switzerland border. The Collider is at CERN, Europe’s particle physics lab near Geneva. He was a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne since 2003. The scientist had written of his desire to carry out attacks. As of October 14, Halim had been released and Adlene had not been charged. Adlene received his doctorate in 2003 from the University of Savoid in Annecy, France. He was an author on more than one hundred physics papers. He had worked at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Chilton, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.

October 8, 2009—India—More than two hundred Maoist Naxalite rebels ambushed forty-five police commandos in Laheri village in Maharashtra State, killing seventeen of them in a three-hour gun battle and taking their weapons.

October 9, 2009—Pakistan—In a morning attack, a suicide car bomber in Peshawar killed 52 people and injured 106 when his 50 kilograms of explosives went off near a bus stop in the Khyber Bazaar.

October 10, 2009—Pakistan—Nine Amjad Farooqi gunmen took thirty-nine civilian and military hostages at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. The initial gun battle killed four gunmen and six guards. The gunmen wore camouflage and used a minivan to attack the headquarters checkpoint. The gunmen demanded the release of several militants in Pakistani custody. The hostages were freed after a twenty-two-hour siege in which three soldiers and three hostages were killed and five injured. One terrorist wearing a suicide vest was shot to death. Two others blew themselves up in another part of the building. The press reported that twenty people, including nine terrorists and eight soldiers, died in the incident. Aqil, aka Dr. Usman, who led the attack, was injured when he set off explosives and was captured. He was believed to have masterminded the March 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan. He was also believed to have been involved in the July 2007 attempt to attack the airplane of former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He was from Pakistani’s Punjab Province, as were four other militants. Five were from South Waziristan.

October 10, 2009—Pakistan—An Amjad Farooqi bomb targeted against a military vehicle at a security checkpoint in the Shangla district in the Swat Valley killed forty-one and injured forty-five.

October 11, 2009—Northern Ireland—The Irish National Liberation Army, a Provisional Irish Army splinter group, renounced violence and said it would soon hand over weapons and use “exclusively peaceful means.” It vowed to cooperate with Canadian Gen. John D. Chastelain, leader of the international disarmament commission overseeing the disarming of the loyalist and republican terrorists.

October 11, 2009—Somalia—Sheik Da’ud Mohamed Garane, al-Shabaab’s appointed governor of Gedo region in Somalia, threatened to attack targets in Kenya. He told two hundred people in southwestern Somalia, “Our intelligence sources have already confirmed that Kenya is giving training and military equipment to Somali men in three different areas along its border with Somalia. These men are being prepared to attack the peaceful positions we control. But let me tell Kenya that we will do all we can to prevent that to happen.”

October 11, 2009—Philippines—Irish priest Michael Sinnott was kidnapped during an evening stroll in his garden at his missionary home on Mindanao Island by four or five members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. They threw him into a pickup which they drove to a beach, got out, burned the vehicle, and escaped with him in a speedboat. He was freed on November 12. Manila said no ransom was paid. 09101101

October 12, 2009—India—Maoist Naxalite terrorists blew up a railway track and a bridge, fired at a bus, blocked a highway, and burned down a truck before fleeing in mineral-rich Jharkhand State. They also called for a two-day strike over a planned government offensive in two of the eleven rebel strongholds chosen for the operation.

October 15, 2009—Pakistan—Five Amjad Farooqi attacks in Lahore, Kohat, and Peshawar killed thirty-nine people. At 9:00 a.m. at the Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore, a terrorist used grenades and a rifle to enter a broken main gate and kill six people. The Taliban bombed a police station in Khoat and a government residence in Peshawar. Half of the dead were security police; ten militants died and two were captured.

October 16, 2009—Australia—Five men—Mohamed Ali Elomar, Abdul Rakib Hasan, Khaled Cheikho, Moustafa Cheikho, and Mohammed Omar Jamal, aged 25 to 44, who were arrested in a November 2005 raid on a home, were convicted in the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney of “conspiracy to do acts in preparation for a terrorist act or acts.” Some three hundred witnesses testified during the record ten-month, $27.5 million trial. They had pleaded guilty at the start of their trial. The jury deliberated for twenty-three days. Sentencing was scheduled for December 14, 2009. They faced life in prison. Prosecutors used eighteen hours of taped phone conversations that showed the group was planning a terrorist attack in Australia. They were linked to four others who had earlier pleaded guilty to acquiring weapons, hydrochloric acid, and bombs for an attack. Three of them had trained at paramilitary camps in western New South Wales to prepare for the attacks. The prosecution said that the attack would be revenge for Australia’s sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. They had stockpiled thirty thousand rounds of ammunition, bomb-making equipment, and explosive chemicals, along with extremist literature, instructional DVDs for building homemade bombs, and suicide bomb-belts. One of the men had links to Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.

October 18, 2009—Iran—Jundallah (Soldiers of God) was suspected when a suicide bomber killed forty-two people, including five senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and more than twenty tribal leaders, in the Pishin district of Sistan-Baluchistan Province, near the Pakistan border. Among the dead were Gen. Noor Ali Shoushtari, deputy commander of the Guard’s ground force, and Rajab Ali Mohammad-Zadeh, a chief provincial Guard commander for the area. Some local Web sites suggested more than sixty were killed. More than two dozen others were wounded. The commanders were in a car en route to a meeting with local tribal leaders. Press TV claimed there was an explosion at the meeting at the inauguration of the Local Achievements Exhibition in Pishin and another one at another convoy of Guards.

October 19, 2009—Spain—Spain arrested two armed Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA) suspects, including Aitor Elizaran Aguilar, 30, who ran ETA’s political policy-making branch, and a woman, Oihana San Vicente, 32, who worked in ETA’s political apparatus. Spain credited a joint French-Spanish operation for the takedown. The duo carried fake IDs and were driving a car stolen the previous week.

October 20, 2009—Pakistan—Six people were killed and twenty-nine wounded when suicide bombers detonated explosives in the men’s and women’s sections of International Islamic University.

October 20, 2009—United States—The Supreme Court announced it would determine whether judges have the power to release Guantanamo Bay prisoners into the United States if deemed not be enemy combatants. The case, Kiyemba v. Obama, involved the Uighurs still held at the prison facility.

October 21, 2009—United States—Tarek Mehanna, 27, a dual Egypt-U.S. citizen pharmacist who lived with his parents in Sudbury, Massachusetts, was charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists. He distributed a video that he said showed the “mutilation and abuse” of the bodies of U.S. personnel in Iraq and the setting off of a roadside bomb in Iraq that killed U.S. soldiers. An FBI agent said that Mehanna “reveled in the death of United States servicemen overseas.” The acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts said that Mehanna and other conspirators wanted to kill one or two members of the U.S. administration, fire automatic weapons at mall entrances and then kill first responders. The mall plot fell through when the conspirators could not get automatic weapons via Islamic convert Daniel Maldonado, who was said to have contacts with gang members. Mehanna faced fifteen years in prison and a $250,000 fine. His two co-conspirators included Ahmad Abousamra and another man whose identity was not released. The prosecution team said the trio traveled to Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen and sought training from the Taliban. The prosecution said that the “conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country, and extraterritorial homicide of a U.S. national” started in 2001 and lasted until May 2008. Mehanna was represented by attorney J. W. Carney, Jr. The affidavit said the conspirators planned “violent jihad against American interests and … would talk about fighting jihad and their desire to die on the battlefield … the co-conspirators attempted to radicalize others and inspire each other by, among other things, watching and distributing jihadi videos.” Mehanna had been arrested in November 2008 as he was about to board a flight at Logan International Airport in Boston and indicted in January 2009 on charges of lying to a joint terrorism task force regarding Maldonado, who was captured by Kenyan troops while fighting with al Qaeda in Somalia. Maldonado was sentenced to ten years after pleading guilty to receiving military-type training from al Qaeda.

Mehanna was held without bail on October 21, 2009, by Magistrate Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the federal court in Boston. A detention and probable cause hearing was scheduled for October 30.

October 22, 2009—Sudan—Several armed men kidnapped Gauthier Lefevre, a French staffer for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), near Al-Geneina in West Darfur. His ICRC vehicle was clearly marked with Red Cross logos. 09102201

October 22, 2009—Northern Ireland—A bomb exploded at a British Territorial Army base in North Belfast at 1:00 a.m., causing no injuries. Irish Republican Army splinter groups were suspected.

October 22, 2009—Algeria—Terrorists ambushed a convoy of private security contractors with the Canadian engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin in a remote mountainous area near Tizi Ouzou. Seven Algerian police officers died and two others were wounded in the attack east of Algiers. No foreigners were harmed. The local al Qaeda affiliate was suspected. 09102202

October 22, 2009—Nigeria—Royal Dutch Shell offered to provide training and financial assistance to repentant rebels who accepted the government’s amnesty for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta militants.

October 22, 2009—Pakistan—At 9:30 a.m., two Taliban gunmen on a motorcycle fired at an unarmored Pakistani army jeep stuck in traffic in residential Islamabad, killing Brig. Moeenuddin Ahmed Haider, who was on bereavement leave (his father-in-law had died) from a posting with the UN peacekeeping force in the Sudan, and another military officer in the vehicle. The driver was critically wounded; some reports said he was killed. Haider was on his way to army headquarters in Rawalpindi. The gunmen escaped.

October 23, 2009—Italy—Libyan citizen Mohamed Game was seriously wounded when he set off a homemade bomb at an Italian military barracks in Milan. An Italian soldier was slightly injured. Game and his two accomplices did not fit the normal profile of a homegrown terrorist, being moderately involved in local religious activities. 09102301

October 23, 2009—Pakistan—Five civilians and two security personnel were killed and thirteen injured when a suicide bomber riding a bicycle set off his explosives at the Kamra checkpoint near the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, a military facility 40 miles northwest of Islamabad. Some observers believed the site is associated with the country’s nuclear weapons program.

At least fifteen people were wounded, nine seriously, in a car bomb explosion near the upscale Swan restaurant in Peshawar’s residential Hayatabad neighborhood. Police arrested two suspects at the scene.

Sixteen people died when a bus which they were taking to a wedding hit a roadside bomb in the Mohmand tribal region.

October 25, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta announced an indefinite cease-fire.

October 25, 2009—Iraq—Bombs exploded outside government buildings in Baghdad, killing 160 people, including 30 Iraqi children riding on a bus, and injuring 540 people, including 3 American security contractors. One bomb went off at 10:15 a.m. outside Baghdad’s Provincial Council governorate building, another at the Justice Ministry, at 10:30 a.m. Among the dead were 30 children in a minibus outside the Justice Ministry building. That bomb was hidden in a white Department of Water pickup that was stolen in Falluja. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed credit.

On October 31, a man being questioned for the bombings grabbed a guard’s gun while being escorted to get a drink of water, wounded the guard, broke into an investigator’s office, and fatally shot investigator Maj. Arkan Hachim, who returned fire after he was wounded and shot the suspect to death. 09102501

October 27, 2009—United Kingdom—Seven former Guantanamo Bay detainees asked the High Court in London to reject the government’s request for secret sessions on their allegations that they were tortured at Gitmo, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Morocco. The ex-detainees were Binyam Mohamed, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Moazzam Begg, and Martin Mubanga.

