Word: islamists
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...evidence is mounting that would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, once thought to have acted alone, actually had the support of an Islamist terror network. French authorities now believe the network included a Parisian cell that has so far eluded detection. Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami last December with explosives in his shoes. French justice officials tell TIME that Reid, 28, who trained in al-Qaeda camps, repeatedly contacted fellow extremists while in Paris in the weeks before his planned attack. Reid told authorities he bought the explosives in the Netherlands...
...second job with a computer-software firm. In 1999, at the age of 25, he was married, had a young son and was earning a good living. "Nothing in his life, family background or activities indicated Cherifi was harboring the anger, fanaticism and conspiratorial drive of an Islamist zealot," the French official says. "Yet when he finally came to our attention, we realized he'd completely dedicated himself to international jihad...
...radical Islam drew him to London, he was unable to follow his fellow extremists to al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Although investigators say the by-now-unemployed Cherifi methodically liquidated family accounts to finance that trip, health problems posed by diabetes derailed his candidacy as a fighter. Police suspect Islamist leaders in London urged Cherifi to dedicate himself instead to vital covert logistics work in Paris - a role more securely assumed without the conspicuous Afghan link - providing money, documents, safe houses and go-between services for members of newly established European cells...
French terror expert Roland Jacquard says the apparent fanaticism beneath Cherifi's well-adjusted exterior is characteristic of Europe's current generation of Islamist operatives. "Recruiters dig through what you or I may consider success, achievement or promise to find that ember of racial, social or religious anger and resentment," Jacquard says. In cases like Cherifi's, he adds, that ember is often a lingering fury at the racial and economic prejudices that French Arabs and their families feel they suffer in French society. Ironically, that anger can be fanned into flame by their own success in climbing...
...bottle rocket by comparison with Saddam's Scuds, but the new Qassam-2 missile developed by Hamas could have a far greater impact. Members of the radical Islamist group in Gaza on Sunday fired two of the home-made rockets into southern Israel - and although their warheads exploded harmlessly in an open field, the political shock waves are still being felt throughout Israel. The Israeli Defense Force responded with three heavy air raids over 24 hours on Palestinian security targets in Gaza City, and sent its tanks back into the Palestinian city of Nablus in the West Bank. And that...