Police: Gunman fires at Danish anti-Islam writer

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A gunman tried to shoot a Danish writer and prominent critic of Islam on Tuesday, but missed and fled after a scuffle with his intended victim, police and the writer said.

Lars Hedegaard, who heads a group that claims press freedom is under threat from Islam, told The Associated Press he was shaken but not physically injured in the attack at his Copenhagen home.

Police were searching for the suspect, whom they described as a "foreign" man aged 20-25.

Hedegaard, 70, said the gunman rang the doorbell of his apartment building on the pretext of delivering a package, and when Hedegaard opened the front door, the man pulled out a gun and fired a shot that narrowly missed the writer's head.

"The bullet flew past my right ear, after which I attacked him and punched him in the face, which made him lose the gun," Hedegaard told AP. He said the gunman then fled.

Hedegaard heads the Free Press Society in Denmark and its international offshoot, theInternational Free Press Society. He is also among the publishers of a weekly anti-Islam newsletter.

In 2011, he was convicted of hate speech and fined 5,000 kroner ($1,000) for making a series of insulting and degrading statements about Muslims.

The motive of Tuesday's attack was not immediately clear.

Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt condemned it as a "despicable" act.

"It is even worse if the attack is rooted in an attempt to prevent Lars Hedegaard to use his freedom of expression," she said.

Hedegaard has expressed support for a range of outspoken Islam critics in Europe, including Swedish artist Lars Vilks and Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.

"Failed attack on my friend and Islam critic Lars Hedegaard in Denmark this morning. My thoughts are with him. Terrible," Wilders tweeted.

The Free Press Society said it was "shaken and angry" over the attack, but "relieved that the perpetrator did not succeed."

Several Scandinavian writers, artists and journalists have been exposed to threats and violence from extremists since the 2005 publication of Danish newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad triggered an uproar in Muslim countries.

Many Muslims believe the prophet should not be depicted at all — even in a flattering way — because it might encourage idolatry

In 2010, a Somali man living in Denmark used an ax to break into the home of one of the cartoonists, who escaped unharmed by locking himself into a panic room.

Last year, four Swedish residents were convicted of terrorism in Denmark for plotting a shooting spree at the newspaper that first published the Muhammad caricatures.

In Sweden, Vilks has lived under police protection after a drawing he made depicting Muhammad as a dog led to death threats from militant Islamists.

Terrorists with Western links a growing threat

FILE - This Oct. 2008 file photo shows Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was born in 1971 in New Mexico where his father was studying agriculture as a Fulbright scholar. The son was educated in the United States but left in 2002, eventually returning to Yemen where he became a key figure in the local al-Qaida branch, which U.S. authorities believed was the most dangerous of the al-Qaida franchises. Al-Awlaki's fluent English and articulate speaking style won him a huge following among disaffected young Muslims in the West. He and another American, Samir Khan, who edited al-Qaida's Internet magazine, were killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011. (AP Photo/Muhammad ud-Deen, File)

FILE - These undated photos released by the FBI show Adam Yahiye Gadahn. Born Adam Pearlman in Oregon, Gadahn converted to Islam in 1995 and moved to Pakistan, where he joined al-Qaida as a propagandist. Using the name "Azzam the American," he appeared in numerous al-Qaida videos, denouncing U.S. moves in Afghanistan and elsewhere and threatening attacks on Western interests abroad. (AP Photo/FBI, File)

They are called "homegrown terrorists," Western citizens highly prized by Islamic militant groups because they can move across borders and carry out attacks easier than people from Middle East or South Asian nations.

Two such people — one Canadian and one Australian — are believed to have been involved in the July 18 bus bombing inBulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver, according to Bulgarian investigators. Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov of Bulgaria said the two were members of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah, which in turn is linked to Iran.