October 28, 2009—United States—The FBI fatally shot Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, alias Christopher Thomas, leader of a radical fundamentalist Sunni Islam separatist group and the radical mosque Masjid al-Haqq, in a gun battle at a warehouse in Dearborn, Michigan, after he and ten followers failed to surrender on several criminal charges, including conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. In three raids, police arrested six of his followers on charges of illegal possession and sale of firearms and conspiracy to sell stolen goods. Abdullah was an imam of a faction of Ummah (“Brotherhood”), a radical group whose primary mission is to establish an Islamic state within the United States. Some of his followers converted to Islam while in prison. He told them stealing was acceptable so long as they prayed. He skimmed 20 percent of the profits from furs, electronics, and other items his followers fenced. A search of his duplex yielded weapons, including an M-16.

October 28, 2009—Pakistan—A car bomb packed with 250 pounds of explosives went off in the Mina Bazaar in old town Peshawar, killing one hundred people, including sixty women and children, and injuring more than two hundred during a visit to Pakistan by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Many buildings, including a mosque, collapsed, and scores of stores were set on fire. No group claimed credit, although the Taliban was suspected.

October 28, 2009—Afghanistan—At 5:45 a.m., three Taliban gunmen wearing suicide vests and police uniforms were shot to death by UN guards after killing eight people, including six UN workers—among them five foreigners—including an American security guard and two members of the Afghan security forces at Kabul’s Bakhtar guesthouse hosting UN staffers. Nine UN staffers were injured. The gunmen used grenades and rockets in the attack. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the raid aimed at warning people to avoid participating in the November 7 runoff presidential election. Twenty poll-watchers were staying at the facility. Oamrullah Saleh, chief of Afghan intelligence, said that the attack was the work of Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani’s group and al Qaeda member Ajmal, who was hiding in Waziristan. Saleh said that eight Afghans were arrested, including an imam who provided safe haven. The three suicide attackers were from Pakistan’s Swat Valley. 09102801

October 28, 2009—Somalia—Islamic gunmen attempted to assassinate Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in a gun battle with African Union peacekeepers that left five people dead and sixteen injured on Maka Al-Mukarama, which links the airport and the presidential palace in Mogadishu. He was returning from Yemen when the convoy took mortar fire.

October 29, 2009—Pakistan—The Pakistani military found a passport of Said Bahaji, a 9/11 suspect, in Sherwangai, a South Waziristan town captured from Taliban terrorists. The passport of the German citizen of Moroccan descent included an August 2001 Pakistani visa. Bahaji entered Karachi, Pakistan, on September 4, 2001. He had lived with 9/11 hijack leader Muhammad Atta in Germany. Bahaji was a member of a cell in Hamburg that funded the 9/11 hijackers. He is wanted in Germany and Spain on terrorism charges.

Soldiers also found a Spanish passport for Raquel Burgos Garcia, who is married to Amer Azizi, a Moroccan member of al Qaeda suspect in the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the 3/11 Madrid train bombings in 2004. Her family had not heard from her since 2001. Her passport had visas to India and Iran. Authorities also found a Moroccan document with her photo.

November 2009—Mali—Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) kidnapped a French man in Menaka. In early March 2010, AQIM released Pierre Camatte following a Mali court decision to release four jailed AQIM members. 09119901

November 1, 2009—Saudi Arabia—Authorities in Riyadh searching a vacant house found an al Qaeda weapons cache that included 281 assault rifles and 51 ammunition boxes.

November 2, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber rode up in a motorcycle and set off explosives outside a National Bank branch where people had queued up for their monthly checks, killing thirty-five, including two women and four soldiers, and injuring sixty-five, including nine soldiers, in the Cannt area of Rawalpindi. The bank is near the army’s headquarters.

A separate suicide bomber injured seventeen people at the Babu Sabu police checkpoint in Lahore.

November 3, 2009—Israel—Israeli Navy commandos stopped the Antigua-flagged cargo ship Francop, which was loaded with hundreds of tons of arms heading from Iran to Syria. The arms, which Israel said were destined for Hizballah, included more than forty containers of missiles, rockets, light arms, and mortars.

November 5, 2009—United States—At 1:00 p.m. yelling “God is Great” in Arabic, Muslim psychiatrist and Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, shot to death thirteen people and wounded forty-three at the Soldier Readiness Center of Fort Hood, Texas, before being wounded by four bullets in a gun battle with civilian police Sgt. Kimberly Munley, 34, who was injured in the thighs and a wrist, and army civilian police Sgt. Mark Todd, who arrived minutes after she did. Many of the wounded had multiple gunshot wounds. The 36th Engineer Brigade suffered the majority of casualties. Hasan carried two pistols and more than a half-dozen magazines of ammunition, firing at least one hundred rounds at unarmed soldiers. Initial reports of more than one gunman proved false; two individuals detained for questioning were soon released.

Hasan was born at Arlington Hospital, Virginia, to parents who emigrated from Jordan. He graduated from William Fleming High School in Roanoke, Virginia, then enlisted in the U.S. Army. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997 with a biochem major, then picked up a doctorate in psychiatry from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda. Hasan had served at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for eight years, working with veterans suffering post-traumatic stress. Hasan had counseled soldiers at the psychiatric facility on campus. He had poor fitness reports as a psychiatrist. He had attended the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, for daily prayers, often in his army fatigues. He had often railed against the U.S. war on terror, saying it was actually a war against Muslims, and had complained about being scheduled to go to Afghanistan the next month. An individual with the screen name Nidal Hasan had posted praises of suicide bombers on the Internet six months earlier. He had wanted a discharge from the army, having endured anti–Muslim harassment since 9/11. He was single with no children and described by many as a loner.

One of Hasan’s pistols, a $1,100 FN Herstal Five-Seven that can handle thirty-round magazines, came from Guns Galore in Killeen, Texas.

Among the dead were:

• Spec. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, who had served for three and a half years, including a tour in Iraq. He was married in August in Oklahoma City.

• Pfc. Michael Pearson, 21, scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan as a bomb disposal specialist

• Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, en route from Iraq to Chicago after learning she was pregnant with her first child. She had disarmed bombs in Iraq. Her father was Colombian and her mother Puerto Rican. She had been in the army for three years.

• Nurse practitioner Russell Seager, 51, from Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, was preparing to deploy to Iraq. In August, he was profiled by WUWM–Milwaukee Public Radio.

• Physician’s assistant Michael G. Cahill, 62, a retired chief warrant officer in the National Guard and a physician’s assistant for twenty-two years. He had worked as a contract civilian employee for six years at Fort Hood. He was four years from retiring.

• Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, from rural Wisconsin, who dropped her studies in social work a week after 9/11 to enlist in the army. She had earlier deployed to Afghanistan, where she was slated to return in December. She was with the Madison, Wisconsin-based 467th Medical Detachment.

• Pfc. Aaron Nemelka, 19, had been in the army for over a year and had signed up to defuse bombs. He was a 2008 graduate of West Jordan (Utah) High School.

• Pfc. Kham Xiong, 23, from St. Paul, Minnesota, whose father fought the Communists during the Vietnam War. He was the first casualty, waiting to get a flu shot and a vision test.

• Staff Sgt. Justin M. DeCrow, 32, a thirteen-year veteran who had decided to become a civilian. He had been deployed in South Korea. He had known his wife, Marikay, since first grade.

• Retired Maj. John P. Gaffaney, 56, a psychiatric nurse for the San Diego government for twenty years who had spent three years before successfully persuading a review board for the National Guard to return him to active duty despite his hearing loss. He had reported to Fort Hood on November 1.

• Spec. Frederick Greene, 29, from Mountain City, Tennessee, nicknamed “Silent Soldier,” was to deploy to Afghanistan. He had been married less than two years and enlisted six months after the wedding. He served in the 16th Signal Company at Fort Hood.

• Army Reserve Lt. Col. Juanita Warman, 55, a single mother with two daughters and six grandchildren, who worked her way through the University of Pittsburgh. She had orchestrated the creation of the post-traumatic stress disorder program of the Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program. The physician’s assistant and nurse was to deploy to Iraq. She hailed from Havre de Grace, Maryland. She was buried in Section 59 of Arlington National Cemetery.

• Maj. Libardo Eduardo Caraveo, 52, an army psychologist from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Woodbridge, Virginia, who had arrived at Fort Hood the day before he was murdered. He was slated to deploy to Afghanistan. He was a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso, first in his family to attend college. He earned his doctorate in psychology from the University of Arizona.

The wounded included:

• Pfc. Najee Hull

• Pvt. Joseph Foster

Investigators determined that Hasan had held his mother’s funeral at the Dar al-Jihrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, on May 31, 2001, the same mosque that 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour had attended the previous month. Since-radicalized Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi had served at the mosque at that time. Al-Aulaqi moved on to London, where he preached Islamist extremism. Having moved on to Yemen, he exchanged e-mails with Hasan, and praised Hasan’s attack. Hasan also visited radical Islamist Web sites.

On November 13, Hasan’s lawyer, retired Army Col. John Galligan, said his client was paralyzed from the waist down, had severe pain in his hands, and likely would never walk again.

The same day, Hasan was charged with thirteen counts of premeditated murder, which carries the death penalty. On December 2, 2009, Hasan was charged with an additional thirty-two counts of attempted premeditated murder of the thirty soldiers and two civilians who were injured.

On April 9, 2010, Nidal Hasan was airlifted from a San Antonio military hospital to Bell County Jail in Belton, where he would be kept in isolation under twenty-four-hour watch in a 12 x 15 foot cell in the jail infirmary.

Hasan made his first Article 32 courtroom appearance on June 1, 2010, but the trial was delayed for four months.

On October 5, 2010, Hasan was ordered to undergo a mental evaluation to determine his fitness to stand trial. John Galligan served as Hasan’s lead attorney.

On November 6, 2012, 148 victims and family members sued the federal government for compensation and sued al-Aulaqi’s estate for compensation and punitive damages.

November 5, 2009—Afghanistan—A Norwegian journalist and his Afghani translator were kidnapped in the east near the Pakistan border while filming a documentary. He phoned the Norwegian Embassy the next day to report his kidnapping. The duo were freed on November 12. 09110501

November 8, 2009—Pakistan—A Taliban suicide car bomber killed twelve people, including Matni-area Mayor Abdul Malik, a little girl, and five young men, and injured thirty-six, including the mayor’s son, when the terrorist set off 10 kilograms of explosives in Adazai, 10 miles south of Peshawar. Malik had earlier been a Taliban supporter, but switched sides. Taliban spokesman Omar claimed credit, saying, “Our local fighters carried out this attack. He had set up a militia. He was supporting killings of our men. He was interfering in our matters.”

Meanwhile, Islamabad police shot to death a would-be suicide bomber at a checkpoint.

November 9, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber set off his rickshaw near a group of Peshawar policemen, killing three people and wounding five.

November 10, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber drove his red car, loaded with 110 pounds of explosives, into a donkey cart at a congested traffic circle in Charsadda, 18 miles north of Peshawar, killing twenty-six, including six children and three women, and injuring sixty. Police Chief Mohammed Riaz Khan, whose two-car convoy was leaving the area, said he was the target.

November 11, 2009—Somalia—Abdi Hassan Abdi, a Somali, tried to board a Daallo Airlines flight scheduled to fly from Mogadishu airport to Hargeisa, then Djibouti, and then Dubai, with a plastic bag containing 600 grams of ammonium nitrate and a half liter of concentrated sulfuric acid in a plastic bottle, along with a syringe containing 5 milliliters of an unidentified liquid. He was the last person to board the flight. African Union peacekeeping forces arrested Abdi after they searched him and discovered the chemicals. They handed him over to the Somali National Security Agency. The case was similar to a Nigerian’s attempt to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. 09111101

November 12, 2009—Pakistan—Two motorcycle riders shot to death Abul Hassan Jaffri, Pakistani director of public relations for the Iranian Consulate in Peshawar, near his home as he was on his way to work. No group claimed credit for killing the Shi’ite Muslim, although Iran blamed Jundallah. 09111201

November 13, 2009—United States—Attorney General Eric Holder announced that 9/11 suspects Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi would be tried in New York City. Five other Guantanamo Bay detainees—Omar Khadr, Mohammed Kamin, Ibrahim al-Qosi, Noor Uthman Muhammed, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—would be tried at military commissions.

