JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia's anti-terror squad arrested 11 people suspected of planning a range of attacks on domestic and foreign targets including the U.S. Embassy and a site near the Australian Embassy, police said Saturday. 

The suspects were arrested in raids Friday and Saturday in four provinces, national police spokesman Maj. Gen. Suhardi Alius said.

He said the suspects belonged to a new group called the Harakah Sunni for Indonesian Society, or HASMI.

"From evidence found at the scene, we believe that this group was well prepared for serious terror attacks," Alius said.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told NBC News, "We have seen the reports, but cannot comment as this is an ongoing Indonesian security investigation."

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Police seized a number of bombs, explosive materials, a bomb-making manual and ammunition, Alius said. They also found a 3-kilogram (6.6-pound) gas cylinder filled with highly explosive material, which had been assembled at a house in the East Java town of Madiun. Videos and images of attacks on Muslims in various parts of the world were also recovered, he said. 

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Alius said the group planned to target the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and a plaza near the Australian Embassy and the local office of U.S. mining giant Freeport-McMoRan. It also planned to attack the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya and the headquarters of a special police force in Central Java, he said.

It was unclear how far the plans had advanced.

Alius said police are still investigating whether the group has ties with established terrorist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiyah. An investigator who spoke in condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide information to the media said HASMI's apparent leader, Abu Hanifah, was a Jemaah Islamiyah sympathizer.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, has been battling terrorists since the 2002 bombings in Bali by militants linked to Jemaah Islamiyah which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Subsequent attacks have claimed more than 50 people, mostly Indonesians. The government has arrested more than 700 suspected terrorists and killed dozens more in an attempt to root out militants.

Earlier this month, police warned of a terrorist threat in Bali targeting a ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the bombings. The country's security alert was raised to its highest level.

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Last month, police arrested 10 Islamist militants and seized a dozen homemade bombs from a group suspected of planning suicide attacks against security forces and plotting to blow up the Parliament building. The alleged bomb maker turned himself in to police while wearing an empty suicide vest.

Recent terror attacks in the country have been carried out by individuals or small groups and have targeted security forces and local "infidels" instead of Westerners, with less deadly results. The arrests announced Saturday appear to be the first in recent years to involve a group that allegedly planned to target foreign facilities. 

NBC's Catherine Chomiak contributed to this report. 

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MEXICO CITY - Jesus Alfredo Guzman, to be the son of Mexico’s most wanted drug gang boss “El Chapo,” it believed to have been captured, officials in the country said Thursday.

A man suspected to be Jesus Alfredo was held in the western state of Jalisco on Thursday morning, the Navy said in a statement.

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His father Joaquin Guzman - nicknamed “Shorty,” or "El Chapo" in Spanish - escaped a Mexican jail in a laundry cart in 2001 and runs the Sinaloa cartel, arguably the country's most powerful gang. 

Drug violence in Mexico has exploded over the last decade, and there have been more than 55,000 drug-related killings since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. 

One killed every half hour in Mexico drug-related violence

Thursday's arrest comes just over week before Mexico votes for a new president. The ruling National Action Party has lost support due to the drug violence ravaging the country. The constitution bars Calderon from running for re-election. 

The U.S. Treasury said last month Americans were banned from doing any business with two of Guzman's sons, who were identified as Ivan Guzman and Ovidio Guzman, under the terms of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. 

Cross-border methamphetamine trade booms amid Mexico's 'war on drugs'

Reuters contributed to this report

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ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan arrested an "important" French al-Qaida leader on the Pakistan-Iran border, a Pakistani intelligence official told NBC News on Wednesday, amid criticism from the United States that the country is not doing enough to fight militancy.

The official told NBC that Naamen Meziche, a French national of Algerian origin, was a "most-wanted" figure in the terrorist network. 

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Meziche is believed to have links with militant groups in Europe and Reuters cited media reports as saying he may have played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"At this moment, he is in custody of ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence agency) and is being interrogated," the Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told NBC.

There was no immediate confirmation from French authorities.

Meziche reportedly worked closely with another al-Qaida leader, Younis al-Mauritani, who was responsible for international operations.

Mauritani was captured by Pakistani authorities in September last year.

