January 2012—South Korea—Liu Qiang, a Chinese citizen, conducted an arson attack at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. He had conducted an arson attack on Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine for Japan’s World War II dead in December 2011. He served ten months in a South Korean prison for the embassy attack. A Seoul court rejected a prosecution effort to extradite him to Tokyo. On January 4, 2013, he flew home to China. 12019901
January 2012—Azerbaijan—The Ministry of National Security announced it had stopped “preparations” by Iran-backed terrorists to attack “foreign public figures in Baku,” including Israeli Ambassador Michael Lotem, a rabbi, and a teacher at a local Jewish school. The ministry said the Iranians had budgeted $150,000 for the attack and that by living in Iran, the terrorists’ leader could meet “with Iranian special services.”
January 2012—United States—The Ohio-based King Hearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development disbanded. Six years earlier, the U.S. Treasury Department had ordered U.S. banks to freeze the group’s assets because it suspected that the group was funding Hamas.
January 2012—Algeria—The Algerian Direction de la Sécurité Interieure arrested three members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb who were planning suicide attacks against U.S. and European ships in the western Mediterranean. The trio had purchased a boat that they planned to pack with explosives.
January 1, 2012—United States—At 8:44 p.m., a Molotov cocktail exploded at the main entrance of the Imam al-Khoei Foundation’s mosque in Queens, New York, while about eighty worshipers were in the building. A second firebomb was thrown at the sign for the center’s school. Molotov cocktails went off at a convenience store and three homes that evening. Structural damage was minimal. The foundation has branches around the world, promoting development, human rights, and minority rights as a consultant to the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
Ray Lazier Lengend, 40, a Queens resident of Guyanese descent, said he threw the firebombs in part because he was not permitted to use the mosque’s bathrooms. Police found him after tracking a stolen car with Virginia license plates that was spotted at two sites. He was arrested on January 3 and charged with one count of arson as a hate crime, four counts of arson, and five counts of criminal possession of a weapon. He was given a psychiatric examination. Authorities said he was believed to have been kicked out of the store on December 27 for stealing milk and coffee in a glass bottle.
January 4, 2012—Ukraine—On February 27, 2012, Russian Channel One television reported that Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services had foiled a plot to assassinate Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Odessa. Authorities learned of the plot after a bomb went off on January 4 inside an Odessa apartment, killing Ruslan Madayev, 26. Adam Osmayev, 31, and Ilya Pyanzin, 28, a Kazakh citizen, survived. Several of the inhabitants had been sent by Doku Umarov, Chechen terrorist leader. Pyanzin said the group planned to first attack strategic sites in Moscow, then attack Putin. Pyanzin had traveled to the Ukraine from the Arab Emirates via Turkey. Osmayev, who lived in London for several years, said the group had surveilled Moscow routes taken by Putin’s drivers. The group was to conduct the attack in the days leading up to the March 4 presidential elections. The bomb would go off on Kutuzovsky Prospect, a wide avenue. Opposition party leaders suggested the story was a hoax.
January 5, 2012—Pakistan—Pakistani Taliban gunmen kidnapped Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, a British doctor working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), while on his way home from work. On April 29, 2012, Dale’s beheaded body, wrapped in plastic, was found by the roadside in Quetta. Dale’s name was written with black marker on the white plastic bag. The Taliban said a ransom had not been paid. A doctor said he had been killed twelve hours before being found; a sharp knife had been used to cut his head off. He had worked for the ICRC and the British Red Cross in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. He had been managing a health program for Baluchistan for the past year. 12010501
January 5, 2012—United States—A federal court in the District of Columbia sentenced Pakistani citizen Irfan ul-Haq, 37, to four years in prison for conspiring to smuggle a member of the Pakistani Taliban into the United States. He and two other Pakistanis had pleaded guilty in September 2010 to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Qasim Ali, 32, and Zahid Yousaf, 43, in December 2010 were sentenced to three years in prison as part of their plea bargains. They were to return to Pakistan after their release. Federal agents ran a sting operation in Ecuador against them in January 2011, sending informants to ask them to smuggle the individual to the United States. The individual would journey from Pakistan to Dubai, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, then on to the United States. One of the smugglers said the normal rate for such a job was between $50,000 and $60,000. The trio was arrested in Miami on March 13, 2011, after accepting partial payment and obtaining a fake Pakistani passport.
January 5, 2012—Iraq—A suicide bomber set off his explosives near Shi’ite pilgrims near Nasiriyah, killing forty-eight and wounding eighty-one. An Iraqi security officer tried to stop him by wrapping his arms around him. The Sunni officer was killed in the blast and became a local hero. On February 6, 2012, the al Qaeda affiliate Islamic State of Iraq said, “Sunni heroes of heroes” killed “nonbelievers and Iranian agents” in the attack.
January 6, 2012—Syria—A suicide bomber set off his explosive device at a busy intersection in the center Midan neighborhood of Damascus, when many people were heading to Friday prayers. The blast killed twenty-six, including eleven police officers, and wounded sixty-three. The government blamed terrorists; the opposition blamed the government. Col. Malik Kurdi, an assistant commander of the Free Syrian Army opposition group, denied involvement.
January 6, 2012—United States—Authorities arrested Craig Benedict Baxam, 24, of Laurel, Maryland, at Baltimore-Washington International Airport as he returned to the United States after trying to get to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. He secretly converted to Islam in July, days before leaving the army. He was charged with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist group. He left the United States on December 20 on a flight to Kenya, en route to Somalia. He was arrested by the Kenyans on a bus to Garissa on December 23. The FBI interviewed him twice in Kenya. He had served in Baghdad and South Korea, and had been trained in cryptology and intelligence. He faced fifteen years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
January 6, 2012—Kenya—The Kenya-based Muslim Youth Center claimed that its leader had been named to represent al-Shabaab in Kenya. In 2011, the UN said the group had recruited, funded, and run training and orientation events for al-Shabaab. Amiir Ahmad Iman Ali, alias Abdul Fatah of Kismayo, issued a fifty-minute video lecture produced by al-Kataib, al-Shabaab’s media foundation. He noted wars in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Chechnya. Ali said, “If you are unable to reach the land of jihad … then raise your sword against the enemy that is closest to you. Jihad should be now waged inside Kenya, which is legally a war zone. You don’t have to get permission from your parents.” In a separate statement, he said, “The Muslim lands will once again rule with Shari’ah and your kufr democracy will be dumped in the sewage.” Ali, a Kenyan, had been based in Somalia since 2009. He was believed to command between two hundred and five hundred fighters. He speaks Swahili, English, Arabic, and Somali.
January 6, 2012—Georgia—Police arrested a man in Tbilisi and confiscated thirty-six vials of cesium–135, a radioactive isotope. He claimed he obtained the material in Abkhazia.
January 7, 2012—United States—The FBI arrested Sami Osmakac, 25, a naturalized American born in Kosovo who was planning on conducting a car bombing, hostage-taking, and suicide bombing in the Tampa, Florida, area. The Florida resident intended to use explosives and weapons “to create mayhem” in Tampa, but the Muslim community tipped off authorities, who conducted a sting operation. On January 9, he was charged with one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
Osmakac recorded a martyrdom video in which he said he would “pay back for wrongs he felt were done to Muslims,” according to prosecutors. He had posted anti–Jewish and anti–Christian videos on the Internet. The FBI was tipped off in September 2011 that the resident of Pinellas Park, Florida, “asked for al Qaeda flags.” He went on to discuss potential targets, and asked for an informant’s assistance in obtaining guns and explosives. An undercover FBI employee met him on December 21, when Osmakac said he wanted an AK-47-style machine gun, Uzi submachine guns, high capacity magazines, grenades, and an explosive belt. Prosecutors said he gave the FBI employee a $500 down payment. The FBI inerted the weapons, which were to be used in night clubs in the Ybor City area of Tampa, the operations center of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Ybor City, a business in the South Tampa area, and an Irish bar in south Tampa—all places where there would be large crowds. In a follow-up hostage-taking, he planned to demand prison release, then set off an explosive belt. He faced life in prison.
Osmakac was born in Lubizde, near the Prokletije Mountains of Kosovo on the Albania border. His family, followers of a Sufi sect, immigrated to the United States when he was 13. Locals said he was a loner in high school who rapped about bombs and killing. Osmakac was jailed for head-butting a Christian preacher outside a Lady Gaga concert. He had also physically threatened a Tampa area activist. He had tried to travel to Saudi Arabia to study Islam but had visa problems and only made it to Turkey.
January 7, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan soldier shot to death a member of NATO.
January 10, 2012—Pakistan—A bomb exploded at a Jamrud bus station, killing thirty people and injuring dozens in what was believed to be an attack on a pro-government militia. Some members of the Zakakhel tribe were among those waiting in the passenger pickup area. At least six tribal police officers were killed. The Pakistani Taliban was suspected.
January 10, 2012—Pakistan—Aslam Awan, alias Abdullah Khorasani, 29, a Pakistani from Abbottabad who was a senior operations organizer for al Qaeda, was killed in a drone strike at a compound near Miran Shah in North Waziristan. He was close to the group’s chief of external operations. He had lived for several years in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester, United Kingdom. He arrived in the United Kingdom in 2002 on a student visa, moving into an apartment with Abdul Rahman, a school friend from Pakistan. They were joined by Murad Iqbal, a Pakistani from Karachi. The trio recruited other youths in Manchester, going camping in the Lake District in March 2006 and June 23, 2006, and simulating suicide bombing exercises. Awan went to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area in late 2006. He wrote to Rahman to have him and his colleagues join him. He noted terrorist training and participation in fighting. One of the recruits was Omar Arshad, who had dropped out of pharmacy studies at Manchester University and went missing. In January 2007, Arshad’s father had tracked him down and obtained a British control order, which limited his movements and communications. The group planned to help him escape. He shaved his beard, a colleague drove him to Birmingham Airport, and he flew to Iran then Lahore, Pakistan, the next day on a ticket Rahman bought for him. U.K. authorities believed Arshad joined militants in Pakistan. Iqbal went to the border region to join his friends.
In November 2007, Rahman pleaded guilty to dissemination of terrorist literature and aiding and abetting a breach of a control order. Rahman had arrived in the United Kingdom from the Pakistan border area to study biotechnology at Abertay University in Dundee, United Kingdom, but quit on his first day and moved to Manchester, working as a mobile phone salesman. The Cheetham Hill team was linked to Rangzieb Ahmed, a senior al Qaeda facilitator in Manchester who was arrested in Pakistan and convicted in the United Kingdom in 2008 of directing terrorism.
January 11, 2012—Iran—A bomb magnetically attached by a passing motorcyclist to a Peugeot 405 killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, a chemical engineer at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, and his bodyguard. Roshan was deputy director of the facility. Tehran blamed Israel for the rush-hour attack. No one claimed credit for the fourth attack on an Iranian nuclear scientist in the past two years. On February 9, 2012, MSN.com said Iranian officials claimed that Mossad had financed, trained, and armed the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a group designated as terrorists by the United States, to carry out attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists.
January 11, 2012—Kenya—Al-Shabaab took several hostages in an attack on Gerille, killing six people, including three police officers, a civilian servant, and a primary-school teacher. At least four government officials were missing.
January 12, 2012—Pakistan—The Associated Press said that intercepted militant radio communications suggested that Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in an air strike in North Waziristan.
January 14, 2012—Iraq—A suicide bomber killed 53 Shi’ite pilgrims, including 3 children, and wounded 137 near Basra. He was wearing a military uniform. On February 6, 2012, the al Qaeda affiliate Islamic State of Iraq said, “Sunni heroes of heroes” killed “nonbelievers and Iranian agents” in the attack.
January 15, 2012—Yemen—Armed Obeyid Marib tribesmen kidnapped a 34-year-old Norwegian man working for the UN in Sana’a, then transferred him to central Marib Province, 110 miles east. The group demanded the release of a fellow tribesman arrested for killing four soldiers guarding oil tankers. 12011501
January 15, 2012—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula announced it had murdered two soldiers who had been kidnapped two months earlier near Zinjibar, capital of Abyan Province. The bodies were found in southern Yemen.
January 16, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram gunmen shot and killed three Chadians in Kamaturu in Yobe State. 12011601
January 16, 2012—Thailand—Thai police detained Hussein Atris (variant Atris Hussein), a former hairdresser born in Lebanon, who held a Swedish passport and was alleged to have links to Hizballah. He led police to a warehouse containing more than 8,800 pounds of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate. Police said he had distilled the materials into crystal form, one step toward making a bomb. Police charged Atris Hussein after finding “initial chemical materials that could produce bombs.” Authorities said he wanted to attack popular Western tourist spots in Bangkok. Police said they had foiled a bombing but that another suspect was at large.
January 17, 2012—Ethiopia—Gunmen from Eritrea attacked a group of twenty-two European tourists before dawn in the volcanic northern Afar region, killing five—including two Germans, two Hungarians, and an Austrian—and seriously hurting two Belgians before kidnapping two Ethiopians and two Germans. Two Italians escaped unharmed. The tourists were traveling with the Addis Ababa-based Green Land Tours and Travel, according to local observers. The Eritrean government denied involvement. In February, a rebel group in the Afar region claimed it had freed the two Germans, although by mid–April, there had been no official confirmation of the release. 12011701
January 19, 2012—Somalia—A bomb went off at a police checkpoint to a refugee camp near Mogadishu, killing two Somali policemen and four refugees.
January 19, 2012—Somalia—A hand grenade was thrown at a UN compound in Mogadishu, causing no casualties. 12011901
January 19, 2012—Northern Ireland—Irish Republican Army dissidents set off two bombs within ten minutes in Londonderry during the night, causing no injuries. Police had evacuated the areas after received phoned warnings. One bomb went off outside Londonderry’s main tourist office while seventy-five residents of a nursing home were being evacuated 25 yards away. A bomb was hidden in a gym bag.
January 19, 2012—Pakistan—Gunmen broke into a home in Multan and kidnapped Italian citizen Giovanni Lo Porto and a German man who worked for Welthungerhilfe, an international aid group based in Bonn. The kidnappers overpowered the private guard who watched over the rented house. The gunmen threw the duo into a car and sped away. The group was providing aid to victims of the 2010 floods and had returned after a visit to nearby Kot Addu town. No one claimed credit. It was unclear whether the Taliban or criminals were responsible. 12011902
January 20, 2012—India—Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie, 64, called off his visit to the Jaipur Literature Festival after learning that he was a target for assassination by Muslim protestors. Muslim clerics and lawmakers had called for him to be banned from entering India. Rushdie said that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld had been hired to kill him. On January 24, he was prevented from speaking to the convention via video link when William Dalrymple, the event’s organizer, received a death threat and police warned of likely violent protests.
January 20, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram conducted a series of bombings and gun attacks on police stations, immigration offices, and the local headquarters of the secret police in Kano, killing 186 people, including 150 civilians, 29 police officers, 3 secret police officers, 2 immigration officers, and a customs officer. A suicide car bomber set off explosives outside a regional police headquarters, freeing many Boko Haram prisoners. Spokesman Abul Qaqa took credit for the group, saying the state government had refused to release the prisoners. Authorities announced on January 23 that they had discovered ten unexploded car bombs in Kano.
January 20, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen in the Niger Delta kidnapped William Gregory, 50, a U.S. citizen working for Marubeni Corporation, in the southeastern town of Warri. The group killed his driver and demanded a ransom. He was released on January 27. Marubeni said it had not paid a ransom. 12012001
January 20, 2012—Afghanistan—Abdul Basir, an Afghan soldier belonging to the 201 Army Corps, turned his gun on allied forces, killing five French soldiers and wounding fourteen in Kapisa Province, east of Kabul, on a joint French-Afghan base. On July 17, 2012, an Afghan military court sentenced the gunman to death. 12072002
January 21, 2012—Somalia—Gunmen surrounded the car of Michael Scott Moore, a German American journalist who had just left the airport after dropping off an Indian colleague, threw him into another vehicle, and kidnapped him in the northern town of Galkayo, Adado, on the border between Puntland and Galmudug. The gunmen severely beat his Somali companion. The American engineer came to Somalia to look into building a deep water port in the town of Hobyo, a coastal pirate base. Local officials said the attackers might have been his guards who had links to pirates. They were believed to have driven to Hobyo. The group moved him at least three times within twenty-four hours and on January 26 threatened to kill him after the U.S. Navy SEALs rescued an American and a Danish hostage the previous night. Hassan Abdi, a pirate connected to the kidnappers, said, “If they try again, we will all die together … It’s difficult to hold U.S. hostages, cause it’s a game of chance: die or get huge money. But we shall stick with our plans and will never release him until we get a ransom.” 12012101
January 21, 2012—Sudan—A gunman shot a UN–African Union peacekeeper and wounded three others in an ambush on a patrol in eastern Darfur. 12012102
January 21, 2012—United States—The FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces arrested Jamshid Muhtorov, 35, an Uzbek refugee living in Aurora, Colorado, at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on charges that he planned to travel overseas to fight for a terrorist group. There was no evidence that he was plotting attacks in the United States. Muhtorov was charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union in Uzbekistan. He was detained before boarding a flight to Istanbul, Turkey. Judge Morton Denlow in Chicago ordered him transferred to Denver. Neighbors said Muhtorov worked as a truck driver. The FBI said intercepted phone calls with his wife indicated that they argued about his plans. He told his daughter he would never see her again, but “if she was a good Muslim girl, he will see her in heaven.” He faced fifteen years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He was represented by a court-appointed attorney. In his February two court appearance in Denver, he denied the allegations, saying, “I swear to Allah I never did anything like that.”
January 22, 2012—United States—Authorities arrested North Carolina teacher Nevine Aly Elsheikh and Shkumbin Sherifi on charges of plotting to behead three witnesses who testified against Shkumbin’s brother, Hysen Sherifi, who on January 13 was sentenced to forty-five years in prison for conspiracy to kill people overseas and kill a federal officer. Elsheikh was scheduled to appear in federal court on February 3 on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Elshiekh was on leave as director of special education at the Sterling Montessori Academy in Morrisville, North Carolina. She was represented by attorney Charles Swift.