November 13, 2009—Italy—Authorities announced the arrests of seventeen people involved in a terrorist financing ring. Italian police arrested six people on charges of criminal association and falsifying documents. Austrian arrested two others; the investigation involved police in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, and Algeria. The group raised 1 million Euros during three years via muggings, burglaries, and other thefts, sending the money to Algeria. The group created fake IDs to travel between North Africa and Europe.

November 13, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide car bomber killed sixteen and wounded more than thirty in an attack at the gate of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate headquarters in Peshawar.

November 15, 2009—Germany—The Federal Criminal Police Office announced that they believed that Jan Schneider, alias Hamza, a Kazakhstan-born ethnic German convert to Islam, may be traveling to Afghanistan and planning to attack German military or civilian targets in Afghanistan.

November 18, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide bomber killed nineteen outside a Peshawar courthouse. He had arrived by taxi at a lower courthouse and was being searched by police at the gate when he set off his explosives.

November 19, 2009—Pakistan—Two police officers were killed after a remotely-detonated bomb went off shortly after midnight, destroying a police vehicle and wounding four others in Peshawar.

November 22, 2009—Northern Ireland—A 400-pound car bomb left by Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissidents outside a police reform headquarters in Belfast failed to go off.

Meanwhile, police arrested four other IRA dissidents after a gun battle.

November 23, 2009—United States—The federal government charged eight suspects with recruiting at least twenty young Somali Americans from Minnesota to join the al-Shabaab Islamist insurgency in Somalia. Mahamud Said Omar, a U.S. permanent resident, had been arrested two weeks earlier in the Netherlands. He had funded airfare and AK-47s for several of the youths to join the al Qaeda affiliate. The United States requested his extradition. The seven others were outside the United States and not in custody. Among them were Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax and Abdiweli Yassin Isse, who were charged on October 9, a day after they told a U.S. border agent that they were going from San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico. The FBI said they had conspired to recruit and pay for six Somali Americans to go abroad in December 2007. One of their recruits was Shirwa Ahmed, 27, a Minneapolis college student who blew himself up in one of five coordinated attacks that killed twenty-two UN aid workers in Somalia in October 2008. Charged with conspiracy to support terrorism and kill outside the United States, firearms offenses, and solicitation to commit violent crime were Ahmed Ali Omar, Khalid Mohamud Abshir, Zakaria Maruf, Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, and Mustafa Ali Salat. They were all U.S. permanent residents who left for Somalia between December 2007 and August 2008. A key trainer for the recruits was Saleh Ali Nabhan, 30, a liaison to al Qaeda in Pakistan.

November 24, 2009—Spain—Hundreds of police officers in four northern provinces arrested thirty-four people believed to be members of the outlawed Segi (literally meaning “to continue”), the youth wing of the Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA). None were yet considered full-fledged members of ETA but could become so. Many of the suspects were picked up in Bilbao and San Sebastian. Police searched forty-six homes and twenty-one youth centers, seizing pro–ETA publications, material, instruction manuals to make firebombs, and computers.

November 24, 2009—United States—A federal grand jury in Philadelphia indicted four men in a plot to support Hizballah through illegal schemes, including buying twelve hundred Colt M-4 machine guns. Hassan Hodroj—a member of Hizballah’s political council—and his son-in-law Dib Hani Harb, both of Beirut, sought to send the weapons from Philadelphia to Syria but were thwarted by an undercover operation. Hodroj was a Hizballah spokesman and head of its Palestinian issues portfolio. Harb, Moussa Ali Hamdan of Brooklyn, and Hasan Antar Karaki of Beirut were also charged with seeking to send counterfeit money and cash generated by the sale of phony passports to Hizballah. The four were believed to be overseas. Another six were indicted for a separate scam that entailed trafficking in stolen cell phones, laptops, automobiles, fake Nike tennis shoes, and Sony PlayStation 2 video game systems that would finance the shipment of antiaircraft missiles to Syria. The chief suspect in the case, who was arrested on November 21, paid $20,000 to an undercover officer in July as a deposit on machine guns and Stinger shoulder-fired missiles. Eight others were charged with lesser offenses, including trafficking in stolen or counterfeit goods. Authorities had thirteen suspects in custody and were looking for eleven others.

November 27, 2009—Russia—A 15-pound bomb planted on a rail line derailed the Nevsky Express train between Moscow and St. Petersburg, killing at least 26 people and injuring 130 others some 200 miles northwest of Moscow in a wooded area near Uglovka. Three carriages were thrown from the tracks in the 9:30 p.m. explosion. Among the dead was Boris Yevstratikov, chief of the Russian federal reserve; a former senator; and Sergei Tarasov, chairman of the state road agency. Among the injured were passengers Igor Pushkaryov, 32; and Yekaterina Ivanova, who waited four hours to be removed from the train that was carrying 650 passengers and 20 staff. At least 92 people were hospitalized; 21 were listed in serious condition.

The next day, a smaller bomb partly exploded, briefly disrupting rescue operations but causing no injuries.

An attack on the train in 2007 caused 27 injuries but no deaths.

Muslim extremists, North Caucasus militants, and Russian ultranationalists were all suspected in the attack. Police released a sketch of a suspect and a description of an accomplice; the duo was spotted near the area in the days before the attack occurred. The sketch showed a man in his early 50s with light skin and wearing a red wig. The male accomplice was in his early 30s. Police found a possible hideout where four people had stayed and recovered DNA samples.

Chechen Islamists led by Doku Umarov posted a claim of responsibility on the Web site kavkazcenter.com, which often runs messages of support for the rebels. Russian news services said the suspects included Pavel Kosolapov, an ethnic Russian who converted to Islam, who was accused in the 2007 bombing of the same train. He remained at large. He was also believed to have been involved in some of the attacks since 2004 on subway trains, bus stops, and rock festivals.

On March 6, 2010, Russian authorities said that the eight Islamists who were killed and ten captured on March 2 and 3, 2010, were behind the Nevsky train bombing, as well as fifteen other attacks. Police found explosive components in a raid in Ingushetia Province. DNA taken from the rebels matched that found at the scene of the train bombing. Among those killed was Alexander Tikhomirov, a young radical preacher.

November 29, 2009—Mauritania—Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) kidnapped three Spanish aid workers—two men and a woman from the Barcelona Solidarity Action humanitarian organization—from their thirteen-vehicle aid convoy. The group announced via an audiotape on December 7 that it had kidnapped them and released an audio on December 14 saying that they were in “good health.” However, the Spanish government announced in late December that aid worker Albert Vilalta, 45, was injured. The press said he was shot three times in his left leg while trying to flee during the abduction, and that the government sent medicine for him with the help of area tribal leaders. AQIM later said the trio was being treated in accordance with sharia law and planned to free “our detainees from your jails.” The AQIM claimed that two cells abducted the three Spaniards about 105 miles north of Nouakchott, near Nouadhibou, and in a separate incident, a Frenchman in neighboring Mali, to the east. The Spanish Foreign Ministry said it had not received any demands. 09112901

December 2009—Niger—Late in the month, al Qaeda–linked bandits murdered four Saudi tourists hunting birds in the desert of Tillaberi in the west. One Saudi shot at the gunmen, part of a thirty-member gang led by a local arms smuggler. Two other Saudis were wounded. Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that the gunmen planned to sell them to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, alias The Uncatchable. 09129901

December 3, 2009—Guinea—Junta leader Capt. Moussa “Dadis” Camara was slightly wounded when a renegade faction of his presidential guard opened fire on him. Vice President and Defense Minister Gen. Sekouba Konate returned from Lebanon to serve as acting president.

December 3, 2009—Somalia—A male suicide bomber dressed as a woman in a black burqa set off his bomb at a graduation ceremony of doctors at Banadir University in Mogadishu, killing twenty-four people, including nine students, parents, two journalists, a professor, two doctors, and three government officials, and wounding fifty-five. The terrorist walked up to a speakers’ panel, said, “Peace,” and set off the bomb. Among the dead was Minister of Higher Education Ibrahim Hassan Addou, a Somali American who once taught at American University; Education Minister Abdullahi Wayel; and Health Minister Qamar Aden. Sports Minister Suleman Olad Robie was hospitalized in critical condition. The government blamed al-Shabaab and said the killer was a Danish citizen of Somali descent. The bomber’s father identified a photo of the dead terrorist. 09120301

December 3, 2009—Syria—A bomb went off in the morning on a bus in the Zinab neighborhood of Damascus near a Shi’a shrine, killing and wounding dozens. A bombing in the same area killed seventeen people in September 2008.

December 4, 2009—Pakistan—The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed credit when four gunmen attacked a mosque in Rawalpindi frequented by military personnel, killing forty and wounding eighty in the gun and grenade assault. Most of the victims were children. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up during a prayer service. The first stood up in the front row and set off his explosives. Several other attackers threw grenades and shot from the back of the mosque. The second attacker then blew himself up. Two gunmen were killed by authorities. Among the dead was Bilal Riaz, son of retired general Nasim Riaz, who was praying with him.

December 4–5, 2009—Sudan—Gunmen shot to death five Rwandan soldiers in a series of attacks on the UN–African Union peacekeeping forces in Darfur. 09120401, 09120501

December 7, 2009—Turkey—A radical wing of the separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) claimed credit when gunmen fired automatic weapons at a military vehicle, killing seven Turkish soldiers and injuring three others near Resadiye in Tokat Province, Antolia. The ambush followed weeks of street protests across the country.

December 7, 2009—Pakistan—Bombs in Lahore and Peshawar killed forty-six and wounded one hundred. A suicide bomber killed ten outside a Peshawar courthouse. Two remotely-detonated bombs went off in Lahore’s Moon Market at 9:00 p.m., killing thirty-six people, including a 2-year-old, and injuring one hundred, including Mohammad Nauman. Authorities later said one of the bombs was set off by a suicide bomber.

December 7, 2009—United States/Pakistan—Pakistani authorities raided a home in Sargodha, about 120 miles south of Islamabad, and arrested five Muslim U.S. citizen students from Alexandria, Virginia, who were suspected of planning terrorist attacks, obtaining terrorist training, and seeking to join the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Jangvi, and Jamaat ud-Dawa militant organizations. The arrests occurred at the home of Khalid Farooq Chaudry (father of Umar Farooq Chaudry), an activist with ties to the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed. The detainees told arresting officers, “We are here for jihad.” The groups did not trust the five’s bona fides when initially contacted in August and sent them away. The individuals included two Pakistani Americans, two Ethiopian Americans (also reported as Yemeni Americans), and an Egyptian American. Some had been born in the United States. They had told their parents that they were attending a local conference, but the parents became suspicious when they called their cell phones and got an overseas ring tone. They immediately contacted the FBI, local imams, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The five arrived in Karachi on November 30, then went to Lahore and later Sargodha. The five were identified as:

• Umar Farouq Chaudhry, 24, Pakistani American originally from Sargodha, who had maintained links with an Islamic extremist organization. His mother claimed that he was in Pakistan to marry and said he was a student at George Mason University. The detained father owns a small computer sales and repair business called Geeks and Wireless.

