The Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) kicked off last June to provide military expertise, equipment and

development aid to nine Saharan nations whose vast, ungoverned reaches are considered fertile ground for militant Islamist groups looking to establish Afghanistan-style terror training camps and to engage in smuggling and other illicit activities.

The TSCTI represents a massive upgrade from the Pan-Sahel Initiative, a $7 million forerunner that was initiated in 2002 in what Theresa Whelan, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, called "just a drop in the bucket" compared with the region's security needs.

In its campaign to justify the increase, the US military has likened the Sahara to the "Wild West", and the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat, or GSPC) is its most wanted enemy. On the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations and estimated to have a few hundred remaining members based in Algeria, the group was formed in the late 1990s to overthrow the government in Algiers and create a hardline Islamic state. Its founders broke ranks with the notorious Armed Islamic Group over its policy of killing civilians indiscriminately during Algeria's 1992-99 civil war that left more than 100,000 dead. The GSPC was accused of kidnapping European tourists in 2003 and claimed responsibility for a spate of strikes around the Sahara last year that reportedly killed a total of 40 soldiers from Algeria and Mauritania. But some observers say terrorism in the Sahara is little more than a mirage and that protracted, high-profile US involvement could destabilize the region.

"If anything, the [initiative] ... will generate terrorism, by which I mean resistance to the overall US presence and strategy," said Jeremy Keenan, a Sahara specialist at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

Aside from the 2003 kidnapping issue, US and Algerian authorities have failed to present "indisputable verification of a single act of alleged terrorism in the Sahara", Keenan insists. "Without the GSPC, the US has no legitimacy for its presence in the region," he said, noting that a growing US dependence on African oil, which the administration of President George W Bush has declared a "national strategic interest", has moved the United States to bolster its presence in the region.

A report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said that although the Sahara is "not a terrorist hotbed", repressive governments in the region are taking advantage of the Bush administration's "war on terror" to tap US largess and deny civil freedoms. The report noted that former Mauritanian president Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya - a US ally in West Africa who was deposed last August in a bloodless coup - used the threat of terrorism to justify human-rights abuses.

Taya jailed and harassed dozens of opposition politicians, charging that they were connected to the GSPC; this fed popular discontent, and it is said that the military junta that ousted Taya while he was abroad did so to appease a simmering public. Hundreds of Mauritanians took to the streets of the capital, Nouakchott, to denounce the United States at the start of the TSCTI.

The United States is already under fire for secretly supporting the anti-Islamist warlords who last week lost control of Mogadishu to jihadist militia after a 15-year stranglehold. A number of opponents of the Central Intelligence Agency-administered program claim that enterprising warlords have exploited US fears that the lawless East African country is becoming a terrorist haven. The warlords use this fear to gain funding and arms to reinforce existing criminal operations under the pretense of fighting radicals, they argue.

They also argue that the effect of this policy at the grassroots is a witches' brew of anti-American sentiment and Islamic radicalism among Somalis fed up with US involvement in their affairs, particularly when the Americans are backing forces that have torn the country apart.

Critics say the same scenario threatens to take hold in Saharan Africa, only there the warlords are dictators, and national borders substitute for city blocks.

They also contend that the limited threat the GSPC may have posed on the African continent in recent years has been all but snuffed out. Since the isolated attacks last summer, Algerian authorities have cracked down hard on the group: the latest fatal GSPC strike resulted in just one death and the unexpected surrender two days later of three ranking militants. This supports intelligence reports that the group's leadership is in tatters and on the run. Analysts say a recent threat by one ranking militant that US military installations may come under attack is little more than hot air.

GSPC founder Hassan Hattab, now in government custody, has called on all remaining militants to take advantage of a new government amnesty under which they can give up the gun in exchange for immunity from prosecution, saying those who continue to fight do not belong to his organization, since they harm Muslims. This week the Algerian army killed five GSPC gunmen and destroyed 30 hideouts in eastern Algeria; security sources confirmed that the operation was "based on accurate information given to the army by repenting gunmen". Algeria has freed some 2,200 jailed Islamist militants under the amnesty since February.

A limited number of holdouts still stir occasional trouble in the remote Algerian countryside, but the GSPC has shifted the focus of its operations to Europe, where an elusive network of sleeper cells has shown a willingness, and means, to target civilians. Dozens of operatives have been arrested and a number of major plots foiled over the past year, including a scheme to outdo the attacks of September 11, 2001. US and European intelligence officials also have evidence that Europe-based operatives continue to recruit, train and finance North African jihadists to fight US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. These factors make the GSPC-Europe "the largest, most cohesive and dangerous terrorist organization in the al-Qaeda orbit", according to a report by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think-tank.

