Democratic presidential hopeful and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson released a statement reacting to the asssassination of Pakistani former prime minister and opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, saying "We mourn for Ms. Bhutto. She knew the dangers to her safety. Her death, and the deaths of so many of her supporters is more than just a tragedy. It is a testament to the will of the Pakistani people to see democracy restored. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who died today."

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Richardson stated, "It is in the interests of the US that there be a democratic Pakistan that relentlessly hunts down terrorists. Musharraf has failed,and his attempts to cling to power are destabilizing his country. He must go."

Islamic militants are suspected of using Second Life, the internet virtual world, to hunt for recruits and mimic real-life terrorism.

Police and the intelligence services are concerned that it may have been infiltrated by extremists to proselytise, communicate and transfer money to one another. Radicals may also be responsible for "virtual" terrorist attacks in which buildings depicted on the website are blown up.

Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian government's High Tech Crime Centre, said jihadists may also be using the virtual reality world to master skills such as reconnaissance and surveillance. "We need to start thinking about living, working and protecting two worlds and two realities," he told a security industry conference in Sydney.

Terrorists have also been involved in sham marriages, which are attractive because federal law allows an alien who is the spouse of a U.S. citizen to gain lawful permanent residency. However, federal law prohibits marriage fraud, which is defined as a marriage that is entered solely "for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws." A number of terrorists and terror supporters affiliated with al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used sham marriages. For example, three members of a Hezbollah fundraising cell in Charlotte, North Carolina were involved in sham marriages. Two of the women who married conspirators were actually a lesbian couple who lived together rather than with their "husbands."

Extremists who preach hate and incite violence and murder will be targeted under a tough crackdown launched by the Attorney-General today to bring "radicalisers" before the courts.

Lord Goldsmith, QC, has delivered a warning that those who threatened the freedom to protest or of expression by "inciting violence, murder or terrorism" must "face the full force of the law."

He admitted that too little had been done to tackle the minority of extremists whose actions "can threaten the lives of others and undermine public safety."

An Italian judge who ordered 25 CIA operatives to stand trial June 8 – as well as the large public protest in Vicenza, Italy, last week over the expansion of a US military base – adds momentum and edge to a widening division between the US and Europe over tactics in the international "war on terror" – even if a recent upstart attitude in Europe is not expected to be a relations-wrecker with Washington.

A government-backed Islamic organisation is teaching young Muslims that dying while fighting for the British armed forces is an act of martyrdom.

The British Muslim Forum (BMF) explains to young people that even if a Muslim soldier dies in combat while fighting in an Islamic country such as Afghanistan, he will still be regarded as a martyr and a hero for this country.

This "common sense" approach is objectionable in practice and principle: it is ineffective, as non-Asians can be used for attacks; it is over-broad, including people who, despite appearances, do not belong to racial or religious groups suspected of terrorism, such as Sikhs; the proportion of people involved in terrorism is minute; and it is wrong to stigmatise all by reference to a tiny minority; and targeting causes resentment and disaffection.

"I felt very crushed by the defeat. It was a huge, huge blow." Imran Khan winces as he recalls the failure to secure a private prosecution of the racist thugs who murdered the black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Our leaders would do well to reread "Alice Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll. If they can suppress their vanity for a moment, they should recognize that they have much in common with the White Queen. When Alice declares that "one can't believe impossible things," the queen retorts that "sometimes I have believed six impossible things before breakfast." Politicians either believe impossible things or shut their eyes to unpleasant facts.

Many Muslims in Britain are beginning to doubt the alleged plot to blow up aircraft flying to the United States from Britain.

Two suitcases containing bombs and found on trains in Germany were likely to have formed part of a terrorist plot, German investigators said Friday.

The Federal Government's "war on terrorism" has suffered an embarrassing setback after Joseph Thomas, dubbed Jihad Jack, walked free after an appeal court quashed his conviction.

While British investigators have revealed a trans-Atlantic plot to blow up as many as 12 US-bound planes, their case against British and Pakistani suspects also reveals that the West's war on terror is attracting more and more young Muslims to militant circles, say terrorism experts.

The root cause of terrorism is politics. People who feel offended, abused, or injured by the policies of the major powers but have no armies with which to defend themselves often resort to terror. It's the only weapon available to the weak.

