Man killed at Paris airport planned to ‘die for Allah’ – prosecutor

March 19, 2017 Article

A man shot dead by French soldiers at Paris Orly airport on Saturday shouted he was there to “die for Allah” and tried to seize a soldier’s assault rifle, apparently intending to open fire on passengers, a prosecutor said. The latest in a series of attacks in France forced the evacuation of France’s second-busiest airport and thrust security back to the forefront of France’s presidential election campaign.

The attacker, named as Ziyed Ben Belgacem, arrived at Orly airport on Saturday morning, threw down a bag containing a can of petrol and seized hold of a woman air force member who was part of a military patrol at the airport, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Using the servicewoman as a shield, he put his air pistol to her head and shouted at other soldiers with her: “Put down your guns. Put your hands on your head. I am here to die for Allah. In any case, there will be deaths.” The other soldiers then shot and killed Belgacem. Molins said the assailant, who tried to grab the woman’s Famas assault rifle, seemed bent on carrying out a serious attack. “Given the violence that is shown in the (CCTV) pictures … you sense that he was determined to go through with it,” Molins told a news conference. “Everything leads one to believe he wanted to seize the Famas so that there were deaths and then to fire at people.” On his body, police found a Koran and 750 euros in cash. At his home, they found several grams of cocaine, a machete and some foreign currency, Molins said.

Prosecutors are investigating a number of terrorism-related offences, including attempted murder. Belgacem’s choice of target and evidence that he had been radicalised justified launching a terrorism investigation, Molins said. Belgacem’s father, brother and a cousin are in police custody, Molins said.

Emergency services arrive at Orly airport southern terminal after a shooting incident near Paris, France March 18, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

ON THE RADAR

Belgacem, 39, was already on the authorities’ radar. They spotted him as a radicalised Muslim when he served a prison term several years ago for drug-trafficking. Several hours earlier, Belgacem shot and wounded a police officer with his air pistol after a routine traffic stop north of Paris before fleeing, officials said. After the first incident, Belgacem called his father and brother saying he had done something stupid, the prosecutor said. Later he entered a bar in Vitry-sur-Seine on the other side of Paris and opened fire with his air gun without hitting anyone. He also stole a car before arriving at the airport.

More than 230 people have died in France in the past two years at the hands of attackers allied to the militant Islamist group Islamic State, whose strongholds in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by an international coalition including France. These include coordinated bombings and shootings in November 2015 in Paris when 130 people were killed and scores injured. With the country in the throes of a highly-charged election campaign before a two-round presidential election in April and May, the attacks will fuel the political debate.

Conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon said in a video message that France was in a “situation of virtual civil war” and there was no justification for lifting a state of emergency in place since the November 2015 attacks, after the justice minister said this week conditions were in place for lifting it. Far-right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen, running on an anti-immigration, anti-EU ticket, said the death of the Orly airport attacker, who she said was a multiple repeat offender, had averted a “possible massacre”. “Our government is overwhelmed, stunned, paralysed like a rabbit in the headlights,” she told an election rally. One witness, who gave only his first name of Dominique, said he saw a man seize the woman soldier by the arm at the airport and take hold of her weapon. “We ran off, down the staircase. Afterwards, we heard two shots,” he told BFM TV. Flights from Orly were suspended for several hours after the incident.

Prince William, second-in-line to the British throne, and his wife Kate, who finished a two-day visit to Paris on Saturday stuck to their plans despite the attack. President Francois Hollande said the case had shown the need for the “Sentinelle” security operation brought in after 2015 attacks. The soldiers involved were patrolling the airport as part of the “Sentinelle” operation. Last month, Egyptian Abdullah Reda al-Hamahmy, 29, was shot and seriously wounded near the Louvre museum when he launched himself at a group of soldiers, crying out “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest).

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Categories: France, News, Orly airport, Paris airport, President Hollande, ziyed Ben Belgacem

1,000 Page Study on Extremist Convictions Cannot Be Dismissed

March 5, 2017 Article

The Sunday Times reported on a Henry Jackson study that has listed data showing that about a tenth of all Britain’s Islamist terrorists come from just 5 council wards in Birmingham. It states that women’s involvement in Islamist terror plots is low, though this has trebled over a period of time from 1998-2016.

