Dina Temple-Raston

Investigators Trace Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Activities Abroad

Dina Temple-Raston — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:18:00 +0000

The investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing continues. Investigators have spoken with the parents of the suspects in Russia. Audie Cornish talks to Dina Temple-Raston about the latest developments.

Investigators Name Two Suspects In Boston Bombing

Dina Temple-Raston — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:11:00 +0000

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

We begin this hour with a major break in the investigation into Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon.

RICHARD DESLAURIERS: Today, we are enlisting the public's help to identify the two suspects. After a very detailed analysis of photo, video and other evidence, we are releasing photos of these two suspects. They are identified as Suspect 1 and Suspect 2. They appeared to be associated.

Osama Bin Laden's Son-In-Law Set To Appear In N.Y. Court

Dina Temple-Raston — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:24:00 +0000

Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and former al-Qaida spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith is expected to appear in a New York courtroom Monday afternoon.

Abu Ghaith was captured by U.S. officials in February, and his arrest is considered important not just because he was so close to bin Laden, but also because the Obama administration has decided to try him in a federal court instead of using a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On the surface, Abu Ghaith, 47, would appear to be a perfect candidate for a trial at Guantanamo. He is affiliated with al-Qaida, and he is a foreigner.

Pakistan's Ambitious Program To Re-Educate Militants

Dina Temple-Raston — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 07:15:00 +0000

A Pakistani army officer named Col. Zeshan is giving a tour of a jihadi rehabilitation center secreted in the hills of northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley.

"This place was also captured by the Taliban," he says, walking me around the heavily guarded complex. "The army took over this place from them ... when the war was going on."

The war against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat began in 2009. It was a military offensive that took a year to drive most of the Pakistani Taliban out of the valley.

Bin Laden's Son-In-Law Arrested, Brought To U.S.

Dina Temple-Raston — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:51:00 +0000

Update at 4:30 p.m. EST. Details Of Capture

Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and a former al-Qaida spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, is in U.S. custody and is being held in a Manhattan jail. He could appear in a federal court as soon as Friday, U.S. officials familiar with the case say.

His capture is considered important not just because he was so close to bin Laden but also because U.S. officials have decided to try him in a federal court, not Guantanamo Bay.

Abu Ghaith, 48, may be best known for his multiple appearances in al-Qaida propaganda videos.

Sept. 11 Trial Judge Gives Defense Attorneys Access To 'Camp 7'

Dina Temple-Raston — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:29:00 +0000

Defense attorneys in the trial of the five men accused of orchestrating the terror attacks on September 11th will get to see for the first time where their clients are incarcerated.

The army judge presiding over the trial at Guantanamo Bay said today he will allow the lawyers to visit a secret section of the prison.

It's known as Camp 7 and it's nestled in the crevice of a hill at Guantanamo Bay.

Hints Of Progress After Investigation at Guantanamo Court

Dina Temple-Raston — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:41:00 +0000

The most dramatic moment of the week's hearing at Guantanamo Bay's military commissions was when a one-legged man stood up and began to berate the judge.

The one-legged man, Walid bin Attash, is one of the defendants in the high-profile Sept. 11 case, and his complaint was a throwback to a time when the tribunal first opened.

Alleged Sept. 11 Plotters Appear In Court, But Focus Is On Lawyers

Dina Temple-Raston — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:47:00 +0000

Pretrial hearings in the death penalty trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of planning the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks lasted a little more than an hour Monday before the judge recessed the session until Tuesday.

The men, who all came into the courtroom in camouflage vests and traditional garments known as shalwar kameez, have been in jail — awaiting this trial — for more than a decade.

They were arraigned back in May, didn't enter pleas, and their trial has been moving at a plodding pace ever since.

Procedure Questions Expected To Bog Down Hearings For Alleged Sept. 11 Planners

Dina Temple-Raston — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 08:31:00 +0000

Pretrial hearings resume Monday in the death penalty trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The men have been in jail, awaiting trial, for more than a decade. The hearings in their case started back in May, and they have hardly moved forward since then.

Eventually, the case will be one of dueling narratives. The prosecution will focus on the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the defense will talk about the treatment of its clients after their capture.

