The FBI arrested a California man for allegedly sending more than 120 packages claiming to contain anthrax to Rep. George Radanovich's (R-Calif.) Modesto district office and more than 100 media organizations throughout the country. Next time leave off the return address.
Marc M. Keysor, 66, was charged Wednesday evening with sending the letters, which contained a CD entitled "Anthrax: Shock & Awe Terror" and an attached sugar packet containing a "white powdery substance." The packet had an orange biohazard symbol on its label and the words "Anthrax Sample."
Several of the packages allegedly sent by the Sacramento resident were sent to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., for processing according to the FBI's press release.
"At this point none of the contents have tested positive for bio-hazardous material," it read. "It is likely that many other mailings will be received over the next few days. Recipients of these mailings are advised to contact their local FBI office so that these packages can be collected and preserved for evidentiary purposes."
Radanovich's office received the letter Wednesday morning and reported them to authorities.
Keysor's arrest was not connected to the hoax mailings containing a powdery substance sent last week to numerous banks and the New York Times, according to the FBI.
Posted by: ed ||
10/31/2008 12:12 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
This guy's OLD HIPPIE. Let's see how he likes jail at his age.
Posted by: ARMY GUY ||
10/31/2008 13:39 Comments ||
Top||
#2
And if you think this guy's dumb, I give you...the feds
Feds: Suspect in anthrax hoax did it before
SAN FRANCISCO A California man suspected of mailing more than 120 hoax anthrax letters to media outlets, including The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was interviewed previously by the FBI after one similar mailing in 2007, but he was not charged.
Marc M. Keyser, 66, was interviewed by the FBI in January 2007 for allegedly sending a package containing a small aerosol can labeled "Anthrax," along with a compact disc, to the Sacramento News and Review newspaper, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in federal court.
Keyser told agents then that he was using the mailing as a publicity stunt for a novel he had penned, and "to model what would happen if terrorists were to use anthrax ... to show the amount of anthrax a terrorist might spray into the air conditioning system in a shopping mall." The can did not contain anthrax.
Agents warned Keyser he had violated federal law and could be prosecuted, but they didn't arrest him. Agent Filip Colfescu said in the complaint that Keyser at the time apologized for the hoax "and told agents they should not worry, that he would not be doing it again."
Oh. Okay. You seem like a nice guy...
Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner, who is prosecuting the current case, said Keyser was not charged in 2007 because "it was a very much more limited conduct at that point. It was one instance. He was admonished."
Oooooh...admonished! what now? Double secret probation?
A suicide bomber killed five people in a daring attack -- claimed by the Taliban -- inside the Information Ministry in the heart of the Afghan capital on Thursday, said the government. The Taliban said foreign advisers were the targets of the attack, which also involved an exchange of gunfire with ministry guards. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the attack was carried out by the 'enemies' of Afghans. The deputy police chief for Kabul said a woman was also among those killed. A doctor at a hospital near the blast site said at least one person was killed and 18 wounded. The blast damaged part of the first floor of the ministry -- which lies several hundred metres away from the presidential palace in Kabul -- and forced authorities to evacuate ministry officials. Meanwhile, a Danish soldier was injured on Wednesday in a gunbattle in the southern Helmand province, said Denmark's Army Operational Command in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
A Somali deputy police commander has escaped an insurgent attack that killed six of his guards south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
The abortive attack had targeted the deputy police commander of the Medina and Dharkenley districts. Abdullahi Ali Yari had been the target of the attack on his office, a Press TV correspondent in Somalia reported.
He, however, escaped unharmed while the insurgents killed six of his guards near the office which had reportedly been targeted 19 times over the past three months.
The commander's precinct has been the site of recurrent insurgent raids.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic Courts
North Somali authorities said on Thursday they had arrested a prominent local sheikh suspected of involvement in a wave of suicide attacks that killed at least 30 people.
There was still no claim of responsibility for the five bombs in Puntland and Somaliland regions on Wednesday. But suspicion has fallen on local insurgents fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian military allies. The United States blamed al Qaeda, which it says works through the local Islamist militant group al Shabaab, for the attacks, which overshadowed a regional heads-of-state meeting in Kenya to discuss the 17-year-long conflict in Somalia. Medical staff in Bosasso port, in semi-autonomous Puntland, said two soldiers wounded by one of the car bombs, at an intelligence headquarters, had died overnight, bringing to at least five the victims of that strike.
