2011—Georgia—Authorities arrested two Georgian men who had cesium–137, firearms, and TNT. One detainee was a former Soviet officer in an army logistics unit who retired in the early 1990s. He had kept the cesium for years before he and a relative tried to sell it to a Georgian agent.
January 1, 2011—Egypt—Thirty minutes after midnight, a suicide bomber stepped out of his car and set off explosives at the entrance to the Coptic Christian Church of Two Saints in Alexandria, killing twenty-three worshipers and injuring ninety-seven, including four police officers, as nearly one thousand parishioners were exiting Mass. The homemade device contained nails and ball bearings. Authorities blamed al Qaeda, whose Iraqi affiliate had threatened to attack Christians. The newspaper al-Masry al-Youm reported that security services said several foreign “infiltrators” had entered the country, although the bomb seemed to have been locally made. Egyptian Interior Minister Habib al-Adly blamed the al Qaeda-linked Palestinian Islamic Army. Abu Musanna, a spokesman for the Army of Islam, denied the charge. 11010101
January 2, 2011—Israel—Authorities charged five Hamas members who were arrested in November 2010 with planning to fire a rocket into a Jerusalem stadium during a soccer game. The key suspects were Hamas and Muslim Brothers members Mussa Hamada of East Jerusalem, and Bassem Omri, an Israeli citizen living in Beit Tzafafa. The other three Palestinian defendants were charged with selling them pistols.
January 4, 2011—Turkey—The Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that detainees could be held for only ten years without sentencing. The government released eighteen members of Turkish Hizballah and five members of the Kurdish Workers Party after they had spent more than a decade in jail without having the sentences endorsed by that court. One of those released was Edip Gumus, a Turkish Hizballah member who was freed from Diyarbakir’s jail. He was arrested in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison in December 2009 for membership in a terrorist organization and participating in more than one hundred murders. He admitted membership in the group but denied involvement in the murders.
January 4, 2011—Pakistan—Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard for Punjab Province’s Governor Salman Taseer, fatally shot Taseer in Islamabad. Taseer had criticized the anti-blasphemy law. On October 1, a Pakistani court sentenced Qadri to two sentences of death for murder and terrorism. He had seven days to file an appeal.
January 5, 2011—Norway/Turkey—Cuma Yasar, 40, a man wearing a snow mask and claiming to have a bomb, tried to enter the cockpit of a Turkish Airlines B-737–800 about to land at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul. He demanded that the captain fly back to Oslo. He was tackled by passengers Firat Faysal Ali and Dag Gjerstad; authorities then took him into custody. The hijacker was reportedly mentally ill. 11010501
January 5, 2011—Morocco—Morocco arrested a member of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and twenty-six other people planning to attack local and foreign security services and rob banks in Casablanca and Rabat. They had cached weapons, including thirty Kalashnikov rifles, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and several handguns at three sites in Amghala, an oasis in Western Sahara. The government said the group wanted to send recruits “to AQIM camps in Algeria and Mali to undergo paramilitary training before returning to Morocco to execute their destructive plans.” Observers said it was the first evidence of links between AQIM and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO).
January 6, 2011—United States—Two Maryland state employees sustained burns to their fingers when they opened packages that flashed, caught fire, and gave off smoke and a sulfur smell. One package was addressed to Governor Martin O’Malley in Annapolis and was opened at 12:30 p.m.; the other to Maryland Secretary of Transportation Beverley K. Swaim-Staley near Hanover and went off fifteen minutes later. Suspicious packages at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the federal courthouse in Baltimore were determined to be harmless. Both packages were the size of small books. One had five holiday stamps. Officials did not find explosives in the devices, which were 12 inches long, 4 to 8 inches wide, and one inch thick. A note that accompanied the package to O’Malley read, “Reports suspicious activity! Total bull[—]! You have created a self fulfilling prophecy. -X-” in all capital letters. The note referred to Maryland’s 113 highway signs asking for drivers to assist in spotting terrorist activities.
January 7, 2011—Niger—In a nighttime attack on Le Toulousain, a restaurant owned by a French citizen, in Niamey, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb kidnapped two French citizens. The next day, the terrorists executed them during a French rescue attempt at Ouallam, 60 miles northwest of Niamey. The duo was found dead at the Niger-Mali border. 11010701
January 7, 2011—United States—A package addressed to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano ignited at 2:45 p.m. when a mail sorter threw it into a bin at a U.S. Postal Service annex on V Street Northeast in Washington, DC, causing no injuries.
January 8, 2011—United States—At least six people, including a 9-year-old and U.S. District Court Judge John M. Roll, 63, the chief judge in Arizona, were killed and fourteen wounded when gunman Jared Lee Loughner, 22, fired a Glock 19 pistol at Arizona Member of the U.S. House of Representatives Gabrielle Giffords, 40, outside a Safeway grocery store in Tucson, Arizona, as the Democratic leader met with constituents. Giffords, a “blue dog” Democrat, sustained a bullet to the head and was sent to surgery; she was able to communicate, but not talk, within a few hours. Gabe Zimmerman, her local director of community outreach, died. Giffords’s district director Ron Barber, 65, a lifelong social worker with four grandchildren, and Pamela Simon, her community outreach aide, were wounded.
The 9-year-old was identified as Christina Taylor Green, who was born on September 11, 2001. She was a member of her school’s student council. She was the only girl on her Little League baseball team. She was the granddaughter of Dallas Green, the Philadelphia Phillies former manager. Susan Hileman, the neighbor who brought her to the event so that she could learn more about the political process, was shot four times.
Loughner’s Glock was fully loaded with thirty rounds. He had another magazine with thirty rounds, and two others that had fifteen bullets. He also carried a knife. He purchased the Glock on November 30 at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson, where he immediately passed a background check despite a history of bizarre behavior in his community college. He could conceal and carry the pistol without a permit under Arizona law.
President George H. W. Bush had appointed Roll in 1991; Roll became chief judge in 2006. He received hundreds of threats in February 2009 when he permitted a lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants to continue. He was put under twenty-four-hour protection for a month.
Giffords was beginning her third term having served earlier as a member of the Arizona House and Senate. She is married to astronaut Mark E. Kelly, who piloted space shuttles Endeavour and Discovery. The two met in China in 2003 and were married in January 2007. She had been subjected to threats. In August 2009, during a similar Congress on Your Corner event, a protester shouted invective and dropped a handgun. On March 22, 2010, the glass door to her Tucson office was shattered after she voted in favor of the health care bill.
Loughner posted several incoherent anti-government messages on the Internet, complaining about low educational attainment in Giffords’s district. Authorities were looking at his possible links to anti-government groups. He was rejected when he applied to the army. He posted a video attacking police at Tucson’s Pima Community College where he entered as a student in 2005. He withdrew in fall 2010 after disciplinary issues. Between February and September 2010, campus police were called five times to deal with his disruptive behavior in classrooms and libraries. His rap sheet included a drug arrest.
Loughner was represented by Judy Clarke, a San Diego public defender who defended Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and assisted in the defense of would-be twentieth 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui. She was joined by San Diego defender Mark Fleming. Loughner was charged with five federal offenses, including two capital murder counts, as well as attempted murder of Giffords and two others.
Authorities believed he acted alone and had planned the attack for some time. He had met Giffords at a similar Tucson mall public event in 2007.
A federal grand jury indicted Loughner on January 19, 2011, on three counts of attempting to assassinate Giffords and two counts of attempted murder of Ron Barber and Pam Simon. He faced life in prison and twenty years, respectively, on the charges. On January 24, a federal judge entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of Loughner to three counts of attempted murder.
On March 4, 2011, federal authorities charged Loughner with forty-nine counts of murder and attempted murder. The superseding indictment still charged him with the murder of two federal officials—Judge Roll and Gabriel Zimmerman—and added causing the deaths of Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck, Dorwan Stoddard, and Christina Taylor. He was also charged with injuring ten others and with numerous weapons infractions. The prosecutors argued that everyone was in a federally protected area, exercising their constitutional right of free assembly, and that their civil rights had been violated by the attack. On March 9, he pleaded not guilty. On May 25, 2011, U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns declared Loughner mentally unfit to stand trial and remanded him to a federal facility in Springfield, Missouri, to receive treatment for up to four months.
Representative Giffords attended the 2012 State of the Union address, finished the Congress on Your Corner event that had been halted by Loughner’s attack, and announced that she was resigning so that she could devote her time to her rehabilitation.
On August 7, 2012, Loughner agreed to a plea bargain accepted by Judge Larry A. Burns under which the gunman would spend the rest of his life in prison. Court-appointed psychiatrist Christina Pietz testified that he was able to understand the criminal charges, but was still seriously mentally ill with schizophrenia and his condition could deteriorate during a trial. He had been forcibly medicated with psychotropic drugs for more than a year. On November 8, 2012, U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns sentenced Loughner to seven consecutive life terms without parole plus 140 years.
January 9, 2011—Philippines—Government troops killed two Abu Sayyaf gunmen and captured a third following a forty-five-minute gun battle in the mountains outside Tipi Tipo on Basilan Island. The soldiers seived two M-16 rifles with ammunition and a rocket-propelled grenade.
January 10, 2011—Spain—The Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA) announced a permanent cease-fire as:
a firm commitment towards a process to achieve a lasting resolution and toward an end to the armed confrontation…. It is time to act with historical responsibility. ETA calls upon those governing Spain and France to end all repressive measures and to leave aside for once and for all their position of denial towards the Basque Country…. The solution will come through the democratic process with dialogue and negotiation as its tools and with its compass pointed towards the will of the Basque people … ETA will continue its indefatigable struggle and efforts to promote and to bring to a conclusion the democratic process until there is a truly democratic situation in the Basque Country.
The group did not mention a surrender of its weapons.
January 11, 2011—France/Spain—Police arrested Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA) member Iraitz Guesalaga in the southern town of Ciboure. He was believed to be one of the group’s technology experts, handling encryption. Spanish police arrested his girlfriend, Ixaso Urtiaga, in Zarautz, for aiding the ETA.
January 11, 2011—Egypt—Yelling “There is no God but God,” a deputy policeman killed a Christian man and wounded five other Christians on a train.
January 13, 2011—Ireland—Irish police detained five suspected Irish Republican Army dissidents under Section 30 of the Offenses Against the State Act after finding a bomb-making factory with metal tubes and other components at a remote farm 40 miles from Dublin in County Kildare. Police later released one man but held the others for questioning. Police suspected the dissident group Óglaigh na hÉireann (Irish Volunteers) was making mortar bombs to be used in Northern Ireland.
January 16, 2011—Pakistan—Gunmen in Dera Murad Jamali in Baluchistan Province torched ten parked oil tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan. One person was injured. 11011601
January 17, 2011—Yemen—A Yemeni court sentenced Anwar al-Aulaqi in absentia to ten years in prison on charges of inciting to kill foreigners. The court sentenced Hisham Asim, 19, to death; prosecutors said al-Aulaqi incited him to kill a Frenchman in an October shooting. The court sentenced in absentia Anwar al-Aulaqi’s cousin, Othman al-Aulaqi, to eight years in prison on charges of inciting to kill foreigners.
January 17, 2011—Paraguay—The leftist Paraguayan People’s Army claimed credit for a bombing that injured five people when a backpack bomb exploded outside a police station in Horqueta. It was the third bombing in a week. The group left a handwritten note saying it would keep up the anti-government attacks.
January 17, 2011—Iraq—A suicide bomber driving a car killed one person when he attacked the convoy of the governor of Anbar Province.
January 18, 2011—Iraq—A suicide bomber set off his explosive vest at a line of recruits at a police station in Tikrit, killing 67 and wounding 160 others.
January 18, 2011—Spain—The government arrested ten suspected members, including two women, of the Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA). Nine were arrested in Navarra, the other in Alava. Six suspects were linked to Ekin, a group which Spain’s National Court in 2007 ruled was “part of the heart” of ETA. The other four were linked to Askatasuna, a pro–ETA propaganda group.
January 18, 2011—United States—Three city employees found a Swiss Army backpack containing a bomb on a park bench in Spokane, Washington, an hour before a Martin Luther King, Jr., Day parade was to begin. Police defused the device, which they said could have caused multiple casualties. It contained metal pellets and a chemical found in rat poison. Authorities said it had a remote detonator. Officials noted that there are white supremacist and militia groups in the area. On April 22, 2011, a superseding indictment accused Kevin Harpham, 36, of Colville, Washington, with a hate crime—planting the bomb “because of actual or perceived race, color, and national origin” of march participants. On March 9, federal authorities had arrested Harpham. He pleaded not guilty in federal court to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and for possessing an unregistered explosive device. He often posted on white supremacist Web sites, including the Vanguard News Network. He observed, “Those who say you can’t win a war by bombing have never tried.”
January 19, 2011—Iraq—Fifteen people were killed in two suicide bombings in Diyala Province. A suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden ambulance into a police training center in Baqubah, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing thirteen and wounding seventy, many of them training with the Facilities Protection Service. Two people died and fifteen were injured when a man set off his explosive vest near the convoy of a senior provincial official during a gathering of Shi’ite pilgrims in Khalis district, north of Baqubah.
January 20, 2011—Iraq—Three bombs killed 50 Shi’ite pilgrims and injured at least 150 in attacks in Karbala in the runup to the Arbaeen religious commemoration. Two parked cars and a motorcycle had been rigged with the explosives.
January 21, 2011—Qatar—Al-Jazeera ran an Osama bin Laden audio in which he said that the release of two kidnapped French journalists depended on changes in France’s military role in Afghanistan.
We repeat the same message to you. The release of your prisoners from the hands of our brethren depends on the withdrawal of your soldiers from our countries…. The dismissal of your President [Nicholas] Sarkozy to get out of Afghanistan is the result of his subservience to the United States and this [dismissal] is considered to be the green signal to kill your prisoners without delay…. We will not do that at the time that suits him [Sarkozy] and this position will cost you dearly on all fronts, in France and abroad … [France] with its debt and budget deficit does not need new fronts.
The Taliban had kidnapped France 3 Television reporter Herve Ghesquiere and cameraman Stephane Taponier in December 2009.
January 21, 2011—United States/Pakistan—The United States imposed sanctions on Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Qari Hussain Mehsud, who had recruited children as suicide bombers. The United States blocked all property “subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Hussain has an interest” and prohibited all transactions by U.S. persons with him.
January 24, 2011—Russia—A suicide bomber set off explosives at 4:32 p.m. at the entrance of the international arrivals section of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, killing thirty-five people and wounding more than two hundred. The bomb included small metal objects that served as shrapnel. WTOP reported that eight foreigners, including two Britons and several French and Italian citizens, were among the dead. Passengers from Italy, Tajikistan, and Germany were coming through the unsecured customs area when the bomb exploded. North Caucasus Muslim separatists were suspected. A witness said the bomber was a short, dark man with a suitcase. Authorities said on January 29 that the bomber was a 20-year-old male but did not release his name. The Kommersant newspaper reported that authorities were searching for a Russian from Stavropol who was a member of the radical Islamist group Nogai Jamaat. The individual was believed involved in an August 17, 2010, terrorist attack.
In a Webcast on Kavkazcenter.com on February 7, Islamic leader Doku Umarov said he had ordered the suicide bombing and vowed further attacks. On February 9, Russian officials said the bomber was Magomed Yevloyev, 20, from Ingushetia. They arrested his teenage brother and sister on suspicion of involvement in the attack. On March 29, Russian authorities arrested two suspects in the attack. Investigators charged Chechen warlord Doku Umarov and another terrorist with organizing the bombing. Russian media reports suggested that Umarov might have been killed in a March 29 law enforcement raid in Ingushetia Province in which seventeen militants were killed. 11012401
January 24, 2011—United States—Police in Dearborn, Michigan, arrested southern California resident Roger Stockham, 63, for having explosives in his vehicle in the parking lot outside the Islamic Center of America, one of the nation’s largest mosques. He was arraigned on January 27 on one count of making a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possessing explosives with an unlawful intent. He had a large quantity of class–C fireworks including M-80s, which are outlawed in Michigan. Stockham was jailed on a $500,000 bond.
January 25, 2011—Thailand—At 5:25 p.m., a bomb exploded in the Yaha district of Yala Province, killing nine civilians and wounding two others. Muslim separatists were suspected.
January 25, 2011—Philippines—Four were killed and fifteen injured when a bomb exploded at 2:00 p.m. under a seat in a bus in Manila’s financial district. The Newman Bus Lines bus was approaching a Metro Rail Transit station on Buendia Avenue in Makati City.
January 25, 2011—Pakistan—Suicide bombers killed sixteen Shi’ite Muslims—thirteen in Lahore and three in Karachi. In Lahore, a bomb went off in front of a market near a procession of Shi’ite mourners observing the fortieth day of Ashura. In Karachi, a motorcyclist set off his bomb next to his police van at a security checkpoint outside another Shi’ite festival, killing two police officers. At least fifty-two people were hospitalized in Lahore; fifteen were in critical condition. Shakir Ullah Shakir, a spokesman for the Fedayeen-e-Islam, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban and Laskhar-e-Jangvi Sunni terrorist groups, claimed credit for the Lahore attack, observing that Shi’ites are enemies of Islam. Police said the Lahore bomber was a boy between 13 and 15 years old, carrying a bag. He set off the bomb after police stopped him.
January 27, 2011—Iraq—A parked car bomb went off near a funeral tent in the Shi’ite neighborhood of Shula in northwestern Baghdad, killing 48 and injuring 121.
January 27, 2011—United States—Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Janet Napolitano announced the five-color terrorist warning system would be phased out over ninety days and said DHS would use a two-tier warning system that provided more specific information on threats and how to respond to them.
January 28, 2011—Pakistan—A car bomb exploded in the Kohat Tunnel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing seven and wounding fifteen.
January 28, 2011—Afghanistan—After firing a weapon, a suicide bomber set off his explosive vest in the Finest supermarket in Kabul’s diplomatic quarter, killing eight people, including three foreign women, and injuring six. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed credit, saying it was targeting the chief of Xe Services.
The Afghan National Security (ANS) Directorate revealed on February 10, 2011, that Talib Jan, 45, an imprisoned Taliban fighter, planned the suicide bombing from Pul-i-Charkhi prison outside Kabul. He had been held there for three years. ANS spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said the group planned to assassinate two French diplomats; earlier reports had incorrectly said that the group was trying to kill the head of U.S. security contractor Xe Corporation. The ANS arrested Muhammad Khan, 33, a Kabul resident who told a news conference that he drove the bomber from Pakistan into Afghanistan. He also said he had earlier planted explosives along a road and bridge used by coalition troops. He said he did not know that his passenger, Muhammad Shoib, was a suicide bomber. 11012801
February 2011—South Sudan—Rebel leader George Athor killed 211 southern civilians and security troops in an attack in Jonglei State. Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management James Kok Ruea said that circa 160 were civilians, including children, elderly, and refugees. Thirty of the attackers died. The ruling party said that Khartoum armed and financed rebel leaders.
February 2011—Yemen—Sada al-Malahim, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s online magazine, called for the Tunisian people to implement “God’s Law” rather than following democracy, which it deemed the road to hell.
February 2011—Georgia—Authorities arrested two men in Kutaisi with a small quantity of two radioactive materials stolen from an abandoned Soviet helicopter factory. Businessman Soslan Oniani was linked to the case. His cousin, Tariel Oniani, was an organized crime boss convicted in Russia of kidnapping. Police surveillance in 2012 established that Soslan was involved in a deal for radioactive materials.
February 2011—Algeria—Armed al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb gunmen seized Italian tourist Maria Sandra Mariani, 54, near the Niger border. They freed her on April 17, 2012. 11029901
February 1, 2011—Mauritania—Three al Qaeda suspects died when their vehicle exploded during a shootout with local soldiers. The trio planned to attack the French Embassy and an army base. The vehicle was one of a three-car convoy that crossed the Mali border the previous weekend. Authorities captured a driver and his vehicle that contained 1.5 tons of explosives. The second vehicle exploded; one of the suspects set off his explosive belt. The third vehicle eluded capture. A suspect was arrested on February 5. 11020101
February 2, 2011—Pakistan—Nine people, including three children, died and another twenty people were injured when a car bomb exploded near Peshawar on a road leading to the Afghanistan border.
February 3, 2011—Belgium—Police in Brussels announced the arrest on a Spanish National Court warrant of two Pakistani brothers connected to a cell that forged passports for al Qaeda supporters.
February 5, 2011—Egypt—An armed gang attacked a natural gas terminal near el-Arish in the northern Sinai Peninsula, disrupting supplies to Israel and Jordan for a month. 11020501
February 10, 2011—Pakistan—A 14-year-old Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber wearing a school uniform killed twenty-seven army recruits and wounded another forty-two during morning calisthenics at a military training center in Mardan, 50 kilometers north of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. A school for children of the recruits is inside the training facility. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq said it was a “message for those who wish to join pro–American military…. We will continue targeting Pakistan military until it stops supporting the United States.”
February 10, 2011—United States—The U.S. Department of the Treasury (DOT) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) accused the Beirut-based Lebanese Canadian Bank SAL of laundering $200 million per month in drug profits for a smuggling group tied to Hizballah. The Bank was designated a “primary money laundering concern” under terms of the U.S. Patriot Act. DOT and DEA said the ring was run by Ayman Joumaa, whose group smuggled drugs from South America to Europe and the Middle East via West Africa. The money was laundered via trading consumer goods throughout the world, including via U.S. used car dealerships. As of 2009, the bank had assets of more than $5 billion.
February 11, 2011—Iraq—A suicide car bomber set off his explosives among a group of Shi’ite pilgrims in Samarra, killing eight and wounding thirty.
February 12, 2011—Iraq—A suicide bomber set off his explosives vest at a bus terminal for Shi’ite pilgrims in Samarra, killing thirty-eight and wounding seventy-four people. The vest contained 22 pounds of explosives.
February 14, 2011—United States—Prosecutors accused seven men of trying to sell surface-to-air missiles and smuggle drugs to informants they had believed were Taliban operatives. They agreed in meetings in Benin, Romania, Ghana, and the Ukraine to transport and sell heroin for the Taliban and tried to sell cocaine to the informants. Five of the men were arrested in Liberia on February 10 and 11 and were to be extradited to the United States.
February 18, 2011—Egypt—Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a thirty-four-minute taped message to the Egyptian people, entitled A Message of Hope and Glad Tidings to Our People in Egypt, in which he said that their government had “deviated from Islam” and that democracy “can only be nonreligious.” He asked, “What is the reality through which Egypt is living? The reality of Egypt is the reality of deviation from Islam.” Mubarak’s rule was “a regime that rules the people through the use of torture, rigged elections, corrupt media, and an unjust justice system.” He said democracy “means that sovereignty is to the desires of the majority, without committing to any quality, value, or creed. A democratic state can only be secular, meaning nonreligious.” He then traced the history of Egypt’s move toward secularism. A second part of the video was to answer the question, “How do we change this reality to what Islam wanted us to have?”
