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2 women arrested in al-Qaida -inspired New York City terror plot

NEW YORK (AP) — Two women were arrested Thursday on charges they plotted to wage violent jihad by building a homemade bomb and using it for a Boston Marathon-type attack.

One of the women, Noelle Velentzas, had been "obsessed with pressure cookers since the Boston Marathon attacks in 2013" and made jokes alluding to explosives after receiving one as a gift, according to a criminal complaint. And it says in a conversation with an undercover investigator about the women's willingness to fight, she pulled a knife and asked, "Why can't we be bad b-----s?"

The complaint unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn names Velentzas and her former roommate, Asia Siddiqui, as the targets of an undercover investigation into the thwarted homegrown terror plot.

The women, both from Queens, were held without bail after a brief court appearance where they spoke only to say they understood the charges against them. Velentzas wore a hijab and a dark dress, and Siddiqui donned a green T-shirt with a long-sleeved black shirt underneath and a dark long skirt.

"My client will enter a plea of not guilty, if and when there is an indictment. I know it's a serious case, but we're going to fight it out in court," said Siddiqui's lawyer, Thomas Dunn. Velentzas' attorney had no comment.

The women repeatedly expressed support for violent jihad during conversations with the undercover, who secretly recorded them, according to the complaint.

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U.S. Marshals stand outside U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn during the arraignment on terrorism charg …

In 2009, Siddiqui, 31, wrote a poem in a magazine published by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula that declared there is "no excuse to sit back and wait — for the skies rain martyrdom," investigators wrote in court papers. Velentzas, 28, called Osama bin Laden one of her heroes and said she and Siddiqui were "citizens of the Islamic State," they said.

Since 2014, the pair plotted to build an explosive device to use in a terrorist attack on American soil, the complaint says. They "researched and acquired some of the components of a car bomb, like the one used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; a fertilizer bomb, like the one used in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City; and a pressure cooker bomb, like the one used in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing," authorities wrote.

After two New York City police officers were gunned down in a patrol car in December, Velentzas told an undercover officer that the deaths showed it was easy to kill a police officer, according to the complaint. She said killing an officer was easier than buying food "because sometimes one has to wait in line to buy food," according to the complaint.

After the undercover officer mentioned that 25,000 officers had turned out for the first of the funerals for the two officers, Velentzas "complimented" the undercover for coming up with an attractive target and considered whether the other funeral was an appropriate target, according to the complaint.

The complaint suggests that authorities decided to make the arrests after Siddiqui came into "possession of multiple propane gas tanks, as well as instructions for how to transform propane tanks into explosive devices," and told the undercover she was "disinclined" to talk about her plans.

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A Syrian opposition group, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, fighte …

During a search of the defendants' homes early Thursday, agents recovered items including three gas tanks, a pressure cooker, fertilizer, handwritten notes on recipes for bomb making and jihadist literature, court papers say. They also found two machetes and two daggers.

"It is very, very important to note: there was never any imminent threat to our fellow New Yorkers," Mayor Bill de Blasio said when asked about the case. The plot, he added, "was undercut before it could turn into something dangerous."

Neighbors of Siddiqui said she and her brother lived in the basement of a red-brick three floor house, owned by their parents, who didn't live there.

"She was quiet, and I never thought she could do this," said Mohammad Shahidul Haque, a retired hospital lab tech.

The arrests came the same day as another U.S. citizen was brought from Pakistan to New York to face charges he supported a conspiracy to kill Americans. Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh appeared Thursday in Brooklyn federal court and was held without bail.

Authorities say Al Farekh conspired to support efforts to kill Americans and U.S. military members abroad. His lawyer did not comment.

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Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik, Jake Pearson, Colleen Long and Kiley Armstrong contributed to this report.

Tikrit (Iraq) (AFP) - Iraqi forces which retook Tikrit from the Islamic State group found burial sites Wednesday believed to hold victims of a June massacre in which hundreds of army cadets were executed.

The Speicher massacre -- named after the nearby base from which the mostly Shiite recruits were abducted -- stoked widespread anger against IS and helped rally support to battle the jihadists.

Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghaban told AFP that a burial site had been discovered in a freshly retaken palace complex on the banks of the Tigris river.

