Amanda Knox Conviction in Italy Could Spur Lengthy Extradition Fight

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/ANDREW KELLYItaly’s conviction of Amanda Knox for the murder of her British roommate when the two were exchange students together could spur a drawn-out fight over extradition in the United States, where supporters contend she is the victim of a faulty foreign justice system.

If Knox’s conviction is ultimately confirmed pending further appeals, her lawyers are expected to argue that the United States cannot send her to Italy in part because of U.S. constitutional guarantees against “double jeopardy,” although some experts say that could be a tough case to prove.

Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty on Thursday for the second time in the 2007 stabbing death of Meredith Kercher, in a retrial that reversed an earlier appeal judgment that cleared her.

Knox, who spent four years in an Italian jail before returning to the United States in 2011, was sentenced to 28 years and 6 months but will not face jail time pending further appeals in Italy. Knox did not attend the trial and would have to be extradited to serve her sentence.

“She has powerful legal arguments that she can use to fight extradition, or the U.S. can use to deny extradition,” said Sean Casey, a New York-based former federal prosecutor. “Under the law, the Constitution trumps a treaty.”

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Afghan President Accuses US of Sponsoring Terrorist Attacks to Destabilize Him

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Photo Credit: Rahmat Gul/AP

Photo Credit: Rahmat Gul/AP

President Hamid Karzai has frequently lashed out at the U.S. military for causing civilian casualties in its raids. But behind the scenes, he has been building a far broader case against the Americans, suggesting that they may have aided or conducted shadowy insurgent-style attacks to undermine his government, according to senior Afghan officials.

Karzai has formalized his suspicions with a list of dozens of attacks that he believes the U.S. government may have been involved in, according to one palace official. The list even includes the recent bomb and gun assault on a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul, one of the bloodiest acts targeting the international community in Afghanistan, the official said. The attack, which left 21 people dead, including three Americans, was almost universally attributed to the Taliban.

But Karzai believes it was one of many incidents that may have been planned by Americans to weaken him and foment instability in Afghanistan, according to the senior palace official, who is sympathetic to the president’s view and spoke on the condition of anonymity. He acknowledged that his government had no concrete evidence of U.S. involvement and that the American role had not been formally confirmed.

U.S. officials, who have been informed of some of the claims, have reacted with incredulity and anger to the idea that they are trying to debilitate Afghanistan’s government, which they have supported with hundreds of billions of dollars.

“It’s a deeply conspiratorial view that’s divorced from reality,” U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham said Monday. He suggested that one reason for the allegations might be to “throw us off balance.”

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Pentagon Fumes as Afghanistan Frees Taliban Fighters with ‘Blood On Their Hands’

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Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Afghani officials freed 37 insurgents and Taliban fighters with “blood on their hands” in what the Pentagon called a “major step backward” for the rule of law in the war torn nation.

The hardened fighters were among 88 prisoners who were being held by the U.S. and being transferred to the emerging Afghan criminal justice system. U.S. authorities said many had directly participated in attacks that wounded or killed scores of U.S. military personnel and Afghan citizens, yet were freed by the Afghan Review Board.

“The ARB is releasing back to society dangerous insurgents who have Afghan blood on their hands,” the United States Forces-Afghanistan said in a statement. “This extra-judicial release of detainees is a major step backward in further developing the rule of law in Afghanistan.”

Many of those freed were Taliban fighters who were connected by forensic evidence to specific IED attacks. Several were captured in possession of bomb materials and some even admitted taking part in attacks on coalition forces. At least two had been captured, freed and recaptured.

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Iranian Official Confirms Country Sought to Build Nuclear Weapons

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

A founder of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards now admits that the Islamic Republic was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. This is the first time any regime official has made such an admission, even as another report claims that one of Iran’s most radical clerics was the spiritual overseer of the nuclear weapons program.

“We pursued ways in order to gain nuclear arms,” Gen. Mohsen Rafiqdoost told the regime’s Mehr News on Saturday. “I asked Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] what his opinion was. He said do not pursue atoms, and we stopped.”

But that claim falls short of the truth. In the late 1980s, a letter by Mohsen Rezaei, then the chief commander of the Guards, asking Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Revolution, for approval of the nuclear bomb program was revealed. It showed the leader had approved of seeking nuclear weapons.

Rafiqdoost became the first minister of the Guards and was in charge of purchasing arms on the black market.

Iranian officials have for a long time denied that there ever was a nuclear bomb program and have consistently insisted that the country’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes to help feed its only existing nuclear power plant and ones the country plans to build.

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US Forces Launch Missile Strike Against Shebab Leader in Somalia

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Mohamed Abdiwahab

Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Mohamed Abdiwahab

The US military launched a missile strike in Somalia on Sunday targeting a suspected Shebab militant leader, defense officials said.

