Eideard

One of the suspects being taken to Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe

Three suspected al Qaeda members had been planning a bomb attack in Germany for four months when they were arrested, federal prosecutors said.

Rainer Griesbaum, a federal prosecutor, told a news conference on Saturday that the trio, led by a 29-year-old Moroccan, had planned to detonate their device in a crowded area but had not yet picked a target. “They were still in the experimental phase,” Griesbaum said. “They were planning to explode a device packed with pieces of metal in the midst of a large crowd…”

The three were detained in police raids in Duesseldorf and the nearby city of Bochum at 6:30 a.m. on Friday after authorities, who had been monitoring the group, decided they might be getting close to carrying out an attack…

Bild newspaper reported that the Eurovision Song Contest, watched by more than 100 million television viewers, was a possible target. The contest will be held in the western city of Duesseldorf on May 14…

Griesbaum said the 29-year-old Moroccan had attended an al Qaeda terror camp in the Waziristan region of Pakistan near the Afghan border in 2010. He returned to Germany in May 2010 and was attempting to build a terror network here with an estimated seven to eight members…

The other suspects are a 31-year-old electrician identified as Jamil S., who holds dual German and Moroccan citizenship, and a 19-year-old with German and Iranian citizenship, Amid C., who was about to graduate from high school…

Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine reported on Saturday that the CIA as well as Morocco’s intelligence agency had worked with German authorities on the investigation.

Authorities said they decided to launch the raid on Friday when the suspects discussed making a “detonator for a bomb”…

Berlin views Germany as a potential target because it has nearly 5,000 military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent of the…international force fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.

Though most conventional journalists don’t mention it, the fact that there are almost 54,000 American military stationed in Germany – for decades – is part of the equation. Certainly the CIA recognizes that their presence makes them targets – and provocative to questions of foreign policy.

Thousands of people marched for peace in Omagh one week after the murder of constable Ronan Kerr in the Co Tyrone town.

The mass rally was a powerful demonstration against violence in a community which suffered the infamous 1998 bombing by dissident republicans that killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins…

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams warned against sheltering those responsible arguing that the political landscape had changed since the days of the Troubles.

“Don’t be fooled into thinking that you are helping the IRA,” he said, “The war is over.”

Dissident republicans opposed to the peace process were blamed for the booby trap device that exploded under the policeman’s car on April 2. The same extremists are believed to be behind a 500lb van bomb police discovered near the border town of Newry on Thursday.

The Omagh rally attracted support from across the community and was attended by friends and relatives of the murdered officer. And while the march was not party political, organisers said it was intended to send a message of support in the peace process.

Gareth McElduff used Facebook to co-ordinate the rally and said it demonstrated the widespread support for the Kerr family.

He added: ”Although these are major, major setbacks in the peace process, hopefully the amount of people that is going to come out today is going to show everybody that we want peace in Ireland again and we don’t want to go back to the Troubles.”

Many in the crowd held posters carrying a picture of Pc Kerr’s face, with the words: ”Not In My Name.”

All power to the people. Stick the terrorist fools back into the cesspool from whence they came. The young copper who was murdered was a nationalist and a republican – willing to fight for change through political action. Unlike the cowards who killed him.

Think it’s any safer just because it’s older, now?

A security officer at the McNamara Federal Building stored a suspicious package that turned out to contain a bomb for three weeks before alerting authorities, said a spokesman for a union that represents guards at the site, who called the incident “a total embarrassment.”

“He apparently set it aside,” said David Wright, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 918, which represents the Federal Protective Service (FPS) employees, who guard the McNamara and other federal buildings around the country.

“It should have been left in place and he should have called in a canine detection unit to see if they could make a determination about it,” he said Tuesday.

The package was eventually placed behind two dumpsters behind the McNamara Building on Michigan Avenue downtown around 10 a.m. Friday. The Detroit Police Department’s bomb squad collected the device from there and moved it to Belle Isle, where it was detonated…

The contracted security guard has been suspended, said an official with the Washington, D.C., office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday.

