February 21, 1965—United States—The only man who admitted involvement in the assassination of Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, Thomas Hagan, 69, was paroled from a Manhattan prison on April 27, 2010.
November 24, 1968—United States—On October 11, 2009, Luis Armando Pena Soltren, 66, surrendered to federal authorities at John F. Kennedy Airport, from which he had hijacked Pan Am flight 281 in 1968. He had flown from Havana under the custody of State Department diplomatic security personnel. A December 1968 indictment said that Soltren, Jose Rafael Rios Cruz, Miguel Castro, and Alejandro Figueroa conspired to hijack the flight. They brought concealed guns and knives aboard, forced their way into the plane’s cabin, and demanded to go to Havana. Figueroa was acquitted in 1969. Rios and Castro were sentenced in the 1970s after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in New York. They received fifteen-year and twelve-year sentences, respectively.
May 8, 1972—Belgium—Reginald Levy, 88, the pilot of Sabena flight 571, died on August 1, 2010, in Dover, United Kingdom, of a suspected heart attack or blood clot. He had been flying during his fiftieth birthday when the plane was hijacked by Black September. One of the passengers was his wife, Dora, with whom he was planning to celebrate with a dinner in Tel Aviv. He kept calmly talking to the hijackers and passed information on to authorities. The plane was stormed by a rescue team that included eventual Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and eventual Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Levy, born in Blackpool, United Kingdom, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for piloting Royal Air Force bombers during World War II. He flew in the Berlin Air Lift before joining Sabena, from which he retired in 1982.
July 31, 1972—United States—Five Black Panther Party sympathizers were accompanied by their three children when they hijacked Delta Airlines flight 841, a DC8 flying from Detroit to Miami on July 31, 1972. George E. Wright, alias Burgess, was one of them. They demanded $1 million and to be flown to Algeria. The ransom was paid in Miami where the hostages were freed, and the plane went on to Algiers the next day. They were taken into custody but freed on August 4. The money was returned to Delta on August 23, 1972. On September 26, 2011, Wright, 68, was taken into Portuguese police custody at the request of the United States. He had lived in a local hamlet with his Portuguese wife and two children. He had escaped from a New Jersey jail after his conviction of killing a gas station attendant. The United States requested his extradition.
April 1977—West Germany—On September 4, 2009, UPI reported that former Red Army Faction (RAF) member Verena Becker had been arrested in her Berlin apartment in connection with the April 1977 murder of Siegfried Buback. She reportedly had been paid $70,000 by the German intelligence service for tips that led to the arrests of several terrorists. Although RAF terrorists Christian Klar, Knut Folkerts, Guenter Sonnenberg, and Brigitte Mohnhaupt were convicted of planning and carrying out the killing, several observers had questioned the verdict. Becker had been sentenced to life in prison in 1977 for seriously injuring a police officer, but was pardoned in 1989. When she and Sonnenberg were arrested, they had the Buback murder weapon, but she was never tried in the case. She then alerted police to the hiding places of Klar and Mohnhaupt.
November 4, 1979—Iran—Former hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran Gary E. Lee, 67, a State Department officer, died on October 10, 2010, in Fulton, Texas, of cancer. Lee survived mock executions, beatings, and near starvation. On October 11, 2010, fellow hostage and Consul General Richard Morefield, 81, died at a hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, of pneumonia. He was kept in isolation during his confinement. Three times his captors placed a gun against his head and clicked the trigger.
February 21, 1981—West Germany—Richard Cummings, writing in the Spring 2008 edition of Intelligencer, established that the Carlos group was responsible for the bombing of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty facility in Munich. This was the only terrorist attack attributable to Carlos for which he did not claim credit. Among those involved in the attack were Johannes Weinrich, alias Steve, from the German Revolutionary Cells; Bruno Breguet, alias Luca, from the Swiss Primea Linea; Jose Maria Larretxea, alias Schep, from Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA); and another woman from the ETA.
May 13, 1981—Italy—On January 18, 2010, Turkey released would-be papal assassin Mehmet Ali Agca, 52, from Sincan’s prison. He was taken to the psychiatry department of the military hospital, GATA, to be assessed for compulsory military service, but a 2006 military hospital report said his “severe anti-social personality disorder” made him unfit for duty. He released a statement saying, “I proclaim the end of the world. All the world will be destroyed in this century. Every human being will die in this century … I am the Christ eternal.” He was represented by attorneys Melahat Uzunoglu and Gokay Gultekin.
1982—Lebanon—David Stuart Dodge, 86, the former acting president of the American University of Beirut, who was abducted in Lebanon in 1982 and released in 1983, died of cancer in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 20, 2009.
May 12, 1982—Portugal—On October 15, 2008, the Vatican announced that in 1982, Pope John Paul II was wounded by ultraconservative Spanish priest Juan Fernandez Krohn in a knife attack in Fatima. The injury had been kept secret for a quarter century, according to the documentary Testimony, made by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz and narrated by Michael York. Krohn was arrested, served several years in a Portuguese prison, and was expelled from the country.
1983—United States—On May 10, 2011, the FBI arrested Norberto Gonzalez Claudio in Puerto Rico. He was the last of sixteen alleged accomplices in the 1983 theft of $7 million from a West Hartford armored car depot by a militant Puerto Rican independence group. The only remaining at-large suspect was Victor Gerena, who had been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List longer than any other fugitive. He was believed to be living in Cuba.
April 18, 1983—Lebanon—On May 22, 2012, CIA’s Office of Public Affairs announced that fifteen names had been inscribed on the Memorial Wall. Among the names were those killed in the attack on the Beirut Embassy: Phyliss Nancy Faraci, Deborah M. Hixon (a friend of the author), Frank J. Johnson, James F. Lewis, and his wife, Monique N. Lewis, who was on her first day on the job.
1985—Greece—On July 7, 2008, Ibrahim Fatayer Abdelatif, 43, was ordered freed from a temporary holding center for illegal immigrants in Rome, having served his twenty-five-year sentence (reduced for good behavior) for the 1985 Achille Lauro shipjacking. Italy attempted to expel him, but his attorneys argued that since he was stateless, he should be permitted to stay for humanitarian reasons.
On April 30, 2009, Youssef Magied al-Molqi, the leader of the hijackers, was released early from a prison in Palermo, Italy. He had served nearly twenty-four years of his thirty-year sentence and was freed for “good behavior.” He was transferred to a holding center for immigrants in Trapani while officials worked on expulsion orders. Stella Cavallo, his attorney, said she would fight any expulsion order. She noted that he had married an Italian woman but was stateless. In 1996, he had disappeared during a furlough but was captured in Spain three weeks later.
March 25, 1985—Lebanon—The remains of Alec Collett, who was 63 when he was abducted, were found on November 23, 2009, in eastern Lebanon. In April 1986, the Revolutionary Organization of Muslim Socialists sent to a Beirut television station a video showing the British UN worker being hanged. His Austrian driver was also kidnapped but later released. Collett was married to U.S. citizen Elaine Collett; their son Karim was 11 at the time of the kidnapping.
1986—Lebanon—On February 26, 2009, a U.S. federal court dismissed a lawsuit against Libya brought by the estate of U.S. librarian Peter Kilburn, who was kidnapped and eventually killed following the U.S. raid on Libya in 1986. His relatives and the U.S. government had requested the dismissal so that the family could seek compensation from the $1.8 billion fund created to compensate victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism.
September 5, 1986—Pakistan—On January 9, 2010, a U.S. missile strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan, killed Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, a Palestinian with possible Lebanese citizenship who was a member of Abu Nidal and possibly of al Qaeda. He was wanted by the United States for his role in the September 5, 1986, hijacking of Pan Am 73 during a stop in Karachi in which twenty people, including two Americans, were killed when the terrorists threw grenades and fired automatic weapons at the passengers. He was tried and convicted in Pakistan, but he and three accomplices were released in January 2008. The four were placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List in 2009.
1987—France—On October 14, 2008, Marseille airport authorities arrested Algerian diplomat Mohamed Ziane Hasseni for complicity in the 1987 murder of exiled Algerian dissident Ali Mecili, an attorney killed by three gunshots in his Paris apartment on the Left Bank. Preliminary charges were filed against Hasseni, chief of protocol of the Algerian Foreign Ministry. He was released but barred from leaving the country. Mecili had been jailed in Algeria in the 1960s. Upon release, he moved to France, studied law, and became a French citizen. Another suspect in the killing had been arrested soon after but was sent to Algeria because he was a senior Algerian military security agent.
July 11, 1988—Greece—On March 1, 2012, a special French antiterrorism court convicted three radical Palestinian members of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in absentia and sentenced them to thirty years in prison for the attack on the City of Poros cruise ship that left nine dead, including three French citizens. Adnan Sojod was convicted of murder and attempted murder. Samir Khaidir and Abdul Hamid Amoud were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to attempt murder. New arrest warrants were issued.
December 21, 1988—United Kingdom—On August 4, 2008, President Bush signed legislation directing the Department of State to settle all remaining lawsuits against Libya regarding the downing of Pan Am 103. The legislation gave Libya immunity from further lawsuits once compensation is paid.
On November 15, 2008, an Edinburgh court refused to release on bail Libyan terrorist Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who was serving a life sentence for the bombing, despite his cancer.
On May 22, 2012, CIA’s Office of Public Affairs announced that fifteen names had been inscribed on the Memorial Wall. Among the names was Matthew K. Gannon, who was killed in the Lockerbie bombing.
May 21, 1991—India—On October 17, 2012, Sri Lanka released Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the leader of the former Liberation Tigers of Tamil, wanted by India for the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He remained on Interpol’s wanted list. Sri Lanka said he could continue working for a nongovernmental development organization in the north.
June 1993—United States—On February 15, 2011, Dr. Charles Epstein, the Unabomber’s target, died in Tiburon, California, at age 77 of pancreatic cancer.
July 18, 1994—Argentina—On May 20, 2009, Argentina issued an international arrest warrant for Samuel Salman El-Reda, a Colombian of Lebanese descent, in connection with the bombing of a Jewish charities building in Buenos Aires that killed eighty-five and injured three hundred. On January 29, 2013, Israel protested to the Argentine ambassador regarding a January 26, 2013, agreement between Iran and Argentina to jointly investigate the attack.
