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Nigerian police/military hunt for hundreds of missing students
after school attacked
Employee says roughly half of the school's 800 students remain missing
Thomson Reuters · Posted:
Dec 12, 2020 12:51 PM ET
People walk near the Government Science secondary school in Nigeria's Kankara district on Saturday,
a day after it was attacked by armed bandits, in northwestern Katsina State. (Abdullahi Inuwa/Reuters)
Bandits armed with assault rifles attacked a secondary school in Nigeria's northwestern Katsina State late on Friday, police said, and two local people told Reuters hundreds of students were missing.
The gunmen stormed the Government Science secondary school in Kankara district at about 9:40 p.m. local time, and police at the scene returned fire, allowing some students to run for safety, police spokesperson Gambo Isah said in a statement.
Police said they were working with the army and air force to determine how many pupils were missing or kidnapped, and to find them. One officer was shot and wounded in the exchange of fire with the gang, they said.
There were chaotic scenes at the school on Saturday as desperate parents and security personnel gathered to search for roughly half of the school's 800 students who were still missing, one parent and a school employee told Reuters.
Katsina, the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, is plagued by violent bandits who regularly attack locals and kidnap for ransom. Attacks by Islamist militants are common in northeastern parts of the country.
Violence and insecurity across Nigeria have enraged citizens, particularly after scores of farmers were killed, some beheaded, by Islamist militants in northeast Borno state late last month.
Buhari, who arrived on Friday for a week in his home village some 200 kilometres from Kankara, was scheduled to brief the country's National Assembly on the security situation last week but cancelled the appearance without official explanation.
Jailed terrorist Hashem Abedi admits helping brother plan
Ariana Grande attack which killed 22
7 Dec 2020 13:36
Undated file photo issued by Greater Manchester Police, of Hashem Abedi, younger brother of the
Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi. © Greater Manchester Police via AP
A convicted terrorist has finally admitted his role in planning the deadly attack in which his brother detonated a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert, killing 22 people and injured 800, many of whom were children.
On Monday, a public inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing was told that Hashem Abedi, a convicted terrorist and brother of the Manchester bomber, had finally admitted his involvement in planning the attack.
The 23-year-old made the admission in the autumn as part of ongoing investigations into the atrocities which were committed on May 22, 2017.
The public inquiry’s legal team told the hearing that they had interviewed Abedi on October 22.
“During the course of that interview, Hahem Abedi admitted that he had played a full part, and a knowing part, in the planning and preparation for the Arena attack,” said Paul Greaney QC.
Abedi was arrested in Libya shortly after his brother carried out the suicide bombing. Abedi did not give evidence during the trial at the Old Bailey earlier this year and refused to face his victims’ families in court.
Instead, he provided a defence statement denying his involvement and spoke of his “shock” on hearing the actions of his brother.
In August 2020, Abedi was sentenced to 55 years in prison, the longest minimum term ever given by a British court.
Hashem's brother, Salman Abedi detonated a “large home-made improvised explosive device” in the foyer of the Manchester Arena during an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, 2017.
Twenty-three people, including Salman Abedi perished.
Stories like this are great ammunition for radical Islamist recruiters.
War profiteers: Danish pension funds accused of financing war in Yemen
11 Dec 2020 10:14
Smoke rises as people inspect damage at the site of air strikes in the city of Saada, Yemen
Reuters / Naif Rahma
New research by Oxfam IBIS revealed that Denmark’s 16 pension funds have together invested almost 3 billion Danish kroner ($500 million) in foreign arms manufacturers supplying weapons to countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Those weapons were most likely used in the war in Yemen, as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are heavily involved in the conflict there, said the report. It has accused the pension funds of "profiteering.”
One of the 21 companies that received Danish pension fund money is US missile manufacturer Raytheon. The fund that gave the money said it didn't invest in companies that produce so-called unconventional weapons, such as landmines and cluster munitions. Nevertheless, it assured that it “follows the situation in Yemen very closely.”
“I think many pension customers will be shocked when they discover that their pension savings right now are helping to keep the world's worst war alive. That is completely unacceptable,” said Kristian Weise, Secretary General of Oxfam IBIS.