One of the officials said an unmanned drone launched the missile in the late evening hours, but declined to confirm the suspect’s identity or whether the strike was successful.

The US government has “been tracking this guy for years,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A second US official said the strike in the southeastern port town of Barawe “was against a senior Shebab commander.”

“The US is assessing the results of the operation” to determine if the suspect was killed, the official added.

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Afghan President Says U.S. Should Start Talks With Taliban or Leave

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMAD ISMAIL

Photo Credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMAD ISMAIL

President Hamid Karzai appeared to stiffen his resolve on Saturday not to sign a security pact with Washington, saying the United States should leave Afghanistan unless it could restart peace talks with the Taliban.

“In exchange for this agreement, we want peace for the people of Afghanistan. Otherwise, it’s better for them to leave and our country will find its own way,” Karzai told a news conference.

The president said pressing ahead with talks with the Taliban, in power from 1996-2001, was critical to ensure that Afghanistan was not left with a weak central government.

“Starting peace talks is a condition because we want to be confident that after the signing of the security agreement, Afghanistan will not be divided into fiefdoms,” he said.

Most diplomats now agree that Karzai is unlikely to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) that would allow for some form of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan after the end of 2014, when most troops are due to leave.

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Pentagon: U.S. Not Capable of Detecting Foreign Nuke Threats

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

American intelligence and security agencies are not currently capable of detecting when foreign nations are building nuclear weapons or ramping up their existing programs, according to a newly released Pentagon report that faults a range of U.S. agencies.

“The nation is not yet organized or fully equipped” to detect clandestine nuclear activities across the globe, and in most cases “current solutions are either inadequate, or more often, do not exist,” according to the report, which was compiled over three years by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board.

More nations than ever are pursuing nuclear arms. However, the United States does not have the mechanisms to detect and track these programs, according to the report.

Moreover, U.S. intelligence agencies are not doing enough to rectify the issue, according to the report, which called for a full-scale revamp in how agencies approach the issue of nuclear detection.

The United States “lacks a cohesive, long term, international engagement plan aimed at building cooperation and transparency,” the report warns.

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Ship of Warmist Fools to Get Bill for Rescue

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

The Federal Government of Australia laid out $2.4 million (Australian dollars) to help rescue the ship full of global warming true believers, who got ice-bound in Antarctic waters they were dead certain had to be melting. And now it wants to paid back for that needless expense. Watt’s Up With That cites this Australian news report:

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt yesterday said costs, estimated at about $2.4 million, would be sought from the insurer of the operators of the vessel.

The MV Akademik Shokalskiy, chartered by the University of NSW-associated Australasian Antarctic Expedition to retrace the steps of explorer Sir Douglas Mawson, became stuck in thick sea ice on Christmas Eve.

The 52 passengers were rescued by the Aurora Australis on January 2.

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Report: Al-Qaeda Planned to Blow Up US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem Convention Center

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Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency cracked open an al-Qaeda plot, directed from the Gaza Strip, to carry out mega terror attacks in Israel against both US and Israeli targets, according to information the Shin Bet made available Wednesday.

Israel is holding three suspects in the plot, it added, but the key plotter is still at large. The trio were arrested three weeks ago, shortly before one or more of them were to travel to Syria for final planning of the operations, which were reportedly initiated on the direct orders of al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The planned attacks included twin suicide bombings, against the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and the main Israeli convention center in Jerusalem, where President Barack Obama gave the centerpiece speech of his Israel visit last March. Other planned attacks included targeting an Israeli bus and Jewish homes in East Jerusalem.

Iyad Abu-Sara, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem, was to be sent to Syria to gain expertise in the nuts and bolts of terror attacks. He would then facilitate the twin attacks, which were to be carried out by al-Qaeda operatives entering Israel with Russian paperwork, according to the Shin Bet. Abu-Sara is one of the trio now under arrest.

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Iranian Official on Nuke Deal: ‘We Did Not Agree to Dismantle Anything’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif insisted Wednesday that the Obama administration mischaracterizes concessions by his side in the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that “we did not agree to dismantle anything.”

Zarif told CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto that terminology used by the White House to describe the agreement differed from the text agreed to by Iran and the other countries in the talks — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

“The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments” under the agreement that took effect Monday, Zarif said in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum.

As part of the accord, Iran was required to dilute its stockpile of uranium that had been enriched to 20%, well above the 5% level needed for power generation but still below the level for developing a nuclear weapon.

In addition, the deal mandated that Iran halt all enrichment above 5% and “dismantle the technical connections required to enrich above 5%,” according to a White House fact sheet issued in November after the initial agreement was reached.

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