02/01/12: The New York Times reports that a group of four Islamic militants, all of them British citizens, admitted involvement on Wednesday in a conspiracy inspired by Al Qaeda to place a bomb in the toilets of the London Stock Exchange, part of a plot that, prosecutors said, was foiled after undercover counterterrorism officers tailed them as they surveyed London tourist attractions. The four were among a group of nine men who had been set to plead not guilty to terrorism charges but changed their plea to guilty when they learned of the likely sentences, Britain’s Press Association news agency reported.
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01/31/12: The Huffington Post reports that two former Libyan detainees, Sami Al Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhadj, at the center of claims that British spies were involved in rendition and torture, are launching legal proceedings against the former director of counter-terrorism at MI6. The two men claim that evidence of the UK's role in the couple's rendition is detailed in a number of documents held by the Libyan security services, which came to light after the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
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01/30/12: Reuters reports that a Norwegian of Chinese Muslim origin with alleged links to al Qaeda was convicted on Monday of plotting to blow up a Danish newspaper that had printed cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Mikael Davud, who was accused of leading a bomb plot, had admitted he intended some day to attack Chinese interests like the Chinese embassy in Oslo but he was charged only with plotting to bomb the Danish newspaper. Prosecutors had earlier recommended an 11-year prison sentence for Davud.
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01/28/12: The Boston Globe reports that France and Afghanistan agree NATO should speed up by a year its timetable for handing all combat operations to Afghan forces in 2013, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday, raising new questions about the unity of the Western military alliance. Sarkozy also announced a faster-track exit for France, the fourth-largest contributor of troops in Afghanistan -- marking a distinct break from previous plans to adhere to the US goal of withdrawing combat forces by the end of 2014.
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01/25/12: JURIST reports that Convicted Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic was arrested Saturday in Bosnia and Herzegovina after being on the run since May 2007 when he escaped from a Bosnia prison. Stankovic was convicted of multiple war crimes in 2006, including rape, enslavement and torture. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutor Serge Brammertz welcomed the arrest, saying it "is significant for the victims of the grave crimes he has been convicted for."
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01/21/12: ABC News reports that a Swedish court has acquitted three men accused of plotting to murder an artist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a dog. In Friday's ruling, the Goteborg district court said the defendants lied about why they visited an art gallery where Lars Vilks was expected to make an appearance, and were armed with knives, but it hadn't been proved that they intended to kill him. The ruling was expected as the three men — of Somali and Iraqi origin — had been released pending the decision.
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01/20/12: The Modesto Bee reports that a Lebanese-Swedish man detained in a terror probe in Thailand has told a Swedish newspaper that he's innocent and blamed Israel's Mossad spy agency for his arrest. The tabloid Aftonbladet on Friday said it spoke to 47-year-old Atris Hussein in a Bangkok prison where he's being held on allegations of illegally possessing explosive materials. Hussein was quoted as saying he is "100 percent innocent" and that "much of the material the police found in my warehouse had been placed there, probably by the Israeli security service Mossad." Police have said Hussein was storing 8,800 pounds of explosive materials in Bangkok before shipping them to another destination.
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01/19/12: The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that a German court says the verdict in the case of an alleged Islamic extremist who has admitted killing two US airmen at Frankfurt Airport last year is again being delayed to hear more evidence. At issue are allegations that suspect Arid Uka, a 21-year-old ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, was seen in 2010 in an Islamic fundamentalist prayer room in the Bosnian city of Zenica. A federal investigator cast doubt on that claim, however, testifying there was no evidence that he had crossed the border into Bosnia.
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01/17/12: CNN reports that the United Kingdom cannot deport a radical cleric linked to al Qaeda to Jordan because evidence obtained by torture could be used against him there, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in a landmark case Tuesday. Abu Qatada has been fighting to remain in the United Kingdom since he was first arrested under anti-terrorism legislation nearly a decade ago. He would be "at real risk of ill-treatment or a grossly unfair trial if deported to Jordan, where he is wanted on terrorism charges," the court said in a statement announcing the ruling.
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01/14/12: The Hill reports that in a move reflecting the Pentagon’s new cost-cutting strategy, the US Army is planning to withdraw two of its four brigades from Europe. The Army is replacing the two brigades with rotational units, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an interview with the Defense Department’s American Forces Press Service. The move is part of both a reduction in ground forces for the Army as well as a strategic shift toward the Asia-Pacific region.