Hysen Sherifi is a native of Kosovo and a U.S. legal permanent resident in North Carolina. Prosecutors quoted FBI informants as saying that Hysen wanted to hire someone to kill the witnesses and to attack an inmate who “defrauded” him out of money concerning his federal charges. He wanted photos of their corpses as proof. Prosecutors said Elsheikh had visited him in a North Carolina jail in December 2011, when she learned of his plans. In January 2012, she handed $750 to an informant to kill one witness. Shkumbin Sherifi gave the same informant the other $4,250.
January 24, 2012—Somalia—Al-Shabaab set off a truck bomb at an Ethiopian military base in Beledweyne. The group claimed thirty-three Ethiopian troops were killed.
January 26, 2012—Afghanistan—A suicide car bomber killed three people and wounded thirty-one outside the gates of a NATO-sponsored Provincial Reconstruction Team aid office in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand Province. The bomber appeared to be targeting vehicles that held foreigners. It was not clear whether foreigners were among the casualties. 12012601
January 26, 2012—United States—The Department of State designated a trio as terrorists for targeting Americans overseas. Brothers Yassin Chouka and Monir Chouka were involved in 2010 and 2011 attacks on civilians in Afghanistan. State said they were “fighters, recruiters, facilitators and propagandists for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.” Mevlu Kar had tried to set up an al Qaeda branch in Lebanon where he was a wanted man and subject of an Interpol Red Notice. State said he was involved in a 2007 bomb plot against U.S. military installations in Germany to be conducted by the Islamic Jihad Union. Their U.S.-based financial assets were frozen.
January 27, 2012—Nigeria—Al Qaeda kidnapped German engineer Edgar Fritz Raupach in Kano. Raupach worked for Dantata and Sawoe Construction Co., Ltd. He appeared in an online video in March, wearing a tank top and guarded by two rifle-toting masked terrorists. He said in German and English, “I beg my government to save my life. They will kill me here.” The group demanded the release of Umm Sayf Allah al-Ansariya, also known as Filiz Gelowicz, who had been sentenced in March 2011 to thirty months in prison on five counts of supporting a terrorist organization and six counts of recruiting for a terrorist group. Prosecutors said she had collected money and posted Internet text and video for al Qaeda, the Islamic Jihad Union, and the German Taliban Mujahideen. Her husband was arrested in 2007 as the leader of the Sauerland Group, a German terrorist organization. In April 2012, the Berliner Kammergericht ordered her released after she served two thirds of her sentence. He attorney, Mutlu Gunal, said she did not want to be released as part of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) demands.
Raupach’s kidnappers stabbed him to death when Nigerian soldiers attacked their hideout on May 31. The soldiers killed all four kidnappers, then found his body.
It was believed to be the first AQIM operation on Nigerian soil.
On June 11, 2012, AQIM blamed the German government for Raupach’s death, even though Berlin had complied with their demand for Gelowicz’s release. The group posted a note on the Internet, saying, “Your government gave the green light for the operation” to rescue Raupach. AQIM warned European governments to not be “dealing in foolishness” during hostage negotiations. A German official told the press that the government was not aware beforehand that Nigerian troops were going to attack the hideout and that the troops were trying to arrest terrorists and did not know that Raupach was being held at that location. 12012701
January 27, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau released a forty-five-minute Hausa-language tape in which he threatened to kill more security personnel and kidnap their families. He claimed U.S. President Barack Obama was conducting war against Islam. He said that Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan could not stop the group. He claimed credit for the recent attacks in Kano that killed 186 people. “We attacked the securities base because they were arresting our members and torturing our wives and children. They should know they have families, too, we can abduct them. We have what it takes to do anything we want.” But he also said the group was not responsible for civilian casualties. “We never kill ordinary people. Rather, we protect them. It is the army that rushed to the press to say we are the ones killing civilians. We are not fighting civilians. We only kill soldiers, police, and other security agencies.” Turning to the United States, he observed, “In America, from former President George Bush to Obama, the Americans have always been fighting and destroying Islam. They have tagged us terrorists, and they are paying for it. It is the same in Nigeria, and we will resist.”
January 28, 2012—Sudan—Gunmen from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM-N) kidnapped forty-seven Chinese workers near Abbasiya in the South Kordofan region, 390 miles south of Khartoum. At least eighteen escaped but one was missing. China announced on February 2 that a worker shot by rebels during a Sudanese government rescue attempt probably had died; he remained missing. The hostages were employed by Sino-hydro, a state-controlled engineering and construction company. Beijing sent a hostage negotiation team to Sudan and approached the new government of South Sudan to mediate. The rebels demanded that Beijing include the government to get them to stop military attacks and let aid reach South Kordofan and suggested that Beijing move its nationals out of the war zones. Yasir Arman, SPLM-N General Secretary, said, “The SPLM-N calls upon China to contribute to the humanitarian operation and to ask Khartoum government to open safe corridors for humanitarian operations. SPLM-N calls again upon China to support the demand of an international investigation on the war crimes against Sudanese people.” Authorities believed the hostages were held in the mountainous Nuba region of South Kordofan. The Chinese public expressed outrage at the lack of a strong Chinese strike against the hostage takers. Arman said China’s Ambassador to Ethiopia Xie Xiaoyan had held talks with his group. The rebels released the twenty-nine Chinese workers on February 7, 2012. The Sudanese government suggested that the government of South Sudan had intervened. The Red Cross transferred the freed hostages to Nairobi. One of the missing workers was found dead. 12012801
January 29, 2012—Venezuela—Four gunmen kidnapped Mexican Ambassador Carlos Pujalte Pineiro, 58, and his wife, Paloma Ojeda, from their BMW following a reception in the “country club” section of Chacao in Caracas, holding them for four hours before police forced the kidnappers to release them unharmed in a slum the next morning. This was the second time in two months Pineiro had been taken hostage. Police suspected criminals interested in quick money via an “express kidnapping.”
January 31, 2012—Yemen—An air strike killed a dozen al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terrorists, including Abdul Monem al-Fahtani, a mid-level AQAP leader believed to have participated in the 2000 USS Cole attack. Yemeni forces had attacked him in late 2010; his death was never confirmed.
January 31, 2012—Egypt—Bedouins blocked a road and kidnapped twenty-four Chinese workers and a translator who were on their way to a military-owned cement factory. The kidnappers demanded the release of prisoners but freed the hostages a day later. 12013101
January 31, 2012—Yemen—Armed tribesmen kidnapped a German, a Colombian, an Iraqi, a Palestinian, and two Yemenis, all of whom worked for the UN Humanitarian Office, near Sana’a. They were released unharmed on February 2. 12013102
February 2012—Colombia—The Colombian National Liberation Army kidnapped eleven oil workers in Arauca Province from a bus on the way to the Bicentennial pipeline. They were freed at the request of the families on March 6, 2012.
February 1, 2012—Philippines—Abu Sayyaf was believed responsible for kidnapping two tourists—a Dutch citizen and a Swiss citizen—in southern Tawi-Tawi Province. 12020101
February 1, 2012—Nigeria—A member of the State Security Service announced the arrest of Boko Haram spokesman Abul-Qaqa after tracking his cell phone. He was flown to Abuja for questioning.
February 2, 2012—Philippines—The military announced that in a 3:00 a.m. air strike on a terrorist safe house in Parang on Jolo Island, it had killed Malaysian citizen Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, senior leader of Jemaah Islamiyah; Umbra Jumdail, a leader of Abu Sayyaf; and Abdullah Ali, alias Muawiyah, a Singaporean leader of Jemaah Islamiyah. The United States had offered a $5 million reward for Marwan’s capture. The U.S.-trained engineer was accused of involvement in several bombings in the Philippines and training new terrorists. The military said thirty terrorists were at the camp. Fifteen of them were killed.
February 3, 2012—Egypt—Masked Bedouin gunmen kidnapped two American tourists and their local tour guide from a minibus on the way from St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on the heels of major soccer rioting following the one-year anniversary of the kickoff of the Arab Spring. The kidnappers left behind three other people. The Bedouins demanded the release and retrial of thirty-three detained Bedouins, some of whom were believed responsible for the shooting of a French tourist during an armed robbery of a Sharm el-Sheikh currency exchange shop the previous week. The hostages were freed the same day into the custody of the military. One of the freed Americans, E. P., said that she was not afraid and that the Bedouins were “very nice … They kept on reassuring us that we will be fine … They treated us like family.” 12020301
February 5, 2012—Egypt—An explosion went off at the Egyptian pipeline carrying gas to Israel and Jordan in the northern Sinai at the entrance of the town of al-Arish. No group claimed credit. The pipeline was shut down for at least two months. The pipeline is run by Gasco, a subsidiary of the national gas company EGAS.
February 5, 2012—Nigeria—The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta took credit for attacking an Italian oil giant Eni SpA pipeline, interrupting the flow of four thousand barrels of oil. It warned of more attacks in the Delta. The company confirmed the sabotage.
February 7, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected of setting off car bombs at the army’s First Mechanized Division Headquarters and the training command of the air force near Kaduna, causing several injuries. The group released a video claiming to welcome peace talks with the government. A third bomb went off near a highway overpass. One of the car bombers at the headquarters was wearing a military uniform. Soldiers fired at him, killing him. Air force officials said the bomber was stopped before getting past the gate, so he threw an explosive 550 yards from the outer fence of the base.
February 8, 2012—Somalia—Al-Shabaab set off a car bomb in Mogadishu that killed eight people and wounded two members of parliament.
February 9, 2012—Somalia—As-Sahab Media released a fifteen-minute video in which Ayman al-Zawahiri and Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen leader Mukhtar Abdurahman Abu az–Zubeir, alias Godane, announced that al-Shabaab had pledged bayat (an oath of allegiance) to the al Qaeda leader. The duo had recorded their presentations separately; the comments were then spliced. Al-Zawahiri said, “Today I bring glad tidings to our Muslim Ummah, happy tidings that pleased the believers and displeases the crusaders, which is the joining of Shabaab al-Mujahideen in Somalia to Qaida’t al-Jihad in support of the jihad unit in the face of the Zionist-Crusader campaign and their helpers of cooperative traitor rulers who brought in the crusader invasive forces to their countries.” Az-Zubeir added, “The entire world attests that America’s days are over and her rule has gone and her minions in the land of Muslims—their end has come.”
February 10, 2012—Syria—Two suicide bombs went off in the commercial center of Aleppo, killing twenty-eight. No one claimed credit. Observers feared al Qaeda was trying to establish a foothold.
February 11, 2012—Syria—Three gunmen waiting outside Brig. Gen. Issa al-Kholi’s his home in the Rukn Eddin neighborhood of Damascus shot him to death. Al-Kholi was director of a hospital.
February 12, 2012—Egypt—Nermeen Gomaa Khalil, 41, an Egyptian woman working as a consultant for a UN fund for women, was fatally shot in the head by gunmen in a passing car while driving through Mohandiseen, a Cairo neighborhood.
February 12, 2012—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video onto the Internet entitled Onwards, Lions of Syria in which he called for Syrians to overthrown Bashar al-Assad without Arab or Western government assistance. He called on Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan to aid Syrian rebels.
Wounded Syria still bleeds day after day, while the butcher, son of the butcher Bashar bin Hafiz, is not deterred to stop. But the resistance of our people in Syria despite all the pain, sacrifice, and bloodshed escalates and grows. [Muslims should help] his brothers in Syria with all that he can, with his life, money, opinion, as well as information … Our people in Syria, don’t rely on the West, or the United States or Arab governments and Turkey. You know better what they are planning against you. Our people in Syria, don’t depend on the Arab League and its corrupt governments supporting it. If we want freedom, we must be liberated from this regime. If we want justice, we must retaliate against this regime. Continue your revolt and anger. Don’t accept anything else apart from independent, respectful governments.
February 13, 2012—United Kingdom—The United Kingdom released Abu Qatada, al Qaeda’s seniormost operative in Europe.
February 13, 2012—India—A bomb exploded under an Israeli Embassy van in New Delhi, wounding four people, including the van’s driver, its passenger—Tal Yehoshua-Koren, an embassy employee who is the wife of an Israeli defense envoy—and two people in a nearby car. The bomb was slapped onto the car by a passing motorcyclist as Yehoshua-Koren was on her way to pick up her children from the American Embassy School. The bomb went off a few hundred yards from the prime minister’s residence. It was similar to the January 11 killing of an Iranian nuclear chemist in Tehran. On March 7, Indian police arrested a local journalist, Syed Mohammed Kazmi, 50, in connection with the attack. He claimed to work for an Iranian news organization, according to the Press Trust of India. Investigators said he had been in touch with the bomber. He was represented by attorney Vijay Aggarwal. On March 15, India issued arrest warrants for three Iranians—Housan Afshar, Syed Ali Mehdi Sadr, and Mohammed Reza Abolghasemi. On March 17, 2012, Indian police said the bombing attack was connected to the plot to attack Israelis in Thailand.
Indian police identified the bomber as Houshang Afshar Irani, whose passport showed he first visited New Delhi in April 2011 for ten days before returning to the city on January 29, 2012. He reached the city’s airport seventy-five minutes after the bomb attack, and after waiting seven hours for a flight, left for Malaysia and on to Dubai, then Tehran. Investigators said the bomb was a TNT variant. The shell was made outside India. The magnetic strips used in the limpet were the same as those used in the Bangkok and Tbilisi bombings.
On July 30, 2012, ABCNews.com reported that Interpol had issued arrest warrants for five members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in the case. They were Houshang Afshar Irani, a builder who drove past the Israeli car on a motorcycle and attached the explosive device; Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, a salesman and alleged mastermind; Syed Ali Mahdiansadr, a mobile shopkeeper; and Mohammed Reza Abolghasemi, a clerk at a Tehran water authority. Two were also wanted by Thai police for the plot to attack Israeli targets in Bangkok the next day. Thai and Indian police were also searching for Ali Akbar Norouzishayan, a retired Tehran accountant, who was spotted on security camera footage leaving the Bangkok safe house after the explosion. 12021301
February 13, 2012—Georgia—A bomb found under an Israeli Embassy car in Tbilisi was defused without incident. 12021302
February 14, 2012—Thailand—The Israeli government blamed Iran for a bomb that exploded in Bangkok, blowing off a leg of Saeid Moradi, an Iranian man who was carrying it. Three Thai men and one Thai woman were treated at Kluaynamthai Hospital for their injuries from the blast. Two foreigners and the Iranian ran from the residence when some explosives went off. He tried to hail a cab, but the driver refused to take the blood-drenched Moradi. He then threw a bomb at the taxi and started running. Surrounded by police, he threw a grenade at them, but it bounced back, blowing off a leg. Police found Iranian currency, U.S. dollars, and Thai money in a satchel at the scene. Authorities found C4 explosives and two magnetic explosive devices in his house. His passport said he was Saeid Moradi from Iran. Mohammad Kharzei, 42, a second Iranian, was detained at Bangkok’s international airport as he attempted to escape to Malaysia. A third man, Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, was arrested in Malaysia on February 15. A Bangkok court approved an arrest warrant for Leila Rohani, who rented the destroyed house before fleeing to Tehran. Thai police said on February 17 that they were searching for a fifth suspect who was seen on security cameras entering and exiting the house before the bomb went off. On February 27, Thai authorities arrested three more Iranians who were in contact with the key suspects.
Moradi arrived in Thailand from Seoul, South Korea, on February 8. He flew into Phuket, then stayed in a Chonburi hotel.
Israel said that the magnetic explosives were similar to those used in New Delhi and Tbilisi the previous day.
On March 15, Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, 31, an Iranian man held in Malaysia, told a Kuala Lumpur court that he was not involved and intended to fight extradition. Thai officials said he was seen leaving the building where the bomb went off. Malaysia ordered Sedaghatzadeh’s extradition to Thailand on June 25, 2012. 12021401
February 17, 2012—Pakistan—A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed twenty-three Shi’ite Muslims and wounded fifty people in a market in Parachinar near the Afghanistan border. Locals protested the attack and were fired on by security officials, who killed three people.
February 17, 2012—United States—Federal authorities arrested Amine el Khalifi, 29, a Moroccan illegally in the United States, as he walked to the U.S. Capitol wearing what he thought was a suicide vest. The Alexandria, Virginia, resident had been given an inerted vest and fake handgun by an FBI undercover agent. Retired patent attorney Frank Dynda, Khalifi’s landlord, tipped off the FBI a year earlier about his suspicious behavior. For the rest of the year, the FBI learned he was considering attacking a synagogue, an Alexandria building with military offices, and a restaurant popular with military officers before settling on the Capitol target. He was arrested a few blocks from the Capitol at lunchtime, carrying the vest and an inoperable loaded automatic weapon which he believed had been provided by al Qaeda. He was charged in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against federal property. He faced life in prison.
He had arrived in the United States at age 16, then overstayed his visitor’s visa while living in northern Virginia. He was evicted from an Arlington apartment in 2010 after missing rent payment. On December 1, 2011, Khalifi and Hussien, who Khalifi thought was an al Qaeda operative, met Yusuf, an undercover officer who Khalifi told he wanted to bomb an Alexandria building. On December 8, Khalifi told Hussien that he should attack a synagogue and an army general. On December 15, Khalifi told Hussien that he wanted to bomb a DC restaurant next to a government building; the duo visited the restaurant the next week. On January 7, 2012, Hussien told Khalifi that he worked for al Qaeda. They talked about conducting a second attack on a military site after Khalifi either shot up or bombed the restaurant. On January 8, Khalifi bought bomb-making materials. On January 15, Khalifi decided to conduct a suicide bombing against the Capitol. The duo set off a test bomb in a West Virginia quarry. Khalifi set the bombing date for February 17. The two visited the Capitol on January 28 and February 6. During the second surveillance and on February 12, Khalifi asked for a gun to shoot Capitol guards. On February 14, Yusuf gave Khalifi an inoperable weapon and what Khalifi thought was a suicide jacket. Khalifi tested its cell phone detonator. On February 17, Khalifi prayed at the northern Virginia Dar al-Hijrah mosque. The trio went to a parking garage near the Capitol, and Khalifi took what he thought would be his last walk. He was arrested several blocks away. Police raided a red brick rambler on Randolph Street in the Douglas Park neighborhood of Alexandria. A preliminary court hearing was set for February 22.
