Homeland Security News

A sting operation stopped a plot to abduct, torture and kill police officers to bring attention to the antiauthority sovereign citizen movement, Las Vegas police said Thursday.  David Allen Brutsche and Devon Campbell Newman were arrested at an apartment a few miles off the Vegas Strip before they could carry out a plan to snatch officers, "put them on trial" and execute them in a vacant house, Las Vegas police Lt. James Seebock said.

Federal authorities regard sovereign citizen extremists as domestic terrorists.  Authorities have linked sovereign citizens groups with violent confrontations in recent years, including deadly shootings in Louisiana and Arkansas.  Brutsche, 42, and Newman, 67, wanted to draw attention to the group's absolute rejection governmental authority, making the case a domestic terror plot, Seebock said.

Read more:  ABC News

The outgoing director of the FBI gave a sobering assessment Thursday of the current threats facing the U.S. homeland: A biological weapon of mass destruction detonated inside the country and a plane downed in mid-flight are viable scenarios.  Americans now traveling to war-torn Syria could bring terrorist tactics home with them.

Terrorism has "changed so much since the days after Sept. 11th," director Robert Mueller said in a rare interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas.  In particular, Mueller said, the threat emanating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan has now "migrated" to places like Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Syria.  In Syria, a near-civil war has reportedly killed more than 1,000 people and is drawing fighters from around the world, including the United States.

"[When] you have individuals traveling to those venues, you are concerned [first] about the associations they will make, and secondly about the expertise they will develop and whether or not they will utilize those associations, utilize that expertise, to undertake an attack upon the homeland," Mueller said.

Read more:  ABC News

A Thai court on Thursday sentenced an Iranian man to life in prison and his compatriot to 15 years in jail for their roles in a botched bomb plot that was exposed last year when an accidental explosion blew apart the Bangkok villa where they were staying.

Israeli and Thai officials have said the plot was aimed at Israeli diplomats in Bangkok, Thailand's capital, though Iran denied the allegations and neither defendant was charged with terrorism or attempting to kill Israelis.

The court convicted and sentenced Saeid Moradi, 29, to life in prison for attempting to murder a police officer, possessing illegal explosives and causing explosions that damaged property and injured several civilians. It sentenced 43-year-old Mohammad Kharzei to 15 years in jail for possessing explosives.

Read more: AP (via Yahoo News)

The Treasury Department today designated four members of Hezbollah's leadership who are "responsible for operations throughout the Middle East."  The designations, Treasury said, further expose Iranian-backed Hezbollah's "pernicious activities that reach beyond the borders of Lebanon."  The four members of Hezbollah sanctioned by Treasury today are: Khalil Harb, Muhammad Kawtharani, Muhammad Yusuf Ahmad Mansur, and Muhammad Qabalan.

Read more:  Long War Journal

The one-eyed terror leader Moktar Belmoktar, who is considered by many to be the most dangerous man in the Sahara, is now officially joining forces with a Mali-based jihadist group and vowing to support Islamists in Egypt, according to a statement posted Thursday.

The announcement of the alliance known as "the Mourabitounes" formalizes an emerging union between Belmoktar's followers and the group known as MUJAO, or Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa. Their statement was carried by the Nouakchott Information Agency, a Mauritanian site previously used by Belmoktar to convey messages.

The two groups said they had decided "to confront the Zionist campaign against Islam and Muslims" by uniting jihadists from the Nile to the Atlantic, spanning all of North Africa.

Read more: ABC News