In December, three Algerian members of a GSPC cell in southern Italy were arrested in a sweep and implicated in a plot to kill "at least 10,000 people" and blow up a vessel "as big as the Titanic". More than $22 million is said to have been found in the vehicle used by the three; attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums and railway stations in a deliberate attempt to exceed the September 11 carnage, according to Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu. The plan was foreshadowed in a communique issued by the GSPC four days after the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center came crashing down, pledging its support to al-Qaeda and threatening to harm "the interests of European countries and the US". It is still debated as to whether the GSPC has formally aligned itself with Osama bin Laden, but the group has repeatedly avowed a fierce allegiance.

Italy has "evolved from a logistics base" to a "de facto base of operations" for GSPC activities targeting Europe, says the Jamestown report. Algerian GSPC operatives based out of a Milan mosque were first arrested in 2002 for illegally acquiring explosives and weapons. In 2005, Italian police detained five of 11 Algerians suspected of belonging to the GSPC and investigated their involvement in a failed terrorist attack against the Spanish National Court in Madrid, among other incidents. "GSPC cells in Italy employ a dual-track approach to planning terrorist attacks and provide support infrastructure - safe houses, communications, weapons ... and [forged documents] to cells elsewhere in Europe," the report noted.

However, the terror group has singled out France as its primary foreign target. In January 2005, French authorities arrested 11 suspects with ties to the GSPC and charged them with recruiting suicide bombers to send to Iraq. In September, police seized three other Algerians affiliated with the GSPC purported to be preparing to bomb the Paris subway. "The only way to discipline France is jihad and Islamic martyrdom," group leaders said in a statement. "France is our Enemy No 1, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community."

Spain, too, has seen a spike in GSPC activity. Authorities there arrested 20 suspected terrorists on January 12 in Barcelona and Madrid. Among them were Moroccan-born Omar Nakhcha, the head of a GSPC cell said to recruit and give logistical support to Iraq-bound militants and suicide bombers. A spokesman for Spain's Interior Ministry said one of the group's recruits was responsible for a suicide attack in November 2003 in Nasiriyah, Iraq, that killed 19 Italians and nine Iraqis. Nakhcha, for his part, is thought to have led a cell of a shadowy GSPC affiliate, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, that helped the escape of three suspects in the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people and participated in the 2003 Casablanca attacks.

A prominent Spanish judge and the head of France's domestic security service are carrying out extensive inquiries into loose-knit terror networks in both countries. Those arrested have disclosed information on interconnected cells responsible for recruitment, falsifying documents and acquiring explosive materials. At least 50 French Arabs have journeyed to Iraq for suicide operations over the past two years, according to one Spanish research institute.

Western intelligence agencies estimate the GSPC has an exile network of 800-900 active operatives and supporters spread throughout Europe. So far arrests have been made in Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands, but authorities fear that the group may hold a growing appeal to the thousands of frustrated young Muslims who idle at the fringes of major European cities.

North America has not been bypassed by the GPSC either. A Toronto-based cell that had included an al-Qaeda-trained bomb-maker was broken up in November. Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian militant recruited by the GSPC, was arrested by US authorities in Seattle after crossing from Canada. Tried on charges he planned to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Hicks's legal team returned to the High Court yesterday in a bid to enforce the decision and register him as a British citizen immediately.

The legal team representing Hicks complained the process of registering him as a citizen had been delayed.

The court was told that the British Government had tried to gain access to Hicks to deliver the oath needed before he can register for citizenship.

The US has blocked those attempts because he is not a British citizen.

Britain has already won the freedom of all nine of its nationals held at the US detention camp.

The court was given an assurance from the British Government that the matter would be presented to Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett tomorrow and that she will consider "whether and, if so, what representations should be made to the US Government".

Lawyers told the court that the British Government accepts that it is dealing with the case of someone entitled to be registered as a British citizen.

Hicks, originally from Adelaide, has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002.

The 30-year-old convert to Islam was captured in Afghanistan where he allegedly fought alongside the ruling Taliban against US-led forces who invaded after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

He faces charges of conspiracy, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy.

"This ruling gives a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of non-citizens at the whim of the President. The decision is profoundly disturbing because it legitimizes the fact that the Bush Administration rounded up and imprisoned our clients because of their religion and race," said Rachel Meeropol, a CCR attorney in the case.

