Al-Qaeda assassin worked for MI6', secret cables claim

An alleged al-Qaeda militant suspected of bombing a luxury hotel and two churches in Pakistan in 2002 was an informer for MI6, it has been claimed.

Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili was detained at Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and last year.

The Guardian claims to have seen secret Wikileaks files in which he is described as an al-Qaeda "assassin".

Other Wikileaks files suggest a mosque in north London served as a "haven" for Islamic extremists.

According to the files, 35 men held at Guantanamo Bay had gone to fight against Western forces in Afghanistan after being indoctrinated in Britain. The US documents identify two preachers at the Finsbury Park Mosque - Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada - as key recruiters.

Those revelations are contained in a Daily Telegraph report on separate secret files which suggested London was the hub of a global terror network.

The files, written by US military commanders, say that by the late 1990s the mosque was attracting young men from around the world, who were radicalised before being sent to training camps in Afghanistan.

It said the 35 detainees had passed through Finsbury Park Mosque as well as other centres such as Regent's Park and East London mosques and a rented room above a pub near Baker Street.

US intelligence officials said Finsbury Park served as "an attack planning and propaganda production base" for al-Qaeda.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said some of the files show MI6 in a very bad light.

He said: "A lot of it doesn't surprise me... In my view they completely underestimated how dangerous recruiters and proselytisers like Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza were."

The Guardian says Mr Hamlili was described in his Guantanamo assessment file as a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper and assassin for al-Qaeda".

US interrogators believed he was also a British intelligence informer.

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Neil Revill, who is originally from Consett, escaped the death penalty but was told he would die in prison after being sentenced yesterday.

A MURDERER has been told he will spend the rest of his life behind bars for stabbing a woman to death and decapitating her boyfriend in Los Angeles 10 years ago.

Neil Revill, who is originally from Consett, escaped the death penalty but was told he would die in prison after being sentenced yesterday.

The 38-year-old was last month found guilty of one count of first-degree murder and one of second-degree murder following the bloody knife slayings at an LA flat in 2001.

He was convicted of killing his friend Arthur Davodian, before stabbing Kimberley Crayton, the niece of singer Al Jarreau, to death, in the drug-fuelled attack.

Revill was also found guilty of two charges of transporting controlled substances. A prison informant gave evidence against Revill during a six-week trial, saying he had confessed while in jail.

Speaking after the sentencing, the area’s Deputy District Attorney Phillip Stirling said: “I am not a bloodthirsty individual who thinks the death sentence is appropriate in every case.


“Whether this was an appropriate case for the death penalty or not is a close call. That being said, life in prison with no possibility of parole is the next most harsh sentence.

“I don’t believe Neil Revill is the devil, however, what he did on that day was as bad as you could do. That’s pretty hardcore stuff and we are satisfied with what happened.”

The killings took place on October 11, 2001, and Revill has spent the past nine years in prison awaiting sentence.

Mr Davodian, 22, was stabbed 17 times before his head was severed from his body. Miss Crayton, 20, had locked herself in a bedroom while her lover was murdered, but Revill smashed the door down.

She was stabbed 19 times but her 14-month-old baby survived. A prison cell informant told the court that Revill confessed to having been in the midst of a drug-fuelled paranoid episode when he launched the attack.

Revill suspected Mr Davodian, a drug dealer, was trying to keep him in the property while Israeli-organised gangsters were coming to kill him. DNA linked him to the murders.

Today the convicted murderer was awaiting transportation to a state prison in California. His parents, Brenda and Graham, who now live in Perth, Australia, were both in court to hear his fate.

Mr Stirling said: “For a double murderer with a beheading and a life imprisonment with no possibility of parole sentence, he will start out as a very high classification prisoner.”

Revill was born in County Durham, but moved to Germany with his father when he was still young. He returned to the North East and lived with his grandfather in Stanley, before moving to Sunderland and then to the USA.

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Killer caught after officers recognize a murder scene depicted in his chest tattoo

A gang member has been convicted of a murder that went unsolved for seven years – after police discovered a detailed tattoo of the killing inked on the gunman’s chest.

Anthony Garcia’s telltale tattoo has a man with the body of a peanut – gang slang for a rival gang member – being hit by bullets and falling back towards the liquor store.

