Tunisia – Soldiers Arrested In Terror Plot Against US Military Officers

Tunisian authorities have reportedly arrested nine soldiers for allegedly planning attacks on visiting American military officers.

The arrests were made under the Tunisian anti-terrorism law, lawyers said.

The detainees, two of whom are officers in the Tunisian Air Force, planned to assassinate American military officers who visit the country periodically for military training and joint exercises with the Tunisian army, the German Deutsche Press Agency (DPA) reported.

Dr. Jack Kalpakian, a political expert at Morocco’s Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, said he was not surprised to hear news of the terror sweep.

“Tunisia’s government has followed a very secularist policy and has not been very sympathetic towards any kind of political religious expression,” he told The Media Line.

“While in other countries in North Africa expressions of Islamism are tolerated to some extent, Tunisia represses these voices,” he said.

Lawyer Samir Bin ‘Amar told DPA that a court charged the nine detainees with incitement to carry out terror attacks, attempting to acquire weapons and explosives for a terror organization and using Tunisian soil to recruit people for a terror organization.

Read Full Article

Austrian Al-Qaeda Cell Watched For 3 years

he Austrian public prosecutor’s office has reportedly been investigating an Austrian cell of worldwide terror network Al-Qaeda for three years.

The magazine News will have a report about that in its edition that goes on sale tomorrow (Thurs) based on documents allegedly in the possession of the Office for Protection of the Constitution and the Fight against Terrorism (BVT).

The magazine claims US officials informed their Austrian counterparts at the end of 2005 that Austrian citizen Abdulrahmen H., born in Mödling, Lower Austria in 1983, and four others had trained as para-militaries at an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan from August to October 2005.

News said Abdulrahmen, the head of the Austrian Al-Qaeda cell, had been killed along the Afghan-Pakistani border and another cell member had died in Afghanistan. The magazine added three other cell members were abroad, one in prison in Tunisia.

News also reported BVT investigators had questioned a former Al-Qaeda member in October 2007 in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina about the training of Austrian cell members at Al-Qaeda camps.

The magazine added that, according to the charge against German terror suspect Aleem Nasir, Abdulrahman H. had trained at explosives expert Nasir’s “Mir Ali” camp in Pakistan.

Source