On June 22, 2012, Khalifi pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria to a charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against federal property. Under his plea bargain, he would serve twenty-five to thirty years. On September 14, 2012, Khalifi was sentenced to thirty years in prison. He was to be deported to Morocco after finishing his sentence.
February 22, 2012—Georgia—Five gunmen fired automatic rifles and grenade launchers and set off a roadside bomb under a motorcade at 8:30 a.m. in a failed attempt to kill Aleksandr Z. Ankvab, president of the Russian-backed rebel enclave Abkhazia. Ankvab was uninjured, but a bodyguard died and two others were seriously injured in the sixth assassination try against Ankvab in a decade. He had recently dismissed the entire staff of the immigration bureau on suspicion of corruption.
February 23, 2012—Pakistan—A Honda City car filled with 100 pounds of explosives and artillery shells was remotely detonated at a minibus depot in Peshawar, killing thirteen, including two children. No one claimed credit.
February 23, 2012—Afghanistan—As a wave of protests continued over inadvertent American burning of Qurans, a member of the Afghan Army shot to death two U.S. soldiers at a base in eastern Afghanistan.
February 24, 2012—Somalia—A missile strike in Kilometre 60, in the al-Shabaab-controlled Lower Shabelle region, killed an Egyptian and three Kenyan Islamists.
February 25, 2012—Yemen—A pickup truck bomb outside a presidential compound in Mukalla, Hadramout Province, killed twenty-five people hours after Yemen’s new president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, was sworn in. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was suspected.
February 25, 2012—Afghanistan—Abdul Saboor, an Afghan driver, turned his silenced pistol on his NATO counterparts, killing two U.S. officers inside the Interior Ministry building in Kabul. The duo were identified by the press as Air Force Lt. Col. John D. Loftis, 44, of Paducah, Kentucky and a Major Saboor, a Tajik from Parwan Province, did not appear to have Taliban links. He escaped from the Ministry.
February 26, 2012—Colombia—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced that it would no longer kidnap civilians for ransom. It also said it would free its ten remaining “prisoners of war”—soldiers and policemen who had been held for more than a decade. It was believed to still hold one hundred civilian hostages. FARC did not mention their fate.
February 26, 2012—Afghanistan—Protestors demonstrating against the burning of Qurans threw a grenade, wounding at least six U.S. service members in the north.
February 26, 2012—Nigeria—A Boko Haram suicide bomber killed three people—a father, his child, and a woman—and hospitalized thirty-eight at the headquarters of the Church of Christ in Nigeria during an early morning service in Jos. The bomber hit a woman with his car while driving to the church compound. Boko Haram spokesman Abul Qaqa also claimed credit for burning down a primary school in Maiduguri and warned security agencies to not enter Islamic schools. “Our attacks have no distinction on any person, be him Muslim or Christian. For as long as they stand against us and our cause, their blood is legitimate to be shed.”
February 28, 2012—Pakistan—Uniformed Sunni gunmen fired on a bus convoy ferrying Shi’ite passengers from Rawalpindi to Gilgit in Kohistan district in the north. They forced selected passengers to get off the bus, then shot to death all eighteen. The attack was conducted 102 miles north of Islamabad. The Pakistani Taliban claimed credit.
March 2012—Yemen—In two incidents, a Swiss woman and three Philippine nationals were kidnapped. As of March 28, they had not been released. 12039901-02
March 2012—Saudi Arabia—In mid–March, gunmen attacked a BBC news crew, killing a cameraman and critically wounding a senior correspondent as they tried to film a suspected terrorist’s family home in the radical-infested Suweidi neighborhood of Riyadh. The terrorist was identified as Ibrahim al-Rayyes, number 6 on the Saudis’ Most Wanted Terrorists List. He was killed in early December 2011 in a shootout with police near a filling station in Suweidi. Eight security officers were wounded and a terrorist was killed in the gun battle. 12039903
March 2012—Saudi Arabia—In late March, two U.S. defense workers were gunned down outside their homes in Riyadh. 12039904-05
March 2012—Yemen—In two incidents, a Swiss woman and three Philippine nationals were kidnapped. As of March 28, they had not been released. On May 1, 2012, her kidnappers released a video of the Swiss hostage, who said that she was being held by al Qaeda and needed the Swiss government to help her. 12039906-07
March 1, 2012—Turkey—A remotely-detonated bomb injured fifteen police officers and a civilian in a police minibus near the Istanbul headquarters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). No one claimed credit.
March 1, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan soldier and an Afghan civilian teaching a literacy course on a NATO-Afghan base in the Zhari district of southern Kandahar Province shot to death two U.S. troops and injured a third. NATO troops shot to death the gunmen. 12030101
March 1, 2012—Yemen—A gunman fired several shots at an armored vehicle carrying a U.S. security team training Yemeni soldiers. No one was injured. 12030102
March 2, 2012—Pakistan—A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber killed twenty-three people when he attacked the headquarters of the rival Lashkar-e-Islam insurgent group in the northwest Tirah Valley.
March 3, 2012—Algeria—A four-wheel-drive Toyota crashed into the entrance of the headquarters of the national police in Tamanrasset, 1,200 miles south of Algiers, at 7:45 a.m., wounding fifteen officers, five firemen, and three bystanders. A local journalist said five police officers had died. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was suspected.
March 4, 2012—Yemen—Ansar al-Sharia, a group linked to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), conducted two suicide bomb attacks in Zinjibar, killing nearly two hundred soldiers. They also captured seventy soldiers. AQAP later claimed credit.
March 8, 2012—Thailand—Four soldiers escorting Buddhist villagers were killed by a bomb set by Islamist terrorists.
March 10, 2012—Kenya—The government blamed al-Shabaab for a series of grenade attacks in Nairobi that killed at least six and injured nearly seventy. People in a car threw three grenades at an outdoor bus terminal, killing four and wounding forty. The Red Cross said a dozen people were in critical condition. Among the injured was Frederick Shikutu, 36. 12031001
March 11, 2012—Pakistan—A suicide bomber killed at least fifteen mourners and wounded another thirty-seven at a funeral attended by anti–Taliban politician Khush Dil Khan, who was unhurt in the attack in Badhber in the Peshawar suburbs. Among the hospitalized was Zahir Khan, 32, whose brother was killed.
March 11, 2012—Afghanistan—U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38, wearing local garb and carrying a 9-mm pistol and an M-4 rifle with a grenade launcher, walked out of his base at 3:00 a.m. and went to Najeeban and Alokozo (also identified as Balandi and Alkozai), two villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, where he shot to death seventeen sleeping people, including three women and nine children, before coming back to his base and surrendering. At least eight other children were wounded. Bales was on his fourth war zone tour of duty; three others were in Iraq. He was flown to Kuwait, then later to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to await criminal charges for leaving his post, killing the people, and trying to burn their bodies. There was some evidence that he had returned to base before the second attack. He was from Joint Base Fort Lewis-McChord, in Washington State. The highly decorated soldier had been hurt twice in Iraq, suffering a concussion and losing part of his foot. The married father of two had received a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury. He was a member of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. The Taliban vowed to avenge the deaths, observing, “If the perpetrators of this massacre were in fact mentally ill, then this testifies to yet another moral transgression by the American military because they are arming lunatics in Afghanistan who turn their weapons against defenseless Afghans.” Prosecutors at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, charged Bales on March 23 with seventeen counts of murder, six counts of attempted murder and aggravated assault, and dereliction of duty. He was represented by attorney John Henry Browne of Seattle.
March 11, 2012—Nigeria—A suicide car bomber killed ten people during the day’s final Mass at St. Finbar’s Catholic Church in Jos. He had been stopped at the gate of the compound. Boko Haram was suspected.
March 11, 2012—France—Mohammed Merah, 23, a gunman on a motorcycle, shot and killed a French soldier of north African origin who was on his motorcycle. He used a .45 caliber pistol. The soldier was not in uniform and the motorcycle did not have military identification on it. Merah posted a video of the shooting, telling the soldier, “You kill my brothers, I kill you.” Paratrooper Imad Ibn Ziaten answered an online ad to purchase a scooter in Toulouse. Ziaten had said he was in the military. Merah used his brother’s IP address to set up the fatal meeting with Ziaten. 12031101
March 13, 2012—Ethiopia—Gunmen in the southwest killed nineteen people in an attack on a public bus in Gambella region.
March 14, 2012—Azerbaijan—The Ministry of National Security arrested twenty-two people accused of plotting terrorist attacks against Western, U.S. and Israeli embassies and other targets at the behest of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Azeri cell members were trained in “camps around Tehran” and elsewhere in Iran. Their Iranian handlers met them in Syria and Russia, according to the Ministry. The Ministry said the group can be traced back to 1999, and had been given money, weapons, and military training. The group had obtained weapons and explosives.
March 14, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan crashed a stolen pickup truck into a ditch near the plane of arriving U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta. The man burst into flames but his truck did not. The Afghan was an interpreter working for the coalition forces at the Camp Bastion military airfield, a British complex adjoining Camp Leatherneck. The attacker had tried to run over a group of U.S. Marines and other dignitaries waiting on a runway ramp for the plane. The attacker died a day later of extensive burns. No explosives were found in the car or on the attacker, who was not wearing a suicide vest. He apparently tried to ignite gasoline containers in the cab of the truck. Secretary Panetta denied that he was the target. The man had hijacked the truck thirty minutes earlier, injuring a British soldier. A military dog who apparently pulled the attacker from the wreck sustained slight burn wounds. 12031401
March 15, 2012—United States—Bakhtiyor Jumaev, a Philadelphia resident believed to be from Uzbekistan, was arrested and charged in Philadelphia in an alleged plot to provide support to an Uzbek terrorist organization. He was represented by attorney Barnaby Wittels. Authorities said Jumaev sent $300 to Uzbek refugee Jamshid Muhtorov, who lived in Aurora, Colorado. Muhtorov was arrested on January 12, 2012, while traveling in Chicago. Investigators believed the duo was planning a “wedding”—a terrorist attack by the Islamic Jihad Union.
March 16, 2012—France—Black-clad gunman Mohammed Merah, riding a motorcycle, shot and killed two French paratroopers of North African and French Caribbean descent and injured a black soldier from the French Antilles while they were using an ATM in a shopping center in Montauban. Merah posted a video of the shooting, during which he yelled, “Allahu Akbar.” He used a .45 caliber pistol to kill Abel Chennouf, 25, and Mohamed Legouade, 23. The wounded soldier went into a coma. 12031601
March 16, 2012—Pakistan/United States—The Washington Post reported that documents captured at Osama bin Laden’s compound on May 2, 2011, showed that he planned to kill President Obama so that he could deal with an “unprepared” Vice President Biden and also planned to kill then–Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus. Bin Laden proposed an attack on Air Force One.
March 17, 2012—Syria—Two suicide car bombers killed 27 people and injured 140 others in front of the intelligence and security buildings in Damascus. Authorities said a third bomb went off at a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, but the two bombers were the only casualties.
March 18, 2012—Yemen—In Taiz, an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula gunman riding on the back of a motorcycle shot to death Joel Shrum, 29, an American teacher serving as an advisor at a Swedish-affiliated institute. Shrum was on his way to work. The al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia texted to the news media, “This operation comes as a response to the campaign of Christian proselytizing that the West has launched against Muslims.” Shrum, of Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, had gone to Yemen in 2009 to learn Arabic. He had been living in the country with his wife and two children. 12031801
March 18, 2012—Indonesia—Counterterrorism police killed five members of a Jemaah Islamiyah splinter group in Bali who were considering conducting a series of robberies of jewelry stores, including two that night. The police raided two hotels in the Denpasar area of Bali. Authorities seized two guns and ammunition. Police believed they were responsible for a bank robbery in Medan, North Sumatra, in 2010. The press later reported that they planned to bomb the Hard Rock Café and other Western targets.
March 18, 2012—Syria—A bomb went off at a government security building in Aleppo, killing a police officer and a civilian and injuring thirty people.
March 19, 2012—France—At 8:00 a.m., Mohammed Merah, 23, a French citizen of Algerian descent, riding a Yamaha T-Max 530 motor scooter, shot to death French Israeli Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, and his two sons, Gabriel, 6, and Arieh, 3, and Miriam Monsonego, 8-year-old daughter of the school’s director, at the Jewish elementary Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse before escaping. He drove up and shot two pistols at a group of children waiting in front of the school, then followed others into a courtyard as they ran toward the building. Monsonego died in front of her father, Yaacov. All of the dead were dual Israeli French nationals and all were shot in the head. Another six students were wounded, including a 17-year-old boy who was in serious condition at a local hospital. Merah had used the same .45 caliber Colt semiautomatic pistol in his attacks on French paratroopers of North African descent on March 11 and 15.
Merah wounded three police officers in a shootout in a Toulouse house. On March 21 at 3:00 p.m., he was surrounded by three hundred police officers and said he would surrender at night “to be more discreet.” He threw a pistol out the window in exchange for a “communication device,” but police believed he retained other weapons, including an AK-47. Although he appeared to have acted alone, he told police negotiators that he had met al Qaeda leaders while in Pakistan in 2011. He said he was acting for “revenge for Palestinian children” and was attacking the French Army because of its involvement in Afghanistan and for French banning of Islamic veils. He claimed to be a member of al Qaeda who had been to Afghanistan twice and had trained in Waziristan. Authorities said he planned to kill another soldier and two police officers. His brother was implicated in a network sending foreign fighters to Iraq. After a thirty-two-hour siege, he was shot to death.
Also on March 21, police arrested another man at a separate location in connection with the school shooting.
Merah was well-known to authorities. The Toulouse-born delinquent who had worked in a body shop had been sentenced fifteen times in Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor for such offenses as purse-snatching and possession of stolen goods. Acquaintances said he was not particularly devout as a juvenile and had taken to wearing punk garb. He had been represented on a charge of driving without a valid license by attorney Christian Etelin, who said his client was psychologically impaired. He twice tried to join the French armed forces. He was turned down in Lille because of prior convictions. In July 2010, he tried to join the Foreign Legion in Toulouse but left after the first round of tests.
France 24 said French intelligence had tracked Merah for several years. Merah was arrested in Afghanistan on December 19, 2007. He was sentenced to three years for planting bombs in Kandahar. He escaped from Kandahar prison in 2008. Afghan police picked him up at a traffic stop and sent him back to France, which placed him under surveillance. Merah became involved with a group of fifteen extremists upon returning to France. He was on a U.S. no-fly list.
Merah called Ebba Kalondo, the senior news editor of the television network France 24, two hours before police surrounded him in his hideout, to talk about the attacks.
The press said authorities found him after being tipped off by a Toulouse motorcycle shop owner, who reported that a man had asked how to turn off the GPS in his TMX scooter. When the police RAID team arrived at 3:00 a.m. at Merah’s house 2 miles from the school, he shot through the door, injuring one officer in the knee, one in the shoulder, and wounding a third. Police detained his mother, elder brother, and two sisters, seeking to get their help in dealing with him. Merah said he was a member of Forsane Alizza (Knights of Glory), which the French government had banned in January for recruiting people to fight in Afghanistan. Before its banning, it posted on Facebook a call to attack Americans, Jews, and French soldiers.
On March 22 at 11:30 a.m., the siege ended when Merah, wearing a bulletproof vest, emerged from a bathroom and fired thirty shots at police, who returned fire, using at least three hundred rounds of ammunition. Merah jumped out a window onto a balcony, apparently was hit in the head, and toppled to the ground, dead. Two police officers were injured. Merah had two bullets left in his gun. Police found rifles and material for making bombs.
The little known Kazakhstan-based Jund al-Khilafah said “Yusuf of France” was responsible for the school attack. French officials said it was probably an opportunistic claim and that Merah had not heard of them.
The attacks came just before French national elections on April 23 and May 6.
Al-Jazeera said it had decided against broadcasting Merah’s murder videos.
On March 25, investigating judges filed preliminary murder and terrorism charges against an Islamist radical with ties to a jihadi network—Abdelkader Merah, 29, the gunman’s older brother. He denied the charges.
On June 11, 2012, Mohamed Benalel Merah, Mohammed Merah’s father, filed a lawsuit in Paris alleging murder in the killing by police of his son. His legal team included terrorist Carlos’s wife Isabelle Courtant-Peyre and Algerian lawyer Zahia Mokhtari. 12031901
March 19–20, 2012—Somalia—Al-Shabaab conducted nighttime mortar attacks on the Presidential Palace, killing five and injuring several others. The five mortar attack landed on a refugee camp next to the presidential compound, killing five. Abu Zubeyr, alias Ahmed Godane, an al-Shabaab commander, aired a twenty-five-minute message on the group’s radio station calling for other Somalis to join the Jihad.
March 20, 2012—United Kingdom—Former Russian banker German Gorbuntsov was shot in East London; police viewed it as an attempted murder. Ten days later, prosecutors were attempting to deport a suspected Chechen government assassin.
March 21, 2012—United States—Shaima Alawadi, 32, an Iraqi woman whose family had been in the United States since the mid–1990s, was found severely beaten on the head with a tire iron, next to a threatening note saying, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” Fatima Al-Himidi, 17, her daughter, found her lying in a pool of blood that morning in the dining room of the house in El Cajon, California. The mother of five died on March 24. The family received a similar note earlier in the month but had not reported it to authorities. The family had moved from Michigan a few weeks earlier. Alawadi’s husband had previously worked in San Diego as a private contractor for the U.S. Army, serving as a cultural adviser to train soldiers deploying to the Middle East. Police were investigating whether the murder was a hate crime. She was buried in Iraq on March 31.
