AMSTERDAM — The Netherlands raised its alert level for terrorist attacks to "substantial" on Wednesday, citing an increase in the number of Islamist militants traveling from the Netherlands to Syria, as well as a radicalization of Dutch youth.

"The chance of an attack in the Netherlands or against Dutch interests abroad has risen," the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) said in a statement.

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"Close to a hundred individuals have recently left the Netherlands for various countries in Africa and the Middle East, especially Syria."

The agency said individuals fighting for radical Islam abroad could return and "inspire others in the Netherlands to follow in their footsteps."

Political changes in the Middle East and North Africa have made space for an expansion of radical Islamic groups that are no longer under the control of security forces, the agency said.

Dutch police and intelligence services have deployed extra personnel to investigate suspect individuals and monitor sources, the agency said.

The Netherlands has not suffered a major terrorist attack, but a radical Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdered the provocative filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was critical of multiculturalism and of Islam, in Amsterdam in 2004.

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Children shot at, tortured and raped in Syria, report says

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Tourists have long flocked to Egypt to see the pyramids, take a trip up the majestic Nile or relax on one of its many sun-kissed beaches.

But, in a potentially damaging blow to its economy, Egypt has now been ranked below countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Chad for "safety and security" in an influential report on tourism by the World Economic Forum.

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It is perhaps little wonder that tourists are spooked — amid ongoing political unrest, Molotov cocktails, gunfire and tear gas have become almost commonplace in some areas.

Two years after the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, protesters still return to Cairo’s Tahrir Square — where it all began — to demonstrate against the Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and lament the country’s failing economy.

Earlier this month, Bedouin gunmen kidnapped a British couple who were on their way to the glittering beaches of Sharm El Sheikh. They were quickly released, but Bedouins have taken other hostages and also attacked police stations and blocked access to towns to show their discontent with what they see as their poor treatment by Cairo.

Last month, thugs attacked and entered the InterContinental hotel in Cairo, forcing it to close down while it implemented heightened security measures.

And there has been also been unrest over death sentences handed out to 21 soccer fans over a deadly riot at a stadium last year.

From terrorism to road accidents
The World Economic Forum report, The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index 2013, ranked Egypt overall in 85th place out of the 140 countries considered by the group, down 10 from last year. 

The safety and security category looked at "the costliness of common crime and violence as well as terrorism." It also considered the reliability of the police and the number of road traffic accidents.

Egypt was in 140th and last place on this list behind Yemen at 139, Chad at 138, and Pakistan at 137. The U.S. State Department has current travel warnings for the latter three countries, but not Egypt.

According to the Egypt’s state information service, tourism makes up 11.3 percent of Egypt’s gross domestic product.

In 2010, before the revolution, Egypt welcomed an estimated 14.7 million tourists who brought $12.5 billion in revenue. Last year, it had 11 million tourists bringing $10.5 billion in revenue.

Emile Asaad, manager of an American Express travel agency in the ancient city of Luxor, home to King Tut's tomb and the famous temples of Luxor and Karnak, said that “the important thing is that when people need to walk in the street they want to feel safe."

"We have over 400 boats on the Nile, there is still 20 to 25 percent occupancy on some of the most popular boats, but others are just sitting and not operating," he said. "We don't know how the future looks."

Adla Ragab, an economic advisor to the Egypt’s Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou, said officials were taken aback by the WEF report.

"When we first saw it, we were shocked. We held a lot of workshops to discuss this issue," she said by phone.

Ragab said media reports had led people to believe that Egypt is more dangerous than it actually is. She added that during a trip to the U.S., hotel staff had insisted on escorting her to a nearby restaurant after dark, but that didn’t mean she would advise people not to go to the U.S.

'It's a nice country'
A selection of foreign tourists in Egypt appeared to support Ragab’s view.

"I can say to anybody, go to Egypt! It's a nice country. There [are] so many things to see. It's very good weather, it's warm in the winter and there's no problem," Dirk Posner, of Leipzig, Germany, said while visiting the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Yuan Ye, from Shandong province, China, recommended that tourists use a trusted travel agency and explore the country with a group because of difficulties with facilities and services.