Here are some examples of Western citizens who have been linked to terrorism both in their home countries or abroad in recent years:

LONDON SUBWAY BOMBING

Four young Britons — three of Pakistani and one of Jamaican origin — carried out a series of suicide attacks July 7, 2005, on the London public transport that killed 56 people. More than 700 people were injured. All four had lived normal lives under the police radar and had no criminal records. They carried home-made bombs in backpacks. Al-Qaida released video testimonies of two of the bombers who denounced the West and declared their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

SHOE BOMBER

Richard Reid was a British citizen who converted to Islam in prison. After his release he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where authorities say he trained with al-Qaida. More than three months after Sept. 11 attacks, Reid boarded an American Airlines flight in Paris bound for Miami and tried to detonate a bomb in his shoes. He was subdued by passengers and crew members, and the plane landed safely in Boston. In 2002 Reid was sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to eight counts of terrorism and attempting to destroy a commercial airliner.

DAVID COLEMAN HEADLEY

Headley, a Pakistani-American, used his U.S. passport to travel frequently to India, where he allegedly scouted out venues for terror attacks on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organization. The al-Qaida-affiliated group used the information to plan and carry out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, in which more than 160 people died. Last month Headley was sentenced by a U.S. federal court in Chicago to 35 years in prison for his role in the Mumbai attacks.

TIMES SQUARE FAILED BOMBING

On May 1, 2010, two street vendors alerted police to smoke coming out of a vehicle parked on New York's Time Square — an area teeming with tourists. Police found the vehicle was rigged with a bomb that failed to explode. Two days later, federal agents in New York arrested Faisal Shahzad, 30, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen who lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after he had boarded a flight bound for Dubai in the Persian Gulf. Shahzad confessed to the attempted car bombing and said he had trained at a Pakistani terror training camp. Shahzad was sentenced to life imprisonment in October 2010.

ANWAR AL-AWLAKI

Al-Awlaki was born in 1971 in New Mexico, where his father was studying agriculture as a Fulbright scholar. The son was educated in the United States but left in 2002, eventually returning to Yemen where he became a key figure in the local al-Qaida branch, which U.S. authorities believed was the most dangerous of the al-Qaida franchises. Al-Awlaki's fluent English and articulate speaking style won him a huge following among disaffected young Muslims in the West. He and another American, Samir Khan, who edited al-Qaida's Internet magazine, were killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011.

MAJ. NIDAL MALIK HASAN

Born in Arlington, Virginia, to Palestinian parents, Hasan joined the U.S. Army in college and became a military psychiatrist. Colleagues said during an assignment at Walter Reed Medical Center, he was deeply affected by dealing with young soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. FBI investigators alleged that he corresponded by email with al-Awlaki. Hasan was wounded and captured by police on Nov. 5, 2009, after he allegedly opened fire on soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding more than two dozen. Hasan, who was paralyzed from the waist down in the shooting, was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. A trial date has not been set, and he could face the death penalty if convicted.

ADAM GADAHN

Born Adam Pearlman in Oregon, Gadahn converted to Islam in 1995 and moved to Pakistan, where he joined al-Qaida as a propagandist. Using the name "Azzam the American," he appeared in numerous al-Qaida videos, denouncing U.S. moves in Afghanistan and elsewhere and threatening attacks on Western interests abroad. U.S. authorities filed treason charges against him in 2006 and have offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction. Despite rumors he had been killed or captured, Gadahn appeared in a video last September marking the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

GLASGOW AIRPORT ATTACK

On June 30, 2007, a jeep loaded with propane canisters slammed into the terminal of the Glasgow International Airport in Scotland, setting the building on fire. Five bystanders were injured. Both occupants of the vehicle were arrested. Police identified them as Bilal Abdulla, a British-born, Muslim doctor of Iraqi descent and Kafeel Ahmed, the driver. Anti-terrorism officials said Abdulla became radicalized due to the Iraq war. Ahmed, an Indian engineering student, died of his burns. Abdulla was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 32 years in prison.

AHMAD OMAR SAEED SHEIKH

Following his education in Britain, the British-born Sheikh traveled to South Asia, where he joined Islamic militant groups. He was sent to prison for kidnapping Western tourists in India in 1994, but was released to Pakistan five years later in an exchange of prisoners following the hijacking of an Indian airliner to Afghanistan. In 2002 he was convicted of kidnapping and murder in the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and sentenced to death. His appeal is still pending in a Pakistani court.

