Obama's secret death warrant on al-Awlaki revealed

President Obama's secret memorandum authorising the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was only legally valid if he could not be taken alive, it has emerged.

The legal writ, issued by the Justice Department, tackled the issues surrounding the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen by the American government - on the surface an unconstitutional act.



The issuing of the document followed fraught negotiations between administration officials and lawyers at the DOJ.Constitutional? Anwar al-Awlaki - a U.S. born citizen - was killed using secret authorisation from the justice department

Killed: Anwar al-Awlaki, left, and Osama bin Laden have both died following attacks by the U.S.legal? Officials at both the White House and the Justice Department have since refused all requests to answer how fifth amendment rights - guaranteeing a fair trial for all U.S. citizens - were satisfied by the secret memorandum

Pakistan arrests CIA’s bin Laden informants

Members of the anti-terrorism squad are seen surrounding the compound where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad May 4, 2011.


Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested five CIA informants who fed information to the US spy agency before the raid last month which killed Osama bin Laden, The New York Times reported today.

One of the detainees was reported to be a Pakistani Army major whom officials said copied license plates of cars visiting the al Qaeda leader’s compound 30 miles northwest of Islamabad.

The fate of the CIA informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, the newspaper reported, citing American officials.

Outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta raised the issue of the informants’ detention during a trip to Islamabad last week where he met with Pakistani military and intelligence officers, the newspaper said.

Some in Washington see the arrest as another sign of the deep disconnect between US and Pakistani priorities in the fight against extremists, the Times reported.

The United States kept Islamabad in the dark about the May 2 raid by Navy SEALs until after it was completed, humiliating Pakistan’s armed forces and putting US military and intelligence ties under serious strain.

Pakistan's nuclear surge exposed

Recent satellite images obtained by Fox News from the aerial imagery company GEOEYE show an expanding nuclear facility at the Khushab facility about 100 miles south of Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad.

Tensions increase in Pakistan after Nato helicopter injures two soldiers in attack on Afghan border

A Nato helicopter attacked a Pakistani army post near the Afghan border today, injuring two Pakistani soldiers in an incident that could further increase tensions following the U.S. raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Nato confirmed there were helicopters flying near the Pakistani border and was investigating the reported attack.

‘There were helicopters operating in the border region, and we are aware there has been an incident,’ said Nato coalition spokesman Lt. Col. John Dorrian. ‘But we are going to have to assess the situation.’

Catch it if you can: A U.S Marine Cobra attack helicopter fires diversionary flares as it flies near Forward Operating Base Edi in the volatile Helmand Province

Fearsome: Cobra attack helicopters, like this one pictured in southern Afghanistan, are regularly used to battle the Taliban

Al Qaeda Reportedly Picks Interim Operational Leader

Egyptian militant Saif al-Adel reportedly has taken over as an interim operational leader of Al Qaeda until the terror group appoints Usama bin Laden’s permanent successor after the U.S. Navy SEALs' deadly raid on bin Laden's Pakistan.

Noman Benotman, an analyst with the Quilliam Foundation think tank and a former associate of bin Laden, told Reuters of the promotion Tuesday. Al-Adel will remain as Al Qaeda's operational leader while the organization collects pledges to appoint Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's top deputy, as Al Qaeda's new leader – a move that is expected.

Benotman cited contacts in jihadist circles as his sources, but the report could not be independently confirmed.

Pakistan Suicide Bombs to Avenge Bin Laden - Osama sons say US violated international law

Bombers take bin Laden revenge in Pakistan

Victims of the bombing being transported to hospitals May 13, 2011.

Suicide bombers killed 80 people at a Pakistani paramilitary academy yesterday in revenge for the death of Osama bin Laden in a US raid and militants in Pakistan vowed to carry out more attacks.

A member of the Pakistani parliament said Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Pakistan’s spy chief, said he was “ready to resign” over the bin Laden affair that has embarrassed the nation. Pakistan’s opposition leader accused the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, spy agency of negligence and incompetence.

Followers of bin Laden have vowed revenge for the al Qaeda chief’s death and the Pakistani Taliban said Friday’s attack by two suicide bombers in the northwestern town of Charsadda was their first taste of vengeance.

“There will be more,” militant spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The bombers struck as recruits were going on leave and 65 of them were among the 80 dead. Pools of blood strewn with soldiers’ caps and shoes lay on the road outside the academy as the wounded, looking dazed with parts of their clothes ripped away by shrapnel, were loaded into trucks.

Obama aides were divided on bin Laden raid

 Several red flags convinced US officials of bin Laden’s potential presence in the compound.