"I think generally it is safe for tourists, but you should be careful, very careful from the peddlers who try to sell you something — force to sell you something," he said with a smile.

Jaffar and Francoise Bentchikou, from Paris, France, also encouraged foreigners to visit.

"We saw that the problems were limited to some places so we just try to avoid them," Jaffar said. "[Tourists] have to be conscious of the situation, but for the time being we have seen nothing against tourists especially."

"We feel very bad about the revenue lost for tourism for the Egyptians," Francoise added.  "That is something that makes us very unhappy."

But travel companies said many people were staying away.

Bob Atkinson, a travel expert with the U.K.-based price-comparison website TravelSupermarket.com, said unrest in Egypt had "seriously affected the tourist trade."

"The Arab uprisings very much put the Egypt market into a tailspin," he said.

Flavia Jaber, owner of Toronto-based company Road to Travel, which includes Road to Egypt, said that "our business to Egypt is dead in the water at the moment."

"People are not going to Egypt right now, at least not from North America," she said.

"Definitely there are things going on in Egypt that are very unsavory and when you are considering going on a holiday, you want to go and relax, have a good time," she added. "You might say let’s not go to Egypt this year, let’s wait until things settle down."

However, there was at least one thing in Egypt's favor in the WEF report — the price. The country was ranked the fourth cheapest tourist destination in the world "with competitive hotel prices, low fuel costs and low prices more generally." 

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Egypt could 'collapse,' army chief warns as violence continues

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A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who served as an al-Qaida spokesman and warned Americans after Sept. 11 that “the storm shall not stop” pleaded not guilty Friday in a civilian court to plotting to kill Americans.

Handcuffed and in a blue prison suit, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith wore earphones to listen to a live translation of the hearing in a heavily guarded federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan, walking distance from the World Trade Center site.

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He entered the plea through a court-appointed lawyer and was ordered to return to court April 8. Abu Ghaith himself spoke only twice, answering “Yes” when he was asked whether he understood the charge and whether he wanted representation.

Prosecutors disclosed that Abu Ghaith was captured Feb. 28 overseas and flown to New York the following day. They said he had yielded enough information after his capture to fill 22 pages. They did not give details of what he said.

An indictment unsealed Thursday accuses Abu Ghaith of taking part in al-Qaida plots to kill Americans, both before and after the 2001 terror attacks. It describes him as such a close confidant that bin Laden summoned him for help on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001.

Abu Ghaith gave a speech after Sept. 11 and warned Americans that “the storm shall not stop, especially the airplanes storm” and suggested that Muslims and opponents of the United States should not fly or live in high rises.

Jordanian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News that Abu Ghaith was captured by Turkish officials in Ankara, where a court ruled that he had entered the country with a fake passport.

The Turkish government ordered him deported to Kuwait, where he was born, but arranged for him to travel through Jordan, where he was taken into custody by American law enforcement, the sources said.

NBC News exclusive: Iran was holding Abu Ghaith, U.S. officials say

Rep. Peter King of New York, a Republican who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, announced the capture Thursday and credited the FBI and CIA.

Some Republican members of Congress expressed surprise that they had not been consulted, and said that Abu Ghaith should have been prosecuted as an enemy combatant and held by the military at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

They issued statements Friday denouncing the decision and saying that the Obama administration was weakening the nation by not having al-Qaida figures like Abu Ghaith detained and interrogated at military facilities.

“The administration risks missing important opportunities to gather intelligence to prevent future attacks and save lives,” Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said in a statement.

In November 2009, the administration announced plans to try five people accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks in civilian court in New York. The White House backed off that plan a year and a half later after a political backlash.

Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said civilian courts have “a pretty good, strong track record” in handling terrorism prosecutions. He cited the men convicted of trying to blow up an airliner in December 2009 and detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010, both of whom got life sentences in civilian courts.