Yasser Ebrahim, a plaintiff in the case, described his reaction today: "I am very disappointed and shocked. I can't believe the court would allow this to happen. I am frightened for other Muslims in the United States, who could face the same discrimination and abuse that I suffered."

The ruling also states that there are effectively two tiers of rights for citizens and non-citizens. Prolonged detention and discrimination against non-citizens would be flatly illegal if applied to American citizens. In addition, the ruling states that non-citizens who are "out of status" can be imprisoned and criminally investigated without the Constitutional rights afforded to citizens accused of crimes.

"The complexity of U.S. immigration law leaves millions of immigrants vulnerable to this type of abuse, and the Bush Administration has exploited this situation to betray fundamental constitutional principles," said Bill Goodman, CCR Legal Director. "Congress may be debating immigration, but the Bush Administration has already deployed backdoor tactics to marginalize immigrants through detention policies and court filings," he added.

The ruling allowed CCR to proceed on the challenge to the excessively harsh conditions of confinement in which the men were held. The ruling rejected attempts by senior administration officials, including FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, to avoid answering these accusations. Ms. Meeropol added that the ruling regarding the administration officials was a victory in the case: "Top Bush Administration officials orchestrated religious discrimination and cruel conditions. They tried to run from these accusations, but the judge ruled they must answer our clients' claims."

CCR first filed Turkmen v. Ashcroft in April 2002 against Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, former INS Commissioner James W. Ziglar, and officials of the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, on behalf of a class of male Muslim non-citizens from Arab and South Asian countries who were swept up by the INS and FBI in the dragnet that followed September 11. Shortly after September 11, hundreds of Muslim men of Arab and South Asian descent were arrested pursuant to an explicit policy, formulated by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, to use the federal immigration law to detain non-citizens suspected of having possible ties to terrorism. Although the men were arrested and detained on minor immigration violations, because their arrest was made in connection to the terrorism investigation, they were subjected to a blanket "hold until cleared" policy pursuant to which the INS denied them bond without regard to evidence of dangerousness or flight risk, and detained them until the FBI cleared them of terrorist ties. While detained, they were held in incredibly restrictive conditions of confinement and abused by correctional officers.

The two whistleblowers eventually lost their jobs, received death threats and were blackballed in the disaster relief industry. But they remained convinced their sacrifice was worth seeing justice done.

They were wrong.

As a result, most Americans were kept in the dark about a major fraud involving their donated goods even as new requests for charity emerged with disasters like Hurricane Katrina. And Christopherson and L'Allier were left disillusioned.

"I wouldn't open my mouth again for all the tea in China," L'Allier said. Added Christopherson, a 34-year-old father of two: "I paid a big price."

As firefighters searched for survivors after the Sept. 11 attacks, heat from the World Trade Center's smoldering ruins burned the soles off their boots. They needed new ones every few hours, and Christopherson made sure they got them. The moment that crushed Christopherson's faith was when his employer dispatched the trucks to the warehouse for those supplies, donated by Americans.

The government ultimately gave the whistleblowers $30,000 each after expenses, their share in a civil settlement against KEI. They say the sum was hardly worth their trouble.

Federal prosecutors eventually charged KEI and some executives with fraud, including overbilling the government in several disasters, but excluded the Sept. 11 thefts. Officially, the government can't fully explain why.

KEI had worked for years for the government, providing disaster relief services during tornadoes, floods and other catastrophes. It was picked to manage the New York warehouse for the government's main Sept. 11 relief contractor.

Thomas Heffelfinger, the former U.S. attorney in Minnesota who prosecuted KEI, said he never intended to charge the company for the ground zero theft, and instead referred that part of the case to prosecutors in New York.

"At the heart of the KEI case was financial fraud," Heffelfinger said. "It was so bad we didn't need the theft."

Heather Tasker, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in New York, declined to discuss the KEI case. The whistleblowers, however, said they've never been contacted by New York prosecutors.

FBI documents indicate the government, in fact, was preparing to charge KEI with Sept. 11 thefts.

A March 2002 entry in the FBI's "prosecutive status" report states the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota intended "to prosecute individuals who were alleged to be involved in the transportation of stolen goods from New York City after the terrorist attack." A followup entry from Sept. 6, 2002 lists the specific evidence supporting such a charge.

The lead investigators for the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Agency told AP that the plan to prosecute KEI for those thefts stopped as soon as it became clear in late summer 2002 that an FBI agent in Minnesota had stolen a crystal globe from ground zero.