March 22, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda message forums al-Shamukh al-Islam, al-Fidaa, and Ansar al-Mujahideen Arabic Forum started going offline, possibly from a cyber attack. Al-Mujahidin and al-Shamukh returned briefly. The administrator of another al Qaeda site posted, “The media arena is witnessing a vicious attack by the cross and its helpers on the jihadi media castles.” Al-Shamukh returned on April 4, noting, “The enemies of Allah who boast of their freedoms have not spared any effort to eradicate our blessed media.” Five other sites remained offline.
March 25, 2012—United Kingdom—The Sunday Times received a four-minute video from Waliur Rehman, deputy commander of the Pakistani Tehrik-e-Taliban, in which he claimed that Muslim prisoners, including Bilal Abdullah, the Glasgow airport bomber, and Dhiren Barot, a “dirty bomb” plotter, were being mistreated in U.K. jails. The video was filmed the previous week near Miranshah, capital of North Waziristan. He threatened “severe revenge” if Muslim prisoners were not released. “If the British government does not comply with this, then our revenge against the British government will be very severe. These are not just words. We will show them in practice. We will show them how we take revenge for the mistreatment of our brothers.” He claimed Abdullah and Barot were “stripped naked and their dignity violated.” “They poured hot kerosene oil on [Barot’s] face.”
March 26, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan Army soldier shot to death two U.K. troops at the entrance of the provincial reconstruction team headquarters in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand Province. Foreign forces returned fire, killing him. A member of a U.S.-trained Afghan Local Police Force fatally shot a NATO soldier as troops approached a militia checkpoint. Since May 2007, Afghan security forces had killed at least eighty NATO troops.
March 27, 2012—Spain—Police in Valencia arrested Muhrad Hussein Almalki, “al Qaeda’s librarian,” on charges of broadcasting videos on the Internet to incite terrorist attacks. He had been under investigation since February 2011. He was suspected of working with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb. He supervised one of the al Qaeda sites that went dark in late March 2012 and posted often under aliases on two others.
March 27, 2012—Afghanistan—The Defense Ministry went into lockdown after the discovery of ten suicide vests, mostly in guard sheds around a parking lot, and the arrests of sixteen soldiers and civilians suspected of planning to attack the ministry and the intelligence agency and bomb commuter buses carrying government employees home. Two suspected bombers reportedly were at large.
March 28, 2012—Yemen—Unknown gunmen kidnapped Saudi deputy consul Abdullah al-Khalidi from his vehicle near his residence in Rimi, in the Mansoora district. On April 17, 2012, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said that al Qaeda had claimed credit and was demanding the release of prisoners and a ransom payment. He said Saudi terror suspect Mashaal Rasheed al-Shawdakhi had phoned the Saudi Embassy in Yemen, threatening to kill al-Khalidi if the government did not release senior al Qaeda prisoners, both Saudi and Yemeni, and six female prisoners in Saudi jails. Shawdakhi claimed that Nasser al-Washidi, leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had appointed him to release the demands. AQAP released al-Khalidi on August 11, 2012, after tribal mediation efforts. The terms of his release were not disclosed. 12032801
March 28, 2012—Pakistan—Gunmen conducted two attacks in Baluchistan’s Mastung district. In one attack, gunmen fired on a car carrying local staff of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, killing a driver and a member of the group’s project staff. Another member of the staff was wounded. In Quetta, gunmen on motorcycles fired on a passenger van, killing four Shi’ites. 12032802
March 30, 2012—Afghanistan—A member of the Afghan Local Police in Paktika Province shot to death nine drugged colleagues in their sleep, then escaped in a government vehicle full of guns and ammunition.
March 30, 2012—Afghanistan—Acid was thrown into the faces and the mouths of two children. The Afghan National Army brought their bodies to the local hospital after villagers found them in Nani village in eastern Ghazni Province’s Andar district. The identity of their parents was unknown.
March 30, 2012—Afghanistan—Asadullah, alias Mujahid Sanaullah, 22, a member of the Afghan Local Police in Paktika Province, shot to death nine colleagues—including eight police officers—whom he had drugged, in their sleep, then escaped with two terrorists in a Toyota Ranger police pickup truck filled with ten rifles and twenty-five magazines of ammunition. He had been a Taliban fighter for several years. His neighbors said he had given the Taliban permission to kill his father, Ehsanulah, a government official and religious leader in the Yayakhil district of Paktika Province. Authorities detained two of Asadullah’s brothers following the shootings. Among the dead was Mohammed Ramazan, a police commander who had supported Asadullah’s participation in a reintegration program for former Taliban insurgents, and two of Ramazan’s sons.
March 30, 2012—France—Police arrested nineteen or twenty Islamic militants in early morning raids in Toulouse, Paris, and southern and western cities including Nantes, seizing Kalashnikov assault rifles. Among those detained was Mohammed Achamlane, leader of the small militant group Forsan al-Izza. He denied that the group seeks jihadi recruits. President Nicolas Sarkozy said at least some of the detainees would be expelled. Seven were held for questioning; two were released.
On April 4, 2012, thirteen of those arrested were placed under formal investigation for “criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise,” and possession and transportation of weapons. Nine of the thirteen were jailed, including Achamlane. The other four were released on April 3 but remained “under judicial control.” Achamlane was represented by attorney Philippe Missamou. French prosecutor Francois Molins said the detainees were “calling for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in France and calling for the implementation of Sharia law and inciting Muslims in France to unite for the preparation of a civil war.” Prosecutors said Achamlane’s followers held “discussions during a meeting held in Lyon in September 2011 about a plan to kidnap a judge based in Lyon.”
March 31, 2012—Thailand—Bombs killed 14 and wounded more than 500 in Yala and Songkhla provinces. Buildings, cars, and motorcycles were damaged in the attacks on shoppers and a high-rise hotel. Bombs hidden in two stolen trucks went off in Yala, setting fire to nearby vehicles and buildings and killing 11 and injuring 110. The second bomb went off twenty minutes after the first, injuring numerous people who had gathered after the initial attack. An hour later, a car bomb went off in the underground parking of the 405-room Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel in Songkhla Province, killing at least 3, including a Malaysian tourist, and injuring 400, mostly from smoke inhalation. The bomb set off a fire at a high rise hotel in Hat Yai city and badly damaged a McDonald’s. A fourth bomb on a motorcycle went off 50 meters from a local police station in the Mae Lan district of Pattani Province, wounding a police officer. Islamist insurgents were suspected. 12033101
March 31, 2012—Kenya—Two nighttime grenade attacks killed one person and injured thirty-three others. One grenade went off in the southeastern town of Mtwapa, killing one and injuring thirty-one. Another was thrown into a stadium in the coastal city of Mombasa, injuring two others. No one claimed credit, but al-Shabaab posted an Internet message that observed,
The deteriorating insecurity in Kenyan cities is an embodiment of Kenya’s misguided policies that place foreign interests above its national interests and the security of Western nations above the security of its citizens, thereby wasting the lives of its men and its resources for no real gain…. The Kenyan public must be aware that the more Kenyan troops continue to persecute innocent Muslims of Somalia, the less secure Kenyan cities will be; and the more oppression the Muslims of Somalia feel, the more constricted Kenyan life will be…. Such is the law of Retribution. Your security depends on our security. It is a long, protracted war and Kenyans must neither harbor a reason for optimism nor hope for triumph.
March 31, 2012—Nigeria—Security forces raided a suspected Boko Haram bomb factory in Okene in Kogi State. During the raid, the group killed a soldier and a member of the State Security Service. Elsewhere, Boko Haram shot to death local politician Wanangu Kachuwa after returning to his home in Maiduguri following a church service. Also that night, the group burned down two police stations in separate cities in Yobe State, injuring two police officers.
March 31, 2012—Saudi Arabia—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) abducted Paul Johnson, 49, of Stafford Township, New Jersey, a Lockheed Martin employee. The kidnappers released a video on April 3 showing a blindfolded Johnson and threatened to kill him within seventy-two hours if the government did not release al Qaeda prisoners. The video showed a man reading a statement and holding an AK-47. A subtitle said that he was Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, head of the Saudi branch of AQAP.
April 2012—Mali—Gunmen claiming to be acting under the orders of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb kidnapped a Swiss missionary in Timbuktu. She was later freed after negotiations. 12049901
April 2012—Georgia—Authorities arrested smugglers from Abkhazia who were bringing three glass containers with 2.2 pounds of yellowcake uranium.
April 2012—Georgia—Authorities arrested three men in a hotel suite in Batumi offering radioactive cesium. One of the Turkish men said he could provide uranium. The buyers, undercover agents, said they would photograph the four cylinders and see if their leader was interested. Police then arrested the trio. The arrests were linked to Soslan Oniani. One lead cylinder held cesium–137, two held strontium–90, and the fourth held a spent nuclear material which could be used to make a radioactive dispersal device (dirty bomb). The two Turks and Oniani were convicted in a Georgian court in September 2012 and sentenced to six years in prison.
April 2012—Turkey—Ankara authorities arrested three Turkish men with a kilogram of cesium–135. Georgian officials said they were residents of Germany and were driving a German-plated car. The material originated in Abkhazia. Turkish authorities said the trio entered the country from Georgia.
April 2, 2012—Colombia—A loaned Brazilian Air Force helicopter took off from an airstrip in central Colombia to pick up six police officers and four soldiers who were being released by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who had kidnapped them a dozen years earlier. They were FARC’s last group of government hostages, although hundreds of civilians remained captive.
April 2, 2012—United Kingdom—Government lawyers accused E1, 45, a Chechen-born former elite soldier described as “a henchman” of President Ramzan A. Kadyrov of Chechnya, of seeking to assassinate Akhmed K. Zakayev, a prominent Chechen politician who was granted asylum in 2003 in London. Government attorneys said E1 was involved in a 2009 Kadyrov-sponsored assassination in Vienna, Austria.
April 2, 2012—Internet—Jihadi forums posted a photo of the New York City skyline at sunset, overlaid with the text “Al Qaeda: Coming Soon Again in New York.”
April 2, 2012—Pakistan—Judge Shahrukh Arjumand sentenced thee wives and two adult daughters of Osama bin Laden to serve six weeks and pay a fine of $110 for violating immigration laws. They were formally arrested on March 3. They were to be deported to their respective countries on April 15. Kharia Hussain Sabir and Siham Sharif were Saudis, as were the two adult daughters. Amal Ahmad Abdul Fateh, 30, is a Yemeni who was wounded when bin Laden was shot in a SEAL raid on May 2, 2011, in Abbotabad. Fateh had born him five children. They had faced five years, but Pakistan wanted them and their children out of the country.
April 4, 2012—Somalia—A young Al-Shabaab female suicide bomber killed six people, including two senior sports officials—Said Mohamed Nur Mugambe, head of the Somali football federation, and Somali Olympic Committee president Adan Hagi Yabarow Wiish—and injured a dozen, including Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, ten journalists, and a lawmaker, during a celebration of the first anniversary of Somali national television in Somalia’s newly reopened National Theater in Mogadishu. The skinny woman, in her early 20s, was carrying a police ID. Al-Shabaab said that it had planted explosives at the theater ahead of time.
April 4, 2012—France—DCRI authorities arrested another ten Islamists in Roubaix, Lyon, Bordeaux, Valence, Pau, Marseille, Carpentras, and in the Lot et Garonne region. They were suspected of links to Islamist Web sites and threatening violence in online postings. An official said some of them might have been trying to obtain terrorist training on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
April 4, 2012—Lebanon—A sniper fired bullets past the head and torso of Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces, one of the country’s main Christian parties, as he bent down to pick up a flower. The sniper was on a hilltop, one kilometer away. Hizballah was suspected.
April 5, 2012—China—The Ministry of Public Security added six Turkic Uighur men to its list of terrorists, accusing them of involvement in East Turkestan Islamic Movement terrorist attacks in Zinjiang. They remained at large. The Ministry said they had recruited and trained members for the organization, provided funding, and incited violence, including suicide bombings.
April 5, 2012—Mali—Unidentified gunmen kidnapped Algeria’s consul in Gao and five consular officials. The town was under control of Tuareg separatists. The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an ally of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, was suspected. Authorities later changed the number of hostages to seven. As of April 30, the hostages remained detained. On September 2, 2012, MUJAO spokesman Oumar Ould Hamaha said the group had killed the Algerian diplomat. “We did this so that Algeria learns a lesson and understands that when we give an ultimatum, they need to take us seriously. And so that other countries know that when we give an ultimatum in regards to their hostages, they need to act.” 12040501
April 6, 2012—Libya—Explosives were thrown over the wall of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. No one was injured. Two former Libyan guards hired by a security contractor were taken into custody. They drove a car owned by compound guard Ahmed Marimi. They were released by the Libyan government for lack of “hard evidence.” Ibrahim Faqzi Etwear was a former employee of Blue Mountain Group of Carmarthen, Wales, who had been fired four days earlier for vandalism. The other suspect was Mohe el-Dean Bacher, a recently demoted guard. 12040601
April 6, 2012—Yemen—An al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula bomber died when his explosives detonated prematurely as he attempted to attack an intelligence office in Mansoura in southern Aden Province. A motorcyclist he had tricked into giving him a ride also died.
April 8, 2012—Nigeria—A suicide car bomber killed forty-one people in front of the All Nations Christian Assembly Church in Kaduna on Easter morning. The car exploded at a roadside junction where men sold black market gasoline, which caught fire. Boko Haram was blamed. As of April 10, it had not spoken of the attack.
Later that day, a bomb went off in Jos, killing sixteen.
April 9, 2012—Somalia—Al-Shabaab bombed a vegetable market in Baidoa, killing a dozen people and wounding thirty. Police arrested one suspect. The group posted on its Web site, “The explosion has targeted Ethiopians and their apostate companions. Then they opened fire at the civilians in the market, killing five people on the spot.”
April 9, 2012—Nigeria—Suspected Boko Haram gunmen fired on a policeman and his family in Potiskum, a city in the northeast, killing the policeman’s 6-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, gunmen killed three people in attacks on a police station, church, and bank in the northeastern border town of Dikwa. A local politician, a police officer, a civilian, and three gunmen died in the attacks, which were blamed on Boko Haram.
April 9, 2012—Egypt—An explosion went off at the Egyptian pipeline carrying gas to Israel and Jordan in the northern Sinai at the entrance of the town of al-Arish. No group claimed credit. It was the fourteenth attack on the pipeline since the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak. The pipeline is run by Gasco, a subsidiary of the national gas company EGAS. 12040901
April 9, 2012—Peru—Masked Shining Path gunmen took nearly forty oil and gas workers hostage near natural gas fields near Kepashiato in a bid to foil an army capture operation. The employees work for the Swedish firm Skanska, which services Peru’s main natural gas pipeline. Some fifteen hundred troops and police joined the search for the hostages. The Shining Path fired on a military helicopter that was part of the dragnet, killing a police captain and injuring two people. The group demanded a $10 million ransom, along with explosives and weapons. The government said it would not negotiate. The Maoist faction, led by Martin Quispe, alias Comrade Gabriel, freed the hostages after being surrounded by government troops on April 14. At least six security agents were killed during the rescue. Quispe appeared on television to say that his group was now named the Militarized Communist Party of Peru. 12040902
April 12, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram leader Imam Abubakar Shekau posted a fourteen-minute Internet video addressing Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. “You the helpless, we heard that you intend and want to destroy us, but this talk is useless when it is said by an infidel because only God can destroy us. Until now, nobody was able to do that, and you, too, will not be able to do anything, with God’s help…. One day you kill one thousand and then we turn back, then after two days we kill your own one hundred. We’re turning it around like the way it is in the Quran.” Shekau was in a white robe; he was joined by gunmen holding Kalashnikov rifles. He spoke in Arabic and Hausa. The video included a Hausa song about the sect, saying it was ready to kill nonbelievers. The video included the group’s logo of two crossed Kalashnikovs around a Quran and a black Islamist flag, similar to that used by al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb.
April 14, 2012—Colombia—Four bombs exploded in the country apparently in protest of the visit of President Barack Obama for the Summit of the Americas. Leftist rebels were suspected. Two bombs went off in a ditch in a residential area near the attorney general’s office and the U.S. Embassy, breaking windows but causing no casualties. Two other bombs went off in Cartagena.
April 15, 2012—Afghanistan—The Taliban conducted coordinated attacks at 1:45 p.m. against several Western embassies in Kabul’s diplomatic quarter. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid credited a “spring offensive” that it had planned for months. “This is a message to those foreign commanders who claim that the Taliban lost momentum. We just showed that we are here and we will launch and stage attacks whenever we want.” Local police captured two terrorists with suicide-bomb vests and destroyed a car bomb near the parliament building. U.S. Embassy staff were reported safe but under lockdown. The Taliban said it had targeted the U.K. and German embassies, the headquarters of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and President Hamid Karzai’s presidential palace compound. Two rockets hit a British Embassy guard tower and a rocket-propelled grenade landed outside the front gate of a house used by British diplomats. Rockets were also fired at the Russian, U.K., German, and Canadian embassies and the parliament building. Fighting was reported at seven locations, including near the U.S., Russian, and German embassies. Three rockets hit a supermarket that is popular with foreigners near the German Embassy. The Taliban attacked the Star Hotel complex near the presidential palace and the Iranian Embassy. Gun battles went on for at least fourteen hours. The Pakistan-based Haqqani branch of the Taliban was blamed. The Interior Ministry said seventeen terrorists were killed and seventeen police officers and fourteen civilians were injured in the attacks in Kabul and several outlying areas. 12041501-05
April 15, 2012—Mali—Islamists believed linked to al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM) kidnapped Swiss missionary Beatrice Stockly. She was released on October 24, 2012. 12041501
April 16, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram shot dead two people in Maiduguri.
April 17, 2012—Afghanistan—The Taliban was suspected of poisoning the well of a school for girls in Rostaq in Takhar Province, hospitalizing 171 women and girls ranging in age from 14 to 30. Police took 2 school caretakers into custody.
