Attack on Kabul, Afghanistan, tutoring center kills 18
By Clyde Hughes
an educational center in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday. Photo by Hedayatullah Amid/EPA-EFE
Oct. 24 (UPI) -- An attack on a Kabul, Afghanistan, tutoring center Saturday killed 18 and wounded 57 others amid negotiations between the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban.
The Taliban denied responsibility for the attack, while government and U.S. officials had called for calm during negotiations in Qatar. Those calls, though, have not stopped the violence in provinces throughout Afghanistan.
The Taliban may have denied responsibility, but this is exactly what they used to do. However, that may well be a false-flag operation by some faction that does not want peace.
"Ambulances are still transferring the bodies," Abuzar Motaqi, a hospital official, said. "Most of them are very young."
Someone at the Kawsar Education Center recognized the suspect along a narrow street near the school as he tried to enter. The suspect set off a suicide vest just outside the facility. Another explosion at an education center in 2018 killed 48 students.
"After a week of horrific violence across Afghanistan, [the attack] drains every last ounce of energy and hope," said Sharhzad Akbar, chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
In another attack south of Kabul on Saturday, at least eight civilians were killed in a roadside bomb blast in Ghazni City. Six security personnel who were protecting the Kamal Khan dam in Nimroz province died in the militant attack.
High Council of National Reconciliation head Abdullah Abdullah condemned the school attack saying it violated Islamic principles and values.
Gosh, maybe you should try and convert them to Islam? Oh, wait...
Interesting and revealing discussion by Mustafa Farooq, one of Canada's highly educated and influential Muslims. Here he reveals Muslim plans for Canada and the rest of the world.
NCCM’s Mustafa Farooq: “How are we Muslims going to recreate Cordoba [Caliphate] in any Canadian city?”
ACDemocracy
Posted by: Rachel Ehrenfeld July 8, 2020
Mustafa Farooq, Photo: Screenshot from YouTube Channel NCCMtv
Mustafa Farooq is Executive Director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM). A lawyer by profession, Mustafa completed his Juris Doctor at the University of Alberta and Osgoode Hall (York University) and later earned h
is Master of Laws (LLM) at UC Berkeley in California.
is Master of Laws (LLM) at UC Berkeley in California.
In a Facebook post (November 3, 2009) Mustafa Farooq wrote (the post is no longer available online):
How are we Muslims going to recreate Cordoba [Caliphate/ Islamic State] in Edmonton/Toronto/Montreal/any Canadian city? We have a massive task ahead of us, but I really believe that it is one at which we can succeed, one in which we erase these artificial “nation-state” identities, and move together to pursue Jannah [paradise].
For the rest of the article and a number of useful links, please see ACDemocracy.
Norwegian police ‘apologize’ for ordering local to take down drawings of
Prophet Mohammed he put up in defense of free speech
26 Oct 2020 12:29
Norwegian police have admitted they were wrong in asking a local man to tear down cartoons of Prophet Mohammed which he had hung around the town in response to the gruesome murder of a teacher in France.
A man in his 40s, who wished to remain anonymous, printed out cartoons of Prophet Mohammed and hung them around the town of Kongsberg last week. He chose popular places like the local mall and cinema, as well as bus stops, to make sure the cartoons would be seen by as many people as possible.
The man explained to the public broadcaster NRK that he wanted to highlight the importance of freedom of expression and that “Islam cannot have any special protection in a free society.” He added that he wanted an “honest conversation about Islam without people getting labeled as racists and fascists.”
While the individual, who is also a father to small children, according to media reports, admitted that he wanted to see if the cartoons would provoke any reaction from police, he said he did not expect four officers to come knocking at his door the very same day.
He told the Human Rights Service NGO that police were concerned that Muslims would be offended by the drawings. The officers argued that the posters were put up without a permit, so they ordered him to take them down and to never do anything like that again, the man said. According to him, the officers even threatened him with legal action.
If I had hung up posters of Karl Marx, Buddha or Jesus, would I have four police officers knocking on the door with a request to take them down?
The man told the media that he had grown up in the Middle East and that such things should not happen “in a liberal democracy.”
Following the story’s exposure, Kongsberg Police Chief Havard Reva said that he “regrets” that the officers had arrived at the man’s residence, and apologized. He admitted that the drawings alone could not serve as a reason to seek out who put them up.
“The police should have not advised him to remove the drawings. The natural thing in such situations is to have a request from the landowner who wants the drawings removed,” Reva told the Laagendalsposten newspaper.
In a similar vein, high-ranking regional police official Oyvind Aas told Aftenposten that the officers had no right to order the posters to be taken down, calling it an “actual mistake.”
The police response prompted some backlash from politicians. An MP and former Justice Minister Per-Willy Amundsen told local media that the Kongsberg man “had really not done anything wrong in the legal sense,” while the actions of the officers were “bordering on the abuse of power.”
Before Kongsberg, the cartoons depicting Mohammed had also appeared on the streets of Lillestrom, just outside Norway’s capital Oslo, according to local media.
It happened after middle school teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by a young Chechen refugee in France on October 16 for showing his class the cartoons of Mohammed as part of a lesson on freedom of expression.
