Al-Qaeda

From notorious terrorists to naughty cats and salacious kisses, 2014 has been a year of oddities in Turkey. Here are our picks: 1) Al-Qaeda mastermind featured in Turkish cosmetic ad

Turkey is being used as one of the primary routes for weapons smuggling to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Nusra, according to a United Nations report.

President Barack Obama said "the longest war in American history has come to a responsible conclusion."

Obama has welcomed the end of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan. The war came to a formal end Dec. 28 with a ceremony in Kabul.

U.S. counter-terrorism officials backed negotiations with two prominent jihadi clerics in a failed attempt to save the life of an American hostage who was later beheaded by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, the Guardian newspaper reported on Dec. 19.
   

At least 20 people have been killed and 40 hurt in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, officials say, quoted by the international media.

Five or six militants wearing security uniforms entered the school, officials said. Gunfire and explosions were heard as security forces surrounded the area.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John O. Brennan defended on Thursday CIA officers who had been accused of using brutal interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda suspects.

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The CIA declassified a letter Dec. 11 that suggests US intelligence had grave doubts about part of the case made by former president George W. Bush's White House to justify the war in Iraq.
      

Jihadist attacks around the world in November killed a total of 5,042 people, showing Islamist extremism is "stronger than ever" despite Al-Qaeda's declining role, a new study published on Dec. 11 said.
      

Al-Qaeda has blamed President Barack Obama for the deaths of a US journalist and a South African during a failed hostage rescue attempt, warning "the lives of all Americans are in danger".
      

The 500-page US Senate Intelligence Committee report, which provides an account of the intelligence agency's detention and interrogation program in the so-called war against terror, underlines that the CIA soon realized after al-Masri's detention in 2004 that he had no connection to Al-Qaeda.

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