April 17, 2012—Nigeria—Authorities raided Boko Haram sites in Maiduguri, killed one member and arrested thirteen others.
April 18, 2012—Nigeria—The U.S. Embassy warned Americans that “Boko Haram may be planning attacks in Abuja, Nigeria, including against hotels frequently visited by Westerners.” In November 2011, the embassy had warned of possible attacks against the Hilton, Sheraton, and Nicon Luxury hotels in Abuja.
April 18, 2012—Azerbaijan—The Ministry of National Security announced that it had disbanded a terrorist cell of twenty al Qaeda-linked operatives who were planning to attack “shrines, mosques, and prayer houses,” as well as “law enforcement agencies” to “create [an] atmosphere of … confusion and horror among the population.” The Ministry noted that some members of the cell had logged two months receiving “weapons and physical training in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The Weekly Standard reported that the cell was aided by Ibrahimkhalil “Saleh” Davudov before he was killed by Russian security forces in 2012. Davudov had been head of Dagestani terrorists and reported to Chechen terrorist leader Doku Umarov. The government said some of the terrorists were trained in northern Pakistan by the Islamic Jihad Union, which is affiliated with al Qaeda.
April 19, 2012—Nigeria—Suspected Boko Haram gunmen attacked a bakery and shot others in a Maiduguri street, killing seven people, including an officer of the Nigeria Customs Service, a man selling drinking water in the street, and five people working overnight in the bakery near a branch of Nigeria’s Central Bank.
April 19, 2012—Tajikistan—A court in Khujand convicted thirty-four people of participation in a terrorist group and sentenced them to terms ranging from eight to twenty-eight years. Some were charged with murder and attempting the violent overthrow of the country. They were believed to be members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
April 19, 2012—Kazakhstan—A court sentenced forty-seven people to up to fifteen years on terrorism charges after a month-long secret trial in the western region of the country. Some forty-two defendants were jailed on charges of forming a terrorist group, financing extremist activity, and organizing a series of attacks. The other five were linked to Jund al-Khilafah attacks in Atyrau, a western oil city, in October 2011; only a bomber was killed. The defendants were between 22 and 32 years old. Two were from Uzbekistan.
April 20, 2012—United Kingdom—West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit police at Heathrow Airport arrested three Birmingham men on suspicion of “possessing articles and documents with intent to use them for terrorist purposes overseas.” The trio, aged 33 to 39, had arrived that night from Oman.
April 20, 2012—United Kingdom—Al-Shabaab posted a warning on jihadi Web sites that the United Kingdom faced terrorist attacks if it deported radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada.
April 21, 2012—Afghanistan—The National Directorate of Security (NDS) intelligence agency said that it had arrested Haqqani terrorists planning to kill Second Vice President Karim Khalili and a second group of three Pakistanis and two Afghans who were smuggling 11 tons of explosives into Kabul hidden in a truck of potatoes. A government spokesman said that the trio, all Afghans, hailed from Paktia, Ghazni, and Wardak provinces, and “all the detained individuals confessed their involvement during the preliminary investigations and admitted that they had been dispatched to military, terrorist, and suicide training camps in Miran Shah, Pakistan.” NDS said the smuggling was organized by the Pakistani Taliban and the Qari Baryal group.
April 23, 2012—Kenya—The U.S. Embassy warned U.S. citizens “residing in or visiting Kenya that the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi has received credible information regarding a possible attack on Nairobi hotels and prominent Kenyan government buildings.” The attacks could include “suicide operations, bombings, kidnappings, attacks on civil aviation, and attacks on maritime vessels in or near Kenyan ports.”
April 24, 2012—Nigeria—A bomb exploded at a bar in a Christian neighborhood in Jos where people were watching Chelsea play Barcelona in the Champions League. One person was killed and nine others injured. Boko Haram was suspected.
April 24, 2012—Pakistan—A time bomb containing between 13 and 18 pounds of explosives went off in Lahore’s busiest rail station, killing two and injuring twenty-seven who were in the waiting area of Business Express, a luxury train service linking Lahore and Karachi. Lashkar-e-Baluchistan (Army of Baluchistan) claimed credit.
April 24, 2012—United Kingdom—In morning raids in Luton, members of the counterterrorism unit of London’s Metropolitan Police Service arrested five men, aged 21 to 35, on “the suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism.”
April 25, 2012—Syria—An explosion killed sixteen people when it flattened a block of houses in Hama. The government claimed rebel bomb makers accidentally set off the bomb, but anti-government activists blamed government shelling and said the death toll was seventy.
April 26, 2012—Nigeria—A suicide car bomber in Abuja and a man driving a car and armed with explosives in Kaduna attacked two Nigerian newspapers—ThisDay in Abuja and an office building it shares with The Moment and The Daily Sun newspapers in Kaduna—killing seven and wounding twenty-six. Boko Haram claimed credit. The Abuja attack killed three and injured others. In Kaduna, locals allowed a car bomber to open the trunk of his car; he pulled out a bomb and threw it, killing four people. He was arrested. Boko Haram said it would continue attacking the media because of inaccurate coverage. On May 1, Boko Haram posted an eighteen-minute video to YouTube that showed the smiling suicide bomber driving into the newspaper offices. The group included threats to continue attacks against journalists, major Nigerian newspapers, Voice of America, Radio France Internationale, and the Nigerian government, saying, “If they destroy one brick from our building, we will destroy five hundred from theirs.”
April 26, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan special forces soldier opened fire with a machine gun from the top of a building, shooting to death Andrew Britton, 25, a Green Beret soldier in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar and wounding three other coalition troops and a local interpreter before he was killed. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi posted on an insurgent Web site that it had planted the terrorist in the elite unit. The Taliban identified the killer as Zakirullah, a resident of Nangarhar Province.
April 27, 2012—Afghanistan—During an argument between Afghan and Western troops, an Afghan police officer opened fire, injuring two U.S. troops. NATO troops fired back, killing two local police officers.
April 27, 2012—Syria—State television reported that a suicide bomber killed ten and wounded nearly thirty across the street from a Damascus mosque.
April 27, 2012—Denmark—Authorities arrested three people—a 22-year-old Jordanian citizen, a 23-year-old Turkish citizen who lives in Denmark, and a 21-year-old Danish citizen who lives in Egypt—on suspicion of planning a terror attack. They were charged with illegal possession of automatic weapons and ammunition, which police had confiscated. They were arrested at two locations. Police seized three cars in Herlev, a suburb of Copenhagen; witnesses also saw police activity in the Valby neighborhood.
April 27, 2012—Ukraine—Four bombs went off within seventy-two minutes of each other, injuring twenty-nine people, including nine children, in Dnipropetrovsk. Authorities blamed terrorists. The first bomb, which went off at 11:50 a.m., was hidden in a trash can at a tram stop, and injured thirteen. Forty minutes later, a bomb went off near a movie theater, injuring eleven, including nine children. A third bomb went off near a park entrance, injuring three people. The fourth bomb went off in the city center, causing no injuries. At least twenty-four people were hospitalized. The city is the home of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko.
April 28, 2012—Afghanistan—At 11:15 a.m., two Taliban gunmen who hid their Spanish-made Astra Cub pistols and explosives in their boots failed to assassinate Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wesa when they were stopped in his reception area by police who fired on them. Wesa is U.S.-educated. The terrorists and two Afghan police officers died in the twenty-minute exchange. Wesa’s office said it was the ninth assassination attempt on him. The Astra holds eleven .22 caliber bullets and has a 2-inch barrel. The attackers left behind two vehicles that were packed with explosives, which authorities defused.
April 28, 2012—Colombia—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped French television journalist Romeo Langlois, 35. On May 6, 2012, a FARC squadron commander identifying himself as Ancizar, alias Monaso, dressed in olive fatigues and carrying an assault rifle, released a video in which he said that Langlois was a “prisoner of war” who was receiving medical treatment for an injured arm. Langlois was captured in Caqueta while with Colombian military and police forces on an antidrug mission when they engaged in a gun battle with FARC during which four Colombian soldiers and a policeman were killed. The spokesman said he was reading from a script dated April 30. Langlois was working freelance for France 24, a news channel. On May 30, FARC released Langlois in the village of San Isidro, Caqueta Department, to an international delegation including a representative of the French government, the International Red Cross, and former Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba. Langlois said that FARC treated him with respect, “They never tied me up…. They always treated me like a guest.” He told a meeting in the town square that “the government has sold the idea that this conflict was almost over, that there were just a few hot zones left. That has always been false. The fact that they had to hold an independent journalist for thirty-three days to remind people of the situation, shows how tremendously degraded the conflict has become.” He said the guerrillas held up his release to coincide with the group’s forty-eighth anniversary. 12042801
April 29, 2012—Kenya—A grenade was thrown into God’s House of Miracles International Church in Nairobi’s Ngara enclave during Sunday services, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen. Al-Shabaab was suspected. On May 15, 2012, police charged Kenyan citizen Ibrahim Kibe Kagwa with six counts of causing grievous bodily harm.
April 29, 2012—Algeria—Security forces killed twenty members of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, an al Qaeda splinter group, as they were about to attack two fuel tankers near the Mali border. The group had earlier kidnapped seven Algerian diplomats from their consulate in Gao, in northern Mali.
April 30, 2012—Nigeria—A suicide bomber drove his motorcycle into a convoy carrying Police Commissioner Mamman Sule to his offices near the governor’s office in Jalingo, capital of Taraba State. Sule was uninjured, but the explosives caused massive damage at a roadside market, kill?ing eleven people—including the suicide bomber—injuring twenty-six, and blowing out the windows of the state Ministry of Finance building. Boko Haram was suspected.
April 30, 2012—Syria—Government media said nine people died and one hundred were wounded in two suicide bombings against local branches of army and air force intelligence in Idlib. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said twenty were killed, most with the security services.
April 30, 2012—United States—The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested five men planning to blow up Cleveland’s Brecksville–Northfield High Level Bridge at Route 82 that crosses from Brecksville to Sagamore Hills over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. An undercover FBI agent gave them inoperable explosive devices. The FBI arrested them after the individuals planted the device. Douglas L. Wright, 26, Brandon L. Baxter, 20, and Anthony Hayne, 35, were held on charges of conspiracy and attempted use of explosive materials to damage physical property affecting interstate commerce. Charges were pending against Connor C. Stevens, 20, and Joshua S. Stafford, 23. Three of the men claimed to be anarchists. The Bureau said the group wanted to “topple financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland” while co-conspirators used smoke grenades to distract law enforcement. The group ratcheted up the plan into using explosives to destroy bridges or other targets. Some of the bombers were to set off the bombs from a safe distance that they thought could provide an alibi. The FBI had tracked the individuals since a confidential source met Wright at a Cleveland-area protest event in November 2011. Wright told the source that his group of anarchists “had been discussing plans involving violence and destruction to physical property … to send a message to corporations and the United States government.” The charges carried possible sentences of twenty-plus years in prison. The five had been associated with the Occupy Cleveland movement, which denied involvement and canceled its planned May Day protest following the arrests.
May 2012—Libya—Rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the Benghazi offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Brigades of Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, a Libyan jihadi group named after the “blind sheikh,” claimed credit. The group said the Red Cross was targeted as “one of the strongholds of Christian missionary activity.” The group released a three-minute video of the nighttime attack. 12059901
May 2012—Congo—Villagers unhappy with the UN for not protecting them fired at a UN base, injuring eleven Pakistani peacekeepers who were part of the UN mission. 12059902
May 2012—Egypt—Bedouin tribesman kidnapped ten Fijian soldiers attached to the UN Multinational Force and Observers, holding them for two days. 12059903
May 2012—Syria—As of January 9, 2013, nine Lebanese Shi’ites, part of a group kidnapped in Aleppo, remained hostages. Lebanese, Turkish, and Qatari officials had tried to broker a deal. 12059904
May 1, 2012—Germany—Berlin police found three pipe bombs, about 16 inches long and filled with an explosive made of chlorate and sugar, on sidewalks in Berlin’s western Kreuzberg neighborhood near a May 1 protest march that attracted ten thousand leftist demonstrators.
May 1, 2012—Yemen—Five suspected al Qaeda gunmen attacked Yemeni and French employees of the French oil company Total as they were driving from an oil field in Hadramout Province to the airport in Seiyun. Two kilometers away from the airport, the gunmen fired rifles at the car, killing a Yemeni escort soldier who was sitting in the front passenger seat and wounding a Frenchman in the leg and another Yemeni employee, who was hit three times in the chest. 12050101
May 1, 2012—United Kingdom—Authorities arrested six men and one woman suspected of financing terrorism in Somalia by smuggling khat leaf into the United States and Canada. The raids took place at four residences in London, Coventry, and Cardiff, Wales. Police searched seven other residences and a business in Coventry.
May 1, 2012—United Kingdom—Police charged Kamran Ahmed, 21, from Birmingham, with six counts of terrorism offenses, saying that he possessed documents and records that could be used to commit terrorism. He was out on bail until a hearing scheduled for May 4 in Westminster Magistrates Court.
May 2, 2012—Internet—The first two new editions of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s e-magazine Inspire since the death of editor Samir Khan and operations chief Anwar al-Aulaqi offered instructions on building remotely-detonated bombs and how to set off forest fires in the United States with timed explosives. The ninth edition eulogized the duo, saying:
To the disappointment of our enemies, issue 9 of Inspire magazine is out against all odds…. The Zionists and the Crusaders thought that the magazine was gone with the martyrdom of Shaykh Anwar and brother Samir. Yet again, they have failed to come to terms with the fact that the Muslim ummah is the most fertile and most generous mother that gives birth to thousands and thousands of the likes of Shaykh Anwar and brother Samir … Inspire is and will be an effective tool regardless of who is in charge of it.
Articles in the ninth edition included, “It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,” and suggested Montana as a good place for an “ember bomb.” “In America, there are more houses built in the [countryside] than in the cities. It is difficult to choose a better place [than] in the valleys of Montana.” Articles in the eighth edition included, “Training with the Handgun” and “Remote Control Detonation,” and apparently al-Aulaqi’s final article, in which he said, “Explosives … firearms … poisons, or chemical and biological weapons against population centers is allowed and is strongly recommended due to its great effect on the enemy.” The magazine said it is “still publishing America’s worst nightmare.” The magazine’s new editors did not have the English-language fluency of their predecessors, publishing such passages as “What does it take to be an effective urbanite assassin? This is an inquiry that recurs in the psyche of the personage who apprehends the potency of this policy upon his preys.”
May 2, 2012—Afghanistan—At 6:15 a.m., at least four Taliban insurgents, armed with mortars, machine guns, hand grenades, and suicide vests attacked the main gate of the Green Village, a fortified compound run by Stratex Hospitality that houses two thousand Westerners in Kabul, killing at least six people, including one foreign guard and one Afghan student. The attack came hours after President Barack Obama left the country after a surprise visit. The Taliban announced, “This delivers a message to President Obama that he is not welcome in Afghanistan. When he is in Afghanistan, we want him to hear the sound of explosions. Afghanistan does not want his imposed strategy.” The terrorists had worn burqas to hide their weapons. They set off at least three explosions, possibly car bombs, at the gate. Two insurgents entered the compound and seized the laundry and maintenance building. Afghan special police forces and Norwegian military personnel conducted a three-hour gun battle, killing at least one terrorist. 12050201
May 3, 2012—Russia—Two suicide car bombers set off their 175 pounds of explosives fifteen minutes apart during the night near a traffic police post in Makhachkala, Dagestan, killing thirteen and wounding more than one hundred. Islamist insurgents were suspected. The first bomb went off at 10:10 p.m.; the second killed police officers and rescue workers arriving at the scene. Shrapnel went through a natural gas pipeline, starting a fire that kept rescue workers away from the victims.
May 3, 2012—Germany—Four men were charged in Berlin with membership in a terrorist organization and planning to carry out an attack for al Qaeda in Germany against an undetermined target. Abdeladim el-Kebir, the group’s 30-year-old Moroccan leader, was also charged with training at a terrorist camp near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He also recruited and indoctrinated the group’s other members. Jamil S., 32, a German Moroccan, was charged with helping to make explosives. Amid C., 20, a German Iranian, and Halil S., 27, a German, were believed to have been involved in logistics. Halil S. was accused of involvement in the plot after the other three Duesseldorf Cell members were arrested in Duesseldorf and Bochum on April 29, 2011. Halil S. was arrested in Bochum on December 8, 2011.
May 3, 2012—Afghanistan—The national intelligence agency said it had arrested a Pakistani suicide truck bomber on the main road in eastern Kabul. The target was unspecified.
May 4, 2012—United States—The news media reported that the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) issued a monthly note in which it indicated that cyber attacks had been targeting gas pipeline companies since December 2011. DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard confirmed that the team “has been working since March 2012 with critical infrastructure owners and operators in the oil and natural gas sector to address a series of cyber intrusions targeting natural gas pipeline companies. The cyber intrusion involves sophisticated spear-phishing activities targeting personnel within the private companies.” The memo added, “Analysis shows that the spear-phishing attempts have targeted a variety of personnel within these organizations; however, the number of persons targeted appears to be tightly focused. In addition, the emails have been convincingly crafted to appear as though they were sent from a trusted member internal to the organization.” The hacking was first spotted in March. National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander told a Senate Committee that a similar attack that occurred in March 2011 was believed to have originated on Chinese servers.
May 4, 2012—Pakistan—An 8:00 a.m. suicide bombing in the Bajur tribal area near the Afghanistan border killed twenty-six people—five of them local members of the security forces, including one who had received an award for bravery in fighting jihadis—and injuring at least seventy-five people. The terrorist set off the bomb as he approached a security checkpoint, killing a woman and several schoolchildren. The Pakistani Taliban claimed credit, saying two senior security officials had been targeted to avenge the death at the hands of security forces in Bajur in 2011 of Sheik Marwan, an al Qaeda commander. Ihsanullah Ihsan said, “We will continue to attack government-sponsored militias and security forces.” Taliban commander Dadullah was believed behind the attack.