• Waqar Hussain Khan, variant Hassan Khan, 22, Pakistani American who was convicted in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2008 of embezzlement for stealing packages from the UPS store where he worked. He received a one-year suspended sentence.

• Ahmad Abdullah Minni, 20, Ethiopian American who had been contacted by Pakistani Taliban recruiter Saifullah after he praised jihadi videos on YouTube. The family runs a day care center out of their home.

• Aman Hasan Yamer, 18, Ethiopian American

• Ramy Zamzam, 22, Howard University dental student of Egyptian background. Friends said he was involved with local charities. Zamzam received a bachelor of science degree from Howard in chemistry and biology in 2009.

Pakistani police said Zamzam was the ringleader. He refused to answer questions for hours. He had tried to raise money to build mosques in the United States. He left behind an eleven-minute video which some believed was a suicide bomber testament. In the video, the narrator referred to “the ongoing conflict in the world, and that young Muslims have to do something.”

Other names given for them included Yasir Zamzam, Aman Yasir, Ahmed Abdullah Waqar, and Eman Hassan.

The five had exchanged coded e-mails for months with Saifullah and got in touch with him when they arrived in Pakistan on November 30. Police found that they were carrying a map of Miranshah, a town in Waziristan, where al Qaeda is based. Authorities confiscated their laptops, external hard drives, cell phones, and an iPod.

The five had met as members of a youth group at the Islamic Circle of North America Mosque in Alexandria, Virginia.

On December 14, 2009, Pakistan’s High Court in Lahore blocked them from being deported or handed over to the FBI until it had time to review the case. A court in Sargodha ordered the group held for ten days for interrogation. On December 25, a Pakistani court extended their detention for another ten days. Authorities said the group had mentioned a Pakistani nuclear power plant in Punjab Province in their e-mail account. They also found maps of a Pakistani air force base in Sargodha and sensitive installations at Chashma Barrage nearby. The area includes a major water reservoir and Chinese-installed power plants. On December 31, 2009, Pakistani police said they would ask a court to charge the five and would seek life sentences. They were scheduled for a January 4, 2010, court appearance in Sargodha.

At the January 4, 2010, hearing of the five Americans, a Pakistani court gave the prosecution two weeks to prepare charges. The five northern Virginians said that they would fight terrorism charges. While they claimed to be jihadists, they said they were not planning terrorist attacks. The next hearing was set for January 18.

On March 17, 2010, Pakistani authorities charged the five with five counts, three of which carry a life term. Prosecutors said they were planning to attack a Pakistani nuclear plant and an air base, targets in Afghanistan, and “territories of the United States.” The specific charges included planning to wage war against powers in alliance with Pakistan, planning to commit terrorist acts in the territories of Afghanistan and the United States, and contributing money to banned organizations. Evidentiary hearings were scheduled for March 31, 2010.

The trial opened on March 31, 2010, with the defense saying the government had fabricated the evidence. The prosecution said that the five communicated via shared e-mail account ramadanhaji99@yahoo.com. Defense attorney Hassan Katchela said he would present exculpatory evidence on June 9; the prosecution had rested on May 14.

On June 24, 2010, a Pakistani court convicted the five on charges of criminal conspiracy and funding a banned terrorist organization and sentenced them to ten years in prison. They were each fined $820. Defense attorney Hassan Katchela said he would appeal. The government also planned to appeal the sentences, hoping for twenty years.

December 8, 2009—Pakistan—Two U.S. Predator missiles hit a white car being driven to the Afghanistan border, killing Saleh al-Somali, a senior al Qaeda operations planner who ran the group’s attacks outside the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and another Arab man near Miran Shah in North Waziristan Province. The Washington Post reported that he was believed to have plotted attacks against the United States and Europe.

December 8, 2009—Iraq—The Islamic State of Iraq, also known as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), claimed credit for setting off four bombs around 10:00 a.m. near education facilities, judicial complexes, and other targets in Baghdad that killed 127 and wounded more than 500. The group said it had hit “bastions of evil and dens of apostates.” The group claimed it was “determined to uproot the pillars of this government” and “the list of targets has no end.” The government blamed remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and AQI. One of the bombs was set against the Rafaidyan Bank that was used as the temporary headquarters of the Finance Ministry, which was destroyed in August 2009. A small blue pickup truck was driven into an alley near the building, after which it was detonated. Another bomb hit the Judicial Institute, which trains judges. Another went off in the Karkh district courthouse’s parking lot, after an attacker drove through a checkpoint. The courthouse abuts a fine arts academy near a children’s cultural center. Another bomb went off in the Dora neighborhood near a technical institute.

December 9, 2009—Thailand—Five bombs went off before the landing of a helicopter carrying Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva during a joint visit to the border town of Bukit Ta to open the Thai-Malay Friendship Bridge over the Sunai Lukok River. Among the wounded were four soldiers, two Marines, five police officers, and three local defense officers, who were trying to remove booby-trapped banners with separatist slogans. Four bombs went off in Yala; another went off in nearby Narathiwat Province. 09120901

December 11, 2009—Qatar—Adam Gadahn, the U.S.-born al Qaeda spokesman, released an English-language video on Islamist Web sites in which he said that the United States and Pakistan were responsible for a recent wave of bombings that had been attributed to al Qaeda–linked groups. He claimed al Qaeda “condemned and continue to condemn” all attacks by Western powers or “secular political forces.” He added, “We express our condolences to the families of the Muslim men, women, and children killed in these criminal acts and we ask Allah to have mercy on those killed and accept them as shohadaa (martyrs)…. We also express the same in regard to the unintended Muslim victims of the mujahideen’s operations against the crusaders and their allies and puppets, and to the countless faceless and nameless Muslim victims of the murderous crusades” in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s Waziristan regions, and Swat Valley, and elsewhere. He warned against assisting the United States in the newly-announced troop surge, saying,

Those who have made the foolish decision to stand with America and its allies in their losing war against Islam … you have not only betrayed Islam and Muslims and left the fold of faith, but you have also caused the destabilization of nations and the displacement … of thousands of weak and oppressed people…. The blood of countless Muslims is on your hands, and the security and very future of the countries you claim to defend and serve has been placed in jeopardy because your external enemies are taking advantage of your heedlessness as you fight and kill your fellow countrymen for American dollars.

December 15, 2009—Pakistan—A car bomb killed twenty-two people (seventeen men, three women, and two children) and injured sixty, three critically, at a market in Dera Ghazi Khan. The terrorist set off the explosives in front of the home of former provincial governor Sardar Zulfiqar Muhammad Khosa, who is now the senior advisor to the chief minister of Punjab. Twenty shops were destroyed.

December 15, 2009—Afghanistan—In mid-morning, a car bomb killed eight people in Kabul’s upscale Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood. It was apparently targeted against former vice president Ahmed Zia Massoud, brother of the late commander of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated by al Qaeda two days before 9/11. The bomb went off outside the former VP’s residence, killing two guards and four female civilians, and injuring dozens. The Heetal Hotel, popular among Westerners, was also damaged.

December 15, 2009—Afghanistan—A bomb killed five Afghans and a Nepalese man at the Paktia office of a contractor working on U.S. development projects. 09121501

December 15, 2009—Afghanistan—A facility of the United States firm DAI was bombed in Gardez, killing five Afghan security guards. 09121502

December 15, 2009—Ecuador—The government released its 131-page Angostura report, which indicated that Gustavo Larrea, who served as Interior and Security Minister under President Rafael Correa, had direct links with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The report said former Deputy Interior Minister Jose Ignacio Chauvin and television journalist and Alianza Pais legislator Maria Augusta Calle also were tied to FARC. The report said that retired general and former ambassador to Venezuela Rene Vargas Pazzos rented a farm west of Quito to the FARC, which used it to refine cocaine.

December 16, 2009—Ghana/United States—U.S. Drug Enforcement agents and Ghanaian authorities arrested three French-speaking Malian men in their 30s believed to be running cocaine to finance al Qaeda. They were sent to New York on December 16, charged with smuggling drugs through the Sahara to Spain to raise money for al Qaeda, al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). U.S. Magistrate Jude James C. Francis, IV, in New York ordered them held without bail after they did not enter pleas to charges of narcoterrorism conspiracy and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists by moving hundreds of kilograms of cocaine. Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure, and Idriss Abelrahman were believed to be members of AQIM. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) used informants posing as supporters of FARC. In August 2009, DEA started the sting operation. In September, a French-speaking DEA informant posed as “a Lebanese radical committed to opposing the interests of the United States, Israel, and, more broadly, the West and its ideals,” according to court papers. He met Issa in Ghana, saying that FARC wanted to securely smuggle drugs through western and northern Africa to Europe. The suspects said their transportation protection fee was 3,000 Euros (circa $4,200) per kilogram. The charge sheet noted that “Issa confirmed that the protection would come from al-Qaeda and the people that would protect the load would be very well armed.” Issa was represented by attorney Julia Gatto. They faced life in prison.

The court filing said Toure served as the business leader of an organization that worked closely with AQIM. Per the government affidavit, “Toure stated that he has worked with al Qaeda to transport and deliver between one and two tons of hashish to Tunisia and that his organization and al Qaeda have collaborated in the human smuggling of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indian subjects into Spain.” In taped conversations, Toure mentioned kidnap attempts against Europeans and obtaining foreign visas. Abelrahman allegedly led a militia of eleven armed men who provided security for the drug shipments. He confided anti–U.S. sentiments to the DEA’s informants. Issa was alleged to be a fixer for a criminal ring operating in Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Mali. Toure and Abelrahman met the DEA informants in November in Ghana, claiming to be “kings” of the desert and “warriors of God.” DEA said Toure told an undercover informant one route would be through Algeria and Morocco; another would be through Algeria to Libya.

December 17, 2009—Yemen—Security forces raided three terrorist safe houses in Sana’a and Abyan Province, killing thirty-four terrorists and arresting seventeen others with ties to al Qaeda. ABC News claimed two U.S. Predator cruise missiles had been used in the raids. Among the dead was Mohammed Saleh al-Kazemi, a senior al Qaeda figure in Yemen, and Hani Abdo Shaalan, a Yemeni who was released from Guantanamo Bay in June 2007. The 30-year-old was among four al Qaeda members killed in a December 17, 2009, raid by Yemeni authorities north of Sana’a. He was planning to bomb the U.K. Embassy and other Western sites. He had traveled to Afghanistan via Pakistan in July 2001. He became a chef’s assistant at a Taliban camp and was at Tora Bora during the U.S. air campaign. He was captured by Pakistani forces near the Afghanistan border.

December 17, 2009—Qatar—One of the four wives of al Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, Omaima Hassan, published a statement on Islamist Web sites, her first. Her seven-page screed called on “Muslim sisters” to assist with supporting jihad, which she believes is “an obligation for all Muslims, men and women, but the way of fighting is not easy for women. Our main role—that I ask God to accept from us—is to preserve the mujahideen in their sons, and homes, and boost their confidence, and to help them raise their children in the best way.” But women can also become suicide bombers who conduct “martyrdom missions.” Women should continue to wear Muslim head coverings (hijabs) and ignore the Western media.

Meanwhile, As-Sahab released Ayman al-Zawahiri’s sixty-five-page The Morning and the Lantern, a critique of the Pakistani government.

December 18, 2009—Pakistan—A suicide attacker set off explosives outside a mosque frequented by police in the Lower Dir region after Friday prayers, killing ten people and wounding twenty-five. No group claimed credit, although the Pakistani Taliban was suspected.