Authorities in the Somali breakaway region of Puntland said Thursday they believed the two suicide bombers who struck anti-terrorism centres a day earlier had been trained by Al-Qaeda. "The attackers were trained by Al-Qaeda, according to the evidence we have collected, but investigations are still under way," Puntland presidential advisor Bile Mohamoud Qabowsade told.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic Courts
Gunmen have killed a peacekeeper and wounded another in an attack in North Darfur in western Sudan, the joint United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) said on Thursday.
"One peacekeeper was killed and another injured yesterday in ... North Darfur by unknown armed men," UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni told Reuters. He said the shooting took place on Wednesday in the state of North Darfur. The killing brings to 10 the number of peacekeepers who have lost their lives in Darfur over the last three months. In October, one Nigerian sergeant was shot dead after up to 60 armed bandits ambushed his convoy. In early July, seven members of the under-manned force were killed and another 22 were wounded in an ambush by militia fighters in North Darfur. A week later, another Nigerian officer was killed in a car-jacking in west Darfur. The force is responsible for securing the violent region but is far short of its promised strength of 26,000 personnel.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
A car bomb explosion blamed on the Basque separatists at a university in Pamplona, Spain has wounded 17 people and set a building on fire. No one has claimed responsibility for the Thursday explosion but officials are blaming the Basque separatist group ETA for the attack.
The bomb went off in a parking lot at the University of Navarra and broke windows and set cars on fire, AP reported. "ETA has once again displayed its vileness," said Jose Antonio Alonso, spokesman in parliament for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapaptero's Socialist party.
Seventeen people were slightly injured, some of them as a result of flying glass, the Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.
He went on to add that a man who claimed to be speaking for ETA phoned in a warning to the authorities in the Basque capital, Vitoria an hour before the explosion. He had said that the bomb was packed in a white Peugeot and was due to go off at 'the university campus.'
Unfortunately the police thought he was referring to the university in Vitoria and carried out a search there, not knowing that the bomb would go off without warning in Pamplona, 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Vitoria. "Clearly, whoever placed the bomb gave a warning and either intentionally did not give all the information or made a mistake,'' Perez Rubalcaba said.
Earlier on Tuesday Spanish police had arrested three suspected members of ETA in Pamplona and another in Valencia. However Rubalcaba refrained from speculating on whether or not Pamplona had been targeted as a result of the arrests.
Navarra borders on the Basque region and is home to many Basque-speakers and ETA says that it should be part of the independent homeland it wants to create.
ETA called a cease-fire in March 2006 but resumed attacks in December 2006 after peace talks with Zapatero's government failed. Since then, it has been blamed for seven deaths, three of them in 2008.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Mohammad Momin Khawaja, a Pakistani-Canadian, has been convicted of terrorist crimes by a Canadian court and is likely to receive a stiff sentence on 18 November.
Khawaja has been convicted of seven offences, including that he was a bomb-builder; that he had trained as a terrorist; and that he had financed terrorism through an intermediary.
Khawaja (29), who grew up in Canada, has been convicted of seven offences, five of which come under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act, including that he was a bomb-builder; that he had trained as a terrorist; and that he had financed terrorism through an intermediary.
Sentencing on the individual counts ranges from 10 years to life. Justice Douglas Rutherford of Ontario Superior Court found that Khawaja, whose day job was to fix computers for Canada's Foreign Affairs Department, felt it was his calling to do whatever he could to help a band of British Al Qaeda sympathisers whom he had met on the Internet. Last year, five of these men were convicted of plotting to bomb packed nightclubs and busy shopping malls around London, in hopes of creating a panic that would force the British government to pull its soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Globe and Mail reports.
Tarek Fatah, co-founder of the progressive Muslim Canadian Congress, said in a statement that Khawaja's conviction comes "after this terrorist had been portrayed by Islamist groups in Canada as a victim of so-called Islamophobia and racial profiling". The conviction should serve as a wake-up call to self-styled leaders of the Muslim community who painted the picture of Momin Khawaja as a victim and the Crown as the enemy. May be Islamists in Canada and the West will now come to their senses and cease spreading a sense of false victimhood among young Muslim men.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan Intelligence officials say a suspected US missile strike has killed 15 people in northwest Pakistan. The officials said the identities of those killed in the attack late Friday were not immediately clear.