July 26, 1994—Cambodia—The Khmer Rouge kidnapped three Westerners from a train in the southeast near Phnom Voar at the direction of Sam Bith. Bith ordered the trio killed on September 28, 1994, after negotiations broke down. He defected to the government in 1997 and received the rank of general in the Cambodian Army. However, he was arrested in May 2002 after another Khmer Rouge leader implicated him in the killings. Bith was sentenced to life in December 2002 after being found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap Australian David Wilson, Briton Mark Slater, and French citizen Jean-Michel Braquet. Nuon Paet and Chhouk Rin were also sentenced to life for their involvement in the kidnapping and murders. Bith, 74, died in prison on February 15, 2008.
March 1995—Pakistan—May 22, 2012, CIA’s Office of Public Affairs announced that fifteen names had been inscribed on the Memorial Wall. Among the names was Jacqueline K. Van Landingham, who was in the van that was attacked.
March 20, 1995—Japan—On June 4, 2012, police in Sagamihara, Japan, arrested Naoko Kikuchi, 40, a follower of the Aum Supreme Truth cult. Kikuchi had admitted to making the sarin but did not know about the details of the planned attack. She was held on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. After seventeen years on the run, she was living in a small, run-down house made out of rusted metal panels. A 41-year-old man was detained for hiding the suspect. Police acted on a tipoff, possibly sparked by their doubling the reward for her arrest to ten million yen ($125,000).
On June 15, 2012, Japanese police arrested the final at-large suspect, Katsuya Takahashi, 54, former bodyguard for Aum leader Shoko Asahara, in front of a comic book café on suspicion of murder and attempted murder for the attack. He had altered his appearance and was using an alias when captured.
December 27, 1995—Philippines—On December 17, 2010, a federal judge in Washington, DC, sentenced Madhatta Asagal Haipe, 48, a charter member and deputy chief of the Abu Sayyaf (al–Harakat al-Islamiyyah) terrorist group to twenty-five years in prison for his role in the 1995 ransom kidnapping of sixteen tourists, including four Americans. He left the group in 1997 for Malaysia and was arrested there in June 2006. He was transferred to the Philippines, then extradited to the United States in summer 2010. He pleaded guilty in July 2010.
November 1996—Comoros—May 22, 2012, CIA’s Office of Public Affairs announced that fifteen names had been inscribed on the Memorial Wall. Among the names was Leslianne Shedd, who was on the hijacked plane. Witnesses said she “spent her final moments comforting those around her.”
1997—Cuba—On December 2, 2010, an official government Web site reported that Cuba’s Supreme Court had begun the review of the death sentence of Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, a Salvadoran who had been convicted of terrorism after confessing to five hotel bombings in 1997.
December 1997—Colombia—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped Army Cpl. Pablo Emilio Moncayo, 19, after overrunning his base in Putumayo State near the southern border with Ecuador. Proof of life came only in 2007, when FARC released a video of him asking President Uribe to open peace negotiations with the rebels. Moncayo was released on March 30, 2010, two days after the release of Pvt. Josue Daniel Calvo in Meta State after Calvo was held for eleven months. Moncayo, now 31, was handed over in Caqueta State to officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross and leftist Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who had served as a liaison between the government and FARC. A Brazilian helicopter crew flew Moncayo to Floencia, the state capital.
August 7, 1998—Kenya/Tanzania—On August 3, 2008, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed escaped a police raid in Kenya. He was seeking treatment for a kidney problem. He planned the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 and wounded 5,000.
On November 17, 2010, Ahmed Ghailani, 36, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage or destroy U.S. property. He was acquitted of 284 counts of murder and attempted murder. He faced twenty years to life. Sentencing was set for January 25, 2011.
On June 7, 2011, Somali officials killed Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, alias Harun Fazul, and a second al Qaeda operative in a shootout after they had stopped their luxury car at a government checkpoint in Mogadishu. The terrorists opened fire when security found a pistol on one of the men. Mohammed was wanted for planning the embassy bombings. A security official said Mohammed was carrying a false South African passport for “Daniel Robinson,” maps, weapons, $40,000 in cash, and documents about a plot he was considering to attack Eton College and luxury hotels in London, including the Ritz Carlton, and mainland Europe. Al Qaeda operatives would check into hotels, then set their rooms alight.
On May 22, 2012, CIA’s Office of Public Affairs announced that fifteen names had been inscribed on the Memorial Wall. Among the names was Molly N. Hardy, killed in the Nairobi Embassy bombing.
August 15, 1998—Northern Ireland—On June 9, 2009, the Belfast High Court ruled that the families of the victims of the Omagh bombing of 1998 could collect $2.4 million in damages from the Real Irish Republican Army terrorists responsible for the attack—Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy, and Seamus Daly.
February 25, 1999—Colombia—The 45th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped three Americans who had been helping an Indian group in a land dispute with a U.S. oil company. Terence Freitas, 24, an environmentalist from Los Angeles; Ingrid Inawatuk (or Washinawatok), 41, a member of the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin; and Gay Laheenae (variant Lahe’ena’e Gay), 39, who was Sioux and headed the Hawaii-based Pacific Cultural Conservancy International, were grabbed during the morning near Royota village in Arauca Province. The trio was studying the U’wa culture, which was in conflict with the Colombian government.
The bodies of the three Americans were found on March 5, 1999, amid signs that they had been tortured. The blindfolded and bound bodies were on the Venezuelan side of the Arauca River in the Venezuelan hamlet of Los Pajaros. The two women were shot four times each in the face and chest with 9-mm weapons; Freitas was shot six times. Colombian and U.S. officials said that the killings were on the orders of senior insurgent commanders, citing eyewitness accounts and electronic intercepts of two rebel conversations, including a recording of the order to execute them. One of the intercepted cellular phone conversations was between the 45th Front and German Briceno, Front commander and brother of Jorge Briceno, FARC’s leading military strategist. The 45th Front was one of the groups most closely tied to drug trafficking. German Briceno protected large cocaine laboratories in the jungle.
Raul Reyes, a member of FARC’s seven-man ruling junta, said on March 8, 1999, that FARC would investigate, but he had seen no sign of any rebel role.
FARC admitted to the murders on March 10, 1999, but refused to extradite the killers to the United States, saying that they would be “sanctioned” by their code of revolutionary justice. The killers believed the activists worked for CIA. The killers were identified as German Briceno Suarez, alias Grannobles, and the brother of Mono Jojoy, alias Rafael, alias Marrano, alias Alveiro, alias Reynaldo. Washinatwatok was bitten by a snake and taken to a clinic in Arauca Department for first aid. The doctors told FARC that she would have to stay there, but the kidnappers took her away. When she became seriously ill with life-threatening complications, El Marrano called German Briceno, or “Grannobles,” who gave the order to kill the Americans. The group received a second radio communication rescinding the kill order, but it arrived too late. Senior FARC leaders apparently did not support the killings.
On March 25, 1999, authorities ordered the arrest of German Briceno, who on July 16, 1999, was charged with ordering the killings. Gustavo Bogota, a member of the U’wa tribe, was charged as an accomplice. The duo remained at large. FARC claimed that Briceno was not responsible and that a lower-ranking squad leader and two fighters under his command were involved.
On March 22, 2012, Venezuela detained William Alberto Asprilla, alias Marquetaliano, 62, a mid-level FARC leader, on the road between Caracas and La Guaira port. Colombian authorities said he was in Venezuela for the previous six months doing support work for the rebels. He was wanted for his role in the kidnapping and murder, along with rebellion and conspiracy. Colombia had issued an international arrest order via Interpol. He was very close to Jorge Briceno. He had planned the kidnappings with the Briceno brothers. 99022501
December 15, 1999—United States—On March 13, 2012, in a 7–4 ruling, the full U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ahmed Ressam’s twenty-two-year sentence was unreasonably lenient and sent the case back to U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle for resentencing. Current federal sentencing guidelines called for sixty-five years to life. On October 24, 2012, Judge Coughenour, having had his twenty-two-year sentence of Ahmed Ressam twice overturned by federal appeals court panels, sentenced Ressam to thirty-seven years, refusing to impose a life sentence. Ressam was represented by public defender Thomas W. Hillier.
December 31, 1999—United States—On October 20, 2008, a court in Kalamazoo, Michigan, sentenced to nine years in prison Frank Ambrose, 33, a former environmental activist, for his New Year’s Eve arson attack at Michigan State University’s Agriculture Hall in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. He was also ordered to pay $3.7 million to MSU and to other sabotaged sites; the MSU damage was estimated at $1 million. He was sentenced to a lifetime of supervisory release after prison. He later became a government informant. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to set a fire and explosion. He had been protesting genetically modified crops.
October 12, 2000—Yemen—In mid–April 2010, sixty-one relatives of the seventeen sailors who were killed sued Sudan in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, for $282.5 million in emotional damages that were rejected in a previous lawsuit. Three years earlier, thirty-three family members received $8 million in damages.
On December 16, 2010, the news media reported that a photo had surfaced of Fahd al-Quso, an al Qaeda terrorist wanted for the USS Cole bombing, who had been believed to have died in an air strike in Pakistan in October 2010. He was photographed during an early December interview with Arafat Mudabish, a Yemeni journalist. Al-Quso was indicted in 2003 by a federal grand jury for the USS Cole attack and was believed to have attended a meeting in Malaysia regarding 9/11 planning.
On January 31, 2012, an air strike killed a dozen al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terrorists, including Abdul Monem al-Fahtani, a mid-level AQAP leader believed to have participated in the 2000 USS Cole attack. Yemeni forces had attacked him in late 2010; his death was never confirmed.
On May 6, 2012, an air strike killed two Yemeni al Qaeda terrorists, including Fahd al-Quso, 37, who was wanted in the USS Cole bombing, in their car in southern Yemen’s Wadi Rafad valley in Shabwa Province. The second terrorist was identified as Fahed Salem al-Akdam. The al Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sharia group said, “Al-Qaida affirms the martyrdom of the Fahd al-Quso in an American attack this afternoon in Rafad.’’ Al-Quso was also linked to the 2009 Christmas airliner attack, apparently having met with the suspected underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Yemeni government officials reported in 2009 that al-Quso was killed in an air strike in Rafd, but he later resurfaced.
September 11, 2001—United States—On January 17, 2002, attorneys for Zacarias Moussaoui filed a 202-page appeal of his life sentence. He had pleaded guilty in April 2005 of complicity in the 9/11 attacks and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in May 2006. He asked to rescind his guilty plea. On February 15, 2008, the court papers were unsealed and revealed that his attorneys, Justin S. Antonipillai and Barbara L. Hartung, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to overturn the guilty plea and life prison sentence because he could not choose his own counsel or learn much of the evidence against him.