February 19, 2011—Russia—Masked gunmen killed three Moscow-area vacationers on a road in Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus. Islamist terrorists were suspected.
February 20, 2011—Russia—Police discovered and defused three bombs, containing 154 pounds of TNT, in a car parked near a hotel in the Kabardino-Balkaria region in the North Caucasus. A few days earlier, terrorists had shot five people.
February 21, 2011—Afghanistan—A suicide bomber killed thirty people and injured thirty-six in a noon attack on the office of the Imam Sahib district governor in northern Kunduz Province where people were lining up to collect ID cards.
February 23, 2011—United States—The FBI in Lubbock, Texas, arrested Saudi citizen Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, a student at a Texas college, for “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction” in connection with his alleged purchase of chemicals and equipment necessary to make an improvised explosive device (IED). His “research of potential U.S. targets,” included getting the address of former President George W. Bush’s home in Dallas. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Aldawsari had “purchased ingredients to construct an explosive device and was actively researching potential targets in the United States.” This included purchasing “concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids” and trying to purchase phenol, a precursor of “the explosive trinitrophenol, also known as T.N.P., or picric acid.” DOJ said, “Legally authorized electronic surveillance revealed that Aldawsari used various e-mail accounts in researching explosives and targets, and often sent emails to himself as part of this process…. Aldawsari sent himself an e-mail titled ‘Tyrant’s House,’ in which he listed the Dallas address for former President George W. Bush.” Another e-mail said, “One operation in the land of the infidels is equal to ten operations against occupying forces in the land of the Muslims.” He wrote in his journal, “And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel American, it is time for Jihad.” He referred to the Saudi royal family derisively as “Saululi” and said the king was the “Traitor to the Two Holy Places.” In a March 2010 blog entry, he wrote, “Grant me martyrdom for Your sake and make Jihad easy for me.” Other targets included three soldiers who had served at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a dozen dams and reservoirs in California and Colorado, and nuclear power plants. He considered hiding the explosives in realistic-looking baby dolls nestled in baby carriages and bringing an explosive backpack into a nightclub. Authorities said he acted alone. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Aldawsari arrived in the United States in September 2008 on a student visa. He initially studied English as a second language at Vanderbilt University, then moved on to Texas Tech University in August 2009 to study chemical engineering. His wandering continued with a transfer to study business at South Plains College in Lubbock in January 2011. A Saudi firm had financed his education.
On March 9, 2011, a federal grand jury in Texas indicted Aldawsari on one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He pleaded not guilty on March 28. His trial was scheduled for May 2.
The chemical company Carolina Biological Supply of Burlington, North Carolina, notified the FBI when he made a suspicious $435 online purchase of phenol. Shipping company Con-way Freight alerted the Lubbock police and the FBI, saying the order did not appear to be for commercial use.
During his trial, prosecutors played a recording from his apartment made on the night before his arrest in which he said he would get “maximum satisfaction” and would be “smiling” after attacking Americans. Closing arguments were heard on June 27, 2012. Later that day, he was found guilty in federal court in Amarillo, Texas. He was represented by attorney Dan Cogdell, who presented no testimony or evidence.
February 24, 2011—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri posted an audio on the Internet cautioning against attacking civilians, observing, “I and my brothers in al Qaeda distance themselves … from such operations and condemn them.” He claimed Osama bin Laden was behind the reminder.
February 27, 2011—Afghanistan—Taliban gunmen in Ghazni Province kidnapped a Canadian man from Toronto, identifying him on its Web site as a “secret agent” who had “been involved in some clandestine activities to get some secret information especially to learn the whereabouts of the mujahideen.” The group said the Canadian government did not respond positively to its conditions for his release and would post a video of him online. 11022701
March 2011—Israel—Early in the month, a pipe bomb exploded in a trash can in Jerusalem, tearing off the hand of an Israeli municipal worker. A fortnight later, no arrests had been announced.
March 2, 2011—Germany—At 3:30 p.m., Arid Uka, a 21-year-old from Mitrovica, Kosovo, walked up to a U.S. military bus parked outside Frankfurt Airport’s Terminal 2, started arguing with U.S. service members, a group of thirteen who had arrived from London and were on their way to Ramstein military base. Uka pulled out a handgun and began firing outside then inside the bus. He killed two U.S. airmen from Lakenheath base in Britain, including the bus driver, and wounded two security forces members on their way to deployment to Afghanistan. The dead were Airman 1st Class Zachary Cuddeback, 21, of Virginia, and Staff Sgt. Nicholas Alden, 25, of South Carolina. Uka held his gun to the head of a fifth serviceman and pressed the trigger twice, but the gun jammed. Uka fled into the terminal but was captured by the uninjured U.S. airman and two German federal police officers.
Uka had passports from former Yugoslavia and Germany. He was in the process of obtaining German citizenship. He had links to radical Islamists in Germany but was believed to have acted alone. He had attended Eduard Spranger School until 2007. Two years before the attack he had befriended Syrian German Rami Makanesi, who was at this time in a German jail on charges of aiding terrorists in Pakistan. Uka also had Facebook connections with several radical Islamists. In January 2011, he started as a temp at the international letter-sorting office of Deutsche Post AG at Frankfurt Airport. Uka told investigators that he was seeking revenge for the deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Authorities were expected to charge Uka with murder, attempted murder, and aggravated assault.
On August 31, 2011, Uka confessed to the attack in a court hearing saying he had been influenced by online Islamist propaganda. He faced two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder for wounding two more airmen and aiming at a third. On February 20, 2012, Uka was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and serious bodily harm and sentenced to life in prison. The judge said Uka would not be immediately eligible for parole in fifteen years; he would have to wait several more years for a review of his sentence. 11030201
March 2, 2011—Pakistan—Gunmen shot to death Shahbaz Bhatti as he left for work from his mother’s home in Islamabad. Bhatti was serving as the federal minorities minister and was the lone Christian in the government’s cabinet. The attackers left leaflets from the Punjabi Taliban and al Qaeda. Bhatti had criticized the government’s tough anti-blasphemy laws.
March 2, 2011—Gaza Strip—Hamas officials arrested Hisham al-Suaydani, alias Sheikh Abu Walid-al-Maqdasi, spiritual leader of Monotheism and Holy War, a Salafist faction in Gaza inspired by al Qaeda. Al-Suaydani is a Palestinian with Egyptian citizenship. The group claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel in contravention of a two-year-old truce.
March 4, 2011—Madagascar—A bomb exploded next to the car of President Andry Rajoelina, causing no injuries. His car had been fired on in December 2009.
March 8, 2011—Pakistan—The Pakistani Taliban set off a car bomb at a gas station near an office of the country’s main intelligence agency, killing twenty-five and injuring one hundred. Natural gas cylinders also exploded, destroying an office of the national airline and several other business offices in Faisalabad.
March 9, 2011—Pakistan—A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber killed thirty-six and injured dozens in the Peshawar suburbs at a funeral for the wife of an anti–Taliban Adezai tribal militia member. The militia is led by Dilawar Khan. The bomber was a teen pretending to attend the funeral.
March 11, 2011—West Bank—A Palestinian broke into Itamar, a West Bank settlement near Nablus, and killed two parents and their three children, stabbing them in their sleep. Two other children, also asleep, were untouched. The dead were Ruth, 36, and Ehud Fogel, 37, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, 3 months. On April 17, the Israeli Defense Forces announced the arrests of Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad, 18, in the nearby Palestinian village of Awarta. The duo were accused of conducting the attack. Hakim was arrested on April 5; Amjad on April 10. Six others were arrested for aiding them. The two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine apparently acted independently of the group.
March 14, 2011—Afghanistan—A Taliban suicide bomber killed thirty-seven people and wounded another forty at an Afghan National Army recruiting center in Kunduz Province. Among the dead were four children playing outside the base.
March 15, 2011—Indonesia—A mail bomb addressed to the Jakarta offices of the U.S.-funded Islamic Liberal Network injured four people while police were trying to defuse it. The bomb was secreted inside a hole in a heavy book entitled They Should Be Killed for the Sins Against Islam and the Muslims.
March 23, 2011—Israel—A rolling suitcase with a 2 to 4 pound bomb hidden near a public telephone exploded at 3:00 p.m. at Jerusalem’s central bus station, killing a 59-year-old woman and injuring more than fifty people, including two pregnant women. Ball bearings had been hidden in the device. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the attack. No group claimed credit, but the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees praised the attack. Police said they were searching for a car seen fleeing the scene.
Meanwhile, two Katusha rockets landed in Beer Sheva, injuring a man and damaging buildings, including a synagogue. A third rocket crashed near Ashdod.
March 24, 2011—Pakistan—A Taliban suicide bomber’s car exploded at a police station in Hangu District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing five people and wounding more than two dozen.
March 27, 2011—Egypt—An armed gang planted explosives at a natural gas terminal near el-Arish in the northern Sinai Peninsula, but the detonator fizzled. 11032701
March 29, 2011—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released a fifth edition of Inspire, featuring Anwar al-Aulaqi’s “The Tsunami of Change” broadside against Peter Bergen’s coverage of al Qaeda. Al-Aulaqi argued against CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who has said, “The Arab revolts of 2011 represent a total repudiation of al Qaeda’s founding ideology,” rather the world should “know very well that the opposite is the case.” Al-Aulaqi also observed, “For a so-called ‘terrorism expert’ such as Peter Bergen, it is interesting to see how even he doesn’t get it right this time. For him to think that because a Taliban-style regime is not going to take over following the revolutions is a too short-term way of viewing the unfolding events…. The Mujahideen around the world are going through a moment of elation and I wonder whether the West is aware of the upsurge in Mujahideen activity in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria, and Morocco?”
March 29, 2011—Russia—A joint team of Russia’s Investigative Committee, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Interior and Defense ministries killed seventeen militants in two special law enforcement operations in Ingushetia. Two FSB servicemen and one police officer were also killed in the raids. Meanwhile, authorities detained two suspected accomplices in the January 24, 2011, bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport.
March 31, 2011—Switzerland—A parcel bomb exploded in the Olten offices of Swissnuclear, an umbrella group for the nuclear industry, injuring two people.
April 2, 2011—Egypt—Israel issued a warning to its citizens to evacuate the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, citing “terrorist plans to kidnap Israelis and use them as bargaining chips.” Earlier that day an Israeli aircraft fired on a group of Hamas members “planning to carry out kidnappings” during Passover, and three would-be terrorists died in a car near Gaza City around 2:00 a.m. Meanwhile, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine revoked its cease-fire with Israel.
April 2, 2011—Northern Ireland—A booby-trapped bomb exploded under the car of Police Constable Ronan Kerr, 25, outside his Omagh home, killing him. Irish Republican Army dissidents were suspected. This was the first lethal bombing in the current campaign. Several thousand mourners attended his Catholic funeral. By July 27, authorities had arrested ten people, including a 23-year-old woman. A 33-year-old man from Omagh was charged after arms and explosives were found in Coalisland, County Tyrone.
April 3, 2011—Pakistan—Two suicide bombers killed forty-two people (nineteen men, fourteen women, and nine children) and wounded more than one hundred at the entrance to the Sufi Sakhi Sarkar shrine in Punjab Province’s Dera Ghazi Khan district. Police arrested a third would-be suicide bomber wearing an explosive jacket that partially detonated, wounding him, and arrested a fourth wannabe suicide bomber before he could set off his explosives. Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed credit in a call to the Associated Press. The Sufis were celebrating the 942nd feastday of saint Hazrat Syed Ahmad Sultan, also known as Sakhi Sarwar.
April 4, 2011—Israel—Israel charged Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, operations manager at Gaza’s power plant, with developing rockets, increasing their range, and making them penetrate tank armor for Hamas. The engineer had disappeared from a train in the Ukraine on February 19 but reappeared a few days later in an Israeli jail. His Ukrainian wife claimed Mossad kidnapped him. He was also charged with setting up a military academy in Gaza to train Hamas.
April 4, 2011—West Bank—A masked gunman shot to death Juliano Mer Khamis, 52, a prominent Israeli actor and doctor who founded the Freedom Theater in Jenin’s refugee camp in 2006 with Zakaria Zubeidi, a former Palestinian military leader. Khamis was born to a Jewish mother and a Christian Arab father and had supported Palestinian causes. Khamis was walked to his car near the theater and then shot five times. He had appeared in nearly thirty movies.
April 6, 2011—Pakistan—Four gunmen on two motorcycles in Balochistan Province’s Bolan district fired on two tankers carrying fuel headed for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The gunmen then set the tankers alight before escaping. No one was injured, but the tankers were destroyed. No one claimed credit. 11040601
April 7, 2011—Israel—Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades gunmen fired a Russian-made Kornet antitank missile from Gaza into Israel, hitting a school bus. A 16-year-old boy was critically wounded and the driver was injured. The terrorists said they were retaliating for an Israeli air strike on April 1 that killed three senior Hamas operatives. The boy died on April 17.
April 9, 2011—Northern Ireland—Police defused a 500-pound bomb hidden in an abandoned van outside Newry on the main road between Dublin and Belfast. Authorities suspected the Provisional Irish Republican Army dissidents who had killed a police officer in Omagh on April 2.
April 11, 2011—Belarus—An explosion in the Minsk Oktyabrskaya subway station during the 6:00 p.m. rush hour killed fifteen and wounded two hundred to three hundred, including Lyudmila Zhechko. The bomb, which went off at 5:55 p.m., was packed with nails and metal balls and wired to a remote detonator. Officials blamed unnamed terrorists and rounded up dissidents for questioning. The station is close to government offices and the official residence of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Later that night, police arrested two suspects described as Belarus citizens who had known each other for a long time. Surveillance video indicated that one of the men left a bag at a bench and then left. One individual was born in 1986. President Lukashenko said the duo confessed to committing terrorist attacks on Independence Day in Minsk on July 3, 2008, and in Vitebsk in September 2005. Two days later, authorities said one of the detainees had confessed to the subway bombing. By April 15, authorities had five suspects in custody, including an electrician and a lathe operator. Authorities said the bomb was remotely detonated by radio, contained nails and small metal balls, and had the equivalent of 5 kilograms of TNT.
Vladislav Kovalyov and Dmitry Konovalov, a lathe operator, both 26-year-old childhood friends, were convicted in the Supreme Court of the Republic of Belarus on November 30, 2011, of the bombing. Neither man had a previous criminal record; many questioned the evidence offered at trial. Konovalov admitted his guilt in building and detonating the bomb. Kovalyov, an electrician, pleaded not guilty to aiding Konovalov, saying he did not take part in the attack. He retracted his confession, saying he was beaten. They were sentenced to death on March 17, 2012. They were also charged and convicted of two bombings in 2005 and 2008 that caused injuries. On March 18, 2012, Belarus announced that the two had been executed with a shot to the back of the head. Human rights activists protested the quick execution. No motive was ever given.
April 13, 2011—Gaza Strip—Gunmen kidnapped Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, Italian freelance journalist and pro–Palestinian humanitarian activist for the International Solidarity Movement. On April 15, Hamas security forces found his body in an empty house in Gaza City after a detained kidnapper had revealed the hideout following Hamas’s interrogation. He had been strangled with a plastic handcuff strip. He had been beaten about the head before he died. One person was detained for questioning. Arrigoni was killed just a few hours before police found the hideout. A few hours before the murder, a video was posted on YouTube that showed a blindfolded Arrigoni, whose right cheek appeared to have been bruised. His hands were tied behind his back and someone was grasping his hair to point his head toward the camera. Arabic writing indicated that he would be murdered if Hesham al-Saeedni, who had been held for nearly a year by Hamas, and Salafist leader Abu Walid al-Maqdisi, were not released within thirty hours of 11:00 a.m. Thursday. Al-Saeedni led an al Qaeda-inspired group. The text said Italy was an “infidel nation whose armies are still present in Muslim lands.” Al-Tawhid wal–Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War) claimed credit. Hamas had arrested its leader, Abu Walid al-Maqdisi, in March. On April 19, 2011, Hamas announced the deaths of two of the suspects and the arrest of a third in a raid. A Jordanian suspect shot himself after throwing a grenade that killed a second suspect. 11041301
April 13, 2011—Afghanistan—A 13-year-old suicide bomber set off his explosive vest at a meeting of tribal elders in the Asmar district of Kunar Province, killing ten people, including five school boys and tribal elder Malik Zareen, a former military commander who had battled the Soviet occupation and who supported the government.
April 14, 2011—Pakistan—Al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri released a sixty-nine-minute video, the fifth part of the series entitled A Message of Hope and Glad Tidings to Our People in Egypt, recorded before the intervention in Libya, in which he called upon Muslims to rise up against NATO and Muammar Qadhafi in Libya. “I want to direct the attention of our Muslim brothers in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and the rest of the Muslim countries, that if the Americans and the NATO forces enter Libya then their neighbors in Egypt and Tunisia and Algeria and the rest of the Muslim countries should rise up and fight both the mercenaries of Qadhafi and the rest of NATO.” He warned that Qadhafi should be ousted before “Western aid … turns into invasions.” He said the Egyptian government had shown “separation from Islam” and “subservience to the West.” The video included a clip from an earlier message by Anwar al-Aulaqi.
April 15, 2011—Indonesia—A suicide bomber in Cirebon, West Java killed himself at a mosque where police were praying, wounding twenty-eight people. The bomb contained nails, nuts, and bolts. It was the first time a house of worship had been targeted in the latest wave of violence.
April 15, 2011—Jordan—Counterterrorism authorities arrested 103 Salafists, among them Ayman al-Balawi, 38, the brother of Humam al-Balawi, the al Qaeda terrorist who killed seven CIA officers in Khost, Afghanistan, on December 30, 2009.
April 18, 2011—Afghanistan—Between seven and twelve Iranian engineers and five Afghani citizens were kidnapped in western Afghanistan, according to conflicting Iranian media reports. They worked for a construction company that was building a police training center in the Hassan-Abad region of Farah Province. The kidnappers also stole the hostages’ two cars. 11041801
April 20, 2011—United States—A pipe bomb with propane tanks failed to detonate in a back hallway at the Southwest Plaza Mall in Littleton, Colorado, on the twelfth anniversary of the attack at Columbine High School. A small fire was quickly put out. On April 26, 2011, authorities arrested Earl Albert Moore, 65, at King Soopers grocery store in Boulder after customers and employees told police that he was acting suspiciously. Moore had been released on April 13 from the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Estill, South Carolina, after serving time for bank robbery. He had been sentenced to eighteen years in prison for a March 2005 robbery of $2,546 at the Whitesville State Bank in Crab Orchard, West Virginia.
April 22, 2011—Northern Ireland—Police arrested three men and seized weapons and explosives from an Omagh storage facility.
April 23, 2011—Northern Ireland—Authorities found bomb-making equipment in South Armagh.
April 24, 2011—Iraq—A bomb exploded outside the Sacred Heart church in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood as a police pickup truck pulled away, injuring two Iraqi policemen and two passersby.
Elsewhere, four Iraqi police officers were wounded in a firefight with gunmen outside Mary the Virgin Catholic Church in Baghdad.
April 25, 2011—Northern Ireland—Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissidents warned that they would oppose the May 17 to 20 visit to Ireland of Queen Elizabeth II and that they would continue to kill local police officers, particularly those from the Catholic regions. A masked Real IRA speaker in Londonderry said, “The Queen of England is wanted for war crimes in Ireland and not wanted on Irish soil.” The visit was the first by a British monarch to Ireland since 1911.
April 27, 2011—Egypt—An armed gang set off explosives at a natural gas terminal near el-Arish in the northern Sinai Peninsula. The pipeline supplying gas from the main terminal at Port Said to Israel and Jordan was shut down to quench the fire. The pipeline supplies small quantities of gas to Syria and Lebanon. Anti-regime Bedouin tribesmen were suspected. 11042701
April 27, 2011—Afghanistan—Ahmad Gul, a portly Afghan Air Force helicopter pilot, pulled a 9-mm pistol from his flight suit and opened fire with no warning inside a NATO military base in Kabul, killing eight U.S. service members, a U.S. civilian contractor, and an Afghan soldier and wounding five following an argument at a morning meeting. He then turned the gun on himself. Gul had served for two decades in the air force. On January 17, 2012, the U.S. Air Force concluded that Gul had acted alone. He had become radicalized while attending a mosque in Pakistan and told relatives that he wanted to kill Americans. He yelled, “Good Muslims—please stay away! Muslims, don’t come close or you will be killed,” outside the window of the Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Airport. He dipped his finger in blood, and wrote, “Allah is one” on a wall in Dari and “Allah in your name” on the facing wall. The dead Americans were identified as Maj. Philip D. Ambard, Maj. Jeffrey O. Ausborn, Maj. David L. Brodeur, Lt. Col. Frank D. Bryant, Jr., Maj. Raymond G. Estelle, II, Capt. Nathan J. Nylander, Maj. Charles A. Ransom, M. Sgt. Tara R. Brown, and private contractor James McLaughlin, Jr., a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Some 1,500 attended Gul’s funeral, praising him as a martyr. 11042702
April 28, 2011—Morocco—At 11:00 a.m., two bombs exploded at the Café Argana, which overlooks the Jama el-Fnaa Square in Marrakesh, killing seventeen people, including six French citizens, two Canadians, a Briton, a Dutch tourist, two Russians, a Portuguese citizen, a Swiss citizen, and four Moroccans (several were dual nationals), and injuring twenty-five others. Among the dead were Michael Zekry, 29, a pregnant Israeli Canadian, and her husband, Messod Wizman, 30, a Moroccan Canadian. They had been married for three years and had a 2-year-old boy. The duo had come from Shanghai to visit his parents, who live in Casablanca. Eric, the son of Nadine Asnar, died. Initial reports said a suicide bomber was involved, but the government later said the bombs were remotely detonated and packed with nails, triacetone triperoxide (TATP), and ammonium nitrate. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was suspected. No one claimed credit. The café was designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations.
On May 7, 2011, Moroccan authorities arrested three Moroccan suspects with al Qaeda contacts. On June 30, 2011, the Rabat trial began of seven people accused in the attack. The hearing was to continue on August 18. On September 22, 2011, the chief suspect, Adel Othmani, recanted his confession. He had been charged with premeditated murder and bomb making. He claimed, “I have never set foot in Marrakech.” He was arrested three days after the bombing. A mobile SIM card that he owned was used in the bombing. The others were charged with membership in a banned group. 11042801
April 28, 2011—Pakistan—A roadside bomb went off under a bus ferrying Pakistani Navy employees to work in Karachi, killing four sailors and a passerby. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said the group attacked the navy because it is part of the Pakistani Army.
