'Terrorists' like Abu Hamza will never get real justice until the real 9/11 trial | Karen Greenberg

May 20, 2014, 11:25 am

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Sure, not every alleged terrorist is totally innocent. But every juror's subconscious will be clouded until KSM gets his day in court. Let's have the big verdict instead of surrogate cases

One month ago, in a federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan, in the imaginary shadow of the World Trade Center, a seasoned defense attorney asked a jury of American citizens to place several accusations of terrorism against his client, Abu Hamza al-Masri, in their proper legal context. As in, to disassociate this alleged terrorism from the terrorism of 11 September 2001.

This case is about what happened in the world before 9/11, which is a very different place, with a lot of different views, things that may have changed radically from 9/11. But you have to put yourself back, to the extent you can, in a pre-9/11 context.

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Surrogate mother jailed for faking pregnancies

June 16, 2014, 10:28 am

≫ Next: First it was Osama's lust for Whitney, now we can ogle the Isis sex symbol

≪ Previous: 'Terrorists' like Abu Hamza will never get real justice until the real 9/11 trial | Karen Greenberg

Louise Pollard, who agreed to act as a surrogate mother for one of Osama bin Laden's sons, jailed for faking pregnancies

A woman who achieved notoriety by agreeing to act as a surrogate mother for one of Osama bin Laden's sons has been jailed for faking pregnancies to trick desperate prospective parents out of thousands of pounds.

Louise Pollard, 28, from Plymouth, pretended to inseminate herself before telling couples that she was expecting their child but would then "milk" her victims by saying she needed money to maintain her car or had fallen behind on her rent. Bristol crown court was told Pollard's scam was uncovered when a pregnancy confirmation letter she sent to one of the couples was found to be a forgery. Pollard was jailed for three years and four months for fraud by false representation.

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First it was Osama's lust for Whitney, now we can ogle the Isis sex symbol

June 19, 2014, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Riyadh rage: inside Saudi Arabia's joyriding craze

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The Mail's singular mission to find the romance in the jihadist struggle offers us a dreamy new hunk. It's just a pity that his blood-crazed antics are not so adorable

Kanye West tells Annie Leibovitz: check out my wedding snap

There is always a special thrill reserved for the moment MailOnline gets behind a new celebrity. Whether the website actively perceives itself to be the modern equivalent of Louis B Mayer is unclear, but its ability to spot a new starlet and ruthlessly mould them into a sex symbol who defines the age is second to none.

Last weekend was a case in point. If you're wondering why you have spent this week suddenly hearing more about some stuff going on in Iraq, then allow Lost in Showbiz to enlighten you: these conflicts are essentially star vehicles, and the as-yet-untitled Mesopotamian sequel has just had its romantic lead cast. As the Mail's now deleted tweet of its star profile announced: "Isis chief executioner winning hearts with his rugged looks."

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Riyadh rage: inside Saudi Arabia's joyriding craze

June 22, 2014, 10:30 am

≫ Next: The sad legacy of 9/11: Isis and al-Qaida are stronger than ever | Ali Soufan

≪ Previous: First it was Osama's lust for Whitney, now we can ogle the Isis sex symbol

Fuelled by boredom, anger and alienation, young people are stealing cars and racing them at terrifying speeds through Saudi Arabia's biggest cities. Even Osama bin Laden's bodyguard cut his teeth as a joyrider fighting pitched battles with local police

Night after night, throngs of kids steal cars on the outskirts of Riyadh. They remove the number plates, add stickers to the bodywork and use the cars to swerve at high speeds through the Saudi Arabian capital. At 150mph the slightest mistake can have dramatic consequences. Accidents are frequent and spectacular. Deaths and injuries are common.

The phenomenon known as tafhit in colloquial Saudi Arabic and celebrated by MIA in the video for her 2012 single Bad Girls is not new. Saudi youth have raced cars since the 1970s oil bonanza, which brought the country spotless roads, Japanese sedans and unheard-of economic inequalities. Inevitably, it is a maledominated subculture but some women joyride too.

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The sad legacy of 9/11: Isis and al-Qaida are stronger than ever | Ali Soufan

September 11, 2014, 2:15 am

≫ Next: Bin Laden spokesman sentenced to life in prison for al-Qaida role after 9/11

≪ Previous: Riyadh rage: inside Saudi Arabia's joyriding craze

We havent been fighting a 13-year war. Weve been fighting a new one-year war, 13 times. What now?