On Friday, someone erected the drawings of Mohammed on the doors of the offices of two local newspapers in the Norwegian town of Roros and on a local shop, prompting complaints to the police.
Militant reportedly blows himself up at checkpoint in
Turkish city near Syrian border
26 Oct 2020 19:16
One militant has been killed in a suicide bomb explosion in Iskenderun, and another is being hunted by Turkish security forces, authorities in Hatay province, just across the border from Syria, said.
Photos from the site show extensive damage to cars and storefronts.
Payas is a town just north of Iskenderun. The militants presumably ran the checkpoint and drove into the city, with police in hot pursuit.
No civilians were hurt in the incident, Dogan said.
Hatay is the southernmost Turkish province, nestled between the Mediterranean to the west and Syria to the south and east. The adjacent Idlib governorate in Syria is the last bastion of Turkish-backed militants, many of whom are affiliated with Al-Qaeda, which once sought to overthrow the government in Damascus.
Over 3,380 martyred in fight against terrorism in five years: Pakistan
Ary Web Desk On Oct 26, 2020
ISLAMABAD: At least 3,384 people, including 1,457 security personnel, have been martyred in 3,990 terror attacks during the past five years in Pakistan, ARY News reported.
According to the interior ministry, 8,436 people, including 2,569 security officials have been injured in terrorism-related incidents from 2015 to 13th of September 2020.
Balochistan was the most terrorism-affected region of the country where 1,435 terror attacks were reported, 1,048 attacks were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 371 attacks were reported in Sindh and 180 attacks were reported in Punjab in five years.
It is pertaining to mention here that Pakistan has rendered countless sacrifices in War against Terrorism and has always taken indiscriminate action against any form of extremism and terrorism.
Wow!
Last year in July, Prime Minister Imran Khan had said that the Pakistani nation had rendered 70,000 sacrifices in war against terrorism as a high price of the Afghan war.
PM Imran Khan, while addressing to the US Institute of Peace in Washington, reiterated, “I have always adopted the stance that Afghan issue could be resolved through dialogues. I’ve also asked everyone in the United States that there is no military solution to the issue.”
PM Kahn, you should know that American oligarchs don't want a solution to the war in Afghanistan, or anywhere else. War is the objective! The relentless movement of weapons is what keeps the American economy from collapsing.
Man who helped San Bernardino terrorists is sentenced to 20 years in prison
6 hrs ago
U.S. Department of Justice
Fontana Herald News
A Riverside man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for conspiring to commit terrorist attacks in the Inland Empire and for providing assault rifles later used in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack that killed 14 people.
Enrique Marquez Jr., 28, was sentenced on Oct. 23 by United States District Judge Jesus Bernal, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The sentencing concludes a case in which Marquez pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy to provided material support and resources to terrorists.
In the plea agreement and in open court, Marquez admitted that he conspired with Syed Rizwan Farook in 2011 and 2012 to make plans to attack Riverside City College (RCC) and commuter traffic on the 91 Freeway.
Marquez also pleaded guilty to making false statements in connection with the acquisition of firearms by serving as the “straw buyer” of two assault rifles that he provided to Farook. More than three years later, Farook and his wife used those rifles in the shooting rampage at the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center (IRC) on Dec. 2, 2015. Hours later, both Farook and his wife were killed by law enforcement, ending what at the time was the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
“This defendant was an active member of a conspiracy that planned to inflict death and destruction on innocent people,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Tracy Wilkison. “Today’s sentence is the direct result of actions that enabled a terrorist and laid the foundation for an attack that took 14 innocent lives, wounded 22 others, and shook the entire nation. By his own admissions, this defendant collaborated with and purchased weapons for a man he definitively knew held radical and anti-American beliefs -- and who wanted to kill innocent people.”
Two of the 14 shooting victims at the IRC were Fontana residents.
“Mr. Marquez could have intervened to support law enforcement instead of supporting terrorists,” said Kristi K. Johnson, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “He might have thwarted the Dec. 2 attack, but he chose to stay silent before being captured. While the terrorists -- whose names we may prefer to forget -- paid for their crimes with their lives, the prison sentence imposed on Mr. Marquez today may deliver a measure of justice to the victims of the attack for which Mr. Marquez supplied the instruments leading to their deaths and injuries.”
Prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum that Marquez “was a full, willing, and motivated participant of the conspiracy who not only provided the agreement necessary for the conspiracy to attack RCC and SR-91, but also co-designed the attacks with Farook, purchased the two firearms and ammunition to facilitate the attacks, researched bomb making and obtained explosive powder and other bomb-making materials, and visited RCC and SR-91 to sketch out how he and Farook would attack the two locations to maximize casualties.”
Marquez was arrested about two weeks after the IRC terrorist attack and has remained in custody ever since his first court appearance on Dec. 17, 2015. In imposing the sentence, Bernal denied Marquez’s request for a five-year sentence, which essentially would have been a time-served sentence that soon would have resulted in his release from custody. In court documents, prosecutors called this request an attempt to “downplay the seriousness of his actions, and skirt that his actions contributed to the mass killing and injuring of innocent people in San Bernardino just a few years later.”
Once he completes his prison sentence, Marquez will be placed on supervised release for a term of 15 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment