They were among the 21 people, including women and children from Kerala, who had travelled to the Middle East and went missing in 2016.
Warren Weinstein, the first American citizen to be taken hostage by Al Qaeda linked terrorists in Pakistan since Daniel Pearl, is also a Jewish American like the ill-fated journalist. Amir Mir reports
American intelligence agencies believe that they have killed Sheikh Said al Masri, alias Mustafa Abu al Yazid, Al Qaeda's no. 3 leader, in a recent missile strike in a tribal area of Pakistan. The New York Times quoted a United States administration official as saying that al-Masri was the terror network's main conduit to leader Osama bin Laden. He further said that as Al Qaeda's chief operating officer, he played a role in everything -- from finances to operational planning.
The Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a US plane has told interrogators that the explosive device strapped in his legs was "acquired in Yemen along with instructions for its use".
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.
The figure, based on testimony by senior US intelligence officials to a joint inquiry by the US Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees, is at least three times higher than previous estimates.
About 150 terrorist entities and individuals, either based or with links to Pakistan have been blacklisted by the United Nations, with the latest addition being of Abdul Rehman Makki, the Lashkar-e-Taiba deputy chief designated by the Security Council's Al Qaeda sanctions committee.
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.
In his memoirs, Lord Stevens, former metropolitan police commissioner, said he ordered a secret operation to protect the prime minister and his wife after receiving intelligence about the plot, weeks before the event in June 2002.
"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."
A non-metallic explosive device that could have passed through airport security unnoticed like the one used in the failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound jet in 2009 by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was recovered, the official said.
"We confirm to the jihadi Ummah that is uprising against oppression, the martyrdom of the mujahid heroic sheikh Abu Abdul Rahman Anwar bin Nasser al-Awlaki," the US-based monitoring group SITE Intelligence quoted an Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula statement issued on jihadist websites as saying.
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.
Mohammad Afroze has been found guilty under Sections 120-b (conspiracy) and Section 126 of the Indian Penal Code (committing depredation on territories of power at peace with the Government of India).
Al Qaeda's chief in Pakistan, who once fought in Jammu and Kashmir, was among four terrorists killed in a United States drone attack in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan tribal region on Thursday.
Afroze was arrested on December 3, 2001 on charges of conspiring with terrorist outfit al Qaeda to bomb the House of Commons in UK, Parliament House in India and Radio Towers in Australia.
A top al-Qaeda operative, captured by US special forces in a secretive mission in Libya this month, pleaded not guilty to a charge of his involvement in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, in a New York court.
"Al-Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002. I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," Clinton told a group of senior Pakistani journalists in Lahore on Thursday.
A website has published a video message from Al Qaeda deputy leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, whom Washington had reported as killed in a drone strike in Pakistan last week.
This is the first explicit claim of responsibility for the blasts, which claimed 56 lives, by the terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden.
The purported video of Yemen's Al-Qaeda branch claiming responsibility for last week's attack at a French satirical newspaper is authentic, the United States has said.
Al Qaeda-linked group claims responsibility for London blasts
"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.
'India is a major target for ISIS and Al Qaeda because it has a very large Muslim Diaspora, regular conflicts with a Muslim country and experiences violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims on a regular basis.' 'This provides for a very stable breeding ground for jihadist radicalisation and recruitment.'
This operation was conducted to teach a lesson to the blasphemers of this land whose poisonous tongues are constantly abusing Allah...the religion of Islam and the Messenger...under the pretext of so-called 'freedom of speech', Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, a spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, said in the statement according to SITE Intelligence Group.
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.
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.
Terrorist outfit Al Qaeda marked the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington with a video message in which it has predicted that US President Barack Obama would be brought down by the Muslims.
Their detention outside the US enables CIA interrogators to apply interrogation methods that are banned by US law, said Haaretz.
Anwar al-Awlaki, the public face of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has been killed, the Yemeni defence ministry announced on Friday, signalling another major setback to the terror network after the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
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.
The Al Qaeda has launched a blistering attack on Pakistan's beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf accusing him of betraying Muslims by supporting the US-led war in Afghanistan.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second most powerful leader after Osama Bin Laden, might be critically wounded and possibly dead, according to a media report.The CBS News reported that it had obtained a copy of an intercepted letter, which urgently requests a doctor to treat al-Zawahiri. The Al Qaeda leaders are believed to be hiding somewhere in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Al Qaeda and a North Waziristan-based terror group 'Brigade 313' have reportedly prepared a plan to launch an attack on the 19th Commonwealth Games, which are due to be held in New Delhi from October 3 to October 14.
As the peril of Islamic militancy spreads like a jungle fire in almost every nook and corner of Pakistan, the Al Qaeda network keeps thriving by evolving a modus operandi which exploits its local affiliates -- the Pakistani militant groups active in Jammu Kashmir and Afghanistan -- to pursue their global jehadi agenda, says Amir Mir.
Eighteen year-old Hammaad Munshi of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, has been arrested on suspicion of terrorist activities after handwritten notes about martyrdom, propaganda from Al-Qaeda and instructions on how to make Napalm bomb were found at his house.
The CIA director described Pakistan's role in the war on terror, saying "The United States has not had a better partner in the war on terrorism than the Pakistanis. The turmoil of the past few weeks has only deepened that cooperation," he said, adding the two countries now had 'even more clearly mutual and common interests'.
