Who is Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the Saudi bomb-maker believed to be in Yemen with AQAP the last few years? And why is he a suspect in the cargo escapade?

Remember the story of the young Saudi who joined AQAP, repented and asked for a meeting with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister who handles the country's counter-terrorism matters? And how in August, 2009,right before Ramadam, a meeting was set up between the Prince and the young Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, so that al-Asiri could surrender and enter Saudi Arabia's much acclaimed rehabilitation program. It was expected to be a major media event, and another chance for the Saudis to show off their program.

Al-Asiri was admitted to the palace, underwent a number of checks, and then met with the prince. An ied hidden on his body (believed then to have been hidden in his rectum) exploded, killing Asiri but not harming the Prince. He wasn't close enough. The IED was composed of PETN.

Al-Asiri's older brother is Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. [More...]

The news is filled with a terror scare today from two packages with explosives headed to synagogues in the U.S from Yemen. President Obama says it sounds like al Qaida Arab Peninsula. (AQAP.) The Guardian reports cleric Anwar al-Awlaki may be behind it.

I'm just getting to the news so I don't have any thoughts on it yet. Here's a thread to discuss it.

Pro Publica has a lengthy investigative article on admitted Mumbai bombing complicitor and former DEA informant Daood Gilani, aka David Coleman Headley.

The focal point of the article is that Headley's ex-wife told the FBI he had become an extremist involved with Lashkar-i-Taiba back in 2005 when she reported a domestic violence incident between them. The FBI either did nothing or glossed over it. [More...]

The State Department has issued a terror travel alert for Americans in Europe. It represents less of a threat than a "travel warning."

The United States travel alert does not discourage Americans from visiting Europe, a step American officials rejected in part because of concerns about the impact on tourism and student travel. A “travel alert” of the kind issued Sunday is considered to be far less disruptive than a “travel warning” that would advise Americans to stay away from certain high-threat areas.

Paris and Berlin seem to be the targets.

President Obama addressed the nation today on the 9/11 anniversary. His message: Stay true to who we are as Americans.

“The highest honor we can pay those we lost, indeed our greatest weapon in this ongoing war, is to do what our adversaries fear the most – to stay true to who we are, as Americans; to renew our sense of common purpose; to say that we define the character of our country, and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are,” he said.

Thoughts?

Leave it to politicians like New York Gov. David Paterson to miss the forest for the trees.

"This is what the terrorists want," said New York Gov. David Paterson Thursday. "This is the terrorists getting a yield on their investment when they attacked this country and blew up the World Trade Center, that we're now fighting each other. This is making their day."

It's not the lone nutjob causing that reaction. Replace the "fighting with each other" with "spying on Americans, destroying our civil liberties, restricting Miranda rights and becoming a police state" and it's a valid point and one that needs to be made more often. How much better it would read had he said:[More...]

In the Sunday Times: a feature article on the Obama administration’s "shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies."

In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

...The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya.

The Times calls it a stealth war on terror, and says while it began under Bush, it has expanded under Obama. It also points out the risks: [More...]

In 2005, the U.S. issued an extradition warrant for Abdullah Khadr, the brother of Guantanamo child solder Omar Khadr, whose Guantanamo trial begins Tuesday. He's been in jail in Canada ever since. Now 29, Abdullah was freed Wednesday when a Canadian court refused to extradite him.

He is wanted in the U.S. for allegedly purchasing weapons for al-Qaida and plotting to kill Americans abroad. The U.S. case against Khadr relied on a statement he made to the FBI and Canadian police in Pakistan, and information he gave when he arrived in Toronto in December 2005. Khadr's lawyers argued the statements made in Pakistan were the result of torture.

And, that's $500,000.00 the CIA threw down the drain. It paid that amount as a bounty to Pakistani authorities in 2004 to detain Abdullah. He was then turned over to Canada which arrested him on the U.S. warrant.

Canada's Justice Minister Rob Nicholson says the government would study the ruling closely before deciding whether to appeal.

[More...]

Bump and Update: Today, OFAC granted the license to the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights to represent the al Awlaki's. (If you read my post below from this morning, you'll see I predicted that. Why? Aside from the news interview with the OFAC spokesman, as I wrote, the licenses are liberally granted so that lawyers don't challenge the government's authority to make you get one. (According to the OFAC website, the average wait time for approval is something like 117 days, but it can be a lot less and varies by the part of the country you are in. )

The Government doesn't want that lawsuit. But the ACLU still intends to challenge the license requirement, as applied to those providing pro bono legal services.

Today, the ACLU and CCR say:

“The license issued by OFAC today will allow us to pursue our litigation relating to the government’s asserted authority to engage in targeted killings of American civilians without due process. While we appreciate OFAC’s quick response to our lawsuit, we continue to believe that OFAC’s regulations are unconstitutional because they require lawyers who are providing uncompensated legal representation to seek the government’s permission before challenging the constitutionality of the government’s conduct. Notably, OFAC has indicated that the license issued to us today can be revoked at any time. We will pursue our claim that OFAC’s attorney-licensing regulations are unconstitutional and should be invalidated.”

[More...]

Plans to build a Mosque near the site of the former WTC cleared a final hurdle today. The ACLU says:

We congratulate the Landmarks Preservation Commission for promoting our nation's core values and not letting bias get in the way of the rule of law. "The free exercise of religion is one of America's most fundamental freedoms. For hundreds of years, our pluralism and tolerance have sustained and strengthened our nation. On 9/11, religious extremists opposed to that very pluralism killed 3,000 Americans. Those fanatics would want nothing more than for our nation to turn its back on the very ideals that make this country so great.

The ACLU calls the planned center a "monument to pluralism, symbolic of America's commitment to religious freedom."

I agree the Islamic Center has every bit as much of a right to be built on the site as any other kind of building. To reject it because of 9/11 is to further the very prejudices we should be striving to overcome. [More...]

The Washington Post presents Top Secret America, containing its findings following a two year report on the U.S. intelligence system

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

A few other findings:

The European Court of Human Rights yesterday blocked the transfer to the U.S. of four suspected terrorists. The grounds: They might get sent to Supermax in Florence, CO which has inhumane conditions.

Egyptian-born Hamza, a former imam of the once-notorious Finsbury Park mosque in north London who has one eye and a hook for one hand, is serving a seven-year jail term for inciting followers to murder non-believers.

The other men in jail awaiting extradition are British nationals Babar Ahmad, Haroon Rashid Aswat and Seyla Talha Ahsan.

Interestingly, the court rejected their claims that their designation as enemy combatants could lead to the death penalty, and that their trials would be unjust. It was the Supermax argument that won the day.

[T]heir complaints "concerning the stringency of conditions there for what could be the rest of their lives, raised serious questions of fact and law". [More...]