He pointed out that the war and the accompanying humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen will only be kept alive as long as the flow of weapons to the warring parties continues. “In Oxfam IBIS' opinion, these arms deliveries should be stopped immediately. To that extent, the Danish pension funds have an ethical and moral responsibility that they should take on,” Weise added.
Denmark halted all exports of weapons and military equipment to the UAE and Saudi Arabia in 2018. However, “Despite the fact that there is a political desire in Denmark that we should not in any way contribute to keeping the war in Yemen alive, we are still part of it through our pension funds,” said Weise. “It must be stopped because, as it is now, several million Danish pension customers are helping to keep the war in Yemen running, and I think that very few Danes actually want to have their pension remunerated by contributing to war and murder in Yemen,” he added.
Nearly 230,000 people have died since 2015 as a result of the war in Yemen between the Saudi-led coalition and the local Houthi rebel movement. It is estimated that 80 percent of Yemen’s 28 million population requires desperate emergency aid. The United Nations has described the situation as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Now, let's not forget that the Houthi's are backed by Iran, and that this is a proxy war. Iran would have Saudi Arabia half surrounded if they got control of Yemen, as they do Syria.
Germany: Muslim Migrant Hailed as ‘Model Refugee’
Murders Handicapped Man
DEC 10, 2020 6:00 PM
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Jihad Watch
Stand up and take a bow, Chancellor Merkel. My latest in FrontPage:
The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do. The German-language news outlet Bild reported Monday that “the almost blind and handicapped ex-cook Helmut K. († 50) from Kaufbeuren made an appointment on the gay dating platform ‘Planet Romeo’ on March 14th at 4.30pm with the username wandalalaland.’” Then “at 9:01 p.m., the heavy metal fan was tied up and gagged in his bedroom, which is above the popular escape room ‘Countdown,” and was “gagged so hard that he choked on his dentures.” Helmut K. ultimately died, and “the man whom prosecutor Andreas Slach suspects to be behind ‘wandalalaland’ is now sitting in the dock at the Kempten Regional Court.” The perpetrator is a Muslim migrant who once won praise as a “model refugee.”
The 29-year-old Karam A., according to Bild, “has lived as a model refugee in Kaufbeuren since 2015, but is said to have killed people in his home country of Syria, according to investigators.” Why was he let in to Germany if he had been known to have killed people in Syria, and if this was not known, why wasn’t he deported when it was discovered? Bild doesn’t bother to take up such questions.
It does report, however, that the death of Helmut K. was the result of careful planning. “Together with Hazem K. († 21), A. is said to have forged the murder plot that cost the life of Helmut K., who was in need of care and had a heart condition. Hazem K. knew from the neighborhood that the early retiree was hoarding 8,000 euros in cash in his apartment.” It was Karam’s friend Hazem who “developed the idea for the robbery with a fake account. During the police interrogation, he confessed to everything, incriminated his accomplice Karam A. seriously, but then hanged himself in his cell in August.”
Karam puts all the blame on Hazem: “He screwed the police, religion and his lawyer.” Religion? What does his religion have to do with this? Were Hazem and Karam plotting to murder a homosexual because of Sharia’s death penalty on such activity? He doesn’t explain, and Bild once again doesn’t ask.
I suspect Karam was referring to the suicide, not the murder since his lawyer was included in the list. Hence, the police would have been 'screwed', and he would have missed out on Paradise for having suicided.
Bild was more interested in Karam’s flair for melodrama: “Theatrically he tried to convince the judge of his innocence: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, there are many things in life that are unbelievable, so that’s not impossible.’ Judge Christoph Schwiebacher ended this bizarre performance: ‘Don’t tell any more stories, stop the show!’”
One of the most commonly repeated elements of the Leftist/Islamic supremacist rap sheet against me, (Robert Spencer) supposedly establishing that I am an “anti-Muslim extremist,” is that I said that there was no reliable way to distinguish between peaceful Muslims and jihadists, and no distinction between the two in Muslim communities. This statement doesn’t mean that all Muslims are terrorists; it means that peaceful Muslims aren’t separating themselves from the terrorists.