Pakistan arrests 3 in 'another fatal blow' to al-Qaida

Pakistan officials told Reuters that Meziche was the ringleader of a group of 11 people who left Germany in 2009 to fight U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, according to Reuters. They did not specify the time or location of his capture.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said during a trip to Kabul that stabilization efforts in Afghanistan would remain difficult as long as militants had safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, and that Washington was "reaching the limits" of its patience with Islamabad.

Panetta: US patience with Pakistan 'reaching the limits'

U.S. officials often describe Pakistan as an unreliable partner in the war on militancy and demand tougher action against militant groups, especially those based in Pakistan's volatile tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan says it will not allow any militant safe havens inside its territory, and that it will pursue its own strategy against militant groups.

NBC News' Fakhar ur Rehman in Islamabad and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Criminal charges against journalists and a police officer are being considered by British prosecutors after an investigation into alleged phone hacking by reporters at tabloid newspapers, it was reported Wednesday.

The Crown Prosecution Service said police had handed it files on four cases, which include allegations that a reporter paid a police officer for information and that another attempted to pervert the course of justice, BBC News reported.

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The cases also include allegations of misconduct in a public office, witness intimidation and harassment. 

Four journalists, one police officer and six others are reportedly involved. They have not been named and it is not clear if any are employees of the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

The BBC said prosecutors had made a statement saying they would not disclose the identities of those involved, or give any estimate on when they might reach decisions in the cases.

Phone hacking lawsuits to be filed in US courts

On Friday it emerged that lawsuits over alleged phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation are to be filed in U.S. courts for the first time.

Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has been at the forefront of efforts to expose phone hacking at newspapers, expects to file civil lawsuits on behalf of three alleged victims.

Timeline: Key developments in phone hacking scandal

Earlier this year, former News Corp chief executive and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie Brooks, a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, were arrested as part of the hacking investigation. They were later released.

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LONDON -- Former News Corp chief executive and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie Brooks, a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, were arrested Tuesday in a wide-ranging investigation into phone hacking in the British media, NBC News reported.

A total of six people were arrested in the early morning on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, British police said in a statement. The charge is an indication that investigators may be focusing on a possible attempted coverup of the scope of phone hacking.

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The Metropolitan Police said five men and a woman were arrested in various locations in London and surrounding countryside in a series of raids conducted between 5 a.m. (1 a.m. ET) and 7 a.m. (3 a.m. ET) Tuesday. Police said searches of the premises are ongoing.

 

The investigation stems from widespread wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch's now-closed News of the World tabloid. The victims have ranged from celebrities and major politicians to the families of crime victims.

Tabloid editor got free horse from UK police

Police, who did not release any names, said a 43-year-old woman was arrested at her home in Oxfordshire and she was being questioned by police there. Also arrested were a 49-year-old man in Oxfordshire, a 39-year-old man in Hampshire, a 46-year-old man in West London, a 38-year-old man in Hertforshire and a 48-year-old man in East London.

It emerged recently that Rebekah Brooks got a free horse from the U.K. police, and that this horse was subsequently ridden by Cameron. Police are also investigating allegations of illegal payments made by some British newspapers to police officers.

Rebekah Brooks was previously arrested in July 2011 at her apartment block in an exclusive area of Chelsea, West London, on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption.

Her husband Charlie, a former race horse trainer, reportedly tried to reclaim a computer, paperwork and a phone from a trash can outside the apartment block, saying they were his. But detectives removed the items for investigation, NBC reported.

According to a count by the BBC, the total number of arrests made in the Operation Weeting phone-hacking inquiry is 45.

Cash settlements
A judge-led inquiry into media ethics has heard extensive testimony about wrongdoing by tabloid journalists, and Murdoch's company has reached cash settlements with a number of victims.

There is also a simultaneous investigation into corrupt relations between the police and the press which has yielded a number of arrests in recent weeks.

James Murdoch insists he didn't mislead British lawmakers

An inquiry panel appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron is trying to determine why an initial police investigation into phone hacking in 2006 failed to reveal the scope of the problem.

At the time, Murdoch's executives claimed the wrongdoing was limited to one scurrilous reporter and an unprincipled private detective, both of whom were jailed.

Journalist: CNN star Piers Morgan must have known about tabloid phone hacking

The dormant police investigation was reopened last year after reporters were found to have hacked into the voicemail of a missing schoolgirl who was later found to have been murdered.