“It is the consensus view of the president’s national security team and of agencies all across the federal government that this is the best way to handle bringing Abu Ghaith to justice,” Earnest said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Intelligence Committee, said she expected that Abu Ghaith would be put away for life.

“The bottom line is the federal criminal court system works,” she said.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 8, 2013 8:11 AM EST

A French woman told a court that she simply wasn't thinking when she sent her 3-year-old son to kindergarten wearing a T-shirt reading "Jihad, born September 11" on the back and "I am a bomb" on the front, French media reported Thursday. 

The woman, Boucha Bagour, 34, and her brother, Zeyad Bagour, 29, could be fined 1,000 and 3,000 euros ($1,300 and $3,900), respectively, when their trial on charges of "apologizing for terrorism" resumes next month, the newspaper Le Parisien reported. Both have pleaded not guilty.

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At a hearing Wednesday near Avignon, Bagour, a single mother, said she dressed her son — who really is named Jihad and who she said really was born on Sept. 11 — "without thinking about it" last September. She was charged after teachers and the principal complained to authorities.  

"I thought it might make people laugh," she said, according to Le Parisien.

Zeyad Bagour, the boy's uncle, who is also charged because he bought the T-shirt, said he, too, didn't think there was a problem. The French phrase "je suis une bombe" — literally, "I am a bomb" — is a slang expression of self-regard, and "to me, it means 'I am beautiful,'" he said, adding, that T-shirts with the slogan are widely available in Avignon's markets.

The T-shirts are also widely available for sale online. They're even sold by American Apparel.

The Bagours' lawyer put it more bluntly, telling the court, according to the newspaper, that if they truly meant to support terrorism, they picked a poor venue, noting that the class was filled with kindergartners "who cannot read." 

In an interview with the newspaper La Provence in November, Boucha  Bagour said that while she is Muslim, "there is no message to be conveyed by the T-shirt — no intent."

"'Bomb' is used in the sense of 'handsome,' nothing more," she said. "And my son was actually born on September 11."

"It's just a simple phrase on a T-shirt," she said. "It's nothing dangerous."

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Lawyers for terror suspects held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, said Tuesday that detainees are engaged in widespread protests of conditions at the prison, including a hunger strike that may imperil their lives.

Calling the situation “alarming,” the lawyers said in a statement that some of their clients are “coughing up blood” and “losing consciousness.”  A letter making similar assertions was sent earlier this week to Navy Rear Adm. John W. Smith, the commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo and signed by a dozen lawyers who represent most of the detainees at Guantanamo.  

A spokesman for U.S. military at Guantanamo   disputed the lawyers’ claims of a widespread hunger strike, saying they and their clients were merely trying to get attention and keep Guantanamo “in the news. ” 

The spokesman, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, said that a half-dozen detainees are currently on a hunger strike -- five of whom are being force fed through tubes -- and that no lives were in danger. Durand added that the figure was consistent with the average number of hunger strikers at Guantanamo over the past several years. He also acknowledged that “some detainees” have been disciplined and moved out of Camp 6 -- the most permissive of the camps at Guantanamo, with communal living arrangements -- but he declined to say how many or give the reasons for the action. 

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The conflicting claims underscored the difficulty of obtaining information about conditions at the facility, which President Barack Obama vowed to shut down on his first day in office after his 2008 election but which still remains open as a result of congressional opposition to its closure. There are 166 detainees remaining at the camp, but military rules forbid them from communicating in any way with members of the news media and visits to the camp by outsiders are tightly regulated. Even their communications with their lawyers must be cleared by military censors.

One of those lawyers, David Remes, told NBC News in a telephone interview from Guantanamo Monday night that he saw one of his clients -- Hussain Almerfedi, a Yemeni -- earlier that day and that he had lost “substantial weight” and was “very sick.” Under Guantanamo rules, Remes said he could not share anything that his client told him until the censor cleared the communication. But he said that he offered Almerfedi some trail mix during their meeting and he declined to take it -- a sign,  Remes said,  that his client was participating in the hunger strike.

