Abu Sayyaf, officially known by the Islamic State as the Islamic State – East Asia Province, is a Jihadist militant and pirate group that followed the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. It was based in and around Jolo and Basilan islands in the southwestern part of the Philippines, where for more than five decades, Moro groups had been engaged in an insurgency seeking to make Moro Province independent. The group was considered violent and was responsible for the Philippines' worst terrorist attack, the bombing of MV Superferry 14 in 2004, which killed 116 people. The name of the group was derived from Arabic abu, and sayyaf. As of April 2023, the group was estimated to have about 20 members, down from 1,250 in 2000. They used mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles.
Frederick McCarthy Forsyth is an English novelist and journalist. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and The Kill List. Forsyth's works frequently appear on best-sellers lists and more than a dozen of his titles have been adapted to film. By 2006, he had sold more than 70 million books in more than 30 languages.
The Sum of All Fears is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 14, 1991, as the sequel to Clear and Present Danger (1989). Main character Jack Ryan, who is now the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, tries to stop a crisis concerning the Middle East peace process wherein Palestinian and former East German terrorists conspire to bring the United States and Soviet Union into nuclear war. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, which is a reboot of the Jack Ryan film series and starring Ben Affleck as the younger iteration of the CIA analyst, was released on May 31, 2002.
Ransom is a 1996 American action thriller film directed by Ron Howard from a screenplay by Richard Price and Alexander Ignon. The film stars Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Gary Sinise, Delroy Lindo, Lili Taylor, Brawley Nolte, Liev Schreiber, Donnie Wahlberg and Evan Handler. Gibson was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. The film was the 5th highest-grossing film of 1996 in the United States. The original story came from a 1954 episode of The United States Steel Hour titled "Fearful Decision". In 1956, it was adapted by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum into the feature film, Ransom!, starring Glenn Ford, Donna Reed, and Leslie Nielsen.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent is a 2006 stealth game developed by Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Shanghai, and published by Ubisoft. The Splinter Cell series, endorsed by American author Tom Clancy, follows Sam Fisher, an agent employed by a black-ops division of the National Security Agency (NSA), dubbed Third Echelon. The game was released for GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360 in October 2006. The Wii and Windows versions were released in November 2006. A PlayStation 3 version was released in March 2007.
Double Team is a 1997 action comedy film directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark in his American directorial debut, and written by Don Jakoby and Paul Mones. It stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as counter-terrorist agent Jack Quinn, who is assigned to bring an elusive terrorist known as Stavros to justice. Things become personal when Stavros kidnaps Quinn's pregnant wife after his own lover and child were killed in an assassination attempt gone awry. Aiding Quinn in his rescue is his flamboyant weapons dealer Yaz. It received negative reviews and was nominated for and received three Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Supporting Actor (Rodman), Worst New Star (Rodman) and Worst Screen Couple.
The Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations was a militant group responsible for a number of terrorist activities directed at the Cuban government following the Cuban Revolution. The United States government provided them with extensive financial and logistical support throughout their existence. It was founded by a group that included Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both of whom worked with the CIA at various times, and was composed chiefly of Cuban exiles opposed to the Castro government. It was formed in 1976 as an umbrella group for a number of anti-Castro militant groups. Its activities included a number of bombings and assassinations, including the killing of human-rights activist Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., and the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 which killed 73 people.
The Dogs of War (1974) is a war novel by British writer Frederick Forsyth, featuring a small group of European mercenary soldiers hired by a British industrialist to depose the government of the fictional African country of Zangaro. The story details a geologist's mineral discovery, and the preparations for the attack: soldier recruitment, training, reconnaissance, and the logistics of the coup d'état. Like most of Forsyth's work, the novel is more about the protagonists' occupational tradecraft than their characters. The source of the title, The Dogs of War, is Act III, scene 1, line 270 of Julius Caesar (1599), by William Shakespeare: Cry, 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike is the Xbox-exclusive expansion to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2. It includes new multiplayer modes, such as "Heli Hunt", and features increased difficulty compared to the base game.
The Dogs of War is a 1980 American war film based upon the 1974 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth. Largely filmed in Belize, it was directed by John Irvin and starred Christopher Walken and Tom Berenger. In it a small mercenary unit of soldiers is privately hired to depose the president of a fictional African country modeled after Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, Equatorial Guinea and Angola, so that a British tycoon can gain access to a platinum deposit.
Rosalind Sarah Myers is a fictional character from the BBC television series Spooks, which follows the exploits of Section D, a counter-terrorism division in MI5. She is portrayed by British actress Hermione Norris. The character was a former MI6 officer who joins MI5 in the fifth series.
The Assignment is a 1997 spy action thriller film directed by Christian Duguay and starring Aidan Quinn, with Donald Sutherland and Ben Kingsley. The film, written by Dan Gordon and Sabi H. Shabtai, is set mostly in the late 1980s and deals with a CIA plan to use Quinn's character to masquerade as the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
Along Came a Spider is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Lee Tamahori. It is the second installment in the Alex Cross film series and a sequel to the 1997 film Kiss the Girls, with Morgan Freeman and Jay O. Sanders reprising their roles as detective Alex Cross and FBI-agent Kyle Craig. The screenplay by Marc Moss was adapted from the 1993 novel of the same title by James Patterson, but many of the key plot elements of the book were eliminated. The film was a box office success, although receiving mixed reviews from critics.
Carrie Anne Mathison, played by actress Claire Danes, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the American television drama/thriller series Homeland on Showtime, created by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon. Carrie is a CIA officer who, while on assignment in Iraq, learned from a CIA asset that an American prisoner of war had been turned by al-Qaeda. After a U.S. Marine sergeant named Nicholas Brody is rescued from captivity, Carrie believes that he is the POW described to her. Carrie's investigation of Brody is complicated by her bipolar disorder and results in an obsession with her suspect.
Kill Alex Cross is the 18th novel in the Alex Cross series by James Patterson, following fictional detective Alex Cross as he tries to solve two crimes – one involving the president's kidnapped children and the other a case of someone poisoning the water supply.