Barack Obama with members of the national security team at one in a series of meetings discussing the mission against bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House May 1, 2011

US President Barack Obama held a crucial meeting last week in which his advisers debated three options for dealing with top-secret information about a luxury compound in Pakistan where they thought Osama bin Laden might be hiding.

At a two-hour meeting in the ultra-secure White House Situation Room, the team discussed the pros and cons of a raid on the compound by a small group of elite US forces, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

After 10 years, what gave bin Laden away?

 A drawing released by the United States Department of Defense of the compound in which bin Laden was killed.

 An aerial view, released by the United States Department of Defense, of the compound.

Bin Laden’s location came as a surprise. — Reuters pic

Osama bin Laden’s decade on the run after 9/11 may have come to its end in part because his large hideout reportedly lacked a phone and Internet connection — an unusual absence likely to have drawn investigators’ curiosity.

For a decade, his presumed choice of Pakistan as a hideout from history’s biggest manhunt worked well enough. Experts speculated that he had sought protection from local militants in their remote mountain bastions, repaying the hospitality by helping their bloody effort to make Pakistan ungovernable.

In part, the effort succeeded because he and other al Qaeda leaders had been able to avoid the electronic communications that Western spies often use to track their targets.

China hails death of bin Laden, defends partner Pakistan

A vendor sells masks of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in Nanjing, Jiangsu province May 3, 2011. China hailed on Tuesday the death of bin Laden in a US raid while defending its regional partner Pakistan against accusations it had done too little against terror threats

China hailed today the death of Osama bin Laden in a US raid while defending its regional partner Pakistan against accusations it had done too little against terror threats.

Beijing and Washington have gone through bouts of friction over Taiwan and Tibet, regional security and most recently China’s clampdown on dissent and human rights activists.

China showed no appetite, however, for turning the US raid that killed bin Laden on Pakistani soil into a point of dispute.

Should bin Laden have been captured and tried?

US President BarackObama announcing th killing of Osama on live TV May 1, 201


While many world leaders applauded the US operation that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, there were concerns in parts of Europe that the United States was wrong to act as policeman, judge and executioner.

US Attorney General Eric Holder defended the action as lawful yesterday, but some in Europe said bin Laden should have been captured and put on trial.

“It was quite clearly a violation of international law,” former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt told German TV. “The operation could also have incalculable consequences in the Arab world in light of all the unrest.”

Ehrhart Koerting, Interior Minister in the city-state of Berlin, said: “As a lawyer, I would have preferred to have seen him put on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

Zawahri, al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader

Osama bin Laden (left) with his adviser and purported successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, during an interview with Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir (not pictured) in an image supplied by the respected Dawn newspaper November 10, 2001.

Al Qaeda leader bin Laden dead, Obama says

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the nation from the White House in Washington, May 1, 2011. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital Islamabad, Obama said on Sunday.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and his body was recovered, President Barack Obama announced on Sunday.


"Justice has been done," Obama said in a dramatic, late-night White House speech announcing the death of the elusive mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the New York and Washington.

Obama said U.S. forces led the operation that killed bin Laden. No Americans were killed in the operation and they took care to avoid civilian casualties, he said.

Militants destroy 27 Nato oil tankers in southern Pakistan after supply route to Afghanistan closed

Suspected militants in southern Pakistan have destroyed at least 27 tankers carrying fuel for foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The incident came the day after the Pakistan government blocked supply routes to its neighbour in an apparent protest at a Nato air raid which killed three Pakistani troops.

The convoy of tankers attacked on Friday is believed to have been heading to a second crossing in the southwest of the country which was still open. It is not yet clear if the vehicles had been diverted because of the border closure.

Attack: At least 27 tankers carrying fuel for foreign troops in Afghanistan were destroyed in southern Pakistan on Friday morning

Border: Pakistan closed the crossing in an apparent protest at a Nato air raid which killed three Pakistani troops earlier this week

Osama bin Laden orders a UK attack Mumbai-style gun blitz in Europe was his plan, say U.S. spy chiefs

Osama Bin Laden personally ordered commando attacks on Britain, U.S. intelligence chiefs believe.

The Al Qaeda leader is said to have sent a directive to his planners several months ago naming the countries and the type of attacks he wanted.

Bin Laden’s direct link to the plot was released by intelligence officials via National Public Radio in the U.S. yesterday.

# New audio tape attacks Muslim governments for spending too much on armies
# Al Qaeda leader called for attacks on UK, Germany and France
# U.S. may also have been a target

Mastermind: Osama bin Laden is said to have been behind the plot to launch attacks on European cities

Osama bin Laden 'is a bought and paid for CIA agent' claims Cuban leader Fidel Castro

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro has claimed that Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is a CIA agent during an interview with a state newspaper. However he did not elaborate further on the claims


Cuban leader Fidel Castro has claimed Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is a bought-and-paid-for CIA agent.

