Padilla guilty of aiding Al-Qaeda

Good riddance to Padilla.
This loser was willing to trade his lack of Saturday night dates for the lives of innocent women and children.

A US federal jury overnight found citizen Jose Padilla guilty of aiding Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network and conspiring to commit murder outside the United States.
The jury found Padilla, a 36-year-old former member of a Chicago gang, guilty of supporting Islamic terrorists and of conspiring to kill, kidnap and maim people.
Padilla's two co-conspirators, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were also found guilty of the three charges they faced.
The seven-man, five woman jury took a day and a half to reach the verdict.
The three month long trial focused largely on wiretaps of telephone conversations between Padilla's co-defendants.

The White House was quick to hail the verdict.
"We commend the jury for its work in this trial and thank it for upholding a core American principle of impartial justice for all. Jose Padilla received a fair trial and a just verdict," said spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Padilla was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Chicago. He later moved to South Florida.
A convert to Islam, Padilla was detained in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare airport after returning from Egypt and was taken to a US navy prison in South Carolina.
Then-US attorney general John Ashcroft justified placing Padilla in military detention as an "enemy combatant" by saying he was suspected of planning to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United States.
But when Padilla was transferred to the civilian justice system after spending three-and-a-half years in military detention held without charge, the indictment made no mention of the so-called dirty bomb plot.

Instead Padilla and co-defendants were charged with aiding a US-based militant cell of Al-Qaeda that supplied recruits and funding to Islamic extremists abroad.
They were accused of conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.
The prosecution portrayed Padilla as an Al-Qaeda-trained terrorist who plotted bloody attacks abroad.
"He provided himself to Al-Qaeda for training to learn how to murder, kidnap and maim," government lawyer Brian Frazier told the court during closing arguments on Tuesday.
The main piece of evidence against him was a "mujahedeen data form" found in Afghanistan in 2001 that was filled out under an alias and bore Padilla's fingerprints.
"You are already inside the Al-Qaeda organisation when you get this form to fill out," said Mr Frazier.
Padilla's lawyers said the charges were exaggerated, and insisted he and the other defendants had links with countries such as Afghanistan and Bosnia because they were involved in humanitarian aid for Muslims there.
One of the defence lawyers, Kenneth Swart, told the court that the charges were politically motivated.
Prosecutors claim that Padilla went to Afghanistan from Egypt in 1998, though the defence insisted Padilla travelled to Egypt to study Islam and Arabic.
A key theme during the trial was the government's claim that Jayyousi used his American Worldwide Relief charity as a front to provide funds and equipment to terrorists. The defence team argued the group sent aid to oppressed Muslims in conflict areas.

Padilla's defence team claimed that while held in military detention from 2002 to 2005 their client was subjected to sleep deprivation, threats of execution, exposure to noxious fumes, and extreme heat and cold, and was forced to wear a hood and stand in one position for extended periods of time.

"Jose was not a member of any support cell because there wasn't one. He did not commit violence. There were no victims, real or imaginary," Padilla's lawyer Anthony Natale told the jurors during the defence phase.

US authorities deny Padilla was mistreated.
Jeanne Baker, who represented Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Florida resident alleged to have recruited Padilla, had argued that the US government "is twisting the facts out of all recognition".
The government "really is trying to put Al-Qaeda on trial", Ms Baker said, adding: "It has nothing to do with the facts."
The defence team, which did not call on a single witness to testify, pointed out that Mr Frazier mentioned Al-Qaeda a total of 91 times in his opening statement.

One down and 3 billion to go!

Hamas Militiamen Beat Protesters

It's often debated as to whether or not there actually are middle-of-the- road Arabs in Palestine that want freedom.
Perhaps this incident is a good sign. MB

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Hamas militiamen beat protesters with clubs and rifle butts to try to stop a demonstration by political opponents in the Gaza Strip on Monday, but hundreds chanting "We want freedom" defied the ban.

Hamas routed forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement in five days of savage fighting in Gaza in June. The Islamic militant group has tolerated no dissent since taking over the coastal strip.



After Fatah and other allied groups announced plans to stage a rally Monday, Hamas banned "all demonstrations and public gatherings" that did not have special permission.

Buses arriving at the demonstration site in a main square were halted by Hamas guards who beat protesters, driving them away and confiscating Fatah flags.

Nevertheless, about 300 protesters got past the militia cordon and demonstrated for about 20 minutes, shouting "We want to raise our voice," before dispersing.

Hamas men arrested several demonstrators and confiscated equipment from news photographers and cameramen seeking to cover the arrests, including an Associated Press camera.

The Palestinian journalists' union called on members to observe a three-day boycott of any events organized by the Hamas force to protest the treatment of the media.

