Jamestown Foundation, 14 Jan 10: In November 2001, an American Muslim cleric told the Washington Post that he had no sympathy for the perpetrators of 9/11, that Muslims and non-Muslims needed “more mutual understanding,” and that the Taliban had no right to impose the burqa on women.
The cleric, Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki, is the same man who is now believed to have played a major role in radicalizing Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. army psychiatrist who killed 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood last November, and 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate explosives aboard an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.
In an exclusive interview, al-Awlaki told Yemeni journalist Abdulilah al-Sha’i, that Major Hasan contacted him on December 17, 2008, to inquire about the legitimacy of killing American soldiers and officers. Further correspondence discussed Shari’a-based justifications for killing Israeli civilians. Al-Awlaki considered the Fort Hood attack a legitimate act of jihad as it was a military target and described Hasan’s attack as a “heroic act.” . . .
CP, 14 Jan 10: The terrorist mastermind behind a plot to cause untold deaths and destruction on Canadian soil stood in court Thursday to renounce the extremist views that once fuelled his chilling plans, saying he deserved nothing less than this country’s “complete and absolute contempt.”
Zakaria Amara, 24, a co-leader of the Toronto 18 plot to set off bombs outside the CSIS and Toronto Stock Exchange buildings in downtown Toronto and at a military base in Ontario, pleaded guilty in October.
At his sentencing hearing Thursday he read a letter to the judge and an open letter to Canadians, distancing himself from the extremist ideology that once consumed him and led him to direct a plot his own lawyer said would have resulted in a loss of life on an “unheard of scale.”
“I have spent my entire life struggling to discover the truth and the reality of life,” Amara said. “But looking back retrospectively, I can also say that it is this same righteous struggle that led me down the road of extremism.” . . .
New York Daily News, 14 Jan 10: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tightened air security Thursday afternoon amid new threat-related intelligence hinting that Al Qaeda in Yemen is readying more U.S. attacks, the Daily News has learned. Napolitano said passenger flights are being covered by even more Federal air marshals – who sources said are being bolstered in the surge in the skies by immigration agents. The feds are also conducting random passenger checks and adding more suspects put on terror watchlists.
U.S. counterterror officials told The News the latest air security measures are a response to fresh intelligence on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The information suggests the group is actively plotting more homeland attacks after the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.The credible information about AQAP does not include specifics such as a target, date or location, but is sufficiently worrisome to ratchet up defensive measures, one U.S. counterterror official said. . . .
Officials: ‘Credible Intelligence’ on Terror Attack Planning Against U.S.
Fox News, 14 Jan 10: Credible intelligence has emerged that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is plotting another attack against the United States and U.S. interests abroad . . . .According to those familiar with the intelligence, the strategic threat from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, has intensified and the group is emboldened by the failed Dec. 25 plot. “The threat did not end on Christmas Day”, according to one source familiar with the intelligence. . . . .
Fox News, 14 Jan 10: Despite the failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to “connect the dots” in the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day, most Americans are confident in the intelligence community’s ability to uncover threats in the future.
Still, in the war on terrorism, Americans think terrorists are more committed to winning than the United States is, and a plurality thinks the country is less safe today than it was a year ago.
A Fox News poll released Thursday shows nearly three in four Americans — 74 percent — are very or somewhat confident U.S. intelligence gathering agencies will succeed in identifying threats down the road. Today’s views are essentially unchanged from 2004, when 71 percent said they were confident in the agencies.
The poll also asked which side is “more deeply committed” to winning the war on terrorism. By 49 percent to 33 percent, more Americans say they think radical Muslims and extremists are more committed to winning than the United States and its allies. In 2005, the same number said the United States was more committed (36 percent) as said radical Muslims (36 percent). . . . .
New York Times, 14 Jan 10: Jordan, one of the United States’ closest allies in the Arab world, came under pressure on Wednesday from Islamists to stop cooperating with American forces in Afghanistan. Two weeks after a Jordanian suicide bomber blew himself up at a Central Intelligence Agency base in Khost Province, Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups demanded that the Jordanian government drop its pro-America stance. In a statement titled “It Is Not Our War,” they wrote, “We demand an end to the policy of what is called cooperation or security coordination with the Zionist enemy or the American intelligence agencies, and the withdrawal of Jordanian forces from Afghanistan.” . . . Some Jordanians have expressed support for his action, and he has been lionized on Islamist Web sites, where for years he was a popular jihadi blogger. . . .