The report is to be launched this week by Britain’s anti-terrorism chief, Assistant Commissioner, Mark Rowley. It covers 269 convictions or suicide bombings and over 400 offences and makes the point that terror and support networks provide inspiration and ready made support for individuals looking to conduct violence in the name of extremist groups. Obviously, one of the most well known networks that worked for decades with impunity was Anjem Choudhary’s extremist network that preyed on young men and the more vulnerable they were, the more his group preyed on them.

Produced by the Henry Jackson society, the report seems to indicate that clustered segregated neighbourhoods, allied to deprivation and networks of support for extremism, make up the majority of the phenotype of cases which have ended up in the courts. The report is a detailed analysis that will need to be reviewed to ensure that professionals and specialists working in this area, understand the rich and accurate picture around Islamist extremism and violence. If we are to separate this from Muslims, the vast and overwhelming majority of citizens who are peaceful and who follow Islam as a central part of their lives, then we must fully understand the core environmental factors that raise succeptibility in some to extremism and violence. This report does make for intriguing reading.

Categories: MyBlog, Opinions

‘Blind sheikh’ convicted in 1993 World Trade bombing dies in U.S. prison

February 20, 2017 Article

Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Muslim cleric known as “the blind sheikh” who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of planning a broader “war of urban terrorism” in the United States, died on Saturday in a North Carolina prison, authorities said.

Abdel-Rahman, 78, died of natural causes at 9:40 a.m. (1440 GMT) at a medical centre at a federal prison compound in Butner, North Carolina, according to Greg Norton, a spokesman.

The cleric, who had diabetes and coronary artery disease, had been incarcerated at the complex for nearly 10 years, Norton said.

Earlier, the cleric’s son Ammar said his family had received a phone call in Eygpt from a U.S. representative saying his father had died.

The Egyptian-born Abdel-Rahman remained a spiritual leader for radical Muslims even after more than 20 years in prison.

With his long grey beard, sunglasses and red and white clerical cap, the charismatic Abdel-Rahman was the face of radical Islam in the 1980s and 1990s. He preached a fiery brand of Islam that called for the death of people and governments he disapproved of and the installation of an Islamic government in Egypt. His following was tied to fundamentalist killings and bomb attacks around the world.

“Abdel-Rahman was at the vortex of some of the bloodiest and most consequential terrorist incidents of the 1990s – incidents that would establish the patterns of global terrorism that continue to bedevil us today,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington.

“He was a tireless and enthusiastic in projecting his message of violence and hatred,” said Hoffman, who served on the U.S. government’s commission that reviewed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington and over Pennsylvania.

Abdel-Rahman, who was born in a village along the Nile on May 3, 1938, lost his eyesight due to childhood diabetes and grew up studying a Braille version of the Koran.

As an adult he became associated with the fundamentalist Islamic Group and was imprisoned and accused of issuing a fatwa leading to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, against whom he had railed for years. The sheikh said he was hung upside-down from the ceiling, beaten with sticks and given electric shocks while held but he was eventually acquitted and went into self-imposed exile in 1990.

He managed to get to New York after the U.S. Embassy in Sudan granted him a tourist visa in 1990 – despite the fact that he was on the State Department’s list of people with ties to terror groups.

U.S. authorities blamed a computer error for the visa, but the mistake was compounded in 1991 when Abdel-Rahman was given a green card and permanent U.S. resident status. The New York Times reported the CIA had approved the visa application for Abdel-Rahman, who had supported the anti-Soviet mujahedin in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Abdel-Rahman preached his radical message and lived in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and nearby Jersey City, New Jersey, building a strong following among fundamentalist Muslims. Even in exile, he remained a force in the Middle East, where followers listened to cassette tapes and radio broadcasts of his sermons decrying the Egyptian government and Israel.

While in the United States Abdel-Rahman and his disciples would be linked to the 1990 slaying in New York of militant Rabbi Meir Kahane, the 1992 killing of an anti-fundamentalist writer in Egypt and attacks on foreign tourists in Egypt.

