Recently in Al-Qaeda Category

Of course they do. An update on this story. "Sept. 11 Defendant Seeks a Trial, and a Platform," by Scott Shane for the New York Times, November 21:

The five men the Justice Department has said will be charged in the attacks of Sept. 11 intend to plead not guilty so they can express their political and religious views during a trial, the lawyer for one of the men said on Saturday.

The lawyer, Scott L. Fenstermaker, said that during a meeting at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prison on Tuesday, his client, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, expressed the desire for a trial despite his intention to admit his role in the attacks and seek "martyrdom" through execution.

"He acknowledges that he helped plan the 9/11 attacks, and he says he's looking forward to dying," Mr. Fenstermaker said of Mr. Ali. But he said he expected Mr. Ali and his co-defendants to plead not guilty "so they can have a trial and try to get their message out."

Mr. Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief organizer of the 2001 plot. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced on Nov. 13 that Mr. Mohammed, Mr. Ali and three other alleged 9/11 plotters would be tried in federal criminal court. Mr. Fenstermaker said Mr. Ali told him all five men would seek a trial.

The report of Mr. Ali's comments may add to complaints from critics of Mr. Holder's decision who favored military trials in Cuba and have said a criminal trial will provide terrorists with a propaganda platform. Defenders of the move say military commissions, too, would have given the defendants a public showcase for their views.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Fenstermaker, who represents Mr. Ali in a civil case challenging his detention and visited him for three days last week, gave The New York Times a translation from Arabic of a two-page letter written by Mr. Mohammed, Mr. Ali, and a third 9/11 defendant, Walid Muhammad Salih bin Attash to the military court at Guantánamo in September.

The letter was written to say that the men had no objection to a 60-day continuance in military commission proceedings. But the three men used it to condemn the United States' military presence in Muslim countries and its support for Israel, a preview of the kind of thing they might be expected to say in court.

"We were arrested in 2003 and we spent three years moving around between the black sites in the 'Dark Ages' of Bush, then we were transferred to the island of oppression, torture and terror, Guantánamo, in 2006," the letter said. The phrase 'Dark Ages' was in English in the original, the translator noted.

The letter goes on to excoriate President Obama, describing the current era as "the black ages of Barack" and calling him "a liar." The three men offer greetings to Osama bin Laden; his deputy in Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri; and the head of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Since their first appearances in military court at Guantánamo, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 defendants have indicated that they would admit their role in the terrorist plot and seek to be executed. But when they are indicted and brought to New York City for arraignment, as expected sometime in the next two months, they will have the option afforded any criminal defendant of pleading not guilty and standing trial....

Wait a minute. I thought opposition to the jihad was "racism," right? So that means that the anti-jihadists should have no problem with Khalid Kelly, right?

And yet, for some crazy reason I want to protect the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, legal equality, and all the other freedoms that Islamic supremacism and Sharia deny, from Khalid Kelly as much as from Abu Izzadeen. "Irishman wants to kill for Islam," by Nicola Smith in The Sunday Times, November 15 (thanks to Cindy):

An Irish jihadist living in Pakistan's Swat valley says he is preparing to wage war against British and allied troops in Afghanistan.

Khalid Kelly, a former altar boy from the Liberties area of Dublin who used to be known as Terry, told The Sunday Times he is undergoing weapons training in Pakistan's mountainous tribal region in order to fight jihad against the enemies of Islam. His dream is to face a British soldier in combat, although he would "settle" for an American, he said.

"I'm already on the path to jihad. I've already picked up a gun and done target practice to make myself familiar with weapons. The other day I learnt how to use an M-16 [rifle] in five hours," he said. "Next week, inshallah, I could be in Afghanistan fighting a British soldier."

Asked how he would feel about his own three-year-old son becoming a suicide bomber he replied: "I hope he goes to jannah [heaven] before marriageable age." His son, named Osama after Kelly's role model, lives in Britain with his Pakistani mother and two younger brothers. His father reckons Osama will be efficient with weapons by the age of ten.

Kelly says he learnt map-reading in the Scottish mountains, terrain similar to Afghanistan, although he admits he is currently out of shape. He justifies his intentions because of the West's actions against Muslims.

"Why is it such a big deal that I want to do this? Have I not got the right to do the same thing as a guy going into an army recruitment centre?" he said. "As long as we have no security, you will have no security. We'll kill and bomb you as you have killed and bombed our lands."

Ireland is also a legitimate target, according to Kelly. "Ireland has a US embassy so it is open to attack," he stated.

Kelly, 42, is an unconventional jihadist. Having grown up a staunch Catholic and trained as a nurse, he moved to Saudi Arabia in 1996 to work at the King Faisal hospital on a tax-free salary. In 2000 he was introduced to radical Islam by an Afghan when he was serving time in the Al-Ha'ir prison in Riyadh for bootlegging....

He is also unapologetic about his desire to fund, encourage and take part in terrorism. "I always believe Islam is terrorism. We are told to terrorise the enemies of Islam," he said. "The world will become a dangerous place. Everybody had better start embracing Islam or people will start flying planes into buildings again."

"Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies..." -- Koran 8:60

Read it all.

Our pal Raymond Ibrahim reviews Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, edited by Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, over at the Middle East Quarterly:

Al Qaeda in Its Own Words provides the translated writings of four jihadis--Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and Abu Musab Zarqawi. Edited by five people with Kepel, a French sociologist of Islam, as lead editor, it contains a wealth of data that, unfortunately, is presented in a rather confused manner.

The actual words of Al-Qaeda are rarely analyzed or placed in context. Obvious contradictions--such as Al-Qaeda's constant protestations to Americans that its war on them is a response to and derives from U.S. foreign policy while telling Muslims that the jihad must persevere until the globe is governed according to Islamic law--are ignored.

Where objective analysis is wanting, apologetics and hackneyed psychoanalyses predominate: Thus, the "neocons" are akin to Al-Qaeda since "the dual undertakings of 9/11 and the American attack on Iraq ... mirrored each other"; bin Laden--that "nervous, flaccid, eternal adolescent"--opted for a life of jihad due to his "devouring" need for "recognition"; whereas Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri chose jihad due to the "trauma" and "humiliation" they underwent in Egyptian prisons....

Read it all.

Calling for freelance jihad. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. "Counterterrorism: Shifting from 'Who' to 'How,'" by Scott Stewart and Fred Burton for Stratfor, November 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):

In the 11th edition of the online magazine Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battle), which was released to jihadist Web sites last week, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi wrote an article that called for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets. The targets included "any tyrant, intelligence den, prince" or "minister" (referring to the governments in the Muslim world like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen), and "any crusaders whenever you find one of them, like at the airports of the crusader Western countries that participate in the wars against Islam, or their living compounds, trains etc.," (an obvious reference to the United States and Europe and Westerners living in Muslim countries)....