UK – A man arrested by anti-terrorist police in Gloucester is suspected of having links with shoe bomber Richard Reid, Sky News has learned.
Security sources told Sky the man had clear links to al Qaeda and said his arrest was very significant.
ISTANBUL, Turkey – A Turkish court on Wednesday charged at least three suspects, two of them women, with involvement in last week’s deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul.
The new arraignments bring to at least 18 the number of people charged as accomplices to the two suicide bombers who on Nov. 20 blew up trucks outside the British Consulate and a British-owned bank.
Six others were earlier charged in the Nov. 15 attacks on two synagogues in Istanbul.
DUSSELDORF – A German court has jailed an al-Qaeda suspect for four years for helping plot terror attacks against Jewish targets.
Shadi Abdellah, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, had told the court he was briefly a bodyguard to al-Qaeda head Osama Bin Laden.
The court in Duesseldorf found him guilty of membership of a terror group and falsifying passports.
He is believed to have received a lesser sentence for giving what prosecutors called valuable testimony.
Abdellah, 27, was one of nine suspected extremists arrested in Germany in April 2002 on suspicion of plotting imminent terror attacks.
The targets were believed to be two Jewish restaurants in Duesseldorf and a Jewish community centre in Berlin.
SAN`A, Yemen – Yemeni security forces are pursuing a second top al-Qaida figure after capturing the alleged mastermind of the terror network’s most dramatic attacks in Yemen, the bombings of the destroyer USS Cole and a French oil tanker, government officials said Wednesday.
Abu Ali al-Kandahari is one of two top al-Qaida leaders in Yemen, according to security reports published in the Yemeni press.
The other, Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, was arrested by security forces that surrounded his hide-out west of the capital, San’a, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday. Four men, believed to be al-Ahdal’s guards, were also arrested.
Al-Kandahari is believed to be hiding in the northern provinces of Marib and Jawf, and security forces are closing in on him, said officials, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
He is reported to have replaced Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi after he was killed by a missile fired from a U.S. drone aircraft last year. Al-Harethi was thought to have been Osama bin Laden’s top deputy in Yemen.