He was speaking at a concrete waterfront post of Tikrit's water police building, where the wall was stained by blood that had run down into the river.

"This place reminds us of those who were unjustly killed, it reminds us of the massacre," Ghaban said, sobbing. "They were innocent people."

"Today the cowards were defeated... We will hunt them down wherever they are. We will bring security and peace to all of Iraq," he said.

The site is known among fighters as "Al-Madhbah", an Arabic word for a place where slaughter is carried out.

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A Shiite fighter from the Popular Mobilisation units walks down an alley bearing defaced Islamist sl …

Pictures of the executions released by the IS group showed the police building and several recruits in plainclothes being frogmarched to the waterfront, shot and pushed into the river.

Ghaban said a burial site was found a few metres (yards) away in the riverside complex of palaces that former president Saddam Hussein had built in his hometown.

- Matching IDs -

"We found dozens of ID cards in a pile of waste near the site," said policeman Hussein al-Rikabi, who took AFP to the site.

He said the documents matched the names of Speicher recruits known to have been executed or who had gone missing since jihadists took over Tikrit and large parts of Iraq in June 2014.

Traces in the ground suggested that earth moving machinery had been used to bury something.

"We don't know how many bodies are in this mass grave, we are waiting for a special committee to come and carry out the work," he said.

A statement later announced the committee had been formed in coordination with the health ministry.

The highest estimate for the number of young recruits killed in the Speicher massacre is about 1,700.

Hadi al-Ameri, the head of the Shiite Badr group of which Ghaban is also a member, had warned at its launch a month ago that the Tikrit operation would be an opportunity to avenge the massacre.

His comment had sparked fears that regular and irregular forces would engage in reprisal killings against Sunnis.

Iraq's political and Shiite religious leadership has insisted heavily however on the need for all forces to refrain from any abuses, which they said would only undermine the war against IS.

The families of the Speicher victims have been anxiously waiting for the Tikrit operation to wrap up and allow for an investigation.

BEIRUT (AP) — It was a bruising week for Syria's Bashar Assad. The rapid collapse of his forces on two fronts in the north and south brought the opposition its biggest victories in two years, raising serious questions about the president's ability to fend off increasingly sophisticated rebel campaigns.

After losing the capital of Idlib province in northwestern Syria this week, government forces on Thursday lost major ground in the south, where rebels captured the only functioning border crossing with Jordan, a crucial gateway for Syria's government.

For some observers, the successive losses represent a shift in Syria's four-year civil war — suggesting Assad's forces were overstretched and pointing to a new unity and assertiveness by opposition forces, which had long been plagued by divisions.

The opposition drive is being led largely by al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front. The group has long been among the strongest opposition forces, and in the recent moves it has shown greater coordination with other rebel factions. All told, the Nusra Front and its rival, the Islamic State group, now control roughly half of Syria, raising concerns about the country's future.

On Wednesday, Islamic State militants made their deepest foray yet toward Damascus, briefly seizing parts of a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of the Syrian capital.

While they do not yet threaten Assad's hold on power, the rebel gains are likely to raise further questions among frustrated supporters about his ability to end the war.

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Smoke rises in the Syrian town of Nasib, as seen from the Jordanian town of Jaber, north of Mafraq, …

"The apparent collapse of government defenses in Idlib has punched a gaping hole in the government's narrative of approaching victory and boosted the opposition politically as well as militarily, spelling trouble for Bashar Assad," wrote Syria expert Aron Lund in an article published on the Syria Comment blog.

On Thursday, plumes of smoke billowed from the Syrian side of the border with Jordan, as Syrian warplanes and helicopters bombed the areas, trying to slow down the advances by rebels who seized the Nasib border crossing.

Nasib is an important route for Damascus to get essentials and for merchants and businessmen as a way to export to the Gulf. A prolonged closure will increase the stranglehold on an economy ravaged by four years of war. Last week, rebels captured the strategic nearby town of Busra Sham, posing in front of its historic citadel and Roman theater in another punch to government supporters.

The biggest blow to the government however, came from the north with the rebel capture of the city of Idlib last weekend after a four-day assault.