April 29, 2011—Germany—At 6:30 a.m., authorities in Duesseldorf and Bochum arrested three young Moroccans suspected of planning an al Qaeda attack. Police seized large amounts of explosives. One of the suspects, Abdeladim El-K., 29, had lived for a decade in Germany. He visited an al Qaeda training camp in 2010 near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, training in weapons and explosives, and was ordered to conduct an attack in Germany. He reentered Germany illegally in May 2010, recruiting longtime friends Jamil S., 32, who has joint German-Moroccan citizenship, and Amid C. (also identified as Ahmed Sh.), 29, who is a dual citizen of Germany and Iran. German authorities said the trio appeared to have been inspired by the attack in Morocco the previous day, but there did not seem to be any connection to that attack. The trio was obtaining hydrogen peroxide and acetone for bomb making. Some observers suggested that they planned to attack the Eurovision Song Contest in Dusseldorf, scheduled to run May 10–14; others said transportation hubs were targeted. One other suspect remained at large. The trio had been under surveillance for seven months.
May 2011—Pakistan—Two hand grenades were thrown at the Karachi consulate of Saudi Arabia, causing some damage but no injuries. 11059901
May 2011—Nigeria—Chris McManus of the United Kingdom and Franco Lamolinara of Italy were kidnapped by what were believed to be Boko Haram terrorists. The duo were grabbed from their homes in the northwest. They worked for an Italian construction firm in Nigeria. Their kidnappers killed them on March 8, 2012, just before rescuers arrived. 11059902
May 2011—China—A bomb exploded outside a rural bank in Gansu Province, injuring more than forty people. Local media said an embezzlement case was involved.
May 2011—China—Qian Mingqi, 52, set off three bombs in Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province. He was killed in the third bombing. He was frustrated at not being able to get satisfaction of an “illegally removed” building in 2002. He had threatened, “I could take action I don’t want to take.”
May 1, 2011—Afghanistan—A 12-year-old suicide bomber set off his explosives in a bazaar in the Barmal district of Paktika Province, killing four people and injuring a dozen others. Among those killed was Sher Nawaz, head of a district council in the Shakeen area of Paktika Province.
May 1, 2011—Pakistan—President Barack Obama announced that a U.S. Navy SEAL team had killed Osama bin Laden in a mansion in Pakistan. The following is a transcript of his remarks made from the East Room at 11:35 p.m. EDT.
Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
It was nearly ten years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory—hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.
And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly three thousand citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.
On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.
We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda—an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.
Over the last ten years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support. And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.
Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghanistan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.
And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our Intelligence Community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.
Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must—and we will—remain vigilant at home and abroad.
As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not—and never will be—at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11 that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.
Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well, and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people.
Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.
The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly ten years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who’s been gravely wounded.
So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.
Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work, nor know their names. But tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.
We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.
Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.
And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.
The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.
On May 20, 2011, President Obama addressed intelligence officers in the lobby of the CIA Original Headquarters Building:
That’s why I came here. I wanted every single one of you to know, whether you work at the CIA or across the community, at every step of our effort to take out bin Laden, the work you did and the quality of the intelligence that you provided made the critical difference—to me, to our team on those helicopters, to our nation.
After I directed that getting bin Laden be the priority, you hunkered down even more, building on years of painstaking work; pulling together, in some cases, the slenderest of intelligence streams, running those threads to ground until you found that courier and you tracked him to that compound. And when I was briefed last summer, you had built the strongest intelligence case against—in terms of where bin Laden was since Tora Bora.
In the months that followed, including all those meetings in the Situation Room, we did what sound intelligence demands: We pushed for more collection. We pushed for more evidence. We questioned our assumptions. You strengthened your analysis. You didn’t bite your tongue and try to spin the ball, but you gave it to me straight each and every time.
And we did something really remarkable in Washington—we kept it a secret. (Laughter and applause.) That’s how it should be.
Of course, when the time came to actually make the decision, we didn’t know for sure that bin Laden was there. The evidence was circumstantial and the risks, especially to the lives of our special operations forces, were huge. And I knew that the consequences of failure could be enormous. But I made the decision that I did because I had absolute confidence in the skill of our military personnel and I had confidence in you. I put my bet on you. And now the whole world knows that that faith in you was justified.
So just as impressive as what you did was how you did it. It was a tribute to your perseverance, your relentless focus and determination over many years. For the fight against al Qaeda did not begin on 9/11. Among you are veterans who’ve been pursuing these murderers for many years, even before they attacked our embassies in Africa and struck the Cole in Yemen. Among you are young men and women for whom 9/11 was a call to service. This fight has defined your generation. And on this wall are stars honoring all your colleagues and friends, more than a dozen who have given their lives in the fight against al Qaeda and its violent allies.
As the years wore on, others began to think that this terrorist might never be brought to justice. But you never quit. You never gave up. You pulled together across this Agency and across the Community.
No one piece of information and no one agency made this possible. You did it together—CIA, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, everyone at ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] and the National Counterterrorism Center. Folks across the country, civilian and military, so many of you here today.
And that’s exactly how our Intelligence Community is supposed to work, using every capability—human, technical—collecting, analyzing, sharing, integrating intelligence, and then acting on it.
That’s what made this one of the greatest intelligence successes in American history, and that’s why intelligence professionals are going to study and be inspired by your achievement for generations to come.
An interagency team had been planning the pre-dawn operation since August 2010 when a trusted bin Laden courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was detected making a cell phone call to a friend. Most of bin Laden’s couriers made calls at least 90 miles away from his walled compound. Al-Kuwaiti was tracked to bin Laden’s hideout in Abbotabad, Pakistan. A U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 strike team helicoptered to the mansion built in 2005 for bin Laden. One of the Black Hawk helicopters stalled, but the pilot landed safely. The team worked its way up three floors strewn with barricades intended to impede their progress. The team reported that bin Laden put up resistance, and they shot him twice. Also killed was son Khalid bin Laden, 20; Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the Pakistani-born Pashtun courier; the courier’s wife, Bushra; and the courier’s brother, Abrar. One of bin Laden’s wives was shot in the leg. After DNA testing in Afghanistan proved his identity, bin Laden was buried at sea in an Islamic service aboard the USS Carl Vinson. The assault team seized numerous computers, thumb drives, and hard drives. The Taliban announced his death within twenty-four hours. The White House announced that it would not release death photos.
The three-story compound was eight times the size of surrounding houses and was a few hundred feet away from a Pakistani military academy, leading many observers to speculate on how much the Pakistani government really knew about bin Laden’s hideout. Pakistani authorities said that the house was registered in the name of Arshad Khan, which may have been fake.
Word of the contents of the materials that were taken out of the compound quickly was released to the media, which eagerly reported the presence of a trove of pornography. Also found were notes on plans as of February 2010 to attack the U.S. commuter rail network and cause mass casualties on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. One operation was to tamper with the rails so that the train would fall off a track at a valley or bridge.
Reaction to the Operation Geronimo raid in Pakistan was mixed, with many criticizing the United States for a breach of sovereignty and the Pakistani government for either incompetence in not spotting bin Laden, dereliction of duty in not stopping the U.S. raid, or complicity in hiding bin Laden. The Pakistani government was suspected of leaking to the local news media the name of the U.S. chief of station (COS) in Islamabad; this was the second time in a year that a COS/Islamabad’s name appeared in the press.
Pakistan permitted the United States to interview bin Laden’s three wives, who had been living with him at the compound. Two were Saudis; one Yemeni. Pakistan agreed on May 26 to allow U.S. intelligence officers to examine the contents of the safe house.
On December 9, 2011, Pakistan announced that two of bin Laden’s widows, Khairiah Sabar and Siham Sabar, would be allowed to return to their native Saudi Arabia, which had restored their citizenship. Yemen rejected a return by bin Laden’s third wife, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, whom he married in 2000. She might be offered a new home in Qatar. Bin Laden married Kairiah in 1985 and Siham in 1987. The two college graduates lost their citizenship when Saudi Arabia pulled his citizenship in 1994. Eight of bin Laden’s children would accompany the duo to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden’s first wife, a Syrian, deserted in Afghanistan a few weeks before 9/11 to return to Syria. His second marriage ended in divorce in the early 1990s. One of his daughters, Safiya, 12, remained in Pakistani custody.
Three of Osama bin Laden’s widows—Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, Siham Saber, and Khairiah Saber—who were taken into custody the night he was killed, were reported on March 8, 2012, with having been charged with illegally entering the country. On April 26, 2012, Pakistan deported bin Laden’s three widows and several children and grandchildren to Saudi Arabia.
May 2, 2011—United Kingdom—Police officers from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and Cumbria Constabulary arrested five London men in their 20s on suspicion of terrorism near a nuclear waste processing plant in Sellafield in northwestern England. Metropolitan Police officers searched four homes in east London.
May 7, 2011—Iraq—Huthaifa al-Batawi, a senior al Qaeda in Iraq operative, grabbed a gun from a Baghdad prison guard on May 7, 2011, on his way to a nighttime interrogation, fired on his guards, freed inmates, and conducted a gun battle that killed eleven inmates and six Iraqi counterterrorism officers, including the senior counterterrorist official for an affluent Baghdad neighborhood. Al-Batawi was believed to have organized an October 2010 attack on a church that killed dozens and to have been involved in several car bombings against government officials and security forces.
May 8, 2011—Afghanistan—Afghan and the International Security Assistance Force coalition captured an al Qaeda Moroccan facilitator who recruited foreign fighters. The individual was captured in southern Zabul Province following a gun battle that left ten insurgents dead. Authorities found passports and ID cards from France, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia on the bodies.
May 9, 2011—France—Authorities arrested five men, including some French citizens, during police raids in Paris and two heavily immigrant suburbs; a sixth was arrested on May 10 at Charles de Gaulle Airport as he arrived from Algeria. The group was planning to train in Pakistan with Islamic militants. French Interior Ministry Claude Gueant said, “Nothing indicates that those people were planning an attack in France.” Gueant said the sixth man, an Indian engineer, was the group’s leader and had “a high level of technical training.” The group had been in contact with two French citizens who had been arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in January 2011 and were members of the group that conducted the Bali bombing attack in 2002 that killed two hundred people.
May 12, 2011—United States—New York City police arrested Ahmed Ferhani, 26, an Algerian, and Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, a Moroccan-born U.S. citizen, after they purchased three pistols, ammunition, and an inert grenade from an undercover officer. The arrests ended a seven-month operation designed to foil a plan to attack synagogues, kill Jews, and blow up the Empire State Building. They were charged under state terrorism statutes that carry a life sentence. They were also charged with hate crimes. On June 15, 2011, authorities dropped the charge of second degree conspiracy as a terror crime, which carried a life sentence. The duo pleaded not guilty to lesser state charges, including criminal possession of a weapon as a terror crime, in the plot to blow up New York City synagogues. They were also charged with terror conspiracy and hate crimes. The duo faced thirty-two years in prison if convicted. Mamdouh was represented by attorney Aaron Mysliwiec.
May 13, 2011—Pakistan—A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber set off his explosives at 6:00 a.m. at a military training center, killing eighty members of the Frontier Constabulary at Shabqadar Fort in Charsadda as they were preparing for their graduation ceremony. Another eighty people were injured. A second bomber was believed involved.
May 14, 2011—United States—Authorities arrested three people on charges of providing $50,000 to the Pakistani Taliban. Hafiz Muhammad Sher Ali Khan, 76, was arrested after morning services at Miami’s Flagler Mosque, where he serves as imam. Police arrested one of his sons, Izhar Khan, 24, imam at the Jamaat al-Mu’mineen Mosque in Margate, Florida, following their morning services. Los Angeles police detained the other son, Irfan Khan, 37, at his hotel room. Three other people were charged in the indictment for handling the distribution of funds and remained at large in Pakistan, including Hafiz’s daughter, grandson, and an unrelated man. The funds were used to purchase guns, support militants’ families, and promote the Pakistani Taliban cause. The Florida residents faced fifteen years in prison for each of four counts listed in the indictment. Khurrum Wahid, attorney for the imam, said that his client would plead not guilty to providing material assistance to the terrorist group from 2008 to 2010, and conspiracy to provide material support to a conspiracy to murder, maim, and kidnap people overseas. The trial was heard in Miami’s Federal District Court by Magistrate Judge Barry L. Garber.
May 16, 2011—Pakistan—Two gunmen on two motorbikes shot to death Hassan M. al-Kahtani, a Saudi diplomat who was driving a silver Toyota Corona by himself in Karachi. Police said a 9-mm pistol was used. The diplomat appeared to be on his way from his home to work as a member of the consulate’s security staff. The New York Times quoted an unnamed Pakistani security official who said that al-Khatani was an intelligence officer. No group claimed credit. 11051601
May 16, 2011—United Kingdom—Irish Republican Army dissidents were suspected of making a bomb threat against central London the day before Queen Elizabeth II was due to visit Ireland, the first by a British monarch in one hundred years. No bomb was found.
May 17, 2011—Ireland—Police detonated a pipe bomb found on a bus in County Kildare that was on its way to Dublin, where the British Queen was to visit.
May 17, 2011—Pakistan—Pakistani military authorities announced the arrest in Karachi of Muhammad Ali Qasim Yaqub, alias Abu Sohaib al-Makki, a Yemeni who has been working directly under al Qaeda leaders along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
May 18, 2011—Afghanistan—Noman Benotman, former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, told the news media that Saif al-Adel, alias Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, was named interim leader of al Qaeda.
May 18, 2011—Russia—Reuters reported that the al Qaeda magazine Inspire had been translated into Russian in an attempt to reach out to Islamists in the North Caucasus. The magazine was posted on the Web site Ansar al-Mujahideen, a Russian-language forum.
May 18, 2011—Pakistan—Al Qaeda released a thirteen-minute audiotape entitled Speech from the Martyr of Islam—As We Think of Him—To the Islamic Ummah from the now-late Osama bin Laden, apparently recorded after February 17. Navy SEALs found a copy of the tape in the Abbottabad safe house where he was killed. He mentions the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, observing,
[It would be a sin] to lose this opportunity…. What are you waiting for? Save yourselves and your children, because the opportunity is here…. The winds of change flew to the square of Tahrir and a great revolution was begun. This wasn’t a revolution of starving and pain, but a revolution of giving and peace. The great oppression in our countries has reached great levels, and we have delayed enough the wave of change. Let the truth ring out. Remember those that go out with a sword are true believers, those that go fight with the tongue are true believers, and those that fight in their hearts are true believers. Oh, Muslims, you have seen many revolutions in your past. Those that the people have been so happy about, but then have turned into nothing. And the way to keep these revolutions from having the same problem is fighting ignorance. And some of the most important information is Islam. For this is the true crisis that has hit our nations…. The sun of the revolution has risen from the Maghreb. The light of the revolution came from Tunisia. It has given the nation tranquility and made the faces of the people happy.
He said his supporters should
set up an operations room that follows up events and works in parallel … to save the people that are struggling to bring down their tyrants…. A delay may cause the opportunity to be lost, and carrying it out before the right time will increase the number of casualties. I believe that the winds of change will envelop the entire Muslim world. The youth must prepare what is necessary and must not make any decision without consulting those of experience and honesty who avoid half solutions…. Tunisia was the first but swiftly the knights of Egypt have taken a spark from the free people of Tunisia to Tahrir Square. It has made the rulers worried…. We watch with you this great historic event and we share with you joy and happiness and delight and felicity. We are happy for what makes you happy, and we are sad for what makes you sad. So congratulations to you for your victories.
Bin Laden said the Arab Spring put the region at a “serious crossroads … a great and rare historic opportunity to rise with the Ummah and to free yourselves from servitude to the desires of the rulers, man-made law, and Western dominance.” Officials suggested the likelihood of the airing of other posthumous bin Laden tapes as others were found at the Abbottabad compound.
May 20, 2011—Pakistan—Nine NATO oil tankers were set alight after a remote-controlled bomb went off under the lead vehicle at Torkham, at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
May 20, 2011—Pakistan—A remote-controlled bomb exploded under a NATO oil tanker during the morning in Khyber Agency about 8 kilometers east of the Afghanistan border. When local residents gathered to collect oil leaked from the tank, it caught fire and killed sixteen, including five children.
May 20, 2011—Internet—A jihadi Web site posted an audio message from Ayman al-Zawahiri that was recorded prior to bin Laden’s death. He called the United States the leader of “crusader enemies … NATO is not a goodwill organization. It is an aid to the hegemonic powers in this world. They aim to end the corrupt Qadhafi regime but then install their own ideals. They want to steal Libya’s resources and relics because of their greed and politics.” He called on Egyptians to aid Libyans, observing “the fight in Libya today is the fight of the Muslim nation after the governments failed to protect the Libyan people from the crimes of Qadhafi.” He also praised the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
May 21, 2011—Northern Ireland—Masked men claiming to be members of the Irish Republican Army left a small bomb at the office of the Santander bank on Shipquay Street in a Londonderry commercial area. The bomb exploded an hour later, causing no injuries and little damage.
May 22, 2011—Pakistan—Militants attacked a Pakistani naval base in Karachi, taking several Chinese technicians hostage during a sixteen-hour siege. Ten Pakistani security officers were killed in the attack. 11052201
May 25, 2011—United States—Federal authorities arrested Waad Ramadan Alwan, 30, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 23, in Bowling Green, Kentucky on a twenty-three-count federal indictment. Terrorism charges included trying to ship Stinger missiles and explosives to al Qaeda in Iraq. The duo had been admitted into the United States as refugees in 2009. Alwan was charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad, conspiring to use explosives against U.S. nationals abroad, and conspiracy to export Stinger missiles. Hammadi was charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorists and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). James Earhart represented Hammadi. Alwan was assigned a public defender.
The FBI began its investigation of Alwan in September 2009, five months after he entered the United States. They used an undercover informant, who learned that Alwan had been an AQI insurgent who attacked U.S. troops from 2003 until his capture by Iraqi authorities. In 2010 the FBI matched his fingerprints with two prints found on an unexploded bomb in Iraq in 2005. The FBI began a sting in September 2010 when the informant claimed he was supporting AQI. The duo delivered money, inert explosives, and weapons, including the Stingers, to a tractor-trailer.
On December 16, 2011, Alwan pleaded guilty in federal court in Kentucky to trying to send weapons and cash to AQI, conspiring to attack U.S. soldiers in Iraq, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. On January 29, 2013, U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell sentenced Hammadi to life in prison without parole and Alwan to a forty-year sentence. Alwan was represented by attorney Scott Wendelsdorf. Hammadi was represented by attorney James Earhart of Louisville, Kentucky; he planned to appeal the sentence. Among the wounded from explosives planted by the duo was former Pennsylvania National Guard Sgt. Brandon Miller of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, who suffered burn injuries when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb near Bayji. Prosecutors said Alwan worked with the Mujahideen Shura Council who had claimed credit for the kidnapping, torture, and deaths of two soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division and the death of a third soldier. Hammadi was linked to Jaish al-Mujahideen, alias the Mujahideen Army, which said it shot down U.S. helicopters in 2006 and 2007. Hammadi had told a confidential informant that he was involved in eleven bomb attacks against U.S. soldiers.
May 26, 2011—Pakistan—A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber set off explosives in his pickup truck near several government offices in Hangu, killing twenty-six people.
May 26, 2011—China—Three bombs, including two car bombs, exploded within an hour outside government offices in Fuzhou city. Observers suggested it was the work of a farmer displeased with the legal system. Two people were killed and six injured. One bomb went off at a local prosecutor’s office, another at a government building, and the last at a food and drug administration office. The Chinese government attempted to cover up the incidents, according to the Washington Post.
May 27, 2011—Lebanon—A bomb exploded beneath a UN Interim Force in Lebanon convoy, injuring six Italian UN peacekeepers. No one claimed credit for attacking the logistics convoy on the highway outside Sidon. 11052701
May 27, 2011—Pakistan—A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber set off explosives in his car that killed twenty-five and injured fifty-six near local law enforcement and court buildings in Hangu District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
May 28, 2011—Afghanistan—A Taliban suicide bomber garbed as a policeman opened fire and set off his explosives in a meeting of Afghan and NATO officials, killing Gen. Daud Daud, the north’s senior police official; senior Takhar Province Police Chief Shah Jan Noori; the governor’s secretary; and two German soldiers. The attack wounded ten others, including Maj. Gen. Markus Kneip, the seniormost German commander in the country, and Abdul Jabar, the provincial governor. Daud had earlier served as Deputy Interior Minister for Counter-Narcotics Affairs. He had also been an aide to Northern Alliance Cdr. Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated by al Qaeda two days before 9/11. 11052801
May 29, 2011—Nigeria—Following the inauguration of the southern Christian Goodluck Jonathan as the country’s president, several bombs went off in the country’s Muslim north and a city near Abuja, killing fifteen people. One explosive at a Bauchi bar went off at 8:00 p.m., killing between ten and fifteen people and injuring thirty-five. Another bomb went off at a beer garden in Zuba, near Abuja, killing two and wounding eleven. Several people were injured in a bombing of a bar in Zaria. No one claimed credit.
May 29, 2011—United States—A Florida man was arrested after firing an AK-47 in a market. He claimed membership in a “sovereign citizen movement.”
May 30, 2011—Nigeria—Two teens were injured when they stepped on explosives in Zaria. A bomb went off near an army patrol vehicle in Maiduguri, causing no casualties. Five people were arrested. No one claimed credit.
May 30, 2011—Turkey—A small bicycle bomb exploded near an overpass in the Etiler district of Istanbul during 9:00 a.m. rush hour, injuring seven people and damaging five vehicles.
May 30, 2011—Somalia—Suicide bombers drove their minivan up to an African Union (AU) peacekeeping base in Mogadishu and fired on guards. Three attackers were shot, but explosives on one of the bodies went off, killing two AU soldiers and a member of a government-allied militia and wounding five other AU peacekeepers. A fourth terrorist was captured. Al-Shabaab claimed that the bomber was Abdullahi Ahmed, 25, a Somali American.
May 31, 2011—United States—The Department of Justice refiled capital charges of conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking aircraft, and terrorism against 9/11 plotters Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi to allow prosecution before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay.