The country's former president has said that the world's most wanted terrorist always popped up when former US President George W Bush needed to scare the world, and argued that recently published documents on the internet prove it.

Castro told state media: 'Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do.

Osama bin Laden is 'alive, well, and hunting falcons in Iran', documentary claims Osama bin Laden is 'alive, well, and hunting falcons in Iran', documentary claims

Hunting falcons in Iran? Osama bin Laden (file photo)

He's not in Iran, he's in Washington: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shown here at UN headquarters in New York yesterday, has sarcastically dismissed the claims

Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living in luxury in Iran, it is claimed.

That is the astonishing suggestion in a documentary to be shown at a film festival in New York.

Bin Laden has been housed in a guarded compound north of Tehran with his wife, several children and grandchildren since 2003, protected by the Iranian regime, according to Feathered Cocaine, an Icelandic film about the illicit multi-million-dollar trade in falcons.

Profile: Hakimullah Mehsud - Leader of Taliban Pakistan directly threathen USA.Alleged killed but survive.

Hakimullah has been reported killed several times in the past year 


Mehsud, left, has vowed to continue war of attrition against the Pakistani military


 Hakimullah was involved in al-Balawi's attack on CIA operatives in Afghanistan


Speculation over the faith of Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, has been widespread since reports emerged that he had been killed in a US drone attack in northwestern Pakistan on January 14.

Mehsud came to prominence in the Taliban movement after a number of devastating raids on the nation's regular army in 2007.

His first-ever mention in an English-language newspaper came when he was appointed as a spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, his predecessor.

Mehsud then gained a reputation for his fighting skills, particularly with the AK-47, and served as Baitullah Mehsud's deputy commander until the leader died in a CIA drone missile strike in August 8, 2009.

Aged about 30 years old and never shy of the media, Hakimullah Mehsud is reportedly an extremely mobile Taliban commander - cropping up in one or other of the tribal areas regularly, especially the Khyber, Kurram and Orakzai tribal agencies.

He is an articulate leader, frequently spelling out his organisation's objectives: to maintain the campaign of attrition against the Pakistani army in order to carve out a Pashtun Taliban emirate in Pakistan.

He is also the Pakistani Taliban's most successful leader to date. In one especially audacious raid, he captured 300 Pakistani soldiers - an attack that local journalists say added greatly to his prestige.

'Lively and dangerous'

Shafiq Ahmad, a reporter for Geo TV in Peshawar, met the leader at the beginning of 2009.

"Hakimullah is a lively man," he said.

"He told us he could give us two gifts. One was the Humvee military vehicle that his fighters had captured during a recent raid in the Khyber pass on an Afghanistan-bound supply convoy for Nato forces.

"The other was a jeep that his men had snatched from UN employees."

Another journalist, the BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan, met Mehsud at the same time and was impressed by a "handsome young man with a pleasant demeanour", even though "danger radiated from him".

"He [would] drive like a man possessed, manoeuvring around razor sharp bends at barely possible speeds ... braking inches short of a several hundred-foot drop."

Mehsud was born near the town of Jandola in South Waziristan around 1980 and went to a small village school in Hangu District.

Mehsud's reputation has only grown with every inaccurate claim by the Pakistani government to have killed him.

On August 10, 2009, Pakistani officials proudly announced his death, saying he had been hit by an unmanned drone attack after intercepting his phone calls.

But just hours later a Reuters news agency journalist reported he had spoken to Mehsud after the attack.

Later, on September 5, Pakistan forces "captured a man who confessed to killing Hakimullah", according to the national newspaper The Daily Times, which also headlined four weeks later that Hakimullah had most probably died on October 1.

The headline was ruined three days later when the press-loving leader met a group of reporters in a bid to end any premature speculation of his demise.

Timeline: Attacks on US targets

New York investigators study evidence after a car bomb attack was foiled in Times Square

US targets have come under attack both at home and abroad in the last 30 years:

April 2010 - Police, tipped off by a street vendor, find and defuse a bomb inside a vehiclein New York's Times Square.

December 2009 - A Nigerian man is seized after trying to blow up US-bound Northwest Flight 253as it approaches Detroit.

His attempt was thwarted by passengers and crew on the plane who extinguished the flames and restrained him.

December 2004 - Fighters storm the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing five local staff and four Saudi security personnel. Three fighters are killed and two captured.