The government had held the mainly Sunni city since Syria's conflict began four years ago even as most of the surrounding countryside fell into rebel hands. Damascus had often boasted of keeping hold of all the provincial capitals with the exception of Raqqa, in the east, which fell in 2013 and is now the de facto capital of the Islamic State group.

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Members of the Jordanian government forces patrol the border with Syria near the Nasib crossing in t …

The Idlib attack was led by a coalition of rebel forces led by Nusra, along with the hard-line Ahrar al-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa groups, believed to be largely backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In an audio statement Wednesday, Nusra's leader Abu Muhammed al-Golani said Idlib would be ruled by Islamic Shariah law but vowed that his group would not seek to monopolize power in the city, urging rebels to remain united.

According to some activists, the groups have received an infusion of new weapons and logistical support meant to pressure Assad and his Iranian backers as part of the Sunni-Shiite proxy war playing out in the region, with Yemen as its latest arena.

"There is no question that we live in an interactive region," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut, adding that the Saudis were pushing via Jordan for the rebel offensive in southern Syria.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Tuesday that Arabs and other states should work to establish "a military balance on the ground to force the butcher of Damascus to respond to a peaceful solution at a time he is insisting on military victory."

In the Idlib offensive, the Syrian government accused Turkey of opening the way for thousands of rebels to reach the battle zone.

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Smoke rises over the Syrian town of Nasib near the Nasib border crossing, as seen from the Jordanian …

An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 rebels are believed to have taken part in the attack under a unified command known as Jaysh al-Fateh, or Conquest Army, storming the city from three sides. They were supported by heavy weaponry seized from defeated government forces and reportedly used U.S.-made advanced TOW missiles seized from moderate rebels in earlier clashes.

Pro-government media said Turkish forces jammed Syrian army telecommunication systems in Idlib, contributing to the collapse in defenses.

Within four days, the militants were in control of the city of 165,000 people, as thousands of its residents fled for safety in government-held areas.

"It was a real war," said a pro-government Sunni resident who fled shortly before Idlib fell. He described hundreds of "bearded men" — a reference to Islamic militants — arriving in the city.

"I left in the last moment when I realized my end will be death. We did not want to die this way," he said by phone, asking that his name not be made public for fear militants might harm relatives still in Idlib.

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Anne Richard, assistant secretary of State of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, rig …

The fighters who moved in were organized and refrained from flagrant acts of provocation, though several residents reported that militants entered Idlib's Saint Mary Orthodox church, made the Islamic call for prayers and detained and humiliated a local priest.

Strategically, the capture of Idlib helps open the way for rebels to put more pressure on government forces in the nearby province of Aleppo, as well as the coastal Latakia province that includes Assad's hometown.

The rebel wins in part reflect the back-and-forth nature of the war from the start.

Still, it is definitely a change from not long ago when Assad's forces had momentum and seemed unbeatable. The battle for Idlib also underscored how deeply the government relies on Shiite militiamen and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas. They were not present in the battle to back up Assad's forces in the city.

"The battle was an important test of the regime's ability to execute its military strategy, and the test failed," wrote Jeffrey White, an analyst with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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Anne Richard, assistant secretary of State of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, lef …

A Middle East-based Western diplomat said Assad is being challenged internally by growing dissatisfaction among the government's own support groups because of his unwillingness to enter into a political settlement, the downward economic situation and high death toll, particularly among his own Alawite constituency.

Still, the diplomat said there is nothing to suggest that would shake the government's "either us or nothing" line when it comes to a political settlement. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to brief journalists.

Lund said Assad's forces have been taken down a notch.

"It seems that Assad is still trying to bite off more of Syria than he can swallow," he wrote. The Idlib defeat "underlines how dangerously overstretched his regime has become."

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Follow Zeina Karam on http://twitter.com/zkaram and Bassem Mroue on http://twitter.com/bmroue

Katie Couric News Video
World powers, Iran reach framework for nuke deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — After securing a surprisingly broad and detailed framework agreement with Iran, President Barack Obama must now subject his signature foreign policy pursuit to the gauntlet of partisan American politics.

A blueprint finalized Thursday after marathon negotiations in Switzerland did little to ease the standoff between Obama and some lawmakers over Congress' role in a final accord. The president has vowed to veto legislation giving Congress the ability to approve or reject a deal, and he made a fresh appeal for lawmakers to give the U.S. and its international partners space to hammer out a comprehensive agreement ahead of a June 30 deadline.