May 31, 2011—Netherlands/France/Belgium—Package bombs set off by alarm clocks ignited gunpowder at IKEA stores in Ghent, Belgium; Lille, France; and Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Two workers in Belgium were slightly injured. 11053101-03
June 1, 2011—Libya—A timer-activated car bomb exploded at 7:00 p.m. in the parking lot of the fourteen-story Tibesty Hotel, which is used by foreign diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador, security, and Qatari military advisors, UN officials, and Western media outlets in rebel-held Benghazi. Rebel leaders blamed Qadhafi “sleeper cells.” No casualties were reported. The previous day, Italy Foreign Minister Franco Frattini had met with rebel leaders at the same hotel. 11060101
June 2, 2011—Internet—Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn released a one hundred-minute video, entitled You Are Only Responsible for Yourself (alternative title, Do Not Rely on Others, Take the Task Upon Yourself), that included clips from six other al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Abu Laith al-Libi, and Attiya. Gadahn observed,
Muslims in the West have to remember that they are perfectly placed to play an important and decisive part in the jihad against the Zionists and Crusaders and to do major damage to the enemies of Islam, waging war on their religion, sacred places, and things, and brethren. This is a golden opportunity and a blessing. Let’s take America as an example. America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for? … It’s important that we weaken our cowardly enemies’ will to fight by targeting influential public figures in Crusader and Zionist government, industry, and media.
He suggested that Western-born or Western-raised jihadis, the “brothers who came from abroad,” are ready to return to their “Crusader” countries to “discharge their duty of jihad.” Imprisonment is not a concern, because “over these past few years, I’ve seen the release of many, many mujahideen who I had never even dreamed would regain their freedom.” Many former detainees “are now back home with their families, or back on the frontlines, fighting the enemies.” “If it’s Allah’s will that you be captured, then it’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison.” Showing the logos of Exxon, Merrill Lynch, and Bank of America, he suggested attacking “influential public figures. Getting to these criminals isn’t as hard as you might think. I mean we’ve seen how a woman knocked the Pope to the floor during Christmas mass, and how Italian leader Berlusconi’s face was smashed during a public appearance. So it’s just a matter of entrusting the matter to Allah and choosing the right place, the right time, and the right method.” The video includes references to bin Laden, followed by, “May Allah have mercy on him,” suggesting the video was made after his death. The narrator cited several Muslims who carried out individual attacks.
June 3, 2011—Pakistan—Al Qaeda military operations chief Mohammed Ilyas Kashmiri, 47, and eight other terrorists were killed by a drone strike on an apple orchard in Ghwa Khwa/Laman village near Wana in South Waziristan. The compound belonged to Mir Ajam Khan, a tribesman with radical links. Kashmiri had reportedly been killed in September 2009; verification of terrorist deaths is difficult. His Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami’s 313 Brigade announced that he had been “martyred” in the 11:15 p.m. strike. The Pakistani was believed to have planned the November 26–28, 2008, siege of Mumbai, India, and to have killed several Pakistanis. He was also believed to have plotted an attack on the Danish Jyllands Posten newspaper that published the Muhammad cartoons in 2005. Pakistan blamed him for the May 22, 2011, assault on the Mehran naval base in Karachi.
Abu Hanzla Kashir, who claimed to be a spokesman for Kashmiri’s Harbat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami group, said in a fax to a Pakistani TV station, “God willing … America will very soon see our full revenge. Our only target is America.”
June 7, 2011—Pakistan—Islamic militants were suspected of setting off a blast that burned five NATO oil tankers at the Torkham crossing into Afghanistan.
June 7, 2011—West Bank—Arsonists desecrated a mosque in the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir, near Ramallah. They sprayed Hebrew messages (“price tag” and “Alei Ayin”) on the walls. Jewish settler extremists were suspected of having thrown a burning tire through a window, setting off a fire on a carpet. Price tag refers to a settlement response to Israeli military attempts to stop their building via attacks on Palestinians. Alei Ayin is an unauthorized Jewish settlement.
June 8, 2011—Internet—Al Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri released a twenty-eight-minute video eulogy of Osama bin Laden, entitled The Noble Knight Dismounted. Al-Zawahiri said bin Laden continued to be a source of inspiration for Muslims, and that the United States would face reprisals, “blood for blood.”
The Sheikh has departed, may God have mercy on him, to his God as a martyr, and we must continue on his path of jihad to expel the invaders from the land of Muslims and to purify it from injustice…. He terrified America when he was alive and is terrifying it as a dead man, to the point that they shudder at the prospect of giving him a grave because of what they know of the love of tens of millions for him … [Osama bin Laden] haunt America and Israel and their Crusader allies, their corrupt agents…. His famous pledge that “you don’t dream of security until we live it as a reality and until you depart the land of Islam” will continue to deprive them of sleep…. Today, and thanks be to God, America is not facing an individual or a group … but a rebelling nation which has awoken from its sleep in a jihadist renaissance challenging it wherever it is.
He warned the United States, “You should await what will befall you after every celebration.” He criticized Osama bin Laden’s Islamic burial at sea, complaining, “What Islam is this? The Islam of America, or the Islam of Obama, who sold his father’s religion, became a Christian, and prayed like the Jews to gain favor with the rich and powerful.” He said 9/11 “destroyed the symbol of American economy in New York and the symbol of American military might in the Pentagon.” He called on Pakistani youth to overthrow the regime, to “shake off the dust of humiliation and overthrow those who have sold you in the slave market to the United States … just as your brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria have done.” Unrest in Yemen will lead to “a good regime that rules in accordance with Shariah” and “expels the Americans and their henchmen.”
June 8, 2011—Colombia—Seven Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels kidnapped three Chinese contractors and a translator who were working for the British Emerald Energy company, part of the China-based Sinochem Group, while engaged in oil exploration in San Vicente del Caguan. Their driver was released with their vehicle. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Chinese Embassy were involved in the negotiations for their release. No proof-of-life was ever received. Translator Jian Mingfu, 46, and contractors Tang Guofu, 28, Zhao Hongwei, 36, and Jiang Shang, 24, were freed on November 22, 2012. They were FARC’s last foreign hostages. 11060801
June 9, 2011—China—An explosion possibly due to a bomb destroyed most of a multi-story police station and killed a police driver in Huangshi township, southern Hunan Province. Some observers suggested it was a revenge attack against corrupt police.
June 10, 2011—Somalia—Interior Minister Abdishakur Sheik Hassan, who also served as Ministry for National Security, was killed when a female suicide bomber set off her explosives at his home. A relative said the bomber was his niece, who had joined al-Shabaab. The group’s spokesman, Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage, claimed credit at a press conference in Mogadishu on June 11.
June 10, 2011—China—A bomb exploded outside a local government headquarters in Tianjin, slightly injuring two people. The male bomber, Lin, wanted revenge on society, according to state-run media. News media said he was carrying twenty homemade bombs the shape of a soda can and had thrown four of them in the Hexi district of Tianjin. It was the third bombing at government facilities in the past three weeks.
June 12, 2011—Pakistan—Just after midnight, two bombs, one by a suicide bomber, killed thirty-four people and injured ninety-eight, eighteen critically, in Peshawar. The first small bomb drew rescue workers to the site. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle set off 22 pounds of explosives, causing the casualties.
June 16, 2011—Internet—Al Qaeda’s (AQ) general command announced that Ayman al-Zawahiri had succeeded Osama bin Laden as the group’s leader. “The general leadership of al Qaeda group, after the completion of consultations, announces that Sheikh Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God give him success, has assumed responsibility for command of the group… We seek with the aid of God to call for the religion of truth and incite our nation to fight … by carrying out jihad against the apostate invaders … with their head being crusader America and its servant Israel, and whoever supports them.” The announcement noted that AQ wanted to “assure our affirmation and support of everyone who carries out jihad … We do not differentiate between an Arab and a foreigner except in piety and righteous deeds.” The group referred to the Guantanamo prisoners, saying, “The lions in the chains who have to be patient … sacrificed and suffered for the cause of supporting Islam and the Muslims.” Al-Zawahiri called on “lone wolf” terrorists to attack those named on a forty-person hit list posted on Ansar al-Mujahideen’s Web site. The list includes U.S. government, military, and media figures. Among them were a member of Congress, Pentagon officials, a conservative pundit, executives of a U.S. company making drones, and two prominent French executives. The site includes photos of twenty-six of the targeted individuals. Al-Zawahiri turned 60 on June 19, 2011.
June 16, 2011—Nigeria—At 8:45 p.m., a Boko Haram suicide bomber killed two people in the parking lot of the Abuja police headquarters. A second Boko Haram bomb in the northeast killed three children. Abu Zaid, the group’s spokesman, and senior leader Usman al-Zawahiri claimed credit for the police blast. Boko Haram in Hausa means, “Western education is sacrilege.” Some observers said Boko Haram was seeking ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Boko Haram leaflets said that its members had trained in Somalia with al-Shabaab.
June 18, 2011—Iraq—On March 17, 2012, an Iraqi Shi’ite militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced at a pre-taped news conference that it was releasing U.S. soldier Rand Michael Hultz, who it had kidnapped and held for nine months. He said he was a former soldier who was working as a civilian when he was abducted on June 18, 2011, in Baghdad by “Yom al-Maoud under the direction of Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr,” also known as the Promised Day Brigade. U.S. officials said all American soldiers had been accounted for and no civilian was reported missing. His ex-wife did not know he was missing. A Rand Michael Hultz had served in Iraq shortly after the 2003 invasion. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq said Iraqi lawmakers Maha al-Douri and Quasay al-Suhail handed over Hultz, who was transferred to the U.S. Embassy.
June 22, 2011—Yemen—Some sixty-two male Islamist terrorists escaped through a 50-yard tunnel from a prison in Mukalla. The terrorists used daggers to attack a guard, grabbed his gun, and fired it. One guard died, another was wounded. Terrorists outside the prison fired at other guards for thirty minutes, offering covering fire for the escaping prisoners. Three escapees were killed; two were captured. At least fifty-seven of the escapees had been convicted on terrorism charges; some had been given a death sentence. Among the escapees were members of an al Qaeda cell that had killed foreign tourists and tried to attack the U.S. Embassy and other Western targets. Two Saudis and two Syrians were among the escapees. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had used the same tactic in a prison escape in Aden the previous summer.
June 22, 2011—United States—Islamic converts Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, 33, born Joseph Anthony Davis, of Seattle, and Walli Mujahidh, 32, born Frederick Domingue, Jr., of Los Angeles, were arrested at a Seattle warehouse for planning to use grenades and machine guns to attack the Military Entrance Processing Station on East Marginal Way in Seattle on July 5. Prosecutors said the duo had purchased two inerted automatic weapons for $800 from an informant and discussed getting pistols. They had planned to deter U.S. military action in Islamic countries. They initially targeted the Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Seattle. Abdul-Latif told an informant that “if one person (Nidal Hasan) could kill so many people, three attackers could kill many more” and that his son would be proud if Latif died while fighting “nonbelievers.” The prosecution said Abdul-Latif told Mujahidh that he would drive a “truck that looks like the Titanic” through the “front gate” and that he wanted to use fragmentation grenades in the facility’s cafeteria to deter pursuers and kill or maim others. He observed, “Imagine how many young Muslims, if we’re successful, will try to hit these kinds of centers. Imagine how fearful America will be.” “If we gonna die,” Abdul-Latif said, “we gotta die taking some kafifirs with us. I’m not trying to run out of ammunition … We’re not only trying to kill people … We’re trying to send a message. We’re trying to get something that’s gonna be on CNN and all over the world.” Mujahidh took a bus from Los Angeles to Seattle on June 21. The charge sheet said that Mujahidh expected a headline to read, “Three Muslim Males Walk Into MEPS Building, Seattle, Washington, and Gun Down Everybody.” “That’s what it’s going to come down to,” Mujahidh said, “because if they surround the building, the only way out is through them … and guns blazing man, guns blazing … We’re not walking out of there alive.” Authorities said they converted to Islam in prison, where they met. Abdul-Latif served in the U.S. Navy in 1995. He was convicted of felony robbery in the first degree in 2002 and assault in 2003 while serving time in Washington State for the robbery. The duo faced life in prison. On December 8, 2011, Mujahidh pleaded guilty to charges that he joined Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif in planning the attack. Mujahidh faced twenty-seven to thirty-two years in prison on pleading guilty to weapons and conspiracy charges. The petty thief had a long history of mental illness and had logged twelve stays at psychiatric hospitals, according to defense attorney Michele Shaw.
June 23, 2011—Iraq—Several men wheeled in explosives on produce carts around 7:00 p.m., then exploded their three bombs in the Shi’ite al-Shurta neighborhood market in Baghdad, killing 21 people and injuring 107.
June 23, 2011—Iraq—Stephen Everhart, an international finance expert working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, died when a bomb exploded under his diplomatic convoy while leaving a Baghdad university. Three other people, including one U.S. citizen, were injured. Everhart was working with the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. He was an associate dean at the American University in Cairo. He had been managing director of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). He was married and had two daughters and a son. 11062301
June 24, 2011—Myanmar—Four bombs exploded in three Burmese cities, wounding two people. The first explosion went off in a house near a market in Naypyidaw, the administrative capital, near a zone featuring hotels and near the Gems Museum. A second bomb went off at noon, destroying a car and wounding a traffic cop and another person. A third bomb went off in Mandalay at 3:00 p.m., three blocks away, but caused no injuries. Twenty miles away, a bomb went off in Pyinoolwin, where a defense academy is located.
June 25, 2011—Afghanistan—Just after noon, a suicide bomber drove a vehicle bomb into the front entrance of a public hospital in the Azra district of rural Lugar Province, killing at least twenty-five people, including patients, staff, and children, many of them in the maternity ward. Some news reports said sixty people had died.
June 25, 2011—United States—Two explosive devices were found in a Borders Bookstore in the suburban Colorado Mills Mall in Golden, Colorado, a Denver suburb. The crude devices caused minimal damage inside the store. No one was injured.
June 25, 2011—Pakistan—A married Uzbek couple conducted a five-hour gun battle at a police station in Dera Ismail Khan, killing ten officers before setting off three explosions that killed themselves. The Pakistani Taliban said it was avenging the death of Osama bin Laden. 11062501
June 26, 2011—Nigeria—Motorcyclists threw bombs into three outdoor beer gardens in Maiduguri, killing twenty-five people. Boko Haram was suspected in the 5:00 p.m. attacks.
June 27, 2011—Afghanistan—At 10:00 p.m. three Taliban gunmen and five or six suicide bombers attacked Kabul’s Hotel Inter-Continental, which frequently has foreign guests. Gunmen wearing police uniforms shot two guards, set off a truck bomb, then stormed the building. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in an e-mail to CNN that “one of the suicide attackers told us on the phone that they are in the lobby and chasing guests into their rooms by smashing the doors of the rooms and he added that they have killed about fifty guests of this hotel.” Four hours later, NATO/International Security Assistance Force helicopters killed three gunmen who were firing rocket-propelled grenades from the roof at the first vice president’s house. Twenty Afghan troops entered the hotel and did a floor-by-floor search, killing two of the would-be suicide bombers. Two others ran upstairs. All of the suicide bombers eventually set off their explosives. Soon afterwards, three bombs went off. At the end of the siege, the government announced that all nine terrorists had died, as had a dozen other people, including nine Afghans, a Turkish pilot, a French tourist, and a Spaniard. The Canadian Embassy denied an early report that one of its diplomats was killed. The U.S. Embassy said all Americans were accounted for. Another dozen people were wounded.
At the time of the attack, the hotel was hosting a wedding and was preparing to host a meeting of provincial governors.
A Taliban spokesman said seven of the group’s members hailed from Konar, Khost, Kunduz, Paktia, Wardak, and Zabul provinces.
On June 28, an air strike killed Haqqani network member Ismail Jan, commander in the Khost-Gardez Pass area and deputy to the senior Haqqani commander, in Paktiya Province. Jan was believed to have organized the hotel attack. 11062701
July 2011—Algeria—An al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb suicide bomber killed two people at a police headquarters in Bordj Maniel, west of Tizi Ouzou.
July 2011—United States—Ulugbek Kodirov, an Uzbek illegally in the United States, was arrested on charges of plotting to kill President Obama with an automatic rifle, acting on instructions of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). He pleaded guilty on February 20, 2012, in a hearing in Birmingham, Alabama, before U.S. District Judge Abdul K. Kallon; the charges were threatening to kill the president, possession of an automatic weapon, and providing material support to terrorists; four other charges were dropped. The 22-year-old was represented by attorney Lance Bell, who said the plea bargain dropped the sentence from life in prison to a possible fifteen to thirty years to be followed by deportation.
Kodirov said he had been communicating with “the Emir,” a member of the IMU. He approached an individual to obtain a Sendra M-115A1 automatic rifle for the assassination; the friend became a confidential source for the government. Kodirov bought the gun from an undercover agent at a Birmingham motel on July 13, 2011, and threatened the president a fourth time. The agent also gave Kodirov four inerted hand grenades. 11079901
July 2011—United Kingdom—Manchester authorities arrested Mohammed Sajid Khan, 33, and his wife, Shasta, 38, after the duo got into an argument. Family members were drawn into the fight; her brother told police that Mohammed was a “home-grown terrorist.” Shasta then admitted that her husband was planning an attack but denied that she was involved. Police discovered a plan to bomb Jewish sites in Manchester and found beheading videos, al Qaeda propaganda, bomb-making guides, hydrogen peroxide, and addresses in the town’s Jewish community. She was convicted on three terrorism-related counts on July 19, 2012, at Manchester Crown Court. He had earlier pleaded guilty.
July 1, 2011—Pakistan—A Swiss married couple were kidnapped while traveling by car in Loralai in southwestern Baluchistan Province. The tourists were on their way to Quetta. 11070101
July 5, 2011—Gaza Strip—Israeli forces killed two Palestinian gunmen and wounded a third who were affiliated with Tawheed and Jihad, a group with links to al Qaeda. The trio were approaching a boundary fence and were believed preparing to fire a rocket into Israel.
July 12, 2011—Egypt—Masked gunmen bombed a terminal of the Egyptian natural gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan. No casualties were reported. No one claimed credit. 11071201
July 12, 2011—Afghanistan—Sardar Mohammad, 35, a police commandant and longtime confidant of President Hamid Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, 48, fired three shots that killed Ahmed Wali Karzai before bodyguards killed Mohammad. Ahmed Karzai was meeting with tribal elders and politicians in his home in Kandahar. Ahmed Karzai was the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan but was also reputedly involved in extensive corruption. The Taliban claimed credit. It was not clear why Mohammad killed Karzai; he had worked against the Taliban during his career. The press claimed that Mohammad had met with Taliban insurgents in Quetta, Pakistan, within the previous three months. On October 15, 2011, a senior NATO official said that he was not a Taliban member and had shot Karzai because he had learned that he was to be disciplined and wanted to avoid being publicly shamed.
On July 14, a suicide bomber set off a bomb hidden in his turban, killing four people and injuring fifteen at a morning memorial service for Karzai in Kandahar’s Red Mosque. The dead included Maulvi Hekmatullah Hekmat, chief cleric of Kandahar. Karzai family members and the cabinet ministers in attendance were not harmed.
July 12, 2011—Philippines—More than a dozen Abu Sayyaf gunmen kidnapped Gerfa Yeatts Lunsman, 41, a Filipina American vet, and her son and nephew on the resort island of Tictabon, near Zamboanga. The group fled in motorboats. A large ransom was demanded. She was dropped off by boat at a wharf in an isolated area of Basilan Island the evening of October 3, 2011, and walked to nearby Maluso township. Her American son Kevin, 14, and Filipino nephew Romnick Jakaria, 19, remained as hostages. It is not known whether a ransom was paid. Lunsmann was born near Zamboanga city but was adopted by a U.S. family and grew up in the United States. She lives in Virginia. Kevin Lunsman was freed on December 10, 2011; there was no indication regarding a ransom payment. 11071202
July 12, 2011—Turkey—Authorities announced they arrested fifteen suspected al Qaeda terrorists in Ankara, Bursa, and Yalova who were planning attacks on foreign targets, including the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. Police seized 700 kilograms of chemicals that could be used in bomb making, two assault rifles, ammunition, and maps of Ankara. Authorities had surveilled a suspect, C.I., for six months. C.I. had al Qaeda contacts. Authorities believed he was trained in arms and explosives, and rented a two-story house in Sincan, near Ankara. He was arrested on a Sincan street earlier in the week. C.I. had led to the arrest of nine suspects in Ankara, three in Bursa, and two in Yalova. 11071302
July 13, 2011—India—Terrorists set off three bombs at 6:45 p.m. in the Dadar, Opera House, and Zaveri Bazar commercial hubs in Mumbai, killing 18 people (originally reported as 21) and wounding 133. The Zaveri bomb was hidden in an umbrella near a motorcycle; the others were in trash under a cart and on top of a bus stop billboard. Lashkar-i-Taiba, radical Hindus, and Indian Mujahideen were suspected, although no group claimed credit immediately. On July 26, Nepalese media reported that over the weekend police had arrested Muhammad Zahir, a man in his 40s, on suspicion of involvement in the attack. Authorities said he spoke on a cell phone and texted about the explosions. 11071303
July 18, 2011—China—Muslim Uighur gunmen attacked a police station in the grand bazaar section of Hotan, Xinjiang Province, near the Pakistan border. Police killed fourteen gunmen but lost an armed policeman, a security guard, and a woman and a teen girl; the latter two had been taken hostage. Another three civilians were injured. Six hostages were freed. Police arrested four gunmen. State news services said the Uighur “rioters” were armed with axes, knives, daggers, Molotov cocktails, and explosives and that they had hacked to death the security guard.
The German-based World Uighur Congress claimed that Uighurs were protesting in front of the police station and were fired on by police.
July 19, 2011—Internet—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the sixth edition of Inspire, which cited the death of Osama bin Laden and succession by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Inspire claimed that bin Laden fought back against U.S. Navy SEALS in a “vicious battle” on May 2, 2011, before he was killed. “He confronted them, his weapons against theirs, and his strength against theirs, and he accepted the challenge of those who came out with their fancy equipment, machinery, weapons, aircrafts, and troops, all haughty and pompous. His determination did not weaken in front of them, nor was he sapped of strength. Rather, he stood and confronted them face to face like a firm mountain, and continued to engage them in a fierce battle … after which he excused himself and fulfilled the trust, receiving bullets of treachery and infidelity.” It was unclear how the Inspire writer could know this directly. Other articles in the magazine showed how to fire an AK-47 and how to form acetone peroxide explosives.