Report: Ireland oversaw harsh Catholic laundries

DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland's government oversaw workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once held thousands of women and teenage girls in unpaid labor and usually against their will, a fact-finding report concluded Tuesday, establishing state involvement in the country's infamous Magdalene Laundries for the first time.

But Prime Minister Enda Kenny stopped short of making any official apology for the decades of harsh treatment documented in 10 Magdalene Laundries, the last of which closed in 1996. He emphasized that the more than 1,000-page report offered a nuanced view of life in the laundries far less stark or one-sided than has been depicted on stage and in film.

Kenny rejected activists' claims of laundry conditions akin to prison and slavery, and confined his statement of regret to the longtime popular view in Ireland that most residents of the Magdalene Laundries were "fallen women," a euphemism for prostitutes.

"The stigma that the branding together of all the residents, all 10,000, in the Magdalene Laundries, needs to be removed, and should have been removed long before this," Kenny said. "And I really am sorry that that never happened, and I regret that it never happened."

Opposition leaders demanded that he offer an official apology for the state's failure to enforce labor laws and human rights standards in the facilities, and to pledge to establish a taxpayer-funded compensation program for survivors. But Kenny instead said all lawmakers should read the report and debate its findings in two weeks.

The report's lead author, former Irish Sen. Martin McAleese, said until now the facts and figures of the workhouses run by four orders of Catholic nuns had been shrouded in "secrecy, silence and shame."

McAleese, the husband of Ireland's former President Mary McAleese, said the failure of successive governments and the nuns to provide any public records on the laundries' operations meant that "stories grew to fill these gaps."

He wrote in the report's introduction that the investigators "found no evidence to support the perception that unmarried girls had babies there, or that many of the women of the Magdalene Laundries since 1922 were prostitutes. The reality is much more complex."

The report found that 10,012 women were committed to the workhouses from 1922, the first year of Ireland's independence from Britain, to the closure of the last two laundries in 1996. It found that the average length of stay was just seven months, not the lifetime imprisonment commonly depicted in fictional works. It said 14 percent stayed more than 5 years, and 8 percent more than a decade. And many hundreds checked into the facilities repeatedly for short periods, reflecting their poverty and the Irish state's inadequate facilities for women needing a home.

It found that 27 percent of the women were ordered into the facilities by an array of state employees: judges, probation officers, school truancy officials, social workers, doctors at psychiatric hospitals, or officials at state-funded shelters for unwed mothers and their babies. Some 16 percent entered laundries voluntarily, 11 percent were consigned there by other family members, and 9 percent were sent there on the recommendation of a priest.

It found that until recent decades, judges often ordered women guilty of crimes ranging from shoplifting to infanticide into the laundries rather than Ireland's male-dominated prison system.

The report disputed depictions in popular culture of physical beatings in the institutions, noting that many Magdalene residents had transferred there as teenagers from other Catholic-run industrial schools where such violence was common, and some survivors failed to distinguish between the two. It found no evidence of such attacks in the nuns' care and, specifically, no complaints of sexual abuse by the nuns.

McAleese said most of the 118 former residents interviewed by the report authors "described the atmosphere in the laundries as cold, with a rigid and uncompromising regime of physically demanding work and prayer, with many instances of verbal censure, scoldings or even humiliating put-downs." Yet a minority, he said, viewed the laundry as "their only refuge in times of great personal difficulty."

Campaigners for justice for the "Maggies" expressed disappointment with the report and particularly the government's response.

"These women were locked up against their will and not paid a penny for their work," said Clare McGettrick, spokeswoman for the Justice for Magdalenes pressure group. She noted that the state inspected the laundries as licensed workplaces, yet never required the nuns to fund any state pension entitlements for the women as normal employers do, which means they are among Ireland's poorest residents today.

"Frankly their country has failed them yet again," said McGettrick said. The prime minister's refusal to apologize on behalf of the state, she said, "prolongs the stigma for these women. The beginning of this process should have been the apology. More women would have given their testimony."