May 2003 - Suicide bombers in vehicles shoot their way into housing compounds for expatriates in Riyadh, the the Saudi capital, as residents sleep. The death toll of 35 includes nine Americans.

September 2001 - Three planes hijacked by al-Qaeda fighters crash into New York's World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagonnear Washington. A fourth hijacked plane crashes in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people are killed in total.

October 2000 - Suicide bombers ram an explosives-laden rubber raft into the US destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen,killing 17 US sailors.

August 1998 - Lorry bombs explode at US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounding thousands.

All but 10 of the deaths are in Nairobi, where the damage is worst.

July 1996 - A bomb explodes at a concert during the Atlanta Olympic Games, killing two people and wounding 110.

June 1996 - A fuel truck bomb kills 19 American soldiers and wounds nearly 400 people at a US military complex in Khobar near the Saudi Arabian oil city of Dhahran.

November 1995 - In Saudi Arabia, a bomb attack on a US-run military centre in Riyadh kills seven people, five of them Americans.

April 1995 - A truck bomb destroys the US federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people.

Two Americans are convicted and one of them is executed.

February 1993 - Six people are killed and more than 1,000 wounded when a bomb in a van explodes under the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.

December 1988 - A Pan American World Airways Boeing 747 crashes on the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people aboardwhen a bomb on board explodes. Eleven people on the ground are also killed.

December 1985 - A hit-squad attacks US and Israeli check-in desks at international airports in Rome and Vienna simultaneously. The attacks claim a total of 20 lives, including four of the fighters.

October 1983 - A suicide car bomb attack by a Muslim group on the headquarters of the US military's peacekeeping force in Lebanon kills 241 US servicemen.

April 1983 - The US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, is destroyed in a suicide car bomb attack. Sixty-three people are killed, among them 17 Americans, including Robert Ames, the CIA's chief Middle East analyst.

November 1979 - Iranian group seizes the US embassy in Tehran, taking 90 hostages. Fifty-two people are held captive for 444 days.

The hostages are released on January 20, 1981, the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration as president.

Osman Bin Laden tape warns of further US attacks

The United States has placed a $50 million bounty on Osama bin Laden


Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a plane on December 25


Tightening up air travel security







Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden claimed the botched Christmas Day bombing of a US airliner and threatened further strikes on US targets, in an audio statement broadcast Sunday on Al-Jazeera television.

"The message that was conveyed through the (attacked) plane of the hero Umar Farouk (Abdulmutallab) is to stress earlier messages delivered to you by the heroes of the 11" September attack on the United States, he said.

"That (message) is, that America should not dream of security until we enjoy it as a reality in Palestine," he added.

Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a Northwest Airline flight over Detroit on Christmas Day but he was thwarted by fellow passengers who pounced on him.

"It is not fair that you (America) enjoy a good life while our brothers in Gaza endure the worst standard of living," bin Laden said.

"Therefore, God willing, our attacks against you will continue as long as you maintain your support to Israel," he warned.

The authenticity of the brief audio statement could not immediately be verified but Al-Jazeera said the voice was that of bin Laden.

Bin Laden, who has a 50-million-dollar bounty on his head and has been in hiding for the past eight years, last made a public statement four months ago when he was quoted on September 25 by SITE Intelligence Group monitoring service as urging European countries to pull their forces out of Afghanistan.

In a similar audio message released in March, Bin Laden accused some Arab leaders of being "complicit" with Israel and the West against Muslims and urged holy war to liberate the Palestinian territories.

Al-Qaeda's franchise in Yemen, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, had claimed responsibility for the plane attack, while Washington accused the group of training Abdulmutallab, who had spent some time in Yemen.

The US administration is putting pressure on Yemen to clamp down on Al-Qaeda militants in the impoverished country, and an international meeting to discuss combating militancy in Yemen will be held on January 27 in London.

The Yemeni government has intensified its campaign against Al-Qaeda, whom it insists it can battle on its own, without any foreign military intervention.

A US grand jury has indicted 23-year-old Abdulmutallab on six counts arising from the attempt to blow up the jet packed packed with 279 passengers and 11 crew on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Michigan district court documents accused him of "carrying a concealed bomb" of high explosives inside his clothing on Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

US intelligence chiefs last Wednesday admitted that they missed a slew of warning signs that should have prevented the attempted attack.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Michael Leiter, head of the National Counter-terrorism Center, made the joint admission during a grilling from the Senate's committee on homeland security and governmental affairs.

Conceding that the system "collectively failed," the two officials said the Abdulmutallab, "should not have stepped on that plane."

Intelligence officials, military analysts and other experts have long believed bin Laden is holed up along the remote mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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