"The issues at stake here are bigger than politics," Obama said. "These are matters of war and peace."

But Republican leaders reaffirmed their intent to vote on legislation giving Congress the last word. Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the panel would vote on such a measure when lawmakers return from a spring recess on April 14.

"The administration first should seek the input of the American people," Corker said.

Some Democrats have backed Corker's quest for a congressional vote on an Iran deal, raising the possibility that lawmakers could override a presidential veto. New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, who is stepping down as top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after his indictment on corruption charges, is among those who backs congressional action.

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President Barack Obama pauses while speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Th …

"If diplomats can negotiate for two years on this issue, then certainly Congress is entitled to a review period of an agreement that will fundamentally alter our relationship with Iran and the sanctions imposed by Congress," Menendez said in a statement Thursday.

For Obama, achieving a nuclear deal with Iran would be a crowning foreign policy achievement and a validation of his pursuit of diplomacy. His overtures to Iran date back to his first presidential campaign in 2008, when he said he would be willing to talk with Tehran's leaders without preconditions. As president, he has staked enormous political capital on the nuclear negotiations, including secretly approving backchannel talks with Iran largely without the knowledge of Congress and key allies.

Senior aides said Thursday that Obama has devoted more time to Iran in recent weeks than any other foreign policy issue, a striking acknowledgment given the upheaval in Yemen and U.S. military engagement in Iraq and Syria.

With Congress in the midst of a two-week recess, the Obama administration has time to wage a campaign to get lawmakers to hold off on legislative action. The president called congressional leaders Thursday afternoon and administration officials planned extensive briefings for lawmakers on the details of the framework.

Senior administration officials said Obama is open to discussions about how Congress can play an oversight role, though they reiterated Obama's opposition to any legislative action occurring while negotiators try to hammer out a final agreement ahead of a June 30 deadline. Officials also did not specify what kind of oversight role they envisioned for lawmakers.

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Iranians flash the victory sign from their car while celebrating on a street in northern Tehran, Ira …

Several Democrats rallied around Obama after the framework was announced. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, said the framework "indicates that a negotiated resolution of Iran's nuclear program may be possible" and he called on Congress to "ensure that its actions do not preclude reaching an acceptable agreement."

Skepticism of the Iran negotiations extends beyond Capitol Hill. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the fiercest critics, told Obama on Thursday that a final deal based on the agreement "would threaten the survival of Israel." The White House said Obama assured Netanyahu that the agreement would not diminish U.S. concerns about Iran's sponsorship of terrorism and threats toward Israel.

Arab allies are also skeptical of the negotiations. Obama also called Saudi Arabia's King Salman Thursday, and he invited the leaders of six Gulf nations— Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman — to Washington this spring.

The U.S. and its negotiating partners — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have been engaged in nuclear talks with Iran for 18 months. After blowing past a March 31 deadline, the parties reached a framework agreement Thursday that outlining limits to Iran's nuclear program. In return, economic and financial sanctions related to Iran's nuclear programs are to be rolled back by the U.S., the United Nations and European Union after the U.N. nuclear agency confirms Iran's compliance.

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Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech in Moscow, March 24, 2015. REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia expressed outrage on Friday over a "frenzied anti-Russian campaign" by U.S. media and political analysts, stepping up a war of words that has intensified during the Ukraine crisis.

Ties between Moscow and Washington have sunk to their lowest level since the Cold War over the crisis in Ukraine, and each side has accused the other of waging an information war.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said "propagandists" working on orders from Washington were producing "Russophobic lampoons, carefully building an image of Russia as an enemy, instilling hatred of anything Russian in ordinary people."

The West accuses Russia of backing separatists in east Ukraine by providing them with weapons and troops, and Russia says the West plotted the overthrow of a Moscow-backed president in Kiev last year. Each side denies the accusations.

Washington imposed sanctions on Moscow after it annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in March last year and stepped them up after the separatist rebellion began in east Ukraine the following month.

The two nuclear powers and veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council are also at odds over many other international matters and differ on human rights and democracy issues.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly and Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Timothy heritage)