The Biden administration is quietly pressing Pakistan to cooperate on combating dreaded terrorist groups such as the ISIS-K and Al Qaeda following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, according to a set of leaked documents and diplomatic cables to a prominent US media outlet.
Their detention outside the US enables CIA interrogators to apply interrogation methods that are banned by US law, said Haaretz.
Rashid Rauf, the terror mastermind believed to be behind the 2006 trans-Atlantic plane bombing plot, and another top al Qaeda operative were among five militants killed in a United States missile attack on Saturday which hit the house of a prominent Taliban commander in Pakistan's troubled north-west.Rashid Rauf, a British-Pakistani citizen, was one of two of the suspected ringleaders of the al Qaeda London Airline plot to destroy the aircraft en route to the United States.
A top Al Qaeda commander, who was reported to have been killed in a US drone strike last year, has appeared in a video warning India of more Mumbai-style terror attacks if it tried to attack Pakistan. 'India should know that it will have to pay a heavy price if it attacks Pakistan,' Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, believed to be Al Qaeda's military commander in Afghanistan and ranked behind No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, said in a 20-minute video in Arabic received by the BBC.
Osama bin Laden's terrorist deputy has reportedly released his new audio message on the internet, the first message from Al Qaeda since the unrest in Egypt began, terming the ousted President Hosni Mubarak's government as a 'suppressive regime that had ruled the people with suppressive forces'.
The White House has said that Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Invetigation Agency trace Osama bin Laden, was not working against Pakistan but the Al Qaeda and should not have been held.
A covert United States military operation in January targeting Al-Qaeda leaders in the Afghan-Pakistan border region accidentally killed an American and an Italian, both aid workers who were hostages of the terror group, President Barack Obama said.
Al Qaeda is no more a cohesive organisation with a lucid structure and has splintered over the years, giving rise to lots of other groups, both inside and outside Pakistan writes Amir Mir
Al-Qaeda and other terror groups like the Taliban and their affiliates are planning to strike against American facilities and its nationals in South and Central Asia, the United States said on Saturday.
FBI spokesperson Richard Kolko told ABC News in an email that 'there have been several reports that Al Qaeda will release a new message calling for the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians.'
An Al Qaeda-linked plot to launch a Mumbai-style terror attack simultaneously on London and major cities in France and Germany was disrupted by intelligence agencies, a report has said.
Pakistani daily Dawn quoting intelligence officials said these explosives can be moulded into shoes or luggage and will be harder to detect.
"Are we reaching a tipping point to witness the decline of this radical behaviour? We don't know the answer to that yet, but we're watching it very closely," National Intelligence Director Admiral Mike McConnell told the House Select Committee on Intelligence. "Brutal attacks unleashed by the al-Qaeda and its affiliates against Muslim civilians have tarnished al-Qaeda's self-styled image as the extremist vanguard," he said.
The defence secretary, however, said the US would not be looking to add significant numbers of US forces to run operations in Pakistan.
If viewed as a part of the Al Qaeda's radicalisation effort to produce jihadists out of discontented Muslim youth in India, the call could well have a much larger dimension, both in the near as well as long term, directly impacting on national security, says Bibhu Prasad Routray.
Terrorist outfit Al Qaeda is training a 12-member team of westerners in Pakistan for a special mission including plotting attacks on return to their home countries, a media report has said.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban are planning suicide and rocket attacks on the embassies, consulates, NGOs, firms and citizens of the US and UK in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan on Tuesday said slain former premier Benazir Bhutto had faced a threat from the Taliban and al-Qaeda because she had pledged to take action against the two groups but there is no similar danger to him.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was indicted in the US for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Mohammed Afroze shot into limelight after being arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
"Musharraf has got a situation at home where there is a certain amount of sympathy in some places for, if not Al Qaeda, then certainly for the people who are more inclined to Islam."
Sources close to Islamist groups in north Africa told the Guardian that at least two senior Al Qaida operatives have already reached Libya, provoking fears that north Africa could become a new "theatre of jihad" in future.
America's new intelligence chief David Petraeus has predicted that Al Qaeda leaders may flee Afghanistan and the entire south Asia as they were being pressed hard by American forces.
The plunging global economy is an even bigger threat to the United States' national security than the al Qaeda terrorist network or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, according to America's new intelligence czar.Traditionally, US intelligence chiefs always preface their opening remarks with either terrorist or nuclear proliferation threats, but DenisBlair's first sentences in his testimony before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was about the economy.
Al Qaeda is promoting the upcoming online release of its first English magazine called Inspire, promising Anwar Al Alwaki, the America-born cleric linked to several terror attacks on the United States, as one of its first guest writers.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has admitted that terrorists operating in Kashmir have nexus with Al Qaeda, Taliban and Pakistani extremists, which is a "very dangerous" combination.
On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, President Barack Obama on Saturday said the United States has stayed strong in the face of threat in the "difficult" decade since the horrific strikes and has stepped up homeland security and put Al Qaeda on the path to defeat.
"We need to go much further in realising the well established objective of degrading the ability of the Taliban to fight while simultaneously denying safe-havens, finances and armament," Indian Ambassador to UN Nirupam Sen told the Security Council on Tuesday.
The Afghanistan government will engage with Taliban elements which are not part of the Al Qaeda network as it continues its military campaign against extremism and terrorism, President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday. "We believe that while we are continuing our campaign against extremism and terrorist networks, the Al Qaeda and its associates, we will also seek means other than a military campaign to bring stability to Afghanistan and to Pakistan by extension," he said.
Iraq's military intelligence authorities have arrested five men, linked to Al Qaeda, for manufacturing chemical weapons and plotting to smuggle them to Europe and North America. The military intelligence authorities monitored the activities of the men for three months in which three workshops that manufactured chemical agents were uncovered.
Former RAW Additional Secretary Jayadeva Ranade tells Rediff.com's Upasna Pandey that India needs to be extremely cautious and watchful of the estimated 35-40 Indians who may have joined the ISIS in Iraq and may return to the country.
Terror outfit Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the failed attempts to send two parcel bombs to Chicago by courier planes of the FedExpress and the UPS on October 29, has come out with a detailed account of its operation code named Operation Haemorrhage in its online magazine titled Inspire.
A top Obama aide on Sunday said the Al Qaeda is based in Pakistan and that the United States would 'not rush' in finalising the new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Al Qaeda has comfortably set up base in Europe at least 480 men -- a deadly mix of locals and infiltrators from the Middle East, says Vicky Nanjappa
With reports of some youths from India joining the Islamic State, National Investigation Agency has sought permission of the government to register a case against the terror group as well as the banned Al Qaeda.
Anger is the basic root cause of all terrorism. The anger is often caused by domestic or external factors. While India may not have much control over the external factors, it should be able to detect in time signs of anger due to domestic reasons and take action to address them. Unaddressed anger at the domestic level drives the angry into the arms of trans-national organisations such as al Qaeda in course of time.
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