July 20, 2011—Yemen—A bomb placed under the driver’s seat of a British man in Aden killed him. The ship surveyor worked in Aden for the Arab Company for Inspection and Marine Consulting. No group claimed credit for killing the longtime resident. 11072001
July 22, 2011—Norway—Norwegian citizen Anders Behring Breivik, 32, set off a car bomb at 3:26 p.m. in Oslo, killing eight people and injuring thirty, before conducting a shooting spree at a youth Labor Party political conference on Utoya Island, 25 miles to the northwest, killing at least sixty-eight people (initial reports said eighty-five people) and injuring another sixty-six in a ninety-minute rampage. More than sixty of the victims were teens. The Oslo bomb went off near the seventeen-story building that houses the prime minister’s office, setting off a fire at the neighboring Oil Ministry. Two hours later, dressed in a police uniform, he herded the students together before opening fire. Several tried to swim away, but were shot in the water. Four people were missing two days after the attack. Residents near the island called police at 5:27 p.m. The first police patrol arrived at 5:52 p.m.; an emergency team from Oslo joined them at 6:09 p.m. They had to use motorboats from local residents to get to the island at 6:25 p.m. Breivik had no getaway plans.
Breivik soon confessed. He was carrying a Glock pistol and an automatic weapon. Police Directorate spokesman Runar Kvernen said that he was “suspected of having some right-wing sympathies,” which were amply demonstrated in Breivik’s Internet postings. If convicted of terrorism charges, he faced twenty-one years in prison. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said his client called the attacks “atrocious” but “necessary.” Lippestad said his client was insane. The fundamentalist Christian belonged to an anti-immigrant party and opposed Islam, multi-culturalism, and “cultural Marxists.” He had recently bought tons of fertilizer that could be used in bomb making. In his fifteen-hundred-page English-language manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, he called for a civil war and detailed how he made the explosives. Symbols of Knights Templar appeared in the document. A Norwegian newspaper reported that some sections came from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto. He appeared in a video in which he was wearing quasi-military uniforms. He considered using anthrax in attacks, but there was no evidence that he knew how to use it or had obtained it.
A little-known jihadist group claimed credit, and jihadi Internet fora praised the attacks.
Breivik told an Oslo court that he acted alone. He later said that there were two cells at large in Norway and possibly others elsewhere in Europe. He entered a plea of not guilty.
Jens David Breivik, a former Norwegian diplomat, said he wished his son had committed suicide. He cut off contact with his son in 1995.
On July 26, police were investigating a Polish chemist who sold chemicals to Breivik online that the latter used to make bombs.
In November, during the first public hearing since the attack, District Court Judge Torkjel Nesheim said there was no reason to believe that Breivik is insane and no reason to believe he had accomplices. Breivik was ordered held in custody for another twelve weeks.
On November 29, 2011, psychiatrists declared that Breivik was a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic at the time of the attacks and during the thirteen interviews they conducted with him. He thus could not be sentenced to prison or preventive detention, but he could be confined to a mental hospital for the rest of his life. Courts would review the compulsory mental health care order every three years.
On February 6, 2012, Breivik defended his act during a custody hearing, saying, “people subjected to genocide” may legally defend themselves. He said, “The attacks on the government headquarters were preventive attacks on traitors to the nation, people committing or planning to commit cultural destruction, including destruction of Norwegian culture and Norwegian ethnicity.”
On March 7, 2012, Breivik was indicted on terrorism and murder charges. He was expected to be involuntarily committed to psychiatric care.
On June 21, 2012, Norwegian prosecutors asked that Breivik be transferred to a psychiatric institution, calling him mentally ill. Failing that, they would ask for a sentence of twenty-one years in prison. The trial ended on June 22, 2012. He was represented by defense lawyer Geir Lippestad, who argued that Breivik acted out of necessity, not insanity. Judges scheduled an August 24 verdict announcement. Brieivik was deemed sane and on August 24, 2012, sentenced to twenty-one years in prison. He gave the court a clenched-fist salute.
July 23, 2011—Iran—On July 24, 2012, Iran announced the arrests of suspects in the July 2011 murder of 35-year-old nuclear physicist Daryoush Rezaie outside his Tehran home. Tehran said, “Two groups in charge of training terrorists were arrested inside and outside Iran.”
July 24, 2011—Yemen—A suicide bomber rammed into an army checkpoint outside Aden, killing nine soldiers and wounding twenty-one others. The government blamed al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
July 26, 2011—Afghanistan—A Taliban suicide bomber hid his explosives in his turban, snuck into a city hall meeting, and killed Kandahar’s mayor, Ghulam Haidar Hamidi, 65.
July 26, 2011—Yemen—Nasser al-Wahishi, leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, posted a ten-minute audio to Islamist Web sites in which he vowed loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri as bin Laden’s successor. “I give you allegiance of obedience in good and hard times, in ease and difficult, and in fighting the enemies of Allah as much as I can—myself and your loyal soldiers who are with me on the Arabian Peninsula.” He said that the group would continue seeking to overthrow President Ali Abdullah Saleh. “My soldiers and those soldiers with me in the Arab Gulf will not give up nor give in until Islam is ruling by God’s will and strength.” The Arab Spring has “blown America’s dreams to the winds” and provided Muslims “a natural chance to rid themselves of the West’s cross—its plots and its plans—to chisel its own course for a return to the glory days … Our war against the Zionist Crusaders remains for they have chosen this war. We are people of war; we were born from its womb and we grew up in its midst. It is as if we were only created to fight them and bother them.”
July 26, 2011—Iraq—The Islamic State of Iraq posted an online plea for funds, saying it needed money to help thousands of widows and children of martyrs. Webmaster Seif Saad said, “A few days ago a brother was martyred, leaving behind a wife and children. There is no need to explain how we were running here and there to collect money for their minimum requirements of life.” He suggested that al Qaeda in Iraq members extort foreign oil, construction, transport, and cell phone firms, along with international media services. Web site administrator Mohamed Abdel-Hadi suggested shaking down wealthy Shi’ites, because “all the Shi’ites, including merchants or government officials, are infidels and confiscating their money is part of jihad.”
July 26, 2011—Lebanon—A roadside bomb went off next to a UN Interim Force in Lebanon convoy carrying French peacekeepers at the southern entrance of Sidon, wounding six of them. One sustained injuries to the face and chest. No group claimed responsibility, although Hizballah was suspected. Investigators said the bomb contained two kilograms of explosives. 11072601
July 26, 2011—United States—Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed two indictments that charged four men as part of two undercover heroin stings in Romania and Afghanistan. The undercover operatives said that the profits would fund Hizballah. A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)-sourced indictment said that Afghan citizen Taza Gul Alizai sold six AK-47 assault rifles and 15 kilograms of heroin during two years to a DEA informant. Alizai faced life in prison on charges of narcoterrorism conspiracy, narcoterrorism, and narcotics importation. He was arrested in the Maldives on July 25; he pleaded not guilty the next day in a Manhattan court.
In the second indictment, three men were charged with conspiracy to import heroin and provide material support to Hizballah. The charge sheet said that Sioavosh Henareh, alias The Doctor, agreed to import heroin to the United States so that profits could go to Hizballah. Informants were introduced to Cetin Aksu and Bachar Wehbe, a Lebanese; the duo tried to buy Stinger antiaircraft missiles, AK-47s, and Glock handguns from the informants. Wehbe said he was purchasing them for Hizballah. Aksu and Henareh faced life in prison on charges of conspiracy to distribute heroin. Aksu and Wehbe were charged with conspiracy to acquire antiaircraft missiles, which also carries a life sentence. Wehbe was arrested in the Maldives on July 25; he pleaded not guilty the next day in a Manhattan court. Aksu and Henareh were arrested in Romania on July 25; extradition was expected to be requested.
July 27, 2011—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri praised Syria’s pro-democracy movement in a seven-minute As-Sahab video posted to jihadi Web sites. “The time of humiliation is gone, the time of deceit is over, and the rule of the thieves is finished.” He said the protestors were part of a broader revolution in the Muslim world. He called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “the leader of criminal gangs, the protector of traitors,” and a corrupt tyrant who was “America’s partner in the war on Islam.” He said al-Assad “abandoned” the Golan Heights after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and that he now serves as “Israel’s border guard.”
Oh free people of Syria and its mujahideen, it is better for you not to ally yourself with the colonialist powers of the world and the new crusades. America, which had committed itself to Bashar for the length of his rule, announces today that it stands with you. After what it saw and the ground shook from the thunder of your rage and after it was devastated by the loss of its two biggest agents in Egypt and Tunisia … Washington today seeks to replace Assad, who sincerely protected the borders of the Zionist entity, with another regime that squanders your revolution and jihad in a new regime that follows America, takes care of Israel’s interests, and grants the Muslims some freedoms … I would have been amongst you and with you, [but] there are enough and more mujahideen and garrisoned ones.
July 28, 2011—United States—U.S. Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, 21, was arrested while AWOL by Killeen, Texas, police at a traffic stop near Fort Hood. The Muslim told investigators that he wanted to attack his colleagues at the base in support of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who had shot to death thirteen people at the base in 2009. Police said he had no accomplices. FBI agents found bomb-making materials in his hotel room. Guns Galore, a Texas gun dealer that had sold Nidal Hasan his weapons used in the earlier attack on Fort Hood, alerted police to Abdo’s suspicious behavior. Abdo bought gunpowder, shotgun ammunition, and a magazine for a semiautomatic handgun. Abdo set aside six one-pound canisters of smokeless gunpowder, but then asked about the powder, raising suspicions. Abdo also bought uniforms with Fort Hood unit patches from a local military surplus store. A search of Abdo’s hotel room and backpack turned up the six pounds of smokeless powder, Christmas lights, and battery-operated clocks—which could be used for a timing and triggering device—sugar, shrapnel, a pressure cooker, shotgun shells that were being dismantled for their raw explosives, a .40-caliber pistol, and Islamic extremist literature, including an article from the al Qaeda magazine Inspire. He was to be charged with possession of bomb-making materials. On August 9, he was indicted on charges of possession of an unregistered destructive device, possession of a firearm, and possession of ammunition by a fugitive from justice.
Abdo had been a member of Company E of the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. He joined the infantry in 2009. Abdo had refused to deploy to Afghanistan on religious grounds. The army approved his request to be discharged as a conscientious objector. Soon after, he went AWOL from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after he was charged with possession of child pornography on his computer on May 13. At a military hearing on June 15, he was recommended for court-martial. His father, Jamal, was deported to Jordan in February 2010 after conviction of solicitation of sex online from a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl.
He was charged on July 29 in U.S. District Court in Waco, Texas, with possession of an unregistered destructive device in connection with a bomb plot. He faced a ten-year sentence.
On November 8, 2011, Abdo was indicted on charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. He faced a life sentence.
On May 22, 2012, Abdo’s civil murder trial opened in U.S. District Court. He was represented by defense lawyer Zachary Boyd. FBI agent Charles Owens said Abdo planned to bomb a Chinese restaurant because he said buffets were popular with soldiers; he would then shoot survivors. On May 24, 2012, a federal jury convicted him of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, which carried a life sentence. He was also convicted of attempted murder of U.S. officers or employees and four counts of possession of a weapon in furtherance of a federal crime of violence. Abdo was also to be tried for murder in a military court on August 20, 2012.
On August 10, 2012, U.S. District Judge Walter Smith sentenced Abdo to two consecutive life sentences, plus sixty years in prison. Abdo represented himself in the hearing and said he remained committed to jihad. “I don’t ask the court for mercy because Allah is the one who gives me mercy.”
July 30, 2011—Egypt—At dawn, gunmen did little damage when they fired rocket-propelled grenades at the pipeline terminal at al-Shuluq in northern Sinai. No injuries were reported. The pipeline carries natural gas from Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula to Israel and Jordan. The pipeline had been shut down after a previous attack.
August 2011—Spain—Spain arrested a terrorist of Moroccan descent “planning to poison the water supplies of tourist locations in Spain, in retaliation for the death of bin Laden,” according to the European Union Terrorist Situation and Trend Report.
August 2011—China—Late in August, the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) released a ten-minute video claiming credit for attacks in July in the West that killed three dozen people. The Islamist Uighur group was believed to be based in Pakistan and had links to al Qaeda. TIP leader Abdul Shakoor Damla said the attacks were revenge against the Chinese government. In 2008, the group had claimed credit for several bus bombings in China. The video included footage of TIP member Memtieli Tiliwaldi, a suspect in the July attacks who was fatally shot by Chinese authorities in a cornfield in July.
August 2, 2011—Iraq—A car bomb exploded outside the Holy Family Catholic church in Kirkuk’s Shatterlo neighborhood at 5:30 a.m., wounding twenty-three people.
August 12, 2011—United States—Daniel Wells Herriman, 40, of Konawa, Oklahoma, phoned Seminole County 911 to say that he had placed a homemade time bomb under a natural gas pipeline 75 miles east of Oklahoma City. Hours earlier, employees of Enerfin Resources had found the device, which did not explode. Herriman had no connection to the company. The bomb consisted of sealed white pipes containing black powder, a propane tank, two batteries, wires, broken light bulbs, and a wind-up alarm clock.
August 13, 2011—Pakistan—At 3:10 a.m., circa eight to ten gunmen kidnapped Warren Weinstein, 70, an American, from his Lahore home in the Model Town neighborhood. He was working as J.E. Austin Associates, Inc., country director on a development project. He had planned to finish his work that weekend and move out of the country by August 15, possibly to return to his home in Rockville, Maryland. The gunmen had told guards that they wanted to give them food during Ramadan. After the guards opened the gate, two of the assailants ran through the gate while six others used the back door. Police claimed that the gunmen tortured the guards, then escaped with the American. As of August 14, police had developed no leads and were not sure whether the attackers were terrorists or criminals seeking ransom.
Weinstein had twenty-five years of experience in international development projects. He earned his doctorate in international law and economics at Columbia University. He speaks six languages, including Urdu. The company said he was an expert in governance, microfinance, small and medium-size business development, and institutional development. The firm said he was in poor health and posted a list of medications, including those for heart problems, that it hoped the kidnappers would give him.
On August 18, Pakistani police released a sketch of a possible suspect, a thin youth with short dark hair and a stubbly beard.
On August 25, Pakistani police retracted the day’s earlier announcement that Weinstein had been found 120 miles from Lahore in the Khushab district. The kidnappers had fled a safe house before the police raid.
Pakistani police arrested three men in connection with the kidnapping. The trio were from the province in which Weinstein had lived for seven years. Police had tracked their cell phone numbers.
On December 1, 2011, Ayman al-Zawahiri said via a thirty-minute audio posting on Islamist Web sites that al Qaeda was responsible and demanded the release of al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists from several prisons around the world, including everyone held at Guantanamo. He also demanded the end of U.S. air attacks against Islamists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Gaza, and Yemen; the free movement of people and goods between Egypt and Gaza; and closure of Guantanamo. He said Weinstein’s family should not trust U.S. President Obama. “Your government tortures our prisoners, but we have not tortured your prisoner … Your problem is not with us but with Obama. We have raised fair demands … So continue to pressure Obama, if you want your relative to be handed back.” He said that Obama wished Weinstein “would be killed to get rid of his problem.” He demanded the release of six prominent members of al Qaeda in the West, including Ramzi Yousef, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and members of bin Laden’s family. “Obama has the power, capacity, and authority to free [Weinstein]. He could also leave him in captivity for years and, if he does something stupid, kill him.” Al-Zawahiri said, “Just as the Americans detain all who they suspect of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban, even remotely, we detained this man who is neck deep in American aid to Pakistan since the 1970s.” He noted that Libyan terrorist Jamal Ibrahim Ashtiwi al-Misrati, alias Attiyatullah, alias Atiyah Abd al Rahman, survived an initial air strike but died with his son Issam in a second attack on August 23, 2011. “He was martyred, may God have mercy on him … by bombing by a crusader spy plane.” Al-Zawahiri added, “I tell the captive soldiers of al Qaeda and the Taliban and our female prisoners held in the prisons of the crusaders and their collaborators, we have not forgotten you and in order to free you we have taken hostage the Jewish American Warren Weinstein.”
NBC News reported on December 2, 2011, that Tehrik-e-Taliban was responsible for the kidnapping of Weinstein, who was shifted to various locations.
McClatchyDC.com reported that Weinstein was alive and in good health as of January 25, 2012. He was being held by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants in North Waziristan. In December 2011, Ayman al-Zawahiri had said in a video that al Qaeda was holding Weinstein.
On March 16, 2012, al-Zawahiri released an eleven-minute As-Sahab Internet video in which he said, “By the grace of Allah, we, on our part, have captured the American Jew Warren Weinstein.” He demanded the release of al Qaeda prisoners, including blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, Aafia Siddiqui, Osama bin Laden’s family, and “every single person arrested on allegations of links with al Qaeda and Taliban” for the release of Weinstein. Al-Zawahiri said the Pakistani Army “slaves of America” were taking bribes, and that the populace should,
Rise up in the face of these treacherous generals! Take to the streets! Revolt! Rise and step forward to face death so that you may be given life once again! … Cannot a million free and noble people rise from amongst the Muslims of Pakistan to stage a protest against the generals of Pakistan Army so as to force them to stop their treachery … by participating with America in its war against Islam, compel them to stop drone strikes and pressurize them to bring an end to army operations in the tribal areas [in the Swat border region] … Partnership with America only leads to loss in this world and the hereafter … O our people in Pakistan! The Arab world around you is surging in a wave of revolution. Tyrants and oppressive rulers are falling. Why are you not making any move? Why are you not deposing these tyrants? Why are you not toppling these treacherous bribe-takers?
He mentioned a U.S. air strike in November 2011 that killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers on the Afghanistan border.
On May 5, 2012, the kidnappers released a three minute and forty seconds video in which Weinstein said, “My life is in your hands, Mr. President. If you accept the demands, I live. If you don’t accept the demands, then I die. It’s important you accept the demands and act quickly and don’t delay. There’ll be no benefit in delaying, it will just make things more difficult for me.” He said if Obama accepted the demands, “then I will live and hopefully rejoin my family and also enjoy my children, my two daughters, like you enjoy your two daughters.” He said he wanted his wife to know, “I’m fine, I’m well. I’m getting all my medications. I’m being taken care of.”
On September 12, 2012, Weinstein appeared in a ninety-second As-Sahab video in which he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to negotiate with the terrorists. “Unfortunately President Obama and the American government have shown no interest in my case. Therefore, as a Jew, I am appealing to you, Prime Minister Netanyahu, the head of the Jewish State of Israel, as one Jew to another, to please intervene on my behalf, to work with the mujahideen and to accept their demands so that I can be released and returned to my family, my wife, my children and my grandchildren again.” He asked his wife “Please make as many contacts as you can with Jewish communities in the United States in order to put pressure on the American government and President Obama to work with and accept the demands of the mujahideen in order for me to get my freedom.” He also asked Elaine Weinstein to appeal to the “Republican candidate.” He said he was taking his medication and was “being taken care of.” 11081301
August 13, 2011—Yemen—The New York Times reported that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was trying to obtain castor beans to produce ricin, which it would pack around explosives to be used in attacks against U.S. subway stations, malls, and an airport. The group mentioned ricin in a fall 2010 edition of its online magazine Inspire in an article entitled “Tips for Our Brothers in the United States of America.”
August 13, 2011—Algeria—At 4:30 a.m., Anes Abu El-Nadr, an al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) suicide bomber, injured twenty-nine people when he tried to drive his Toyota Hilux pickup truck bomb into police headquarters in Tizi Ouszou. AQIM in a posting to an Islamist Web site claimed thirty-five people were killed or wounded.
August 14, 2011—Afghanistan—Six Taliban suicide bombers attacked a provincial governor’s compound in Chaikar, Parwan Province, killing twenty-two people. Governor Abdul Basir Salangi, his police chief and intelligence director, a local army commander, and two NATO advisors were meeting in the home. Salangi survived. The first explosion was a car bomb outside the front gate. Five other terrorists ran through the subsequent hole in the wall, bringing with them suicide vests, automatic weapons, and rocket-propelled grenades. Police killed three of the attackers before they could make it to the house.
August 15, 2011—Internet—Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri released a twelve-minute video on an Islamist Web site addressed to “Muslim brothers everywhere” in which he observed, “America today is staggering. Hunt her down wherever you may encounter her. Hunt her down to cut what is left of her corruption’s tail. Pursue America, which killed the Imam of the Mujahideen and threw his body into the sea, and then captured his women and sons. Hunt her down until history says that a murderous country spread corruption in the earth so God sent his faithful to her to make an example out of her.”
August 18, 2011—Israel—Terrorists crossed from the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula into Israel and conducted several attacks on vehicles and soldiers near the Eilat resort, killing eight and wounding more than twenty-four. In the first attack at noon, gunmen on a road several miles outside Eilat fired on an intercity bus carrying soldiers. Driver Benny Bilbaski saw “two men in fatigues shooting at me” and quickly drove out of range. The injured were treated. A simultaneous attack on a bus and two cars, plus a bombing of a military vehicle carrying troops responding to the scene, resulted in a soldier being killed by the blast and ensuing gun battle. One car was hit by an antitank rocket. Two attacks set off suicide belts. Terrorists also fired mortars from Gaza at troops conducting maintenance on the border fence. Israeli helicopter gunships killed seven attackers.
A retaliatory Israeli air strike on Rafah town in the Gaza Strip killed eight Palestinians, including Kamal al-Neirab, the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees; Imad Hamad, the leader of the group’s armed wing; the group’s rocket expert; his two-year-old son; along with the leader of the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad group and his son and brother. Another forty people were injured. The group retaliated by firing a Grad rocket at Ashkelon town. The Iron Dome missile defense system knocked down the rocket.
An Egyptian military officer and two police officers were killed in border skirmishes after the attacks.
On September 21, 2012, three gunmen wearing sand-colored camouflage uniforms crossed the Sinai border with Israel at Har Harif in a mountainous area but were shot to death in a firefight with Israeli troops, who lost one soldier; a second soldier was wounded. The terrorists had fired on Israeli soldiers who were bringing water to African migrants and securing a construction zone for a security fence at Mount Harif between the Gaza Strip and Eilat. An explosives belt worn by one of the terrorists detonated. The gunmen had three rocket-propelled grenade launchers and a machine gun hidden in a nearby pit. The Supporters of the Holy Places claimed credit, saying it was retaliating for the anti–Muhammad video. The group also claimed credit for the August 18, 2011, attack near Eilat that killed eight and wounded more than thirty people. The group said one of its leaders, Ibrahim Aweida, helped lead the Eilat attack and that he died in an Israeli attack in the Sinai village of Khreiza in August 2012. The most recent attack was also to avenge his death.
August 19, 2011—Pakistan—A suicide bomber killed forty-eight worshipers and wounded more than one hundred at a Sunni mosque in Ghundi in the Khyber region near the Afghanistan border. A boy believed to be about 15 or 16 years old set off a suicide vest packed with ball bearings. The roof of the mosque collapsed on the worshipers, who were engaged in Friday prayers during Ramadan.
August 19, 2011—India—Maoist rebels were blamed for an attack on a police patrol in the Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh State. The terrorists shot to death nine officers and a civilian.