In the years leading up to the attacks of 11 September 2001, the west saw al-Qaida rising but didnt address the threat in time. My colleagues and I in the FBI and over at the CIA had been focused on al-Qaida since the mid-1990s. The true threat, however, came from the ideology, not the group.

In the first years after 9/11, the west focused too much on Osama bin Laden and not enough on the bin Ladenism he spawned. We mistook killing the messenger for killing the message. The tactics were understandable repeated targeted strikes at key individuals to keep al-Qaida off balance but our strategy was based on just that: our understanding of them, rather than their understanding of us

Obama has now outlined his strategy to knock down the Isis threat. But the real work starts where it should have in 2001

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Bin Laden spokesman sentenced to life in prison for al-Qaida role after 9/11

September 23, 2014, 7:38 am

≫ Next: Bin Laden's killer? Robert ONeills claim challenges Seals code of silence

≪ Previous: The sad legacy of 9/11: Isis and al-Qaida are stronger than ever | Ali Soufan

Osama bin Ladens son-in-law Suleiman Abu Ghaith, convicted in March, became voice of al-Qaida recruitment after 9/11

The sad legacy of 9/11: Isis and al-Qaida are stronger than ever

Defiant to the end, Osama bin Ladens son-in-law was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison for acting as al-Qaidas spokesman after the September 11 terror attacks.

Suleiman Abu Ghaith was sentenced by US district judge Lewis A Kaplan, who said he saw no remorse whatsoever from the 48-year-old imam.

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Bin Laden's killer? Robert ONeills claim challenges Seals code of silence

November 7, 2014, 2:31 am

≫ Next: Pentagon: leaked special forces mission details could endanger national security

≪ Previous: Bin Laden spokesman sentenced to life in prison for al-Qaida role after 9/11

Publicity around shooting of al-Qaida leader goes against ethos of quiet professionals and undermines Obamas military coup

Silence had long been a matter of pride for the US special forces. Dirty, dangerous work done without any public acclaim. Knowledge of their deeds restricted to a tiny band of brothers. Not for nothing were the navys elite Seal (Sea, air and land) teams dubbed the quiet professionals.

But there is little quiet about them these days. Never before in the history of the special forces has so much been known about so few. Since the Seal raid on Osama bin Ladens compound in Pakistan in 2011, almost every detail of their operation has been divulged.

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Pentagon: leaked special forces mission details could endanger national security

November 7, 2014, 10:25 am

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Statement comes after identification of two members of the team that killed Osama bin Laden

The Pentagon has expressed concern that US national security could be endangered by former special forces members going public with details of operations such as the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The warning came amid an unseemly public squabble involving former members of the elite US Navy SEAL Team 6 over who should be credited with firing the shot that killed the al-Qaida leader, which has also put the names of the traditionally anonymous special forces into the public domain.

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Veteran US Seal who claims he shot Bin Laden rounds on critics

November 8, 2014, 1:42 pm

≫ Next: The p-word the New York Post just could not bear to use...

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Robert ONeill says that he no longer cares if anyone believes his account of secret mission

The former navy Seal who claims to have killed Osama bin Laden said he no longer cared if anyone believed him and criticised other commandos for turning on him over the latest revelations about the secret 2011 mission in Pakistan.

Robert ONeill, a highly decorated 38-year-old veteran from Butte, Montana, now retired after 17 years in the forces, also said the al-Qaida leader died afraid and that US military leaders had not wanted him captured alive.

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The p-word the New York Post just could not bear to use...

November 12, 2014, 3:34 am

≫ Next: Richard Dawkins's honey and other high-profile airport confiscations

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How about this! In the land of the free, at a newspaper that makes much of asserting its freedom to say what it likes, there is one word it feels it shouldn't use: pussy.

Jim Romenesko reports that a headline on the New York Post's website originally stated: "Osama bin Laden died like a pussy."

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Richard Dawkins's honey and other high-profile airport confiscations

November 4, 2013, 8:34 am

≫ Next: Sketching Guantánamo

≪ Previous: The p-word the New York Post just could not bear to use...

