Word: magnus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tape's purpose? Professional bin Laden watchers- the sort who know how to read a loosely knotted turban- shrug off the conspiracy theorists who maintain that the recording must have had some mysterious ulterior motive. This was the Hindu Kush version of "What I did on my vacation." Magnus Ranstorp, an al-Qaeda expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, speculates that the visiting Saudi wanted to immortalize his meeting with bin Laden and was planning to keep the tape private. Mustafa Alani, a Middle East security scholar at London's Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies...
...sanctuary like Afghanistan, the terrorists' capacity to conceive and carry out grand attacks in a centralized manner has clearly been undermined. Trouble is, not all the terrorism inspired by al-Qaeda needs to be handed down from the top. "They can be self-initiating at the grassroots level," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland. "Each individual member considers himself to have the authority to issue a fatwa. If we look only for the leadership and traditional nature of authority, it's a mistake...
...relatively benign environment of Panama. "We're good at hitting big, immovable things," says an Air Force general. "We don't do so well when they move around and they're small." Both are true of bin Laden. "He is the hardest man ever to get to," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland. To avoid being spotted by satellites, bin Laden and his associates use human couriers to relay messages, who sometimes travel on foot rather than in cars. He has been extra careful since Chechen secessionist leader Dzhokar Dudayev was blown...
Despite a string of international championships and honors like "world handball player of the century," Magnus Wislander, captain of the two-time world champion Swedish handball team, may be best known for his other nickname: "the Snake." He's no Richard Hatch, though. In Wislander's case, the title refers to an uncanny ability to slither through a field of opponents toward the goal. To get a grip on the sport, a popular one in Europe, think soccer using hands instead of feet, with some dribbling thrown in. Adept at both offense and defense, Wislander, 36, is 10 years older...