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Report: Al Qaeda gaining strength
5/1/2014 3:36:58 AM
- State Department report says al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen particularly lethal
- Al Qaeda Central has had difficulty commanding influence and ordering directives
- The civil war in Syria continues to be a magnet for extremists
- NEW: Terror attacks increase in 2013; More than 9,700 recorded resulting in more than 17,800 deaths
(CNN) -- Al Qaeda's central leadership and its ability to direct operations from beyond its base in Pakistan has diminished, but its affiliate organizations, along with other terror groups, have grown more dangerous, according to a new report from the State Department.
"The terrorist threat continued to evolve rapidly in 2013, with an increasing number of groups around the world - including both AQ affiliates and other terrorist organizations - posing a threat to the United States, our allies, and our interests," the annual report on global terrrorism trends found.
In the report, the State Department said ongoing efforts to degrade and eliminate the organization led by Ayman al-Zawahiri have "accelerated the decentralization" of al Qaeda. But those steps have led to groups like its affiliate in Yemen, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to take advantage of conditions on the ground to "broaden and deepen their operations," become more autonomous and focus on their own goals of attacking the United States and other western governments.
Zawahiri has experienced difficulty in commanding influence and ordering directives throughout the group's affiliate structure, the report said, noting an increase in violent attacks by affiliate groups against civilian populations in their areas of operations.
In addition to the more deadly attacks, the decentralization of al-Qaeda has led affiliates to increase their financial independence through increased kidnappings for ransom and criminal activity like extortion and credit card fraud, the report found.
Al-Zawahiri: Followers should 'capture Westerners'
According to the report, al Qaeda in Yemen is among the most lethal of the affiliate groups and "continues to pose the most significant threat to the United States and U.S. citizens and interests in Yemen."
The group's leader, Nasir Wahishi, recently elevated to the No. 2 position in al Qaeda's larger network, carried out more than 100 attacks in Yemen in 2013. It continues its focus of directing attacks at the U.S. homeland like the failed 2009 attempt to take down a jetliner over Detroit with the "Underwear Bomber."
The group has been in the crosshairs of the Yemeni government and U.S. counterterror efforts and was the focus of several military operations against its leadership following the release of a video that showed a large gathering of the group and its senior leadership.
Terror attacks on the rise
The report cited 9,707 terrorist attacks in 2013, a 43% increase from 2012, according to statistics compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
Attacks resulted in more than 17,800 deaths and more than 32,500 injuries. The majority took place in Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Thailand and Yemen.
Last year's most lethal incidents were carried out by the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, Nigeria's Boko Haram, al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and ISIL, according to the report.
Snowden's impact
Tina Kaidanow, the State Department's top counterterrorism official, said the revelations by Edward Snowden of classified National Security Agency surveillance programs has degraded America's ability to monitor and prevent terrorist activity.
"It has done damage to our intelligence efforts and it's done damage to our ability to ensure that these groups don't have eyesight on the way that we try and gain intelligence with respect to what they're doing," she said. "So overall, know, it's incredibly damaging when we have these kinds of leaks because, at the end of the day, these groups are better able to assess and judge how we obtain our information."
Syria, Iraq and Africa
The civil war in Syria, with it's increasing sectarian nature, also continues to be a magnet with "thousands" of foreign fighters joining violent extremist groups to do battle for or against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the report found.
It added that al-Qaeda linked groups, such as al-Nusrah Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, remain a serious threat. The Iraqi group, which has had some differences with core al-Qaeda and Zawahiri, was found in the report to have conducted some of the most lethal attacks in the world last year.
While Iran and its Shia proxies led by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah continue to support the al-Assad regime, many foreign jihadists are traveling to Syria to fight with al Qaeda-aligned groups like the Nusra Front. A number of governments are concerned those fighters will eventually return to their home countries to carry out attacks of their own.
Next door in Iraq, a weak security environment in the western section of the country along with the de-stabilizing effects of the situation in Syria have allowed a former al Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to move across the border with ease to conduct its own attacks.
Terrorist groups operating in ungoverned areas of Africa also continue to pose a threat. While the report cites operations by al-Shabaab in east Africa, and terrorist groups operating in Nigeria, Mali and Algeria, the report also singles out Libya as an area of concern and instability.
"Libya's porous borders, the weakness of Libya's nascent security institutions, and large amounts of loose small arms create opportunities for violent extremists," the report said.
Execution, a relic we can't get right
5/1/2014 1:57:47 AM
- Mark O'Mara acknowledges if anyone deserved death penalty, Clayton Lockett did
- O'Mara: But execution is a 19th-century relic, and we still can't do it properly
- He asks how many innocent inmates have been killed?