September 11, 2001—United States—On February 11, 2008, the Pentagon announced that it would seek the death penalty in the war crimes charges of six individuals detained at Guantanamo who were believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM), Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali alias Ammar al-Baluchi, Mohammed al-Qahtani, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and Walid bin Attash alias Khallad. The six were charged with conspiracy, murder in violation of the laws of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing bodily injury, destruction of property, terrorism, and material support for terrorism. KSM, bin Attash, Binalshibh, and Ali were also charged with hijacking or hazarding an aircraft.
On March 1, 2008, Dorothy England, wife of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, christened the USS New York in Avondale, Louisiana. The bow stem contains 7.5 tons of scrap steel from Ground Zero.
On July 13, 2010, workers at Ground Zero found an eighteenth century 32-foot-long ship hull under the site. A 100-pound anchor was found a few yards from the ship; it was unclear whether it was part of the vessel.
On April 4, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that five 9/11 suspects (Khalid Sheik Muhammad; Ramzi Binalshibh; Walid Muhammad bin Attash, alias Tawfiq bin Attash; Amar al-Baluchi, alias Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali; and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi) would be tried before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay. The Department of Justice unsealed a December 2009 indictment, which was dismissed by a federal judge at the request of the civilian prosecutors. The announcement reversed an earlier decision to try the group in a federal courthouse in Manhattan.
The U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 killed bin Laden in a raid at his Abbotabad, Pakistan compound on May 1, 2011 (see also Incident entry May 1, 2011—Pakistan).
On June 17, 2011, New York City’s medical examiner ruled that Jerry Borg, 63, who died in 2010, had succumbed to complications caused by pulmonary sarcoidosis, which he got from inhaling dust at Ground Zero. He was the 2753th World Trade Center victim, only the third person to be added to the medical examiner’s list.
The five terrorists accused of organizing 9/11 were arraigned on May 5, 2012, in a military commission in Gitmo. Following the lead of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they refused to speak. They were charged with conspiracy, attacking civilians, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, murder in violation of the law of war, hijacking, terrorism, and other crimes. They deferred entering a plea. Mohammed’s civilian attorney was David Nevin. Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mohammed’s nephew, was represented by civilian attorney James Connell. Brig. Gen. Mark Martins was the chief military prosecutor. Walid bin Attash was represented by civilian attorney Cheryl Borman, who wore a black hijab. Mustafa al-Hawsawi was represented by Navy Cdr. Walter Ruiz. Also on trial was Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
On July 28, 2012, the U.S. Navy christened the USS Somerset, the last of three navy ships named for 9/11 attack sites.
On October 15, 2012, the week-long pretrial hearing began before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abd al Aziz Ali (alias Ammar al Baluchi), and Walid bin Attash sat calmly and spoke directly to Judge Col. James L. Pohl.
October 2001—United States—On June 27, 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to a $5.85 million settlement with Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who agreed to drop his 2003 lawsuit against the government after he had been declared a “person of interest” by former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in the investigation of the October 2001 anthrax attacks. The government did not admit wrongdoing. On July 14, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, unanimously dismissed Hatfill’s libel lawsuit against the New York Times, saying that he had become a public figure and that the Times had not acted with malice.
On July 29, 2008, Bruce E. Ivins, a 62-year-old biodefense scientist who worked at the U.S. Army lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, committed suicide via an overdose of Tylenol when he learned that federal prosecutors were going to indict him for the October 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States. Prosecutors were going to offer a plea bargain of life in prison, but he died two hours before the meeting was scheduled. He was represented by Bethesda, Maryland, attorney Paul F. Kemp. Some observers suggested that he conducted the attacks for financial gain; he had two patents that were used by the California company Vax Gen to create anthrax vaccines after the attacks. Others pointed out that he had developed mental problems. In March 2008, he was found unconscious in his home. The same thing happened in late July. A Frederick social worker, Jean Duley, had told the FBI on July 21 that he had made mass homicidal threats and asked for judicial protection from Ivins. She cited his psychiatrist, who called him a threat.
On November 28, 2011, the U.S. government agreed to pay $2.5 million to the family of Robert Stevens, an employee of American Media, who died after his exposure to the anthrax spores. The government filed documents in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, in which it agreed to the settlement but did not admit liability or negligence. The family had sued the government for $50 million.
2002—Gulf of Aden—On August 19, 2010, al Qaeda member Hazem al-Mujali turned himself in to Yemeni authorities. He had been accused of taking part in the bombing of a French oil tanker in 2002.
February 2002—Colombia—On January 10, 2008, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released Consuelo Gonzalez, a politician who had been kidnapped in 2001, and Clara Rojas, who was grabbed in February 2002 with Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Rojas’s son, who was born in captivity, had been quietly passed to foster care three years earlier. The release was mediated by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who called FARC and National Liberation Army rebels “true armies” rather than terrorists. On February 27, 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy pleaded for FARC to free Betancourt, who was ill, according to two of the four hostages who were freed that day. The hostages were former Colombian legislators Gloria Polanco, Orlando Beltran, Jorge Eduardo Gechem, and Luis Eladio Perez. The International Committee of the Red Cross met the hostages in a Colombian jungle and flew them to Caracas, where they met Chavez, who brokered their freedom.
On April 8, 2008, Spain, Switzerland, and France closed their humanitarian mission to free the hostages. FARC had claimed that the group had not coordinated its plane landing in Colombia with them ahead of time. The plane had arrived on April 3 with diplomats and doctors to help Betancourt, who reportedly was dying from hepatitis B.
On July 2, 2008, in a daring rescue called Operation Check, the Colombian Army tricked the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander Gerardo Antonio Aguilar Ramirez, alias Cesar, and his fellow hostage-takers into believing that an Army Mi-17 helicopter that landed in a remote jungle clearing 45 miles southeast of San Jose del Guaviare belonged to a humanitarian group and was going to move several hostages to another FARC-controlled locale to meet new FARC commander Alfonso Cano. After the FARC moved several of its highest-value hostages to the site—it had rarely kept all of its major hostages in the same place—the army sprung the trap, flying off, capturing two FARC rebels, including Cesar and his deputy, Alexander Farfan, alias Gafas, on board without firing a shot, and freeing former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt (held since February 23, 2002), 46; American Northrop Grumman military contractors Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes (held since February 13, 2003); and eleven Colombian soldiers, including Army Capt. Juan Carlos Bermeo, Lt. Raimundo Malagon, and army nurse William Perez. The rebels still held seven hundred hostages.
On July 9, 2010, Betancourt sued the Colombian government for $6.5 million in compensation for her captivity.
February 27, 2002—India—On February 22, 2011, a court in Gujarat found thirty-one Muslims guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy by setting alight the Sabarmati Express train coach in Godhra and killing fifty-nine Hindu passengers. Another sixty-three were acquitted, among them Maulana Hussain Umarji, 70, who was believed to be a key conspirator. The defense said it would appeal. On March 1, 2011, the court sentenced eleven Muslims to death for being part of the criminal conspiracy; twenty were sentenced to life in prison.
April 2002—Colombia—In May 2012, Sigifredo Lopez, 48, one of the hostages freed after being held for more than seven years, was arrested in Colombia on May 16, 2012, on suspicion of helping to carry out the kidnapping of a dozen provincial parliamentarians in Cali by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
As of May 21, 2012, he had not been charged. FARC kidnappers had scuffled with another FARC team and thinking that they were under military attack, killed the other eleven hostages, sparking Lopez, to prevent a rescue. Lopez was freed in February 2009.
April 11, 2002—Tunisia—On February 5, 2009, a French court sentenced German citizen Christian Ganczarski to eighteen years in jail for his part in the suicide bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia that killed twenty-one people in 2002. French authorities had arrested him in 2003. The court also sentenced Walid Naouar, the suicide bomber’s brother, to twelve years.
May 8, 2002—United States—U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke announced on January 16, 2008, that Jose Padilla, 37, the alleged “dirty bomber,” his alleged recruiter Adham Amin Hassoun, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a former San Diego school administrator accused of aiding overseas Islamist fighters, should spend at least thirty years to life in prison. On January 22, 2008, Judge Cooke sentenced Padilla to seventeen years and four months on conspiracy charges; Hassoun to fifteen years and eight months; and Jayyousi to twelve years and eight months. Attorneys for the trio promised appeals. On February 17, 2011, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel threw out Padilla’s claim that he was tortured while in a navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, saying that the enemy combatant had no right to sue for constitutional violations and that the defendants had qualified immunity. On September 19, 2011, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit said that Padilla’s January 2008 seventeen-year sentence was too lenient and ordered the case sent back to federal court for resentencing.
August 2002—Indonesia/Papua New Guinea—Gunmen attacked a convoy of international teachers for forty-five minutes, killing three people, including Rick Spiers, who had been teaching children of U.S. mining workers, the school’s American superintendent, and an Indonesian colleague, and wounding eight others, including Patsy Spier, Rick’s wife. In late 2008, at age 51, she became a coordinator in the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism, where she tracked down victims and determined their need for money, counseling, and other assistance. She also trained FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors in working with families.
October 2002—United States—On September 24, 2008, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady in Alexandria, Virginia, rejected sniper John Allen Muhammad’s appeal of the death sentence he received for the murder of Dean H. Meyers near Manassas, Virginia. O’Grady lifted the stay of execution. On September 16, 2009, Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Mary Grace O’Brien set November 10 as the execution date. On November 10, 2009, John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection. At 9:06 p.m., thiopental sodium knocked him out, pancuronium bromide stopped his breathing, and potassium chloride stopped his heart. He was pronounced dead five minutes later at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia.
In a taping for an A&E cable television interview scheduled to air on July 29, 2010, sniper Lee Boyd Malvo told William Shatner that the duo had killed forty-two people in 2002. He claimed that the duo had three conspirators, two of whom they killed.
October 6, 2002—Yemen—On August 31, 2012, Khaled Batis, variant Khalid Batees, a senior al Qaeda terrorist wanted for masterminding the October 6, 2002, attack on the French oil tanker Limburg, was killed along with four other terrorists riding in a vehicle that was struck by a drone missile on August 31, 2012, in Hadramawt, Yemen.
October 12, 2002—Indonesia/Bali—On November 8, 2008, the Indonesian government executed Islamic militants Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim, and Ali Ghufron (the last two are brothers) at 11:20 p.m. for helping plan and conduct the Bali bombing by Jemaah Islamiyah (al Qaeda sympathizers) that killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists.