And that is demonstrably true. All too many jihadis have operated freely in American mosques without being put out. After a Muslim who supported the Islamic State shot a police officer in Philadelphia, the local mosque leaders initially denied knowing him, but then it turned out they were lying, and the jihadi attended the mosque frequently. The same thing happened after jihadis attacked our free speech event in Garland, Texas: the mosque they attended in Phoenix denied knowing them, but it turned out they were regular members.
In a similar vein, this Karam A. was hailed as a “model refugee” for his success in assimilating into German society. But it seems as if he still carried within him some of the attitudes and assumptions created by a culture of violence that mandates the execution of homosexuals.
This could be an overreaction in this particular case since it does not appear that it was an execution as much as a robbery gone wrong.
Yet no one could have predicted that this would happen, as there is, here again, no reliable way to distinguish between peaceful Muslims and violent ones. Instead of heaping abuse upon those who point this out, genuinely peaceful Muslims should be working hard to establish such a distinction, in Germany and elsewhere, because of course, no one would dream of actually doing something so radical as seriously vetting the migrants.
‘Deliberate stigmatization’: Austria’s top court overturns headscarf ban
in primary schools
12 Dec 2020 05:01
FILE PHOTO. © Global Look Press / Daniel Schaefer
Austria’s Constitutional Court has lifted a ban on wearing headscarves in primary schools that was in force since 2019, arguing that it targets Islam and hinders the integration of Muslim girls.
The court declared the ban unconstitutional in a Friday ruling, saying it violates Austria’s principles of religious and ideological neutrality. “The school is based, among other things, on the basic values of openness and tolerance,” the court’s president, Christoph Grabenwarter, said, adding that, by focusing on a specific religion, the legislation infringes upon this principle of equality.
The regulation… marginalizes Islamic origin and tradition as such.
Passed in May 2019, the law does not explicitly mention Muslim head coverings. Instead, it prohibits primary school children from wearing “ideologically or religiously influenced clothing, which involves covering of the head,” while making specific exemptions for the Jewish kippah and the patka headdress worn by Sikhs.
How did they ever think they would get that through the courts?
The legislation, supported by the Conservative People’s Party (OVP) and the right-wing Freedom Party (FPO), which at that time retained a majority in the parliament, was met with skepticism as its opponents called it “populist” while people ridiculed it on social media.
Austria’s Islamic Faith Community (IGGO) said the law violated religious freedom as well as parents’ rights to educate their children in their faith. The IGGO then filed a formal complaint with the court in January this year.
The government argued that the ban is aimed at protecting Muslim girls from “social pressure” when it comes to wearing religious clothing. The court, however, dismissed such reasoning as insufficient, and said that the legislature’s real effect is detrimental to the nation’s integration efforts, which is the opposite to what its authors supposedly sought to achieve.
“The ban on the Islamic headscarf, which selectively covers a specific religious or ideological clothing, deliberately stigmatizes a certain group of people,” the court ruled. “It carries the risk of making it more difficult for Muslim girls to access education or marginalizing them socially.”
The judges also rejected the argument that wearing headscarves in schools could lead to religious conflicts, adding that the ban applied to girls that “do not disturb the peace at school” anyway.
Seriously? It's been a while since the judges went to school, I think.
Following the court’s decision, the IGGO said that “our trust in the rule of law and our patience have paid off.” The news was also welcomed by most of Austria's opposition parties. The Social Democrats called on the government to “respect” the ruling as well as to develop an integration concept that “no longer sees integration as a populist plaything but as a socio-political task.”
The government, which is still led by OVP’s Sebastian Kurz, said it would “of course” accept the ruling. Still, Susanne Raab, the minister for women and integration, noted that she finds it “regrettable” that young girls would have to wear headscarves in school from now on. The OVP’s former coalition partners from FPO denounced the decision as a “sad day for children’s rights.”
There is obviously a significant difference of opinion as to what 'integration' means between the courts and the government.
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