May 5, 2012—Mali—Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine Islamists torched the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar, a Sufi saint in Timbuktu, which was designated by UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a World Heritage Site.
May 7, 2012—Yemen/United States—The news media reported that the CIA in April had foiled a plot by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner around the first anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden. The bomb contained lead azide and had a new dual-detonator design that improved upon the earlier “underwear bomber” method that failed on Christmas 2009. The bomb did not have any metal parts, which would make it more difficult to detect by current screening mechanisms, although U.S. authorities said that it would probably be spotted by U.S. scanners. U.S. officials said it was still designed to be hidden in the terrorist’s underwear. The FBI’s Quantico facility was testing the device, which had been seized within the previous ten days. The Bureau credited the “close cooperation with our security and intelligence partners overseas.” Officials said the bomb was seized in transit in the Middle East outside Yemen, but not at an airport. The United States had been aware of the plot for about one month. The bomber had been told to pick a target of opportunity.
The next day, the press reported that the would-be bomber was a Saudi intelligence service source who passed the bomb to the Agency via the Saudis rather than detonate it on a plane. In a joint operation with the Saudi intelligence service, the CIA tracked the device for several weeks. The plotters, including Fahd al-Quso, later died in an air strike because of information provided by the source, according to the Washington Post. NBC News reported on May 10 that source was a Western-documented British national of Middle Eastern origin. Other news reports said that the British MI5 and MI6 intelligence services were also involved in the individual’s recruitment. Members of the U.S. Congress called for an investigation of the plethora of leaks regarding the case.
Authorities believed the bomb was designed by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri or an apprentice. Asiri had designed the first underwear bomb and the printer ink cartridge bombs that were discovered in 2010 before they could explode inside cargo planes. Asiri had also inserted a bomb inside his brother in the latter’s 2009 attempt to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi deputy interior minister. The press later reported that the would-be terrorist was a Yemeni born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who studied and worked in the United Kingdom, where he obtained a U.K. passport.
May 7, 2012—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) attacked a Yemeni army base in Abyan Province, killing twenty-two soldiers, injuring twelve, and capturing twenty-five a few hours after a drone strike had killed AQAP operations chief Fahd al-Quso. The terrorists arrived by sea and land, and stole weapons and other military hardware.
May 8, 2012—United States—Southwest Airlines flight 811 and flight 1184 flying from Orange County, California, to Phoenix, Arizona, were the subjects of nonspecific bomb threats. Passengers and bags were screened. No bombs were found.
May 8, 2012—Algeria—The U.S. Department of State announced in a travel advisory that “the U.S. government considers the potential threat to U.S. Embassy personnel assigned to Algiers sufficiently serious to require them to live and work under significant security restrictions.”
May 9, 2012—Syria—A bomb hit a Syrian military convoy escorting the head of the UN observer mission, injuring eight Syrian soldiers. The opposition Free Syrian Army denied involvement. None of the UN monitors, led by Norwegian Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, were injured. The convoy went on to Daraa. 12050901
May 9, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called on Muslims to avenge the February Quran burnings at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan by fighting “those aggressors who occupied your countries, stole your wealth, and violated your sanctities.” He deemed the American apology for the mistake a “silly farce.”
May 9, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram (BH) was believed responsible for shooting to death two traders in a market in Maiduguri. Soldiers killed one suspected BH member and arrested two others who carried out an attack on a military post.
May 10, 2012—Russia—Russian media announced that earlier in the week Russia’s security service in a joint operation with Abkhazian security services arrested three men in Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia on charges of plotting to attack the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea city of Sochi. The trio was believed to be leaders of a regional cell of the North Caucasus–based Chechen terrorist group Caucasus Emirate. Police seized weapons, including three portable surface-to-air missiles, two antitank guided missiles, a mortar, and a flamethrower.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State added the Caucasus Emirate to its list of foreign terrorist groups and authorized a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the location of its leader, Doku Umarov.
May 10, 2012—Syria—Syria’s Interior Ministry claimed that terrorists had set off two “booby-trapped cars” filled with more than a ton of explosives, killing dozens and wounding more than 400 near an intersection on a busy highway during the morning rush hour in Damascus. No one claimed credit. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 59 died and the nation’s intelligence agency building was destroyed in the 8:00 a.m. blasts. The Interior Ministry said the dead included 55 civilians and security force members and 372 injured at an intersection in the densely populated neighborhood of Qazzaz. The Health Ministry’s tally was 55 dead and circa 400 wounded. At least one foreign expert suggested that the al Qaeda-linked Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant or the jihadi Al-Baraa Ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade was responsible. The target was the headquarters of the Syrian security services’ Palestine Branch; the building housing the Patrols Branch was also damaged. The explosions destroyed twenty-one vehicles and damaged more than one hundred others. The Al-Nusrah Front released a video on May 11 claiming credit, saying, “We fulfilled our promise to respond with strikes and explosions” to avenge the Assad regime’s attacks on residential areas. “We promised the regime in our last declaration to respond to its killing of families, women, children, and old men in a number of Syrian provinces, and here we kept our promise…. We tell this regime: stop your massacres against the Sunni people. If not, you will bear the sin of the Alawites. What is coming will be more calamitous, God willing.”
May 11, 2012—Afghanistan—A man wearing an Afghan Army uniform shot to death a U.S. soldier in Konar Province. It was the fifteenth attack in which Afghan soldiers or insurgents wearing military uniforms had shot foreign troops. The Taliban claimed credit. The terrorist, Mahmood, died in a precision air strike in Kunar Province on September 15. 12051101
May 11, 2012—Syria—Authorities said they had foiled a suicide minivan bombing that would have set off 1,200 kilograms of explosives in Aleppo. The non–Syrian bomber was shot to death in his van in the al Shaar district. 12051201
May 11, 2012—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video calling for al-Shabaab to continue attacks and ignore drone strikes.
May 12, 2012—Afghanistan—At 3:00 p.m., gunmen wearing Afghan police uniforms shot to death two British NATO soldiers in a joint NATO-Afghan coalition compound in Helmand Province. A third policeman shot to death one of the attackers and wounded the second, who escaped. The duo had been members of the Afghan National Police for one year. 12051202
May 12, 2012—Nigeria—Nigerian police captured Suleiman Mohammed, a leading Boko Haram figure in Kano, along with his wife and children in his hideout. The Yoruba terrorist was flown to Abuja. Police recovered explosives, ammunition, and guns.
May 13, 2012—Afghanistan—Gunmen shot to death Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, who was stuck in traffic in Kabul. Occupants of a car beside his opened fire. Rahmani was a Taliban defector who had served on the seventy-member High Peace Council set up two years earlier to liaise with the insurgents. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Majihid denied involvement, saying, “Others are involved in this.”
May 14, 2012—United States—Federal authorities arrested and charged three self-proclaimed anarchist members of the Black Bloc who had traveled from Florida to Chicago planning to commit violence as a protest against the NATO summit. They had plotted to attack President Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters, the Chicago mayor’s home, and four Chicago police district stations. The Black Bloc name was used by anarchists who conducted violence during the Occupy protests, including in Rome in 2011 when ski-masked terrorists torched cars and clashed with police and other Occupiers. An Illinois judge set bail at $1.5 million. The trio were identified as Brian Church, 22, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Jared Chase, 27, of Keene, New Hampshire; and Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Massachusetts and Oakland Park, Florida. Charges included providing material support for terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism, and possession of explosives or incendiary devices. Authorities said Church planned to recruit four teams of four each and that reconnaissance had already been done on the Chicago Police Department headquarters. Police seized improvised explosive or incendiary devices, a mortar gun, swords, a hunting bow, throwing stars, and knives with brass-knuckle handles. Prosecutors said they had also stockpiled Molotov cocktails. They were represented by the National Lawyers Guild and attorney Sarah Gelsomino of the People’s Law Office.
May 14, 2012—Afghanistan—Some 389 boys at a school in the Ismail Khan Mandokhil district of southeastern Khost Province fell ill after drinking water from a well that may have been poisoned. Eighty of them remained in a hospital as of May 20.
May 15, 2012—Colombia—A bomb targeting former Interior Minister Fernando Londono exploded in Bogota’s commercial district, killing two people and injuring nineteen, including Londono.
May 15, 2012—Kenya—Gunmen fired shots and threw four grenades outside Mombasa’s Velle Vista nightclub after they were denied entry, killing a security guard and wounding five people, including a terrorist. Authorities blamed al-Shabaab. The terrorist was hospitalized with shrapnel from a grenade. He was identified as Thabit Jamal Din Yahya, a Nairobi resident who had traveled to Mombasa days before the attack. He was to depart for Nairobi at 10:00 p.m. via bus. Authorities searched the bus terminal and found that his luggage contained a pistol magazine and eight rounds of ammunition.
May 15, 2012—Kenya—A bomb exploded at the world’s largest refugee camp, near the Kenya-Somalia border, killing one policeman and seriously wounding four others when the bomb went off under their car. Al-Shabaab was suspected.
May 15, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri issued an audio message on jihadi Web sites entitled Yemen: Between a Fugitive Puppet and a Collaborating Stooge. It was recorded before the latest underwear bomber attempt.
May 18, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a video lasting six minutes and nineteen seconds on jihadi Web sites in which he called for Muslims to rise up against the Saudi monarchy using the model of Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.
Why don’t you rise up, for you are the sons of the strong and proud tribes that look down upon death in order to lift up humiliation and oppression? Are you afraid of the forces of the Saudi regime and its security and army? The Family of Saud might be able to kill tens, hundreds, or thousands from amongst you, but if hundreds of thousands come out, then they will be shocked and will end up, Allah permitting, in the state that their brethren ended up in amongst the ousted tyrants.
He also observed, regarding a Yemeni government change, “So, Ali Abdallah Saleh is gone, and his successor Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has taken over.”
May 19, 2012—Italy—A bomb went off at 7:45 a.m. at a high school in Brindisi, killing a 16-year-old girl and injuring ten. Police did not think it was the work of the Sacred United Crown, a Mafia group, suggesting anarchists were behind it. The school was named after anti–Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo, a judge who was also killed in the 1992 bombing on a highway in Sicily by La Cosa Nostra. The bomb consisted of three cooking-gas canisters and a remotely-controlled detonator. It had been placed on a low wall ringing the school. Police later ruled out the Mafia and said it appeared to be the work of a lone man. Two men were taken into custody for questioning. On June 7, 2012, Giovanni Vantaggiato, 68, confessed to acting alone in building and placing the Brindisi school bomb. He had been arrested a day earlier. Surveillance video showed him driving his own car and his wife’s car in front of the school in the days before the attack. He used a remote detonator. He owns a gas station, giving him access to gas and gas tanks used in the bombing. His motive remained unclear.
May 19, 2012—Syria—A suicide car bomber in Deir al-Zor killed nine and wounded one hundred. The regime blamed al Qaeda.
May 20, 2012—Yemen—Three American contractors working with the Yemen Coast Guard were wounded in a shooting in the port city of Hodeida. One person was arrested in the attack. 12052001
May 20, 2012—United States—Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, of Chicago, was charged with falsely making a terrorist threat. Mark Neiweem, 28, believed to be from Chicago, was charged with attempted possession of explosives or incendiary devices. Bond was set at $750,000 for Senakiewicz and $500,000 for Neiweem. Authorities said they were not part of the previous week’s plot to set off bombs throughout Chicago as part of the anti–NATO demonstrations by the Black Bloc. Senakiewicz, a native of Poland, told friends he had made two homemade explosive devices that could “blow up half of an overpass for a train” and was planning to use them during the summit. He said that they were stored in a Chicago home in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book. He also said he had a vehicle “filled with explosives and weapons.” A search turned up no explosives. Neiweem told an associate that he wanted to obtain materials to make a pipe bomb. Senakiewicz claimed to be a member of the Black Bloc and “an anarchist who is upset with the lack of chaos in Chicago.”
May 21, 2012—Yemen—At 10:00 a.m., a suicide bomber dressed in a military uniform killed 105 soldiers and injured 300, some critically, at a military parade rehearsal in Sabeen Square, 220 meters from the presidential palace in Sana’a. The parade was to commemorate National Day, when in 1990 the two countries of North Yemen and South Yemen united. Ansar al-Shariah posted on Facebook that it was aiming at Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, Yemen’s defense minister, and was retaliating for attacks on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) southern safe houses in May. AQAP said it was avenging the U.S. and local military’s war on its followers in southern Yemen. The attack missed killing the defense minister, the target of the bomber. The group issued a message to military commanders that said, “We will take revenge, God willing, and the flames of war will reach you everywhere, and what happened is but the start of a jihad project in defense of honor and sanctities.” The group had heretofore attacked targets in the south, ignoring the capital. Observers suggested that the bomber was an AQAP penetration of the armed forces. Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced the sacking of four senior commanders. Among the injured was Mahdi al-Jarbani, the drill major for the brigade; he sustained shrapnel wounds. On January 14, 2013, nine Yemenis accused of complicity in the suicide bombing appeared in court.
May 21, 2012—Colombia—Between sixty and eighty Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) members staged an attack from Venezuelan soil into Colombia on an army patrol guarding a telecommunications tower, killing twelve soldiers, including a second lieutenant, and wounding four others during an hour-long firefight. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that he had sent additional troops to guard against rebels passing into his country. The Nuevo Arco Iris foundation Bogota reported that FARC had conducted 550 attacks in the first four months of 2012, an increase of 3 percent from 2011 and 15 percent from four years earlier.
May 22, 2012—France—U.S. Airways flight 787, a B-767 flying from Paris to Charlotte with 188 people on board, was diverted safely to Bangor, Maine, after a female French citizen born in Cameroon handed a note to a flight attendant saying that she had a surgically implanted bomb. The plane was trailed by two F-15s. She was removed from the aircraft, questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and placed in FBI custody. Earlier in the month there were reports that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was looking into such an attack. U.S. Attorney Thomas Delahanty, II, said that there was not sufficient evidence to support charges against Lucie Zeeko Marigot, 41, and she would soon be headed back home.
May 22, 2012—Syria—Syrian rebels kidnapped eleven Lebanese Shi’ites and their Syrian driver in Aleppo Province while they were coming home via two buses from a pilgrimage in Iran. The rebels released the women they had detained, saying they should go to a security headquarters in Aleppo and arrange for the release of rebels being held by the Syrian government. The Free Syrian Army denied involvement. The Lebanese victims’ neighborhoods saw rioting, with streets blocked by burning tires. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged calm, saying, “We don’t want to create a conflict. That is illegitimate. Those Syrian immigrants are our brothers, and we don’t want any violent actions, which do not help the cause.”
As of December 15, the kidnappers had released two hostages as a goodwill gesture but insisted that the other nine were Hizballah members. The group was led by Amar al-Dadikhi of the North Storm Brigade, who demanded the release by Syria of two prominent opposition figures—Tal al-Mallohi and Lt. Col. Hussein Harmoush—and the release by Lebanon of all Syrian activists in detention. Mallohi was a teen female blogger who was jailed in 2009 on accusations of espionage. Harmoush was the first prominent Syrian Army defector in June 2011 and disappeared in Turkey in August 2011, soon appearing on Syrian television to recant his claims that the government had ordered troops to fire on civilians. Dadikhi permitted two New York Times journalists on December 13 to meet with hostages Ali Abbas, 30, and Ali Tormos, 54. 12052201
May 22, 2012—Argentina—Police defused a bomb at the Gran Rex Theater in Buenos Aires, a day before former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was scheduled to speak. The bomb was set to go off at 4:30 p.m. during Uribe’s presentation at an international conference of entrepreneurs. 12052202
May 22, 2012—United States—The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs released an al Qaeda video calling for “covert mujahideen” to conduct “electronic jihad” against the U.S. government and critical infrastructure, including the electronic grid. The video exhorted Muslims “with expertise in this domain to target the Web sites and information systems of big companies and government agencies.” The Department of Homeland Security reported receiving more than fifty thousand reports of cyber intrusions or attempted intrusions in the United States since October 2011. The call for cyber jihad was part of a two-hour al Qaeda online video.
May 22, 2012—Afghanistan—At 4:00 p.m., gunmen kidnapped four workers—Helen Johnston, 28, of the United Kingdom; Moragwa Oirere, 26, of Kenya; and their two Afghan colleagues—who were on assignment for Medair, an international humanitarian organization based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Medair specializes in emergency relief work, food aid, and nutrition projects. The hostages were grabbed as they were traveling on horseback on a rural road near a project site between Yaftal and Raghistan districts in Badakhshan Province. Afghan elders worked to free the hostages during negotiations over the terrorists’ demand for a $10 million ransom. The hostages were freed from a mountain cave on June 2 in a 1:00 a.m. raid by helicopter-borne U.K. and NATO forces. Seven terrorists were killed. The terrorists had links to the Taliban and were armed with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and AK-47s. They had held the hostages in Gulati, a village in Shahri Buzurg district, a mountainous and forested area near the border with Tajikistan. 12052202
May 23, 2012—Afghanistan—Terrorists poisoned 122 girls and 3 teachers at the Bibi Hajera girls’ school in the provincial capital of Talokhan. The Taliban was suspected.
May 23, 2012—Internet—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that cyber experts in the U.S. Department of State’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications had hacked into al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Web sites that posted information on al Qaeda attacks against Yemeni citizens.
May 24, 2012—Pakistan—Two missiles fired from a drone hit a house in the Mirali area of North Waziristan, killing ten militants, including five Central Asians linked to al Qaeda, and injuring several individuals.
