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Ahmed Ressam is an Algerian al-Qaeda member who lived for a time in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He received extensive terrorist training in Afghanistan.
The Buffalo Six is a group of six Yemeni-American friends who pled guilty to charges of providing material support to al-Qaeda in December 2003, based on their having attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan together in the Spring of 2001. The suspects were facing likely convictions with steeper sentences under the "material support law" which requires no proof that a defendant engaged in terrorism, aided or abetted terrorism, or conspired to commit terrorism.
The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, known by the French acronym GICM, is a Salafi jihadist terrorist organisation affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The GICM is one of several North African terrorist franchises spawned in Afghanistan during the tenure of the Taliban. The organisation and its associated members have been linked to major terrorist attacks including the 2003 Casablanca bombings that killed 33 people and wounded more than 100, and the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people and wounded over 2,000. A crackdown against the organisation's numerous cells in Europe is thought to have since significantly damaged the GICM's capabilities.
A sleeper agent is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization not to undertake an immediate mission but to act as a potential asset if activated. Even if unactivated, the "sleeper agent" is still an asset and is still playing an active role in sedition, treason or espionage by virtue of agreeing to act if activated. Sleeper agents are popular plot devices in fiction, particularly in espionage fiction and science fiction. This common use in fiction is directly related to and results from repeated instances of real-life "sleeper agents" participating in spying, espionage, sedition, treason, and assassinations.
Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a social resistance strategy in which small, independent groups, or individuals, challenge an established institution such as a law, economic system, social order, or government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent protest and civil disobedience to vandalism, terrorism, and other violent activity.
The Detroit Sleeper Cell is a group of men of Middle-Eastern descent who the United States Department of Justice believed were plotting an attack on Disneyland.
Richard Convertino is a former federal prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan. Convertino was the lead Assistant U.S. Attorney in the "Detroit Sleeper Cell" prosecutions of Karim Koubriti and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi. However, the U.S. Department of Justice subsequently removed Convertino from his position and asked courts to dismiss those convictions, on the grounds that Convertino had failed to disclose evidence to which the defense was entitled.
Jaber A. Elbaneh, also known as Gabr al-Bana is a Yemeni-American who was labeled a suspected terrorist by the United States after it emerged that he had attended the Al Farouq training camp alongside the Lackawanna Six, and remained on at the camp after they returned home. He fled to Yemen, where he worked as a cab driver before turning himself in to authorities.
The Revolutionary Cells were a self-described "urban guerrilla" organisation, that was active between 1973 and 1995, and was described in the early 1980s as one of Germany's most dangerous leftist terrorist groups by the West German Interior Ministry. According to the office of the German Federal Prosecutor, the Revolutionary Cells claimed responsibility for 186 attacks, of which 40 were committed in West Berlin.
Capital punishment in Michigan was legal from statehood in 1837 until it was abolished in 1847 for murder. Michigan is one of the few U.S. states never to have executed anyone following admission into the Union.
Clandestine human intelligence is intelligence collected from human sources using clandestine espionage methods. These sources consist of people working in a variety of roles within the intelligence community. Examples include the quintessential spy, who collects intelligence; couriers and related personnel, who handle an intelligence organization's (ideally) secure communications; and support personnel, such as access agents, who may arrange the contact between the potential spy and the case officer who recruits them. The recruiter and supervising agent may not necessarily be the same individual. Large espionage networks may be composed of multiple levels of spies, support personnel, and supervisors. Espionage networks are typically organized as a cell system, in which each clandestine operator knows only the people in his own cell, perhaps the external case officer, and an emergency method to contact higher levels if the case officer or cell leader is captured, but has no knowledge of people in other cells. This cellular organization is a form of compartmentalisation, which is an important tactic for controlling access to information, used in order to diminish the risk of discovery of the network or the release of sensitive information.
A clandestine cell system is a method for organizing a group of people such that such people can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization.
Project Thread was a Canadian police operation that resulted in the arrest of 24 immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area in 2003 amidst incorrect allegations they formed a threat to national security, and maintained "suspected ties to al-Qaeda". It was later determined that police had based their operation on "flimsy evidence and stereotypes".
Operation Smokescreen was an American interagency counterterrorist operation to disrupt fundraising by Hezbollah, that took place in early 1995, ending in 2002. The operation involved the Sheriff's Office in Iredell County, North Carolina, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF), Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service (DSS).
David Coleman Headley is an American terrorist of Pakistani origin, and a spy who conspired in plotting the 2008 Mumbai attacks. He is currently serving a 35 year prison sentence in the United States.
El Al Flight 432, was a Boeing 720-058B that was attacked by a squad of four armed Palestinian militants, members of the Lebanese-based militant organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while it was preparing for takeoff at the Zurich International Airport in Kloten on February 18, 1969. The plane was on its way from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv via Zurich, and was due to take off at Zurich International Airport. Several of the crew members were injured during the attack, and one later died of his injuries. The plane was severely damaged. A greater disaster was averted when Mordechai Rahamim, an undercover Israeli security agent stationed on the plane, opened fire at the attackers and killed the terrorist leader. Rahamim and the three surviving attackers were arrested and tried by Swiss authorities. The attackers were found guilty and given prison sentences, while Rahamim was acquitted.
A list of suspects and convictions related to the 2004 Madrid Train Bombings.
Rasmea Yousef Odeh in Arabic رسمية يوسف عودة is a Palestinian Jordanian and former American citizen who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine convicted by Israeli military courts for her role in the murder of two students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe in the 1969 Jerusalem Supermarket bombing. After her release in a prisoner exchange, she immigrated to the United States, became a U.S. citizen, and she served as associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago, Illinois.
On the afternoon of 17 August 2017, 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub drove a van into pedestrians on La Rambla in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain killing 13 people and injuring at least 130 others, one of whom died 10 days later on 27 August. Abouyaaqoub fled the attack on foot, then killed another person in order to steal the victim's car to make his escape.
On October 8, 2020, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the arrests of 13 men suspected of orchestrating a domestic terror plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, and otherwise violently overthrow the state government. The suspects were tied to a paramilitary militia group that called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen, which was founded by two of the suspects. Six of the suspects were charged in federal court, while the other seven were charged with state crimes. A week later, a fourteenth suspect was arrested and charged in state court.
References
- ↑ "Remember this? Terror suspect in Cedar Rapids". The Gazette.
- ^ Cell phony: Government's star witness says he's a scam artist, not a terrorist, Detroit Metro Times , April 16, 2003
- ^ USA v. Karim Kobrouti et al., Findlaw
- ^ Detroit 'Sleeper Cell' Prosecutor Faces Probe: Grand Jury Considering Indictment for Misconduct, Washington Post , November 4, 2005
- ^ Remember This?, Cedar Rapids Gazette , September 11, 2011