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01/07/12: CNN reports that British officials Saturday warned of terror threats in Kenya as the east African nation battles Islamist militants in neighboring Somalia. "Kenyan authorities have alerted the public to a heightened threat from terrorist attacks in Nairobi. We believe that terrorists may be in the final stages of planning attacks," the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a statement. It said the attacks may target places where expatriates gather such as hotels, shopping centers and beaches.
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12/16/11: The Local reports that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been granted permission to appeal against extradition from Britain to Sweden over rape allegations and a hearing will start on February 1, a court said Friday. The decision means Assange will spend a second Christmas at the country mansion of a wealthy supporter in Norfolk, eastern England. He was arrested last December on a European arrest warrant issued by Sweden after allegations by two women of sexual assault and rape. Assange believes the allegations are politically motivated and linked to WikiLeaks' release of hundreds of thousands of classified US files about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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12/16/11: CNN reports that "Carlos the Jackal," once among the world's most wanted fugitives, has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in a series of fatal bombings in the 1980s, a French court said. The 62-year-old, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was on trial for his role in the attacks on two trains, a train station and a newspaper office in France in 1982 and 1983. The bombings killed 11 and injured more than 100. He was sentenced late Thursday.
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12/09/11: Jurist reports that after previously refusing to enter a plea, former Serbian general and alleged war criminal Ratko Mladic pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges linked to the execution of more than 30 Muslim prisoners in the eastern town of Bisina in July 1995. The presiding judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Alphons Orie, scheduled the pre-trial conference for March 26 with the trial to begin March 27. The Mladic case is expected to last years, and the court is anxious to avoid a similar delay in the legal process that allowed Slobodan Milosevic, Mladic's boss, to evade justice when he died of a heart attack in 2006 before his trial concluded.
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11/18/11: The Bellingham Herald reports that the EU says it has initialed a new agreement with the United States on the transfer of air passengers' data for flights from Europe to America. The EU said Thursday the accord addresses European privacy concerns because it sets clear limits to what the data can be used for by US authorities, and contains stronger data protection guarantees. If endorsed by the EU Council and the European Parliament, it will replace the existing agreement from 2007.
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11/17/11: The Voice of America reports that Germany is launching a national registry of neo-Nazis similar to a list of Islamic extremists put in place after September 11, 2001. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Frederich said the new registry will hold information gathered from police and intelligence agents from across Germany. The announcement of the new list comes as authorities open a fresh investigation into a string of murders of Turkish immigrants and a Greek.
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11/15/11: The Boston Globe reports that the Netherlands' Supreme Court Tuesday slightly reduced the sentence of an Islamic radical convicted of recruiting and indoctrinating young Muslims for his group that plotted terrorist attacks. The court found that Nouriddin el Fahtni's eight-year sentence was longer than allowed by law and reduced it to seven years and four months. El Fahtni's group is linked with the so-called "Hofstad" group that includes figures such as Mohammed Bouyeri, who is serving a life sentence for the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
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11/15/11: The Telegraph reports that officers from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit detained the men at their homes in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham, England on suspicion of travelling to Pakistan to undertake terrorist training and of raising funds for terrorist purposes. A police spokesman said the suspects, aged between 19 and 24, had been arrested as part of Operation Pitsford, a large-scale inquiry which has already seen eight other people charged with a variety of offences.
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Commentary: British Court of Appeal decision implicitly repudiates Goldsmith memo
12/20/11: Opinio Juris features commentary by Kevin Jon Heller concerning the Court of Appeal judgment ordering the UK government to seek the release of Yunus Rahmatullah, an alleged member of Lashkar-e-Taiba who has been detained at Bagram since 2004, from US custody. What is particularly interesting about the decision is that it directly — though implicitly — rejects a little-known memo written by Jack Goldsmith while he was at the Office of Legal Counsel, in which he argued that “operatives of international terrorist organizations” were not “protected persons” for purposes of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that “[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of motive.”
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December 20, 2011 at 02:03 PM in Judiciary / Cases, Executive Branch, International Law / Law of War / Human Rights, Detainees / Guantanamo, Europe / Eurasia, Commentary / Opinion | Permalink