U.S. authorities took action in 1992 by revoking Abdel-Rahman’s green card on the grounds that he had lied about a bad check charge in Egypt and about having two wives when he entered the country. He was facing the possibility of deportation when a truck bomb went off in the basement parking garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 in an attack that made Americans realise that they were not immune to international terrorism.

Four months later Abdel-Rahman was arrested and went on trial with several followers in 1995, accused of plotting a day of terror for the United States – assassinations and synchronized bombings of the U.N. headquarters, a major federal government facility in Manhattan and tunnels and a bridge linking New York City and New Jersey.

The indictment said Abdel-Rahman and his followers planned to “levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States” as part of a jihad – or holy war – to stop U.S. support for Israel and change its overall Middle East policy.

The defendants were not directly charged with the 1993 World Trade Center attack but were convicted of conspiring with those who did carry out the bombing.

Abdel-Rahman’s convictions also included plotting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to the United States in 1993, a Jewish New York state legislator and a Jewish New York State Supreme Court justice.

Much of the case against Abdel-Rahman and his followers was based on video and audio recordings made with the help of a bodyguard for the sheikh who became an FBI informant. A video also showed four defendants mixing fertiliser and diesel fuel for bombs.

After a nine-month trial, the sheikh and nine followers were found guilty in October 1995 on 48 of 50 charges.

He did not testify at his trial but at a sentencing hearing Abdel-Rahman gave a passionate speech of more than 90 minutes through a translator, proclaiming his innocence and denouncing the United States as an enemy of his faith.

“I have not committed any crime except telling people about Islam,” he said.

Abdel-Rahman was still an important figure in radical Islam even after years in prison. A year before his al Qaeda followers pulled off the most destructive assault on U.S. soil, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden had pledged a jihad to free Abdel-Rahman from prison. When Mohammed Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his short-lived presidency of Egypt in 2012, he said winning the sheikh’s freedom would be a priority and the jihadists who attacked an Algerian oilfield and took hostages in 2013 also demanded his release.

In 2006 one of Abdel-Rahman’s lawyers, Lynne F. Stewart, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for helping smuggle messages from the cleric to his followers in Egypt.

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Categories: Abdel Rehman, Blind Sheikh, death, United States, World Trade Centre bombing

Pakistan says kills 100 ‘terrorists’ after suicide shrine attack

February 18, 2017 Article

Pakistani security forces killed dozens of suspected militants on Friday, a day after Islamic State claimed a suicide bombing that killed more than 80 worshippers at a Sufi shrine, the biggest in a spate of attacks this week across the country.

The bombing at the famed Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in southern Sindh province was Pakistan’s deadliest attack for two years, killing at least 83 people and highlighting the threat of militant groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and Islamic State.

The security response was swift.

“Over 100 terrorists have been killed since last night and sizeable apprehensions also made,” the military said in an operations update on Friday evening.

“Terrorists will be targeted ruthlessly, indiscriminately, anywhere and everywhere. No let up,” an armed forces spokesman added in a tweet.

With authorities facing angry criticism for failing to tighten security before the shrine bomber struck, analysts warned that the wave of violence pointed to a major escalation in Islamist militants’ attempts to destabilise the region.

“This is a virtual declaration of war against the state of Pakistan,” said Imtiaz Gul, head of the independent Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad.

With pressure growing for action, Pakistan demanded that neighbouring Afghanistan hand over 76 “terrorists” it said were sheltering over the border.

The bombings over five days have hit all four of Pakistan’s provinces and two major cities, shaking a nascent sense that the worst of the country’s militant violence may be in the past.

A series of military operations against insurgent groups operating in Pakistan had encouraged hopes that their leaders were scattered.

“But this has led to a degree of complacency within our civil-military leadership that perhaps they have completely destroyed these elements, or broken their back,” Gul said.

If so, that impression has been shattered in recent days.

BLOOD AND TEARS

At Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the white marble floor was still stained with blood on Friday, and a pile of shoes and slippers was heaped in the courtyard, many of them belonging to the dead.

Outside, protesters shouted slogans at police, who they said had failed to protect the shrine.