August 19, 2011—Afghanistan—Taliban gunmen attacked the British Council in the Karte Parwan residential neighborhood in Kabul, initially killing at least four people, including three Afghan police officers and a civilian municipality worker. The attack came on the day Afghans mark their 1919 independence from the British. After a truck bomb exploded at the entrance to the compound at 5:30 a.m., gunmen stormed the building. A second bomb went off ten minutes later. A grenade went off at 7:45 a.m., as the gun battle with hundreds of police officers continued. At least five wounded people, four of them police officers and one a Nepalese guard wearing a U.K. Embassy guard force hat, were rushed to hospitals during the eight-hour gun battle. Two Britons and a South African survived by hiding in a safe room. At least eight people, including a New Zealand Special Forces soldier, five police officers, and two Afghan guards, were later reported killed, as were the terrorists. Another twenty-two people were injured. 11081901
August 22, 2011—Pakistan—An air strike against a vehicle and a guest house in Nork in Pakistan’s northwest tribal area killed five people, including al Qaeda deputy chief and operational planner Atiyah Abd-al-Rahman. The Libyan was believed to have met Osama bin Laden while still a teen. He was the group’s principal operational planner, served as liaison between the group’s senior leaders and its foot soldiers, and ran the group’s financial operations after the death of Saeed al-Masri in May 2010. He sent a letter to al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 telling him to back off from attacks on Shi’ites. He was linked to the December 2009 bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan. He tried to be the liaison between al Qaeda and Algerian terrorists in 1993, having earlier fought against the Algerian government, but the Armed Islamic Group detained him and threatened to kill him. He escaped after five months and fled the country. He became the liaison between al Qaeda-linked groups in Iraq, Iran, and Algeria.
August 26, 2011—Nigeria—A Boko Haram suicide car bomber crashed into the main UN building in Abuja, killing twenty-three and wounding eighty-one. It was the first suicide bombing against foreigners in Nigeria. Nigerian authorities claimed the terrorists had al Qaeda links. The State Security Service said it had arrested two men—Babagana Ismail Kwaljima and Babagan Mali—suspected of planning the attack on August 21. The Service said it had a tipoff of the bombing on August 18. Mamman Nur, a third suspect, remained at large as of August 31. Local authorities offered a $160,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Mamman Nur, believed to be the mastermind of the bombing. On December 28, 2011, UN Childrens’ Fund (UNICEF) worker Fred Willis died from his wounds, bringing the death toll to twenty-five. 11082601
September 2011—Niger—Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb kidnapped seven French citizens from Arlit, a mining town. 11099901
September 1, 2011—Afghanistan—Taliban gunmen kidnapped forty boys who were lured across the border from Bajaur Agency along Pakistan’s tribal region during an outing. The Taliban freed those younger than 12 years old, but kept thirty teens. The group said it was punishing the boys’ tribe for forming a pro-government militia. The boys were walking to a picnic area along a river to mark the end of Ramadan when a man coaxed them across the border. Local elders were negotiating with the terrorists. 11090101
September 2, 2011—United States—Federal authorities arraigned Jubair Ahmad, 24, a native of Pakistan and resident of Woodbridge, Virginia, after he produced a violent jihadist video in September 2010 with the help of the son of a leader of Lashkar-i-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist group. Charges in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, included providing material support to terrorists and making false statements to the FBI during a terrorism investigation. The five-minute video was posted to YouTube. It included images of Lashkar leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and showed the bombing of armored trucks. Authorities said Ahmad consulted with Saeed’s son, Talha, on what photos, videos, and music to use. Talha gave him editing suggestions in October 2010. Authorities said that while Ahmad was a teen in Pakistan, he received religious and weapons training from Lashkar. He faced fifteen years in prison for material support and another eight for the false statement.
September 3, 2011—Iraq—Lancet, a British medical journal, reported that 12,284 Iraqi civilians had died in 1,003 suicide bomb attacks from March 2003 through December 2010. The 79 suicide attacks against coalition forces killed 200 troops, according to iCasualties.org.
September 5, 2011—Pakistan—The Inter-Services Intelligence arrested Younis al-Mauritani and two al Qaeda associates—Abdul Ghaffar al-Shami and Messara al-Shami—in the suburbs of Quetta. Pakistani authorities said Osama bin Laden had tasked him with focusing “on hitting targets of economic importance in United States of America, Europe, and Australia.” U.S. targets included gas and oil pipelines, dams, and oil tankers.
September 6, 2011—United States—The FBI arrested Agron Hasbajrami, an Albanian immigrant, at John F. Kennedy Airport before boarding a plane to Turkey after they intercepted messages supporting terrorists in Pakistan. An FBI informant offered to help him join an overseas radical group. Hasbajrami, 27, had lived legally in Brooklyn since 2008. He was accused of sending more than $1,000 to a contact in Pakistan to fund terrorism and joining a jihadi group. On April 12, 2012, as part of a plea bargain, he admitted in court to providing the money and pleaded guilty before Judge John Gleeson in Federal District Court in Brooklyn to one count of attempting to provide material support to terrorists. He faced fifteen years in prison upon his September 14 sentencing. He would have faced sixty years if convicted. The government dropped three other counts of providing material support to terrorists. He agreed to be deported after serving prison time.
September 7, 2011—India—A bomb hidden in a briefcase exploded at 10:15 a.m. in front of gate 5 of the Delhi High Court, killing thirteen people and wounding seventy-four. Police released sketches of two suspects. Harkat-ul-Jihar-al-Islami in Kashmir took credit, as did the Indian Mujahideen. Police said the bomb contained ammonium nitrate. Police detained six men for questioning on September 8. They included the owners, a manager, and two patrons of an Internet café that was used for sending a message claiming credit by the Kashmiri group. Police also detained an 8-year-old laborer at a bus station in Uttar Pradesh.
September 7, 2011—Pakistan—Two Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers attacked the Quetta residence of Brig. Gen. Farrukh Shahzad, deputy chief of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force that combats terrorist groups. At least twenty-three people, among them Shahzad’s wife and six security personnel, were killed and fifty-two wounded, including the general. The first terrorist set off his car bomb among security vehicles parked outside. The second attacker ran into the house, was shot at, and set off his explosives. A spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, said Shahzad was targeted in retaliation for Shahzad’s involvement in an operation against the group on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in May. Police found an Afghan refugee card at the site; a picture on the card matched the description of one of the bombers. The card belonged to a 21-year-old man from Afghanistan’s Kunduz Province who was living in Peshawar, Pakistan. The two bombs contained 60 kilograms of explosives. 11090701
September 8, 2011—Germany—Police in the Kreuzberg and Neukoelln districts of Berlin arrested two bomb plotters—a 24-year-old German of Lebanese descent and a 28-year-old man from Gaza. The duo had tried to obtain bomb-making chemicals. Police did not determine whether the terrorists had a specific target and did not find any links to terrorist groups. The duo had been surveilled for months after attempting to acquire a large amount of cooling agent.
September 8, 2011—United States—The news media reported that intelligence agencies alerted the president to “specific, credible but unconfirmed” information regarding a possible Pakistan-based terrorist threat to New York and Washington, DC, tunnels and bridges during the 9/11 tenth anniversary period. The plot involved three individuals, including one U.S.-born person, who possibly had already entered the United States in the past few weeks, driving an explosives-laden vehicle. Two of them might have used U.S. documents such as green cards to enter the country. Authorities believed they had traveled from Afghanistan or Pakistan, possibly transiting through Dubai on their way to the United States. Officials suggested that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had ordered the attack.
September 9, 2011—United States—Reed S. Berry, 26, of St. Joseph, Michigan, who was under FBI surveillance because of his suspected links to terrorists, put his car in reverse and sped toward FBI special agent Samuel Moore, who avoided the collision. On October 2, 2011, a federal judge ordered Berry held for attempting the crash.
September 9, 2011—Pakistan—The government warned that the Taliban was planning to kidnap a senior government official to barter for the release of Osama bin Laden’s wives and children. The Interior Ministry sent the warning on August 23 to senior security officials, three days before the kidnapping of Shahbaz Taseer, son of a wealthy provincial governor.
September 10, 2011—Kenya—At 12:30 p.m., gunmen attacked the Kiwayu Safari Village beach resort north of Lamu near the Somalia border, killing British citizen David Tebbut and kidnapping Judith, his wife. They escaped by boat. The couple had arrived after visiting the Maasai Mara reserve. They were the sole guests in the cloth-doored hotel. Somalia militia were suspected of taking her toward Ras Kamboni in Somalia. On September 13, Kenyan police arrested a suspect. Somali pirates freed Judith Tebbut on March 21, 2012. The Kenya government blamed al-Shabaab. A pirate told the press that a ransom was airdropped. 11091001
September 10, 2011—Sweden—Swedish police arrested four people in Goteborg on suspicion of preparing a terror attack. They also evacuated the Roda Sten arts center under the city’s Alvsborg Bridge. Swedish prosecutors on September 12 told a judge that the four were “planning to commit murder.” The four, ages 23 to 26, included three Somali men and an Iraqi. They were identified as Kulan Mohamud Abel, Mahamud Abdi Aziz, Mahmood Salar Sami, and Mohamud Abdi Weli.
The Somalia-born Weli was represented by attorney Eva Henriksson. Weli obtained Swedish citizenship in 2000. In 2009 he had received a suspended sentence and was fined for assault. Sami was born in Iraq and obtained Swedish citizenship. He had earlier been charged with multiple counts of theft, assault, and making threats, among other crimes, and had served several years in prison. Somali-born Aziz had lived in Sweden since 1999, but retained Somali citizenship. He had been fined for minor driving offenses. Somali-born Abel obtained Swedish citizenship and had no prior criminal record. Swedish media said they were suspected of al-Shabaab links.
September 12, 2011—Iraq—Local authorities believed foreigners were among the gunmen who hijacked a bus filled with Shi’ite pilgrims in a Sunni-dominated section of Anbar Province. The gunmen forced the men out of the bus and shot to death twenty-two of them. Four suspects were released for lack of evidence; as of September 18, another four were being held.
September 13, 2011—Pakistan—The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan attacked a school bus with rocket and small arms fire near Peshawar Tuesday, killing the driver and three children and injuring sixteen others. The group’s spokesman, Mohammad Talha, said it was responding to growing anti–Taliban resistance groups.
September 13, 2011—Pakistan—Seven members of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network conducted a twenty-hour gun battle against the U.S. Embassy and other targets. Afghan and NATO troops killed the last gunman around 9:30 a.m. on September 14. The terrorists threw grenades and fired automatic weapons from a neighboring building that was under construction. They wore burqas to hide weapons but not suicide vests. During the battle, four suicide bombers attacked other targets in Kabul. The day’s attacks killed eleven Afghan civilians, including five children, and five policemen, and wounded another twenty Afghan civilians. Three NATO troops were wounded while clearing their building; another three were hurt when grenades exploded at a military base. The Taliban claimed credit saying it wanted to expel foreign troops from the country.
September 16–17, 2011—Ivory Coast—Gunmen from neighboring Liberia conducted attacks on southwestern border villages over two days, killing at least fifteen people. 11091601, 11091701
September 19, 2011—United Kingdom—Police arrested six people in Birmingham and another in West Midlands on suspicion of “commission, preparation or instigation” of an act of terrorism. A woman was held for failing to disclose information that might prevent an act of terror. The suspected Islamic extremists were aged 22 to 32; all were British residents. Police raided more than a dozen homes and businesses in the sweep. Police said the plot was in its early stages but significant. On September 26, the government charged the six men from Birmingham. Irfan Nasser, 30, and Irfan Khalid, 26, faced twelve counts, including planning a suicide bombing event, making a martyrdom film, traveling to Pakistan for training in terrorism, including bomb making, weapons, and poison making. Four were charged with preparing for an act of terrorism in the United Kingdom. Two were charged with failing to disclose information. The six were denied bail at their court hearing. The Midlands man was still being questioned.
On October 22, 2012, the trial in London’s Woolwich Crown Court began of Irfan Khalid, 27, Ahik Ali, 27, and Irfan Naseer, 31, who were inspired by the sermons of Anwar al-Aulaqi. Authorities said they were planning to set off eight knapsack bombs in a suicide attack or to set off time-delay bombs in crowded areas “in order to cause mass deaths and casualties.” They were charged with preparing for terrorism by plotting a bombing campaign, recruiting others, and fund-raising. Khalid and Naseer were also charged with traveling to Pakistan for terrorism training. The trio pleaded not guilty. Naseer had a degree in pharmacy, which prosecutors said helped him in designing chemical compounds suitable for bomb making. Rahim Ahmed was named as a co-conspirator and the group’s chief financier, using fake charities on financial markets to raise money. He lost most of the terrorists’ money through inept trading. He pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism. Prosecutors said the group also discussed strapping blades on the front of a truck and driving it into a crowd, a tip offered in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine.
September 20, 2011—Turkey—An explosion in a car parked in front of the Cankaya municipal building on Kumrular Street near Ankara’s Kizilay metro station and a school killed three people and wounded fifteen. The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons claimed credit, saying it was retaliating for the government’s “War” against them.
September 20, 2011—Afghanistan—Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading government attempts to negotiate with the Taliban, was killed in his home in Kabul by Esmatullah, a Taliban suicide bomber. Rabbani was president from 1992 to 1996. The suicide bomber hid explosives in his turban. Two other peace council members were wounded in the murder of the Tajik leader of the Northern Alliance. One of them was Rahmatullah Wahidyar, who brought the killer to the home. The bomber had obtained access by sending an audio recording that he said included messages from Taliban leaders and that he was going to bring a second audio that could go only to Rabbani. On September 25, Afghan authorities announced the arrest in Kabul of Hamidullah Akhund, who had delivered a message from Rabbani to the Taliban. On October 2, an investigative delegation established by Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the evidence and a confession from a man involved in the killing established that the bomber was from Chaman, Pakistan, and that the bombing had been plotted in Quetta, Pakistan.
September 20, 2011—Pakistan—Eight to ten gunmen in a pickup truck stopped a bus of Shi’ite Muslim pilgrims, pulled them outside, and fired Kalashnikov automatic rifles and rocket launchers, killing twenty-six and wounding six. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed credit. Later that day, two other Shi’ites died when gunmen attacked their vehicles. The victims were relatives of bus victims.
September 21, 2011—Russia—A bomb exploded in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, killing three people in a car that was transporting a bomb. Several bystanders were wounded.
September 22, 2011—Russia—Two bombs exploded in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, killing one person and wounding sixty. One bomb hit a police car and injured four police officers. A second bomb, hidden inside or beneath a car, wounded police officers and other first responders.
September 25, 2011—Afghanistan—A Taliban gunman attacked the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing at least one American and injuring another at the Ariana Hotel annex in the compound before he was killed. The news media said the annex was used by the CIA. Federal News Radio reported that the family of Jay Henigan, 61, a plumber from Sycamore, Illinois, was shot by an Afghan worker providing security to the facility. 11092601
September 25, 2011—Indonesia—A suicide bomber wounded twenty-two people at a Protestant church in Solo, Java. Hundreds of worshipers were leaving at the end of the service when the bomb went off. It was strapped to the terrorist’s stomach and was packed with nails, nuts, and bolts.
On October 8, 2001, authorities arrested three men suspected of planning a suicide bombing in April at a mosque in a police compound in Cirebon, West Java, and another on September 25. The April bomber died and injured several dozen police officers when he set off the bomb, spewing nails, nuts, and bolts into the crowd. One of the planners was Heru Komarudin, 31, detained at a market in central Jakarta. Two others with links to him were arrested in Bekasi, a Jakarta suburb, where police confiscated two boxes of suspicious materials. One of the men was a computer repairman. The September 25 bomber, Achmad Yosepa Hayat, was a member of Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid, which was founded by Abu Bakar Baaysir, spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah.
September 27, 2011—Yemen—An al Qaeda suicide bomber attacked the convoy of Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Ahmed in Aden by driving his car next to the convoy on a coastal highway. Several security officers were injured but Ahmed was unharmed. The previous month his car hit a landmine in Abyan Province, killing two guards.
September 27, 2011—Internet—The seventh edition of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula-sponsored Inspire magazine was posted. The group noted 9/11 by devoting the edition to “The Greatest Special Operations of All Time.” The edition complained that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was stirring conspiracy theories by crediting the U.S. government rather than al Qaeda with 9/11. Abu Suhail wrote, “The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government. So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?” An article attributed to the late Osama bin Laden counseled, “Do not let America’s front and its troops seem hard and become great in your eyes.” Samir Khan wrote the main article, “The Media Conflict.” Inspire noted, “While America was focused on battling our mujahideen in the mountains of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraq, the jihadi media and its supporters were in fifth gear. Thousands of productions were produced and dispersed to both the net and real world. Something that was produced thousands of feet above in the mountains of Afghanistan was found distributed in the streets of London and California. Ideas that disseminated from the lips of the mujahideen’s leaders were carried out in Madrid and Times Square.” The edition included an article by Anwar al-Aulaqi entitled “Targeting the Populations of Countries That Are at War with the Muslims.” These were the last articles written by Khan and al-Aulaqi.
September 28, 2011—United States—Authorities arrested U.S. citizen Rezwan Ferdaus, 26, on charges of planning to fly seven remote-controlled aircraft filled with C-4 explosives into the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol to “kill as many people as possible.” He had told FBI undercover agents purporting to be al Qaeda operatives that “I just can’t stop. There is no other choice for me. This is what we have to do. This is the righteous way … to terrorize enemies of Allah.” Ferdaus rigged mobile phones to serve as electrical switches to set off the explosives and gave eight of them to the FBI agents. They later told him that the devices had killed three U.S. soldiers and injured four others in Iraq, to which he replied, “That was exactly what I wanted.” He told FBI agents he had been inspired by videos and literature promoted by al Qaeda, which showed him “how evil America is and that jihad is the solution.” He had earlier planned to attack federal buildings before he met the undercover operatives, taking pictures of the Capitol and Pentagon. He was working with a former felon who introduced him to the FBI agents in March. The FBI gave him $7,000 to purchase a remote-controlled plane, and gave him 25 pounds of C-4, three grenades, and six AK-47 rifles, all of which remained under the control of the FBI. He had kept a model plane to be used in the attack in a storage locker in suburban Boston rented under the name Dave Winfield. He gave the FBI two thumb drives with details of his plan. He planned to recruit six snipers to attack people fleeing the bombed Pentagon. He bought the plane in August. The FBI delivered the explosives to a storage facility in Framingham, Massachusetts, where they arrested him after he took possession.
The planes were more than 5 feet long, with a 4-foot wing span, and could carry 10 to 12 pounds of explosives. They were models of the F-4 Phantom and F-86 Sabre.
He was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Worcester, Massachusetts, and ordered held without bail. A dangerousness hearing was scheduled for October 3, 2011.
He lived in the basement of his parents’ home in Ashland, Massachusetts. He played with the psychedelic Latin/funk band Goosepimp Orchestra and the Slik Road band. In 2003, he and two Ashland High School classmates were charged for pouring concrete in front of ten school doors. He was placed on probation and ordered to pay $406 in restitution. He earned a bachelor of science degree in physics in 2008 from Northeastern University.
Ferdaus pleaded not guilty in a court in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 3, 2011. On July 10, 2012, his lawyers and prosecutors agreed to a plea deal in which he would plead guilty to two charges—attempting to provide material support to terrorists and attempting to damage and destroy federal buildings by means of explosives. The charges carried a thirty-five-year maximum sentence, but the attorneys agreed to request a seventeen-year sentence followed by ten years of supervised release. Ferdaus pleaded guilty on July 20, 2012, in a Boston federal court. He was sentenced on November 1, 2012, to seventeen years in prison. His attorney, Miriam Conrad, claimed he was mentally ill.
September 29, 2011—United States—The U.S. Department of the Treasury (DOT) listed Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders Zafar Iqbal and Hafiz Abdul Salam Bhuttavi as specially designated global terrorists. Iqbal was a co-founder and key fund-raiser for the group. Bhuttavi is its deputy emir and main ideologue. DOT also designated Hajji Faizullah Khan Noorzai, Hajji Malik Noorzai, Abdur Rehman, Abdul Aziz Abbasin, and Fazal Rahim for supporting al Qaeda, the Taliban, or the Haqqani network. Faizullah is a prominent Taliban financier who collected more than $100,000 from Gulf donors and invested funds for senior Taliban leaders. The money went toward training Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists to attack Afghan military forces. Pakistani-based businessman Malik was accused of investing “millions of dollars” for the Taliban. He also managed a madrassa on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He stored vehicles later used as car bombs. Rehman was a Taliban terrorist facilitator for three years; his Karachi madrassa supported the Taliban. He also funded al Qaeda and helped other terrorist groups. Abbasin, a key Haqqani commander, was behind ambushes of Afghan supply vehicles and trained fighters. Pakistan authorities arrested Rahim in 2010. He had been a financier for al Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, distributing funds to terrorists and recruiting terrorists. The United States froze their assets, prevented them from using financial institutions, and could prosecute them for terrorist activities.
September 30, 2011—Yemen—Sunni cleric and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) operations chief Anwar al-Aulaqi, 40, and AQAP-sponsored Inspire magazine editor Samir Khan, 25, were killed in a 9:55 a.m. air strike on their Toyota pickup truck in Khashef, northern Yemen, 87 miles east of Sana’a. Tribal leaders said seven people were killed in the strike. Al-Aulaqi was staying in the house of Khamis bin Arfaaj, a prominent Islamist who had run for the country’s parliament for the Islah Party, which has AQAP ties, according to the government. Authorities were attempting to determine whether they had also killed Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, a Saudi bomb maker who had created the explosive devices used in the Christmas 2009 underwear bomber plot and the October 2010 AQAP cargo plane plot.
September 30, 2011—Turkey—A suicide bomber set off his explosives at a paramilitary police station in Kemer, killing one person and wounding two others.
October 2011—Somalia—UN Childrens’ Fund (UNICEF) reported that twenty-four children were killed and fifty-eight injured during conflicts that month.
October 1, 2011—Kenya—Ten al-Shabaab terrorists kidnapped Marie Dedieu, 66, a French woman, from her vacation home in Manda Island in the north and sped off with her on a boat towards Somalia. Kenyan navy units failed to stop the getaway despite injuring several of the abductors in a shootout. Officials said the terrorists were operating from Ras Kamboni, Somalia. The wheelchair-using Frenchwoman lives in Kenya six months each year. The woman, a quadriplegic suffering from cancer, died in captivity in Somalia. Her death was reported by the press on October 19, 2011. 11100101
October 4, 2011—Pakistan—Sunni extremists riding motorcycles shot to death thirteen Shi’ites and one Sunni after ordering them off a bus and lining them up in southwest Pakistan. Another four Shi’ites and two Sunnis were injured. The victims had been headed to work in a vegetable market in the Quetta suburbs.