From the page:

-- More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. --

From the page:

--This research paper explores the theory of democratic consolidation and uses a center of gravity analysis to determine strategy recommendations for combating the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and achieving enduring regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq. To date, most of the effort (i.e., military, political, informational, and economic) put forth to combat terrorist organizations with global reach has been aimed at terrorism itself; that is, against the critical capability of conducting violent acts. This paper argues that efforts must be re-channeled and re-focused on the second critical capability in this center of gravity analysis: promotion of violent ideology. Delving deeper into the analysis, the author shows that critical requirements of promoting violent ideology are the continuance of illiteracy and the repression of women. Widespread illiteracy and the repression of women's role in society facilitates terrorists' abilities to find sanct! uaries, recruit new terrorists, promote 'mob' culture, promote intolerance, and ensure the stability of their oppressive regime. As a result, the critical vulnerabilities of radical Islamic terrorists and extremists include literacy programs; gender equality; promotion of tolerance; and exposure to foreign ideas, religions, and cultures. These vulnerabilities should be the focus of U.S. foreign policy and strategy towards Iraq and Afghanistan. --

From the page:

-- Iraq's government criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday for making fun of its U.S.-sponsored democracy at the G8 summit. --

From the page:

-- The Bush administration is sending Congress conflicting signals on how to try foreign terrorism suspects despite earlier calls for Congress to ratify the current system struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, senators said on Thursday. --

From the page:

-- The US today reversed policy when it said all detainees at Guantánamo Bay and all other prisoners in US military custody were entitled to protection under the Geneva conventions. --

From the page:

-- Six French citizens who were once inmates of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre went on trial in Paris yesterday accused of "associating with terrorists". --

From the page:

-- The Nova Scotia-born wife of an accused terrorist has a long history of being outspoken on the Internet and has called for Muslims to take up arms against their oppressors while questioning why certain criminals aren't executed in Canada. --

From the page:

-- The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday. --

From the page:

-- "All the cliches that we have about the poor, the radical upbringing at home, they're just blown out of the window. There is no ultimate type of characteristic, there is no cliched person who would become a terrorist," said Sebestyen Gorka, professor of terrorism studies at the George C. Marshall Center in Germany. --

From the page:

-- The level of "sinister" terrorist activity in Britain is increasing as the anniversary of last year's July 7 attacks on London approaches, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad has warned. --

From the page:

-- Two of last week's biggest stories -- the arrest of seven Florida men on a conspiracy bombing plot and the government's probe into the records of a banking group called SWIFT -- were covered by the media in very different ways. --

From the page:

-- Somalia's newly powerful sharia courts have appointed a leading Islamist on Washington's list of most wanted terrorists as the head of their new parliament, officials said on Sunday. --

From the page:

-- A parliamentary probe was due to hear testimony on Thursday from a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who alleges he was kidnapped by the CIA and held for five months in an Afghan jail. --

-- British agents are operating in the United States to trace links with Islamic extremists from England who recruit Muslims to fight for terrorist groups abroad.

The British-led investigation has played a part in identifying a number of US-based terrorists and helped the authorities in Washington to break up an al-Qaeda cell operating in Falls Church, Virginia.

The agents are particularly keen to discover if the visitors included Mohammad Sidique Khan, leader of the July 7 suicide bombers, who is alleged to have travelled to America's East Coast to meet fellow militants and stage a series of attacks on synagogues.

Khan was considered such a threat that he was banned from returning to America two years before the attack on London, according to a book written by a US intelligence specialist.

The disclosure, made by the award-winning author Ron Suskind in an extract from The One Percent Doctrine in The Times yesterday, led to calls for a full public inquiry into intelligence lapses before the attacks on July 7 which killed 52 people in London.

Intelligence sources in America insist that the man they were alerted to was Khan.

However, Tony Blair's spokesman said the claims would not lead to any further investigation by the Intelligence and Security Committee, which last month cleared MI5 of serious errors, or any other form of inquiry. "The (Security and Intelligence) Committee's conclusion is that there was not an intelligence failure," he said.

The Conservatives have called for an independent inquiry into the July 7 bombings, while the Liberal Democrats and victims' relatives want a full public inquiry.

Neither the FBI nor police would comment on the investigations into Khan's alleged visits to the US in 2002, but, in Falls Church yesterday, residents blamed "foreign agitators" for encouraging young men from the city's Muslim community to join extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda.