December 18, 2009—Poland—Far-right terrorists were linked with the theft of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Sets You Free”) sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, now a museum. A week later, Polish police found the sign, which had been cut into three pieces, and arrested five men, initially described as “ordinary criminals.” They had dropped the “I” in “Frei,” leading to their capture. Aftonbladet reported that the group had been commissioned by Swedish neo–Nazis who would sell the sign to a Nazi memorabilia collector, then use the money to finance terrorist attacks in Sweden, including bombings of the Riksdagen (Stockholm’s parliament building), as well as the foreign ministry and the home of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. The neo–Nazis reportedly had Russian weapons, explosives, and machine guns and a five-man assault team. On January 8, 2010, Anders Högström, founder of Sweden’s anti-immigrant National Socialist Front in 1994, claimed that he organized the theft for an unnamed collector who was willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. On January 3, the British Daily Mirror said it was a rich Briton. But after finding out about the plot, Högström claimed he instead informed police. Högström left the far-right movement in 1999. Krakow police said they were already arresting the thieves when the anonymous phone call was received. Polish prosecutors said they wanted to question three Swedish residents. Authorities said the leader of the gang, Marcin A, had worked at Högström’s family estate in southern Sweden. On March 18, 2010, a Warsaw court convicted three men—two of them brothers—of the theft and sentenced them to eighteen to thirty months. 09121801

December 19, 2009—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said one of its boats had attacked a major pipeline west of Port Harcourt belonging to either Chevron or Royal Dutch Shell. Shell said it had no reports of such an attack. The group said the October 25 cease-fire was void for the next thirty days. 09121901

December 21, 2009—Colombia—The Teofilio Forero unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was believed responsible for the kidnap and murder of Luis Francisco Cuellar Carvajal, governor of the department of Caqueta, Colombia, who was kidnapped from his home at 10:00 p.m. Colombian troops found his bloody body, his throat slit, the next day, on his sixty-ninth birthday. One of his bodyguards was killed during the kidnapping, the fifth time Cuellar had been kidnapped. Cuellar was kidnapped by eight to ten men in military uniforms who drove a pickup to his home as Cuellar was settling into bed around 10:15 p.m. After killing the guard, they opened the front door using explosives. They then drove the hostage to the mountains bordering Florencia, the local capital. After President Uribe ordered the military to find the kidnappers, the terrorists killed Cuellar. In the previous kidnappings, Cuellar had been released after payment of a ransom.

December 24, 2009—Yemen—Yemeni and U.S. forces attacked a meeting of senior al Qaeda operatives, who might have included Anwar al-Aulaqi, who was in touch with the gunman responsible for the Fort Hood shootings on November 5, 2009, and apparently was in touch with would-be Christmas 2009 airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Authorities suggested that thirty militants were killed, including al-Aulaqi. Also killed were two al Qaeda leaders—Nasser al-Wuhayshi, who had been Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary and ran al Qaeda’s operations on the Arabic Peninsula; and his deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi who had been released from Guantanamo Bay military prison. Authorities said it would take days to identify the dead and wounded. Al-Aulaqi’s house in Shabwa Province was demolished in the attack. A Yemeni journalist, Abdul Elah Hider al-Shaya, said he had talked on the phone with al-Aulaqi after the attack.

December 24, 2009—West Bank—Gunmen shot to death Rabbi Meir Hai, 45, a teacher and father of seven, as he drove near his home in the Shavei Shomron settlement. On December 26, the Israeli Defense Forces killed six Palestinians, including three in Nablus believed to have been involved in the attack. Police said the trio was involved with the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade. One of them, Annan Sleiman Moustafa Tsubakh, 36, was hiding in a crawlspace in his house with two assault rifles, two handguns, and ammunition. The other three were crawling along the border wall planning an attack.

December 25, 2009—Netherlands/United States—Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, 23, tried to light a powdery substance in seat 19A on Northwest Airlines flight 253, an Airbus 330 that originated in Amsterdam that was about to land in Detroit. Two people spotted him and a third—Jasper Schuringa, a filmmaker from Amsterdam—and the flight attendants jumped him after the device ignited. A faulty detonator stymied the explosion. He was treated for second and third degree burns on his thighs at the burn unit of the University of Michigan Medical Center. Schuringa also was hospitalized after the attack.

The Nigerian told authorities he wanted to set off a bomb over the United States. He tried to set off the explosives with a syringe sewn into his underwear; the media immediately labeled him the Underwear Bomber. The explosives were taped to his leg. He said he had been equipped and trained by an al Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen and that there were “others like him” in Yemen.

He had left Lagos, Nigeria, the previous day on a KLM flight to Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport and boarded the flight in Amsterdam, having not undergone secondary screening. A Delta Airlines (Northwest and Delta have merged) official initially said a passenger had set off firecrackers on the plane at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, causing minor injuries among the 278 passengers. Initial reports differed as to whether the device was an incendiary or an explosive.

The next day, Scotland Yard searched an apartment block at University College, London, where a person named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a mechanical engineering student from September 2005 to June 2008.

While not on the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) no-fly list or FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), Abdulmutallab is in the National Counterterrorism Center’s TIDE (Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment) records of terrorist suspects. His father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a prominent retired Nigerian bank executive, had warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria on November 19 about his son’s “radicalization,” prompting his addition in the terrorism database; CNN claimed that the father had talked to someone at CIA. The U.S. Embassy in London had issued the son a visa in 2008.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQIM) said it was retaliating for U.S. support to Yemeni antiterrorist efforts. It said Abdulmutallab had “penetrated all modern and sophisticated technology and devices and security barriers in airports of the world, with courage and bravery, without fearing death and with seeking the help of Allah.”

Abdulmutallab told investigators that he had the personal blessing for the operation of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a Yemen-based cleric with al Qaeda ties who had been in contact with Nidal Hasan, who on November 5, 2009, shot to death thirteen people at Fort Hood. Some reports said that Abdulmutallab and al-Aulaqi had been in the same Yemeni prayer room.

He was the youngest of sixteen children of his father and the son of the second of his father’s two wives. He grew up in Kaduna, Nigeria. He obtained an engineering degree from City University in London. He later studied for an advanced business degree in Dubai. He father agreed to let him go to Yemen in July to study Arabic. In August he told his family that he had dropped out but would stay in Yemen for unknown reasons. Days later he texted to say that he was cutting all ties with his family. The Yemeni government verified that he was in the country from early August to early December and had a visa to study at the Sana’a Institute for the Arabic Language. He paid cash for the ticket on the December 24 KLM flight to Amsterdam at the KLM office in Accra, Ghana, on December 16, 2009. Nigerian authorities said he snuck into the country on December 24.

Investigators said he brought 80 grams of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a powerful plastic explosive, on board the flight. The material was enough to punch a hole in the side of the plane if it had exploded.

He was charged in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan with attempting to destroy an aircraft and with placing a destructive device on board a plane. Each count carries a twenty-year sentence. He was jailed in Milan, Michigan, 45 miles south of Detroit, until a bond hearing. He was assigned public defender Miriam Siefer. He was scheduled to appear in a federal court in Michigan on January 8, 2010.

Authorities determined that an individual named Farouk1986 (perhaps Abdulmutallab) had posted to an Internet forum, www.gawaher.com, three hundred messages from 2005 to 2007 (when he was in a British boarding school in Togo), including one in January 2005 that lamented that he “never found a true Muslim friend…. I have no one to speak too [sic]…. No one to consult, no one to support me, and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems.” He indicated that he had been in the United States (he might have traveled to Washington in July 2004 and Houston in August 2008.). He had considered studying at Stanford, UC–Berkeley, or CalTech, but he scored only 1200 on the SAT. He logged 287 Facebook friends. He frequently sought the counsel of others on how to live an upstanding Muslim lifestyle.

U.K. Home Secretary Alan Johnson said Abdulmutallab had been watchlisted in May 2009 and banned from entering the United Kingdom.

On January 6, 2010, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was charged with six federal counts, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a life sentence; attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States; willful attempt to destroy and wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States; willfully placing a destructive device in, upon, and in proximity to an aircraft, within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States; and two counts of possession of a firearm or destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence. Authorities said he had sewn into his underwear the high explosives Pentaerythritol (PETN), Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), and other ingredients. Judge Nancy Edmunds was assigned to the case in the Eastern District of Michigan.

On January 6, 2010, a federal grand jury indicted Abdulmutallab on six counts, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, attempted murder, willful attempt to destroy or wreck an aircraft, and use of a firearm in a crime of violence. He faced life in prison.

Pundits noted that evidence that should have been considered included that he had purchased a one-way ticket with cash and had no luggage, that he was in touch with radical Imam al-Aulaqi, and that National Security Agency had a report indicating that AQIM was planning a holiday attack using a Nigerian named Umar Farouk. Other reports disputed the no-luggage, no-cash story.

In a one-minute audiotape released on January 24, 2010, Osama bin Laden said he endorsed the Christmas 2009 attempt to blow up a Northwest flight.

National Public Radio reported on January 25, 2010, that Abdulmutallab had contacts with two of the men involved in terrorist plots in the United Kingdom. Waheed Zaman was involved in the 2006 plot to set off liquid bombs on seven passenger planes en route to the United States and Canada. They might have met via programs sponsored by the Islamic Student Society at the London Metropolitan University; Zaman was president of the society. Abdulmutallab was president of University College London’s Islamic Society in 2007. Abdulmutallab was also linked to a man arrested in 2007 in a plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier.

On January 21, 2010, Malaysia arrested four Syrians, two Nigerians, two Malaysians, a Yemeni, and a Jordanian tied to an international terrorist network with ties to Abdulmutallab. They were among the fifty people arrested while attending a weekly Islamic class with Aiman al-Dakkak, a Syrian university lecturer in his 50s, at a home near Kuala Lumpur. Al-Dakkak and his family had lived in Malaysia since 2003, when he came to Malaysia to pursue a second doctorate in Islamic studies. His son, Mohamed Hozifa, in his 20s, was among the ten detainees. Some were students at a Malaysian university in Gombak. The others were freed. Among them was Muhamad Yunus Zainal Abidin.

On April 26, 2010, ABC World News reported that a newly-discovered video produced by AQIM showed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab training with al Qaeda in Yemen, firing weapons at such targets as a Jewish star, a U.K. flag, and the letters UN, and speaking in Arabic about the upcoming attack. He said in the video, “The enemy is in your lands with their armies, the Jews and the Christians and their agents…. God said if you do not fight back, He will punish you and replace you.”

National Counterterrorism Center director Michael E. Leiter told the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Forum on June 30, 2010, that Anwar al-Aulaqi “had a direct operational role” in the bombing attempt. Another U.S. official said al-Aulaqi was the link between the bomber and his trainers.

On September 13, 2010, Abdulmutallab fired his lawyers and suggested he wanted to plead guilty to some of the charges.

On December 15, 2010, federal prosecutors in Detroit added the charges of conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and possession of an explosive device in furtherance of crime of violence. Abdulmutallab faced a life sentence. A new arraignment was scheduled for December 16 in federal court in Detroit. Initial charges included attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and willful attempt to destroy and wreck an aircraft within the jurisdiction of the United States, but did not specifically say “terrorism.” On January 25, 2011, U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds set a trial date of October 4, 2011. He was represented by attorney Anthony Chambers.

On February 10, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice released a memo indicating that Anwar al-Aulaqi personally directed the underwear bomber plot of December 25, 2009.