“The men are at their wit’s end,” he said. “This is their eleventh year of being there and they have no prospect for release.” He also said that since taking over last year as commander,  Adm. Smith had “turned the clock back” to 2002 and 2003, imposing harsher restrictions on the detainees and more-rigorous searches in which personal items were being seized. The searches are being carried out by guards -- some of whom are returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq -- who he asserted appear to be extracting vengeance for what they encountered overseas, he said.   

One flashpoint appears to have been a Feb. 6 search at Camp 6 in which, according to the lawyers, camp authorities seized blankets, sheets, towels, sleeping mats, razors and other items from the detainees,  including family photos and religious CDs from the detainees. In their letter to Smith, the lawyers alleged that Arabic interpreters at the camp inspected Qurans “in ways that constitute desecration.” 

Durand, the Guantanamo spokesman, disputed that any harsher restrictions had been imposed by the new commander and said the search last month was in keeping with past practice. He said that search, and earlier ones, have turned up  “a Wal-Mart worth of stuff,” including improvised weapons, illegal electronics and other illicit contraband. But he said that handling of the Qurans was tightly regulated  and that no guards are even permitted to touch the Islamic Holy Books during the searches.

Durand also acknowledged that some of the dispute between camp authorities and the detainees’ lawyers may be about defining terms. Guantanamo officials define a hunger strike as refusing to eat nine meals in a row. But, he said, some of the detainees may be hoarding food in their cells even when they claim to be on a hunger strike.  

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MILAN — Italy's former military intelligence chief was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for his role in the kidnapping of an Egyptian Muslim cleric in an operation organized by the United States.

An American former CIA station chief was this month sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail after imam Abu Omar was snatched from a Milan street in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation during the United States' "war on terror."

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The Milan appeals court sentenced Niccolo Pollari, former head of the Sismi military intelligence agency, to 10 years in prison and his former deputy Marco Mancini to nine years.

The court also awarded a provisional 1 million euros ($1.3 million) in damages to the imam, the Ansa news wire reported, as well as 500,000 euros to the imam's wife.

Nicola Madia, a lawyer for Pollari, said he was disturbed by the decision and that his client would appeal to Italy's highest court. Pollari will not have to go to jail until the appeals process has been exhausted.

Madia said Pollari had not been able to defend himself properly because successive Italian governments had declared the case to be covered by state secrecy laws.

The sentences are part of the fallout from a campaign waged by then President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Abu Omar says he was tortured for seven months after being flown to Egypt in what was known as an "extraordinary rendition" operation. He was a resident in Italy at the time of his abduction.

Former CIA Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other American officials were convicted in their absence by the Milan appeals court for their part in the operation but are unlikely to serve their sentences.

Human rights groups have been fighting to expose heavy-handed tactics used by the CIA during the Bush administration.

Related:

Italian court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

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HANGU, Pakistan — A suicide bomber killed 22 people on Friday in a crowded market outside two mosques in northwest Pakistan, police and hospital officials said.

Two of the dead were policemen.

Forty-eight people were wounded in the attack in a narrow lane in the town of Hangu that houses both a Shiite and a Sunni Muslim mosque.

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Officials said the anti-Taliban Sunni Supreme Council often holds its meetings in the Sunni mosque, which made it a possible target.

But district police chief Muhammad Saeed said that the attack was aimed at Shiites and that Sunni Muslims were unintended victims.

"Most of the dead were moving in and out of the mosques in the marketplace after Friday prayers when the bomb went off," senior police officer Imtiaz Shah said.

Hangu, part of Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan, has been racked by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite tribes whose mosques, homes and shops are often close to one another.

Hangu is just a few miles from Parachinar, which has a significant Shiite population against whom hardline Sunni militant groups have launched attacks for years.

No group had claimed responsibility for the attack by late evening. 

Related:

Pakistan's unprecedented winter of attacks

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