They said the house targeted in the raid in Mir Ali village in North Waziristan was frequented by an Arab known as Abu Kasha Iraqi.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) A mid-level al Qaeda leader, identified as an Iraqi, was among up to 20 people killed on Friday in a U.S. missile strike in northwest Pakistan, a Pakistani intelligence official said.
The intelligence official identified the al Qaeda leader as Abu Akash and said he was believed to have been Iraqi.
"He is a mid-level al Qaeda man who was leading a high-profile life in Mir Wali," said the official, who declined to be identified, referring to the second biggest town in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border.
#2
From Bill Roggio: Abu Kasha was the key link between al Qaeda's Shura Majlis -- main Shura or consultive body -- and the Taliban.
His resonsibilities have expanded to assisting in facilitating al Qaeda external operations against the West, a senior US military intelligence official told told The Long War Journal today.
Kasha commanded two local Pakistani commanders, Imanullah and Haq Nawaz Dawar. These men administer al Qaeda's network in Mir Ali. Kasha had a working relationship and close communication with the Uzbek terror groups, including the Islamic Jihad Group run by Najimuddin Uzbek, who also operates out of North Waziristan.
One wonders if the other 14 were all innocent women and children, and how many fluffy bunnies were killed.
Tribal volunteers positioned on mountains in North and South Waziristan agencies opened fire on suspected US drones flying over the areas on Thursday. Tribesmen said the spy planes escaped the firing as they were flying at a high altitude. The drones continued flying over the two agencies throughout the day.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
i bet it pissed them off that they couldn't hit a remote control airplane
Posted by: chris ||
10/31/2008 9:57 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Let's play with their heads a bit. Paint the underside of the drones with the silhouete of a B-52.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
10/31/2008 14:34 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Monkeys flinging feces at eagles.
Posted by: ed ||
10/31/2008 14:46 Comments ||
Top||
Security forces in Mohmand Agency killed five Taliban and captured an explosives expert known to have links with Afghan insurgents, a senior military officer said on Thursday, AFP reported.
One Taliban was killed and another was wounded in a shootout with troops, who chased their vehicle when they refused to stop at a checkpost, Colonel Muhammad Saifullah said. Four other Taliban arrived in a jeep to rescue the injured, but security forces attacked the vehicle, killing all of them, he said.
The alleged explosives expert was identified as Pakistani Taliban commander Imran alias Mansoor.
Meanwhile, security forces killed 10 Taliban during a search operation in Sarsanai village of Kabal tehsil in Swat, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said. The ISPR statement said that security forces also seized a large quantity of explosives and CDs from the village.
Also, the Taliban beheaded a police constable who they abducted two days ago from Charbagh tehsil.
The Taliban also released 62 jirga members, abducted from Matta tehsil, after a deal with the local population, a jirga member and local administration officials told Daily Times. Sources said that the local population had assured the Taliban that they would not support the government in future. The Taliban had earlier killed two jirga members to pressure the local community to surrender to their demands.
Security forces on Thursday continued operation against the Taliban in Bajaur Agency and pounded suspected hideouts in Mamoond, Nawagai and Khar tehsils, officials said, APP reported.
Meanwhile, two persons were killed and another injured when a shell accidentally hit a house in Bai Cheena in Khar tehsil.
The security forces have strengthened their position in Loyesam and surrounding areas of Khar. Also on Thursday, Pakistani officials deported 17 Afghan nationals at Torkham border and arrested 25 Uzbek nationals travelling without valid documents.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
seems too me that kidnappeing the elders would ppiss the tirbe off and they would fight them even harder nnow so that any more kidnappings would happen even more
Posted by: chris ||
10/31/2008 9:59 Comments ||
Top||
US deaths in Iraq plunge to wartime low in October
BAGHDAD U.S. deaths in Iraq fell in October to their lowest monthly level of the war, matching the record low of 13 fatalities suffered in July. Iraqi deaths fell to their lowest monthly levels of the year.
Eight of the 13 Americans died in combat, most of them in northern Iraq where al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgent groups remain active. The U.S. military suffered 25 deaths in September and 23 in August.
The sharp drop in American fatalities reflects the overall security improvements across the country following the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and the rout suffered by Shiite extremists in fighting last spring in Basra and Baghdad.
But the decline also points to a shift in tactics by extremist groups, which U.S. commanders say are now focusing their attacks on Iraqi soldiers and police that are doing much of the fighting.