Whoo-Hoo! If he loses the gig he can always go to work for the TSA.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the nation’s airlines to remove emergency oxygen masks from the restrooms on some 6,000 planes last month, but it only made the work public this week.

“In order to protect the traveling public, the FAA eliminated the problem before making the work public,” FAA said is a statement Thursday. “Had the FAA publicized the existence of this security vulnerability prior to airlines fixing it, thousands of planes across the U.S. and the safety of passengers could have been at risk.”

The FAA didn’t say what the risk was or what triggered the concerns.

According to the agency, it is working with aircraft manufacturers to design, certify and install a new oxygen system for restrooms in all types of aircraft in the U.S. fleet.

Until then, flight attendants have been told “to make it a priority to check whether the lavatory is occupied following any event where oxygen masks are deployed in the cabin.”

I’ll bet they even have a tidy booklet for the flight attendant that explains what to do with the body of anyone discovered in the restroom – dead from oxygen deprivation.

Two high-ranking Libyan air force pilots have who fled to Malta in their aircraft are reported to have told officials they escaped rather than carry out orders to bomb civilians.

The officers defected as Libyan diplomats in several countries and international organisations resigned in protest at the regime’s violent response to the deepening crisis. They included Muammar Gaddafi’s ambassadors to China, India, Indonesia and Poland, as well as Libya’s representative to the Arab League and most, if not all, of its mission at the United Nations…

The two Mirage F1 jets touched down in Malta after the pilots said they urgently needed to refuel and sought emergency clearance to land. The Times of Malta reported on its website the pilots had told officials they flew to the island after being ordered to bomb protesters occupying Libya’s second-biggest city of Benghazi.

One report said they had also brought with them two other members of the Libyan armed forces. The pilots – both colonels – said that, after taking off from Okba Ben Nafi base, they flew low through Libyan air space to avoid radar detection.

The pilots were being questioned by Maltese police who were also trying to identify seven other people who landed from Libya in two civilian helicopters shortly before the arrival of the jets. The helicopters took off from Libya without official clearance and a source in Malta said they appeared to have been in haste, with only one of the seven people aboard carrying a passport.

All seven said they were French. The helicopters’ passengers said they were working on an oil platform off Benghazi when the violence in Libya erupted…

A spokesman for Libya’s delegation at the UN told Reuters its members had declared their allegiance to Libya’s people, not the government. The spokesman, Dia al-Hotmani, said: “The members of the Libyan mission are representing only the Libyan people and not anyone else.”

Bravo! Having the courage of your convictions ain’t always easy.

Making to the rank of colonel implies a dedication to your country not required of civilians. To recognize that loyalty as misplaced and reactionary, counter to the needs of your country – and acting upon that conclusion – is an demanding accomplishment requiring great character.

Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes following the discovery of a series of bombs from the Second World War in the French city centre of Rennes.

Sixty five years after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, the city in Brittany was closed as engineers worked to defuse a 550lb RAF device…

Some 10,000 people living in Rennes were involved in the evacuation as the centre of the city resembled a ghost town…

Further east, 4,500 people were moved out of Woippy, in the suburbs of Metz, as bomb disposal experts worked on devices around a former Wehrmacht supply centre.

It is now being converted into a bus station, but was bombed so many times during the war that its basement and foundations are littered with ordnance, including RAF and US air force devices.

All of the work was being coordinated by France’s Département du Déminage (Department of Mine Clearance), which recovers around 1,000 tons of unexploded munitions every year…

Their work is concentrated on the so-called ‘Iron Harvest’ of unexploded ordnance which is littered around the battlefields and bombing targets of northern France…

Some 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied strategic bombing during the Second World War.

Just in case you think “collateral damage” is a brand new excuse.

Al-Qaeda has opened a new front in war on the West, launching its own English-language internet newspaper, which features articles such as “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom“.