Saleh Nasser, of the small, leftist, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine was at the protest and condemned Hamas' response.

"Treating people in this way when they came to raise their voice in a peaceful demonstration is something that is condemned, rejected and cannot be accepted," he said. "We are astonished by the decision to ban demonstrations."

Following the protest, Hamas squads raided Gaza offices of media organizations seeking material from the rally, eyewitnesses said. Staff at Gulf-based satellite broadcaster Al-Arabiyya said the Hamas men seized a camera, videotape and tripod from their premises.

The June infighting in Gaza, which killed about 100 people, deepened the already bitter political rivalry between Hamas and Fatah.

Following the Hamas takeover of Gaza, Abbas expelled Hamas from the Palestinian coalition government and formed a West Bank-based administration of moderates in its place.

Undeterred, deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh pledged to impose law and order on the formerly anarchic Gaza Strip. But his heavily armed police, known as the Executive Force, is gaining a reputation for being heavy-handed at best, particularly when dealing with Fatah supporters.


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Debka Anti-Terror Site Foils Bomb Plot

New York steps up security against al Qaeda attack in response to DEBKAfile Exclusive Report, followed by additional info on Manhattan dirty bomb

August 11, 2007, 10:45 AM (GMT+02:00)

New York police increased security Friday, Aug. 10, throughout Manhattan and tunnels and bridges against threat of an al Qaeda plot to detonate a dirty bomb in the city. The department cited an “unverified radiological threat” from Internet chatter reported on Israeli Web site debka.com, stressing the security hike was precautionary.

At the same time, the NY police confirmed to Reuters that additional information had been received that a dirty bomb may go off on Friday evening around 34th Street in Manhattan, where the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden and Macy’s department store are located. The deployment of radiological sensors was increased on vehicles, boats and helicopters and vehicle checkpoints set up in Wall Street, lower Manhattan’s financial district and at bridges and tunnels.

New York Mayor and US homeland department played down the threat as “unsubstantiated” and stressed the city’s alert status stayed unchanged at “orange.”

"Bombing in southern Iraq kills governor,"

by Hamid Ahmed for the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD - A powerful roadside bomb on Saturday killed the governor and police chief of a southern province that has seen fierce internal fighting between Shiite factions, officials said.
The bomb struck a convoy carrying the Khalil Jalil Hamza, the governor of the Qadisiyah province, and the provincial police chief home from a funeral service for a tribal sheik at about 5 p.m., army Brig. Gen. Othman al-Farood said.
Hamza and the police chief, Maj. Gen. Khalid Hassan, were killed, along with their driver and a body guard who were in the same SUV, according to al-Farood, the commander of the Iraqi army division in charge of the area.
The attack occurred in the town of Aajaf, as the convoy was headed back to the provincial capital of Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.
Diwaniyah has been the site of heavy clashes between U.S.-Iraqi security forces and Shiite militia fighters. The area also has seen a rise in internal rivalries between rival militia forces, including the Mahdi Army that is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
In Baghdad, militants bombed the house of a prominent anti-al-Qaida Sunni cleric, seriously wounding him and killing three of his relatives in what appeared to be an increased campaign against Sunnis who have turned against the terror network.
That attack, which was followed by a fierce firefight, came after Sheik Wathiq al-Obeidi called on residents in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah to rise up against foreign fighters, a reference to al-Qaida in Iraq, which recently has seen a surge in opposition from fellow Sunnis.
A Sunni insurgent umbrella group threatened the cleric on Tuesday, calling him a traitor and accusing him of working with the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of Sunni tribal leaders who are fighting al-Qaida in Iraq in the province of the same name west of Baghdad.
"The so-called Wathiq and his followers ... are a legitimate target for mujahedeen (holy warriors)," the statement said.
The concept of takfir, or excommunication, coupled with the mandate to kill unbelievers (Qur'an 9:5) leads to two internal consequences for Muslim communities: One is eternal instability, as tempers are conditioned to be short and explosive over disagreements. Additionally, the lack of separation of religion and state in Islamic teachings only adds fuel to the fire where political disagreements arise, demonstrated by both Shi'ites and Sunnis in this article.

In that atmosphere, the hazards of being branded a substandard believer, coupled with the military and material incentive for demonstrating religious devotion only further encourages as literal a following of texts and teachings as possible (see also: Gaza Strip). And thus, there arises a self-perpetuating cycle in that the solution to Islamically-charged instability is always more Islam (since the root of the problem is that the other party has it wrong), more sharia, and more jihad to make it happen.

Many thanks to Jihad Watch for the work they do in alerting readers Islamic Fundelmentalists. (Also for this article.)