“I wish I could have been here and died in the blast last night,” a devastated Ali Hussain told Reuters, sitting on the floor of the shrine.

He said that local Sufis had asked for more security after a separate bombing this week killed 13 people in the eastern city of Lahore, but said: “No one bothered to secure this place.”

Anwer Ali, 25, rushed to the shrine after he heard the explosion, and described seeing dead bodies and chaos as people fled the scene.

“There were threats to the shrine. The Taliban had warned that they will attack here, but authorities didn’t take it seriously,” Ali said.

Sindh police chief A.D. Khawaja said on Friday that the death toll had reached 83 people with scores more wounded.

The attacks have once again raised questions over the influence of Islamic State in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 190 million people that has tense relations with its neighbours India and Afghanistan.

In the past two years, Islamic State has worked to build its “Khorasan province” encompassing Afghanistan and Pakistan, often helped by local radicals.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s foreign policy adviser Sartaj Aziz blamed Jamaat-ur-Ahrar (JuA), a Pakistani Taliban faction that has been linked to Islamic State, for the attack.

Most of the other recent attacks have been claimed by factions of the Pakistani Taliban, which is waging its own fight against the government but whose ranks have also cooperated with and sometimes defected to Islamic State.

That has led some observers to question whether the growing prominence of Islamic State actually represents a new threat – since its fighters were already operating under different names to attack government, army and minority faith targets, among others.

However, the increasing number of attacks claimed by Islamic State has raised pressure on authorities to show they are capable of containing the renewed violence.

Islamic State also said it was behind another shrine attack, in southwestern Baluchistan province, that killed at least 52 people last November. In October, it said it carried out an assault on a police training college, killing 59.

The shrine attack has heightened tensions with Afghanistan, after Pakistani officials said some militant leaders took shelter over the border. The accusation echoes similar criticism from Kabul aimed at Islamabad.

In a telephone call with Afghanistan’s national security adviser, Aziz expressed concern that JuA was operating from Afghanistan and that Kabul had failed to act against them, according to a statement from his office.

On Friday, border crossings were closed and Afghan diplomats were summoned to military headquarters in Islamabad and given a list of 76 “most-wanted terrorists” that Pakistan demanded be captured and handed over, the army said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday condemned the shrine attack on Twitter, calling Islamic State “a common enemy of Afghanistan & Pakistan”.

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Categories: Attack, Khorasan, Lal Shahbaz Qalander, Nawaz Sharif, News, Pakistan, Pakistan Taliban, Sindh, Sufi Shrine

Islamic State’s Caliphate Days are Numbered

February 12, 2017 Article

Western-backed Syrian forces should isolate Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria “by the spring” before an offensive on the city itself, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Saturday.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes the powerful Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, launched the campaign on Raqqa in November.

It announced this month the start of a new phase in the offensive, aiming to complete its encirclement of the city and cut off the road to the militants’ stronghold in Deir al-Zor, southeast of Raqqa.

“I hope that isolation will be completed by the spring and then operations to liberate Raqqa itself can begin thereafter,” Fallon told reporters in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.

Islamic State is fighting hard to preserve its foothold in Syria as it loses ground in Iraq.

U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces last month dislodged the militants from the eastern side of Mosul, their last city stronghold in Iraq, and are preparing an offensive on the parts of the city that lie west of the Tigris river.

“Raqqa is a much smaller city than Mosul but will clearly be defended very vigorously by Daesh and that means the operation to liberate Raqqa has to be very carefully prepared, as the operation for Mosul was,” Fallon said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.”Once Raqqa is liberated after Mosul, we will see the beginning of the end of this terrible caliphate,” he said. Islamic State declared the caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Britain is part of the U.S-led coalition supporting forces battling Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters walk with their weapons during an offensive against Islamic State militants in northern Raqqa province, Syria February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said

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Categories: Caliphate, Islamic State, Michael Fallon, Mosul, News, Raqqa, Syrian Forces

U.S. appeals court upholds suspension of Trump travel ban

February 10, 2017 Article

A U.S. federal appeals court on Thursday unanimously upheld a suspension of President Donald Trump’s order that restricted travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling came in a challenge to Trump’s order filed by the states of Washington and Minnesota. The U.S. Supreme Court will likely determine the case’s final outcome.

