By Paul Cruickshank and Adam Levine
Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen has released a new guide for would-be Western recruits urging those Western militants who were thinking of traveling to join the group in Yemen to, in effect, think twice before making the trip.
The guide, entitled "Expectations Full," was apparently compiled by Samir Khan, the American-Saudi editor of the group's Inspire magazine, before his death in a drone strike in late September 2011.
Recommended: Yemen plot exposes new world of U.S. spying
"I strongly recommend all the brothers and sisters coming from the West to consider attacking America in its own backyard. The effect is much greater, it always embarrasses the enemy, and these type of individual decision-making attacks are nearly impossible for them to contain," Khan wrote in a caption underneath a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco skyline.
By Nic Robertson, Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister, CNN
Diplomats and other observers in Libya say that with elections one month away, the National Transitional Council is struggling to exert control over various militia prominent in the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi. The situation is further complicated by tribal rivalries and a growing presence of Islamist militants in some areas.
One source briefed by Western intelligence officials says of particular concern is the city of Derna on the Mediterranean coast some 160 miles (300 kilometers) west of the Egyptian border. The source tells CNN that hundreds of Islamist militants are present in and around the town, and there are camps where weapons and physical training are provided to militants. He said one official had described the area as "a disaster zone."
Tensions have grown between local people and the militants. Last month, a number of Derna residents went to a camp on the outskirts of the city, according to the source, and forced militants to leave.
By Paul Cruickshank, CNN Terrorism Analyst
For years they were the double act at the top of al Qaeda: the charismatic Saudi who projected aloofness while he micro-managed, and his cunning but divisive Egyptian deputy, whose prolific video output made him the public face of the network in the years after 9/11.
They had forged an alliance between their two groups, and settled into a symbiotic partnership in the Jihadist melting pot of Peshawar in the late 1980s, and in the following decade the Sudan and Taliban-run Afghanistan. Those who spent time in their company say the two men were genuinely close and enjoyed an easy and often jocular repartee. When Osama bin Laden walked into a room, Ayman al Zawahiri was often at his side, deferential and courteous – a quite calculated but also genuine show of respect – and a metaphor for his relationship with the Saudi.
For there was also fierce ambition in the Egyptian, and some different ideas about where al Qaeda’s priorities should lie, which the Abbottabad documents suggest caused a number of disagreements in the years after 9/11, with implications, given Zawahiri’s accession as leader, for the future course of the terrorist network.
By Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank
The editor and star contributor may be dead, but that hasn't prevented al Qaeda in Yemen from issuing the eighth and ninth editions of its online English-language magazine, Inspire.
The eighth edition of the high-color magazine includes the most detailed advice yet from radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on launching attacks against Western countries. In a five-page article entitled "Targeting the Populations of Countries at War With Muslims," al-Awlaki justifies the killing of women and children and the use of chemical and biological weapons in addition to bombings and gun attacks.
Al-Awlaki and the man widely believed to have been Inspire's editor, former North Carolina blogger Samir Khan, were both killed in a drone attack in September in Yemen. It's unclear why it's taken so long to publish their articles. FULL POST
By Paul Cruickshank, CNN Terrorism Analyst
Editor’s note: On Tuesday an American of Bosnian descent became the third man to be convicted of a suicide bombing plot against the New York subway. This account draws on court testimony and documents as well as interviews with U.S. counter-terrorism and intelligence officials.
The e-mail was sent from somewhere in Pakistan at 7:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 6, 2009. It was instantly logged by the massive data-gathering computers of the U.S. National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, and at GCHQ, the UK's signals intelligence agency.
The sender was someone known to U.S. and UK security services as "Ahmad," who'd been on the radar of British intelligence since a suspected al Qaeda cell had been uncovered in Manchester that year, according to senior U.S. counterterrorism officials.
But the recipient was previously unknown, with the address njbzaz@yahoo.com. Whoever it was lived in the Denver area. Alarm bells rang across the U.S. intelligence establishment. Who in Colorado was in touch with a man suspected as a handler for al Qaeda?
Within two hours, njbzaz replied, "Listen I need a amount of the one mixing of (flour and ghee oil) and I do not khow the amount."
Minutes later, he sent a follow-up: "Plez reply to what I asked u right away. the marriage is ready flour and oil."
