Ayman al-Zawahiri appointed as al-Qaeda leader

The long-serving second-in-command of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been appointed its head following the death of Osama Bin Laden, the militant organisation said in a statement.

Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan in early May.

Al-Qaeda warned it would continue to fight a holy war against the US and Israel under Zawahiri's direction.

Analysts say Egyptian-born Zawahiri, 59, is intelligent but lacks the charisma of his predecessor.

He is claimed by some experts to have been the "operational brains" behind the 9/11 attacks on the US.

For years Bin Laden's deputy, with a $25m (£15m) bounty on his head, he had been widely anticipated to replace Bin Laden at the helm.

The statement announcing his appointment was posted on a militant website and attributed to al-Qaeda's General Command.

"Sheikh Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God guide him, assumed responsibility as the group's amir [leader]", it said.

It vowed that under Zawahiri, it would pursue jihad or holy war against the US and Israel "until all invading armies leave the land of Islam".

'Jihadist renaissance'

Zawahiri, whose 60th birthday is believed to be this Sunday, warned just over a week ago that Bin Laden would continue to "terrify" the US from beyond the grave.

In a video message posted on the internet on 8 June, Zawahiri said al-Qaeda would continue to fight.

"The sheikh has departed, may God have mercy on him, to his God as a martyr and we must continue on his path of jihad to expel the invaders from the land of Muslims and to purify it from injustice," Zawahiri said.

"Today, and thanks be to God, America is not facing an individual or a group, but a rebelling nation, which has awoken from its sleep in a jihadist renaissance."

The BBC's Middle East correspondent, Jon Leyne, says priorities for al-Qaeda's new leader may include attempting to to mount a big attack to show the organisation is still in business.

In addition, he says, Zawahiri will want to turn the wave of unrest in the Middle East to al-Qaeda's advantage - perhaps building more of a power base in Yemen and working to intensify the instability there.

Divisions?

In his message last week, Zawahiri applauded the Arab uprisings against "corrupt and tyrant leaders" and urged those involved to continue their "struggle until the fall of all corrupt regimes that the West has forced onto our countries".

But our correspondent adds that the delay in announcing Zawahiri as al-Qaeda chief - coming as it does more than six weeks after Bin Laden's death, despite his being the obvious choice - may point to divisions within the leadership.

Zawahiri has for years had a bounty on his head and security analysts have suggested he is most likely to be hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border region.

However, Bin Laden and other key militant leaders who were also believed to be concealed there have instead been discovered in Pakistani towns and cities.

Bin Laden's killing by US special forces in a covert operation in the garrison town of Abbottabad on 2 May strained Washington's relations with Islamabad.

US President Barack Obama said "someone" was protecting Bin Laden, but Pakistan has denied any knowledge of Bin Laden's whereabouts and has arrested alleged CIA informants.

US aware 'Nigerian' prepared for terror attack

The US was aware that "a Nigerian" in Yemen was being prepared for a terrorist attack - weeks before an attempted bombing on a US plane.

ABC News and the New York Times say there was intelligence to this effect, but its source is unclear.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab flew from Lagos to Amsterdam before changing planes for a flight to Detroit on which he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb.

The Netherlands is to introduce body scanners on US flights within weeks.

Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst said Mr Abdulmutallab did not raise any concerns as he passed through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to board the flight.

She said the airport would be able to use body scanners on all flights to the US from the airport in three weeks. Nigerian authorities also said they would start using the machines next year.

Obama denounces lapses

Ms Ter Horst said that though the US had previously not wanted the scanners to be used because of privacy concerns, Washington had now agreed that "all possible measures will be used on flights to the US".

"It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster," she said.

US President Barack Obama has acknowledged unacceptable security failures.

He said a systemic failure allowed Mr Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, to fly to the US on 25 December despite family members warning officials in November that he had extremist views.

The source of the intelligence about "a Nigerian" in Yemen was reported as coming from the Yemeni government or from US intercept intelligence, which can refer to intercepted e-mail and phone calls.

Mr Obama said he wanted to know why a warning weeks ago from Mr Abdulmutallab's father did not lead to the accused being placed on a no-fly list.

"We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix flaws in the system," Mr Obama said.

Some passengers and crew tackled Mr Abdulmutallab in his seat about 20 minutes before landing in Detroit as he allegedly tried to detonate explosives in his underwear.

Initial investigations found he had used the explosive PETN and a syringe filled with liquid.

The Dutch interior minister described the bomb as professionally made but executed in an "amateurish" way.

She said Mr Abdulmutallab had passed through standard security checks, including a metal detector and a hand baggage scan, without raising suspicions.

Nigerian airports 'safe'

Mr Abdulmutallab has reportedly told investigators that he trained in Yemen with al-Qaeda.

He was living in Yemen from August to early December, the foreign ministry said, according to an earlier report from the official Saba news agency.

He had a visa to study Arabic at an institute in the capital, Sanaa.

Lithuania hosted secret CIA prisons

The CIA used at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found.

The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania.

It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board.

Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA "black sites", media reports say.

In Lithuania, at least eight terror suspects were held at one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, the investigation found.

It was formerly a riding school and the suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005.

In August this year, US media reports claimed that Lithuania, Poland and Romania all hosted secret CIA interrogation centres.

But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania's political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow.

It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing.

Secret flights

The practice of "extraordinary rendition" and the long-suspected network of secret US detention facilities became among the most controversial aspects of the Bush administration's response to the 11 September attacks.

"Extraordinary rendition" is the tactic of capturing militant suspects in one country and transporting them to another without judicial oversight.

The BBC's defence and security correspondent Nick Childs says critics of the Bush administration saw it as a way of avoiding legal constraints and, in some cases, as they put it, "contracting out" torture - although American officials repeatedly denied the allegations.

The issue caused considerable strains between Washington and some of its key allies during President Bush's administration.

Many governments - not least the British - have been under pressure to disclose what they knew, Nick Childs says, and the tactics the Americans did or did not use, and how extensively, remain murky.

US officials have hinted at perhaps dozens of prisoners having been held in secret detention centres. A controversial European Parliament report, however, spoke of hundreds of so-called "rendition" flights.

So far, only one case has actually gone to trial. Recently an Italian court convicted more than 20 American agents in their absence of being involved in the abduction of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.

US President Barack Obama announced early on that he was closing the foreign detention centre network.