October 4, 2011—Somalia—A suicide bomber killed seventy-two people in Mogadishu by setting off a truck bomb loaded with drums of fuel outside the Education Ministry. Students accompanied by their parents were registering for scholarships offered by the Turkish government. Another forty-two were wounded; many suffered amputated limbs and burns. The group claimed credit via an Internet posting. “Our mujahideen fighters have entered a place where ministers and AMISOM foreigners stay.” AMISOM is the African Union peacekeeping team consisting of Ugandan and Burundian forces. The next day, al-Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage promised further attacks. He said the group was warning those who thought the group had fled from Mogadishu for good in August. “We wish to inform the Muslim people that the campaign against infidels will be back-to-back, and by God’s grace, will increase day by day and will increase in the coming hours.”
October 5, 2011—Afghanistan—Authorities announced the arrests of six people planning to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. The duo confessed to working with an Egyptian and a Bangladeshi operating out of Pakistan who had links to al Qaeda and the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate. The group included Emal Habib, chairman of the microbiology department at Kabul University’s medical school, three students including a fourth-year medical student, and Mohibullah Ahmady, a security guard at the presidential palace who was to kill Karzai during a trip to the provinces. Ahmady was from Karzai’s home village of Karz. The plotters had worked with the Pakistan-based duo for a year. They had traveled to Pakistan to learn bomb making and how to fire guns. The president’s office clarified on October 8 that Ahmady was not a presidential bodyguard, but rather a member of the palace protection unit assigned to an outer gate, with no access to the palace.
October 10, 2011—Sudan—In a late night attack, gunmen killed three UN African Union peacekeepers and injured another six who were guarding the Zam Zam camp for displaced people in North Darfur. 11101001
October 11, 2011—United States—Authorities announced that they had disrupted an Iran-backed assassination plot against Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel A. al-Jubeir, 49, by Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Iranian descent who was a used-car salesman living in Round Rock, Texas, and Gholam Shakuri, an Iran-based member of Iran’s elite covert action Quds Force unit of the Revolutionary Guards Corps. Authorities arrested Arbabsiar on September 29 in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport after being denied entry to Mexico to contact Los Zetas. Shakuri remained at large. The duo had referred to the plot as “buying a Chevrolet.” They were charged with conspiracy to murder a foreign official, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, and conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism. Arbabsiar told authorities he had been recruited and funded by members of the Quds Force. The news media said the plotters hoped to strike other targets, including the Saudi and Israeli embassies, after the assassination. The plan was to blow up a restaurant frequented by the ambassador. The U.S. government imposed financial sanctions on five Iranians, including the two suspects and Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani. Arbabsiar was arraigned on October 11 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and ordered held without bail. His court-appointed attorney was Sabrina Shroff.
The complaint indicated that Arbabsiar was approached by his cousin—Abdul Reza Shahlai, 54, a senior commander in the Quds Force—in Iran in the spring regarding a plot to kidnap Jubeir. Arbabsiar replied that he knew Mexican drug traffickers who “are willing to undertake criminal activity in exchange for money.” Arbabsiar told a Drug Enforcement Administration informant who was posing as a member of a Mexican drug cartel that he would need four men to carry out the attack and would pay $1.5 million. He wired a $100,000 down payment to an account monitored by the FBI. He dismissed as “no big deal” that U.S. senators and others could be killed in the restaurant bombing. “They want that guy done. If the hundred go with him, [blank] them.”
On October 24, 2011, Arbabsiar pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
On October 3, 2012, U.S. prosecutors told the court that Dr. Gregory B. Saathoff, a University of Virginia psychiatrist who had examined Arbabsiar for more than thirty hours, had determined that he was not mentally ill and had not experienced manic episodes when questioned by federal agents. On October 17, 2012, Arbabsiar pleaded guilty to plotting to assassinate the ambassador. Sentencing was set for January 23, 2013. Gholam Shakuri, also charged in the plot, remained at large in Iran. 11101101
October 12, 2011—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a video on Islamist Web sites in which he called on Algerians to mimic Libyans in overthrowing their government. He also attacked Egypt’s military leadership for maintaining ties to Israel and not backing the Arab Spring uprisings against Tunisian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “Oh lions of Algeria! Look at your brothers in Tunisia and Libya when they cast their leaders into the dustbin of history. So, why don’t you revolt against your despot [President Abdelaziz Bouteflika]? … The Muslim nation across the world expects you to deliver a model of jihad and struggle by opposing the corrupt dictators.” He called the Libyan rebels “our people.” “I congratulate our brothers, the mujahideen who carried out the two operations in Eilat [southern Israel] and I pray for God to shower them with rewards … The military council did not move when Qadhafi’s forces crushed our people in Libya, the military council did not move when Israel bombed Gaza.” He called on Egyptian protestors to continue to harass the Israeli Embassy, saying, “You have stormed the Israeli Embassy and expelled the Israeli ambassador. Don’t allow him to return. You should continue with this popular uprising until the Israeli Embassy is closed and the peace treaty revoked.”
October 13, 2011—Kenya—Suspected al-Shabaab terrorists kidnapped two Spanish women working for Doctors Without Borders at the Dadaab refugee camp in North Eastern Province. A driver was wounded in the attack. Security forces chased the kidnappers toward the border with Somalia. Dadaab is 60 miles from the border. It is the world’s largest refugee camp, hosting four hundred thousand people. The next day, security forces found the aid workers’ abandoned vehicle in a desert. 11101301
October 13, 2011—Pakistan—The Washington Post reported that U.S. missile strikes killed terrorist leaders in North Waziristan. Among the dead was Ahmed Omar Abdul Rahman, alias Saifullah, 45, son of the blind cleric who was jailed in connection with the bombing of the New York City World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. A separate strike killed Janbaz Zadran, a deputy of Haqqani network leader Sirajuddin Haqqani and close aide to Haqqani’s brother Badruddin. He was killed in a drone strike in Dane Darpa Khel, Pakistan. He had handled the group’s finances and arms shipments. Pakistani authorities said the dead also included Khan Mohammad, deputy of Taliban commander Maulvi Nazir.
October 14, 2011—Pakistan—The Washington Post reported that U.S. missile strikes killed Abu Miqdad al-Masri and Abd al-Rahman al-Yemeni, two al Qaeda terrorists with ties to the group’s senior leadership, in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Al-Masri was a bin Laden associate.
October 15, 2011—Yemen—A U.S. missile strike killed nine al Qaeda terrorists, including Abdul-Rahman al-Aulaqi—16-year-old son of Anwar al-Aulaqi—and his 17-year-old cousin and Egyptian-born Ibrahim al-Bana, propaganda chief of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in Azzan. Tribal elders said four other members of the al-Aulaqi clan were killed, along with local militant Maulana Iftikhar. U.S. officials privately told the media that they were not aware that al-Aulaqi was in the area when the order to fire the missiles came.
October 20, 2011—Libya—Libyan dictator Mo’ammar Qadhafi, fleeing his hometown of Sirte in a one hundred–SUV convoy, was wounded and captured by supporters of the Transitional National Government. He was pulled out of a culvert, beaten, and shot in the head. His body was shown on worldwide television.
October 20, 2011—Spain—The Basque Nation and Liberty announced that it was ending its forty-three-year armed struggle for independence and said it wanted to open talks with Spain and France. It had earlier announced a cease-fire.
October 21, 2011—Philippines—Three South Koreans scouting for mining opportunities were kidnapped from their hotel in Cagayan de Oro and taken to Lanao del Sur. The kidnappers contacted the hostages’ relatives via the hostages’ cell phones. One—Choi Inn So—was found on Mindanao Island on November 26. The military rescued the other two—Wu Seok-Bung and Kim Nam-Du—on November 27, 2011. Choi was treated in a local hospital for an ulcer. 11102101
October 23, 2011—Algeria—The jihadi Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) kidnapped three aid workers—Italian Rossella Urru and Spaniards Enric Gonyalons and Ainhoa Fernandez del Rincon—from a southern refugee camp in Tindouf, near the border with Mauritania, and spirited them to northern Mali. On December 9, 2011, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb denied involvement in the kidnapping. They were freed on July 19, 2012, and reunited with their families in Europe. The group claimed that they received a ransom of 15 million Euros ($18.4 million) and obtained the release of two imprisoned MUJAO members. MUJAO spokesman Adnan Abu Elwalid Sahraoui threatened to stage more kidnappings, observing, “We will take them as soon as they enter the territories of Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, or Niger.” Gen. Gilbert Diendere, a senior security aide to Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, was one of the mediators. 11102301
October 24, 2011—Kenya—Two grenades went off in Nairobi, killing one person and injuring twenty. The first bomb went off at a blue-collar nightclub, injuring a dozen people. The second bomb, at a downtown bus station, killed one person and injured eight. Two days earlier, the U.S. Embassy had warned of credible information of an imminent terrorist attack. The bombs targeted Kenyans rather than foreigners. Kenyan police arrested a man with thirteen grenades, four revolvers, an assault rifle, a machine gun, and seven hundred rounds of ammunition. Later that month, a Kenyan court sentenced to life Elgiva Bwire Oliacha, 28, a non–Somali Kenyan citizen, after he pleaded guilty to charges of throwing the grenade at the bus stop.
October 25, 2011—Somalia—Three staffers from the Danish Refugee Council—American Jessica Buchanan, 32, Dane Poul Thisted, 60, and a Somali man—were kidnapped near Galkayo at 3:00 p.m. in the semi-autonomous Puntland area. The trio worked for the Council’s Danish Demining Group. Some of the aid workers’ bodyguards were arrested. Several Somali leaders were assisting in resolving the case. The Habargedir clan condemned the kidnapping by al-Shabaab terrorists; other sources attributed the attack to pirates. The gunmen demanded $10 million ransom and rejected an offer of $1.5 million.
In November 2011, the captors permitted a physician to examine Buchanan for a kidney ailment.
On January 25, 2012, two dozen U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 members rescued Buchanan and Thisted. One dozen parachuted from an Air Force Special Operations plane to a place 2 miles from the hideout in Hiimo Gaabo, south of Galkayo. The SEALs killed nine terrorists, then whisked away the hostages in helicopters. No SEALs were harmed. The rescued hostages were flown to a U.S. air base in Djibouti. 11102501
October 25, 2011—Thailand—Islamic militants were suspected of setting off bombs in twenty-three places in Yala city, killing three and injuring forty-four.
October 27, 2011—Somalia—Al-Shabaab gunmen ambushed Kenyan soldiers, killing one and injuring another. This was the first Kenyan battlefield casualty in its thirteen days of operations against al-Shabaab, which had been crossing the Kenya border to conduct attacks. 11102701
October 28, 2011—Kenya—Al-Shabaab set off a bomb against a Kenyan security forces vehicle, wounding four police officers. 11102801
October 28, 2011—Bosnia—A radical Islamist gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle at the front of the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo during rush hour, wounding a guard. Authorities said he was targeting the building in a terrorist attack. A police SWAT team shot and arrested the bearded gunman, who was wearing a long brown camouflage coat. The Dnevni Avaz newspaper said he was Mevlid Jasarevic, 23, from Novi Pazar in Sandzak region in southwest Serbia. He was reportedly a follower of Wahhabism. He had a police record which included an arrest in November 2010 for carrying a large knife outside a visit by the U.S. Ambassador to Serbia to Novi Pazar. Jasarevic had been deported in 2008 from Austria after a robbery in Vienna. Serbia police briefly detained seventeen of his associates in Sandzak. 11102802
October 28, 2011—Yemen—A car bomb exploded beneath the car of Maj. Ali al-Haji, battalion commander in the Central Security Forces (CSF), as he was driving from his office to his home via a market near the Arish area of Aden. He was the head of counterterrorism for the CSF. Two bystander children were wounded. Al Qaeda was suspected.
October 29, 2011—Afghanistan—A suicide car bomber hit an armored Rhino bus in a NATO military convoy as it passed the private American University near the Darul Aman Palace, killing thirteen NATO personnel (five soldiers and eight civilians), two British civilians working for a building contractor, a Canadian, and four Afghans, including two students. Among the dead was Canadian Master Cpl. Byron Greff. The injured included Afghan citizen Ahmad Fawad, 20, who sustained wounds to the face and left arm. A Taliban spokesman texted that the group had killed “Sixteen foreign soldiers, one civilian” and injured many others. The group claimed that 1,500 pounds of explosives were used. 11102901
October 29, 2011—Somalia—Two al-Shabaab suicide bombers and ten gunmen attacked an African Union peacekeepers’ base in Mogadishu, setting off a two-hour gun battle. One of the bombers was Abdisalan Hussein Ali, 22, a Somali American born in Somalia but who had lived in Minneapolis, according to the terrorists’ posting of his suicide message on a Web site. He had been a pre-med student at the University of Minnesota before he disappeared in November 2008. 11102902
October 29, 2011—Turkey—Two people died and twenty were injured when a female suicide bomber set off her explosives in the primarily Kurdish town of Bingol, near the local headquarters of the governing Justice and Development Party. Turkey was celebrating the eighty-eighth anniversary of the founding of the republic. Kurdish PKK rebels were suspected, although no one claimed credit.
October 30, 2011—Thailand—Muslim insurgents were suspected of killing four people when four gunmen riding two motorcycles shot dead two men and a woman at a grocery store in Narathiwat during the morning. Gunmen on a pickup truck shot dead another man in neighboring Songkhla Province. Terrorists also set off ten homemade bombs at grocery stores, shops, and residences in five of the thirteen districts in Narathiwat Province during the evening, causing no casualties.
October 31, 2011—Afghanistan—At 6:10 a.m., a Taliban terrorist crashed his pickup truck into a checkpoint at a nongovernmental organization’s facility near the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kandahar, then set off explosives. Three terrorists ran through the hole in the security wall and seized the building. The gun battle lasted until 1:00 p.m. Three UNHCR staffers were killed and two wounded in the attack. A total of five people died, including two security contractors; six people, including a police officer, were wounded. 11103101
October 31, 2011—Kazakhstan—Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) claimed credit for a suicide bombing in Atyrau. They released a video demanding the repeal of new laws requiring official registration of religious groups and banning state employees from praying at work.
November 2011—Venezuela—A Chilean official was kidnapped. He escaped soon after but was shot in the leg. 11119901
November 2011—Azerbaijan—The Washington Post reported on May 28, 2012, that Iran was behind a plot to attack U.S. Embassy officials and their families with snipers with noise-suppressed rifles and a car bomb. Azerbaijan authorities detained nearly two dozen people in January and March 2012. It was unclear whether Hizballah was to provide the muscle. Intercepted messages, according to the Post, were traced to Azerbaijan criminal Balagardash Dashdev who had links to Iranian militants. In October 2011, he had coordinated the shipment of explosives, weapons, and cash to local contacts. Potential targets were to include the country’s small Jewish community, diplomats, and foreign-owned businesses in Baku. At least ten Iranians snuck into the country. Locals conducted surveillance against potential targets, including a Jewish elementary school, a U.S.-owned fast food restaurant, and an oil company office, according to the Azerbaijan government. Dashdev told investigators that he planned to avenge the deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists. His confession ran on local television.
November 1, 2011—United States—Authorities arrested four Georgia men plotting to conduct an attack with explosives and ricin against U.S. government buildings in Atlanta, Washington, DC, and other U.S. cities. They also planned to attack officials with firearms, explosives, and ricin. They were inspired by Absolved, an online novel written by a former Alabama militiaman, according to prosecutors. The ricin would be blown out of a moving car on a highway. One of the men was a former lab technician at the Agriculture Department and allegedly had obtained castor beans, from which ricin can be made. Defendant Frederick Thomas created a “bucket list” of targets, government workers, politicians, corporate leaders, and members of the news media, telling an undercover FBI informant that a politician and others needed to be “taken out” to “make the country right again.” “When it comes to saving the Constitution, that means some people gotta die.” The four, aged 65 to 73, appeared in U.S. District Court in Gainesville, Georgia, on November 2. They were identified as Thomas, Dan Roberts, Ray H. Adams, and Samuel J. Crump, members of a fringe group of a militia organization called the “covert group” which met in the Georgia foothills. They met with an FBI informant, who recorded their meetings, and by a federal agent undercover as an arms dealer. Thomas and Roberts were charged with conspiracy to receive unregistered firearms. Crump and Adams were charged with attempting to produce a biological agent for use as a weapon.
On April 10, 2012, Thomas and Roberts pleaded guilty in federal court in Gainesville, Georgia, to conspiring to obtain an unregistered explosive and an illegal gun silencer. Thomas, 73, and Roberts, 67, faced five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Adams, 55, and Crump, 68, were charged with conspiring and attempting to make ricin. On August 22, 2012, U.S. District Judge Richard Story sentenced the duo to five years in prison. Thomas was represented by attorney Jeffrey Ertel.
November 2, 2011—France—A firebomb gutted the headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after it ran a cartoon image of the prophet Muhammad on its cover with the words “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter.” It said Muhammad had guest-edited the edition. The magazine’s Web site was hacked and showed images of a mosque with the words “No God but Allah.”
November 3, 2011—Afghanistan—At 10:00 a.m., a suicide bomber set off his vehicle at a logistics company that works with Italian NATO troops near Herat Airport. A second vehicle crashed into a second checkpoint and exploded. The two drivers wore Afghan Army uniforms. Three terrorists, also in army uniforms, ran into the building and fired on guards. The three-hour gun battle killed two Afghan security guards and five terrorists. Four people were wounded. 11110301
November 4, 2011—Nigeria—A car bomb exploded at a three-story building used as a military office and barracks in Damaturu, injuring two soldiers.
Four bombs exploded in Maiduguri. Boko Haram was suspected.
November 5, 2011—Nigeria—Bombings and armed attacks in the northeast Yobe State city of Damaturu against three police stations, a bank, mosques, and churches killed sixty-seven and injured more than one hundred. During the three hours of attacks, the gunmen fired on the police headquarters and the antiterrorism office before moving to churches and mosques. Three suicide bombers drove a stolen black SUV toward the three-story Joint Task Force headquarters but could not get through the gate. They set off their explosives, damaging roofs and walls. Two other bombs went off at other military facilities, injuring several soldiers. Other gunmen raided nearby Potiskum village, killing two people. Boko Haram (“Western education is sinful.”) claimed credit and said it would continue its attacks.
November 5, 2011—Nigeria—The U.S. Embassy warned that Boko Haram could bomb the Hilton, Nicon Luxury, and Sheraton hotels in Abuja. The hotels are frequented by diplomats, politicians, and local business leaders. The attacks could occur during Eid al-Adha celebrations.
November 7, 2011—Sudan—Armed gunmen killed a Sierra Leonean member of an African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur patrol near Nyala. Two other Sierra Leonean soldiers were wounded. UN peacekeepers arrested a suspect and turned him over to Sudanese police. 11110701
November 7, 2011—Afghanistan—An Afghan soldier fired on his Australian trainers in Oruzgan Province, wounding three Australian soldiers and two Afghan soldiers. The gunmen stole a Humvee and escaped. The vehicle was later found abandoned and on fire. 11110702
November 9, 2011—Venezuela—Three gunmen in an SUV pulled up to the Valencia home of the parents of Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos, 24, and kidnapped him. The next day, authorities found the SUV in Bejuma. Police later found a car in Aguas Claras that was used to transport Ramos after the SUV was abandoned. They also found a house containing provisions for the kidnapping. No ransom demand was made.
He was freed by security authorities, including the National Guard and the judicial police, fifty-one hours later in a raid on a remote cabin in Montalban. Ramos hid under a bed while the kidnappers responded with heavy gunfire. Four Venezuelan kidnappers were taken into custody; authorities were searching for four Colombians. Media reports suggested that either common criminals or leftist rebels were behind the kidnapping. Ramos said that the men in the cabin had Colombian accents and often talked “about the guerrilla” in Colombia. As of the Ramos kidnapping, there had been 1,050 kidnappings in Venezuela in 2011. Venezuela logged more than 17,000 murders in 2010, a rate higher than Iraq’s. Ramos stayed in the country so that he could play in Venezuela’s winter baseball league. He told reporters that the kidnappers “did not tie me up, they did not tape my mouth, they did not have a hood on me. They did not mistreat me physically, but psychologically the damage was very big.” Some said if “there is no collaboration things will get difficult.” He said it appeared that the kidnappers had watched his movements for some time.
November 10, 2011—Egypt—Bombers set off remote-controlled explosives, shutting down the gas pipeline between Egypt, Israel, and Jordan on the Northern Sinai. The first bomb went off near Mazar, 18 miles west of al-Arish. A second bomb went off west of al-Arish near a pumping station. Extended wires were found at the scene. Authorities said the saboteurs used two trucks. The pipeline is run by Gasco, an Egyptian gas transport company that is a subsidiary of EGAS, the national gas company. 11111001
November 10, 2011—United States—The Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center initially claimed that foreign-based hackers using an address in Russia had caused a pump at a Curran-Gardner Townships Public Water District water plant, outside Springfield, Illinois, to fail. It would have been the first known cyberattack to damage U.S. infrastructure. Authorities later said it was not a foreign cyberattack. By November 23, federal officials said there was no evidence that foreign hackers were involved.
November 11, 2011—Turkey—At 5:00 p.m., a lone Kurdish gunman seajacked the ferry Kartepe, which was carrying twenty-four passengers and crew near Izmit on the Marmara Sea. The gunman, who demanded that the attack be televised live, was later killed by security forces.
November 11, 2011—United States—A single bullet hit a White House window at 9:30 p.m.; several others hit an exterior wall. Authorities said the bullet was fired by Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, celebrating his 21st birthday. The Idaho man drove from his home in Idaho Falls and stopped his 1998 black Honda Accord near 17th Street and Constitution Avenue Northwest. He was 750 yards from the south face of the White House. He abandoned the car, which had stalled, on the lawn of the U.S. Institute of Peace in the 2300 block of Constitution Avenue and ran away. He apparently crossed the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge into Virginia. Police found a loaded Romanian-made Cugir SA semiautomatic rifle with a telescopic sight, three spare magazines of 7.62 39-mm ammunition, several boxes of bullets, brass knuckles, nine spent shell casings, and an aluminum baseball bat in his car. State police arrested him on November 16 at 12:30 p.m. at a Hampton Inn hotel in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
He was initially charged with felony possession of a dangerous weapon. After he told authorities that he “needed to kill” President Obama—who was in San Diego at the time—he was charged with attempted assassination. He had earlier been arrested on minor counts in Idaho, Texas, and Utah. He did not appear to have any ties to radical organizations nor the Occupy Washington protestors. He told investigators that Obama was “the devil” and “the antichrist” and he “will not stop until it’s done.” He told authorities that he was the second coming of Jesus. He faced life in prison. He was initially arraigned before a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh. Bond was denied. He was to appear in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC; a full hearing was postponed until December 12. Prosecutors on November 28 asked for a more extensive psychiatric examination. He was on probation for resisting arrest and obstructing justice stemming from his arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia. Three Idaho witnesses had known of his intention to harm the President.