On March 9, 2010, police raided an Internet café in Pamulang, Banten Province, and killed Dulmatin, 40, alias Joko Pitoyo, a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah who was believed behind the Bali bombings. Two other terrorists died in the raid. Police arrested twenty-one suspects in Aceh and Java and seized books on jihad, rifles, and military uniforms. The electronics specialist had trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and had a $10 million bounty on his head. His group called itself the Aceh branch of al Qaeda for Southeast Asia (Tandzim al-Qoidah Indonesia Wilayah Serambi Makkah).
On January 25, 2011, Pakistani security officials arrested al Qaeda operative Umar Patek, 40, a Javanese Arabic man suspected of membership in Jemaah Islamiyah, in connection with the Bali bombings. He was believed to be the deputy field commander for those bombings, as well as suicide bombings in Jakarta in 2003 and 2009. The United States had offered a $1 million reward for his arrest.
On June 9, 2011, Indonesian authorities in central Java arrested Heru Kuncoro, who was suspected in the bombing, along with two other men with ties to terrorist leaders, after security officials foiled a plot by sixteen detainees to kill police with cyanide. Police said he was a facilitator who bought electronic equipment used in the bombings.
The trial of Hisyam Bin Alizein, alias Umar Patek, 41, for the Bali bombings began on February 13, 2012, in the West Jakarta District Court. He was charged with premeditated murder, hiding information about terrorism, illegal possession of explosives, and conspiracy to commit terrorism. Prosecutors said he had confessed to being a key participant in the Bali bombings, assembling the 2,250-pound bomb that was hidden inside a van. He also said he made the bombs used in the December 24, 2000, attacks on churches that killed nineteen. He faced death by firing squad. He was represented by ten lawyers, including attorney Ashluddin Hatjani.
He told interrogators he had hidden in a rented house while he built a 700-kilogram bomb using a rice ladle, grocer’s scale, and plastic bags. His band hid the bomb in four filing cabinets, then loaded them in a Mitsubishi L300 van along with a TNT vest bomb. He said a small explosion occurred while they were loading the bomb onto the van.
He claimed to have learned bomb making while at a militant academy in Pakistan’s Sadda Province from 1991 to 1994 and later at Turkhom, Afghanistan.
While he was living in Solo, Indonesia, he was pitched by Imam Samudra to make the Bali bomb. He flew to Denpasar, Bali, and went to the rented house with co-conspirator Sawad. Dulmatin worked on the electronic circuits used for the detonators. Patek and Dulmatin joined Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines after the bombings. Nadeem Akhtar, 37, a Pakistani in Indonesia, helped Patek get a Pakistani visa from his embassy in Jakarta.
On June 21, 2012, an Indonesian court sentenced Umar Patek, 45, to twenty years, after finding him guilty of helping assemble the Bali bomb, premeditated murder, and conspiracy to smuggle explosives and firearms for use in terror attacks. He was also charged with smuggling firearms from the Philippines to Indonesia and planning a militant camp in Aceh in 2010. He told the court that upon arrival in Bali, 950 kilograms of the explosives had already been mixed, and he agreed to mix the rest. “When I saw Sawada, aka Sarjiyo, looking exhausted and nervous, finally I agreed to help him and both of us mixed the explosive ingredients that were less than 50 kg. I did it lazily because it didn’t come from my soul and it was contrary to my conscience.”
November 28, 2002—Kenya—On September 14, 2002, U.S. commandos killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, ringleader of the attackers of the Mombasa hotel, in Baraawe, Somalia. He might also have played a role in the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
2003—India—Bombs went off at Mumbai’s Gateway of India and Zaveri gold market, killing fifty-four people. The Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was blamed. On July 27, 2009, an India court convicted a married couple and another man for the attacks. On August 4, 2009, the prosecution demanded the death sentence for the married couple—Mohammad Hanif and his wife Fahmida (who goes by one name)—and their accomplice Ashrat Ansari.
2003—Morocco—Al-Jazeera reported on April 10, 2008, that nine Casablanca-based Moroccan men jailed for the bombings that killed forty-five people in 2003 had tunneled out of Kenitra prison, north of Rabat. One of the escapees had been on death row; six others were serving life sentences; the other two had been sentenced to twenty years.
2003—Venezuela—On April 30, 2008, a Venezuelan court sentenced dissident former Gen. Felipe Rodriguez to ten years in prison for conspiracy and aggravated burning of property in the 2003 bombings of the Spanish and Colombian embassies that injured four people. He had been involved in the 2002 failed coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez.
2003—Gulf of Aden—On April 22, 2012, Mohammed Said al-Umdah, alias Ghareeb al-Taizi, who provided logistical and financial support for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and two others were killed when an air strike hit his SUV in northeast Yemen. He had received military training in Afghanistan under Osama bin Laden’s supervision. He had been convicted for his role in the 2003 bombing of the French oil tanker Limburg in the Gulf of Aden. He was one of the twenty-three convicts who escaped from a Yemeni prison in February 2006. The Yemeni Embassy in Washington, DC, said he was number 4 on its most wanted list.
2003—Georgia—Armenian citizen Garik Dadaian was arrested after setting off a radiation detector at a checkpoint on the border with Armenia. He was returned to Armenia a few days later. In 2010, his name was found on a bank transfer slip carried by one of two smugglers arrested with highly enriched uranium, which the duo had obtained from Dadaian. Forensic analysis said it was from the same batch as the 2003 material. Russian authorities suggested he got the material from a manufacturing plant in Novosibirsk, Russia. The duo was identified as bankrupt dairy farmer Sumbat Tonoyan and Hrant Ohanian, a former physicist at a nuclear research facility in Yerevan, Armenia. They were sentenced to thirteen to fourteen years.
January 5, 2003—United Kingdom—In a bloody gun battle, British authorities arrested seven al Qaeda members planning to use ricin in the London underground. The terrorists were commanded by al-Zarqawi.
February 13, 2003—Colombia—On February 2, 2008, the Colombian Army detained near the Venezuela border Luz Dari Condo Rubio, a Colombian female rebel wanted in the kidnapping of three U.S. contractors in February 2003.
On February 27, 2008, Luis Eladio Perez, one of the four Colombian legislators who were freed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), said that the three Americans had given him letters to give to President Bush and other U.S. politicians but that the rebels confiscated them.
On July 2, 2008, the Colombian Army fooled FARC into believing that its helicopter was a FARC chopper that was to move several hostages out of the area. When the FARC placed its hostages onto the helicopter, government troops announced the ruse, freed the hostages, including Betancourt and the three Americans, and detained the FARC members (see also Updates February 2002—Colombia).
On August 1, 2008, the United States indicted Hely Mejia Mendoza, alias Martin Sombra, in U.S. District Court for conspiring with other guerrillas to abduct the trio.
On August 22, 2009, Colombian police captured Jose Armando Cadena Cabrera, alias Bronco, a FARC guerrilla who was believed to have killed U.S. citizen Thomas John Janis and soldier Luis Alcides Cruz and kidnapped the other three Americans whose helicopter had crashed. The three Northrop Grumman contractors wrote in their 2009 memoir that a FARC member named Sonia told them that she had killed the duo.
On September 19, 2009, Colombia extradited to Florida Nancy Conde Rubio, 37, who led a finance and supply operation for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. She faced charges of terrorism in a U.S. federal court. She was the former girlfriend of a FARC member who helped guard fifteen hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors, who were rescued by the Colombian military in July 2008. Conde’s intercepted phone calls helped locate the rebel hideout.
On December 14, 2010, a U.S. federal grand jury of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia indicted eighteen FARC members on terrorism and weapons charges in connection with the taking of the three U.S. hostages. Sixteen of them were charged for the first time. This was the first time senior FARC general staff members were accused of telling their American hostages that the kidnapping would increase international pressure on Bogota to accede to their demands. Among those indicted were
• Tanja Anamary Nijmeijer, 32, a former Dutch schoolteacher who rose to senior FARC levels. She recently was shown in a fifty-three-second video broadcast by Dutch news services in which she wore military fatigues and held an assault rifle. She had written a diary recovered from a FARC camp in 2007. She was an aide to Victor Suarez, alias Jorse Briceno, alias El Mono Jojoy, the senior FARC military strategist who was killed in a Colombian raid in August 2010.
• Carlos Alberto Garcia, alias El Paisa
• Jose Ignacio Gonzalez Perdomo, alias Alfred Arenas
FARC member Alexander Beltran Herrera was extradited to the United States in mid–March 2012. On March 12, 2012, the 35-year-old pleaded not guilty in a U.S. court to taking three U.S. citizens hostage after their plane crashed in Colombia in February 2003. He was represented by court-appointed attorney John Machado. Herrera was one of eighteen FARC members indicted in February 2012. The others remained at large.
August 19, 2003—Iraq—On June 26, 2009, Iraqi officials arrested Ali Hussein Azzawi, 54, a former Iraqi Airways commercial airline pilot and senior member of al Qaeda in Iraq, at his home in eastern Baghdad. On January 16, 2010, authorities released a videotaped confession in which he said he was a senior member of the Sunni group. Iraqi officials said he orchestrated the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed twenty-two people.
September 10, 2003—Sweden—On August 29, 2011, assassin Mijailo Mijailovic said he faked mental illness at his trial so he would get a less severe sentence. He blamed politicians for his failings in life; the hatred led to his attack.
2004—Israel—On April 26, 2010, Israeli forces killed Ali Sweiti, 42, who was a senior member of the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigade, the Hamas armed movement, who was believed to have killed an Israeli soldier. He refused to leave a house where he was hiding during a late night raid. After a gun battle, Israeli soldiers bulldozed the house with him in it; his body was found in the rubble. He had two wives and fourteen children.
2004—Saudi Arabia—On April 8, 2012, Saudi Arabia began the trial of fifty men suspected of al Qaeda links. They were charged with killing an American who was kidnapped in 2004, bombing the al-Muhaya foreign housing compound in Riyadh and other compounds in the Eastern Province in 2003, and planning to attack the U.S. and U.K. embassies.