On February 16, 2012, Abdulmutallab was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Detroit to life in prison without possibility of parole. 09122501

December 27, 2009—Pakistan—Two suicide bombers killed ten people and wounded scores of others. One bomb went off at the home of Sarfaraz Khan, a local official in the Kurram area of a semiautonomous tribal region, killing him, his 13-year-old son, three young nephews, and possibly his wife. A second bomb went off when a suicide bomber set off his explosives outside a prayer hall in Muzzaffarabad, Kashmir, during Ashura, killing eleven and injuring more than eighty.

December 28, 2009—Pakistan—A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber killed forty-four people and injured another sixty among the thousands of Shi’ites who were commemorating Ashura via a procession along M. A. Jinnah Road in Karachi. An earlier blast in the northeast killed seven others.

December 28, 2009—Spain—Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba warned that Basque Nation and Liberty could be planning a major attack or a high-profile kidnapping. Madrid raised the nationwide terrorism alert to level two. The highest level is four, when the military would be deployed against an imminent threat.

December 29, 2009—Yemen—An al Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula Web site called on all Muslims to join the “mast [intentional pun] media campaign” by providing information helpful in attacking U.S. naval interests, including vessels at sea, how crews are serviced by other nations, naval nuclear weapons, and navy personnel and their families. “The lions of al Qaeda flirted with the American Navy several years ago when they targeted the destroyed Cole! Now, with the help of God, every American naval vessel in the seas and oceans: aircraft carriers, submarines, and all of its war machines within range of al Qaeda—will be destroyed, God willing.”

December 30, 2009—Afghanistan—A Taliban terrorist wearing an explosives belt under his clothes killed seven American civilians and a Jordanian (a separate report said he was an Afghan civilian) and wounded eight people, including six Americans, at the heavily fortified military Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost Province. Reports differed as to whether the terrorist walked into the base dining room or gym.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid the bomber was an Afghan National Army soldier wearing a military uniform. ABCNews.com reported on January 2, 2010, that the bomber was a Pakistani member of the Wazir tribe who had visited the facility several times. Initial reports said he would be driven by Arghawan, the base Afghan security director, two hours from the Ghulam Khan border crossing to the base. Because he was with Arghawan, he was not searched. Arghawan also died in the explosion. ABC News claimed that the Taliban in Pakistan had told the Associated Press that the informant had offered to become a double agent for them and that the bombing was in revenge for drone attacks against senior Taliban leaders. The news service speculated that the perpetrators belonged to the Taliban faction led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose group also kidnapped Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl in late June 2009.

The White House announced on December 31, 2009, that President Barack Obama sent a message to the Agency workforce, in which he said,

I write to mark a sad occasion in the history of the CIA and our country. Yesterday, seven Americans in Afghanistan gave their lives in service to their country. Michelle and I have their families, friends, and colleagues in our thoughts and prayers. These brave Americans were part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for our way of life. The United States would not be able to maintain the freedom and security that we cherish without decades of service from the dedicated men and women of the CIA. You have helped us understand the world as it is, and taken great risks to protect our country. You have served in the shadows, and your sacrifices have sometimes been unknown to your fellow citizens, your friends, and even your families. In recent years, the CIA has been tested as never before. Since our country was attacked on September 11, 2001, you have served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century. Because of your service, plots have been disrupted, American lives have been saved, and our Allies and partners have been more secure. Your triumphs and even your names may be unknown to your fellow Americans, but your service is deeply appreciated. Indeed, I know firsthand the excellent quality of your work because I rely on it every day. The men and women who gave their lives in Afghanistan did their duty with courage, honor and excellence, and we must draw strength from the example of their sacrifice. They will take their place on the Memorial Wall at Langley alongside so many other heroes who gave their lives on behalf of their country. And they will live on in the hearts of those who loved them, and in the freedom that they gave their lives to defend. May God bless the memory of those we lost, and may God bless the United States of America.

CIA.gov reported the same day that CIA Director Leon Panetta said,

Those who fell yesterday were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism. We owe them our deepest gratitude, and we pledge to them and their families that we will never cease fighting for the cause to which they dedicated their lives—a safer America. Families have been our Agency’s first priority. Before sharing this information with anyone else, we wanted to be in contact with each of them. This is the most difficult news to bear under any circumstances, but that it comes during the holidays makes it even harder. In coming days and weeks, we will comfort their loved ones as a family. They are in our thoughts and prayers—now and always…. Yesterday’s tragedy reminds us that the men and women of the CIA put their lives at risk every day to protect this nation. Throughout our history, the reality is that those who make a real difference often face real danger.

The Web site also said that “Director Panetta credited U.S. military doctors and nurses with saving the lives of those wounded in the attack. In honor and memory of the dead, he requested that the flags at CIA Headquarters be flown at half-staff.”

On January 7, 2010, Mustafa Abu Yazid, al Qaeda’s commander of operations in Afghanistan and its number 3 leader, claimed credit via Islamist Web sites, saying it was avenging the deaths of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban in Pakistan who was killed in a missile strike last August, and al Qaeda operatives Saleh al-Somali and Abdullah al-Libi.

Al-Jazeera reported that the bomber was Jordanian Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor who became a double agent. Al-Balawi came from the same hometown as the deceased leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Jordanians had believed that he had been rehabilitated and were using him to find Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to CNN. Al Qaeda named him as Hamam Khalil Mohammed Abu Malal, alias Abu Dujana Khorasani. It said he was a well-known Islamist author and a preacher on jihadi Web sites. “May God accept him as a martyr who was able to infiltrate the Americans’ forts…. We ask God to bless the people who follow your path, Abu Dujana. Let them know that your brothers are following your path and they will not have peace of mind until they slaughter the Americans and let the Islamic nation be proud for having men like you among its sons.”

Several groups have claimed responsibility for the attack, including the Taliban in Afghanistan. Hakimullah Mehsud, Pakistani Taliban chief, also said in an e-mail that his group was avenging Baitullah Mehsud’s killing. He was believed to have died from his wounds in a U.S. missile strike on January 17, 2010.

On January 2, 2010, AOL.com ran video showing the bomber’s video will. The suicide bomber was wearing a military uniform and holding a gun.

The Jordanian and the American intelligence services offered me millions of dollars to work with them and to spy on mujahideen [“holy warriors”] here, but hamd’allah [“thanks be to God”] I came to the mujahideen and I told them everything. We arranged together this attack. What we strive for cannot be exchanged for all the wealth in the world. This attack will be the first of the revenge operations against the Americans…. We say that we will never forget the blood of our Emir Beitullah Mehsud, God’s mercy on him. To retaliate for his death in the United States and outside the United States will remain an obligation on all emigrants who were harbored by Beitullah Mehsud…. God’s combatant never exposes his religion to blackmail and never renounces it, even if he is offered the sun in one hand and the moon in the other.

He had posted on September 2009 on an al Qaeda Web site, “If [a Muslim] dies in the cause of Allah, he will grant his words glory that will be permanent marks on the path to guide to jihad, with permission from Allah. If love of jihad enters a man’s heart, it will not leave him even if he wants to do so. What he sees of luxurious palaces will remind him of positions of the martyrs in the higher heaven.”

Mustafa Abul-Yazid, leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the group’s overall number 3, posted to a Web site on January 7, 2010, that bomber Humma Khalil Mohammed Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, 36, a doctor, “detonated his explosive belt, concealed from the eyes of those who do not believe in the Hereafter, in a gathering of American and Jordanian intelligence men…. He avenged our martyrs, and as he wrote in his final testament, may God have mercy on him: Taking revenge for the leader the Amir Beitullah Mehsud and the leaders Abu Saleh al-Somali and Abdallah Said al-Libi and their brothers, may God have mercy on them.” Al-Yazid said that the bomber wrote in his will that he was avenging “our righteous martyrs.” He said this was a “successful epic” and that the group would fight the United States “until they inflict upon them the greatest and most astonishing deaths and wounds…. May God accept him as a martyr who was able to infiltrate the Americans’ forts. We ask God to bless the people who follow your path, Abu Dujana. Let them know that your brothers are following your path and they will not have peace of mind until they slaughter the Americans and let the Islamic nation be proud for having men like you among its sons.”

The New York Times reported on January 2 that the Afghan Taliban claimed that the bomber was a disillusioned Afghan National Army soldier, which the Afghan Defense Ministry denied. WSJ.com reported on January 3 that a senior Afghan Taliban leader said, “We attacked this base because the team there was organizing drone strikes in Loya Paktia and surrounding area. We attacked on that particular day because we knew the woman who was leading the team [was there].” The Los Angeles Times on January 9 said Balawi was born in Kuwait and arrested in Jordan in 2009 attempting to enter the Gaza Strip as part of a medical relief team.

The Pakistani Taliban also claimed credit. The press suggested involvement of the Haqqani network, a Taliban splinter.

Forward Operating Base Chapman was named for 1st Special Forces Group Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Chapman of Puyallup, who died on January 4, 2002, the first American soldier killed in the war.

Humma Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, from Zarqa, Jordan, had frequently posted on jihadi Web sites, including the password-protected al-Hisba site, where he used the name Abu Dujana al-Khurasani, according to the Wall Street Journal on January 5. He was recruited into al Qaeda. Sometime in 2008 or 2009, he approached Jordanian intelligence (or was arrested and interrogated regarding his support for extremists) and was recruited as a double agent to report on the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to the Washington Times. Other press reports said that he approached the Jordanian service and offered his services.

CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in the Washington Post on January 10, 2010, that the bomber was about to be searched by security officers when he set off his bomb outside a gym on the compound. The Los Angeles Times reported on January 9 that most of the CIA officers were 50 feet away but that the blast was particularly powerful and the device included shrapnel.

On January 6, the Associated Press and Newsweek Turkiye reported that Defne Bayrak, 31, Turkish journalist wife of the bomber, phoned Turkish media to say that her husband saw the United States as an adversary, as did she. (Reuters on January 7 reported that she was the author of Osama bin Laden: Che Guevara of the East.) The Istanbul-based Bayrak said her husband planned to become a surgeon in Turkey. She said he was a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian. They met in an Internet chat room and married during his last year of medical school in 2001. They had two little girls while he worked in Jordanian hospitals. He was one of a group of Jordanian doctors who offered to aid Hamas in Gaza and besieged Palestinians during the Israeli assault on Hamas. He also had contacts with the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. Newsweek.com reported on January 4 that he had been an administrator for the al-Hesbah Forum, a major al Qaeda Web site. He had said he wanted to die in a jihad against Israel and the United States, according to Mohammed Yousef, a high school classmate in Jordan. The Jordanian GID arrested him in March (or January) 2009 following his Internet postings as Abu Dujana al-Khurasani. He was jailed for three days, then left Jordan, claiming he was going to study surgery in Pakistan. Bayrak said that did not work out, and he got another job. He apparently then traveled to Afghanistan. Bayrak took their two daughters from Jordan to Istanbul in October 2009. On January 1, 2010, she received an anonymous call from a person she believed was in Pakistan who told her, “Your husband did this for Allah. We will broadcast a video of his celebrated martyrdom on the Web and you will watch him.”

The video appeared soon afterward in which al-Balawi said, “We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud. We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside.”

MSNBC.com reported on January 4 that al-Balawi told the Vanguards of Khurasan, an al Qaeda Web site,

When you ponder the verses and hadiths that speak about jihad and its graciousness, and then you let your imagination run wild to fly with what Allah has prepared for martyrs, your life becomes cheap for its purpose, and the extravagant houses and expensive cars and all the decoration of life becomes very distasteful in your eyes…. They say “there’s love that kills.” And I only see that as truthful in the love for jihad, as this love is either going to kill you in repentance should you choose to sit away from jihad, or will kill you as a martyr for the cause of Allah if you choose to go to jihad, and the human must choose between these two deaths.