That prompted a broader review that ultimately found 16 government employees, including a top FBI executive and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, had such artifacts from New York or the Pentagon.

"How could you secure an indictment?" FEMA investigator Kirk Beauchamp asked. "It would be a conflict."

While the globe's discovery had been widely reported, its impact on the Sept. 11 thefts had remained mostly unknown.

Prosecutors "and the FBI were very conscious of the fact that if they proceeded in one direction, they would have to proceed in the other, which meant prosecuting FBI agents," said Jane Turner, the lead FBI agent. She too became a whistleblower alleging the bureau tried to fire her for bringing the stolen artifacts to light. Turner retired in 2003.

The FBI declined to discuss Turner's allegation, saying it involved a personnel matter.

"It's illogical" not to prosecute KEI because of the agents' stolen artifacts, said E. Lawrence Barcella, former chief of major crimes in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington. "The fact that FBI agents stole trinkets is an order of magnitude different than a company selling things they steal."

Nick Gess, another former federal prosecutor, said the agents' actions shouldn't have precluded prosecuting the company.

"DEA agents have been found to smoke pot occasionally," Gess said. "That doesn't mean they (the Drug Enforcement Administration) can't still work on drug cases."

The government also didn't prosecute any of its employees for taking souvenirs, claiming it lacked a policy prohibiting such thefts.

Ultimately, the FBI donated the stolen goods found at KEI's warehouse to the Salvation Army.

Joe Friedberg, a lawyer who represented a KEI executive, dismissed the Sept. 11 thefts as "much ado about nothing." Friedberg said KEI took a few pallets of water and T-shirts because they had authorization from a FEMA official to take surplus items.

But that FEMA official, Kathy McCoy, said she never gave Kieger such permission.

Those who work near ground zero today are shocked to learn such thefts went unpunished.

"To take advantage of people at a time of despair, it's probably one of the worst things human beings can do to another person," said Gregory Broms, Sr., a firefighter with Engine Company 10 at the foot of the former World Trade Center site. "It was morally wrong."

Christopherson recalled receiving boxes of white T-shirts stolen from the Long Island warehouse sent back to him after KEI had embossed a Sept. 11 logo on the front. He was instructed by his boss to sell them to firefighters, police and volunteers for $12 a piece. Disgusted, he threw them in the corner and never sold them.

Christopherson and L'Allier went to the FBI in fall 2001. On April 16, 2002, agents raided KEI, recovering at least 15,000 T-shirts and 18,000 bottles of bottled water. Because months had passed, the seized items were a fraction of the total the company had taken, the whistleblowers said.

Both men were threatened and harassed, reporting it to the FBI's Turner. "We all experienced the death threats," L'Allier said. "We all experienced the phone ringing at three in the morning and no one being there. I'd come home and the house would be wide open."

A few months after the raid, prosecutors drafted charges accusing the company of stealing the ground zero relief supplies, seeking an indictment on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Turner said.

But Turner discovered in late August 2002 a cracked Tiffany & Co. globe - lifted from the World Trade Center ruins - on the desk of a colleague. The theft case against KEI sputtered.

Eventually, KEI executives Edward Kieger Jr., Patrick Iwan and Joseph Dreshar were indicted in 2004 by a federal grand jury on charges of scheming to defraud the government. The former executives pleaded guilty, and Kieger and Iwan are serving prison terms. KEI has gone out of business.

Christopherson and L'Allier were stunned when the indictment excluded the ground zero thefts. They spent two years unsuccessfully trying to find new work in disaster relief. Christopherson now runs a landscaping business; L'Allier works as a paramedic.

For years, the two couldn't speak publicly because their whistleblower case remained under seal. They worried similar fraud might have occurred during Katrina.

"If you donated, at your local supermarket, water or canned goods or cleaning supplies and a truck goes down there (to New Orleans), who knows where it is ending up," L'Allier.

Today, the whistleblowers worry their fate might chill others from exposing wrongdoing.

"They felt they had to come forward about the theft because it was so wrong," Turner said. "I've lost my career. They've lost their jobs. The price is so high for telling the truth."

"We can take very good high-quality pictures and (get) information from ranges and distances where they don't know they're being observed," said Jim Courtright, of Lockheed Martin. "We can also do electronic signature comparison. If there are radiating radars, we can tell who they are and where they are."

Drones equipped with the new technology are being called Predator B's. The drones launched Wednesday were controlled from the SPAWAR complex on Pacific Highway.