Dawkins tweeted 'Bin Laden has won' after his jar of honey was confiscated by airport security. Which other items of celebrity baggage have famously fallen foul of airport regulations

He may have been dead for two and a half years, but this week Osama bin Laden achieved the unspeakably evil endpoint of his diabolical lifelong masterplan: he got an airport security team to confiscate a little jar of honey from Richard Dawkins. Distraught, the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist tweeted:

Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste.

Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 3, 2013

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Sketching Guantánamo

November 13, 2013, 7:18 am

≫ Next: Pakistani doctor who helped CIA find Bin Laden faces murder charge

≪ Previous: Richard Dawkins's honey and other high-profile airport confiscations

Court artist's new book offers a rare and unique insight into the drama of the military hearings at US detention centre

Janet Hamlin has been covering Guantánamo for seven years, making more than 25 trips to the prison. Her work provides an unusual view into the controversial military commissions proceedings - and the only view of the small number of detainees charged with crimes (of the 164 prisoners that remain at Guantánamo, only six face formal charges).

Sketching Guantánamo, a compilation of her work with accompanying essays, has just hit the shelves. The artist exchanged ideas and answered questions last week over the phone and Gmail chat:

This was the first time I was in court and the first time I saw the motions and the judge and lawyers from each side like I had seen in the movies and I didn't understand anything about the law and the court procedures. I wondered whether the trial would be fair or only what the American government wanted. They weren't using civilian law or military law and they made up a new law that doesn't offer anything in favour of the prisoner...

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Pakistani doctor who helped CIA find Bin Laden faces murder charge

November 22, 2013, 6:24 am

≫ Next: Dirty Wars review | Peter Bradshaw

≪ Previous: Sketching Guantánamo

Shakil Afridi faces allegations over operating on boy in 2006, who died after surgery

The lawyer for a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden says his client has been charged with murder.

Samiullah Afridi said on Friday that Shakil Afridi was charged with murder, in a case involving a boy who died after the doctor operated on him for appendicitis in 2006, in Pakistan's Khyber tribal area.

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Dirty Wars review | Peter Bradshaw

November 28, 2013, 2:00 pm

≫ Next: A virtual Osama bin Laden, recruiting jihadis? It's not such a crazy notion | Steven Poole

≪ Previous: Pakistani doctor who helped CIA find Bin Laden faces murder charge

Jeremy Scahill's documentary about the shadowy world of the Joint Special Operations Command is an important story

Jeremy Scahill is the national security correspondent for the Nation and his new film is about the strange case of JSoc, or Joint Special Operations Command. It's a military force that has long existed in its own shadowy world of deniability, taking out assumed terrorists, launching drone attacks and killing large numbers of innocent civilians in countries with which the US is not technically at war: Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen. For years, Scahill battled to find out more about JSoc in Afghanistan. Then, when Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, Scahill had the disconcerting experience of seeing JSoc come triumphantly out of the shadows, taking the credit, wallowing in glory. Its commander Admiral William McRaven, once so camera shy, now appeared front and centre on TV. Where did that leave Scahill's investigations? Well, his case is that JSoc is a strangely dysfunctional, even homicidal body which has, in fact, become no more transparent or democratically accountable as a result of the Bin Laden publicity. Its bodycount may not be a matter of "collateral damage", but paranoid, punitive killing sprees: a semi-rogue body on whose behalf there will always be someone to dismiss dissenters as the enemy's useful idiot. The movie has rather silly, Bourne-style thriller graphics, which are unnecessary: it has an important story to tell.

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A virtual Osama bin Laden, recruiting jihadis? It's not such a crazy notion | Steven Poole

January 10, 2014, 8:39 am

≫ Next: Close Guantánamo prison, says first US commander on 12th anniversary

≪ Previous: Dirty Wars review | Peter Bradshaw

US intelligence's fear of supervillain avatars sounds outlandish but there's a solid precedent for using video games as political weapons

Spies are paid to worry about unlikely scenarios, but the prospect of an immortal digital simulacrum of Osama bin Laden recruiting jihadis in cyberspace for centuries to come seems particularly remote. Yet that is what a just-declassified US intelligence study from 2008 suggested was one potential danger of the fast-developing technologies of virtual worlds, along with neo-Nazis digitally defacing your view by hacking into your Google Glass-style augmented-reality display, or China successfully exporting its "authoritarian-friendly" tech to the rest of the world.