February 26, 2004—United States—Members of the White Aryan Resistance set off a bomb that injured Don Logan, the black director of diversity at Scottsdale, Arizona. Logan underwent four surgeries on his hand and arm. The bomb also injured a secretary. The group had called on “lone wolves” to attack non-whites and the government. In January 2012, a six-week trial began for identical twins Dennis and Daniel Mahon, 61, of Illinois. On February 24, 2012, the jury convicted Dennis Mahon on three charges but said Daniel was not guilty of conspiracy to damage buildings and property by means of explosives. On May 21, 2012, U.S. District Judge David Campbell sentenced Dennis Mahon to forty years in prison.
March 11, 2004—Spain—On July 17, 2008, Spain’s Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, an Egyptian, on charges of leading the group that bombed several Madrid trains on March 11, 2004, killing 191 people. It also cleared four men convicted by a lower court in the case. In October 2007, the National Court had convicted three men of murder. European investigators determined that the attacks cost only $80,000 to conduct.
On December 18, 2008, a Moroccan criminal court convicted Abdelilah Ahriz, 31, of belonging to the group that conducted the train attacks. He was sentenced to twenty years. Prosecutors had requested a life sentence, noting that witness testimony and DNA sampling proved his involvement.
In November 2009, National Court Judge Eloy Velasco indicted seven Islamic militants for helping the bombers of Madrid trains on March 11, 2004. The suspects were said to have provided money, housing, food, and forged documents to the six key suspects, whom they also hid and then helped escape from Spain. Six suspects were charged with membership in a terrorist group; the seventh with collaborating with terrorists. Three of the fugitives were believed to have later conducted suicide bombings in Iraq against Western soldiers. A fourth was caught and convicted in Morocco for his role in the training bombings. A fifth faced trial in Morocco. The sixth, initially believed to have gone to ground in Belgium, remained at large. The seven defendants included four Moroccans, an Algerian, and a Tunisian. Zohair Khadiri, a Moroccan, was the only one in jail. The judge linked him to three others convicted last May in Spain for helping train bomb suspects to flee. The six faced twelve-year prison sentences; the collaborator faced ten years in prison. A procedural hearing was scheduled for November 20, 2009.
On January 12, 2010, Spanish terrorism expert Fernando Reinares claimed that the train bombings were orchestrated by terrorists in North Waziristan. A ringleader was a Moroccan, Amer Azizi, who had been in northwest Pakistan in 2004 and worked with al Qaeda’s head of external operations, Egyptian citizen Hamza Rabia. Azizi had recruited the leaders of the bombers’ cell. The two were killed in a U.S. missile attack in 2005 on Haisori village near Miranshah in North Waziristan.
April 9, 2004—Iraq—The U.S. military announced on March 30, 2008, the discovery of the remains of Army Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, who had been kidnapped in 2004 when his fuel convoy was ambushed west of Baghdad.
October 18, 2004—Spain—Spanish police arrested thirty suspected Islamic militants planning to set off a 500-kilogram bomb at Madrid’s antiterrorism National Court. They hoped to destroy files against other Islamist terrorist suspects, including those held in the 3/11 Madrid train bombings in 2004. Among them were nineteen Algerians, five Moroccans, and defendants from Mauritania, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Spain. They were identified by a Moroccan who was a police informant, by wiretaps, and intercepted correspondence. Their trial began in October 2007 and ended on January 14, 2008. On February 4, 2008, a Spanish court provisionally released ten of them. Five were kept in jail on other charges. Those who were freed must report to the police station every Monday, surrender their passports, and not leave Spain.
On February 27, 2008, a Spanish court acquitted twenty of the suspects of charges of conspiracy to blow up the court but convicted them of lesser offenses. The twenty were convicted of creating jihadi cells in jail by recruiting other prisoners. The three-judge court convicted eighteen of belonging to a terrorist organization. The other two were convicted of collaborating with the group. Sentences ranged from five to fourteen years. The final ten were acquitted of all charges.
October 19, 2004—Iraq—On June 2, 2009, a Baghdad court convicted Iraqi citizen Ali Lutfi al-Rawi and sentenced him to life in prison for the 2004 kidnapping and murder of U.K. aid worker Margaret Hassan. On August 22, 2010, Iraq’s deputy justice minister confirmed that al-Rawi had escaped from prison in September 2009.
2005—Australia—On February 15, 2010, five Australian Muslims who were found guilty in October 2009 of conspiring to commit an attack between July 2004 and November 2005 were sentenced by the New South Wales State Supreme Court Judge Anthony Whealy to terms ranging from twenty-three to twenty-eight years. Authorities had confiscated twenty-eight thousand rounds of ammunition, weapons, and chemicals to make bombs that were to be used in retaliation for Australian involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The men, aged 25 to 44, were arrested in Sydney in 2005.
February 12, 2005—Brazil—Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura was one of two ranchers who were alleged to have ordered the February 12, 2005, murder of Sister Dorothy Stang, 73, a U.S. nun and rain forest activist. He was convicted and sentenced to thirty years, but on retrial (Brazil requires retrials for first offenders sentenced to twenty-plus years) in Para State’s seniormost court, he was acquitted on a technicality on May 6, 2008. On April 7, 2009, a Brazilian court ordered his arrest and retrial. Prosecutors refiled charges on April 12, 2010.
On December 31, 2008, Brazilian police arrested Regivaldo Pereira Galvao, who had been seen at the site of Stang’s murder. Pereira was held on charges of land fraud and slavery. He had earlier been charged with conspiracy to murder Stang. He had been held in prison for a year after Stang’s murder until his release by the Brazilian Supreme Court in 2006; as of December 31, 2008, he had yet to be tried.
A documentary movie released in 2008, They Killed Sister Dorothy, was narrated by Martin Sheen. Brazilian investigators said some of the interviews in the film would be used against those accused in the case.
February 14, 2005—Lebanon—On April 19, 2009, Dubai authorities arrested Syrian intelligence officer Muhammed Zuhair Siddiq on suspicion of involvement in the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri. France had put him under house arrest in October 2005 on the recommendation of a UN commission investigating the killing, but he disappeared in March 2008.
On April 29, 2009, Lebanon released Jamil Sayyed, Ali Hajj, Raymond Azar, and Mustafa Hamdan, the four generals it had held for nearly four years in the case, after an internal tribunal in The Hague ordered them freed. Prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to continue the detention.
On May 24, 2009, Hizballah denied Der Spiegel’s claim that the group was involved in the attack.
On March 31, 2010, UN special investigator, Canadian prosecutor David Bellemare, summoned twelve Hizballah members for questioning.
In November 2010, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) reported that the UN International Independent Investigation Commission had determined that phone records implicated Hizballah in the Hariri assassination. Pundits speculated that the UN would indict a Hizballah member by the end of the year. CBC also reported that an internal UN document had suggested that Col. Wissam al-Hassan, a Lebanese intelligence official who was a liaison with UN investigators, was implicated in the case because although he was in charge of Hariri’s security, he had taken that day off to take a university exam.
On January 12, 2011, on the eve of potential indictments against Hizballah members in the Hariri assassination, eleven cabinet ministers from Hizballah and its allies withdrew from the Lebanese government coalition of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, ensuring that the government would fall and sparking a crisis in regime stability. The UN prosecutor issued a sealed indictment against suspects on January 17, 2011.
On July 29, 2011, the UN-based international court announced the names of four Hizballah members wanted on suspicion of the murder—Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Hizballah’s deputy military commander; Salim Jamil Ayyash; Hussein Hassan Oneissi; and Assad Hassan Sabra. On August 17, 2011, the UN tribunal released its forty-seven-page indictment against Hizballah members, following its June 30 arrest warrants for four Hizballah members who remained at large.
July 7, 2005—United Kingdom—Investigators determined that the London subway and train bombings cost only $15,000 to conduct.
On January 21, 2009, authorities in Peshawar, Pakistan, arrested Taifi, a Saudi from Taif, and six other insurgents in a pre-dawn raid on the house of an Afghan refugee. Taifi was believed involved in the London bombings.
On April 28, 2009, Kingston Crown Court west of London acquitted in a retrial Mohammed Shakil, 32, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and Waheed Ali, 25, of aiding the bombers by scouting locations for the attacks. A jury in the first trial in 2008 failed to reach a verdict. The trio were found not guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions. Ali and Shakil were convicted of conspiring to attend a terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2001 and 2003, where they were instructed in the use of automatic weapons and grenade launchers. The next day, they were sentenced to seven years in prison. Saleem was represented by attorney Imran Khan. Prosecutors had claimed that the trio had joined three of the bombers for a test run in December 2004, when they visited subway stations and tourist locales.
Martine Wright, 37, who lost both legs in the Aldgate blast, five years later to the day was a member of the British women’s sitting volleyball team that was training to compete in the 2012 London Paralympics.
July 21, 2005—United Kingdom—A London court on February 5, 2008, convicted Siraj Ali, 33, Muhedin Ali, 29, Ismail Abduraham, 25, Wahbi Mohammed, 25, and Abdul Sherif, 30, of twenty-two charges of failing to disclose information about terrorism and assisting an offender in connection with the failed copycat bombing of the London transit system in July 2005. Mohammed was sentenced to seventeen years, Siraj Ali to twelve years, Sherif and Abdurahman to ten years, and Muhedin Ali to seven years. The five provided safe houses, passports, clothing, and food for the would-be bombers after the failed attacks. Siraj Ali and Mohammed were also charged and convicted of having prior knowledge of the attacks. Sherif is the brother of Hussain Osman, a convicted bomber. Mohammed is the brother of Ramzi Mohammed, another bomber.
On February 26, 2008, the self-appointed Osama bin London, Mohammed Hamid, 50, was convicted of running terrorist training camps in the U.K. countryside, including one attended by the five men convicted of the failed bombing plot. He was also convicted of encouraging Muslims to attend the camps and holding recruiting sessions in his London home aiming at murdering “nonbelievers.” Prosecutors told the Woolwich Crown Court that he had deemed the fifty-two deaths in the 7/7 London train and bus bombings in 2005 as “not even breakfast for me.” He was an associate of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical Islamic cleric. Hamid, who often gave fiery speeches at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, ran a bookstall in central London.
On February 13, 2009, British prosecutors announced that they would not seek charges against the police officers who shot to death Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, on July 22, 2005, in the mistaken belief that he was another would-be suicide bomber.
September 2005—Belarus—Two explosions wounded forty-eight people in Vitebsk.