The Washington Post on January 5 expanded on the story, saying he had told the Vanguards that,

I have had a predisposition for love of jihad and martyrdom since I was little. If love of jihad enters a man’s heart, it will not leave him even if he wants to do so…. If the name of a martyr they knew is mentioned in front of them, you find that blood has frozen in their veins as though it were a dew drop in the mouth of a beautiful flower. You find that the weeping in their straying looks is more eloquent than screams.

The Associated Press reported on January 4 that he had posted on a jihadi Web site, “No words are more eloquent than those proven by acts, so that if a Muslim survives, he will be one who proves his words with acts. If he dies in the cause of Allah, he will grant his words glory that will be permanent marks on the path to guide to jihad, with permission from Allah.”

On January 7, the Associated Press noted that an Islamic Web site ran an article Abu Dujana wrote on December 29, 2008, in which he commented on seeing a photo of two Islamic women lying dead in a pool of blood. “Anyone who sees such painful picture and does not rush to fight should consider his manhood and masculinity dead. I have never wished to be in Gaza, but now I wish to be a bomb fired by the monotheists or a car bomb that takes the lives of the biggest number of Jews to hell.”

On January 8, the New York Times reported that muslm.net ran a blog by Abu Dujana al-Khorasani with the headline, “When Will My Words Drink My Blood?” He wrote, “My words will die if I do not save them with my blood. My articles will be against me if I don’t prove to them that I am not a hypocrite. One has to die to make the other live. I wish I could be the one to die.”

A Pakistani television network on January 9 also ran a video clip of him meeting with Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, saying, “The emigrant for the sake of God will not put his religion on the bargaining table and will not sell his religion even if they put the sun in his right hand and the moon on his left.” Mehsud had claimed credit for the attack on behalf of Tehrak-e-Taliban Pakistani, according to CNN on January 4.

PBS.com and ABCNews.com reported on January 5, 2010, that the dead included:

• Harold Brown, Jr., 37, a former Navy SEAL originally from Massachusetts, who left behind a wife and three children, aged 12, 10, and 2. He had served in the army and his family said he had worked for the State Department. He had also worked for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). His obituary in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette on January 9 noted that he was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated from Nashoba Regional High School in 1990. He earned an associate of arts degree in Liberal Arts from Mt. Wachusett Community College, a bachelor of arts degree in political science from George Washington University, and a master of business administration from the University of Phoenix. He served with the U.S. Army in Bosnia, the Gulf War, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was a runner and fitness enthusiast who was a member of the Knights of Columbus.

• Scott Roberson, 39, a security officer from Ohio who left behind an 8-months-pregnant wife, Molly. Their daughter will be named Piper. The former Navy SEAL had been an undercover narcotics officer for the Atlanta police department. Cleveland.com reported on January 2 that he earned a degree in criminology from Florida State University and had been a contractor with the UN security forces in Kosovo. He later protected high-risk officials in Iraq. His sister told 11Alive.com on January 2 that he was a member of the Iron Pigs—a national motorcycle club for law enforcement and firefighters—and a founding member of the Metro Atlanta Police Emerald Society.

Newsweek.com and the Associated Press reported on January 6 that two of the dead were employees of Xe, formerly Blackwater:

• Jeremy Wise, 35, a former Navy SEAL from Virginia Beach, Virginia.

• Dane Clark Paresi, 46, a Portland, Washington, native and retired U.S. Army master sergeant who lived in DuPont, near Fort Lewis. KATU.com reported that Paresi grew up on Mount Scott, graduated from Portland’s Marshall High School in 1982, and began army basic training the next day. He served twenty-seven years in the army, deploying with Special Forces to war zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. He earned the Bronze Star, the National Defense Service Medal with Bronze Star, and the Meritorious Service Medal, along with Bronze Service Stars for tours in Mauritania, the Philippines, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Southeast Asia, Kenya, and Afghanistan. He retired from 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis in 2008. He left behind a wife—MindyLou—and two daughters—Alexandra, 24, and Santina, 9—along with his parents and five siblings. He was buried with full military honors at Willamette National Cemetery, a quarter mile from his boyhood home.

Associated Press and FederalNewsRadio.com on January 7 reported that one of the dead was:

• Elizabeth Hanson, 30, who hailed from Rockford in northern Illinois. She was not married or engaged. She graduated from Keith Country Day School in Rockford in 1997. Her class photo included a quotation from novelist Ursula K. LeGuin, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” She attended Colby College in Maine, majoring in Economics and writing a senior thesis entitled Faithless Heathens: Scriptural Economics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. She minored in Russian language and literature, according to the New York Times of January 7.

Daren James LaBonte’s family later decided to report on his death and tell a little about his life but not about the work he was doing:

• LaBonte grew up in Connecticut, playing baseball and football at Brookfield High School. He turned down an offer from the Cleveland Indians to join the army upon his graduation from high school in 1992. He joined the First Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He later graduated from Columbia College of Missouri and earned a master of arts degree in Criminal Justice from Boston University in May 2006. He had worked as a police officer in Libertyville, Illinois, and with the U.S. Marshals before joining the FBI. He worked briefly in the FBI’s New York field office, before leaving in 2006. His daughter, Raina, would turn age 3 in November 2010. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Associated Press and FederalNewsRadio.com on January 7, 2010, reported that one of the wounded was the deputy station chief of Kabul and that the dead Khost base chief was a 45-year-old member of the Alec Station created before 9/11 to track down bin Laden. She left behind three small children.

The Washington Post reported on January 10 that Paresi and Wise were approaching al-Balawi as he exited his car for a security check. Al-Balawi kept his hand in his pocket, and pushed a plunger, detonating the bomb that fired thousands of steel pellets, killing several Americans outside and injuring six CIA officers inside a nearby building.

In a memorial ceremony held on February 5, 2010, in a huge tent at the Quadrangle of CIA Headquarters, President Obama called the dead “American patriots who loved their country and gave their lives to defend it…. There are no words that can ease the ache in your hearts. But to their colleagues and all who served with them—those here today, those still recovering, those watching around the world, I say: Let their sacrifice be a summons. To carry on their work. To complete this mission. To win this war and to keep our country safe.” The Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, added, “They are the heart and soul of this great country. Their devotion to duty is the foundation of our country…. We will carry this fight to the enemy…. Our resolve is unbroken, our energy undiminished and our dedication to each other and to our nation unshakable.” The White House issued the following press release on February 5, 2010:

President Obama and CIA Director Panetta Speak at CIA Memorial Service

The Central Intelligence Agency today held a memorial service at its headquarters for the seven Americans killed in eastern Afghanistan on December 30th. Family members and more than a thousand Agency officers gathered in attendance, along with guests including President Obama and senior officials from the Intelligence Community, the White House, and the Pentagon, as well as members of Congress.

President Obama spoke of the country’s gratitude to the families. “Everything you instilled in them—the virtues of service and decency and duty—were on display that December day. That is what you gave them. That is what you gave to America. And our nation will be forever in your debt.” He told CIA officers that their “seven heroes” were at the vanguard of a mission vital to national security. “Let their sacrifice be a summons. To carry on their work. To complete this mission. To win this war, and to keep our country safe.”

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta paid tribute to the talent and accomplishments of the fallen, telling their loved ones that Agency officers “simply cannot do these jobs-we can’t do these jobs-without the love and support of our families.” He called the seven “genuine patriots” who “lived up to our highest principles,” and pledged that CIA would strive to be worthy of them. Panetta added: “As they worked to protect lives, they sacrificed their own. For this, we honor them-now and always…. We will carry this fight to the enemy. Our resolve is unbroken, our energy undiminished, and our dedication to each other and to our nation, unshakable.”

President Obama gave the following remarks at the memorial for the CIA officers at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia:

America’s intelligence agencies are a community, and the CIA is a family. That is how we gather here today. I speak as a grateful Commander-in-Chief who relies on you. There are members of Congress here who support you. Leaders—Leon Panetta, Steve Kappes—who guide you. And most of all, family, friends and colleagues who love you and grieve with you.

For more than sixty years, the security of our nation has demanded that the work of this agency remain largely unknown. But today, our gratitude as citizens demands that we speak of seven American patriots who loved their country and gave their lives to defend it: [Names redacted.]

They came from different corners of our country—men and women—and each walked their own path to that rugged base in the mountains. Some had come to this work after a lifetime of protecting others—in law enforcement, in the military; one was just a few years out of college.

Some had devoted years, decades, even, to unraveling the dark web of terrorists that threatened us; others, like so many of you, joined these ranks when 9/11 called a new generation to service. Some had spent years on dangerous tours around the globe; others had just arrived in harm’s way.

But there, at the remote outpost, they were bound by a common spirit. They heard their country’s call and answered it. They served in the shadows and took pride in it. They were doing their job and they loved it. They saw the danger and accepted it. They knew that the price of freedom is high and, in an awful instant, they paid that price.

There are no words that can ease the ache in your hearts. But to their colleagues and all who served with them—those here today, those still recovering, those watching around the world—I say: Let their sacrifice be a summons. To carry on their work. To complete this mission. To win this war, and to keep our country safe.

To their parents—it is against the natural order of life for parents to lay their children to rest. Yet these weeks of solemn tribute have revealed for all to see—that you raised remarkable sons and daughters. Everything you instilled in them—the virtues of service and decency and duty—were on display that December day. That is what you gave them. That is what you gave to America. And our nation will be forever in your debt.

To the spouses—your husbands and wives raised their hand and took an oath to protect and defend the country that they loved. They fulfilled that oath with their life. But they also took your hand and made a vow to you. And that bond of love endures, from this world to the next. Amidst grief that is sometimes unbearable, may you find some comfort in our vow to you—that this agency, and this country, will stand with you and support you always.

And to the beautiful children—I know that this must be so hard and confusing, but please always remember this. It wasn’t always easy for your mom or dad to leave home. But they went to another country to defend our country. And they gave their lives to protect yours. And as you grow, the best way to keep their memory alive and the highest tribute you can pay to them is to live as they lived, with honor and dignity and integrity.

They served in secrecy, but today every American can see their legacy. For the record of their service—and of this generation of intelligence professionals—is written all around us. It’s written in the extremists who no longer threaten our country—because you eliminated them. It’s written in the attacks that never occurred—because you thwarted them. And it’s written in the Americans, across this country and around the world, who are alive today—because you saved them.

And should anyone here ever wonder whether your fellow citizens truly appreciate that service, you need only remember the extraordinary tributes of recent weeks: the thousands of Americans who have sat down at their computers and posted messages to seven heroes they never knew; in the outpouring of generosity to the memorial foundation that will help support these proud families.

And along a funeral procession in Massachusetts, in the freezing cold, mile after mile, friends and total strangers paying their respects, small children holding signs saying, “Thank You.” And a woman holding up a large American flag because, she said simply, “He died for me and my family.”

As a nation, we pledge to be there for you and your families. We need you more than ever. In an ever-changing world where new dangers emerge suddenly, we need you to be one step ahead of nimble adversaries. In this information age, we need you to sift through vast universes of data to find intelligence that can be acted upon swiftly. And in an era of technology and unmanned systems, we still need men and women like these seven—professionals of skill and talent and courage who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect our nation.

Because of them, because of you, a child born in America today is welcomed into a country that is proud and confident, strong and hopeful—just as Molly Roberson welcomed her daughter Piper this week, both of whom join us today. Piper will never know her dad, Scott. But thanks to Molly, she will know what her father stood for—a man who served his country, who did his duty, and who gave his life to keep her safe.