They have pressed Ireland for more than a decade to admit its legal responsibility to compensate residents for hardships experienced, freedom denied, and the lack of wages paid. The government since 2002 has paid more than €1 billion ($1.3 billion) to more than 13,000 people who suffered sexual, physical and psychological abuse in other Catholic-run workhouses and orphanages but explicitly excluded former Magdalene residents, contending these were privately run institutions with negligible state involvement.

The United Nations Committee on Torture in 2011, hearing a legal petition from the Justice for Magdalenes group, rejected the Irish government's arguments and ordered the fact-finding effort subsequently undertaken by McAleese and officials from six Irish government departments.

McAleese concluded that his investigation had "found significant state involvement with the Magdalene Laundries."

The four orders issued their own statements of regret to past laundry residents, but largely defended their conditions as inevitable in tougher times.

The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, which ran the two biggest laundries in Dublin, in a statement expressed "deep regret" that many residents "did not experience our refuge as a place of protection and care." But they suggested that women in their care faced worse conditions and fewer options in the hostile Ireland outside the laundry gates.

And the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, which ran two laundries south of Dublin and in the western city of Galway, said some workers built lifelong friendships with nuns running the workhouse. "We wish that we could have done more and that it could have been different," the nuns said. "It is regrettable that the Magdalene homes had to exist at all."

___

Online:

Another survivalist development in Idaho?

ST. MARIES, Idaho (AP) — A group of survivalists wants to build a giant walled fortress in the woods of the Idaho Panhandle, a medieval-style city where residents would be required to own weapons and stand ready to defend the compound if society collapses.

The proposal is called the Citadel and has created a buzz among folks in this remote logging town 70 miles southeast of Spokane, Wash. The project would more than double the population of Benewah County, home to 9,000 souls.

Locals have many questions, but organizers so far are pointing only to a website billing the Citadel as "A Community of Liberty."

"There is no leader," Christian Kerodin, a convicted felon who is a promoter of the project, wrote in a brief email to The Associated Press. "There is a significant group of equals involved ... each bringing their own professional skills and life experiences to the group.

"It is very much a 'grass-roots' endeavor,'" Kerodin wrote, declining to provide any additional details.

Such communities are hardly new, especially in northern Idaho, which has long been a magnet for those looking to shun mainstream society because of its isolation, wide-open spaces and lack of racial diversity. For three decades, the Aryan Nations operated a compound about an hour north of here before the group went bankrupt and the land was sold.

Then came another community known as "Almost Heaven," founded in 1994 by Green Beret-turned-"patriot" movement leader Bo Gritz for those wanting a refuge from urban ills and Y2K concerns. That project crumbled when large numbers of buyers failed to move to the development, located 100 miles to the south.

The number of so-called patriot groups has grown since President Barack Obama was first elected, and the renewed debate over gun control is further deepening resentment of the federal government among such factions, said Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC tracks such groups.

Nevertheless, Potok noted, plans for these sorts of communities rarely come to fruition.

"The people behind the Citadel are like 12-year-old boys talking about the tree house, or the secret underground city, they're going to build some day," he said.

The website shows drawings of a stone fortress with room inside for up to 7,000 families. The compound would include houses, schools, a hotel and a firearms factory and museum. The gun factory, the website said, would manufacture semi-automatic pistols and AR-15 rifles — which would be illegal if Congress reinstated the 1994 ban on assault weapons.

Applicants must pay a $208 fee, and the website claims several hundred people already have applied to live in the Citadel.

The site also warns that not all would be comfortable at the development:

"Marxists, Socialists, Liberals and Establishment Republicans will likely find that life in our community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles."

No construction has begun. Kerodin filed papers with the Idaho Secretary of State in November for a company called Citadel Land Development. III Arms LLC, which is the name of the proposed firearms company, also has purchased 20 acres of land in Benewah County, the county auditor said.

The Citadel website said those 20 acres would serve as an administrative site from which to build the entire 2,000- to 3,000-acre compound.

Kerodin, who declined requests for a telephone interview, was convicted in 2004 of federal extortion charges and illegal possession of a firearm in a case in which he posed as a counterterrorism expert and attempted to coerce shopping mall owners in the Washington, D.C., area to hire him to improve security, according to court documents. He served 30 months in federal prison.

