One day after thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in a "day of rage" to protest food and water shortages, protesters gathered in the northern regions of the country to call attention to poor basic services. Around 2,000 protesters gathered in Sulaymaniyah in Kurdish northern Iraq, while a small group of about 100 protested in Fallujah.

Hospital sources told Reuters that one person died and 11 were hurt in clashes in the north.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a Shiite cleric, urged Iraq's leaders to listen to the protesters and fight corruption, improve the economy and fix basic services. Eight years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there are still only basic services and usually only a few hours of power a day.

Also on Saturday, militants detonated bombs at Iraq's largest oil refinery, killing at least one employee. The attack at the refinery in Baiji, 112 miles north of Baghdad, occured at 4:30 a.m. and prompted a temporary closure of the refinery, one of three in Iraq. The refinery is in an area that was at one time controlled by Al Qaeda.

-- Alana Semuels

Photo: Workers try to extinguish a fire at the Baiji refinery after it was attacked by militants. Credit: Bassem Daham / Associated Press

A journalist accused of acting as a media advisor to Al Qaeda in Yemen was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison on Tuesday, but colleagues and advocacy groups are calling foul, accusing the government of seeking to suppress press freedoms.

Abdul Elah Haidar Sha'ee, 34, is well known for his coverage of militant Islamist groups, particularly Al Qaeda, scoring exclusive interviews with several high-ranking figures in the movement, including the presumed leader of the local branch of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi, and the American-born cleric Anwar Awlaki.

"We will work in a number of ways to expose this ruling, and we call on all political parties, civil society and human rights organizations to condemn it and stand behind Al Sha'ee and escalate the demonstrations for his release" Jamal Anaam, head of the freedoms committee of the Yemeni journalists syndicate, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday (Arabic link).

Sha'ee was arrested in August along with his colleague, 28-year-old Abdul Karim Shami, who received a sentence of two years.

New developments have surfaced in the case of Taimour Abdulwahab Abdaly, a 28-year-old Iraq-born Swedish suicide bomber who died in a botched attack on central Stockholm on Dec. 11, in revenge for what he called Sweden's "war on Islam."

This weekend, Iraq's top security official Gen. Dhai Kanani told the Dubai-based pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya (link in Arabic) that Abdaly received explosives training for three months in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and that Iraqi authorities informed U.S. officials about a planned bombing plot in Sweden two months before Abdaly's bungled attack in the Swedish capital, which killed him and injured two others when a bomb belt he was wearing detonated prematurely. 

Ten minutes before Abdaly blew himself up, he reportedly sent e-mail to SAPO, the state-run Swedish news agency, and his wife and family containing an audio message in which he, among other things, apologized to his family for lying about his trips to the Middle East.

"I went for jihad," he said in the recording.

Does being a proponent of the kind of puritanical strain of Islam touted by Osama bin Laden automatically make you a member of Al Qaeda?

Iran seems to think so. 

Iranian security forces arrested seven alleged Al Qaeda operatives in the northwestern city of Sardasht, the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an unnamed official as saying Wednesday.

The operatives had been identified nearly a month ago and were arrested after judiciary authorities gave a green light, the official said.

Were they caught with bombs or suicide vests?

According to the Iranians, they are accused so far only of using books and leaflets to promote "Wahabbi" or Salafist Sunni Islam in predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran.

"The suspects were nabbed with an appreciable number of books, leaflets and documents about Wahhabism and other depraved cults,” the official said. "They sought to sow sectarian discord, but they were finally arrested by security forces and handed over to the judiciary."

-- Los Angeles Times

Photo: English-language translation of a book about Salafist Islam. Credit: Salafibookstore.com

A majority of Muslims around the world welcome a significant role for Islam in their countries' political life, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, but have mixed feelings toward militant religious groups such as  Hamas and Hezbollah.

According to the survey, majorities in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria would favor changing the current laws to allow stoning as a punishment for adultery, hand amputation for theft and death for those who convert from Islam to another religion. About 85% of Pakistani Muslims said they would support a law segregating men and women in the workplace.

Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and Jordan were among the most enthusiastic, with more than three-quarters of Muslims polled in those countries reporting positive views of Islam's influence in politics: either that Islam had a large role in politics, and that was a good thing, or that it played a small role, and that was bad.

Algeria is now considered America's closest ally in the fight against Al Qaeda in North Africa, an unlikely partnership that emerged following years of strained relations, leaked US diplomatic cables obtained by Babylon & Beyond show.

The documents show extensive intelligence, security and, increasingly, economic cooperation between the two states, despite Algeria's violent history, oppressive government and ongoing tensions over its placement on the American Transportation Security Administration's enhanced screening watch list in January 2010.