That investigation led to the resignation of Cameron's top media adviser, Andy Coulson, who had been the editor of the News of the World. Like Rebekah Brooks, Coulson has denied wrongdoing.

Murdoch's company has reached cash settlements with various hacking victims, including actress Sienna Miller and singer Charlotte Church, but many new cases are being brought against News International, the U.K. newspaper branch of Murdoch's global media empire.

The scandal also scuttled Murdoch's plans to purchase full control of the British broadcaster BSkyB.

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NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

LONDON -- Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was bundled into the back of a police car to escape protesters after a speaking engagement at Britain's Cambridge University on Friday that angered women's rights activists.

About 150 demonstrators, waving banners and chanting "2, 4, 6, 8, no more violence, no more rape" had circled the Cambridge Union Society where Strauss-Kahn delivered a speech on globalization and the Eurozone to a select group of students.

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As the French economist left, the angry crowd, shouting references to New York hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo who accused him of sexual assault, tried to scale barricades guarded by police and security officers set up to protect him.

Placards were thrown at the car and protesters scuffled with officers as he was whisked away.

"I don't think he should have been invited here to speak to students," student Morgan Wild, 23, told Reuters. "I think it's part of a crass PR campaign to rehabilitate his reputation and we shouldn't be taken for fools."

Strauss-Kahn calls sexual encounter with maid a 'moral failing'

"It's got nothing to do with freedom of speech," said student Francesca Williams, 21. "They're inviting a man who hates women. I don't think DSK should be given the privilege of speaking in front of a private audience."

Cambridgeshire Police said a 19-year-old man was arrested for assaulting a police officer and a woman, 22, was detained for a breach of the peace. Two others were arrested on Friday morning after banners were plastered all over the Union Society building.

The Cambridge News website displayed photos showing its walls defaced with messages including "DSK GO AWAY" and "WOMEN DESERVE BETTER."

'Flabbergasted'
There was tight security inside the venue with the gray-haired Strauss-Kahn flanked by four burly men during his speech and 25 guards brought in for the occasion.

But even within the historic 19th century building, where politicians such as British wartime leader Winston Churchill have addressed students, he was unable to escape controversy.

One student asked him to explain vaginal bruising suffered by Nafissatou Diallo, the maid behind the sexual assault allegations who is now pursuing civil claims against Strauss-Kahn in New York.

"The reality is that I spent a week in prison. There hasn't been a prosecution," he replied to a rapt audience listening over the faint shouts and sirens heard from outside.

Diallo's lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, spoke to about 100 Cambridge students and journalists on her behalf at a rival event earlier Friday.

According to the Guardian newspaper, Wigdor said he was "flabbergasted" at the invitation. He called it "an affront to all victims of sexual crimes."

"The history of Cambridge and the history of the union are now interspersed with Strauss-Kahn. I don't blame Strauss-Kahn. I blame the union," he said.

A statement posted Friday on the Cambridge union's website said the invitation was made well before Strauss-Kahn's controversial departure from the IMF. His experience in French politics mean that he was "exceptionally well qualified" to speak on the financial crisis and the French presidential election, it said.

Some of those attending the speech, many of them economics or politics students, agreed. They said they wanted to hear about Strauss-Kahn's experiences in the IMF and politics, not his personal life.

"This is a forum for free speech," said politics student Milad Matin, 21. "It's not a value judgement. I'm not endorsing rape by watching him speak."

Strauss-Kahn held in French prostitution probe

Strauss-Kahn has mostly kept a low profile since New York prosecutors dismissed charges of attempted rape and sexual assault against him in August, based on concerns about Diallo's credibility. But in recent months he has rejoined the international speech circuit.

Though the criminal case is over, the first civil court hearing over Diallo's claims is scheduled for March 28.

Strauss-Kahn was also held for two days in January in a police station in the northern French city of Lille, where investigators questioned him about allegations that a prostitution ring organized by his business acquaintances provided women for clients of Lille's Carlton Hotel.

Police want to establish whether Strauss-Kahn knew that women at parties he attended in Lille, Paris and Washington were prostitutes. His lawyer has said Strauss-Kahn had no reason to think so.

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Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.