Homeland Security News

Gunmen suspected to be allied to Islamist sect Boko Haram have stormed a construction site in northeast Nigeria, carting off 125 kg (275 pounds) of dynamite and hundreds of detonators, two security sources said on Wednesday.  The militants struck the Bara area of Yobe state at around 2 a.m. on Monday morning, the two security sources in Yobe told Reuters, but no shots were heard.  One of the sources said the men arrived on four motorcycles, beating and overpowering the site's private security guards.

The police and military both declined to comment.  Officials from the company, a Nigerian firm called Ric Rock, were not immediately available for comment.  The Nigerian military launched a major offensive in May aimed at defeating the Islamists in three northeastern states -- Borno, Yobe and Adamawa -- but that has pushed many of them into hiding, from where they can still launch deadly attacks.

Read more: Reuters

The rich Manhattanite once accused of plotting to blow up the Washington Square Arch struck a plea deal with prosecutors Tuesday that will send him to prison for seven years.

Aaron Greene, 31, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempted criminal possession of a weapon for having a stash of HTMD — an explosive powder — inside the ritzy apartment on W. 9th St. in Greenwich Village that he shared with his girlfriend.

He had faced a prison term of up to 25 years if convicted on the top charge levied against him.

Greene and gal pal Morgan Gliedman were hit with multiple felony weapons-related charges when they were busted on Dec. 29. Police raided their apartment and found the HTMD along with terrorist how-to books and a mini-arsenal.

Read more: New York Daily News

Lawyers for an Algerian man known as “the black flag”, whose surrender is being sought by the United States on international terrorism charges, have said he should not be extradited because a search of his dwelling was unconstitutional.

Ali Charaf Damache (47), who has been living in Ireland for a decade, is wanted in the United States to face charges relating to the conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists and to attempted identity theft to facilitate an act of international terrorism.

Counsel for Damache Mícheál O’Higgins SC said his client’s surrender should not be granted because of the US Government’s reliance of what he called an unconstitutional search of Damache’s dwelling carried out with an invalid warrant.

Read more: Independent (Ireland)

The terrorists behind the Bulgaria bus attack last year smuggled from Poland the parts to make the bomb that killed five Israeli tourists and their driver, Bulgarian daily newspaper Trud reported Monday.

Three of the terrorists, thought to be Hezbollah operatives, including the yet unidentified bomber, traveled to Bulgaria from Warsaw on June 28 of last year with the detonator and remote control, Trud said, citing investigators.

Meliad Farah, Leabnese-born Australian citizen, also known as Hussein assembled the parts into the bomb that eventually claimed 6 lives in the Black Sea resort city of Burgas, Trud said.

Read more: Haaretz

Al Qaeda-linked fighters in a rebel-held eastern Syrian city on Monday abducted a prominent Italian Jesuit priest who championed the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said.  Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant kidnapped father Paolo Dall'Oglio while he was walking in Raqqa, which fell to militant Islamist brigades in March, the sources in Raqqa province told Reuters.

Syrian authorities expelled Dall'Oglio from the country last year for helping victims of Assad's military crackdown while he served at a sixth-century monastery in the Anti-Lebanon mountains north of Damascus.  He has been an advocate of reconciliation for the country's myriad religious and ethnic sects, especially between Kurds and Arabs, as Syria slipped into civil war.  Dall'Oglio blamed Assad for provoking sectarian mayhem and called his forces "thugs."

Read more:  Reuters