December 27, 2005—Philippines—On August 28, 2009, Manila extradited to the United States Filipino citizen Commander Madhatta Haipe in connection with a hostage-taking by Abu Sayyaf. He had been held in the Philippines for at least three months. He was indicted in November 2000 on charges of leading a group that kidnapped sixteen people, including four Californians, from the mountainous Tran-Kine Spring Resort at Lake Sebu, 640 miles southeast of Manila, on December 27, 2005. Most of the hostages were held for five days. The rest were released on December 31 after payment of a $57,000 ransom. A week later, troops in helicopter gunships raided the kidnappers’ safe haven, killing seven, and capturing three, including Haipe, who was wounded. Haipe was a former professor of Islamic studies at Mindanao State University in the Philippines. On August 29, 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay in Washington, DC, ordered him held without bond pending trial.
2006—Israel—On October 20, 2010, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Bank of China could be sued for supporting terrorism in a case brought by the family of Daniel Wultz, 16, an American residing in south Florida who was killed in a 2006 suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv restaurant. Islamic Jihad (IJ) claimed credit. His parents, Yekutiel and Sheryl Wultz, sought $300 million in damages in 2008 from Iran, Syria, and the Bank of China. Israel had claimed that IJ was financing its bombings via a bank account in the United States maintained by Said al-Shurafa, a senior IJ officer.
January 7, 2006—Iraq—Jill Carroll, who had been kidnapped and held hostage for three months, on August 18, 2008, left her job as a journalist with the Christian Science Monitor to begin five months of training to become a firefighter and EMT for Fairfax County Fire and Rescue in northern Virginia.
In late August 2008, coalition forces announced that on August 11 and 17, 2008, they had detained two suspected masterminds of several kidnappings, including Carroll’s, identified as Salim Abdallah Ashur al-Shujayri, alias Abu Uthman, and Ali Rash Nasir Jiyad al-Shammari, alias Abu Tiba. They were also believed behind car and suicide bombings against Iraqis. Abu Tiba was believed to have led fifteen al Qaeda in Iraq attack cells by giving them money, weapons, and explosives.
March 2006—United States—On August 26, 2008, Mohammed Taheri-Azar, 25, was sentenced to up to thirty-three years in prison after pleading guilty to nine counts of attempted murder when he drove his SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina bar The Pit. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran. He grew up near Charlotte, North Carolina, and graduated from the university.
March 2006—United States—On June 11, 2009, a federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, convicted Syed Haris Ahmed, 24, of conspiracy to support terrorists. He had gone to Washington, DC, in April 2005, where he made short digital videos of the U.S. Capitol, Pentagon, George Washington National Masonic Memorial, the World Bank, and fuel tanks near I-95 in northern Virginia. He shared the videos with Younis Tsouli, believed to be a recruiter for al Qaeda in Iraq, and Aabid Hussein Khan, who has ties to Pakistani Islamists, including Lashkar-i-Taiba. The duo had been convicted of terrorist crimes in the United Kingdom. Ahmed was arrested in March 2006.
March 2, 2006—Pakistan—On February 24, 2010, a missile strike in Dargah Mandi in North Waziristan, Pakistan, killed thirteen terrorists, including Qari Mohammad Zafar, who was wanted for questioning in the March 2, 2006, bombing near the U.S. Consulate in Karachi that killed three Pakistanis and U.S. diplomat David Foy. The United States had put a $5 million reward out for the pro–Taliban Zafar, who was a member of Lashkar-e Jangvi.
May 29, 2006—Iraq—The 500-pound car bomb killed cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, Army Capt. James Funkhouser, and Iraqi translator Sam. Four other soldiers and CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier were injured. She ultimately returned to Iraq with Adm. Mike Millen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in December 2009 during a United Service Organizations (USO) trip.
June 2, 2006—Canada—Toronto police arrested eighteen terrorists—fourteen adults and four youths—planning to conduct three days of bombing attacks in “the Battle of Toronto,” starting on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. The group hoped to shut down the downtown core, harm the economy, and kill civilians by parking three explosives-packed U-Haul vans at the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Front Street offices of Canada’s intelligence agency, and a military base off Highway 401 between Toronto and Ottawa. They intended to use three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitric acid. Three months later, they planned to attack the Sears Building in Chicago or the UN headquarters in New York City. The group also had plans to bomb nuclear power stations, storm the parliament buildings in Ottawa, and kidnap and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The group hoped to pressure the government to withdraw Canadian troops from Afghanistan. Police relied on the work of undercover police agent Shaher Elsohemy, who talked to the deputy chief of the group about its plans.
On September 25, 2008, an Ontario court declared guilty one of the “Toronto 18” who was 17 at the time of his arrest.
The sentencing hearing in a Brampton court began on June 22, 2009, against Saad Khalid, 22, from Mississauga. Khalid was charged with knowingly participating in a terrorist group, receiving training for the purpose of enhancing the ability of a terrorist group, and doing anything with “intent to cause an explosion of an explosive substance that was likely to cause serious bodily harm or death.” He pleaded guilty to the last count—he rented warehouse space in Newmarket to store the fertilizer and received the delivery truck—the only one who admitted to the existence of a bomb plot. Police arrested Khalid and others while they were unloading the truck. Prosecutors said Khalid attended a jihadist training camp in Washago, Ontario, in December 2005. He was represented by attorney Russell Silverstein.
Since the arrests and Khalid’s hearing, charges against seven defendants were stayed by the court.
By March 2006, the group’s two ringleaders—one from Scarborough and one from Mississauga—had clashed. The Mississauga leader is alleged to have developed the bomb plot.
One plotter was sentenced to fourteen years on June 23, 2009. Ringleader Zacariah Amara faced life in prison, which in Canada translates to twenty-five years. Sentencing was scheduled for January 2010.
June 22, 2006—United States—Federal authorities in Miami’s impoverished Liberty City district arrested six individuals aged 22 to 32 who were plotting to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, the James Lawrence King Federal Justice Building, federal courthouse buildings, the Federal Detention Center, the Miami Police Department, and the FBI office in Miami. Those arrested included Lyglenson Lemorin, Stanley Grant Phanor, Narseale Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, and Rotschild Augustine.
On December 13, 2007, Judge Lenard declared a mistrial for six of the defendants. Lyglenson Lemorin was acquitted of all charges but remained in detention as there was an “immigration hold” on him.
The retrial began on January 22, 2008. On February 6, 2008, federal immigration prosecutors charged Lemorin with nearly identical offenses. On May 12, 2009, a Miami federal jury convicted five of the remaining Liberty City Six in their third trial of charges of planning to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Sentencing was scheduled for July 27, 2009. Herrera was acquitted.
July 8, 2006—Germany—On February 7, 2008, Lebanese citizen Youssef Mohammed el-Hajdib told a German court that he took part in the attempt to bomb two German commuter trains in July 2006 and that the ringleader was Jihad Hamad, who was sentenced in Lebanon in December 2007 to twelve years in prison. The bombing was to be revenge for German newspapers reprinting caricatures of Muhammad. On December 9, 2008, a German court in Duesseldorf found the 24-year-old college student guilty of attempted murder and other crimes. He had claimed that the devices would not have exploded. He was sentenced to life in prison. Defense attorney Bernd Rosenkranz said he would appeal.
August 10, 2006—United Kingdom—On April 2, 2008, jury selection began in the trial of eight British Muslims who had been arrested in a terrorist plot to use liquid explosives to destroy ten commercial jetliners flying to the United States. Most of them were in their 20s and of Pakistani extraction. The plot led to major changes in how airport security is handled. The group pleaded not guilty. Police had searched sixty-nine sites, arrested twenty-one people, and confiscated four hundred computers, two hundred cell phones, eight thousand computer-related items, including DVDs, CDs, and memory sticks, and several martyrdom videos. Among the seized bomb-making equipment were empty sports drink bottles to hold the explosive liquids, batteries, syringes, food coloring, an amp-volt reader, a pH reader, electronic scales, a digital thermometer, bulbs, wiring, hydrogen peroxide, and citric acid. The group planned to down United flight 925 to Washington, United flight 931 to San Francisco, United flight 959 to Chicago, American Airlines flight 139 to New York, American Airlines flight 91 to Chicago, Air Canada flight 849 to Toronto, and Air Canada flight 865 to Montreal. The prosecution ran six “martyrdom tapes” recorded by the defendants. One of the plotters planned attacks on nuclear power plants, gas pipelines, oil refineries, tunnels, electric grids, Internet service providers, the London financial district, and Heathrow Airport’s control tower.
On June 2, 2008, defendant Ali Ahmed Khan told the jury that he was not involved in an airliner plot, but had looked into setting off a non-lethal bomb at the British Parliament to protest U.K. participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he and fellow defendant Assad Sarwar went to Pakistan to work with Afghan refugees and that they had considered bombing the Bank of England and the Canary Wharf financial district.
Khan’s family had moved to the United Kingdom from Pakistan in the 1960s.
On July 14, 2008, the trio pleaded guilty to conspiracy to set off bombs but not guilty to conspiracy to murder, saying that they did not target planes and did not intend to cause injuries. Defendants Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar testified that they intended to bomb Parliament and other high profile sites as a publicity stunt. Ali, Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to cause public nuisance by distributing their confessor videos.
The jury of the Woolwich Crown Court issued a split decision on September 8, 2008, convicting Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 27, Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussein, 27, of “conspiracy to murder persons unknown” but not deciding whether any of the eight defendants intended to destroy the planes with liquid bombs. Mohammed Guilzar, 27, was acquitted of all charges and set free. The jury did not decide on the murder conspiracy charges against Ibrahim Savant, 27, Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, Waheed Zaman, 24, and Umar Islam, 30. Those four had earlier pleaded guilty on public nuisance charges and were kept in detention. The seven faced life in prison. The prosecution said it would seek a retrial, as the jury had not come to a verdict on some of the charges.
On September 7, 2009, at the end of Britain’s longest counterterrorist investigation, the Woolwich Crown Court found Tanvir Hussain, Assad Sarwar, and Abdulla Ahmed Ali guilty of plotting to kill more than 1,500 people. Not guilty were Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, Waheed Zaman, and Donald Stewart-Whyte, who had converted to Islam four months before his arrest. Umar Islam was found guilty of a separate charge of conspiracy to commit murder, for which Ali, Hussain, and Sarwar had been convicted at the group’s first trial that ended in September 2008. The jury hung on whether to convict Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, and Waheed Zaman on conspiracy to murder persons unknown; the prosecutor said he would retry the trio. On September 14, 2009, Justice Richard Henriques sentenced Ali to life in prison with a minimum of forty years before becoming eligible for parole; Sarwar to life with a minimum of thirty-six years; Hussain to life with a minimum of thirty-two years; and Umar Islam to twenty-two years.
