National Desk

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON


BRITON CHARGED WITH PLOTTING ATTACKS WITH ‘SHOE-BOMBER’


American authorities brought charges yesterday against a British man they contend conspired with an admitted Al Qaeda member, Richard Reid, to use bombs placed in shoes to blow up planes in midair.


A seven-count federal grand jury indictment unsealed in Boston charges Saajid Badat, 25, with attempted murder, trying to destroy an aircraft, and other charges related to the alleged conspiracy with Mr. Reid, who also is a British citizen and Muslim convert.


Reid’s attempt to blow up an American Airlines Paris-to-Miami flight on December 22, 2001, was thwarted by attendants and passengers after he tried to light a fuse leading to the concealed plastic explosives in his sneakers.


The indictment says Mr. Badat “admitted that he was asked to conduct a shoe bombing like Reid” when he was arrested in Britain last November. Bomb components similar to Reid’s were found at his home, the indictment said.


The indictment indicates Mr. Badat was assisting Reid while plotting his own separate attack. Mr. Badat allegedly got his “custom-made” shoe bombs in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda had training camps.


Mr. Badat, a British citizen, pleaded innocent last month to similar British charges and faces trial there beginning February 28. Mr. Ashcroft said America has “a keen interest” in seeking Mr. Badat’s eventual extradition to stand trial in this country but also recognized the British intend to put him on trial first.


Reid is serving a life prison sentence in America after pleading guilty in Boston federal court to the airline bomb plot.


– Associated Press


PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNS LAW EXTENDING LIBERTY BONDS TO 2009


President Bush signed a bill yesterday extending the post-September 11 Liberty Bonds program into 2009, continuing financial incentives for rebuilding Lower Manhattan after the 2001 terror attacks.


The $8 billion Liberty Bond program was approved after the attacks, but it was due to expire at the end of the year without being fully used.


The five-year extension is expected to cost an additional $400 million. New York’s elected officials, including Senators Schumer and Clinton, both Democrats, and Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki, both Republicans, supported the extension.


The extension was signed into law as part of a middle-income tax cut package. After the September 11 attacks, Bush pledged about $20.8 billion to the city to help clean up and rebuild.


– Associated Press


SUPREME COURT REFUSES TO HEAR TEN COMMANDMENTS CASE


The three-year legal battle over ousted Alabama Chief Justice Moore and his Ten Commandments monument ended quietly yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Justice Moore’s final appeal.


The high court made no comment in declining Justice Moore’s request to reverse his expulsion last year by a state judicial ethics panel for refusing a federal judge’s order to remove the 5,300-pound monument from the Alabama courthouse.


Justice Moore said in a statement that it was hypocritical for the “liberal Supreme Court” to turn down his appeal even though the justices begin each session with the phrase, “God save the United States and this honorable court.”


– Associated Press


NORTHEAST


RUMSFELD SAYS HE DOESN’T EXPECT CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ


Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said yesterday he does not expect civil war in Iraq and pointed to the recent retaking of the former insurgent stronghold of Samarra as evidence of progress in stabilizing the country before elections in January.


“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Mr. Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations when asked about the threat of civil war. “But what has to be done in that country is what basically was done in Samarra over the last 48 hours.”


Mr. Rumsfeld credited a process of first trying diplomacy, then threatening force and finally using it. “That’s what happened in Samarra,” he said, referring to the city that coalition and Iraqi forces had chosen as the first target of at least four strongholds of resistance. Fallujah, Ramadi, and the Sadr City section of Baghdad also are believed to be on the target list.


On whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war, Mr. Rumsfeld said flatly yesterday that intelligence about such weapons before the invasion was faulty – a markedly different statement than what he told a television interviewer just a day earlier.


“It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Rumsfeld said yesterday in the speech to the foreign affairs group. “Why the intelligence proved wrong I’m not in a position to say, but the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail.”


– Associated Press


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