After Fighting To Go To School, A Pakistani Woman Builds Her Own

Dina Temple-Raston — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 11:15:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hs2hxrY_HI

Pakistani Cafe Is Oasis In Desert Of Civil Discourse

Dina Temple-Raston — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 11:56:00 +0000

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

In Pakistan, there's a cafe called the Second Floor. It's listed in a local Karachi social blog as one of the coolest cafes in town. Since it opened its doors five years ago, it's become a haven in a city more known for its violence than its civil discourse. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston paid a visit.

DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: The artwork on the front stoop of the Second Floor Cafe in Karachi says it all.

SABEEN MAHMUD: I wanted something right at the entrance...

TEMPLE-RASTON: That's Shameen Mahmud.

Pakistani Military Hopes Rehab Will Lead Men To Paralympics

Dina Temple-Raston — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 00:02:00 +0000

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel. Over the past decade, more than 3,000 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in the war against Islamist militants along the border with Afghanistan. We're about to hear a story now about some of the nearly 10,000 who have come home but wounded. Many end up in the Armed Forces Institute for Rehabilitative Medicine in Rawalpindi. It's the top veterans hospital in Pakistan.

The Tony Soprano of Karachi: Gangster Or Politician?

Dina Temple-Raston — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:01:00 +0000

Gangsters have been part of life in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, for decades. And nowhere is their rule more notorious than in the slums of Lyari, a dusty warren of low-slung tenement houses in the south central part of Karachi.

And in Pakistan, they are a little different from the American variety. They are part Tony Soprano — with the attendant extortion schemes and kickbacks and armed enforcers — but they are also, in a sense, politicians closely aligned to the various political parties.

Pakistan's 'Patriot Act' Could Target Politicians

Dina Temple-Raston — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 08:49:00 +0000

Earlier this month, Pakistan's powerful Lower House of Parliament passed what analysts have dubbed Pakistan's Patriot Act. Its name here is "Investigation for Fair Trial Bill."

It has been presented to the Pakistani people as a way to update existing law and usher the rules for investigation in Pakistan into the 21st century. Among other things, it makes electronic eavesdropping admissible as evidence in court.

To American ears, the argument for the new law should sound vaguely familiar.

Pakistan Embraces Man Behind 'One Pound Fish' Viral Video

Dina Temple-Raston — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 21:16:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_miGclPFGs

Multiple Feuds Bring A Record Year Of Violence To Karachi

Dina Temple-Raston — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 07:59:00 +0000

The sad truth about Karachi in 2012 was that whatever your religion, business affiliation, or political party, someone was willing to kill you for it.

The murder rate in Pakistan's largest city and commercial hub hit an all time high last year. Over 2,500 people died in violent crimes in Karachi in 2012, a 50 percent increase over the year before.

Most of the deaths were attributable to sectarian killings and score settling. Shia Muslims took on the brunt of the violence.

Street Signs Intended To Give Pakistani City New Direction

Dina Temple-Raston — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 10:10:00 +0000

Landlords built Lahore in a haphazard way over centuries. They didn't concern themselves with city grids or sensible mapping. As a result, Lahore is renowned in Pakistan for being almost impossible to navigate.

And that's where Asim Fayaz and Khurram Siddiqi come in.

Fayaz and Siddiqi won a $10,000 grant from TED, the U.S.-based foundation that promotes ideas in a variety of fields and often helps fund them.

In Pakistan, Tax Evaders Are Everywhere — Government Included

Dina Temple-Raston — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:29:00 +0000

Tax evasion is a chronic problem in Pakistan — only about 2 percent of the population is registered in the tax system, and the government collects just 9 percent of the country's wealth in taxes, one of the lowest rates in the world.

But now a new investigative report is making headlines.

Recovery To Take 'Quite A Long Time' In Storm-Ravaged Breezy Point

Dina Temple-Raston — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:31:00 +0000

Anyone who traveled to Breezy Point, Queens, in New York City in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, even as recently as a few of days ago, would have needed an SUV — its main thoroughfare was under 3 feet of water. Today, you can see pavement.