- O'Mara: It doesn't deter crime, and victims' families often left feeling no relief
Editor's note: Mark O'Mara is a CNN legal analyst. He is a criminal defense attorney who frequently writes and speaks about issues related to race, guns and self-defense in the context of the American criminal justice system. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was Clayton Lockett. He committed a series of vile acts that we as a civilization would condemn under any circumstances.
In August 2000, a jury in Oklahoma found Lockett guilty of first-degree murder, rape, forcible oral sodomy, kidnapping and a bevy of other charges -- 19 in all. They stemmed from a robbery-gone-wrong in which victims were tied up at gunpoint; one young woman was raped multiple times, and another, who had just graduated from high school, was shot and buried alive in a ditch.
On Tuesday night, Lockett was scheduled to die by lethal injection -- the preferred means for executing criminals in states that allow for the death penalty.
During lethal injections, subjects are given a chemical cocktail designed to put them to sleep, render paralysis and then stop the heart. One problem for death-penalty states, such as my state of Florida, is the chemicals used for lethal injection are hard to come by, partly because some companies who produce the chemicals refuse to sell them for the purposes of executions.
So in the case of Lockett, the state of Oklahoma tested a new combination of chemicals. Instead of putting Lockett to sleep and stopping his heart, the administration of the lethal injection caused his vein to burst, and about 45 minutes later, he died of a heart attack. It's been dubbed a "botched execution," and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin stayed another execution scheduled for Tuesday evening pending an investigation.
This is an absurd problem for states to wrestle with -- this notion of how to kill someone properly. Like I said, if anyone deserved the death penalty, it was Lockett, but the real debate is whether we need to be in the business of trying to find the least cruel and least unusual way to kill anyone voluntarily. It seems clear that the death penalty is a 19th-century relic, and our ridiculous struggle to figure out how to do it properly in the 21st century is a signal that perhaps we should join the rest of the civilized Western world in abolishing executions.
Even Russia hasn't had an execution since 1999, and I wouldn't exactly call Vladimir Putin soft on crime.
But please understand that I am not some left-wing, dyed-in-the-wool liberal who simply believes all criminal behavior is the fault of a system that fosters deviance. Not at all. I believe that if you take somebody's life with premeditation, and if a jury, after hearing all of the evidence properly presented by competent counsel, finds you guilty, then you should die -- but in prison, at the end of a life sentence.
My objection to the death penalty is pragmatic. It's ineffective as a deterrent, and it is an extraordinary burden on our justice system.
For a punishment to offer an effective deterrence, it has to be applied swiftly to maintain the logical cause and effect relationship with the crime, that this is a consequence. But we simply cannot, and should not, act quickly. The extended period required to ensure that the death penalty is appropriate -- that all options and appeals have been exhausted before resorting to the ultimate punishment -- is an essential safeguard in a civilized society. In Lockett's case, this process took nearly 14 years.
Even with this long process of appeals, our system is far from perfect. Innocence projects around the country have saved 144 death-row inmates since 1973 by presenting new evidence that has proven them not guilty. Think of how many innocent people we have executed, when the number should be zero. We should all be shocked and appalled. Since we know innocent people sometimes get convicted based upon bad identification, faulty witnesses, improper police activities and incompetent counsel, can't we at least agree to avoid killing somebody when we know we have an imperfect system?
And the burden of the appeals process on the criminal justice system is huge. A recent report from Amnesty International shows the average cost to carry a death penalty case from prosecution to execution is three to 10 times more than a case with a life sentence. Very often, a life sentence costs the state less than $1 million. Some death penalty cases have cost more than $10 million. The excruciatingly long, and necessary, appeals process in death penalty cases cost taxpayers millions for each case, and it draws resources away from other important prosecutions. Is it worth the price?
It would be worth the price, if that was what it took to get justice. But is the death penalty justice? Or is it retribution? Often in a death penalty case, members of the victim's family are the strongest advocates for a death sentence. They say they want justice for their slain loved one, but what they often truly want is retribution. This is both understandable and acceptable. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But it's never that simple.
I've tried death penalty cases, and I've been lucky: None of my clients has ever been sent to death row. But I know many good lawyers who haven't been so lucky. You may be surprised to know that in many death penalty cases, which last for years, defense lawyers get to know victims' families. The families of homicide victims, after an execution, often don't feel the long sought-after sense of relief they expected. Often, they are left, instead, with unresolved emptiness. Two lives are lost when a murder is committed, and two families are irrevocably altered. We should feel the pain as well, and spend more time, effort and money on those who are affected. We should not spend ever-dwindling resources figuring out ways to kill.
The death penalty is flawed in every conceivable way, and it should be abolished.
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