U.S. authorities quickly established that the Denver-based e-mailer was Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan resident alien. He had moved to the Denver area from New York in January 2009 and taken a job as an airport shuttle van driver.
He appeared to be asking for clarification on the quantities of chemicals needed to make a bomb. Flour had frequently been part of the mixture in al Qaeda bombs in the West.
But U.S. intelligence agencies had no idea what Zazi was planning or whether he had co-conspirators. The FBI decided to track his movements and was soon trying to keep up with him.
Zazi left Denver in a rented Chevy Impala early September 9. The FBI was on his tail and asked a highway patrol officer to find a pretext to stop him - and find out where he was going.
By CNN Terrorism Analyst Paul Cruickshank
Within weeks of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden was planning follow-up operations to bring down airliners in the United States and south-east Asia, according to a convicted al Qaeda operative testifying in a terror trial in New York.
Saajid Badat was speaking via a video deposition from the United Kingdom, where he is serving a jail sentence for his role in plotting to blow up a U.S. bound aircraft in December 2001.
It's the first time that an al Qaeda operative has provided such detail about plans to bring down airliners in the wake of 9/11.
By CNN Terrorism Analyst Paul Cruickshank
New details emerged in federal court in Brooklyn on Monday of a plan al Qaeda hatched in the summer of 2008 to bomb the Long Island Railroad.
Bryant Neal Vinas, a confessed American al Qaeda operative who joined the terrorist network in Pakistan's tribal areas in March 2008, provided details of a plan for a suicide bomber to detonate explosives aboard a Long Island Railroad train as it entered a tunnel on the commuter line to create maximum devastation.
Vinas was testifying in the trial of Adis Medunjanin, a U.S. citizen of Bosnian descent, who is charged with involvement in an al Qaeda plot to bomb New York's subways in September 2009. U.S. authorities allege the 2009 plot was orchestrated by Saleh al Somali and other senior al Qaeda operatives. Vinas and Medunjanin never met.
By CNN Terrorism Analyst Paul Cruickshank
White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan warned of the dangers posed by al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen in speech at NYPD Headquarters in New York Friday, when he assessed the threat from al Qaeda one year after the death of Osama bin Laden.
He described the group – al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) – which has taken advantage of a security vacuum in southern Yemen to expand its reach as “very, very dangerous.”
Brennan received a standing ovation from NYPD officers at the event for his role in the operation that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. He was presented with an NYPD jacket by New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
One NYPD official asked him what it was like to be in the White House Situation Room that night. “There wasn’t a sense of exubarance, he said, “there were no high fives. People let out a breath. It was a moment of reflection. This was something we’d all worked toward for a long time.”
FULL POST
By Paul Cruickshank, CNN Terrorism Analyst
Saajid Badat, a U.K. terrorist convicted for plotting in December 2001 to blow up a shoe bomb on a transatlantic airliner heading from Europe to the United States, revealed in a U.S. court Thursday that he met Osama bin Laden several times in Afghanistan between 2000-2001.
When he pleaded guilty in 2005, Badat indicated that had been directed by al Qaeda to launch the plot, but this is the first time he has publicly revealed his interactions with the terrorist group’s founder.
As part of his guilty plea, Badat admitted he had conspired with shoe-bomber Richard Reid to launch the plot against transatlantic aviation. In December 2001 Reid attempted but failed to blow up a plane travelling from Paris to Miami with a device made from the explosive PETN hidden in his shoe, and
subsequently pleaded guilty of the plot in the United States.
The revelations about Badat’s ties to bin Laden suggest it is possible the deceased terrorist leader had a hand in the plots to target U.S. bound aviation with shoe bombs in late 2001.
By Paul Cruickshank, Pam Benson and Tim Lister
On the maps of Yemen it's called Jaar - a dusty, dilapidated sort of place with a population of some 40,000. But the group that has controlled Jaar for the past year, al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al Shariah, has changed the town's name to the Emirate of Qar.
Now Jaar is in the cross hairs of both U.S. and Saudi counter-terrorism agencies, following Ansar al Shariah's attack on a military base near Zinjibar on the coast about 20 miles (28 kilometers) away. The group seized large amounts of weaponry and took more than 70 Yemeni soldiers hostage. It is threatening to kill its captives unless about 300 al Qaeda members in Yemeni jails are freed. FULL POST
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