Shortly after the ruling, Trump tweeted: “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”

The Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision and considering its options.

Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order barred entry for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and imposed a 120-day halt on all refugees, except refugees from Syria who are barred indefinitely.

U.S. District Judge James Robart suspended Trump’s order last Friday.

The ruling from the 9th Circuit, which followed a hearing on the case on Tuesday, does not resolve the lawsuit, but relates instead to whether Trump’s order should be suspended while litigation proceeds.

Two members of the three-judge panel were appointed by former Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and one was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush.

The government could ask the entire 9th Circuit court to review the decision “en banc” or appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The three judges said the states had shown that even temporary reinstatement of the ban would cause harm.

In the ruling, they said they acknowledged the competing public interests of national security and free flow of travel but that the U.S. government had not offered “any evidence” of national security concerns to justify banning the seven countries.

They added that the government did not show evidence that any person from the affected countries had perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.

Their ruling also said it was unlikely the White House’s counsel had authority to amend a presidential executive order and that the government did not show how the order could be administered in parts.

Curbing entry to the United States as a national security measure was a central premise of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, originally proposed as a temporary ban on all Muslims. He has voiced frustration at the legal challenge to his order.

U.S. presidents have in the past claimed sweeping powers to fight terrorism, but individuals, states and civil rights groups challenging the ban said his administration had offered no evidence it answered a threat.

Shanez Tabarsi (R) is greeted by her daughter Negin after traveling to the U.S. from Iran following a federal court’s temporary stay of U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order travel ban at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. February 6, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

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Categories: Justice Department, Muslim Majority countries, News, terrorism, Trump travel ban, US Federal Appeals Court

Quebec mosque shooting: suspect Alexandre Bissonnette’s far-right views

January 31, 2017 Article

The suspect in the deadly shooting a Quebec City mosque has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder with a restricted firearm.

Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, a student at Université Lava, made a brief court appearance at the Quebec City courthouse yesterday. He is due back in court on February 21.

Hours after the shooting on January 29, Prime Minister Trudeau condemned the “terrorist attack on Muslims in a centre of worship and refuge”.

Provincial police are treating the incident as a terrorist act.

But why have they not included terrorism-related charges? The answer is simple, and reflects the early nature of the investigation. Crown prosecutor Thomas Jacques confirmed that Bissonnette was charged with the evidence presently available.

A spokeswoman for Canada’s federal police did not rule adding terrorism-related charges at a later date.

Mr Bissonnette remains somewhat of an anomaly. Little is known about his behaviour away from the internet.

A childhood friend of Mr Bissonnette described him as a person “enthralled by a borderline racist nationalist movement“.

Others who monitored Mr Bissonnette’s online activity draw similar conclusions. A user of an online forum said to be popular with the sole suspect, told Le Journal de Quebec that his views were “very right and ultra-nationalist white supremacist“.

François Deschamps, who runs a Facebook page to support refugees called Bienvenue aux Réfugiés, observed Mr Bissonnette’s anti-Muslim posts for almost a whole year. Nor did Alexandre Bissonnette hide behind an online pseudonym.

On January 30, at 4:07pm GMT, a Facebook post from Bienvenue aux Réfugiés confirmed Mr Bissonnette’s “pro-La Pen and anti-feminist positions at Université Laval and on social media.”

Marine Le Pen’s visit to Quebec City in March 2016 inspired Mr Bissonnette to outwardly express extreme nationalist politics, according to those who clashed with him on social media. This, perhaps, explains the varieties of political interests on his now deleted Facebook profile. His ‘likes’ ranged from Canada’s federal NDP and its former leader Jack Layton to an interest in atheism, video games, chess, Richard Dawkins, Girogio Roversi’s The Amorality of Atheism, and Christopher Hitchens.

A clustering of nationalistic ‘likes’ include U.S. President Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right National Front, and Mathieu Bock-Cóté. The latter is a Quebec City columnist known for “his pro-nationalist and anti-multicultural views,” according to the Montreal Gazette. Other nationalist interests included Génération Nationale –  a movement which rejects the ‘ideology of multiculturalism’.

