Participants to a jihadist forum have been troubled by another scare story that bin Laden has been arrested. Iranian websites, apparently quoting American officials, said that Osama bin Laden had been arrested in the beginning of February by Iranian forces, while moving along the border... MORE

On February 24 the jihadist al-Qal'ah forum (www.qal3ati.net) ran a brief note on breaking events in Libya. Under the rubric: "Your brothers in Libya need your prayers," a contributor to the forum explained that: "For a week now, right up to the present hour, a... MORE

Philippine intelligence searching for suspects for the February 14 bomb attacks in Makati, Davao and General Santos - detailed in the last edition of Terrorism Focus - claim to have been swamped with raw information on plots to bomb shopping malls and transport systems. They... MORE

Taking a leaf out of the Idarat al-Tawahhush, "The Management of Barbarism," (see "New Book Lays Out al-Qaeda's Military Strategy" in this issue) and the need to understand ‘the rules of the game' — particularly the need to sidestep traditional media channels to send the... MORE

U.S. warnings a week ago of an increased threat of attack to its residents in Jeddah were borne out on March 14 with news of a clash between Saudi security forces and suspected Islamist militants. As forces raided a residential building housing a wanted Islamist... MORE

Some extra light was cast upon the obscure events of last January in the Gulf state of Oman (reported in Terrorism Focus Vol II, Iss 3) when a group of ‘Islamists' were picked up. On April 18 the trial began of a total of 31... MORE

Syria's pivotal position, geographically and politically, between developments in Lebanon and Iraq has made it a major new focus for Western policy in the Middle East. One of the several factors casting the spotlight on Damascus is its ambiguous relationship towards Islamist militants operating in... MORE

On April 22 the Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs announced it had arrested and detained for two years a member of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) under the Internal Security Act. According to the Singapore daily the Straits Times, The detainee, Jahpar bin Osman had trained in... MORE

In addition to the unexpected re-appearance of Sawt al-Jihad, just released on the internet is another new magazine, aimed at those the Arab mujahideen fighting in the Caucasus, or sympathizers following the events in the region, entitled Sawt al-Qoqaz (The Voice of the Caucasus). Modeled... MORE

A flurry of interest was expressed at the beginning of the month in the contents of a 7-page letter, apparently from a Sumatra-based operative of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamyiah (JI), detailing the training of militants for suicide bombings in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. If authentic,... MORE