NEW YORK – The Federal Bureau of Investigation is forming a squad to assist prosecutors in the upcoming New York trials of Sept. 11 suspects.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Tuesday the squad will include agents, analysts and other professional support staff with experience working on major trials and investigations.

He says the squad will function as a task force with members from the New York City Police Department, Port Authority Police Department, Fire Department and several other agencies.

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that self-declared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four accused henchmen will be tried in federal court in lower Manhattan.

AP, 15 December 2009

ATLANTA – Two Georgia men were each sentenced to more than 10 years in prison Monday for plotting to aid terrorists by sending homemade videos of Washington landmarks overseas and traveling abroad to try to turn their anti-American rhetoric into action.

Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 23, was sentenced to 17 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of four terror-related charges in August. He faced a maximum sentence of as many as 60 years behind bars.

CHICAGO – A Chicago man accused of planning a terrorist attack against a Danish newspaper knew in advance about a plot to attack Mumbai and offered congratulations to the killers afterward, federal prosecutors charged Monday.

In papers filed in federal court in Chicago, prosecutors said Tahawwur Hussain Rana learned an attack was about to happen while traveling in Dubai days before the Nov. 26, 2008, attack in India that left 166 people dead.

PHOENIX – An Arizona man facing prison time for lying to authorities in a terrorism-funding investigation could have been a big help to authorities because of his past involvement with a Muslim charity that aided Hamas, an FBI agent testified Friday.

Other testimony, from relatives and other supporters, portrayed Akram Musa Abdallah as a community pillar and family leader who worked to help people and build bridges between faiths.

Abdallah, a 55-year-old Mesa resident, was to have been sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court on his guilty plea to one count of making a false statement during 2007 interviews with FBI agents concerning his mid-1990s fundraising for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered an independent review on Tuesday of how the agency handled information that the military psychiatrist charged in the Fort Hood shooting had communicated with an anti-American cleric in Yemen.

Mueller asked William Webster, the former head of the FBI and CIA as well as a former judge, to conduct the review of the domestic law enforcement agency's actions and policies before the November 5 shooting that killed 13 people.

Questions have been raised about the handling of e-mails the accused shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, sent to the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been sympathetic to al Qaeda. They were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies and examined by U.S. joint terrorism task forces.

Chicago: US prosecutors have filed fresh charges against suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley in connection with last year's deadly attacks in Mumbai that took the lives of 166 people.

Headley, an American citizen of Pakistani origin already accused of plotting to murder a Danish newspaper cartoonist, was cited in charges unsealed Monday morning in Chicago with conspiracy in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

Headley, whose birth name was Daood Gilani, is accused of scoping out locations for the attacks in India. He'd been travelling throughout India last year, conducting surveillance in anticipation of the coordinated bombings that also left hundreds injured, federal authorities said.

 By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD – The FBI is sending a team to Pakistan and India as part of an inquiry into a Chicago man accused of plotting against a Danish newspaper and sizing up targets ahead of last year's deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India's financial capital.

Pakistan's role in alleged plots spanning three countries has increasingly come under scrutiny as new details emerge about the case and suspect David Coleman Headley's links to the country.

Headley, 49, an American of Pakistani descent, and Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana, 48, a Pakistani-born Canadian national, were charged in October with conspiring to attack the Jyllands Posten newspaper in Denmark. The newspaper had published 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 that set off protests in parts of the Muslim world.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. prosecutor said on Thursday the government may seek new charges against an Afghan-born man who has pleaded not guilty to plotting a bombing attack in the United States.

Prosecutors revealed their intentions in federal court during a hearing in the case of Najibullah Zazi, 24, who was indicted by a grand jury in September on a charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

Zazi, a former coffee vendor from New York who had moved to Colorado, is suspected of attempting to create and detonate a bomb in New York City on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

WEST COVINA, Calif. – A judge on Thursday lifted a seal on court records and transcripts that a Southern California man says will prove he was an informant for the FBI.

Craig Monteilh claims he has not been fully paid by the FBI for spying on mosques — an activity that angered the Muslim community and brought accusations that worshippers and clerics were being targeted instead of possible terrorists.

Superior Court Judge Carol Williams Elswick ordered the unsealing of 2007 court records related to a theft case against Monteilh, 47, a fitness consultant from Irvine.

Monteilh said the records include testimony from an FBI agent confirming he worked with the agency as an informant.

The Arab American News

By Khalil AlHajal
Saturday, 11.21.2009, 02:26am

Several major rights advocacy organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Justice Department on Monday calling for an investigation into potential civil rights violations commiteed during the Oct. 28 FBI raid conducted in Dearborn in which a religious leader was killed.

Imam Luqman Abdullah, leader of the Detroit-based Masjid Al-Haqq made up primarily of African Americans, was killed during a raid in a Dearborn warehouse where undercover agents lured members of the group in a sting operation involving stolen goods. The groups who signed the letter included the Council of American-Islamic Relations—Michigan, The American Civil Liberties Union—Michigan, the National Lawyers Guild, the Congress of Arab American Organizations, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice and The Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice.

Four people, including one Dearborn man, were charged on Nov. 23 with transporting stolen goods as part of an alleged weapons procurement ring.

A federal terrorism task force in Pennsylvania announced the arrests, according to a Justice Department release.