On December 9, 2009, the jury at Woolwich Crown Court found Adam Khatib, 22, guilty of conspiring to commit murder with Abdulla Ahmed Ali. Khatib, then a 19-year-old factory worker, was willing to become a suicide bomber on one of the planes. Nabeel Hussain, 25, was guilty of acts preparatory to terrorism. Police found a martyr’s will, dated September 2005, in which he said, “Why should I worry when I die a Muslim in the manner in which I am to die? I go to my death for the sake of my maker, who if he wishes can bless limbs torn away.” Mohammed Shamin Uddin, 39, was convicted of possessing a document likely to be useful to terrorists. He had researched how to buy hydrogen peroxide, a precursor for liquid explosives. Authorities found a CD containing information on making poisons and explosives.
On July 8, 2010, following their third trial, this one lasting three months, Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, and Waheed Zaman were found guilty in a U.K. court of conspiracy to murder. Zaman had recorded a martyrdom video in which he said, “I warn you today so that you will have no cause for complaint. Remember, as you kill us, you will be killed; as you bomb us, you will be bombed.” On July 12, 2010, they were sentenced to life in prison.
Scotland Yard said the police operation in the case cost circa $40 million and involved twenty-nine surveillance teams.
October 2006—United Kingdom—Sohail Anjum Qureshi, 30, originally of Pakistan, was arrested at Heathrow Airport as he was about to board a plane for Islamabad. He was carrying what he said were “gifts” for the mujahideen he was going to meet in Pakistan. The gifts were a night-vision optical device, backpacks, police-style ASP batons, sleeping bags, and camping gear. He was also carrying a computer hard drive with several “combat manuals” in its files, 9,000 pounds (worth $16,800) and an eight-page al-wida (farewell message) in which he said, “If I am to become a Shaheed [martyr] then cry not and celebrate that day as if you celebrate a happy occasion.” He had told an Internet contact that he had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan in 1996 and led another in 1998. He had contacted Samina Malik, the lyrical terrorist, who worked in a Heathrow Airport store and told him about airport security measures. She was sentenced to nine months in prison in November 2007 for possession of articles useful for terrorist purposes. He claimed he was a terrorism financier and fund-raiser, observing that “bullets cost money.” He said that he wanted to “kill many” in an overseas operation. On January 8, 2008, a British court sentenced him to four and a half years in prison.
November 16, 2006—Iraq—Forty gunmen took hostage six Western contractors in two incidents six weeks apart. On March 13, 2008, the media announced that severed fingers of the hostages were sent to the U.S. military in Baghdad in February 2008. DNA tests confirmed that the fingers belonged to the hostages.
Five men—Paul Reuben, 41, of Buffalo, Minnesota; Jonathon Cote, 25, of Getzville, New York; former Marine Joshua Munns, 25, of Redding, California; and Bert Nussbaumer, 26, of Vienna, Austria—were kidnapped near the Kuwait border on November 16. They worked for the Kuwait-based Crescent Security Group. John Young, 45, of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, was also taken, although his fingers did not show up in the March 2008 case. He was the security team’s leader. Reuben appeared in a video that was released on January 3, 2007. The video was time-stamped December 21–22.
On January 5, 2007, Ronald J. Withrow, 40, of Lubbock, Texas, a contractor working for JPI Worldwide, was abducted near Basra.
On March 23, 2008, the FBI reported the recovery of the bodies of Young and Withrow and three unidentified bodies. They were attempting to recover another corpse near Basra, near where the convoy attack occurred.
On April 23, 2008, U.S. authorities identified Cote’s body in Basra. His was the last to be recovered.
December 2006—Ceuta—Eleven Islamist militants were arrested on charges of plotting terrorist attacks in Ceuta and Mellia, two Spanish enclaves on Morocco’s north coast. Police seized forged documents, computers, an air pistol, a bulletproof vest, and a large machete. The group went on trial at Spain’s National Court in Madrid on March 20, 2012. Prosecutor Carlos Bautista sought sentences of eight years in prison for seven of the defendants and sentences of up to eleven years for the two other defendants, who were also charged with robbery and forgery. Charges had been dropped against two others. The group pleaded innocent. Among the defendants was Mohamed Fuad Abdeselam, 40, a social worker and father of five, who was believed to be the group’s ringleader. He denied giving radical jihadi videos to the others. Prosecutors said the group planned to steal explosives from a local military base and had photographs of the busy passenger ferry that links Ceuta to the Spanish mainland.
2007—United States—John Tomkins, a machinist from Dubuque, Iowa, was arrested for mailing two inoperable pipe bombs and letters threatening violence against investment firms whose stock picks had not performed as well as he had expected. On May 3, 2012, he told a federal jury that he was guilty and expressed remorse. He wanted to force the firms’ executive to boost the stock valuation of two companies.
2007—United States—On December 15, 2010, the U.S. Eastern District Court of New York sentenced Abdul Kadir to life in prison after he was convicted in a 2007 plot to explode fuel tanks and the fuel pipeline under John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
January 31, 2007—United Kingdom—Birmingham police, Midlands Counterterrorism Unit officers, West Midlands Police, and London’s Metropolitan Police raided eight homes and four businesses in two predominantly Muslim neighborhoods beginning at 4:30 a.m. and detained eight Muslim radicals planning to kidnap, torture, and kill a Muslim soldier serving in the U.K. Army, then post the execution video on the Internet.
On February 9, 2007, U.K. police charged six men in the case. They were Parviz Khan, 36, Mohammed Irfan, 30, Zahoor Iqbal, 29, Hamid Elasmar, 43, and Amjad Mahmood, 31. Khan, as the group’s leader, was charged with providing equipment and funding for the plan. The five were ordered held until February 23, when a hearing was scheduled. The sixth defendant, Basiru Gassama, 29, was charged under the Terrorism Act with failing to inform authorities about the plot.
In mid–January 2008, Khan pleaded guilty to sending night-vision equipment, sleeping bags, walkie-talkies, computer equipment, and other gear to Pakistan to be used by extremists. The shipments were made in 2005 and 2006. His plea was made public on January 29 at the opening of the trial of two co-defendants. He planned to kidnap the serviceman in the Broad Street entertainment area of Birmingham. Khan had been stopped by U.K. authorities on his return from Pakistan in July 2006 when they found him carrying a notebook with “a shopping list from terrorist contacts of materials they wanted sent back in the next delivery.” He was under surveillance until his arrest.
Gassama, Irfan, and Elsamar pleaded guilty to helping Khan or failing to report the plot. Iqbal and Mahmood pleaded not guilty to assisting Khan and knowing of his plot and not reporting it to police. Police found in Iqbal’s computer the Encyclopedia Jihad, plus videos and books that included a “mujahideen poison book.”
March 2007—Iran—On December 9, 2011, a year-old, fifty-seven-second video was released by the family of Robert Levinson, now 63, a former FBI agent who vanished from the Iranian resort island of Kish in March 2007. It was unclear who his abductors were; Iran denied involvement. Levinson said, “Please help me get home. Thirty-three years of service to the United States deserves something…. I need the help of the United States government to answer the requests of the group that has held me.” He vanished while serving as a private investigator into a cigarette smuggling case. The video had been mailed to his family a year earlier but was kept under wraps while U.S. officials examined it and the still images also sent to the family. Some observers suggested he was held by Hizballah. Levinson had briefly met with Dawud Salahuddin, a U.S. fugitive in Iran who had assassinated a former aide to the deposed Shah in 1980.
April 2007—Iraq—The Shi’ite-dominated parliament was bombed, killing a parliamentarian. On February 22, 2009, Iraqi security forces said hard-line Sunni Mohammed al-Daini, a member of parliament, had been named by two bodyguards as involved in the attack. Security forces said he was also involved in burying victims alive and robbing gold stores. He remained free because of parliamentary immunity and said the allegations were baseless.
May 2007—Colombia—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) took hostage Erik Roland Larsson, 67, and his Colombian wife from the Cielito Lindo ranch where the couple had retired. She escaped less than a month later during a gun battle between FARC and police. The terrorists demanded a $5 million ransom for the Swede’s release. He had worked on a hydroelectric project in northern Colombia before retiring. He was released on March 17, 2009, the final remaining foreign hostage held by FARC. His right arm, right leg, and parts of his face were paralyzed, apparently as a result of a stroke he suffered in captivity. It was not disclosed whether a ransom had been paid. 07059901
May 7, 2007—United States—On January 3, 2008, U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler ruled in Camden, New Jersey, against bail for the five foreign-born Muslims who were charged in May with conspiring to kill soldiers at Fort Dix. They faced life in prison. Mohamad Shnewer was represented by attorney Rocco Cipparone.
On December 21, 2008, a judge found the five guilty of conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers and other charges but not guilty of attempted murder. Sentencing was set for April 2009.
May 29, 2007—Iraq—The hostage takers of five U.K. citizens released a video, dated November 18, 2007, but released in December, that showed hostage “Jason,” who was to be killed if the United Kingdom did not withdraw its troops from Iraq in ten days. On July 20, 2008, the kidnappers said that Jason had killed himself on May 25.
On February 26, 2008, Peter Moore, one of five U.K. citizens, along with two Iraqis, who were kidnapped in 2007 from a Finance Ministry building in Baghdad, was on an Al-Arabiya video broadcast, pleading with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to release nine Iraqi prisoners in return for the hostages’ freedom. “It’s a simple exchange—release those that they want so we can go home. It’s as simple as that. It is a simple exchange of people. This is all they want, just have their people released.” Moore worked as a computer consultant for BearingPoint, a Virginia-based management and technology consulting firm. The video was signed by the previously-unknown Shi’ite Islamic Resistance in Iraq. Iraqi government officials blamed Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia. British cleric Canon Andrew White had unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate in July 2007.
In March 2009, a videotape showing Moore in good health was delivered to the British Embassy in Baghdad.
The Islamic Shi’ite Resistance of Iraq kidnappers released a video on March 22, 2009, of one of the five British hostages who were kidnapped in May 2007. The British Embassy did not release the hostage’s name. The video also included footage of fellow British hostage Peter Moore.