In the Falls Plaza shopping mall, most preferred to chat about their historic city's latest civic award for its floral displays and not its reputation as the jihad capital of America.

Over the past few months, 11 men who regularly attended the same Islamic Centre in Falls Church have been convicted of terrorism charges. Seven reportedly went to training camps in Pakistan, including one used by Khan.

Their trials exposed a network stretching from this placid commuter belt serving the US capital ten miles away, passing through British cities and on to jihadi camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A twelfth man from this city of barely 11,000 residents, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was jailed for 30 years in March for plotting to assassinate President Bush and being a member of al-Qaeda. FBI investigators claim in The One Percent Doctrine that Abu Ali, 24, was in regular e-mail contact with Khan.

The latest trial of the "Virginia 11" led to a junior school teacher, Ali Asad Chandia, being convicted on June 6 for giving aid to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which is banned in both the US and Britain. A number of Scotland Yard officers and British intelligence agents gave evidence. --

-- The UK has helped the US fly terror suspects to secret detention camps, says a report from Europe's leading human rights watchdog.

A report for the Council of Europe by Swiss MP Dick Marty says Prestwick Airport in Scotland was a stop-off point for the CIA flights.

And it says British intelligence gave information used to mistreat a former UK resident held in Guantanamo Bay.

UK ministers have repeatedly denied being involved in torture flights.

The report concludes that a "spider's web" of flights criss-crossed Europe, and included secret jails in Poland and Romania. Both countries had previously denied the claims. --

-- Like a hunter using a duck call, Shannen Rossmiller invites the online attentions of would-be terrorists by adorning her e-mail with video clips of Westerners getting their heads cut off.

"They get pumped up when they see beheadings. For them, it's like rock videos," Rossmiller said. "I always give the appearance that I am one of them."

Appearances deceive. At her Montana high school, Rossmiller was a cheerleader -- a farm girl whose slight frame meant she was the one hoisted to the top of the human pyramid. Now 35, she is a mother of three, a part-time paralegal and a $23,000-a-year municipal court judge in a town north of here.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she has found herself an unpaid night job. She uses the Internet to find terrorism suspects, she said, hunting for them while her family sleeps, spending the hours between 3 a.m. and dawn at her home computer. Her husband, Randy, a wireless network technician, keeps eight computers and two broadband systems working in their house. --

-- The interior minister has dealt a blow to hopes of peace with the Basque separatist organisation ETA by saying the government is still not convinced the terrorists want to give up the armed struggle.

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba admitted that the government has not reached the conclusion that ETA wants to "put an end to the violence".

But he said that there was a "solid basis" for keeping the peace process with ETA alive.

ETA announced a permanent ceasefire in March, raising hopes the terrorist organisation had given up violence for good after 38 years of attacks in pursuit of a separate Basque state. --

-- US President George W Bush has moved to quell a firestorm over his Government's secret collection of telephone records of tens of millions of private citizens, insisting they were all needed to "target Al Qaeda".

But the latest controversy has already spawned a major lawsuit against Verizon, one of the telephone companies involved, and members of Congress expressed unease over what they see as gradual erosion of privacy rights.

The lawsuit, filed in New York on Friday, seeks $US5 billion from Verizon in damages, alleging the company has broken the law by agreeing to provide the National Security Agency with telephone records of its clients.

The plaintiffs argue phone companies should not cooperate with the NSA that specialises in electronic espionage without a proper court warrant based on well-grounded "suspicion of terrorist activity or other criminal activity". --

-- The US secretary of state has defended the invasion of Iraq and hinted that America will not release prisoners from Guantanamo Bay until it is certain they pose no threat.

"I know we have made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure," Condoleezza Rice told a gathering of 200 foreign policy experts, local officials and journalists organised by the Chatham House foreign policy institute in England on Friday. --

-- A court has convicted nine Muslims of belonging to a terrorist group and planning to attack Dutch politicians.

Two men in the so-called Hofstad group were jailed for 15 and 13 years for using a hand grenade against police.

The court did not pass a jail term on the group's leader, Mohammed Bouyeri, as he is already serving life in prison for murdering film-maker Theo van Gogh.

The trial has been treated as a test of the Netherlands' tough new anti-terror legislation. --