Counterterrorism Blog

The NEFA Foundation has released two new reports on its website. First, a report by NEFA Senior Investigator Claudio Franco and NEFA Director of Analysis and Research Ronald Sandee titled "Developments in the Jihadi Resurgence in Pakistan: January 2008." The report serves as a comprehensive study of events across various turbulent regions of Pakistan during the month of January, including a spate of recent suicide bombing attacks and the U.S. airstrike in Mir Ali that killed senior Al-Qaida commander Abu al-Laith al-Liby. As revealed in Appendix A to the report, according to NEFA sources inside Pakistan, the other Al-Qaida operatives killed in the Mir Ali strike reportedly included Abu al-Laith's former deputy "Abu Suhail", "Hamza al-Somali" (of Australian or US nationality), Adam Gadahn (a.k.a. Azzam al-Amriki), "Abu Ubayda Tawari Rakhis al-Mutairi" (of Kuwaiti nationality), "Abu Adil al-Kuwaiti" (of Kuwaiti nationality), and at least three Uzbek nationals--though, it should be noted that the death of the American Gadahn has not yet been officially confirmed. The report includes two separate appendixes focused on specific events in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) (all of which can be accessed via the NEFA "Special Reports" sub-section).

Separately, NEFA has also now made available my expert witness report filed on behalf of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut in U.S. v. Hassan Abu-Jihaad. On March 5, a jury in New Haven found Abu-Jihaad guilty of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense information. During the trial, federal prosecutors detailed how Abu-Jihaad--a former U.S. Navy signalman--had secretly passed along details regarding the planned movements of U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf to an Al-Qaida website known as "Azzam Publications." The information was later recovered by British authorities during a raid of the London home of Babar Ahmad, the former administrator in charge of Azzam Publications.