Its tag-line is “Inspire the Believers” and its first front page features a quotation by the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki: “May our souls be sacrificed for you”. The magazine claims to be published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), whose leaders are the most prominent propagandists of any of the group’s branches.

The full magazine is not yet online, but the contents page offers messages from both Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. It also advertises a piece by Awlaki entitled: “Shaykh Anwar’s message to the American people and Muslims in the West”.

Other articles include a question-and-answer session with the leader of AQAP, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Basir, and a tantalising piece offering a “detailed yet short, easy-to-read manual on how to make a bomb using ingredients found in a kitchen”.

Awlaki, whose father is a former minister of agriculture in Yemen and who grew up in the United States when his father was studying there, has become the most important tool in al-Qaeda’s outreach to English-speaking Muslims.

His videos have been widely circulated on British campuses, and he was in touch with the American army major who went on a shooting rampage last November in Fort Hood, Texas. He is now believed to be operating under the shelter of members of his powerful Awlaki clan in eastern Yemen with ties to the militant group, and this magazine may be his brainchild, according to analysts.

Does this fall under the “Build-a-better-mousetrap-inventors” school of journalism? Or the Voice-of-America straight-up category of agitprop which is chartered to convince the world how to interpret which empires are good and which are evil?

Hi there. My name is Faisal. I’m a nutball!

Authorities hunting for the suspect in the botched Times Square bombing dramatically beat the clock overnight, seizing a Pakistani-American citizen moments before he was set to begin a long trip to his strife-torn homeland.

Faisal Shahzad, 30, was arrested around 11:45 p.m. ET Monday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, said Attorney General Eric Holder…

Shahzad was on board Emirates Airlines Flight 202 to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the jetway had been pulled back when the plane was called to return to the gate, a law enforcement source said. Shahzad was booked through to Islamabad, Pakistan, via Dubai, a senior airline official confirmed.

Americans are made to feel better by the quantity and variety of “safety checks” introduced by our politicians. Achieving pretty much nothing more than interfering with the 99.99% of our lives unconcerned with terrorism.

“They just caught him at the last second,” a law enforcement source said…

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An airliner travelling from Taiwan to China made an emergency landing after a passenger jokingly claimed he had a bomb on board, officials say.

The Taipei-Shanghai flight of Taiwan’s China Airlines landed safely in Hangzhou, eastern China, and the passenger was held for questioning.

Police then checked the man’s luggage and found no explosives.

The man – identified only as Lin – later admitted he made the comment as a joke, the officials said.

China Airlines spokesman Bruce Chen said the passenger was travelling on a US passport, the Associated Press reports.

He did not appear to have been drinking excessively, the spokesman added.

So, uh, maybe he was just drinking “enough”?

Police stay on guard at Riverdale Jewish Center

Four men have been arrested in a suspected plot to bomb a synagogue and Jewish community center in New York City and to shoot at military planes with stinger missiles.

A joint release from the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the FBI and the New York Police Department said the suspects were charged with plotting to detonate explosives near a synagogue in the Riverdale section of New York’s Bronx borough.

The men were also charged with plotting to shoot military planes located at New York’s Air National Guard base at Stewart airport in Newburgh, New York, with stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, the statement said. Newburgh is about 60 miles north of New York City.

“The defendants wanted to engage in terrorist attacks. They selected targets and sought the weapons necessary to carry out their plans,” Lev Dassin, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in the statement.

The four men, identified as James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, were arrested after buying an inactive missile and inert explosives in a sting operation run by the FBI and other agencies…

The complaint said they bought an arsenal in May that included improvised explosive devices containing inert C-4 plastic explosives and a surface-to-air guided missile provided by the FBI that was not capable of being fired…

Each man is charged with one count of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, and one count of conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, which also carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

All the men live in Newburgh, NY, authorities said.

Three of the four born and brought up in the GOUSA.