May 25, 2012—Yemen—Two al Qaeda-linked suicide bombers killed twelve Shi’ites at a school and a protest march in the north. Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), an al Qaeda-linked Sunni group, claimed credit, saying it was avenging the deaths of Sunnis in the north. A suicide bomber set off his explosive belt at a Shi’ite protest march in Saada Province but caused no casualties. Later that day, in al-Jawf Province, a suicide bomber attacked a school in which Shi’ite rebels, known as Houthis, were praying, killing twelve of them. Ansar said more than twenty “apostates” had died. The group said, “O apostates, don’t think that we have forgotten you or that our battle against the crusaders and their allies in Abyan will stop us from fighting you. For, by God, we will not cease until we purify the Arabian Peninsula of you.”
May 25, 2012—Turkey—Two suspected suicide bombers set off their car bomb outside a police station in Pinarbasi, Kayseri Province, killing a police officer and wounding eighteen people. The Kurdistan Workers Party claimed credit. The media said the bombers had entered the country from Syria. Authorities detained four people. Police had followed the car from Goksun district in Kahramanmaras to Pinarbasi after it blew through a checkpoint. Police fired on the car as it passed the Pinarbasi police station.
May 25–26, 2012—Mexico—Five warehouses and parking lots of Sabritas, a PepsiCo subsidiary, were firebombed in Michoacan and Guanajuato states by masked men who attacked dozens of the firm’s distribution trucks and some warehouses. No injuries were reported. On May 28, authorities detained a Knights Templar drug cartel lieutenant and three other drug cartel suspects for the first multiple attacks on a foreign firm in the country’s five and a half years of drug wars. The cartel left Michoacan’s La Familia group in 2011 and trafficks mostly in methamphetamines and marijuana. The Knights Templar claimed credit for the attacks. 12052501, 12052601
May 26, 2012—Kenya—Terrorists threw grenades at a hotel and a refugee camp in the northeast, wounding five people. Al-Shabaab was suspected.
May 27, 2012—Benin—A U.S. Department of State official told the press that an American had been kidnapped in Benin. The United States was providing “consular assistance.” 12052701
May 27, 2012—Iraq—A roadside bomb injured twenty-four Pakistan pilgrims whose bus overturned en route to a Shi’ite shrine near Saqlawiyah, 45 miles west of Baghdad. The pilgrims were on their way from Syria to a northern Baghdad shrine in the Kazimiyah neighborhood. At least nineteen people were hurt by the explosion; another five were hurt when the bus overturned. 12052702
May 27, 2012—Dubai—British sailor Timothy Andrew MacColl, 27, vanished after leaving the Rock Bottom Bar at the Regent Hotel in the area of Deira and getting into a taxi at 2:00 a.m. The bar was fifteen minutes from Port Rashid, where his ship, the HMS Westminster, had docked the previous day. He is married with two children, aged 4 and 6. Rachel MacColl was expecting their third child in October.
May 28, 2012—Kenya—The government blamed terrorists for a 1:15 p.m. explosion in a shopping center on Moi Avenue in downtown Nairobi that injured thirty-three people, five of them critically. Police and hospital officials said it was an accidental electrical fire. An official later suggested that it was a fertilizer bomb. Witnesses smelled ammonia at the scene and noted that a bearded man had left behind a bag shortly before the explosion.
May 28, 2012—Denmark—Authorities arrested two Somali-origin Danish brothers, aged 18 and 23, “in the process of preparing an act of terror.” One was detained in Aarhus and one as he got off the plane at Copenhagen International Airport. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) said they were overheard talking about weapons, targets, and methods. One had been to an al-Shabaab training camp. They had lived in Denmark for sixteen years.
May 29, 2012—Afghanistan—The Taliban was suspected when 160 schoolgirls, aged 10 to 20, were poisoned in Takhar Province. A police official suggested that the classrooms had been sprayed with a toxin before the girls entered the Aahan Dara Girls School in Taluqan.
May 29, 2012—Somalia—Al-Shabaab gunmen attacked the Somali president’s convoy as it was traveling from Afgoye to Mogadishu. African Union forces intervened; the president was unhurt.
May 30, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen kidnapped an Italian engineer working for a construction company in the south. 12053001
May 30, 2012—Azerbaijan—The government announced the arrest of forty individuals planning to attack the Eurovision Song Contest venue at Baku Crystal Hall, religious pilgrimage sites, police stations, and Marriott and Hilton hotels in Baku, as well as conduct an April assassination against President Ilham Aliyev. Authorities seized 13 assault rifles, a machine gun, 12 handguns, 3 rifles, 3,400 rounds of ammunition, 62 hand grenades, and several kilograms of explosives.
May 30, 2012—Kenya—Al-Shabaab posted on a Web site a threat that “something big is coming” and that Kenyans would “watch your towers coming down. Two weeks from now you will weep.”
May 31, 2012—Egypt—Two 31-year-old American tourists were kidnapped from their car in Dahab on their way to Nuweiba, another resort town on the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba in the Egyptian Sinai region. They were released the same day. One of the hostages was Brandon Kutz. The Bedouin gunmen had demanded the release of Eid Suleiman Etaiwy, a man arrested on May 30 for drug possession.
June 2012—Georgia—Acting on a tip from the Germans, local authorities arrested five suspects with nine vials of cesium–135.
June 2012—Argentina—Police arrested seven Peruvians with ties to the Shining Path on suspicion of trafficking cocaine in Buenos Aires. Authorities seized twenty thousand doses of paco, a smokable cocaine residue.
June 1, 2012—Mexico—Gunmen torched a delivery truck belonging to Sabritas, a local division of PepsiCo. The criminal organization Knights Templar, an offshoot of La Familia, claimed credit for similar attacks earlier in the week.
June 3, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram claimed credit for bombing two churches in Bauchi, killing fifteen people and injuring thirty-eight, including six children, during Sunday morning services. The group also threatened journalists over what it claimed was biased reporting. The bombs struck the Church of Christ and the Living Faith church in the Yelwatudu area of Bauchi State. The group on occasion calls itself the Nigerian Taliban.
June 3, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri posted an Internet video entitled Days with the Imam, Part Two, in which he said that Osama bin Laden had lived cheaply, spending his money on attacks against the West and providing hospitality with good food.
When you entered his house you would be surprised. It was a very simple house, with some wooden beds and plastic coverings and very little furniture. If the Sheikh invited us to his house, he would give us what he had in the way of bread, vegetables, rice—whatever was available he would give us…. He was known for his generosity with guests by slaughtering sheep for them and because of continuous visitors, he once bought a herd of sheep so that he would be always ready for them. He would slaughter livestock for them and give them tasty food…. He spent all his money on jihad…. Luxury is the enemy of jihad and if the mujahideen were brought up to live in asceticism, they would tolerate the burden of jihad.
He thus claimed that bin Laden swore off electricity to live a simpler life. Al-Zawahiri claimed that bin Laden spent $50,000 to finance the U.S. African embassy bombings in 1998, depleting his $55,000 savings.
June 4, 2012—Italy—The Olga Nucleus of the Informal Anarchist Federation-International Revolutionary (FAI), an Italian anarchist group, shot Roberto Adinolfi, the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare in Genoa. The company is part of the Italian industrial conglomerate Finmeccanica and builds, operates, and decommissions nuclear power plants. Two gunmen ambushed him near his Genoa home and shot him in the legs. They fled on motorbikes.
June 4, 2012—Iraq—A suicide car bomber killed 18 and wounded 125 at the offices of Shi’ite religious affairs in the Bab al-Mouadham district in north-central Baghdad.
June 4, 2012—Pakistan—A pre-dawn drone strike on a compound and nearby pickup truck in Hassu Khel (variant Hesokhel), a small North Waziristan village south of Mir Ali, Pakistan, killed al Qaeda’s deputy commander Abu Yahya al-Libi, true name Mohamed Hassan Qaid, 49, and fourteen other terrorists, including several of Arab or Central Asian descent. Al-Qaida’s top-ranked, password-protected Shamukh Web forum confirmed the death. The New York Times reported that al-Libi was at the compound recuperating from injuries suffered in a May 28 drone strike. The key propagandist escaped a U.S. military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on the night of July 10, 2005. He later appeared in more than thirty videos produced by As-Sahab. In December 2009, Pakistani officials erroneously reported he had been killed in a Predator strike. The Rewards for Justice Program had offered $1 million for information leading to his detention. He had been attempting to lure Libyans into al Qaeda, posting a video in December 2011 that said, “At this crossroads you have found yourselves: You either choose a secular regime that pleases the greedy crocodiles of the West and for them to use it as a means to fulfill their goals, or you take a strong position and establish the religion of Allah.”
On June 12, 2012, As-Sahab released a video of al-Libi that was produced some time after November 2011 and dated Islamic year 1433. He called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a “tyrant” and his government a “criminal regime.” He said that the “West and their agent assistants” were complicit in Assad’s crimes. He called “on our brothers in Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey to go help their brothers and to sacrifice themselves for them” in Syria. “If your revolution was to be peaceful, God would have chosen it that way, but now the illusion of peaceful means after these great sacrifices … would show weakness.” He did not refer to the May 25 massacre in Houla, Syria, in which the UN said more than one hundred people, nearly half of them children, were executed. The video used honorifics for al-Libi that generally are given only to the living.
June 6, 2012—Afghanistan—Two suicide bombers attacked a bazaar in southern Kandahar Province, killing twenty-two and injuring more than fifty. The market is on the main highway to Pakistan. A Taliban spokesman credited Islamic insurgents but claimed that the dead were all foreign soldiers.
June 6, 2012—Libya—A bomb thrown from a passing vehicle exploded next to a wall of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi causing no casualties. The Brigades of Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, a Libyan jihadi group named after the “blind sheikh,” claimed credit. The group said it was responding to the drone strike that killed Abu Yahya al-Libi on June 4. 12060601
June 6, 2012—Colombia—The Colombian military bombed a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camp in Antioquia state, killing eight rebels, including Luis Enrique Benitez, the leader of the 37th Front of the FARC.
June 7, 2012—United States/Somalia—The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program offered $7 million for information on the whereabouts of al-Shabaab founder and commander Ahmed Abdi aw-Mohammed. It offered $5 million for Ibrahim Haji Jama, an al-Shabaab co-founder; Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, al-Shabaab financer; al-Shabaab military commander Bashir Mohamed Mahamoud; and al-Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Robow. The program offered $3 million for al-Shabaab intelligence chief Zakariya Ismail Ahmed Hersi and senior al-Shabaab figure Abdullahi Yare. On June 11, 2012, al-Shabaab fund-raiser Fuad Mohamed Khalaf posted an audio statement on jihadi Web sites offering a bounty of ten camels for U.S. President Barack Obama and twenty chickens (ten hens, ten cocks) for information on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Whoever brings the mujahideen information about the whereabouts of infidel Obama and the lady of Bill Clinton, the woman named Hillary Clinton, I will give a reward.” The Western press reported that the going rate for a camel in Somalia is $700. Khalaf observed, “There is nothing new in the fact that infidels pay to have Muslim leaders killed. They already did that by offering camels for the head of Prophet Mohammed, and $5 million is equivalent to two hundred camels today.”
June 8, 2012—Nigeria—A suicide bomber set off his car outside Maiduguri police headquarters, killing eight and wounding nineteen people.
A few hours later, another bomber died when his explosives went off prematurely elsewhere in the city.
June 8, 2012—Pakistan—An 18-pound time bomb went off in a bus filled with government employees and other civilians in Peshawar, killing nineteen, including seven women and a child, and wounding forty-two. Passengers included twenty-two employees of the Peshawar Civil Secretariat and another thirty civilians en route to Charsadda.
June 8, 2012—Ivory Coast—Gunmen snuck across the border with Liberia and killed eight civilians, one or two Ivorian soldiers, and seven Nigerien UN peacekeeping troops on patrol south of Tai in the southwest. 12060801
June 8, 2012—Internet—Omaima Hassan, wife of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, posted a seven-page letter praising Muslim women for their role in the Arab Spring.
I congratulate all females of the world for these blessed revolutions and I salute every mother who sacrificed her loved ones in the revolutions. It is really an Arab Spring and will soon become an Islamic Spring…. These revolutions toppled the tyrant criminals, and thanks to your efforts, patience, and raising your sons in dignity…. Much of what happened was something we had wished, pleaded, and called for, for decades, but unfortunately, only few had responded. But today, the balance has tipped—with the grace of God—and things have changed…. We did not leave our homes, nor were we persecuted in our nations except to implement the will of God and uphold His word. But if we were made to choose between going back to our lands and compromising our principles, then we would choose expatriation, even if we continued to be immigrants for the rest of our lives … Every righteous Muslim mother shall raise her son as the new Saladin and say to him: you will be the one to bring back the glory of the Islamic Umma, and you will be the one to liberate Jerusalem, God willing … The veil is the Muslim woman’s identity and the West wants to remove this identity so she will be without an identity. My advice to you sisters is to raise your children on the love of martyrdom … and to prepare them for restoring the glories of Islam and the liberation of Jerusalem … We will have a new Islamic state based on sharia arbitration, and we will free Palestine and build a state of succession to the prophecy.
She had posted a similar message in 2009.
June 10, 2012—Nigeria—A suicide car bomber crashed into the Christ Chosen Church of God in Jos, killing six and injuring forty-eight people. Meanwhile, 230 miles away, gunmen fired into the Church of the Brethren (EYN) chapel in Biu, killing an usher and another worshiper and wounding several people. Boko Haram claimed credit for both attacks.
June 11, 2012—Internet—CNN reported that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) posted on the Shumukh and al-Fidaa jihadi forums that it was seeking Western recruits. The posting, by the military committee of AQAP, noted, “Corresponding with those who yearn for martyrdom operations and the brothers who are searching to execute an operation that would cause great damage to the enemies, the goal now is to activate those brothers who reside in the land of the enemy … whether Jewish, Christian, or apostates as clearly individual jihad or the so-called lone wolf has become popular.” AQAP included three e-mails to use to contact them, using downloadable encryption software. They had earlier published the e-mails in Inspire.
June 11, 2012—Libya—Gunmen fired on a convoy transporting British Ambassador Dominic Asquith near a university in Benghazi, injuring two security guards. 12061101
June 12, 2012—Libya—A bomb went off at the Misrata offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, wounding the landowner’s son and seriously damaging the building. 12061201
June 13, 2012—Iraq—A series of twenty-two roadside and suicide car bombings throughout the country killed more than 90 and injured at least 270. Many of them were Shi’ite pilgrims walking and driving to the Imam Kadhim shrine in the Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad. Imam Moussa al-Kadhim is one of twelve revered imams and a saint in Shi’ite Islam. One of the bombs, in Hilla, killed twenty people and injured forty. One Hilla bomb hit a restaurant near a local police academy, killing several recruits eating breakfast. Shi’ite mosques in Hilla were also damaged, although no casualties were reported. Other bombs went off in Kadhimiya and other Baghdad neighborhoods, including Balad and Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, Hindiya and Madaan, south of Baghdad, and Samarra, Mosul, Falluja, and Ramadi. A truck bomb went off at 5:00 a.m. in Kadhimiya. Five parked cars exploded in Baghdad, killing 29 and injuring 80. A group of day laborers were hit by an explosion in a village east of Karbala. In Kirkuk, four car bombs exploded, two near Kurdish political offices, including that of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani’s party. Two car bombs exploded in Balad, killing five and wounding thirty. Gunfire and bombs killed five in Diyala Province. A morning bomb in Mosul was aimed at an office of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s party, killing two people. A second afternoon blast killed a soldier. Two other Mosul explosions wounded five other people. No one claimed credit, although al Qaeda in Iraq was suspected.
June 14, 2012—Germany—Some 850 police officers raided homes, meeting halls, and mosques in seven of the country’s sixteen states, focusing on the radical Islamist organizations Dawa FFM and The True Religion (DWR). The government banned the Salafist organization Millatu Ibrahim after it called on Muslims to fight against the country’s “constitutional order.” Police seized videos, laptops, cell phones, and other items to determine whether those groups should also be banned.
June 16, 2012—Iraq—Car bombs at religious processions killed at least twenty-six people. The first bomb went off after noon near Shi’ite pilgrims in the Shula neighborhood in Baghdad, killing fourteen people headed toward the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. At 1:00 p.m., a car bomb went off in the Kadhimiyah neighborhood, killing another dozen.
June 16, 2012—Pakistan—Two bombs killed thirty-two people in the Khyber tribal region. The first bomb was hidden in a pickup truck that exploded in the Zakhakhel bus stop in Landi Kotal, 30 miles west of Peshawar, killing twenty-five people and injuring dozens. The Zakhakhel tribe had formed a pro-government militia that had battled Lashkar-i-Islam in the Tirah Valley. Later that day, a bomb exploded in a handcart in Kohat district, killing seven people, including police officers. Lashkar was suspected.
June 16, 2012—Pakistan—The terrorist group led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur threatened to attack anyone conducting polio vaccinations in North Waziristan as long as the United States conducted drone missile strikes in Pakistan. “No one will have the right to complain about damage in case of any violation … Polio campaigns are also used to spy for America against the mujahideen, one example of which is Dr. Shakil Afridi.”
June 17, 2012—Iraq—A roadside bomb went off during the morning under a two-vehicle convoy in Kirkuk, killing an Iraqi security contractor and injuring three other Iraqis. The four were working for a Turkish firm providing security for a Turkish construction project. 12061701
June 17, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram bombed three churches in Damaturu during Sunday services, killing 25 people, including 20 civilians, and sparking a wave of violence leading to the deaths of at least 138 people and injuries to 130 others over the next few days. In the first attack, a suicide bomber crashed through a barricade at the EWCA Goodnews Wusasa Zaria church around 9:00 a.m., killing 24 and injuring 125, according to a Kaduna state government official (the Nigerian Red Cross Society said there were 2 dead and 22 injured). Minutes later, a bomb went off at the Christ the King Catholic Church in Zaria, killing 10 and injuring more than 50, according to the same official. (The Red Cross said 16 died and 31 were injured.) Another 10 died in a 9:25 a.m. bombing of a Kaduna church. The Red Cross said 32 were killed and 78 were injured in the bombing and a series of reprisals by Christian youths in Zaria and Kaduna. An Associated Press reporter said he saw a fourth bombed church, a police station punctured by bullets, and a crumbling police outpost. Five primary schools were also bombed. Nigerian authorities arrested a bomber who survived. Boko Haram said in a Hausa-language e-mail, “Allah has given us victory in the attacks we launched against churches in Kaduna and Zaria towns which resulted in the deaths of many Christians and security personnel.”