Iraqi government figures showed at least 364 Iraqis killed in October including police, soldiers, civilians and militants.
Militants have blown up a section of a Baghdad water pipeline, shutting off drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people, the US military said.
The explosion on Thursday (local time) tore an 45 centimetre hole in a pipeline carrying drinking water to Baghdad's Adhamiyah, Rusafa and Karrada districts, a US military said, adding that it expected the pipeline would be fixed by the end of Friday.
Infrastructure such as power lines, oil refineries and water pipes are a common target for militants in Iraq, although such attacks have fallen sharply as violence has dropped to four year lows.
Iraqi forces hunting Al Qaeda members arrested 220 people in a raid in western Anbar province, a former insurgent stronghold, the province's police chief and the US military said.
Police backed by the Iraqi army stormed houses in the village of Owesat, in southern Anbar where they believe the Sunni Islamist insurgents were hiding, on Thursday morning (local time), Anbar police chief Major General Tareq Yusuf said.
"Those gunmen were controlling this area and they thought it would be safe for them there. We took the initiative and executed a bold raid," he said.
The area is in a zone along the Euphrates river by the border between Anbar and Babil provinces, dubbed the "triangle of death" by US forces in the years after the 2003 invasion for its stubborn insurgency, although it is now quieter.
Mr Yusuf said a few of the militants resisted. No one was killed but two policemen were wounded during the offensive. Mr Yusuf did not think all of those arrested belonged to Al Qaeda.
"An investigation is under way to sift the good guys from the bad guys," he said.
The US Marines handed Anbar back to Iraqi security control last month, two years after the desert region was considered lost to insurgents and al Qaeda militants. They put Iraqis in control of neighbouring Babil this month.
But security officials say remnants of the Sunni Islamist group and other insurgents still roam the region, occasionally planting bombs and attacking security forces.
An explosive device that was taken to a Gaza police station to be dismantled killed one Hamas security office and wounded three others while it was being dismantled. Hamas did not report where the bomb was found and why it was taken inside the police station. Policing Gaza style must be facinating
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday ordered the closure of Israel's crossings with the Gaza Strip, shortly after Palestinian militants fired a rocket on southern Israel despite a four-month-old truce. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the rocket landed near the city of Sderot but there were no casualties or damage.
The closure of the crossing points, through which vital supplies are imported into the Hamas-ruled territory, went into effect on Thursday morning, a statement from Barak's office said. It did not say when the crossing points would reopen.
The June ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Islamist Hamas group has largely held, though Palestinian militants have occasionally fired rockets into Israel. In response, Israel usually temporarily closes its border with the territory. Under the agreement, Hamas agreed to halt rocket attacks in return for the gradual lifting of a blockade that Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip two years ago.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
* Bali bombers in isolation
* Police reveal bombs found this week
* Families not told executions imminent
INDONESIA has stepped up security around foreign embassies amid fears of attacks as it prepares to execute the three Islamists convicted over the Bali nightclub bombings which killed 202 people.
Police have revealed they had found and defused two bombs in a Balinese Hindu migrant area on Sulawesi island on Wednesday and Thursday as tensions mount ahead of the imminent executions.
"I think there is a connection between this and the execution of Amrozi and others," local police chief Suparni Parto said, referring to bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, who could be executed as early as today.
National police spokesman Abubakar Nataprawira said extra police had been stationed around embassies in Jakarta, especially the US and Australian missions, as well as sensitive locations across the main island of Java.
"We are increasing security at embassies and public places such as malls," he said.
Bus terminals, railway stations and houses of worship were also possible targets, he said.
"The exact date (for the execution) is the Attorney-General's Office's decision but the police are ready for the execution to be carried out any time."
Officials have said Imam Samudra, 38, Amrozi, 47, and Mukhlas, 48, will be executed by firing squad any time from midnight last night until mid-November.
They were sentenced six years ago for the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali which killed more than 160 foreigners including 88 Australians.
The attack, launched in retaliation for the US invasion of Afghanistan, remains one of the bloodiest terror bombings carried out in the name of Islam since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The executions have been repeatedly delayed by a series of failed appeals and most recently by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in September.
Attorney-General's Office spokesman Jasam Pandjaitan told the Antara state news agency the executions would be carried out "soon."