On January 17, 2012, a federal grand jury indicted Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez with attempting to assassinate the president, three counts each of assaulting a federal officer, assault with a dangerous weapon, and possessing a gun during a violent crime. There had been three Secret Service officers in the line of fire when the shots were fired at the White House. He was indicted on five counts of using a firearm during a violent crime, one count of illegally transporting a gun across state lines, and one count of damaging federal property. The indictment followed his initial appearance before a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh, who ordered him to remain in custody. He faced life in prison. He was charged On May 11, 2012, with two additional offenses, “injury to a dwelling” and “placing lives in jeopardy,” each punishable by up to twenty years. He was scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Washington on July 20 for a status hearing.
November 12, 2011—Kazakhstan—M. K. Kariyev, a jihadi gunman, shot to death at least seven people before blowing himself up in Taraz. He initially shot two members of the Kazakh security service, then broke into a weapons store at 11:30 a.m., killing a guard and a customer, then stole two semiautomatic rifles and ammunition. He then shot to death two pursuing police officers and took their weapons, including an assault rifle. He took over a car, which he drove home, where he picked up a grenade launcher. He then attacked the regional headquarters of the National Security Committee, but was wounded. When the police moved to arrest him, he blew himself up, killing police commander Capt. G. Baitasov. Witnesses said he was an ethnic Kazakh.
The previous week, the newly-formed Jund al-Khilafah was believed responsible for a suicide bombing in Atyrau that killed only the terrorist. Two similar bombings in May left only the attackers dead.
November 12, 2011—Qatar—Authorities discovered an Iran-linked, four-person Bahraini terrorist cell plotting attacks in Bahrain. Authorities seized a laptop with information about the Saudi Embassy and Interior Ministry building in Manama. The four were extradited to Bahrain.
November 12, 2011—Yemen—Soldiers killed six al Qaeda-linked fighters in Zinjibar; six soldiers were wounded.
November 12, 2011—Egypt—Authorities arrested Abdel-Halim Hassan Heneidi, a terrorist leader in el-Arish. He was part of al Qaeda in the Sinai, which calls for an Islamic emirate.
November 13, 2011—Egypt—At dawn, authorities arrested Mohammed Eid Muslih Hamad, alias El-Hiti, at a seaside vacation house in el-Arish in the northern Sinai. He ran an al Qaeda-inspired group in the Sinai that was responsible for attacks on police and a gas pipeline that transports fuel to Jordan and Israel. He was being questioned regarding a series of attacks in August in southern Israel. He was part of al Qaeda in the Sinai, which calls for an Islamic emirate.
November 14, 2011—Germany—German prosecutors announced the arrests of two neo–Nazi terrorist cell members linked with ten murders, mostly of individuals of Turkish and Greek origin. Authorities seized a confessor video in which the terrorists claimed credit for killing eight Turks and a Greek from 2000 to 2006 and a female police officer in 2007 during the “Doener Murder Series.” The name came from the workplace of some of the victims, who sold doener kabobs. Some were shot in the face at point-blank range. The video also claimed the group was behind more than a dozen bank robberies and a nail-bomb attack in Cologne in 2004 on a street with mostly Turkish and Kurdish residents. The Prosecutor General’s Office announced that two of the terrorists, Uwe Boehnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, were found dead in a burning motor home in Eisenach on November 4, 2011. Flatmate Beate Zschaepe, 36, set off a bomb in Zwickau in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence and then fled. She surrendered to local police on November 8 and was charged with co-founding and belonging to a terrorist organization. Investigators found weapons used in the attacks, along with pro–Nazi materials. On November 13, authorities arrested Holger G. (or Holger Z.) near Hannover on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities by the National Socialist Underground (NSU). He appeared before a judge on November 14, detained as a suspected accomplice in the killings. Der Spiegel called the group the Brown Army Faction.
Three of the attackers had previous criminal records. In 1998, Beate Zschaepe, Uwe Mundlos, and Uwe Boehnhardt were arrested after preparing a bomb attack but were not kept under surveillance following their release.
November 15, 2011—Kenya—A landmine exploded at the Dadaab refugee camp—the world’s largest—injuring two guards. A UN official said the bomb targeted a passing police convoy. Somali militants were believed responsible. They had set off a bomb at the same camp earlier in the month. 11119901, 11111501
November 15, 2011—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri released a thirty-minute Internet video entitled Days with the Imam, Part One, in which he cited Osama bin Laden’s “superior morals” and loyalty, noting his “delicate … human side,” and describing him as noble, generous, and good. He wanted to “shed light on the human side of Osama bin Laden—his noble, refined side.”
People probably don’t know, they remember the lion of Islam threatening America and Bush, but people don’t know that he was a very delicate, nice, shy man … No one has ever met him with him, friend or foe, and not spoken of his nobility and his modesty … He was known for crying and tearing up very easily. He would tell me that certain brothers would tell him to try and hold them back a bit and I told him that it was a blessing he had … I had the honor of the companionship of that man for long periods in travel and in different circumstances … Sheikh Osama would feel great sadness if he felt that his brothers in the path of jihad had been oppressed or had not reached their rightful goal. That man was very loyal to his brothers and he was intent on remembering them in virtue and praising their way … He used to remember the nineteen who attacked the idiot of the age, America, in the Pentagon, the seat of its military leadership, and in New York, the symbol of its economic power.
He promised that other bin Laden tribute videos would follow.
November 15, 2011—Colombia—Rodrigo Londono, 52, alias Timochenko, alias Timoleon Jimenez, was named head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on November 15, 2011, when he was 52 years old. He had joined the FARC in 1982 and had risen to become a member of its Secretariat in 1989. He was believed to be a senior FARC liaison with the Venezuelan government. He faced more than one hundred arrest warrants on charges of terrorism, kidnapping, and aggravated homicide.
November 19, 2011—United States—NYPD police arrested unemployed al Qaeda sympathizer Jose Pimental Sosa, alias Muhammad Yusuf, 27, a Dominican Republic-born naturalized U.S. citizen living in Manhattan, who plotted to bomb a police station in Bayonne, New Jersey, police and post offices in New York City, and U.S. troops returning home. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he was motivated by terrorist propaganda and opposition to U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had decided to build bombs in August and was further spurred on by the killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi on September 30. He appeared to be working alone. He was accused of having an explosive substance that he planned to use against people and property to terrorize the public. The bombs were to be studded with nails to increase injuries. He faced twenty-five years to life if convicted of criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree as a crime of terrorism and of conspiracy as a crime of terrorism. He was represented by attorneys Lori Cohen and Joseph Zablocki. Sosa pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.
Sosa had sought assistance from a New York Police Department (NYPD) informant in drilling holes in metal tubes to be used for the three pipe bombs. The FBI had a separate investigation into Sosa’s activities. He had lived with his uncle on West 137th Street in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood in New York City after his mother had recently thrown him out. Witnesses said he appeared to be unstable and had tried to circumcise himself. Dominican authorities said he had left the country at an early age and had no criminal record in that country. He lived mostly in Manhattan but spent five years in Schenectady, where he was arrested for credit card fraud. U.S. authorities said he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam in 2004. He had been under surveillance for more than two years. In May 2009, an Albany police department discovered that he had talked about going to Yemen to obtain terrorist training before returning to the United States. NYPD officers made more than four hundred hours of secret recordings. In October 2010, he began to maintain trueislam1.com, a radical Islamist Web site that included al Qaeda propaganda and instructional materials from Inspire. He had been unsuccessful in contacting al-Aulaqi. Federal officials believed he was not prosecutable under federal laws for unilateral conspiracy. NYPD said police had used at least four confidential informants in the case.
November 21, 2011—Lebanon—The news media reported that earlier in the year, Hizballah had captured six CIA informants by combing telephone records. In June, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on television that his group had identified at least two CIA assets. In a December 9 al-Manar Television broadcast, the group released what it claimed were the names of several CIA officers working in Lebanon.
November 22, 2011—Somalia—A roadside bomb exploded in the Medina neighborhood of Mogadishu, killing eleven civilians and wounding many others. Al-Shabaab was suspected.
November 24, 2011—Mali—Gunmen kidnapped two French citizens from their hotel in Hombori during the night. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) later claimed credit, saying Serge Lazarevic and Philippe Verdon were French intelligence agents. Reuters quoted French media reports indicating that Lazarevic, of Hungarian extraction, “took part during the 1990s in the recruitment of Yugoslav mercenaries to fight in then Zaire.” The press also claimed that Verdon was arrested in September 2003 in Comoros for involvement in a coup attempt. The group said the attack was to avenge Malian attacks against AQIM and French aggression in the Sahel. Addressing the Malian government, the group said, “It is time you learned your lesson and stop killing mujahideen and their families to please the impious crusaders.” 11112401
November 24, 2011—Kenya—Al-Shabaab was suspected of setting off a landmine under a large military truck carrying several soldiers near Mandera on the Kenya-Somalia border. The blast killed one soldier and seriously wounded five others.
At 7:30 p.m., terrorists threw hand grenades at a hotel and shopping center in Garissa, killing three and wounding six. Authorities detained hundreds of ethnic Somalis.
November 25, 2011—Mali—At 2:30 p.m., gunmen broke into Timbuktu’s Amanar restaurant, grabbed four European tourists, and shot one—a German citizen—to death when he refused to get into their truck. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was suspected. On April 30, 2012, AQIM offered to release British citizen Stephen Malcolm if the United Kingdom freed Abu Qatada. The group said on a jihadi Web site, “The initiative to the British government is to release its citizen Stephen Malcolm, who also has South African nationality, if it deports Abu Qatada to one of the ‘Arab Spring’ countries … If Britain ignores this offer it will bear the consequences of handing Abu Qatada to the Jordanian government.” The other hostages were identified as Swiss national Nils Joan Viktor Gustafson and Dutch national Jacobus Nicolo Ruke. AQIM released a photo of the three hostages in December 2011. 11112501
November 26, 2011—Colombia—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) shot and killed four hostages, all of them security force members, held for more than a decade. Three hostages were shot in the head; the fourth sustained two shots in the back. Authorities found a fifth hostage, policeman Luis Alberto Erazo, 48, alive after he had fled from the group; he had been held for twelve years. FARC chased him, throwing grenades. He was wounded in the face. Police also found chains near the bodies, which were discovered in Caqueta during military operations against the group. Some of the hostages had been kidnapped twelve to thirteen years earlier. FARC routinely kills hostages to prevent rescue attempts.
November 27, 2011—Philippines—A 10-kilogram TNT bomb went off in room 226 at the two-story Atilano Pension House budget hotel in Zamboanga City in the southern Philippines, killing three people and wounding twenty-seven, including several wedding guests. Two people were in serious condition and another dozen were in a hospital the next day. The ensuing fire gutted the hotel, collapsed much of the second floor, blew off the roof, and shattered windows in nearby buildings. Abu Sayyaf was suspected. Three of its bomb makers died in one of the hotel’s rooms in January 2000 while they were assembling a bomb.
November 27, 2011—Philippines—Authorities in Isabela City on Basilan Island found and defused two explosives.
November 27, 2011—Philippines—Authorities arrested three men and a woman for hacking into AT&T customer phones in an attempt to send money to Jemaah Islamiyah. The hackers had worked with a group that financed the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. The group began its hacking in 2009. Local police said the “remote toll fraud” scheme cost $2 million.
November 28, 2011—Somalia—Al-Shabaab announced that it had banned sixteen aid groups, including six UN agencies, from central and southern Somalia. Masked gunmen seized equipment from aid offices in Beldweyne and Baidoa towns.
November 28, 2011—Iraq—At 8:00 a.m., a suicide bomber crashed his car into the gate of al-Hout prison in Taji, north of Baghdad, killing nineteen people, including ten policemen and nine civilians, and injuring twenty-two people. Al Qaeda in Iraq was suspected.
November 30, 2011—Somalia—A suicide bomber in a military uniform feigned a stomach ache to draw people to him, then set off his explosives at army headquarters, killing four soldiers and wounding twelve others, four seriously. Somali soldiers shot the terrorist to death. Gen. Abdikarim Yusuf Dhagabadan, head of the country’s armed forces, said he believed the terrorist was trying to assassinate him as he arrived at the office. Al-Shabaab was suspected.
December 4, 2011—Bahrain—After midnight, a canister placed under a minibus’s front tire exploded near the fence of the U.K. Embassy, causing no casualties. 11120401
December 6, 2011—Afghanistan—Suicide bombers killed at least sixty minority Hazara Shi’ite worshipers during Ashura observances in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif. The Pakistani group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi called Radio Free Europe to claim credit. Lashkar spokesman Ali Sher-e-Khuda told the BBC that the group was battling discrimination by “Afghanistan’s ruling Shi’ite elite.” The Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence service denied involvement. In the Kabul attack, at noon, a suicide bomber walked to the Abul Fazal Abbas shrine in the Murad Khani district, set off his explosives, and killed fifty-six people. Later that day, a bicycle bomb killed four Shi’ite pilgrims in Mazar-e Sharif.
December 7, 2011—Germany—A package bomb was sent to Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, at the bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt. The bomb was discovered in the mail room and caused no injuries. Its return address was European Central Bank, also in Germany.
December 8, 2011—Pakistan—Gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, destroying more than twenty NATO-bound oil tankers just outside Quetta. 11120801
December 8, 2011—Germany—A police special operations team in Bochum arrested Halil S., a 27-year-old German man, who was believed to be a member of the Duesseldorf cell, which was believed to be plotting to conduct a bombing in Europe for al Qaeda. Three of its members were arrested in April when they were making a shrapnel bomb to attack a bus or crowded place in Germany. Halil S. was accused of supporting the trio with financial and logistical help, then conducting the attack after their arrest. Police found no weapons or explosives in his apartment.
December 11, 2011—Pakistan—During the night, gunmen on motorcycles fired on a convoy of eight civilian tankers bringing oil for NATO forces in Afghanistan, killing one of the truck drivers in an attack 55 miles southwest of Quetta. 11121101
December 11, 2011—Kenya—A bomb killed a police officer and wounded three others in Mandera, on the Somalia border. A second bomb killed nine soldiers.
December 12, 2011—Yemen—Fifteen members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula dug a 130-foot tunnel and escaped from the Central Security prison in Aden. Twelve of the escapees had been convicted in the killing of security officials and of a bank robbery. Three were captured within twenty-four hours.
December 12, 2011—Kenya—A bomb killed six people, including the district head of intelligence and his driver, and wounded four civilian bystanders, including two women, in Wajir during Kenyan Independence Day celebrations. The bomb exploded beneath a car carrying intelligence officers out of a stadium following a parade.
December 12, 2011—France—Authorities discovered and defused a package bomb that was sent to the Greek Embassy in Paris. The package had no external markings and contained a low-power explosive device. 11121201
December 13, 2011—Belgium—WNRN reported that Nordine Amrani, 33, of Liege threw three grenades and fired from a rooftop elevated walkway into the crowded Christmas market at a city center square near a court building on shoppers in Place St. Lambert in Liege, killing 4 and wounding 123. He died in the incident, but it was unclear how, as police did not kill him. The dead included a 23-month-old child, two teen boys aged 15 and 17, and a 75-year-old woman. At least 52 people were treated for their injuries at a makeshift field hospital at the scene. Another 31 people were admitted for treatment at the Citadelle Hospital. Police said that the gunman was not a terrorist, as he had acted alone. He was carrying a pistol, a semiautomatic rifle, and grenades in his bag. Amrani had earlier been convicted on sexual abuse, drugs, and arms racketeering offenses and was on conditional parole. He had served forty months in jail. He had been cultivating several thousand cannabis plants. He was scheduled to meet with police that day regarding a suspected rape.
December 13, 2011—Yemen—Yemeni security forces captured six al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members, including Musaed al-Barbari, who attacked the Sana’a International Airport in 2009. The Yemeni Embassy in Washington reported, “The terrorism suspects have been carrying out surveillance, and planning missions aimed at targeting government and high ranking security officials. Furthermore, the cell was planning on orchestrating attacks on foreign missions and critical state installations.” Al-Barbari had weapons, explosives, and training and recruiting material.
December 13, 2011—Italy—Right-wing extremist Gianluca Casseri, 50, fired in an outdoor Florence market, killing two Senegalese vendors and wounding three other Senegalese immigrants in a second Florence market before shooting himself to death. He had earlier participated in racist marches. 11121301
December 15, 2011—United States—An elderly Chinese man turned himself in to police after firing nine shots at the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles. A police spokesman said, “He was protesting their human rights record or lack thereof.” 11121501
December 17, 2011—Nigeria—The joint military task force for Borno State raided a house that contained a Boko Haram bomb factory in the Bolori ward of Maiduguri. Authorities seized IEDs, AK47s, ammunition, and other items. Gun and bomb attacks in the north during the previous four days had left seven dead.
December 17, 2011—Indonesia—A helicopter carrying twenty-nine workers and family members for the Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan mining firm was hit by six shots near the firm’s Grasburg gold and copper mine in the east. The wife of a Freeport employee was injured by shrapnel. The helicopter landed 55 miles away from the attack. 11121701
December 18, 2011—Iraq—The last U.S. troops departed the country.
December 20, 2011—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a video that included Abu Yazeed, an English speaker who might become the replacement for Anwar al-Aulaqi, who was commemorated in the video. In referring to the deaths of al-Aulaqi and Samir Khan in an air strike, he noted, “Their willingness to exceed all limits is just unthinkable and by assassinating three of its own citizens far away from combat zones and with no judicial process.” It was the first time an Anglophone besides al-Aulaqi had appeared in an AQAP video. The video included a posthumous use of al-Aulaqi footage in which he said, “You have two choices: either hijra (emigration) or jihad (holy war) … I specifically invite the youth to either fight in the West or join their brothers in the fronts of jihad: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. I invite them to join us in our new front, Yemen, the base from which the great jihad of the Arabian Peninsula will begin, the base from which the greatest army of Islam will march forth.” The video included a eulogy for al-Aulaqi by Gitmo alumnus Ibrahim al-Rubaish, an AQAP leader. “As a result, the mujaheed brother Nidal Hasan … executed a heroic slaughter in Fort Hood military base, killing those soldiers who were preparing to go to Iraq.”
December 22, 2011—United States—The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced that information leading to the location of Syria-born al Qaeda (AQ) financier Yasin al-Suri, alias Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, alias Izz al-Din Abd al-Farid Khalil, alias Zayn al-Abadin, who was believed to be in Iran, would net $10 million from the Rewards for Justice program. He was one of six individuals upon whom sanctions were imposed in July 2011. Robert A. Hartung, assistant director for Threat Investigations and Analysis at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, told the press, “From his sanctuary inside Iran, he has moved terrorist recruits through Iran to al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has also arranged for the release of al Qaeda operatives from Iranian prisons and their transfer to Pakistan. And he has funneled significant amounts of money through Iran to AQ leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
December 22, 2011—Iraq—Seventeen bombs exploded in eleven Baghdad neighborhoods, most of them Shi’ite, killing 69 and injuring 207, in the worst day of violence since U.S. troops left. Unlike the most recent bombing campaigns which targeted police and other government facilities, the attacks aimed at civilian casualties. Al Qaeda in Iraq, using the name Islamic State of Iraq, eventually claimed credit. Among the dead was Fadil Ahmed, 31. One of the bombs was hidden in a minibus disguised as an ambulance, which was permitted to get close to a government building. In another bomb attack, an SUV picked up day laborers before the driver set off its explosives. Two other bombs went off as rescuers arrived. Other bombs targeted an elementary school, a vegetable market, and the convoy of a senior bank official. Fifteen of the attacks occurred between 6:30 and 8:30 a.m. Two other bombs went off in the evening; one car bomb injured three civilians and another damaged houses and shops. Four of the bombings used car bombs, including two suicide drivers. Police defused another five car bombs. A Katyusha rocket killed one person and injured another in a western Baghdad neighborhood.
December 22, 2011—Egypt—The Ansar al Jihad in the Sinai Peninsula posted its mission statement on jihadi Internet sites, saying, “With this message we send you the good tidings of the birth of the group Ansar al-Jihad in the Sinai Peninsula and we pledge unto Allah the Great and Almighty to do our best to fight the corrupt regime and its henchmen among the Jews, the Americans, and those around them.” It pledged an oath to the late Osama bin Laden, and said that the United States “nor those who live in America will ever enjoy security as long as we don’t live it in reality in Palestine.”
December 23, 2011—Syria—The government blamed al Qaeda when two suicide car bombs exploded outside buildings of the General Security Directorate and a military intelligence service branch in the Kfar Sousa area of Damascus, killing 44 people and wounding 166. Oppositionists said the government had set off the bombs, killing detained protestors. The UN Security Council condemned the bombings.
December 24, 2011—Nigeria—Paramilitary forces battled Boko Haram in Yobe and Borno states, killing sixty-one people. Three bombs went off at churches in Maiduguri, capital of Borno, killing eleven.
December 25, 2011—Nigeria—A series of Boko Haram bombings and shootings hit churches in Madalla, Jos, Kano, Damaturu, and Gadaka, killing forty-two people. At 8:00 a.m., a bomb exploded at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, killing thirty-five and wounding fifty-two. A second bomb went off in Jos near the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, causing no deaths. Gunmen fired on police guarding a second church that had been bombed, wounding one officer who later died. A suicide car bomber killed three people in Damaturu, capital of Yobe State, at the state headquarters of the Nigerian secret police. The target, a senior military commander, survived. A Damaturu police station was also bombed. Police arrested four people and recovered four unexploded bombs. On January 17, 2012, police arrested Kabiru Sokoto at the mansion of the Borno State governor in Abuja, charging him with being the mastermind of the bombing of St. Theresa’s. He escaped later that day when Boko Haram attacked his police convoy that was transferring him to a police station in Abaji, outside Abuja.
December 25, 2011—Afghanistan—A suicide bomber killed twenty people, including parliamentarian Abdu Mutalib Baig and an 8-year-old boy, at a 2:00 p.m. funeral in Taloqan, capital of Takhar Province. Dozens were wounded.
December 29, 2011—Afghanistan—An individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire on his French instructors, killing two French Foreign Legionnaires, before he was shot to death. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack in the Kapisa valley by a man named Ibrahim.