TVA Nouvelles, a provincial French-language news outlet has speculated that Mr Bissonnette may have posted on 4Chan before the attack took place.

This detail, however, is not independently verified. The post in question, made on the day of the shooting, asks: “What day are mosques most active? I’m going to go demonstrate at the main one in my city and I want to go at the right time.” A screenshot of the message timestamps it at 2:44pm. The shootings began at around 8pm local time. Viewing the 4Chan thread with an American VPN presents the same timestamp found in the screenshot. Viewing the page from a UK browser puts the time at 7:45pm.

There’s nothing, however, to suggest that this post is related to the shooting, but the timing of it, may, in the end, prove coincidental.

It’s now up to provincial police to verify this claim.

In a statement, Alexandre Bissonnette’s employer stated: “Héma-Québec was shocked to learn that one of its employees, Mr. Alexandre Bissonnette, was arrested as a suspect in the tragic events that took place at the Centre culturel islamique de Québec on January 29, 2017.”

The names of the dead emerged on Monday afternoon. All the victims were fathers. Azzedine, 57, a grocer, butcher and father of three, helped newcomers settle in Quebec City.

Khaled Belkacemi, 60, a professor of soil and agri-food engineering at Laval University, was described by staff as ‘distinguished, passionate & truly involved‘.

Aboubaker Thabti, 44, worked in a pharmacy and had two young children.

Two friends from Guinea, Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42, and Ibrahima Barry, 39, were among the dead, according to Souleymane Bah, president of the Association of Guineans in Quebec. Mamadou had worked in the IT sector and father to two toddlers under the age of five. Ibrahima worked for Quebec’s Revenue Ministry. His children are 13, seven, three and two.

Abdelkrim Hassane, 41, worked as a programming analyst for the provincial government. He is survived by three daughters, aged 10, eight and 15 months.

A GoFundMe page to support the victims’ families and to help cover funeral expenses raised C$157,526 in one day.

Two the 19 individuals wounded in the shooting remain in critical condition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Canada, Marine Le Pen, News, Quebec, terrorism

Foreign powers back Syria truce deal, war erupts among rebels

January 25, 2017 Article

Russia and regional powers Turkey and Iran backed a shaky truce between Syria’s warring parties on Tuesday and agreed to monitor its compliance, but on the ground rebels faced continued fighting on two fronts which could undermine the deal.

After two days of deliberations in Astana, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said the powers had agreed in a final communique to establish a system “to observe and ensure full compliance with the ceasefire, prevent any provocations and determine all modalities of the ceasefire.”

While welcoming the text, the Syrian government’s chief negotiator Bashar Ja’afari said an offensive against rebels west of Damascus would carry on. Rebels say it is a major violation of the ceasefire agreed on Dec. 30.

Opposition negotiator Mohammad Alloush said he had reservations about the text which he said legitimised Iran’s “bloodletting” in Syria and did not address the role of Shi’ite militias fighting rebels.

In northwest Syria, heavy fighting erupted between the jihadist group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and Free Syrian Army factions who were represented at the Astana talks.

FSA groups are reeling after being driven from Aleppo city last month by government forces and their allies. Any further loss of territory in their main northern stronghold – this time at the hands of jihadist insurgents – could leave them too weak to achieve any meaningful gains from peace negotiations.

In Astana, rebel and government delegates held indirect talks for the first time in nine months at a time when Turkey, which backs the rebels, and Russia, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, want to disentangle themselves from the fighting.

That has led them into an ad-hoc alliance that also appears to enshrine Iran in a process that could lead to some form of political settlement – leaving the United Nations’ role unclear, especially with the United States distracted by domestic issues.

The talks represent a coup for Moscow, which has evolved into the main powerbroker since its military intervention in September 2015 to shore up Assad. “We have managed … to give birth to the Astana process,” the head of the Russian delegation, Alexander Lavrentyev, told reporters.

The final text did not go into any details beyond reaffirming the Turkish-Russian Dec. 30 ceasefire. A Western diplomat said the three powers agreed to meet again in Astana on Feb. 6 to discuss the mechanism.

