Taliban and al Qaeda Sending Suicide Bomber Teams To U.S. and Europe

Brian Ross and ABC News are reporting that according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter, large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe.

Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.

A Pakistani journalist was invited to attend and take pictures as some 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12, were supposedly sent off on their suicide missions.

The tape shows Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah, whose brother was killed by the U.S. last month, introducing and congratulating each team as they stood.

“These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places,” Dadullah says on the tape. “Why shouldn’t we go after them?”

The leader of the team assigned to attack Great Britain spoke in English.

“So let me say something about why we are going, along with my team, for a suicide attack in Britain,” he said. “Whether my colleagues, companions and Muslim brothers die today or tonight, every drop of our blood will invigorate the Muslim (unintelligible).”

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Dirty Bomb Terror Threat Increasing

The threat of terrorists attacking Britain with a radioactive “dirty bomb” has grown rapidly in recent months, a leading defence expert has warned.

Prof Sandra Bell spoke out following the sentencing last week of seven al-Qaeda “foot soldiers” who had plotted dirty bomb attacks in Britain and the United States.

The men were jailed for a total of 136 years at Woolwich Crown Court. Their leader, Dhiren Barot, is serving life for conspiracy to murder.

Prof Bell, the director of homeland security at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “The threat from dirty bombs is now higher than it was two years ago, and has increased significantly over the last six months.

“I used to think you had more chance of winning the lottery than of being attacked with radiation weapons, but times are changing.” She said that turmoil in parts of Africa and the former Soviet Union had created a black market in radioactive materials which could be used to lace a conventional bomb.

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Terrorist Watch List Grows

A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror.

The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.

A portion of the FBI’s unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to “the entire watch list of 509,000 names,” which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.

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Davis-Besse Nuclear Terror Threat A Hoax

The Port Clinton Police Department now says a threat against the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station near Oak Harbor is a hoax.  Investigators had been working on the case since Sunday, but the case broke open on Wednesday.

According to a news release from the Port Clinton Police Department, an employee at McCarthy’s Restaurant in Port Clinton reported the threat on Sunday, saying two ”arab-looking” men were talking about the plant, and wrote the word “boom” on a napkin.  The Port Clinton Police called in the Ottawa County Sheriff, the FBI, the Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard.

Extra patrols were set up around the plant, off Route 2 in Oak Harbor.

Investigators say when they looked further, they learned that the napkin was found Saturday, a day before it was reported to police.  Police interviewed a number of people, and say restaurant employee Katelyn McRitchie wrote other words on the napkin to make it look like a threat toward the power plant.

Police say McRitchie confessed to fabricating the story.  She could face charges of inducing panic or falsification after the county prosecutor reviews the case.

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CDC Investigates 11 Sick Passengers On Mexico To Miami Flight

Health authorities responded Tuesday to reports that 11 people were ill on a flight from Mexico to Miami International Airport.

The Aeromexico flight from Merida, Mexico, landed at the airport and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was meeting with authorities in Miami to assess the situation, said Von Roebuck, a CDC spokesman. He had no further details.

Aeromexico spokeswoman Gemma Liebanas said the airline is investigating.

“I think that the people who got sick, it must have been from something they ate at the airport, because no food is served on the flight from Merida to Miami at that hour of the day,” Liebanas said.

Airport spokesman Marc Henderson could not confirm the illnesses. He said the plane landed at about 1:10 p.m.

Fox News Reports On Islamberg Compound In New York

Hidden in a remote area off a primitive dirt road lies a mysterious 70-acre compound in which more than 100 Muslims live in seclusion, following the teachings of its founder, a radical cleric with alleged ties to terrorism.

It’s neither a Taliban stronghold outside Jalalabad, nor an extremist madrassa on the outskirts of Karachi.

It’s a place called Islamberg, a closed and seemingly quiet community at the foot of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, about three hours north of Manhattan.

It’s also a compound shrouded in local rumors, mystery — and fear — sitting near the huge reservoir system that provides New York City with most of its drinking water.

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Additional Articles

NY Times

Paul Williams report in the Canada Free Press

Experts Warn – Possibility of Nuclear Attack By Terrorists

Security experts from around the world meeting here Monday warned of the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack, and called for renewed efforts to crack down on black market sales of nuclear and radioactive material.

“Nuclear terrorism is a global threat that requires a global response,” said FBI director Robert Mueller, as he inaugurated an international conference on nuclear terrorism, a component of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT).

He described nuclear terrorism as “one of the most dangerous and deadly threats” that nations around the world face.

President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the initiative in July 2006 at the G8 summit of industrialized nations meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

At the time the two leaders urged nations around the world to work to fight the threat of nuclear terrorism by working to better safeguard nuclear material and radioactive substances.

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Iran Threatens Gulf Region If U.S. Strikes Nuclear Plant

Iran has threatened to launch a missile blitz against the Gulf states and plunge the entire Middle East into war if America attacks its nuclear facilities.