Keeping tabs on virtual congregations of al-Qaida types is apparently one of the main reasons why, as documents released by Edward Snowden last month showed, American spies have for years been infiltrating online games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. It will no doubt be disappointing to learn that the cute elf you were chatting with in WoW was almost certainly a CIA agent. Meanwhile, it now seems likely that the vast majority of the population of Second Life are either professional spooks or academic researchers in the digital humanities. They probably have a lot to talk about.

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Close Guantánamo prison, says first US commander on 12th anniversary

January 11, 2014, 11:47 am

≫ Next: Bin Laden death images subject to purge, emails reveal

≪ Previous: A virtual Osama bin Laden, recruiting jihadis? It's not such a crazy notion | Steven Poole

• Major General Michael Lehnert says facility is a liability
• 'Terrorists aim to change our behaviour. They have succeeded'

On the 12th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, the first commanding general of the base has said that it should be closed.

In a statement released by the advocacy organisation Human Rights First, Major General Michael Lehnert who has spoken out on the issue before said: While there were compelling operational reasons to stand up Guantánamo prison early in the war [in Iraq and Afghanistan], we squandered international goodwill and lost opportunities by failing to adhere to the Geneva Conventions and to our own rule of law. Those decisions turned Guantánamo into a liability.

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Bin Laden death images subject to purge, emails reveal

February 11, 2014, 12:24 am

≫ Next: Bin Laden's son-in-law to stand trial for conspiracy to kill Americans

≪ Previous: Close Guantánamo prison, says first US commander on 12th anniversary

US military chief ordered his subordinates to destroy any photographs of Osama bin Laden's body or give them to the CIA

Eleven days after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, the US military's top special operations officer ordered subordinates to destroy any photographs of the al-Qaida founder's corpse or turn them over to the CIA, according to a newly released email.

The email was obtained under a freedom of information request by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch. The document, released on Monday by the group, shows that Admiral William McRaven, who heads the US Special Operations Command, told military officers on 13 May 2011 that photos of Bin Laden's remains should have been sent to the CIA or already destroyed. Bin Laden was killed by a special ops team in Pakistan on 2 May 2011.

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Bin Laden's son-in-law to stand trial for conspiracy to kill Americans

March 2, 2014, 10:48 am

≫ Next: Trial for Bin Laden's son-in-law begins in New York with jury selection

≪ Previous: Bin Laden death images subject to purge, emails reveal

Highest-ranking al-Qaida figure to stand trial in US
Judge rejects Suleiman Abu Ghaiths claim of mistaken identity

Amid unusually tight security, Osama bin Ladens son-in-law will go to trial on Monday, charged with conspiring to kill Americans in his role as al-Qaidas mouthpiece after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Spectators at the trial of Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the highest-ranking al-Qaida figure to face trial on US soil since the attacks, will pass through a metal detector before entering a Manhattan courtroom where prosecutors will try to prove to an anonymous jury that the one-time terror-network spokesman tried to rally others to kill Americans.

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Trial for Bin Laden's son-in-law begins in New York with jury selection

March 3, 2014, 12:44 pm

≫ Next: Osama bin Laden son-in-law agreed to help terror campaign, court hears

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Suleiman Abu Ghaith charged with conspiring to kill Americans as part of his role as al-Qaida spokesman after 9/11

Osama bin Ladens son-in-law was introduced to prospective jurors Monday at the start of his trial on charges that he conspired to kill Americans and support terrorists in his role as al-Qaidas spokesman after the September 11 attacks.

US district judge Lewis A Kaplan asked Suleiman Abu Ghaith to turn and face the potential jurors before asking if any knew him. None did.

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Osama bin Laden son-in-law agreed to help terror campaign, court hears

March 5, 2014, 12:03 pm

≫ Next: British al-Qaida turncoat to testify in trial of Bin Laden's son-in-law

≪ Previous: Trial for Bin Laden's son-in-law begins in New York with jury selection

New York prosecutors accuse Suleiman Abu Ghaith of acting as al-Qaidas mouthpiece in propaganda videos and speeches

Osama bin Ladens son-in-law conspired with him to recruit a new wave of jihadists even as the American buildings attacked on September 11 were still burning, a New York court heard on Wednesday.

Suleiman Abu Ghaith confessed to FBI officials after his capture in Jordan last year that he agreed to help Bin Ladens campaign against the west by using the murderous power of his words as al-Qaidas mouthpiece in propaganda videos and speeches, US prosecutors said.

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