Garcia’s nickname was ‘Chopper’ and a miniature helicopter is depicted raining shots down on the scene.


Anthony Garcia¿s tattoo has a man with the body of a peanut ¿ slang for a rival gang member ¿ being hit by bullets and falling back towards a liquor store. Garcia's nickname was Chopper and a mini helicopter is firing shots

The tattoo even showed the Christmas lights that were hanging from the roof of the liquor store where 23-year-old John Juarez was shot in the 2004 murder.

And it included a street lamp and sign from across the street.

The whole scene was sketched out under the chilling banner of ‘RIVERA KILLS’, a reference to the Los Angeles Latino street gang, Rivera-13.

Police revealed today how they only made the breakthrough by chance when homicide investigator Kevin Lloyd was flipping through snapshots of tattooed gang members.

Out of the blue, Garcia’s tattoo caught his attention because it reminded him of a murder case he helped probe years earlier.

The detective then helped set up a sting to trick the 25-year-old into confessing to the killing.

Garcia had only been arrested on a minor traffic offence and his bare chest was photographed because gang graffiti artists often mark their own bodies with the same signatures they spray on buses and storefronts.


The liquor store where 23-year-old John Juarez was shot in the 2004 murder, also seen in Garcia's tattoo


The tattoo shows the Christmas lights that were hanging from the roof of the liquor store at the time of the murder

Gang members also sometimes have tattoos that could help link them to a crime.

At the time, the tattoo meant nothing to the officers who arrested Garcia and he was let go.

Homicide Lt. Dave Dolson said it was unheard of for a tattoo to lay out a detailed crime scene.

‘I haven’t seen it before and I haven’t heard of anything like it, either,’ he told the Los Angeles Times.

After Lloyd recognised the mural, sheriff’s detectives arrested Garcia for the shooting and officers, posing as gang members, got a confession from the gang member who bragged to them about carrying out the shooting.

 

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France launches international hunt for murder suspect

French authorities Saturday issued an international search alert for murder suspect Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes amid evidence that he carefully planned the killing of his wife and four children.
The 50-year-old businessman is wanted after the bodies of his wife and children aged 13 to 20 were dug up in the garden of their family home in the western city of Nantes, Brittany, on Thursday.
Autopsies done on the bodies showed the victims had been "methodically" shot with a .22 calibre firearm similar to one that Dupont de Ligonnes had used in shooting practice at a Nantes rifle club.
Wife Agnes 49, daughter Anne, 16, and three sons were apparently shot several times in the head while asleep, around April 3 or 4, and tests are under way to see if they were drugged first.
The missing man was last seen on April 15, when he left a budget hotel at Roquebrune-sur-Argens in the Var region on France's Mediterranean coast, abandoning one of the family cars in the car park.
Nantes prosecutor Xavier Ronsin, who announced the international alert, said Dupont de Ligonnes had severe money troubles, with debts of at least 50,000 euros ($57,000) and declared income of just 4,000 euros last year.
But on April 12 he stayed at a luxury hotel in the south of France, where staff remember him as having been very relaxed, the manageress said Saturday.
"He was very well dressed and didn't appear to have a care in the world," Sylvie Boucher at the five-star Auberge de Cassagne near Avignon told AFP.
Signing in as Xavier Laurent, he took a prestige suite before dining alone, ordering half a bottle of burgundy, she said.
"People on their own always stand out a bit more than others, but he stood out because he chatted a lot with the staff. He was very nice with everybody," she said. "He showed no signs of worry, on the contrary he appeared very relaxed."
Inquiries have revealed that Dupont de Ligonnes had bought ammunition for his gun before the killings, as well as quicklime and sacking similar to that used to wrap the bodies.
He also went for shooting practice at a local rifle club, its president Alain Neutre said Saturday -- four times in the week before the murders.
Club coach Benoit Herault said the fugitive had started with a .22 pistol but in February began bringing a carbine of the same calibre with a 10-round magazine, which he said he had inherited from his father.
His older sons, 20-year-old Arthur and 18-year-old Thomas, had recently started joining him for lessons, while 13-year-old Benoit had been due to follow, Herault said.
On April 1, the last time Dupont de Ligonnes came to the club, "he told me his sons could not make the appointment fixed for April 9, without giving a reason".
The shooting coach said the man had asked him about using a silencer. "I told him it was pointless on a shooting range."
"I saw him firing his rifle with a silencer once," Herault said, before adding grimly, referring to the murders, "Anyway, to do what was done, no training was needed."
Herault confirmed an earlier statement by Ronsin that shortly before his disappearance Dupont de Ligonnes had made bizarre claims to friends that he was a US secret agent and was leaving to join a witness protection programme.
He said Dupont de Ligonnes, who had presented the required medical certificate that declared him mentally fit to carry a firearm, had left an impression of someone "not exuberant".