Qatar, Bahrain and Oman all host important US bases and British forces are based in all three countries. Any Iranian attack would be bound to draw in the other Gulf Cooperation Council states: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

The attacks on Arab states would be in addition to airstrikes on Israel, which have been threatened repeatedly. An Iranian foreign ministry official said: “The objective would be to overwhelm US missile defence systems with dozens and maybe hundreds of missiles fired simultaneously at specific targets.”

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MI6 Probes UK Link To Nuclear Trade With Iran

A British company has been closed down after being caught in an apparent attempt to sell black-market weapons-grade uranium to Iran and Sudan, The Observer can reveal.

Anti-terrorist officers and MI6 are now investigating a wider British-based plot allegedly to supply Iran with material for use in a nuclear weapons programme. One person has already been charged with attempting to proliferate ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

During the 20-month investigation, which also involved MI5 and Customs and Excise, a group of Britons was tracked as they obtained weapons-grade uranium from the black market in Russia. Investigators believe it was intended for export to Sudan and on to Iran.

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Chiquita Brands Sued For Sponsoring Terrorism

Family members of people killed by militant groups in Colombia are suing Chiquita Brands International. The lawsuit accuses the banana company of sponsoring terrorism.

The suit, filed anonymously in Washington, contends that ten unnamed Chiquita employees and a Colombian subsidiary aided and abetted terrorists by providing arms, funding and other support to paramilitary forces responsible for 144 murders.

A Chiquita spokesman says the company hasn’t seen the lawsuit, but denies the allegations. The spokesman says the company paid to protect the lives of employees and their families.

In March, Chiquita admitted to paying terrorists to protect its banana operation in Colombia. A Justice Department investigation into Chiquita’s financial dealings with paramilitary groups resulted in a corporate conviction for one count of doing business with a terrorist organization and a $25-million fine.

High Tech Gadgets To Protect New York From Terrorism

Police helicopters will be able to read license plates. Officers will carry backpacks designed to detect dirty bombs. And blimp-like detectors may hover over the city, scanning for chemical and other threats.

Those are some of array of high-tech gadgets that will help secure the city against terrorism, the Police Commissioner said yesterday.

“There is no environment across the nation that compares to New York City,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a Manhattan forum hosted by the firm CIT Aerospace. “We have the highest number of critical assets in the smallest amount of physical space.”

The September 11 attacks and more recent scares – such as a plot to blow up the aviation fuel system at John F Kennedy International Airport — have cemented a belief at the nation’s largest police department that “technology must match the actual problems we face,” Kelly said.

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Strange Incident On Northwest Airlines Flight 720

Shortly before landing, Bob Hayden and a flight attendant had agreed on a signal: When she waved the plastic handcuffs, he would discreetly leave his seat and restrain an unruly passenger who had frightened some of the 150 people on board a Minneapolis-to-Boston flight Saturday night with erratic behavior.

Hayden, a 65-year-old former police commander, had enlisted a gray-haired gentleman sitting next to him to assist. The man turned out to be a former US Marine.

“I had looked around the plane for help, and all the younger guys had averted their eyes. When I asked the guy next to me if he was up to it, all he said was, ‘Retired captain. USMC.’ I said, ‘You’ll do,’ ” Hayden recalled. “So, basically, a couple of grandfathers took care of the situation.”

The incident on Northwest Airlines Flight 720 ended peacefully, but not before Hayden, a former Boston police deputy superintendent and former Lawrence police chief, and the retired Marine had handcuffed one man and stood guard over another until the plane touched down safely at Logan International Airport around 7:50 p.m

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Annie Jacobsen has more.

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Authorities Eye New Yorks Islamberg Encampment

A remote Muslim commune nestled in the Catskill Mountains has come under the scrutiny of state and federal authorities for possible ties to terrorism, according to law-enforcement sources.

Officials say Islamberg – a wooded, 70-acre encampment in upstate Tompkins, about three hours north of the city – acts as the headquarters for an outfit called Muslims of the Americas, widely believed to be a front for Jamaat al-Fuqra, founded by radical Pakistani cleric Mubarak Ali Gilani.

Reports of gunfire and military-style physical training at the camp have led some investigators to believe that the group’s members are preparing for homegrown jihad.

According to one account, a neighbor said he has seen commune members dressed in Port Authority uniforms.

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For more information read Paul Williams report in the Canada Free Press

Neil Cavuto interviews Paul Williams regarding Islamberg watch it here.

The Danger of Unremarkable Terror Targets

Until a suspected terrorist plot was revealed, few people even knew there was a pipeline of highly combustible jet fuel snaking beneath the nation’s largest city.

But authorities said Monday that it’s one of countless lesser-known targets including waterway retaining walls, dingy rail yards and tunnel ventilation systems that they struggle to protect from attacks.

New York police spend “considerable time and resources protecting the landmarks nearly everyone would recognize as emblematic of New York and America,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. “But we also protect the anonymous, unheralded elements of infrastructure that are essential to the life of the city.”

Police were aware that the fuel system feeding John F. Kennedy International Airport posed a risk well before investigators unearthed an alleged conspiracy by a homegrown Muslim terror cell to blow it up, with the goal of killing thousands of people and inflicting major damage on the U.S. economy.

Pipeline networks don’t carry the stature of sites such as Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, so the general public doesn’t give them much notice.

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