And on some distant day, years from now, when she is grown, if Piper—or any of these children—seeks to understand for themselves, they’ll need only come here—to Langley, through these doors, and stand before that proud Memorial Wall that honors the fallen.

And perhaps they’ll run their fingers over the stars that recall their parent’s service. Perhaps they’ll walk over to that Book of Honor, turn the pages, and see their parent’s names. And at that moment of quiet reflection, they will see what we all know today—that our nation is blessed to have men and women such as these. That we are humbled by their service, that we give thanks for every day that you keep us safe.

May God bless these seven patriots, may he watch over their families. And may God bless the United States of America.

On February 27, 2010, radical Islamist Web sites featured a longer forty-three-minute cut of al-Balawi’s confessor video in Arabic and English versions. It was dated Safar 1431, which includes any date between January 16, 2010, and February 13, 2010. An introduction by As-Sahab said President Obama’s 2009 address in Cairo had deceived “simpletons,” adding “it wasn’t long before these fools woke up to Obama’s crimes, which are no less ugly than the crimes of his predecessor.” Al-Balawi said that he had been targeting Jordanian intelligence. “We planned for something but got a bigger gift—a gift from God—who brought us … a valuable prey: Americans, and from the CIA. That’s when I became certain that the best way to teach Jordanian intelligence and the CIA a lesson is with the martyrdom belt…. So it wasn’t planned this way. The target was Abu Zaid, but the stupidity of Jordanian intelligence and the stupidity of American intelligence is what has turned it into a valuable prey. It’s a blessing from Allah.” He said, “Look, this is for you. It’s not a watch. It’s a detonator to kill as many as I can, God willing.” He told As-Sahab Media that he tried to join the jihad in Iraq, but then was recruited by the Jordanians. “Actually, Jordanian intelligence—may God send consecutive curses on it—is the one who gave me a large amount of money, it is the one who paid for my ticket, and it is the one who helped me to forge some documents I needed to get a Pakistani visa…. They tried to entice me with money and offered me amounts reaching into the millions of dollars.” He instead used the money to fund the mujahideen terrorists. “So this is a new era for the Mujahideen, God willing, in which the Mujahideen will use intelligence-based tactics and methods which rival or even exceed those of the security apparatuses of the strongest of states, like Jordan and American, with the permission of Allah, Lord of the worlds…. You can only get a maximum number of kills for a minimum number of martyrs and losses in the ranks of the Mujahideen with a martyrdom operation.” He said Jordanian intelligence had helped target al Qaeda and Hizballah leaders. “The Jordanian intelligence apparatus has a record which emboldens them to such behavior, but with Allah’s permission, after this operation, they will never stand on their feet again…. There is no solution to the situation in Jordan other than mobilizing to the land of jihad to learn the arts of war and train in them, then return to Jordan and begin operations.” He said he had tricked the Jordanians, observing, “I cut ties for four months, then came back to them with some videos taken with leaders of the Mujahideen, so that they would think that I was leaking videos and betraying the Mujahideen…. The bait fell in the right spot, and they went head over heels with excitement …[I would] throw in some accurate information which we thought the enemy probably already had knowledge of.”

On March 8, 2010, Hussein al-Yemeni, a senior al Qaeda bomb expert and trainer believed to have been behind the Khost attack, was among more than a dozen people killed in an air strike in Miram Shah, North Waziristan, Pakistan. He was believed to have been an intermediary between al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Taliban, and the Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan, serving as a conduit for funds, messages, and recruits. He was in his late 20s or early 30s. He had been imprisoned in Yemen between 2005 and 2007 and went to Pakistan after his release.

On April 30, 2010, extremist Web sites posted a twenty-nine-minute audio, entitled O Hesitant One, It Is an Obligation, by al-Balawi, in which he said that Islamic countries were “plagued with despotic leaders” who were anti-jihad. “How long will love for jihad to be just a dream, little more than a hobby which you do on your off-time?” He said he had recorded the message on December 29, 2009.

On Memorial Day, May 31, 2010, the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, New York, sent a B-17 bomber to drop flowers into the waters off Manhattan near Ground Zero in memory of the Khost victims. Michael J. Sulick, Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Serice, threw two dozen red roses into the water.

During the CIA’s memorial ceremony, the names of those killed in Khost were publicly identified as chief of base Jennifer Lynne Matthews, 45, of Fredericksburg, buried at Arlington National Cemetery; Daren James LaBonte, 35, of Alexandria; Scott Michael Roberson, 39; Harold E. Brown, Jr., 37; Elizabeth Hanson, 30; and security contractors Jeremy Jason Wise, 35; and Dane Clark Paresi, 46. Twelve new stars were added to the Memorial Wall, bringing the constellation of heroes to 102 stars, 40 of whom remained unidentified to the public.

On August 20, 2010, federal authorities filed sealed criminal charges in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia against Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud for the Khost attack. The charges were unsealed on September 1, 2010. He was charged with conspiracy to murder a U.S. national while outside the United States and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction against a U.S. national while outside the United States.

On October 19, 2010, CIA’s Office of Public Affairs released Director Leon E. Panetta’s statement on the Khowst attack, entitled Lessons from Khowst, to the public:

Last December, our Agency family lost seven courageous and talented colleagues in a terrorist attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khowst, Afghanistan. These dedicated men and women were assigned to CIA’s top priority—disrupting and dismantling al-Qa’ida and its militant allies. That work carries, by its very nature, significant risk. CIA is conducting the most aggressive counterterrorism operations in our history, a mission we are pursuing with a level of determination worthy of our fallen heroes. We will sustain that momentum and, whenever possible, intensify our pursuit. We will continue to fight for a safer America.

Earlier this year, I directed that a task force of seasoned Agency professionals conduct a review of the Khowst attack. The purpose was to examine what happened, what lessons were learned, and what steps should be taken to prevent such incidents in the future. In addition, I asked Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Charlie Allen, a highly accomplished former Agency officer, to conduct an independent study of the Khowst attack and to review the work of the task force. They concurred with its findings. One of CIA’s greatest strengths is our ability to learn from experience, refine our methods, and adapt to the shifting tactics of America’s enemies.

The review is now complete, and I would like to thank those who participated. They did our Agency a great service. It was, to be sure, a difficult task—especially since key insights perished with those we lost. Perfect visibility into all that contributed to the attack is therefore impossible. But based on an exhaustive examination of the available information, we have a firm understanding of what our Agency could have done better. In keeping with past practice, we will provide the Khowst report to the Office of Inspector General.

In highly sensitive, complex counterterrorism operations, our officers must often deal with dangerous people in situations involving a high degree of ambiguity and risk. The task force noted that the Khowst assailant fit the description of someone who could offer us access to some of our most vicious enemies. He had already provided information that was independently verified. The decision to meet him at the Khowst base—with the objective of gaining additional intelligence on high priority terrorist targets—was the product of consultations between Headquarters and the field. He had confirmed access within extremist circles, making a covert relationship with him—if he was acting in good faith—potentially very productive. But he had not rejected his terrorist roots. He was, in fact, a brutal murderer.

Mitigating the risk inherent in intelligence operations, especially the most sensitive ones, is essential to success. In this case, the task force determined that the Khowst assailant was not fully vetted and that sufficient security precautions were not taken. These missteps occurred because of shortcomings across several Agency components in areas including communications, documentation, and management oversight. Coupled with a powerful drive to disrupt al-Qa’ida, these factors contributed to the tragedy at Khowst. Each played an important role; none was more important than the others. Based on the findings of the task force and the independent review, responsibility cannot be assigned to any particular individual or group. Rather, it was the intense determination to accomplish the mission that influenced the judgments that were made.

There are no guarantees in the dangerous work of counterterrorism, but the task force identified six key areas that deserve greater focus as we carry out that vital mission. We will:

• Enforce greater discipline in communications, ensuring that key guidance, operational facts, and judgments are conveyed and clearly flagged in formal channels.

• Strengthen our attention to counterintelligence concerns while maintaining a wartime footing.

• Apply the skills and experience of senior officers more effectively in sensitive cases.

• Require greater standardization of security procedures.

• More carefully manage information sharing with other intelligence services.

• Maintain our high operational tempo against terrorist targets, even as we make adjustments to how we conduct our essential mission.

I have approved 23 specific actions recommended by the task force, some of which I ordered implemented months ago. They provide for organizational and resource changes, communications improvements, tightened security procedures, more focused training, and reinforced counterintelligence practices. These include:

• Establishing a War Zone Board made up of senior officers from several components and chaired by the Director of the National Clandestine Service. It will conduct a baseline review of our staffing, training, security, and resources in the most dangerous areas where we operate.

• Assembling a select surge cadre of veteran officers who will lend their expertise to our most critical counterterrorism operations.

• Creating an NCS Deputy within the Counterterrorism Center, who will report to the Director of the Counterterrorism Center and ensure a more integrated effort across Agency offices.

• Conducting a thorough review of our security measures and applying even more rigorous standards at all our facilities.

• Expanding our training effort for both managers and officers on hostile environments and counterintelligence challenges.

• Creating an integrated counterintelligence vetting cell within our Counterterrorism Center that focuses on high-risk/high-gain assets, evaluates potential threats, assesses “lessons learned,” and applies the latest technology and best practices to counterterrorism operations.

• Designating a senior officer to ensure that all the recommendations are indeed implemented.

We’ve now taken a hard look at what happened and what needed to be done after the tragedy at Khowst. While we cannot eliminate all of the risks involved in fighting a war, we can and will do a better job of protecting our officers. Drawing on the work of the task force and its insights, it’s time to move forward. Nothing in the report can relieve the pain of losing our seven fallen colleagues. By putting their lives on the line to pursue our nation’s terrorist enemies, they taught us what bravery is all about. It is that legacy that we will always remember in our hearts. 09123001

December 30, 2009—Afghanistan—Four Canadian troops, including Sgt. George Miok, Sgt. Kirk Taylor, and Cpl. Zachery McCormack, and Michelle Lang, 34, a Canadian health reporter with the Calgary Herald, on assignment for Canwest News Service, were killed when their armored vehicle was hit by a bomb. The group was visiting community reconstruction projects 4 miles outside Kandahar during the afternoon. Lang had been in the country for only nineteen days, on her first assignment in Afghanistan. 09123002

December 31, 2009—Afghanistan—The French Foreign Ministry said two French journalists and their local guides were missing. On February 14, 2010, the Taliban posted on a jihad Web site a video of the two kidnapped journalists pleading for Paris to negotiate for their release. On April 12, 2010, the Taliban threatened to kill kidnapped French journalists Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier and their driver, who had been held for more than one hundred days, if a Taliban video was not broadcast on French television and France did not release detainees. Ghesquiere, reading from a script in English, said, “The French President, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, must understand that we are now in danger of death. I repeat: the French president much negotiate very quickly. Otherwise, we will be executed soon.” Taponnier read from a French script. The Taliban said it had submitted a list of their “most ordinary detainees to the government of France for release as an exchange for the two Frenchmen and their Algerian colleague.” It added, “There is no other option for the release of the said detainees except the option of a detainees exchange.” The group said that the detainees were “miserable” and “living a life under torture and brutalities.” On June 29, 2011, after 547 days of captivity, France 3 Television French journalists Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier and their interpreter Reza Din were released. 09123101

December 31, 2009—Yemen—After a gun battle, authorities arrested Mohammed Abdu Saleh al-Haudali, 35, an al Qaeda member, in the village of Deer Jaber in the Bajel district northeast of Sana’a.

Elsewhere, Mohammed Ali Al-Henk, an al Qaeda operative, was captured in the Arhab district north of Sana’a.