What Went Wrong? N.Y. Hospitals Swiped By Sandy

Dina Temple-Raston — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 14:48:00 +0000

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The power outages and flooded also critically affected New York's hospitals. Several had to evacuate patients during the storm. New York University's Langone Medical Center was one of them. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has the story.

DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: The trouble at NYU Langone Hospital began on Monday evening. The lights went out in the emergency room. Power was down in the transplant unit. And even today as I stand in front of one of the most modern advanced hospitals in the United States, this place is wall-to-wall maintenance trucks.

As Jihadists Spread, Connecting The Dots Proves Hard

Dina Temple-Raston — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:43:00 +0000

More than a year after popular protests rocked the Arab world, U.S. intelligence officials are struggling to understand the myriad of Islamist groups that have filled the vacuum.

Those groups run the gamut from moderate believers who are willing to give the political process a try to violent extremists. The difficulty is figuring out which is which.

The day after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Rep.

Minnesota Case Re-Opens Wounds Among Somalis

Dina Temple-Raston — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:58:00 +0000

For nearly three weeks, the benches at the back of a federal courtroom in Minneapolis were filled with local Somalis.

Man Arrested In Plot To Blow Up NY Federal Reserve

Dina Temple-Raston — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:31:00 +0000

A man has been arrested in an alleged terror plot to blow up the Federal Reserve building in New York City. Federal authorities and the New York Police Department collaborated to foil the plot apparently conceived by a Bangladeshi man, Quazi Mohammd Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis. Nafis is said to have conceived the plot. However, authorities learned of the plot and actually provided what appeared to be the bomb. It was inert and there was no threat to the public.

Court Overturns Conviction Of Bin Laden Driver

Dina Temple-Raston — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 23:26:00 +0000

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of Osama bin Laden's former driver and bodyguard, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. If the name sounds familiar, it should.

Predicting The Future: Fantasy Or A Good Algorithm?

Dina Temple-Raston — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 07:07:00 +0000

After failing to predict the Arab Spring, intelligence officials are now exploring whether Big Data, the combing of billions of pieces of disparate electronic information, can help them identify hot spots before they explode. The intelligence community has always been in the business of forecasting the future. The question is whether tapping into publicly available data — Twitter and news feeds and blogs among other things — can help them do that faster and more precisely.

Enter a Swedish-American start-up company called Recorded Future.

U.S. Drones Navigate Murky Legal Path In Pakistan

Dina Temple-Raston — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 09:58:00 +0000

The U.S. has been carrying out drone strikes in Pakistan for some eight years, but it's done so under a policy that has emerged piecemeal over that time.

"It started in 2004, when drones were really an oddity," says Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was on the State Department's policy planning staff when it all started during the Bush administration.

"The first drone attack by the United States was not admitted to by the U.S. government," Markey says, "and the Pakistani government at the time, run by Gen.

Benghazi Attack Raises New Questions About Al-Qaida

Dina Temple-Raston — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:37:00 +0000

For the past decade, al-Qaida has been a top-down organization.

Letters seized at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan showed that he was a hands-on manager, approving everything from operations to leadership changes in affiliate groups.

But there's early intelligence that al-Qaida may have had a small role in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on Sept. 11.

If al-Qaida involvement is confirmed, it may signal that al-Qaida has changed.

The broader investigation is still playing out.

Official Versions Diverge Over U.S. Consulate Attack

Dina Temple-Raston — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:35:00 +0000

The attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last week has led to dueling versions of what unfolded that night in Benghazi.

To hear the Obama administration tell it, the attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was spontaneous — and staged by local extremists who saw an opportunity to hijack peaceful demonstrations against an offensive film.

The Libyans have a different view. They say it was a premeditated strike, launched by foreign fighters with ties to al-Qaida.

The divergence in accounts was at the center of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Percent Of Detainees Who Return To Terrorism After Release Edges Up

Dina Temple-Raston — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:45:00 +0000

Almost 28 percent of the detainees transferred out of the U.S.-run detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have either returned to terrorism or are suspected of having done so, the Director of National Intelligence says in a new report.

That's almost a full percentage point higher than last year's figure and is in line with evidence that indicates the number of detainees suspected or