In Washington, the State Department called on Russia, Turkey and Iran “to press regime, pro-regime, and opposition forces to abide by the ceasefire in order to create an environment more conducive to intra-Syrian political discussions.”

Acting spokesman Mark Toner said: “We look forward to the resumption of U.N.-sponsored intra-Syrian talks between the regime and opposition groups.”

FIGHTING FOR WATER

Since the ceasefire announcement, government-backed forces have launched an offensive northwest of Damascus in the Wadi Barada area, where fighting intensified on Tuesday.

The government and its allies, including Lebanese group Hezbollah were trying to push forward in Ain al-Fija, where springs and a pumping station that supply most of the capital’s water are located.

Rebels had come to the meeting hoping Moscow would put pressure on the Iranians to curb military offensives.

“The Russians have moved from a stage of being a party in the fighting and are now exerting efforts to become a guarantor. They are finding a lot of obstacles from (Lebanon’s Shi’ite) Hezbollah forces, Iran and the regime,” Alloush told reporters after the talks.

He said he expected Russia to respond within a week to a rebel ceasefire proposal and that rebels would never allow Iran, which they accuse of trying to change the demographic make-up of certain Sunni Muslim areas, to have a say in Syria’s future.

Government envoy Ja’afari said it was “pitiful” that some “armed terrorist groups in Astana” were criticising Iran, one of the three guarantors.

Western diplomats attending the talks informally said despite a lack of detail about the ceasefire, it was positive that the final communique mentioned reviving the U.N. political talks in Geneva under U.N. resolution 2254 and that the three powers agreed to jointly fight Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which changed its name from Nusra Front last year, and to separate them from armed opposition groups.

However, Assad’s foreign backers and opponents have rarely agreed on exactly which fighters represent moderate rebel forces and which ones are jihadists.

The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, who was attending the Astana talks, said he now hoped to reconvene peace talks in Geneva next month.

“We (the UN) are the main player in regards to the political process,” de Mistura said. “The political process should continue in Geneva … We cannot allow another ceasefire to be, in a way, wasted, because of a lack of a political process.”

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Categories: Astana, Bashar Al Assad, Ceasefire, FSA, News, Rebel Groups, Russia, Syria Truce, Truce, Water

“I lost all hope of going home” – Chibok Schoolgirl

January 24, 2017 Article

Nigeria is facing mounting pressure to find some 200 schoolgirls abducted 1,000 days ago in Boko Haram’s most infamous attack after the rescue of 24 girls raised hopes that they are alive.

For more than two years there was no sign of the girls who were kidnapped by the Islamist fighters from a school in Chibok in northeast Nigeria one night in April 2014, sparking global outrage and a celebrity-backed campaign #bringbackourgirls.

But the discovery of one of the girls with a baby last May fuelled hopes for their safety, with a further two girls found in later months and a group of 21 released in October in a deal brokered by Switzerland and the International Red Cross.

For parents like Rebecca Joseph the return home of the group of 21 girls at Christmas was a bitter-sweet celebration.

Her daughter, Elizabeth, is one of an estimated 195 girls still held captive by the jihadist group, which has tried to force some of them to convert to Islam and to marry their captors.

“I am happy that some of the girls are returning home even though my own daughter is not among them,” Joseph told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the town of Chibok in Borno state.

“My prayer is that my daughter and the rest of the girls will be rescued and returned to their families safe.”

With last weekend marking 1,000 days since the girls were abducted, President Muhammadu Buhari said he remained committed to ensuring the abducted schoolgirls are reunited with their families “as soon as practicable”.

“We are hopeful that many more will still return,” said Buhari, who came to power in 2015 and replaced a government criticised for not doing enough to find the missing girls.

“The tears never dry, the ache is in our hearts,” he said in a statement.

STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM

The Nigerian government said last month that it was involved in negotiations aimed at securing the release of some of the girls as the army captured a key Boko Haram camp, the militant group’s last enclave in the vast Sambisa forest.

The exact number of Chibok girls still in captivity is believed to be 195 but it has been hard to pin down an exact number since the girls went missing.

