The Philippine authorities said on Tuesday that they were deporting two American brothers arrested for suspected links to terrorism. One of the men worked until 2000 for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the laboratory said.
A spokesman for the laboratory, a major nuclear weapons facility near San Francisco, said that the FBI had been examining whether the former employee, Michael Ray Stubbs, 55, had access to sensitive information there in the course of his work as a heating and air conditioning technician.
An FBI agent in San Francisco, Chris McDonough, said that the bureau was "assisting in the investigation" by the Philippine authorities but "does not have any charges pending" against either Stubbs or his brother, Jamil Daoud Mujahid, 56, a convert to Islam. The two men were arrested on Dec. 13 in the town of Tanza in Cavite province, 34km southwest of Manila, according to the Philippine bureau of immigration.
Philippine officials said that Mujahid, also known as James Stubbs, had met with members of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim extremist group, as well as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front separatist movement, two groups loosely linked by Philippine officials to al-Qaeda.
Both men denied any wrongdoing when they appeared in handcuffs at a news conference in Manila on Tuesday. But a Philippine official said that the US government was concerned that Michael Ray Stubbs may have passed sensitive information from Lawrence Livermore to his brother, who might have shared it with the militant groups.
The brothers, both of whom carried tourist visas, are being deported to the US as "undesirable aliens," the Philippine immigration commissioner, Andrea Domingo, said on Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear when the men would be returned to the US, and whether they would face arrest in this country. The State Department referred questions about the details of the deportation to Philippine authorities, but the Philippine Embassy in Washington said it had no information about their return.
Susan Houghton, a spokesman for the Livermore lab, said that Michael Ray Stubbs' security clearance there had been terminated as a routine matter in July 2000, four months after he left his job on a medical leave.
"We are aware of what the Philippines officials did," Houghton said. "We have been working closely with the FBI on this issue since he was arrested in the Philippines a few weeks ago."
The Philippine immigration bureau has described the Stubbs brothers as "diehard Muslim extremists" who were "seen meeting with known leaders of various terrorist cells" with links to al-Qaeda. Philippine officials have described Mujahid as a man who left a job as a teacher in California to study Arabic in the Sudan.
The Philippine authorities said that the brothers, born in Missouri, had been under surveillance before their arrest. Domingo, the immigration commissioner, said there was no evidence linking the two men to any past or planned terrorist operations, but she said that in his statements to local authorities, Mujahid had called for the overthrow of the American government.
Domingo said the two men carried documents indicating that they were soliciting funds for the construction of Muslim schools and mosques.
Mujahid interrupted the news conference to denounce the accusations against him and his brother as "fabricated lies." Mujahid said he had a Filipino wife and was in the Philippines because she was pregnant.
Domingo was quoted as saying that the two men were "violating immigration laws and they're being charged and they are going through immigration proceedings."
The US Embassy in the Philippines has declined to comment on the allegations, except to say that the brothers had retained legal counsel to address the charges.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which was founded in 1952 to design nuclear weapons, is a federal facility administered by the Department of Energy and managed by the University of California. Its current responsibilities include research into other areas of science and engineering with national security applications.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS