New Year starts off right with worldwide crackdown on Islamist terrorists

The civilized world rang in the New Year with arrests of Islamist terrorists around the globe.

France closed 2002 with the arrests of four suspected terrorists at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

In the first few days of 2003, Yemen, acting on an FBI tip, apprehended 30 Islamists alleged to have been behind the murders of three American Christian missionaries and the severe wounding of a fourth. Egypt rounded up more than a dozen members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Authorities in the Philippines captured a senior member of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. Indonesian President Megawati devoted her New Year’s address pledging to continue rooting out Islamist terrorists – a big statement from the world’s most populous Islamic country.

At home, an alleged al Qaeda funder operating out of Chicago wound up in court.

But there are still holdouts. Elsewhere on the home front, Arab and Muslim activist groups filed suit on Christmas Eve against Attorney General John Ashcroft for his anti-terrorism efforts. . . .

Read the Center’s new report on the People’s Republic of China 2002 Zhuhai Airshow by Asian Security Studies Fellow Richard Fisher.