The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing.
The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major al-Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions. And it comes practically on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden.
In a filing this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”
The statement, tucked into a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri’s attorneys, suggests that the prospect of further military trials for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has all but ground to a halt, much as the administration’s plan to try the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court has stalled.
This comes as interesting news, in comparison to the latest news on the arrest of suspected terrorists in Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now looking for eight suspects who are linked to their seizure of explosives and other nasty things from a gang of Muslim terrorists. A fourth man was arrested by the RCMP on Friday morning.
The three men arrested over a terror plot in Canada were in possession of bomb-making materials and at least one has links to a group fighting Western forces in Afghanistan, officials said Thursday.
Hiva Alizadeh, 30, and Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, were arrested in police raids on their suburban Ottawa homes Wednesday morning, and formally charged with “terrorist offences” on Thursday during brief court appearances.
A third Canadian national, Khuram Sher, 28, of London, Ontario was arrested on Thursday.
“Investigators have grounds to believe that Alizadeh, Ahmed and Sher are part of a domestic terrorist group operating in Canada,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) superintendent Serge Therriault told a press conference.
“We also believe that Alizadeh is a member of, and remains in contact with, a terrorist group with links to the conflict in Afghanistan,” he said.
Police said the accused were in possession of a horde of material for making improvised explosive devices, including schematics, videos, drawings, instructions, books and electrical components.
During raids on the homes of the suspects, authorities said they also seized more than 50 electronic circuit boards that could be used in remote detonators.
This “large amount of terrorist documentation and manuals” demonstrates that the suspects “intended to construct an explosive device or explosive devices for terrorist purposes,” said Therriault.
Police also said they had evidence a member of the cell had received bomb-making training abroad, but they did not specify which suspect or where and when the training allegedly took place.
[…]Alizadeh, Ahmed and Sher were arrested following a year-long investigation by the RCMP, Canada’s spy agency and several police forces across the country.
Raymond Boisvert, assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said the intelligence that led to the arrest of the trio was provided to the RCMP.
Police said they arrested them this week to prevent one suspect from providing financial support to “terrorist counterparts” for the purchase of weapons for use against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
“This group posed a real and serious threat to the citizens of the national capital region and Canada’s national security,” said Therriault.
“Our criminal investigation and arrests prevented the assembly of any bombs and the terrorist attack or attacks from being carried out.”
Here’s the latest: Ottawa was a potential target for the group. Keep in mind that Ottawa is the capital of Canada, about an hour north of the northern tip of New York state.
…the Iraqi government has to decide on how to lure foreign investors and oil firms to setup shop in the many rich oil fields. With modern development, industry and organization Iraq could be a major producer and, potentially, one of the major countries in the world in just a few decades. So far, things haven’t exactly happened in the order many experts and investors hoped.The hang up is, of course, price per barrel. Companies were asking too much for operating in the country in the eyes of the government. Still, others were willing to operate at loss just to get a foothold in the new market.
It’s funny, because if our war in Iraq were really a war for oil, why is Iraq taking offers to see who will be drilling for all that oil? (The offers are also coming from China, Russia and India, not just the USA)
Since early 2007 the Egyptian government has been appeasing Muslim fundamentalists by settling matters of sectarian conflict out of court in line with Islamic Sharia law. That prohibits Christians from bringing evidence against Muslims. The government brokers ‘reconciliation’ sessions where the Christians are forced to drop all the charges they are making (arson, looting, assault, kidnap, robbery, criminal damage, rioting, torture, rape, murder) in exchange for Muslim guarantees of ‘peace’.
…Not only is violence against Christian individuals, churches and communities escalating dangerously, but the courts are increasingly subordinating the Constitution to Sharia law. Notably, the courts are refusing to allow Muslims the right to convert. The consequences of this are huge. A woman who is officially registered as a Muslim must by law marry a Muslim and the children of a man officially registered as a Muslim are automatically deemed Muslim by the State. The few who have courageously challenged this have been forced into hiding to preserve their lives.
Please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries.
Sri Lanka, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc.
Wow! Michael Totten has a super-long interview with Robert Kaplan, a moderate who writes about the U.S. military and global conflicts in the most far-flung places in the world.
Excerpts:
Kaplan: …The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say “you have to kill all the people to get to us.” So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.
Kaplan: …The Sri Lankan government was elected in 2005 to win the war. And it has done that. Extremely brutally. It’s a government that’s very nationalist Sinhalese Buddhist. These are not the Richard Gere’s “peace and love” Buddhists. These are the real blood and soil Buddhists, where Buddhism is like any other religion when it’s threatened and it’s defending a piece of territory. It can be very brutal.
Wow, this thing was really messy. You have suicide bombing terrorists with human shields on the one side, and a journalist-killing authoritarian government on the other side. There were no good guys. What a mess. These militant Buddhists remind me of the militant nationalist Hindus I talked about before.
Here is a pretty useful timeline of events from Atlas Shrugs for the current democratic crisis in Honduras. This article really emphasizes the socialist policies of the wanna-be dictator. The person who provided it is an American investor living in Honduras.
Excerpt:
I have been disgusted at the world reaction to these events. It’s like they only looked at what happened on Sunday morning and ignored what events led to that day. I don’t understand how the removal of Zelaya was anything less than a small country demanding that their country remain democratic. Their constitutional process worked exactly right to remove a rogue president with an agenda that was detrimental to the Honduran constitution and society. While the actions o f June 28 would fit some definitions of a coup, it was certainly a legal and CONSTITUTIONAL coup. There have been several articles written that state that it was a MANDATORY coup. That’s a very difficult concept for most people from the first world to understand, but there are some coups that are good and even required.
I hope that Honduras can bear up under the economic sanctions they are likely to face – and no help from Obama, either. He seems to prefer Chavez and Ahmadinejad.
WINTERY KNIGHT 