The Balinese prosecutor in charge of the executions reportedly arrived early yesterday at the prison island of Nusakambangan off southern Java where the bombers are being held, along with police responsible for firing squads.
The younger brother of Amrozi and Mukhlas said the family had not been informed of the executions, as they should be three days in advance.
Beaming broadly like his older brother Amrozi, who is known as the "smiling assassin," Ali Fauzi said the family had nothing to be ashamed about.
"Do we feel embarrassed or ashamed of what they have done? No, we feel proud because in this world full of lies and accusations there are still people who are ready to fight against that," he said in Tenggulun village , East Java.
Fears of a violent backlash from Islamist radicals in the world's most populous Muslim country have risen amid reports that hundreds of extremists are planning to protest near the prison.
The vast majority of Indonesian Muslims are moderate but a small fanatical fringe have waged jihad, or holy war, for many years in a bid to bring about an Islamic caliphate across South-East Asia.
The country has been hit by a string of attacks since 2000, including a suicide bombing in Bali which killed 20 people in 2005, a car bombing at the Australian embassy which killed 10 people in 2004 and another car bombing at the American-owned JW Marriott hotel which killed 12 people in 2003.
Most of the attacks including the 2002 blasts have been attributed to the Jemaah Islamiah regional terror network.
Sri Lankan air force jets pounded a Tamil Tiger suicide fighters' base deep in the country's embattled north Thursday, and ground troops seized a major rebel defence line on the north-western coast, the military said. The air strike on the base of the Tamil Tiger suicide fighters, known as Black Tigers, in the rebel stronghold of Mullaitivu came during an intensified government offensive against the guerrillas' de facto state in the north. Officials have pledged to crush the rebels by the end of the year.
I guess if you're attacking a suicide boomers' base nobody should mind getting killed, huh?
Air force spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara said pilots confirmed the attack was successful, but details of damage and casualties were not immediately available.
Troops "launched a multi-pronged offensive and marched toward Nachchikuda from three directions, destroying and capturing vital" rebel positions, the ministry said in a statement. The rebels "have withdrawn from the area as the security forces intensified their military thrust," it said. The military did not provide casualty details, in line with a new government policy, but said its troops inflicted "heavy casualties" on the rebels.
Also Wednesday, soldiers took control of Jayapuram, a rebel-held village in Kilinochchi.
The latest military successes came a day after the rebels' rudimentary air force bombed a power station on the outskirts of the capital and an army base in the north, injuring three soldiers.
The bombings, which showed that the rebels retain the ability to carry out startling attacks on the government, were a huge morale boost for the reeling guerrillas and an embarrassment for the military.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Do suicide bombers really need a base?
Seems like the Tigers could really cut their heads off overhead if they hired a consultant or something.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A suicide bomber killed five people in a daring attack -- claimed by the Taliban -- inside the Information Ministry in the heart of the Afghan capital on Thursday, said the government. The Taliban said foreign advisers were the targets of the attack, which also involved an exchange of gunfire with ministry guards. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the attack was carried out by the 'enemies' of Afghans. The deputy police chief for Kabul said a woman was also among those killed. A doctor at a hospital near the blast site said at least one person was killed and 18 wounded. The blast damaged part of the first floor of the ministry -- which lies several hundred metres away from the presidential palace in Kabul -- and forced authorities to evacuate ministry officials. Meanwhile, a Danish soldier was injured on Wednesday in a gunbattle in the southern Helmand province, said Denmark's Army Operational Command in a statement.
Gunmen have killed a peacekeeper and wounded another in an attack in North Darfur in western Sudan, the joint United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) said on Thursday. 
A car bomb explosion blamed on the Basque separatists at a university in Pamplona, Spain has wounded 17 people and set a building on fire. No one has claimed responsibility for the Thursday explosion but officials are blaming the Basque separatist group ETA for the attack. 
Mohammad Momin Khawaja, a Pakistani-Canadian, has been convicted of terrorist crimes by a Canadian court and is likely to receive a stiff sentence on 18 November.
Security forces in Mohmand Agency killed five Taliban and captured an explosives expert known to have links with Afghan insurgents, a senior military officer said on Thursday, AFP reported.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday ordered the closure of Israel's crossings with the Gaza Strip, shortly after Palestinian militants fired a rocket on southern Israel despite a four-month-old truce. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the rocket landed near the city of Sderot but there were no casualties or damage.