While the conviction makes it illegal for Kerodin to possess a firearm, residents of the Citadel would be required to own guns and to pledge to train together and use them if the compound were attacked. Residents would also be required to stock enough food and water to last a year.

In St. Maries, a logging community of 2,600 people that is the Benewah County seat, townspeople had plenty of questions about the proposed development.

"This is Podunk, Idaho," said resident Wanda Wemhoff. "What are they defending themselves against?"

Gary Davis, owner of a quilt shop, worried about the type of people who would be drawn to such a community. "Nobody benefits from having a closed society move into their midst," he said.

But County Commissioner Bud McCall was less concerned, calling the Citadel little more than a "pie in the sky thing." ''As far as I know," he said, "it hasn't gone anywhere."

18 charged in $200-million global credit card scam

NEWARK, N.J. - Eighteen people have been charged in what may be one of the largest U.S.credit card fraud rings, a sprawling international scam that duped credit rating agencies and used thousands of fake identities to steal at least $200 million, federal authorities said Tuesday.

The elaborate scheme involved improving fake cardholders' credit scores, allowing the scammers to borrow more money that they never repaid, investigators said.

"The accused availed themselves of a virtual cafeteria of sophisticated frauds and schemes, whose main menu items were greed and deceit," said David Velazquez, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark field office.

The U.S. attorney in Newark, Paul Fishman, described an intricate Jersey City-based con that began in 2007, operated in at least 28 states and wired money to Pakistan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Romania, China and Japan.

The group used at least 7,000 fake identities to obtain more than 25,000 credit cards, Fishman said. Investigators documented $200 million in losses, but the figure could rise, he said.

"Through their greed and arrogance," Fishman said, the people arrested harm credit card companies, consumers and "the rest of us who have to deal with increased interest rates and fees because of the money sucked out of the system by criminals."

Participants in the scam set up more than 1,800 mailing addresses, creating fake utility bills and other documents to provide credit card companies with what appeared to be legitimate addresses, investigators said. Once they obtained the cards, they started making small charges and paying off the cards to raise their credit limits, authorities said.

They then sent fake reports to credit rating agencies, making it appear that cardholders had paid off debts, setting the stage for sterling credit ratings and high credit limits, investigators said.

Fishman said once the credit limits were raised, participants would take out loans or max out the credit cards and not repay the debts.

He said those who obtained credit cards often added co-conspirators and sham businesses as authorized users, who could piggyback on high credit ratings and open other fraudulent accounts with high credit limits.

The group created at least 80 sham businesses that accepted credit card payments, Fishman said. It would run the fraudulently obtained credit cards through the machines, keeping the money, he said.

In one example, prosecutors allege a defendant used a six-year-old boy's Social Security number to obtain a fake utility bill used to open credit card accounts.

The scheme funded a lavish lifestyle for the accused, including spa treatments, electronics, luxury cars and millions of dollars of gold, Fishman said. In one raid, authorities said they found $68,000 stashed in an oven.

Authorities allege one man withdrew and wired $1.5 million from personal accounts despite not having a job. They allege another defendant was linked to 12 false identities, stole $2.5 million from 464 credit cards and received $18,000 from two sham companies.

Three jewelry stores within blocks of each other in a heavily Indian section of Jersey City were closed Tuesday, and their inventory was seized. All had signs advertising gold jewelry. Their metal security gates were shut, and they were guarded by FBI agents.

Fourteen defendants appeared before a federal judge Tuesday afternoon. Lawyers said one man was a taxi driver, another a limo driver. Most own property in New Jersey or New York and said they were U.S. citizens. Eight were released, and six remained in custody ahead of a Friday bail hearing.

Authorities said many of the defendants had family ties, including a father and son.

Attorney Angelo Servidio, representing defendant Tarsem Lal, said what authorities had done was merely make allegations.

"The fact that this is the biggest fraud case brought by this office doesn't mean my client is involved in it," he said.

Four of the defendants named in Tuesday's indictment were arrested previously, and three have pleaded guilty. Others haven't been charged, and the investigation is ongoing, Fishman said.

Each of the defendants was charged with one count of bank fraud and could face up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.