June 18, 2012—Pakistan—Ghazala Javed, a popular female Pakistani singer who defied the Taliban’s decree against singing and dancing, was shot to death during the night. Her ex-husband was a suspect, against whom she had filed for divorce after finding he had a second wife. Authorities said it did not appear that the Taliban was involved. She was driving home with her father after leaving a hair salon when gunmen on a motorcycle fired on her car. She was hit with six bullets and pronounced dead at a Peshawar hospital.
June 18, 2012—Israel—The Mujahideen Shura Council of Jerusalem, a group claiming al Qaeda ties, infiltrated Israel from the Egyptian Sinai desert and killed a civilian Israeli construction worker on a team building a border fence 20 miles south of the Gaza Strip near the border community of Nitzana. At 6:00 a.m., three terrorists ambushed two cars carrying civilians to the site, fired a rocket-propelled grenade and an AK-47 assault rifle, and set off bombs which hit one of the vehicles. The vehicle went into a ditch, killing Sayed Fashafsheh, 36, an Arab citizen of Israel from Haifa. Israeli forces killed two gunmen that the group said were an Egyptian and a Saudi. Israeli gunfire set off explosives that the terrorists were carrying on their bodies. A third terrorist was believed to have escaped back to Egypt. An Israeli military spokesman said the explosives and gear—flak jackets, camouflage uniforms, and helmets—were similar to those used in an August 2011 attack by the Popular Resistance Committees, a Palestinian group, in which eight Israelis were killed near Eilat resort. 12061801
June 18, 2012—Iraq—A suicide bomber set off his explosive belt in a funeral tent in Baqouba, killing at least fifteen mourners of a Zubaidi Shi’ite tribal leader. Another forty people were wounded. Among the mourners was Lt. Gen. Ali Ghaidan, commander of the army’s ground forces. He was not wounded but one of his bodyguards died and two others were wounded. The government blamed al Qaeda-linked Sunni terrorists.
June 18, 2012—Pakistan—A remotely-detonated car bomb exploded next to a bus going to the Baluchistan University of Information Technology in Quetta, killing five students and injuring more than fifty people.
June 18, 2012—Yemen—An al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) suicide bomber of Somali nationality jumped at a vehicle carrying Maj. Gen. Salem Ali Qatan to work in Aden. Qatan, who had led the anti–AQAP military campaign, died, as did his driver and a security guard escorting him in a three-car convoy. Five passersby, including two women, were seriously wounded. The group posted an Internet message to the “leaders of the joint American-Yemeni campaign … The message … consists of the blood and body parts of the martyrdom-seekers who swore to pluck your rotten heads, which agreed to be a vehicle for America in its war against the Muslims in Yemen.”
Later that day, Yemeni security forces detained Sami Dayyan, a suspected AQAP leader, and two other suspected terrorists driving from Aden to Lahej Province. Explosives and suicide belts were found in the vehicle. Residents in Aden’s al-Mansoura district said Dayyan was looking to rent a house in the neighborhood a few days earlier but was chased away.
June 19, 2012—Nigeria—A bomb went off prematurely, blowing off the arms and legs of the terrorist in Bauchi city. His intended target was not clear.
June 19, 2012—Yemen—The government announced that police in Sana’a stopped a vehicle carrying a trio who had weapons, explosives, and maps of foreign embassies and the homes of military and civilian notables marked out.
June 19, 2012—Kenya—Police arrested two Iranians in Nairobi, seizing bomb-making chemicals. The same day, police in Mombasa impounded an Iraq-origin container suspected of containing explosives. One of the Iranians was flown to Mombasa. He led police to 15 kilograms of RDX powder, which the forensic lab was examining. The duo was charged on June 25 with intent to conduct bombings. The Associated Press reported on July 2 that the Iranians planned to attack Israeli, U.S., U.K., or Saudi targets inside Kenya. They were believed to be members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, an elite Iranian unit. The charge sheet said that Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi had explosives “in circumstances that indicated they were armed with the intent to commit a felony, namely, acts intended to cause grievous harm.” The duo was represented by attorney David Kirimi.
June 20, 2012—France—A man claiming membership in al Qaeda took four hostages during a botched robbery of the CIC bank branch in Toulouse at 10:30 a.m. during which he fired a shot. The hostages, including the bank manager, were freed after several hours. He was slightly injured during his arrest at 4:00 p.m. Several gunshots were heard at the scene.
June 21, 2012—Sweden—Authorities found explosives on a truck at the southwestern Ringhals atomic power station. Technicians said the material lacked a detonator. Security was increased at the country’s three nuclear power plants.
June 21, 2012—Afghanistan—At 11:30 p.m., seven Taliban gunmen attacked Kabul’s Spozhmai Hotel, taking dozens of hostages and conducting an eleven-hour siege that left twenty-six people dead in a gun battle with Afghan and NATO troops. They jumped out of a minivan wearing burqas, which they pulled off to reveal their automatic weapons. They ran into the hotel yelling, “Where are the prostitutes,” before shooting the manager and three unarmed hotel guards. Some terrorists attacked the Spugmay restaurant. Others went to the rooftop terrace and to the garden, attacking diners. They fired on any male they found but appeared to be sparing women and children. The terrorists killed fifteen civilians, a police officer, and three security guards before they were killed. Police said ten people were wounded. One of the dead was a young Afghan man who had emigrated and returned from London for a visit. Two terrorists died by setting off their suicide vests. Police rescued the remaining fifty hostages. Four civilians had escaped by jumping into nearby Qargha Lake; one drowned. Police found burqas in the terrorists’ minivan, which was used to bring in explosives. Police disarmed the explosives by firing a rocket-propelled grenade into the van.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the gunmen targeted Westerners and were armed with suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades, and heavy machine guns. In an e-mail during the siege, he wrote, “Every night people come here for different types of debauchery, but on Thursday night, the number increases, including foreigners who come here and they hold anti–Islamic ceremonies. Tonight, according to our information, a number of ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] and embassy diplomats from foreign countries have been invited by some senior Kabul administration officials and are now under attack.” Claiming that there was drinking and dancing going on, he observed, “These acts are illegal and strictly prohibited in Islam. Women dancers were sexually misused there.” Apparently there were no foreigners at the site at the time of the attack. 12062101
June 22, 2012—Iraq—Two bombs went off within minutes of each other in an open-air market in the Shi’te neighborhood of Husseiniyah in northeastern Baghdad, killing fourteen and wounding more than one hundred people. A car bomb went off in Samarra near the Shi’ite al-Askari shrine, killing one pilgrim and injuring thirteen. Gunmen fired on a police checkpoint in Baghdad, killing three officers.
June 24, 2012—Pakistan—Pakistani Taliban gunmen crossed the border from Afghanistan to attack a Pakistani patrol in Upper Dir, killing eighteen troops and beheading seventeen of them. Another four troops were missing. Pakistani troops killed fourteen terrorists. Reuters reported that the gunmen were led by Fazlullah, alias FM Mullah, who had terrorized the Swat Valley before being pushed out by Pakistani forces three years ago. He was the cousin of Sirajuddin Ahmad, who served as his spokesman.
June 24, 2012—Uganda—Authorities arrested five Pakistanis and a Congolese guide in the western oil region of Ntoroki after they crossed the border with Congo. Police said while in the Congo, they had met with Allied Democratic Forces, a group of Ugandan rebels formed in the mid–1990s who hoped to create an Islamic state. Police spokeswoman Judith Nabakoba said, “They are suspected to be involved in terrorism.” Ugandan police issued a terrorist alert, suggesting that attacks could be conducted against fans watching the European soccer championship.
June 25, 2012—Pakistan—Taliban gunmen fired on the Karachi offices of Aaj TV, injuring a guard and employee. Spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said Aaj had not broadcast the group’s claim for the previous day’s attack in Upper Dir and threatened further attacks on stations that did not broadcast Taliban statements.
June 25, 2012—Norway—The Associated Press cited three European security agencies as indicating that a Norwegian man had been trained by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was awaiting orders to carry out an attack against the West. The New York Daily News said it was to be against a U.S. jet; the Times of London said it would be an Olympics attack. He was believed to be in his 30s with no immigrant background. He converted to Islam in 2008, became radicalized, then traveled to Yemen for terrorist training. He was believed to have been in Yemen for several months and was still there. He had no criminal record and used the kunya Muslim Abu Abdurrahman.
June 25, 2012—United States—NPR reported that the FBI was investigating more than one hundred suspected Islamic extremists within the U.S. armed forces. At least a dozen cases were considered serious.
June 25, 2012—United Kingdom—Reuters and The Guardian quoted Security Service (MI5) Director Gen. Jonathan Evans as saying in a rare speech “today parts of the Arab world have once more become a permissive environment for al Qaeda … A small number of British would-be jihadis are also making their way to Arab countries to seek training and opportunities for militant activity, as they do in Somalia and Yemen. Some will return to the United Kingdom and post a threat here.” He also said the Olympic Games were an attractive terrorist target.
June 25, 2012—Yemen—The Yemeni Defense Ministry said that al Qaeda landmines had killed seventy-three people, including twenty-three soldiers, in Abyan Province since al Qaeda fighters were defeated two weeks earlier. The Defense Ministry said tens of thousands of mines were planted.
June 26, 2012—Nigeria—Terrorists bombed a police outpost in Damaturu and police station in Kano at 6:00 p.m. The terrorists then conducted a gun battle with the Damaturu police in which four policemen, four civilians, and nineteen terrorists died. They later set fire to two blocks of empty classrooms at the Federal Polytechnic Damaturu during the night. Boko Haram was suspected.
June 26, 2012—Yemen—At least twenty-three inmates, including five al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) members, escaped a Yemeni prison by tunneling out from a cell to a nearby graveyard. Several AQAP terrorists were believed to have gone across the border to Oman.
June 26, 2012—Kenya—The U.S. Embassy issued a travel warning against Americans visiting the country.
June 27, 2012—Northern Ireland—Queen Elizabeth II shook hands with former Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander Martin McGuinness in a show of support for the peace process. The IRA had killed her cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, in a 1979 bombing. The Queen and McGuinness, now the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, met at an arts event in Belfast.
June 27, 2012—Pakistan—A bomb exploded in a Sibi railway station tea shop, killing seven and injuring twenty. Baloch separatists were suspected of targeting Punjabis traveling through the area.
June 27, 2012—Mali—Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian founder of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was reported killed in a battle between Islamists and secular Tuareg separatist rebels belonging to the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) in northern Mali. The gun battle left twenty dead in Gao, Mali. Belmokhtar led one of AQIM’s two battalions in Algeria’s southern desert. An Algerian court had sentenced him to life in absentia for the killing of ten Algerian customs agents in 2007.
June 27, 2012—West Bank—A Palestinian crashed his vehicle into an Israeli police car, attacked a security guard, and tried to grab his gun. The Palestinian was shot and taken to a Jerusalem hospital. Police investigators believed it was an attempted terrorist attack.
June 27, 2012—Syria—Kamal Ghanaja, a senior Hamas operative, was assassinated in his Damascus home in the Quidsia neighborhood by gunmen who seized rifles and set the house on fire. His charred body showed signs of torture. Observers attributed the killing to a rift with the Syrian government; other blamed Israel. A Syrian opposition group blamed the Shabiha, a Syrian pro-government militia. Ghanaja, a former deputy of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in a Dubai hotel room in 2010, was believed to have run guns into the Gaza Strip. A public statement by Hamas did not specifically blame Israel.
June 28, 2012—United Kingdom—East London police arrested two British Muslim converts planning to conduct terrorist attacks. Friends identified the detainees as Jamal ud–Din, 18, and Zakariya, 32. Ud-Din had posted a YouTube video in 2011 in which he denigrated democracy and non–Muslims, praised jailed Egyptian radical preacher Abu Hamza, and expressed anger at the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. It was not determined whether they planned to attack the upcoming Olympics.
June 28, 2012—Pakistan—Sunni terrorists set off a bomb against a bus carrying forty Shi’ite pilgrims from Iran to Quetta, killing ten people and wounding twenty-five, including four police officers escorting the bus. 12062801
June 28, 2012—Iraq—A bomb in a parked taxi exploded at the entrance of a Baghdad market in the Shi’ite district of Washash, killing eight people. In Baqubah, 35 miles away, six people died when a bomb in a parked car went off near shops and cafés in a Shi’ite area. Bombs also went off in the Sunni town of Taji, in the Shi’ite area of Abu Dsheer in southern Baghdad, and in Fallujah, a Sunni area. At least twenty-one people were killed and more than one hundred were wounded during the day’s attacks.
June 29, 2012—China—Ten minutes after a Tianjin Airlines flight took off from Hotan in southern Xinjiang, toward Urumqi, six people tried to hijack it and set off explosives but were subdued by the passengers, crew, and a group of police officers who happened to be on the flight. The hijackers disassembled a crutch into metal rods which they tried to use to break into the cockpit. The hijackers, all ethnic Uighurs, sustained minor injuries, as did two air marshals and two flight attendants. The hijackers were arrested once the plane landed. On December 11, a Chinese court in Xinjiang sentenced three hijackers to death and gave a fourth a life sentence in what the media deemed religious-inspired terrorism. The two other hijackers were injured during the scuffle and died in custody. Those sentenced to death were Musa Yusuf, Arsdikali Yimin, and Omar Yimin. Alimu Musa, sentenced to life, showed “a good attitude in admitting his crimes,” according to Xinhua news agency. 12062901
June 29, 2012—United States—The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on two hawalas—informal money exchange networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan—in an effort to slow Taliban cash used to pay salaries and purchase weapons. Treasury said Afghan Taliban commanders kept accounts with the Haji Khairullah Haji Sattar Money Exchange and the Roshan Money Exchange. Much of the cash came from narcotics sales. The UN added those exchanges to its list of backers of Taliban terrorists.
June 29, 2012—Kenya—In late June, four foreign aid workers from Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Canada, and two Kenyans, all affiliated with the Norwegian Refugee Council, were kidnapped from their convoy in the Dadaab refugee complex near the Somalia border. Their driver was killed and the Pakistani hostage was shot in the leg. Two other injured staff members were treated at a Nairobi hospital. The kidnappers made off with a Norwegian Refugee Council vehicle. On July 1, they were freed following a rescue by Kenya Defense Forces and Somali soldiers, who killed a kidnapper. Two terrorists escaped while trying to flee with the hostages, none of whom were hurt in the rescue. The Pakistani underwent surgery at the base. 12062902
June 29, 2012—Nigeria—Authorities destroyed a Boko Haram hideout in Damaturu, killing at least three sect members.
June 29, 2012—France—Authorities in Toulon arrested a 35-year-old Tunisian man believed to have administered a radical Web site that served as the conduit of messages between al Qaeda-linked jihadis, including al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon, and groups in Yemen, Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. He was accused of raising funds, recruiting and transporting jihadis for indoctrination and military training, and providing information about bomb making and potential targets. In 2003, he arrived in France, living there on a valid residence permit. Extremist leaders in 2008 tasked him with running the Web site. He was spotted in 2007 when investigators in Paris arrested a recruitment network of volunteers for Afghanistan. A French official said, “We’ve already got two emails from Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon thanking [him] for the money and saying the funds bought Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers.”
June 30, 2012—Nigeria—Soldiers continued the offensive against Boko Haram in the Nyanya and Obansanjo Estates neighborhoods of Damaturu, firing mortar rounds while the terrorists used gunfire and improvised explosive devices.
July 2012—Kenya—Local authorities arrested two Iranian men who brought more than 220 pounds of RDX explosives into the country as part of a plot to bomb several Western and Israeli businesses.
July 2012—Melilla—Authorities arrested two Spanish citizens in the Spanish enclave in North Africa on suspicion of terrorism.
July 2012—Libya—On October 6, 2012, seven members of the Iranian Red Crescent were released to the Iranian Embassy after sixty-five days in captivity.
July 2012—Congo—March 23 Movement rebels killed a UN peacekeeper and fired on a UN peacekeeping base at Kiwanja. 12079901
July 1, 2012—Kenya—At 10:15 a.m., masked “goons” wearing balaclavas attacked churchgoers at the Catholic church and the African Inland Church with guns and grenades, killing at least seventeen, including two police officers, and wounding fifty. The attacks occurred in Garissa, a town used as a base for anti-al-Shabaab operations. Four gunmen attacked the African Inland Church, throwing two grenades and shooting to death two police officers guarding the door. They scooped up the police officers’ rifles and turned them on the worshipers. Two other terrorists threw grenades into the Roman Catholic church, wounding three people.
July 1, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected of slashing throats in a nighttime attack in Maiduguri. One victim was found the next day barely breathing, bleeding at the neck. A neighbor saw fourteen bodies, some of them from the Christian south.
July 1, 2012—Afghanistan—The latest “green on blue” attack involved an Afghan wearing the uniform of the Afghan National Civil Order Police who turned his gun on British soldiers during an argument, killing three of them as they left a meeting with local elders in Helmand Province. A spokesman for the provincial government said that the attacker was a member of the Civil Order Police and had been fatally wounded in the 5:00 p.m. firefight with the British troops at a checkpoint in the Nahr-e Saraj district.
July 1, 2012—Yemen—Yemeni authorities announced that they had foiled at least thirteen al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) plots to attack foreign diplomats, embassies, and senior military and government officials in Sana’a and other cities. The attacks would include assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings of foreign diplomats. AQAP prisoners provided the tipoff information.
July 1, 2012—West Bank—Palestinian parliamentarian Shami al-Shami was shot twice in the leg by gunmen as he got out of his car at 1:30 a.m. as he returned to his Jenin home. Six bullets missed him; one hit the side mirror. He is a member of Fatah.