Academics and security experts say it may be a huge challenge to obtain the girls’ freedom given the significance of the abduction for Boko Haram, which has killed about 15,000 people in its seven-year insurgency to set up an Islamic state.

“Outside Nigeria, the Chibok girls have come to symbolise the Boko Haram conflict,” said Sola Tayo, an associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

“The global outrage generated by their captivity has added to their value to the insurgents,” she added, adding that they were also significant to Buhari because he made their release a key campaign pledge before his 2015 election.

The government said in October that it had not swapped Boko Haram fighters or paid a ransom for the release of the 21 girls but several security analysts said it was implausible that the Islamist group would have let the girls go for nothing.

“To secure the release of the remaining girls would require concessions by the Nigerian government, which could reverse significant gains it has made against Boko Haram,” said Ryan Cummings, director of risk management consultancy Signal Risk.

“In addition to detainees, Boko Haram may also demand supplies, weapons, vehicles and even money which they could use to recalibrate and invigorate their armed campaign against the Nigerian state.”

DEEP DIVISIONS

One of the major obstacles to securing the release of all of the Chibok girls who remain in captivity is the deep divisions emerging within Boko Haram, said Freedom Onuoha, a security analyst and lecturer at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka.

The militants split last year with one faction moving away from the group’s established figurehead Abubakar Shekau over his failure to adhere to guidance from Islamic State to which Boko Haram pledged allegiance in 2015.

It is unclear how many Chibok girls are held by the main faction led by Shekau, thought to be based in the Sambisa, and by the Islamic State-allied splinter group – headed by Abu Musab al-Barnawi and believed to operate in the Lake Chad area.

“It will be difficult to release most of the remaining girls as each faction will maintain a strong hold on them and would negotiate with state officials on their own terms,” said Onuoha.

While the deal to free the 21 girls was seen as a huge boost for the government’s assertions that it would soon bring home the others, a lack of progress since then has seen public hopes dwindle and frustrations arise, academics said.

Although Nigeria has driven Boko Haram out of most of the territory it held, its battle against the militants will not be considered over until the fate of all of the Chibok girls is made clear, said Nnamdi Obasi of the International Crisis Group.

“From various indications, it is most unlikely that all the remaining girls will come home alive, but the government owes their parents and the public the fundamental responsibility of accounting for every one of them,” the Nigeria analyst said.

The post “I lost all hope of going home” – Chibok Schoolgirl appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: #bringbackourgirls, Boko Haram, Chibok schoolgirl, Islamic State, News, Nigeria

Wife of Orlando gunman in court, uncle says she’s innocent

January 18, 2017 Article

The wife of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, appeared in court on Tuesday (January 17) accused of committing a crime by assisting her husband ahead of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Noor Salman, 30, was not present for the June 2016 attack. But she faces up to life in prison if convicted of aiding and abetting husband Omar Mateen’s attempt to provide material support to a terrorist organization, federal prosecutors said.

She also is charged with obstructing justice for lying to authorities investigating the massacre, according to prosecutors.

The first person charged by U.S. authorities in connection with the shooting, Salman did not enter a plea at her initial court appearance in Oakland, California. Dressed in a yellow t-shirt and gray sweatpants, she spoke only to acknowledge she understood the proceedings.

Her uncle Al Salman spoke to reporters outside of the court and said, “We believe in her. When she said ‘I’m innocent’ we know she’s innocent.”

Salman was arrested on Monday in California, where she was living with her mother in the San Francisco area, according to her uncle, Al Salman, who denied she played a role in the attack.

Salman said his niece, a U.S. citizen and the daughter of parents who immigrated from the West Bank in 1985, was physically abused by Mateen.

Mateen was killed in a shootout with police after he took hostages during a three-hour standoff in the Pulse nightclub. He wounded dozens more in the shooting, which intensified fears about attacks by Americans inspired by Islamic State.

Noor Salman’s indictment, unsealed on Tuesday, was returned last week by a federal grand jury in the U.S. Middle District of Florida, which includes Orlando.

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Categories: Florida, gunman, News, Noor Salman, Omar Mateen, Orlando Gunman