Lockheed Martin says the technology has applications from everything to homeland security to search and rescue.

Pardon, Mr President?

* At a presidential gala in 2002, President Bush spotted the singer Stevie Wonder sitting nearby and tried to attract the blind singer's attention by waving. Unsurprisingly, Wonder did not respond.

* White House aides were forced quickly to correct a Bush remark during Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the US in April after he referred to China as the Republic of China - the official name for Taiwan. China itself is the People's Republic of China.

* During a press conference in Beijing last year, the President's attempt to make a quick but dignified getaway from reporters was thwarted when he tried to exit the room through a locked door. An aide had to show him the way out.

"We don't want to put up something that will just be a symbol," said Al Garza, the group's executive director. "We want to make sure it's permanent, properly structured and done right."

As few as four people were observed working on the fence recently, said Cecile Lumer of the humanitarian aid group Citizens for Border Solutions.

"From the beginning, the numbers they have projected have always fallen very short of the reality," Lumer said.

One of the ranch owners, Jack Ladd, said he hoped the fence would keep Mexican livestock off his property, but he doubted it would keep people out.

"We want to make it clear that while we oppose illegal immigration, we weren't necessarily trying to keep Mexicans off the land," he said.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate, dubbed "the world's most exclusive club," is also one of the most elderly, with more than a third of its 100 members at or well past 65 with no plans to leave anytime soon.

While most elderly Americans are retiring, senior senators still wield considerable power, tackling tough issues from war to taxes, some more effectively than others.

"Some of these old people are probably wonderfully wise and some of them, maybe, should have retired a long time ago," said Stephen Hess, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution.

A recent survey of experts declared six of the oldest senators as among the chamber's 10 "best," while three of the oldest were among the five "worst."

Senior senators walk -- some shuffle -- the marble halls of power, packing political muscle and legislative know-how as well as a few joint replacements and hearing aids.

The Senate historian says the average age for a senator is 60.3 years, the oldest ever and up six years from 1985. Thirty-seven are at least 65, 19 of whom are in their 70s. Five are in their 80.

The word Senate derives from the Latin senex, meaning old man. The Senate, or council of elders, was a powerful body in ancient Rome.

At 88, Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia is the oldest U.S. senator. He walks with two canes yet remains one of the most respected voices in Congress.

"If I could live another 100 years, I'd like to continue in the Senate," said Byrd, running for an unprecedented ninth six-year term.

First elected in 1958, Byrd became the longest-serving senator this month, passing South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, who retired in 2003 at 100, which made him the oldest senator in the 217-year history of the clubby chamber.

Thurmond, while a powerhouse much of his career, seldom joined Senate debates in his final years and used a wheelchair and relied heavily on aides. He died soon after retiring.

'SOME STAYED TOO LONG'

"History documents that some stayed too long," said Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, still vigorous at 79. "I don't want to be remembered that way."

"I wake up every morning delighted to be on this side of the grass," Warner added.

Dr. Jan Busby-Whitehead, chief of geriatric medicine at the University of North Carolina and a member of the American Geriatrics Society, noted Americans overall were living and working longer.

Those who stay on the job can provide experience and maturity but are also more prone to memory loss and other illnesses.

"The criteria for employment shouldn't be age, but ability. Not everyone ages the same way," Busby-Whitehead said.

In the Senate, old age cuts across party lines and perceived effectiveness.

Time magazine had experts rate senators in its April 24 edition and included six senior citizens among its "10 best senators": Democrats Edward Kennedy, 74, of Massachusetts and Carl Levin, 71, of Michigan, along with Republicans Arlen Specter, 76, of Pennsylvania, Richard Lugar, 74, of Indiana, John McCain, 69, of Arizona, and Thad Cochran, 68, of Mississippi.

Among Time's "five worst" were two older Republicans, Conrad Burns, 71, of Montana and Jim Bunning, 74, of Kentucky, and Democrat Daniel Akaka, 81, of Hawaii.

Why do so many stay in the Senate so late in life?

James Thurber of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington said reasons varied with each senator.

"In most cases, it's because they have a safe seat and public service ethic," Thurber said. "A cynical view would be they can't do anything else or find it uncomfortable to leave the stage."

In the past decade, nearly 90 percent of senators who ran for re-election won. They are paid $165,200 a year and enjoy generous health and retirement benefits.

Last year, Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, now 73, said he was stepping down. "It was not my ambition to stay there until they carried me out."

But 10 of the 29 senators running for re-election this year are at least 70. Life expectancy for someone that age is about 14 years.