On June 7, 2009, Laith al-Khazali was released by the Iraqi government following reports that several Iran-linked militiamen would be released in exchange for the freedom of five British hostages. Government spokesmen denied such a deal took place. He and his brother Qasi had been held since March 2007 for the January 2007 attack in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers, who were identified as Capt. Brian S. Freeman, 31, of Temecula, California; 1st Lt. Jacob N. Fritz, 25, of Verdon, Nebraska; Spc. Johnathan B. Chism, 22, of Gonzales, Louisiana; Pfc. Shawn P. Falter, 25, of Cortland, New York; and Pfc. Johnathon M. Millican, 20, of Trafford, Alabama. They were believed to be among the nine to twelve gunmen in five SUVs who drove through checkpoints before firing on the soldiers in the government compound. One of the soldiers died at the scene; four others were kidnapped—three of them were later found fatally shot—the last was alive with a gunshot wound, but died en route to the hospital. Al-Khazali’s Shi’ite group was identified as the League of the Righteous, alias Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), which had claimed more than six thousand attacks against foreign military forces. Four of the British hostages worked for GardaWorld, a Canada-based security firm, and were protecting the fifth Briton, a computer analyst with U.S.-based BearingPoint. Qasi remained in custody.
On June 21, 2009, U.K. officials identified two bodies recovered in Iraq, saying they were likely to be two of the hostages, Jason Creswell, originally from Glasgow, Scotland, and Jason Swindlehurst, originally from Skelmersdale.
On July 29, 2009, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the families that British hostages Alan McMenemy and Alec MacLachlan were probably dead. He also said he believed Peter Moore was alive. The bodies of two other hostages—Jason Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst—were recovered and returned to the United Kingdom in June 2009.
In August 2009, Moore’s kidnappers, Asaib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous), said it would disarm and join the political process.
On September 2, 2009, the remains of Alec MacLachlan were handed over to the U.K. Embassy in Baghdad following negotiations between the Iraqi government and the kidnappers.
On the morning of December 30, 2009, Moore, 36, was handed over to Iraqi authorities, apparently the only survivor of the hostage taking. The United Kingdom said it made no concessions to the terrorists but would not comment as to whether the Iraqi government did so. Reuters reported that Moore had been in Iran during some of his captivity. British officials called on the terrorists to release the body of Alan McMenemy, 34, one of the four bodyguards kidnapped with Moore and believed to have been killed.
June 2, 2007—United States—On February 17, 2011, U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry sentenced Russell Defreitas to life in prison.
June 30, 2007—United Kingdom—On December 17, 2008, Bilal Abdulla, 29, was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the failed car bomb attacks in Glasgow and London. Under British law, he would serve at least thirty-two years in prison. Mohammed Asha, 28, was acquitted.
August 4, 2007—United States—Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed (also identified as Mohamed Ahmed), 24, and Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, two Egyptian students from the University of South Florida in Tampa, were stopped for speeding in their 2000 Toyota Camry near a navy base in Goose Creek, South Carolina. They were jailed after authorities discovered explosives in the car’s trunk. The material included a mixture of fertilizer, kitty litter, and sugar; 20 feet of fuse cord; and a box of .22 caliber bullets. On August 31, they were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of carrying explosive materials across state lines. One of them faced terrorist-related charges of demonstrating how to use pipe bomb explosives, including the use of remotely-controlled toys, to the other. The duo claimed they were going to the beach with fireworks purchased from Wal-Mart. With federal charges in place, state charges were expected to be dismissed as of September 4.
Authorities later determined that Ahmed had posted on YouTube a twelve-minute video on how to use a remotely-controlled toy car to set off a bomb. His computer had bomb-making files in a folder called “Bomb Shock.”
On December 1, 2007, Mohamed said in a defense filing that the explosives were cheap “sugar rocket” fireworks he had made that would travel only a few feet. On January 31, 2008, the FBI announced that the items were low-grade fireworks. But prosecutors countered on February 5, 2008, that the FBI report had been mischaracterized and that the items met the U.S. legal definition of explosives.
September 2007—Germany—On April 22, 2009, a Berlin court began a trial of three Germans and a Turk who had by September 2007 accumulated enough chemicals to make a half ton of explosives, which were to be used in bombing U.S. military bases, dance clubs, bars, and other American hangouts in Germany. Two Germans and a Turk were arrested in September 2007; the other German was arrested later. Those accused were Fritz Gelowicz, 29; Adem Yilmaz, 30, a Turk who grew up in Germany; Daniel Schneider, 22, a Muslim convert; and Attila Selek, a German citizen of Turkish descent. While overseas, Gelowicz, Yilmaz, and Schneider met a recruiter for the Pakistan-based Islamic Jihad Union, which had been accused of bombing the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 2004. The threesome trained in an al Qaeda affiliate’s Pakistan-based camp.
On March 4, 2010, a German court convicted four men in connection with a foiled terrorist plot against Ramstein Air Base and other U.S. and Uzbek military and diplomatic installations in Germany. They were mixing explosives that would have been more destructive than the 3/11 Madrid train bombings. Three were convicted of membership in a terrorist organization. German citizens Gelowicz and Schneider were sentenced to twelve years in prison for membership in a terrorist organization. Turkish citizen Yilmaz received eleven years for membership in a terrorist organization. German citizen Selek was sentenced to five years for supporting the organization.
September 2007—Denmark—On October 21, 2008, the City Court in Glostrup convicted Hammad Khuershid, a Danish citizen of Pakistani origin, and Abdoulghani Tokhi, an Afghan citizen, of preparing a terrorist attack. The duo was clandestinely filmed mixing triacetone triperoxide, the same kind of explosive used in the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings of the London transit system. Prosecutors linked Khuershid to an al Qaeda member. Police had found handwritten bomb-making manuals in the suspects’ homes; Khuershid allegedly had copied them at the pro–Taliban Red Mosque in Islamabad. The duo had spent time in Waziristan; Khuershid denied receiving military training while he was there. The duo faced life in prison, although such sentences are often reduced to sixteen years. They had been arrested in Copenhagen in September 2007.
September 2007—Maldives—A bomb exploded in Sultan Park outside the office of Minister of Islamic Affairs Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, wounding twelve tourists. Within a week, authorities rounded up fifty extremists in a raid on a makeshift mosque on Himandhoo Island. The mosque was patrolled by masked men carrying swords and iron rods. Six terrorism suspects were transferred to a prison and counseled by ministry officials for more than a year. They eventually were declared rehabilitated.
In early August 2008, Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom pardoned immigration officer Warahumath Ahmed, 21, of M. Radium Kokaa, who was sentenced on February 21, 2008, to a year in prison. He had assisted the escape of detained bombing suspects Abdul Latheef Ibrahim of Green Villa, Laamu atoll Kalhaidhoo, and Ali Shameem of Dhoores, Shaviyani atoll Komandoo. They remained at large.
September 29, 2007—Sudan—One thousand rebels attacked an African Union camp in Haskanita, killing a dozen African Union peacekeepers in Darfur.
On November 20, 2008, an International Criminal Court prosecutor requested arrest warrants on charges of war crimes for three of the rebel commanders believed responsible. Their names were not released.
October 2007—Chad—U.S. missionary Steven Godbold, 48, was taken hostage by the Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJT). MDJT spokesman Choua Dazi accused him of being a spy for the local government. He was released on July 24, 2008.
October 18, 2007—Pakistan—On February 25, 2008, Pakistani authorities arrested suspected al Qaeda member Qari Saifullah Akhtar in Lahore for involvement in the October suicide bombing in Karachi of the homecoming parade of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The attack killed 140.
December 2007—France—Authorities arrested eight French Algerians and Algerians in the Paris suburbs, seizing computers, electronic material, night-vision goggles, global positioning equipment, cell phones, weapons-making machinery, and 20,000 Euros ($30,000). Authorities said they were sending logistical equipment for an attack in Algeria. By mid–June 2008, six of the men had been released.
December 24, 2007—Mauritania—A family of four French tourists was murdered by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb terrorists who fired AK-47s at them. Three gunmen in a black Mercedes attacked five French tourists from Lyon as they were having a midafternoon picnic near Aleg, 1,700 miles southwest of Algiers. Francois Tollet, 74, a retired chemist, survived when the body of one of his two dying sons fell on him. His brother and a friend also died. The gunmen escaped into Senegal and Gambia, but were eventually captured by French intelligence in Guinea-Bissau. 07122401
December 26, 2007—Somalia—A female Spanish doctor and a female Argentine nurse working for Medicins sans Frontieres were kidnapped in Puntland. They were released on January 2, 2008. No ransom was paid, according to Nicolas Martin Cinto, the Spanish ambassador to Kenya, who participated in the negotiations for their release. 07122601
December 27, 2007—Pakistan—Authorities in the Northwest Frontier Province on January 17, 2008, arrested Aitazaz Shah, 15, who said he had been trained as a suicide bomber to kill Benazir Bhutto if the first group did not kill her, and Sher Zaman, 32, his handler in Dera Ismail Khan. The former prime minister was murdered in a gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. The duo was arrested while driving on a rural road near the border. Police found explosives in the car. Three other males were later detained. On February 7, 2008, Scotland Yard investigators concluded that she was killed when the blast forced her head against the SUV’s open roof and that she was not killed by bullets.
On February 7, 2008, Pakistani authorities arrested Husnain Gul and Rafaqat in connection with the attack. One of them was the brother of the suicide bomber. Police later arrested Gul’s cousin, taxi driver Abdul Rashid.
On March 1, 2008, Zaman and Shah appeared in court to be formally charged with aiding the assassination plot. Rashid, Gul, and Rafaqat were accused of providing transportation and other assistance. Police also charged Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the umbrella movement of Pakistani Taliban, who remained at large but had denied the charges. Investigators said Mehsud gave the equivalent of $6,500 to Qari Ismail, who belongs to a Taliban-linked seminar, to organize the assassination. On June 14, 2009, Pakistan announced that it would conduct a military strike against Mehsud.
On November 5, 2011, seven men, including two senior police officers, were indicted for conspiracy to kill former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Police officers Saud Aziz, former Rawalpindi police chief, and Khurram Shahzad were accused of security breaches and covering up evidence by hosing down the crime scene. The duo pleaded not guilty and were released on bail. The other five defendants, members of the Pakistani Taliban, were indicted in an antiterror court in Rawalpindi for terrorism, murder, attempted murder, and criminal conspiracy. They were suspected of having links with Beitullah Mehsud, the former leader of the Pakistani Taliban. They were identified as Sher Zaman, Hasnain Gul, Rafaqat Hussain, Abdul Rasheed, and Aitzaz Shah. All hailed from northwest Pakistan.