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Drug task force, DEA arrests local doctor

Drug Enforcement Agency officials and the Shelby County Drug Enforcement Task Force today arrested a doctor after a Shelby County Grand Jury indicted him April 19 on drug-related offenses.

Dr. Jerry B. Hankins, 44, is charged with three counts of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance, with a bond of $50,000 each, and three counts of trafficking in a controlled substance, also with bonds of $50,000 each.

Hankins was booked into the Shelby County Jail and had not posted the total $300,000 bond as of 5 p.m. April 22.

Drug task force investigators in December 2010 began investigating 280 Recovery, a medical clinic formed to treat opiate addiction and located at 16233 Highway 280 in Chelsea. The investigation focused “primarily” on Hankins, according to the drug task force.

The investigation was a collaborative effort with the DEA and the Alabama State Board of Pharmacy.

Investigators determined that Hankins, of Birmingham, was not operating in accordance to rules set forth by the DEA, and that he violated several state statutes, according to a drug task force press release.

“Prescription drug diversion is extremely profitable and unfortunately costly to those who become addicted to prescriptions drugs,” drug task force commander Lt. Chris George said in the release. “This clinic was being used to facilitate the distribution of some very addictive controlled drugs.  I am thankful for the work of our investigators as well as the work conducted by the DEA and Board of Pharmacy.”

 

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Mokbel family is downsizing now the money that once rolled through the front door is gone.

 
Although there's a Mercedes-Benz still parked in the driveway, the little hatch model with P-plates is a far cry from the black gangster Merc of choice Tony bragged about at the peak of his life of crime in the illicit drug market.

A Mokbel relative was in no mood to talk at the family home in Brunswick, where deals were often done just walking distance from the cafes on Sydney Rd where "Fat Tony" would make his presence known.

"We're not interested. I'm not interested. Which part don't you understand?" the relative said.

"It's not my problem ... we've got nothing to say."

It's believed the family is caring for Laura Mokbel, who has previously staunchly defended Tony amid the Purana Taskforce investigations.

But the family woes do not extend only to Tony.

Older brother Horty Mokbel has been charged with bashing an inmate in Castlemaine's Loddon Prison.

Horty, along with three co-accused, all face counts of intentionally causing injury, assault in company, assault by kicking and unlawful assault following an incident on March 29.

Along with his co-accused, Horty was transferred to where brother, Tony, was jailed at Barwon Prison earlier this month.

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Brazen burglar's haul estimated at $15m

Police are searching for a burglar who has allegedly stolen millions of dollars worth of property from houses in Melbourne's east.

It is believed the same thief has been robbing homes in Kew, Balwyn North and Canterbury since 2007.

They believe the man has stolen about $15 million worth of jewellery, cash and electrical items.

Police say the man disables alarms, security lights and cameras, before scaling walls to gain access to the houses.

He has also broken into safes.

Detective Senior Constable Attila Kovacs says police were lucky to catch a glimpse of the daring thief.

" He takes a significant risk going into these homes that have high fences, they have good security systems. He's very brazen, but on this occasion that risk hasn't paid off for him as he was caught on film," he said.

Detective Senior Constable Kovacs says police now have CCTV footage of the man in action, from a bungled break-in in February.

"The offender has tried to disturb the camera, turn it away from where he was, in doing so, that camera has broken off its mountings, swung around, and actually captured an image of him," he said.

"Fortunately for us, the image is of good quality. That image has been circulated today and we're seeking the assistance of the public to help us identify that offender."

 

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