A detailed timeline of "major anti-terrorism successes" of 2008 including the killing or capture of at least 19 militant figures, several major illegal weapons cache discoveries and a thwarted assassination attempt on then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visited Algeria in September of that year.

"It is worth remembering that no country is more important than Algeria in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Sahel and Maghreb," the American ambassador to Algiers, David D. Pearce, wrote in a Jan. 6, 2010, cable.

[Updated at 9:52 a.m.: Death toll revised and reference to Yemen media report report of alleged Al Qaeda responsibility added.]

A car bomb exploded along a procession of Shiite Muslims in northern Yemen, killing at least 17 people and raising concerns that Al Qaeda was seeking to exploit religious differences in a country engulfed in rebellion.

The blast occurred in a rugged province where the government and Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are under a tense ceasefire in fighting that has killed hundreds and displaced thousands. No one claimed immediate responsibility but a tribal leader told Yemen media that Al Qaeda carried out the attack as retaliation against the Houthis for detaining five Al Qaeda operatives earlier this year.

One of two Palestinians killed in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike Wednesday evening was Islam Yasin, a senior operative of the Army of Islam, according to an Israeli army statement. This is the second joint IDF-Shin Bet operation in two weeks targeting members of the organization, believed to be engaged in terrorism plots in Egypt's Sinai peninsula.

Two weeks ago, in the first targeted killing in some time, Israeli forces killed Mohammed Namnam, also in Gaza. The army, after a few hours of silence on the matter, said Namnam was a top member of the organization, which identifies with global Islamist causes and Al Qaeda, and was involved in preparing an attack against "American and Israeli targets" in the peninsula.

Egyptian authorities are stepping up efforts to protect the country's Christian churches following a series of threats by Al Qaeda. 

Newspapers reported Tuesday that the Ministry of Interior had tightened its security presence and police patrols around all churches in Cairo and other provinces across the country. Worshipers will also be thoroughly searched before entering any church.

An eyewitness in the Qena, where six Copts and a Muslim were killed in a drive-by shooting outside a church on Jan. 7, said that no fewer than six security vehicles were positioned outside his neighborhood church. He added that no cars were allowed to park within about 300 yards of the area.

The red alert comes after Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Iraq attacked the Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad during a Sunday Mass attended by 120 worshipers. At least 58 were killed and 75 were wounded during the raid.

As Yemen steps up its fight against Al Qaeda, the group is finding plenty of cover in rural areas where the army has little control and local separatists are often engaged in their own battles against U.S.-backed government forces.

On Sunday, the Yemeni army continued a series of air strikes in south Yemen after an ambush on a military convoy (link in Arabic) Saturday killed at least four Yemeni soldiers and a number of suspected Al Qaeda militants. The number of casualties from Sunday's bombing could not be confirmed, but the satellite channel Al Jazeera reported that "a number" had been killed and wounded.

The channel showed footage of Yemeni military trucks rolling through the dusty streets of a city in the Abyan province that had been the site of deadly clashes between government troops and alleged Al Qaeda militants. Sometimes, it's tricky to tell who is whom: Yemeni separatist movements are also active in a region defined by tribal allegiances and a deep disdain for the government.

Several people were injured in a pair of attacks Wednesday on another dangerous day for foreigners in the Arabian Peninsula nation of Yemen.

Arab media and diplomats reported that a shell or missile struck a vehicle carrying five British Embassy staff as it headed toward the embassy in Sana, Yemen’s capital, Wednesday morning. 

Separately, employees of the Austrian energy giant OMV were shot by a security guard at the company’s office near Sana. Agence France-Presse cited Yemeni security officials as saying one French national was killed in the attack, but Dow Jones cited OMV as saying two people were injured and no one killed.

The accusations read like a spy novel. Following his arrest in early 2008, Moroccan authorities linked 52-year-old Abdelkader Belliraj, a Belgian citizen of Moroccan descent, with virtually every known terrorist on record.

Belliraj allegedly met with Al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri during the week preceding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; was granted a private audience with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; and was tied to six murders in Brussels, Belgium, during the 1980s -- four of them as a hit man for Abu Nidal, the Palestinian militant whose organization is credited by the U.S. State Department with terrorist attacks in 20 countries, killing or injuring almost 900 people.

Belliraj allegedly confessed to all these allegations under interrogation by Moroccan police but retracted everything at his trial, claiming he had been tortured. He was convicted and received a life sentence in July 2009, together with dozens of other defendants, who received sentences of two to 25 years in prison.

Last week, as his trial was set to start in a court in Sale, near the Moroccan city of Rabat, Belliraj gave interviews to two Belgian newspapers on a cellphone that had been smuggled into his cell.